04 March 2015

All in time

Okay, since a few people know and a lot of other people have guessed, I'll admit that this medical crap is kind of suppressing a lot of my ability to focus on blogging. If my doctors are to be believed, I will be just fine, although there will be some period where I will likely be very short of enthusiasm for, well, moving.

RIP Leonard Nimoy, at 83. I never met him or anything like that, but everything I knew about him told me he was cool, kind, and fun. Lot of sadness in my world the moment the news broke. And here's Leonard Nimoy's last tweet.
William Shatner stole Leonard Nimoy's bike.

Appropriately, as a guests on Virtually Speaking Sundays, Spocko and Digby, both commentators on media, commemorated Leonard Nimoy and discussed his impact on our way of thinking in his most famous role.

"FCC overrules state laws to help cities build out municipal broadband: Before it tackles net neutrality, the FCC is setting a major precedent for municipal broadband: it's just voted to preempt state laws that were preventing two cities from building out their own locally run broadband networks. The decision was prompted by separate petitions from Wilson, North Carolina, and Chattanooga, Tennessee - both cities that've established high-speed, gigabit internet services, but have been barred from expanding to neighboring communities due to existing state laws. So far, 19 states have similar regulations to those that the FCC is overriding in Wilson and Chattanooga, but today's ruling affects only those two specific cases." We need to make this national.

If you heard that Obama vetoed the Keystone Pipeline, understand that that's not quite true. He vetoed a step of process, not the bill. But gee, it I'm sure it sounds good to uninformed Obama supporters.

Charlie is on A different cluetrain and lists the axioms of a paradigm shift in political reality as the Robber Barons once again take control of the terrain.

Google decides to do evil, then relents. Banning adult content was obviously a stupid idea. I can't imagine who came up with it in the first place. What were they drinking?

This is interesting: "Actress Emma Thompson and her husband refuse to pay 'a penny more' in taxes until HSBC tax evaders go to jail. [...] 'I want to stop paying tax, until everyone pays tax,' Wise told the Evening Standard. 'I have actively loved paying tax, because I am a profound fucking socialist and I believe we are all in it together. But I am disgusted with HMRC. I am disgusted with HSBC. And I'm not paying a penny more until those evil bastards go to prison.'"

Atrios has been keeping me up to date with Rahm Emanuel's problems (and also makes a side point about the reason something called "neighborhood schools" used to be universally regarded as a good thing) and why he's having them. And he really, really is a horrible person. And the revelation that the Chicago police have their very own black sites certainly didn't enhance his image as a man who stood for Truth, Justice, and The American Way. The possibility that Chicago could be getting rid of Rahm and replace him with someone who actually cares about citizens seems almost too good to be true.

"Israeli Claims About Iran Nuclear Program Denied By Own Spy Agency"

Debunking the Corporate Case For Fast Track Trade Authority

From the only official to go to prison in connection with torture: "CIA Torture Whistleblower: US Government Lacks 'the Guts' to Face Its Crimes: John Kiriakou's advice to future national security whistleblowers: 'Get a lawyer first.'"

No one could have predicted that Obama would support Rahm Emanuel's campaign.

An incomplete list of lies our news media told

Suppressing the Republican vote

Greg Benford has posted his Trapdoor article about the legendary Sidney Coleman online. There's a reason why some of our friends thought Terry Carr must have made him up, but I can testify that he was very real and just as cool and funny as the legends specified.

"Chocolate snorting offers new way to a cocoa high."

Wonder Woman with curves

If you can do Facebook, 365 days in 40 seconds

Trailer for Joss Whedon's In Your Eyes

The Motown Sound - 16 Big Hits Vol. 7 (1967)

Marvin Gaye, "Too Busy Thinking About My Baby"

The Fireflies

4 comments:

  1. I hope the medical crap gets better. I like seeing Avedon posts pop up in the blogroll.
    ~

    ReplyDelete
  2. Get well soon Avedon, if only to stop me from cutting and pasting endlessly in this thread.

    Here's an oldie but goodie by a not even twice-monthly poster who was a comrade [LINK] of Matt Tabbi's during their Russian eXile days:

    The War Nerd: Saudis, Syria, and "Blowback"
    December 19, 2013

    ***QUOTE*** ...According to the Daily Beast:

    >>>“Saudi Arabia is playing a dangerous double game—turning a blind eye to the jihadists flocking from Riyadh to Syria while assuring the West of its commitment to fighting terror.”<<<

    This is the famous “blowback” theory: Saudi Arabia itself will become a target when the Saudis fighting in Syria come home. There was serious “blowback,” we’re told, after a generation of Saudis, most famously a tall guy named Osama, went off to do jihad in Afghanistan, and it could happen again.

    You’ll notice that this story has a certain poetic justice to it: Saudi shall reap what it sows, and the terror they inflict on others will be done unto them. Here’s a good tip on reading war stories: whenever they stink of poetic justice, don’t believe them. There is no poetic justice, just a lot of very prosaic injustice. What goes around doesn’t come around. Karma’s not a bitch, she’s a myth (or a mythess)....

    The blowback theory rests on the assumption that the Saudis are just rich idiots playing around with things too powerful for them to control. It’s easy to see them as bumpkins who just got lucky by finding the world’s biggest oil reserve under their desert. Those silly Saudis, huh? They just have no idea what they’re stirring up. This is the view of Saudi Arabia you get in the Daily Beast story:

    >>>“Saudi Arabian officials are doing little to try to stop [Saudi jihadis] flying out from the Riyadh airport—a further sign, say Western diplomats, of the Kingdom throwing caution to the wind when it comes to the Syrian civil war.”<<<

    Let’s try a different theory: that the Saudis know exactly what they’re doing. That they are, in fact, geniuses at exporting trouble while keeping the homeland quiet. What other Middle Eastern faction has held power as long as the House of Saud? They’re coming up on a century in control of the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and in that century they’ve buried a lot of groups that looked a lot shinier and more modern, starting with the Al Rashidi, who were more cosmopolitan, tolerant, and adaptable than the Sauds. The Sauds crushed them anyway....***END QUOTE***

    Like they say read the whole thing, if only for the War Nerd's explanation at the end for why a Saudi Dr. Richard Kimble never would have found the one armed man. [LINK]

    ReplyDelete
  3. For any of you who either are very slow on the uptake or who never tire of reading the latest from the endless War is a Racket genre, here's the War Nerd again:

    More proof the US defense industry has nothing to do with defending America
    December 18, 2014

    ***QUOTE*** This has been a classic week in the defense procurement industry. The armed services are trying to boost their worst aircraft, the totally worthless F-35, by trashing their best, the simple, effective, proven A-10 Warthog.

    The A-10 is popular enough that the USAF had to come up with a reason for wanting to get rid of it, and the one it produced is the sort of thing that would make any psych-therapist chuckle with glee: The USAF said it needed maintenance personnel to handle its precious new high-priced fighter, the F-35, and that the only place it could get them from was the maintenance crews currently keeping the A-10 flying. Nope, there were no other options! The only way to find a good crew is to gut the one effective ground-attack aircraft the USAF has in its inventory, in favor of the worst fighter ever designed....

    I hear you asking, “Wait, wait—are you saying it’s even worse than the F-104 Starfighter, the plane the Bundeswehr called ‘The Flying Coffin’?” Yes, I am. Because as bad as the F-104 was, it didn’t cost $337 million per plane. That’s the projected cost of this godawful flying pooch, the F-35. $337 million per plane. Yes, folks, for slightly more than one billion dollars, you get three very bad airplanes.

    You can check off all the worst features of American military aircraft design programs, and the F-35 has every single one....

    It makes no sense. I’ll just say that right up front. The reason it doesn’t seem to make any sense is that it doesn’t. There are no secret reasons here, no top-security considerations that justify any of this. It’s corruption, pure and simple. The sooner you understand that the US defense industry has nothing at all to do with defending America, and everything to do with making Dick Cheney’s buddies even richer, the more quickly you’ll be able to understand what’s going on.

    I used to believe the Navy was the most corrupt of all the services, but going by recent form I’d have to say that slimed-up torch has been passed to a new service.... ***END QUOTE***

    Not a moment of suspense in the whole post but if you feel you must finish what you start: [LINK]

    ReplyDelete