Poppy Day
(2 minutes silence)
…In Flanders fields
The poppies grow
Between the crosses
Row on row
That mark out place
We are the dead…
— Siouxsie & The Banshees, ‘Join Hands’
Drawing upon the poem “In Flanders Fields” that was inspired by the horrors of the Second Battle of Ypres (horrors that included the first use of poison gas), Siouxsie’s discordant version carries with it the anger, chaos, and disruption of war. The poppies that blossomed amid the carnage and shell-churned soil of Ypres are the inspiration of our Memorial Day poppies today.
Regardless of our feelings about our current wars, we owe a moment of silence for the fallen, past, present, future. And while this upcoming day is a remembrance of the sacrifices of American soldiers, let us not forget the greater costs of all wars. We have at this hour lost over 1,656 soldiers to this abomination; let us not also forget that the death toll among Iraqis is orders of magnitude greater.
While I hold no hope that this will occur in my (or my child’s) lifetime, may there be no more wars. May there be no more blood needlessly shed for untruths large and small.
Posted by protected static as politics at 9:27 PM UTC
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Awoke this morning to much cawing coming from our backyard. While making coffee, the source became apparent: another juvenile raven (or crow – I’m wavering somewhat, but for now I’m still going to call them ravens), probably from the same clutch of eggs as the one that didn’t make it, thought he was stuck on our neighbor’s back porch.
Mom & Dad were close by, periodically flying off to other nearby locations to, I can only assume, check in on their other fledglings… Given the amount of crowing and cawing that has been going on this morning, I’m guessing that they have at least two others who’ve survived so far.
I’m happy for them… they were so angry with me after I disposed of the other baby, and harassed me mercilessly for a couple of days. (Yeah, yeah, I know – anthropomorphising, yadda yadda. You weren’t dive-bombed ;-) ) Now, however, it would seem that the first baby was maybe fledged somewhat prematurely. Mom and Dad now appear to have their hands (wings? beaks?) full with the others.
Posted by protected static as random at 8:29 AM UTC
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over on slow memory leak. I think I like it, but I’m not entirely sure… I found myself second-guessing it over and over, but after some major rework, I think it isn’t too bad…
Posted by protected static as random at 11:59 PM UTC
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(hi, hi, hi)
My friend Kristina over at Lively Writhing has a righteous kvetch to the weather entities (we’re having a most atypical heat wave here in Seattle – we get one or two per summer, and they typically suck raw moose because so few houses here are air conditioned), but I think she’s making a big mistake – it’s July 4th that’s almost guaranteed to be rainy, not Memorial Day.
There’s actually a simple programming demo on Microsoft’s website where the (deliberately simplistic) example program is a silly little weather predictor: key in a date, and it uses a pseudo-random number to choose from a couple of vague options to tell you what the weather’ll be. It’s sorta like a magic 8-ball of Seattle weather (my sources say cloudy, with intermittent lattés). The sole non-random date? July 4 – 100% guaranteed to rain. I didn’t get it until we moved here…
Of course, now I don’t think it’s funny at all.
Should we talk about the government? (hi, hi, hi, hi)
Posted by protected static as random at 7:49 PM UTC
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…and fascists, evidently: Microsoft is canning Ralph Reed. Hey Ralph! Don’t let the door hit’cha where the Good Lord split’cha, ‘kay?
Thanks to John at AMERICABlog, who picked it up from The Seattle Weekly (trying to scoop The Stranger, I guess – ain’t real competition great?).
Read the Weekly’s article – it’s pretty interesting:
“…there’s another potential cause of his deletion from Outlook address books at Microsoft: Reed is now caught up in the influence-peddling scandal in D.C., which includes accusations he worked in concert with two other top Republicans also once engaged by Microsoft. One of them, Jack Abramoff, lobbied for Microsoft in the late 1990s while a member of the Seattle law and lobbying firm Preston Gates Ellis—the firm of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates’ father, William H. Gates II. Abramoff is under investigation for possibly bilking millions of dollars from former Indian tribal clients and improperly using his friendship with House Speaker Tom DeLay, who is facing ethics charges and is the subject of federal investigations. (See “Following the Money,” April 6.) Abramoff’s questioned activities include a suspected money-laundering scheme that involves both Reed and fellow Microsoft adviser and lobbying superstar Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform.”
Whatever the reason, I’m glad he’s gone – the article still has pleny of nuggets to raise concern, but still… I’ll take good news like this every day, particularly in light of boneheaded shit like Microsoft’s new patent on XML serialization.
Sigh. Like I said… Right now I gotta make the best of the good moments, ’cause the bad ones keep coming fast and furious…
Posted by protected static as politics at 10:35 AM UTC
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At what point do we suspend Godwin’s Law?
Okay, not Godwin’s law per se – but when does the Nazi comparison stop being hyperbolic? Can it ever? Will there ever be a time when events trump the emotional loading of ‘Hitler’ or ‘Nazi’?
Is that time now?
Consolidation of oligarchical and corporatist power into a small elite; media consolidation and control; military fetishism; denigration of women, homosexuals, and the ever popular ‘others’. A Party solely concerned with concentrating power and power’s mechanisms.
Secret tribunals. Extrajudicial prison camps. With death chambers.
Warrantless searches. Secret evidence. Secret surveillence. Police investigation and intimidation of political dissidents.
If not now, when? Because when they’re dragging you away, it’s too late.
When?
(Mike Godwin, BTW, has his own blog on copyright and related digital freedom issues ssues called, appropriately enough, Godwin’s Law. Check out the css and step into the wayback machine, you Mac fanatics out there ;-))
Posted by protected static as politics at 6:09 AM UTC
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I’ve gone and created a new blog named slow memory leak. A few things have happened lately that have gotten me thinking about writing again… This blog is enough of a mishegas without adding more noise to the signal, so I decided to create a new space solely for writing and/or other creative endeavors.
My first post is up, combining the two parts of “That time of year” into one piece and expanding upon it, with a little fictionalization thrown in for gloss… We’ll see how long this lasts – I haven’t written creatively for years, and I’m feeling kinda rusty.
Posted by protected static as random at 9:51 PM UTC
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I’ve got my headphones on, listening to a French reggae/hip-hop tune being streamed in realtime by one of the rock channels of Swedish radio. Look for the word “Lyssna” to load the streams…
Posted by protected static as geek, random at 10:58 AM UTC
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It is really quiet outside our house this morning. Quite a noticible change, in fact.
The baby raven? Dead.
I was taking some trash out this morning when I saw it lying in the gutter. Last night, one of our neighbors told us that it had hurt one of its wings, and that they tried to feed it. No luck.
I went inside and came back out with a trash bag. Instantly, Mom started cawing and crowing at me, the tempo and pitch rising the closer I got to her baby.
It surprised me with its softness, which I could feel through the trash bag. Its baby feathers were more like inky down than sharp, spiky quills. Its head lolled about, its eyes were closed. There was a huge bare patch on the underside of one wing – probably the original injury. Its legs were red with raw, exposed flesh – these were new.
Mom dove at my head, and took a perch on the telephone lines overhead, still screaming at me. Sorry, Mom. I’m not the predator here…
I’m guessing it got hit by a car, or got run over by someone who didn’t realize it had taken shelter under their tires. It was so quiet on our porch – sitting, blinking at us, not making a sound.
It sags limply in my hands as I cradle it in the trash bag. It’s bigger than I thought it would be – about a third the size of an adult. I look for any hint of life: a blink, a twitch, a shallow breath.
Nothing. It’s still warm, but not as warm as a live bird. One of its legs juts out stiffly, awkwardly, a grotesque counterbalance to the dangling head and beak. Raw pinkish-red skin shows in sharp contrast to the fluffy black feathers, broken white ends of pinfeathers clinging to the edges of wounds. Specks of brown and white bird shit flecked its feathers.
Mom still screams at me, futilely.
Sorry Mom.
She swoops at my head again as I get up and start to walk to our trashcans. She follows me until I step through the gates at the bottom of our driveway and sits on our neighbor’s roof, cawing still, but not coming closer.
I give it one last exam, hoping against hope for a sign that it is alive. I get what I expect: nothing. The body is still warm, but cooling. I bundle it up in the bag, tying it tight. We’re supposed to get warm weather this week…
Mom keeps her distance as I return to our front porch empty-handed. She is still crying out her warnings, her curses, black avian imprecations flying as her baby never will.
Sorry Mom.
It is quiet outside our house this morning.
Posted by protected static as random at 8:17 AM UTC
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Reaving. Not the usual sort of activity one engages in, eh? Even if you live in an area with as strong a Scandinavian heritage as Seattle, it’s ya-sure-you-betcha loggers and fishermen most folks identify with, not Vikings.
In our house, we dig Vikings…
At any rate, the boy and I went to the Viking Festival in Poulsbo, WA. I know, the place was founded by squarehead[*] loggers and fishermen, but what the heck, right? The weather didn’t look too bad, we needed to get out of the house, so I figured we’d go the long way, up to the Edmonds ferry.
After his initial reaction (“Oh boy! Vikings!”), the boy was kind of skeptical.
“Are there going to be real Vikings there?”
No, there will be people dressed like Vikings, showing you how Vikings lived.
“Aren’t there any more Vikings?”
No, they stopped being Vikings after a while and became farmers and traders.
“Why? Did they run out of monks?”
Snort.
Heh. Like I said, in our house, we dig the Vikings. Pirates are okay, too – but there’s just something about Vikings…
At any rate, despite a horrific downpour that struck just as we were looking for parking, we had a great day. We rode some rides on the carnival, we ate some typical Kiawanis/Cub Scout/Lions Club festival food for lunch, rode some more rides, then the boy got to wear a ‘real’ Viking helmet (excellent craftsmanship), check out some superbly-made chain mail, and heft a dull but otherwise perfect throwing axe…
“There”, the interpreter says, as he shows the boy what he looks like in a mirror, “ready for pillaging.”
“Cool.”, I say, “Let’s go find us some monks.”
There is an appreciative chuckle from the latter-day Vikings behind the table.
All-in-all, it was a good day.
* Yes, squarehead… I figure having more than a couple of Gunnars and Carls on one side of the family gives me some latitude ;-) Oh, and the Irish monk jokes? That’s covered by part of the other side of my family… [back]
Posted by protected static as random at 8:51 PM UTC
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For the last couple of weeks, we’ve had a raven crowing at us incessantly every time we’ve stepped out onto our front porch. Late last week, I watched it chase two fat raccoons through our backyard, not letting up until they were a block away – one trickster to another, right? And this past week, we had our front steps worked on by this Russian carpenter with a very dry sense of humor: “Ah… I see my assistant is already here…”. I was afraid he was going to add a noise-hazard premium.
Well, today our suspicions were confirmed: this morning there was a fledgling raven sitting on our front porch. Blinking at us (no fear – not that it would have done it any good), waiting to see what happened next, Mom verbally abusing us the entire while.
So far, it looks promising: this evening, I heard Mom cursing out someone up the block. Junior has achieved lift-off.
Posted by protected static as random at 9:19 PM UTC
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At least, in terms of our approach to science… From a piece in The American Journal of Bioethics titled “Well, it worked with Schiavo: The President Prepares the Nation for a Stem Cell Crisis”:
Either way, buckle your seat belts for a week that will see the President of the United States make the strongest statement against science to be made by the leader of a superpower since the Popes of the 12th century.
Jesus. Wept. I’ve been trying to console myself now for a while with the convenient fiction that these bastards are really only interested in moving us back to the Gilded Age of robber barons and the untrammeled power of the wealthiest elites… No, these fuckers are going for the mother lode – they want complete and total devotion to our new feudal lords.
Unquestioning obedience.
Fealty.
Not Capitalism: Feudalism. That’s what these bastards want.
That Enlightenment? Fuck it. What did it produce that was worthwhile? You know, apart from THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE AND THE BILL OF RIGHTS! Again, capital letters are a piss-poor substitute for the absolute outrage I feel.
Don’t mind the screams coming from the abbatoir – we’re converting some heathens today… Just kiss the President’s ring and leave your tribute at the door.
Posted by protected static as geek, politics at 9:02 PM UTC
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Washington Post headline on MSNBC this morning: U.S. tells Iraqis not to abuse prisoners: Warnings lead to friction between U.S., Iraqi forces
In a letter last month to troops preparing to serve as advisers to Iraqi units, Army Gen. George Casey, the senior U.S. officer in Iraq, said one of their principal missions would be to ensure that Iraqi forces understood and complied with proper standards of detainee treatment.
Yup. We’ve got the moral high ground on that one, haven’t we?
Posted by protected static as politics at 7:59 AM UTC
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Morse code beats IM:
an Australian museum recently decided to run a hilarious speed trial — between a bunch of teenagers using SMS, and a 93-year-old telegraph operator using Morse Code and an old-school telegraph lever. Who could send a message faster?
Heh. Who indeed? Three guesses, first two don’t count…
Posted by protected static as geek at 11:27 AM UTC
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google.co.jp, that is…
It’s funny seeing who comes here and why. For instance, you’ve got to be careful if you’re going to use technorati’s tag – I blogged about Camille Paglia’s death and liked to Susie Bright’s reflective piece on her passing. Since much of what Bright and Paglia both wrote about involved sex and porn, I put those in as tags… …and got a bunch of visits from IP addresses in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan.
I’m pretty sure they went away disappointed…
At any rate, it’s kind of weird being the #1 Google result for legitimate programming keywords.
Posted by protected static as geek, random at 10:40 PM UTC
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