Fierce Planet

Posted by jnfr at 06:45 PM | Comments (0)

July 17, 2007

Ahhhh......

Isn't it great to have the Daily Show back again?

Here's John Oliver on English-only language laws:

Posted by jnfr at 05:28 PM | Comments (0)

July 12, 2007

Rest in Peace

Lady Bird Johnson, 1912-2007

I am old enough to remember how ugly our highways were before Lady Bird Johnson began her long campaign to plant wildflowers all over the country. We can't thank her enough for her contributions to our environment.

Here is the online version of the PBS biography "Lady Bird", on her life and times.

UPDATE: See also Rick Pearlstein's tribute to Lady Bird as a great and aggressive liberal force.

I loved her. They'll tell you about the wildflowers and the crusade against unsightly billboards. They won't tell you about what a great liberal she was, what a brave warrior against racism she was - that she risked her life for these principles.

Then he talks about her work in the South, which in Lyndon Johnson's day was defending its racist legacy vigorously and even violently. It's a good read.

Posted by jnfr at 07:46 AM | Comments (0)

May 16, 2007

No Comment

UPDATE: I like this cartoonist's vision.

UPDATE: If I had the balls and the verbal agility, I'd sound like Christopher Hitchens, at least on this subject.

Posted by jnfr at 12:26 PM | Comments (0)

April 23, 2007

Meanwhile...

I know I should be obsessed with politics today — there's so much going on. But I'm really waiting for tonight's new episode of "Heroes".

Posted by jnfr at 06:10 PM | Comments (0)

April 20, 2007

Friday Funnies

Top Secret Government Alien UFO Invasion Film

I know this really dates me. If you love it as much as I do, it dates you too.

Posted by jnfr at 04:52 PM | Comments (0)

April 18, 2007

What Keith Said

Posted by jnfr at 09:47 AM | Comments (0)

April 17, 2007

Gwen Ifill

She spoke clearly and with compelling grace on Meet the Press, about Don Imus and his enablers in the media.

Posted by jnfr at 08:17 AM | Comments (0)

April 16, 2007

And the winner is...

From a recent Pew Research Center Report:

How to read this table:
Nationwide, 35% of Americans score in the high knowledge category...Among regular viewers of The Daily Show and Colbert Report, 54% scored in the high knowledge category.

So, watch this and become more informed:

Posted by jnfr at 10:37 AM | Comments (0)

April 06, 2007

Friday Funnies

Colbert's Lemon-Raid!

We may have already won.

Posted by jnfr at 02:25 PM | Comments (2)

March 26, 2007

Battlestar Blogging

Hell of an episode last night, though I wasn't as shocked and surprised as the preview articles led me to expect. I thoroughly enjoyed it all. Starting with Apollo's ringing speech about justice and the hypocrisy of those standing in judgement on Baltar, followed by Balter's sad walk down the hall, holding his meager possessions, free but totally alone.

And then the shockers: the reveal of four of the five unknown Cylons (if that can be trusted; I don't take anything in Galactica at face value). Four you would not have expected, either. I was sure Gaeta was one of the Five.

This Entertainment Weekly article contains interviews with Mary McDonnell, Edward James Olmos, and Ronald Moore (the show's Exec. Producer). Olmos said:

All the kids who were chosen [to be] Cylons were floored. Just stunned. I remember reading it going, Oh my god — just like people watching the show.

I guess only Olmos could call Tigh a kid.

Then Cylons appear en masse and ready to assault the humans. A freak electrical outage leaves the fleet unable to jump away. So the Viper pilots rush out to engage the enemy, and Apollo is among them. And who does he find there in space?

Well, I always said I didn't think Kara was gone for good, though I don't think she's still among the living either. I guess we'll have to wait for frakking 2008 to learn more. Whatever convinced the producer to leave us hanging that long?

For those who want to know more about the musical choice in this episode, the man who scored it has written about the song.

The song link was taken from a commenter in the official Pandagon thread on this episode.

Screenshots courtesy of My TiVo.

UPDATE: Well, if this interview with Ronald Moore is truthful, and it certainly sounds truthful, the reveal was an honest one and we have found out who four of the Five are.

Posted by jnfr at 03:34 PM | Comments (0)

March 01, 2007

No comment

Posted by jnfr at 10:08 AM | Comments (0)

February 12, 2007

Another happy day

At the Grammys, Making Very Nice

The Dixie Chicks Take Five, Including Album of the Year

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 11 The Dixie Chicks got the last laugh Sunday night. Rejected by the country establishment, the polarizing group was tickled to find itself in the warm embrace of the broader Recording Academy, which honored the Chicks with five Grammy Awards -- including the three biggest: album of the year, record of the year and song of the year.

The Texas trio also won for best country group vocal and best country album. The latter award was especially surprising, since they were excommunicated from the church of country music in 2003 after singer Natalie Maines popped off about President Bush and the war in Iraq. Upon bouncing to the podium after the result was announced, Maines said what just about everybody inside Staples Center was probably thinking: "That's interesting." She closed her gaping mouth just long enough to grin mischievously, then said, "Well, to quote the great Simpsons, 'HA HA!' "

"Not Ready to Make Nice," the group's defiant answer to the angry country fans who'd criticized the group for criticizing Bush, won song of the year, the industry's top songwriting award. "I am, for the first time in my life, speechless," Maines said. ...

Congratulations to the Dixie Chicks, who stood up for what they believed and weathered the nasty storms.

Posted by jnfr at 08:57 AM | Comments (1)

April 01, 2006

The Well turns 21

Twenty-one years ago today The Well opened for logins. In Internet time that was eons ago. The Well was one of the earliest bulletin boards in existence, and one of the best-known. It mostly hosted conversations by people in northern California. Orginally, "Well" stood for "Whole Earth 'lectronic Link", and for a long while it was run by the same folks who published the Whole Earth Review and Co-evolution Quarterly.

I spent a lot of years living and working in the alternative culture, and I read about the Well more than once. I wrote the dial-up number on a notebook and I carried it around for years. But I didn't have a computer back then, and I didn't live in California, so the early years of the Well passed me by.

When I finally did settle in with my own computer and a place to dial from, it was October of 1993. I logged into the Well, and I've never left. I didn't like it at first. The Unix-driven environment was hard to understand, and like any long-standing community it had many in-groups and out-groups, its own mores and language and shared understandings that I didn't share.

But it was also full of really smart, funny people, talking about dozens of interesting subjects, and brimming over with new things to learn. So by the time I'd been there a few months, I was hooked.

I learned how to use the message board software. I even learned a little Unix. I got to know the people, and eventually met some of them in the flesh. I started playing online in Muses, where I met the stranger who never seemed like a stranger who eventually became my husband. I made a few fast friends, and learned to cope with the people I disliked. I learned and learned and learned. And to this day I still do.

There's never a day that goes by where the people of the Well fail to amuse me, teach me, or astound me with their brilliance. They also annoy me, shock me, and dismay me with stupidity. In every way they mirror the human condition, and they mirror myself, and I love them all intently, even the ones I really dislike.

The Well also led me to the Internet, via a gateway which made me promise, every time I used it, that I would never use the Internet for commercial purposes.

Yes, it's true. I didn't use the Internet to get to the Well. That wasn't really possible for ordinary people back in the day. I dialed in long-distance, paying by the minute and paying the Well by the hour. And I have never made a lot of money, so you know it was important. Eventually I signed on via the Compuserve Packet Network, which charged me by the hour but cost much less than AT&T. And then came netcom and my first flat-rate dial-up 'net access.

Boy, these years have gone by fast. I loved using gopher to rummage around the Smithsonian databases. I never quite figured out WAIS searches. Everything back then was text-based, and the web pages we visited were all in ASCii, rendered by lynx. But the first time a Well friend invited us over to his T1-connected computer at NOAA and showed us video from a space shuttle streaming from out of nowhere, the World Wide Web had me hooked. I used the Well to get to the Internet, and it led me to an even wider virtual world.

Today most people think that the web is all there is, and the Well is home to only a few thousand dedicated talkers. It remains one of the few for-pay message board systems in existence. The software (called picospan) runs rings around anything you've seen in web forums or commenting systems. We also have a web interface now, and I use that a lot but the web seems sluggish in comparison. The people are still smart and funny and irritating as ever. Still mostly from California too, though we have a lot of members around the U.S., and even a few from the rest of the world.

I've seen the Well go through a couple of different owners since I joined. Currently we're a subset of Salon, and they're trying to sell us off, so the future is uncertain. But then, the future usually is uncertain.

This afternoon, when I was with a couple friends toasting the Well's 21st birthday, we asked ourselves if there was any chance it could last another 21 years. Who knows? People have been predicting the imminent demise of the Well nearly forever, and we're still here, so maybe there's a chance. I hope so. The Well is a small treasure of the 'net, and in its own way it is irreplaceable. At least, I've never found anyplace I liked so well, and I've seen a lot of communities in my life, online and off.

Posted by jnfr at 06:18 PM | Comments (8)

March 28, 2006

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Posted by jnfr at 07:39 PM | Comments (0)

December 08, 2005

In Memorium

In My Life

There are places I remember
All my life though some have changed
So forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I've loved them all

But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one who compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new
I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more

Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more

Lennon/McCartney

Posted by jnfr at 07:31 PM | Comments (0)

July 22, 2005

It is Dominion we are after

Just to make clear who and what I was referring to in that last post, let me post this quote, which I found at Theocracy Watch. These are the people that the current administration is allied with, and beholden to.

Author and educator George Grant was Executive Director of Coral Ridge Ministries for many years. He explains in The Changing of the Guard, Biblical Principles for Political Action:

Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ -- to have dominion in civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness.

But it is dominion we are after. Not just a voice.

It is dominion we are after. Not just influence.

It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time.

It is dominion we are after.

World conquest. That's what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish. We must win the world with the power of the Gospel. And we must never settle for anything less... Thus, Christian politics has as its primary intent the conquest of the land -- of men, families, institutions, bureaucracies, courts, and governments for the Kingdom of Christ. (pp. 50-51)

Posted by jnfr at 11:16 AM | Comments (5)

July 12, 2005

I agree with Dana Stevens

I don't like the new set of The Daily Show. I want the sofa back, for all the reasons Stevens outlines so well.

Posted by jnfr at 04:54 PM | Comments (0)

February 21, 2005

Hunter Thompson

Fear and Loathing in America: Beginning of the End

It was just after dawn in Woody Creek when the first bomb hit New York City this morning, and as usual I was writing about sports. But not for long. Football suddenly seemed irrelevant, compared to the scenes of destruction and utter devastation coming out of New York on TV.

Even ESPN was broadcasting war news. It was the worst disaster in the history of the United States, including Pearl Harbor, the San Francisco earthquake, and probably the battle of Antietam in 1862, when 23,000 American soldiers were slaughtered in one day.

The battle of the World Trade Center lasted about 99 minutes and cost 20,000 lives in two hours (according to unofficial estimates as of midnight on Tuesday). The final numbers, including those from the supposedly impregnable Pentagon, across the Potomac River from Washington, will likely be higher. Anything that kills 300 trained firefighters in two hours is a world-class disaster.

And it was not even Bombs that caused this massive damage. No nuclear missiles were launched from any foreign soil, no enemy bombers flew over New York and Washington to rain death on innocent Americans. No. It was four (4) commercial jetliners.

They were the first flights of the day from American and United Airlines, 'piloted' by skilled and loyal U.S. citizens, and there was nothing suspicious about them when they took off from Newark, Logan, and Dulles on routine cross-country flights to the West Coast with fully loaded fuel tanks -- which would soon explode on impact and utterly destroy the world famous Twin Towers of downtown Manhattan's World Trade Center. Boom! Boom! Just like that.

The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the U.S. or any other country. Make no mistake about it: we are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that strange and mysterious enemy for the rest of our lives.

It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy. Osama bin Laden will be a primitive 'figurehead' -- or even dead, for all we know -- but whoever put those all-American jet planes loaded with all-American fuel into the 110-story-high Twin Towers and the Pentagon did it with chilling precision and accuracy. The second one was a dead-on bull's eye. Straight into the middle of the skyscraper.

Nothing ever Claimed by George W. Bush's $350 billion 'Star Wars' missile defense system could have prevented Tuesday's attack, and it cost next to nothing to pull off. The efficiency of it was terrifying. Fewer than 20 unarmed Suicide soldiers from some apparently primitive country somewhere on the other side of the world took out the World Trade Center and half the Pentagon with three quick and costless attacks on one day. That is terrifying.

We are going to punish somebody for this attack, but just who or where will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once. Who knows? Not even the Generals in what remains of the Pentagon or the New York papers calling for war seem to know who did it or where to look for them.

This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed -- for anyone, and certainly not for a baffled little creep like George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child-President has been chose by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it off. He can declare a National Security Emergency and clamp down Hard on Everybody, no matter where they live or why. If the guilty won't hold up their hands and confess, he and the Generals will ferret them out by force.

Good luck. He is in for a profoundly difficult job -- armed as he is with no credible Military Intelligence, no witnesses, and only the ghost of Bin Laden to blame for the tragedy.

Okay. It is 24 hours later now, and we are not getting much information about the Five Ws of this thing. Not even the numbers of dead and wounded can be established. CNN reports more than 800 people standing in line to donate blood at St. Vincent's Hospital in Greenwich Village, but only fewer than 500 victims brought to the Emergency Room.. The numbers don't add up. I am confused.

The numbers out of the Pentagon are baffling, as if Military Censorship had already been imposed on the media. It is ominous. The only news on TV comes from weeping victims and ignorant speculators.

The lid is on, Loose Lips Sink Ships. Don't say anything that might give aid to The Enemy.

ESPN.com Page 2, September 12, 2001.

Posted by jnfr at 03:28 PM | Comments (0)

February 13, 2005

The first time in my life

that I ever wished I lived in New York City.

Posted by jnfr at 07:24 PM | Comments (0)

November 24, 2004

Gay porn in the Italian Senate!!

Guess they haven't been updating their virus checkers.

Posted by jnfr at 04:10 PM | Comments (0)

November 16, 2004

Forced commercials!

If this new law really gets rammed through in this lame duck session, not only will it undo fair use of copyrighted materials, you'll be a criminal if you use your TiVO to skip any commercial material at all! Write your Congresspersons.

UPDATE: Boy, I'm having a hard time looking at this lighthearted post sitting here surrounded by death and destruction. But I can't think about death and destruction all the time; I couldn't continue if I did.

Posted by jnfr at 10:55 AM | Comments (0)