Senator Kennedy's Legacy

So, what did he do?, courtesy of TwistedChick, a long-trusted news and news aggregation source.

Thoughts on Excellence

Kilohana Men in the Duke Kahanamoku Race 2007 (hat tip to Kate Elliot. Thanks, Kate!). Watching this made me misty-eyed for two reasons. One, I've become a sap in my old age.[*] Two, it is a joy to see a thing done well, and with passion, because I believe in doing all things well, and with passion. This is why we admire athletes - who do a thing and do it well. This is why we admire all those who achieve excellence and pity those who have never reached for it in the entirety of their lives. To do a thing well, to strive to do that thing well - whether it is writing legal briefs, writing code, singing, dancing, stand-up comedy, playing basketball, or whatever it is that you consider worth doing - is an important part of the human experience, and may even be the quintessential human experience. What a marvel is humanity, when we do a thing and do it well.







[*] OK, it's more complex than that, but, I have.

Lion of the Senate - Gone

Obituary: Edward Kennedy (at BBC News)

It's interesting to me that on NPR this morning they kept talking about how Kennedy got stuff done regardless of which party controlled the White House. He stood firm on his principles of public service and progressive ideals. It's standing firm and working both sides of the aisle to achieve real results, not pseudo-partisan "compromises," that gets things done. Current Democratic senators and representatives, take heed. You can't give away your goal to get your goal.

I've gotten a lot of flack for this over the years...

But I still don't get why I, a woman, shouldn't crow when I do something well, or, be proud of my accomplishments. Because it'll hurt a man's feelings? Any more than when I punch you in the face?

It's a huge step away from what women are commonly expected to do - we've all noted studies in which women are observed to phrase sentences as questions as opposed to statements, so that we don't step on the widdle men's toes by challenging them directly and confidently. We're also told not to boast of our achievements or accomplishments because somehow men are easily intimidated by this. (Apparently.)

My name means "star," and I'm not hiding my light for anyone.

"There's a force stronger than nature, keeps her will alive"

So, it's obvious I hope that this blog is on its last legs. I never write, I never call. Tut, tut. Don't know if it'll change or not, as I seem to be doing more "Sidra the Writer" type stuff on livejournal/dreamwidth, which, doesn't mean much anyway, and the purpose of this blog is political and social commentary, and writing.

We'll see what happens.

Anyway. There are times when one wishes to bust out in song, not to celebrate anything in particular, and not in a 76 trombones musical kind of way (or even a Victor/Victoria kind of way) but just bust out in song because it's been too long since the last time you busted out. So last night Freddie Mercury bust out in my head, champion that he is, and I regaled my neighbors I suppose, with a little a cappella "We Are the Champions". Yeah, baby, sing it! I miss Freddie Mercury. I miss the music of my childhood and youth, but is it that it's better music (and by what metric?) or is it that it's the music of my childhood and youth, before life got more and more difficult, and so many burdens accreted that now I feel like my own planetary disk. Feel free to spin off a small planet, oh, debt, oh loneliness, oh people who've fucked themselves over whom I cannot save. Spin off and orbit around me if you must, though I'd much rather you went all rogue planet on me and departed my gravitational well entirely.

Sigh. So much for astronomical metaphors.

Three links make a post, my friends:

Bitchin cool, as they used to say: Shepardess makes bridal gown from wool of her own sheep. It looks really cool, seriously, you gotta click on this.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver dies. I admire the Kennedy ethic greatly - with great gifts, comes the obligation to use them in service of others. Funny how the (frequently republican) politicos forget that the little people whom they oft disdain so much are in fact the people they are supposed to be working for.

I've been reading Iroquois Diplomacy on the American Frontier, let me tell you all about it.

mini-update

Grandma, dead.

Awesome wedding entrance video. That's how to do it, baby.

Phase change in Alaska as the permafrost melts - and lakes disappear. Alaska Meltdown.

Wow, do I love Jimmy Carter

I always loved him before, for living his principles, unlike so many who claim said principles and then defile them - that's a rant for another time - but I love him even more now.

The Words of God Do Not Justify Cruelty to Women.

kidnapping? Yes, Sidra, kidnapping?

From the Sidra is Incredibly Dense and Incredibly Lucky Department.

So, this guy stalked and tried to kidnap me when I was 18 or 19. Actually, he tried to kidnap me and then stalked me. It took me 20 years and a student patron at the law library needing to look up information on attempt as a crime for me to realize that. I am so incredibly fucking stupid. I have also always thought that I used up all my luck in this life long ago, but now I wonder how I survived the car accident in the 90s at all, because, shit howdy, some guy tried to kidnap me and I got away unscathed 20 years ago. My luck should have been used up right then. No more. Holy crap. How is it that I am alive? No, seriously. And I should've plunged through the ice and drowned in Wasilla Lake years before that. I should have been raped and murdered in 1980. I mean, holy fucking cow. How many more near misses can one human have?

I wonder if the stalking afterward qualifies as renewed attempts to kidnap. That could be an interesting law school exam question.

(Attempt to commit a crime is a criminal act, but you generally need more than mere preparation to commit the crime, and to perform an act to actually "attempt" the crime. To pluck a not-at-all random example out of my past, try, say, putting your hand on my arm and trying to pull me into your car when I say "no" after you invite me into your car. Conspiracy to commit a crime works similarly.)

Imaginary Threats, You Mean

Imagining Threats, aka, Risk Analysis and Cognitive Biases.

Dusting off my software designer hat -- oh, this is so damn true.

On the Mind Control of Women Through Rape Fear

Fear is the mind-killer, or, fearful women are easy to control, aren't they?

Stoking that fear is an incredibly effective way to control women's lives, because although it's impossible to avoid all situations where rape might occur, it's possible to take precautions like, oh, making sure you have a male protector whenever that's possible, or avoiding activities where such protection might not be possible. It's the 21st century; anyone who says that women should be dependent on and subservient to men because of some innate gender determined traits is going to get laughed at. But if someone says that women should behave in a way which is tantamount to that, because unfortunate though it is, we live in an imperfect world and there are some evil men out there who might rape you if you don't follow your properly circumscribed feminine role, that's credible.

I agree with Sara

Memo to the Right Wing: Put Up or Shut Up, or, Are you Trying to Start a Civil War? Yes or No?

Tragedy at the Holocaust Museum: Stand Up To Terror. "As I've noted before, groups heading toward major acts of violence always inch up to it by degrees." Egged on by right-wing hatemongers like Rush Limbaugh.

Eight episodes of right-wing extremist violence in four and a half months. We haven't gone four weeks since February without some poor guy -- always with a long history of mental illness, usually with a record of military service and/or domestic violence, and invariably jacked up on a toxic cocktail of white male privilege; us-versus-them enemy seeking; fury at women, blacks and/or Jews; and a belief that the world as he knew it was ending unless he took up arms -- taking out his gun and offing innocent Americans in a suicidal bid for glory.

For the record: This is not business as usual. True: there have always been occasional events, usually dismissed by the corporate media as "isolated incidents," the work of "lone wolf shooters" acting for reasons all their own. But you have to go back a long, long way in American history before you come to a place where you find incidents like this happening an average of once every two weeks. And the chattering classes are finally beginning to realize what those of us who've been faithfully watching the right wing for years were telling them a year ago: there's nothing isolated about any of this.

This is how terrorism begins.

The Far Right's First 100 Days: Shifting Into Overdrive

Somewhere back in February, about three weeks into the Obama Administration, everybody on the left suddenly noticed that there was something different going on with the conservatives. The outrageous screeds and paranoid delusions sounded pretty much as they always had -- but there was a new fury behind them, a strident urgency that hadn't been there before, and a very audible shift of the gears in right-wing behavior and rhetoric. None of this came as a surprise to veteran right-wing watchers -- we'd been predicting a bad backlash since the 2006 election -- but three months into the new administration, it's increasingly hard to ignore the fact that this ominous new trend is taking on a momentum of its own.

On April 7, the Department of Homeland Security ratified some of those observations. Fueled by bone-deep racism, an unnatural terror of liberal government, frustration over the economic downturn, and fears about America's loss of world standing, they said, the militant right wing is indeed rising again. Their numbers are up, their talk is turning ugly, and it's not unthinkable that we could be in for a wave of domestic terrorism unseen since the mid-90s.

From Sea to Land, Slowly

Discovered: the missing link that solves a mystery of evolution

Dang, that's just cool!

David Simon is right

I disagree with the remark "the parasite is killing the host," as I don't believe that bloggers and other commentators relying on professional journalists are killing their work by discussing it. He proceeds, however, to the real point, which is that those journalists need funding in order to commit journalism, and that "citizen journalists" most of the time are citizen commentators, and if they want to commit journalism, they need to become professional journalists in order to achieve that goal. In which case they need funding, resources, etc. His remarks about citizen journalists are not as kind as my paraphrase, but that's OK. Where he's coming from is generally correct.

David Simon's testimony to Senate committee

If we were a different country, a public-funding approach might work. If we set it up right, even in this country a public-funding approach might work. (Setting it up right requires that funding be guaranteed, and not at the whim of Congress or an Executive. I just don't know how that could be done.)

That leaves us with non-profits taking over papers - and that's an EXTREMELY interesting idea, or for-pay subscription models to access content (or both!). I pay $70 a year (starting this year) for access to the Encyclopedia Britannica because I need to be able to trust my content source. I would be willing to pay for a subscription to something else, too.

What bothers me about much of the for-pay subscription models I've encountered thus far with newspaper websites is the per-article approach. If I'm going to have to pay, I want to pay once (a year), like I would to pay for a print newspaper subscription, or once per day, like I would for a single issue of a paper. It has to be easy to pay and then when I come to a newspaper's website, I want access to the whole damn thing (save, perhaps, some custom archive from 150 years ago that requires an additional subscription or something, that would make sense, I suppose.) The freebie articles offered as loss leaders simply annoy me. And confusing, because after my first click I don't know what I have access to and what I don't.

I would also be highly intrigued by an AP or Reuters subscription service, or a multi-paper subscription service. I like reading multiple articles on the same subject across different papers to sniff out the bias. It's useful.

Simon's remarks about loosening antitrust restrictions go in that direction, but I worry that we'd open the door to further monopolization of the industry, and we already have one or two organizations with too damn much power and influence to begin with, so I'm not sure how to achieve the one (aggregate subscription services) without the other (centralized monopolistic corporate providers that are really all one provider). Dunno.

More military tribunals for GTMO Detainees?

Obama 'to revive military trials'

The BBC's Adam Brookes in Washington says the president may have decided that trying detainees such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - the man who allegedly planned 9/11 - in a civilian court in the US would be simply too complex and too difficult.

That is such bullshit. If it's that complex, you get a special master or something. There's ways to accommodate such a need in the system already.

Mormon Baptism after Death

I have multiple reactions to this Mormon practice of posthumous baptisms of strangers. Temple baptism rites performed for Obama's mother in Provo LDS temple

On the one hand, to try and change someone's religion after their death is an astounding act of hubris. "We know so much better than you," such an act says, "that we will change your religion after death." Moreover, God will let them? How does that work? According to Church doctrine, per the article: "The Church does not list persons as members of the Church or 'Mormons' merely because proxy baptisms have been performed. Church doctrine teaches that at some point the spirit of the deceased person will be informed that a baptism has been performed on his or her behalf and will be given the opportunity to accept or reject it." So, the damned are screaming in some pit somewhere and someone walks up and says "hi! you've received a proxy baptism!...." It's like some bizarre encyclopedia salesman skit.

On the other hand, it's cowardly. If you can't convince someone to join your religion during their lifetime, you go behind their back? How is that doing unto others, for that matter?

Finally, but most importantly...it's really meaningless. If someone proxy baptizes me after I'm dead, I haven't done anything to change religion, so as offensive as it sounds, nothings really changed, has it?