burning question...

ok, so if it becomes illegal to burn the American flag, what about symbolically/virtually burning the flag? what constitues the flag? it's a symbol right? -- it's not an actual object. what you see above is an American flag. so, on the slippery slope of legal interpretation that little picture could conceivably cause YOU the reader to break the law just because it was displayed on your computer -- if, due to some digital alteration, the owner of said image changed it to an "American flag burning". "well", you say, "that's not what they mean, they mean really burning a real flag". ok, what constitues a "real" flag? think along the lines of what constitutes a "assault weapon" (another ill-thought law we know about here in CA).
what freedom are we protecting here? just a thought.

and what if someone put up a web page where you could symbolically burn a flag as a legitimate expression of protest (against this stupid proposal for example)? if you say "yes, that should be illegal", then you probably think merely suggesting the idea smacks of un-Americanism if not outright terrorism ("giving aid and comfort to those who would destroy us").

remember, the first amendment gives you the right of free speech, but it does not give you the right to yell "fire!" in a crowded theater (unless of course someone really is burning a flag).

Bush's GOP Allies Are Breaking Ranks

todays LA Times has Robert Scheer writing and quoting the recent discussions in congress:

...an increasing number of Republicans are admitting that the emperor has no clothes — having lied his pants off about our motives for invading Iraq, and ever since about how great things are going there.

"Too often we've been told, and the American people have been told, that we're at a turning point," said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on NBC's "Meet the Press," as he disagreed with Cheney's absurd claim last week that the Iraq insurgency is in its "last throes." "What the American people should have been told and should be told [is that] it's long, it's hard, it's tough."

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, was even more blunt: "Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse," he told U.S. News and World Report, as the latest suicide bombings claimed the lives of dozens of Iraqis. "The White House is completely disconnected from reality. It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq."

Even Rep. Walter B. Jones (R-N.C.), who brought us "freedom fries," has found enough of his wits to admit publicly that he has lost confidence in the Iraq occupation and would sponsor legislation calling on the administration to more clearly define how, and when, it intends to bring the war to a close.

the emperor may not be a lame duck yet, but do I detect a limp?

BTW, I was going to provide a "proper conservative analysis" link to "liberal" Scheer, but all I could find is years old material... little help here?

ojai/ventura weekend trip

the awesome family celebrated the last day of school with a trip to the country cousins for the weekend. yes, the Ojai Valley, where a unique blend of people coexist (more or less) with nature and each other. where you get your food from the mountain people's co-op, trader joes, or the back yard. we weren't invited to Jacko's casino party in nearby Santa Ynez Saturday night, so instead we went to Eric Ericcsen's (see review) on the pier at Ventura:

...and talked about the "not guilty" individual instead. Ventura has some interesting places and a good farmers market Saturday mornings, but for a large part it's ugly and utilitarian. I did enjoy the sculptures and talking to the artists with their works in progress at Art City:

there are a lot of gems like this hidden away in "San Buenaventura". but I digress, let's get back to the meal. for dinner I had charbroiled (rare) Ahi with an olive oil and green something or other sauce. with pilaf and veggies it was a nice light meal complemented by a glass of pinot blanc (sorry, forgot the brand -- sheesh, what kind of review is this?!) for dessert we decided to get fancy and went to the luxurious Ojai Valley Inn. there we had a really good chocolate delicacy described as:

"Valrhona chocolate fondant with raspberry coulis brandy chocolate sorbet".
anyway, it was a fun weekend with sailing, kayaking, pinball, pool, darts, tennis, oil painting and last but not least -- banjo pickin'!
if anyone cares I'll post more about whatever, just ask :-)

another trackback experiment

note to self: put this under the "learning experience" category. so I was reading Matt's (http://technologynewsetc.blogsome.com/) "trackback traffic for dummies" post (not really what he called it, but that's what I need). he describes trackbacks as something that:

"allows a blogger to see who has viewed the original post and has written another entry concerning it (and usually links to the original post). For example, if I were to link to a post on Engadget, that link would be put in the trackbacks section of the Engadget post. There would probably be Engadget readers curious to see who linked to that post, and would end up clicking the link to my blog through the trackback."

I tried a trackback before and did something wrong. this post is another attempt. and if anyone knows of a real "trackbacks for dummies" web page, please let me know :)

p.s. I see have a little trackback thing below each post and that haloscan is managing it for me. I also see that none of my posts have any trackbacks. so what does it take for someone to do something that causes an entry to appear in there?

p.p.s. maybe I'll write my own "trackbacks for dummies" here when I finally get my head around it.

"The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment"

came across this little gem by happenstance. you can buy the book/read reviews or just read it online. here's an excerpt from chapter 7:

Never pull your attention away from a scene impulsively because it looks ugly, unpleasant, or painful.

Make a conscious decision, the words are enough, to love yourself for seeing it as revolting. If possible, keep your attention on it until it turns beautiful, or at least until you are indifferent to it.

You don't have to go looking for bad scenes to test yourself, or remind yourself of all that is wrong in the world, but once a scene manifests itself in your presence, become as fully aware of it as you can.

Staying with it is important. You may hide in your room or leave the city, but you as an entity will still be stuck on a low vibration level of denial if you pull away suddenly. It will seem like the strangest of coincidences when, having withdrawn your attention sharply from one unpleasant scene, you keep running into others like it. That will baffle you, and keep happening until you come to an unpleasantness you can tolerate or love, and your vibrations go up.

Look at it, love it, and then get away! It's all right to channel your attention to what is pleasant for you. What else is freedom for? And as long as there is free will, there are always going to be some beings creating vibrations you do not like, no matter what level you are on. The point is to take your leave in a way that doesn't hang you up.

After a few experiences with loving weird events, you will be tuned in enough to get early warning when someone is likely to rip you off or otherwise stir up bad vibrations, (when the cup is starting to fall, so to speak,) and you will be able to make the right moves before it gets too involved.

Don't feel that it is "unspiritual" to perceive unwholesome possibilities in other people: it isn't paranoia if the object of your fear is real.

It's just carelessness karma if you ignore early warnings. Keep your mind open and unresisting to any possibility: that's what gives you the information to keep evil from manifesting in your life. Pay attention, here and now. It's all right to say No.

No matter what others are doing, you are the only one who is responsible for what happens to you. There is nothing in the external event that in the least way determines your feelings and experiences: your life is entirely governed by your vibrations, what they tell you and how you respond.

The slower your vibrations, the more unpleasant your life: you will contend with more conflict, mass, and pain. Events will happen too fast for control, yet time will seem interminable because you can see no way out.

But when you raise your vibration level, you can neatly sidestep collisions, both psychic and physical, and quite literally change the world for the better. Love is the strongest magic of all.

When you learn to love hell, you will be in heaven.

my excuse for not posting

no, the dog didn't eat my work. much more creative: I was in the hospital for nine days and at home in bed for two weeks after that. I've finally got enough strength to get back into the groove -- tried a few days of work last week part time but was too tired and sick to really make a go of it. anyway, here's what happened...

what you're lookin' at there is a healed up case of "severe cellulitus". starting at my elbow, most of my arm swelled up to twice normal size. I was running a fever of usually 102, but it peaked at 105. when I eventually went to the ER, they admitted me into the hospital and said "you're not going home tonight". cause was unknown - I didn't get bit or scratched. suspicion was that it was MRSA and for a while, possibly flesh eating bacteria. luckily, whatever it was slowly was defeated by some heavy duty IV antibiotics: vancomycin and about four other expensive brews.

the good news is I seem to be making a complete recovery (just taking a long time). the bad news (for you) is that these nasty germs are out in the community now and there's not much you can do to prevent the same thing from happening to you.
apparently these infections are occurring quite frequently now...

Bush's "plan" to "save" social security...

I say "plan" because he doesn't really have a plan (not publicly available anyway) in the sense that people normally would define "plan". what he has is a list of talking points about the problem and calls for help for a solution:

"...I'll tell you this: If this federal government doesn't act, your bill, your payroll taxed are going to have to go up a lot in order to pay the promises made to me. Or the government is going to have to slash the benefits. Or the government is going to have to make dramatic cuts in other programs. And so I see a problem. I think the math is clear. And so now is the time to get something done.

And so I stood up in front of the United States at my State of the Union address and said to the Congress, here's the problem. And I'm going to put some ideas on the table, ideas that I didn't necessarily think of...good ideas about different ways to permanently fix the problem. And that's what Congress must do; it must permanently fix the problem..."
"And so now is the time to bring people together from both parties to have a permanent fix. And all ideas are on the table. And I'm looking forward to discussing any good idea with a Democrat or a Republican."
-- Bush's "plan" speech 4/15/05

OK George, I'm putting this on the table for you: cut medical benefits, keep drug costs high, increase subsidies to the junk food and tobacco agribusiness. sick Americans won't live long enough to soak up our precious trust fund! instead of pay-as-you-go, we'll call it "pay-till-you-go" :)

the GOP website says it's the Democrats fault. oh, that's constructive :p

what does the liberal media establishment say?

"...Eyeing the failure of President Bill Clinton's health care plan in 1994, which sank in part from its complexity, Bush has avoided laying out a specific plan whose details would be open to attack. But this has caused problems for its supporters, who say Democrats have filled in the blanks. "It's one thing to say, 'No, that's not what the plan does,' " said David John, a private-account supporter at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "It's another to say, 'We don't think that's what the plan does, but we don't know for sure.' "
--SF Chronical 3/4/05

so that's why there's no plan!

can this be true? let's check the whitehouse web page. yep, there's no plan there!
ok, a little more searching and I found the SS website
does show somebody with a real plan -- it's congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. here he separates fact from fiction. hmmm, maybe? good luck dude!

credits to
habitatgirl, Pursuit, and gothamimage.
they have done good writeups on the subject, generated plenty of responses and made me wonder. what is W up to?

test your prejudices...

"Happily Blind with 20/20 Vision
Here's an interesting (and possibly controversial) test hosted at Harvard's website: Implicit Association Test. The theory is that we subconsciously have prejudices and preferences, whether racial, age, gender, or some other category that divides us into groups."

thx to The Slacker Shack for the info.

that reminds me. I wonder if Harvard Pres. Lawrence Summers would be willing to take the test? you heard he hates women right?

Bush's torture advocate threatens kids...

y'know this news spinning is fun!

excerpts from todays LA Times article by Lorenza Muñoz and Jon Healey...

Students Do Not Share Gonzales' View on Piracy

Attorney general says downloading bootlegs is illegal, but many at seminar are unfazed.

In his first trip to California as the nation's attorney general, Alberto R. Gonzales told a group of high school students to just say no to online piracy.

But, for many of the students, the response was to just say "why not?"

During a daylong UCLA seminar featuring Gonzales, students peppered speakers with tough questions about the real effect of piracy. Some even suggested that government should focus more on tackling poverty and improving education than on jailing kids who download movies, music and software.

"Isn't the government using morality as a means for studios to make millions of dollars?" asked 18-year-old senior Kate Schwartz of Santa Monica's New Roads High School.
...
Angel Aparicio, 18, a senior at Belmont High School, said his uncle had to take a second job because piracy slowed production at the DVD plant where he works.

"What stops actors and stuntmen from just getting another job like a normal citizen?" he asked.
...
Bobby Brathwaite, a 26-year-old junior, said downloading on campus was pervasive and would continue well into the future.
"It's kind of the new business model and it's here to stay," he said, noting that he has about 200 song files on his computer. "Record companies are using the courts and law enforcement to try and protect their profit margins…. When I buy a CD I feel like I'm paying for corporate lawyers and corporate headquarters and, no offense, but I don't want to do that. And I don't have to."
...
Others questioned whether the punishment for pirating movies — as many as three years in federal prison for a first offender with no commercial motive — fit the crime.
...
Unfazed by the students' skepticism, Gonzales said this was only the beginning of an intensive educational outreach effort. He wanted to let the students know that intellectual property theft was illegal, carried consequences and could permanently stain their records.

"Sitting through a one-hour, two-hour session may not be enough…. It takes awhile to educate people," he told reporters later. "

hmmm, maybe he's really trying to say he wants to send them indefinitely to re-education camps in Gitmo? "no child left behind" indeed!

Technorati Tags:
politics, alberto gonzales, piracy, torture

thoughts on GOP Christian politics...

read a good editorial by Jack Hitt in yesterday's LA Times. He attacks "Evangelical Christians" and other religious group members for robotic adherence to their leadership. it's a common habit of individuals to take the easy way out and agree with the prepackaged opinion of whatever group we've already identified ourselves with. it's the KISS method, right?

the problem is that buying this package of beliefs engenders an intolerance, hypocrisy, and dogmatism which is not faithful to Jesus' words...
a few excerpts:

"...When the pope died, CNN's Wolf Blitzer introduced former Clinton aide Paul Begala and right-wing pundit Robert Novak this way: "Bob is a good Catholic; I'm not so sure about Paul Begala." At the bottom of the screen, CNN ran an informative factoid for the audience: "Many Catholic doctrines are conservative."

note: "catholic" means "universal". so if you're Catholic but not a "good Catholic", what are you? (I detect some "moral relativism" here.)

"...Jesus provoked his followers into thinking for themselves. His preferred media outlet? A literary genre called the parable. It's a style of Q&A wherein the teacher doesn't give the answer but challenges the listener with a half-finished story that forces him to think through to the answer by himself. The radical right has swapped out this genius preacher for some easy listening. They insist that everything will be fine if we just nail the Ten Commandments above every courthouse.

Curious. Jesus updated the Ten Commandments in his most famous speech, the Sermon on the Mount. In it, one finds the Eight Beatitudes. Why don't we ever hear about nailing those somewhere? Here's why: It's not simply the law in the Ten Commandments that attracts fundamentalists. Rather, it's the syntax. The authoritarianism of so many "Thou Shalt Nots."

The Jesus who speaks in the Gospels is nothing like the fuming Republican Jesus I see on TV now. Jesus was a leader who understood that ambiguity and doubt are not to be feared but are, simply, facts of life that a great teacher exploits to guide his followers on their own paths toward conviction and belief.

Here is a quote from Jesus that you almost never hear: "What do you think?" It's right there in the Bible. Jesus asks this question all the time.

One parable Jesus taught was this one, from Matthew: "What do you think? A man had two sons. And he went to the first and said, 'Son, go and work in the vineyard today.' And he answered, 'I will not,' but afterward he changed his mind and went. And he went to the other son and said the same. And he answered, 'I go, sir,' but did not go." Jesus' disciples all strenuously raised their hands. They knew the answer! The first son was the most virtuous!

Whereupon Jesus (whose sense of humor is underrated) replied: "Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you."

something to think about, eh? anyway, I'm content to wait and let others go into the kindgom of God before me :)

Technorati Tags:
politics, gop, fundamentalist, evangelical

boyhood at it's finest...

one of my funnier flickr pics:

"Wowee, they don't teach this at school!!"

study finds email worse than marijuana...

After 80 clinical sessions the result of a study out of King's College London University has found that office workers constantly bombarded by phone calls, emails and text messages who feel compelled to respond immediately to the distractions are suffering from a higher loss of IQ than marijuana smokers. Dr. Glenn Wilson reported the study showed a 10 point drop in IQ by the office workers which is the equivalent of the IQ drop seen in those who loose an entire nights sleep. Marijuana smokers who were studied had only a 4 point drop in their IQ.

thanks to Is It Just Me? for sharing the story. gee, maybe I could get a study funded showing how blogging is better than pot. of course I'll have to get some smokers as a control group...

my earlier Einstein interest is spreading...

lifted pic from todays msn.com main page. notice the way I have of tapping into the groove (see earlier posts)? keep reading my blog and you'll see.

also I found out that the Skirball Cultural Center in L.A. has a special exhibition on the super genius going on now. maybe the awesome family will go see it...

"my father's house has many rooms..."

this weekend was a spiritual one for the awesome's, in a variety of ways. first, we went to a real native american pow-wow which was a first for me and very cool. I connected with the great spirit via drums, chants, dancing, burning sage and shaking hands with about a hundred people.


next up saturday evening was a traditional passover seder. not a first, but I did get have a first experience with slivovitz plum brandy (from hungary). a tasty spirit.


lastly (the first will be last) was church yesterday from which the title of this post comes. the gospel was John 14, a very important chapter which I may later further expound upon. you can check the title link for a cursory look. please don't be confused; I may be a "doubting Thomas", but I am also an "American Catholic" (oh yeah, that really straightens it out, Tom). just don't ask me to explain/defend Mother Teresa.

Winslow Homer original?

I was at an older friends house the other evening who showed me this newly framed work he owns, "Waterfall in the Adirondacks":


he's had the piece for many years. he bought it at a museum that had a Homer exhibit at the time. as it turns out, it may be an original - from which the litho's were made. I forget what the term for it is; not a "master" but some sort of proof or something is stamped on the back. nice watercolor.

maybe something to take on Antique Roadshow next time they're in town?

random thoughts...

I was wondering how they did this shot. maybe the easiest thing to do is photoshop the speed?

trackback test

the link is to a story about water. he's got a trackback thing which I clicked and posted here. so I'm guessing that now that I've posted his link, his trackback counter should increment. I'm figuring this out for myself because (as so often happens in life) relying on others to help is often fruitless.

update -- well obviously I still don't know what I'm doing, as you'll find if you click on the link. but that's how we learn, eh? feel free to comment (is that a cry for help?)

Gadget of the Day: Buffalo LinkTheater Hi-Def Wireless DVD Player

"Buffalo Technology's media player has most of the right features for a streaming media player. First of all, it is wireless. 802.11g and 802.11b are supported. You can also use a wired connection if necessary. It connects to your computer which runs special server software. Or you can connect an external USB hard drive to it. It will search the drive for videos, music, and photos. The easy user interface and remote control provides a simple way to watch or listen to your multimedia. And that can even be hi-def. It will upscale if required your video source to 720p or 1080i. There is also a progressive scan dvd player if you just want to watch a quick movie. This is perfect for the home theater rack. What I really like is that it will play both DivX and WMV-HD."

(thanks to www.mybestgadgets.com
for the info)

I've seen these things before. the thing that bugs me is you have to have your pc on. this device is interesting in that this allows you to connect a USB drive. so with the wireless access, could this player also share that drive - act as a server in other words? that would be sweet, 'cause I could do file transfers as needed from PC to USB drive, but keep the two machine independent.

random quotes...

If you think you're too small to make a difference, you've never been in bed with a mosquito.
- Anita Roddick, Founder, The Body Shop

Artsy Science

Artsy Science

kewl micro-photography. hey maybe this one should be on my blogroll? check on that and get back to me, will ya?