Serenity

I'm still in Brazil, but here in the internet café it occurs to me that I should start planning Serenity opening night now. I'm getting a posse together to see it open at the Metronomicon on Friday night, the 30th. Leave a comment if you're a browncoat who wants in; I work near the theater, so I'll score us all tix.

Today's quote

From Charles Gatewood, when asked "What's the weirdest place you've ever been?"

San Francisco

This is someone who has been some very weird places. His site is definitely not work-safe.

Radio silence

Yes, I know that it's been ages since I've been blogging lately. I'm embarassed. I have long overdue posts I want to get to about forgotten TV shows, cultural appropriation and racism, national service obligation, vigorous urging for you to see Serenity opening weekend, and of course the many failures of the Bush administration, so I will get back to it eventually.

But not immediately. I'm going on the road again, for a little over a week, off to Brazil. I'll be living a phone- and computer-free existence. So if you can't reach me, it's because you can't reach me.

Unhappy anniversary

Four years since 11 September 2001.

Time again to read what Phil Agre said four days later.

The people who conducted those terrorist attacks are entirely responsible for what they did. They are evil, and they made themselves evil by choice. Nearly as evil are the religious authorities who provided the ideological basis of this terrible self-making with their spurious justifications for suicide bombings. Yet the call to war is precisely a call for us, formerly citizens of a democracy, to remake ourselves in the image of that evil -- to ignore all evil deeds of our own, and instead to project all of our own failings into an enemy who grows ever bigger, ever more inhuman, with every exaggeration of the extent of the danger and the need for revenge. The call to war is not legitimate: it is not capable of delivering what it claims to deliver.

I've posted before about Mr. Agre, using the words "scary and prescient." At this point, though, I'm realizing that things are worse than he forsaw, in many important ways.

First things first

Having returned from Burning Man, before I say anything else, for those who haven't given yet, let me offer you Billmon's list of places to donate to relief efforts for New Orleans.

Off the air to burn the Man

I'm on the way out the door to wend my way out to Burning Man. So no posting for the next week.

I leave you with this quote from Hakim Bey's The Temporary Autonomous Zone, a manifesto unknown to most Burners but essential to understanding what the event is about. If Larry Harvey is the James Madison of Burning Man, then Bey is its John Locke, and T.A.Z. is analagous to Two Treatises on Government.

Uprising, or the Latin form insurrection, are words used by historians to label failed revolutions — movements which do not match the expected curve, the consensus-approved trajectory: revolution, reaction, betrayal, the founding of a stronger and even more oppressive State — the turning of the wheel, the return of history again and again to its highest form: jackboot on the face of humanity forever.

By failing to follow this curve, the up-rising suggests the possibility of a movement outside and beyond the Hegelian spiral of that “progress” which is secretly nothing more than a vicious circle. Surgo—rise up, surge. Insurgo—rise up, raise oneself up. A bootstrap operation. A goodbye to that wretched parody of the karmic round, historical revolutionary futility. The slogan “Revolution!” has mutated from tocsin to toxin, a malign pseudo-Gnostic fate-trap, a nightmare where no matter how we struggle we never escape that evil Aeon, that incubus the State, one State after another, every "heaven" ruled by yet one more evil angel.

If History IS “Time,” as it claims to be, then the uprising is a moment that springs up and out of Time, violates the “law” of History. If the State IS History, as it claims to be, then the insurrection is the forbidden moment, an unforgivable denial of the dialectic — shimmying up the pole and out of the smokehole, a shaman's maneuver carried out at an "impossible angle" to the universe. History says the Revolution attains “permanence,” or at least duration, while the uprising is “temporary.” In this sense an uprising is like a “peak experience” as opposed to the standard of “ordinary” consciousness and experience. Like festivals, uprisings cannot happen every day—otherwise they would not be “nonordinary.” But such moments of intensity give shape and meaning to the entirety of a life. The shaman returns—you can't stay up on the roof forever— but things have changed, shifts and integrations have occurred—a difference is made.

I'll see you when the uprising is over.

---

Update: It turns out that Hakim Bey is a creepy pædophile. Allow that to colour your reading of a his essay in the same way that antisemitism informs T. S. Eliot or slaveholding colours Thomas Jefferson in your mind.

Shuttle

I'm a sucker for the magic of space exploration — sending both robots and people — but the space shuttle program is exactly what's wrong with NASA. In A Rocket To Nowhere, Maciej Ceglowski explains why.

Future archaeologists trying to understand what the Shuttle was for are going to have a mess on their hands. Why was such a powerful rocket used only to reach very low orbits, where air resistance and debris would limit the useful lifetime of a satellite to a few years? Why was there both a big cargo bay and a big crew compartment? What kind of missions would require people to assist in deploying a large payload? Why was the Shuttle intentionally crippled so that it could not land on autopilot? 1 Why go through all the trouble to give the Shuttle large wings if it has no jet engines and the glide characteristics of a brick? Why build such complex, adjustable main engines and then rely on the equivalent of two giant firecrackers to provide most of the takeoff thrust? Why use a glass thermal protection system, rather than a low-tech ablative shield? And having chosen such a fragile method of heat protection, why on earth mount the orbiter on the side of the rocket, where things will fall on it during launch?

Taken on its own merits, the Shuttle gives the impression of a vehicle designed to be launched repeatedly to near-Earth orbit, tended by five to seven passengers with little concern for their personal safety, and requiring extravagant care and preparation before each flight, with an almost fetishistic emphasis on reuse. Clearly this primitive space plane must have been a sacred artifact, used in religious rituals to deliver sacrifice to a sky god.

As tempting as it is to picture a blood-spattered Canadarm flinging goat carcasses into the void, we know that the Shuttle is the fruit of what was supposed to be a rational decision making process. That so much about the vehicle design is bizarre and confused is the direct result of the Shuttle's little-remembered role as a military vehicle during the Cold War.

By the time Shuttle development began, it was clear that the original vision of a Shuttle as part of a larger space transportation system was far too costly and ambitious to receive Congressional support. So NASA concentrated on building only the first component of its vision ...

It's long and fascinating. I'd already been convinced that the Shuttle was a mess, but if I hadn't been, this article would have convinced me.

---

Update: @vruba at Tupperwolf has a related thought about the Shuttle.

Think of the Space Shuttle. Its basic technical design was silly. Both its fatal accidents were caused by problems that came from its byzantine liftoff configuration. If there were a problem at a certain point in the ascent, the plan was to reverse through its own exhaust plume. It was late, overbudget, and missed its turnaround time promise by a factor of five.

But its advocates knew it was the Shuttle or nothing. Their predecessors had sustained the Apollo program for more than a decade upon the firm assurance that getting white men to the moon, the moooon, should be budgeted under the heading of defending freedom. Of course, Congress eventually crunched the numbers and worked out that it wasn’t actually killing any Viet Cong whatsoever. The Shuttle people used a cleverer ruse: they spread its construction, and thus federal money, throughout the country. It had parts made in every state. I have no idea what’s in North Dakota or Maine that gets people into orbit, but they found something. And so Congress never wanted to cancel it, even when it was clearly the wrong idea. The Shuttle’s political engineering was a model of simplicity and reliability.

(Also, I would bet you a pound of fine medium-roasted Sidamo coffee beans, with notes of wine, marmelade, and blueberry, that defense and intelligence people were quietly pulling hard for the Shuttle well into the ’90s.)

Rock me like a hurricane

NOLA.com is still blogging through the hurricane.

Fingers crossed for New Orleans. Hang tough.

T Shirt

As a rule, I don't like t-shirts with words on 'em. But I might make an exception.

Metaphilia

There needs to be a word for "this is the sort of thing you'll like if you like this sort of thing." Metaphilic, perhaps?

I bring it up because Digby at Hullabaloo hits one out of the park with a post for the hardcore politics junkies. He starts by chewing on a Gary Hart op-ed on the Iraq/Vietnam comparison ... talks about Democrats' hangover from the McGovern Miscalculation ... and then spins into some deep thinking about why the mainstream media seemed to have it in for Hart, Clinton, and Gore. Too twisty and complicated to quote. Very metaphilic.

And if you go there, you should follow his links. Mighty.

Whaddaya mean by fact?

Someone has constructed a website of "facts" about Vin Diesel like this one:

Vin Diesel is powered by the tears of the Chupakabra.

Um, okay.

Popularity

Via Atrios, I learn that Cenk Uygur has done a little math with poll results.

George Bush’s approval ratings are at 36%. Those are pre-coup numbers. That’s when a politician in a third world country becomes so unpopular that a couple of generals decide to show him the door. Nixon at the height of Watergate was at 39%, three points HIGHER than Bush is right now. And people despised Nixon.
...
Bill Clinton approval rating when he left office was 66%! On the day of his impeachment (12/19/98), when supposedly regular Americans were disgusted by his actions, his approval rating was even higher. It was 72%.

I know some present day Republicans are a little science and math challenged, so I’ll help you with the math: 72 is exactly twice as much as 36.

Don't tell W, though. You know what kinds of things he gets up to when he feels a need to buoy his popularity.

Burn baby burn

Burning Man is next week. I'll be there starting Wednesday morning.

I just got the word from the Tortoise that our camp will be between Bipolar and Catharsis @ 6:30. I'll also be paying a visit to the Man at 11:00 in the morning each day ... or rather, each day that I motivate.

I'll be the guy dressed a bit like T. E. Lawrence.

Up, up ...

If you care, you probably already know that Bryan Singer has abandoned the X-Men to direct the only film that would justify such treachery ... Superman Returns. It's gonna be great.

Serious film-and-comics geeks should check out the production's video blog which is full of chocolately goodness about the production. There are a few spoilers, but not too bad --- the main thing we learn is that the sets are gorgeous.

If you're only a film geek, and have a soft spot for celebrity pop culture weirdness, go there just to check out blog entry #7, "The Call." I won't spoil the reason why.

Folktales

It's been kicking around the web for years, but it occurs to me that some of my readers who might be interested have not yet read the fascinating article Myths Over Miami.

Captured on South Beach, Satan later escaped. His demons and the horrible Bloody Mary are now killing people. God has fled. Avenging angels hide out in the Everglades. And other tales from children in Dade’s homeless shelters.

Yuppie feti

Some of my readers may not be familiar with Joe Bob Briggs, drive-in movie critic extraordinaire, who may be the greatest living American satirist. Yes, his central schtick is reviewing really, really bad movies. And yes, he truly loves really, really bad movies.

But also, nearly every one of his reviews starts out with some biting—and very funny—social commentary. And his free-standing essays outnumber his movie reviews.

He's also the author of my single favourite pro-choice debunking of the pro-life movement, included in his 1990 collection The Cosmic Wisdom of Joe Bob Briggs. As a service to the world, I am reprinting it here.

---

Yuppie Feti

Now that the Fetus Fans have won their court battle, I'd like to suggest some measures we can take to make the next eighteen years sufferable. You don't have to worry about any time after the next eighteen years, because by then entire armies of feti will be swarming across the country, and they'll be able to vote. Of course, many of em won't make it. By that time the death penalty will apply to six-year-olds and up, and many of these orphaned feti will be killing one another, in a kind of retroactive birth control.

Anyhow, here's what I think we should do. From now on each fetus should be registered. In the past all you had to do was say, “I don't want no fetus in my bod.” What we should have women do now is go down to the post office as soon as they get pregnant, get a computer number for the fetus they don't want, and then go over to the courthouse steps, like you once did when you went there to say, “I will no longer be responsible for my wife's debts.” Only this time you say, “Come get this here fetus.”

No takers?

The county agent searches the crowd for a moment, looking for volunteer parents.

The next day somebody gets a call:

“Mr. Randolph C. Bisselman? Glad I caught you. We have a homeless fetus here and we've run a random computer matchup from a list of Pro Life activists. Congratulations! We'll be sending over Fetus No. 4789542. You might want to write that number down for your records. And I'm sure that your political, social, and religious views will shape this young fetus into a fine human being. By the way, if you'd like to view the fetus, we'd be happy to order a sonogram as soon as we locate the mother. She works, you know.”

Wouldn't this work? Why not? I am not being facetious. Let's look at all of the possible objections.

1. “That child is not my responsibility.”

It's not this lady's responsibility either. She wanted sex, not a baby. In fact, this lady can't even pronounce “responsibility." If she gives birth to the baby, she'll probably only change its diapers once a week. This lady is the kind of lady who should have children taken away from her. Surely you don't want her to do the job?

2. “Okay, it's the government's responsibility.”

You think the government is gonna take this fetus to McDonald's or buy it a GI Joe with a kung-fu grip? We got to have a human being here.

3. “Okay, a social worker should do it.”

Most of em are gone—spending cuts. I've got a sister in Little Rock who runs a privately supported foster home. She's full all the time, tending all the little yard monsters she can handle. And so is just about every other foster home. Nope. We've got to have some individual human beings.

4. “I don't have the money.”

You've got more money than the mommy.

5. “I have my own kids to take care of.”

Kids adjust to anything. It's your attitude we've got to work on.

6. “It's not fair.”

Now you're talking.

7. “A baby is a full-time job, and I'm not ready for that commitment in my life right now.”

Excellent.

8. “At the very least I should get some money from the government for the time I'll spend raising that baby.”

Point well taken.

9. “Nobody can do this to me!”

Very good. Very very good. You've finally reached the emotional point of view of a poor single woman who just found out she's pregnant.

Don't worry, though, we'll all pitch in, help you out, buy the fetus a baseball bat. You just think you don't want it. Later it'll become the most precious thing in the world to you, because of what the two of you went through together. Trust me.

S for Suess, I guess

Thanks to Indigo's poem which I blogged a while back, Isomeme reports:

I'm hearing T. S. Eliot in a head-on collision with Dr. Seuss:

I would not dare to eat a peach
I would not walk upon the beach
I could not hear the mermaids sing
I could not see the love you bring

I say it now without a pause
I should have been a pair of claws!

Hmmnn. Is "Prufrock" the most alluded poem in modern English literature? "The Raven" probably beats it out, but combined with Suess, the pair might come out on top.

Memento

Via Brad Plumer, I learn that the Village Voice has an article on cheating on exams.

Scientific equations seem to be the most popular at the moment, students opting for tattoos with the most long-term value and breadth of application. Tattoo parlors consulted for this piece all cite inside-arm tattoos of the quadratic equation as the street favorite, with full-stomach tattoos of the Periodic Table of Elements as the second, though infinitely more painful, most popular option.

... which gets me thinking “Maxwell's equations in the differential form are both conceptually elegant and æsthetically beautiful,” but ...

“Science is sexy,” says Colin Klein, a college student, “but it's also very useful.” Klein's tattoo, a multiplication table that covers his entire body, took 10 years and over $500,000 to complete—you do the math.

But not all tattoo cheaters are in it for the long run. “Down my left arm I got a list of 30 adjectives,” explains Simon Moerder, a student at a well-known American university who's using tattoos to take the GRE at the end of the summer. “Down my right arm I got another list of adjectives—except they're antonyms. So when the test people look at my arms, they see art. But when I look at my arms, I see answers.”

... bloody hell, they're just pulling my leg. But I really do know someone who's thinking about getting one of these.

Factcheck squared redux

Close readers of my blog may recall that I dissed FactCheck.org for dropping the ball about Social Security. The Decemberist lays a mighty smackdown on them, if you're interested.

Is factcheck.org politically biased? I don't know, but my guess would be that it's not. The problem is that they get played, and I think the GOP has been more aggressive about playing them. If you set yourself up as the last word on the truth or falsehood of ads, you will immediately be the addresse of a lot of spin. Factcheck obviously wants to respond quickly, and they want to respond with clear assertions of truth or falsehood, unlike many of the newspaper "ad watch" projects which are so mealy-mouthed that a reader winds up more confused after reading it than before. But trying to fulfill those two goals, its far too easy to read the first spin that comes in on the fax, conclude that it sounds persuasive, and run with it.

Newspapers make errors, blogs make errors, political ads stretch the truth and make errors. But to have the credibility to be the ultimate arbiter of truth in political discourse, factcheck.org has to be impeccable. They have to limit their assertions to things that can be said with certainty and they need to at the very least correct their errors immediately. Factcheck.org has forfeited the opportunity to play that role.

It breaks my heart, a bit: the site was a good idea.

The opposite of the intended effect

Via Billmon's excellent comments around Cindy Sheehan, I learn that the Boston Globe reports on chemical weapons in Iraq. There's a little reminder:

The Bush administration cited evidence that Saddam Hussein's government was manufacturing weapons of mass destruction as the main justification for the invasion. No such weapons or factories were found.

But the lede of the story is this:

US troops raiding a warehouse in the northern city of Mosul uncovered a suspected chemical weapons factory containing 1,500 gallons of chemicals believed destined for attacks on US and Iraqi forces and civilians, military officials said yesterday.

The early morning raid last Monday found 11 precursor agents, ''some of them quite dangerous by themselves," a military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Steven Boylan, said in Baghdad.

Combined, the chemicals would yield an agent capable of ''lingering hazards" for those exposed to it, Boylan said. The likely targets would have been ''coalition and Iraqi security forces, and Iraqi civilians," partly because the chemicals would be difficult to keep from spreading over a wide area, he said.

Boylan said the suspected lab was new, dating from sometime after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Emphasis mine. Didn't want you to miss how much safer this invasion has made us.

Jelly donut

It turns out that JFK's German was fine, and he did say what he meant after all.

Social class

Brad Plumer has an incicive comment about how social class connects to one's work — and wriggles out of the over-simple idea that higher income equals higher social class.

One way to define class — and this is hardly an original thought — is to look not at income but at power. Power in the workplace. Power in the world. The working class, from this point of view, can be defined as those who do their jobs under strict supervision, have little control over what they do or how fast they do it, and have no power over anyone else. Notice I picked this definition somewhat deliberately; these are precisely the sorts of people who, under labor law, can join a union. Obviously the definition's not hard and fast. I'm in a union, after all, because at work I technically get no input into the Mother Jones budget, and have precisely zero authority over any other employee. So that's the law. In practice, though, I do have the ability to hire, promote, and fire interns, I get to work at my own pace, and have wide discretion over what projects I want to pursue. So I'd put myself in the middle class, even if I make far less, income-wise, than many who would be considered working class. Intuitively, this classification makes far more sense than calling me “working class” and, say, a well-paid, unionized electrician “middle class.”

I like this. I have a tendency, when talking about class, to avoid talking about “middle” class for this very reason, and refer to “working” versus “professional;” I break things up into poor, working poor, working, professional, intellectual, upper professional, aristocratic.

Is Iran next?

Having heard rumblings that the neo-cons in power are unsatisfied with the debacle in Iraq and want to also invade Iran, one wonders where the troops for that are supposed to come from.

Via Justin Logan, American Conservative magazine has a disturbing answer.

The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney's office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing --- that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack --- but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.

Several senior Air Force officers are apparently cowards who are failing their country.

Ideograph idiocy

Via Christa Faust, I learn of Hanzi Smatter, a blog "dedicated to the misuse of Chinese characters (Hanzi or Kanji) in Western culture." It's a strangely fascinating object lesson in dumbth, particularly around folks getting Kanji tattoos that mean unintended things --- or that are "typos" that mean nothing at all.

Which of course makes me think of J-List's famous "stupid foreigner" t-shirt.

Bias

Quiz time: which paranoid lefty blogger wrote this about the vulnerability of the press to right-wing think tank propaganda?

Journalists are, perforce, generalists; they have limited time and expertise and are always confronted by what I call the tyranny of the blank page or the broadcast slot. Whether they are ready or not, the paper is coming out tomorrow morning and the news is going on at six p.m. They’ve got to fill so many column inches, or so many minutes of airtime. Period.

And, being rational people, they want to fill those pages and minutes with the least effort, and at the least risk to themselves. If they can come out looking good as well --- looking like they have mastered their topic, gathered new and provocative insights, or clearly advanced the public debate --- they, and their bosses feel that they’ve had a good day.

But there are other, less obvious, things, that you need to grasp if you are to put yourself in the journalist’s shoes .... to most journalists (and, indeed, to most people) the value of ideas is far from self-evident. That, and not the supposedly left-wing bias of the media is, in my view, the single biggest obstacle to effective communication ...

Really, guess. Then come read the answer... Why, it's from a primer on media relations published by the right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation.

You may want to read the whole thing.

Anecdotal evidence

So reading Focus On The Family's list of seven signs of gender confusion in young boys, I see at least five of these signs when I was a kid. I have lived in San Francisco for the last eight years, so I've had every opportunity for any lurking homosexuality to surface.

And yet, strangely, I am heterosexual.

I can only conclude that Focus On The Family has no fucking idea what they're talking about.

Many others agree.

Today's quote

Seen in large letters in the Old Navy store window:

Fit in
Stand out

Says it all, doesn't it?

Touched by his noodly appendage

Following up on my earlier post about the growing religion of flying spaghetti monsterism, I offer you FSM supplies. And the original FSM page is full of new stuff. Like this ...

"As a scientist, I'd like to say that the currently accepted scientific theory is evolution. But, some competing ideas have been proposed, such as ID and FSMism, and discussion to include one should include the other, as these ideas are equally valid." -- Mark Zurbuchen, Ph.D

... and much much more. Not to mention that my study of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has also turned me on to study of the Invisible Pink Unicorn.

Remember to ask yourself: WWFSMD?

Stranger than science fiction

Marxist science fiction writer Ken MacLeod blogs his experience at this year's World Science Fiction convention.

Ever the sucker for space movement memorabilia, I bought badges of Gagarin, Koralev, and a pioneer cadre of cosmonauts from the Russian fans' table (manned by the same guys as ten years ago, selling the same commie kitsch). Their Worldcon bid is for Moscow 2017.

Follow me down the hall of mirrors: this SF writer's factual account of a real event in the science fictional sounding year of 2005 reads like a piece of science fiction someone might have written in 1985.

What George denied us

A while ago, I plugged Darth Vader's blog. It seems the Dark Lord of the Sith has made his last post, and it is a triumph, tying the whole story together.

My son said, “I know there is good in you. The Emperor hasn't driven it from you fully. That was why you couldn't destroy me, that's why you won't bring me to your Emperor now.”

....

Through the fabric of the Force I could feel him reaching out to me, his hand open. It just about broke my heart. Only Shmi Skywalker knew love that pure, and I felt her spirit stir within him to my horror and shame. I took hold of the railing, fearing I would fall.

And then I felt the slithering tentacles of Darth Sidious' mind descend upon my consciousness, encircling my wounded heart and cooling it. A voice in my thoughts asked me what destiny of chaos I would have the galaxy face if not for the strength of the enduring New Order. My spirit suffused with a dark light, and my leg began to feel normal again.

I turned around to face my son. “You don't understand the power of the dark side. I must obey my master.”

Luke made his appeal again, stepping up to me and searching my lenses with his eyes. “I feel the conflict with you, let go of your hate!”

Poor fool, if only he knew. Innocent as a junior temple youngling, he parroted the dead preachings of an extinct order of loveless charlatans. If only the difference between dark and light were so simple as not being afraid. He cannot conceive of the fear he must know if he is to face the burden of the true Force.

I swear, it even manages to make poetic sense out of Shmi Skywalker's virgin birth. If you have any love left for Star Wars, check it out.