Iran and Opium

This article takes a serious look at life inside Iran. I had no idea Iran leads the world in Opium usage by percent of its population. As expected, this is because nobody has a job and two-thirds of the population is under 30. The article also explains how the current hardline rule sprung from this desperation.

Continuing the parallels evident between Iran and the Third Reich, this seems similar to Germany's situation after WWI when they were punished severely by the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler responded by giving everyone jobs rearming the country. Iran is responding by building nuclear weapons, which engenders a sense of pride in the otherwise forlorn population.

The author reports from the city of Shaft. I wonder if he planned that?

New LCD

No, not a new LCD TV - the press has unearthed a new Lowest Common Denominator and her name is Jordan Susch. Here's Jordan's story in her own words:

“I’m a true example of how Harry Potter books can open your life to witchcraft,” said Jordan Susch. Susch says she read the first Harry Potter novel when she was in the fourth grade. Two years later, she says, she and her friends were practicing witchcraft.“We wanted to know if spells, potions and curses worked. By the seventh grade, I was so depressed, I set a date to kill myself,” Susch said.

How's that for a logical leap? She was depressed because her curses didn't work? Or because she's an idiot with idiot parents. I feel very confident that if you are suicidally depressed, there's more to it than the Half-Blood Prince.

So of course, the answer in Georgia is to ban the books from the school library because of the Lowest Common Denominator. Luckily she's found common-cause with a busybody mother with too much time on her hands. Closed-minded parent Laura Mallory said, “I want to protect my kids, children and others from evil, not fill their minds with it.”

Let's hope she's shielding her precious children from other fiction containing evil witchcraft like turning water into devil-liquor.

Hu?

There was a protest today at a joint appearance by President Bush and Chinese president Hu Jintao (or somesuch). Some gal started hollerin' at Hu about persucuting the Falun Gong religious sect. Good for her, I thought as I read the story. It couldn't hurt for Hu to finally get a little lip as well. What pissed me off is that Bush "expressed personal regret to Chinese President Hu Jintao for a protest during an elaborate welcoming ceremony on the White House lawn Thursday." There should be 100,000 Chinese-Americans on the Capitol Mall tomorrow showing Hu what it's like to have some freedom.

Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rumsfeld

I've been soaking up the recent public thrashings of Donald Rumsfeld by former Generals. The response from the White House and their proxies has been disingenuous, as usual. Claiming that there are 8000 Generals and only 6 have spoken out...therefore, Rummy's the man for 7994 Generals is statistically criminal.

However, the White House is in a serious pinch here. They should have taken Rummy out in 2004 when he offered to resign. Since then, Bush has done a swan dive in the polls. Firing Rumsfeld would mean Senate confirmations of a replacement...on TV every day. As bad as the news is for Bush as it is, this would be much worse as Democrats would seek to capitalize and Republicans would seek to distance. Bush has no choice but to keep Rummy on.

Tom Cruise Stays Relevant

If there was any doubt who would fill the Michael Jackson freak-out void in the news...

The Mission Impossible star, 43, said: "I'm gonna eat the placenta. I thought that would be good. Very nutritious. I'm gonna eat the cord and the placenta right there."

Who Moved My IED?

This post by Walter Kirn, substituting for Andrew Sullivan makes an interesting connection between vapid corporate sloganeering and the Iraq War. It's also well written and disparages my current professional vector (Six Sigma) which I like. He writes:

For Iraq, I blame the managers, of course, but I also blame their reading lists. More than once, while predicting victory, Donald Rumsfeld has used the magic words "Tipping Point." This new pop formula for achieving vast results from relatively limited efforts has turned out to be one disastrous abracadabra.

He goes on:

Behind every failed war is a failed metaphor (remember The Domino Effect, the Vietnam-era version of The Tipping Point?) that mesmerized its masters into waging it, kept them waging it once they started losing it, and immobilized them with disbelief when it turned back into intellectual smoke.Behind every failed war is a failed metaphor (remember The Domino Effect, the Vietnam-era version of The Tipping Point?) that mesmerized its masters into waging it, kept them waging it once they started losing it, and immobilized them with disbelief when it turned back into intellectual smoke.

I like that line "Behind every failed war is a failed metaphor..."

Musing on Idioms

We're all familiar with the idiomatic expression about a "wrench in the works" - meaning to screw up a plan. However, while listening to a Brit on some chat show the other day they referred to a "spanner in the works." I was aware that spanner was British for the American "wrench," but I was surprised to find an idiom that translated. One of the most difficult parts of learning any new language are idioms, because they infrequently jump languages. I guess it's a little easier in the situation at hand, because it's just jumping dialects.

I doubt that the expression "junk in the trunk," about large-assed women, translates to "junk in the boot" in England. Would Commander Cody sing about a "Lorry-drivin' Man?"

Back to the Bar

You can put the temperance movement on hold because it's safe to drink in bars in Texas again.

Chicago Intelligence Needed

The wife and I are planning an excursion to Chicago next month. We're interested if anyone has unique sites/restaurants/things to do while we're there. We'll probably knock out Wrigley and the Art Institute, but are curious if anyone has any deeper recommendations.

Detroit Dwarf City

If you were considering starting up an all-dwarf Kiss cover band, forget about it. It's been done. Twice. And there's some ill feeling between MiniKiss and TinyKiss with the potential for a mini-fistfight. I sense a reality show, but would it be Fox or MTV?

Wedge Issue Picks Up Steam

I was struck by the following headline and subhead in the LA Times today: "Christians Sue for Right Not to Tolerate Policies: Many codes intended to protect gays from harassment are illegal, conservatives argue."

The point the fringe religious right is making is that their religion requires them to speak out against homosexuality, and therefore a university regulation banning the harassment of gays is an infringement on their freedom of religious expression. Isn't this about like Islamists saying that their religion requires them to kill infidels, and therefore laws against murder are a abridgement of their freedom of religious expression? I can't see myself supporting anyone that uses religion to allow harassment of others, but I might support this: I'm sure there's some shit in the bible where God or Jesus or someone says to reap the bounty of the earth...therefore making a plant (pot) illegal limits my religious expression.

I was struck by the following headline and subhead in the LA Times today: "Christians Sue for Right Not to Tolerate Policies: Many codes intended to protect gays from harassment are illegal, conservatives argue."

The point the fringe religious right is making is that their religion requires them to speak out against homosexuality, and therefore a university regulation banning the harassment of gays is an infringement on their freedom of religious expression. Isn't this about like Islamists saying that their religion requires them to kill infidels, and therefore laws against murder are a abridgement of their freedom of religious expression? I can't see myself supporting anyone that uses religion to allow harassment of others, but I might support this: I'm sure there's some shit in the bible where God or Jesus or someone says to reap the bounty of the earth...therefore making a plant (pot) illegal limits my religious expression.

War On Christianity continues

I was struck by the following headline and subhead in the LA Times today: "Christians Sue for Right Not to Tolerate Policies: Many codes intended to protect gays from harassment are illegal, conservatives argue."

The point the fringe religious right is making is that their religion requires them to speak out against homosexuality, and therefore a university regulation banning the harassment of gays is an infringement on their freedom of religious expression. Isn't this about like Islamists saying that their religion requires them to kill infidels, and therefore laws against murder are a abridgement of their freedom of religious expression? I can't see myself supporting anyone that uses religion to allow harassment of others, but I might support this: I'm sure there's some shit in the bible where God or Jesus or someone says to reap the bounty of the earth...therefore making a plant (pot) illegal limits my religious expression.

French Roast

While I enjoy the popular uprising in general, I think the French protests and subsequent government cave-in over the jobs law shows a tragic shortsightedness. I don't think allowing employers the option to fire someone under 26 years old is a bad idea. They're slowly going to become more and more marginalized by their inability to complete, which is a result of their bloated welfare state. They have a stagnating economy, rising xenophobia and racism, and an inability to make hard decisions about the future of their country.

Boykin's Back

I might support Tom Delay's War on Christianity if it means we can get rid of characters like Gen. Earl Boykin. You may remember Earl as the guy who made a big splash a few years ago by cutting through the rhetoric and declaring the War on Terrorism to really be about good vs. evil. He went on to say basically that Islam was Satan.

In another episode described here, Boykin said he had proof positive that Satan was behind anyone taking up arms against America:

At several of his talks, he showed photos from the capital of Somalia, where he had commanded Delta Forces during the 1993 battle there. In the pictures, there were black streaks in the sky, photographic evidence, he said, of a "demonic spirit over the city of Mogadishu."

I'm thinking that we need to start fitting this guy for a straight jacket. President Bush thought he deserved to be promoted. And promote him he did...to a position where he had oversight of prisoners (in his mind, Satan's Soldiers) in Iraq. He apparently treated them much like you would expect.

So what now? Why, promote him again of course. Likely presidential candidate Sen. George Allen has put his name up to head all U.S. Special Ops. As noted in the Salon article linked above, it will be interesting to see if Faust McCain stays true to his anti-torture roots and votes against this cat, or if he continues to cave in to the religious right because of his presidential fever.

Birth of a Wedge Issue

This article describes how in the wake of the immigration protests, a school in San Diego has banned patriotic clothing and flags. This is how wedge issues are born. I would expect to hear some flag-waiving politicians demagoging this issue in the next day or so. The midterm elections will surely depend on something insignificant like this.

Enemies of Virtue

Delay, paragon of virtue, uttered the following in a speech last week on his so-called War on Christianity (via Sullivan): "Sides are being chosen, and the future of man hangs in the balance! The enemies of virtue may be on the march, but they have not won, and if we put our trust in Christ, they never will ... It is for us then to do as our heroes have always done and put our faith in the perfect redeeming love of Jesus Christ."

After atheists were declared worse marriage potential than Muslim immigrants, how can he say there's a War on Christianity with a straight face? I smell the GOP wedge issue du jour for the 2006 Congressional elections. We will be hearing a lot more about the contrived War on Christianity. I'm interested in how much of it we will hear from John "Faust" McCain.

Permanent Delay

I'm obviously overjoyed about the Delay resignation. He's always been a noxious melange of hubristic bullying with religious extremism: my two least favorite characteristics in a politician. However I have no doubt that he will play the martyr card so well, it would make Osama jealous. Some very frightening foreshadowing from Time, "[Delay] vowed to pursue an aggressive speaking and organizing campaign aimed at promoting...Republican candidates and a closer connection between religion and government." Ugh.

For any even modest admirer of the enigmatic songwriter Townes Van Zandt, the film "Be Here to Love Me" is a must watch (available from NetFlix here). Even without the great music culled from rare footage of live performances in various folks' living rooms, the movie would stand on its own just for the stories recounted by his many great friends (including the likes of Joe Ely, Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, and especially Guy Clark.) No narrator is necessary to move the documentary along: this story is woven together efficiently by editing the many interviews to describe the action on the screen.

To those somewhat familiar with Townes life, he is accurately painted as alternatively engaging and frightening, and capable of just about anything. An example is the story of him falling off a four story balcony on purpose, just to see what it would feel like at the moment he started to fall.
This rare glimpse into Townes' day-to-day life, albeit liquor soaked, provided insight into his sense of humor and personable nature, giving lie to the usual description of him as perpetually depressed (granted, he is depressed quite a bit.) After watching Be Here to Love Me, you come away knowing that this was a giving man, whose cup runneth over with friends and family. But mostly you see a different breed of cat, whose single-minded devotion to his songcraft left him perpetually just a little out of touch with reality (the liquor and drugs didn't help his grasp of reality either).

The DVD contains some interesting extras including live performances and extended interviews with friends and family.