admin
I am the tech dude and web developer of the product known as Bob Harris.
Homepage: http://coffee.bc.ca
Posts by admin
The main reason we have troops in Iraq (while Osama is two countries to the east)
Aug 15th
New Zogby poll:
Respondents are far more familiar with the Three Stooges – Larry, Curly and Moe – than the three branches of the US Government – judicial, executive and legislative. Seventy-four per cent identified the former, while 42 per cent identified the latter.
Gaaah.
Actual praise for a TV anchor
Aug 15th
Chuck Roberts on CNN Headline News, interviewing Ned Lamont, just apologized for these comments by saying this:
After which the guy gave Lamont the chance to rebut Cheney and Lieberman.
Same reservations I always have about news media. But for once, somebody did the right thing. Cheers.
PS — Just back from Florida where I had limited access to the Internet, air conditioning, and my own common sense. This worked out surprisingly well. More as I unpack.
Why I was cheering for Lamont
Aug 10th
btw, I’d like to confirm that I was rooting for Lamont over Lieberman not because of the latter’s support for a war which has killed tens of thousands of innocents at a cost of hundreds of billions with the net effect of making us less safe while destroying our international reputation and destabilizing the entire mideast.
I mean, who in their right mind could oppose that?
No, precisely as the White House wants you to think, I was rooting against Lieberman only because I have a suicidal wish to die at the hands of fanatics, whose cause I may even secretly sympathize with, despite any liberal’s deep antipathy toward fundmentalism of every stripe.
In fact, 60% of the American people now have no interest in our security and are willing, nay, eager to die at the hands of terrorists.
So once again, the White House is making perfect sense.
Me and the Stranger
Aug 10th
From the Trebekistan page at Amazon.com:
So according to Amazon’s algorithm, more than half of the people who look at my book ultimately choose… The Stranger by Albert Camus.
How absurd.
Find whatever meaning in that you prefer.
Bush Administration Wants To Make Ordering Torture Retroactively Legal
Aug 10th
Didn’t see this on the front pages, what with all the Red Alert! happening the very day after it becomes clear that incumbent war supporters will be in grave danger unless the public is re-convinced on the war.
But this fine nugget was squeezed into page A21 in today’s L.A. Times (about one-fifth the size of the adjacent story on teenagers’ cell phone video preferences — this just in!) following up on this story in the Washington Post:
Fidell said the initiative was "not just protection of political appointees but also CIA personnel who led interrogations."
Interrogation practices "follow from policies that were formed at the highest levels of the administration," said a fourth attorney, Scott Horton. "The administration is trying to insulate policymakers under the War Crimes Act."
Nice. You can just smell the democracy on these people.
Shorter Joe Lieberman
Aug 9th
"I care too much about democracy to respect the outcome of a fair election, and I have too much regard for the people of Connecticut to pay attention to what they actually think."
My friend Val wished at lunch today that Lieberman would have put up one-tenth as much fuss as the VP candidate in the Florida mess of 2000.
"So now I will continue to run against a candidate who has already beaten me, against a party I expect to remain a member of."
Of course, that wasn’t the end of his career, but possibly the beginning, raising the possibility of a presidential run in 2004. This here, if handled gracefully, would probably be the end.
Ick.
My unseemly love for the new MacBook Pro continues
Aug 9th
Had to burn a DVD today to get some promo stuff out. I’d never done that on a computer before. Pretty simple, or should be, but you know how these things can go. Everything’s download-a-new-this, update-the-driver-that, and two hours later you’re actually doing something. If you’re lucky. And I’d never even launched iDVD, even out of curiosity. So I wasn’t expecting perfection.
But that’s what I got. Totally self-explanatory. Everything worked. In twenty minutes, I had menus and graphics and music picked out. Like it’s supposed to be. Now there’s a DVD burning just beneath my right wrist while I’m typing this, with enough processing power that I can go about the rest of my work and not even notice a delay. So, wow. If you’re looking to get a new machine, well, there.
Disclosure: I own a few shares of Apple, so I could arguably be a member of the cult. Use your own judgment.
Africans know how to take their medicine
Aug 9th
One of the excuses sometimes used to skimp on AIDS treatments in Africa is the prejudiced notion (once even vocalized explicitly by the head of the Agency for International Development under the Bush administration) that Africans won’t stick to complicated medical regimens the way, say, we First Worlders will.
Debunked. Scoreboard: Africans 77%, North Americans 55%.
Of course, if people everywhere are really pretty similar
Worst. Ad. Placement. Ever.
Aug 6th
Came across this somewhat obsolete sponsored ad near the bottom of a Yahoo News photo page, during a search under the word "Beirut":
Worst. Ad. Placement. Ever. And just so goddam sad.
I was actually searching (unsuccessfully so far) for the original source of this chilling photo, published here by the conservative Oslo tabloid Aftenposten, comparing satellite shots of Beirut before and after the bombing:
Dozens of Israeli civilians. Hundreds of Lebanese civilians. (This might seem inequitable, but then our UN Ambassador has explicitly stated that the Lebanese deaths don’t count the same way.) Probably the greatest recruiting tool Hezbollah ever had. No end in sight. Iraq falling into chaos. And our leaders refusing to acknowledge even obvious realities.
I wish I had something wise to say, or even something even mildly cheerful, but I don’t.
UPDATE: turns out the source of the aerial comparison seems to be an obscure little paper called the New York Times. Well, duh.
And now for something completely horrible
Aug 6th
Declassified Pentagon documents confirm widespread atrocities by U.S. troops in Vietnam, confirmed by investigators but largely unprosecuted:
The records describe recurrent attacks on ordinary Vietnamese — families in their homes, farmers in rice paddies, teenagers out fishing. Hundreds of soldiers, in interviews with investigators and letters to commanders, described a violent minority who murdered, raped and tortured with impunity.
Abuses were not confined to a few rogue units, a Times review of the files found. They were uncovered in every Army division that operated in Vietnam. [Emphasis added.]
Words now fail.
Friday pudublogging: lifesaving pudu edition
Aug 4th
Some pudus even have the reflexes and agility to save lives.
This leaf was blowing at high speed right at that guy’s shins. And this valiant little pudu leapt in and snatched the menacing leaf right out of the air, saving the day. Or at least I like to think so.
Photo taken at the Jacksonville Zoo by this guy, who I suspect may have been wearing the snakeskin pants. He is lucky to have his tibias.
Normally, I would now make gentle fun of someone wearing anything that warm in Jacksonville in August… except I’m about to head for Florida in August myself. Apparently the heat wave in Ohio wasn’t enough for me.
Too bad we don’t all have valiant little pudus looking out for us.
But I thought if the government thought you were guilty, you were guilty
Aug 2nd
Richard Jewell, finally honored as a hero by the governor of Georgia. Ten years later. (Wait, wasn’t he the Olympic Centennial Park bomber? No, that was Eric Rudolph.)
Innocent until proven guilty after a fair trial: a fundamental tenet of American freedom. Right? Right?
Who could possibly hate freedom so much?
Keep reading. . .
Guantanamo calling… it might be for you
Aug 2nd
This is bad. From today’s Washington Post:
The plan, which would replace a military trial system ruled illegal by the Supreme Court in June, would also allow the secretary of defense to add crimes at will to those under the military court’s jurisdiction. . .
[snip]
Under the proposed procedures, defendants would lack rights to confront accusers, exclude hearsay accusations, or bar evidence obtained through rough or coercive interrogations. They would not be guaranteed a public or speedy trial and would lack the right to choose their military counsel, who in turn would not be guaranteed equal access to evidence held by prosecutors.
Detainees would also not be guaranteed the right to be present at their own trials, if their absence is deemed necessary to protect national security or individuals.
Can you say junta?
Your president speaks
Aug 2nd
Compiled by First Draft, from a Fox interview on Monday. Examples include the classic:
Sigh.
I’m reminded of Mark Crispin Miller’s prescient observation about the precise moments of Bush’s verbal breakdowns, something I wish had been widely noted at the time:
Not 100% but Bush has been pretty consistent ever since: lucid on war, capital punishment, and sports; a complete mess on anything requiring compassion.
Sigh.
Home, sort of
Jul 31st
Update: those of you not from Cleveland will learn much about the town’s self-image simply from the existence of this post.
To clarify: yes, parts of Los Angeles, as if this is not common
knowledge, can have crappy weather sometimes, plus occasional
chunky-style air. We get mudslides. We get smoke from wildfires. We
get a bay as filthy as Lake Erie’s long-ago worst every time it rains.
We’ve got not just one frustrating baseball team, but two. Plus
traffic that can rival some third world cities. Median home prices
which start at roughly your wildest dreams and go from there. And a
nice big seismic fault under our feet, which is deeply reassuring in
the age of Katrina.
I left out the racial tensions, sprawl beyond imagining, and state
government run by a right-wing Austrian. And yet I still love Los
Angeles. Lots. Much as I still love Clevo.
Email I’ve glanced at (I never have time for it all anymore, sorry)
looks maybe 5-to-1 able to comprehend that the following is not a
comparison of one place to another, but a standard-issue, rather
pedestrian complaint about the cheapness of sprawl anywhere. But since
some Clevolians still freak the instant they hear a word that isn’t
praise for a comeback the city made a decade ago, rest assured: if I
saw a Taco Bell worth praying to in Guatemala, I would write about it
there.
[Post begins here.] In Ohio for a few days visiting family in and around the Snow Belt.
Some
things never change. The Indians lost a game in the ninth inning a few
minutes after my flight landed, so at least that was the same as
always. And the weather is intolerable, which it usually is here, so
that felt familiar.
Most of all, the conversion of the remaining
bits of greenspace into a vast shopping imperium continues unabated.
The small town I grew up in, which once had empty expanses of woods
between little neighborhoods of small homes, is now a strip mall
fiesta, one of the leading retail destinations in the entire state.
The new Taco Bell is incredibly shiny. Really. If Taco Bell ever
decides to become a religion, I now know what the cathedrals will look
like.
Not far away, the newest megamall is another in the
current fad of simulated-town monstrosities which architecturally remap
selfish consumption as a form of community. Its name, which to me
sounds like self-parody: Legacy Village.
As if the great legacy of our forebears, one we will proudly fight to
pass to our children, is the right to eat at Cheesecake Factory.
This is just a middle-aged guy looking at his old hometown and saying it’s not what it used to be. Doesn’t make it less true.
PS: can’t we all just learn to enjoy the fact that the Indians do suck, possibly for years to come? (Much as this space guessed
on Opening Night, just from looking at their ages and stat lines.) We
can still love them. Roll with it. It’s just a different kind of fun.
