A Fine and Private Place

Have I been missing something?

2012-01-19T13:40:00.001-05:00

It occurred to me the other day that I have surely been slower than usual, that the reason Republicans want to rid the country of what they refer to as "entitlement programs" like Medicare and Social Security (forget corporate welfare and entitlements for the wealthy) is that if those programs went away, some of their corporate sponsors -- like, oh, the big insurance companies -- would make a bundle more money (more for those campaign coffers!) from people who could and would feel they had to buy more health insurance. Those who couldn't afford it, well, no one care about them anyway, right? No Republicans, anyway. After all, what's a $1500 tax break in the Republican mind? Not worth considering, right? Paltry!

As an aside, I figured out the Republican logic of denying payroll tax breaks while insisting on continuing the tax cuts for the wealthiest in this country: Those who are not in the top brackets are accustomed to living on little money, so they don't need it; whereas those who are in the top brackets are used to having lots and lots of money and can't do without it.

Well, maybe a paltry $1500 they can live without.

Ellsberg: My how things have changed

2011-06-14T12:19:00.001-05:00

And not for the better. Something else worth noting:
Daniel Ellsberg: All the crimes Richard Nixon committed against me are now legal

The Crash and Brooksley Born

2011-06-14T12:06:00.003-05:00

I first saw Frontline's "The Warning" in August of 2009. If you haven't seen it, it's worth watching the encore presentation tonight on PBS or reading the transcript or watching the program online or listening to a podcast or audio-to-go, all available on the associated Frontline site.

It's the story of Brooksley Born who, as head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC], "became alarmed by the lack of oversight of the secretive, multitrillion-dollar over-the-counter derivatives market. Her attempts to regulate derivatives ran into fierce resistance from then-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and then-Deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who prevailed upon Congress to stop Born and limit future regulation" [quoted from the website].

The Old Boys' Network at work ...

Privacy and "anonymized" data

2011-05-26T08:40:00.003-05:00

And speaking of the problems with data processing and privacy, Leon Neyfakh, in Our Data, Ourselves on boston.com writes that

... a small group of thinkers is suggesting an entirely new way of understanding our relationship with the data we generate. Instead of arguing about ownership and the right to privacy, they say, we should be imagining data as a public resource: a bountiful trove of information about our society which, if properly managed and cared for, can help us set better policy, more effectively run our institutions, promote public health, and generally give us a more accurate understanding of who we are. This growing pool of data should be public and anonymous, they say — and each of us should feel a civic responsibility to contribute to it.

But this assumes, as is pointed out in the article,

... a level of anonymization that not only doesn’t exist, but never will. Given enough outside information to draw on, [privacy experts] say, bad actors will always be able to cross-reference data sets with each other, figure out who’s who, and harm individuals who never explicitly agreed to be included in the first place.

In one famous case back in 1997, Carnegie Mellon professor of computer science Latanya Sweeney was able to match publicly available voter rolls to a set of supposedly anonymized medical data, and successfully identify former Massachusetts Governor William F. Weld. According to Sweeney, currently a visiting professor at Harvard and an affiliate of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, 87 percent of the US population can be identified by name in this way, based only on birthday, ZIP code, and gender.

I know that when people start talking about how I should consider it my "civic responsibility" to give it all up, I start having really dark thoughts ... I may or may not be concerned about what other "civic responsibles" might do with my data, but I know that it never stops there and that once data is out there, it's out there. You might be able to trust the immediate data gatherers, but you cannot assume that data won't get lost, stolen, mishandled, hacked, etc.

Why Privacy Matters and What It Means

2011-05-24T11:33:00.002-05:00

Today I read an article by Daniel J. Solove that is one of the best articles I've seen about why protecting privacy matters and what it means.

It particularly responds to the "I have nothing to hide" comment which is so prevalent and so hopelessly naive.

This article discusses the Orwellian vs the Kafkaesque abuses of information about people: i.e., problems caused by the collection of information (surveillance) vs problems caused by the processing of information.

My own immediate response to the "I have nothing to hide" remark has been that what matters is whether someone else thinks you have something to hide or whether someone else is looking for something that can be used to make a case against you. Consider the case of Robert Oppenheimer.

And that just applies to extreme cases.

Read the article. To the end. You don't have to read all the comments. :)

Wisconsin

2011-03-27T12:59:00.002-05:00

I've been alarmed by what's going on in Wisconsin. The governor puts out an order to arrest legel representatives of the people because those representatives are not behaving as he wants them to behave. Then he ignores a court order that puts a hold on the law he's trying to pass. Surely that's abuse of power.

If a Democrat did any of those things, Republicans would be outraged.

If a dictator did any of those things, say, in Libya, people would consider it business as usual.

I don't want it to become business as usual in this country.

But as I watch the news coming out of Wisconsin, I think how easy it would be to become business as usual. And how easy it would be for other things to become business as usual ...

Prepare to pay MORE for meds losing patents

2011-03-27T12:47:00.004-05:00

I learned from my pharmacist the other day that it has been decided that it's legal for companies holding expired patents on medicines to pay the generic producers not to produce generics of those medicines.

Lipitor, for example, is slated to lose the protection of its patent this year, according to an article I read recently. If Parke-Davis pays off all the potential producers of a generic version of Lipitor, then there will be no low-cost generics available. Furthermore, Parke-Davis will have, presumably, spent a lot of money paying off any would-be competitors. And the cost of that paying-off will, of course, be passed on to the people who take Lipitor.

The generic guys make money without having to do anything, and Parke-Davis continues to make money all over the place, and the consumer loses again.

Get Over the Insistance on Instant Gratification

2010-04-05T12:03:00.002-05:00

Some people who supported Obama for his election are giving up on him unconscionably soon. He inherited a complete financial mess, not to mention a huge deficit and two wars, one of which was entirely unnecessary and waged on the whim of the previous administration to the detriment of the carrying out of the other war that should have been the focus of the previous administration.

To even imagine that Obama would be able to accomplish everything all of his many diverse supporters want him to do, much less to expect him to do all those things in less than a year, especially up against the wall of Republican obstinance that they will not help him do anything, even if it's for the good of the country -- well, that's completely unfair.

Economic Lessons

2009-03-03T11:50:00.000-05:00

And the lesson learned from all this economic mess is ... if you're going to behave, behave as IRresponsibly as possible and do it in the BIGgest possible way so that you make others take your risks (while you take your millions and run) and you end up too big to fail and you get lots of other people's money handed to you with barely a slap on the wrist. Greed is Good ...

Whereas ... all you get from being responsible is ... you end up small enough to fail, to disappear beneath the waves without a trace.

I'm sick of it.

Let's look at the whole picture ...

2008-12-02T08:24:00.002-05:00

In this article in the Washington Post, Marie Arana reminds us that to refer to Barak Obama as our first black President is to ignore all but one portion of his bloodlines and heritage. "To me, as to increasing numbers of mixed-race people, Barack Obama is not our first black president. He is our first biracial, bicultural president. He is more than the personification of African American achievement. He is a bridge between races, a living symbol of tolerance, a signal that strict racial categories must go." She also points out that "Few who see Barack Obama, it seems, understand that he's 50 percent white Kansan."

On a tangentially related note, remember all that stuff about Obama sitting on a panel with '60s radical, Ayers? That, apparently, made Obama a "terrorist sympathizer." Why didn't his sitting on that same panel with, as I understand it, some powerful Republicans also make him a "Republican sympathizer"?

I wonder about these things ...

Kick the SOBs Out -- sans Millions

2008-11-23T10:56:00.002-05:00

Something to make you REALLY SICK ...

Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation this morning said that the CEO of Toyota makes $1 million/year. His company made $5 billion last year.

The CEO of one the "big three" US auto makers makes $15.7 million/year. Another makes $21 million. Both companies LOST multiple BILLIONS last year.

As Nancy Pelosi said, most workers make less in a LIFETIME than one of those guys makes in a MONTH.

The auto CEOs arrived in Washington in their big private jets, hats in hand, begging for handouts -- with no plans to share as to what they planned to DO with that money.

I say kick the SOBs out -- and demand that they pay back to their respective companies the multiple millions they've been paid in past years for letting their companies FAIL. At the very least the millions ought to go to pension funds and layoff payments for people who are going to lose their jobs because of the greed and bad management of those CEOs.

Why should I pay them ANYTHING??? Why should the taxpayers pay them ANYTHING before they've PAID BACK all that money they never earned?

Money for nothing ...

I feel the same way about AIG. No junkets, no parties in ANY part of the company if you're expecting taxpayers to bail you out. You cut back FIRST. Then, when you've done all you can, maybe then and only then come to the taxpayers. Maybe.

A Nose as a Nose ...

2008-11-23T08:25:00.003-05:00

HERE in The Economist this week, is a wonderful "obituary" by Ann Wroe for the Bush administration, in which the nose of a president serves as a metaphor for his failings.

The Bright Side and the Grim Side

2008-11-15T12:00:00.002-05:00

Hooray! Obama is our new President-elect!

On the seriously bright side, I love what Garrison Keillor had to say HERE in his syndicated column as it appears in the Chicago Tribune.

On the significantly grim side, I am sickened -- but, sadly, not particularly surprised -- by an Associated Press report as it appeared on the NPR website HERE.

Many people were concerned about what might happen during the election and about whether we might end up with another election mess (and giveaway) like the one we had in 2000. I have also been concerned for Obama's personal safety. I hope that I have reason to continue to celebrate his election and Presidency and that I never have to mourn as I did in 1968 when both Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated. I think Obama may be the best Presidential option we've had since Robert Kennedy. I hope we are blessed with the same intelligence and strength and grace for the next four years that we saw during the campaign and election.

Priorities in the Health Care Debate [revisited]

2008-10-29T08:01:00.003-05:00

Spammers have figured out how to bypass the comment monitor, apparently, because my original post of this in November of 2007 got spammed this morning. I think the topic is worth repeating, so I deleted the original posting, and I'm reposting my post and its one legit comment here.

There's something seriously wrong with the current debate about health insurance for children. It is said that all children deserve health insurance. Ithink the people who are arguing for that -- indeed, everyone arguing in this debate -- are focussing on the wrong thing.

It's not health insurance that children -- and adults -- need. It's health care.

In fact, I believe we need a lot less insurance and a lot more care.

The idea that we need insurance to get care is bogus. Though it's true that, given the system as it is set up today, one really does need insurance to be able to afford care, it's also true that if the whole insurance industry disappeared tomorrow, we'd still have doctors and nurses and health card providers. And a whole very expensive middle-group would have their< costs -- and profits -- eliminated from the overall cost of health care. Furthermore, healthcare providers would be able to eliminate their expenses associated with dealing with insurance companies and filling out forms and such.

Something to think about ...

Comment from blogger "Sal", Sat Nov 03, 03:32:00 PM 2007:

San Francisco is offering health care for the uninsured and, of course,is being taken to court for how they're doing it, but ...

SF is offering health care, not insurance, to people of low income who have no insurance and can't be covered with Medicare or MediCal. If you're on holiday at Disneyland and bust your head, your Anaheim medical bills won't be taken care of, but any health issues that pop up while you're within the city limits are.

Chron article

But right you are. The question is health care, not health insurance.

Olbermann comments on Palin's glass house

2008-10-10T15:44:00.002-05:00

Keith Olbermann, in one of his "Special Comments" this week, takes Palin to task for her hypocrisy HERE:

Olbermann: It's Palin doing the pallin'
Hockey moms in glass houses shouldn't throw stones

UnAmerican Activities, Palin Style

2008-10-09T14:29:00.002-05:00

You know what they say about living in glass houses and throwing stones, not to mention what the Bible says about not judging people. As long as we're talking about associations with violence and anti-American terrorists, check out the Palin credentials in a salon.com article by David Talbot HERE. Palin's husband was a long-time member of the Alaska Independence Party founded by Joe Vogler, "preached armed insurrection against the United States of America." Palin told the AIP to "keep up the good work."

Hypocrisy to the max

2008-10-09T10:26:00.003-05:00

Hypocrisy isn't unusual on the campaign trail. But to hold Obama accountable for any association with a "terrorist" who was engaged in terrorist activities when Obama was a kid but who was, by the time Obama came to know him, a respected professor -- to hold Obama accountable for that without taking John McCain seriously to task for his association with, even embracing of, unrepentant convicted criminal terrorist G. Gordon Liddy takes hypocrisy to new levels.

Read what Steve Chapman had to say in The Chicago Tribune HERE, for one thing.

Find more at mediamatters.org HERE, including links to the above article and others.

Moyers on the bailout (by any other name)

2008-10-04T08:31:00.002-05:00

The transcripts of last night's Bill Moyers' Journal aren't up yet but they will be soon. Watch for them and note what Moyers and his guest, Emma Coleman Jordan, say about the great bailout (by any other name) ... Or go ahead and watch the streaming video, which is online and available for viewing.

Meanwhile, click HERE for more info about Professor Jordan and for some pointers to more reading.

There's also a link to a copy of the bailout bill (bloated from the original 110+ page House version to * 451 * pages in the version the Senate passed -- roughly 340 pages tacked onto the end) and a discussion about it: www.publicmarkup.org

"Go easy on the little lady, guys"

2008-10-01T04:32:00.002-05:00

According to the UK's TimesOnline, "John McCain’s campaign is putting pressure on the organisers of the vice-presidential debate tomorrow night to go easy on Sarah Palin amid growing alarm that faltering performances in recent days have made her an object of public ridicule." Can you just imagine the scenario should Ms. Palin, through some act of a quixotic god, become President of the US? A letter to Vladimir Putin from the US Secretary of State: "Dear Vlad, Would you please take it easy on our Little Lady? She's having a bad week. Lots of mean nasty people are giving her a hard time. Thanks." Can you imagine what McCain's campaign would be saying about Hillary Clinton had she faltered, nay, revealed such cavernous depths of inexperience and such complete inappropriateness for the job the Republicans propose that she have? One only has to listen to what they say about Obama.

Obama meets Bartlet?

2008-09-26T08:51:00.002-05:00

Maureen Dowd, columnist for The New York Times, asked "The West Wing" creator Aaron Sorkin how he thought a conversation would go between Obama and Sorkin's fictional President Bartlet. She published Sorkin's response in her column HERE.

Makes a great read -- and a thought-provoking one.

Journalists arrested at Republican National Convention

2008-09-26T08:30:00.006-05:00

Journalists arrested while covering Republican National Convention from democracynow.org:

John Lundquist, attorney for the Democracy Now! journalists, said, “The most notable lapse by law enforcement during the RNC was the record-breaking number of journalists indiscriminately arrested and detained for doing nothing more than performing in the best tradition of reporters who gather the news.”

Shades of 1968 and the DNC ...

There were links to a Washington Post report and an AP report, among a long list of other sources. Nothing from The New York Times.

Remember McCain and "The Keating 5"?

2008-09-26T08:24:00.002-05:00

McCain's support of NONregulation got us -- and him -- into trouble before, ending in a taxpayer bailout if the S&Ls at the end of the 1980s. His recent politically expedient "conversion" to supporting regulation should be taken in context of his career-long support of NONregulation: Check out this LA Times article.

The subprime mortgage meltdown primer

2008-09-26T08:21:00.001-05:00

Great explanation, at a link sent to me by a friend:
The subprime mortgage meltdown primer, as told using stick figures and real-world language: www.businesspundit.com/sub-prime/

GKeillor weights in on Salon.com

2008-09-24T14:10:00.001-05:00

Take a look at Where is the outrage?, by Garrison Keillor.

Bill Moyers: What F.Scott Fitzgerald said ...

2008-09-23T14:24:00.003-05:00

One segment of Bill Moyers' Journal on Friday 19 September 2008 began with Bill Moyers saying this:

The news this week drove us to pull The Great Gatsby off the bookshelf and read what F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote of his protagonists, the Buchanans: "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."

It's happening all over again, except this time Tom and Daisy are the titans and speculators on Wall Street who took the money and ran. Their bubble burst, as it did in the roaring twenties, leaving the mess for you and me, our children and our grandchildren, to clean up.

See the full transcript HERE.

And the moral of this story is ...

2008-09-23T13:10:00.002-05:00

[Preceded by the details of all the recent financial finagling and frolicking and calamitous -- for some of us -- crashing to earth and below.]

"So what have we learned from this story, children? We have learned that white collar crime -- by whatever name you call it and in whatever greedy gluttonous form -- does, indeed, pay, and, furthermore, it pays very well. And we have learned that if you make a big enough mess, the Little People will once again, as always, have to clean up that mess for you, while you, on the other hand, land safely in the Bahamas with your golden parachute and your millions in compensation for a job thoroughly botched and with a lot more of their money, too."

Let me get this straight . . .

2008-09-23T06:40:00.004-05:00

This one is making the rounds. I love it.

I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.....

- If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."
- Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story.
- If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
- Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.
- Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.
- Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.
- If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a state Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.
- If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.
- If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.
- If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.
- If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
- If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.
- If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.
- If you're husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

OK, much clearer now.

The Palin Choice: I Feel Like I'm in a Mad Magazine Strip

2008-09-12T12:59:00.006-05:00

It's hard to believe that the Republicans weren't on some kind of potent drugs when they selected and applauded and endorsed the selection of Ms. Palin to be their VP candidate. Had the Democrats selected someone as ill-suited, the Republicans would have excoriated them mercilessly.

The choice is so impossibly absurd that it's hard to respond to it in any rational manner.

Did the Republicans think that just because Ms. Palin is a woman, all the women who had endorsed Hillary Clinton would line up to support her instead? Do they think women are really that stupid?

Maybe they do.

Read Gloria Steinem's eloquent remarks, published HERE in the LA Times.

You may also wish to consider adding your thoughts HERE to the womenagainstsarahpalin blog. If you haven't seen the petition for comments, it's HERE.

The Corporate Wall

2008-08-04T10:23:00.002-05:00

One of my paintings made it onto a corporate wall early this year. The company had remodelled its home office and sent out a call to artists in our very artist-laden community to create new works for the walls. I was one of the artists selected.

Growth Potential is 5-feet square, acrylic on canvas. I haven't painted with acrylics in years and had never worked with liquid acrylics until this project. What fun.

Been a Long Time

2008-08-04T10:19:00.002-05:00

Yes, it has. Generally, I figure if I want to talk to myself, which is mostly what this amounts to, I could write in a journal. But every once in a while, the urge, well, nudges, as it did this morning. Whether or not I have anything to say.

I could wish the Democrats hadn't suddenly had an embarrassment of riches in candidates this round. Made it hard to choose.

I definitely wish the campaign would get out of the gutter and stop making something out of absolutely nothing at every manufactured opportunity. Spin doctors are alive and well and eating up the communication waves.

Monday, Monday

2008-08-04T10:10:00.002-05:00

If you haven't read The Librarian, you might find it interesting ... in a sobering, depressing sort of way. The one bit of good news I found after reading is is/was that the New American Century site has gone out of business. But ... given the nature of political intrigue, has it really? Or does it or something and someones like it still lurk underground, undermining?

Given the nature of political intrigue ...

Paper, the "New Technology"

2007-12-05T13:35:00.000-05:00

Several years ago, Wired Magazine had a fascinating article about digital paper being developed in Scandinavia: www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.04/anoto.html

It's finally hit the market, along with the pen-computer you use with it: flyworld.com/whatis/index.html

I want one ...

"Everything old is new again." -- Peter Allen

"The Edge of the Roof"

2007-09-28T15:07:00.000-05:00

The poet Robert Bly read from his translation of a work by Rumi when he and Bill Moyers conversed on the August 31 edition of Bill Moyers Journal on PBS:

"The rest is self-hatred and mocking other people and bombing. So, just be quiet and sit down." That'd be a good thing to say to Bush, [said Bly]. "Just be quiet and sit down. The reason is you're drunk. And this is the edge of the roof."

It's worth reading the entire transcript -- for many reasons.

A Tank for Phish ...

2007-09-28T15:03:00.000-05:00

This may be very old news, but it was new news to me: A site where you can submit suspected phishing expeditions and hopefully have them verified one way or the other or perhaps find them as already having been verified one way or the other: phishtank.com.

'Tis a Puzzlement ...

2007-07-23T22:49:00.000-05:00

If Cheney is not part of the Executive Branch of our government, as he lately claims (having earlier claimed the benefit of "executive privilege," which is allowed only for the Executive Branch), how was he able to stand in for President Bush during Bush's colonscopy? I'm just curious. Of course, as one person pointed out, many of us seriously suspect Cheney has been "standing in" for Bush since the beginning, so what else is new?

Are all our US civics books being rewritten in light of the past 6.5 years? Has the Constitution been tossed into deep-freeze storage or perhaps burned to a cinder like the sled at the end of "Citizen Kane"? What's the point in having a Constitution if those whose jobs are defined by that document decide to redefine their jobs in their own self-certain, self-centric image?

Why doesn't someone do something when those elected officials sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States flagrantly ignore or defy it?

When I was much younger, I used to wonder how Germany could have slid into Naziism and insanity without anyone's doing anything to stop it. Lately, I begin to understand a little better. I hope we're not there yet, but I see how it could happen ...

Experiments in Bookbinding: "Artist Books"

2007-07-23T22:33:00.000-05:00

In the spring, I discovered a new passionate compulsion: Making little journals. I made something like 78 in a couple of weeks, just having fun. Most of my little journals have rag bond paper for pages, but all of the 78 and more have fragments of "failed" paintings as covers. I had all these bits of watercolor paper lying around with paintings that I started and either didn't like or didn't finish or or or. I'd taken a couple of workshops in bookmaking and spent literally hours looking for examples and info and tutorials on the web. After running across Dennis Yuen's cailun.info site, I was looking for something to use to play with making some "buttonhole" longstitch books, and decided to cut a cover from one of those fragments ... Voila! I had so much fun that I started chopping in earnest, finding many wonderful covers among many equally not-at-all-wonderful paintings. I got a little carried away: My books.

The first of many

Bill Moyers Journal

2007-07-23T22:24:00.000-05:00

Well, it's been a while, as anyone can see. I have variously had not enough to say and much too much to say, much of which I haven't seen any point in posting in this curiously private public place, not being an especially public person. Furthermore, I didn't think I remembered my sign-in info. But amazingly, I did, as one can see, since I am here.

So while I'm here, I'll make a special point of suggesting that anyone who might be paying attention make a special point of either watching "Bill Moyers Journal" on PBS or checking out the Bill Moyers Journal website and either reading transcripts or watching the streaming video.

There's an awful lot of mindless trashy junk on the tube these days. It's a godsend to have Moyers back on PBS ... An oasis of intelligence and thought-full-ness in a desert of unreal "reality TV" ...

Beating the Odds

2007-03-14T13:08:00.000-05:00

A doctor told me this morning that I had beaten the odds with regard to something.

Someone has to beat the odds. Otherwise, they are not odds:
they are certainties.

The oddly prophetic Eisenhower

2007-03-02T07:37:00.000-05:00

Yes, Eisenhower really did say this:

Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are ... a few ... Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.

Read the full quotation here,along with context and commentary.

I liked Ike. Well, except for his letting McCarthy go on too long. I was just a little kid at the time, though, so I didn't dislike that about him until much later.

What we "know" ...

2007-02-14T11:18:00.000-05:00

Listening to Bush press conference ...

"What we know," he says, speaking of Iran.

Echos of 4 years ago ...

Who is following whom?

2007-02-14T09:24:00.000-05:00

Is Bush taking his cues from Chavez or is Chavez taking his from Bush?

According to news reports, including this one from the BBC online, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has "called on the National Assembly to give him the power to rule by decree for a year ..."

Let's see ... Bush repeatedly breaks the laws of this country that he was sworn to uphold -- and, with astonishing arrogance, admits to having done so and, furthermore, insists he has the power and authority to do so.

And Congress lets him get away with it. He didn't even need to "call on" the Congress "to give him the power."

There's something telling about that ...

ACLU Mourns Passing of Molly Ivins

2007-02-10T10:04:00.000-05:00

This appeared in the ACLU Online email newsletter [Fri, 9 Feb 2007] and can also be found on the ACLU website here.

ACLU Mourns Molly Ivins, Neighbor, Friend and Fierce Advocate

By Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director

The ACLU was deeply saddened by the death of legendary journalist and columnist Molly Ivins, who passed away on January 31, 2007 after a long battle with cancer.

She was a much-loved member of the ACLU family, a steadfast supporter of civil liberties and highly respected for her staunch commitment to the protection of individual freedoms. Her cutting wit, remarkable intellect and down-home wisdom will be terribly missed.

In recent years, Molly, in her ever-folksy style, used her columns to point out how the Bush administration, in the name of national security and patriotism, has curtailed Americans' constitutional rights and usurped excessive power. Molly's appreciation for the ACLU's work in fighting off these assaults is best understood in her own words. In a July 2005 column, she wrote: "We suffer the worst attack on this country since Pearl Harbor, and the Bush administration sends the FBI after the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU exists to protect every citizen's rights as defined in the Bill of Rights in the Constitution of the United States. The ACLU works solely through the legal system: It does not advocate violence, terrorism or any other damn thing except the Bill of Rights. Since when is that extremist? ... We are living in a time when our government is investigating an organization that stands for the highest and best American ideals."

In an interview for a documentary on the ACLU, Ivins, commenting on the importance of religious liberty, recognized the ACLU's unrelenting persistence in defending that ideal: "That principle," she said, "is so important that it's worth being a pain in the ass about. And that's what the ACLU is."

She held a special place in the heart of the ACLU of Texas, Ivins' home state. As Will Harrell, Executive Director of the Texas affiliate and a close friend of Molly said, "She was a huge supporter of civil liberties and a national icon and she will be mourned by many. But at the ACLU of Texas, we're deeply saddened that we lost a neighbor and a friend."

She was one-of-a-kind, but we will continue to do the important work that would make her proud. And we will laugh at ourselves, as she would have wanted from us. The ACLU is establishing the Molly Ivins Fund for Justice and Liberty in Ivins' honor. To make a gift to the Fund, please go here:

http://action.aclu.org/site/R?i=I8HirUD6UUCxpb6y7lXWIw..

[ACLU 2/1/2007]

Recording Iraq

2007-02-07T17:57:00.000-05:00

If you're anywhere near Bristol, England, between now and the end of March 2007, stop by the Anolfini Gallery to see Recording Iraq, a unique and important installation by independent film producer Michael Burke and the Ken Stanton Archive:

In 2003, just before the coalition invasion of Iraq, independent film producer Michael Burke purchased satellite time from Reuters and made an open request for video recordings made on the ground during the first weeks of the ensuing war. As the conflict continued Burke travelled to Iraq making contacts and establishing a network of paid and volunteer sources. Contributors - including civilians, human shields, aid workers, photojournalists and amateur operators with varying skills and expectations of the power of the video image - witnessed tragedy and atrocity, humour and defiance; producing tapes that range from the mundane and commonplace to the sensational and unique.

KSA [the Ken Stanton Archive] have followed the development of this archive for three years; cataloguing tapes, researching its use and considering how this material might be seen, or displayed outside conventional formats. Recording Iraq presents over 200 hours of unedited footage, alongside transcripts from recorded interviews with Burke which describe the frustrations, dangers and contradictions inherent in trying to record, collect and place material such as this within the public realm. KSA’s approach is to examine the criteria we employ to select and edit such material, and reflect back upon our own implication in the ways in which it is re-presented.

From Wednesday, 7 February 2007 until Sunday, 1 April 2007 -- Free
Arnolfini, 16 Narrow Quay, Bristol, BS1 4QA, United Kingdom
Phone: 0117 917 2300 FAX: 0117 917 2303
Email: boxoffice@arnolfini.org.uk
Website: www.arnolfini.org.uk/

Molly Ivins

2007-02-01T07:11:00.000-05:00

Molly Ivins, one of my journalistic heros, is dead.

The President IS NOT Above the Law

2007-01-31T12:51:00.000-05:00

In the New York Times in an op-ed piece published 31 January 2007, "Bush Is Not Above the Law"James Bamford writes:

Last August, a federal judge found that the president of the United States broke the law, committed a serious felony and violated the Constitution. Had the president been an ordinary citizen — someone charged with bank robbery or income tax evasion — the wheels of justice would have immediately begun to turn. The F.B.I. would have conducted an investigation, a United States attorney’s office would have impaneled a grand jury and charges would have been brought. But under the Bush Justice Department, no F.B.I. agents were ever dispatched to padlock White House files or knock on doors and no federal prosecutors ever opened a case. ... To allow a president to break the law and commit a felony for more than five years without even a formal independent investigation would be the ultimate subversion of the Constitution and the rule of law.

And yet ...

Furthermore, as Paul Krugman pointed out in the New York Times on 19 January 2007 in "Surging and Purging"

the Bush administration is trying to protect itself by purging independent-minded prosecutors. ... Since the middle of last month, the Bush administration has pushed out at least four U.S. attorneys, and possibly as many as seven, without explanation. ... such a wholesale firing of prosecutors midway through an administration isn’t normal. ... Why, then, are prosecutors that the Bush administration itself appointed suddenly being pushed out?
The likely answer is that for the first time the administration is really worried about where corruption investigations might lead.

One can only hope they lead SOMEWHERE. SOON.

Hey, FCC! NO MORE MEDIA CONSOLIDATION!

2007-01-10T16:40:00.000-05:00

MySpace has censored this ad about the dangers of media consolidation.

Common Cause members have already sent tens of thousands of messages to the FCC - but in this final week before the deadline, they wanted to advertise on high-traffic websites to recruit new activists. Outrageously, MySpace told Common Cause that they "won't allow that to be shown." ...

Maybe MySpace doesn't want the word getting out about proposed changes to the ownership rules because they themselves are owned by a media conglomerate. In 2005, MySpace was gobbled up by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., which also owns Fox.

Their refusal proves our point: Big Media has too much control over what the public hears, sees and watches -- and we need to let the FCC know it.

Visit Common Cause: No More Consolidation

Pondering: Life

2007-01-02T13:40:00.000-05:00

Why is it that the self described "pro-life" people don't raise hell over in vitro fertilization? Why are they not concerned about the "murder" of all those eggs and embryos that are "discarded"? Why is that life not every bit as sacred as any any similar clump of cells in a womb? Shouldn't every fertilized egg that results from such treatment be brought to term if at all possible?

If "life" begins at conception, no matter how that conception is accomplished, shouldn't all those little bits of life be every bit as protected as the little bits of life created, say, by a rape?

Pondering: The food supply

2007-01-02T13:39:00.000-05:00

Why do (did) "they" put ground up dead cattle into food for other cattle, thereby forcing herbivores to be not only carnivores but also cannibals, whereas "they" put cereal grains and vegetables into food for dogs, when dogs are carnivores?

Wouldn't it make more sense to put all those grains and veggies into the herbivore food and to put all the meat into the carnivore food?

Good question

2007-01-02T13:28:00.000-05:00

Paul Maliszewski brings up one of those age-old and interesting and never really answered or answerable questions in his review in The Wilson Quarterly of Frank Wynne's book, I Was Vermeer: The Rise and Fall of the Twentieth Century’s Greatest Forger:

The story of [Dutch artist and art forger Han] van Meegeren has been told before, in several out-of-print biographies and scholarly works of art history. Frank Wynne, a London-based journalist and the English translator of Michel Houellebecq’s novel The Elementary Particles, adds little to those accounts of the forger’s fizzy rise and ignominious fall, and he only cursorily considers the uncomfortable questions about the art world raised by a forger’s achievements. What makes one painting—or one painter—more valuable than another? Are such determinations rational, or arbitrary and faddish?

What have we learned?

2006-12-18T07:37:00.000-05:00

In the Washington Post, Matthew Price reviews The Cave Painters: Probing the Mysteries of the World's First Artists, by Gregory Curtis:

The work of other artists didn't often reduce Pablo Picasso to a state of utter humility, but that's exactly what happened just after World War II, when he was mucking about in a cave in southwestern France. This wasn't just any cave, however -- its walls were festooned with striking pictures of horses and bulls that date from the Ice Age, all rendered with exquisite sophistication and symbolic force. Upon exiting the cave ["Lascaux, the Sistine Chapel of cave art"], an awed Picasso declared, "We have learned nothing in twelve thousand years."

Poppy helping Dubya

2006-11-30T15:06:00.000-05:00

Molly Ivins on the Bush 41 Iraq task force [11/17/06]:

It does seem that we may be going back to the typical modus operandi of Dubya. Poppy Bush has helped Junior out of the Vietnam War, his failures in the oil business and other efforts all of his "adult" life.

Strings Attached

2006-11-30T08:15:00.000-05:00

David Lindley on the current state of physics in the time of string theory, reviewing two books in The Wilson Quarterly: The Trouble with Physics:The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next by Lee Smolin and Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law by Peter Woit

The problem with string mania, Smolin concludes, is that it suits the wrong kind of mentality. He makes a nice distinction between scientific seers—people such as Einstein and Niels Bohr, his heroes, who deeply pondered the working of nature and were by no means brilliant mathematicians—and craftspeople, who are enormously adept at intricate calculation but don’t seem to think much about the larger meaning of their ingenious manipulations. Seers are always in short supply, and the technical demands of mastering string theory are such that would-be researchers of a more philosophical stripe can rarely meet the price of entry.

Both authors plead for universities and granting agencies to consciously find room, every now and then, for the mavericks and eccentrics who might bring much-needed new ideas into the excessively closed world of theoretical physics. Fat chance, unfortunately, was my instant reaction, given the way the scientific world, like academia in general, rewards careerism more than brilliance.

On the other hand, as Smolin suggests, the true originals have always had to find their own paths. Think of Einstein, hatching his most brilliant ideas in the patent office in Bern.

The "N-Word"

2006-11-29T12:52:00.000-05:00

The N-Word: Unmentionable lessons of the midterm aftermath by Diane McWhorter [28 Nov 2006]:

The relevance of Third Reich Germany to today's America is not that Bush equals Hitler or that the United States government is a death machine. It's that it provides a rather spectacular example of the insidious process by which decent people come to regard the unthinkable as not only thinkable but doable, justifiable. Of the way freethinkers and speakers become compliant and self-censoring. Of the mechanism by which moral or humanistic categories are converted into bureaucratic ones. And finally, of the willingness with which we hand control over to the state and convince ourselves that we are the masters of our destiny

Are two sentences really a story?

2006-11-22T09:59:00.000-05:00

I've often been irritated by those "short story" competitions that limit the writer to 150 or 250 words. Can that really be a story, or is that just a vignette, an anecdote, or just a few sentences strung together? Maybe it's because I've always been a "long" writer that that seems an absurd limitation for a real story.

Apparently the short-short-short tradition (?) has been around a long time. Peter Burnett in his review Tragic writer has last laugh on Stalin of Incidences by Daniil Kharms[1905-1942, an absurdist writer in the Russian experimental tradition] includes this:

It's unheard of that a review should quote a complete story from the book in question, but that's precisely what I'd like to do in including the following Kharmsian micro-fiction, entitled "An Encounter." It's easily representative of the work and effortlessly perverse, while also offering a minuscule lesson in reminiscence and prose storytelling.

It goes: "On one occasion a man went off to work and on the way he met another man who, having bought a loaf of Polish bread, was wending his way home. And that's just about all there is to it."

Is that really a story? Unless the reader chooses to read a lot of irony or hidden meaning into that second sentence, that sentence is superfluous. Which makes this "story" a single sentence. That, to me, is not a story. Absurd, yes. A story, no.

My thinking exactly

2006-11-19T13:29:00.000-05:00

Today's Doonesbury [Sunday 19 November 2006]. Ignoring the first two panes and skipping right to the classroom, of course.

View Points

2006-11-16T10:47:00.000-05:00

Opposing Points of View
[KMVincent]

A Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives

2006-11-15T21:19:00.000-05:00

A Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives ... by Michael Moore. Good message, starting with item #1: "We will always respect you for your conservative beliefs. We will never, ever, call you 'unpatriotic' simply because you disagree with us." Hear, hear. And, I might add, we will never say you "want the terrorists to win" just because you disagree with us.

How many are too many?

2006-11-09T19:49:00.000-05:00

On November 8, Keith Olbermann's daily "worst person in the world" winner was

... good old Rupert Murdoch. According to the international news service, in Tokyo at a conference Monday, the News Corp boss said it was right to go into Iraq and that U.S. casualties there, “By the terms of any previous war are quite minute.”

Two thousand, eight hundred and thirty nine dead, “quite minute.”

Ed Bradley is dead

2006-11-09T14:12:00.000-05:00

Ed Bradley, award-winning veteran CBS news and 60 Minutes correspondent, is dead at 65 of leukemia. Rest, rest ...

Write letters and cards for Amnesty International

2006-11-09T09:41:00.000-05:00

If you support the work of Amnesty International but are not familiar with Amnesty International's "Freedom Writers" program, you might want to check into it, especially since it's time for the holiday card campaign -- writing cards to prisoners of conscience.

I'm one of the Last of the Great Letterwriters (if I do say so myself) and I support Amnesty International, but for yearsI avoided the letter-writing campaign. I thought I'd have to compose my own letters from scratch, and I was absolutely certain I'd say something culturally or politically inflammatory or something and the prisoner's situation would end up worse than it had been. Then my brother told me about someone who, as I recall, had similar fears but started the program -- and eventually heard from a prisoner of conscience to whom her card had provided much hope. So I thought, OK, I can do this.

When looked into the program, I was relieved to learn that Amnesty provides sample letters for the governments, so you don't have to write your own -- and I don't because, as I said, I don't want to completely ruin someone's chances of getting free. On the cards to prisoners, you can just say something as simple as "We are thinking of you." Guidelines are laid out for you on the Amnesty Freedom Writers site.

Amnesty has monthly appeals whereby you write government officials in support of a prisoner of conscience -- three per month. Then in the summer and for the winter holidays, they have card campaigns during which they send cards directly to prisoners. You can have notices mailed or emailed to you at the beginning of each month, or you can go directly to the website to keep up with the lastest campaigns.

The appeal letters and addresses for the November campaign are online now, along with information about each case: www.amnestyusa.org/freedomwriters

Here's the link for the holiday cards information and addresses: www.amnestyusa.org/action/holiday

Maybe you can make someone's day ...

"Conceptions of what is art and what is beautiful"

2006-11-08T09:34:00.000-05:00

[In the early 1900s,] Edward Steichen attempted to import Constantin Brancusi's "Bird in Space" from Europe.Customs denied duty-free entry because it was deemed not a work of art. A long court battle resulted in a landmark decision from an intelligent judge, acknowledging that "conceptions of what is art and what is beautiful are not static. They change with time." There can be no permanent definition of what is, or isn't, art.

Modernism vs. morality
A chronicle of the longstanding debate over nonconformist art
By David Rollow, Boston Globe, November 5, 2006
Reviewing Visual Shock: A History of Art Controversies in American Culture
By Michael Kammen [Knopf]

Get out and vote!

2006-11-06T18:25:00.000-05:00

Vote   Vote   Vote
Vote   Vote   Vote
Vote   Vote   Vote

Ready, set, ...

2006-11-05T08:32:00.000-05:00

Avi Rubin's blog highlights a major new security study of Diebold's AccuVote Optical Scan (AV-OS) voting machine. Here's part of the abstract:

We present an independent security evaluation of the AccuVote Optical Scan voting terminal (AV-OS). We identify a number of new vulnerabilities of this system which, if exploited maliciously, can invalidate the results of an election process utilizing the terminal. Furthermore, based on our findings an AV-OS can be compromised with off-the-shelf equipment in a matter of minutes even if the machine has its removable memory card sealed in place. The basic attack can be applied to effect a variety of results, including entirely neutralizing one candidate so that their votes are not counted, swapping the votes of two candidates, or biasing the results by shifting some votes from one candidate to another. Such vote tabulation corruptions can lay dormant until the election day, thus avoiding detection through pre-election tests.

Rubin includes this further tidbit from the report in his blog:

The attacks in this paper are cleverly designed to make a compromised machine appear to work correctly when the system's audit reports are evaluated or when the machine is subjected to pre-election testing. Besides manipulation of the voting machine totals and reports, the authors explain how any voter can vote an arbitrary number of times using (get this), Post-it notes, if the voter is left unattended.

The above is an excerpt from Avi Rubin's website.

Ongoing questions: Development of the web

2006-11-04T13:07:00.000-05:00

Web inventor fears for the future
Pallab Ghosh, BBC News, 2 Nov. 2006

The British developer of the world wide web [Sir Tim Berners-Lee] says he is worried about the way it could be used to spread misinformation and "undemocratic forces". ... He wants to set up a web science research project to study the social implications of the web's development."

See also Web inventor warns of 'dark' net
Jonathan Fildes, BBC News, 23 May 2006

The web should remain neutral and resist attempts to fragment it into different services, web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee has said. ... there have been increasingly diverse opinions on how [the web] should evolve. The World Wide Web Consortium, of which Sir Tim is the director, believes in an open model. This is based on the concept of network neutrality, where everyone has the same level of access to the web and that all data moving around the web is treated equally. ... But telecoms companies in the US ... would like to implement a two-tier system, where data from companies or institutions that can pay are given priority over those that cannot.

No matter what you call it ...

2006-11-04T12:49:00.000-05:00

"Bush has declared that the administration will not tolerate the use of torture but has pressed to retain the use of unspecified 'alternative' interrogation methods."

U.S. Seeks Silence on CIA Prisons
Court Is Asked to Bar Detainees From Talking About Interrogations

By Carol D. Leonnig and Eric Rich
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, November 4, 2006

To sleep, perchance to count chirps

2006-11-03T10:38:00.000-05:00

A friend once gave me one of those meditation CDs -- you know, the mountain stream, the ocean, the wind in the trees? This one was an hour's worth of mountain stream.

I'm lying there, trying to relax as I listen with my eyes closed to the CD. But I'm thinking thinking thinking. No one sat by a stream and let a tape run for an hour, I think to myself. Someone sat for maybe three minutes, max, and then they just looped the tape over and over until it filled an hour. So I start listening intently for some clue as to a starting point. And I find it: A little chirp of a bird. So I start counting to see how far apart the little bird chirps are. It takes me a few rounds to confirm: Sixty seconds. The CD is one hour of 60 repeats of 60 seconds of the sound of a stream.

Then do I finally relax? No. I start listening for that stupid chirp to come up. Every 60 seconds ...

Traditional American Values

2006-11-03T08:46:00.000-05:00

At Amnesty International USA,
Stand up for the America you believe in. Sign the pledge.

... Amnesty International has launched a new campaign to restore our traditional American values of justice, rule of law, and human dignity. Please join us to fight for the America we believe in, the America that leads the world on human rights. ...

Open Source Software for Voting Machines

2006-11-02T22:58:00.000-05:00

It's apparent to me that one of THE most important steps to take toward preserving -- perhaps reclaiming -- our democracy is to see that any software used in election machines is open source, available for inspection at any time and any place by officials and even the public. It's too important, and whatever "intellectual property" protection voting machine companies think they should have over their "proprietary" software fades completely away next to the protections we must have over our system of government and, therefore, our election process and practice.

Check out the site of the Open Voting Consortium. See also HBO's Hacking Democracy site and a Salon review of the documentary. Also, check out blackboxvoting.org (associated with the woman in the HBO documentary) and blackboxvoting.com (not).

At least, according to a friend of mine who's been active in this thing for years, I'll be voting on paper this year:

... Diebold was certified in NC [North Carolina] but they choose to not participate. Perhaps it was the $7.5 Million bond or maybe the felony charges for stunts like switching software that scared them away. Maybe they didn't want the SBOE to examine the source code; all the above are required by NC law.

The NC law requires a voter verifiable paper trail _and random audits of the paper. The combination of a paper trail and random audits makes the computer code a moot point. Open it or close it (the code) the paper is what counts in NC. BTW, NC is one of only 13 states that require paper and random audits.

Good for North Carolina [ncvoter.net].
Modified 04 Nov 2006

Olbermann: Bush Owes the Apology -- Apologies

2006-11-02T08:29:00.000-05:00

Bush owes troops an apology, not Kerry
Olbermann: Bush ‘appearing to be stupid’ about Kerry’s joke
Keith Olbermann, Anchor, 'Countdown' [Nov 2006]

Mr. Bush and his minions responded by appearing to be too stupid to realize that they had been called stupid. ... There is ... no political division in this country that [President Bush] and his party will not exploit, nor have not exploited; no anxiety that he and his party will not inflame. There is no line this president has not crossed — nor will not cross — to keep one political party in power. He has spread any and every fear among us in a desperate effort to avoid that which he most fears — some check, some balance against what has become not an imperial, but a unilateral presidency. And now it is evident that it no longer matters to him whether that effort to avoid the judgment of the people is subtle and nuanced or laughably transparent.

See also Bush owes us an apology
Keith Olbermann comments on President Bush's Rose Garden address [Sept. 2006]

DST-gusting

2006-10-31T16:17:00.000-05:00

Reminder on the news this morning: Next year, DST starts earlier and ends later. Which just makes it all the more curious to me ... Why doesn't everyone just start doing earlier whatever it is they want to be doing earlier and let the rest of us who have no such needs go blissfully on, our lives -- and hours -- uninterrupted??? Why this insane insistence on changing the damned clocks and pretending that this hour is now that hour and that hour is now this hour ... for a few months, until the end of which time that hour will be this hour again and this hour will be that hour again ... for a very few months, until the end of which time ... etc., etc., etc., ad nauseam???

First Global Internet Governance Forum

2006-10-30T09:09:00.000-05:00

The future of the Internet is being discussed this week in Athens at the UN's first global Internet Governance Forum. According to another BBC news online article about the agenda of the forum , "The greatest challenge in making the IGF work is the potential culture clash." [ Forum website URL ]

Simple Choices

2006-10-29T01:26:00.000-05:00

Doonesbury for Sunday 29 October 2006.

View Points

2006-10-28T22:28:00.000-05:00

Kinda depends on your point of view, doesn't it?
[KMVincent]

Sheep's clothing

2006-10-28T22:22:00.000-05:00

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." -- Sinclair Lewis, American novelist, first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Beginning of the end?

2006-10-28T16:34:00.000-05:00

Keith Olbermann speaks out eloquently about the Military Commissions Act:

"... we now face what our ancestors faced, at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering: A government more dangerous to our liberty, than is the enemy it claims to protect us from."

Amnesty International

2006-10-28T09:31:00.000-05:00

Read about Amnesty International's campaign for Internet freedom, sign the pledge, and participate in the campaign yourself.

The BBC's online news site has several articles about the campaign, including this introductory article and this more recent one:

Bloggers are being asked to show their support for freedom of expression by Amnesty International. The human rights group also wants web log writers to highlight the plight of fellow bloggers jailed for what they wrote in their online journals. The organisation said fundamental rights such as free speech faced graver threats than ever before. The campaign coincides with the start of a week-long UN-organised conference that will debate the future of the net.

Visit the Amnesty International site to learn more, or go directly to the home page for the irrepressible.info campaign.

Is Gimmick-Free Painting a Dead Art?

2006-10-27T11:43:00.000-05:00

In the 30 October 2006 issue of Newsweek magazine, contributing correspondent Peter Plagens takes a look at a MoMA retrospective of the art of painter Brice Marden.

In "An Old-School Radical", Plagens writes: "In an art world increasingly given over to carnivals of video and installation art, [Brice] Marden is the consensus champion of straight-ahead painting. That is, he works in oil on flat, rectangular canvases: adding no assemblages, appropriated photos or anything else peculiar. ... If the fruits of his subtle sensibility and deft touch can't convince people that painting isn't passé, it's hard to imagine what could."

PBS POV documentary

2006-10-27T07:34:00.000-05:00

I saw a wonderful documentary film Wednesday night on PBS's POV [Point of View]. My Country, My Country, by filmmaker Laura Poitras, covers the period leading up to and immediately following the January 2005 elections in Iraq. Ms. Poitras focus's on a Sunni doctor and his family. She goes with the man when he goes to work at the Adhamiya Free Clinic, goes with him to Abu Ghraib, goes with him as he tries to convince people that it's important to vote in the upcoming elections. It's a very personal, very poignant look at ordinary people stuck in extraordinary times and trying to continue moving forward.

If you didn't see the documentary on TV, you can see some things on the POV website and read about the film and the people in it. Also on the POV site is an interview with Carlos Valenzuela, head of the UN team helping with the elections. One of the most moving parts of the film was people collecting at voting places and preparing to vote, despite what must have been great fear that they might be killed just for showing up.

Also on the website is an update to the film, including the news that, last January, the doctor's 19-year-old nephew, who was also studying to be a doctor, was assassinated outside a friend's home ...

And there's another telling note from the filmmaker: "Since finishing "My Country, My Country," I've been placed on the Department of Homeland Security's terror watch list. Returning to the U.S. in August 2006 after screenings in Europe, I was detained at two airports." —Laura Poitras

What do Americans want in their art?

2006-10-26T15:22:00.000-05:00

In his article, "Whose Art Is It Anyway?" in the October 30, 2006, issue of The Nation magazine, Peter Plagens looks at the ongoing question of what is ART from the particularly American perspective as he discusses a new book, Visual Shock by Michael Kammen ["who occupies an endowed chair of history and culture at Cornell and who won a Pulitzer Prize"]. Kammen's book looks at the history of various arts controversies in the US.

Plagens writes that a friend told him that an art professor told him that "Americans want, first, signs of a special talent. Second is lots of evident labor; third comes nonabject materials. The fourth requisite is realism, followed by noble (or at least not ignoble) content. Nowadays, you might add to the list political correctness of one sort or another.... And hanging over everything is the presumption of the constitutional right of every American never, ever to be offended by anything."

For better or worse, this sounds and feels a bit like the way it is to me.

What good are the arts anyway?

2006-10-26T15:18:00.000-05:00

Anthony Daniels, in an article in New Criterion, "The Higher Destruction" discusses some of the questions raised by John Carey in Carey's book, What Good Are the Arts.

Naturally, as an artist myself, I think there's plenty good about the arts, as does Daniels. Cary seems to have some strange ideas.

The state of the arts ...

2006-10-26T15:15:00.000-05:00

In his article, "The state of poetry", which appeared in the Raleigh News and Observer in December of 1997, author and former NC poet laureate, Fred Chappell, wrote "There is no competition in art; each work is unique, and comparisons should be made among them only to appreciate salient excellences or to make clear the judgments of flaws. After a certain level of performance can be observed, it is mere personal taste that sets one artist over another...."

I certainly agree with the concept -- agree that it's the way things should be and could be in an ideal world. But I'm not sure I think this is the way things actually work.

A Favorite Political Cartoon

2006-10-24T14:57:00.000-05:00

Karl Rove and Plato are lounging together on a grassy hillside. Rove says to Plato, "But surely you agree that truth can be created by the repetition of a lie."
[Bizarro cartoon by Dan Piaro, 29 October 2004]

So far so good

2006-10-22T22:13:00.000-05:00

I'm certainly nowhere near the state of having been carried away. I guess this is what happens when you end up with a blog you didn't plan to have. You are rendered speechless. At least for the moment ...

Note to Self

2006-10-19T00:15:00.000-05:00

Don't get carried away ...