Fox ran two Photoshopped pictures on its ‘Fox & Friends’ show.  The pictures is Photoshopped were of a NY Times reporter & an NY Times editor.  Check out the story here -> http://mediamatters.org/items/200807020002. 

  How much different is this than when Katie Couric is thinned out and dewrikled?  Or when the glamour mags airbrush the models?  One could argue that the reporters Fox Photoshopped were made to be less attractive and more sinister, but that is just an opinion.  Some people may like yellow, corn nugget teeth. 

  I think what Fox did is despicable.  I think that what glamour mags do is just bad, but where and how do we draw the line?  I assume, but don’t know, that the models, KC included, allow or sign a contract allowing the mags to alter their appearances.  The two NY Times guys did not, again assumed by me.  So perhaps the only difference is legalistic and the other differences are only arbitrary.  Perhaps airbrushing the truth is as bad as distorting it.  It’s all propaganda, no?

I found a list of Books That Screwed Up The World, by some guy. It is decent, fun to compare with my own. I don’t think the Communist Manifesto by Marx & Engels belongs on the list. I also disagree with The Prince by Machiavelli. Missing from this guy’s list but present on mine are, The Bible - old testament & new -(I know it’s a collection of books), The Qur’an and The Bell Curve by Hernstein & Murray.
The bible has been used as a justification for the Crusades, the Inquisition, witch hunts, slavery, homophobic hatred, etc. The Qu’ran has been used to justify female circumcision, many a fatwa, the 9-11 attacks, suicide bombings, etc. One may make the arguement that these religious texts are responsible for much good as well. It is my contention that there are many books which do the same, with little or no negative influence, Shakespeare, Rousseau, Emerson, Thoreau, Bonhoeffer… Even ‘militant’ books like On War by Clausewitz or Autobiography of X by Malcolm X have not brought about as much harm as they have good. In fact, one may get the same morality lessons from many other sources. Religious texts certainly do not have a monopoly on morality lessons. They do, on the other hand, have a near monopoly on genocidal inspiration.
The Bell Curve uses pseudoscience and weakly supported (read one-sided) analysis to legitimate racial and class disparity. The authors start with the assumption that minorities and the underclass are less intelligent than the majority and the rich. They then set out to back up their assertion. Rather than taking the data and drawing a conclusion, they start with the conclusion and select the data they use. They do not discuss at all differences in the education recieved by the two groups as having an effect on this. They do not discuss the difference in opportunity possessed by the two groups. Their assertion reads like this- poor people and minorities are not as smart as the majority and rich people. Both groups had the opportunity to go to a free public school. Both groups do not perform the same at the schools, therefore one group must be genetically better than the other. It is a very juvenile train of logic. Are Quakers genetically inferior because they can not operate a microwave? Is it logical to blame the abused for the abuse? The Bell Curve gives these questions a resounding “YES!” So this book is one of the very few books to come out in the late 20th century that the usual suspects can appeal to and cite when making racial arguements vs the huge amount of literature one may point to when backing the idea that race has no statistical value in determining one’s cognative ability, Jonathan Kozol comes to mind.

  It struck me on Monday as I was driving to work hearing yet another report on Myanmar (Burma) and the horrible cyclone that struck the country, yet another striking blow to the arguement that America is not the best country in the world.  Look at the example below. 

  Myanmar, due to a devastating cyclone hitting the country, many are left without homes, power, food, clean water, etc.  Tthe death toll could top 100,000, the injured count could reach 2 million.  The natural disaster is being turned into a man made catasrophe due to the Government of Myanmar not letting in foreign aid.  The government has repeatedly denied entrance to the county by foreign aid workers.  Myanmar’s ability to respond to such a large scale disaster has been pointed out as insufficent in many articles.  So why will they not let in foreign aid workers?  Is it pride, fear or something else?  Surely in America, in our republic, the democratically elected officials wouldn’t allow something so horrid to occur.

  America, flashback to 29 August 2005.  To paraphrase Sophia Petrillo, picture it, New Orleans 2005, hurricane Katrina hits the city.  For whatever reasons the government, the US government, said it was ‘unable’ to reach to devastated areas.  It insisted on this for several days.  Foreign aid workers were turned away from ports around New Orleans by the US armed forces.  This first occured on 30 August 2005, the day after the hurricane hit the city, several days before American aid reached anyone in the city.  G-Dub stated that America did not need any assistance from foreign aid workers and further that America would not accept assistance from foreign aid workers. Yet, no aid was reaching the people of New Orleans. So why would G-Dub not let in foreign aid workers? Was it pride, fear or something else?

  It strikes me as odd that Myanmar, who’s armed forces are much smaller than that of the US, will not let in foreign aid workers to assist its citizens. 

  It strikes me as odd that the US, who’s relief forces were ‘unable’ to reach the citizens of New Orleans, would not let in foreign aid workers that were able to. 

  Truely this shows the difference in governance between a military junta style dictatorship and that of a republic.

You Make Me Touch Your hands For Stupid Reasons is an awesome, almost LolCatz Speak, breakup letter. Teh internets giveth again. Make sure to have your volume up so you can hear the dramatic reading of this letter. The word construct, “you make me touch your hands for stupid reasons,” would seem sort of bittersweet in an emo song or you know, better context. But schadenfreude does not even begin to explain the massive amount of humour I found in this. Please, click and enjoy.

  My Bloody Valentine is to play a small set of US dates.  I have already requested time off to go see them in Chicago.

  My Bloody Valentine is probably best known today for Kevin Shields’s work on the Lost In Translation soundtrack.  But, for me, MBV’s 1991 album, Loveless, is it.  It is my favourite album of all time.  MBV is my favourite band ever.  It is my opinion that without MBV, we would have no Sonic Youth, no Pavement, no Radiohead, etc., etc.  I put MBV as the second most important/influential band in Rock & Roll history, right behind Chuck Berry (without whom we wouldn’t have had the Beatles…).  This is like my birthday, christmas, chanukah and new year’s all rolled into one.  

  Not only are MBV touring for the first time since 1991, they are slated to release two albums.  One is to consist of unreleased material from the 1991 sessions that were to have made the follow up album to Loveless (then MBV broke up), the other is to be of new material. 

  On another note, Tom Waits is set to play the Brady June 25th.  I’m not such a big fan of his but apparently a lot of people are.  The cheap tix are $400.

  Oh dear internets, my embarrassment grows. This article informed me that the English only bill has passed the OK House. It is now going to the OK Senate. In this new draft, the bill’s authors added exemptions for Oklahoma’s American Indian languages, Brail and sign language.  I guess the hypocracy of disallowing Native American languages was to much even for them.  But this only serves to further expose the racist anti-hispanic/latino sentiments behind the bill. 

  America is one of a very few (the only as far as I know) developed countries who’s citizens do not have to interact with people who speak other languages regularly.  Even so, putting other languages on signage, what is so horrible about that?  Shouldn’t the government want people to read what it feels is important enough to say?  What, dear internets, besides a (scary) Nationalism could be the motivating factor behind this bill? 

    What I find humourous is this, think of the idea of ‘the ugly American’ and of American tourists in general.  When these people go oversees they benefit from English being on signage throughout.  Statistics have shown, for many decades, that Americans speak only one language.  Most other developed countries have citizens that speak two languages as a matter of course and three and up on the average.  English is on street signs, retail signage, mass transit systems, etc.  Now, I know that Enland is our favourite colony, but it isn’t even continental.  Why then should English be written on signage of countries that do not speak English?  What have they learned that Oklahoman’s do not know?  Could it be a ‘build it and they will come’ thing?  Like, if we make it easy to be a tourist here, maybe they’ll come.  Shouldn’t Oklahoma be interested in this as well?  It certainly stands a better chance of bringing in tourist dollars than a new convention center.  That convention center idea was old when I studied urban decay and revitalization in the late 90s.  Since nearly every metropolitan city in America had that idea 18 or so years ago, is Tulsa really going to pull in the tourist bucks?  Seems HIGHLY unlikely.  Will Oklahoma bring in tourist bucks if our signage is in their language?  Probably not, but it is far less expensive than a convention center or those dumb promotional commercials the state makes to show in other states. 

  I guess what I am left with is that there seem to be no reasons to pass an English only law in Oklahoma except for the racist anti-hispanic/latino ones.  But, if we are going to do the English only thing, shouldn’t get more specific?  Like, the Queen’s English only, or proper English only?  Shouldn’t we punish abusers of the language?  I mean, isn’t txt msg technically English? 

  I found a few awesome blogs while reading the Heeb interview with Christian Lander, creator of stuffwhitepeoplelike.com.

  Passive Aggressive Notes and Fake Steve Jobs are my favs.  They are now listed in my blogroll.

  The internets also gave me a wikipedia article about teh and that word, along with pwn, keep me laughing pretty regular.

  This wikipedia article on lol cats is awesome.  I particularly like this phrase, “Im in ur noun, verb-ing ur related noun.”

  Remember that time, dear internets, I told you about Wisconsin residents being all xenophobic and how I was all proud and stuff that it was not Oklahoma (Native America) that went wacky?  Boy is my face red.  I’m going to feel this in the morning.

  I discovered that my beloved state, Oklahoma (Native America), has attempted, at least once before now as well, to legislate English as the one and only official state language.  If I take a second, and that is as much time as is needed, I can see the ignorance, the irony and be embarassed by such an attempt.  If I take a second, again that is all that is needed, I can guess which political party is responsible for authoring, petitioning for and championing this bill.  It isn’t the Greens or the Libertarians.  The person(s) responisble for this bill belong to the same party as Sally Kern, the nogoodnik. 

  This article, or plea, has some detail about the proceedings where this bill was voted on, http://www.ahalenia.com/iws/alert.html.  Very tellingly, an American Indian (Native American) was present and not allowed to speak, in fact no one (private citizen) was allowed to speak. 

  This attempt is ludacris.  Oklahoma (Native America) is home to several American Indian (Native Americans) tribes.  Tribes the federal govenment forced here, with violence.  Oklahoma (Native America) is home to a large German population, a Jewish population and a sizable Itallian population.  But I think it is safe to assume the real population this legislation is targeted at is the same population that was recently ostracized/expelled -> hispanics/latinos/chicanos. 

  The following is all personal testimony and heresay but, I’ve never heard anyone complain about computer terminals or signage being in German or Cherokee (Native Americans).  I guess it really bothers some people when they look at a sign and have to read it in English then they are forced to see that below that is a Spanish translation or that some storefront signage is in Spanish.  Why does it bother these people so?  I am unable to anwer this.  While I hesitate to throw the following word around, granted I used to use it frequently in my formative years, I feel this legislation borders on fascist.  It is definitly elitist.  Barring the free, open and equal access to public knowledge/speech from a specific group or groups of the public has no legitimate defense, at least in a republic.

Here is the bill that came before committee in Jan ‘08 http://webserver1.lsb.state.ok.us/2007-08HB/HB1423_int.rtf

” “ in Feb ‘03 http://www2.lsb.state.ok.us/2003-04HB/HB1020_cs.rtf

‘02 article that makes reference to ’97 bill http://www.lsb.state.ok.us/HOUSE/news6048.htm

  PS, thanks are due to Timmy for telling me about the trouble down at the ol’ ravine.

  Sally Kern types in Wisconsin get angry, even threaten violence, after Pledge of Allegiance recited in a Spansih class in, guess what language, wait for it… wait for it… 

  If you guessed Farsi you were wrong.

 http://www.progressive.org/mag_mc042108b

   How could anyone think that reciting the Pledge in a Spanish class in the Spanish language is disrepecting the troops?  The people in this story are disrespecting me with their ignorance.   At least this story is coming out of another state and not Oklahoma.  But look for Inhofe, Coburn and Sullivan to comment on this case. 

  America has no official national language.  America does have several ammendmants, the first of which guarantees free speech. 

  America doesn’t have a native, white, English speeking population.  America does have many free, legal citizens who speak Spanish, either as a first or second language.

After attending the presentation that Dr. Martens organized, I feel an invigoration. The presentation was at the OLA conference on Wednesday from 8:45-9:45 and was titled, “OSS OnRamp: 5 Innovative Projects by LIS Students Utilizing Open Source Software.” The presenters made using the software seem so easy. Plus, the idea of being able to customize my own software by writing/editing the code sort of jibes nicely with my solipsism.

In high school I was in AP Computer Science. We learned how to program in Pascal, a now mostly defunct language. But I remember really enjoying the work. This was either my junior or sophmore year, well after I had quit playing D&D, but most of the people in the class with me were active players of, not only D&D but, Magic The Gathering. The whole thing just went against who I was in high school. The computer dorks wore highwater polyester pants that showed of their white socks, had greasy hair and pizza faces. Plus, I was also too busy taking photos and working in the darkroom, writing one act plays and reading the books on the senior reading lists so I could make fun of the idiots in my grade who hadn’t read The Brothers Karamazov. That is to say, I was too busy being a different kind of dork, the pretentious art/book dork.

But now I’m ready to join up with the polyester panted empire. I’m too old for zits (please gods) and I don’t think I own any white socks. Plus, some of my friends and I are actively trying to make a D&D cadre. The open source movement is right up my alley, politically. I can’t think of a good reason not to re-up my hit points and roll the 20 sided die for charisma and charm, etc. Go OSS!