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Friday, April 18, 2008
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Bush Calls the Kettle on Iran
You'd think my head would have fallen off with the number of times I've shaken it over the span of the Bush regime.
So, Twitter-user BreakingNewsOn (http://twitter.com/…kingNewsOn ) twittered: " President Bush calls it naive to think Iran couldn%u2019t transfer nuclear enrichment knowledge from energy purposes to producing an atomic bomb."
Uh-huh... no, it's naive to think that you're not lying to us, George!
Come on, is ANYone falling for this crap?
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1 in 5 Iraq & Afghanistan USGIs Suffer from PTSD
This seems to always be what people forget about with war. Sure, we've got to get the badguys and protect our country, but at what cost? Do we over-work our military and push them so hard they are scarred for life just to save our way of life?
Or can we work a little harder to keep everyone sane, by perhaps spending more time avoiding war, or (more realistically) maybe our government can spend a bit more time coming up with a plan to better utilize our troops so they don't end up suffering from PTSD (or work out how to make it so they don't suffer it as badly)?
Or perhaps it's that our government truly doesn't give a shit about our troops, their lives or their deaths?
Either way, I hope this is the last war we have where so many Americans fall for the BS rhetoric about how noble war is.
If it's so noble, why do our soldiers come back mentally scarred for life? And why do we (and our government) seem to care so little about them after they come back?
Almost forgot to add a link to the above stories on Google News:
http://news.google.com/
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Before ThePete.Com, There was SPINNINGHEAD!
Ugh... this is hard to post, actually--what you see above is one of the earliest incarnations of ThePete.Com. SpinningHead.com was my first "real" site (as opposed to something at Geocities or FortuneCity). The idea was that the babyhead (me at 7 months) would spin and spin while you browsed my site. The catch was that the spinning was really distracting and annoying, so at some point, I stopped it.
I didn't really bother keeping track of what happened when, so I don't know precisely when I bought that old domain name and I certainly didn't keep track of every time I changed my site design--at least not until July of '99 when I bought "ThePete.Com" as a domain.
I do vaguely remember having bought the SpinningHead domain with birthday money, so I think it was June of 97--since I'm not sure I decided July of 98 would be a reasonable compromise for a "birth date" for my site as it is today--that is to say, a blog site.
The Bitch page would show up later in '98 and that was my first attempt at real regular content posting--what we call blogging today. I'll be posting screencaps of later versions of SH.c and ThePete.com, soon.
But just look at that monster! A black background? Those graphics? Why the hell didn't I put each one on a new line? "Fun Page"?? "Life Sucks"?? Wow. I was SO imaginative!!
Or not... O_O
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Wednesday, April 16, 2008
National Conference for Media Reform, 6/6-6/8/8
I got this email today from Amy Goodman, host of the show I always post about, Democracy Now. No, I don't know Goodman personally, I'm just on a mailing list someplace. Not even sure which one or how I got on it--the point is, this is a good cause and I thought I'd post about it.
The National Conference for Media Reform is what it sounds like--a conference for media reform--why does media need reforming?
People completely miss the importance of the media, not only in America, but in EVERY democracy. People forget that a free press is the fourth branch of government, really. It's the only truly independent check and balance. I think it was Ben Franklin who said that if he had to choose between a strong government and a weak press or a strong press and NO government, he'd choose the latter. Why? My guess is that knowing what's going on is the most important thing.
Look at how badly the media did during the build-up to the Iraq war. The mainstreamers were so busy bad-mouthing the bloggers that they forgot to do what we've been doing all along--questioning authority, providing that check and balance. And guess what? The mainstream press got it all wrong.
They buried stories critical of the administration, ignored evidence of corruption and inaccuracy in what the USG is telling us and it's still going on to this day.
The mass media is dictating to us what is news and what isn't based on what they think we'll want to watch. Well, sometimes medicine doesn't taste good but we have to take it anyway. Likewise, forcing capitalism-centered motivations on a process that is meant to keep us educated about our world is completely illogical and goes against the very point of a free press and its function as an independent fourth branch of government.
Of course, that's my take. What's yours? Agree with me? Have a different opinion but feel like the media in the US is still a joke?
Well, maybe you should check out that conference in June. I won't be able to make it, but if you live near Minneapolis or can afford to go, DO IT! Get involved! It's the only way things will change.
Wow--the National Conference for Media Reform starts on my birthday--that'd be one helluva birthday pressie for a guy like me. :)
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Kid Uses a Pic of Mine for Sexism Project
Any of my regulars remember that little gem?
Well, it turns out that the youth of today are paying attention to the way women are being treated and one kid in particular decided she should write about it for a school project. Not only that, she spotted my great example of sexism in action (the picture above) and had her teacher contact me to ask for permission to use it. Of course, I gave it to them. The really nice thing is that her project is available online here:
http://ntstudent32.weebly.com/index.html
Here's a cutting from her project that appeared near my picture:
"Well our media is obviously biased and our men are also sexist. A man holds a poster saying, ‘she [Hillary Clinton] couldn’t satisfy her husband she won’t satisfy America”. A women’s ability to satisfy her husband in bed should never be compared to that of her capability to run for president. A man cheating on his wife should never be blamed on a woman and personal affairs should never be part of the elections. This shows how remnants of sexism is still alive in the 21st century."
Pretty sharp kid, I'd say--despite a few typos and her evidence clearly illustrating that there are more than just "remnants" of sexism still alive today. She also adds:
"The photographer mentions that the man holding the poster was in Hollywood and its shocking how no one took away the poster for being sexist but if it was a racist comments against Obama, I am pretty sure someone would have torn his poster down for being racist then why not for being sexist?"
She makes an excellent point. However, I'd have to say that the sign should never be taken away under any circumstances. This is still America, where (at least in theory) we still have the right to free speech. In short, your right to say stupid things and even incorrect things is sacrosanct. Social freedom of speech is something else entirely. Still she makes a powerful observation--if that guy had been slamming Obama for being black would he have been able to walk when I snapped that picture?
It's a shame that I didn't have a more visceral reaction to the sign. I smiled and thanked the man for holding the sign so I could take the picture as I walked by. I left him with the impression that I agreed with his message. Of course, then I put his picture on my blog and elsewhere on the 'net and criticized him for it. I wonder if that guy has a wife, sisters, a mother...I have all of them and I respect them all way more than he must respect the women in his life.
So, boo sexism, yay hope for the future!
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Anyone Using SocialThing? I Love It, but...
SocialThing is a new service that allows you to follow your friends on various social networks. To me it seems like Twitter and FriendFeed had a kid together but forgot to teach it a few things.
The UI is very Twitter-like, which is good--your friend's posts show up in chronological order, unlike FriendFeed which posts everything in clumps based on socnet or user. I find this a little confusing. However, a good way SocialThing is like FF is by allowing you to follow multiple services. FF simply imports feeds, but SocialThing seems to be doing things differently behind the scenes. They only have a handful of services available and if adding them were as easy as just adding feeds, the one problem I have with SocialThing would not exist.
I simply can't follow enough of my friends, so I have to stick with FriendFeed.
Now, both FF and ST allow you to post to any of the networks you have listed, but I like the way ST handles this better than FF. It's just cleaner and more simple.
I'm really hoping they add more services soon. They say delicious, digg, last.fm, MySpace and YouTube are next in line. I've voted for plenty of other sites like Utterz and (ironically) FriendFeed to be added, too. If only they'd just allow RSS feeds (like FriendFeed does) they would cover a LOT of bases.
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Monday, April 14, 2008
Photos and Video from Bear McCreary BSG Concert
Last night was the Bear McCreary concert where he performed a bunch of the music he wrote for the "Battlestar Galactica" series. I thought it was pretty ironic that all us geek-types were hanging out listening to geeky (but brilliant) music in one of the most "in" places in Hollywood. If you have never heard McCreary's music for BSG or seen the show, I recommend both. "Battlestar" is very well written and the music is amazing. McCreary is influenced by a lot of cultures from around the world and what's better is that he knows what to do with those influences. I feel that his music goes well beyond BSG.
The musicians were amazing--one in particular should get some sort of award for passion. The violin (viola?) player was so into his performance that a wave before he left the stage doused everyone with a spray of his sweat. *I'm not kidding.* Plus his music was pretty damn awesome, too. Of course, the tyco drums tend to steal McCreary's music.
The event was MCed by James Callis, who (brilliantly) plays Gaius Baltar on BSG, and opening for McCreary was his brother, Brendan, who performed with his band, "Brendan's Band." (TheWife got his EP for just $5!)
McCreary also ran a cute comedy video that featured short interviews with BSG cast and crew slamming his work, most of them insisting: "There's no music in Battlestar! ...oh, you mean the drums!"
The best bit of the video had to be when Edward James Olmos, after being reminded of who Bear McCreary was, turned to the camera, smiled and said "Hey, Bear! RRRARRR!"
There's is something terrifying about Edward James Olmos being funny.
Anyway, so it was a blast. There's another performance Tuesday night, but I think that one is sold out, as well.
To check out pics from the event check out my Flickr photoset here: http://flickr.com/…539184861/
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