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September 30, 2004

If You're Gonna Go Responsible

Be responsible. Jonathan Tasini writes about Eddie Bauer's hypocrisy -- having a pro-environment ad campaign while using sweatshop labor. Of course, if the company's cause is the environment, good for them for touting it (assuming they're keeping up the deal), but fair labor practices should really just be a no-brainer for everybody. If you make a product most people use, then your employees should be able to buy them.

Posted by josh at 05:59 PM | Comments (0)

The Top 10 Reasons

To get out of Iraq.

Posted by josh at 05:56 PM | Comments (0)

Tonight's Debate, This Afternoon

The Associated Press went ahead and sent out a debate story template, which both ABCNews and the Boston Globe posted early, until they got caught. Wonkette caught it; and Eschaton posted the whole thing, as did MyDD. Annatopia, however, managed to get the whole story in screen shots.

UPDATE: A new version of the story has appeared, written in the future tense.

Posted by josh at 05:35 PM | Comments (0)

MIT Technology Review Emerging Tech Conference

I won't link to the individual posts (there's a bunch of long ones), but Andy's been doing a bunch of interesting blogging on the Emerging Tech Conference that you should read, if you're interested in such things.

Posted by josh at 04:33 PM | Comments (0)

September 28, 2004

He's a Lady

Can you believe what passes for "reality" TV these days? Yup, TBS premiers He's a Lady on Oct. 12. The premise? Dress guys up like women and try to pass them off in public as such. Now that's programming at its best.

Posted by josh at 10:49 PM | Comments (0)

S-Zoo

I arrived at school today to see the "Maury event 1:30 p.m. room 254 signs" hanging around Newhouse. I knew Maury was going to be on campus, talking, and I was wondering if he was maybe going to tape a show on campus, because when I headed over to the library at 10, I walked past a pen full of people with only University Union signs hanging around it. It wasn't until I returned to Newhouse a little later that they had hung a sign that said Real World casting call. The people were all still penned up at 4 as I walked out with Steve. Wow. Just plain nuts.

Posted by josh at 05:52 PM | Comments (0)

Vote Republican? More Money.

OK, so there's a cause-effect issue here. Kos notes that those states that get the most money in federal aid tend to be those that vote Republican, while the ones at the other end of the spectrum -- the least federal aid -- tend to vote Democrat. In fact, 8 of the top 10 aid getters are "red states" and 7 of the bottom 10 aid getters are "blue states." But let's not jump to conclusions -- I don't believe the administration is essentially rewarding votes (or bribing red states) with aid. Rather, the people who live in states that are historically poor and need more federal aid vote Republican, which is weird, because Republicans these days are doing an awful lot to help out rich people, and not so much to help out poor people. Maybe the voters in those red states need a little re-education into who they're voting for and why: Vote for Republicans, get federal aid because so many people are unemployed and the schools are underperforming because there's no tax money to be had. Vote Democrat, get less federal aid because employment rates go up, household income goes up, schools get better, and everybody's happy. Either way there's more money coming in; wouldn't you rather not be depressed and poor to get the money?

Posted by josh at 11:09 AM | Comments (0)

Democrat or Progressive? How About a Trade?

Via Silversand I learned about an interesting site called VotePair. The idea here is that if you want Bush out and to vote for a progressive, there's a way for that to happen. Let's say you live in a "safe" state (that is, a state that's going to go for either Bush or Kerry, and there's nothing you can do about it). That's probably a good state in which to vote for a third-party candidate. But, if you live in a swing state, you want to vote Kerry even though the thought sickens you, since at least he can beat Bush. What do you do? You get onto VotePair, find someone who lives in a safe state, and promise to vote for Kerry in the swing state in exchange for someone in the safe state voting for the progressive candidate. Not the fantastic all-wonderful situation you'd prefer, but better than sitting around vomiting because you hate the "choice" you have to make.

Posted by josh at 11:04 AM | Comments (0)

September 27, 2004

Bassist's Wang

OK. Over on my privacy policy I relinquish myself from you being irritated at me for something in the way of non-pornographic content that really isn't suitable for people who don't want to read material that might be of an adult nature. That said, I was doing my occasional romp through the list of search phrases people click to get to my Web site. One such phrase was Horan nice penis. In fact, two people clicked through from that phrase. I did a search for that phrase, and couldn't find my site among the first 150 options. Let me repeat that. Two people searched for Horan nice penis, and scrolled through at least 151 options to get to my Web site. It seems I wrote the word penis in a post about Quinn and Cantara getting fired. I must have written the word "nice" within a month of said post, and was linking to bassist Seth Horan's blog (I now use the phrase Seth's Road Journal..., because that's what he calls it). So, Seth, congratulations on your nice penis, and thank you, pervs, for visiting my site despite the fact that I'm sure you were disappointed with what you found. [Incidentally, if you now plan to do a search for Horan nice penis, my site will likely appear much higher, because I have now actually used the phrase Horan nice penis. Repeatedly, even.]

Posted by josh at 03:22 PM | Comments (0)

Back Even?

With the first debate three days away, the latest Rasmussen poll has Bush solidly with 213 electoral votes and Kerry solidly with 211.

Posted by josh at 10:16 AM | Comments (0)

Dear Jennifer

You're welcome.

Posted by josh at 10:13 AM | Comments (0)

How Do I Add Stations to My Cable Lineup?

Somebody please instruct me as to how to order G4techTV on a Time Warner system. I really really must see the hockey season as played by a video game system, because owners don't want to lose more money and lower-tier players insist on making ridiculous salaries (like, say $900,000 for a fourth stringer, awarded by an arbiter, not an owner).

Posted by josh at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)

Rather Out in May?

After about 24 years, Dan Rather's tenure might be up in May. John Roberts and Scott Pelley are considered candidates to replace him. As one SU professor (and former industry bigshot) notes, "Rather's nuts," and that has nothing to do with the fact that he's 73. Host of NPR's Wait Wair Don't Tell Me Peter Sagal said on air on Saturday that feeling he wasn't worthy to sit in Walter Cronkite's chair when he started as CBS's anchor, Rather simply crouched behind the table. I always knew you had to be crazy to do that job.

Posted by josh at 09:51 AM | Comments (0)

September 26, 2004

Three Days in the Life (Snapshots)

Short prose.

Posted by josh at 10:07 PM | Comments (0)

Sunday

Short prose.

Posted by josh at 09:37 PM | Comments (0)

Saddam for President

Via No Capital comes a story that would likely throw both Iraq and America into chaos: Saddam Hussein plans to declare his candidacy for president of Iraq. He won't be tried before the proposed January elections, and there's nothing specifically disallowing him from running, and according to the story, a recent Gallup poll finds over 40% of the people want him back. I guess there's something to be said for electing the known evil versus dealing with the chaos (which would explain Bush's popularity as well, I suppose).

Posted by josh at 08:42 PM | Comments (0)

So Long Ellis, We'll Miss Ya

The Red Sox announced today over the PA system that today is the last regular season game Ellis Burks will play at Fenway Park. He's had a decent career, though it was far too short, thanks to knee problems; he'll end with a batting average around .290 and over 350 home runs. So long, ol' buddy. Do well in your retirement.

Posted by josh at 05:07 PM | Comments (0)

Is Voting Worth the Trouble?

Jim Holt asks, "Is voting worth the trouble?" I was talking to a poet/journalism student this morning at the Pavilion about voting, and he was speaking about the cynical view (which I don't think he really ascribes to). Paraphrasing: The glory of a closed voting system is that no one knows for whom you voted. The problem of a closed voting system is you have no way of knowing if your vote was even counted. When I went over to the other coffee shop (this one a chain, so I won't mention it's name, though it's not the one you think), the guy behind the counter recognized me as someone who carries around voter registration forms. He took ten forms from me to distribute in the cafe.

The point is, yes, voting is worth the trouble. And I don't think it's as much trouble as Holt makes it out to be: going to the polling place, waiting in line. Of course, you can always get an absentee ballot (which means you have to get to a mailbox and open the door, after carrying the ballot all the way from your car parked at the curb, unless you can just leave it in your own mailbox for your carrier).

The journalism student/poet told me that he thinks our votes don't really count, because the political elites pick who is to be the next president (political elites is my phrase, not his). To a point, he's right. Even if the political elites narrowed it down to a few people they were happy to see us elect -- Bush, Kerry, some of the other folks who ran in the primary -- there's a big enough difference between the two major party candidates that yes, our votes do matter, even if there's no way to show that any individual vote was the one that tilted the election in one way or the other.

Posted by josh at 03:29 PM | Comments (0)

Murders in Iraq are Up Since Saddam Ouster

Are Iraqis better off without Saddam? Who the hell knows? We know that during Saddam's reign, there were many, many government-sponsored killings. Now those killings have simply shifted to street crimes.

The murder rate rose this summer, defying more than a year of promises from the American authorities about the increasing effectiveness of the Iraqi police and security forces.

We got rid of Saddam, taking a criminal regime out of office, and opened the door for criminal anarchy in the streets. America: Helping to create freedom among criminals in the Middle East.

Posted by josh at 03:15 PM | Comments (0)

Al Qaeda May Disrupt Afghan Election

And what are we going to do about it? Try to show strong resolve. We wanted free elections in Afghanistan. We got rid of their former regime so that there could be. But there's not yet. Strong resolve is going to get this done? Come on, get real.

Posted by josh at 03:12 PM | Comments (0)

For Sale: Playas, NM

Here's an interesting little Times story about a small town that needs a buyer. For the whole town. They're hoping perhaps to use it for anti-terrorism training.

Posted by josh at 03:07 PM | Comments (0)

Are Indian Smoke Shops Becoming the Next Canadian Pharmacies?

Perhaps. But telling American Indians they can't move their businesses to the Internet is just setting them up to be impounded in their reservations shops with no way to increase business. You might as well just set up a border patrol so that those who drive onto reservations to buy their tax-free cigarettes pay tariffs as they leave the reservation. If the American government didn't want to deal with the sort of competition independent reservation shops provide for shops that have to charge taxes, it shouldn't have carried out a genocide campaign.

Posted by josh at 02:39 PM | Comments (0)

Times Trying, at Least

On the cover of the New York Times Magazine today is a story about bloggers that would have been fantastic six months to a year ago. The story essentially puts blogs in the mainstream, except that for the little they were under the radar before the political conventions, blogs have been pretty much in the mainstream since then. Case in point: the story alludes to the fact that Wonkette gets 450,000 page views a week, and Kos is getting 350,000 page views a day. If that's not mainstream, what is? The Times' daily circulation is only about four times Kos', and the Times has a slightly bigger payroll (just slightly, mind you).

My friend Rebecca Reynolds did a study last spring examining the notion that bloggers set the mainstream news agenda. She concluded essentially (and I'll be somewhat vague on the details here because I don't want to blow the article before she gets it published) that bloggers tend to react to stories in the mainstream media, and so mainstream news outlets are still setting the agenda. Why, then, this Times Magazine story now of all times? A story in this vein would have been amazing a year ago and fantastic six months ago. Since the story covers mainly bloggers covering the Republican Convention, even a few weeks ago this would have been relevant. I'm a bit annoyed that I pay $4.50 every Sunday for what seems to be a bit of a sham at times (remember my post on Try Not to Annoy Your Llama?), but beyond that, it seems to me that the paper with the second highest circulation in the country (behind USA Today and perhaps the most sophisticated readership is delivering old news and trying to pass it off as an emerging trend.

Posted by josh at 02:07 PM | Comments (0)

September 25, 2004

Friggin' GM

I'm stuck watching the Red Sox-Yankees series on YES, the Yankees' cable station, thanks to my 2003 relocation to the wintry hills of Syracuse. Tonight's game is brought to us "with limited commercial interruption" by GM, which means that instead of watching commercials at the end of each half-inning, I only have to watch them every inning. On the half-inning breaks, I have to watch a highlight of the Yankees beating the Red Sox at some point in the history of baseball. Gee, thanks GM, for the limited commercial interruptions.

Posted by josh at 09:43 PM | Comments (0)

Salon Tries to Get Maxim Out of a Hole

Welcome back from the Yom Kippur fast; now that you're done atoning, here's an entry about a magazine that inspires lust, so you can start sinning for next year.

Just the other day, the Times ran a story about how Dennis Publishing, which publishes Maxim, Blender and other magazines, is cutting jobs. I know they plan these features ahead, but the timing here is rather suspect. Salon's weekend feature is a glorified stroke job on Felix Dennis (the Dennis in Dennis Publishing). Could there be an, umm, blending of content sometime in the future? Or at least a sharing of services?

Posted by josh at 09:35 PM | Comments (0)

September 24, 2004

Voter Registration

The voter registration deadline in the state of New York is October 8. Beginning today, I am carrying around registration forms (see note at the top of this page). Feel free to come ask to sign up. I am happy to mail in your form for you.

Posted by josh at 12:50 PM | Comments (0)

Eek.

So, I haven't gotten up from in front of the computer yet. I plan to, it just hasn't happened yet. I decided, what the hell? I don't feel like standing. I'll zip on over to Tickle and take that personality test (see, I'm not all serious and cynical throughout). And umm, well, no more personality tests. They're just too creepy:

You're a Poet

Your personality is actually determined by two personality sub-types - your primary, or dominant sub-type, and your secondary sub-type. You are a Poet which means you are a Thinker / Golden. Your primary sub-type is defined by "Thinker" characteristics and your secondary sub-type is defined by "Golden" characteristics.

That means you're complex and artistic with a rich inner life. Chances are you're a bit shy and quiet, and you enjoy peaceful, comfortable environments. You're an interesting person to know, full of insights and inspiration, even though you're sometimes hesitant to express them.

Posted by josh at 12:14 PM | Comments (0)

No, Most of the Country is Not Enough, Thanks for Asking

Donald Rumsfeld told Congress yesterday that chances are, only 75-to-80 percent of Iraqis will get to vote in January, because of violence in the rest of the country (violence Allawi overlooked yesterday). Rumsfeld's point of view? better three-fourths or four-fifths of the country than none of it. Without the numbers in front of me, it's either 16 or 20 years in the U.S. since 20 to 25 percent of voters wouldn't have made too much of a difference in the way presidential elections turned out. That's a landslide victory by any count, so leaving out that much of the country would be just ridiculous.

What if they tried that in the U.S.? A quarter of this country comes out to leaving out California, Texas, Florida and Ohio. Or California, New York, Texas and Virginia. Those are huge chunks of the electorate, and important states to any candidate (in the first scenario I put forth, Dems would lose 55 electoral votes, Republicans 81, according to the EVP, and in the second dems would lose 86 and Republicans 47). No, Mr. Rumsfeld, 75-to-80 percent of the country is not better than none.

Posted by josh at 11:48 AM | Comments (0)

Disney to Miramax: Just Say No to Moore

Buried at the bottom of a WSJ story about Miramax cutting 13 percent of its work force is this nugget about Michael Moore's next film:

Now, Disney and Miramax are sparring over Mr. Moore's next film, said to be a documentary about health care in the U.S. Miramax has shown interest in financing and distributing the movie, though no deal has been made. But in a rerun of the "Fahrenheit" saga, people familiar with the matter say that Disney has told the Weinsteins not to bother, because it doesn't plan to allow the company to release it.

I haven't seen anything on it on Moore's Web site, but I've sent him an e-mail asking if he's really considering Miramax, given the shaft Disney gave him earlier this year. I'm not really expecting a response, but if I get one, it'll be posted here.

Posted by josh at 10:39 AM | Comments (0)

September 23, 2004

Are We Smarter Than That?

I don't know. Teresa Heinz Kerry predicted Osama bin Laden will "magically be found" in the weeks leading up to the election, spurring the president's re-election. Hopefully if that happens, Americans will be smart enough to know that he was caught back in April or something. This is something a number of people (at least in my circles) were worried about right after we found Saddam.

Posted by josh at 07:31 PM | Comments (0)

Time for Anger Management Training

Is a bad milkshake worth setting a bomb off in a McDonald's over? I don't think so.

Posted by josh at 07:29 PM | Comments (0)

A Little Unconstitutional, Perhaps?

The House today voted to keep federal courts from dropping the words "under God" from the U.S. pledge of allegiance. Like this could possibly make it through the judiciary. Congress's check on federal courts is the ability to block appointees, not the power to legislate their powers away.

Posted by josh at 07:26 PM | Comments (0)

Michael Moore at SU

Go get a cup of coffee. This is going to be a long post. You've been warned.

I went to see Michael Moore at the Carrier Dome last night. He said it was the first time he'd spoken in a football stadium. They opened up 10,000 tickets and sold them all at $3 students/$5 adults. He was speaking as part of the Syracuse Symposium series on humor, which focuses on people who use humor for social action (click here for a schedule). I don't hide the fact that sometimes, Moore just annoys the heck out of me. I resolved to not bring anything heavy to throw. So I only brought a pocket-sized notebook (and filled 10 pages front and back). These are observations on things he said, the way I feel about them, and the reactions of the people I could see (which was a good chunk of the third-level balcony).

While we didn't all get to sit together, I walked down to the dome with Joe, Jen, Andrew and Nolla (Laurie joined us later). The local NPR station this morning said that there were 15 people protesting, which was probably accurate, but some of them were anti-Bush. I only managed to see two signs. One said, "Lick Bush, Beat Dick," the other said, "Moore is a traitor." I actually thought the turnout for protesting would be a lot bigger, but it turns out a bunch of anti-Moore folks picked up tickets and actually went to hear what he had to say, which impressed the heck out of me, as not enough liberals do that. And now, the talk.

Have some faith. "It seems like every other person I talk to is breaking into tears that Bush is going to get four more years....Stop the whining. Have some faith in your fellow Americans." While Moore did not dwell on action the whole night, he did return to it often. His point? Look, if all you do is sit around whining, he might win; you've got to go to the polls, have faith that other people will, too. That's definitely a message I can get behind, but I think there's a lot to be desired when it comes to the Kerry campaign. I was chatting with Christen yesterday, who said that the DNC keeps calling and e-mail our pal Chris, who has given money and pledged her support to the Democrats in this election. But they're just bothering the heck out of her. On the other hand, I've e-mailed the DNC several times in the past few months to let them know I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 and that there are issues that are important to me that they weren't talking about. Shouldn't they be e-mailing and calling me, trying to get my vote? They already have Chris's. I'm sorry, but that glossy photo of Kerry and Edwards is not enough to win my vote. It's great that Democrats are going after the base. What about those of us who aren't part of the base? Even if we're not going to vote for Bush, we're not necessarily going to vote for Kerry, and the way this campaign is shaping up, if Kerry is polling better than 15% or so ahead of Bush near the election, I'm voting forDavid Cobb. And I'll be letting the DNC know that I'm considering Cobb again, to see if they're willing to try to get my vote.

Stop whining. Moore: "People say [in whiny voice], 'Why won't Kerry do this? Why did Dan Rather do that?...[Republicans] don't whine. They're up at the crack of dawn wondering which minority group they're going to keep from getting married today....Our side doesn't see the crack of dawn unless we've been up all night." Good point. Though one of the problems the left has in this country is that conservatives can get behind one guy and stick more or less to one message, even if they don't agree entirely with his policies. The other side of the fence this election is more together than it has been in the past, I think, but we're not all rallying behind John Kerry so much as we're rallying behind the concept of anybody but Bush. And again. Do something. Take a trip to your local PIRG office. Register people to vote. Make sure you get to the polls or fill out an absentee ballot. Just don't spend your nights whining over your beer and going to bed at dawn, only to wake up that eveniing to find you've done nothing for another day. Moore's belief: "They can only stay in power if we stay in bed."

"The polls are full of crap." Moore asked people to stop reading polls, which he said are "full of crap." The differences in the Rasmussen, Slate and EVP readings are a testament to that (though you can bet your ass I'm going to keep reading them). Further, he said, the concept of the likely voter has changed. More young people are going to vote in this election than ever have before. Beyond the people who have become eligible since the 2000 election, that election taught us that each voted does count, and so people who have been eligible in the past but who haven't voted are more likely to go out this time. What gets missed in terms of young people in the polling are two groups of people (though he only mentioned the second): (a) college students living in dorm rooms, where pollsters can't call and really can't determine who lives there anyway, and (b) people whose primary phones are their cell phones. I know I haven't been called to take a survey (marketing or political) since I abandoned my landline. I disagree that we should stop paying attention to polls, but I do agree that we can't dwell on them, because they are not reality. Moore also suggested turning off the TV, unless of course people are watching The Daily Show.

We are the majority. Moore pointed out (correctly in my view) that while most of the people in this country would never use the term "liberal" to describe their political views, the vast majority of people are not Christian conservatives a la the president. Most people are for things like women's rights to equal pay and minimum wage laws, which are liberal concepts.

Kerry ain't great, but he's what we've got.. Republicans get behind Bush, Moore said, even if they disagree with him on some things. "'We must re-elect Bush.' 'But he gave $10 billion to Africa to fight AIDS when you said we should just send condoms.' 'I don't care. We must re-elect Bush.'" I think I'm paraphrasing him there, but you get the point. This is probably the anybody-but-Bush attitude speaking, but Moore said let's get behind Kerry, stop questioning him on policies he's not necessarily speaking to: "The day after [Kerry] is in the White House, let's beat the shit out of him" over the issues -- but let's get Kerry into the White House. "I have a new slogan for the Kerry campaign: Bush and Kerry both suck. That's why I'm voting for John Kerry." And really, think about it. Are you better off than you were four years ago in terms of job, economy, etc.? I can count one friend who is, and he got into that situation right around the start of the campaigning ahead of the 2000 election. I've been in Syracuse for just over a year now, and in just that short time, I can see how worse off this place is due to the current administration's policies.

On Ralph Nader. Moore said he's been a friend of "Ralph" for a long time (Moore only called Nader by his first name, which I feel is really belittling for a candidate -- Moore referred to Bush and Kerry, but also to Ralph, as though he were just some buddy of someone who was doing something). When Nader was looking for help in 2000, Moore said, a lot of people said, "Yes, if you don't campaign in the swing states." But when Al Gore shut Nader of the debates, Moore said that Nader went after Gore, and lost a lot of his support group in the process. That said, Moore didn't blame Nader for Bush's victory -- he blamed Gore, who didn't win his home state, who didn't let Bill Clinton campaign in Arkansas (a state Gore lost), and who didn't ask for all the Florida votes to be recounted, just some in a couple of counties. Moore said that at this point, Nader needs to go away and leave us alone. The fact that Nader didn't get the Green Party nomination this time around says something to me, and I feel that if pollsters rephrased their questions to include "Green Party nominee David Cobb" and "Independence Party candidate Raph Nader," Cobb would start showing some support in the polls and Nader's would be lessened.

Free advice for Kerry. Moore started prattling on here -- this was maybe 30-45 minutes of the two hours he spent (including showing us clips of deleted scenes from Fahrenheit 9/11, which I'll get to later, as well as a game of Stump the Canadian). Moore spoke a lot about what he mentioned in F911: Where's Osama bin Laden? What's the Bush family connection with the Saudi royal family? He also said that Kerry's running on a mantra of "I'm not Bush." From Moore: "OK. I like that. It's good enough for me. I'd vote for this bottle of water over Bush. And it's French!" But that's not good enough for everybody -- there are some people who may not feel like they're a whole lot better of than they were in 2000, but they don't feel much worse off, either. Moore did make a comparison, though, that seemed to click with a lot of the young people in the audience. "Kerry has to realize there's something likable about Bush. Bush is like Ferris Bueller. Ferris Bueller is cool. He gets away with everything. The Democrats are Ferris Bueller's sister, sitting in the police station with Charlie Sheen, wondering, 'how does he get away with it?'"

Flip-flopping on Iraq. We're all aware of Kerry's supposed flip-flopping on Iraq. We've seen the, "I voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it" clip many times over. But Kerry stands by his view that Bush should have had the authority to go to war as a last resort -- just that Bush didn't wait until it was a last resort. Meanwhile, Moore went through what he called Bush's flip-flopping on Iraq -- though what he really covered was the changing positions over the past 20 years of some of the people (mostly Donald Jumsfeld, actually) who served under Reagan and in the first Bush administration. Moore started in 1983, when we liked Saddam and helped him get weapons; 12 days after a Rumsfeld visit, Iraq gassed Iran. In March of 1984, Rumsfeld visited again, opening up the avenues for Iraq to get credit and weapons from U.S. sources. [Please keep in mind I'm not going back to verify any of this, if Moore gets any of this wrong, please note it in the comments and I'll be happy to change it.] Later, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, we decided we didn't like him, but that we would only get the Iraqi army out of Kuwait, and not go after Saddam. Shortly after that, we decided to support a Shiite uprising to go after Saddam, then we pulled their support and they got slaughtered. Later, under Clinton, Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz said we should go after Saddam (though we didn't). In a debate during the 2000 campaign, Bush came out against using U.S. troops for regime change and nation building, but shortly after 9/11, Bush said we should go after Saddam (although we knew he had nothing to do with the attacks). We then went after Saddam, purportedly because he had weapons of mass destruction, and when we got him but there were no weapons of mass destruction, Bush said, "mission accomplished," though 15 months later we're still over there fighting. The free advice to Kerry on this? Tell Bush, "I've held one position: I believed you." And to reiterate something Moore said, most of us did -- and we should be able to trust the president when he says something.

F911 and the troops in Iraq. Moore said there are bootleg copies of Fahrenheit 9/11 floating around the streets and military bases of Baghdad. "And I have no idea how they got there," he said sarcastically. He said that he met a soldier who told him he had been anti-Moore, thought the author/filmmaker was anti-military, but after reading Dude, Where's My Country? and seeing F911, he realized he was wrong, and wanted to apologize for that. Moore said he told the soldier: "No, please accept my apologies for sending you on this mission, that had nothing to do with the self-defense of our country." I doubt he actually said it, but yes, we're sending troops overseas on a mission that was invented by the president. Moore noted that he supported the bootleg copies of F911 being out there, and that he hates U.S. copyright law. The film is due out on DVD on Oct. 5, and he's going to try to get a whole bunch at cost and distribute them free to undecided voters ahead of the election (and try to get the movie on television the night before the election, though he's having trouble with the DVD company because of a contract clause that gives them exclusivity for a month or two after the release). "The rest of you," he said, "know how to download." [Incidentally, if this is the way he wants to go, why skip out on the Creative Commons license?] Next out for Moore -- perhaps by the end of next week -- is a book of letters from soldiers and their families.

Q&A. Lacking a good mechanism for a Q&A with 10,000 people in a football stadium, Moore's volunteers were running around while everyone was in line taking quesions, which means nobody got to ask about the substance of the speech. There is one question that was asked that I do want to address, because it's one of the problems I've had with Moore and he did address to some extent (though I wasn't entirely satisfied with his answer). Someone asked him to respond to charges of hypocrisy, fighting for working people and putting out books and films with large companies, while clearly making lots of money and claiming not to like our copyright laws. He answered that while he was making Roger & Me he was on welfare making $99/week, and that if anyone had told him people would flock to theaters by the millions to see a documentary, he never would have believed it. He said he'd promise to keep using his money for good. Drudge has charged that Moore owns a couple of $1 million-plus properties, though I've never looked into that, and that's not something he addressed, but I'm not sure how much I care -- he doesn't go out and spend thousands of dollars on a suit (though I wish he'd wear one once in a while; he at least showed up in clean jeans last night). I am concerned that he doesn't look to smaller publishers and film distributors who could (a) handle his work and (b) benefit greatly from representing it, or do that stuff himself. And if he truly hates the copyright laws of the U.S. he should stop letting big media companies profit from his work.

The Iraq war. We all know Moore's position (and mine) on the war. So I'm going to give you just two quotes. "When we drop bombs on a civilian population, we kill people. I just want to say to my Christian conservative friends in here: Thou shalt not kill. Moses didn't come down from the moutain with an asterisk next to 'Thou shalt not kill.'" And he's right on that of course. The other thing he said was, "This is a war that cannot be won." He went on to say further that this war is illegal and immoral, and therefore should not be won. Inasmuch as I agree with the illegal/immoral part, I don't think I can support him in the "should not be won" part. Can this war be won? Well, it's subjective, I guess. I don't feel there are ever any winners in war. There's certainly one side that lost less than the other, but if the war ended today, would the statistic that says fewer of our people are dead than theirs mean we won? I don't think so. Incidentally, I'm a teaching assistant in a class full of military personnel (they're learning Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Flash), and one student asked what I thought of Moore's talk; bottom line, this is where the speaker lost this particular student, who took Moore's words as meaning that our military was perhaps not good enough to win this war.

F911 deleted scenes. Moore told us we were getting the first look at deleted scenes from the Fahrenheit 9/11 DVD, which comes with 100 minutes of such footage. We got to see two of the scenes. One is essentially a life in pre-war Baghdad scene. In the film, there's about 20 seconds of things like a kid flying a kite and just life happening, to show that Iraqis are people, too. The deleted scene includes interviews with Iraqis (mostly subtitled), showing people who say they're scared of the Bush administration and who mention that they don't want war and they're doing OK under Saddam. The scene ends with an elderly man speaking in English, saying, "We don't want this war. We want peace." And really, doesn't it take two sides willing to fight to have a war? The other scene we got to see was of hundreds of relatives outside Abu Ghraib prison, hoping for their loved ones to be released. They told stories of how long their relatives had been in prison, of what kinds of good people their relatives are. There was also one shot of a person who had just been released, saying that his treatment had been awful (but what was he going to say -- the room service was fantastic?).

Stump the Canadian. At one point near the end, Moore called people up who were either not registered to vote or who were registered and had never voted. He also called up a Canadian who had never voted. The idea was that he asked the Canadian political stuff about the U.S. and the Americans political stuff about Canada. Of course, the Canadian couldn't name the Canadian prime minister either, but for the most part, he did better than four Americans when it came to knowing about both countries. Sad, it was.

Closing thoughts. One of the things that always bugged me about Moore is the way he dresses in public. I'm not one to talk -- baggy jeans and t-shirts are my wardrobe of choice -- but when I'm in front of people for a presentation or a job interview (even at a ratty sandwich shop), I'm wearing a shirt and tie, probably a suit. To Moore's credit, the jeans were clean this time, which I'm not used to seeing, and he did wear a sport coat over his shirt (or sweater, I couldn't tell on the monitors). The beard has grown in a bit so it doesn't look like he's just not shaved in three days. The baseball cap should probably go, but whatever. I just feel like if you want to be taken seriously as a speaker, there needs to be something in the way of professional dress -- would you buy a copier from a salesman who showed up unshaven in dirty jeans, faded cap and ratty sneakers? I tend to doubt it. The other thing that surprised me was that he in general didn't say anything I felt was just plain stupid. He did some stupid stuff in Bowling for Columbine (and the other two earlier films) that I feel like he fixed (mostly) in F911, but with Moore there tends to be that moment when you just want to smack him. But it didn't come. I wasn't blown away, though many in the audience were. He handled his hecklers well, too. He told them there would be a time slot for angry white guys, as well, and he responded to abrasive questions, too, so I have to applaud him for that. All in all, I'd say it was an evening well-spent.

Posted by josh at 03:01 PM | Comments (0)

Awfully Good Deal for House Arrest

For Martha Stewart, who is scheduled to serve 5 months of house arrest after she serves 5 months in prison. The deal: she gets to work 48 hours/week. She'll be able to head back to Martha Stewart Living, and perhaps to a prime time show she would be featured in. I don't know the statistics for people under "house arrest," but being able to work 48 hours at a job that brings in, well, lots and lots of money doesn't sound like such an awful punishment.

Posted by josh at 07:14 AM | Comments (0)

September 22, 2004

It's Official

CBS has been fined $550,000 for the Superbowl halftime thing. That's $27,500 for each of the network-owned stations. There were no fines for the 200-plus CBS affiliates not owned by the networks.

Something we're going to see as part of this fallout is increased fines. The Journal article linked above notes that some want the maximum fine to be raised to $275,000 per incident, some to $500,000. That's a minimum of a ten-fold increase in fines. I hope that legislation comes with some clear definitions of indecency, because it's just going to discourage any smaller broadcasters from trying to get into the game.

Posted by josh at 04:16 PM | Comments (0)

Yusuf Islam Detained, Deported

Yusuf Islam, the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens, was detained and deported after his flight was re-directed to Maine. Apparently, last year's re-release of "Peace Train" was too much to handle. Back to Britain with him, the damned peacenik! Yeesh.

Posted by josh at 03:14 PM | Comments (0)

Do You Care? I Don't...Sort of.

It appears that perhaps Laura Bush didn't smoke pot in high school. How is this a campaign issue? What it really is, is a non-story about how Kitty Kelley needs to be a better journalist.

Posted by josh at 02:59 PM | Comments (0)

How's Your Local News?

I. Voting is the most important thing we can do in a democracy such as America.

II. An informed citizenry is the best way to make sure the voting process works to citizens' advantage.

III. Ergo, providing campaign information to citizens in a democracy such as America is in the public interest.

IV. Broadcasters get to use the public airwaves in exchange for operating in the public interest.

V. Ergo, broadcasters should provide campaign information to the public here in America.

How's your local news station doing?

Posted by josh at 02:52 PM | Comments (0)

Viacom: So What?

Here's another problem of corporate-owned media outlets. CBSNews has screwed up royally. Their credibility is hugely damaged. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who will be turning to NBCNews or ABCNews instead. But CBS' parent Viacom just plain isn't going to feel it at all. By some accounts, the national news accounts for about $100 million of the corporation's $3.6 billion in profits. And if $100 million looks like a lot of that total, keep in mind that if every penny of that goes away, it moves $3.6 billion all the way down to...yup. $3.5 billion. What's the incentive to even bother putting together a solid news program? That's not to say that CBS hasn't done some great reporting over the years -- they surely have, including some awesome work on the Abu Ghraib prison abuse story. But when the network doesn't adhere to strict news standards as happened in 'Memo-Gate,' there's hardly any financial loss to the company. Networks are in business to make money -- how else can they be punished here?

Posted by josh at 02:43 PM | Comments (0)

FOX Wants to Use Our Airwaves

So legally, they're supposed to act in something called the public interest. Which says to me that they would join NBC, ABC and CBS in giving viewers the presidential debates live. Tell them they should.

UPDATE [2004-09-23]: It seems that the reason FOX doesn't want to air the debates live is the baseball playoffs. So, stick the playoffs on FX or FSN. Do I want the opportunity to watch them? You betcha. Are the presidential debates more important? You betcha.

Posted by josh at 02:40 PM | Comments (0)

Privacy Policy

At the urging of someone who knows these things, I have a new privacy policy. Just lettiing you know.

Posted by josh at 02:37 PM | Comments (0)

September 21, 2004

You Don't Have to Support Bush...

...To be upset at CBS. RatherBiased.com, an anti-Dan Rather blog, lists the 20 things CBS likely won't apoogize for.

Posted by josh at 06:19 PM | Comments (0)

Are You Joking?!

Please say yes. (Via No Capital.)

Posted by josh at 06:15 PM | Comments (0)

Advertising Pissing You Off?

Well, soon you could be pissing on advertising. Yup. Deodorizing urinal screens that actually have audio/video advertisements in them.

Posted by josh at 06:03 PM | Comments (0)

They Fall For It, But Can't Do It

The Times won't let Michael Moore reprint one of its stories in a book accompaniment to his film Fahrenheit 9/11. The Times says they don't want their reporting to be part of a political battle. How about just citing proprietary content, maintaining copyright, etc.? Just a little funny that the Times can fall for the spin, but not do it themselves.

Posted by josh at 05:57 PM | Comments (0)

NYC Homeless Getting a New Kind of Shaft

They're now taking homeless people who are doing things like recovering from back surgery and sticking them in a group home that primarily caters to mentally ill adults, and has a record of violence (staff and residents). One resident even mentioned he has lost the little bit of money he had thanks to the home.

Posted by josh at 05:44 PM | Comments (0)

Summer

The Coffee Pavilion open poetry night strikes again. Summer.

Posted by josh at 05:38 PM | Comments (0)

Who to Believe?

Here's a problem with polls: Even if you use a lot of different sources, you never quite know, do you? This morning's update at Slate's scorecard has Bush with 323 electoral votes; today's update at the electoral vote predictor has Bush ahead 256-239, with the 43 others up for grabs in tied races. Today's Rasmussen polls have Bush up 213-189, and fully 136 electoral votes up for grabs. So Kerry's got somewhere between 189 and 239 electoral votes (not enough to win in any case, but with plenty of votes in tied states), and Bush somewhere between 213 and 323, which is just an enormous spread.

Posted by josh at 10:42 AM | Comments (0)

September 20, 2004

Another Reason to Drop AOL

There are some people who swear by their AOL accounts. I still can't figure out why, what with it costing so much money and having more-than-occasional accidental disconnections. Now for those people who both swear by their AOL accounts and by the insecurity of information on the Internet, there's a new way to give AOL another $10 plus $2/month for an additional security step for their login. That makes AOL's dial-up service almost as expensive as DSL in most markets. In-friggin-sane.

Posted by josh at 08:44 PM | Comments (0)

Graydon Carter and Conflict of Interest

From the Why Bother? file drawer comes the story of Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair. Next month's edition of the magazine (which is not yet available on its Web site) includes an annual round-up of the "New Establishment," a list of people or firms making waves in Hollywood. For the first time, the list is accompanied by a small note about an appearance of comflict of interest. The Times, however, has a pretty impressive list of conflicts missed in the confession.

Posted by josh at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)

Let's not lose sight...

...of the fact that even though the documents CBS has been working from were likely forged (or invented), the fact remains that the secretary who would have typed the memos (though she said she didn't recall having done so) said the content of the memos was consistent with Bush's supervisor's feelings at that time. So, bad CBS, but bad Bush, too. This should reflect on the network's work, but the hit to Bush's campaign should stay intact.

Posted by josh at 10:33 AM | Comments (0)

Happy Birthday

To Andrea. Send her a quick e-mail.

Posted by josh at 10:24 AM | Comments (0)

September 19, 2004

Autumn

Autumn.

Posted by josh at 10:36 PM | Comments (0)

Bloody Ungrateful Squirrels

Poor Susanne. That's the last time anyone tries to save a squirrel from Boston traffic.

Posted by josh at 07:55 PM | Comments (0)

The Basement

Saturday night at The Basement was a typical blast. Seth played. Andrea came. So did Emily. And Christen. And Emery. And Stef. Good people, good music. And to speak the truth, IHEG has done right by the room.

Posted by josh at 07:43 PM | Comments (0)

Lost It

Let's get this straight: Henning's fantastic. But he's quite lost touch with reality, I'm afraid.

Posted by josh at 07:38 PM | Comments (0)

September 17, 2004

Pictures From a Café

I've been working on this piece of prose for a month, and I decided it was just time to finish it.

Posted by josh at 03:40 PM | Comments (0)

New Words

New today:

• Luxury, an assignment for open poetry.
• Old Man, an observation.
• Sweet Home Chicago, written at Suds.

Comments always welcome.

Posted by josh at 03:06 PM | Comments (0)

I Know I Feel Safer Flying

Because a 52-year old special education teacher was arrested for trying to fly with a weighted bookmark. Fortunately, authorities have declined to prosecute her.

Posted by josh at 02:07 PM | Comments (0)

Hold Them Accountable

Watch this ad.

Posted by josh at 10:52 AM | Comments (0)

F911 in Baghdad

Does it surprise anybody to know that the only way to see Fahrenheit 9/11 in Bagdad is to watch a pirate copy? Let's make them a democracy, but wait a sec, umm...don't give them the tools to be a participatory democracy just yet.

Posted by josh at 10:42 AM | Comments (0)

New MoveOn PAC Ad

Eli Pariser of MoveOn makes a great point in this Times story: The money used for Iraq could much better be used for health care and education back home. The interesting thing that I think people are starting to wake up to is that back during the 2000 campaign, Bush advocated for pulling our troops out of nations overseas, coming out against nation-building. Meanwhile, he's spending in the hundreds of billions of dollars knocking regimes out of Afghanistan and Iraq and rebuilding those countries (though the amount of rebuilding he's doing in Afghanistan is questionable -- he more went in there to destroy the country, it seems).

UPDATE: I found the ad, and it is far less than incendiary. Seriously. If this is the kind of thing that causes a stir, maybe we should just ban all political advertising and make candidates sink or swim on their debating and rhetoric skills. Oh, or their records, but we don't really like to talk about that, now, do we?

Posted by josh at 10:26 AM | Comments (0)

September 15, 2004

Violence on Television - Still

Here's a piece from the Benton Foundation's communications headlines e-mail:

THE EFFECT OF TELEVISION VIOLENCE ON CHILDREN The House Telecommunications Subcommittee (Commerce) heard testimony from academic and medical professionals who acknowledged portrayals of violence on TV have contributed to a rise in violence among adolescents. Jeff McIntyre, representing the American Psychological Association (APA), said there is great “ambiguity in implementation” of the current rating system. “It appears that ratings systems are undermined by the marketing efforts of the very groups responsible for their implementation and effectiveness.” He said this “significant lack of accountability” should be considered “when proposals for self-regulation are discussed.” Ronald Davis, a member of the American Medical Association board, said it’s up to the entertainment industry to “assume its share of responsibility for contributing to the epidemic of violence in our society and [it] should exercise greater responsibility in its programming content.” University of Arizona Prof. Dale Kunkel, a researcher on the National TV Violent Study project in the 1990s, noted research shows “that the manner is which most violence is presented on television actually enhances rather than diminishes its risk of harmful effects on child-viewers.” Most TV violence depicts violence that doesn't cause realistic suffering, he said, while only 4% of shows had an anti-violence theme. “Independent of whether or not violence on television might be reduced in quantity, it could certainly be presented in more responsible fashion, thereby diminishing its risk to child viewers,” Dr. Kunkel said.
[SOURCE: Communications Daily, AUTHOR: ]
(Not available online)

The thing that speaks to me about this is the note about self-regulation and responsibility. These violence studies have been coming up roughly the same since the early 1970s in terms of effects of television violence, so no surprise there, but it is clear that even as networks place the ratings on their own shows, they market to whomever they want -- particular to younger children, who are frequently in the care of the television-as-babysitter.

But the question is, what to do? More FCC oversight, of both broadcast and networks? Somehow, I don't think that's going to fly with anyone -- not the industry, not the FCC, not Congress, not the majority of the public, me included. Fines are only good to a certain point. Hefty fines got Howard Stern off the air in six whole markets. CBS will challenge the $550,000 fine it's receiving for the Janet Jackson thing, and if the network is forced to pay up, you can bet Jackson and Justin Timberlake will be ponying up most of that money after the network sues the pants off them (and they will be sure to broadcast such an action with a long delay). MTV, which produced the half-time show, might chip in, but CBS and MTV are both owned by Viacom, so it's really just a transfer of cash for the company.

So, again, what is to be done? Surely it will be in many future contracts that anybody who causes a company to be fined under indecency regulations will be held responsible for those fines, but that can only help so much. Sometimes it'd be worth the $27,500 maximum per station for a host or performer to say something when huge revenues follow for various reasons. Surely it'd be worth a little bad press for a station to keep half a million listeners in a large market by leaving on the air someone who violates indecency rules (better to keep the 500,000 people who will go to another station for Howard Stern than lose the perhaps 20,000 who would boycott the station if you leave him on).

Even if we can solve the indecency thing, violence generally does not fall into the "indecent" category. It can change a rating on television or on a film, but a 13-year old has as much access to something rated TV-Y as she does to something rated TV-MA. Theoretically, one needs to be 17 to see an R-rated movie in the theater (or to rent one), but I've been carded a grand total of once in my life for an R-rated film, and it was one that had minimal violence in it (but lots of sex, which in terms of psychology might not be a whole lot different, but that's not my field).

So it comes down to responsible self-regulation, I guess, which is what McIntyre said in the first place. If one network took its violent programming off the air, viewers might go to another for the violence they crave. But if all of the networks removed (or at least, severely restricted) violent programming, violent culture could change in a relatively short period of time. To borrow from Kovach and Rosenstiel in a bit of a different arena, sometimes mass media outlets are responsible for giving audience members what they need, not what they claim they want.

Posted by josh at 12:19 PM | Comments (0)

September 14, 2004

Where In The World is Billmon?

Back on August 15, Billmon wrote that he'd be on a boat for a week. Has he utterly disappeared? Is he back safe? Has he moved the Whiskey Bar?

Posted by josh at 08:47 PM | Comments (0)

So Long, Mom

Tom Lehrer once did a song called "So Long, Mom," about Johnny Jones, a military pilot going off to World War III:

So long, Mom, I'm off to drop the bomb
So don't wait up for me
But while you swelter down there in your shelter
You can see me on your TV
With Brinkley and Hunt-a-ley describing contrapuntally
The cities we have lost
No need for you to miss a minute
Of the agonizing holocaust

Steve Clemons has a post today not about WWIII, but about an actual conference coming up on World War IV!

Posted by josh at 08:41 PM | Comments (0)

Another Reason to Love Kelsey Flynn

Kelsey's really funny. Hysterical, crack-me-up, oh-my-god-did-she-just-SAY-that? sorts of funny. Case in point: What will Springer and Maury have to do to catch up with Oprah's car give-away?

Posted by josh at 08:38 PM | Comments (0)

Florida Does it Again

When Florida comes down to just a few votes again this year and Ralph Nader appears to be to blame for Bush's slight victory, you can definitely expect a lawsuit - Division of Elections Director Dawn Roberts has defied a court order and placed Nader's name on the ballot. She says she has to beat the arrival of Hurricane Ivan and can't wait for the appeal court's decision. Ayup.

Posted by josh at 08:25 PM | Comments (0)

Thanks, Seth

For the kind words:

My friend Josh Shear read a particularly poignant piece tonight concerning the anniversary of 9/11, and being a veteran of the old Northampton Fire And Water Cafe scene, he's influenced by that style, and moreso than the Featured Poet I'm listening to now, he had the room in the palm of his hand. Just a thought. You go, Josh.

Posted by josh at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)

September 13, 2004

Liberal Academicians - So What?

Drudge is making something of a big deal about this story in the Princeton University paper about professors at Princeton, Harvard and Yale giving almost exclusively to John Kerry's campaign, the Democratic Party or liberal 527s. The question: So what? The story doesn't go into whether professors are abusing their positions to further liberal causes in the classroom, or what the other implications of a left-leaning faculty might be.

Posted by josh at 04:43 PM | Comments (0)

CBS' Document Problem Roundup

You'll have to scroll down to the proper section, but The Note has an extensive roundup of blog posts and news stories about the purported Killian documents.

Posted by josh at 04:14 PM | Comments (0)

Hey, Programmers

So, I'm sitting here at Saturn of Syracuse, was going to work on a piece of prose I'm writing, but hey, I've got Saturn's wireless signal, so I figured I'd do my web stuff. Now, there are some controls on the network (I get "Error - this page classified as personal" on some sites; I assume because they don't want their employees dicking around on the Internet), so I assume they don't want people like me busying up their network. I assume there's also some other stuff they might not want happening; send me some e-mail to let me know if I should tell them to close their network. Thanks!

Posted by josh at 01:27 PM | Comments (0)

###

Some of the companies with the biggest stake in making sure the World Wide Web continues -- Intel, Cisco, HP, AT&T -- are warning us that the Web might become overloaded soon, so we have to watch out for the end of things over here.

Posted by josh at 10:21 AM | Comments (0)

Mazen al-Tumeizi

An Iraqi reporter, Mazen al-Tumeizi, died on live television (print story) while covering a U.S. strike in Baghdad. (Just in case you missed the story.)

Posted by josh at 08:30 AM | Comments (0)

Liberal Media

A new study shows that major media outlets have a liberal bias. Of course, the study was carried out by a conservative thinktank. Academic papers have shown over and over that a small minority of mainstream newspapers has a liberal slant and a similar minority has a conservative slant, but by and large, the media comes out about 50/50.

Posted by josh at 08:26 AM | Comments (0)

September 12, 2004

Getting the Evil Men Straight

A lesson of sorts for Donald Rumsfeld:

Osama bin Laden is leader of the al Qaeda terror network. We haven't seen him in quite a while. We're offering lots of money for his capture. He might be dead.

Saddam Hussein is the former Iraqi dictator we have in custody. We know he's alive; we know exactly where he is.

Shouldn't the U.S. Defense Secretary be at least reasonably on top of the country's top enemies? Just checking. Via MY.

Posted by josh at 12:56 PM | Comments (0)

The Anti-Viagra

Cows.

Posted by josh at 11:12 AM | Comments (0)

Poor Headline Writer

There were Fridays I would sit at the computer, reading the same story over and over, trying to think of a headline. While it could be the job that was the most fun sometimes, other times, well, it was terrible, and I'd end up throwing some default headline on there. Like this one, over which I'm sure the headline writer anguished for far too long before giving up: Try Not to Annoy Your Llama.

Posted by josh at 10:38 AM | Comments (0)

Inquiring Minds Want to Know

Remember back when Zach interviewed to be on Queer Eye? We're all just wondering whatever became of that.

Posted by josh at 10:12 AM | Comments (0)

Eight Months?

Well, it's good to know that plea bargaining is as alive and well in the military as it is in civilian courts in the U.S. Specialist Armin Cruz pled guilty to abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib, and wound up with eight months in prison. Oh, and a demotion to private. Eight months? There are far lesser crimes that carry much harsher penalties. Eight months!?

Posted by josh at 09:42 AM | Comments (0)

Enter the Haggis

Even if you're like me and think that the only thing worse than a good set of Highland pipes is a bad set of Highland pipes, you've got to like Enter the Haggis. So much fun. Forget that Pearl Jam/Nirvana argument going on over at Matt's place. Kai, Jai (I'll just keep murdering her name) and Monica went to the Tusk for dinner, then to the Irish fest to see ETH. Seth showed up, we grabbed a beer, and came to the apartment. But above all, cheers to ETH.

Posted by josh at 12:57 AM | Comments (0)

September 11, 2004

Three Years After: There's Always Baseball

I wasn't going to post on today being September 11. I spent most of this morning bouncing between working on a paper and spending whole halves of hours at a time in stupefied reflection. But then I read Matt's post, and thought I should at least acknowledge the anniversary. I remember spending most of that day feeling fairly helpless. We got one radio station in the newsroom. I had it on, and by 2, the boss turned it off. It was the same thing over and over. We ate our lunch more slowly, we joked less, when Jen called me to tell me Amy was on the 106th floor of the south tower, I stared at the wall, and took the next morning off. I listened to talking heads on NPR say the same thing over and over for four days. I went to hear James play. It helped.

Eventually, writing took over. The first was a letter to Amy, written fully five weeks after. I woke up then, did normal stuff. I look back every year with a poem (2002, 2003, 2004), though today might be the last of those. I don't know if I can get motivated anymore. The attacks have become too exploited, particularly by the Bush administration, but by others as well. I still see the unlicensed FDNY caps, from which the money went to some smart merchant, not the Department. I see American flags flown against etiquette (in the rain, overnight without lights, on athletic uniforms, etc.) because people think it's better to show support than it is to show respect.

My roommate had some friends over last night and today, and this afternoon, I heard someone say s/he didn't think at all about today being Sept. 11, and someone else said they were all going to hell for not remembering. But maybe remembering the date isn't quite as important as remembering the event, the motivations, the lessons. Matt pointed out that we as Americans in general didn't really learn anything. Maybe just that it's easier to be hassled with inconveniences like long lines, extra searches at the airport, giving up some civil liberties to the Patriot Act, rather than suffering through another attack. Personally, I disagree. I don't feel like it's all working. I don't feel safer, just more hassled. Maybe it's just me.

I've got the Orioles-Yankees game on the television, hoping against hope the birds can repeat yesterday's pounding of the pinstripes. They're talking about baseball being a return to normalcy when the games resumed in September of 2001. Maybe that's today's lesson. Feeling down? There's always baseball.

Posted by josh at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)

Scary

OK. Dogs are cute and all. I have a little bitterness toward dogs because once I had a dog named Pal (Palsy-Walsy, actually), and one time my family was out to dinner for my birthday, and Pal knocked my carrot cake of the pantry counter where it was cooling, ate the whole thing, and when we got back, he ran away and we never saw him again. I'm a cat guy.

But this isn't about me. This is about the fact that people will read anything. Via silversand comes a blog purportedly written by a pooch named Freddie. I'll spare you the agony, but it says "Ruff, ruff, ruff" over and over, and has links in each post to something dog-related (like, say, meet Snoopy). How do I know people are reading? Well, first of all, there's a site counter at the bottom of the page that reads over 14,000 right now. But perhaps even more scary is the fact that people do an awful of commenting on the site. *sigh*

Posted by josh at 09:57 AM | Comments (0)

September 10, 2004

Ah, That Explains a Lot

Hey guys, got cramps? Headaches? Hot flashes? Feeling anti-social? Depressed? A new study finds that men may also suffer from PMS. In fact, men scored higher than women in all PMS-related symptoms except for retaining water.

Posted by josh at 05:56 PM | Comments (0)

Back At It

I thought he'd abandoned it, but Seth's finally back it. Come out Sunday to the Borders at Carousel Center or Saturday the 18th to the Basement in Northampton. Or any of his other stops, but I won't be there with you.

Posted by josh at 04:17 PM | Comments (0)

Censored Stories

Project Censored has posted its list of the Top 25 Censored Stories of the past year. AlterNet has republished the Top 10.

Posted by josh at 04:02 PM | Comments (0)

Oh the Civility

Yeah, right. An anti-Bush demonstrator at a campaign speech was ejected by her hair.

Posted by josh at 03:46 PM | Comments (0)

Major Failure of Leadership

Not that this is going to surprise anybody who reads this post, but a new report declares this whole Iraq thing a "major failure of leadership" on the part of Bush. Well, at least it's official now.

Posted by josh at 03:43 PM | Comments (0)

From the Companies That Don't Need to Get Bigger File...

...TIme Warner, who is perhaps interested in buying Adelphia. Of course, TW at this point is so big that no one might notice the merger.

Posted by josh at 03:12 PM | Comments (0)

Such Refreshing News

Come 2006, no more Michael Eisner heading Disney. Maybe the company will start heading in a different direction -- one that's not focused on world domination and crappy programming. And maybe it'll stop buying cable stations that compete with ones it already owns -- and keeping them in competition. How did this guy make it 20 years?

Posted by josh at 03:04 PM | Comments (0)

September 08, 2004

And the Award for Most Humorous Internet Scam Goes To...

This guy who wrote to Mistress Matisse. Matisse is a very intelligent, liberal woman who is a legal dungeon owner (read: BDSM). I peak in on her blog occasionally, and usually read the political stuff first and then some of the stuff about the clients (or would-be/wannabe clients), but this certainly takes the cake. My oh my.

Posted by josh at 08:17 PM | Comments (0)

Props for Trying

Sorry I have to pass this along, but he's trying so hard. Check out Yuri In Da Cab.

Posted by josh at 04:40 PM | Comments (0)

If Only They Could Vote

Out of 35 countries that are not the U.S., only three -- Poland, Nigeria and the Philippines -- would like to see George W. Bush re-elected. India and Thailand were divided, but the rest were all very much in favor of Kerry, many by a long shot. Some of those included:

• Norway, which favored Kerry 74-6
• Germany, 74-10
• France, 64-5
• Italy, 58-14
• Canada, 61-16

Britain, Spain and Japan, among others were also for Kerry.

Posted by josh at 03:46 PM | Comments (0)

The Networks are Stupid

Disney's ABC has been losing the prime time ratings war for several years now (the last time it did really well was the season it ran Who Wants to be a Millionaire? every night, but then that ran dry). One reason may be the manner in which the network decided to cut costs: produce its own shows (or, more accurately, buy shows from its own production companies). That's all well and good -- they're not paying Steven Bochco or whomever else for the programming and thereby keeping their costs down -- but if people aren't watching the shows, why stick to that model for saving money?

Let me explain a bit about oligopoly theory. It says, basically, that when a few companies run things, a change in one is likely to bring a change in others. The thinking behind that reads something like this (with a real-life example): When four companies (say, the networks ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX) have the vast majority of the programming, they probably run things pretty much the same. If one decided not to, it would either be way ahead, prompting the others to run their companies that way, or way behind, in which case it should change its practices back to the way the others work.

I do understand that companies are trying to save some money, and the network television industry is no different. But now CBS has announced it will try to own more of the shows it airs. Why would companies seek to save money by switching to a model that ABC has shown doesn't work? That's an awfully bass-ackward way to run things.

Posted by josh at 01:03 PM | Comments (0)

Kerry Bounce

The Electoral Vote Predictor has had Bush ahead of Kerry since just before the Republican National convention, but with over a dozen new polls available, Kerry has retaken the lead -- but is still under the number needed to win (he is polling 264-222, with 268 needed to win). The big news: Kerry and Bush are dead even in Colorado, Nevada, Missouri and Florida. There are also eight more states polling for one candidate or the other within the margin of error.

Posted by josh at 12:58 PM | Comments (0)

To Rock the Boat, Or Not? Not.

I'm aware that big companies suppress dissent. In fact, I write regularly about my disdain for big media. But I think Elizabeth Guider is a little bit paranoid. While it's certainly true that lots of news stories about dissent get tucked away at places like The Independent Media Center, which reaches far fewer people than say, the Times or the Post, most decent movies find a way to get distributed, regardless of their content. When Disney opted to fund then not distribute Fahrenheit 9/11, it found a distributor pretty darn quickly. If Soldiers Pay is indeed any good, it will get distributed. However, a 35-minute documentary isn't something that's going to play on big screens, and it's not quite the right length for a made-for-television movie. And when its director says it is meant to be a political statement he wants to get out before the election, well, maybe what the film needs is a PAC willing to put up some money.

Posted by josh at 12:40 PM | Comments (0)

Gathering

Join Andrea, me and others for a gathering on September 18 from 9 p.m. until closing time at The Basement on Gothic Street in Northampton. Seth will provide tunes.

Posted by josh at 12:35 PM | Comments (0)

September 07, 2004

More Good News on Gay Marriage

Another judge in Washington has ruled a gay marriage ban unconstitutional.

Posted by josh at 07:47 PM | Comments (0)

Congrats to Ansel

Ansel Appleton has won the rookie competition at the National Slam Poet Contest. See the story here.

Posted by josh at 07:42 PM | Comments (0)

9th Hampden District (Mass.) Race Heats Up

Despite some poor writing that makes parts of this article confusing, it's clear that the race for Massachusetts State Senator from the 9th Hampden District is just crazy. Two-term incumbent Chris Asselin is running again, despite having been indicted on mail fraud and conspiracy to commit federal bribery charges. Springfield City Councilor Rosemary Mazza Moriarty has served her city well for a while, except for the part where she was a councilor during the administration of Mayor Michael Albano. Under his administration, the city racked up $32 million in debt, and has taken an interest-free loan from the state that comes complete with his own auditor. Of course, there is also the part where the third candidate is a 26-year old lawyer with no political experience. Interesting race, indeed.

Posted by josh at 07:14 PM | Comments (0)

I See

No I don't. Apparently, if Kerry is elected in November, there will be another terrorist attack on the U.S. At least that's what Dick Cheney says.

Posted by josh at 05:57 PM | Comments (0)

People are Just Plain Rude

Matt Yglesias has had to close comments on his popular blog. Why? Because since the Republican Convention, people have just been rude. There used to be discourse (agree or disagree) and the ocassional polite taking the author to task for getting something not quite right, but damn, grow up, people. If you read the post, you'll see a number of trackbacks to it, but as he writes, it's too bad for people who have been posting comments for a long time, and who often have intelligent things to say.

Posted by josh at 10:49 AM | Comments (0)

Dead College Students

Wow. Here's a depressing bunch of stories about dead college students. They're dropping like flies. Another NYU suicide (6th this year). Dead girl at Princeton. And McGill. And in a Colorado State frat house.

Posted by josh at 10:42 AM | Comments (0)

Losing the Drug War

Here's an interesting article summing up failures in the War on Drugs, including how rather than stopping the growth of poppy and coca plants in Colombia, we're really succeeding in killing the Amazon.

Posted by josh at 10:33 AM | Comments (0)

Sex on Television=Sex in Teens

A new study in Pediatrics shows that those adolescents who watch television shows with sexual content are more likely to engage in sexual activities. I've got to wonder: Did this survey just give teens bragging rights? "Yeah, I watch porn. Yeah, I get laid all the time."

The threats to the validity of this study are abundant. It would appear that the purpose of the study parallels the purpose of the National Television Violence Studies. Every so often, a bunch of researchers find out the viewing habits of children, then observe their behaviors. The great part of the violence studies is that researchers can actually observe both the viewing habits and the behaviors of children. The may be able to observe the viewing habits of adolescents, though kids were self-reporting in this study. You always have to be a little bit skeptical of self-reported surveys, but I would tend to be more skeptical when it comes to teens self-reporting -- even on an anonymous survey, what adolescent wants to report watching un-cool programming?

The other side of this -- the sexual behaviors of adolescents -- is something that absolutely cannot be observed. Some (I'd venture to say many) adolescents would over-report on this. Come on; how many proud 17-year old virgin males are there running about the hallways of schools? And this doesn't apply just to boys: Remember Mena Suvari's character in American Beauty? Likewise, there might be some who are not proud of their past sexual proclivities and would underreport. If underreporting equals overreporting, the results come out even, but I would tend to doubt they would be equal in a study like this. The point is, don't take this stuff at face value. Just because it was published doesn't mean there's not a ton wrong with it.

Posted by josh at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)

September 06, 2004

National Anthem

I've just finished temping for the last four days at The Great New York State Fair. On two mornings, I arrived before 10 a.m., the time at which the National Anthem is played. Here's the weird thing about this. Picture a situation in which all of a sudden, music comes from loudspeakers throughout a large area, thousands of people stop in their tracks, take of their hats, and turn around to look at a symbol that's supposed to represent the thing (country) they put above all else. Sound like America to you? I thought not.

Posted by josh at 11:09 PM | Comments (0)

Bush and Cocaine

While many of us on the left might have been asking half-sarcastically over 43's administration, "Is he on drugs?" Kitty Kelly (you remember her from all the unauthorized biographies) has a new book coming out Sept. 14 about the Bush family, which I assume is also an unauthorized biography. In it, she claims that Bush first did cocaine in the mid-1960s, which is not contrary to the 1999 statement that Bush had not done illegal drugs in the past 25 years (quoted in the same Mirror article. What is contrary, however, is the notion that Bush did cocaine at Camp David while 41 was president. Yeah. If that's not true, Kelly can probably forget about ever writing another book. If it is, well, hopefully people will see that as a fault (though I don't have a lot of faith in people) and vote against him. While the ocassional drink or even joint never hurt anyone, repetitive cocaine use does.

Posted by josh at 10:20 PM | Comments (0)

September 05, 2004

Still Flapping Over Wardrobe Malfunction

Reuters is reporting that CBS parent Viacom faces a $550,000 fine for Janet Jackson's "Wardrobe Malfunction" during this year's Super Bowl. The FCC will reportedly vote unanimously to levy the maximum $27,500 fine on each of the CBS-owned television stations, though the 200 affiliates not owned by the network will be spared the fine. I said back then (wherever the blog was -- maybe at Pitas? -- that I agreed with Alan Thicke, who had said, "Right boob, wrong time." But half-a-million wrong time? No way.

I know it's been suggested that perhaps the right way to go about this would be to simply fine the perpetrator of the act or language declared indecent. Not a great idea, but you can be damned sure if Viacom gets slammed for $550,000, it's going to at least consider seeking recompense from the producers of the halftime show, and perhaps from Janet herself. If it solves the tort suit problem that would likely follow from such a hefty fine (and perhaps in future cases, as well), then that's the way it might have to be.

Posted by josh at 10:30 PM | Comments (0)

September 04, 2004

The Fair

New words. An assignment from the Coffee Pavilion's open poetry night was to write in the style of another poet. I took Tom Wait's slow couplets, unbounded by syllabic matching of lines.

Posted by josh at 10:57 PM | Comments (0)

Bush and Pataki

I finally got to read Bush's speech. Is it just me or, with the exception of saying "We will leave no child behind" in Spanish (wish I could have heard that!) did he just take paragraphs out of speeches he had already given? For more wisdom, here's Matt's take: Bush speaking isn't Bush governing.

George Pataki, on the other hand, suffers from something so many others speaking at the convention suffer from: Not realizing that saying something was accomplished does not mean it was actually accomplished. He goes off on this series of Bush "accomplishments" and says they were accomplished. I just don't see it. I also am offended that he claims the national outpouring of support for New York City after 9/11 for Republicans. He never says, "Republicans in Iowa..." or "Republicans in Pennsylvania...," but the fact that he's delivering this speech to Republican delegates is quite telling. "Thank you, Republicans," not, "Thank you, Americans."

Posted by josh at 08:27 AM | Comments (0)

September 02, 2004

If one more tree grew in a forest...

...would anybody notice? How about if Time Warner bought MGM? What's another 4,000 films in TW's vast catalog of movies, music, cable channels, magazines, Internet providers and sacrificed first-born males?

Posted by josh at 02:56 PM | Comments (0)

Wednesday at the Convention

Back in 2002, it took everything I had to vote Democrat in the Massachusetts gubernatorial election, particularly because we had a good Green Party candidate running. But Shannon O'Brien was my pick, and last night, Mitt Romney showed us why. First of all, he ran on a platform of, "I saved the Olympics, and Massachusetts has a lot of debt." Notice he mentioned his stint chairing the Salt Lake Olympics yet again. Next, in one of the most solidly liberal states in the country (though it does have a history of voting Republican when it comes to governors since Dukakis), he appears to be one of the few favoring this man+woman=marriage thing. And finally, he has taken the road so many have when talking about Kerry on war. The thing is, Kerry didn't vote for war. He voted to authorize the president to go to war if it was indeed the last resort. And he still would vote to allow the president to go to war if it was indeed the last resort. Just, if he had been president, it wouldn't have yet been last resort time when we went to war.

Zell Miller -- defector or not -- called for bipartisanship. Bush is one of the most polarizing presidents ever. Does Miller truly believe this man can bring together the two parties? Yowzah!

Ray and I were sitting at Suds last night, and as the Red Sox finished off the Angels, Ray started doing the "I'm crushing your head!" thing with his fingers. I followed his gaze to the teevee up at the other end of the bar, where Dick Cheney's lips were moving and the closed captioning seemed to be following pretty well. Here's his speech, which was just party rhetoric. If you could have written the speech you thought he'd give, you'd probably hit on about 80% of what he said (though you might have missed that the Bush tax cuts are working, evidenced by the fact that more people own homes now than ever before).

I'm at the Chiefs game tonight for some scorekeeping, so I may or may not make it back in time to watch Bush -- though I didn't watch Kerry, opting instead for the morning after reading, wchih I might just do tomorrow as well. Ta-ta.

Posted by josh at 10:52 AM | Comments (3)

September 01, 2004

James' New Site

Well, he's still using somewhat irritating frames, but acoustipunk-turned-all-out-rocker James O'Brien has a new site that's easy to get around. Hats off, brother.

Posted by josh at 08:11 PM | Comments (0)

Voting Against the Twins

Matt Yglesias points out that if Bush is going to run on character, his kids are fair game. Which makes sense. Recovering alcoholic father raises kids who get arrested for underage drinking while their father is in the White House. Good man growing up, good dad. Yessirree. Run on that character. Meanwhile, Julia Turner takes a shot at explaining why the twins blew it last night -- or rather why it was just a bad speech in general.

Posted by josh at 06:54 PM | Comments (0)

Comments!

All righty then. Sorry for the delay, but it appears I now have TypeKey working and you should be able to comment. You don't have to tell me who you are, but you do have to create a TypeKey account (try to comment, it will ask you to do so) and log in. The reason I'm doing this is so that I don't get comments trying to sell you erection-enhancing drugs or cancer-causing tobacco sticks. Hope that doesn't inconvenience anyone too much. Cheers!

Posted by josh at 04:02 PM | Comments (0)

I'm Out of the House!

I'm sitting in the library, and noticing the looks on the faces of new students. There's this kind of amazement, of wonder. Of looking around half-nervous as hell, half-excited to be as far away from home as the students could get. I'd likely not have thought of this had it not been for Henning's mention of the new Smithies at the ice cream shop.

And speaking of which, Northampton's looking different these days. For years, the only chains that have survived on Main Street are a Starbucks and a Bucci. But in the past month, Cold Stone Creamery and Quizno's have moved in. There are still several open storefronts on the street, too. It wasn't that way a year ago when I moved out of town. A month ago I bumped into Star Drooker, who agreed with me that rents are just getting too high for the regular folk to open up shops. He should know -- he was paying an inordinate amount of money for a small basement space until he and his wife Trish Overstreet outgrew the cafe/performance space they were running. Hopefully, more people will be able to soon open, as rents come down, or they'll get deals -- it will be good if more people like this get to populate downtown.

Posted by josh at 03:06 PM | Comments (0)

Get Your Stamps Here

A new service from Stamps.com allows you to put pretty much anything you want on a stamp (though it will cost you more than the value on the stamp) and then send it through the mail. There are some images that have been deemed inappropriate for stamps -- such as Lee Harvey Oswald mug shots -- but the folks over at TSG managed to get some passed, like the Rosenbergs, Monica Lewinsky's famous blue dress, and high school and college yearbook photos of Ted Kaczynski (the "Unabomber") -- though more recent photos of Kaczynski were denied passage.

Posted by josh at 01:55 PM | Comments (0)

Reading the Law

Molly Ivins' latest column points out that Bush's top donors tend to be from scandal-laden corporations -- or, alternately, that they get federal appointments. The other thing that stands out is that John Ashcroft evidently is asking that two volumes of federal laws be destroyed, deeming them inappropriate for outside use. That's right up there with this post from Zach, about a court ruling being redacted from public versions due to its sensitivity regarding national security. The ruling is that when you don't define national security, free speech suffers.

Posted by josh at 01:45 PM | Comments (0)

Yesterday's convention speeches

I didn’t get to watch the convention speeches last night, so again, I’m going on the transcripts. The real problem with that right now is that I’m reading Princella Smith’s screed against the label “Generation X” and not knowing how old she is - though as a winner of an MTV contest, I don’t know if she’s old enough to lay claim to being called a Gen Xer. Having been born in 1976, I seem to have been born on the cusp of Gen X with Gen Y - where the line starts to get blurry between those without a cause and those who are markedly more politically active.

I’m not so sure in what way “President Bush calls upon us to change the world” and be what Smith likes to call “Generation X-amp