Ups and Downs

I feel like I've used that title before. Maybe because it's incredibly jejune.

Anyway, I am having a very busy week, but I felt that updating was the right move, as it's been, only two days in, a week full of ups and downs (fortunately, almost all my direct and personal experiences have been ups); I have about ten minutes, so pardon as this becomes a bulleted list full of link salad.

• Personal Up: This week is my last week at my current job. I'll be moving to a new position a little closer to home, more money, smaller company, etc. etc. It's a weird feeling to be on my last week somewhere—the last time this happened, the store was closing, so we were all on our last legs. My mood is one of completion and celebration, but also a little bit of loss—loss of the people and the familiarity and those all-important rituals—but I still have to jump through the usual hoops. It's like a really lame Irish wake.


• Book World Down: Amazon's little war with MacMillan. I am less than impressed with Amazon's behavior on this front. While books may get marked up a lot, books get marked up for a reason, and you are, as John Scalzi said it, "unload[ing] a shotgun into a crowd of writers" when you pull this kind of action against a publisher. According to the New York Times, Amazon has relented; but according to John Scalzi, some books from MacMillan imprints are still not available on Amazon, so I suspect either Amazon is badly managed or they are trying to stab at their foes even as they fall. Mr. Scalzi's thoughts on how to deal with this are all at once obvious and brilliant; if you want to help an author catch a break, listen to him.


• Speaking of corporate entities I am less than pleased with at the moment, a personal corporate Down: Google. Google has decided, as of today, to discontinue the FTP service that allows me to broadcast this blog here on my website, for good business reasons that nonetheless make my life complicated. The workaround they are offering is not as robust nor is it truly a replacement; as such, I think it's time I look into WordPress, so stay tuned for a possible format shift. You'll be kept updated, I assure you.


• Creative Up (no pun intended): Up has been nominated for both Best Picture and Best Animated Picture. This is stupendous news; Up well-and-truly does deserve the Best Picture, and just being nominated goes a long way toward pulling animation out of its current ghetto of separation. I dream of the day that variations on a medium will all be judged equally (animation vs. live-action film, sequential art vs. novels, my favorite topic of genre fiction vs. fiction), and we just came a tiny step closer. My only worry is that splitting its nomination between two categories could also split its votes, but, a man can still dream.


• And finally, here at the bottom, a Political Up (liberal politics to follow, you have been warned): My country is getting the wheels moving on repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". I think that letting anyone who is fit to serve do so is the right decision in all matters, and seeing things start to shift pleases me. I recognize it will take time (unlike a lot of America, it seems), but I'm glad that the government is starting the move.

That's all the news that's fit to type on my lunch break; now, please pardon me as I go lift weights and eat hummus. It's an exciting life I lead.

That's It

I'm done with you, Republican talking heads.

For those not in the know, I apologize for ruining your morning, but apparently Rudy Giuliani, Mary Matalin, and a few other right-leaning chin-waggers have now claimed that there were no domestic terror attacks during the George W. Bush administration. When asked about 9/11 and the shoe bomber, they have attempted to claim that 9/11 was "inherited" from the Clinton administration.

Horseshit, people. If you want to twist history to claim that the (successful) attack that we have come to call 9/11 was Clinton's fault, then the same should theoretically apply to Obama and this latest (failed) attack. Bush inherited the security forces and regulations set down under previous administrations, and so did Obama. Even if Obama did something to cause the weakening in security, say that; don't claim that Bush had an immaculate record, especially not when the shoe-bomber was found even after the initial crackdown his administration engineered.

"We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term," [former White House Press Secretary Dana] Perino told Fox News last November. [source: above link]

Of course you told Fox News that, you useless piece of shit. Get out of my damn country and stop polluting a perfectly reasonable conservative party with your idiotic, anti-intellectual, public-insulting lies.

If you believe this—if you want to say that Bush was a more successful President in this sense—then okay; that's why we have First Amendment rights. But I have them too, and I want to say a couple of things to you:

First of all, you are wrong. There was a terrorist attack during George W. Bush's first year as President, and sources across the world will back that up. President Bush didn't "inherit" this attack from President Clinton any more than President Obama "inherited" the Christmas Day attack from President Bush. To claim otherwise is historical revisionism, similar to that practiced by a variety of fascist and otherwise oppressive regimes. Like, say, China. Who are communist. Bet that stung to hear, huh?

Second of all, I hate you. You are exactly what's wrong with politics today. This isn't about issues or debate anymore, and it hasn't been for a long time; but this is beyond the fucking pale, people. This is yet more cashing in on the deaths of three thousand people and the fears and pain of countless more, just so a political party can win itself some influence. You are a disgrace to my country and to the vision of its forefathers.

To the "journalists" and "leaders" propagating this statement: If I could make it happen, you would spend every single moment of your lives unable to concentrate, to move, to think, for all the shame you feel at having said this. You should be fired and blacklisted from your professions for this behavior. You're ruining my country. Get out. I want a dialogue between right and left, not this insane cycle of mudslinging and lies that make up the morass of American politics right now. If you are marketing this story as truth, I don't even count you as human anymore. I hope your life consists of perpetual suffering. Especially you, Fox News. I would love it if you and whoever your left-wing equivalent are would go off the air and out of print and disappear. Stop poisoning our minds.

Excuse me. I need to go and do work now. Thanks for interrupting, you mendacious piles of dung.

Concerning Polanski

I was going to try to avoid this topic. I was going to not be political this time. I was going to not get involved.
But I have heard both sides now. I have seen the arguing. I have seen the misinformation and the ranting and the opinions, and I have to weigh in on my own personal little corner of the Internet.

This post is about the arrest of Roman Polanski (link for those who have not heard about it). Therefore, this post is about someone who has confessed to drugging and raping a minor. If this makes you uncomfortable, I understand and you don't have to read; but from here on out, you've been warned. Also, I admit I am fallible; and if I have any of my facts (my facts, not my opinions) incorrect, please inform me—I believe in changing based on new data.

There. Now I'm going to say it: Of the two extreme sides, I agree with the people signing the petition.

I think that Polanski did exactly what he plead guilty to. I think he is, or was, a rapist. And I do not think that should be excused, nor should his fleeing the country when things went (illegally) sour.

But I think that the method by which the situation has been handled up to now is utterly unacceptable. If there is some red tape somewhere that has prevented an arrest until now, then alright, that's different; but this smacks of police turning a cultural event into a trap for a criminal, and not even a criminal who has, as far as we know (and I'd think we'd know) offended again.

It is not, for me, about this one case; it is about the precedent this case stands to set. It is about the precedent that the police can choose when and where to arrest a criminal; that they can engage in acts which I would argue border on entrapment to capture a criminal who has not since offended; that bureaucracy is more important than the wishes of the victim; and that a person's celebrity status can be allowed to influence a case both negatively and positively.

I absolutely think that Polanski should be punished for what he did—both the original crime and feeling the country. If he actually served his original, plea-bargained sentence (which I cannot quite tell if he did or not, the articles about it are obtuse on this point), then he should serve time for fleeing the country. However, in my ideal world I would call for a mistrial, have him tried somewhere other than Los Angeles County, and have him serve the sentence issued by that trial; not because I think he would be treated more harshly, but because the behavior of the original judge should not be allowed to stand.

Also, I have heard people speak of boycotting those who signed the petition to free Polanski: I respectfully disagree. I won't stop you, but it seems to me to smack of hypocrisy: People want Polanski's artistic career to be kept separate from the politics of his trial and arrest, but they want to bring their politics into their decisions about others' art? Then again, I avoid Century Theaters because their owner supported Proposition 8, so maybe there is argument to be made for my own hypocrisy...

That's what I have to say. Now let's see how big this fire gets.

amazonfail: Just to get this out of the way...

I am quite well aware of the amazonfail phenomenon. And of course I have an opinion about it.

For those who are not aware of the situation, what is absolutely known is that Amazon.com, at first slowly and then in a torrent over Easter weekend, removed a multitude of LGBT and abuse-survival books from their rankings. Here are a handful of links: the story at Wikipedia's Amazon.com entry; the blog entry by Mark Probst (an author whose book was de-ranked in the process of this) that Wikipedia claims first brought this into the public eye; the Publisher's Weekly article wherein Amazon blames the situation on a glitch; and a Theory proposed via LiveJournal that makes a fair amount of sense (though the writer could perhaps have been less arrogant about it). The other links I have seen have been histrionic or condescending, depending on the side they take, so I would rather not debut them here (because avoiding bias in a discussion about bias is going to be oh-so-easy to do...).

My personal feeling on the matter is this: Somehow, somewhere, Amazon screwed up. The "Bantown" LJ theory seems plausible, as does some sort of poorly-chosen set of criteria for flagging books as "adult" (akin to when LiveJournal banned a bunch of non-erotic communities a while back). We can argue about Amazon's culpability until the sun goes down, but they definitely made some sort of mistake somewhere, in addition to the even worse mistake of sending what seems like a form letter to Probst instead of really investigating the problem.

Unfortunately, Amazon's mistake hit two of the Internet's major ammo dumps: the LGBT community, and abuse survivors. These are groups who have legitimate grievances as regards their overall treatment, and whom I would never want to see treated as anything but human beings, but which, as a result of their experiences, are liable to react badly and to trigger others not in those groups into temper loss.

So, Amazon screwed up, somehow; and then the Internet opened up a fresh box of berserk rage, and started attacking/boycotting/deriding Amazon. Whatever Amazon did at that point was going to be moot; until they find the actual culprits behind this problem (whether human beings or lines of code), present unassailable evidence that these are the actual culprits and not scapegoats, and find a way to both reverse the problem and take action against those culprits, they will be bearing a massive black eye.

And in the meantime, the attacks against Amazon will get more unreasonable, spurred by corporate stupidity as Amazon flails to mend the gaping hole in its PR; the boycotts will spread, to the point where many accounts lost during this period will never come back; sales may dip, leading to damage to publishers and writers, or sales may barely be affected, leading to a dismissal of a very important group of voices as just more screaming on the Internet. All sides of all debates will think the other sides are even dumber than before, and we will slouch on without any real progress being made. This is how Internet drama goes, with a wide array of rapid coverage forcing people to respond to breaking news before they themselves are certain of what's going on.

In the end, I can only say this: keep buying books, from wherever you think best. And if you have some data to add to this discussion, please, don't hesitate.

Critical? Critical.

I had the pleasure, during my theoretically-daily cardio program, to catch President Obama's speech about, and signing of, the stimulus bill. I am ashamed to admit that I had followed some of the basics of this bill, but did not until today realize the full extent of it (which may not have been certain until today anyway, given the ways of American politics). My interest here, however, is in two things Obama said and did during his speech.

One is his continued commitment to governmental transparency. As a bleeding-heart who desperately wants government to do what I think it's supposed to, seeing them making efforts to allow me to judge that for myself is monumental. I just wish this kind of behavior could be met with the level of work-a-day ignorance used to regard political scandals or celebrity meltdowns.

The other, and the more fascinating to me in the short term, is President Obama's comment about the stimulus package providing "critical broadband connections". President Obama is one of the first politicians, and definitely the first President of the United States, who I have ever heard refer to an Internet connection of a decent speed as "critical". Personally, I don't think he's wrong; and I also don't think I'll ever stop being grateful that we have a White House staff who finally understands the importance of the Internet.

Economic Stimulus

I was just alerted to his idea via my faceless friends on MetaFilter: there are a few movements out there that want to stimulate the U.S. economy by getting the government to forgive student loan debts.

I'm fortunate enough to not be carrying any debt--in large part thanks to my parents spending a truly absurd amount of money to pay off all my loans. But I know how much those loans should have been, and I know that I didn't pay nearly as much for graduate school as some. I think that the Huffington Post has an excellent point: while forgiving those loans may cost the government quite a bit of money, many of those loans teeter on the brink of defaulting anyway, and the amount of money they would then be spending on things other than loans could be like the stimulus package granted last year, only every 2 months or so (and without quite as much propensity to just save that money rather than spend it). In short: /signed.

A Virtual Toast

I'll be succinct; another speech would just do the ones preceding me injustice.

To President Barack Obama. May he find safe harbor and steer us in the right direction.

This Week's Salad

• Follow-up item: China unblocks the New York Times. Well, I suppose that's a small step in the right direction...


• The Far Side Reenactment Pool. The sincerest, and perhaps strangest, form of flattery.


• Obama's science advisors include an open access supporter, which I guess is sort of a follow-up to the POSTNotes link I provided last week. This is not the first nomination that has gone to someone with strong beliefs about online community and freedom of information, and I'm excited to see where this all goes.

Serious post to follow in a few days' time.

The Great Firewall

Big surprise: Many Web sites are blocked from viewing in China.

As much as I hate to say it, this doesn't scare me. Censorship scares me, but this is neither new nor unique. What scares me, what absolutely terrifies me, is the sentiment expressed in this quoted statement by a representative of the Foreign Ministry:

“I hope that the Web sites in question will be able to self-regulate, and not do things that will violate Chinese law, and for the sake of both sides, develop conditions for Web site cooperation."

This from the Foreign Ministry. In other words, not to be inflammatory: If you want to stop being censored, stop saying things we don't approve of.

I have a serious problem with the quoted representative's attitude. It suggests that the only "appeal" against censorship is censoring oneself. It suggests an incontrovertible rightness to their behavior.

I have nothing pithy to end on. I'm just going to go be furious until I have time to do some research, and determine if China's government really is the fascistic, facile 1984 derivative that this article paints them to be.

A witty post title to keep you warm at night, 11/29/08

Link salad for you, while I consider my post, which I have appear to have forgotten how to write:

• In case you didn't see it, it's true: Cartoon Network has perpetrated the Final Rickroll. I like to think we'll look back on this as the beginning of a new era.


• For those of you with a political bent: the full text of Lawrence Summers' controversial address (the "women are less committed to science" speech) and an article, sadly not containing the full text, of the so-called "Summers memo". I have made my judgments on these issues and on Lawrence Summers, as much as I can for now, and ultimately, Summers' apparent sexism disappoints me, but I am grateful that he is not in a position where he has direct impact on the issues that is bound to render him blind to, and hopeful that it will not impact the considerable knowledge he brings to the board; I thought you might find these helpful. Wikipedia pages omitted because I just can't figure out how biased they are; the tone used could be that of a journalist with integrity or that of a dissembling apologist.


• To cleanse your palate after that, Language Log looks to be gearing up for a rumble. Over what, you ask? Why, over proper usage of the term "pentathlon". These are the sorts of things us nerds will cut you over.


• Britain deploys TV cameras designed to detect crimes before they happen. No, I'm not kidding, and no, I'm not happy. The system sounds ridiculous, and that's exactly my problem with it—what right do they have to pull this kind of maneuver on the populace at large? The quote about where money should be spent sums it up beautifully, but it does not adequately address my reaction to a story from two years ago about London Homicide's list of the 100 British people most likely to commit crimes. This wasn't a hypothetical list, either; this is a list of people that they were going to try to steer into counseling, or even possibly arrest. I have previously considered moving to the U.K., but this, combined with the "crime-detecting" CCTV systems as evidence against reformation in the two years since that article, give me pause. (Bonus silver lining: Enjoy the fact that concerns about excessive surveillance and invasion of privacy are raised in a quote from a man called an information commissioner.)


• And to wrap this one up: Just as we started with the ultimate expression of the Rickroll, we will end with the ultimate comeback to crude pickup lines.

That's all for now; my inability to write my post has now spread and metastasized, and I have found myself unable to operate simple Ctrl + commands. A better post with more original words when I return from sleep tomorrow morning.

Time to Show My Colors

I had said I'd avoid politics, but this year it's impossible. I have something I absolutely have to say.

Thank you to groups like MoveOn and TrueMajority, for fighting ceaselessly and thanklessly for change.

Thank you to the ACLU and its allies, who are as we speak appealing Prop 8.

Thank you to John McCain, for one of the most gracious concession speeches I have ever had the privilege to see; for showing us that you still are the affable, kindly, patriotic man that we had seen in previous years; and for all the years of service you have given to this great country.

And thank you, America. Thank you for coming out and showing us your true colors. For participating in the system instead of just criticizing. For voting from the heart, and proving that we truly have made strides since the days of Rosa Parks. Thank you for the light at the end of the tunnel; thank you for showing that we have the strength to win this. Thank you for making me, once more, proud to be an American.

And thank you to our newly-elected 44th President, for one of the most stirring speeches I have yet seen; for being the statesman we have waited for; for being, as you say, change we can believe in. People accuse you of being too right, and people accuse you of being disingenuous; but I see the strong left in you and I see the truth in your words, do believe that you are what we need right now--not just us, but the world. From what I've seen in the news, the world agrees.

I think the man himself said it best--it will be a hard battle, but this election is proof that we can win it. And to those who want to tear down the world: we will defeat you.

And let me say it, one last time, before these words are hammered into a meaningless void by the media: Yes we did. And yes we can.

Last night, when I arrived home from an election night celebration, from witnessing one of the most awesome, inspiring speeches I have seen in recent memory, I had the privilege of reading the words I have wanted to see now for over a year; and though I can't be in all of your offices and living rooms, I can pretend.

So please, right now, hoist a glass.

To President Barack Obama.