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Today's Fortune: |
   
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Friday, February 21, 2003
.: posted by andy 2/21/2003
Today I spoke with a German girl in my class about Iraq. She said she heard that because the French are so against our war, we're supposed to start calling french fries "Liberty Fries." I thought that was pretty funny.
.: posted by andy 2/21/2003
I'm upset that we're probably gonna go to war with Iraq. But I'm not upset for the same reasons these people are. I just think there are many much better places to go to war with. It's just sad, because both sides of the Iraq debate are so completely disingenuous. I don't believe for a second that we are going to war to protect the world against saddam hussein's WMDs. I also don't believe that the anti war movement really believes in multilateralism or international law, whatever those things are. I will say that at least it's pretty easy to see through to the real issue behind the anti-bushies. It's just bad-old-fashioned boring partisan politics. The attempt to connect al qaeda and iraq is sad, yes.
What I can't figure out is what is the motivation to go after iraq anyway? Establishing the Pax Americana via international trade seemed to be the driving force of our foreign policy post cold war, and I think that strategy is better than flexing military muscle in iraq to limit international terrorism. I understand the immediate need to destroy terrorist havens like taleban controlled Afghanistan, abu sayyaf in the Philippines, Iran and Saudi Arabia, but I really don't understand the obsession with iraq. It seems like by pursuing this irrational obsession with iraq, we are exposing ourselves to exploitation by the rest of the world that believes they would benefit from a weaker US. I guess this seems to me like this is going to be the diplomatic equivalent to vietnam. It's going to cost us much more than we could possibly get out of it, we might destroy one or two WMDs in the process, but ultimately we will be creating an even worse problem for ourselves, the increasing view by the rest of the world that we are not the shining star of democracy and freedom that we tried to present ourselves as during the cold war, but an irrational, overpowerful empire that is only interested in settling old scores.
.: posted by Jeremy 2/21/2003
Ebola in the Congo. Man I hope I never get that. It's frightening how quickly they decide it's witchcraft, and start stoning people. Seems like the intellectuals and individualists are always the first to go. In this case, it was teachers. It's easy to think of these people as savages, but we're not so far off, ourselves. If I didn't have the education I have, I'm sure I would think any hemmorhagic fever was the work of the devil. And naturally I would use that excuse to kill Jeremy.
We'll probably see a similar thing here in the United States. In fact, we already do to some extent. Many of the people against the war on Iraq are branded as unpatriotic. A very common attitude here in Cosmopolitan North Carolina is, "If you don't love it, leave it." Which makes perfect sense as long as you don't think critically about the actual facts of the war.
1. Saddam Hussein doesn't have the capability to deliver a weapons payload to the United States.
2. The only tie between Iraq and Al Qaeda is through a man living in Kurdish-controlled Northern Iraq. Inconveniently for the jingoists, the Kurds are supposedly our allies.
3. Saddam Hussein is cooperating with weapons inspectors. In this respect, our threats of war have a practical and positive effect--we can strongarm him into anything, given enough time.
4. Saddam Hussein, an egomaniac, will not just turn his WMD over to some whackjob terrorists. If you had a gun, and you knew some thugs were breaking into your house, would you give your gun to the teenager down the street, so that he could go kill the thugs' families, leaving yourself defenseless? Or would you keep the gun and zap the thugs yourself?
Threats of war seem to work with Hussein and Iraq. We can force them to either keep their weapons as a deterrent, or surrender and destroy them as a preventative. Declaring a War will force them to use those weapons in one way or another. I forget what this has to do with Ebola.
.: posted by andy 2/21/2003
I actually hope this is a start of a major trend. If every 15 year old that got pregnant because of the lack of sex-ed in texas schools aborted in those school's bathrooms, then I bet there wouldn't be so much controversy about educating kids about birth control methods outside the scope of just abstinence. I'm not saying kids are so dumb as to not understand the concept of a condom, but I do think that school boards intend to create a stigma about birth control. It's amazing that they are able to make kids fear birth control almost as much as sex itself. Maybe people in this part of the world wouldn't be so fucked up if at 14 all of us didn't see a pregnant classmate get vaporized in the orwellian style and forced to leave their schools. They claim that they believe pregnancy is "contageous," that a pregnant girl may possibly get some attention and then be envied, and therefore must be removed to prevent that. I say BS. They are removed as a simple consequence of having sex. If you have sex, we will do the absolute worst thing that your simple mind can comprehend, we will end your social life.
I really do think many people's major issues are easily traced back to the perverse attitude towards sex that our governments try to drill into us. Growing up in the late 80s and 90s, everytime you hear about sex, even on outlets like MTV, you always hear of some kind of deadly or negatively-life-altering consequence that is unavoidably the result. It's no wonder I'm terrified of leaving my apartment... I might meet somebody, wicked hedonism might take over, and I'll wind up terminally infecting myself.
I'm sure this can all be traced back to Nancy Reagan somehow.
.: posted by Jeremy 2/21/2003
Thursday, February 20, 2003
Must be hard to get respect with a name like Ding Ling.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 2/20/2003
Power line networking is the devil's technology.
.: posted by Jeremy 2/20/2003
I don't know about yesterday's fortune's author, but I personally have an enemy in my bowels.
I guess I should reconsider that statement... I have several enemies in my bowels depending on if it's a workday.
And about today's fortune... I thought fortunes were supposed to be enlightening? I've known that God hates me for several years now.
.: posted by Jeremy 2/20/2003
We got a pageview from someone using ARPAnet. Does that creep you out a little? Who would this person be? Who uses ARPAnet? Is it someone from the past? Is it someone trapped in some University's steam tunnels, whose only connection to the outside world has been through an UNIX server storaged somewhere? Is the Total Information Awareness System in Alpha?
These pageviews show up every now and then across the web. I wonder who it is.
.: posted by andy 2/20/2003
Wednesday, February 19, 2003
It turns out that tyler durden's father failed to mention one of the major steps on the way to becoming a fully disfunctional member of society. A house. As much as I really hate the idea of planting roots, especially while I'm living in houston, it really seems like the most reasonable thing to do. First thing I need to do, though, is move out of this expensive ass apartment and move into a cheap ass apartment with a roommate, coz at the rate I'm throwing away money on this place, I'll never even pay off my modest credit card debt, let alone save enough for any kind of down payment on my own deed restricted 3/4 acre peice of heaven.
.: posted by Jeremy 2/19/2003
Tuesday, February 18, 2003
Woohoo! The biggest diamond heist ever! Thieves cleaned out 123 of 160 vaults at Antwerp's high security Diamond Centre.
.: posted by andy 2/18/2003
Today the Army announced that its troops in Kuwait are definitely ready to begin the attack on Iraq. Yup, 100,000 troops are all there and ready to go. So Iraq just better be ready (for an attack from Kuwait), coz we have a lot of troops there, and they're ready to attack. You'd better put the Republican Guard down there, to protect against all those American soldiers who are ready to attack from Kuwait.
I think Kurdistan (the region, not the hypothetical nation) will play a lot bigger role in this War than the Administration lets on. It would make a lot of sense. Just like we did counterintelligence to divert Iraqi attention toward an amphibious attack in the first war, we'll make them expect an attack from Kuwait in the second war. Then we'll bomb the hell out of their radar, do a quick buildup in Kurdish controlled areas, and attack south toward Baghdad. On the way we can take Tikrit, which is Hussein's hometown and is thought to be one of his strongholds. Also, I think there are dams in northern and northwestern Iraq that supply hydroelectric power to the major cities. If we can take control of those instead of destroying them or letting them be destroyed, that's something we won't have to rebuild after the war, and in the meantime we can control power to Baghdad.
Well, that was a good theory, but I just checked the World Factbook and it says Iraq only gets about 2 % of its power from hydroelectric dams. But anyway, I still think attacking from the North is a good idea. Especially if they expect an attack from the south.
.: posted by andy 2/18/2003
I really want to see Battle Royale. Also.
Amendments 5 and 6 are kinda low on my list of priorities right about now. In the past few days I've been besieged by people who apparently don't like it when others state a differing opinion. I had a 45 minute discussion tonight with a friend(and I use the term loosely) who was angered because of peace protests. He felt they were ignorant, or just ignoring the truth about Iraq; and to top it off they had the gall to carry insulting caricatures of GW on posters. I said what truth, that we want unfettered access to the second-largest oil reserves on Earth, and GW is a lot like Reagan, only with worse advisers; he muttered something about how people shouldn't be allowed to speak their opinion when they're wrong. I've found the best comeback to those who don't want to hear the opinions of others is, "When the revolution comes, people like you'll be the first ones up against the wall."
And if I get ONE MORE GODDAMNED 'if you don't love it, leave it' chain email, I'm gonna track down the motherfucker that wrote it and make him wish he lived in a country with stricter gun control laws. God Bless Texas. Er, America.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 2/18/2003
Monday, February 17, 2003
Don't know much about Illegal Art, but their EULA is pretty good.
Today we had a snow day. Mrs. Thomas used the time to paint the ceiling of the dining room, and I used the time to watch Igby Goes Down and Iron Monkey. I also hepled a little with the dining room thing, but I didn't do any painting. I'll tape and wash brushes and take down and rehang light fixtures, but I hate painting. I didn't get a happy fuzzy feeling at the end of Igby Goes Down. It was just depressing. I'll bet the use of beatings in the movie is supposed to be significant, but I'm not trying to think about that.
Iron Monkey was pretty good. I'm not a big fan of kung fu movies where everyone is flying around on wires all the damn time, but despite the flightiness of the movie's protagonists and antagonists, there was still some pretty good fighting. I started out thinking I wasn't going to watch all the way through the movie, but after a little bit I was hooked. I watched the Quentin Tarantino interview that came bundled with the movie. He started out talking about how excited he was that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was well-received by American audiences, and said specifically that if you like Crouching Tiger, you'll love Iron Monkey. I was a little put off by this because it sounds like his whole plan was to capitalize on the success of Crouching Tiger, and where that movie is all picturesque and has some stunning cinematography, Iron Monkey is a movie very much in the Hong Kong action-flick style. In that respect I think Tarantino missed his mark--Crouching Tiger was as poorly received in Asia as run-of-the-mill Hong Kong movies are here. The Chinese are very snobbish about martial arts movies, and didn't appreciate that Chow Yun Fat took the lead role. Chow Yun Fat isn't a martial artists, he's more of a Dirty Harry shoot-em-up kind of Asian guy. Likewise Americans are very snobbish about things like plot and character development. But Tarantino redeemed himself a thousand-fold by saying that perhaps we're over-sophisticated when it comes to movies. I think his implication was that we're actually just playing at this sophistication. His observation is that the Hong Kong movie-going audience is a much poorer working class, and for their money they want the whole range of experiences--tragedy, comedy, exhileration, suspense, etc. Americans tend to look at a movie that busy as a shotgun approach to entertainment, and unrefined. Tarantino wanted Iron Monkey to break us out of that mold, and he probably has the same idea for his new movie, Kill Bill.
And this reminds me. A lot of people criticize Gangs of New York as a violently pointless movie. I read a review the other day where the guy said, "So what?" So the point is that this happened, right here in America, on the streets of New York City, and it was terrible. If someone watched a movie about the Warsaw Ghetto, they wouldn't finish by saying, "So what?" So why would you watch a movie about terrible vice, corruption, violence, prejudice, and mayhem on the streets of what some wankers would call the Center of the World, and then turn around and say "So what?" It's a whole era of American history that we've swept completely under the rug. But I guess that's myopic of me. We're sweeping all of American History under the rug. History is becoming a fetish, and historians fetishists.
And while I'm on my soapbox, let me just say that it seems like the whole point of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the Bill of Rights is to prevent our government from holding its citizens indefinitely as enemy combatants. I would even be so bold as to say that this is exactly the circumstance the framers had in mind when writing these amendments. I am astonished that there isn't greater outrage over this issue. The government isn't allowing his case to come to trial because he has information that could lead to the disruption of terrorist activities. This raises several questions: 1. How is the government obtaining this information? 2. Is there any evidence that his information has actually been useful? 3. What is the government's ultimate plan for this guy?
But this is nothing new. I remember posting on sadmind several times about people held indefinitely by the government as threats to national security, with no trial, no access to lawyers, no ability to confront their accusers, and indeed having not been made aware of the charges against them. This has been going on for a long time. Americans implicitly trust our government, and I suppose this is the unavoidable result of our incredible freedom. The government can get away with things like this because we have no sense of historical or international context. People need to think of government as a living breathing organism that is in constant competition with us. While we carefully watch and control it, we will thrive because of it. When we take it for granted, trusting it and turning our backs on it, it will begin to thrive at our expense. It will propagate, it will spread, and it will try to destroy its competition. This is why we have the right to petition our government for a redress of grievances. This is why we have elected representatives (oddly silent elected representatives, in many cases). This is why we vote, and why we have free speech. But no one will act to restrain the government, because no one can be bothered to.
.: posted by andy 2/17/2003
A statement made today by the president of the staunchly independent thinking French Nation:
"It is not really responsible behavior, it is not well brought-up behavior. They missed a good opportunity to keep quiet."
In reference to the eastern European EU applicants who support the US administration's Iraq policy.
I thought it was especially interesting that the versions of this story on cnn.com and msnbc.com both do not contain this quote, even though msnbc.com compiled this story partly from the same AP wire story and cnn.com obviously knew about it through their own means.
Also interesting, the impetus for this post was hearing the quoting of Chirac on the Fox News Channel. The difference was in the translation, they quoted him as saying "shut up" instead of "keep quiet."
.: posted by Jeremy 2/17/2003
.: posted by Jeremy 2/17/2003
I think I have either completely lost, or completely failed to develop the ability to relate to normal people. I want to describe why I feel this way, but I'm convinced that I'm the only person that will have any idea what I'm talking about. Have you ever been surrounded by 3 engineers that smell like a mixture of goat urine and BO, talking about the latest comic book based movie and comparing the 9 different star trek series? I have. I get the feeling that these guys feel fulfilled in their lives and are completely unashamed. I think that's great for them. It's just that after two years of having lunch with these people on a regular basis, I feel like running away screaming every time one of them opens his mouth.
.: posted by Jeremy 2/17/2003
Sunday, February 16, 2003
Cooking for losers. We've eaten pretty well this weekend, but usually we're total losers when it comes to cooking.
.: posted by andy 2/16/2003
Can somebody tell me how to apply for editor of cnn.com? This is a terrible headline:
Colombia leads search for U.S. crash survivors
Is it about the shuttle? If it is, it doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense. What the hell is this "U.S. crash survivors" BS? I guess american astronauts have special high-temp-ceramic-skin that Israelis don't? But then you click and realize the word "columbia" is actually in reference to some country in south america, not a space ship.
.: posted by Jeremy 2/16/2003
We're bidding on this kerosene space heater. This is the first time we've ever bought anything over ebay.
.: posted by andy 2/16/2003
I'd just like to add that the Iraq flash I posted was sent to me by Stephanie on friday. If she had seen that flash a few weeks earlier, all our lives might be slightly more interesting right now. Damn Kurds.
.: posted by Jeremy 2/16/2003
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