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More on the disgusting practice of recruiting schoolchildren into the military:
| In many New York City public schools that are predominantly Black and Latino, military recruiters are a heavy presence, promising young people financial security and a fulfilling career. Recruiters roam the halls, set up tables and even pull students out of class... ''We've heard everything up to and including having a desk in the guidance counselor's office...When the kid comes in to talk to the counselor about college, before the kid can get there, they've got somebody in their face saying, 'You want to go to college? How are you going to pay for college?''' |
The stupid-juice is still being pumped into the water supply:
| 47 percent believe that Saddam Hussein helped plan and support the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001 (up six percentage points from November). 44 percent actually believe that several of the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11 were Iraqis (up significantly from 37% in November). |
I like Britain. I'm an anglophile. I love British (more specifically English) pop-culture, politics, junk-food, etc. In Ireland, I'd be considered a bit of a ''West Brit''. However, I've always been a bit amused by the high praise lavished on the British occupation of Basra - the notion that they were more ''sensitive'' and less thuggish than the Americans. Tell that to the 13 Irish people killed on Bloody Sunday. Try telling it to their families - see how long your kneecaps last.
Anyhow - this is delightful:
| Relatives of Iraqis tortured by British soldiers revealed last night how they were also arrested and brutally beaten simply for asking questions. The Independent on Sunday can reveal that the Iraqi civilians were punched and kicked after arriving at Camp Breadbasket to find out why friends and relatives had been detained. |
2005 February 26, Saturday
Some lego fun:
Mr. Cranky makes his excellent (and hurtful) Oscar predictions.
2005 February 24, Thursday
You can't make this up. Bush's Amerika gets scarier by the day. Ed Stross is a muralist who painted a replica of the Sistine chapel ceiling on the side of his studio - and has been sentenced to jail for obscenity. Hoo-AH!
| Santia ordered jail time, a fine and probation -- a sentence that sounds a little harsh to a state senator, the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan and fellow artists. Santia ordered Stross, 43, to serve 30 days in jail, do two years' probation and pay a $500 fine for violating a city sign ordinance. Roseville officials said letters were prohibited on the mural and Eve's exposed chest is indecent. Besides jail time and the fee, Stross is to tastefully cover Eve's breasts before reporting to the Macomb County Jail on Monday morning, and to paint over "love" by May 1. "Removing the work is the ultimate punishment. The jail time is nothing compared to removing what I painted," Stross said Thursday. |
| Maybe the biggest piece of luck of all consisted of a rock that has nothing to do with Martian water. The rock, named Bounce because it was hit by Opportunity's airbag on the way to Eagle crater, was found by the rover's instruments to match perfectly another rock called EETA79001. The latter is the catalog number for a Martian meteorite found on Earth. The chemistry and composition of Bounce and EETA79001 are identical. They must have been produced by the same impact event - except one ended up on the ice in Antarctica, where it was discovered in 1979, and the other landed back on the Martian surface, where it got bumped by a NASA spacecraft. What would be the odds on that? |
2005 February 23, Wednesday
In the interest of balance, here's some good news from Iraq. Make the most of it.
The gestapo are recruiting schoolkids. Propaganda of US Military through our Schools What do you expect from a military that runs their wretched "army of one" recruitment adverts before a Harry Potter movie?
| With a military recruiter present every day in the cafeteria, military "speakers" visiting classrooms, and huge recruiting posters in the guidance office, perhaps it's not surprising that teachers and even guidance counselors have been influenced by the constant hum of "enlist, enlist, enlist". Students at Isa's school are told that, yes, they could consider college, but that it's "very expensive" and "may not guarantee you a job", while the military "will pay for college" and "practically guarantees you'll have a great career". Oh, and "a big cash bonus right now if you sign up today!"... ..."It's just everywhere", Isa continued. "Here's an example: In gym we don't exercise or play sports like we used to do-now we "sound off", just like in the military, while running and doing jumping jacks, push-ups, and pull-ups. The freshmen are told to shout, "one, two!", then the sophomores are supposed to answer, "three, four!", and then the whole group of us has to say "Sound off!" I mean it's ridiculous Mom! How are you supposed to exercise while you're shouting at the top of your lungs?" |
2005 February 22, Tuesday
The internet is a strange creature. Conventional wisdom says that you have to update your site as often as possible, several times a day even. I went into a bit of a funk for the first two weeks in February. I expected the site's traffic to drop, as people got bored with the lack of updates. Around the 17th, I had a bandwidth alert from my hosting company, saying I'd already used up 40% of my month's bandwidth. This usually doesn't happen until the last two or three days in the month, if at all. According to Alexa, there's been a spike in traffic over the last few days - although I take their numbers with a grain of salt.
So I go off-world for two weeks and apparently the traffic improves! I don't know whether to be depressed about that or not. Of course, it might just be down to some goddam virus of ddos attack.
2005 February 21, Monday
Exurbia - the vast sprawling sea of shit that is Nowhere land.
| From coast to coast, the United States is undergoing a historic shift in its century-old balance between town and country. A growing population is eschewing the old urban centres and traditional suburbs for the brave new world of exurbia. This is the cultural landscape of modern America: not the downtown conviviality of Cheers, but the soulless anomie of Desperate Housewives; not the urban chic of Friends, but the sprawling southern California of The OC. |
VERY occassionally I've had to visit one of these dumps. The suburbs/exurbs around LA (Santa Clarita for example) are the most depressing places I've been in - and I've been to Branson, Missouri. The working class housing estate that I grew up in back in Ireland is an earthly paradise in comparison.
| What hits one first about exurbia is its ugliness. Laid out by competing developers, disparate 'cookie-cutter' housing developments (often christened with faux Wild West prefixes such as Vale, Ranch or Stable) wander into the distance, devoid of any master-plan. Self-contained behind electronic gates, each house seamlessly resembles the others in a conveyor belt of McMansions. Behind the walls, uniformity is enforced by a strict system of covenants, conditions and restrictions that outlaw individual alterations to homes and gardens... ...The furious rate of sprawl only adds to the dislocation permeating exurbia. 'There are no centres, no recognisable borders to shape a sense of geographic identity,' writes the exurban connoisseur David Brooks. It is a polycentric universe where the rhythms of the day are oriented around drives to the shopping mall, housing subdivision, gym, church or work. There is no downtown or inner-city; few civic landmarks or historic signifiers. Through the highways of Phoenix's boomburbs, Walgreens follows Burger King follows Kmart follows Starbucks. It is all too easy to lose oneself within this landscape of commercial banality: do we turn off at the Safeway or Petsmart? When the New Jersey Devils ice hockey team won the prestigious Stanley Cup in 2003, so absent was any sense of urban fabric they held their victory parade in a parking lot. |
It's nice to know we're slaughtering innocent arabs by the thousands to maintain this open sewer.
2005 February 19, Saturday
Pity the poor Englishman trapped on a ski-lift with these dopes.
| I was the only Englishman, and with customary politeness, the Americans questioned me gently on matters royal. Amid the stunning snow-capped mountains, a far more open vista than in the Alps, we talked of Camilla and Charles, Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle. I am ashamed to say that I used the old line about the castle being built too close to Heathrow Airport and they all nodded sagely and agreed it had been a mistake. |
| America is fast becoming a nation of faith not fact. A nation where the unpleasant aspects of human existence are simply airbrushed away. Television coverage of the Asian Tsunami was a case in point. In Europe it was covered as an unrelenting tragedy, in America, one television network promised "incredible stories of lives saved in near miraculous fashion"... ...Americans want to believe in miracles, their heads are in the clouds. While Europeans fret about what they regard as real life, about poverty and social justice and about combating AIDS, Americans find it easier to rally round a vision, however otherworldly it might be. Millions of Americans, 17% according to a recent survey, seriously believe that the end of the world is coming in their lifetimes and that they will be sucked up through the clouds to heaven. |
Amen, Jeebus.
2005 February 19, Saturday
Pity the poor Englishman trapped on a ski-lift with these dopes.
| I was the only Englishman, and with customary politeness, the Americans questioned me gently on matters royal. Amid the stunning snow-capped mountains, a far more open vista than in the Alps, we talked of Camilla and Charles, Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle. I am ashamed to say that I used the old line about the castle being built too close to Heathrow Airport and they all nodded sagely and agreed it had been a mistake. |
| America is fast becoming a nation of faith not fact. A nation where the unpleasant aspects of human existence are simply airbrushed away. Television coverage of the Asian Tsunami was a case in point. In Europe it was covered as an unrelenting tragedy, in America, one television network promised "incredible stories of lives saved in near miraculous fashion"... ...Americans want to believe in miracles, their heads are in the clouds. While Europeans fret about what they regard as real life, about poverty and social justice and about combating AIDS, Americans find it easier to rally round a vision, however otherworldly it might be. Millions of Americans, 17% according to a recent survey, seriously believe that the end of the world is coming in their lifetimes and that they will be sucked up through the clouds to heaven. |
Amen, Jeebus.
2005 February 16, Wednesday
Someone senior in the Whitehouse is being blackmailed by this loyal republican, methinks. Who's that hiding in the closet??? Is it Cheney? Rumsfeld? Wolfowitz? The mind boggles...
| His real name, it turned out, is James Dale Guckert. He has no journalistic background whatsoever. His application for a press credential to cover the Congress was rejected. But at the White House the press office arranged for him to be given a new pass every single day, a deliberate evasion of the regular credentialing that requires an FBI security check. It was soon revealed. "Gannon" owned and advertised his services as a gay escort on more than half a dozen websites with names like Militarystud.com, MaleCorps.com, WorkingBoys.net and MeetLocalMen.com, which featured dozens of photographs of "Gannon" in dramatic naked poses. One of the sites was still active this week. Thus a phony journalist, planted by a Republican organisation, used by the White House press secretary to interrupt questions from the press corps, protected from FBI vetting by the press office, disseminating smears about its critics and opponents, some of them gay-baiting, was unmasked not only as a hireling and fraud but as a gay prostitute, with enormous potential for blackmail. |
2005 February 15, Tuesday
Thanks for all the emails concerned about my absence. About two weeks ago, federal agents broke down my door, and whisked me away to a re-education camp. I have been cleansed of all my liberal ideas, and now support Operation Infinite Mayhem. God bless Bush, and God bless all the Red-state Mommies and Poppies and Timmies and Tammies!
Who am I kidding. Here's some mush:
Here's a very long column about how people will have to adapt to the onset of Peak Oil. About half way in there's a fascinating account of life in Cuba. They've managed to undo the Industrial Revolution, turning the clock back to a more agrarian way of life. Does that make them Conservatives???
| A low energy lifestyle will certainly mean more walking and cycling, and less driving. There will be reduced sizes of meals, houses, and cars. It isn't too hard to translate that immediately into better physical health. I think we will have more home economics, where people are actually working in the home, like Harvey Baker talked about yesterday. He told about the way he works, and other aspects of a way of life where you don't live a completely separate life, with parents going off and leaving the kids to be baby-sit by CNN or whoever does that. I think there will be less mobility. People will not move as much for jobs, and that means they're not going to break the bonds of community that they've had and try to recreate it in some different place. I think we're going to have a lot of live, local entertainment. |
| One in three U.S. high school students say the press ought to be more restricted, and even more say the government should approve newspaper stories before readers see them, according to a survey being released today. The survey of 112,003 students finds that 36% believe newspapers should get "government approval" of stories before publishing; 51% say they should be able to publish freely; 13% have no opinion. |
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