Wednesday, January 29, 2003
Win Without War. The ads from TrueMajority and the National Council of Churches.
Tuesday, January 28, 2003
Redooced to begging. Save Dooce from her own popularity. Donate to her "damn was *that* my bandwith?!" fund. Because it could happen to anyone, I'm blogging it forward.
Monday, January 27, 2003
Believe it. Reshape yourself through the power of your will; never let yourself be degraded by self-will. The will is the only friend of the Self, and the will is the only enemy of the Self. — Bhagavad Gita 6:5.
Friday, January 24, 2003
Wow! The Senate puts Johnny's evil plan on the ropes! Wired:
Saying they feared government snooping against ordinary Americans, U.S. senators voted Thursday to block funding for a Pentagon computer project that would scour databases for terrorist threats.By a voice vote, the Senate voted to ban funding for the Total Information Awareness program, under former national security adviser John Poindexter, until the Pentagon explains the program and assesses its impact on civil liberties.
The measure, introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) also said the computer dragnet being developed could not be deployed without congressional approval, although it allowed exceptions for national security. It was tacked onto a spending package in the Senate, but it is not yet law.
It is now expected to go to House and Senate negotiators. If the negotiators keep the provision in the spending package, it will advance to the House and Senate for final passage before going to the president for signing into law.
“This makes it clear that Congress wants to make sure there is no snooping on law-abiding Americans,” Wyden told Reuters after the vote.
This is wonderful news! The International Herald Tribune reports that “curbs on the project were adopted without debate and by unanimous consent a part of a package of amendments to an omnibus spending bill.” As this bill moves to the House/Senate conference committee, let your Senators know how delighted you are and especially let your Representatives know how much it means to you that this amendment clear the committee and become law.
Now is the time to take action: Click here to find your legislators and send them a FREE fax. Too busy to write your own letter to your representative? Click here to use mine. (note: my district's representative is a Republican.)
Wednesday, January 22, 2003
Watch me sketch nine continuous-line nudes after Titian’s Venus of Urbino — executed and animated with GE's strange remembering digital marker. Note: Flash required.
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9
[thanks Nik via Val for showing me this cool tool!]
Support The Data-Mining Moratorium Act (S. 188). Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI) has introduced legislation to put a wrench to Johnny's Evil Plan. The bill would stop data-mining under the Total Information Awareness program of the Department of Defense — that twisted brainchild of twisted iran-contra felon John Poindexter to use an advanced form of data-mining to allow gorvernment toadies to to snoop through the most personal information of law-abiding citizens. (Think: cadres of bureacrat/spooks sifting all your communications — phone calls, emails and web searches — financial records, purchases, prescriptions, school records, medical records and travel history.) The bill would also freeze any similar program of the Department of Homeland Security until Congress authorizes such activity and it requires a report to Congress on TIA and other data mining activities. Representative Jerry Nadler (D-NY) is expected to introduced similar legislation in the house. Click here to get more information and send a free fax to your senator via the ACLU web site. Please act now to protect your Fourth Amendment rights!
Doing the math on Johnny's Evil Plan. John Allen Paulos — a professor of mathematics at Temple University, adjunct professor of journalism at Columbia University, and the author of Innumeracy — explains why the Defense Department's data-mining uber-plan won't add up to anything more than an excuse for creating dossiers on American citizens.
Sunday, January 19, 2003
Saddam, The Cowboy, Croesus and the I Ching. “ ...Faced with uncertainty, one nevertheless must decide. And decision about the right strategy must come soon, because as the months drag on, weather conditions are less amenable to an American-led assault, and the cost of keeping large numbers of troops poised for battle will become prohibitive.
So in order to resolve this question, I did what any sane person would do.
I asked the I Ching. ...”
Definitely read more from James Balkin, A professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale and the author of
The Laws of Change: I Ching and the the Philosophy of Life. [Thanks, Val!]
Saturday, January 18, 2003
Justice Department says bookstore customers have no right to privacy. From the American Booksellers for Fee Expression newsletter:
The American people surrender their right of privacy when they buy books in bookstores or borrow them from libraries, Assistant Attorney General Daniel J. Bryant declared in a letter to Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont last month. Last summer, Leahy questioned the Justice Department about its vastly expanded authority to search the records of bookstores and libraries under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act. “Do you think that library and bookstore patrons have a ‘reasonable expectation of privacy’ in the titles of books they have purchased from a bookstore or borrowed from a library,” Leahy asked.On December 23, Bryant replied: “Any right of privacy possessed by library and bookstore patrons in such information is necessarily and inherently limited since, by the nature of these transactions, the patron is reposing that information in the library or bookstore and assumes the risk that the entity may disclose it to another.”
Congressmen Bernie Sanders of Vermont has pledged to try to amend the Patriot Act to "eliminate provisions in the USA Patriot Act that undermine Americans' Constitutionally guaranteed right to read and access information without governmental intrusion or monitoring." Show him your support at bernie@mail.house.gov. Or fax (202) 225-6790.
From the same newsletter, Justice flouts the Freedom of Information Act and refuses to reveal how many times it has used its Power under the Patriot Act to subpeona the records of bookstores and libraries in a suit filed in October by the ABFFE, ACLU and the Freedom to Read Foundation. A hearing is expected in February.
Friday, January 17, 2003
Odin On the Classics. Odin the TV-watching Rottweiler reviews Guys and Dolls. Here.
Checked out by the Crime Dog. Just because we’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to sniff us. Federal and local law enforcement agents visited at least 545 libraries in the past year to inquire after patrons’ records, according to a study by the Library Research Center at the University of Illinois. [right offa CaliforniaAuthors]
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. “ If the doors of perception were cleansed . . . we'd all be batshit crazy.” — Joseph Duemer [via Tom]
The screed of the Scarlet Pimpernel. Mark, of our favorite Directory of Wonderful Things, shares an anonymous e-mail that is a guide to the slimy underbelly of the Cowboy Administration, complete with Disturbing Search Requests:
... We know that Saddam Hussein has Anthrax, as well as botulism and bubonic plague, because the Reagan Administration GAVE him the starter cultures. The emissary on that mission? None other than Donald Rumsfeld. Don't believe me? Type "Rumsfeld" + "Anthrax" + "Iraq" into your search engine. [ Kate: google ]Boy that Dick Cheney sure is a patriotic guy - he'd never give aid and support to our enemies, right? Think again. As CEO of Halliburton, he went around the UN embargo by using foreign subsidiaries Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll-Dresser Pump to rebuild Saddam Hussein's oil infrastructure just three years ago. Not only did he seek to do business with Mr. Hitler-with-a-bigger-mustache, he actually broke the law for the privilege! Estimates of the deal vary from between 23 and 78 million dollars, but Cheney's take amounted to approximately thirty pieces of silver (adjusted for inflation from 33 A.D.) Need proof? Type "Halliburton" + "Iraq" into your search engine. [ Kate: google ]
Admiral John Poindexter, recently put in charge of going over your e-mails and credit card receipts, is a convicted felon who sold Stinger missiles to the Iranians, used the profits to fund an international terrorist organization, and then lied to congress about it. Along with the Stinger missiles, Poindexter also delivered to the Ayatollah a Bible and a key-shaped cake. Go ahead and and call us democrats as unpatriotic as you like, at least we didn't bake any cakes for the Ayatollah.
Too young to remember this? Keywords are "Poindexter" + "Iran". [ Kate: google ]
Worried that you or a loved one may have to serve in the Persian Gulf? Take a tip from the President: "George Bush" + "AWOL" [ Kate: google ] ...
Read more at boing boing.
Thursday, January 16, 2003
All is not rosy for Johnny’s Evil Plan. Senators annonce efforts to de-fund John Poindexter's data-strip-mining dream to sniff though Americans' financial, medical, travel, housing, and even veterinary records. Let's encourage our elected representatives to Shut Johnny Down! Click here to find and fax your legislators.
Need to know more? Read previous entries (1) and (2) or visit the Total Information Awareness Resource Center.
Too damn busy living your paper trail to compose a message to your Senator? Use mine.
While I was Out: In December, in a ham-handed attempt at sleight-of-hand, Johnny switched his creepy logo and replaced a scary schematic of his uber plan with a benign no-info graphic. The schematic was very enlightening, and so I'm posting it here.
True Confessions from the “Axles of Evil” I drive an SUV, a 1996 Jeep Grand Cherokee that has a small profile compared to some. But still, it's got a big V8 engine and gets about 17 miles to the gallon. We call it The Truck. (As in “Honey, is The Truck parked on the right side of the street?”) I bought it when the dot-com gravy train was still running down Covina Avenue. I bought it to do all the things that a truck could do for us: haul the big dogs, big monitors, the house and garden stuff from Home Depot, big canvases, 64 rolls of toilet paper AND 36 rolls of paper towels from Costco. I also bought it because, tooling around Southern California's freeway mega-plex of death in my super fuel-efficient 1989 Honda Civic, I felt like a tin-clad mouse at the unending elephant's polka. Everybody so head-up and so big, whizzing by. So I broke. I wanted to get big too. The used Jeep was in great shape; low mileage and it seemed big enough. I got a good deal and wrote a check for the full amount.
That was in 1999. But last night — Jeep hulking at the curb, me in bed trying to get to sleep — my reasons for buying it kept cropping up, morphing into excuses, dissolving into the ether of that trippy place between wakefulness and dreams — but I need my truck...I have hauled all kinds of great big stuff ... I hardly drive at it all ... what about the dogs ... small is scary. All true, but meaningless. My eyes snapped open.
The thing is, I see the Jeep really was a selfish purchase right from the start ...
Read More at CaliforniaAuthors.com
Wednesday, January 15, 2003
To be really alive, accept the impermanence of yourself and everything else. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, in his new book Advice on Dying and Living a Better Life offers practical advice on this important practice:
1. If you cultivate a sense of the uncertainty of the time of death, you will make better use of your time.2. To prevent procrastination with regard to spiritual practice, take care not to come under the influence of the illusion of permanence.
3. Realize that no matter how wonderful a situation may be, its nature is such that it must end.
4. Do not think that there will be time later.
5. Be frank about facing your own death. Skillfully encourage others to be frank about their deaths. Do not deceive each other with compliments when the time of death is near. Honesty will foster courage and joy.
I try to be thankful that nothing — including me — will last. A bitter situation is bearable because it will pass. Elation is sweeter because it is fleeting. This moment is exquisite because I won't be here forever.
Tuesday, January 14, 2003
Playing 21. Scripps Scientists create a new organism — "a form of the bacterium Escherichia coli with a genetic code that uses 21 basic amino acid building blocks to synthesize proteins--instead of the 20 found in nature." Read more.
Un-American activities. Worried about the poorly managed INS campaign to register, round up and detain men from several Arab and Musilm nations — including people that have fled extremist persecution in places like Iran? The ACLU lets you send a free fax to your legislators to urge them “to put a halt to this special registration program that amounts to little more than blatant racial and religious profiling.”
Monday, January 13, 2003
Terror support ads. The government's Drugs Support Terror ads can be seen here. The detroitproject's spiffy riff, the SUVs Support Terror ads can be seen here.
Sunday, January 12, 2003
Entrances to Hell around the UK. See them. With maps and travelogue.[via memepool]
Scientists tell Washington post-terror secrecy impairs research. “The political climate that we are in is leading toward imposing security regulations that, while they would provide precious little security, would seriously impair the progress and conduct of science,” said John Hamre, president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Read more in the Boston Globe.
Saturday, January 11, 2003
Fortune does help the brave. Read the story of Cory Doctorow’s open-rights book publishing gambit at CaliforniaAuthors.
Friday, January 10, 2003
BBC: Non-Proliferation treaty explained.
Thursday, January 9, 2003
Big thinkers answer this year's big question. Edge.org poses an annual question to the big brains on the Third Culture mailing list — people like Marvin Minsky, Ray Kurzweil, Freeman Dyson, Dennis Dutton, Seth Lloyd, Robert Shapiro and many others. The answers are always an education. This year, the group was asked to imagine that they have just been nominated to be President Bush’s new science advisors and he wants to know: “What are the pressing scientific issues for the nation and the world, and what is your advice on how I can begin to deal with them?” The answers together create an amazing scientific, political and cultural survey. [via a&l] What started it all? Read The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution.
Wednesday, January 8, 2003
After-Christmas sales leave you yawning? Shop Angola Prison.
One chubby toe in the water. The pre-launch of bodyofwisdom.com is online.
Tuesday, January 7, 2003
Samurai swordplay, Uma and a hot dance beat. See the trailer for Kill Bill. It's Quentilicious!
Hey! It's a redesign. Katecohen.com is back and in a shiny new wrapper for 2003. All thanks to husband Val for guidance and support.
Saturday, January 4, 2003
“Fortune helps the brave” — Publius Terentius Afer