best one liner

so far from the ongoing presidential election in the U.S.A. (best one I've seen)

"Does Laura Bush get to run for president in 8 years?"

officially torturers

Well, it's official. The United States of America tortures people.

And if you are American, then when you pay your taxes between now and April, you're helping to pay Mukasey's salary, along with the salaries of all the U.S. soldiers and operatives who will continue to murder and torture people around the world.

Think about it. Below is from this New York Times story

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said Wednesday that while he would consider it torture if he underwent the harsh Central Intelligence Agency interrogation technique known as waterboarding, the practice was not necessarily illegal, and he would not rule out its use in the future.

Under sometimes angry questioning from Democrats at his first oversight hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Mukasey found himself caught in the debate that nearly derailed his confirmation last fall: whether waterboarding is torture.

“Would waterboarding be torture if it were done to you?” asked Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, glowering at Mr. Mukasey.

“I would feel that it was,” Mr. Mukasey acknowledged in the low monotone that he uses in virtually all public settings.

But the attorney general, a retired federal judge, would not be drawn into a larger conversation with Senator Kennedy or other Democrats over whether waterboarding might amount to torture if

Barack's response to the state of the union

A little quiz about privilege, or social class. The idea is to bold the ones that apply to you. H/T Byron

1. Father went to college.
2. Father finished college.
3. Mother went to college.
4. Mother finished college.
5. Have any relative who is or was an attorney, physician, or professor.
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers.
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home.
9. Were read children’s books by a parent.
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18.
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18.
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively.
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18.
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs.
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs.
16. Went to a private high school.
17. Went to summer camp.
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18.
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels.
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18.
21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them.
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child
23. You and your family lived in a single-family house.
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home.
25. You had your own room as a child.
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18.
27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course.
28. Had your own TV in your room in high school.
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college.
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16.
31. Went on a cruise with your family.
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family.
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up.
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.

So I got 12 out of 34. How did you do? What other statements do you think should be added? What does it mean about wealth, class, and privilege?

Hooray!

Victory in South Carolina

"We're looking to fundamentally change the status quo in Washington"

I dare you to watch the whole 16 minutes and *not* get an astounding shiver of powerful emotional connection.

	Popular Vote	Delegates
Obama	542883	63
Clinton	381849	48
Edwards	218573	26

Can anyone tell me how to fix all that blank space that show up between the embedded video and the table?

Honestly

How can you not want this guy to be president? I mean for the "nuclear" alone, I'd vote for him.

WWJD

This is frickin' awesome. H/T Helen



My lovely mum now has pneumonia (which, by the way, should be pronounced "puhnuh MOAN yuh), to go with the cancer and the abdominal surgery. But she's ... she's a fighter. I love you mom. Please everybody make sure you don't tell my mom about this video. She'd find it very disturbing.

What's the big idea? the visionless Hillary Clinton

I recently told a good friend of mine that if Hillary Clinton wins the democratic nomination, I fear I'll have to vote for McCain. He jokingly threatened to break my legs before I could go to the polls. I was mostly joking, but I grow increasingly serious. Not that my vote would count for much, here, since Washington State is very nearly guaranteed to go for the democratic candidate whoever they may be. Then again, if we've *moved* by November, we may be in a different situation.

But honestly, one *does* get the sensation that she'll say anything to win the nomination, falsely accusing her main opponent for the nomination on *multiple* fronts, including his supposed work for a so called "slumlord" and his supposed love for "republican ideas". See factcheck.org

Why does she want so badly to be president? It looks to me like Obama and Edwards both have a big central idea that is inspiring them to take on the insanely difficult task of being president. But for Hillary, I can't find that idea. What is it? It seems like it's more about "I actually *want* all that power".

To me, that's *nuts*. I mean no way in *hell* I'd run for president. But if something *were* to get me to run, it would be some Huge, super inspiring idea. Then I would be running in *spite* of my cynicism toward the whole system. To actually *want* the position for the position's sake is just out there.

An open ended question:

What is spiritual abuse?

Mars Hill Graduate School

Yesterday I attended my first ever class at Mars Hill Graduate School with the super brilliant Jen (I would normally link Jen's blog here. But I think she may be into keeping her blog relatively private. I shall ask). Thank you for the invitation, Jen! A few impressions:

• Money. The ... global impression was that there is rather a lot of ambient money in the environment. The location, the ... decor, the laptops, the clothing, ... etc.
• Whiteness. Everybody, or if I missed someone then at least very *nearly* everybody, was white, in the "White American of European descent" sense.
• Intensity. As with my previous encounters with Mars Hill faculty and students, people were *intense*. I mean to say that, for instance, they were into asking and being asked very hard questions, both about themselves, the world, others, ... I'm talking about at a fairly terrifying level. I wouldn't say they weren't afraid. Rather they were into pinpointing what they were afraid of and then turning to fully engage it. I am enormously drawn toward and repulsed by this (as has previously been the case). I find myself hoping that, in general regarding this sort of thing, the attraction will win over the repulsion. But I'm not at all confident that will be the case, for me.
• Excellence. I got the feeling that excellence was being pursued. People who graduate from the counselling program, me thinks, are going to be very good counsellors. At least for other wealthy white people.
• Anger. I felt angry, in between being fascinated, attracted, and repulsed. Brain McClaren said "Americans are the most excellent consumers in the history of the world" We (yes, of *course* I'm part of it) are consuming excellent education at a relatively high level, from a global perspective. We're using up prodigous resources in that pursuit, while 25,000 children starve to death today. While our government oversees the deaths of hundreds of innocent Iraqi civilians every week. While one billion people won't be able to have a safe drink of water today. How dare we? How unfair is it? Is it possible that it's actually *impossible* for the whole world to consume at this level, and that therefore the *only* way, ultimately, for the consumption level of the poorest to be raised is for us to *lower* our consumption level? All this stuff going through my head during the two hour group therapy class yesterday.
• They'd never let me in anyway. I mean it's a *seminary*! And I'm not even a Christian. Oh well. I wouldn't really want to do it anyway. Too intense (I'm convincing myself here).
  

the balance has tipped

11 out, 10 still standing.

Normal

I'm telling myself that this is normal. Everyone reaches a point where one or both of their parents are really sick and/or dying. Ok, not everyone. Some people's parent's die before their old enough to know about it, and some people have no idea who their parents are, being raised by foster parents or what have you.

But it's *fairly* normal. I guess it's probably not super close to the middle of the curve in terms of what age it happens at in North America. Probably most people get to be 40 or 50 or older before they deal with this. But the point is that everyone has to deal with this--it's normal.

Being of the brain damaged gender (and no doubt I somehow got more of this than most), it takes things time to ... register, with me. I remember kind of waking up one day when Eowyn was about 6 weeks old and thinking "Holy God, this is ... *huge*! life-altering!" My wife graciously said "Ummmm.... did you just now realize that?" To which I replied "Ummmmm.... yes, actually"

So I am saddish and snappish-at-people. Not to an unbearable extent. Just a little. I still haven't gotten to that "ah, it's dawning on me" with this. Give me time. some of us are a bit slower in certain areas.

two martin luther king weekend sermons

So a simple question. It's a decent bet that one of these two voices will, in many ways, be the voice of the United States starting in 2009. Which one do you want to be listening to for at least 4 years?




and

sick parents

Today was fairly stressful for me.

My dad just had abdominal surgery about 10 days ago, and is still very much in a recovery mode. Although he's up and about, he's not moving super fast or lifting much of anything. And he's finding it difficult to adjust his eating and insulin levels so as to maintain his blood sugar in the proper range.

My mother, who was supposed to start radiation on Monday for a cancerous growth in her abdomen, had terrible cramping and vomiting all weekend. Today she went to Valley General Hospital in Monroe, which isn't exactly super inspiring to start with since I'm used to big Seattle Hospitals like UW Medical Center which are national leaders in everything. (I mean who am I to complain? There are at least a billion people on the planet who couldn't dream of having the level of medical care available at valley general.) They did a scan and decided to do emergent surgery because her intestine/bowel was blocked.

As it turns out, it was just scar tissue from her previous surgery. They were able to fix it and I'm told she should be able to recover. But it's still frightening, right in the middle of dealing with the cancer. And my dad finds it *really* hard not to be able to take care of her in the way he'd like since he's still recovering from his own surgery.

Anyway, the whole thing is yucky and frightening. So i spent the afternoon evening hanging out over there with my mega brilliant sister Kat and my dad's good friend Lloyd, who is an absolute gem. Don't know how we'd be coping without this without all his help. He rocks.

So that was my day. I'm thinking I should (there, I've digressed to shoulding on myself. See that?) focus on just sitting with this thing, instead of complaining about it, avoiding it, or what have you.

Explanation requested

Can anyone explain to me how it is that Agatha Christie is ahead of Tolkien in this list? (I suspect the data is at best out of date, and at worst plain wrong)

language dreams and aspirations

So I was looking at wikipedia's "languages by number of speakers". Some notes:

The best information about how many languages there are, and how many people speak them, apparently comes from Christians. Why? They're interested in getting the Bible to all these people in their "heart language" (which is to say the language they most comfortably think in) (there's probably a more technical definition of "heart language" somewhere, but that's my understanding of it). Which includes writing it down, if it's not written down yet, and teaching the people to read it. So in one sense Christians are the primary promoters of literacy on the planet. I find that fascinating. *Why* do they care so much about the Bible? I think I rather take for granted my access to and knowledge of the Bible. I can hardly stand to read it any more. It's intriguing to me that America is at some level one of the most ... bible saturated countries on the face of the planet, and also one of the most horrifically violence saturated countries on the face of the planet. I'm mostly talking about our export of violence. In fact, I would be curious to see a graph looking at a correlation between number of bibles in print and gross amount of money spent on weapons in a long list of nations. I'm willing to bet there would actually be a strong correlation (although of course this doesn't necessarily show causality).

I've got a reasonable grasp on English, and decent start on Spanish. Those are languages number 2 and 3, not necessarily in that order, with 600 to 800 million speakers. And now I'm just barely beginning Arabic, which is somewhere in the top 4 most spoken languages, with somewhere between 200 and 400 million speakers. With those three, I can communicate with something like a billion people in their first language, and well over two billion if you count everyone who speaks one of these three as a second language.

I suppose after that, the thing to do would be to attempt Mandarin, the most spoken first language on the planet, with nearly a billion native speakers. But my sense is that it's even harder than Arabic. My Middle Eastern studies professor says even once you learn modern standard Arabic, you're going to have to learn a whole new ... iteration of it 30 something times over if you want to speak to all the different Arabic speakers. That could be daunting, I suppose, but if one doesn't even step out the front door, one will never get to any destination at all.

More on Bobby Fischer

Edward Rothstein has a very readable piece in today's New York Times entitled "Fischer vs. the World: A Chess Giant's Endgame"

The title of course references "Kasparov vs. the World", a game back in 1999 in which reigning world champion Gary Kasparov played a game of chess against the whole world. The world's moves were decided by majority vote over the internet. Kasparov, playing white, won in 62 moves.

I hope it's okay for me to rather like Fischer's story and style without anybody making any kind of assumption about me agreeing with some of his more unkind remarks about the Jews.

nevada caucuses.

So with about 12 hours before the fates of Nevada's 33 Democratic national convention delegates begin to be decided, I'd like to make the following prediction (not that any of my 3 readers cares):

Obama/Edwards is going to beat HRC by better than 60% to 40%.

Get your bumper stickers here.

a question from a history-naive person

So here's a question. I've grown up with the idea in my head that John F. Kennedy was a ... hero, a guy who would perhaps be in the top 10 of great americans of the 20th century.

Did you grow up with the same impression? Or have you *had* the same impression?

What are your thoughts about this? It's an impression I've never previously though much about. But is it true that he authorized the assassination of the president of South Vietnam, as well as the use of napalm and agent orange over there?

Your impressions/thoughts on JFK?

R.I.P. Bobby Fischer

Bobby Fischer was a bit of a hero to me when I was a kid. Not so much about the chess--I'm not really good enough at chess to be called mediocre. More because of his eccentricity. "Here is someone who is a bit wierd and a bit offputting to a lot of people", I said to myself "Just like me. And he has achieved some level of success in the world. Kewl!"

I guess I also rather like him because he managed to piss off the U.S. government and get his U.S. passport revoked, and then get granted citizenship in Iceland, the most developed country in the world. All of this strikes me as astoundingly kewl, and even to be emulated.

Bobby Fischer is most famous for becoming the only ever (formerly) American World Chess Champion back in 1972. He died today at the age of 65.