Month: September 2006

Hullabaloo:

People and societies don’t just wake up one morning to find they no longer recognize themselves. It’s a process. And we are in the process in this country of “defining deviancy down” in ways I never thought possible. We are legitimizing torture and indefinite detention — saying that we will only do this to the people who really deserve it. One cannot help but wonder what “really deserves it” will mean in the years to come as we fight our endless war against terror.

Sure, right now it’s just a bunch of foreigners and I guess we don’t feel foreigners are entitled to basic human rights. They must not be human — or at least not as human as “we” are. When you think about it, who knows who “we” are either? Right wingers make millions of dollars writing books about how liberals are godless, death-loving, traitors within. Many people who read those books probably believe these liberals are only one step away from being sub-human too —- they are, after all, godless traitors.

Or in the well-known words of Martin Niemöller:

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

How did we get to this pass, where we are debating techniques of torture rather than shunning it?

• so much for that experiment
  it’s so much easier with a king, dontcha think?
  (tags: worstpresidentever politics)
• Amazon Industrial
  worth keeping track of
  (tags: making)

• Christian Values
  that old time religion, back when it meant something — if it ever did
  (tags: values religion)
• All On The Table: Cows, Corn, Gasoline, Spinach, E. Coli., and Grass
  In 2003, The Journal of Dairy Science noted that up to 80 percent of dairy cattle carry [e.coli] O157 [due to ] the unnaturally acidic stomachs of beef and dairy cattle fed on grain.
  (tags: food)

Recent forays into the world of book-binding and camera-building have taken on a life of their own.

One thing that emerges from these projects is the need to make tools and jigs before you can even make the thing you set out to.

For instance, to make a hand-sewn book, you need a book press. A stack of books will work, but a book press will work better and for the cost of a couple of pieces of wood and some fasteners, why not do it right?

Working on making a 6×17 cm roll-film camera and I needed not just the parts — wood, brass tubing, knobs and the like — but some micro-drill bits, a saw, some sandpaper. And the drill bits are so tiny — the smallest is .0130 inches or .3302 millimeters, they will likely require a jig to hold the drill so they don’t break. I may get a small hand drill but I am also considering some kind of bow-drill that of course, I would have to make. I don’t want the drill bit to go too fast and get damaged or wreck the work piece.

Continue reading “manufactory”

Did I hear a US Senator intimate that if the CSA had been better supplied with military intelligence, the Union would not have prevailed? Does anyone else think a sitting Senator who wishes his country had lost the civil war is unfit for his office? His staff claim what he actually said was:

“If Gen. JEB Stuart had had better intelligence, we’d all be meeting in Richmond right now.”

Oh, well then.

All About the Heritage…:

I sincerely hope that there will come a day when the display of a Confederate flag holds the same political meaning in the United States as the display of a swastika in Germany, and I also hope that, someday, positive invocation of any political or military leader of the Confederacy will be tantamount to political suicide. That time ain’t coming soon, though. As many (but not enough) know, Kentucky was a slave state but never joined the Confederacy. Kentucky supplied large numbers of troops to both sides, but by and large avoided serious battles on its terrain. In spite of the fact that Kentucky remained in the Union, the two statues standing outside the old courthouse in Lexington are Confederate officials, including John C. Breckinridge, Confederate Secretary of War. Some people think that these statues are harmless symbols; I don’t. I think that John C. Breckinridge was a traitor and a defender of slavery, and that there’s about as much justification for erecting a statue of him in Lexington as there is for putting up a statue of Stalin in Tblisi.

Gearing up for November!:

With a new NaNo season almost upon us, I wanted to spread the word about a few key site events that will be happening in the next two weeks. At 11:59:59 pm on September 20th, Russ will lock and archive the forums, paving the way for the installation of new message boards, and the subequent October 1 site re-launch.

The NaNoWriMo blog will remain open 24 hours a day during this difficult period, and I invite anyone who….

If I do this again, I will try to do my work in WriteRoom. It is a pretty clean way to work without distractions.
Continue reading “national novel writing month looms”