I just wanted to let you know that I got your latest come-on this morning. Oh, it was where it belonged: in my quarantine folder, along with purported lottery winnings, Hillbilly Heroin pushers, fake luxury items, pirated software, and a host of societal insecurities digitally enshrined. There was your nugget of wisdom, nestled amongst its kind: an enlargement here, a reduction there, drugs, drugs, drugs – all promises of something for nothing.
But I digress.
Back to you, oh my purveyor of perfidious pedigrees. For lo! this morning, you posed a question I could not in good conscience ignore. To do so would have been a disservice to the world, so profound was your question. For I had an answer to your question that would speak volumes of truth, I had wisdom that demanded to be shared.
Your subject line read, “Dr YOUR NAME, how does that sounds?”
My response comes without addressing your inability to run your software properly – you know, the part that replaces “YOUR NAME” with, well, my name? No, without questioning your ability to run a pre-packaged script that you bought bundled with thousands of email addresses from some other sleazebag who is now laughing at you while they spend your money, I must, must respond to your question.
You asked ‘How does that sounds’? Oh, the irony of it all, the delicious irony of such a question from a salesman of fake educational credentials.
It sounds fucking illiterate, you dickhead. It sounds completely fucking illiterate.
But thanks for asking.
Posted by protected static as random, spam at 6:12 PM UTC
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…but Glenn Reynolds is talking out his asshole about the Seattle shootings:
Former terror prosecutor Andrew McCarthy is unhappy that the authorities, and media, seem to be downplaying the Islamic-terror angle to this. Before anyone could know anything they were already pronouncing it an isolated incident. “This is militant Islam in action, but we don’t want to think or talk about Islam, so we’ll pretend that the fact he’s a Muslim is irrelevant (‘terrorists come in all shapes and sizes’ is the official PC postion of government), and if we can’t attach a known group to the shooter we’ll close our eyes to the fact that he might have reason to understand that his religion impelled him to act.” But, of course, all incidents are isolated when looked at in isolation.
And when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Jeebus, that’s freakin’ simplistic, particularly for a law professor. If you look at the events of 9/11 in isolation, do they look isolated? No. If you look at the Madrid and London bombings in isolation, do they look isolated? No. Khobar towers? The USS Cole? Various and sundry bombings and shootings around the world? No, no, no, fercrissakes, NO. They don’t.
At this time, does it look like the shooter was motivated by anti-Semitism? You bet. No question in my mind. Was this a hate crime? Sure looks like it. But was it terrorism? I don’t think so – I don’t think it passes the smell test. Even when organized groups commit politically-motivated violent crimes, they don’t necessarily rise to the level of terrorism. Glenn’s lookin’ for terrorists, by God! And he’s going to find them! So he can put his lead where his mouth is, of course:
You can find much more background on the shooter here, and blogger Rusty Shackleford writes: “Me? I’m going to buy a gun. I’m serious.” It’s certainly too bad that there weren’t armed citizens on the scene, as the shooter might have done less damage.
Have they read the reports? The guy pushed his way into the building and opened fire immediately – even as a proponent of gun ownership, I can’t see how Jane or Joe Random having had a handgun on their person would have made that much difference, beyond adding another body or two to the eventual casualty list.
Because you know, having frightened armed (untrained!) people wandering the streets does wonders for public safety.
Boo! Scary boogah-boogah Muslims are coming to get you, Rusty and Glenn! Boo!
Posted by protected static as politics at 1:25 PM UTC
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Apparently, the shooter is a 30-year-old Pakistani-American with a criminal history and possibly a history of mental illness… He’s described as being not particularly religious, and having a mildly anti-Semitic streak. The Seattle Times has a profile of him here and updates on the shooting here; the Stranger (a local alt-weekly) has a some decent blog postings here.
I’m guessing it’s only a matter of time before there are anti-Muslim reprisals. We’ve got a fairly large Pakistani community here, as well as a sizable Somali population, and there are a number of mosques and Islamic community centers in the metro area. We’ve also got a pretty visible Sikh population – no, they aren’t Muslim, but that hasn’t stopped moronic yahoos bent on revenge in the past…
Posted by protected static as politics at 12:03 PM UTC
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…and not in a good way. Apparently, someone shot up the Jewish Federation in Belltown (a downtown Seattle neighborhood) this evening as a way of expressing their anger at Israel’s conduct in Lebanon. One dead, 5 wounded. Witnesses say that the shooter identified himself as Muslim:
“One of the receptionists told me [(an unidentified employee of the Jewish Federation)] that he shot her and then demanded that she call 911,” the employee said. “He told the police that it was a hostage situation and he wanted us to get our weapons out of Israel.”
The shooter is in custody after a brief standoff.
Nothing good can come of this…
Posted by protected static as politics at 7:17 PM UTC
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No, wait, scratch that… It’s just some dork in neoprene… (Hey, it’s a better picture than the one of me holding a beer, looking quite… disreputable.)
Someone from the class posted a bunch of pictures online – the better ones do not include me, a situation I can live with quite comfortably, thank you very much. But I thought this one was pretty good – it gives you at least a little sense of what the surf was like. Unfortunately, none of the pictures manage to capture how spectacular the coastline around Hobuck Beach really is.
Posted by protected static as random at 10:58 PM UTC
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Rarely do I reproduce someone else’s work in entirety, but this one time… well… I hope digby won’t mind (emphasis in original):
Huh?
by digby
Italy will host an international conference next week to discuss the possibility of a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon, the Italian government said on Friday.
[...]
An Italian foreign ministry spokesman said neither Syria nor Iran – accused by Israel of sponsoring Hezbollah – had been invited, and no one from Israel was expected to attend for the time being.
There are days when I think I need to add a new category for ‘humor – unintentional’.
Posted by protected static as politics at 9:56 AM UTC
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“When they moved, the sound of the tumult was like the din of an army.”
Ah yes, Ezekiel’s wheels within wheels, bestial and fearsome, glowing with fire and travelling like “a stormwind [...] from the North”. This morning, it seemed the perfect image, if not the perfect metaphor for what Billmon has captured perfectly:
So many hatreds, so little time!
Let’s see. We’ve got: Israeli Jews fighting Lebanese Shi’a and Palestinian Sunnis; Palestinian Fatah militants who’ve stopped fighting Hamas militants, but only because they’re both fighting the Israelis; Saudi Sunni fundamentalists issuing fatwas against Hezbollah Shi’a fundamentalists; Egyptian Sunni fundamentalists backing those same Hezbollah Shi’a fundamentalists; Iraqi Sunnis killing Iraqi Shi’a and vice versa; Iraqi Shi’a (the Mahdi Army) jousting with Iraqi Shi’a (the Badr Brigade); Iraqi Kurds trying to push Sunni Arabs and both Sunni and Shi’a Turkomen out of Kirkuk; Turks threatening to invade Kurdistan; Iranians allegedly shelling Kurdistan, Syrian Kurds rebelling against Syrian Allawites who are despised by Syria’s Sunni majority but allied with the Lebanese Shi’a who are hated and feared by the House of Saud and its Sunni fundamentalist minions. Oh, and American and Israeli neocons threatening to bomb both Syria and Iran.
Reading that, all I could think of was the phrase “wheels within wheels” – and further poking around in Ezekiel cemented the association for me. “There shall be disaster after disaster, rumor after rumor. Prophetic vision shall fade; instruction shall be lacking to the priest, and counsel to the elders, while the prince shall be enveloped in terror, and the hands of the common people shall tremble.”
Not my spiritual cup of tea, but again – I can certainly appreciate the imagery, and today it fits. In spades.
Posted by protected static as politics at 9:47 AM UTC
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Having (mercifully, I think) been completely out of contact with the outside world when the current Israel/Hezbollah conflagration started, I’ve allowed myself the luxury of not commenting on the situation. For one thing, I haven’t really been following it in depth. Sure, I’ve been keeping myself appraised, but not with an eye towards conducting any analysis, trenchant or otherwise. For another thing, in the current political climate you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t – from my perspective, there are no clean hands in the Middle East: Israel has a right to exist (as much as any other post-colonial artificially-created entity does, including most if not all of the Arab states that surround Israel) and defend itself. That said, a lot of Israel’s policies almost seem designed to perpetuate the cycle of violence in the Middle East.
Please note that this is not to say that Hezbollah and Hamas are heros here, either. Their continued targetting of civilians is reprehensible, and they’ll need to rehabilitate themselves much in the same manner as Sein Feinn and the IRA have tried in order for me to ever begin considering them to be legitimate actors on the regional or international stage.
So I’m not going to get into an analysis of who’s right and who’s wrong here. I would, however, like to comment upon an article I read yesterday that has pretty accurately predicted the flow of events so far – op-for.com’s “Prepping the Battlespace”:
What we are witnessing in southern Lebanon is concurrent with actions designed to prep a battlefield for the insertion of ground forces. So far, Israel has relied on its dominance in sea and air forces to isolate Hezbollah, rather than focusing their brunt of their superior forces on actual enemy positions. By blockading the coast, neutralizing Beruit’s airport, and damaging roads and bridges into and out of Lebanon, the [Israeli Defense Force (IDF)] has cut off Hezbollah’s supply routes by land, sea, and air, and blocked all lines of escape.
But here’s the problem: the ‘battlespace’ (as the modern combined-arms battlefield is called) in Lebanon is not some replay of El Alamein or Kursk – the IDF is not fighting the 21st century version of Guderian and his Panzer Army. These tactics are inappropriate when levied against an irregular force such as Hezbollah. There are no troop formations to isolate, there are no supply lines to cut – there are only urban centers with large civilian populations, and an enemy that will be difficult if not impossible to distinguish from afar.
So while these tactics make perfect tactical sense, they don’t make much strategic sense. Given the nature of the setting and the forces involved, these tactics are guaranteed to have a disproportionate impact on civilans, and as a result will be seen by much of the outside world as overreacting (at best) or as war crimes (at worst). And when Hezbollah is able to engage IDF units and deal them startlingly effective blows (as in their strike on the Israeli naval gunship) while the IDF continues to pound on civilian areas, international opinion will likely hold Hezbollah in higher regard than the IDF.
Today’s widening of the conflict by the IDF to include strikes on the Lebanese military certainly don’t bode well for regional stability. And, as with the earlier strikes covered in the op-for.com piece above, they seem to emphasize tactical goals while being blind to the strategic ramifications. I fear that this blindness (willing, institutional, inadvertant – I can’t say) will only complicate efforts to bring the fighting to a close, and is likely to have a far greater negative impact on regional stability than not.
[via MSNBC's Clicked]
Posted by protected static as politics at 9:46 AM UTC
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(Updated below)
Caught this tidbit from the WordPress news headlines – how to defeat sploggers, blackhat SEOs, and other kinds of content thieves by feeding them their own special RSS feed. If they’re going to use RSS to steal content, feed ‘em crap, like, oh, their own WHOIS data or George Carlin’s words you can’t say on television (or whatever).
Good stuff. The code in the article will only work with WordPress, but in theory the concept could be (easily?) extended to other platforms. Also, it won’t work if your feed is being picked up by a service like FeedBurner, so YMMV. Still, any little thing to put some sand in their lube, eh?
19 Jul 06 6:58A PDT Update: Jonathan Bailey, the author of the linked piece, stopped by last night and pointed out that there is code in the article that utilizes the .htaccess file, which would work regardless of your blogging/forum/image gallery/other content-related software. He also pointed out that none of these solutions will work on the free ‘turnkey’ sites such as WordPress.com, Blogspot.com, or any other fully-hosted services that keep the blogs inside pretty secure sandboxes.
Posted by protected static as blogging, geek, wordpress at 9:41 PM UTC
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India has announced that they’ve developed their own version of a vaccine for H5N1, better known as the bird flu. Intended for innoculating flocks of poultry against the disease, India will be better able to deploy this prophylactic (it’ll be both faster to produce as well as cheaper) than the current version, which must be imported.
Too bad about those other hoofbeats in the distance, eh?
[via /.]
Posted by protected static as geek, politics at 8:07 AM UTC
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Patches of blue sky are starting to show through the grey Pacific sky. They rain has stopped, and the morning fog, still snagged on high seaside bluffs and conifers, is starting to lift. It’s going to be a beautiful day.
At the moment, I am noticing none of this. I am in a 5.3m-long sea kayak, riding on top of a 1m wave, cruising in to the beach. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by protected static as kayaking at 2:32 PM UTC
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Tired. Trip was a Good Thing. Going to bed.
A real bed. No rocks, no rainfly, no sleeping pad or mummy bag. No rain gently falling, misting, pouring. No ravens going gronk at oh-dark-hundred.
These will also be Good Things.
Posted by protected static as random at 10:26 PM UTC
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…I will be gone. Uh, gone sea kayaking, that is. What did you think I meant?
For the next 5 days, I will be simultaneously battling dehydration, heat stroke, and hypothermia as I learn How Not To Kill Oneself Or Others With A Sea Kayak. We (the class, not my family – I’m the only one embarking on this little adventure) start on Lake Union for some rudimentary skills training/refreshing, then head out to a state park on Puget Sound for 2.5 days. Then it’s off to a campground on Neah Bay for a couple of days of Pacific surf – not the full force of the open ocean, but surf nonetheless.
So I’ve got my camping gear, sunscreen, Gore-TexTM and a bottle of ibuprofen at the ready – I should be all set. Barring any major mishaps, this should be one of the best birthday presents (okay, combined b-day/Father’s Day present) I’ve ever gotten.
So, for what should now be obvious reasons, posting will be uh… light until this coming Friday or so. For varying values of ‘light’, of course.
Posted by protected static as kayaking at 9:00 AM UTC
2 Comments »
Still not what I made…
Okay, it wasn’t as catastrophic as the first time, but dammit! I am still not having any luck making dosa. The last time we went down to Portland, after everyone had a good chuckle at my expense, I was laden with gifts by in-laws determined that I should not repeat my mistakes: my (Jewish) mother-in-law gave me a bag of dosa mix, and my (Keralan) father-in-law* took us to a South Indian grocery store before we left: I now have both urad dal flour and rice flour, the spice paste you serve with dosa, 3 kinds of pickle, and some pappadum (just for kicks).
My father-in-law even had a batch of batter prepared for dinner. He made some of the traditional potato filling and coconut chutney, and after he made the first batch, I tried my hand at it under his tutleage. They were a little on the thick side, but overall pretty good.
Thus properly armed with experience and materials, I set out again to make dosa.
I opted to use the mix first – I added water and set it into the oven to ferment overnight… and got stinky rice-and-dal cheese again. Our kitchen gets pretty hot during the afternoon, so I may have let it sit too long – but then again, there might be wild molds or yeasts that are complicating things… This is a great area for culturing sourdough, for instance.
So I’m going to try again – I’ve certainly got enough flour and/or mix to beat my head against this wall several more times – but we certainly aren’t having dosa for dinner tonight. Meh.
* He’s actually my wife’s ex-step-father – but it’s just easier to say ‘father-in-law’ since we still have a close relationship with him…
Posted by protected static as random at 12:37 PM UTC
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In re. the death of Ken Lay, Gavin at Sadly, No! captured my thoughts exactly…
Posted by protected static as politics at 7:38 AM UTC
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