Wow... Really?

Via TPM, John Perry's new column for Newsmax.com, a prominent conservative news site. The site has since pulled the article, but Media Matters has been kind enough to store a copy for our viewing pleasure. I mean, I'm all for free speech, but you need some real cajones to write a piece suggesting the military overthrow of the President of the United States. And to be a really dumb editor to run it.

Remember when the GOP and the right used to decry those who simply argued against the President's views as treasonous? I don't see any hypocrisy here. None at all.

Video(s) of the Day

I've heard about these dust storms in Australia the past week or so, but this is absolutely surreal:



To all my Aussie friends, stay safe mates.

(Hat Tip: Andrew Sullivan)

UPDATE: This one is from a couple years back, but is even more chill-inducing than the one above. I've always wanted to go to Australia...

The Jig is Up

Via Sullivan, a new New York Times poll shows the good people of these United States figuring out who the good guys and bad guys are in the health care debate:

76 percent said Republicans had not even laid out a clear health care plan. And by a lopsided margin, respondents said that Mr. Obama and not Republicans had made an effort to cross party lines and strike a deal that has the support of both parties. ... Nearly two-thirds of respondents said they believed Republicans in Congress were opposing Mr. Obama’s bill only for political gain, rather than because they believed it was bad for the country; just over half said Democrats in Congress backed the bill for political reasons.

Just 30 percent said they had a favorable view of Republicans in Congress. By contrast, 47 percent said they had a favorable view of Congressional Democrats.

How're those 2010 midterms looking now?

"Mr. Anderson" Watch

CNN interviews Microsoft researcher Gordon Bell, who is essentially downloading his life and memories onto a hard drive. He finds it "freeing" to not have to remember things anymore. And thinks that most of us will too by 2020.

And our machine overlords are snickering.

Blackout

For all of you sports fans who came to Boston for college and attempted to articulate to me how much it sucked being somewhere where you couldn't watch or listen to the teams you loved growing up on a regular basis, I now understand. And you're so right - this shit blows.

The Texas Board of Education and Understanding History

The good people at TPM, led by Josh Marshall, have found some real gems of video coming out of the Texas Board of Education meeting discussing changes to be made to their social studies, history, and government curriculum. The absurdity of some of the statements made by these people are astounding:











For more, The Dallas Morning News has a good article looking at the proposed changes and the people trying to put them in place.

I understand what part of their point is - they want to include a greater representation of conservative leaders and thinkers in 20th century history. Kids should be taught about them alongside liberal and progressive politicians, and allowed to discover through research and analysis of what they are learning who has made lasting contributions to the course of American historical events. Despite what is told to you about "liberal brainwashing institutions of higher education," that's how it happens in college - you're given exposure and allowed to think for yourself.

But on the other hand, facts don't change -

+ There are times that isolationist tendencies have prevented America from preventing mass genocide.
+ We imprisoned innocent Americans for xenophobic reasons.
+ Racism is not a historical tendency of only one party.
+ Nixon lied, and so did Clinton.
+ McCarthy was a vengeful, power-mad senator who governed with fear.
+ Vietnam was the brainchild of liberal presidents.
+ Reagan wasn't a fool, and neither was George W. Bush.
+ Newt Gingrich created a powerful voting block that sustained the conservative legacy of Reagan.
+ America created Osama bin Laden.
+ 9/11 was preventable.
+ The information that led to support of the War in Iraq was a lie.
+ America tortured POWs at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and Bagram.

We have expanded the face and power of the United States by exploiting others, by abusing others, by ignoring others, by destroying others. And nothing any panel determines is ever going to change that. Changing textbooks does not change facts, but it does limit the presentation of the truth. If the Board wants to include conservative leaders and thought in textbooks, then they need to not be hypocritical and present the facts of American history to its students. And that includes both the good, the bad, and the ugly.

To remove the negative of what the United States has done is not teaching kids to hate America. On the contrary, it teaches them our flaws, and our ability to recognize and grow from them, is our greatest strength. It teaches them that even something that is less than perfect, as all things created under God are, that despite that they can still be an incredible force for good in this world. Kids need to be able to see that in the country that grow up in, and maybe they'll be able to see it in each other as well.

The story of America is not about being infallible. It's about penance, tolerance, and redemption. And that's something we should be proud of.

The Twilight Zone

"I want, not for personally for me, but for working Americans, to have a option, that if they don’t like their health insurance, if it’s too expensive, they can’t afford it, if the government can cobble together a cheaper insurance policy that gives the same benefits, I see that as a plus for the folks."

Via Andrew, I almost couldn't believe it when I saw who said the above quote. And it's totally out of left field. Obviously some of the liberal elitist academics must have rubbed off on him when he attended Alma Mater olde BU, but still this is really surprising. So who said the aforementioned quote?

You're traveling through another dimension -- a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind...

Killing their Dream

TNC has Limbaugh, Malkin, and the radical right all figured out as to why they can't stand Barack Obama as President of the United States - because he won't be who they want him to be. Money quote:

But Barack Obama, bourgeois in every way that bourgeois is right and just, will not dance.He tells kids to study--and they seethe. He accepts an apology for an immature act of rudeness--and they go hysterical. He takes his wife out for a date--and their veins bulge. His humanity, his ordinary blackness, is killing them. Dig the audio of his response to Kanye West--the way he says, "He's a jackass." He sounds like one of my brothers. And that's the point, because that's what he is. Barack Obama refuses to be their nigger. And it's driving them crazy.

The Talented Mr. Izzard

Via Andrew Sullivan, an article in The London Times about the Eddie Izzard doing something I can honestly say I really never really thought possible by an every-man, much less a middle-aged, crossdressing British comedian. But it's really, really awesome.

And if you don't know who Eddie Izzard is, you're really missing out.

Sound of the Day

It's football season, baby! HERE WE GO, PATRIOTS! HERE WE GO!

The Power of You and The Power of People

Two posts via Andrew Sullivan that I just thought go well together. First, from Jonah Lehrer's blog:

This computational efficiency is the single most astonishing fact of the mammalian brain. Here you are, reading these words, daydreaming about lunch, processing the richness of reality, thinking about tomorrow, and your brain requires less energy than a low wattage light bulb. Evolution is an impressive engineer.

Makes you feel kind of impressed with yourself, right? "I'm the most efficient, complex, powerful machination this world has ever known." And then there's this from Norman Gates' blog:

Suppose you read four books a week every week for 70 years. Allowing for a day here and there where you're unable to read, we can call that 200 books a year, and 14,000 books over the whole three score years and ten. It's a lot of books. But relative to all the books there are, it's a tiny, tiny fraction. According to the guy who manages the Google Books metadata team, at the latest count the books in the world now total 168,178,719. Your 14,000 books are just 0.008324477724 per cent of that.

You want a reason why people, in joining together, change the world? Because you, in all of your glory, can read eight-thousandths of the worlds collective knowledge in your lifetime. And there is too much with the short time you're given than to just sit there reading.

How Small We Are

More of NASA's recently released Hubble photos thanks to TPM.

Boldly Go.

Post of Shame

Alright, here it is. The post of shame. I've been really bad about blogging for, say the past three-plus weeks. So let's talk about what's been going on.

So I got a job. I cannot begin to describe the feelings that accompany such news after you've spent way more money than you probably should have on a collegiate education, so I honestly hope that everyone out there that is still trapped in that seemingly endless mental cyclone of doubt and second-guessing and fear of failure, I hope that you all will get to experience the joy and relief and anxiety and nervous anticipation that comes with being offered a job that you've put so much time into courting for yourself. And it will come. Patience, grasshopper - you will snatch the stone from the hand soon enough.

And so began the transition to move. If it's a job away from where your current living arrangements, there is definitely a return to that nervous freshmen in college mode that you thought you outgrew. For me, it was somewhat multiplied by the fact that I didn't really know what my living arrangements were going to be. I kind of had a place lined up, but it wasn't at all a sure thing. And then the night before I moved I found another place of promise - and then it's always nice to be able to shop a little. Turns out the last minute find was a way better living situation at a way better cost.

It's funny, you always here about how things work out in the end - that the problems and concerns seem to work themselves out. There is definitely a huge element of luck in that. And the normally least lucky guy hit a streak for five days, and everything worked itself out. Housing, check. No insurance and didn't suffer some catastrophic incident, check. My parents, who helped me move down here, and I not killing each other, check.

I think there's a difference between luck and being fortunate. Luck, to me, is things just swinging your way - that cosmic forces just align to pull things in line with what you want to do. The whole move down here was luck. But there is something to be said about being fortunate, to have the safety and security to be able to wait on luck to make your move. It took me a long time to realize how fortunate I was after graduation to be able to move home and not have my parents looking to drive me out. They knew I was trying my darnedest to get out of there. Nothing against Sutton, but it's a static place that fails, despite the best efforts of those looking to help it grow, to change substantially. After living for four years in the ever-shifting world of Boston, in constant dynamics that are the only thing you can be sure of, to stop moving for the months that I was home was painful. You grew past it - it took me a few months but I was finally able to embrace the one beautiful, note-worthy thing about being there. My family.

And leaving, it hurt a little, more than I think it would have if I had found a job after being there for a month or so. Sitting over dinner with my dad, I told him how I realized how fortunate I had been to have their safety net and willingness to let me flail around there until I could get off and stand up again to move forward. I'm extraordinarily grateful to my parents, my grandmother, and my friends at home for reminding me that there are things that are constant regardless of the passing endless landscape of changes that line the road of life. It was something I think I may have forgotten in Boston a little, where people can change in the time it takes to wait for a Green Line trolley to show up. I was getting a little choked up, telling my father this as we waited for my mother to leave the restaurant after dinner the night I arrived in Media. I felt like it needed to be said, after all the grief I put them through at home as the summer slipped towards autumn. I needed him to know that I was so thankful.

It hadn't needed to be said though. He already knew.

There are parts of Boston I'm going to miss tremendously - namely, the people. I got a picture text last night of my good friend, teammate, and fellow blogger Dan Withrow wolfing down a burger at BU's annual welcome-back barbecue for the athletics department with the caption, "WHOSE'S HUNGRY?" It was sent by a now-sophomore who I affectionately referred to as Rook all last spring, so I forgave the grammatical incorrectness of his use of "WHOSE'S" to let him know that, "Damn, I miss that shit." It's funny how you can feel nostalgia for something that is only a short time gone from your reality, but it comes with moving on to the next thing. That wasn't my place anymore, as much as I love so many of the people and places that are there. Even if someday my road led back there, it wouldn't be the same place. Sure, many of the buildings and trees and benches that I would linger on and around would be there, and maybe even some of those people. But it will never be the same place it was, just as I will never be who I was there again. Everything is moving, everything is changing, and while your piece of a place may have been swept onward, it all becomes anew.

All the same, when Rook messaged me back with, "It missed you too," I knew no matter how strange or funny it seemed, it was what's right. It's how the world works.

And so, it's time to move on. I started writing this as a post of shame, to explain my pathetic absence of blogging. Looking back at it though, I failed to really do that. I'm not ashamed, it's just how my life has been these past few weeks. I can't change it, but it's not something I'm prepared to really feel any shame for - dare I say it's a matter of pride.

So I'm gonna try to get better about the blogging again. Before I used this space to highlight some of the things I was seeing around me in the world and cast my opinion on them. And I'll still try to do some of that. But just like, as Paul sings with the Wings, the "ever-changing world in which we live in," I'm gonna try to let this place grow and be a little less bent on perspective of what's out there, and maybe have a few more posts like this with a little more introspection. A little more self-inspired thought to see where it takes us.

One of my favorite shows is "The West Wing." It's what helped get me so interested in Political Science in school, and maybe even to some degree Philosophy as well. When I was home over the summer, Bravo would show two episodes every morning, from 8 til 10. It's what got me up and started my day. For those of you who know of the show, you'll know where I'm about to steal how I'm gonna close this. But I'm late for work, so fuck it - it's time to move on.

What's next.