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March 2004

March 31, 2004

I've never really been a fan of Barbara Streisand. Her singing doesn't do anything for me, and her acting is horrible - and it's not like I find her at all attractive. To be honest, I've had more enjoyment from the South Park treatment of Barbara Streisand as a horrible monster than anything based on her real life.

That changes today, though. I just stumbled across a speech she gave after receiving the Humanitarian Award from the Human Rights Campaign, and she speaks my kind of language when it comes to human rights and politics. Check it out for yourself.

The Struggle for Equal Rights Continues
Remarks by Barbra Streisand Upon Her receipt of the Human Rights Campaign Humanitarian Award, March 6, 2004

I have been fortunate to receive a few awards in my lifetime, and I always appreciate them, but I must say that this is a very special one because the gay community has supported me from the very beginning. I know that this is a challenging moment in your history. So I am very proud to accept this award from the Human Rights Campaign at this time. You are on the frontlines in the struggle for equal rights, even as continued prejudice stands in the way.

The American Constitution is a magical document that has evolved over 200 plus years. While we revere it, it did not start out as a perfect document. This Republic was founded with a Constitution that counted slaves as three-fifths human. It took decades and a Civil War, the deadliest in U.S. history, to erase that stain upon our country. It took over 100 years to bring women into the political system by giving them the right to vote. Interracial marriage was illegal in some states until 1967. Now the Bush Administration wants to change the positive inclusive direction of our Constitution by calling for an amendment that authorizes discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Well, I say, no way. Dr. Martin Luther King taught us that the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice. We must always go forward, towards greater liberty and greater equality, not backward.

You know, for me, the realization that two people should have the right to form a sacred union regardless of their gender was strengthened when I saw a performance of the play The Normal Heart in 1985. After feeling the love those two men had for each other, I dare anybody not to want them to get married by the end.

The law cannot dictate matters of the heart. When two people form a deep bond, there is usually a soul connection, and the soul has no gender. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are fundamental rights in this country. Happiness can be many things - a good meal, a good friend, a warm puppy, and certainly...love. How can anyone legislate who you can love? That is a human right, the right to love and be loved.

And when you love someone, whether you're in a heterosexual or same-gender relationship, shouldn't you be able to visit them in the hospital when they're sick or dying? Shouldn't everyone have the right to enter into a loving, legally binding, committed relationship that takes on special responsibilities and obligations?

Current civil union legislation doesn't go far enough in protecting equal rights. We must not deny gay families many of the benefits that help keep families strong...social security, pensions, veteran's support, inheritance, the right to take unpaid leave to care for a spouse...the list goes on and on.

Instead of helping families, this president wants to spend a billion and a half dollars to bolster marriage. Turning government into a marriage counselor is a joke...a waste of time and money. It's not a policy; it's a diversion.

But this administration regularly uses the politics of diversion to their advantage. They cleverly use divisive cultural issues to avoid talking about other serious problems, such as unemployment and healthcare. They go after Saddam because they can't find bin Ladin ... They want to send missions to Mars instead of protecting the Earth... Tax cuts for the wealthy instead of assisting the poor...

You have to look at what Bush does, not what he says. Talk is cheap. He expresses empathy for military families and then cuts their benefits...He names a proposal "The Clear Skies Initiative" that pollutes the planet...He says he'll be a uniter and then drives us apart...He steals the slogan "No Child Left Behind" and then breaks his promise to fund his reforms.

Truly, I stand here flabbergasted at what is going on in today's world. Never in my life have I witnessed a president and an administration that is so out of step with the needs of the country, so threatening to our future and so abusive in its use of power.

The Clinton administration left this country with a budget surplus, and also a surplus in the goodwill we shared with our allies. Now we have a deficit in both.

Before the war in Iraq, I went to hear Scott Ritter speak - he had been a weapons inspector for seven years. He told us there was no imminent threat to the United States, that the program to develop nuclear weapons had been dormant since 1998. There was no connection between Iraq and al Qaeda (one is a secular society and the other fundamentalist), that chemical weapons have a short shelf life and wouldn't be usable today...in short, everything Scott Ritter told us has turned out to be the truth.

But this president (the only one to cut taxes during a war) made terrorism a partisan cause. He charged Democrats with being soft on terror, a lie. He appointed John Ashcroft to trample our civil liberties as Attorney General, and, from a human rights point of view, his use of Guantanamo Bay has roused international protest.

Now as the president gears up for his re-election campaign, the right wing propaganda machine is ready to take the skin off of John Kerry, the Democratic Party's nominee. I've never seen anything as ruthless or as relentless as this. They can take a slur hatched at the Republican National Committee or a lie huckstered by the Heritage Foundation, repeat it on Fox, hit it on Limbaugh, print it in the Wall Street Journal, until it's coming out of every media outlet imaginable. Repeating lies over and over doesn't make them any more true. But it does make people believe the lies a little more until finally they stop demanding the truth.

I've seen their ferocity up close, as I witnessed the astounding assault on the CBS movie about Ronald Reagan, in which my husband starred and Craig and Neil produced. They attacked that movie and drove it off network television before any of them had ever seen it.

The Right Wing is very well-organized. They fight dirty. They project their own nastiness onto their opposition. Remember how they accused the Democrats of stealing the election in Florida, while they themselves were doing just that!

We're now in a period that whenever you say something that's critical of the government, you are accused of being unpatriotic. Bush even lent himself to an utterly despicable campaign in Georgia that impugned the patriotism of Senator Max Cleland, who had sacrificed three limbs in the same Vietnam War that the president ducked. Talking about patriotism, let's never forget Bush's fellow Republican, Teddy Roosevelt, who in 1918 said, "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."

Indeed, this country now faces a fundamental choice. Multilateral security or pre-emptive wars. Closing or widening the gaps between the haves and the have nots. Facing the truth or accepting the lies. The public taking an interest or tuning out. Extending our rights or turning them back.

Mr. Bush will dress himself up as a compassionate conservative once more for the election, but he has embraced a remarkably radical policy, which I pray the public finally sees. The mishandling of national and economic security. The shameless politics of special interests and crony capitalists. (And when you talk about special interests it's important to differentiate between public interests that benefit the larger good of the people, like protecting the environment or finding a cure for cancer, versus the special interests that are limited to a particular industry or corporation, like Enron or Halliburton).

Bush recently pushed through a prescription drug bill that actually gives a better deal to the drug companies than to the seniors who need the drugs. And what about the new energy plan that actually increases our dependence on Persian Gulf oil (even though he recently said just the opposite in his State of the Union speech).

The Republicans will try to win the election by convincing the American public that they are the father figures who can keep us safe. But the facts contradict the myth. Two and a half years after the largest attack on American soil, our borders remain easily penetrable. We have the capacity to inspect only 2% of cargo containers coming into our country. Local law enforcement has been weakened by spending cuts, and our intelligence lacks manpower and updated technology. And which party's budget provides the most for homeland security? The Democrats!

This president is so transparent. The only way he would agree to investigations of the mishandling of intelligence leading up to the Iraqi war, is if we wait until after the election to get the reports. Has this administration no shame? What job are we not doing that has allowed them to pull the wool over the eyes of the American people?

But...there is hope. It's starting to turn. I can feel it. The media is finally asking the president and his staff the tougher questions, and looking into the issues that should have been investigated years ago. The people are speaking out at all levels from the grassroots to Washington. All of the good work so many people are doing is finally making a dent. We won't be scared into submission.

What should scare us is that we have no checks and balances on this administration. They control the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives and the Supreme Court. All we have is each other. So each of us must do what we can to create positive change in November. I know the Human Rights Campaign will be at the center of the struggle for equality. And let's be smart...Let's be pragmatic...Let's not allow the Republicans to use gay marriage as a political tool in this election year. Truth and justice eventually wins out.

I am proud to stand with you tonight as the recipient of this prestigious award. Together we can and we will win the fight.

Posted at 12:34 AM

March 30, 2004

The Knights Who Say "Ni" desperately want George W. Bush.

"Bring us a shrubbery!"

They can have him (the silly sots).

Posted at 1:00 AM

March 29, 2004

It's difficult to say with any certainty whether Emperor Bush's lying, cheating, stealing, and killing will ever fully be realized by the public, but recent events have certainly given me hope that the bastard will will be found out for who he is and what he's done. I can only hope that when the truth comes out he will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Richard Clark's testimony and book are certainly a good start.

Bush's Secret Storm

President Bush had two big things going for him in this year's election. He was seen by a majority of Americans as a straight shooter. And he was viewed as the natural leader in the war on terrorism. Now both perceptions are in jeopardy. That explains the ferocity of the White House attack on Richard Clarke.

But the attack on Clarke, the White House's former anti-terrorism expert, could prove to be the fatal mistake of the Bush campaign. Instead of undermining Clarke's credibility, the White House has called its own into question.

It is also calling new attention to the administration's standard operating procedure since Sept. 11, 2001: Do whatever is necessary to intimidate and undercut all who raise questions about the president's handling of terrorism, answer as few of those questions as possible and keep as many secrets as you can.

That is why the Clarke story just keeps getting bigger.

There has been much hand-wringing about how partisan the discussions of Sept. 11 have become over the past week. But Clarke did not create the partisanship, and it was not born last week. An administration that had a united country behind it after Sept. 11 spent two years playing politics very hard to push back all challenges. If the administration had been less defensive earlier about what went wrong, it would not be facing such a serious and awkwardly timed mess now.

Recall that in May 2002, word leaked that Bush had received an intelligence briefing on Aug. 6, 2001, suggesting that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network was plotting to hijack U.S. airliners.

Democrats jumped on the news. Why, asked Tom Daschle, the Senate Democratic leader, did it take so long "for us to receive this information? And what specific actions were taken by the White House in response?" Dick Gephardt, the House Democratic leader, spoke in a similar vein: "What the American people want to know is, exactly what did the White House know, and, more importantly, what was done about it?"

Daschle and Gephardt were trashed. Vice President Cheney denounced "incendiary" commentary by opposition politicians and declared that such politically incorrect thoughts were "thoroughly irresponsible and totally unworthy of national leaders in a time of war."

And the questions abated.

This time, the Bush administration pulled the same levers to silence Clarke -- and the questions didn't stop. On the contrary, inconsistencies in the administration's pre-Sept. 11 story were, finally, big news. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice's furious attacks on Clarke got her trapped in a series of statements that contradicted other administration officials and sometimes herself. And Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist will surely come to regret his vicious speech on Friday accusing Clarke of, among other things, "profiteering." Frist all but accused Clarke of perjury. He alleged that classified testimony Clarke gave to Congress in July 2002 contradicted what Clarke is saying now. "It is one thing for Mr. Clarke to dissemble in front of the media," Frist said. "But if he lied under oath to the United States Congress, it is a far more serious matter." Frist called for declassifying Clarke's congressional testimony.

How weak were the underpinnings of Frist's form of McCarthyism Lite? So weak that Clarke easily one-upped Frist and the administration in his appearance Sunday on "Meet the Press." Clarke endorsed declassifying his testimony in full, and any other relevant documents. Rice, in the meantime, defended the administration's refusal to let her testify before the commission in public and under oath.

All of which raises the question: Who appears more interested in having the whole truth come out, Clarke or the administration? That's why many Republicans think Rice has to testify.

Last week certainly hurt Bush politically by halting the momentum of his attacks on Sen. John Kerry -- and by putting attack politics under unusually harsh scrutiny. But the larger lesson is that delaying accountability and keeping secret what should be public almost always backfires.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who died a year ago this week, made the war on secrecy one of the last great causes of his public life. In 1997, he noted -- presciently, in light of the problems leading to Sept. 11 -- that when government agencies keep secrets from each other, top officials are denied the information they need when they need it. "Secrecy," Moynihan declared, "can confer a form of power without responsibility about which democratic societies must be vigilant." The bitterness of last week is explained by the mischiefs of partisanship, but even more by the costs of secrecy.

Posted at 12:21 AM

March 28, 2004

Today has been an extremely lazy day. Having not gotten to sleep last night until about 4 AM, I was pretty tired when my grandma buzzed me on the intercom at 8:30 to say she needed a ride to church. Awakening me by the intercom wasn't really necessary since I always take her to church when she's here on Sundays and because I had talked with her about it yesterday morning before I left, something she had obviously forgotten, but waking me with the intercom at 8:30 was even less necessary considering we didn't have to leave until about 10 AM. But, I was up, so I stumbled around and started to get cleaned up.

The whole day felt like that, tired, achy, wishing I'd had a couple more hours of sleep, half-stumbling around as I did things. I fixed lunch and dinner for my grandmother and myself, and I got caught up on relying to e.mails, but all I really did was watch tv, play a little Civilization III on the computer, and lay inert. Granted, I'm quite out of shape, and that is a huge part of the problem, but I really felt old today, and it sucked. Worse still, there was nothing worth watching on tv again (even the Simpson's wasn't that fantastic, sadly).

Hopefully things will be a little brighter tomorrow, as I expect to have a little more sleep in hand.

Posted at 12:11 AM

March 27, 2004

I got around a lot today. I was up early getting ready, plans made and places to be. My mother, who's been staying here since late Monday night when she flew back from Florida with my grandmother, was getting ready as well since she had to fly back this afternoon. We said our goodbyes and I was off to Toledo for a good day with friends.

Christiana had decided a while ago that she wanted to take a long weekend away from her studies, and she took the train to Toledo on Wednesday. She won't return until Monday night, and she's packed her time in Toledo with a lot of plans. Today, though, was pretty much planned to be our day together.

I met Christiana at her mother's house, where she is staying, and we headed out to grab lunch. I don't know what it is about my friends and Taco Bell lately, but Christiana has been expressing cravings for the Bell, having not found any near where she lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland, nor near the main campus for American University, where she's a grad student. We grabbed food for ourselves and Christiana's mom and headed back to eat and watch a movie.

Christiana had rented American Splendor, the story of real-life comic book writer Harvey Pekar, a very strange and cynical man who rises to produce a number of well-received comic books based on his real life experiences (the series entitled American Splendor being one of them). The movie follows his life, not just his career, and it's an interesting character study. It was certainly very different and very enjoyable - not fun exactly, but with good laughs and quirky incidents.

We talked for a while before and after the movie, catching up on what we'd each been doing for the past few days. Christiana gave me a bag of videos to watch (she has been buying used movies from the local video store and offered to lend me some, so I chose a dozen interesting movies), and I got to see the two incredibly colorful tree frogs that Christiana had bought to take back to D.C. as gifts for the little girl she takes care of as her job. We didn't stay long after the movie, though, with other plans ahead.

We had made arrangements to get together with Steve, and after quick trips to Target and the bank for Christiana to get some things, we picked Steve up and made our way to Brewed Awakenings to sip coffee and chat (although I had iced tea, actually). We had some interesting conversation regarding international policies on copyright, aid, and power, based on Christiana's graduate studies and Steve's vast reading (and my following of a wide variety of news interests), and we talked about old friends, old enemies, politics, education, work, stuff, stuff, and more stuff. We're quite into conversation, so once we got started it was hard to shut us up.

We left after about an hour and made our way, indirectly, to Westland Lanes bowling alley. Christiana had some coupons for fee bowling, so we got our ugly (although brand new) bowling shoes from the rental, grabbed some balls, and got to it. When we started out, Steve was decimating us, throwing strikes and spares with ease. I was looking miserable with crappy runs, and I couldn't even get close to a spare, let alone a strike. As we got toward the end of the game, though, Steve started to falter and I started throwing straight strikes and spares all through the last set. I ended up winning, outdistancing both of the others, but it wasn't much of a victory - 130 isn't much of a final score in bowling, even for somebody who hasn't bowled at all in three years (and even then just for a few games that were the first in three or four years). Christiana and I played another game after that with me doing about the same and Christiana having a much worse game, but we all had fun playing. We didn't really care who won - it was all just for fun.

We went from there to dinner at J. Alexander's. There was a fairly lengthy wait, but we just talked more, and the time passed quickly. We all had great meals (more than any of us should probably have eaten), and we talked and talked about all sorts of things. By the time we decided to go, it was quite late, and I dropped Steve and Christiana off at their homes after much thanks for a great day. I made my way back to Sandusky pretty tired, but not fighting sleep, and made it back after about 1:30 AM. I crept in so as not to disturb my grandma, and got ready for bed. By the time I checked e.mail and surfed the net a little (to wind down), it was quite, quite late, so I decided I'd better write a Journal entry and get my ass to sleep. I'm done with this, and I can assure you that sleep will come fast. It was a great day, though. Good friends and good times. That's the way I like it.

Posted at 3:58 AM

March 26, 2004

So Chris has been telling me, in e.mails and snail mail, that he's been craving Taco Bell since he's been in New Zealand. They have a number of different fast food places like Burger King and McDonald's, and of course they have "chippys," the fish and chips places, but no Taco Bell. He's also been getting a LOT of rice-type dishes with what he's been sharing with his roommates, so he's really been wanting something different, and Taco Bell was his answer. Too bad he couldn't find one.

Well what are friends for? I went out, bought all of the pre-packaged Taco Bell stuff I could from the grocery, got a lot of sauce packets from the local Taco Bell, and boxed it all up and sent it Air Mail to Chris in New Zealand. It arrived in just a week (which, for the price I paid, does not seem fast enough), and Chris was surprised and ecstatic. In fact, his e.mail to me, thanking me for the food, was so happy and funny that it made me feel very good about sending that care package. I had hoped it would make him happy, but it seems to have been even better than I'd hoped.

As I'm posting this, I expect that Chris is having a big Taco Bell party and introducing his roommates to Taco Bell burritos, hard-shell tacos, and soft-shell tacos, all with a variety of fillings. I wish I was there to see it, but I'm glad that it was a good choice for something to send. Now my only problem is figuring out what I can send next that will top this package ...

Posted at 10:44 PM

March 25, 2004

Package received. Parcel sent.

We're solid.

Posted at 11:43 PM

March 24, 2004

Life is hell. I have evidence.

Posted at 12:15 AM

March 23, 2004

It's even worse than I had ever thought - this widespread abuse has got to stop.

Stop Abuse Before It Starts

Appearing on "Meet the Press" last month, Robert Bennett, one of the chief authors of a report on the child sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, said that "child sexual abuse is a national health problem -- it is a national crisis." The report noted that since 1950, 4,392 Catholic priests had sexually abused 10,667 children. But, as Bennett noted, these numbers are just a small part of the problem, because child sexual abuse is perpetrated not only by fathers in the church but by fathers and other people in families across the United States. If we as a nation are serious about protecting our children, we need a strategy for prevention. We need to stop child sexual abuse before it happens.

Punishment for the abuser and treatment for the victim are necessary, but they aren't enough. We ought to learn from what has been done in the area of drinking and driving. Public health scientists, working with advocates, fostered a new social norm: that drunk driving, far from being something to joke about, is unacceptable. People stopped looking the other way when someone started to get behind the wheel under the influence of alcohol. They insisted on designated drivers and on taking the keys away. As a society, we lowered our threshold for destructive behavior of that sort and moved more quickly to help people with drinking problems -- if possible before they got into trouble from drinking and driving.

In the same way, we need to be looking for warnings of sexual abuse of children, and to act on those warnings before the offense is committed. Stop It Now is an organization that uses marketing techniques to change attitudes about child sexual abuse. Through its work, we have learned that people at risk of abuse will come forward for help if it is offered. We have learned that families need help to identify healthy sexual behavior and the warning signs of abusive behavior in adults and children. They need help when they have concerns about sexual behavior toward children but nothing to report because the system starts working only after there is an identified victim. When the social norms support seeking help, family members have courageously come forward with wrenching stories of what has happened and how it could have been different.

Estimates of the incidence of abuse in the United States range from 100,000 to 500,000 cases a year. Children routinely do not report sexual abuse; 88 percent is not reported to authorities, and only 3 percent of people who have sexually offended have been convicted. Most such offenses occur in the homes and neighborhoods of the children. We also know that in intimate settings, children are even less likely to reveal abuse. Many people still believe that strangers are the danger to children. But most sexual abuse is perpetrated by someone a child knows -- a family member, a family friend or even an older adolescent. Sexual abusers come from all socioeconomic classes and all racial and ethnic groups.

Why does it happen? Bennett said that within the church "there was such a fear of bringing scandal to the church that they planted seeds of an even greater scandal." The same fear keeps one parent from reporting the destructive behavior of a spouse.

We cannot put the responsibility for reporting and stopping child sexual abuse on the child. Adults need to be educated about what constitutes sexual abuse and taught to recognize the warning signs. And we need to make help available for abusers or potential abusers. In Vermont, abusers began coming forward to the criminal justice system once they knew help was available.

Prevention of child sexual abuse will not be accomplished overnight. But what better time than now to start mobilizing the programs we have for children and families, to educate parents and to change the social norms? It's time for the church and for the country to move beyond punishment for perpetrators and therapy for the victims. By starting to focus on prevention we can ensure that in many instances, the abuse will never occur.

Posted at 11:26 PM

March 22, 2004

Just when I start to forget how amazing and impressive Jimmy Carter is, something like this comes up to remind me how phenomenal he is.

Carter Savages Blair and Bush: 'Their war was based on lies'

Jimmy Carter, the former US president, has strongly criticized George Bush and Tony Blair for waging an unnecessary war to oust Saddam Hussein based on "lies or misinterpretations". The 2002 Nobel peace prize winner said Mr Blair had allowed his better judgement to be swayed by Mr Bush's desire to finish a war that his father had started.

In an interview with The Independent on the first anniversary of the American and British invasion of Iraq, Mr Carter, who was president from 1977 to 1981, said the two leaders probably knew that many of the claims being made about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction were based on imperfect intelligence.

He said: "There was no reason for us to become involved in Iraq recently. That was a war based on lies and misinterpretations from London and from Washington, claiming falsely that Saddam Hussein was responsible for [the] 9/11 attacks, claiming falsely that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. And I think that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair probably knew that many of the allegations were based on uncertain intelligence ... a decision was made to go to war [then people said] 'Let's find a reason to do so'."

Before the war Mr Carter made clear his opposition to a unilateral attack and said the US did not have the authority to create a "Pax Americana". During his Nobel prize acceptance speech in December 2002 he warned of the danger of "uncontrollable violence" if countries sought to resolve problems without United Nations input.

His latest comments, made during an interview at the Carter Centre in Atlanta, are notable for their condemnation of the two serving leaders. It is extremely rare for a former US president to criticise an incumbent, or a British prime minister. Mr Carter's comments will add to the mounting pressure on Mr Bush and Mr Blair.

Mr Carter said he believed the momentum for the invasion came from Washington and that many of Mr Bush's senior advisers had long ago signalled their desire to remove Saddam by force. Once a decision had been taken to go to war, every effort was made to find a reason for doing do, he said.

"I think the basic reason was made not in London but in Washington. I think that Bush Jnr was inclined to finish a war that his father had precipitated against Iraq. I think it was that commitment of Bush that prevailed over, I think, the better judgement of Tony Blair and Tony Blair became an enthusiastic supporter of the Bush policy".

Mr Carter's criticisms coincided with damaging claims yesterday from a former White House anti-terrorism co-ordinator. Richard Clarke said that President Bush ignored the threat from al-Qai'da before 11 September but in the immediate aftermath sought to hold Iraq responsible, in defiance of senior intelligence advisers who told him that Saddam had nothing to do with the conspiracy.

With an eye to November's presidential elections, Mr Bush sought on Friday to use the anniversary of the Iraq invasion to say that differences between the US and opponents of the war belonged "to the past".

Speaking at the White House, he told about 80 foreign ambassadors: "There is no neutral ground in the fight between civilisation and terror. There can be no separate peace with the terrorist enemy."

But in the US and Britain, and elsewhere, there is growing anger among people who believe the war in Iraq was at best a deadly distraction and at worst an impediment to the war against al-Qa'ida - diverting resources and energy from countering those groups responsible for attacks such as the train bombings in Madrid.

Over the weekend millions of anti-war protesters poured on to the streets of cities around the world to call for the withdrawal of US-led troops from Iraq. It was estimated that in Rome - which saw the biggest crowds - up to one million turned out.

Mr Carter, 79, has recently published a novel. The Hornet's Nest is centred on America's revolutionary war against the British. That period had many lessons for the present day, Mr Carter said.

Posted at 11:28 PM

March 21, 2004

It's been a while since I've written about the debate over the Pledge of Allegiance, but the issue is just about to be heard by the Supreme Court, and this recent editorial in the Washington Post was both incredibly informative about the history of the Pledge and also quite wise in their view of how the Pledge should be handled in schools. I couldn't agree more.

A Preamble Instead of a Pledge

The Supreme Court will hear oral argument this week on one of the more explosive questions before it: Whether public school teachers can lead students in the Pledge of Allegiance to a nation "under God."

In the Newdow case the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled that public school teachers within that circuit (comprising nine Western states) violate the First Amendment when they lead students -- even those who are willing -- in the pledge. The reason? The court said that teachers are endorsing religion, contrary to the Establishment Clause, when they lead the class in reciting the pledge's words: "one nation, under God." In a public school setting, the lower court held, nonbelieving children can be coerced by teachers' actions in a way that adults are not.

The best solution to this problem -- one that respects both the community's desire to instill patriotism and the conscience of religious dissenters -- is to end recitation not just of the words "under God" but of the entire Pledge of Allegiance. In its place would go a much better statement of our national values: the Preamble to the Constitution.

The preamble was written in 1787 by the nation's founders. The pledge was written in 1892 by a socialist minister to honor Christopher Columbus in a children's magazine. "Under God" wasn't even in it -- the phrase was added in 1954, after a campaign by the Knights of Columbus.

Why the preamble? Because it affirms the sovereignty of "we the people," who strive for a "more perfect union" and thus "do ordain and establish this Constitution." That last part is trickier than it seems. It unites citizens in an ongoing responsibility to uphold constitutional values, not just mouth loyalty oaths.

In the current debate about "under God," it's important to remember that the Pledge of Allegiance itself has a mottled history in this country. That's not surprising in a nation where people take oaths seriously. When World War II was brewing in Europe, Jehovah's Witnesses were the most disliked religious group in America because they opposed saying the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag.

What could it hurt, argued countless school boards and eight Supreme Court justices in a 1940 ruling, for schoolchildren to learn a lesson in patriotism? Jehovah's Witnesses responded that swearing an oath to a flag was the equivalent of worshipping a graven image. They also noted the similarity of the flag salute, which at the time involved children pointing their outstretched right arms toward the flag, to the "Heil Hitler" salute of Nazi Germany. The Nazis were at that time persecuting Jehovah's Witnesses for refusing to give that salute.

After the 1940 court decision on the pledge, Witnesses' children could be denied the right to attend school, even if they stood respectfully and quietly during the pledge. The court's ruling unleashed a wave of violence against Witnesses nationwide, with 335 attacks against 1,500 Witnesses in 1940 alone -- including a castration in Nebraska.

Out of shame over the wave of religious violence it had triggered, the Supreme Court overturned itself only three years later, the fastest reversal in its history. Wrote Justice Robert Jackson, who was later to serve as a prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials: "To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous instead of a compulsory routine is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds."

As amended in 1954, the Pledge of Allegiance makes a statement about God's role in the republic that the framers of the Constitution omitted in 1787. True, the signature line of the Constitution does include the standard dating convention "in the year of our Lord," but that hardly qualifies as an assertion equivalent to "one nation under God." Despite pleas in the ratification debates to add such divine references to the Constitution, the framers believed these are the words we all can agree on:

"We the people, of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Posted at 1:21 AM

March 20, 2004

I am really fucking up my sleep schedule something fierce, and I am surely going to pay for it next week when I have to get up early and attend classes all day during the week. It's sad, too, because there's really no good reason. The stuff I watch on tv (the entire reason I'm st6aying up so late) is really crap, and even worse is the fact that most of what I watch I have already seen at one time or another. What's the lure? Well, partly I just don't want to go to sleep, but even more importantly - there's nothing worthwhile on television these past few weeks, and I can't get my fix of satisfying programming. If we weren't in this deadzone of reruns and crap reality programs, I would be able to watch 24, Smallville, Angel, Everwood, and maybe even some other stuff. As it is, Stargate SG-1 has been the only thing keeping me happy with new, interesting episodes, and my brain is desperate for some sort of entertainment to latch on to (non-gaming entertainment at least).

So sometime soon, hopefully even as soon as tonight, I have to force myself to go to sleep at a reasonable hour (say 1 AM), so that I'll get up at a reasonable hour. Easier said than done.

Posted Written at 3:12 AM

March 19, 2004

Eeeek!

It's my birthday today. Thirty-seven years and still ticking. Who'd have guessed I'd go this long without killing myself during one of many fits of depression? I guess it just goes to show you that nothing is as simple as it seems.

Birthdays have really lost any thrill for me at all. Growing older has no real rewards after you're twenty-one, and each added year just makes it seem like I'm getting further and further from any semblance of youthfulness. I suppose that sucks for everybody, but it's particularly upsetting for me considering youthfulness and youthful interests are what interest me. I don't have any interest in slowing down, watching sports on tv with a beer in hand, going bowling with a league once a week, or going to some crass nude bar as my forms of entertainment. I still love to watch cartoons, play video games, shoot hoops, watch movies, or explore things. Most of my friends are younger than I am, and while part of that is due to the fact that a lot of those people I know from college (where everyone (mostly) is younger than me), but I also just relate better to teens and twenty-something's. Once people reach thirty, it seems, they tend to become settled and unimaginative. I'm the first person to admit that by the time you reach thirty you become somewhat jaded and cynical, and this breaks a lot of your childhood illusions and excitement about the world, but it seems to me that the only point in living at all is to be active and amazed by the things around you. Maybe I'm not the best proponent of such things, given how morose I can be when I get depressed, but believe me when I say that I embrace youthfulness and really hate that it's gradually slipping from my hands just because of what society expects (and forces) from me.

Today, as most of my birthdays, was spent alone. My grandmother is still visiting my mother in Florida, and even though she called and talked to me today, it's not the same as having a physical presence to wish you a "Happy Birthday." I don't know why it even bothers me that there weren't any people to share my birthday with, considering I don't really like the reminder that I'm growing older, but it's just disappointing . I'll get over it though. I always do.

Happy Birthday to me.

Posted at 4:23 AM

March 18, 2004

Laura and I finally got together again tonight after having not met at Big Boy for four weeks. We still do the Thursday night thing at Big Boy, just as we always used to when the whole gang of us were still attending classes, but we meet up just every other Thursday. We were each busy one of the weeks before break, so we kept shoving back our get-together, but we finally saw each other today (mind you, we see each other occasionally on campus, but that's just between classes and usually only allows enough time to say, "Hi. How are you?")

We had a lot to catch up on since we haven't seen each other in so long. We're both crazy-busy with school work, and it seems like neither of us has been able to do a whole lot outside of what's required for classes, but we talked about what was up with each of us and what will be coming up. We also talked about our missing friends: Heather (who keeps close contact with Laura still; Laura will be visiting her in Pittsburgh this weekend), Kristina (who I keep in contact with and who I'm waiting to hear from about whether she got a job where she was going back for a third interview), and Chris (who both of us are e.mailing back and forth with, even though I seem to be in a little more regular of contact; I shared an air mail letter Chris had sent me, and I told Laura about the care package I had sent to Chris a few days ago). The big news of the night is that John, Laura's boyfriend of many years, has been talking about getting engaged, and Laura thinks he may propose soon. THey're a great couple, and it's really quite inevitable that they will be married and spend a long life together, but it's still great to share Laura's excitement over this. She's so exuberant about everything, but she's just downright school-girlish about this, she's so giggly and happy. It's fun to be around.

We only hung out from about 9 PM until just after 10:30 PM, but we talked about a whole lot. Laura still had a lot of papers to grade for her English 112 Composition class that she teaches, so she had a busy night still ahead of her, and we left with promises to see each other on April Fool's Day.

On the drive to Sandusky, and for quite a while after I got back, I talked to Christiana on my cell phone, and we covered all sorts of topics, nothing really new exactly, but things that we have been talking about and sharing new developments as they come along. I was quite tired by the time we wrapped things up, and my lower back was begging for sleep (still achy from shoveling snow yesterday), so I was more than ready to say my goodbyes and get ready for bed. That's where I'm heading now, and I don't think it will take me any time at all to fall asleep. I'm looking forward to that.

Posted at 1:48 AM

March 17, 2004

Top o' tha marnin' to ya!
<thus ends my clichéd stereotyping of St. Patrick's Day>

Being that I'm approximately half Irish, this day always has held some amount of happiness for me (just for the record, my mother's side of the family is 3/4 Irish and 1/4 British, and my father's side is 3/4 German and 1/4 Cherokee). Although I love celebrating my Irish heritage (and the Irish people in general), I cringe at the clichéd view just about the whole world has of the Irish. The drunken, brawling hicks that most people seem to consider the Irish to be is an unfair portrait of the Irish people; it is at least an overblown perception based on a small segment of the culture, and at the most it is a holdout from the beliefs of centuries ago that the Irish are "savages.' That whole set of stereotypes bothers me the most, but there are certainly more, among them the idea that people seem to believe they can claim an Irish heritage by donning a button or shirt that says "Kiss me, I'm Irish." It's as though the whole of Irish culture is so simplistic that anyone can adopt it. Let me tell you, if I claimed on Martin Luther King Day that I loved my African heritage (me, a white guy), I would be mocking all of the vast culture that stems from Africa, and regardless of how impressed and influenced I might be by that culture, it still isn't mine.

Ireland is a beautiful land, and the Irish are a beautiful people with a beautiful culture. I wish more people had the chance to see more of what Irish culture is all about. And I certainly wish that St. Patrick's Day showed more about the Irish than the ridiculous traditions of green beer and green clothing. I'll still always get happiness out of St. Patrick's Day, but my reasons will always be different, and probably more sincere, that those of just about everybody else.

Posted at 12:01 AM

March 16, 2004

Snow, snow, and more snow!

It has been snowing all day since early morning, and there's serious accumulation all over the place. I shouldn't complain because it seems that a lot of other cities have been hit much harder by this particular storm than we have, but it's just that this is the first real snowfall in over a month. We've had snow even a few times during the past week, but it has barely dusted the lawns and has melted off before the end of the day. This snowstorm, however, is throwing stuff at us without reprieve.

I should have shoveled the sidewalks clear today, but really, the snow is coming down so hard that it just won't make a difference. That means there'll be even more snow to shovel tomorrow, which isn't very appealing, but that's just how it will be.

The snow is whipping around so much and coming down so continuously, that I have had my concerns about road conditions, so I decided not to attend classes today. I didn't really have anything important happening in any of my classes, but it is a big deal for me not to go - I rarely skip classes, and even with inclement weather I usually have perfect (or near-perfect) attendance for classes. So today was a bit of an exception for me. But I feel better for not having to endure the crappy road conditions.

In a sense, I have another day of Spring Break. Sort of ironic that inches upon inches of snow translates into a "Spring" break, but that's just how it worked out. As a result of not going to classes, I wasn't as productive as I should have been today. I'll still get by, and I'm on top of everything that has to be done, but I could have done other things that I just decided could wait. Meh.

It's supposed to snow again tomorrow and again Friday, although not nearly as much either time, but it still looks like there'll be plenty of snow to deal with for a while to come. Oh joy.

Posted at 2:28 AM

March 15, 2004

The Ides of March! They're gonna getcha!

It's been quite a hell of a long time, but I used to have Caesar parties on the Ides, sort of a celebration of the passing of a great statesman and the passing of the height of the Roman Empire (and yes, it can well be argued that the height of the Roman Empire was during the reign of Augustus, but in all fairness, the political treachery and corruption that marked the continued fall of the Roman Empire started with Caesar's murder and grew worse from there, so the 'height' of the Roman Empire was, in my mind, the last days of Caesar's reign). Anyhow, I had these parties to celebrate the Ides. Had I continued them, they probably would have become annual toga parties and such, full of outrageous fun. But heck, who would I invite now? I suppose there are people I could invite, up to the point of having a whole house full of people, but I think they'd be more in the way of acquaintances than friends (simply because my true friends, with only a couple of exceptions, all live quite a distance away from me).

But even without a party today was fun. I played more Baldur's Gate II: ToB after I'd run a bunch of errands and made a couple of phone calls, and that was fun. It's getting much more interesting and much harder (I gave up for the day when I found myself facing Demogorgon, the Prince of Demons. He's hella tough, and he easily kicks the asses of all six of the adventurers in my little group).

My Spring Break ends today (school actually resumed today, but I don't have any classes until tomorrow), so my days of play are at an end, but it's been good for me. I'm much more relaxed and at peace with things, and that's a huge difference from where I was leading into Break. So it was a good thing. And I talked to my grandma today, and she's having a great time in Florida. So it's all good all around. Who can argue with that?

Posted at 12:12 AM

March 14, 2004

Nothing I can write today could possibly top this blog from Wil Wheaton as a Journal entry. Yes, I'm a complete geek for being so amused by this, but what can I say?

i shit a piece of π

This morning over breakfast, I said to my wife, "Happy π day!"

"Happy pie day? What the hell are you talking about?"

"No, not 'pie'," I said. "'π'."

"Not 'pie,' but 'pie.'" She was clearly not amused. "Isn't it a little early to be drinking?"

"Anne, look at the date on the calendar."

"Yes it's march 14th, and you're going to watch WrestleMania dos equis* with your brother." She frowned. "Are you trying to tell me that you're taking a pie to Jeremy's house? Because if you expect me to make you a pie . . ."

"No, I don't expect you to make me a pie." I said, well into that area where you've explained the joke so much, it's never going to be funny.

"Today is March fourteenth. That makes it 3.14 on the calendar. 3.14 is also known as π."

She blinked a few times.

"Oh. It's π day."

"Yes!" I said. "And at 1:59 pm, it will be even more π day. Isn't that cool!?"

She took a long, thoughtful drink from her coffee mug, carefully set it down and said, "You are such a nerd."

*It's actually Wrestlemania XX, as in Wrestlemania Twenty, but we've been cracking ourselves up by calling it Wrestlemania dos equis all week.

Posted at 12:48 AM

March 13, 2004

So I've been spending the last two days (yesterday and today) playing Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal, the final sequel in the Baldur's Gate series (the fourth part of the series). I bought this earlier this year after it had finally been ported to the Mac, and I've been looking forward to playing. I must say that I was initially somewhat disappointed; things didn't seem very inspired or very difficult, and I could see that the game was going to be very linear in its progression.

Having had two days to immerse myself in the game, I have to say that it is much more interesting and fun than I had initially believed. The gameplay in this series has always been fun, and once I had reminded myself of everything involved I was having all sorts of fun. Add to that a great storyline and well-developed quests, plots, and backstories, and it makes the whole game very broadly interesting and world-like in scope. I have to hand it to Bioware, the company behind these games (the four Baldur's Gate titles, the Icewind Dale game, and the Neverwinter Nights series (a set of three (so far) even though I've only played the first), they make incredibly imaginative and full story concepts that make their games immensely fun and easy to get immersed in. There's not only complex battle-play but also different puzzles to figure out, so it's not just mindless killing - there's intelligence and subtlety required, too.

Unfortunately, this sequel is very linear. I shouldn't be surprised, I suppose, because this series has been getting progressively more linear as it goes, making it only possible for you to go one way and progress toward the inevitable end. All of the Bioware games have been moving in this direction, and I suppose that the masses would rather have more hack-and-slash and less logic and intrigue, thus leading to a more direct, uncomplicated game progression, but I miss the realistic, open travel allowed by the original Baldur's Gate. In that original game, you had to really think about all that was going on to figure out how to solve quests or to solve riddles or solve mysteries. You had to move all over the place to figure out what was happening and to find clues and items to make things work, and it took a lot of thought to do. That was the best of the best, in my mind, and that has fallen off somewhat in the later sequels and games that Bioware has made.

Still, I've been having great fun. I feel a bit guilty because I haven't been answering e.mails like I should, but this is Spring Break, and if I can't go to Daytona or Cancun, at least I can travel to the World of Greyhawk for a little fantasy adventuring. You have to take your vacations where you find them.

Posted Written at 1:10 AM

March 12, 2004

The train bombings in Spain yesterday, now being widely referred to as "3/11," were a terrible tragedy and a horrible sign that terrorism is sadly alive and well throughout the world. While I agree that it is now clear that all of the world must, sadly, be on the alert and act to prevent terrorist acts, I do not agree with the very frequent comments about how "the West" has to make war on terrorism or that "Islamic fundamentalists" must be considered the enemy. This narrow-minded finger-pointing serves only to make things worse and completely obscures valid observations.

Terrorism has been going on for a long time - not just since 9/11/2001 - and it has been happening everywhere to everybody. If anything, the Middle East and the the East have seen more terrorism in the last hundred years than all of the West combined. Trying to draw lines between East and West doesn't bear out the facts and it helps no one, so let's get real and not go there.

Even worse is the supposition that there needs to be some sort of religious-based East vs. West argument, namely Judeo-Christian beliefs against Islamic beliefs. Unfortunately there's nothing new in this tired feud (or have we forgotten the Crusades, among other things), but that is, in my mind, all the more reason to look at this rationally and see that Islamic people are not all terrorists just as Judeo-Christian people are not all terrorists.

Arguments can be (and are) made both ways, but they are maddeningly invalid because the only people who are terrorists are unbalanced extremists who hold no value in human life regardless of their faiths. We're talking crazy people here, basically large-scale mass-murderers. What religious views were held by Ted Bundy or Jack the Ripper or Jeffery Dahlmer? It doesn't matter! They killed people, lots of people, because they were fucking insane. There simply isn't any difference. Yes, some of these terrorists say they are doing things because their Islamic beliefs told them to. Well, Charles Manson killed all sorts of people because he said the Beatles told him to do so when he listened to The White Album. Does that mean we should have been at war with the Beatles all along? Hell no! It means that Manson was fucking insane, just like every other murdering terrorist.

Terrorism is something that should be stopped, and the whole world needs to act together to achieve that. The politics of divisiveness and scape-goating must stop right now or the terrorists will reign free while we fight amongst ourselves (which, by the way, is what has been happening for years). Get it straight, people, this isn't about East or West; it isn't about whose religion is better; it isn't about who is the more "civilized" - it's about crazy people trying to kill the rest of us. Don't make matters worse by alienating and fighting the sane people who should be our allies.

Posted at 11:55 PM

March 11, 2004

Sarcasm. I love sarcasm. The vast majority of my humor is based upon sarcasm, and I consider myself a great appreciator of sarcasm. With that in mind, I hope you'll understand why I am so amused by this article from Oasis Magazine. Hopefully you'll get as much of a kick out of it as I have.

Where Is My Gay Apocalypse?
Over 3,500 gay marriages and, what, no hellfire? I was promised hellfire. And riots. What gives?
By Mark Morford, San Francisco Gate Columnist

I have been staring with great anticipation out the window of my flat here in the heart of San Francisco, sighing heavily, waiting for the riots and the plagues and the screaming monkeys and the blistering rain of inescapable hellfire. I have my camera all ready and everything.

There has been nothing. I see only some lovely trees and a stunning blue sky and my neighbor walking by with her pair of matching chow chows as a pained-looking woman struggles to parallel park her SUV. Same old, same old.

And this is San Francisco, same-sex-marriage HQ, Sodom-and-Gomorrahville, debauchery central. We are supposed to be careening off the nice, safe road of social acceptability right now, welcoming chaos, exploding into a fiery hell mist of our own sick godless depravity and dropping off the disgusted planet any minute now.

Where is my raging apocalypse? This is what I want to know. Where is the social meltdown? The moral depravity? I was promised an apocalypse, dammit. What am I supposed to do with all these tubs of margarine and confetti and kazoos?

There have been more than 3,500 same-sex-marriage

ceremonies in San Francisco so far. Hundreds more are just now kicking up a storm in Oregon and in beautifully rebellious little burgs around New York state. And, yet, nothing. No chaos. No rain of terror. Not even a lousy heat wave. Sigh.Some homosexual couples have been married for more than three weeks now, living in utter godless sin as they drive their cars and shop and laugh and cry and go to work and pay their taxes and wonder about their dreams. Lightning has not struck them dead. The Hellmouth has not opened wide its gaping maw, hankering for some of the City's trademark Sourdough o' Sin. I am dumbfounded.

After all, same-sex marriage is supposed to ruin the nation, is it not? Induce actual rioting and civil unrest and shirtless anarchy as millions of stupefied citizens pray to a bloody pulverized Mel Gibson-y Jesus for redemption, as they suddenly begin questioning whether ogling the Pottery Barn catalog for more than 10 minutes might mean they're gay.

"It's anarchy," some guy named Rick Forcier, of the Washington state chapter of the Christian Coalition, actually whined. "We seem to have lost the rule of law. It's very frightening when every community decides what laws they will obey." Why, yes, Rick. It's total anarchy. Just look at all the screaming and the bloodshed and the gunfire. Run and hide, Rick. The gay people in love are coming. And they've got tattoos and funny haircuts and want to get married and celebrate their love and be left alone. Hide the children.

This was -- and still is -- very much the right-wing sentiment. It was almost a guarantee: Same-sex marriage spelled the instantaneous end of all that is good and righteous and edible. Insurrection was imminent, apocalypse nigh. You could see it in their eyes -- they could hardly wait.

Hell, even Governator Arnie went on "Meet the Press" recently and proclaimed, semicoherently, that he was actually worried about the riots and deadly mayhem should S.F. continue with its brazen lawlessness. And look. Nothing. Not a peep. Not a single rabid spitting demon to be seen.

I believe I have been misled. I was told repeatedly in extra-glowing terminology by multiple raging Bible-quoting drones that The Good Book expressly forbids same-sex marriage and gay sex, and to engage in either spells imminent doom and instant social bedlam and there are specific verses all about it.

Is this true? Are there actual verses decrying same-sex marriage? Are they anything like those other Biblical verses, about the rules and regulations surrounding marriage that are making the rounds on the Net right now? Real verses. Actual verses. Verses o' sanctimonious fun. Have you seen them?

Like this: "Marriage shall not impede a man's right to take multiple concubines in addition to his wife or wives." (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21).

Or maybe: "A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be stoned to death." (Deut 22:13-21)

Isn't that cute? Isn't quoting Bible verse fun? Ask your local pastor about that one.

Or how about: "If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother's widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law." (Gen. 38:6-10;Deut 25:5-10).

Hey, it's right there, in the Bible. So it must be true.

Is it worth showing those verses to the happily sanctimonious and sneering Christian homophobes who are protesting outside S.F. City Hall right now, telling the gay couples what depraved hell-bound sinners they all are? Nah. Why spoil their whiny apocalyptic wet dreams? Live and let live, I always say.

(Oh, and while we're at it, God also really hates shrimp. Maybe you didn't know. Shrimp are evil, as are all shrimp eaters. Clams, too. Hey, it's in the Bible. You can look it up. Why the Right is attacking homosexuals in love and not, say, Red Lobster, remains a mystery.)

So, here we are. Approaching a full month after the first of S.F.'s marriage ceremonies, and nothing. The universe is smiling madly. The world is shrugging. Anonymous supporters from all over the nation have sent flowers to hundreds of loving gay and lesbian couples. As of this writing, there is no scathing hellfire. No fanged demons of destruction. No meltdown whatsoever. I would know, right? I mean, wouldn't the power go out, or something?

Maybe it's still to come. Maybe total screaming misery and unspeakable sociocultural collapse coupled with wanton bestiality and incest and the giving away of free anal beads to innocent teenagers takes more than a month. Maybe I'm just a little impatient.

Maybe Satan is taking his sweet time to marshal his leather-clad armies, watching as other U.S. cities get in on the same-sex-marriage act, listening as mayors and governors all chime in their support and say what's the big deal. Maybe Beelzebub is waiting for a big moment so as to really leverage the coming news flash, the special report, the sudden activation of the Emergency Broadcast System.

Something like: "This just in: Earthquakes rocked the globe today as giant fire-breathing bees of death swarmed the countryside, feasting on fat white heterosexual babies mostly from Texas and Colorado Springs and Utah and Idaho, as the institution of hetero marriage careened around the mad vortex of space-time like a savage drunken pinball high on black-tar heroin, just like the Christian Right predicted."

"Horrors bled into the streets, terrorists were spawned by thousands, presidents openly lied so as to lead a nation into bloody violent unwinnable wars, thousands of Catholic priests sexually molested tens of thousands of children over a 50-year period without the slightest punishment, the environment teetered on the brink due to heartless government rollbacks as air quality and water quality and food sources were ravaged in the name of corporate profiteering, the economy crumbled like Jenna Bush after her 10th beer bong as hate and fear and bogus Orange Alerts ruled the land."

Oh wait. That was all before the same-sex-marriage thing.

My bad.

Posted at 1:19 AM

March 10, 2004

While I did actually accomplish some useful endeavors today, I spent a good part of the evening finishing the game of Civilization III that I've been playing for ... I don't know how long. I know that I've been playing this particular run at Civ since before Winter Break, but I just don't remember exactly when I started. Needless to say, I've been playing this for a while.

I was really pleased with myself in this game because I curbed any tendencies for conquest after the earliest stages of the game, and I focused upon peace with other nations and with internal development, building railroads and irrigation systems everywhere and building improvements within the cities to the utmost extent possible. I ended up having the happiest, most populous civilization I've ever had with the most developed cities I've ever had, yet the final result of the game, after my forced retirement in year 2050, was the lowest score that I have recorded on my high scores list. I guess that just goes to show you how little most people value peace and prosperity (or at least that's the case with the game developers). Had I been hell-bent on conquest and war, determined to be at odds with the world community even at the expense of making my own people happy and well-supported, then I would have had a higher score. I mean seriously, I had 90% literacy in my nation (the world's highest), an average life-span of 89 years (the world's highest), the shortest times of military service (at 1 year, the lowest in the world), the most advanced technologies, the highest gross national product, the highest per capita income ... what more can I offer, really. It was a disappointing end to such a long-played game, and it sadly showed me that running a peaceful, diplomatic game just wouldn't cut it.

I certainly hope that this game is no reflection upon the world. It certainly reflects the George Bush mentality, but I shudder to think that there is any value in that concept of world development.

Posted Written at 12:21 AM

March 9, 2004

Well, it took me MUCH longer than I ever would have anticipated, but I have made a couple of updates to the website. And to think, it only took me about six hours ...

The first update is that my Senior Thesis is now online, converted into HTML and formatted, and permanently placed as an example of my argumentative writing skills in my Online Portfolio. It's not a part of the main site, just part of the Online Portfolio site, but you've got a link right here, so go read it if you are interested.

The other update is more sweeping but less grand (as though my Thesis were very grand in itself ...). The Archives, the collections of all of my old Journals, has been getting more and more bogged down by the indexing links that allowed selection of any given month of my past Journals. The extra memory consumption was so bad that those pages were 10-20% larger than they needed to be just because of those links, and it was making load times longer for users and also making monthly updates very time-consuming for me. So now I have a different, and better, indexing system. In reality, this is most likely a stop-gap improvement because I want to convert the whole Journal over to Movable Type or Greymatter, but I need a fair amount of time to learn how to use those, implement them, and then transfer all of my Journal entries over to that new system - something that together will just be a huge project. I think that will wait until at least summer.

So the site is updated. Neither of these updates may have any impact on you, even though it took me over six hours to do, and that's disappointing in a way. But it's done, and at least I don't have it needing to be done any more.

Posted at 9:26 PM

March 8, 2004

Today has been something of a "technology catch-up" day for me.

In general, I am very interested and very 'up' on technology. I follow scientific developments, I quickly adopt new technologies, I get ahold of all sorts of gadgets, and I drool over things that I can't afford. What can I say? I'm a geek. It is rare that I have trouble with technology, too. I'm willing to read manuals and generally follow various tech/support sites for various things, and most of the time I just 'know' what to do.

There are problems at times, though, and I simply get stumped for a while. Most of the time, I find a solution on my own; sometimes I find help; rarely do I have to give up, even for a short time. Well, I've had a few tech issues to solve lately.

First, my grandmother's rather old all-in-one phone and answering machine is dying. I'll admit that I'm more than happy to let it die and move to something much more modern. The old microcassette system and inability to save messages is ridiculous, and more modern devices would solve not only these problems but would add time/date stamping and remote access, among other things. A new device would make my grandmother's life much simpler. My grandmother, however, is unbelievably reluctant to change (on any level), so convincing her to switch is not going to be easy. Fortunately, she doesn't believe that her machine can be fixed (although I actually believe that I might be able to repair it), and she has never liked the phone or the answering machine parts of the device for a number of reasons. So today I went to do a little research while my grandma was away, looking at new models to suggest as replacements. They are all much better than what we're looking to replace, but I can honestly say that everything I looked at was ugly and incredibly cheaply built (i.e., with light-weight plastic, etc.). I looked at a whole bunch of different models by different name brands, and they'll work okay, but I wasn't really impressed. And the prices are okay, but it was clear that you were paying for more than you were going to get. Anyhow, my point is that I'm not sure what to recommend since I didn't like anything I saw. I was able to rule out a whole bunch of the possibilities, but I don't really like any of the remaining options either. And this from the guy who once had four phones in a two-bedroom apartment.

My next stop today was at Verizon, the storefront location for the people that run my cell phone service. For the last two weeks, my phone has barely rung before it turns over to voice mail, and I simply can't grab it fast enough to answer. That was never a problem before, so I had no idea what was going on. I checked through all of the phone menus to see if I could change it; I read through my inch-thick manual for some idea of what I could do; and I went through the preferences menu within my voice mail - all to no avail. Today's visit to the store was my last hope. As it turns out, this particular model can be set to vibrate, then ring, then go to voice mail, and I was missing the vibrating aspect. I didn't even know that the phone could be set this way, and there was no mention of this in the manual. The salesman even told me that he has the same model, and he frequently accidentally presses the buttons (on the side of the phone) that reset it like this. It was an easy fix, and I'm glad to have it solved, but I still feel sort of dumb for having no idea what had happened.

My last technological hurdle was with iTunes, the Apple-based online music purchasing service. I had avoided iTunes because I am in no position to buy music, and I would too-readily spend money I can't afford to spend. The Pepsi/iTunes promotion, though, where there's a code for a free song from iTunes under the caps of 1 in 3 16-ounce bottles of Pepsi, was too alluring. I've gathered up a few codes, by myself and from others, and I decided to buy songs a few days ago. I ended up choosing a whole album, Styx's Kilroy Was Here, and plugged in my free codes and my selections and set up a download. I was doing other things, though, and I crashed my whole system, something that happens rarely, but something that would have to happen in the middle of a download of paid stuff, of course. I was frustrated for the past couple of days, but today I found a FAQ that explained how I could still get my songs, even after just such a situation, and I followed the instructions and was back in business. Apple had apparently thought of everything, and I wasn't out of luck. I ended up also downloading "Clint Eastwood" by the Gorillaz and "Bunnies" by Pansy Division. I'm not sure exactly what I'll download next, but I'm momentarily out of unused free codes, so I guess I'll have to wait anyhow.

So it's not like I made any great revelations or technological discoveries today, but I did get a lot of stuff smoothed out that had been unsolvable prior to today. And heck, I made huge leaps technologically in the empire I control in Civilization III, so maybe that counts for something, too. It was a good day, though. At least as those things go.

Posted Written at 1:12 AM

March 7, 2004

I spent quite a bit of time today, both in the wee hours of the morning and then again in the early morning, fucking around with the furnace, which altogether stopped making heat, just as temperatures started dropping again outside. Fortunately, I had talked my grandmother into buying an annual service contract with the heating and air conditioning company, so I was able to get a prompt response once I called them and saved quite a bit as well (in fact, we saved over $150 today, and we've so far saved well over $300 this year, thanks to that contract). It ended up, after spending quite a while testing every component of the furnace and then making two trips back to their shop for parts, that we needed a new control board. Once that was in, the furnace worked without a problem. It was a good thing, too, because after a few straight days of unseasonably warm weather (in the sixties), we rapidly are falling back to the typical thirty-degree temperatures that I expect from March.

I lost a few hours to furnace repairs, but I eventually was able to get back to my relaxing and enjoying - playing some more Civilization III, watching some tv, and reading some new chapters that have been posted to various stories that I read online.

I was up for a few hours in the middle of the night last night when I realized that the furnace was producing no heat, and that has left me a bit tired all day. Tonight, I'm rapidly tiring out even more, and I expect to fall asleep quite easily. Maybe I'll catch up on the sleep I missed then.

Posted at 12:22 AM

March 6, 2004

Today has been all about world domination - not the bullshit military destructive domination Emperor Bush exercises either. I've been playing Civilization III on my computer for a large part of the day. I've made huge progress, too. It's long past the point that any nation can found any new cities, and nobody's really at war any more, but there's some bigtime infrastructure developments and technological improvements going on. My nation controls about half of the land masses in the world and has an economic and military might that outmatches the other nine rival counties combined. I suppose it loses its luster at this point, considering I have such a lead above everyone else, but I expect that very soon I will face a coalition of all nine of those countries deciding I'm too powerful to live, even though I never threaten their controlled areas. That's one of the aspects of the program that seems unrealistic and bogus, and I understand that it keeps the game challenging ... there really should be better ways to arrange diplomacy and maintain peace, though. But if they gang up on me again, I'll fight them all off. I might just be able to hold them all off at once, believe it or not.

But for now, sleep. That's a good thing, too.

Posted at 1:46 AM

March 5, 2004

I have been extremely domestic today, cleaning and organizing the house from bottom to top. Things have been allowed to slide a bit (well, a lot) while classes have been going on, so I've had a huge mound of dirty clothes to be washed, very solid layers of dust on everything in my upstairs apartment, all sorts of papers and mail and bills of my grandmother's to organize throughout her first level rooms, and all sorts of stuff to clean and organize in the basement. It's taken me all day, but I'm finally all done, and while I'm not really thrilled about losing a whole day just to cleaning, the end results look great and leave me feeling much more at peace with my environment. I've also pretty much gotten caught up with e.mails again, and even managed to catch the newest episode of Stargate SG-1.

Tomorrow should be quite the opposite of today. I intend to play computer games and watch tv most of the day, and I have no intention of getting up until I want to, no intention of cleaning anything, and no intention of exerting myself to any significant extent. I plan to just relax and enjoy, and it should be a wonderful change from the crazy focus on my thesis of the last week and a half. It's about damned time.

Posted at 11:18 PM

March 4, 2004

I am way tired. Getting up early the past few days to finish my thesis was bad enough, but getting up early today to get my assignments for today's classes left me with far too little sleep. Add to that the fact that I've been drinking Pepsi again for the last few days, and I'm really dragging (a quick heads-up on the Pepsi thing - I am a fanatic for Pepsi, but I switched to Sprite about a year and a half ago as part of my swearing off of all caffeine. That was okay until I was running on next-to-no sleep during the final push to get my thesis done, and then caffeine was necessary. I might even have resisted the caffeine, but the Pepsi/iTunes Giveaway was too much of a lure, and absolutely nobody sells the Sierra Mist's that are in that promotion, just the Pepsi and Diet Pepsi. So anyhow, low sleep + Pepsi after not having any caffeine. for a year and a half = jittery, exhausted Paul.

Me sleep now. Mmmm..zzzzzzzzzzz.

Posted at 11:31 PM

March 3, 2004

Done and done.

The Thesis from Hell is done, tuned in, and over with. After a wild past couple of days of little sleep, lots of rushed revisions, and some final printings, it is finalized and submitted. All in all, I am quite pleased with the final product. Sarah, Phil, and a graduate student who's a friend of Phil's all think that I should try to get it published in an academic journal. In fact, Phil even thinks I should use it as a proposal for a book deal where I would do a full critical analysis of the whole series of Harry Potter books in regards to trauma theory. I must say that I'm seriously considering at least trying to get published in a journal. It would be a great reference for when I apply to grad schools.

Anyhow, for those of you who are new here, or those of you who know that I've been babbling about a thesis for a while but have no idea what I'm writing about, I did a critical reading of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone interpreted through trauma theory (the study of trauma and post-traumatic behaviors such as is seen in traumatized war veterans or rape victims or abuse survivors, etc.). My main argument is that all of the things that Harry does which are considered to be heroic are in fact subconscious behavioral responses that are automatic, taking over his actions in situations that are similar to the traumas of his childhood, overriding any actions of free will. He isn't acting heroic, he's just reacting to post-traumatic influences. Anyhow, it would make more sense when you read it. Right now I'm rushed to get work done for classes tomorrow, but over Spring Break next week I'll get it set up in HTML with all of the appropriate formatting, and then you can all look it over and judge for yourselves. It's 46 pages long, so be prepared for a sit if you decide to check it out.

Anyhow, I'm low on sleep and full-up on stuff that needs to get done. I'll hopefully have interesting stuff to write in the next few days, now that I am free of the work I was putting onto the thesis. I'll write more tomorrow, of course.

Posted at 1:42 AM

March 2, 2004

Hey, guess what? We're in the top percentiles! My daily Journal writing/blogging, and your semi-regular reading each are behaviors of 10% or less of the internet-using population. So we're special!

"Teacher says I'm special!"
- Ralph Wiggam

Anyhow, here's an interesting news article to support my earlier comments.

Study: Very Few Bloggers on Net

NEW YORK (AP) -- Despite the potential of turning every Internet user into a publisher, relatively few have created Web journals called blogs and even fewer do so with regularity, a new study finds.

Some bloggers indeed update their journals often, in some cases several times a day. But it's clearly a minority who are taking advantage of the blog and its potential to steer the online discourse with personal musings about news events and daily life.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project, in a study released Sunday, found that somewhere between 2 percent and 7 percent of adult Internet users in the United States actually keep their own blogs.

Of those, only about 10 percent update them daily, the majority doing so only once a week or less often.

"The impression out there is that a lot of the blog activity is very feverish," said Lee Rainie, the Pew project's director. "That's not the case. For most bloggers, it's not an all-consuming, all-the-time kind of experience."

The study was largely based on random telephone surveys of 1,555 Internet users taken from March 12 to May 20, 2003. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

That survey found only 2 percent of users keeping blogs, although a preliminary analysis of follow-up surveys from early 2004 showed the figure increasing to about 7 percent.

About 11 percent of Internet users report visiting blogs written by others. Most often, they were for blogs written by friends. But blog readers are more likely to go to journals kept by strangers rather than by family members.

Among other findings: 21 percent of Internet users have posted photos on Web sites, and 20 percent say they have allowed others to download video or music files from their computers. Seven percent have webcams that let others see live pictures of them over the Net.

Posted at 10:46 PM

March 1, 2004

God Hates Shrimp.

You must obey.

Posted at 12:53 AM

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