issues/politics/bullshit

A photograph of his daughter, Leia Ryan Baum, was placed inside the uniform of Sgt. Ryan John Baum during visitation at a funeral home in June 2007. "That's all he wanted to do, is come home and put her on his chest," said Dana Baum, Sgt. Baum's mother.

That's right, this guy died and never got to hold his daughter or see his wife again. He died in Iraq fighting for a war that was never justified in the first place, but aggressively pushed by Bush and his administration, based on flawed intelligence that they knew was flawed:

Yeah, that's him joking about not being able to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Hilarious! Yuck it up, Lieberman.

Apparently, Bush feels a bit bad that his words led to him being perceived as a "guy really anxious for war." But WE all really know he's just a big joker who didn't mean anybody harm, right? He had no choice but to go to war...I mean, he didn't go to war, he sent all of those soldiers to war (4000 dead as of March 2008), and they killed a bunch of Iraqis in the process (104,000 on the low end as of January 2008, according to Iraqi Health Ministry). But, at least things are going well in Iraq now.

I just wanted to remind you of this, and remind myself: WE put these people into power. Every time we don't speak out about something, willfully remain uneducated, and let someone tell us "the way to do things," we risk losing our rights and our lives.

Contact your representatives and tell them what you think. Follow their activity and find out what committees they're on. Vote. It's your government.

Thanks to BagnewsNotes for clueing me into that amazing picture.

...at least, it's funny in the year 2008:

http://www.2007rapture.com/

From the Top 100 list at http://www.fstdt.com/.

I'm taking this opportunity to link to scientology. Oh, and also dianetics. You could do the same if you'd like.

In celebration of the ruling on gay marriage in California, here is a list (which I found here and traced back to here from here which evidentally got it from a forum...sorry I can't attribute the original author) expressing why this is actually a big problem.

1. Being gay is not natural. Real Americans™ always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.
2. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.
3. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.
4. Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn’t changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can’t marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.
5. Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Britany Spears’ 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.
6. Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn’t be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren’t full yet, and the world needs more children.
7. Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.
8. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That’s why we have only one religion in America.
9. Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That’s why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.
10. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven’t adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.

Seriously—big congratulations to you gay and lesbian folks out there in California, and here's hoping this starts a big wave of change across the nation. Cheers!

"...you know what they say on the barstool, there's poor and there's poor."

I'm a few years behind the curve on these last few posts, I know, but I figured it couldn't hurt to bring it up again anyways.

I was feeling sorry for myself just now about my (very relative) state of brokeness, and found this online. I don't feel sorry for myself any more. It's a few years old, but timeless.

What it means: being poor.

Oh, and check out the comments at the bottom too.

I'm not sure what exactly is going on here, but check it out: Breaking Free

The first casualty of the will to power is self-effacing humor.

Bless his heart.

The Sound, Not of Music, but of Control is an interesting article in the NY Times about the effects of cultural oppression on Chinese music. The fact is that if you ("you" being the repressive government of a modern nation-state) try to control cultural expression all you will do is ensure that alternative venues for expression will arise. Whack-a-mole ensues.

My two cents: if you are an American or live in another country where you have relative freedom to express yourself without persecution, do it. Don't waste that freedom and don't let it go away. Make something weird and offensive (to someone) today.

Favorite quote:

“It’s whether you’re happy or not that counts, and not the substance,” said Zheng Yang, a veteran D.J. on Music Radio in Beijing. “Life is smooth, and so music is more about soothing things. Anyone can criticize or blame. What we need right now is guidance.”

"Life is smooth..."

What a douchebag.

I happened upon a story about recording customer service phone calls on Consumerist a while back. I forget exactly which story it was, Consumerist has a number of posts about recording phone calls.

Anyways, this is something I've always wanted to do, not because I want to record customer service calls (even though that's kind of an awesome thing to do--I mean, they already announcer for most customer service calls that it may be recorded, and they don't necessarily specify by who...), but because I've had phone calls in the past from friends and family that I'd like to save because they are nice, or sample for sound projects, or just have because they are so funny and weird.

In the course of poking around further and trying to find information about how to do this, I happened upon a number of great sites--most from Consumerist and specifically comments on that site (I find that it has one of the best comment sections in terms of signal-to-noise ratio of any blog I read regularly). Here they are:

This is a site by an attorney who gives detailed information on what technology to use as well as the legal ramifications of recording people. It is a good place to start. Remember, recording people against their will or without their knowledge can be a crime!

This is a great guide linked to from the above, which goes into more detail about the legality of taping in the U.S.

One of the commentators on Consumerist linked to this item as an example of a good tool for recording calls, at least with land-line phones.

And finally, Radio Shack. Mini jack phone recorder. Enjoy.