politics

Monday various

Saturday various

  • Proof again that parasites are the scariest damn things out there. [via]
  • Speaking, sort of, of parasitic mouth-breathers, you have read the single worst sports column ever written, right? The fact that Mark Whicker doesn’t seem to understand how his column trivialized Jaycee Dugard’s horrific 18-year ordeal — and is lousy journalism to boot — is just disgusting. Joe Wilson gave a more sincere apology.
  • Speaking of Wilson, via Twitter Kurt Andersen writes:

    Nobody who applauded the dude in Baghdad who threw his shoe at Bush really has any standing to accuse Joe Wilson of incivility. Right?

    It’s an interesting point, but I do think it’s wrong and maybe over-simplifies. For starters, this is at least partly about context. Shoe-thrower Muntazer al-Zaidi was a journalist attending a press conference, whereas Joe Wilson was a Congressman attending the President’s address to that legislative body. There are different levels of decorum expected, if only by tradition, in those two very different settings. Also Bush is obviously not Iraqi, whereas both Wilson and Obama are Americans, and Iraq was/is a more hostile battleground than health care. (Although you maybe wouldn’t know it, from some of the “debate” and hysteria surrounding the latter.) Both the thrown shoe and presidential heckling were uncivil acts, neither the best solution at the time, but the shoe is more defensible, if only because it was born out of a shared desperation instead of politics. That Wilson was demonstrably wrong about Obama’s so-called lie, and yet has continued to spread his own lies about the proposed governmental health care… Well, it’s tough to continue drawing parallels between the two outbursts.

  • James Patterson signs a 17-book deal “that will keep him with publisher Hachette through 2012.” Do the math: even if the deal goes into effect immediately, that’s 17 books in just over two years, about eight books a year. I guess it’s a good thing James Patterson doesn’t actually have to write well, huh? [via]
  • And finally, this proposed Plan 9 from Outer Space remake…is a joke, right?

    Plan 9 Teaser Trailer from Darkstone Entertainment on Vimeo.

On that day

I posted this back on September 13, 2001, actually my first post on this weblog. In the eight long years since, a lot has changed — not all for the better, you could probably argue, and least of all some of the links below — but I do think it’s still worth remembering how it felt on that September morning and in the immediate wake of the September 11 attacks, those deaths. I wasn’t living in New York at the time — actually in Pennsylvania, not close but closer to where Flight 93 went down — but I have close family who was, and who were in the city at the time the World Trade Center buildings collapsed. I was lucky not to lose anyone that day, and the shock of it has faded, as it needed to, in the years since. In some ways, I’m glad that today is just another Friday. But, in some others, I think it’s worth remembering.

I still don’t want to write about this. I wasn’t there, and everything I want to say sounds painfully obvious and cliché. When I let myself think about it two nights ago, or yesterday morning, I just wanted to start crying or break something. Even now it’s incomprehensible. This is what I had once been planning to post. But for this…I just don’t have the words. So here’s what some other people have been saying.

Leslie Harpold (The Hoopla500): There’s a layer of dirt covering lower Manhattan. You’d think it’d be lumpy, or at least coarse, but no, it’s softer than sand. There are still four people in my life who work in the WTC that are unaccounted for. When are we supposed to decide to say goodbye, or should I keep expecting miracles? I would feel a lot better if someone would put me to work. I filled out the Red Cross volunteer forms with my whole skills inventory, and I’d be willing to do about anything that didn’t involve dead bodies. They’ve turned the Chelsea Ice rink complex into a makeshift morgue. Can you imagine? I really hope you can’t.

Paul Ford (Ftrain): They are turning away volunteers, turning away blood donors, because there are so many. I knew that would happen. That is why I want to live there, why I love it, why I have been pining for New York City and why I pine for it even as it is coated in ash, with papers swirling in the air. Not the buildings but the people, the bodies, the voices.

Sharon J. Cichelli (Phlebotomy): I’m thinking back to events on Monday evening and how easily we laughed. The memory seems strange, like, surely we weren’t laughing so easily, in light of what’s happened. But, of course, it hadn’t happened yet. My current feelings are casting a pall over the memories.

Robert Rummel-Hudson (Darn Tootin’): A lot of people, a staggering number of them, didn’t hug their kids tonight. They didn’t drive home from work and maybe give someone the finger for cutting them off, or stop at some little grubby store to buy beer or flowers to surprise someone waiting at home. They didn’t make passionate love to their lovers after the sun went down, the cool late summer breeze blowing through their bedroom windows. They are lying in rubble, or in pieces in what remains of a fuselage. Their unblinking eyes are filled with questions. And I can’t answer them. My anger and my fear and my sorrow aren’t enough.

Michael Moore (MichaelMoore.com): Will we ever get to the point that we realize we will be more secure when the rest of the world isn’t living in poverty so we can have nice running shoes? Let’s mourn, let’s grieve, and when it’s appropriate let’s examine our contribution to the unsafe world we live in. It doesn’t have to be like this…

Meg Hourihan (Megnut): 24 hours later, I’m heading back into the kitchen to finish up the dishes, to pick up the spatula that still sits in the sink where I dropped it. I’m going to wash my coffee press and brew that cup of coffee I never had yesterday. I’m going to try and find some semblance of normalcy in this very changed world.

Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times): My story is like so many stories. Thousands of innocent victims are dead, but we think first about those we love. What is new and frightening is that on Tuesday when the tragedy happened, we were all forced to think in these personal terms. The war was here.

My father (via e-mail): Our building is on the block from 14th. to 15th. Street. 14th. Street is quite a bit north of the WTC. Nonetheless the City has set it up as the line of demarcation for what is certainly a battle zone. The subways are running — but 14th. Street is the last stop in Manhattan on the downtown trip to Brooklyn. The power is mostly out in the lower Manhattan financial district. There was a Marriot Hotel still burning when I cam in this morning — but the smoke seems to be mostly white (steam from water) now and less black. Sirens abound. There are virtually no other cars — but the LIRR worked fine this morning. Every once in awhile a military jet roars overhead. It’s hard to imagine how it will ever get back to anything like normal — but I guess it will in time.

Thursday various

  • My sister is getting married in a couple of months — a little less than, actually — and I don’t think she’s taking her fiancé Brian’s last name. Apparently, however, 50% of Americans think she should be legally required to do so. I’m curious as to what these people think the legal repercussions for not taking your husband’s name should be. Thirty years hard labor? My future wife needn’t worry. I ask only a dowry of ten cows and three oxen from her village patriarch. Anyway, as I noted yesterday, my last name is frequently misspelled and -pronounced. [via]
  • N. K. Jemisin on describing characters of color:

    Because so much of fantasy takes place in settings that in no way resemble the real world, featuring species that in no way resemble human, fantasy writers often have trouble dealing with regular people. This is something that, I think, isn’t as much of a problem for mainstream writers, because they can simply describe the world around them and come up with a reasonably accurate representation of humanity. They can also fall back on the plethora of real-world terms used to describe human beings, racially and otherwise. But using these terms makes no sense if you’re dealing with a world that doesn’t share our political/cultural context. You can’t call someone “African American” if your world has no Africa, no America, and has never gone through a colonial phase in which people of disparate cultures were forcibly brought together, thus necessitating the term in the first place.

  • Got $8,000? Why not buy your own Personal Satellite Kit? [via]

  • On the other hand, if you have eight million dollars, maybe you want to bid on your very own rare T-Rex skeleton. (Maybe you could get an Ankylosaurus skeleton and make them fight.)

  • And finally, if you’re going to complain about your job on Facebook, at the very least make sure your boss isn’t one of your friends. [via]

Tuesday various

  • J.R. Blackwell on high school:

    If my life now was like high school, if my “real life” as they say, was at all like the lack of freedom and harassment I experienced while in high school, then things wouldn’t be going well for me at all. Perhaps then, that is how high school prepares you for real life – but showing you what you have to work hard to stay away from – how your earning power gives you freedoms that if you lost, you would lose your freedoms as well. Perhaps high school is a warning for the young mind – fail, and you will go someplace very much like here, except in that place, there isn’t a prom.

  • Frederik Pohl, who at 89 was just awarded his high school diploma would seem to agree:

    Pohl speculates that perhaps, if he had finished high school, he might have gone on to spend the rest of his career at American Car and
    Foundry, instead of writing multiple science fiction classics.”

    Just quit school, kids!

  • A contest to pick the funniest joke and, surprisingly, none of them are terrible? What are the odds? Obviously your mileage may vary, and some — like the winner, I think — are maybe more drolly amusing that laugh-aloud funny, but in any “ten best” list, you expect at least some real clunkers. [via]
  • Just how ridiculous are the “birthers”? Well… [via]

  • And finally, while I debate buying this
    G.I. Joe Complete Collector’s Set     (no, seriously. I am honestly tempted), here’s…