journal

Naturally, the common people dont want war...

Direct from Wingnuttia's Uberpostermensch:

"Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."

Hermann Goering, Hitler's Reich-Marshall at the Nuremberg Trials

Another Excellent Rant

This one from Hunter, a DailyKos regular... some of the better bits:

We are told, in this country, that we went to war because we are "saving the Iraqi people", despite televised speeches and interviews in which saving them was mentioned as merely a tick on the larger dog of what official after official declared proudly as preemptive war. And we are told this most eagerly by the same sites that refer to them as sand niggers, and cite post after post as evidence that so long as an Arab exists in this world, the United States is in danger from them.

and...

Perhaps "leaders of any group will turn out to be liberals" is indeed true, and perhaps there are a hundred perfect reasons for it to be true that are not part of an insidious secret plot by All Those That Oppose Us. Jesus McCracker McBain, it has been shown time and time again that liberalism is directly correlated to knowledge. I'm going to tattoo it onto my forehead, or paint it on my car: It's not a conspiracy, you're just stupid.

and...

I have no patience for this nonsense. I do not wish to know any person not exasperated by these times, or any man that will defend them. I do not wish to discuss morality with fans of addicts, or legality with clans led by criminals, or intellectual conundrums with wandering herds of thundering morons.

Geekpimples

I got geekpimples (engineer equivalent goosepimples) when I read this.

Robert X. Cringely details the plan for all the dark fiber Google has been buying up: "The probable answer lies in one of Google's underground parking garages in Mountain View. There, in a secret area off-limits even to regular GoogleFolk, is a shipping container. But it isn't just any shipping container. This shipping container is a prototype data center"

It has kind of a "checkmate in 3 moves" feel to it, no?

Icepicks

Boing Boing: NPR's "My Lobotomy" on MP3

Ryan says: "Yesterday on NPR's 'All Things Considered,' they aired a segment entitled 'My Lobotomy,'" a story of and narrated by a 56-year old bus driver from California named Howard Dully who underwent an transorbital (a.k.a. icepick) lobotomy in 1966 at the age of 12.

"Since his lobotomy, Mr. Dully has been tortured with the thought of how his life, personality, and soul was changed by the brutal procedure. I'm an avid NPR listener and this is the single best story I've ever heard on air."

I happened to catch this on the way home, and it was one of the hardest hitting stories I've ever heard. I felt nauseous, happy, outraged, all in the space of seconds. And when local NPR guy (I forget his name) signed off with "... if you ever doubted the value of public radio..." in a broken voice, before launching into the usual station ID spiel, it just got to me.

Gadgetlust

Occasionally, I run across ads or pictures that trigger a flash of nostalgia. Being a geek, most of these are computer related. As a kid, I would spend hours paging through Creative Computing and Byte, lusting after the Apple IIe+, Atari 800 or TI-99/4a (shucks, even a Sinclair would have done). Wierd, I know, but it was the exact parallel to what I would later feel when I grew up a bit, and started desiring other (near) unnattainables.

I still lust after gadgets, truth be told, but nothing will compare to the longing I felt as I paged through the AAAF (military px) catalog, imagining I had $800 to drop on an Apple.

My favorite ads were for the Apple II. They frequently juxtaposed with antique furniture, etc, in 'Ye Olde Computer Shop'. One I remember clearly was of Santa Clause using an Apple III (yes, III) to organize his lists.

Proud to be Human

Bad Astronomy Blog » Blog Archive » First Light

the light those first stars emitted was blinding. That light sleeted out into the still-young Universe, traveling through space as the space itself expanded, like someone running up the down-escalator. Finally, after billions of years– billions of years after the stars themselves had blown up– the light reached Earth, falling into the waiting eye of Spitzer.

The fuzzy web of light in that bottom half of the image may be the first real ghost photo– the image of light from stars long-since dead, the very first stars ever to appear in our Universe.

That’s why I got a chill, why the hair on the nape of my neck stirred. Look at that picture again, and wonder that the light recorded in it had traveled for 13.5 billion years, 98.5% of the age of the Universe itself, across that vast and terrible gulf of space. I got a chill when I first saw the picture, but then a spread of warmth: I’m proud to be human, to be able to see this, to know that we can understand it. We all should be proud. We are the way for the Universe to know itself.

Puts things in perspective.

Damnit.

Posting this here before y'all start spamming me with it...Gay Americans favour hybrid electric vehicles

It's a little-known fact, but US gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender consumers buy cars. What's more, they show a penchant for the luxury end of the market and are "significantly more interested in hybrid electric vehicles than their non-gay counterparts".

Sigh.

Stop Alito

From the ever excellent Pharyngula:

Samuel Alito is a polyp sprouting from the diseased colon of the Republican party. I don't care if he's kind to his family, has a wonderful sense of humor, or refrains from branding women with an iron in the shape of an "A"—his political lineage is unambiguous, and that makes him a scabrous chancre not suitable for the office. He's a last-gasp representative of an absolute failure of an administration, the final ghastly moan of a set of bankrupt political policies that are utterly wrong for our country. He must be opposed. Sign on to MoveOn's petition.

MoveOn.org Political Action: Stop Alito