Matchbook Romance

One of the truly cool things about working for Hot Topic is that when bands come in for photo shoots, or some other kind of visit, we often get a free mini-concert in the office.

Yesterday was Matchbook Romance, whom I liked quite a bit.

Emasculating Arabia

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1215415,00.html

Fascinating article.

Two choice, rather unrelated, bits:

Defining the orientalist project, Edward Said wrote of how occidentals feminised and infantilised Arabs, crediting them with 'feminine' traits like intuition and an incapacity for reason (so Arab magicians figure large in the mythology, but Arab mathematicians not at all), and rendered Arabia as pliant, sensuous, passive, awaiting penetration by the rational masculine west.

This is an illuminating remark. Is 'the Arab' unique in this regard, I wonder, and do the roots of such an 'orientalist' project fall in the realm of race differences or class differences, or does that question not make sense at all?

If the Industrial Revolution had birthed in the Fertile Crescent, how different would the world be?

"A released detainee, quoted by the New York Times on May 10, says: 'I realised [the Americans] came to obliterate a whole society, a whole civilisation' - a thought so old and so commonplace that one might hear it uttered, world-wearily, in any Arab cafe, anywhere across the globe...'American humiliates Arab' is not news."

*sigh*

Cotton Tank Top

I started knitting a cotton tank top in baby blue. From front to back, stockinette. I just came up over the shoulders and am now knitting the back.

I think I'm going to pick up stitches all the way around the bottom and put a funky trim on it.

I've never done cotton before, so I don't know how much it stretches during blocking. I may wind up picking up stitches on along the side in order to add some width.

Using: Bernat CottonTots. Size 6 US needles.

I picked up enough yarn to knit a matching tank, or turn out a twinset my making a little cardigan, in yellow, as well.

Guantanamo

http://www.fas.org/man/eprint/vonness.pdf Guantanamo Detainees: National Security or Civil Liberties," by Pamela M. von Ness, U.S. Army War College Strategy Research Project, April 2003.

Got this in the inbox today, haven't read it. Still reading the Taguba report.

Taguba, et al, Testimony

I watched most of Rumsfeld's testifying on a CSPAN repeat over the weekend, and got to hear the last 40+ minutes of the Taguba testimony this morning on NPR.

Of the two, today's hearing contained a lower crap:content ratio, and I have to admit, Lt. General Lance Smith (who is a CENTCOM deputy, if I've got it right -- remember, I'm jotting this down from listening, not seeing a name and title on a screen) didn't spend an overwhelming amount of his Rumsfeld hearing testimony droning on and saying nothing, either. Although, I'll admit that as interested as I am in all this, I zoned out for about 10 minutes somewhere in the middle.

I liked Major-General Taguba. I still haven't read the report, I meant to do so last night but wrote fiction instead. Hopefully I'll get to it tonight, definitely by the weekend.

Florida Panther Science Manipulated?

http://www.bushgreenwatch.org/mt_archives/000115.php -- U.S. Fish & Wildlife Biologist Charges Manipulation of Science on Florida Panther

A veteran biologist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has filed a legal complaint against FWS, charging it with intentionally using flawed scientific data in decisions regarding the endangered Florida panther.

My Country Tortures People*

Want to know what I have to say about Abu Ghraib? Nothing. Everyone else has already said it.

Abu Ghraib
Robin Rowland, CBC News Online | May 6, 2004.


*This is not actually news.

Funny

Humor! On my blog! Well, hellfire, kids! How about that!

It's been way too long. I do still have a sense of humor, not just sarcasm. Today's break is to laugh hysterically at the CafePress offering of Making Light: LL YR VWLS R BLNG T S.

*bwahahahahahahaha*

God, somebody buy me the messenger bag or the coffee mug with this on it.

*wipes eyes*

We now return you to your regularly scheduled seriousness.