I wonder how many folks who oppose doctor assisted suicide, also oppose letting doctors participate in executions…?

I may not loose much weight this holiday break but my little rowhouse sure is.  I haven’t tossed so much paper into the recycling bins in ages. 

I have this bad habit of saving magazines and periodicals.  Not everything I read, but stuff I think could be valuable later.  Like the software developer’s periodicals I read for example.  Journals from the few professional organizations I am a member of, such as The Association for Computer Machinery.  I tell myself there is reference material in these I may need later.  But the fact is it’s all time sensitive.  Most of the fifteen years of computer trade journals I have on my shelves I can safely toss away now, because it either references technology now that is completely out of date and orphaned, or is online where I can more easily get to what I’m looking for via the seach engines.

It’s not like I have stacks of magazines here at Casa del Garrett.  I hate clutter.  So they’re all tucked neatly into those cardboard periodical holders and labeled according to publication and date.  It’s amazing how much of that stuff you can throw out when you ask yourself if you’ve ever so much as touched it in the last ten years.  That came to about four-fifths of it. Then I ask myself how much of it is online anyway and that’s another four-fifths of what’s left.

I’ve saved some newspapers, some of them whole, from certain historical event days.  Like the day the first humans walked on the moon.  The day Nixon resigned.  The day the supreme court overturned Hardwick v. Bowers.  I have the front pages of all the local Washington D.C. newspapers the day gay folk rioted in San Francisco after Dan White got off with Voluntary Manslaughter.  I’ll post the front page of the Washington Star that day later. 

I have lots of old Advocates and other gay periodicals, journals and underground ‘zines from the early to late 1970s, when the movement for respect and equality was getting up some steam.  The optimism of those days is almost painful to read again.  Everyone just assumed that the gains made in the sexual revolution, and for racial equality and women’s rights would naturally translate into a better world for gay people too and it didn’t.  But when you look at how the rest of the era’s equal rights movements played out that’s not so surprising. The straight, white, protestant majority took in the new freedoms that applied to themselves, and pretty much let everyone else keep on struggling.  Racism is still a curse on our country, women are freer to have sex with men now, but not so much to make the same money for the same work, climb the corporate latter, or rise in politics.  Yes, it’s all better now then it was back in 1972 when I graduated from high school.  But isn’t that what they tell gay people when we complain that we are still, after decades of struggle, second class citizens?   Oh cheer up…think of how better off you are now then you Were…!  I was flipping though some of the old gay community newspapers and magazines from the 70’s and marvelling and how anti-gay bullshit just hasn’t changed At All in decades, just the faces speaking it. 

Most of that stuff is going in a Rubbermaid storage container and I’ll have to find someplace in the house for it because that old newsprint degrades rapidly if it’s subjected to wide temperature and humidity swings.  By the time the recycling drop-off reopens I reckon I’ll have another few hundred pounds…yes, that’s right…of paper to deposit into it.  All the old computer journals.  The old libertarian movement journals, Inquiry and Reason.  The occasional lifestyle magazine issues I’ve saved because that particular month’s issue was really good…Cigar Affectionado…Vanity Fair…  The old Regardes from back when I was working as an architectural modelmaker…  The issues of Popular Photography and Camera 35 and Peterson’s Photo-Graphic from when I was trying to be a freelance photographer….  It’s fun to look back on the world as it was when those issues were published, but that world is gone now and if I want to go for a stroll in it again I can do it online.  I need the space more then I need the paper memories.

I’m holding onto my old Mad Magazines and Consumer Reports though.  And the issues of Model Car Science I bought and read thoroughly when I was a kid.

I stumbled across This really intriguing new animated take on the story of Peter and the Wolf…

…There’s a few clips from it out there on YouTube and I was looking them over, absolutely fascinated by what the artists were doing. Anyway, in the comments one person wrote that they almost cried when the Wolf ate the Duck. And someone else responded back a tad put off…

hey, just to let you know, sometimes people like to read the comments before watching to see what other people thought of the clip; and sometimes my computer scrolls down and i catch the comments before watching…so giving away the ending isn’t always prudent. thanks!

So have you watched Milk yet? He gets killed at the end. Whoops…sorry…

Via SLOG, via Twitter…

I’ll bet when we elect our first gay president, he doesn’t invite an avowed racist to deliver the invocation.

They say that gay folk, liberals and progressives are furious over Rick Warren being chosen to give the inagural invocation.  Well then our fury is some pretty pathetic stuff isn’t it?  Compare and contrast: suppose McCain had won, and then invited Gene Robinson to give the invocation.  Imagine the fury on the right.  The boycott by the right of the inaugural would be instantaneous and total.  Nobody…Nobody…on the right would show up.  Not to sit by McCain in the stands, not to march in the parade…they’d even walk away from cabinet positions.  The rage from the right wing media would be blistering, second only to the nuclear bombs being lobbed from the Mega-Church and Jesus Mall pulpits all over America.  Total war would be declared on the McCain presidency then and there. Four years into his presidency and he’d still be hearing it, the outrage not one iota less.  They’d never forgive him.  They’d be beating him over the head with it every second of every day of every year of his first term.  And make no mistake, he’d never get a second. 

Now open your eyes and take another look at the so-called fury on the left.  Pretty lame, isn’t it?  American liberals are so cute when they’re angry.

To the ersatz friend who couldn’t be bothered to introduce me to, or even give me a contact lead on the cute single gay guy who he told me sounded like a perfect match for me: In your next life may you be as lonely as I was in this one.  Then maybe you’ll appreciate the fantastic luck you’ve had in this one enough to understand why what you did hurt so much.

To the ersatz friend who told me I was too homely to get the kind of boyfriend I wanted: Swear to god I had no idea you were so shallow.

To my idiot neighbors who park multiple large vehicles on our street, and the occasional broken down boat trailer, without a shred of thought for the other people who live here: This isn’t the suburbs jackass, and Redfern Avenue isn’t your own private driveway.  Check your deed in case you are confused about that.  Need more parking space?  Put it in your back yard.

To the morons who drag shopping carts full to overflowing to the self checkout counters…oh…wait…I dealt with them in a previous post didn’t I…?

To the jackass neighbor across the alley from me with the bright motion activated spotlight: If you have that thing out there to light up your backyard then I have a suggestion…try pointing it at…you know…your back yard, not up in the sky where it can shine into my bedroom windows like a goddamned searchlight.  Or are you watching for incoming enemy bombers too?

To the careless nitwit at the Valley Motors body shop who didn’t bother checking my rear bumper for structural damage when I brought the car in after it was rear ended: I hope your car drops a connecting rod into your lap while you’re passing a slow tractor trailer up a steep hill on a narrow country road in the only passing zone for the next 20 miles.

More cheerful Festivus complaining can be found Here…

to the s/o:fark your xbox 360! i’m in the farkING ROOM with you. Talk to me!! Put down the goddarned controller and have a CONVERSATION with me! Look at me! Notice that i am in the ROOM with you, or cooking for you, or cleaning your house or doing your laundry! TELL ME ABOUT YOUR farkING DAY!!! Am i not WORTHY of your time because i’m not an RPG or a FPS or an RTS? How about when we do watch TV together, you turn of G4/TECHtv’s xbox360 video game review shows and watch something other than Adam Sessler????

The Nevada unemployment office, chase bank, the T.V. theme from Duck Tales, and Nevada drivers who text while they drive can all go straight to hell.

To my upstairs neighbors: Turn down your classic rock, if I hear Taking Care of Business one more time I will destroy your fuse box with an axe, giggling like a school girl the entire time.

To the middle aged harpies in the grocery store: If I’m pregnant, my stomach IS NOT there for you to touch at will. If you didn’t put it there, don’t touch it.

To my asshole boyfriend who lied to me this morning so he could get out of going to my OB appointment….so glad I spent hundreds of dollars and many hours shopping for your Christmas desires so you could could hide your balls and not be a part of the pregnancy YOU WANTED. The toilet was scrubbed with your toothbrush this morning, again…after I smooshed a fly with it. ASSHOLE.

To my sister: The thing that all your shiatty boyfriends have in common with each other is you.

To my mom: who forces me to attend church on Christmas Eve. I’ve told you a billion times, "I don’t believe that farking virgin birth story." Also, having a Starbucks & a Chick-fil-a inside your church is just WRONG and it’s sad that you can’t see that!!

To my brother: I swear to Ceiling Cat, if you don’t stop giving me a hard time about being a vegetarian, I will kick you in the nads.

To my roommate: I hate your boyfriend and I want him off my couch. Get rid of him and we can be friends again.
To my roommate’s boyfriend: STFU. No one cares what you have to say about EVERYTHING. And get off my couch. And for that matter, my rooommate.

…and so much more!  Festivus will officially end later tonight when Bruce is pinned to the ground during the Feats Of Strength by a trash bag full of old computer manuals he is taking to the recycling drop-off…

Okay…  I discover now that Brad DeLong’s Egregious Moderation is still up and running…just at a different address.  Serves me right for not visiting it more often.  So it’s re-linked…

One of the seductive things about cleaning out the household deadwood is stepping back and seeing all that space again on the closet and bookcase shelves.  I almost never throw away books, but I’ve found that computer manuals are something I have to make an exception to that rule for, or else I wouldn’t have any room to move here at Casa del Garrett.  I’m dragging tons of old manuals for software I haven’t so much as thought about in over a decade to the recycling drop-off, and the effect is I can suddenly see a lot of open space here in the front office. 

Just like when I first moved here.

You let go of all the old stuff in your life and suddenly you have room for new stuff.  And you glance around your nest and it feels like you have a life in front of you again, instead of one that’s mostly behind you.  

Yeouch…  When I got up a few moments ago the thermostat was reading fifteen degrees outside.  And it’s very windy.  All night last night the wind was howling.  I could feel it shake my little Baltimore rowhouse, which is made of brick and concrete block.  It kicked one neighbor’s plastic trash can up and down the ally all night long like a child with a new found toy, making an irritating racket that kept waking me up.  I wanted to run out and put it back in the yard it belonged but I didn’t know whose it was.  Eventually I put in ear plugs. 

Figure the wind chill is in the single digits, the only question is are they positive ones or negative ones.  Ah…I see that wind chill here in Charm City is 6 degrees.  Swell.  I was going to make a trash run this morning but I think I’ll just keep on working inside the house today.  I got dressed and filled the bird feeders.  Before the day is over I’ll probably have to fill them again.  Feathers make better insulation then you might expect, but the little dickens need all the calories they can grab in weather like this.

Via Der Spiegel…

If you spend much time in Germany, it won’t take long before you notice that speaking the language really isn’t that difficult. Any time you’re at a loss for a German word, just throw in some English and move on. For one thing, it’s the height of coolness to sprinkle your German with English. And for another, even if your German friends don’t understand, they’ll smile and nod for fear of looking dumm.

Plus, they do it too. Words like "office" and "meeting" long ago entered the German vocabulary. "Babysitten" and "downloaden" have been adopted. Even the word "people" has been molded to suit the needs of the German language — the term has a negative connotation to indicate folks who are disagreeable and tiresome.

Well that’s how some native English speakers use it too.  But…anyway…

But when it comes to advertising slogans, the use of English is becoming passé. Some advertisers have realized that many Germans just don’t understand — or even worse, misunderstand — their hip slogans. Even such straightforward lines like "Come in and find out," for a chain of perfume stores, can be dodgy. It seems most Germans cycled the slogan through their spotty understanding of English and thought it meant, "Come in, but then go back out again."

…

…The Vodafone slogan "Make the Most of Now" has weird associations with fruit juice ("Most") for many Germans. "Welcome to the Beck’s Experience" didn’t work so well because many thought the last word meant "experiment." The grand prize for slipshod slogans, though, goes to German television station Sat1, which used the catchphrase "Powered by Emotion." This was taken by many to be a modern version of "Kraft durch Freude," the Nazi party’s leisure organization, often translated into English as "strength through joy."

I wonder what the person who did the test marketing on that one made of the startled looks they got.  Hey…this one’s really getting their attention…!  Way back before there was an Exxon…there was the Humble Oil and Refining Company, and its other trade names Esso and Enco.  Then the gods of the corporate boardroom decreed there should be one name for the company everywhere in the world.  At one point they figured to just rebrand all their existing gas stations as "Enco", which was Humble’s acronym for "ENergy COmpany", only to discover that "Enco" translated into "broken engine" in Japanese.

So they invented a word.  Exxon.  It means nothing, they took the family name of a sitting governor and added an extra ‘X’ to it and now it’s the company name.  A lot of corporations are doing that now.  Lexus.  Acura.  Genstar.  Allegis.  Enron.  They’re non-words…words that never were…words that mean precisely nothing.  But because they are empty meaningless words they are absolutely unique and can’t embarrass the company in some far away corner of the world.  As it turns out, the only universal language consists of words that don’t mean anything.

An old friend from grade school, who lives in Pennsylvania these days, has offered to take any of the computer hardware and software I don’t want anymore off my hands.  Techno geek children tend to befriend one another at an early age.  I am grateful.  I dislike the thought of tossing all this stuff away, even if it’s to a recycling bin.  With all the hazardous materials in electronics these days, I doubt much of it really gets recycled anyway, so much as disposed of.  He’s an ingenious tinkerer whose grade school accomplishments included building a pirate radio station and hacking the school sound system.  I’m sure he can put my boxes of old computer hardware to good, possibly even nefarious use.  "You have violated Robot’s Rules of Order and will be asked to leave the future, immediately."

I have another friend in Kansas who I suspect would have loved to take all this stuff off my hands too, but I don’t see myself taking a drive to Kansas until after winter has left the plains, and this stuff is too heavy and bulky to just box up and ship.  He should remind me to look in the computer closet for anything I’m not using though, before I take my next road trip west.

One of my goals this Christmas holiday vacation time is to clear out some of the deadwood from the computer stuff closet in my front office.  It’s a daunting task because I have the pack rat gene…I have it bad…and the stuff in that closet is a deadly mix of old computer technology that I can fashion a zillion plausible scenarios for needing once again, and stuff that I’ll never need again but has sentimental value.  You know you’re dealing with a computer geek when he says that his old PC-XP motherboard manual has sentimental value.  But that was the first computer I ever built myself.

I have tons of old manuals, some from application software I’ll never use again, some for programming languages and development environments I’ll never use again, some for programming languages and development environments I never used to begin with, but thought I might.  The books for Visual J++ being a good example of the latter.  Oh…and Visual InterDev.  Anyone remember that?  I have my first Windows Technical Manual…for Windows 3.11.  I have my books for IBM PC DOS 3.1.  I have the manuals for my favorite word processor of all time, XyWrite for DOS.  Parting with that old friend when it got left behind in the trek to Windows, long file names, the Internet and modern printers was hard.  I have never liked GUI word processors.  But then I have never cared how my words look on paper, only how they scan and read.

I bought several more Rubbermaid storage containers for the task.  I’m going to divide the contents of the closet to stuff that I will likely need to get my hands on to do the work I do now, and maintain the computer network here at Casa del Garrett – stuff that I want to keep but can safely put into storage in the basement or under the backyard deck – and stuff that I can muster up the courage to throw into the Baltimore City paper and electronics recycling bins.  The thing that keeps my pack rat gene in check is I hate living in clutter.  I absolutely hate it.  So when the volume of…stuff…reaches a critical level I can work up enough ruthlessness to throw or give things away I figure I don’t need anymore, and just accept the fact that as soon as I’ve done it I’ll find a use for all of it after all.  Oh look…an article on how to hook a modem up to a shortwave radio and listen in on teletype traffic…Damn…I KNEW I shouldn’t have thrown away that 2400 baud modem!!!

I’ve already got two big contractor’s trash backs full of stuff to take to the city recycling/trash drop-off and I haven’t even gotten into the hardware shelves or the massive floppy disc/CD rom collection.  Some of that stuff may not even be readable anymore.  But I’ll go through it all, one at a time, and find stuff I can toss out.  The rest will go into storage bins and probably live under the basement staircase until I can convince myself that it really is worthless now.  I do all my computer tinkering now in Linux.  The old DOS stuff has sentimental value, but no practical value anymore.  As I was going through the old manuals I found myself remembering moments from the past, when the personal computer was still a new thing and nobody quite knew what to make of them, or what brave new world they would usher in.  I lived back then in a world before the Internet, where primitive amateur computer networks employed modems and batch scripts that called neighboring BBS systems at night, when the long distance charges were low.  I thought I knew what loneliness was back then, but those were happier times.  And I still had a future to look toward, and all the time in the world to find a boyfriend.

So I lay hands on this and that in the computer closet, and the pack rat gene says to me that all these things I am throwing away are me.  But they aren’t.  They are sea shells I have found on the beach and they delighted me for a time.  But there is too much of it to carry with me further on down the shore.  So some of it I’ll leave behind for some other kid to find and play with…perhaps…and the rest I’ll toss back into the sea.  The nice thing about recycling is that this stuff can get to have another go around at life even if I don’t.  Maybe that old DOS 6 manual will come back someday as a novel that will find a home on some other kid’s bookshelf, a treasured favorite.

Via Slashdot…

High school students in Maryland are using speed cameras to get back at their perceived enemies, and even teachers. The students duplicate the victim’s license plate on glossy paper using a laser printer, tape it over their own plate, then speed past a newly installed speed camera. The victim gets a $40 ticket in the mail days later, without any humans ever having been involved in the ticketing process. A blog dedicated to driving and politics adds that a similar, if darker, practice has taken hold in England, where bad guys cruise the streets looking for a car similar to their own. They then duplicate its plates in a more durable form, and thereafter drive around with little fear of trouble from the police.

Nice.  Identity Theft takes to the streets.  Notice how there is no human involved in the process.  I’m guessing that some sort of OCR software finds the license plate in the photo and gets it’s numbers off it.  Then a ticket is software generated and dropped in the mail.  Nobody has to so much as touch the system for it to rake in the violators and their bucks.  But any software system can be gamed.  It’s all a matter of having the right numbers.  That’s all the computer knows you by.  If you give the right numbers to the computer, it assumes it’s you.  But you can at least take steps to protect your credit card and bank account numbers.  Your license plate is supposed to be clearly visible to everyone. 

Montgomery County Council President Phil Andrews said that the issue is troubling in several respects. "I am concerned that someone could get hurt, first of all, because they are speeding in areas where they know speeding is a problem," he said.

Andrews also said that this could hurt the integrity of the Speed Camera Program. "It will cause potential problems for the Speed Camera Program in terms of the confidence in it," he said.

He said he is glad someone caught it before it becomes more widespread and he said he hopes that the word get out to the people participating in this that there will be consequences. 

Idiot.  The more word gets out about this, the more people will do it.  Yes speed kills.  Yes running red lights gets people killed.  But there is a reason why human judgment is a necessary part of administering justice, even when it comes to seemingly trivial matters as traffic court.  Technology is a tool, not a substitute for thinking.  It can provide you with data.  It cannot tell you what to make of the data.  You cannot shrug responsibility for interpreting the data off onto it no matter how cleverly you try.  My most frustrating moments as a contract software engineer were with corporate managers who wanted me to write software that would tell them how to do their jobs.  It doesn’t work that way in this life.  Computers can do a lot of things, but taking responsibility isn’t one of them.  The humans are always responsible.  Even when they don’t want to be.  Especially then.

What you have to understand about the fundamentalist mindset is that it isn’t just gay people they hate.  It’s everyone.

For those who believe that Sinclair Lewis’ Elmer Gantry–and its portrayal of evangelical preachers as hypocritical frauds–offers the last word on conservative Christianity, Rick Warren cannot possibly be a force for good. I have yet to let Jesus enter my life, but I admire Warren. We once appeared on a panel together along with Harvard’s Peter Gomes at the Aspen Ideas Festival. When it came time for questions, a woman stood up, proclaimed her Judaism, and asked Warren if she was going to burn in hell. He paused before responding–and then answered her question the only way it could be answered. Yes, he said to audible gasps. My reaction was that either you believe that Jesus is the savior or you do not, and I found myself impressed that Warren remained true to his convictions, knowing full well that the audience would not like what he said.

–Alan Wolfe, The New Republic

Emphasis mine. You can suppose Wolfe would be equally impressed that Al Capone remained true to his conviction that crime pays.  Anyone who thinks that all Sinclair Lewis did in Elmer Gantry was paint a shallow two-dimensional picture of the fundamentalist herd as a bunch of cynical hucksters never read the book.  Lewis is hard to read sometimes for the brutally clear eye he lays on American life in the early twentieth century, and his relevance to the America we live in today becomes crystal clear the moment you start reading him.  The picture he painted of American populist fundamentalism was so spot-on accurate to the practice of it I knew as a kid in the late 20th, not so much in the particulars as in the culture and mindset, that reading it made me squirm uncomfortably.

The church provided his only oratory, except for campaign speeches by politicians ardent about Jefferson and the price of binding-twine; it provided all his paintings and sculpture, except for the portraits of Lincoln, Longfellow, and Emerson in the school-building, and the two china statuettes of pink ladies with gilt flower-baskets which stood on his mother’s bureau.  From the church came all his profounder philosophy, except the teachers’ admonitions that little boys who let garter-snakes loose in school were certain to be licked now and hanged later, and his mother’s stream of opinions on hanging up his overcoat, wiping his feet, eating fried potatoes with his fingers. and taking the name of the Lord in vain.

If he had sources of literary inspiration outside the church–in McGuffey’s Reader he encountered the boy who stood on the burning deck, and he had a very pretty knowledge of the Nick Carter Series and the exploits of Cole Younger and the James Boys–yet here too the church had guided him.  In Bible stories, the the words of the great hymns, in the anecdotes which the various preachers quoted, he had his only knowledge of literature–

The story of Little Lame Tom who shamed the wicked rich man that owned the handsome team of grays and the pot hat that led him to Jesus.  The ship’s captain who in the storm took counsel with the orphaned but righteous child of missionaries in Zomballa.  The Faithful Dog who saved his master during a terrific conflagration (only sometimes it was a snowstorm, or an attack by Indians) and roused him to give up horse-racing, rum, and playing the harmonica.

How familiar they were, how thrilling, how explainatory to Elmer of the purposes of life, how preparatory for his future usefulness and charm.

…

He had, in fact, got everything from the church and Sunday School, except, perhaps, any longing whatever for decency and kindness and reason.

Hypocrisy isn’t in knowing you are a fraud.  That’s Hollywood’s fundamentalist and it exists to reassure actual ticket-buying fundamentalists that Hollywood still loves them and will keep selling them all the blue-eyed white anglo-saxon Jesuses they want.  Yes, it’s a safe bet that many in the upper ranks dispise the flock.  But not all of them do.  The mindset both in the pews and behind the pulpit is that they are a better class of miserable sinner then you are and that makes them the right hand of God Almighty.

This particular strain of Americana is the fountainhead of American anti-intellectualism and know-nothingness and the reason for that isn’t because they understand that intellect without conscience is a very dangerous thing.  Conscience is the first thing you have to kill within yourself to join the tribe.  They hate any and all human achivement because it shows that humans Can achieve.  The sight of human kindness and compassion, the kind that comes straight from the heart, without strings attached, simply out of love, terrifies them, because that kind of selfless whole hearted love is utterly unfathomable to them. How can anyone possibly love their gay son for the person they are?  Ney…’tis a greater love to stick a knife in their heart…  The common complaints about "elitism" from the kook pews isn’t a complaint about vanity and arrogance…it springs reflexively from that deep hatred within for anyone with a bigger brain and a bigger heart then their own.  H.L. Menkean pegged the type perfectly in his obiturary of William Jennings Bryant.  He might as well have been talking about Warren when he wrote the following…

This talk of sincerity, I confess, fatigues me. If the fellow was sincere, then so was P.T. Barnum. The word is disgraced and degraded by such uses. He was, in fact, a charlatan, a mountebank, a zany without any shame or dignity. What animated him from end to end of his grotesque career was simply ambition–the ambition of a common man to get his hand upon the collar of his superiors, or, failing that, to get his thumb into their eyes. He was born with a roaring voice, and it had the trick of inflaming half-wits against their betters, that he himself might shine. 

Warren has none of the vitriolic bombast of a Bryant or Falwell or Dobson, but so what?  When you can look a jewish person in the face and tell them they’re going to burn in hell for all eternity, does it really matter that you do it with a smile verses a snarl?   Does calling down God’s wrath on Jews really command respect when it’s done out of conviction?  Then I guess the millions who went to the ovens in the Holocaust died for nothing after all, and all the millions who died in anti-Jewish pogroms before them too.  We know how many Jews were alive in the days of Christ, because their Roman overlords kept good population records.  By the standards of natural population growth, or so I’m told, there ought to be around 280 million Jews walking this good earth right now, right this moment.  In fact there are about 19 million.  And Hitler didn’t do all that…

We shall see how defenders of the Church take pains to distinguish between "anti-Judaism" and "antisemitism"; between Christian Jew-hatred as a "necessary but insufficient" cause of the Holocaust; between the "sins of the children" and the sinlessness of the Church as such.  These distinctions become meaningless before the core truth of this history: Because the hatred of Jews had been made holy, it became lethal.

-James Carroll, Constantine’s Sword

Rick Warren is a hate monger, and the fact that he is willing to stick to his religious conceits over the humanity of one Jewish woman standing right in front of him isn’t proof of integrity, it is proof that he’s taken his own humanity around behind the barn and killed it.  Is sincerity really being able to look a person in the face and deny the common human heart you both share?   Doesn’t blind obedience to dogma of any sort involve a necessary amount of self-deception?   What you have to keep in mind, is that just because you are a charlatan that doesn’t mean you don’t see yourself as being sincere.  The first person you have to fool after all, is yourself.

I’m struggling with insomnia again for some reason, and sitting here at the computer surfing around I am reminded that the solstice occurs in just a few minutes as I write this.  So…Happy Winter Solstice 2008 everyone.  I’m sure happy.  Because now the days can start getting longer again. 

Well…except for you folks in the southern hemisphere that is.  Sorry.  Now your days start getting shorter.  So I guess that should be Happy Northern Hemisphere Winter Solstice 2008.

One of these days I have to travel to the southern hemisphere so I can experience the disjoint in seasons for myself.  Oh, and look up at the night sky and see the half of infinity that I don’t see up here.  At some time or another in your life you should experience in a way that really drives it home, the fact that you are living on a planet. 

That’s what’s wrong with Larry Niven’s Ringworld.  It experiences no seasons.  Everywhere you go on Ringworld it is always the middle of summer.  Except where the engineers installed heat fins underneath.  But even there it is always winter.  Or Autumn.  Or whatever season the engineers have decided it will always be.  Which would be worse I wonder…a never ending summer or a never ending winter?  And even the artificial winters of Ringworld wouldn’t be right, because the sun’s radiant energy is always the same no matter what.  Now that I think of it, it would be really Wierd to experience a Ringworld winter because the ground would be cold, and maybe the air around you somewhat too, but the sun is still bearing down on you like it’s summer.

I’m geeking out here aren’t I?  Time to go back to bed and try to sleep a little more…

I’ve added and subtracted pretty much what I had in mind to do.  If you think I’ve overlooked something good, or removed your link by mistake, please let me know.  Some of the new links should be familiar to my regular readers since I cite them often.  SLOG in particular. 

I’ve re-linked Andrew Sullivan because he seems to have wised up regarding Bush and Iraq.  He’s somewhat conservative and that’s fine.  But if you read my archives you know I was blistering in my criticism of him during the Excellent Iraq Adventure.  But unlike the other nutcases in the Bush peanut gallery he kept his eyes open and finally, Finally, could not deny what they were telling him.  I respect him for that.  He’s become as fierce a critic as anyone on the left regarding Bush and Cheney, and in particular about their regime of torture, which my poor country will be generations living down.  And he’s always been on the right side of the same-sex marriage issue.  I find myself reading him more these days and not feeling bad about it afterwards.  So he’s back on my blog roll.

Flight Level 390 is a blog by an airline pilot that is really fascinating.  If you’ve ever flown, and wondered about the people whose job it is to fly those beautiful, magnificent winged machines day in and day out, take a read.  Here’s a sample…

The Guadalajara approach controller clears us for the instrument approach to runway 28; the visibility is about four miles with haze. We can see the runway, barely, but it is getting darker and there is high terrain in all quadrants. Fi-Fi is heavy, barely below maximum landing weight, as we pass over the center of the airport in our descent. I can hear the lead flight attendant hurrying in the forward galley, latching carts and closing aluminum galley doors. The center and aft flight attendants are doing the same plus talking on the PA; the never ending before landing drill.

I took some vacation between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but at this very moment in the time continuum, I feel as if I never left the flight deck. Funny how that happens…

I ask the co-pilot for some flaps and slats as we begin our turn back toward the airport and the radio beam that will lead us to the runway. Looking over my left shoulder, I can see the main hydraulics forcing the leading edge slats into the slip stream. That is so cool! As we turn final approach, the control tower clears us to land. The controller sounds like a young, female newbie and we have to ask her to repeat the clearance. Her ATC english is still a little thick for the Americano pilots. On the second attempt, though, we understand. Cleared to land runway 28, wind 240 at 9.

And this…

She is an old bird with small engines. I have flown her hundreds of hours over the years and have a sweet spot in my heart for her. The company did not update her software to the latest and greatest ones and zeros. Her time flying the Line is coming to an end. She will be replaced with a factory new A321 with big engines and fast computers. I can remember at least three paint schemes on this bird. I wonder what will happen to her…

And this…

Position: West of KSAN; San Diego, feet wet

Altitude: 5,000 feet

True Airspeed: 230 mph (200 kts)

Passengers on board: 138

We were so close, so very close to the hotel van after eight flight hours, three airports, two oceans and thousands of miles. But it was not to be; an aircraft under tow was on the runway and failed to understand their instructions to vacate the runway. The end result was that we had to go around on short final. I could not believe it! It was like a simulator exercise. We are dog tired and this is the last thing we need.

The good news is:

1. We are tankering fuel, i.e., we have plenty of fuel to prevent the morning crew from buying high dollar California kerosene.

2. The co-pilot is one of the best at the airline, a young Canadian female whom I have flown with several times.

3. The weather is pretty good… A little bit of patchy ground fog.

Immediately past the infamous parking garage, the tower gave the "go around" command. The co-pilot raised the nose to 20 degrees and shoved the throttles to the forward stops. The engines, already spooled to 35%, responded immediately and with extreme vigor in the cool, sea level air. Struggling against the thrust, I reached over and raised the flaps to half. I glanced at the vertical speed indicator before I raised the gear… More than 4,000 feet per minute. I would say that is a positive rate.

The tower asked us if we could do a "tight right downwind for another try." I do not think that is a good idea. It is getting dark, we are tired, and this is a big airplane with a big noise footprint. I decline the offer. A few seconds later, at thrust reduction altitude, the co-pilot pushes the nose over and brings the thrust levers back to climb power. I raise the flaps/slats and contact departure control. We head out over the water on a vector to gain altitude and line up our quacking, flapping ducks for another try.

The co-pilot is an aggressive, intelligent pilot at the top of her game. Fi-Fi must obey her at all times. Even so, I ask if I can do anything for her. She asks for help with the nav computers. I go heads down and start pushing buttons on my Multi-purpose Control Display Unit, a high dollar word for a small keyboard and computer screen. In a few moments I have given Fi-Fi’s electronic brain an idea or two about how to get back to the final approach fix. After a couple of checklists read and completed, I tell ATC that we are ready to return. They give us a heading that will merge with the downwind leg north of the runway. I take a few moments to do some administrative chores, as in emailing Mother and explaining why we are burning extra jet fuel. Also, on the PA, I give the folks a little pep talk. Abeam the airport, approach control clears us for the visual approach and to "Please keep it in tight for following traffic."

Fog is rolling in, but we will beat it. The co-pilot calls for landing gear, flaps and slats while still on the downwind. We are still at 4,000 feet. I tell her, "The controllers are taking bets whether or not you will make it down." Fi-Fi has very good vertical capabilities, especially descending, if the pilot knows how to use them. This young lady understands completely.

She makes two tight right banking turns merging with the final approach inside the final approach fix, stows the spoilers and calls for full flaps. Over the parking garage one more time, the runway lights are getting smudgy. The visibility is going down with the arrival of the fog. The Electric Jet settles onto the main gear tires at the thousand foot marker; reverse thrust cascade vanes open and we get with the stopping program. This has been a low stress go around because we were fat on fuel. Actually, it was kind of fun.

Clearing the runway in the fog and before we switched to ground control, the tower controller apologized for the go around. I replied with, "No problem." Behind and over us we hear the roar of jet engines climbing away. The airliner behind us missed the approach because of the fog. The co-pilot and I look at each other with huge grins. We made it in the proverbial nick.

Life on the Line continues…

This kind of thing is what blogs were made for!  I love this technology…absolutely love it…because it brings me this.

I’ve added a few new links to the cartoons section and the news sections.  One link in particular I want to note in the new ‘Fun’ section is HMK Mystery Streams.  It’s a music web cast that is…unique.  I often sit at my drafting table with it going in the background.  Each program runs about an hour or so.  I hate this word because it’s so mis-used, but HMK really is an eclectic mix of this and that from now and my childhood yesterday.  It’s fun…it’s strange…it’s…well…let them describe themselves…

Captured from the continual mystery stream discovered in the fall of 1961, our mission is to post 60 minute fragments, as frequently or infrequently as possible, from this not too distant satellite of unknown origion located on the dark side of the moon. Here’s what you can expect: Hazy overcast explorations, episodes of vaguely familiar audio clues to the past, and overheard comments via an experimental format known as iF: Irregular Frequency. Relax. For the next hour, consider this your official in-flight entertainment. Moving in stereo, in our continuing attempt to gain a more clear and better understanding of the infinite concept of space, time and the atmospheric vibrations and soundscapes known as The HMK Mystery Stream, we can only listen, dream, imagine and repeat whenever possible. The captain has turned on the Fresh Coffee sign. Prepare for lift off… Roger that… Go with bottle up… Your comments are always welcome and appreciated.

This is my kinda radio station!  You should tune in.

Over the next few days I’ll see if I can make some banner links for some of these.  That usually involves capturing the banner off the site and scaling it down to an icon of sorts for the blog roll.  Which is time consuming so I don’t often do it.  If I’ve linked to any of your blogs and you have a blog icon you’d like me to use in the blog roll send it to me.