Baxil [bakh-HEEL'], n.

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Below are the 12 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Baxil" journal:

December 20th, 2007
01:42 am [Link]	December link roundup, Part I Alright, I need to clear these out before the minimized browser windows take over my Dock completely ... GENERAL Finally found something I'd like for Christmas. 'Study Reveals Why Monkeys Shout During Sex' (Probably NSFW: Clinical text descriptions) Glow-in-the-dark cats! Now with 90% less tripping-over-at-midnight! PUN ALERT: I heard a rumor that the Metal Gear Solid webcomic "The Last Days of FOXHOUND" is going to start discussing transhumanist themes in a new spinoff. Supposedly, they're going to name it Dresden CODEC. (Speaking of which, best Dresden Codak comic ever -- Philosophy: The RPG.) "Is it always illegal to kill a woman?" -- a look at how far advertising has advanced in a mere 50 years. Amazon.com gets trolled. Amazon.com assigns response duties to someone with a sense of humor. Make a low-tech refrigerator with clay, sand and water. (Via tropism.) Is stress making us sick? WRITING Essay on the lifespan of literary genres; why "science fiction" as a genre is (un)dead; and why it's still worthwhile. 13 Clichés To Avoid In Blogs. ("Top (n) lists" is #12.) Is Aleister Crowley George W. Bush's grandfather? I'm filing this one under "writing" instead of "politics" because, as a conspiracy theory for TTU, this is MADE OF PURE AWESOME. (In the real world, even if true, I still can't work up any paranoia over it.) Definr: Nifty scripting tricks let you look up a dictionary definition in nigh-real time, without the multiple page loads and/or giant ads involved in (say) Google-searching the word. 'Early morning conversations with my brain': How Wil Wheaton knows he's a writer. TECHNICAL Fixing Mac (and generic) wireless connectivity issues. Google Code Search is now letting us see how programmers swear inside their source code. Five types of end users that tech support folks have to deal with. Blacklists Don't Work: An essay on why the approach used by spam filtering and antivirus applications is doomed from the outset. Good-but. The frustrating thing is -- the general point is true, but the article has some serious logic flaws. For instance: "Why don't Mac users run anti-virus software? Why don't UNIX users run anti-virus software? Because they don't need to. ..." Right. "... They don't run as administrators." WRONG!! This statement in comments (12/12 4:53AM) calls bullshit: "Here's the fundamental law of computer security: don't be the easiest, most common, target on the net." Interview: What it's like being IT manager at the South Pole. What do security software and used cars have in common? Market forces favor bad products over good ones. (Dear libertarians: The invisible hand doesn't solve everything plzkthx.) Ever wondered if perhaps, someday, you could achieve programming superstardom by coming up with a way to somehow notify people that they've got new e-mail? Don't bother. It's patented. :-p POLITICS Hey, remember the "up or down vote" GOP? The new, improved Republican Senate doesn't. In a blisteringly recordbreaking way. Now that's chutzpah: "In response, Romney delivered an address that simultaneously pleaded for religious tolerance and urged intolerance of what he termed the "religion of secularism." If you've seen the documentary "The Aristocrats" (or heard some variation of the joke), take a look at this political take of the classic. A little too close to the truth to be funny. Fox News with a laugh track (VIDEO): Oh my god, they made Bill O'Reilly watchable! What do you think about this painting of Jesus? The author claims that your reaction is a pretty good litmus test for whether you understand Jesus' actual teachings. ECONOMICS "The Total Stupidity of Crowds": How playing games with iterative risk pooling has made EVERY investment that gets anywhere near mortgages dangerous and suspect. A good, non-technical summary of why the subprime mortgage crisis is going to wipe a lot of people out quickly when it starts snowballing. Morgan Stanley issues recession alert for U.S. File this one under "well, duh"; but the real significance is that the cracks in the wall of Wall Street confidence are showing. Oldie but goodie: Gapminder. Play with world economic statistics; roll your own animated graph from hundreds of different data. 10 Absolute "Nos!" for Freelancers. Meant for web designers, but the principles hold elsewhere. BONUS BAXILIAN WRITING: Back in 2004 [friends-locked], I submitted an anonymous story to Tom Tomorrow's blog regarding the evils of debit cards [the quoted part overlined "More, from a reader"]. I'm pretty sure any statute of limitations that might apply to my time at the bank has expired, so let me take this opportunity to repost the link, open the floor to questions, and caution people: DO NOT USE DEBIT CARDS. In the intervening four years, my stance has moderated a bit: As long as it requires a PIN for expenditures, and as long as you have your pin memorized instead of written down, you're probably OK. Probably. But one thing has not changed: any ATM and/or debit card with a Visa/Mastercard logo is A LICENSE FOR PEOPLE TO STEAL YOUR MONEY. If a stranger goes on a shopping spree with your credit card, you're legally liable for no more than $50 as long as you report it promptly. But if a stranger goes on a shopping spree with your debit card, you're at the mercy of your bank to get your money back, and in the meantime I hope you don't have to pay rent or utility bills. As they say, read the whole thing. -- Standard disclaimer 1: Links were picked up from all over the Internet; including blog posts, Reddit, Livejournal, and you. (If you linked it first, I probably got it from you; say so and I'll be happy to name-drop.) Standard disclaimer 2: All these links (and many more!) are also available, nicely tagged and labeled, at my del.icio.us account. Yay social bookmarking! Current Location: ~spiral Current Mood: hungry Tags: link roundup (12 comments \| Leave a comment)
November 20th, 2007
01:29 am [Link]	Link roundup: Nov. 2007 Clearing out the "Gee, I need to share that!" from my browser windows ... Starting off with an oldie but goodie: the Archipelago of Weird. Essay on subculture as geography. (Someone on my friends list linked to it a week or two ago; I no longer remember who.) Why do some people stay on the train past the end of the line? Fantastic magical-realism take on the legend of Boston Charlie. (Again, I forget who on my friends list I stole this from. I need to take better notes.) Strange heresies dept.: The Passion Of The Liefeld. Scroll 3/4 of the way down the page to the big picture of Jesus. In brief, the Greek pantheon shows up at Gethsemane to taunt Christ, and he leaps down off the cross to kick their asses.** Dude. Just, dude. (brain) Moving on to heresies of a different sort: It's cooking. Plus SCIENCE! The article tackles conventional wisdom about food prep and makes a good case against some of it. Scary statistics about the economics of credit cards. How could we save over half the money we spend on the chronically homeless? Give them housing. One of the major consequences of the War on Drugs' rabid marijuana hatred: the loss of one of nature's most durable fabrics. Incidentally, did you know the United States is the only developed nation in which industrial hemp is not an established crop? Haven't decided what to think about this one: Jared Diamond argues that shifting from hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural societies was humanity's worst mistake. (Perhaps so, perhaps not -- but one thing it's hard to deny is that it was inevitable. Ultimately, societies that made the switch could outcompete those that refused, so someone would eventually have done it and won, even if our civilization's ancestors hadn't.) Have decided what to think about this one: "Why I Don't Hire Brilliant Men." STUPID, STUPID, STUPID! headdesk The article doesn't say anything about the perils of intelligent, creative workers; what it bemoans is the perils of smooth talkers. And yet it twists the latter into a morality play on the former. That article should come with a pamphlet on PTFoTCP implementation and a giant clue-by-four engraved with the words "MORAL: Keep fast-talking, ambitious people away from management." On to the multimedia. Here's a catchy music video with furries on bikes. Also, if this regularly happened at football games, I'd have no choice but to become a sports fan. (Second link via inaki.) QOTD: "Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code." (Paul Graham here. via.) Last but not least, if this all gets to be too much for you, remember that we still live in a world in which a guy can tape bacon to his cat in the privacy of his own home. -- * This footnote intentionally left blank. All that's left is for someone to submit a chibi version to Chibi Jesus, and we can all pack the Internet up and go home. Current Location: ~spiral Current Music: "Holy Devotion" mix, DJ Liljo Tags:** link roundup (7 comments \| Leave a comment)
October 27th, 2007
01:15 am [Link]	Link roundup, 2007-10 Cleaning out my browser windows of all of the "I need to mention this later!" cruft from the last few weeks: I've been apathetic on The Golden Compass for months now. But something finally came along that got me interested in seeing it. Speaking of which, here's the site of an atheist rapper (sample lyrics). And if anyone ever tells you (as one of the Republican presidential candidates recently did) that the Declaration of Independence's signers were "mostly clergymen," send them to this beatdown. In the department of Science Telling Us Things That Are Obvious To Everyone But The Moral Majority, feminists have better relationships and sex lives. The study shows this also carries over to their partners. I should probably set this link on computer desk posture to be my home page. If you need more sleep, consider the benefits of planned power naps. (roaminrob, I'm looking at you.) Exploitable OS bugs get the most publicity, but they're not the only virus risk to your computer. Another great link on fighting procrastination that I keep meaning to take the advice of. One of these years. Paul Krugman's introductory blog post hits hard in its summary of one of the worst modern American trends: Rising income inequality. The numbers alone tell the story -- we're back in a Gilded Age. And reading this article on why rich countries are rich and poor countries are poor was like a switch clicking on in my head. The basic revelation -- that high-trust conditions are profitable, and low-trust conditions impoverishing, and that it's easy to degrade trust but extremely hard to engender it -- applies far beyond macroeconomics, and (among other things) is the basis of a fantastic critique of Bastard Culture. Unpacking this is probably worth a post of its own. The origin of "DO NOT WANT." Currency as art. Adding a Dream Coin to my get-someday-when-I-can-buy-small-luxuries-without-guilt list now. And a new webcomic find: three beautiful, poignant riffs on hope, sportsmanship, and compassion [that last one might not make sense without the context of the previous strip]. -------- Here's today's parting shot -- a quotable definition by Jesse Walker (source): Patriotism: I love my dad. Nationalism: My dad can beat up your dad. Imperialism: Here he comes now. Current Location: ~spiral Current Music: Simple Minds, "Don't You Forget About Me" Tags: link roundup (15 comments \| Leave a comment)
July 23rd, 2007
02:39 pm [Link]	It's not just cream that floats Harlan Ellison once claimed the two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity. Considering that Sturgeon's Law seems to be a universal truth, Ellison's rule is pretty easy to demonstrate, but sometimes you run across examples that just cry out for sharing. I'd like to formally nominate some especially sterling examples I recently found ...: Bubble Gum And Duct Tape category: For the most egregious fix of something that could have more easily, more quickly, and more elegantly been replaced. Today's nominee: The header image from GotSky.com! Because nothing screams "professionalism" like taking a pre-cropped 360-pixel-wide graphic from your existing website and telling your graphics guy that that same picture has to be reused at 500 pixels for the redesign. Nothing Beats A First Impression category: For website designs that best maximize clickthrough/visibility/search engine placement while minimizing actual utility. (Unintentional successes only. Spam sites are excluded from consideration, as they do this deliberately.) Today's nominee: MoreMagic's incredible Google summary when you search for their company name: "spacer graphic, spacer graphic, spacer graphic, spacer graphic, spacer graphic, spacer graphic, spacer graphic, spacer graphic, spacer graphic ..."* Get Thee Behind Me category: For superlative application of technology in a manner that is simultaneously dehumanizing, terrifying, and entirely unnecessary. Today's nominee, and likely winner: ~~Redbook's photoshopping of Faith Hill~~ (Edit: Link appears to be down; see here instead for analysis and here for the original flipbook-type animation) for a recent cover shot. The image is large, so I won't repost it here, but I urge you to go look. And then pick up your jaw from the floor. Any other nominees? There can't be any shortage of candidates. -- * Stumbled across while trying to reach the awesome story of the "More Magic switch" in the Jargon File. Current Location: ~yuba Current Mood: busy Current Music: "Suicide is Painless (MASH Theme)," Jimmy Smith Tags: link roundup, my brain now hurts (18 comments \| Leave a comment)
June 4th, 2007
08:41 pm [Link]	In which Rob proves his site-finding l33tness (A DRAMATIZATION) The scene: Our two heroes are at their tech support job, looking up some technical data vaguely relevant to one of their latest support tickets. baxil: Huh? That's really bizarre. The most recent iMacs support a maximum of 3 gb of RAM. roaminrob: What? That's a stupid cap. A longint is 4 gb; why not use that? There has to be some arbitrary limitation that has nothing to do with memory addressing. B: 4 gb or even 2 gb I could understand. Then you at least have paired SO-DIMMs and can get the speed boost. But a maximum of three gb in two slots? R: Lame. Speaking of which, did you ever buy that RAM upgrade for your Mac Mini? B: Hmm. (google) "The Intel chip set used inside has limited memory addressing capabilities, meaning 3GB is the most the system can address."* And no, I didn't ... I thought about it a few weeks ago at Fry's, but they had two different sets of PC5300s, one of them labeled specifically for Macs, which were of course more expensive ... I haven't done enough research to find a good deal ... (Blah blah, whine whine.) R: Ah, but while you have been distracted with the 3gb thing, I have found your RAM, labeled specifically for Mac use, at a price modestly lower than your best deal. Et voila, $78.00 per 1GB chip! (sends link) B: ... R: ...? B: You read that wrong. That's $78 for the entire 2gb upgrade kit. SOUND OF MULTIPLE JAWS DROPPING B: Where's my credit card? And how the hell did you find this? R: Dealmac. And damn, does it feel good to have my Internet mojo back. B: You know, your track record of "recommending sites to me that begin with a D and are TOTALLY AWESOME" is now two for two. R: You're welcome. It's not just Dealmac - check out their RAM side at DealRAM and their generic computer gear side at DealNews. B: Seeing as how I am off the clock, I plan to. (surfs) R: (works) B: ... !!! R: ? B: Dude. (frantic gesticulating) R: (walks over) B: Dealnews. THEY. HAVE. HIKING. GEAR. R: ... A Marmot Precip for $49?!?! B: `O_O;` R: Wow. B: Excuse me, I think I just wet myself. (runs to bathroom) Current Location: ~yuba Current Mood: impressed Tags: geekery, hiking, link roundup (30 comments \| Leave a comment)
April 8th, 2007
07:08 pm [Link]	Notes from the underground Got hit with a one-two punch today as I opened my my friends list, and the combination has left my reality a bit wobbly. In a good way. In the best way -- where reality and fiction are competing to tell the strangest tale, where you're fighting for balance in the middle as Story gets yanked back and forth, and nobody's quite sure where your footing is going to end up. First up is the odd story of the Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel, via luna_torquill; a Depression-era project to tunnel in a straight line between the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City. Originally used to deliver mail, it was reappropriated by capitalists when airplane delivery made its original purpose obsolete. On the heels of that, tangaroa* linked to a Washington Post article where world-famous violinist Joshua Bell took his Stradivarius down to a D.C. subway station and played as a street performer for the better part of an hour. There are so many (so to speak) "money quotes" in the latter story** that I don't know what to excerpt. It digs in for some brilliant points about the role of context in great art, and what made the audience react as they did. Plus bonus points for name-dropping koyaanisqatsi. But this is one of the lines that twisted the knife the most painfully: There was no ethnic or demographic pattern to distinguish the people who stayed to watch Bell, or the ones who gave money, from that vast majority who hurried on past, unheeding. Whites, blacks and Asians, young and old, men and women, were represented in all three groups. But the behavior of one demographic remained absolutely consistent. Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch. And every single time, a parent scooted the kid away. How much we forget as society programs us into adulthood! -- * Not really, of course. This is alternate history in the same vein as my Dangerous Waters article, just grounded enough to make the wholly implausible parts maybe worth a second look. In a sad, wistful sort of way, this seems to me to be the sort of story waywind tags with "pronoia news network". I really wanted to work that into the main text somewhere, but couldn't make it fit; so consider this plug a piece of marginalia. Current Location: ~calorg Current Mood: unsettled Current Music: Internet radio from the '70s Tags:** link roundup, magic, writing (9 comments \| Leave a comment)
March 18th, 2007
10:16 pm [Link]	Quote (and links) of the day: The power of nukes The fireball ... was seen 1,000 km [620 miles] away. The heat could have caused third degree burns at a distance of 100 km [62 miles]. ... The explosion could be seen and felt in Finland, even breaking windows there. ... The seismic shock created by the detonation was measurable even on its third passage around the earth. The average power produced during the entire fission-fusion process, lasting around 39 nanoseconds, was ... equivalent to approximately 1% of the power output of the Sun. -- Wikipedia article on the Tsar Bomba 50-megaton nuclear test, the largest manmade explosion in history -- Got sidetracked from a Google search on instestinal bleeding (sigh ... yes, still dealing with some symptoms; not sure what I'll do if it starts getting worse again) by running into a fascinating page on how real and science-fiction astronauts have to deal with radiation. A fascinating read, from radiation effects to shielding mechanics to ship design. Also did a little surfing around from there to discover that, billions of years ago, conditions were right for at least one of Earth's underground uranium deposits to turn into a natural fission reactor. (Don't worry; it can't happen today because natural decay has reduced uranium deposits' potency.) Plus the aforementioned article on Tsar Bomba. That one bomb, alone, was equivalent to about 3,000 Hiroshimas. And each of those Hiroshimas is itself equivalent to 10,000 of the truck bombs used in the Oklahoma City bombing. That we survived the dawn of the nuclear age is a testament to ... something. Given the known incidents that almost sparked off an Earth-sterilizing missile exchange, probably just pure dumb luck. Current Location: ~calorg Current Music: Bruce Hornsby, "The Tide Will Rise" Tags: link roundup (3 comments \| Leave a comment)
January 30th, 2007
08:17 pm [Link]	Sunday's lesson: No matter how brilliant his posts are, don't read David Neiwert while up too late and about to drop into four hours' sleep. His recent post on anti-Asian eliminationism in 19th and 20th-century America took over my brain and metastasized. Sunday night's dream followed a quiet, middle-class black couple as they endured the incredible indignities of a merciless white world. ( Dream ljcut ) Incidentally, if you're not a regular reader of Orcinus (Neiwert's blog), you just missed a jaw-droppingly haunting post on the scams run in American prisons. Mind you ... as Orcinus says, it's not that the prison conditions themselves are objectionable; it's the way these guys are nakedly fleeced (assuming that even half of what the guy writes is true, and I'd find it hard to believe it's all lies). To those who would say that the treatment described is justified because inmates are there to be punished ... all I can say is, beware the law of unintended consequences. We've accepted as a society that removal of freedom is a just punishment; making them into victims of opportunism is a different thing entirely, and leaves both emotional and financial scars on them that linger long after our focus has turned from punishment to rehabilitation. Do we really want to teach all of our prisoners -- people who will mostly be out on the streets again one day -- that American values specifically condone ripping off the most fragile and vulnerable just because we hold power over them? ... On a less somber note, I happened to notice my old friend Noah leave a comment to the Orcinus post. So this seems like a very timely ... um, time ... to mention Noah's recent post on a creepy yet plausible Star Wars theory. So what really happened to Luke, Leia and Han after the Death Star blew up at the end of A New Hope? Review his provided stills and judge for yourself. If you need a little time to reassemble your brain after reading that last link, go download some games -- the link points to a list of 101 modern freeware greats. Go ahead. You'll thank me in the morning ... and hate me next week once you come up for air. Current Location: ~/computer_desk Current Music: Thumper, "Soaring Skyward" OC Remix Tags: dreams, link roundup (1 comment \| Leave a comment)
January 22nd, 2007
11:39 pm [Link]	Nifty links of the moment This is where I would normally put a Further Confusion wrap-up, but I ended up reading other peoples' journals before getting around to updating my own. So, without further ado, a bunch of great links ganked from others. Department of Space: A Google Maps-type star map for the entire Traveller setting, complete with borders, star system data, shipping routes, jillions of names, etc. The full impact of this doesn't really start hitting you until you scale down step by step and see how big the map is. (via comments in a momentrabbit post) Department of Aerospace: The Russians built two counterparts to the Mir space station. Where are they now? If you answered "Nobody knows," you're only half right, and that's the less interesting half. (h/t xiphias) Department of Decoding: Here, have a cipher to decode. And if you happen to have solved that one already, have a harder one. (h/t chipuni and soreth, respectively) (The first one's cheatable ... if you know where to look. I'll link to the web resource I used in comments, but I'll screen it for several days.) Edited to add: Department of American Exceptionalism: This article should be required reading for anyone who still has any respect for the American health care system. (The rest of us can just cite its statistics as we agitate for a sane alternative.) Via annafdd via jinian. And a second health care link I couldn't wedge in anywhere else. Current Location: ~calorg Current Mood: rushed Current Music: Orbital, "The Saint theme" Tags: american health care is a piece of shit, geekery, link roundup, riddles (4 comments \| Leave a comment)
January 4th, 2007
01:45 am [Link]	Bunnies, cats, and blended hikers While I've been spending most of the last few weeks updating the TTU Wiki, I've occasionally taken side trips out to the amazing land of Internets for my amusement and edification: Never let it be said that webcomics can't teach you important American history. I'm just young enough that I had never heard of the incident in question until XKCD pointed it out. (I grew up in the Reagan years.) For that matter, never let it be said that sci-fi can't teach you world history. I stumbled across a page of Babylon 5 cultural trivia while looking up the origin of the phrase "a voice in the wilderness." Star Trek fans should find the story behind security chief Michael Garibaldi's name to be especially hilarious. I don't remember where I picked up the link to this introduction to Mrs. Miller; probably my friends list. But elsewhere on LJ, I found a way to sum up that link in less than 10 words: (via cat_macros) While meandering around the Internet, I also learned that Scott Williamson finished his second yo-yo of the Pacific Crest Trail about a month ago. If you have no idea what I'm talking about with this "yo-yo" thing, here's a good summary. If you're in the mood for a much longer, more metaphysical and more dramatic story, Backpacker magazine's pretentiously titled article has a fascinating glimpse into the friends Scott made and lost along the way, and his getting shot in the face in 1996. Anyway, Scott's accomplishment is especially noteworthy to me because I actually met the man while attempting my own PCT hike. I ran into Scott and Joe Kisner, who at the time were hiking together in an attempt to do a joint yo-yo, on June 1. Or perhaps I should say they ran into me. We were about 370 miles into the trail, in the San Gabriel mountains outside Los Angeles. Scott and Joe (whose name I just spent two hours googling, and finally confirmed it here; how quickly the also-rans are forgotten!) blew past me in the parking lot at the base of Mt. Baden-Powell, stopping long enough to exchange some pleasantries and for me to recognize Scott from the kickoff party. I wished them luck and eventually limped after them. (This was in the period where early symptoms of giardia were making me feel like utter crap.) Less than 24 hours later, I subsequently learned, Joe gave up on the trail. There was a road detour just west of B-P to preserve red-legged frog habitat; the official detour took an unfamiliar side trail from the road back to the PCT. Apparently Scott and Joe got separated during that side-trail walk -- for distance hikers, it's very common to walk at your own pace and then sync up occasionally throughout the day. Scott hit the PCT and made the turn. From what I heard, Joe hit the intersection and kept walking, ultimately getting lost some 10 miles north of the trail. Unable to navigate back to the PCT, he cross-country hiked down to a road and caught a ride in to civilization. If he had returned to the trail where he left it, he would be a day or two behind the yo-yo's unforgiving schedule and unable to catch up with Scott. So he quit. That encounter really drove home for me how even a tiny slip can doom a yo-yo attempt. (Scott himself failed at seven of them before he finally made headlines in 2004.) So it's great news to hear that Scott managed to finish again this year. I walked 916 miles, and that's no small thing, but my accomplishment absolutely pales besides his. If you're the podcasting sort, there's interviews with him and many other trail characters over at trailcast.org. Otherwise, forgive my rambling. Current Location: ~/computer_desk Current Mood: thoughtful Current Music: Man With No Name, "Deliverance" Tags: baxwalk pct, link roundup (Leave a comment)
November 9th, 2006
01:21 am [Link]	Turn, turn, turn: A blogosphere schadenfreudaganza! Dear fellow progressives: The voting is over. The tidal wave has struck. Liberals, conditioned by over a decade of pre-election optimism and subsequent slapdowns, found their wildest projections exceeded and the voting results climbing to the level of their secret and unvoiced dreams. Not only was there a seismic shift in the House (did we hit 30 pickups, or am I speaking too soon? I know that +29 has been called for certain), but the Senate appears to be at worst 50-50. (And at best, um ... about 50-50, since new Bush buddy Joe Lieberman is #51.) Democrats now control 28 out of 50 governorships and made broad pickups in state-level legislatures. These elections were a victory. A clear, unambigous, victory for sanity. A repudiation of the crimes, lies, greed, excess, divisiveness, pettiness, and destruction of American ideals that we've suffered through continuously for the last 2,119 days. This is the beginning of the end of Bushism. ... A victory? Hell no, a rout! Not a single Democratic incumbent lost their House or Senate seat. This is unprecedented in modern U.S. politics. Of course, this is not the end of the movie; there won't be any credits rolling after the good guys' overwhelming and improbable victory. There is plenty of work left to do. But we DID win, and this is a time to celebrate. And more than celebration ... it's a time for schadenfreude. ( mp3 link)* As the song says: "That's not very nice!" "... Nope, but everybody does it!" Because I love this country -- and its ideals of freedom; economic and social equality; and responsible governance -- the vocal mainstream of the right wing and its elected representatives have unloaded an unending stream of vitriol at me and my fellow progressive Americans since 2001. So, if sore losers on the radical right want to get a bug up their ass about a day or two of open gloating from our side of the fence? Fuck them. I would feel a little bit more guilty about my behavior if the same people complaining could go longer than, oh, two weeks without casually flinging diagnoses of "Bush Derangement Syndrome" [1] in our direction or trotting out the tired "aid and comfort to the enemy" line whenever the media offers critical stories about Iraq [2]. And it's not just the blog wingnuts who have spent the last five years equating Democrats and liberals with terrorists. Thanks for your years of middle fingers, guys; now sit. and. spin. I'll get this out of my system in a few days, and I'll be perfectly happy to return to my usual political maturity after that, but in the meantime, pop the champagne cork and hum along with the mp3 that should by now have finished downloading. Gloating at the misfortune of others begins ... NOW: First, the hard-core Republican reaction. Crooked Timber and Alicublog round up the devastation and recrimination among the foam-at-the-mouth wingnut crowd. And even Bush mouthpiece Tony Snow's favorite blogger wilted: "I don't think anyone can honestly look at the results tonight and say that we saw anything less than a trip to the woodshed for the Republicans." It's almost enough to make a fellow feel sorry for his opponents; another 2,118 days of their wailing and they'll have my sympathy for sure. It's been a real bad week for two old conservative friends in particular. And ... what? President Bush's campaign stops might have hurt his GOP allies? Say it ain't so! It's not like the guy loves throwing his allies under a bus or anything. The Bush administration: Where loyalty is rewarded with a helpful kick in the ass on your way out, and yet they flock to drink the Kool-Aid anyway. A conservative blog roundup shows that the shellshocked wingnuts have started to move from confusion to denial. (Or maybe that's the other way around?) Democrats may have won, but they're dragging down the stock market! Democrats may have won, but because Ned Lamont lost the liberal netroots are discredited! The Democratic sweep proves that the USA is really a conservative nation! And "Man-on-Dog" Santorum's loss is awesome because it frees him up for a SCOTUS seat! Here's one for kadyg: Go Kansas! You know, it's a lot easier to remember the Bush administration's worst misdeeds when we finally have some real hope we have seen the worst of them. Of course, it's also a lot easier to remember the Bush Greatest Hits when they're set to music. (No actual music at link, just lots of pictures and lyrics.) And, extra credit bonus gloat: Has anyone ever bothered to point out that, according to the Rapture Index, the closest we've gotten to Armageddon was under Republican rule and near-universal Bush popularity; and the farthest was back when Democrats controlled all three branches of government? Ahem! Anyway. Savor those links. Let them sink in for a week or two. There's a lot of hard work up ahead on a political, ideological, and cultural level ... but there will be time to get to it after the giddiness dies down. If we want to truly save this country, we have to vaccinate the public (and, especially, the media) against the wholesale construction of false realities by GOP propagandists (edited to add: Bonus link) and corporate flacks. We have to fight to victory in the existing constitutional crisis. We have to build, probably from the ground up, an enduring and appealing liberal vision to inspire a mass movement behind our idealism and keep a public from falling back into the pseudo-fascists' arms once the inevitable disillusionment with the current crop of political winners occurs. We have to clean house of the ugly and disproven mindset that Democrats can only win by being Republicans-lite. We have to solidify the grassroots advantage that liberal bloggers and online communities have begun to build. With a big victory under our belt, and a chance to finally set the agenda after a decade of invective and exclusion, maybe it's a challenge American progressives can handle after all. Current Location: ~calorg Current Mood: exuberant Current Music: AMERICAN Internet radio! With ROCK! Tags: link roundup, politics (9 comments \| Leave a comment)
October 3rd, 2006
10:20 pm [Link]	September links roundup Interesting things I've found across Livejournal or around the Web over the course of the month: The quotable Bax: "Magic is easy. Interfacing it with reality, now that's tough." -- Cited at notdoneliving.net. "I am beginning to really hate bosses who confuse timeliness with responsibility." -- Cited by ounceofreason. And the quotes meme: Remember that "go to a page of quotes and pick 5 you like" meme that spread through LJ a little while back? Blogger Kevin Drum had an intriguing spin on it: Pick 5 you disagree with. I never did meme either one, but I like the ideas. It's A Small World, PCT Edition: Turns out that the thru-hiker known as Chai Guy, who I met several times along the trail, is a friend of kshandra's. (Not only that, but my parents, who spend their summers in Maine, are friends-of-friends of the hiker known as T-bird and her family.) The thru-hiking community leads to some of the strangest connections. Sucky math: hafoc examines The Mathematics of Suck, a tongue-in-cheek attempt to quantify the vileness of most modern American music. One of the funniest things I've read lately. Mathy suck: Speaking of math, kistaro made an offhand comment about Manhattan distances a week or two ago. Speaking of suck, the post sucked me into a sprawling discussion with him. The geekery gets deep quickly. Webcomic clichés: kinkyturtle posted some introspection on the Nine Cheesy Web Comic Plot Lines, which caused me to realize that my webcomic is fully 25% cliché. Wait, you have a webcomic?: Yep! I've very occasionally changed up the format of my journal entries. The illustrated (and/or photographed) entries have run at Tlands under the name "My Afternoon: A Dramatization." Calling 'em like they are: The first of these webcomics was about the brutally sucky completist ending of the game "Jak and Daxter". I now note with some satisfaction that I'm not the only one who has made that observation. Coulda, woulda, shoulda wrote it: The webcomic xckd continues to steal words from my mouth. This time, it's a PCT thru-hike in six panels. Pitch-perfect. I would so do this: Spawn! There may be some marathon running in my future. Resistance is futile: LJ continues its slow assimilation of the rest of the world. Some years ago, on a lark I posted a link to a random Google search I performed. Since then, theferrett's musing on superhero powers has jumped out of nowhere to the #2 result for i can spell patchouli and my life sucks. The coveted #1 is only a Googlebomb away ... What he said: I pretty much agree with everything Kos writes in "The Case for the Libertarian Democrat." My break with the Libertarians was wholly an issue of economic principle. Leftists and Libertarians share a strong common bond of support for civil liberty, and it's one of the things I think both groups are most correct to pull for. It's where Libertarianism veers into knee-jerk anti-governmentarianism that it goes furthest astray, and Kos is right to point out that there are places where government intervention increases personal economic liberties. It would be interesting to see leftists/libertarians making common cause to keep personal freedoms paramount -- when government gets in the way of that, be willing to roll it back, and when the profit motive gets in the way of that, be willing to roll government forward. What'd he say?!: Of course, not everyone responded well to Kos' essay. Reaction among libertarians was especially varied (and generally critical). The comment that made my eyes bug out the furthest: "I can't side with Kos simply because he believes that government has the power to do good. The end." ... ... Um, yeah, guy. Sorry to hear that police and fire departments, the interstate freeway system, and the Bill of Rights haven't been working out for you. More thought-provoking LJ: nicked_metal's advice on writing novels: Don't end everything at the end. bradhicks wonders whether some humans have simply had civilization bred out of them. heron61 argues against trying to prove magic. phierma describes an eye-opening class activity on class warfare. packbat reminds us of the underlying idea behind respecting people's beliefs. eclective's post title says it all: "The Power of 'I Am'." Current Location: ~computer_desk Current Mood: peaceful Current Music: George Winston, "Stars" Tags: link roundup (6 comments \| Leave a comment)

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