Luke's old blog

luke_mcintyre @ 2006-03-06T04:24:00

2006-03-06T09:32:01Z

The Livejournal home page has a link that sends you to random Livejournals. Allow me to summarize the ten I just visited.

1. "I'm depressed and my life sucks."
2. Nothing but lyrics.
3. The thoughtful inventory of a cheerleader's life.
4. "yeah I am on the phone with Sam at this moment, I love him sooo much!!!! He told me that I am his IDEAL WOMAN!!" Actual quote.
5. Two entries on how this guy is a computer nerd, one entry consistingly of his PREORDERED Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy tickets.
6. Three entries, none of it was English. I don't consider "omfg wtf r u doing!!1! lol!1!!!" to be English.
7. Lyrics and online quizzes.
8. Lyrics and online quizzes.
9. "in the next 20 min and you WILL have the best day of your life on Valentines Day.You're number one *love*Will either kiss you, ask you out, or call you.If you break this chain The little boy from the grudgewill be in youre room tonight at exactly 11:30pm.So copy &paste this to 15 ppl NOW DO NOT SEND THIS BACK TO THE PERSON U GOT IT FROM!!

So silly I believe this stuff."
10. A poet whose poems consist of huge blank spaces for no reason. Making readers scroll is not art.

Violence at white supremacist march leads to arrested protesters. Again.

2006-02-27T09:32:10Z

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Two opposing groups hurled insults at each other across police barricades Saturday during a tension-filled neo-Nazi rally that culminated in 17 arrests.

Clad in khaki uniforms, tall black boots and red arm patches bearing swastikas, about 30 members of the National Socialist Movement were barricaded on one side by SWAT team members.

On the other side, a group of black-clad counter-demonstrators, many covering their faces with black masks, held anti-Nazi signs.

Several counter-demonstrators were arrested before the march officially began when pockets of violence erupted, police said.

A total of 17 people were arrested Saturday, including 14 members of out-of-town groups such as the Skinheads Against Racial Prejudices and the Southeastern Anarchist Network were arrested, said Orlando Police spokeswoman Barb Jones.

All faced charges including disorderly conduct, battery on a law enforcement officer and wearing a mask, police said. Full story

Another excellent protest of racist bigotry ending with protesters in jail and more publicity for the racists. Here's an easy way to gauge your protest's success: If more people on your side are arrested for violence against police officers than there are people in the group you're protesting, you lose.

Bonus points given for anyone arrested for violating the law against wearing masks in public, a law that the Ku Klux Klan demonstrated against. Naturally, in the counter-protest of over 1,000 people to the 16 Klan members there were several people arrested for attacking Klan members. No Klansmen arrested though.

With that specific incident I think it's all the more telling that people who protest these things are stupid. The specific issue being protested by the Klan was a law banning the wearing of masks in public. The ACLU even sided with them. The counter-protesters gave them all that publicity for nothing. It must have been the Klan's birthday, how sweet.

Before the rally, authorities encouraged counter-demonstrators to stay home, hoping to avoid the violence that occurred when the same group marched through Toledo, Ohio, in October. A riot ensued, during which protesters threw rocks at police and burned down a bar.

I'm glad that Florida State Senator Gary Siplin "decided to go against the advice of other community leaders and police to organize a counter demonstration." Full story on that

"We're gonna love 'em in our neighborhood, love 'em to death," Senator Siplin said.

Love them to death. I guess that's why more than a hundred police and SWAT officers were needed to restrain the counter-demonstraters. All that love.

In other news, I found a Proletarian Revolution article saying that the counter-protest to the above-mentioned Klan demonstration was not a complete success because the Klansmen weren't "driven from the streets and given a beating." It went on to detail a plan for attacking innocent police officers.

The slogan "Stop the Klan!", under which the PDC had initiated its call, was necessary but not sufficient to prepare demonstrators for an actual confrontation.

Prepare for what confrontation you say?

It is one thing to say that it would be great if numbers and unity scared the Klan into retreating. It is another to not even deal with the obvious: that the KKK would be heavily protected by the police, and would only be "stopped" by a fighting effort that would have to defend itself against the cops. Here's what our leaflet said on the subject:

"As they have done in the past, the cops will aim to keep us under their control and far from the fascists whom they aim to protect. In city after city, every time the fascists rear their ugly heads, the cops are there with their guns and batons turned against us...."

That "would only be 'stopped' by a fighting effort that would have to defend itself against the cops"? Meaning that after they attacked the police the police would fight back? They're not actually taking credit for happily attacking police and preparing to use violence on people for exercizing their freedom, are they?

Many of the anti-Klan protesters arrived at the rally with no clear intention of trying to smash the Klan. Nevertheless, our agitation and our leaflet in favor of doing this received a warm reception. More importantly, the appearance of the Klan enraged the crowd and made clear to many protesters what they hadn't recognized before: that they wanted to smash the Klan!

Terrorist acts from a terrorist organization.

The Proletarian Revolution is printed by the League for the Revolutionary Party. The League for the Revolutionary Party broke away from the Revolutionary Socialists League in the 70s, as did the International Socialists Organization.Granted, this article goes on to criticize the ISO for being too timid during the protest (which worries me that someone could be crazy enough to think the ISO could ever be considered the voice of reason), but this authoritarian method is indicative of the whole way of thinking.

These socialists are opposed to freedom, and their willingness to use premeditated force against innocent people makes them a terrorist organization.

The Luckiest Man Alive

2006-02-27T08:05:43Z

James Campion has another of those 50 Greatest Sports Moments of All Time. A decent amount of foreign moments are mentioned, but the natural emphasis on American sports is there. Altogether it's a good list and an interesting read, though I have to take issue with some events he left and some included, his ranking with the first 20 or so, and including Mark McGwire at all (Side note: Mark McGwire married a former pharmaceutical sales representative in 2002, I'm hoping Leno called him on that).

My favorite is 10. Lou Gehrig's "Luckiest Man" Farewell Speech - 7/4/39

"In a moment forever held in time for every figure in sports history to heed, a dying man stood before over 60,000 people and the world to impart the genuine feeling that he was 'the luckiest man in the world' for having the opportunity to endeavor through the love of his craft. Lou Gehrig, the Iron Horse, who had not missed a game his entire 13-plus year career (spanning a mind-bending 2,130 consecutive games) lowered his head and became the symbol of what sports, and maybe all of life is about; accepting your destiny, giving it your all, and enjoying every moment, good or ill."

Lou Gehrig's farewell speech:
"Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got. Yet today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I have been to ballparks for seventeen years and I have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans. Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure I’m lucky. Who wouldn’t have considered it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I'm lucky. When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat and vice versa, sends you a gift, that’s something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in the white coats remember you with trophies, that’s something. When you have a father and mother who work all their lives so that you can have an education and build your body, it's a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed, that's the finest I know. So I close by saying that I might have had a bad break, but I have an awful lot to live for. Thank you."

Well played, Lou. Well played. At that ceremony, Gehrig became nervous from emotion and asked sportswriter Sid Mercer to speak for him. After the crowd started shouting "We want Gehrig," he stepped up to the mic and gave a tearful, intimate speech that truly was one of sport's greatest moments.

Gehrig's jersey number, 4, was retired by the Yankees. He is the first player in history to receive this honor. The Baseball Writers Association of America excepted Gehrig from the mandatory five year waiting period, voting him into the Hall of Fame in Dec, 1939. He died a year and a half later.

The monument dedicated to Gehrig at Yankee stadium reads, "A man, a gentleman and a great ballplayer whose amazing record of 2,130 consecutive games should stand for all time," but I think Gehrig may be the only person in history who summed himself up better than anyone else could.

Barney-parney-poo

2006-02-26T00:11:49Z

LOS ANGELES - Don Knotts, the skinny, lovable nerd who kept generations of television audiences laughing as bumbling Deputy Barney Fife on “The Andy Griffith Show,” has died. He was 81.

Knotts died Friday night of pulmonary and respiratory complications at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Beverly Hills, said Paul Ward, a spokesman for the cable network TV Land, which airs “The Andy Griffith Show,” and another Knotts hit, “Three’s Company.”

This actually really bums me out. Completely rewriting next week's column now.

It goes without saying on this one...

2006-02-24T03:23:18Z

Alamance County, NC -- An elderly woman drove the wrong way down the interstate... from Orange County to Alamance County.

She faced hundreds of cars and trucks along the way on Tuesday afternoon, making it 14 miles, from Hillsborough to Haw River, without causing a scratch. Full story with video

...but the test to get a driver's license is not hard enough. I'm proud to be from North Carolina. On the other hand, Maryland is looking pretty good right about now:

ANNAPOLIS, Md. -- Debate under way in Annapolis focused Tuesday on nearly two-dozen bills drafted to address drunken driving.

Baltimore television station WBAL reported that one bill would have convicted drunken drivers wear a Scarlet Letter of sorts.

According to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration statistics, 45 percent of Maryland's traffic fatalities are related to alcohol. The House Judiciary Committee heard about 18 driving under the influence bills Tuesday, but none as controversial as the so-called Scarlet Letter approach.

Montgomery County Delegate Herman Taylor, D-District 14, introduced House Bill 1315, which would require the state's Motor Vehicle Administration to issue special license plates to people convicted on at least two DUI offenses.

The license plates would contain the letters "DUI" in bold. Taylor said a drunken driver struck him last May, and at the time of the crash, police had no idea that person was a multiple offender. Full story

I enjoy Maryland. They're facilitating a way for drunk drivers to receive the shame and humiliation that they should.

British people always do this to me

2006-02-21T22:26:28Z

Upon waking this afternoon, I was pleased to hear that my second class of the day had been cancelled, making a pair of the first cancellation which allowed me to sleep until noon. I've been attempting these past few days to collect on sleep owed to me by several late nights.

I spent much of my morning, or afternoon depending on how you define it, doing assignments for the two cancelled classes. Professors have that rare ability to take up student's time regardless of their location.

Which leads me into a not altogether unrelated question, if professors must go to school nearly twice as long in order to acquire the academic mettle to teach, who teaches the professors? And how long must they have gone to college? And who taught them originally? It would seem there must have been a point long ago where one gentleman who knew relatively nothing about anything declared himself to be a scholar, and taught a class about the things that he did not know. It would also seem that many professors today follow suit.

More to the subject, after a couple hours spent writing TV news broadcast copy, which I imagine has to be the lowest level of television writing (television itself being the lowest medium for a writer), I turned my ear to Ambrose Bierce and his short story The Parenticide Club. The end result was much pleasure on my part and your frustration with the tone of this current writing. Anytime I listen to anything British I can't stop my mind from switching back to some sort of recessive mental accent hidden deep in my subconscious. In my head I'm British for the rest of the day.

Granted, Bierce is American. But at least one of the stories take place in England, and the person who recorded the audio book for Librivox was indeed British, making for an exceedingly delightful listening experience.

My point is such: The Parenticide Club is a gruesome masterpiece. Horror, laughter, the proper word for the feeling of being "grossed out", this collection of four short stories has all of it. I recommend the first and third stories, if on no other basis than their first sentence.

MY FAVORITE MURDER - Having murdered my mother under circumstances of singular atrocity, I was arrested and put upon my trial, which lasted seven years.

AN IMPERFECT CONFLAGRATION - Early one June morning in 1872 I murdered my father--an act which made a deep impression on me at the time.

These are simply two of many, The Parenticide Club is full of much more enticing sentences. Ones like:

After that I had not the trouble to bring a luncheon for myself: that little girl was my daily purveyor; and not infrequently in satisfying my simple need from her frugal store I combined pleasure and profit by constraining her attendance at the feast and making misleading proffer of the viands, which eventually I consumed to the last fragment.

I don't even know where to begin diagramming that sentence, let alone writing something like it. Bierce presents just the right mix of large, archaic words and odd sentence structure to make the story seem old, which it is, while still leaving it understandable. Perhaps that's what people thought of Shakespeare a hundred years after he died, when the joking references did not yet require a encyclopedia to understand.

Get the story for free. Read it at Project Gutenberg, or listen to Peter Yearsley's soothing British inflections; "the Queen's english" as Anthony Ridge would put it.

Today's homoerotic asian YMCA karaoke sighting

2006-02-20T18:02:40Z

Video

If you don't feel like watching the whole thing, go to 2:45 and watch where he puts the microphone. That's all I'm going to say.

It's how I get the ladies

2006-02-17T22:50:20Z

http://entensity.net/

Our government is run by a bunch of drunks

2006-02-15T20:47:37Z

The Smoking Gun - When news of George W. Bush's drunken driving arrest surfaced during the final week of the 2000 presidential campaign, Republicans tried to dismiss it as one of those "youthful indiscretions" Bush had steadfastly refused to discuss. Of course, when he got popped in Kennebunkport in 1976, Bush was 30 years old, hardly a kid.

Vice President Dick Cheney, on the other hand, could actually argue that his two DWIs came when he was young and reckless. Full story

Odd, I thought alcohol was good for your heart. Don't worry about the shooting accident though, the ranch owner has said that no one was drinking. Well, maybe "a beer or two". Don't worry unless you're Harry Whittington that is, who is back in intensive care after a pellet moved to his heart and caused a minor heart attack.

If you're wondering how badly Whittington got "peppered," a doctor puts the estimate of pellets in him at "less than 150 or 200." Forbes says, "A three-quarter ounce load of that size shot would normally contain more than 250 pellets. Each pellet is about the size of a small letter "o" in newspaper print." That's a lot of pepper.

The alcohol inconsistency alone warrants investigation, and if Whittington doesn't make it the local DA has already said there will be a grand jury investigation. I've said before that I think both murderers and drunks drivers should be executed. It'd be funny if Cheney turns out to be both.

I love internet inside jokes

2006-02-14T23:54:25Z

This happens a lot

2006-02-13T08:28:44Z

I'm thinking: "This is a very important issue and I am presenting my opinion very clearly and thoroughly."
Caroline is thinking one of the following:
A)".....the FUCK is he talking about?"
B)"I didn't even say anything about the legitimacy of perpetual motion. Why is he so pissed?"
C)"Shutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutup"
D)"I'm going to look interested for 5 more seconds and then say I agree. 5...4..."

Weird-looking news of the day

2006-02-13T08:05:38Z

Before he was an accomplished psychologist, Steven Hayes was a mental patient. His first panic attack came on suddenly, in 1978, as he sat in a psychology-department meeting at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he was an assistant professor. Full story

This guy has a new book out that claims happiness is not normal and that people should learn to live with pain. Judging from his head shot, much of that pain will come from him chopping you into little pieces and eating you. The book is titled Get Out of Your Mind & Into Your Life, which will sell much better than his last book, I'm In Your Closet.

Gothic US rocker Marilyn Manson announced at the Berlin Film Festival that he plans to direct a film based on the diary of Lewis Carroll in which he will play the part of the writer of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland".

Manson, his hair jet-black and his face painted a deathly white, said he wanted to show the dark obsessions of the Victorian author rather than make a period film because that would be "boring".

"It is very much about his obsessions, not so much about the Victorian era. There will be sex," he told reporters. Full story

I don't have a joke for this, except to say that while I was loading that picture of Marilyn Manson the heater made a loud noise and I literally jumped back, almost punching the screen. How is he going to have children? He looks like a burn victim. Marilyn Manson would actually look better if you set him on fire and put him out with a baseball bat.

Now some Hollywood genius is going to put that mangled elf on the big screen, naked, having sex. There has got to be some sort of beastiality law in California.

I'll sleep when I'm dead

2006-02-13T04:37:20Z

"Dawn: When men of reason go to bed." - Ambrose Bierce

"Sleep - those little slices of death, how I loathe them." - Edgar Allen Poe

"I used to do speed. You know, and sometimes a little cough syrup? I'd stay up all night, just writing and writing. I mean, like pages of dribble--You know, about The Faces, or Coltrane. You know, just to fucking write." - Lester Bangs (Almost Famous)

As far back as I can remember I've never had a sleep schedule. Back in middle school I would put off homework in order to stay up late doing anything else, then wake up at five in the morning to do it. By high school I had this down to a science.

It wasn't until exams freshman year that I actually stayed up all night studying. Sophomore year I did it for about every exam. It's much easier than trying to wake up by 8:00. Now I find myself staying up all night at least once a week. Partially this is because I'm busier now than I've ever been in my life, but mostly because it's fun. Staying up all night you get a ridiculous amount of work done, I'm the first one in the Caf at breakfast (I actually eat breakfast), and when my classmates are wiping the sleep out of their eyes I've already been up for a day.

The immediate down side of this is you're a zombie by noon. Personally, as long as I'm entertained or busy I don't get tired. The second I have free time then I'm out.

You wouldn't want to stretch it too far of course. A few months of sleep deprivation will actually kill you. You'll suffer dementia long before that though. Hallucination sets in after a couple days, and I've heard that sleep deprivation isn't an effective torture until at least 36 hours. I've stayed up longer than that many times. Rudy Gardner set the world record by staying up for 11 days, when he was 17 years old.

I'm staying up all night tonight. This is the explanation for any odd or seemingly random entries in the next 24ish hours.

Guess who else is a "flip-flopper"

2006-02-11T05:07:34Z

I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.
- Abraham Lincoln, September 18, 1858
Fourth Joint Lincoln Douglas Debates

Politicians lie. All politicians always lie. While you're busy accusing the other side of doing it, you're also blinding yourself to the lies of your party.

That said, Lincoln is without a doubt the most interesting President. Modern day Republicans who attempt to invoke him as a Republican are soulless whores.

luke_mcintyre @ 2006-02-10T04:08:00

2006-02-10T09:36:12Z

From one of my current poli. sci. books:

"In reality, though, not only were the vast majority of Japanese Americans loyal and patriotic citizens of the United States, once they were allowed in 1943 to join the military more than 17,000 Japanese Americans volunteered. "Even though my older brother was living in Japan," one Japanese American stated, "I told my parents that I was going to enlist because America was my country."

I will never honor Confederate troops who betrayed their country when choosing to fight for their state. I will never respect men who killed their own countrymen in defense of an officially racist state. I will never agree with people who display symbols of racism. That's not heritage, it's hate. It's not patriotism, it's cowardice.

luke_mcintyre @ 2006-02-09T23:53:00

2006-02-10T05:14:11Z

Contact Music - Cocky rap star KANYE WEST is calling for a revised edition of THE BIBLE, because he thinks he should be a character in it.

The JESUS WALKS hitmaker, who picked up three Grammy Awards last night (08FEB06), feels sure he'd be "a griot" (West African storyteller) in a modern Bible.

He says, "I bring up historical subjects in a way that makes kids want to learn about them. I'm an inspirational speaker.

"I changed the sound of music more than one time... For all those reasons, I'd be a part of the Bible. I'm definitely in the history books already."

How does someone with a head that big still stand upright? For all his pros, and there are many, the man still has a number of cons.

Such as his claims of growing up poor and his struggle over adversity, when really he was born into a wealthy family. His mother is a doctor and his father holds two master's degrees. Kanye attended and dropped out of two different colleges before pursuing music full time. Oppressed my ass.

And his talk about the crimes of the diamond trade in "Diamonds from Sierra Leone" certainly doesn't stop him from wearing them (and bragging about it).

Kanye is walking a dangerous path. After last year's Superbowl Terrell Owens was the most loved person in Philadelphia. Hear anything about him lately? Owens didn't catch anything this season except bad press. Take his example, do your job and shut your mouth.

Middle of Muslim Mayhem

2006-02-10T04:44:38Z

In reading about this entire Muslim cartoon debacle, I keep noticing two points that seem to reoccur with each dispute involving Islam. You have one point (a more liberal one) that argues how Islam is so different and, in this case, Muslims are very offended by depictions of Mohammad. The other side (more conservative) doesn't care at all about the Islamic view and, more often than not, thinks we should just bomb them.

I honestly don't know what to think. I know how I feel and I'm aware of my initial reactions to all of this, but there has to be an answer to this. "This" is very well put in Dennis Prager's editorial, "Five questions non-Muslims would like answered". Those questions are:

(1) Why are you so quiet?
(2) Why are none of the Palestinian terrorists Christian?
(3) Why is only one of the 47 Muslim-majority countries a free country?
(4) Why are so many atrocities committed and threatened by Muslims in the name of Islam?
(5) Why do countries governed by religious Muslims persecute other religions?

Of all five, the most troubling and the one I least agreed with was number one. I didn't disagree with it, I just didn't think it was backed up enough. Indeed the few responses to this article that I've been able to find address this and only this point.

But then I come across an article from blogcritics.org saying:

Cartoons of which we disapprove should be fought with more cartoons, not with violence, boycotts, and legal action, which is why the call by the Muslim Action Committee for changes to the U.K. Race Relations Act and the Press Complaints Commission code in response to the Danish cartoon controversy is dangerous.

MAC is also staging a protest march in London on February 18, expected to attract 20,000 to 50,000 people. Full entry

They couldn't be serious. No, please no.

BBC -- Muslim scholars who gathered for an emergency meeting have called for changes to the law to stop images of the Prophet Muhammad being published.

Members of the Muslim Action Committee (MAC) who met in Birmingham called for changes to the Race Relations Act and the Press Complaints Commission code.

The head guy of all of this, Shaikh Faiz Saddiqi, had quite a bit to say about the depiction of Mohammad.

"That act in itself is deeply offensive, it's akin to someone standing up in your face and abusing your mum, your sister, your dad, and it's akin to a deliberate act of provocation."

He said Muslims could accept a one-off publication of such an image as a misjudgement and said this was why it took several months for anger at the cartoons, first published in October, to gain momentum.

But he said other media organisations continuing to show the cartoons knew they were causing offence.

He said: "It happens once, it happens twice but a third time you are going to take action.

"Enough is enough, we have to get back to being a civil society.

"What kicks can you get out of seeing this caricature, except to insult the Prophet of Islam?"

This is, indeed, very dangerous. Saddiqi doesn't understand or is ignoring the very definition of free speech, and the 20,000 to 50,000 people going to that protest are marching against freedom. Their claimed cause does not oppose the satirical or degrading portrayal of Mohammad, simply the portrayal. They oppose freedom. Is this not more offensive to people than a cartoon? These people aren't mainstream Muslims, are they?

I don't know, but I hope not. It's all very troubling.

But if it's cartoons that offend Saddiqi, I can do one better.

luke_mcintyre @ 2006-02-09T18:21:00

2006-02-09T21:31:30Z

Tehran, Iran, Jan. 07 – An Iranian court has sentenced a teenage rape victim to death by hanging after she weepingly confessed that she had unintentionally killed a man who had tried to rape both her and her niece.

The state-run daily Etemaad reported on Saturday that 18-year-old Nazanin confessed to stabbing one of three men who had attacked the pair along with their boyfriends while they were spending some time in a park west of the Iranian capital in March 2005.

File this under: Why organized religion is evil, why theocracy is evil, why militant Islam is a threat, why most Americans don't oppose using force against Iran, why I usually feel dirty after reading world news for a couple hours.

WASHINGTON -- Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid wrote at least four letters helpful to Indian tribes represented by Jack Abramoff, and the senator's staff regularly had contact with the disgraced lobbyist's team about legislation affecting other clients.

The activities detailed in billing records and correspondence obtained by The Associated Press are far more extensive than previously disclosed. They occurred over three years as Reid collected nearly $68,000 in donations from Abramoff's firm, lobbying partners and clients.

Just how many pockets was Abramoff elbow deep in? And how many more Abramoffs are still out there?

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush said the U.S.-led global war on terror has "weakened and fractured" al Qaeda and allied groups, outlining as proof new details about the multinational cooperation that foiled purported terrorist plans to fly a commercial airplane into the tallest skyscraper on the West Coast.

The President just now reveals that we have been routinely stopping terrorists for the past four years. This has nothing to do with his desperate defense of the NSA wiretapping or his amazing failure in the polls.

(CNN) -- Abducted American journalist Jill Carroll appeared in a video broadcast on Kuwaiti television Thursday, urging the U.S. government to meet her kidnappers' demands.

On the video, Carroll says she is OK.

"I'm here. I'm fine. Please, just do whatever they want. Give them whatever they want as quickly as possible. There is very short time. Please do it fast," she says. "That's all."

Al-Jazeera has been cutting the sound to all these videos, presumably because broadcasting the cries of a hostage would be a bit too cruel. A private television station posts it and now the American "news" networks flock to it like the attention whores they are.

Network news is entertainment. It's not news and shouldn't pretend to be. The Breaking News headline a few minutes before this story was posted had Carroll "pleading" with her captors. It's an eye-catching headline as long as you don't have the picture of Carroll calmly saying "I'm fine" right next to it. God I hate network news.

SACRAMENTO, California (AP) -- To graduate this year, high school senior Nadira Wasi faces a requirement that no class before hers has -- the state's high school exit exam.

Wasi, 17, is part of a program for students who need extra assistance in school. She passed the English section but has twice failed the math portion.

On Wednesday, 20 high school seniors and their parents sued the state Department of Education and school Superintendent Jack O'Connell, claiming the exam is illegal and discriminatory. They worry the test may prevent the students from graduating.

Never in my life would I wish on anyone the hell that teachers go through. You're paid next to nothing to teach students the basics that they're going to need for life, trying to help these kids because you love doing it, and they fight you tooth and nail every step of the way.

You can't do math Wasi? You don't get a diploma. Welcome to life, I'm glad you could join us. Awww, you're sad? Be sure and remember how to make that disappointed face, you're going to be needing it if you can't even make it through high school.

Oh my dear sweet god.

2006-02-07T21:04:48Z

Public domain continues to amaze me. As a film student, I almost cried when I found the old black and white movies available at archive.org. It's really, really sad how little exaggeration is in that statement.

But before today I had always associated public domain with things created before 1923, or copyrights that died with their owners; not to new works.

The good people at Librivox are creating books on tape, for free. People are invited to donate personally recorded texts to the already quickly growing library. It's all available for podcast, which is bringing in a few thousand downloads a week.

The texts are all public domain themselves, mostly coming from Project Gutenberg, but the recordings are the creation of unpaid volunteers.

Here's a short list of some of the completed works:

Completed Books

* Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice
* Baum, L. Frank. The Road to Oz
* Bunyan, John. Pilgrim's Progress
* Carroll, Lewis. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
* Christie, Agatha. The Mysterious Affair at Styles
* Conrad, Joseph. The Secret Agent
* Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol
* Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Notes from the Underground
* London, Jack. Call of the Wild
* Shelley, Mary W. Frankenstein, or Modern Prometheus
* Stevenson, Robert Louis. Treasure Island
* Twain, Mark. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

Completed Short Works

* Aesop. Aesop’s Fables, Volume 1 (Fables 1-25)
* Aesop. Aesop’s Fables, Volume 2 (Fables 26-50)
* Crane, Stephen. War is Kind
* The Founding Fathers. The Constitution of the United States
* Henry, O. The Gift of the Magi
* Irving, Washington. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
* Marx and Engels. The Communist Manifesto
* Shakespeare, William. A Personal Anthology of Shakespeare, compiled by Martin Clifton
* Swift, Jonathan. A Modest Proposal
* Twain, Mark. The Awful German Language
* Twain, Mark. The Stolen White Elephant
* United States of America. Declaration of Independence
* Wilde, Oscar. The Happy Prince and Other Tales

They also have a large amount of poetry, and the complete New Testament. It's like having two birthdays on Christmas.

Public domain; it's a movement.

Pack your shit, pack your shit, we gotta get outta here!

2006-02-07T17:05:22Z

Livejournal has gotten on my last nerve, turned it to straw and used it to break the camel's back. I really liked that camel too.

Aside from the crap layouts, extremely limited amount of editing you can do, basically giving you no control over how your page looks, LJ refuses to let me into the html of my own blog. I'm a dork and this is completely unacceptable.

Now they've screwed up the simple five dollar monthly payment for the meager extra services that LJ provides. I'm done.

I'm changing to a different blog service. I'm still shopping, but it's looking like the choice is between Blogger or Typepad. Typepad offers more flexibility in editing, but Blogger lets you right into the code. Typepad has a few more options, but Blogger is free. Both have fairly flexible layouts.

I'll decide later.

Why I no longer attend UNCW: Volume 1,832

2006-02-02T06:24:06Z

Op-Ed from The Seahawk, UNC-Wilmington's student newspaper - So the Pope Foundation is criticizing free speech. Of 16 schools in the North Carolina public system, 15 were condemned. This time, though, it seems the Pope Foundation is criticizing the lack of free speech. And who asked them to do this? No one; they did it out of the goodness of their hearts.

This is the same organization that, out of the goodness of their hearts, paid for a Christian fraternity to sue UNC-Chapel Hill for refusing to recognize an organization that discriminates based on religion. They also helped a student go after UNC-CH when in an e-mail, a professor criticized the comments the student made in her class. Where was the Pope Foundation when the professor's First Amendment rights were being violated? The rest

A student newspaper arguing against student rights. With the insight and intelligence of someone who skimmed a news headline a week ago, the staff editorial goes on to complain that the Pope Center reviews state policy.

Maybe the Pope Foundation should stop handing out unwanted criticisms and go back to doing what it does best: suing Carolina over frivolous matters.

As opposed to what, wanted criticism? Actually, the Pope Center is a project of the John Locke Foundation, a conservative think tank that does nothing but review North Carolina state policy. It doesn't sue, it reviews. Review is a good thing. Aside from being poorly written, poorly thought out, and carelessly confusing FIRE and the Pope Center, it bears an odd structural similarity to a "news" story in the same issue - Right to free speech at UNCW called into question.

This was really just the icing on my angry cake. Here The Seahawk takes a step past poor research into "I bet nobody really reads this."

But both FIRE and the Pope Foundation said this is not enough. Both cited a case at UNC-Greensboro, where students held a demonstration outside of free speech zones. When the administration reacted to punish the students, they sued the school for violating their First Amendment rights. The case has not come to a final verdict yet but UNCG did drop charges against the students.

That's right. FIRE sued UNC-Greensboro. It's amazing that no news source, no one at UNCG, or no one at FIRE knew about this. Could be because it didn't fucking happen. From personal experience I have a bit of a dislike for The Seahawk, so I took the time to write a letter. They don't put letters to the editor online, so I won't know if this ever got through.

EDIT: Actually they do put letters to the editor online. Mine went in a day before this week's edition was printed, so obviously it's not in. We'll see if it is next week.

In response to Amanda Huctheson's news story "Right to free speech at UNCW called into question" (Jan. 26), I have to point out several blatant mistakes.

Huctheson references a UNC-Greensboro event in which two students were charged with protesting outside of a free speech zone. She claims that the university was sued over this incident, but that the case had not reached a final verdict. The case has not reached a final verdict because UNC-Greensboro was never sued. Many state newspapers, in addition to the Associated Press, have covered this event. It would seem that the slightest bit of research could have revealed this fact.

In addition to making up court cases, Huctheson fails to reference the actual court case that prompted UNC-Greensboro to drop the charges against those students. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last September that university free speech zones are constitutional as long as they aren't enforced against students of the school. That court has authority over several states, including North Carolina. Therefore the UNC-Wilmington policy, as it stands right now, is unconstitutional.

Luke McIntyre

Signs of the Apocalypse

2006-01-31T23:41:16Z

Joy inspiring tidbits from the news.

Money well spent - President Vladimir Putin boasted Tuesday that Russia has missiles capable of penetrating any missile defense system.

The Democrats grab their ankles and lube up - Samuel Alito was sworn in as the nation's 110th Supreme Court justice.

Let's get this party...an insurance plan - Along with smoking and chronic infections, alcohol consumption is an important cause of several types of cancer.

I head Congress will be "looking into" this. Sometime soonish. Maybe. - US oil giant Exxon Mobil has posted a quarterly profit of $9.9 billion, the largest in US corporate history, on the back of record oil and gas prices.

File this under "Duh"

2006-01-30T21:52:31Z

Excerpt from Washington Post story - "Study Ties Political Leanings to Hidden Biases" - that accuses Bush supporters of being more prejudice against blacks than people who don't support Bush. Also shows that both sides are close-minded sheep.

Emory University psychologist Drew Westen put self-identified Democratic and Republican partisans in brain scanners and asked them to evaluate negative information about various candidates. Both groups were quick to spot inconsistency and hypocrisy -- but only in candidates they opposed.

When presented with negative information about the candidates they liked, partisans of all stripes found ways to discount it, Westen said. When the unpalatable information was rejected, furthermore, the brain scans showed that volunteers gave themselves feel-good pats -- the scans showed that "reward centers" in volunteers' brains were activated. The psychologist observed that the way these subjects dealt with unwelcome information had curious parallels with drug addiction as addicts also reward themselves for wrong-headed behavior.

Another study presented at the conference, which was in Palm Springs, Calif., explored relationships between racial bias and political affiliation by analyzing self-reported beliefs, voting patterns and the results of psychological tests that measure implicit attitudes -- subtle stereotypes people hold about various groups.

That study found that supporters of President Bush and other conservatives had stronger self-admitted and implicit biases against blacks than liberals did. Full story

Then there's the Times story showing that most political thought is irrational.

And we can't really have a conservative bashing party without mentioning psychologist Gordon Allport's 1946 study that "found that Protestant and Catholic students were more prejudiced against Blacks than those without strong religious affiliations. Numerous other studies have since replicated this correlation between prejudice and religion.

Despite religious teaching advocating love and acceptance, people who report being religious are also likely to be more prejudice. This finding prompted Daniel Batson and Christopher Burris (1993) to conclude that 'Among White middle-class Christians in the United States, religion is not associated with increased love and acceptance but with increased intolerance, prejudice, and bigotry.'" (quoted from a psychology textbook, more info found here)

Good god I love Wikipedia.

It's hard to evade arrest with a limp

2006-01-30T18:44:29Z

Check out the video of St. Louis police beating the crap out of a suspect. Part of me wanted to say the force they used might be a bit excessive, but then at the end of the video you see where police officers had to ram the suspect's full-size van to stop him. Even then the suspect tried running.

Put the lives of innocent pedestrians at risk with a car/van chase, not to mention the officers themselves, and you deserve a beating.

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe suspects simply evading arrest isn't a huge danger, or driving with malicious disregard for human safety is fine. I took a quick look around the same St. Louis website and found these events that happened in just the past three days:

Driver Fleeing From Jennings Police Crashes Into Second Car - A Jennings police officer dodged several bullets after being shot at early Saturday morning. The incident ended with a chase and a serious accident. The dramatic and near deadly series of events began around 2am Saturday morning. By Saturday evening, one person was hospitalized and two suspects were in custody.

Drunk Driver Gets 3 Years In Crash That Cost Officer His Legs - The man who hit a St. Louis police officer Matt Browning has been sentenced to 3 years in prison. John Mittelbuscher pleaded guilty to driving drunk in an accident that cost Officer Browning both his legs. In October 2004, Officer Browning was helping in an arrest near Busch stadium when Mittelbuscher's truck slammed into him. Browning was pinned between his patrol car and another vehicle.

It's sheer luck that these people did not kill someone. In my book, that's as bad as doing it. Stomp away.

Ooooo...pick me!

2006-01-30T07:57:56Z

"We need an international culling task force, a reliably robust, incorruptible public service to go around killing chickens"

New York Times - The United Nations is looking for some professional assassins. There is a world of chickens out there that need killing, and it must be done neatly — and humanely.

Many governments, veterinary specialists say, know little about killing millions of animals — especially when the aim is to spill as little blood as possible and to dispose of the bodies so they cannot spread the highly contagious virus to birds or humans.

Problems are cropping up everywhere. In Vietnam, for example, home flocks range free across muddy rice paddies, where chasing them is next to impossible. High water tables mean they cannot be buried, and poor local farmers cannot spare the gasoline or wood to incinerate them.

This is the problem that caused Dr. David Nabarro, special representative for avian flu for the United Nations secretary general, to call for an international chicken killing task force.

I am officially offering my services to Dr. Nabarro. Not only am I offering my services, Dr. Nabarro, I'm taking your job. You see, Nabs, we're at war. At war with chickens. With the animal activist stance on humanely killing your enemy, you are not fit to lead this army (BTW, I'll be starting an army).

As a Southerner, I know a thing or two about chicken, and as an American, I know a thing or two about wiping races off the planet. The plan for chicken extermination, codenamed KFC (Kill the Fucking Chickens), will comes in two phases.

PHASE ONE: Kill the Fucking Chickens

We will be implementing two methods of chicken murder. Method One: The Stomp, depicted below.

As you can plainly see, this is the most effective and cost efficient way to exterminate the enemy. We should start when they're young. Teams of steel-toe boot wearing, heavyset men will stomp their way through flocks of chicks. In the event of a boot shortage, or the unthinkable event that America runs out of fat asses, we have Method Two: Chicken Choker.

Quite simply, grab the chicken by its neck and shake it like she talked back to you in public.

PHASE TWO: Disposal

The infected chicken corpses will no doubt be a biohazard. To deal with this, I suggest we pull a throwback to the days of Manifest Destiny.

Happy Thanksgiving Motherfuckers.