Paranoid or Under Constant Attack?

Cheney, Energy and Iraq: a conspiracy or just whacked priorities?

Plame, Bush and Iran: a conspiracy or really unfortunate coincidence?

student patrols with shotguns and video cameras: satire or hysteria?

As Bill Morrissey sings

You can call me lazy, crazy, call me stupid, I don't care;
I ain't gettin' up, cause its dangerous out there.

Supplement: I have the greatest respect for those who have the intestinal fortitude to wade into rough comments and actually call people on their bloodlust and medievalism.

I really do think that there's a decent, moderate core to politics in this country, and that we need to be much more vocal about who we are and what we think.

Two Meme

via, whose formatting is more orthodox...

Update (5 May): The more I thought about this, the less I liked both the formatting and some of the answers (actually, the problem is the questions...). I've made some changes (none to the "today/yesterday" questions, though).

Two Names You Go By
1. *-**** [redacted to avoid embarrassment]
2. ***** [censored for national security]

Two Things You Are Wearing Right Now:
1. red shirt
2. unique gold wedding band

Two Things You Want in a Relationship:
1. love
2. trust (got 'em)

Two Things You Want Really Badly:
1. A really, really good (compact, high res, optic zoom) digital camera
2. tenure

Two pets you had/have:
1. Never had a pet.
2. I have a tribble, though.

Two Favorite Sports:
1. Sumo
2. Baseball

Two people who will fill this out:
1. I don't tag.
2. I don't tag.

Two things you did last night:
1. Ate palak paneer
2. went to bed early.

Two Favorite Places to eat:
1. Winsteads (KC)
2. IHOP (anywhere)

Two People that live in your house:
1. Me
2. the Little Anachronism.

Two things you like about yourself:
1. intelligence, which I try to use in the service of others
2. thoughtfulness, empathy, moderation ....

Two things you ate today:
1. moon pie
2. leftover palak paneer

Two people you Last Talked To:
1. spouse
2. janitor

Two Things You're doing tomorrow:
1. eating pizza
2. driving to preschool

Two things that make you laugh:
1. playing nonsense word games with Little Anachronism
2. Le Show.

Two Favorite Holidays: (both festivals of freedom)
1. July 4th
2. Passover

Two last films you've seen:
1. Singin' In The Rain
2. Cinderella

Rorshach Headline...

12 Ways to Battle Fatigue

What does it say about me, that I saw that headline and immediately thought someone had identifed a dozen distinct steps, stages or causes of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?

I've looked at Bees from Both Sides Now....

Bees can be a form of protest, if you're a world-renowned bee-wearer.

But who will, to paraphase the Lorax, speak for the bees?

The smoking gun...

So to speak. For a long time now, and for many people, the death penalty issue has hinged on the question of whether an innocent person could be or has been executed under our system of justice. If the answer is "no", then for many people the death penalty is basically OK, if a bit distasteful (unless someone they care about is affected). But some of us have said for a long time that the answer has to have been "yes" and would be "yes" again, given the slippages and errors which are quite normal even in "capital" cases. Kierkegaard Lives reports that there is exceedingly strong evidence that Texas -- big surprise there, eh? -- in fact has recently executed someone who would have been exonerated and released had he but lived a few months longer.

Worse, we can't even kill competently.

It's true that we, though action and inaction, directly or through our elected or corporate representatives, collectively and individually, cause or hasten death to many people. Death happens. But this is different: this is deliberate, cold-blooded, collective, unnecessary. We are the irresponsible parties in this death, and we should mourn, and we should repent, and we must, as part of that repentance, change.

What if we really can't do anything right....

Madman of Chu complicates things

The hard reality that Darfur points to is that waging a "war on terror" is pointless unless it is undertaken in tandem with a "war on genocide."

This is because "terrorists" is what governments who are undertaking genocide call those who oppose them. He goes on

The kind of resolve and audacity the Bush administration has shown in Iraq would serve well in Sudan and other places where genocide threatens global peace and stability. What the current situation requires is that the US follow the Clinton administration's policy of undertaking peace-enforcing actions in places (like Somalia, Kosovo) where no immediate US economic interests are at stake with the same tenacity and commitment the Bush administration has displayed in Iraq.

A few quibbles: Somalia was a GHWBush project originally, from which Clinton retreated (and subsequently failed to act in Rwanda). Kosovo presents a more complicated situation: we acted with resolve, but we did so at great cost and -- initially at least -- exacerbated the situation in a one-sided manner.

I'm struck by the juxtaposition of Andrew Meyer's argument with Shelby Steele's argument that "white guilt" (a truly broad term, as he uses it) has restrained our hands from accomplishing tasks of moral urgency.

I agree that settling questions in the Sudan is a matter of moral urgency; I'm not convinced that we can or should argue that George Bush's methods in Iraq were "OK but misdirected" in the face of the failure of those methods to actually solve anything.

People Say Dumb Stuff

Mr. Jones has an odiferous collection of mental fewmets; aside from the somewhat partisan selection, it's amusing; I love good epigrams. Here's a few medical malaprops for even more fun.

On the other hand.... thanks to Dave Neiwert, I found this treasure trove of multilingual patriotic documents as well as evidence that our own disgruntled head of state has participated in the promulgation of these recently-decreed-atrocities against national sentiment. Which is to say: the conservatives, including the President, who "object" to the national anthem in Spanish are racist, hypocritical ahistorical, hand-waving liars who are desperately grasping at straws to blunt the force of this new activist movement. Not to mention their other failings.

Historical Buddhist Children....Drinking?

History Carnival Thirty is a fantastic collection, in spite of my appearance there.

Blogmandu features a discussion of a Buddha Wall, an apparent apparition in ... Florida? More stuff I want to follow up on, too.

Kid Comedy Eight has lots of fun stuff.

And, in the "There'll be a carnival for everything someday" category: the first edition of the Carnival of Drinking, which is not as much riotous fun as you might think, but definitely higher-octane than the coffee and tea carnivals (yes, I noticed those, too....).

and Grand Rounds!. And the Carnival of Feminists! Damn, this blogosphere thing is busy...

Posting....

There's no theme here... yet. I'm just catching up on my Washington Post reading...

Vioxx lawsuits would be a perfect moment for the Bush administration to stand up for science, particularly since they could do so by beating up on trial lawyers? It would be nice to see them on the side of science for once, and they've oddly neglected the trial lawyer blight since the campaign (which featured a trial lawyer against them, of course, and which was largely fantastical to begin with). I guess it depends on whether Merck's been paying their grift lately.... or signed on to the dirty tricks squad.

In other science news, nasal spray flu vaccines are much more effective for young children. I've been wondering when we were going to get around to following the Japanese model of vaccinating schoolchildren -- which interrupts the largest transmission pool of the disease -- and shift away from playing catch-up with elderly/toddler vaccinations. Apparently the answer is "not yet, but we're getting better anyway." Speaking of Japan: when demographics and economics collide, obstetrics (i.e. pregnant women) suffer. Also, what's the most widely used pseudoscientific tool in law enforcement, on which our national security depends? answer here

You know this, because you're a blog reader, but blog readers aren't youthful slackers. No, we're professional procrastinators, with years of experience and highly qualified.... If you haven't had quite enough mainstream media metablogging lately, go here and realize that there are some people honestly trying to think things through. Mostly because they'd like to be on the "making a buck" side instead of the "failing economy" side, of course. With sweeping overgeneralizations like this, the transition to blogging ought to be a snap.

John Kenneth Galbraith falls into the category of public intellectuals whose influence I seem to be too young to really appreciate, but the description of The Affluent Society in this obit is uncannily still accurate, fifty years on. Speaking of economists, supply and demand explains a lot about oil prices but very little about energy policy

Reminder: Movies are movies, history is history. movies are not history, they are entertainment created for the purpose of making money.

Still no theme, unless you count the ongoing, continuing rampant march of morons...

Disablism: The Seeing Spouse

I am sighted; my spouse is blind.

There are a few things that I do better than my spouse because I am sighted and my spouse is not

• drive
• track fashions
• skim
• frisbee
• watch television with the sound off
• check cakes in the oven

There are ways in which my skills or capacities exceed those of my spouse but they have nothing to do with vision or blindness:

• news junkiedom
• my chosen profession
• broad general knowledge
• cooking sans recipe
• hear high register sounds

There are also ways in which my spouse surpasses me that have little or nothing to do with blindness

• music
• moral and ethical consistency
• optimism
• ability to predict plot twists mid-drama
• task orientation
• cookie baking quality
• raw intelligence
• balance a checkbook
• understand Windows^tm
• deal with difficult people

And my spouse can read in the dark, and fix my computer when the screen dies.

Ways in which we are exceedingly well matched (we're happily married, after all, over ten years)

• education
• verbal play
• editorial support
• musical interests
• introverts
• patient
• family-centered
• parenting priorities and methods
• political orientation and engagement

Your [temporarily] sighted marriage should be so good.

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