I knew it was coming

I haven't been able to bear reading Riverbend for a long time now. Riverbend is leaving Iraq.

Pandemic of Lies

I had visited several times and there was something nagging at me. I could not work out what left me uniquely unsettled about the place. It was not the depressing environment; few prisons are inspirational. It was not the occasional intimidation. Eventually it came to me: I could not remember being lied to so often and so consistently. In Guantánamo, lying was a disease that had reached pandemic prpportions.

No Fairytales Allowed, by Clive Stafford Smith, attorney to 36 GTMO inmates.

Lines of Questioning for Gonzales

Over at Crooks and Liars, everyone should read the Five Lines of Questioning for Alberto Gonzales. Including Senators.

Here's a Ponderable

I read a particularly interesting comment made to Chris Clarke's "How Not To Be An Asshole: A Guide For Men" post at Pandagon, to wit,

It’s like those who are in a position of oppression, but do not understand it, have something missing inside. It is the sense of an organic, subjective relation to other human beings. Instead of this inside, the oppressor has the conditioned tendency to treat other people (considered to be below him) as mere objects to be used and abused....[read it all]

This combined with the shooting at Virginia Tech today to prompt a question on my part:

Is sociopathy the ultimate manifestation of patriarchy? Its apotheosis, or platonic ideal, so to speak?

A related question to ask might be: why are so many serial killers white men?

[Note, I am not suggesting that the Asian man who committed these murders at Va. Tech is a serial killer. Merely the pondering of violent crime, the hypervigilance so many women have to live under thanks to the patriarchy, and these events at Va. Tech, led to this question.]

Sudan Agrees to Darfur Peacekeepers

Sudan Agrees to Darfur Peacekeepers.

The four-year Darfur conflict between rebels and pro-government Arab militia has seen more than 200,000 deaths and at least 2.4 million displaced.

Does this mean we get to stop with the genocide, now?

Newsflash: Abstinence-Only Ed Doesn't Work

I know we're all overwhelmed with a sense of obviousness here, but note that, once again, the Bush Administration has decided to let us know this little factoid in the Friday Night News Dump, as usual for anything it doesn't really like.

I swear, if aliens contacted the earth and said "we'll give you everything you want or need to clean up this planet, achieve lasting peace, and colonize the solar system, but you have to fire that Bush guy," the Bush Administration would release the news on a Friday.

Anyway. Hey kids, guess what?! Abstinence-only education doesn't work! And we've got the report to prove it -- Impacts for Title V. Section 510, Abstinence Education Programs: Final Report, from Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.

Now, can we ship condoms that work to Africa, please? And actually support women's reproductive health in developing countries? Or do we still need to keep pretending that grownups don't have sex?

I think I ruptured something laughing

Centrifugal Force, over at the xkcd webcomic.

It begins "How do you like my centrifuge, Mister Bond?..."

It ends the only way it can.

Fascinating Footnote

In a legal journal article I'm editing, to quote

Anthony C. Thompson, Navigating the Hidden Obstacles to Ex-Offender Reentry, 45 Boston College Law Review 255, 285 (2004):

[I]n communities of color, women offenders tend to be stigmatized by their community. Although men who commit crimes are not necessarily seen as good members of the community, they are rarely ostracized. Women who engage in crime are often seen as defying gender roles, which is perceived by communities as deviance of a higher order.

Is it because women are supposed to be pure, good, and morally superior to men, or because we're not supposed to engage in self-help (i.e., turning to crime if that's what it takes to survive)?

Today I Applied

To join the Boston Medical Reserve Corps. You don't have to be a medical professional to get involved.

Tentatively checking out Twitter

Very tentatively. This just seems like a great way to distract myself every few minutes, and I don't really need that. We'll see. Me at twitter.

First Space Quidditch Match

Americans Defeat Russians in First Space Quidditch Match.

Would You Like Fries With That?

[Apropos of Dr. B. linking to Acephelous and my browsing there for as long as my eyes could bear the color scheme -- too short a time, alas.]

So, here's one way of viewing what bugs me about people treating an education as a product, and themselves as "consumers" rather than students.[*]

Is an education -- a degree -- something outside you? That can be treated as a commodity? Bought, sold, devised, transferred, placed in trust, bequeathed, inherited? Is it a thing? And what does that say about the student, who sees learning not as something they do, and that changes them, but something that they buy?

How can an education exist as a thing outside of the self getting the education? It implies that there is "me" *here* and there is "a degree" over *here*, and me "with" degree is simply moving them into closer proximity.

I cannot fathom this concept.

[*] This is a perspective that I was initially exposed to as an undergrad at UC Irvine, but not in great depth, no doubt because I can be quite dense about people, but to which I am now, courtesy of law school, quite, quite sick of.

Just so you know

We Alaskans do some pretty cool shit, now and then. Like running diptheria serum 1000 miles across the wilderness, via dog team, to save lives in Nome.

And today? Today we commemorate that event by risking life and limb recreating it. Because Alaska is a big beautiful merciless place, and all you can do in the face of that magnitude of stillness, that great a land, is strive for greatness yourself. To test ourselves, and emerge from the scouring of elements changed, but for the better.

Mackey's spectacular tale won't reach ears of Outside sports fans

[On the unprecedented Yukon Quest and Iditarod back-to-back wins:] Had they been running in the Lower 48, they'd have run coast to coast.

Congratulations to Lance and his stellar dog team. Well done.

How About That Freedom of Religion Thing?

Working out well for ya?

Lawsuit By Wiccans Allowed to Proceed

MADISON, Wis. -- A federal lawsuit filed by Wiccans against the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs will proceed despite a request by the VA that it be put on hold for perhaps as much as a year.

The lawsuit, filed in November, accuses the VA of coming up with "excuse after excuse" for more than nine years for not putting the Wiccan symbol on grave markers of veterans who were members of that religion. The department does not allow Wiccan religious symbols on veterans' headstones in national cemeteries.

Note, gentle reader, the title of that article. Not "Religious Dispute Over Military Gravemarkers Continues" or some such. No, no, that would be too reasonable.

For Gods and Country: The Army Chaplain Who Wanted to Switch to Wicca? Transfer Denied.

On July 6, he applied to become the first Wiccan chaplain in the U.S. armed forces, setting off an extraordinary chain of events. By year's end, his superiors not only denied his request but also withdrew him from Iraq and removed him from the chaplain corps, despite an unblemished service record.

What happened to freedom of religion? Did the Army just tell this man what religion he's allowed to practice?

Feeling pressured to conform, anyone? You should.

Teacher Sues, Blaming Witchcraft Suspicions for Firing

Brewing accusations of witchcraft are expected to bubble over during a federal trial scheduled to open this week on Long Island, N.Y., where a former elementary school teacher is suing the district for $2 million.

In 2001, Lauren Berrios filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Central Islip saying she was fired because co-workers wrongly believed she was a witch. Berrios is Jewish and said the witchcraft rumors surfaced because she turned down invitations to attend Christian services.

She turned down invitations to attend Christian services. Well, shit, neighbor, maybe she just don't like your church much. Maybe she's Lutheran.

It's Not Just Walter Reed

'It Is Just Not Walter Reed': Soldiers Share Troubling Stories Of Military Health Care Across U.S.

How dare you sons of bitches do this and pretend do "support" the troops.

With friends like this, they don't need any fucking enemies.