Author: jacob

Hilzoy Schools the Pope

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Excuse me a moment while I curse out a “holy” man. I can’t stand Pope Beenadick XVI, who used to be Cardinal Ratfucker, and likely has always been an insufferable ass. It seems like every few days, we’re treated to a new bit of wankery, whether it be bawling people out for buying stuff, or saying that Native Americans were “silently longing”for Christianity, or saying that only the Roman Catholic Church brings hope, or yawping about how Catholics must put a stop to child abuse (without, of course, mentioning that they might best begin by, y’know, not fucking sheltering child raping priests). The man is a complete prick.

Which is why I’m so delighted that Hilzoy once again borrowed the Smack-o-Matic and schooled the Pope with it:

I see that while I was away celebrating Christmas, Pope Benedict decided, as Time put it, to take “a subtle swipe at those who might undergo sex-change operations or otherwise attempt to alter their God-given gender.” Here’s what he said:

“What is necessary is a kind of ecology of man, understood in the correct sense. When the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman and asks that this order of creation be respected, it is not the result of an outdated metaphysic. It is a question here of faith in the Creator and of listening to the language of creation, the devaluation of which leads to the self-destruction of man and therefore to the destruction of the same work of God. That which is often expressed and understood by the term “gender”, results finally in the self-emancipation of man from creation and from the Creator. Man wishes to act alone and to dispose ever and exclusively of that alone which concerns him. But in this way he is living contrary to the truth, he is living contrary to the Spirit Creator. The tropical forests are deserving, yes, of our protection, but man merits no less than the creature, in which there is written a message which does not mean a contradiction of our liberty, but its condition.

[snip]

It is not true that the natural world teaches us that marriage is between a man and a woman — it doesn’t have teachings on the subject of either human or divine institutions, and it surely does not teach us that homosexuality is unknown in nature. (The Pope is reputedly very smart and intellectually curious; did he somehow miss the stories about gay penguins, fruit flies, bonobos, and even, topically enough, black swans?) Lots of fish change sex, as did this ex-hen. There are male animals who act like females, and vice versa.

More to the point: so what? Lots of things that we find immoral are widespread in nature. Spiders eat their mates, for instance, but that doesn’t imply that it’s OK for us. Lots of things we think are just fine are unknown in animals — number theory, for instance, or blogging. If you want to argue about what we learn when we “listen to the language of creation”, you need to explain how we distinguish it from, say, the language of prejudice. Does the fact that the purpose of eating seems to be nourishment imply that it is immoral to drink diet soda? Does the fact that we ‘naturally’ get around using our legs imply that we were wrong to invent the bicycle, or, for that matter, the wheelchair? Does the fact that we are born vulnerable to a whole host of diseases mean that we should not develop vaccines and cures?

Personally, I think that the idea of defining what’s “natural” for human beings is generally confused. What’s natural is often contrasted to what’s cultural, but human beings are social animals. If anything is natural for human beings, it is being raised by other human beings, and learning things from them: if we tried to find out what’s ‘natural’ for human beings by dropping an infant into an unpopulated wilderness, we’d have to conclude that what comes naturally to us is starvation.

I stand in awe.

Hilzoy Schools the Pope
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Happy Hour Discurso

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Today’s opining on the public discourse.

Thank you, George W. Bush, for bringing peace to Israel:

Israeli fighter-bombers and combat helicopters strike dozens of targets inside Gaza starting shortly after local dawn. Guardian UK reporting 120 dead. Other accounts as high as 180, with over 300 wounded. Video shows that large high explosive bombs were used by the Israelis, and witness report massive explosions. Witnesses say that Gaza’s police chief is among the dead.

Most were Hamas security and police forces, but many were also civilians, including children. Gaza hospitals are overwhelmed with the casualties. Israel has announced that it’s intent is to destroy Hamas, and called for Arab Palestinians to reject Hamas. Inside Gaza the belief is that Israel, Egypt, and the US are trying to destroy Hamas, which is the de facto government of Gaza. Peres stated that there would be no “invasion” of Gaza, , but left open military incursions.

The strikes were expected for Sunday, but were done a day earlier to increase casualties, in what is now clearly the first step to escalation of the conflict. The bulk of the casualties occurred when Israeli jets struck a graduation at the Hamas headquarters.

Remember how everybody was going to be singing “Kumbaya” by now? Good times:

In January, George W. Bush famously predicted he would broker a Middle East peace by the end of his presidency. Now with Israel’s launch this morning of airstrikes in Gaza — which so far have left 155 dead — Bush’s pledge of a two-state solution is just the latest failure of his disastrous tenure in the White House.

[snip]

After years of malign neglect regarding the simmering Israeli-Palestinian conflict, President Bush launched his renewed peace effort at the November 2007 Annapolis conference. During a subsequent meeting on January 11, 2008 with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Bush made his pledge of a signed agreement during his presidency:

“I believe it’s going to happen, that there will be a signed peace treaty by the time I leave office…I’m on a timetable. I’ve got 12 months.”

[snip]

For her part, Secretary of State Rice finally put an end to Bush’s wishful thinking on December 15. After a meeting of the diplomatic Quartet of Mideast peacemakers – the U.S., the U.N., the European Union and Russia – held at the United Nations, Rice announced:

“They won’t achieve agreement by the end of the year, but they have achieved a good deal of progress in their negotiations, a good deal of progress in the work that is being done on the ground.”

Right. Progress. So what does progress look like, anyway?

One target was the Gaza City police station where a graduation ceremony was taking place (this is raw footage from the aftermath of the attack and is graphic):

Ian Welsh has a good analysis (okay, two) of what Israel can hope to gain from this, which is jack diddly shit. Israel and America both are currently run by men who think the answer to every argument is a bomb. The fact that bombs have failed so often and so dramatically doesn’t deter them in the slightest.

Israel didn’t used to fight so many stupid wars. The fact that they are now might possibly have something to do with the fact that America, their staunchest ally, has been run for eight years by batshit insane neocon fucktards. Thank you, George W. Bush, for fucking up the world even further than it was already fucked up.

And what’s America’s response to this development been? What it always is when a Bushie’s in charge. They’re lying about it:

N.S.A. Spokesman Gordon Johndroe condemed Hamas for breaking the 4 month de-facto truce by firing rockets into Israel.

It was “completely unacceptable” for Hamas, which controls Gaza, to launch attacks on Israel after a truce lasting several months, said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council.

AP

The only trouble is it was Israel who breached the de-facto truce on November 4th with an IDF raid into Gaza killed 6 Palestinians. Hamas reacted immidately to The IDF´s breach of the truce by lanching rockets into Israel later on the 4th.

Gaza truce broken as Israeli raid kills six Hamas gunmen

A four-month ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza was in jeopardy today after Israeli troops killed six Hamas gunmen in a raid into the territory.

Hamas responded by firing a wave of rockets into southern Israel, although no one was injured.

I can hardly wait to see what other lies they spin around this. And just think, my darlings, he has over 20 days left. That’s plenty of time for him to fuck things up even more spectacularly.

We’re not likely to see more effective Republicon leadership come down the pike, either. Remember yesterday, when we discovered that Chip Saltzman, one of the contenders for RNC chairman, was handing out racist CDs as part of his campaign and responding to the backlash by saying it’s all just good, clean political fun? Remember how there was nothing but silence from the current leadership?

That changed this afternoon, nearly 24 hours after the news broke.

Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan issued a statement Saturday distancing the party’s leadership from one of the GOP’s best-known operatives, Chip Saltsman, who distributed a CD containing “Barack the Magic Negro” as part of his campaign to be elected chairman of the Republican National Committee next month.

Duncan, who has served the campaigns of five presidents dating back to Richard Nixon, is seeking reelection as the party’s 60th chairman in a hotly contested race that includes Saltsman and several other viable candidates.

Duncan’s statement, in its entirety, read: “The 2008 election was a wake-up call for Republicans to reach out and bring more people into our party. I am shocked and appalled that anyone would think this is appropriate as it clearly does not move us in the right direction.”

Um…

That’s it?

That’s the best he could come up with? Not “this was wrong because racism is wrong.” Not “I am shocked and appalled that anyone would think this is appropriate” period? Notice that it’s all about consequences, not remorse. Duncan is upset because this debacle makes it harder to sucker people into becoming Republicons. He’s acting just like a serial killer. Serial killers who cry when they get caught aren’t crying for their victims, but themselves.

So are the Cons. Which demonstrates as clearly as anything that the only thing they find wrong about racist bullshit is that people won’t let them get away with it. They see nothing intrinsically wrong with making racist jokes, treating minorities like inferior beings, and discarding them once they’ve outlived their usefulness.

We allowed these fucktards to be elected. The majority of our fellow citizens trusted them to govern well, govern fairly, and keep the world from falling to bits.

If we’d been paying more attention to their idea of a joke, we would’ve easily been able to predict how all this would turn out.

Happy Hour Discurso

Perspective

jacob

Captain Future has an absolutely gorgeous diary up at Daily Kos telling the story of how this photo was taken:

The Apollo 8 mission was to just orbit the Moon, not land. The astronauts had been concentrating on the lunar surface, when Frank Borman caught a glimpse of color on the gray horizon, a conspicuous glow of blue and white against the black sky. It was the Earth. While he excitedly snapped photos in black and white, Bill Anders loaded his camera with color film, and got the shot that became historic. We know it as “Earthrise.”

And it almost never happened. But you’ll have to head over there for the full story, and the full-size photo. I invite you to read the story, and then just spend a few moments gazing at that cloud-swirled blue marble. That’s home, rising in a lunar sky.

There’s another photo, not quite as famous, but just as awe-inspiring:


Carl Sagan named it “The Pale Blue Dot.” It was Voyager’s Valentine’s Day gift to Earth, a portrait. The distance was so vast – nearly 4 billion miles – that Earth filled less than a pixel, bathed in a ray from the sun.

Seeing Earth like this places everything in a different perspective:

In a commencement address delivered May 11, 1996, Sagan related his thoughts on the deeper meaning of the photograph:

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

Exactly so.

Perspective

Bugger This. I Want A Better World.

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Just past the winter solstice, on the cusp of a New Year, my thoughts inevitably begin to play the retrospection game. I hate it. All of those end-of-year “Best of/Worst of” lists drive me crazy, my New Year’s resolutions are always the same, and it’s not like things magically change on January 1st. Every year I am firm in my determination not to indulge in the sillyness.

This year, the failure doesn’t sting. Gazing backward leaves my jaw agape. Just a few highlights: we found water ice on Mars. We learned that America’s government approved torture at the very highest levels. The world’s economy imploded with horrific speed. Barack Obama became America’s first African American president, and gave us all something to look forward to in 2009: a future.

And I became a blogger, joined forces with other brilliant bloggers, and started Carnival of the Elitist Bastards. This is of a piece with voting for Obama. I did all three things for one simple reason: I want a better world.

We can make that happen.

Several years ago, I read a graphic novel series called The Authority. You all know about Spiderman’s schtick – “with great power comes great responsibility.” Well, Jenny Sparks, leader of The Authority, takes that to its logical conclusion. If you have the power to change the world for the better, that’s what you do. No whining, no excuses. Do the job. Fix the world.

Together, we can do that.

We all have our special talents, areas of interest and expertise. We’ve put them to good use in these last many sailings, battling ignorance, expanding knowledge. We’re taking back the word “elitist” and making it respectable again. And it’s working. Have you seen the Elitist Bastards Obama’s stocked his Cabinet with? There’s a Nobel Laureate in there, for the first time ever.

Okay, so maybe we can’t quite claim responsibility for that. Not completely. But every one of us who voted for him has played a part in bringing wisdom back to Washington. I claim this year in the name of Elitist Bastard.

We have a chance now to make this a better world. Time we seize it with both hands.

This year, we shall make it our business to spread the love of learning. We shall ensure that the word “elitist” is once again a mark of distinction rather than a cry of derision. We will continue to beat down ignorance wherever it raises its dribbling head.

But we can go further.

Are you fed up with poverty? Act. Support the politicians who are working to eradicate it, volunteer, donate, train people for new and better jobs.

Fed up with ignorance? Act. Watch what your school board does. Push for better education standards in your country. Promote childhood literacy. Educate.

Fed up with war? Act. Push politicians to reach for diplomacy before they turn to armies. Get involved with programs that attempt to bring enemies together. Make people all too aware of the cost of war.

Fed up with global warming? Act. Get the facts out there. Support environmental groups. Plant a tree, green up your house, protest pollution. Roll up your sleeves and clean up a neighborhood.

We can do much more than we think, just by taking action. Signing a petition may not seem like much, but it adds one more voice, turning a murmur into a shout. Donating a few dollars may not seem like enough, but as we saw with Obama’s campaign, enough small donations add up to plenty of money for change. A few hours of your time may not seem like much, but a few hours may be all that’s needed to change someone’s life. Don’t hold back just because you can’t do much. Become a snowflake, as my character Ishaarda Telsuun recommends:

“The answer is leverage. Place a thousand snowflakes in precisely the right places, and you cause a thousand avalanches…. A thousand snowflakes can reach half the world.”

Ghandi said we must be the change we wish to see in the world. We don’t even have to become fabulously rich or powerful or prestigious to do it. All we have to do is add our snowflake’s worth of weight to the scales: enough of us together will make them tilt.

And then we change the world for the better.

Bugger This. I Want A Better World.

"Please Don't Divorce Us" – Show of Solidarity

jacob

The Courage Campaign is putting together a heart-tugging slideshow filled with same-sex couples, family and friends, all making one simple request: “Please Don’t Divorce Us:”

Infamous prosecutor Ken Starr has filed a legal brief — on behalf of the “Yes on 8” campaign — to nullify the 18,000 same-sex marriages performed in California between May and November of 2008.

Yes, they really did go there after promising repeatedly not to do this.

It’s time to put a face to Ken Starr’s shameful legal proceedings. To put a face to the 18,000 couples facing forcible divorce. To put a face to marriage equality. Because, gay or straight, YOU are the face of the Marriage Equality Movement.

The Courage Campaign just launched “Please Don’t Divorce” a community photo project. They will break your heart and have made me cry on more than one occasion.

Please click through the photos in the slideshow below and then submit your own photo, as an individual, a couple or in a group (perhaps with your family over the holidays). Take a picture holding a piece of paper that says “Please don’t divorce us,” “Please don’t divorce my moms,””Please don’t divorce my friends, Dawn and Audrey,” “Please don’t divorce Californians” or whatever you want after “Please don’t divorce…” and send it to: [email protected].

As soon as I’ve gotten myself put into somewhat photogenic shape, I shall be sending in a photo. I’ll post it here for you all to peruse as well.

Time for a show of solidarity. The bigots who want to destroy thousands of marriages and deny marriage to thousands more need to see exactly who they’re harming, and that these couples aren’t alone.

(Tip o’ the shot glass to Crooks and Liars, first among others I’ve found this on.)

"Please Don't Divorce Us" – Show of Solidarity

Happy Hour Discurso

jacob1 Comment

Today’s opining on the public discourse.

At least one of us is enjoying the snow:


You can’t see it in this pic, but Misha’s watching snowflakes falling while her mommy gnashes her teeth. Our parking lot looks a lot like the Arctic Sea. It’s full of water, chunks of ice, and huge ruts of churned snow. I was tempted to venture out today until I walked down to check the road and saw a pickup truck nearly wreck on its way through. It heaved like a mechanical bull and then wedged itself to a stop in the deeper snow along the side. This is why I’m home cruising the intertoobz rather than out having dinner with a friend.

Grr. Argh.

Welcome to the paradox of global warming. As the seas warm, more moisture gets sucked up into the atmosphere, skedaddles south, and dumps itself all over normally snow-free parts of the country. And guess what? Things are only likely to get much, much worse very quickly indeed:

According to a new report led by the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. “faces the possibility of much more rapid climate change by the end of the century than previous studies have suggested.” The report, commissioned by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, found that global sea levels could rise higher than a 2007 U.N. Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) study had concluded:

In one of the report’s most worrisome findings, the agency estimates that in light of recent ice sheet melting, global sea levels could rise as much as 4 feet by 2100. The intergovernment panel had projected a rise of no more than 1.5 feet by that time, but satellite data over the last two years show the world’s major ice sheets are melting much more rapidly than previously thought. The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are losing an average of 48 cubic miles of ice a year, equivalent to twice the amount of ice in the Alps.

Thank you, George W. Bush, for eight years of inaction. It sure is nice that pollution, environmental degradation, and foreign wars over dwindling oil supplies could rage unchecked so that your buddies in the oil and coal industries could get rich.

Apparently, they weren’t reinvesting that money in containment walls:

By now anybody paying attention is aware of the massive spill of coal-ash sludge that took place in Roane County, Tennessee earlier this week, dumping a reported 1.7 million cubic yards of toxic sludge into the Emory River, a spill many cited as larger than the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.

Except that it wasn’t 1.7 million cubic yards [link moved]:

Authority officials initially said that about 1.7 million cubic yards of wet coal ash had spilled when the earthen retaining wall of an ash pond breached, but on Thursday they released the results of an aerial survey that showed the actual amount was 5.4 million cubic yards, or enough to flood more than 3,000 acres one foot deep. The amount now said to have been spilled is larger than the amount the Authority initially said was in the pond, 2.6 million cubic yards.

As with everything that happens under Bush’s watch, the initial reports drastically underestimated the scope of the disaster. What a fucking shock.

Here’s a description of the disaster’s aftermath from United Mountain Defense. Please contain your surprise upon discovering that the Tennessee Valley Authority has done bugger-all to prevent or respond to said disaster:

TVA says the area is not toxic but you can see coal sludge in the water and dead fish on the banks. The members of this community are without clean water and many without electricity or gas heat. We met people who were given motel rooms by TVA and others on the same street that have been without heat for days in 27° weather and others who have been vomiting for more than 12 hours after drinking the water.
We visited approximately 40 households and many people were frustrated they had not received any information other than what they could figure out from the minute long television segments or an isolated phone call from the water or gas utility. Residents say that they are not surprised by the flood because TVA has been fixing leaks in the retention wall for years and one person said this wall had been leaking for months before it broke.
And, for good measure, an email from one of the United Mountain Defense folks that puts paid to the idea that the response to this disaster has been anything like advertised:

After our chat we set out to find the silt screens, Coast Guard, gravel berm, and live fish that TVA has been advertising as truths in the Emory River adjacent to the spill site. We launched a boat after witnessing three kayakers yesterday. To our surprise we were not chased down by the Coast Guard. We did not have to paddle over any silt fences. We did not have to portage over any gravel berms. We did not have to look hard to miss the fisherman or fish.

And yes, if you’re wondering, the TVA is a federal agency, not state. Bush’s traditions of lying, obfuscating, and denying disasters flourish from top to bottom. This is what happens when we let Cons play at governing for eight years.

And what are the Cons doing while Tennessee chokes? Proving they have a tin-ear when it comes to racist overtones:

Last month, we learned that Katon Dawson, a leading candidate for the chairmanship of the RNC, has been a longtime member of a whites-only country club in South Carolina. This month, Chip Saltsman, the former campaign manager for Mike Huckabee, embarrassed himself in a far more obvious way.

RNC candidate Chip Saltsman’s Christmas greeting to committee members includes a music CD with lyrics from a song called “Barack the Magic Negro,” first played on Rush Limbaugh’s popular radio show. […]

The CD, called “We Hate the USA,” lampoons liberals with such songs as “John Edwards’ Poverty Tour,” “Wright place, wrong pastor,” “Love Client #9,” “Ivory and Ebony” and “The Star Spanglish banner.” Several of the track titles, including “Barack the Magic Negro,” are written in bold font.

[snip]

Saltsman defended his gift to RNC members, noting that he’s a longtime friend of Shanklin and his songs for Limbaugh’s program are meant to be “light-hearted political parodies.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates added, “There’s also a tune called ‘The Star Spanglish Banner.’ Get it? Negroes!! Spanglish!! No?? Clearly your too PC. Seriously, where do people get this idea that the GOP is racist? It really is one of the great mysteries of our time…”

Sometimes, just sometimes, I wish the Smack-o-Matic wasn’t virtual, that I had a license to employ it as frequently as needed, and that it had the power to knock some sense into these raving fucktards. Of course, I’d have to ramp up on the protein and start working out five hours a day in order to develop the upper-body strength that would be needed. Even though the Smack-o-Matic is semi-automated, the sheer volume of rampant stupidity is too much for my muscles to keep pace with.

But what about those Cons who luurves Obama? Aren’t they the voice of reason that could lead the Republicon party to harmony? No. Digby reminds us what song they’re really singing:

It seems that everywhere I turn professional Republicans are falling all over themselves about how much the love our president elect. While I don’t doubt that many GOP members of the public are enthusiastic, let’s just say I’m a little bit skeptical that all these beltway insiders are being altogether sincere in their praise.

Newtie started the trend with his little scold to the RNC about the Blogjevich controversy, which I explained here. It’s a ploy, don’t believe it. When you see snakes like Alex Castellanos saying this, watch your back…

[snip]

He’s the guy who said that calling Hillary Clinton a bitch was just a descriptive term. If anyone thinks this guy (or Pat Robertson) has been converted, think again. They are doing this for political purposes. They want to make sure that he owns the next couple of years, which are likely to be very tough. They will obstruct, of course, but all this happy talk is a pretense designed to appease the masses who are hoping against hope that Obama can turn this ship around.

Watch for the knife in the back. The smarter Cons are singing Kumbaya right now because of numbers like these and these, while humming under their breath “Just you wait.” When Obama doesn’t right the ship instantly upon taking office, you can bet they’ll start clucking over how disappointing it all is and how much the stimulus is costing and how much better things would be if only the Cons were in charge. And quite a few people in America will be stupid enough to chime in.

The groundwork is busily being laid. Fortunately, most of it looks about as stable as the sludge in Tennessee:

The last time Democrats won the White House, Senate, and House, it was 1992, and their majority status was short-lived — 1994 didn’t go well for the party. The National Review‘s Peter Kirsanow believes there’s a similar opportunity awaiting the Republican Party in two years from now.

Rod Blagojevich, $1 trillion “fiscal stimulus”, Harry Reid, expiring tax cuts, Nancy Pelosi, socialized health care, Charlie Rangel, reinstitution of the oil drilling ban, Joe Biden, liberal judicial nominees, Al Franken (maybe), nuclear Iran, John Murtha, car czars, Dennis Kucinich, PC culture, Chris Dodd, entitlement explosion, Barney Frank, entitlement implosion, Barbara Boxer, card check, the Clintons, Russian adventurism.

If Republicans can’t come back in 2010 they should be sued for political malpractice.

Anything’s possible, I suppose, but this doesn’t strike me as much of a gameplan. Indeed, if these are the variables that are supposed to lead to a GOP “comeback,” it’s no wonder Republicans are depressed.

It’s n
ot that I don’t think they’ll eventually be able to con the public – they always do. It’s just that I think they’re going to have to find better arguments than this to win over more than the 23% who say they’ll miss Bush.

Hopefully by the time they come up with something, Americans will be too addicted to responsive government, affordable healthcare, clean air and water, green technology, and the absence of toxic sludge in their yards to pay much attention.

Happy Hour Discurso

Friday Favorite Winter Wonders

jacob

I’m trying very hard right now to think good things about winter. Considering my road and parking lot are buried under nearly six inches of icy slush that’s nigh-impossible to navigate, this is difficult. But there are redeeming qualities to winter. I even have a few favorite things about snow.

For one thing, it makes shriveled berries look rather artistic and lovely:


Everything looks prettier with a coat of new snow. And it’s a lot of fun to go tramping through. Long rambles going nowhere in particular, watching rays of sunlight set the snow aglow, is tremendous fun. I like watching how the light varies: now bright and sparkling, then muted and soft-focus. Then there’s the running: when you come across a long flat stretch, it’s almost impossible not to indulge in a good gallop, just for the sheer wacky fun of it.

Just ask this guy:

So yes, snow can be fun. And what better tribute to it than Loreena McKennitt’s song “Snow”? I found this video montage of figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi set to it, and thus combined two of my great loves: beautiful music and art on ice.

I used to be an enormous figure skating fan. One of my best memories is the Alberville Olympics. My friend JT and I spent weeks watching the figure skating competitions together. You have not experienced a truly surreal figure skating viewing experience until you’ve sat there getting all ooey and aahy with a 6’4, heavy-metal listening, cowboy boot wearing, red-blooded male. After several weeks of exposure, we both decided that we absolutely had to drive to Flagstaff and indulge in some skating ourselves. So no shit, there we were, filled with visions of triple axels, inching our way across the ice like ancient grannies. The reality definitely did not match the fantasy. And then there was the speed-skater-in-training who snookered us into holding hands with her. We didn’t expect her to take off like a rocket and drag us along.

We discovered we were not speed skaters, but we were certainly speed fallers.

That was the year I fell utterly in love with Sergei Ponomarenko and Marina Klimova. They are the epitome of art on ice. They aren’t just phenomenal ice dancers, they are superb storytellers. Not to mention Marina is a drop-dead gorgeous redhead, which adds a whole new dimension of beauty.

Here they are doing Dracula:

Even if you don’t like figure skating, you have to admit that was something outstanding.

Here’s another something outstanding. If you want to see courage defined as endurance for one moment more, go watch Elvis Stojko win the Olympic silver in 1998. Most viewers had no clue he was suffering from a groin pull until he nearly collapsed after finishing his long program. It’s a moment I’ll never forget.

So those are a few of my favorite winter wonders. Turns out it’s not such a bad season after all…

Friday Favorite Winter Wonders

Open Question

jacob2 Comments

I spent a goodly part of Christmas Day on the phone with a friend, discussing various and sundry. What interests us here is the bit where we talked about writers and detail.

Detail is one of those bêtes noires of fiction writing. No one seems quite sure how much or how little should be included. Styles range from the stupefying onslaught of minutae during the age of Deathless Prose to the Spartan anorexia of Hemingway. Compare Les Miserables to For Whom the Bell Tolls, for instance: two gargantuan stories, very different styles. Victor Hugo spends a good part of his 1,463 pages plunging off the main path into the thickets of whatever captured his fancy, breaking into the story to write essays on things only tangenitally related to the novel; Hemingway gets the job done in a mere 471 pages, without side trips. You don’t learn quite as much about life, the universe and everything, but at the same time, at least you don’t get so bogged down in detail that you forget what the characters were doing before the author stopped the story in its tracks to describe every aspect of an incidental something.

There are fans of both types of literature. I happen to be one of those who can’t stand Hemingway. I’ve read a few of his stories and attempted a novel once or twice, and I just can’t get involved. It’s so sparsely written that it feels like an outline, especially his dialogue. I need flesh with the bones of a story, or I’m just not able to immerse myself. But I drowned in Hugo’s magnum opus. Only the musical saved me.

I’ve read with close attention for decades now, and I still can’t figure out why some authors manage to detail very nearly every thread in someone’s coat without stopping the story dead, and others get in trouble merely mentioning that someone’s wearing jeans. My friend and I think it has a lot to do with relevance: if the detail tells us something about the character, if it’s in service to the story and not just there from some misguided attempt to make the world feel “real,” then it works. But he and I part ways when it comes to how much detail is necessary or desirable. He likes more left to the imagination: I like enough to form a thorough mental image. I can’t connect to a story unless I can see the people I’m dealing with, the landscapes they’re moving through, and the objects they’re interacting with. As long as the story moves, I don’t mind if the author’s detail is as rich as Belgian chocolate – I prefer it that way.

Detail’s very much on my mind right now because I’ll be writing fiction again soon. I want to avoid worldbuilder’s disease, but at the same time, I want to ensure that the world I’m creating is detailed enough that readers experience it fully. And so, I’m curious: how do you lot like your detail? How much is too much, and how little is too little? Any particularly egregious examples of Authors Gone Wrong? Any prose passages whose detail captivated you so fully that you remember them to this day?

Have at. I’m off to try to wrestle with ye olde basics of rebuilding a world with cracked foundations.

Open Question

Sheriff Joe Jumps the Shark

jacob

Apparently, being treated as some sort of redneck hero for dying jail underwear pink and creating tent cities has rather gone to Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s head. He was always an authoritarian bully, but he’s been getting crazier and crazier over the years. This year, it appears, he’s finally tipped himself right over into fascism:

I’m spending my Christmas vacation in lovely Maricopa County, AZ, this week with my in-laws. And I have to tell you that, thanks to Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his gang of thugs deputies, I’ll be somewhat relieved when I leave.

After all, how would you like to live in a place where law enforcement actually arrests you for applauding briefly at a public county council meeting? Where they threaten and intimidate you just for showing up in the first place?

That’s what’s been happening here.

It all has to do with an anti-Arpaio group called Maricopa Citizens for Safety Accountability, which formed last spring in response to investigative reports and studies demonstrating that Arpaio’s insane obsession with illegal immigrants was destroying his office’s ability to actually deal with real law enforcement work.

MCSA’s members have been turning up at meetings of the county Board of Supervisors and trying to speak, but the board refuses to let MCSA do so except for brief comment periods at the end of its meetings. Moreover, the board meetings are now patrolled by a huge contingent of deputies who treat the citizens who attend like criminals.

Last week, they went even further:

[snip]

And, of course, deputies and security agents at the Board of Supervisors meetings have begun to arrest spectators. That development came Wednesday.

During the meeting, Board of Supervisors chairman Andy Kunasek warned spectators that they were being disruptive by applauding speakers, but deputies neither dismissed nor arrested spectators who applauded an animal advocate or a public transportation advocate who sang a birthday song for Kunasek.

The scene was different when about 15 spectators stood and clapped for 20 seconds after a Maricopa Citizens group member spoke critically of Arpaio during her turn at the lectern.

Deputies arrested Joel Nelson, Jason Odhner, Monica Sandschafer and Kristy Theilen on allegations of disorderly conduct and trespassing.

[snip]

Deputies made the arrests in a clear attempt to intimidate people associated with Maricopa Citizens, said Carlos Calindo, who attended the meeting.

“It is incredible the way they behaved,” said Calindo, who is not a member of the citizens organization. “You come in there and the atmosphere is incredibly oppressive. They yell at you. They scold you. They try to intimidate you. It is improper.”

Must be because Faux gave him a teevee show. He thinks he’s acceptable.

It’s time for me old home state to wake up and smell the reality. Joe must go.

Sheriff Joe Jumps the Shark

Horror of Horrors: Socialized Medicine

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To hear the Cons tell it, universal healthcare will be the End of Everything. Of course, for them, it seems that anything which benefits a broad swath of humanity is a Terrible Evil that Must Be Fought. So a story like this must truly strike terror into their shriveled little hearts:

[Our son] was first diagnosed by our pediatrician, a private sector doctor, who sent us to the (public) specialised pediatric hospital in Paris for additional exams. We did a scan and a MRI the same day, and that brought the diagnosis we know. He was hospitalised the same day, with surgery immediately scheduled for two days later. At that point, we only had to provide our social security number.

Surgery – an act that the doctor that performed it (one of the world’s top specialists in his field) told us he would not have done it five years before – actually took place the next week, because emergency cases came up in the meantime. After a few days at the hospital, we went home. At that point, we had spent no money, and done little more than filling up a simple form with name and social security number.

Meetings with the doctor in charge of his long term treatment, and with a specialised re-education hospital, were immediately set up, and chemiotherapy and physical therapy were scheduled for the next full year.

Physical therapy included a few hours each day in a specialised hospital, with a varied team of specialists (kinesitherapy, ergotherapy, psychologist, orthophonist) and, had we needed it, schooling. As we lived not too far away, we tried to keep our son at his pre-school for half the day, and at the hospital the other half. Again, apart from filling up a few forms, we had nothing to do.

My wife pretty much stopped working to take my son to the hospital every day (either for reeducation or treatment) – and was allocated a stipend by the government as caregiver, for a full year (equal to just under the minimum wage). Had we needed it, transport by ambulance would have been taken care of, free of charge for us (as it were, car commutes to the hospital could also be reimbursed).

During the chemiotherapy, if he had any side effects (his immune system being weakened, any normal children’s disease basically required him to be hospitalised to be given full anti-biotic treatment), we’d call up the hospital and just come around. Either of us could spend the night with him as needed. We never spent a dime when we did so.

Sounds absolutely awful, doesn’t it? I mean, who in their right mind would want to have state-of-the-art healthcare ready and available should a catastrophic illness strike? How can anyone expect to get better if they don’t have the invigorating fight with insurance companies (if you even have insurance), your employer (if you don’t get fired for missing too much work), and impending bankruptcy to look forward to?

Reading this diary made me realize exactly why the French sometimes look down on us as barbarians.

Horror of Horrors: Socialized Medicine