4-20 post

You know what to do.

Smoke 'em if you got em...

UPDATE Curses...actual post time was clearly a bit late.

Radiohead - Boston Dates Announced

Great. It turns out that Radiohead announced their first non-bonnaroo US tour dates, in Boston, and I will be in Seattle on those days.

Oh well. According to ateaseweb, they're planning multiple nights in Philly, and I assume I can count on a night or two at MSG.

Rumormillblogging - Net Neutrality

As the battle for 'Net neutrality heats up, the fark tagline summarizes it best: "Google, Ebay and Amazon to AT&T: Suck it. We'll build our own network"

Fat Amrericans - Someone Else's Fault

msnbc.com is reporting that most Americans agree that other Americans are fat. However, only 40% consider themselves fat.

Ninety percent of Americans know that most of their compatriots are overweight, but just 40 percent believe themselves to be too fat, according to a study published Tuesday

Given the numbers, and accepting that most of my friends seem to consider me skinny, I'm a bit surprised to find that I rank at the very top end of normal. Either the numbers are unreasonable, or we've all lowered the bar.

Time to skip the dessert tray, fatty.

PBS Frontline - The Tank Man

I was just watching Frontline on PBS, and caught the The Tank Man story some way in. They were talking about modern China, and definitely painted a picture that sounded like 19th century America or Britain, with an odd mix of the 21st Century West.

I don't think it's controversial to say that in the last few years, all of the above countries have spent much time fretting over immigrant labor. I'll take it a step further and posit that this is a direct result of the post Regan/Thatcher era of strike busting and privitization, just to take a gratuitous jab at the right-wingers.

The interesting thing about the report was the discussion about the treatment of migrant rural Chinese workers moving into the affluent coastal cities. The establishment needs the migrant workers for cheap manual labor, but they cities strictly regulate the residency of the workers in the city. I could hardly manage to hear a difference between the discussion of this dynamnic versus the discussions currently happening here about illegal Mexican aliens. Only in this case, they're all technically citizens of the same country.

Perhaps the most interesting bit, in light of the kerfluffle raised by Yahoo and Google conceding to the Chinese government demands of censorship, is the actual discussion of The Tank Man.

They pointed out the fact that the Tiananmen Square demonstrations of 1989 were significantly fueled by the classic protester class, the college students. They then pointed out that a significant chunk of current Chinese college students are the children of the privileged elite.

Significantly, the four college students they interviewed were completely unfamiliar with the images of The Tank Man, and they explicitly asserted that "most people under the age of 20 have probably never seen the images." (I'm curious to see what the results would be if you showed the same picutres to American students of the same demographic. This was not addressed in the segment.) They then segued into a segment in which they pointed out that google image searches for "Tiananmen Square" in the West return copious quantities of results that most of us who are over 30 would recognize in a second, while the Google China results return none.

(Note: I need to watch the segment again, however. Even though the Chinese-speaking students were alleged to not recognize the picture at all, I could have sworn they said that the male student said "1989?" early in the interview. It sure seems odd that 1989 would come up if he didn't have some idea of what he was looking at.)

The main point I'm trying to make here is that we certainly hear enough about the liberalisation of China in the last 15 years. And as much as I don't want to see American workers lose their jobs to globalization, I can certainly understand the argument that it's time for the rest of the world to share in the benefits of industrialization. But there's clearly still an argument that there's some chilling excesses of the Gilded Age-style excesses that benefit the wealthy few at the expense of the common man.

(/socialism) (I still haven't figured out how to make blogger ignore pointy-brackets)

War on Christmas Redux

So, back in the end of twenty-oh-five, we heard much discussion about the "War Against Christmas."

But what about Easter, that seminal holiday of Christianity? Much ink has been spilled about how the Easter Bunny is taking the holiday away from its argued Christian origins. (link)

But finally, we get to see the other side of the argument. The Easter Bunny is a seriously badass dude, and frankly...the Easter Bunny Hates You.

Tennessee Tornadoes

Honestly, I have not been able to follow the news much latley. Tonight I just now hit the msnbc homepage and was freaked out by the following picture.

Apparently, last week tornadoes killed 24, and today they're reporting between 10-12 dead. (Story headline and details in the actual arcticle don't match)

Um...even for those who are global warming doubters, I'd think it would be prudent to consider the possibility that it's real, and start pushing for policies that don't openly spit on the possibility.

Time for some more contributions to the Red Cross, methinks.

Vodkablogging

While shopping at the liquor store tonight, I noticed a new (to me) vodka. It's not clear if the english double entendre was totally responsible for the naming, but I'm sure it didn't hurt in the marketing decision.

For you see, the vodka gets its name from the Dutch word for "1. smooth, 2. even, 3. balanced," but that word happens to be "effen."

I can hardly wait to go to a bar and order "an effen martini."

Systemic Pedophilia in DHS

Okay, I have completely internalized the fact that when BushCo staffs an organization, they're going to do it with unqualified, questionably-competent cronies. That's pretty much a given.

But today, in this dailykos diary, jem6x notes the fact Brian Dole is not the only Homeland Security official to be arrested for pedophilia-related charges. In fact, there have recently been three DHS officials who have allegedly engaged in pedophilia.

What the hell is going on here? Have we gotten to the point where these people are so surrounded by sleaze and corruption that a 55-year-old DHS spokesman allegedly thinks he can attempt to mack on a 14-year-old girl? One of the other dudes, Frank Figueroa, was in charge of "a national program to target child sex predators". He exposed himself to a 16-year-old then proceeded to masturbate. He pleaded no contest to the charges.

Seriously, now...what's with these people?

Coffee Roasting Learnings - Colombia Narino

Back in February we got a coffee roaster along with some sampler packs of green coffee beans. We just finished the first pack and are moving on to the second pack, so I'm just putting this up as a historical document to keep track of our thoughts on the particular beans. Since we're learning the roasting trade, we want to keep a notebook on our thoughts as we go.

Columbia Narino Caracel del Abuelo

We picked this pack as the first one to try since...well...it's from Colombia. Juan Valdez, and all.

Our general take on this one, after making 4-5 batches: Pretty Weak Honestly, no matter what we did, this stuff was acceptable, but from a hardcore coffee freak perspective, I might as well be drinking tea.

We tried pre-heating the Fresh Roast 2...we progressively cranked it up to the maximum time....and after that, the shit is still weak. By no means unflavorable, but I'm far less interested in the subtle interplay of the aftertastes as I am with having a seriously dark brew of freakin' Joe.

We're now moving on to some beans from Costa Rica. Just roasted them up a few minutes ago, and the results look (and smell) more promising. More details to come.

Radiohead - EU Tour Dates Announced

Listen up children....according to ateaseweb, Radiohead's EU tour dates are confirmed (except Bonnaroo, of course) and it will be kicking off in May. No North American dates have been announced yet but the tour is supposed to kick off in June.

I'm all a-quiver, folks.

Wage Slavery

We are all wage slaves, biznotchez. Support the French youth movement.

Reject the bullshit. People were not meant to live this way.

V for Vendetta Movie - First Impression

We just got back from watching the V for Vendetta movie. Before I make any comments, let me just remind everyone that I'm an oldschool fan of the graphic novel, and that I've been pretty psyched about the movie for some time. Take that for what it's worth since I'm definitely the sort of person who consistently falls into the "The book was so much better than the movie" camp.

So my initial thoughts after having just seen the movie can be summed up as: "Meh." The movie retained about 80% of the events from the graphic novel, without retaining the chronology or the basic story arc. As a result, the government comes across as a rather weak example of a corrupt, totalitarian regime. I didn't really get a strong sense of the pervasive Orwellian oppression of the people either. And frankly, I walked away without a good understanding of the motivations of V, himself.

I didn't hate it, and I didn't love it. I had the same final feelings that I did when I saw the movie interpretation of "Fear and Loathing." The movie managed to faithfully convey a bunch of the events of the story without retaining the key parts of the story that made it powerful, or even allowed the story to make sense.

On a scale from Sucked to Rocked, I'm going to have to give it a 3.5.

News Explosion

Uh-oh. On the same day that Dubai Ports World announces that they're going to give up it's management stake in the U.S. ports, we also get the news that the U.S. military is going to close Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Why do I have the disturbing feeling that there is some heinous, unspeakable evil being perpetuated by the assministration right now that they're hoping will slip under the radar due to all this "Big News"?

The Empire Keeps Striking Back

From the "Things that make you go hmm" Department...

Disgustedem directed my attention today to this article from the Poughkeepsie Journal, specifically the third item. The key interesting bit here is that the man who is going to jail for selling crack is named "Landocalrissan Butler." This dude was named after Lando freaking Calrissian, from Empire Strikes Back. In the annals of really awful things parents can do to their kids, I'd say this one ranks pretty high. Hell, I unequivocably blame his parents for the fact that he wound up selling drugs.

I'm trying to conceive the circumstances by which this happened. Note that he's 25, which would put him right into the sweet period of 9 months after the release of ESB. One has to assume he was conceived the night that his parents saw ESB for the first time. And clearly, they were completely blown away, not just by the movie, but particularly by Billy Dee Williams performance. Moreover, both parents were sufficiently wow-ed that neither of them bothered to object to this crime.

I wouldn't even be quite as surprised to see a Hansolo Smith, because Han was a key character, and he was just damned cool. Somehow, naming one's kid after the guy who sold the rebels out to the Empire just does not seem right.

Anyhow, I've got to wrap this one up. I told my friend Mofftarkin that I'd meet him for a beer and I'm already late.

Hunting Safety

I only have time for the following updated graphic. Thanks mspaint.

(previously)

***update: (15:14)*** Some guy has created a "hunting with cheney" flash game.

New Techie Blog

Via slashdot, an apparently new blog by a person responsible for web infrastructure. Not many posts up so far, but the author seems to know his or her stuff.

Virtualthreads

Hybrid Awareness

Taking the President's bold new initiative seriously, some enterprising individual has taken it upon themselves to make a t-shirt design available on cafepress to help further awareness of the human animal hybrid problem. (via boingboing)

WTF? Radiohead headlining Bonnaroo

Holy crap! In one of the strangest matches I've ever seen, yesterday it was announced that Radiohead will be headlining bonnaroo this year. Perhaps with this precedent, phish may get back together and finally headline the Inferno Festival.

Info purloined directly from the ateaseweb posting:

Tickets for the 2006 Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival will go on sale
Saturday, February 11th at 10:00 AM Eastern Time through Bonnaroo.com.
Tickets for Bonnaroo 2006 are priced at two levels: The first tickets will be priced at a special rate of $169.50 each. There is a limited allotment of tickets at this price. When the initial allotment is sold out, ticket prices will increase without notice to $184.50.

Official bonnaroo site here.

Underwhelming SOTU

Since I was a small child, and long before I was ever interested in politics, I've hated Presidential State of the Union addresses. They invariably pre-empted my favorite show and forced me to find something else to occupy my time. Given my feelings towards the chimperor, it probably goes without saying that my attitudes towards them haven't changed much.

However, the presidential speechwriters and advisors totally phoned in last night's speech. In previous ones, even if one was watching them to pick Shrub apart, one always had some grand, overarching concept as a reward for watching. Whether it was the Iraq war, the dismemberment of Social Security or even plans to put a human on "Mars, B!tch3s!", there was always the visionary idea tossed in.

Last night, the best we got was a bold stance against hybrid human-animal cloning. Somewhere in the White House at this moment, there is a seriously hungover speechwriter holding his aching head but laughing his @$$ off over that one, still unable to believe they let him slip that bit in.

In what has now become commonplace, Chimpy railed against the excesses and failings of the government over which he has presided for the last 6 years. He reiterated his pledge to cut in half the massive deficit which he created. He spewed pleasant words about education, for which he cut funding. And he boldly suggested that we need to reduce our dependence on Middle Eastern oil; the dependence which was strengthened by Dick Cheney's energy task force.

So, lacking the single visionary jewel, this was just another example of the Republicans who control the entire government railing against the fat cats in Washington.

Personally, while it was on, I was doing my usual "SOTU activity, and was thoroughly engaged in a cutthroat game of Hide and Seek. Glad I didn't miss anything.