Fri - May 2, 2008

Mission Accomplished for These Sailors Who Are On This Ship On Their Mission


Here is what the White House Press Secretary, Dana Perino, envisions should have taken place 5 (!) years ago:



Can anyone believe for one second that this is what was intended?

Posted at 07:36 AM     |

Sat - April 23, 2005

If you still need a reason to give up Microsoft..



I've been working on a draft of a paper for.. a while now. Up until now, I had been using a program that, let's say, 99% of my colleagues use for writing their scientific papers.
Since I know Microsoft is evil, I had earnestly tried alternatives, many times - Openoffice, Abiword, Mellel, Pages, etc. The thing is, that in my opinion Word and Excel were superior to the competition. I still think they are (although Word for OS X has given me lots of headaches). Excel is even better; I have quite a lot of accumulated data in Excel files, and alternative spreadsheets suck even more.
Well. That's all over now. I'll use freakin' LaTeX if I have to, because Microsoft pulled their support for a piece of legislation, House bill 1515, in my home state of Washington. The bill would have "expand[ed] the jurisdiction of the human rights commission to include sexual orientation"; in other words, it was a broad-spectrum gay-rights bill. The bill was then narrowly defeated. While the ultimate motives for Microsoft to reverse their previous position and withdraw support for gay rights remain a matter of speculation, one thing is for sure - it's time to step up the anti-Microsoft vigilance. That means: no more using their programs; no more accepting Word or Excel files from people (ask for plain text, or PDF), no more Windows Media Player, and no more lan-gaming with Windows users! (Okay, maybe not that one - but give them a dressing-down first.)
See waveflux and Marching Orders for some great coverage of this issue.
Update: Above image credit goes to Mike Tidmus.

Posted at 05:44 PM     |

Fri - February 4, 2005

What's ya take on Gonzales?


As Armando at Daily Kos said:

"The fight was not against Alberto Gonzales, rather against the policy of torture Gonzales justified and forwarded.  The fight against that policy of torture must and does continue."

So I support ideas like this, but I wonder how it will actually affect people in the grip of cognitive dissonance.

(Title of post inspired by this Le Tigre song).

Posted at 08:46 AM     Read More   |

Thu - January 27, 2005

No on Gonzales


I concur with the discussion at dailykos.com that Gonzales is unfit to be the United States attorney general.

I urge the Senate to vote against him, and for the Democratic senators to threaten and if necessary carry out a filibuster on his confirmation. I particularly urge my state senators Boxer and Feinstein to vote no and support a filibuster.

Gonzales had a chance to explain himself, clear up misunderstandings, and convince us he would be a good attorney general. He failed at this simple task and instead gave the impression, shared by the members of the Judiciary committee who voted no, that he saw the president as above the law, and did not repudiate interrogation techniques which any civilized person would call torture. I fear that the confirmation of Gonzales will send a message to the world that the United States will no longer respect the dignity of those it considers its enemies, and this will not only erode our support in the world, but ultimately it will bring harm on our soldiers.

See also this prescient advice.

Posted at 11:03 PM     |

Tue - November 9, 2004

Blue Americans Apologize to World


Hmm, time to fire up MacOSaiX again, there's a site of billions of Americans apologizing for our election results.
The site is called "Sorry Everybody". I'll try to download all of the images and make something interesting..
Like, say...

UPDATE: Yay, they posted it.. on page 137!

Posted at 12:42 AM     |

Mon - November 8, 2004

Red vs. Blue


No "New Canada" or "Jesustan" jokes, just an interesting look at political geography.
There are no "Blue States", only blue cities in a sea of red..
(well, there are 3 or 4 small blue states, I guess, but you see the point.)

UPDATE: ahh, but..adjust for population (thanks to this site!) and we get something more reasonable:

Posted at 12:17 PM     Read More   |

Sun - October 31, 2004

Mosh



See it. It's awesome.

Posted at 01:02 PM     |

Tue - October 12, 2004

"Safe" from what now?


You hear it again and again - "It's the job of the president to keep Americans safe".
What lies beneath this platitude's surface is that there is a limited conception of "safety" being held mind in this frame.

The president doesn't marshal vast resources for preventative measures against cancer and heart disease, nor convene a task force with broad discretionary powers to lower traffic fatalities. However, such measures would save far more lives, for less money, than increased antiterrorism and military spending. Fewer than 3000 people were killed on Sept. 11 2001; by contrast over 40,000 are killed annually in traffic fatalities. 40 times the number of people killed on Sept. 11 have died on America's roads in accidents since, and many times more than that injured - and these deaths and injuries were on the whole no less scary or painful. But this isn't the kind of safety most people are worried about. What was so terrible about the Sept. 11 attacks? That it was a deliberate attack instead of an accumulation of accidents, presumably. This is the kind of danger we have evolved to fear. It's very hard to get the populace worked up about the tens of thousands of lives that could be saved by measures such as locked-in speed limits on cars, or harsher penalties for violations. But it's quite easy when it's a lesser danger, such as terrorism, that happened to have had greater pull in the distant evolutionary past.

Posted at 08:04 PM     Read More   |

Wed - September 29, 2004

Outsourcing Torture


This post is alarming and warrants action.
A bill has been introduced that would make it legal for the United States to deport suspected terrorists to countries that practice torture.
The burden of proof will be on the suspect to prove that they would be tortured in order to block deportation.
Click below for the full text of the relevant parts of the bill in pdf form.
H.R.10, Sec. 3032
H.R.10, Sec. 3033

Posted at 03:23 PM     |

Fri - September 10, 2004

Image


When I heard the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq had reached 1000, I had the idea to make some propaganda.
I downloaded all the face images from CNN (with wget), then used MacOSaiX to composite them together into the face of the person responsible for their deaths.
You can view the image here .

UPDATE(9/14/04): Someone had this idea way before me, and made a much nicer-looking image too.

Posted at 08:56 AM     Read More   |

Wed - September 8, 2004

Against all enemies


Last night I attended "an evening with Richard Clarke", in Zellerbach Hall at UC Berkeley. I was very apprehensive about going at first -- it's been too much lately, how many times have I gone to a movie or attended an event where the best someone could say was "Well, of course it's preaching to the choir, but..."? Plus the image of the school in Beslan has been haunting me - not the children who were killed, which is too horrible to even pretend I can comprehend - but the ones who were released. The ones who were deprived of water for the entire ordeal, who could maybe have had a few sips from a toilet.
What exquisitely orchestrated constructs keep us all from such desperation..

Anyway, I went to the talk for the same reason most of my fellow Berkeleyans did, who am I kidding, to feel better. I can't truly say I learned anything or had my perspectives changed. But there is slight comfort in knowing that there are still intelligent people working in public service. Who, when asked what can be done about the problems that have led to terrorism, can answer "I don't know!" rather than spout one or the other political line. There was one nice meme I will take me, which took the form of (apocryphal?) advice given to Mr. Clarke by a teacher, once-
"Never deny the obvious!", and its corollary which needn't be spelled out for you, wise reader.

Posted at 09:18 PM     |

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