http://annezook.com/ en-us annezook@allmail.net 2010-03-04T13:09:03-07:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://annezook.com/archives/003698.php Or maybe I mean, "the money quote." Either way, there's always one line in a news story that tells the story. Sometimes you just have to read for it. Starbucks in crosshairs on gun-control debate is obviously about one of those fence-straddling issues. Personally, I dislike guns and I most emphatically don't think people need to carry guns around casually in our society. No sane person really needs to have a pocketful of lead to get through their day. Over and over and over, we read the headlines. Disgruntled ex-employees gunning down former co-workers. Disturbed students opening fire on school campuses. Poorer neighborhoods suffering from periodic outbursts of armed warfare. How can any reasonable person argue that gun control is not in society's best interest? Don't even get me started on the hypocrisy of the NRA. However, it's a right covered by Constitutional law and while I think an amendment... 3698@http://annezook.com/ Aimless ranting 2010-03-04T13:09:03-07:00 http://annezook.com/archives/003687.php When I read what other people are writing online, I remember one of the main reasons I gave up politiblogging regularly. Too many other people writing, and doing it a lot better. I particularly liked this one, today: Grifters' Tale - Mercenary opportunism doesn't respect Party lines. As the lights go out in Colorado Springs I wonder if the city is small enough to survive. Only in a place where people are close enough to their government to understand the cause-and-effect between taxes, expenses, and legislation can real democratic reform hope to succeed. Okay, I won't make any stupid Republican jokes today. But I hope I can be forgiven in pointing to a reminder that our illegal and unprovoked invasion of Iraq wasn't as simple-minded as the rightwing warmonger rhetoric tried to make us believe. (If any of you are still interested in Bonehead's reportedly--unusual, not to say abnormal, psychology*,... 3687@http://annezook.com/ 2010-02-04T13:39:55-07:00 http://annezook.com/archives/003684.php So, I'm chatting online with a recently retired friend about how it took her a year or more after retirement to really get her brain around accomplishing anything--to get herself organized so she could start doing all the things she wanted to do. It was the lack of forced scheduling that tripped her up. I pointed out that most our lives are run by imposed schedules--we have school and then work (not to mention parental schedules), so for our entire lives we're accustomed to thinking of "time" as something that's cut into small slices, only a few of which are ours to do with as we please.* Those with iron self-discipline might carve out an hour or so a day to spend writing or drawing or knitting or on decorative carpentry or playing in an imaginary sports league (the term for which I've temporarily misplaced) or playing a real sport... 3684@http://annezook.com/ 2010-01-22T14:19:45-07:00 http://annezook.com/archives/003683.php So, I'm reading along in this article about Google, China, and the mushrooming cyberwars, and I run across this bit: In conventional and even nuclear warfare, your assets are relatively easy to measure against those of your opponent. You have 75 tanks and your opponent has 125, but yours are fitted with better weapons systems – roughly even. And I'm thinking, well, no, not necessarily. But I'm willing to accept it--provisionally--until I see whatever point you're about to make. Then the article then goes on to say: Cyberwarfare is not like that. Your assets consist of your opponents' vulnerabilities and your ability to exploit them. This means that to defend yourself, you have to breach your opponent's defences: implicit in any cyberdefence strategy is the development of a comprehensive offensive capability. And by now the hair is standing up on the back of my neck and I'm muttering, "No, no,... 3683@http://annezook.com/ Big Brother 2010-01-18T13:48:13-07:00 http://annezook.com/archives/003676.php Because, yes, I am a science fiction geek, I give you History of the Scienceers. Thanks to Google's recent front-page mention, I found out that Babbage's dream machine got built. How cool is that? I'm never sure how accurate these things are, but I love 'clocks' that measure in "real time." This one tells how much CO2 we're generating, ticks off the number of crimes occurring in the US, and counts down to the time when we're going to run out of oil, among a lot of other things. Those of you who know me well know I like few things better than finding more stories on how almost everything is Reagan's fault. If you include a few swipes at Tricky Dick, you might just make my day. 1968 & 1980 - the years this "new" (or, should I say, "neo") Republican Party started their march toward power and the... 3676@http://annezook.com/ 2009-12-16T16:14:37-07:00 http://annezook.com/archives/003670.php I brought three chocolates to work with me today and I ate them. And I ain't a bit sorry, even if I am a sinner! As a (former) drinker, I didn't shout about paying "sin tax" on booze, even though I disagreed with sin taxes in principle. I just didn't care that much. As a (current) smoker, I haven't argued over the double-digit "sin tax" on tobacco products. Even though I disagree with the principle, I had a vague hope that forcing retailers to charge $5 or $6 a pack would make the stuff too expensive for the next generation to indulge in. I had a hope, not strong, but a hope. Well, now I hear that Colorado's state government is about to face the question of whether or not to enact a "sin tax" on chocolate. A great many people--people who were smug and self-righteous about the tobacco sin... 3670@http://annezook.com/ 2009-11-17T16:25:54-07:00 http://annezook.com/archives/003664.php I hate the new CNN front page. You used to be able to glance at a "top story" before you took a quick look at the stock market and then scrolled down to browse national and international headlines. Now the colors scream at you and where there used to be informative text, there are pointless pictures. I hate the glaring black-and-red graphics in giant formats. I hate the absence of actual text. Also? Shut up about your stupid videos. (Television's continuing astonishment at its ability to produce moving pictures is wearing me out.) I don't imagine I'm the only person in the country--or even in the minority--when I say that I don't/can't play videos on my work computer. I need words. Hire a blasted transcriber if you have to. Also? Yes, a picture can replace a thousand words, but not just any picture. Having a picture, even one that moves... 3664@http://annezook.com/ 2009-10-27T13:47:21-07:00 http://annezook.com/archives/003662.php For quite a few years now, I've driven by this one corner building out in the south part of town, glanced and the sign, and told myself I should really try to find out who "Intelligence Gaming, Inc." is. I mean, I like games and I certainly like intelligent games. Sadly, today when I finally remembered to Google the organization, I found that they're a part of the (pardon the cliché) industrial-military complex. While also doing business under other names, they make no secret of their business. They list themselves boldly under a Defense Contractor SIC code.* That's not really the kind of "serious games" I was thinking about. An interview with the founder talks about flight training simulators, formulating battle strategies, and in some unspecified fashion, "intelligence." Poking around more deeply, I see that their recent name-change could be more than just a cosmetic re-branding. On their new website,... 3662@http://annezook.com/ 2009-10-21T14:48:42-07:00 http://annezook.com/archives/003653.php The oh-so-liberal CNN website is leading with the headline: Rep. Wilson raises more than $200,000 Yes, the "big story" is that the guy who doesn't believe the words in a bill define the bill (such a Republican point of view), raised $200,000 from people who--I don't know. Think it's okay for a grown man to scream like a toddler? Think it's acceptable for a member of Congress to shout at the President? Think (we're in "oh, so Republican" territory again) you can change reality by yelling that it ain't so? Buried 'way down behind the cut, near the bottom of the story, is the also-ran, unimportant "news" that the guy who ran against Wilson last time raised $750,000 in the same time-frame.... 3653@http://annezook.com/ Media 2009-09-11T12:33:52-07:00 http://annezook.com/archives/003655.php Republicans? Do not "share" power. Republicans? Take power when they have it and do what they want with it. Republicans? Believe "sharing" is a sign of weakness. Republicans? View Democrats' unwillingness to use the power they've won as impotence, not restraint, and as an opening through which they, the Republicans, can take back power without having to wait for another White House run. For eight years we watched those in control of the Republican Party trying to dismantle this country. Following, broadly, along the lines of Reagan and his cohorts, they dismantled worker and environmental protections. They weakened legal protections for individuals while loosening restraints that kept corporations from running amok and indulging in, for instance, massive financial fraud. They came near to completing the population's transition from "citizen" or "voter" to pure consumer.* They even, with a sop to their "small government" roots, made a concerted attempt to bankrupt... 3655@http://annezook.com/ 2009-09-11T11:11:24-07:00 http://annezook.com/archives/003652.php Elsewhere, in the world o'blog, I've been chatting with people about my crazy freelance clients. It amuses me, lets off a little steam, and (names have been changed to protect the stupid) does little or no harm to anyone. In a recent chat about a client with a fixed worldview that doesn't leave room for, you know, facts, one commenter contributed his own brush with the lunatic fringe in a correspondent combining Holocaust denial with predictions of a near-future apocalypse. What wigged me out was not the Lunatic Correspondent--the crazy will always be with us--but my otherwise sane and intelligent friend's willingness to engage with this person. I told my friend, "You have to ignore that kind of person. They get validation for their beliefs, not from facts, but from arguing. As long as they find someone who takes them seriously enough to argue with them, they think they have... 3652@http://annezook.com/ Aimless ranting 2009-09-08T11:51:41-07:00 http://annezook.com/archives/003641.php The suppressionists, the thought-controllers, the small, the mean, and the frightened--they need a little help getting themselves organized. I know they're trying to do what they need to do in order to keep their little brains from exploding at the sheer level of maturity required to deal with the amazing variety of freedom that the world offers today. They're scared and they're bewildered and they want nothing more out of life than a return to the fictional decade of the fifties where men were white and strong and women were pearl-draped dingbats endlessly hoovering immaculate carpets and the ever-sanitized homes of the complacent middle class came without bathrooms because no one ever needed to do anything as vulgar as to take a pee. I'm sure they attribute their failure to stem the tides of individualism and freedom to some kind of moral failing in the vast majority of human beings,... 3641@http://annezook.com/ Aimless ranting 2009-07-22T16:11:17-07:00 http://annezook.com/archives/003629.php We have to guard against cruelty in ourselves ....", President Obama said, after visiting Buchenwald. I wonder if he understands that what he saw in Germany is precisely the reason this country needs to lay out everything to do with our recent descent into madness and torture, to publicly and formally condemn ourselves, and to ritually dedicate ourselves anew to, in fact, being the America most of us are pretending we are? I wonder if he understands that no one** wakes up one morning and decides to indulge in a spot of light genocide or thinks, "Ahhh! Today's the day I start being evil!" These things happen one step at a time. Deciding that what would be immoral and illegal if it happened next door is okay if it happens so far away you can't hear the screaming--that's a pretty big sign. And that deciding that some people are... 3629@http://annezook.com/ Prisoners and Torture 2009-06-08T09:36:35-07:00 http://annezook.com/archives/003626.php Vigil in Hong Kong. Amid heavy security. The event means much the same thing to most of us--a bloody government crackdown on protesting students, a startling set-back to China's admittedly limited progress toward joining the world's "free" nations, etc. And I think most of us remember that one special image from that time, an image that also speaks to the power of a single individual to move the world. Three student leaders, 20 years later. One found Jesus, one found capitalism, and one is still fighting for freedom for the Chinese peoples. "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." -- Margaret Mead... 3626@http://annezook.com/ 2009-06-04T08:37:48-07:00 http://annezook.com/archives/003625.php Penguins do it. Penguins are just adorable, aren't they? I wonder if they're going to name the baby, Tango? Aside from that, who cares from gay or straight. The mental image I formed of these two getting an egg, hatching it, and excitedly setting about rearing their baby? Just melted me. ____________ P.S. The " gay rights activists" mentioned in the story were just being silly. Not to be excessively heteronormative or anything, but if the penguins were homosexual other than just situationally, the presence of females would have made little or no difference. (Unless, of course, the male penguins were separated from each other in an attempt to force male-female mating. The article doesn't go into that kind of detail.) ____________ P. P. S. Because I'm not entirely without malice, I can't wait to hear what the wingnuts have to say.... 3625@http://annezook.com/ Race, Gender, and Sexuality 2009-06-03T13:15:05-07:00