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Pigs fly, birds die … we’re doomed

Posted in Nature, News, Religion, science, tagged , , , , , , , on January 6, 2011| 13 Comments »

All this bird dying, fish floating, mass crab croaking stuff is creepy, and I don’t care how many scientists trot about spouting on about how these are normal events.

Sure, I can understand how finding oneself in Beebe, Arkansas on New Year’s Eve could prompt the mutilation migration that had thousands of birds falling from the sky and nearly 100,000 fish rising to the surface in a nearby river in the days leading up to the holiday, but rural redneckitis doesn’t explain major die-offs in New Zealand, the UK and Sweden. (Although I suspect the Swedish situation may be pinned on broken condoms, but I’m not going there today.)

As some drunken Scot put it: We’re doomed, Laddy.

We’re one year away from 2012, and if predictions are to be awarded their due, apparently the road to global annihilation starts the paving process with fish and birds.

Given that one portent of doom suggests $5 a gallon gas by 2012, my world … where gas is about $7 a gallon … is already up there with the bloating snapper.

We’re also well on our way to learning all the steps to the natural disasters pas de everybody and just the global weather of the past month alone is enough to warm us up for 2012 terrors of the climate kind.

Add to it all things like the birth of a panda cow in Colorado … presaged by that wise woman Christine O’Donnel’s ManMindMouse … and the appearance and immediate shooting of a strange creature in Kentucky and there’s a whole lotta strange goin’ on.

After all, a black man is President of the US of A and it’s now okay to be gay in the army, so apparently hell has frozen over and pigs do fly, so the only horror yet to happen is THE END OF THE WHOLE FUCKING WORLD.

I could make a couple predictions myself from today’s news alone … a Momon nutjob taking over the House Armed Services Committee will result in battles of prophecy fulfillment, or not … thousands upon thousands of people will soon suddenly be unable to identify their location due to Starbucks removing their name from the logo. Yes, creepy things are coming at us.

I’m also guessing strange lights will be seen in the skies, entire nations will mysteriously place idiots in powerful positions and millions will be moved to tears by the news a perfect couple has decided to divorce. Yep … all this over the next twelve months leading to 2012.

I can’t help but wonder when the first time was humans prepared for the end of the world. For sure the predictions have been going around a while and no few religions buy into the idea of Armageddon, but did early man include a sense of total destruction as he painted bison running across cave walls? Could unexplainable events in the ancient natural world have been assumed portents of doom?

I’m guess, yep. I’m also guessing thoughts of surviving such made up a whole bunch of that old time religion that’s morphed into what we have today.

Since we can’t even figure out how to keep oil companies from wasting millions of gallons of their pricy product on useless endeavors like turning the Gulf of Mexico into sludge, much less how to travel to distant, possibly more habitable, planets, what hope could there be in trying to avoid the coming apocalypse?

The only question really then, is: What to do between now and the end of the world?

Of course, a number of options present. We can, for example:

1) Curl up in a ball and do the “Oh, woe is us” thing
2) Turn to a higher power in hopes that gives some leverage
3) Live life to the fullest every day while considering each a gift
4) Figure out a way to make a buck while riding the hysteria wave
5) Ignore all
6) Consider all an adventure and go with the flow

Okay … there are a whole lot more options and I’m willing to hear others, but that’s all the list I have time for right now since there’s no use wasting too much of that on just another bloody blog post, is there?

For my part, I’ll try my best to concentrate on ducking falling fowl, putting one foot in front of the other, having a good time when I can, writing about stuff I find interesting … or amusing … or annoying … taking care of my kids (just in case there turns out to be a world for them to inherit), hanging with my friends, laughing, loving, snorkeling and trying not to spend too much time fretting about stuff I can’t fix.

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InSantaTy: or it’s all a mythtery

Posted in History, News, Religion, science, tagged , on December 21, 2010| 18 Comments »

I wrote earlier today on the magic of belief in Santa Claus, the gift to the imagination that shiny bit of tinsel can hang on children before they reach the age when flying reindeer and fat men squeezing their bulk down chimneys to leave bikes and dolls no longer makes any sense and they face the realization that Mom and Dad are bigger benefactors than they’d figured.

We consider the progression to be in the natural order of things; hopeful frivolity gives way to information, knowledge, to familiarization with the way things really are. Also learned in time is a sense of history that serves to put traditions in context, to illuminate how one thing led to another to another and eventually to St. Nicholas morphing into Santa Claus.

Okay … so my eight-year-old is on the verge of twigging to the Santa gag, and even though I’m hoping he gets this one more year of the fantasy the writing is on the wall. He’s a smart, curious kid who loves to learn and wants to know stuff, and in the long run all that is a good thing.

I can’t help, however, but be amazed at the huge number of people who never get further than the fairy tales.

Those in this article for example:

A new Gallup poll, released Dec. 17, reveals that 40 percent of Americans still believe that humans were created by God within the last 10,000 years.

Yeah … I could have gone with the whole Holy Night tale, but although it is almost Christmas other angles came across my reindeer radar today, and the idea that only 16% of Americans buy the idea of evolution without divine guidance feels to me like a call for intervention.

Don’t get me wrong — I like Christmas music as much as the next indoctrinated American-raised harker of Harold the singing angel, and the idea of Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men (and women and children) is worth propagating. It does rather piss me off when the concept is hijacked once a year by peeps whose agenda is suspect and divisive.

When high on said agenda is keeping people stupid … well … even more reason to bah and humbug, and trotting out Eden as fact while science is swept up with the torn wrapping paper is doing exactly that.

The poll also revealed that beliefs in creationism and evolution are strongly related to levels of education attained. When results are narrowed to those with college degrees, only 37 percent of respondents maintain beliefs in creationism. Meanwhile, the belief in evolution without the aid of God rises to 21 percent.

Those numbers are still appalling, but do give some hope that education has some force against ignorance.

Lest anyone think I’m picking on Christians to put the Christ in Christmas, another story in today’s news made the same point, but in a bit more gruesome a manner. Titled “Koran Written In Saddam Hussein’s Blood Poses Problem For Iraqi Leaders”, it could be considered another candle on the holly branch …

The unique Koran’s creation took over two years:

It was etched in the blood of a dictator in a ghoulish bid for piety. Over the course of two painstaking years in the late 1990s, Saddam Hussein had sat regularly with a nurse and an Islamic calligrapher; the former drawing 27 litres of his blood and the latter using it as a macabre ink to transcribe a Qur’an. But since the fall of Baghdad, almost eight years ago, it has stayed largely out of sight – locked away behind three vaulted doors. It is the one part of the ousted tyrant’s legacy that Iraq has simply not known what to do with.

Slate notes that Saddam was never one for subtlety, and that this undertaking would serve propaganda purposes for when the dictator need to be seen as pious; he “decided to show the world that he was willing to literally sacrifice his blood for the sake of his religion.”

His blood. Nice. What a sacrifice, heh?

And to think Santa would have just left a lump of coal in his stocking and called it a day while assuming he’d made the point that genocide goes on the naughty list. Of course, if Santa was the issue, Saddam would have grown out if it by the time he was 10 or 12 … or 30.

So, why is it okay … normal, reasonable … to mature beyond the dude-in-red flying down from the North Pole, but Adam and Eve and Mohammed once ingested are to last a lifetime? Why is A Visit from St. Nicholas considered light verse, but the second chapter of Luke gospel? (Okay, bad choice of words, but you get my drift.)

But really, does this …

And Mama in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap —
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters, and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new fallen snow,
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below;
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny rein-deer,
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.

… make any less sense than this …

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were
sore afraid.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

… ?

Sure, the first quote rhymes and only has a couple of songs to go with, but more importantly it wasn’t shouted from pulpits in our direction, and I can’t help thinking that’s one big diff. That and the fact that Santa has little political clout and other than marketing not much economical sway, either.

As I said in my earlier post, I don’t see Santa as a dangerous illusion fostered by parents, but a bit of magic meant to stir imagination. The other stuff could be the same, but folks don’t seem to outgrow that shit.

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Sweden’s tough stance on rape … yeah … right …

Posted in News, Sex, Women's rights, World politics, tagged , , on December 20, 2010| 10 Comments »

In a move that was so predictable most would have thought it didn’t warrant actually happening, the Swedish police report on Julian Assange has been “leaked”.

Hilarious!

Can’t we all just hear the frustrated strains of “That’ll show the fucker!” oozing from slime lubricating the machinery haphazardly constructed to pull Julian in, chew him up, then spit out something much more digestible to the masses.

Here’s a bit of what the conversation leading to this might have sounded like:

Slimeball: Okay, Peeps, we’ve found him, got him to turn himself in on the bullshit sex charges, but can’t get a handle on the spin. Ideas?

Fuckwad: We are squirming through every possible loophole we can find, but until the Espionage Act gifts us something we can’t charge him. Poop!

Jerkoff: And now that that Aussie bitch has fucked us, they’ll be no help from down under.

Slimeball: This isn’t helping.

Fuckwad: Hey! How ’bout we turn the tables on him and LEAK the Swede’s police report? He’ll at least look like a jerk that says he’ll call, but never does. You know how that pisses women off.

Slimeball: Maybe that will get Biana Jagger to back off … hm. Great idea, FW!

Jerkoff: Can we do that?

Slimeball: Of course we can do that! We can do anything we want!

Jerkoff: No … I mean, does anyone here know how to leak stuff?

Group head scratching ensues …

Apparently, however, someone was found to pass the info along to newspapers:

The British newspaper The Guardian broke the news of the report on Saturday, and quoted extensively from what it said was an unredacted copy. The New York Times later obtained a redacted form of the report from another source in Swedish. It is a preliminary summary of the evidence taken by investigators when they met with the two women and with Mr. Assange, who left Sweden for Britain in early October but subsequently refused to return to Sweden for further questioning.

A “preliminary summary” … hm. That must mean further evidence that caused dropping of the charges and the further further evidence that saw that charges reinstated are not included. Tidy.

Read all about it at the link above for details on the two women who sought him out, fucked him gladly, then changed their tunes. No need here to go into possible reasons for going after the guy, but consideration should be made of the fact that charging him with anything real has proven difficult.

Michael Moore’s letter to the government of Sweden today gives a very clear picture of what’s up with the crap there:

… In fact, they say that all over Scandinavia, including in your country, rapists “enjoy impunity.” And the United Nations, the EU and Swedish human rights groups have come to the same conclusion: Sweden just doesn’t take sexual assault against women seriously. How else do you explain these statistics from Katrin Axelsson of Women Against Rape:

– Sweden has the HIGHEST per capita number of reported rapes in Europe.

– This number of rapes has quadrupled in the last 20 years.

– The conviction rates? They have steadily DECREASED.

Axelsson says: “On April 23rd of this year, Carina Hägg and Nalin Pekgul (respectively MP and chairwoman of Social Democratic Women in Sweden) wrote in the Göteborgs [newspaper] that ‘up to 90% of all reported rapes [in Sweden] never get to court.'”

Let me say that again: nine out of ten times, when women report they have been raped, you never even bother to start legal proceedings. No wonder that, according to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, it is now statistically more likely that someone in Sweden will be sexually assaulted than that they will be robbed.

Message to rapists? Sweden loves you!

So imagine our surprise when all of a sudden you decided to go after one Julian Assange on sexual assault charges. Well, sort of: first you charged him. Then after investigating it, you dropped the most serious charges and rescinded the arrest warrant.

Then a conservative MP put pressure on you and, lo and behold, you did a 180 and reopened the Assange investigation. Except you still didn’t charge him with anything. You just wanted him for “questioning.” So you — you who have sat by and let thousands of Swedish women be raped while letting their rapists go scott-free — you decided it was now time to crack down on one man — the one man the American government wants arrested, jailed or (depending on which politician or pundit you listen to) executed. You just happened to go after him, on one possible “count of unlawful coercion, two counts of sexual molestation and one count of rape (third degree).” And while thousands of Swedish rapists roam free, you instigated a huge international manhunt on Interpol for this Julian Assange!

Time spent investigating him in Australia ended up with zip, zero zilch there:

Police in Australia have concluded that WikiLeaks and its Australian-born founder Julian Assange have not broken any laws in his home country by publishing classified U.S. documents, the government said Friday.

Wonder how many other countries wasted time and resources trying to figure out if Julian had, by any possible chance at all, done anything worth charging over.

Singapore might get him on that ‘chewing gum in public’ infraction. Quick! Someone call Interpol!

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For the rude, the moronic, the jealous …

Posted in Health, News, tagged , , , on December 14, 2010| 1 Comment »

One response …

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Click! Are we smarter yet?

Posted in Cambodia, Expat Living, History, Island life, News, Seychelles, World politics, tagged , , , , , on December 9, 2010| 20 Comments »

Is connectivity making people smarter?

I’m not talking about those with the inclination to investigate every innovation, develop platforms for interaction or keep track of what humanity is up to, although I do wonder what Julian Assange might have done with his smarts if the Internet didn’t exist and how many other brilliant minds might have gone to seed in the days before sitting around in your bedroom in smelly sweats for days on end allowed one to reach into the guts of power of all sorts.

No, I’m thinking about the reasonably bright lot for whom ease of access to information, one-click research and breakfasting on RSS feeds just might be growing brain cells or teaching the ones already there to shake hands more often.

Historically, availability of info has been proven to do just that, and along with the process of getting smarter shit happens, as this WSJ article illustrates:

As Gutenberg’s press spread through Europe, the Bible was translated into local languages, enabling direct encounters with the text; this was accompanied by a flood of contemporary literature, most of it mediocre. Vulgar versions of the Bible and distracting secular writings fueled religious unrest and civic confusion, leading to claims that the printing press, if not controlled, would lead to chaos and the dismemberment of European intellectual life.

These claims were, of course, correct. Print fueled the Protestant Reformation, which did indeed destroy the Church’s pan-European hold on intellectual life. What the 16th-century foes of print didn’t imagine—couldn’t imagine—was what followed: We built new norms around newly abundant and contemporary literature. Novels, newspapers, scientific journals, the separation of fiction and non-fiction, all of these innovations were created during the collapse of the scribal system, and all had the effect of increasing, rather than decreasing, the intellectual range and output of society.

I started blogging back in 2003 on a professional site that eventually saw my posts getting over 100,000 hits a month. It was new to a lot of people then, all this Internet interaction, but the site was topic-specific … adoption … and many came to it looking for information tailored to their issues, questions and needs. Approaching what was to many a new way of gaining knowledge with an agenda encouraged participation, and a jump into one pool of info prompted leaps into others.

In pursuit of fodder, I joined a bunch of groups … Yahoo first, then Google offered forums for exchange, and the give-and-take was often lively after people overcame their original shyness.

Most new members announced themselves as such, apologizing in advance for any blunders as they tiptoed into discussions, but soon gained confidence not only with the technology, but also in their ability to convey meaning through writing their thoughts.

Unlike in the time when written material was often a one-side lecture and responses took days or weeks to lob the discussion ball back over the net, hot debates started happening in real time with only seconds passing between one point and the next.

People not only began to type faster, they learned to frame thoughts in ways that could be typed fast and understood. Without the benefit of vocal tone, eye contact and body language, words needed to be well chosen and presented if one had any hope of having meaning comprehended by the target audience.

Online groups led to social networking, and chatting and typing got even faster. People grew beyond the fear of putting thoughts in writing … an ‘engraving in stone’ idea that had some concerned for a while about the written word … and began to converse comfortably with their fingers.

The global scope gets people from widely-flung countries and cultures talking, an opportunity that serves to extend the range of thought at the same time it encourages us to consider people geographically distant to feel like neighbors chatting over the back fence. With online translators … as crap as they are … we can even communicate across language divides.

Sure, a lot of what goes back-and-forth is inconsequential bollocks … flirty bullshit, schmooze, schmaltz and preaching to the choir … but it is back-and-forth, active, so has more likelihood of developing into something of interest than sitting in front of the TV. For those who think inconsequential bollocks is what it’s all about ….

The decade the pessimists want to return us to is the 1980s, the last period before society had any significant digital freedoms. Despite frequent genuflection to European novels, we actually spent a lot more time watching “Diff’rent Strokes” than reading Proust, prior to the Internet’s spread. The Net, in fact, restores reading and writing as central activities in our culture.

On a personal level all this connectivity has made life on a tiny island vastly more interesting, and, yes, it has made me smarter. Friends from all over the world share ideas and information freely and easily, so my perspective is wider. I can read news from just about anywhere, from the Red Bluff Daily to Al Jazeera, and although I often feel the overload I can click from link to link to link and examine any issue. When I have a question about anything I can find an answer … or 1,000.

Sure, I can also watch Bullwinkle pull a rabbit out of a hat … oops, wrong hat … and read all the stupid shit that floats, but even that keeps my brain working.

There is no going back … I hope, although today’s news on the ramping up of what is rapidly evolving into a war has me worried that we’re sure to see serious attacks designed to rein in freedom of information.

Those of us with Internet access … even me with my fucking unreliable Kokonet connection … have grown accustomed the routine of getting a bit smarter, or at least better informed, every day, and as more people connect the world gets smaller and smarter, both through reference sources and personal contacts previously impossible.

For example, I have a facebook friend in Niger, so can not only Wiki the country for info, I can write to my pal with questions on day-to-day living, his take on politics and events and a weather report.

When news happens … the recent tragedy in Cambodia comes to mind … it’s not difficult to get a first-hand account from someone there.

The option we have now of removing or ignoring filters placed by those with an agenda we may not see makes it possible to get closer to the bottom of any issue of interest, and as we get better at learning how to use our ‘connections’ to plumb depths we expand the concept of our place in the world.

Of course, there is a downside …

It’s a lot harder to find an excuse to be stupid.

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John Lennon: What could the world be now?

Posted in Celebrities, History, Hopeful thoughts, Loss, love, Music I like, News, Poetry, Writers, tagged , on December 8, 2010| 12 Comments »

Yesterday I wrote about infamous dates, an appropriate topic on Pearl Harbor Day.

Today is another one of those. Although not on the same scale of lives lost or immediate consequence, December 8, 1980 saw a moment that defines a generation, and world, thirty years after the fact of an act of murder.

The death of John Lennon put paid to an era born in the sixties and dying with John.

It could be the timing was coincidental … another decade had closed and the 80’s loomed large and voracious. Flower-power was giving way to the darker, disenchanted tones of Goth, Ronald Reagan was White House-bound and the 80s stretched before us like a ladder to be climbed one pricey rung after the other.

Could it be, however, it was the event that instigated at least some of the changes?

The violent death of a gentle musician and poet at the hand of a publicity-seeking nutjob seems a demarcation point.

Perhaps my rearview mirror has fogged over the past 30 years, but I recall the decades before Dec. 8, 1980 as hopeful … angst-ridden, yes, but that angst flowed from frustration that the world wasn’t moving quite quickly enough toward the peaceful garden we could still imagine at the time.

We’d seen our share of horrors, but felt we’d learned stuff … important stuff that could and would matter. We felt it was possible to actually give peace a chance.

Greed started driving the bus in the 80s and angst turned to the stone of cynicism. As communism fell by the wayside, that perceived specter morphed into the solid form of expanding markets, multiple debt crises, famine and a whole bunch of wars.

Hippies turned into Yuppies, Porsche became the new VW van and conspicuous consumption took over where conscientious objection left off.

Even the drugs got meaner as coke and crack took the place of acid and weed and ad copy became a viable outlet for poets since the pay was so much better.

I’m guessing those who missed the world John Lennon lived and influenced will consider this a geezer ramble … revisionist history not appreciative of the wonders of the past three decades, or not appreciative enough.

Could be. Could be.

But I can’t help but wonder how different the last thirty years might have been if that fuckwad Mark Chapman had not decided to stake his claim to fame by blowing holes through one of the world’s most important proponents of thoughtful consideration and hope.

The music, alone, we’ve been robbed of has left us poorer.

So … on this day, as every 8th of December, I celebrate the life and rue the death of John Lennon, wonder and imagine …

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Oooh, look! Something shiny … it’s Julian Assange again!

Posted in Island life, News, Seychelles, The USA from the outside in, World politics, Younger men, tagged , , , , , , , , on December 4, 2010| 18 Comments »

I began the day thinking a soft post on life in Seychelles might be a good weekend time-filler, especially after all the attention yesterday’s post got, thanks to WordPress sending readers my way by the thousands. I even started putting one together, a little ditty about how somethings translate here, specifically the fact that many Seychellois think the terror on the high seas in our neck of the Indian Ocean is perpetuated by “smiley pirates”, but that will have to wait.

Yet again something shiny fluttered by … ooooh, pretty … and I’m tripping after it with some hope of figuring out what it’s all about.

Okay. Maybe Julian Assange isn’t everyone’s idea of pretty fluff … or anyone’s, for that matter … but we have already established that I think he’s cute and have extended a blogitty invite to share my view.

Turns out such an eventuality could get me in BIG trouble.

No doubt I’m right pissed off that the US Homeland Secutiry Committee could be messing with my chance for a date for New Year’s Eve, but that unwrapping an Assange under my Christmas tree would see me prosecuted under the Patriot Act! WTF?

It took this from Tom Hayden to make that point in a letter he wrote to Rep. Peter King:

I am hoping you will reconsider your call to place WikiLeaks on the list of foreign terrorist organizations. I would hope that as chair of the Homeland Security Committee you would take a more responsible approach than many of your Republican and conservative colleagues who are calling for the assassination of Julian Assange.

You and I remember the time a few short years ago when there were extreme voices opposed to a visa for Gerry Adams and calling for the designation of Sinn Fein as a terrorist organization. And you and a bipartisan coalition were willing to take a risk for peace and conflict resolution, a process that is still ongoing and regarded as a great success.

The comparison, you may say, is incorrect. In one respect, there is a huge difference, which only strengthens my point: Sinn Fein was leading a republican movement that included years of armed struggle, with thousands of British and Irish casualties. WikiLeaks is a nonviolent whistleblower organization whose only weapon is the Internet. Despite weeks of dire warnings, the WikiLeaks disclosures have caused no deaths or suffering so far, nor provoked any terrorist attacks anywhere. The organization, and its media intermediaries, have made conscious efforts to redact any references to individuals which might cause harm.

The current controversy is less about national security than about securing the official reputations of officials conducting secret warfare. As a result of the WikiLeaks documents, the American public has learned, for example, that:

* our government is deceiving the public and Congress by denying our secret bombing of Yemen;
* our Special Forces are in Pakistan;
* the CIA has directed a secret army in Afghanistan;
* there is a secret Task Force 373 conducting assassinations in Afghanistan.

These revelations do no damage to our national security. Instead, they helpfully add to public and Congressional awareness of improper and arguably illegal behavior undertaken under the cover of secrecy.

If your proposal to list WikiLeaks as a terrorist group is adopted, my understanding is that anyone offering nonviolent “material support” to WikiLeaks could be prosecuted under the Patriot Act. As you told MSNBC on Nov. 28, “we’d be able to stop anyone from helping them in any way, whether it’s making contributions, giving free legal advice, or whatever.”

Do you remember when you stood up again and again for lawyers in Northern Ireland trying to defend republicans in court? Do you remember those lawyers like Pat Finucane and Rosemary Nelson being assassinated as a result of their brave legal advocacy? Are you seriously recommending that any American lawyers “giving free legal advice” to Julian Assange should be prosecuted?

The New York Times has provided page upon page of coverage of the WikiLeaks materials over a period of months. Is the Times “assisting in terrorist activity” because the information is “being used by Al Qaeda”, as you put it?

Where does this end? If thousands of Americans join in the legal defense of Julian Assange or WikiLeaks will they be defined as accessories to terrorism?

I urge that you and your colleagues not overreact, not turn to scapegoating, not contribute to a climate of violence, but instead respect freedom of the press, freedom of dissent, and the right to due process under a system of law. We all need more light shed on our secret policies, not greater limitations on the public’s right to know.

Sincerely,

TOM HAYDEN 

Bravo, Tom, and I’m happy to see he’s still around even though I lost track of him way back when. Seems those years with Jane keeps him mindful of how a girl likes the idea of a date now and then without the threat of treason hanging around … or maybe his point is a bit broader. Yeah … we’ll go with that thought.

I know I’m by far not the only one appalled by the reaction to Wikileak’s latest offerings … thank the gods for that! … but although outrage is wending its way around the globe and popping up in a lot of reasonable publications, I subscribe to the Arlo Guthrie theory that says: If ya wanna end war and stuff, ya gotta sing loud.

La, la, la, la LA!

Here’s another voice, hopefully preaching to more than the choir, James Moore:

Secrecy tends to lead to disaster and there are several object lessons to study as a result of American adventures abroad. Saddam Hussein was Donald Rumsfeld’s and Ronald Reagan’s secret friend as long as he was bombing and gassing Iranians to the east. Secrecy led to Iran-Contra and back door dealing in arms to Iran to fund the Contras in Nicaragua, who did not have the support of the country’s population and were eventually defeated. There are, of course, countless other examples ranging from the Gulf of Tonkin to the Bay of Pigs and the information contained in the Pentagon Papers, and, uh, of course, the lies about WMD that propagated our current misadventure in Iraq. Democracy ought not be bribing and lying in the name of democracy.

The horror over WikiLeaks, which is being expressed mostly by inept diplomats, is disingenuous in the extreme. The consistent claims that lives are being endangered by the information borders on the hilarious. How many lives have been lost to erroneous, yet secret information that led to our invasion of Iraq? If WikiLeaks had been around in 2003 the public might have been well armed with information to create political resistance to W’s folly in the ancient deserts. It is, of course, of equal absurdity to suggest there is no need for clandestine operations. But taxpayers and voters tend to acquire their information after the consequences of secret government endeavors, and, obviously, that is a bit late to be of preventive value.

This debate on Democracy Now over whether or not Julian is a hero is an interesting exchange between Steven Aftergood from the “Secrecy News” and constitutional and civil rights litigator Glenn Greenwald that illustrates how even those touting transparency decide to fog the glass when it comes to Julian Assange.

The hunt is on for the man, his website is under attack, anyone helping him in any way may end up facing grave consequences … and what has he done to set the dogs on him as or more assiduously than the hounds of Bin Laden? Words. He did words. Not his words, but those written by people in positions of power now embarressed too have them read.

From the presenter of the debate:

University students are being warned about WikiLeaks. An email from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, that we read in headlines, reads—I want to do it again—quote, “Hi students,

“We received a call today from a SIPA alumnus who is working at the State Department. He asked us to pass along the following information to anyone who will be applying for jobs in the federal government, since all would require a background investigation and in some instances a security clearance.

“The documents released during the past few months through Wikileaks are still considered classified documents. He recommends that you DO NOT post links to these documents nor make comments on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter. Engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government.

“Regards, Office of Career Services.”

… and …

Democracy Now! has obtained the text of a memo that’s been sent to employees at USAID. This is to thousands of employees, about reading the recently released WikiLeaks documents, and it comes from the Department of State. They have also warned their own employees. This memo reads, quote, “Any classified information that may have been unlawfully disclosed and released on the Wikileaks web site was not ‘declassified’ by an appopriate authority and therefore requires continued classification and protection as such from government personnel… Accessing the Wikileaks web site from any computer may be viewed as a violation of the SF-312 agreement… Any discussions concerning the legitimacy of any documents or whether or not they are classified must be conducted within controlled access areas (overseas) or within restricted areas (USAID/Washington)… The documents should not be viewed, downloaded, or stored on your USAID unclassified network computer or home computer; they should not be printed or retransmitted in any fashion.”

That was the memo that went out to thousands of employees at USAID. The State Department has warned all their employees, you are not to access WikiLeaks, not only at the State Department, which they’ve blocked, by the way, WikiLeaks, but even on your home computers. Even if you’ve written a cable yourself, one of these cables that are in the trove of the documents, you cannot put your name in to see if that is one of the cables that has been released. This warning is going out throughout not only the government, as we see, but to prospective employees all over the country, even on their home computers.

If nothing else about the persecution of Assange scares the shit out of you, that should. ANYONE can be a target. And what directs the aim? Words.

As Captain Jack Sparrow said: Sticks and stones, Luv.

Or … for a bit more gravitas, how about this:

“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Julian Assange … pallid and silver-haired … ‘shiny’ and New Year’s Eve go so well together, and before that he’d look great under my tree!

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News from NASA: Life comes in other flavors. No kidding …

Posted in Nature, News, science, tagged , , , on December 3, 2010| 275 Comments »

A science is any discipline in which the fool of this generation can go beyond the point reached by the genius of the last generation. ~Max Gluckman

Finally!

Yes, the discovery has now been made that has expanded our version of what life is, and it’s NASA, not an organization bent on biology, that stretched the limits of living.

Seems there are, after all, life forms that don’t conform to the accepted definition … go figure … and what an eye-opener, heh?

“The definition of life has just expanded,” said Ed Weiler, NASA’s associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s Headquarters in Washington. “As we pursue our efforts to seek signs of life in the solar system, we have to think more broadly, more diversely and consider life as we do not know it.”

I am so confused.

It is possible folks have actually been running on the assumption that all life everywhere must be made of the same stuff that came up with us? And … did it really need to take finding an example of something different here on Earth to get those folks to reconsider their perspective?

Well … if so, that’s just dumb.

NASA-supported researchers have discovered the first known microorganism on Earth able to thrive and reproduce using the toxic chemical arsenic. The microorganism, which lives in California’s Mono Lake, substitutes arsenic for phosphorus in the backbone of its DNA and other cellular components.

Okay. That’s one ‘rule’ down the drain then, isn’t it, since up until now the thought has been that it took six building blocks — carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur — to fire up the living thang in everything from amoeba to zebra; anything not having those six basics was not considered to be alive.

As the research team’s lead scientist put it: If something here on Earth can do something so unexpected, what else can life do that we haven’t seen yet?

Good question … and should be followed by: Why are we so surprised?

To know the history of science is to recognize the mortality of any claim to universal truth. ~Evelyn Fox Keller

I’ve spent no little time considering what “life” is made of, and have come to the conclusion that it ain’t what we think it is. In fact, it seems to me that the part of us those six blocks stack up to may be the least of what we are.

It’s the limiting nature … biology … of the human mind that makes so illusive the far reaches of consciousness, not the other way round, and it’s the consciousness that makes everything else, including the biology. It follows, then, that we are more than our physical form. We’re like tequila … whether it be rotgut or nectar de dioses … most of our potential is wasted while in the bottle.

Who’s to say that it’s not energy … light, sound, electromagnetic waves, something else that has escaped our limited notice … that’s the bit that constitutes LIFE? Biochemists, for one, I suppose, but now they’re even having to rethink.

“The idea of alternative biochemistries for life is common in science fiction,” said Carl Pilcher, director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute at the agency’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. “Until now a life form using arsenic as a building block was only theoretical, but now we know such life exists in Mono Lake.”

Now they know … and they know because they found something on this planet that can be weighed and measured, which is apparently what it takes.

A few things come to mind this morning … and, yes, I know I’m rambling, but I want to get this out before I settle into work, and rambling rants happen when there’s a lot of stuff rolling around in my head …

Which brings me to one thought …

I have a friend who’s a mulitple, so has many people living in one body, a situation that calls into question just how set-in-bone what the living part of us might be.

With a change of personalities in multiples, scars appear and disappear, burn marks do the same, as well as cysts! The multiple can change from being right-handed to being left-handed with ease and agility. Visual accuity can differ, so that some multiples have to carry two or three different pairs of glasses. One personality can be color blind and the other not. Even EYE COLOR can change!

I had a dream last night in which I was having a conversation with my son and my father, both of whom are, in present context, dead. Although I don’t recall much of it now, some of the images are clear. I know if I’d been hooked up to that whatitz thingy that checks brain activity it would have shown all sorts of stuff going on in my head. My question this morning is: Was my dream a result of a biochemical dance, or the other way around?

Could it be that we are surrounded by life forms we have no way of recognizing as such? Makes sense to me, but until a specimen is found on the bottom of Mono Lake … or energy materializes, sits down and gives a good accounting … we’ll keep running on the assumption that it’s all about being carbon-based.

There was a time a platypus was impossible, but … golly … turns out the little dudes are alive and well and happily doing the Monotremata thing down under, and even if we’ve never seen one, we don’t argue their existence. Could we someday be as accepting of a community of sentient invisible beings who might be hanging around us all right now?

I recognize I don’t have the background, knowledge or credentials that might allow me to grasp a lot of what is clearly over my head in the science, and I do understand why NASA folks are thrilled to their gills over the discovery of a “new life form”; it is a big deal and goes far to advance thinking. Good.

I do, however, sometimes tire of what smells like arrogance but is probably more closely related to a lack of imagination in presuming we are the standard by which all must be judged.

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Julian Assange in Red and Green

Posted in History, News, Sex, World politics, tagged , , , on December 2, 2010| 4 Comments »

I admit that my post on the hotness of Julian Assange was tongue-in-cheek … his tongue/my cheek sounds good. Yeah … I think he’s cute, so shoot me.

True, he’s not my type in the physical sense, but I’ve always been flexible when it comes to looks. It’s brains and panache that reel me in, and he’s steeped in both. Although his élan is apparently not effusive, Julian’s reserved manner only serves to make him more attractive. That he grates, and grates so effectively, helps, too.

Stealing, as he does, from the rich (powerful movers-and-shakers running the show), and giving to the poor (the rest of us slobs who are supposed to be happy being spoon-fed cud predigested by the former), there is a temptation to brand him a Robin Hood. Although I would SO love to see him in green tights … and little else … that image doesn’t sit well with a whole lotta folks and I’m staying away from it out of a hesitation to stir this pot in that direction.

And speaking of pots … there seems to be a tempest in the one with the leaks, and the reaction to oozing goo is over the top.

Interpol issuing a “red notice” for him, smacks of sour grapes, harassment and a grasp at straws since actually coming up with something he could be arrested for seems beyond the realm:

The red notice does not amount to an arrest warrant. Instead, it asks people to contact the police if they have any information about his whereabouts.

Yes, Sweden wants to “detain him for questioning” on allegations of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion, all denied by Julian, but don’t have enough to issue a warrant for his arrest, while Australia is trying to figure out whether or not he’s broken any laws there.

If Mr Assange were arrested he could face extradition to the United States, although analysts say that because the US Espionage Act carries the maximum death penalty, nations that do not have the statute might refuse extradition.

But that assumes he’s done something to be arrested for AND that the US Espionage Act has anything to do with him.

Smear campaign? Mega-bullying? Cart-before-horse? Guilt-before-innocence? Shut him the fuck up before he releases any more shit?

Sure, some peeps are right pissed off. After all, Wikileaks has given the world a peek up the bowels of power. And how ’bout that French president chasing a rabbit around the office?

The incident is described in one of the 251,287 classified cables the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks says it has obtained and shared with several newspapers.

Gasp!

If that’s not horror enough, how about the revelation that Silvio Berlusconi is considered to be “feckless, vain, and ineffective as a modern European leader.”

OMG!

Russia has mafia issues? Nyet shit …

No doubt there’s embarrassment … and well there should be. Some of these people are disgusting, some are morons … AND they’re in charge of stuff!

Rolling out the big guns, accusations of dire consequence are bouncing all over the place, but are these real concerns … or nothing more than ramping up the ante?

After the release of an enormous haul of US defence department documents in August, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told the Washington Post: “We have yet to see any harm come to anyone in Afghanistan that we can directly tie to exposure in the Wikileaks documents.”

… After this latest release a Pentagon official, who wished to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of the material involved, told the McClatchy newspaper group that even three months later the US military still had no evidence that people had died or been harmed because of information gleaned from Wikileaks documents.

A bit of historical perspective on hysterical reactions to letting people in on what actually happens in the world might help a bit, and who better to pull into the mix than Daniel Ellsberg, the man who gave us the Pentagon Papers back in 1971 and let us know what a fucking mess was happening:

The release of these papers was politically embarrassing to not only those involved in the Johnson and Kennedy administrations but also the incumbent Nixon administration. Nixon’s Oval Office tape from June 14, 1972, shows H. R. Haldeman describing the situation to Nixon:

[then cabinet-member Donald] Rumsfeld was making this point this morning. To the ordinary guy, all this is a bunch of gobbledygook. But out of the gobbledygook comes a very clear thing…. It shows that people do things the president wants to do even though it’s wrong, and the president can be wrong. John Mitchell, Nixon’s Attorney General, almost immediately issued a telegram to the Times ordering that it halt publication. The Times refused, and the government brought suit against it.

Although the Times eventually won the trial before the Supreme Court, an appellate court ordered that the Times temporarily halt further publication. This was the first successful attempt by the federal government to restrain the publication of a major newspaper since the presidency of Abraham Lincoln during the US Civil War. Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers to 17 other newspapers in rapid succession. The right of the press to publish the papers was upheld in New York Times Co. v. United States.

As a response to the leaks, the Nixon administration began a campaign against further leaks and against Ellsberg personally. Aides Egil Krogh and David Young, under the supervision of John Ehrlichman, created the “White House Plumbers”, which would later lead to the Watergate burglaries.

So … what’s that thing about forgetting history and being doomed? And if I recall correctly, the White House Plumbers ended up in jail for doing shit that really was against the law.

Ellsberg’s take on Julian Assange and the present fracas:

He told the BBC’s World Today programme that US officials made that same argument every time there was a potentially embarrassing leak.

“The best justification they can find for secrecy is that lives are at stake. Actually, lives are at stake as a result of the silences and lies which a lot of these leaks reveal,” he said.

“The same charges were made against the Pentagon Papers and turned out to be quite invalid.”

For sure Julian is, unlike Ellsberg at the time, an unknown quantity and … relevant to ethnocentrics … not American, therefore out of grasp and very likely sub-human and of suspecious intent … all the more reason to tweak Interpol into Red Carding him.

A former UK ambassador to the UN adds an interesting spin:

“I don’t think it has been proven that this is dangerous to US troops, for instance. I haven’t seen that case made very clearly,” he said. “What I think this means is that we need to look at our own mechanisms for democratic accountability and foreign policy. We need to be much, much better.”

In what way is that a bad thing?

And, how about the statement from Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations”

At the very least, they will make governments like Pakistan and Yemen and others, which are collaborating with the US in the battle against terrorism, more reluctant to co-operate.

Huh? Excuse me, but would it be rude to point out that Pakistan and Yemen collaborate with EVERYONE, including terrorists? If it takes Julian Assange to make that point … well … that’s just fucking sad, and scary.

Look … I don’t presume to know much at all about any of this shit other than what I read in the news, and maybe Julian is a total dick out to subvert a wonderful working model of civilization that protects us all without lowly peasants like me and you having to know anything about how that happens. Perhaps global leaders are benevolent heroes diligently striving toward peace and freedom with no hidden agenda and no thought toward personal gain, and exposing foibles … with attribution … should be considered a mortal sin.

Yeah, right. Pull the other one.

No matter. I’d still like to have him try that thing with the green tights, and although it’s raining today the view from my bed is still fab, Jules.

For further reading, check out Andy Borowitz’s take today, this from the BBC on what happens when you piss off the big guys, and this lame move from the Swedes covering their asses.

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Julian Assange Makes Me Go Wiki in the Knees … leaks not up for discussion

Posted in Men, News, Sex, Seychelles, tagged , on November 29, 2010| 20 Comments »

Wiki Image

Yeah, yeah … I know hearts are all a pitty-pat and thighs a’quaking for the new Hawaii Five-0 guys, and that Daniel Radcliffe has grown up enough to be considered luscious these days … but REALLY! … is anyone in today’s world anywhere near as flat-out hot, as sweat-inducingly titillating, as compellingly arousing as Julian Assange?

Not in my book, Babes! And not in yours, either, if your gauge of wanna-slather-him-in-custard-and-slurp-up-sumdat-spotted-dick runs anywhere near where mine takes its turn around the dial.

Okay, he doesn’t have Jason Statham’s body and I’m pretty sure he can’t pitch like Brian Wiison. He’s got no full dark mane, but is rather sparsely coiffed and gray in that premature-cute-as-a-bug sort of way, looks like he’d lobster up after fifteen minutes on my beach, isn’t particularly tall and probably can’t play a mean guitar, but … ooooooooh! does he do it for me!

Assange advocates a “transparent” and “scientific” approach to journalism, saying that “you can’t publish a paper on physics without the full experimental data and results; that should be the standard in journalism.” In 2006, CounterPunch called him Australia’s most infamous former computer hacker. The Age has called him “one of the most intriguing people in the world” and “internet’s freedom fighter.” Assange has called himself “extremely cynical.” The Personal Democracy Forum said that as a teenager he was “Australia’s most famous ethical computer hacker.” He has been described as thriving on intellectual battle.

Pant. Pant.

That he’s smart certainly appeals, and he is whiplash smart. An international man of mystery? Well, duh! The guy is harder to nail down than the Scarlet Pimpernel, a reluctant star, a man long disinclined to step into the slimelight he would rather focus than hog. He is also brave, irreverent, cocky, demanding, uncompromising … and looks enough like Bill Maher to set me aching down under. (Yeah … right … that’s a reference to him being Australian … )

The fact that he is all about transparency ups my longing exponentially, as susceptibility for bullshit doing any sweeping off the feet has ebbed while fondness for exposure, and exposure of stuff that’s hard to come by — as opposed to easy (sure … that’s what I meant) — can set me to sway in breeze factor zero.

Although some accuse Julian of over-exaggeration when it comes to threats and dangers to his adorable person, the idea there could very well be a “manhunt” on for him fits and brings out the come-Sweetie-I’ll-take-care womanly stuff in me that wants to hold him to my breast and soothe his worried brow.

Whew … pass that towel over, will ya, please …

So … Mr. Assange … Julian … Jules …

If some time on a tropical island where no one … but me … will have the foggiest who the hell you are appeals, there’s an amazing view from my bed.

Oh … and bring wine.

One more thing … I don’t cook, so you’ll be doing that, too.

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