Via Boing Boing,
a Latvian artist decomposed an animation of a walking robot into a series of stencils, which were painted onto various urban scenes.
The result is stunning.
Nov 142004
It seems to be getting hard to publicly point out that war is a horrible thing that kills people and generally sucks.
Today brought two terrifying data points. Note that neither is even about any of the particular wars in which we are currently involved, but rather the general idea of organized armed conflict.
First, 66 ABC affiliates decided not to show the film Saving Private Ryan, apparently due to concern that its graphic descriptions of WWII might incur large fines from the FCC in the post-we’ve-seen-Janet-Jackson’s-breast era. This despite the fact that it has been broadcast on ABC on two previous occasions. Is war only “decent” enough for TV when we’re not fighting any?
But wait — there’s more. ABC News via boingboing via backchannel relativepath (thanks!), the United States Secret Service investigated some Boulder, CO high school students simply for singing a forty year old folk song that questions if profit justifies war:
The students told ABC News affiliate KMGH-TV in Denver they are performing Bob Dylan’s song “Masters of War” during the Boulder High School Talent Exposé because they are Dylan fans. They said they want to express their views and show off their musical abilities.
This falls under the Secret Service’s bailiwick, we’re told, because apparently singing this song amounts to threatening the president’s life:
Threatening the president is a federal crime, so the Secret Service was called to the school to investigate.
Students in the band said they’re just singing the lyrics and not inciting anyone to do anything.
The 1963 song ends with the lyrics: “You might say that I’m young. You might say I’m unlearned, but there’s one thing I know, though I’m younger than you, even Jesus would never forgive what you do … And I hope that you die and your death’ll come soon. I will follow your casket in the pale afternoon. And I’ll watch while you’re lowered down to your deathbed. And I’ll stand o’er your grave ’til I’m sure that you’re dead.”
The first stanza of this song identifies those to whom the closing sentiment is addressed:
Come you masters of war You that build all the guns You that build the death planes You that build the big bombs You that hide behind walls You that hide behind desks I just want you to know I can see through your masks
To confuse non-original song lyrics with the sort of threat that warrants Secret Service investigation is absurd and chilling. In fact, the Secret Service’s FAQ rather clearly and reasonably discusses the difference:
The Secret Service does not desire or solicit information pertaining to individuals or groups expressing legitimate criticism of, or political opposition to, the policies and decisions of the government of government officials. However, we are interested in legitimate information relating to threats, plans or attempts by individuals, groups or organizations to harm USSS protectees.
According to ABC News, the Secret Service got involved after a group of students and adults who heard a rehearsal called a radio talk show “saying the song the band sang ended with a call for President Bush to die”, and then someone called the Secret Service. I assume that the Secret Service takes all reported threats seriously, but then does do some degree of actual vetting before sending agents to investigate. The Secret Service actually spent time interviewing the students’ principal as well as a teacher involved in an unrelated student protest last weekend (whaa-?), so presumably someone decided that this was an actual threat. (Note that there is no hint anywhere that the evidence of “threat” goes in any respect beyond singing this song.)
We are so very far through the looking-glass. Even knowing that, what I find amazing is that the talk-show callers, whoever called the Secret Service, and apparently some decision maker all seem to have read the first stanza of this song to identify the sitting POTUS, but that doesn’t seem to bother any of them. One of the performers hits the nail on the head (again from ABC):
“It’s just Bob Dylan’s song. We were just singing Bob Dylan’s song … If you think it has to do with Bush that’s because you’re drawing your own conclusions. We never conveyed that Bush was the person we were talking about,” said Allysse Wojtanek-Watson, a singer for the band.
If you haven’t heard the song or read the lyrics lately, check it out. It’s one of those Dylan songs that send shivers down my spine, and on the “moral values” scale, it certainly surpasses fretting about love between people with similar genitalia.
It’s encouraging that these students are acting with such conscience and bravery, and it’s great that their principal supported them and the performance went off as planned. However, that small silver lining is dwarfed by the impact this sort of exercise of state power has on the broader discussion climate in our country. Boulder is, after all, a very progressive city, and this event sends a pretty strong signal to school administrators and others in less progressive places (like Richland County, WI, or 66 local ABC TV markets).
My hat is off to those fighting the good fight in Boulder, but I hold it over a heart that increasingly quivers for our country. We are not acting like a very good beacon of democracy and freedom at the moment.
Nov 132004
This one’s for you, Jon.
Via Feedster RSS Feed for Video Clips Enclosures, one of the funniest Daily Show segments ever: Birds of a Feather: “
If you haven’t seen this, stop whatever you’re doing now, and go watch it. Seriously. It is that funny.
Nov 112004
News.com reports that Gap will have a kids’ fleece jacket with an integrated radio [speakers in the hood, hence it’s IMHO unfortunate name – “Hoodio”] in stores on Monday for $68.
This is, like the Roomba, notable as it marks the first real application of a new technology in a form that could conceivably result in large scale adoption. That’s cool.
Unfortunately, the Hoodie seems like a bit of a contradiction — it’s a jacket with integrated electronics, but it only lets you access a has-been medium (FM). One can only hope that there’s a headphone jack for the iPod connection its users will certainly want (though integrated iPod controls would be so much cooler).
Gizmodo has more pictures.
Nov 112004
If you haven’t yet read this week’s Savage Love, check it out. Well said, Dan.
Nov 092004
The BBC summary of the first day of the Falluja offensive paints a pretty grim picture. The 11 US soldiers killed yesterday (3 confirmed for Tuesday so far for a total of 14) have been widely covered in the media. The 30,000 to 50,000 estimated civilians left in Fallujah are currently without water, power, or the ability to leave their houses (what with the curfew, bullets, and explosions) with a limited supply of food.
What struck me in the BBC article was the number of insurgents thought to be in Fallujah currently: 3000. Despite Donald “Mr. Reliable” Rumsfeld’s assurance that:
There aren’t going to be large numbers of civilians killed and certainly not by U.S. forces.
the peril in which we have put the poorest (read: least able to evacuate) citizens of Fallujah in order to capture or kill absolutely no more than 1/10th their number is troubling. I have not seen civilian casualty reports yet, and given our early (and accomplished) objective of capturing the hospital and preventing civilian emergency vehicles from accessing it [sorry- can’t find that link at the moment], we may not. Of course, war is a very ugly beast, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that ratio is within certain formal theoretical parameters of “acceptable loss”. However, given (the NYT and rumor control via) relative path’s revelation that the Fallujah to Ramadi insurgent escape chute is unsecured, it seems unlikely that the number of insurgents killed or captured will exceed the number intentionally sacrificed by the insurgency for this PR event.
I wonder if Rumsfeld is as sanguine about how 50,000 poor Iraqi civilians without water, power, food watching US bombs and tanks crush their city will play in the Arab press. The BBC’s translation service provides a preview, which is neither surprising nor encouraging.
Nov 082004
Regarding the events of last Tuesday, this site has over 600 (and counting, it seems) photo apologies from US citizens to the world: http://www.sorryeverybody.com/.
Nov 052004
This update includes two notable additions to the previous post about the 1166% (yes, one thousand and some percent) overstatement of the Bush tally in one precinct of Ohio’s Franklin county:
1) The machine used in this precinct is only used in this county
2) It’s not a Diebold machine
#2 is more a curiosity than anything, and #1 makes it seem less likely that a similar problem happened throughout Ohio (that is, at least as long as one assumes this was a non-intentional error).
However, CNN’s turnout numbers for Franklin county show 512,599 votes counted. It’s hard with the available data to know how this one precinct’s error would extrapolate to the county if in fact the problem were county-wide, but with over half a million votes cast, it’s not hard to imagine a county-wide problem having a bottom-line impact on the outcome.
I’ve been accumulating anecdotes of voting issues for later tonight when I’ll have some time to read them more carefully, but this one is too striking to let sit:
Franklin County’s unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat John Kerry (news – web sites)’s 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct.
Bush actually received 365 votes in the precinct…
Hmm … a 136,000 vote Bush lead / (4258 – 638 = 3620) = 37 and change.
How many precincts were using this equipment? 37 machines with a similar flaw in similar magnitude changes everything, and once provisional ballots are considered the number probably doesn’t need to be anywhere near as large.
I swore I wasn’t going to let my tin-foil hat point in this direction, but this really needs some explanation.
A question I’ve been asking a lot lately is: Why don’t we have someone publicly accounting for why it’s OK that electronic voting machines aren’t auditable? More on that later …
… but thank god the kids were out of school for some reason: National Guard F-16 strafes New Jersey elementary school.
As Mike joked, maybe now people will think twice about that bumper sticker about the Air Force needing to hold a bake sale … 🙂
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