just great

t r u t h o u t – Military Hides Cause of Women Soldiers’ Deaths:

In a startling revelation, the former commander of Abu Ghraib prison testified that Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, former senior US military commander in Iraq, gave orders to cover up the cause of death for some female American soldiers serving in Iraq.
Last week, Col. Janis Karpinski told a panel of judges at the Commission of Inquiry for Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration in New York that several women had died of dehydration because they refused to drink liquids late in the day. They were afraid of being assaulted or even raped by male soldiers if they had to use the women’s latrine after dark.
The latrine for female soldiers at Camp Victory wasn’t located near their barracks, so they had to go outside if they needed to use the bathroom. “There were no lights near any of their facilities, so women were doubly easy targets in the dark of the night,” Karpinski told retired US Army Col. David Hackworth in a September 2004 interview. It was there that male soldiers assaulted and raped women soldiers. So the women took matters into their own hands. They didn’t drink in the late afternoon so they wouldn’t have to urinate at night. They didn’t get raped. But some died of dehydration in the desert heat, Karpinski said.
Karpinski testified that a surgeon for the coalition’s joint task force said in a briefing that “women in fear of getting up in the hours of darkness to go out to the port-a-lets or the latrines were not drinking liquids after 3 or 4 in the afternoon, and in 120 degree heat or warmer, because there was no air-conditioning at most of the facilities, they were dying from dehydration in their sleep.”

Camp Victory? We’re beyond irony now.

coffee: so much more than just a blood substitute

Smelling the Coffee: Starbucks or Peet’s:

You see, Peet’s doesn’t have wireless Internet service for computers! Can you even imagine that? And Peet’s doesn’t even begin to understand coffee-shop atmosphere. So for work, it’s Starbucks.

We have wirelessly endowed Peet’s here, as well as every other variety of caffeine purveyor. Last coffee venue I used with wireless was the Herkimer on Greenwood . . .

Now playing: TMBG Podcast 2A by They Might Be Giants

One of my two Senators failed me.

Hey, is this another Circus of the Spineless?:

Remember these names when Alito screws us over. These are the ones who didn’t even try to stop him.

Akaka, Daniel K. (Coward-HI)
Baucus, Max (Doormat-MT)
Bingaman, Jeff (Toady-NM)
Byrd, Robert C. (Ditherer-WV)
Cantwell, Maria (One-termer-WA) <– thanks for nothing
Carper, Thomas R. (Lickspittle-DE)
Conrad, Kent (Stooge-ND)
Dorgan, Byron L. (Loser-ND)
Inouye, Daniel K. (Pawn-HI)
Johnson, Tim (Milksop-SD)
Kohl, Herb (Flunky-WI)
Landrieu, Mary L. (Parasite-LA)
Lieberman, Joseph I. (Sycophant-CT)
Lincoln, Blanche L. (Puppet-AR)
Nelson, Bill (Candy-ass-FL)
Nelson, E. Benjamin (Lowlife-NE)
Pryor, Mark L. (Chicken-AR)
Rockefeller, John D., IV (Weasel-WV)
Salazar, Ken (Dissembler-CO)

(Actually, it’s very unkind of me to compare these wimps to invertebrates. I like invertebrates.)

I suspected from the email I received (I won’t be so naive as to assume she had any notion of who she was corresponding with) that she wouldn’t be on the side of the angels.

I don’t understand why this would be seen as a politically sound move (if she was being cynical) or a good move for the country (if she was an idiot).

Good luck campaigning, Senator.

on academic freedom

This essay is cited all over the pajama-sphere. Well worth reading. The excerpt is his closing passage, but the argument leading up to it is very well-crafted and insightful.

Michael Bérubé Online:

That’s why academic freedom is so important. It may not be written into the Bill of Rights—you know, the real one, the one in the Constitution. It is far younger than the rights enumerated there, and more fragile. But together with freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances, and the freedom of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, academic freedom is an aspect of procedural liberalism that is one of the cornerstones of a free society. If you believe in the ideals of the open society and the intellectual legacies of the Enlightenment, you should believe in academic freedom—and you should believe that it is a freedom is worth defending.

get a hobby

Get a hobby, I have been told, something that requires me to put this silicon-based device aside for some amount of time.

OK, perhaps I’ll see if I can re-kindle my interest in photography. Went out and bought some chemicals and am steeling myself to go out and take some black and white pictures. Looking through all those old slides and negatives (what is this a picture of? and why are the three exposures of this scene?) has me wondering why, but I am also remembering the feeling I had while taking some of them. I enjoyed it.

Then I saw these images.

And this guy has posted up some new stuff.
Hmm, that raised the stakes a little bit. Both very different kinds of images and with styles that are tied to the subject matter or the media/supplies used (one guy can only shoot 4 days a month and the other is using a film stock that is rapidly disappearing).

I like them both. The amazing colors of the moonlight images are wonderful, but the depth of those B&W Polaroids is great too. I find I can look at them for quite awhile: there’s so much depth of field, there are lots of details to explore.

Wonder if I can take that stuff back and take up something else?

Nah.

Sunday scans

I am working through the backlog of pictures — both chrome slides and b&w negatives — and may share a few from time to time.

Old Barn

an old barn, somewhere in the Smoky Mountains (most likely Cades Cove, a place I spent a lot of time with a camera).

Rock In Moving Water 1

a mossy rock, protruding from a small waterfall. Exposure detail unrecorded, but obviously a couple of seconds exposure.
Leaf-Rock-Water

leaf. rock. water.

Continue reading “Sunday scans”

The NYTimes wakes up

Spies, Lies and Wiretaps – New York Times:

Just trust us. Mr. Bush made himself the judge of the proper balance between national security and Americans’ rights, between the law and presidential power. He wants Americans to accept, on faith, that he is doing it right. But even if the United States had a government based on the good character of elected officials rather than law, Mr. Bush would not have earned that kind of trust. The domestic spying program is part of a well-established pattern: when Mr. Bush doesn’t like the rules, he just changes them, as he has done for the detention and treatment of prisoners and has threatened to do in other areas, like the confirmation of his judicial nominees. He has consistently shown a lack of regard for privacy, civil liberties and judicial due process in claiming his sweeping powers. The founders of our country created the system of checks and balances to avert just this sort of imperial arrogance.

What’s gotten into the water supply over at the Times building? This is pretty strong stuff.

looks at books

Making Light: The life expectancies of books:

Have you ever heard of Harold Bell Wright? How about Mazo de la Roche? Mary Roberts Rinehart, Lloyd Douglas, Irving Bacheller, Frank Yerby, Coningsby Dawson, Warwick Deeping? These were all notable authors in their day. Some of their books were no better than they should be, while others were genuinely praiseworthy; but all of them spent some time perched on top of the commercial heap.

All gone, now. We shall none of us escape obscurity.

Teresa’s widely-cited musings on the life expectancy of books is full of insight and information (and the Usual Suspects in the comments sparkle as well).

Her piece comes on the heels of this by Tim O’Reilly on the economics of publishing, especially for short lifespan books like his.

Seems to me there’s good reason to read both, but I’m too tired now.

<update> I meant to say there was some overlap to be explored, given the two different markets (popular fiction and tech books). But I was too sleepy to even get that right.

democracy in action

“I’m tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn’t work. It isn’t supposed to work. We are supposed to work it.” –Alexander Woolcott

I just sent a couple of mail-form emails to my Senators urging them to take a stand on the Supreme Court nomination. Not that I think much will come of it, but better to fight back and let people see what you’re made of than roll over.

I called their offices earlier today as well — just the local ones, as “circuits were busy” when I tried to call DC.

What do they have to lose if they filibuster? The respect of their peers? I think that’s a foregone conclusion.

And what to gain? Their self-respect, the respect of the electorate (remember them?), and possibly the recognition by their peers that there is an opposition party worth of the title.