Day One with the BlackBerry

The alarm is ungodly loud. I did wake up to an email from a friend I'm sweet on though, so it evens out. Apparently my comics are delayed and someone new is following me on Twitter. I found this out while in the bathroom getting ready for work. Still haven't put everyone's info in, then again I never have collected all of their information in one place before. I need to get a card adapter so I can pull all the business info off of my dad's old Palm. Beyond that, happy with it at the moment. The damn thing looks like an oversized version of my old phone.

Two Receivers in Deep Space

Urge to post...rising

Reasons Why I Should Be Shot

There are many legitimate reasons for why someone would be in their rights to painfully torture me unto death. That I spent my money on clothes and new tech versus art like James Jean's is a primary one. I will have this painting one day.

In a Coma

Work has obviously slowed what is already a spotty blog. But be assured that I will return to posting things only I care about soon. Or rather, be warned.

Taking a Page, Closing a Tab

I think this post will qualify as a genuine shotgun blast of information as I'm very tired.

First off is this excellent link provided by the near and dear Miss Information. It's along the lines of something I think college professors should do at the beginning of class or at least when the opportunity presents itself: pronounce the names of key figures in the class literature. I always have to spell out the name of a philosopher highly influential to me, Ludwig Wittgenstein (the 'w' is pronounced as a 'v') and I still don't know how to say Hegel's name properly yet. So finally there's a site that provides those pronunciations. About fucking time.

Next is a post from Ezra Klein linking to another blogger who makes a point about the raft of Obama appointees and their informal name as "Clinton staffers". The point is it seems the mainstream media and particularly the rightist punditry refer to "any Democrat under about fifty or fifty-five years of age who has had work experience in the executive branch of the federal government." This generally puts said Democrat in the Clinton administration but doesn't necessarily make them a Clinton appointee. Both Klein and Hertzberg think this isn't a problem in the first place but look to clarify the difference between President Clinton's appointments, President Bush's first term appointments and President-Elect Obama's appointments. The key differences are: a) President-Elect Obama has avoided the "no Carter people" or "no Johnson people" of the Clinton and Carter presidencies respectively based on his desire to collect the best people to do the jobs he wants done; and b) most of the Democrats with any executive experience naturally come from the Clinton administration since that was the last time the Democrats held that branch of government. So calling an appointee from the 90s a Clinton person does refer to someone but that reference is pretty meaningless since it doesn't really tell you anything about the person. More to the point, by calling on such people President-Elect Obama is looking to avoid the learning curve of White House staffing.

The final tab to close comes from Andrew Sullivan (naturally) who links to a review of Clay Shirky's book Here Comes Everybody that described both the advantages and drawbacks to distributed, or cloud, actions on the Interwibble. Where you have Flickr providing the first pictures of the 2005 London bus bombings that no news organization could have gotten you also have cloud organizations for Holocaust deniers (re: future lead pipe victims) or even terrorist cells. Shirky, through reviewer and tech security guru Bruce Schneier, speaks about the Interweb's ability to allow loose collections of people to form informal organizations with near zero financial costs and a wide latitude for collaboration and potential action. Personally, I think there's some over-stating of the matter. Loose collections of people don't necessarily evolve into informal structures and informal structures don't necessarily do anything.

Welcome Back Hack

Oh look! Krauthammer's back from his post-election rehab! And he's brought the neo-conservative word on the economy with him in the form of former AEI think-tanker Irwin Stelzer. Bad Krauthammer, you didn't cite your source. I had to go through all the trouble of googling Stelzer. I mean, when the guy you're about to use as the basis for an argument on the economy and how Capitol Hill is handling things once edited and wrote the introduction to The Neocon Reader, don't you think it's pertinent to mention that to your audience? No? Not even when the sitting president appears to have checked out and the president-elect gives all the appearance of already running the country? Not even when the appointees selected by the current president are the ones asking for the billions of dollars you mentioned (without regulation of course)? Oh, and you forgot to mention that Wall Street came running to D.C. first, not the other way around. Fuck all man, own up to your ideology's mistakes. Welcome back Krauthammer. When's your next vacation?

Capital Gains My Ass

David Kurtz mentions this item on Tuesday from Rep. John Boehner who argues that cutting capital gains taxes further would stimulate the economy more than new spending would. I'm about ready to carry around a flaming effigy of capital gains taxes if the GOP claims one more time that cutting capital gains taxes will solve the economic crisis. How the fuck would cutting taxes on investments do that? Right now there's little incentive for people to even start investing in the financial markets let alone make further investments. And investment money is not money that flows into the economic markets so there's no help for the middle class there. Yes the financial markets need help but cutting capital gains taxes isn't a real solution nor does it solve the problem of a flailing consumer market. It's a ruse of an argument allowing the GOP to give the appearence of offering a solution while not actually providing one. What's more, it's a poor ruse as most of the middle class would look at a capital gains cut as some benefiting the rich, well-invested types versus their small annuities and savings accounts that keep getting smaller. Why the GOP keeps running this argument I don't know, but it shows a lack of seriousness on the part of the House GOP to come up with real solutions to this crisis. It's almost as if the GOP has checked out for the rest of the year and left everything for the Democrats to do, which actually might not be a terrible idea at this point.

Eye Strain

Bleh, I'm done appraising things for the night. My eyes hurt from the strain of going back and forth from 10X to 2X to 3X to normal. And my head doesn't have the energy left to type the damn thing and come up with carat sizes and prices. Plus I have some music to listen to and comics to read. I really do hate appraising things.

Delays of the Final Crisis Sort

Too much reading right now. You have any idea how hard it is to figure out what's going on in Final Crisis when you spent nearly a year out of comics? Honestly, Morrison is kicking some bizarre ass on Batman but Final Crisis makes no sense right now. And Johns is building up the Lanterns for The Blackest Night event next year so no help there. Superman is tied up in the New Krypton series and I can't find the first issue of the Brainiac arc. Basically I'm lost but I won't let anyone tell me what's going on since I want to read it myself. I could type appraisals, read books on marketing, novels that are stacking up again or reading the blogs, but no, it's comics for me right now. Fucking DC and Grant Morrison.

The Fundamentalist Trapped In Reality

It's a day of Sullivan posts, sans Gilbert and Sullivan music sadly. In this post obviously the topic is Gov. Palin, her fundamentalism and fundamentalist religion in general. Sullivan is responding to the comments of a reader arguing that you cannot understand the thinking of Gov. Palin without prefacing it with an understanding of her religious background. This, of course, is true but a subject Sullivan has dealt with in his year-old book The Conservative Soul.
For Sullivan, it's not so much that figures like Gov. Palin or President Bush willfully ignore reality but their fundamentalist beliefs (such as the inerrancy of the Bible) force contradictions within the Bible itself and emperical reality that doesn't jive with the divine text into a sort of non-existence within their psyche. The only problem is reality and contradictions have a habit of continuing to intrude in one's life (such as President Bush's perception of the Iraq War and the reality on the ground). Contrary to what you might think, the schizophrenic mentality it takes to maintain the convictions of fundamentalism are not necessarily overriden by reality. With the case of Gov. Palin one sees a woman so steeped within the fundamentalist psyche that, even if you pierce through her perceptions, whatever information is conveyed is ultimately an abberation devil-derived, or further evidence of their correctness. Either way, further discussion of the topic is no longer needed. Hence the "lalalalala" attitude comes so naturally to fundamentalists while appearing freakishly psychotic to everyone else.
Even when ultimately defeated, either by a superior ideology or obsolesence through time, fundamentalists not only refuse to recognize the defeat, they claim a faltering of the faith, a conspiracy of sinners or even a Job-like test they must endure. Reality has influence over the minds of fundamentalists; it serves as a reminder of why they must maintain their faith and a confirmation of their own righteousness. Trying to sway the fundamentalist psyche is akin to deprogramming Manchurian candidates or women lost in abusive relationships. It is possible, but the break from one perceptual reality to another is traumatizing in its own right. Better to ease the fundamentalist psyche out through marginalization and natural shifts in generational thinking. It took nearly four decades to reach this point in the culture war of America but I'm optimistic that moving away from it will happen quickly--say a decade or less. At least that's what I hope.

Where Is Home (Burial Remix)

Sullivan links to an article by Fareed Zakaria that argues for a movement toward the center by President Obama, but the center of what. Going by the title of Sullivan's post alone one would have to conclude that center lies not in America. But Sullivan lets Zakaria do most of the talking as he argues that the next decade will see the global GDP driven almost entirely by the Third World. This is the New World Sullivan refers to and on national security issues as well as economic ones the strong suggestion is that President Obama move to that center versus a center between liberalism and a failed Republican ideology. Sullivan uses Zakaria's article to further his argument that true conservative ideology needs to divorce itself from the Republican party if it is to survive. But more than that, the arguments of both men are that President Obama should become a global leader again. The implied suggestion is that President Obama should ditch the hoary old idea of American exceptionalism and take the reigns of the First World to pull it out of the deepening recession. Whether that's possible is a question left unasked and unanswered. Personally, I don't have an answer either, except to let the S1W take the lead on that. I bet you Chuck D has some spare time these days.

LOLcat Saves Morning

Chuck Norris is Made of Douche-Baggery

So it seems that one Chuck Norris of interwibble fame and movie infamy has written an open letter to President-Elect Obama. Quite the read if you dare. I supposed all that masculinity Mr. Norris has built up shrank is brain. I mean, honestly, calling out a constitutional scholar to read the Constitution? That takes stupidity to a whole new level. Then again, Mr. Norris must have traveled to some far-away rock to live under since he missed the whole campaign slogan, "Yes We Can," and President-Elect Obama's contant refrain of saying that the struggles of the present and future are everyone's struggle. Norris really is coming from the Republican cocoon to make such blatentaly ignorant claims and arguments. That's all they have left? Will the real conservative party please stand up?

What He Said...

Best Obama Quote We Never Heard

From Newsweek, via Jason Zengerle at The Plank, comes what is probably the funniest thing I've heard President-Elect Obama say so far:

"So when Brian Williams is asking me about what's a personal thing that you've done [that's green], and I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.' And he says, 'I'm talking about personal.' What I'm thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I fucking changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective'."

I think had P-E Obama actually said that he would have won an extra ten percent of the public.

November 5, 2008: The Presidential Hangover

Yesterday, across the pond, the English were celebrating Guy Fawkes Day, an annual holiday held for Guy Fawkes' failure to blow up Parliament. The plot was carried out during a time when the English were trying to maintain a sense of civility and social order after the debacle of religious extremism during the English civil wars some forty years earlier in the 17th century. On this side of the pond though, yesterday marked a different sort of celebration. Not one of streaming banners and fireworks, but of a collective sobering after nearly eight years of the Bush presidency and the bitterness of politics that flowed from the White House. America experienced a cultural hangover yesterday. Today though, we have washed up, taken a shave, combed our hair and put on the shoes we wear everyday to work. Nothing physical has changed, but psychologically, everything has. And that change derives from the simple changing of titles of one man--Sen. Barack Obama was and is now President-Elect Barack Obama. We all still have the same bills, the same concerns over the economy, our health and the war on terror. But now, instead of wondering when President Bush will wake up and start leading, we have a president-elect we know can lead. It's a brand new day, if I can borrow such a sullied phrase from Marvel's forced divorce of Spider-Man and Mary Jane. But now we have hope, even those who voted for Sen. McCain. We now know hope. Today is a beautiful day.

City of the Future

What we have here is another example of the astounding architectural accomplishments, planned or nearing completion, that Dubai has brought to the world. It's part of their efforts to use the money supplied by their oil reserves to build a future economy based on tourism. And of course, any tourist destination needs iconic buildings to attract said tourist. Among the other reality defying towers planned are a skyscraper with an intention 18° tilt, a tower nearly 1/2 a mile in height and another mile tall marvel of modern architecture and engineering. Dubai is fast becoming a city of the future in the most literal sense.
For example, by 2012 the city plans to have the largest arch bridge built:

The bridge will cover a mile with twelve lanes of traffic and a metro line running through the center. Another building planned for completion next year will rotate slowly offering residents and office workers a daily view of the entire city:
The building offers communal gardens as well as a massive mall at the base. Think of it as a mixed-use building on steroids.
All of these plans defy belief but offer a glimpse of what future cities could look like. The technologies and engineering obstacles overcome during the construction of these concrete and steel wonders will make future projects in cities such as Tokyo, London and even New York all the easier. Still, one has to also marvel at the sheer insanity behind these structures. It is indeed a beautiful age to live in.

In Defense of the OC

First item of the evening is a short-form rant by myself on the biases within Dallas over which side of the Trinity River one lives on. See, originally the city was formed on the original course of the Trinity. Near the iconic Reunion tower (the shiny phallic ball on a stick) there is not only the place where Kennedy was shot but the cabin of the original settler. The river once ran closer to the cabin than it does today. However, flooding problems forced a course correction for the river, moving the Trinity about less than a mile west. Further flooding problems caused the building of massive earthen levees and any subsequent crossing of the river required a long bridge. Essentially the river and its levees divide the city in half with South Dallas and Oak Cliff existing on the western side while downtown, uptown and generally most things interesting lie on the eastern side.
Strangely though, I've noticed a certain bias against such places as South Dallas and Oak Cliff, with few people willing to escape from the bubble of East and North Dallas. Part of the stigma comes from the larger minority population on the west side of the river. That belief has tumbled into a larger belief that crime is more frequent on the other side of the bridge. Particularly within the bubble of the Park Cities there's a fear of those who come from any place west of the river. I still remember an elderly lady complaining about the new light rail line that ran from Oak Cliff to the swanky Northpark Mall and the subsequent arrival of "all those people from Oak Cliff".
So it's hard to claim that someone living on the eastern side of the river doesn't have a problem with Oak Cliff or South Dallas. While one may live among the many minorities who have spread across all of Dallas, there still exists a stigma against what lies to the west of downtown. It's too black, too Latino, too run down and...dangerous, if you didn't know. Of course, the person saying this will also claim they lack any racism or bias against Oak Cliff, latent or otherwise. I find such claims insulting in a deep sense. This is where I live, born and raised, as my parents before me and my grandparents before them.
My paternal grandfather came to Dallas in the mid '20s and settled in Oak Cliff. He took the tram to work in downtown every day, back when there was a tram, before the levees were built. Even though he is a native son of a Tennessee farm, the life blood of Oak Cliff runs deep within him. No matter how rich he became, the idea of moving out of Oak Cliff was always out of the question. It's a matter of pride, something passed down through the generations to me. I am proud of my heritage and despite the extra ten minutes living here tacks on to any drive I make to see my friends, I consider it the burden of continuing the Oak Cliff heritage.
Those who live east of the river have never dealt with the nuances of where they live. Certainly they believe in a community of East Dallas, Lakewood, the Park Cites or Uptown. Yet those communities are distinctly different from that of Oak Cliff specifically. Oak Cliff is more than a community, it's a state of mind, a way of life and a badge of honor. And the unwillingness of many on the 'proper' side of the river to venture into Oak Cliff is more than slightly irritating.
I worry about Oak Cliff becoming too insular, too self-satisfied with itself to make the effort to extend a hand of friendship across the bridges. At the same time, I see few reasons to do so as Oak Cliff has continually been ignored by the city government as well as the population at large. Oak Cliff is treated as a backwater when Dallas would not exist without it. While it will take those in Oak Cliff to make the first gestures of friendship, I still see a city divided by bias, racism and outright bigotry based on ignorance of their own communities and a belief that interest in Oak Cliff isn't worth the effort. And all of this, I believe, derives from an unwillingness of those on the east to travel into the unknown west. In other words, I believe the existence of a river that distinctly demarks one's travel from one Dallas to another keeps Dallas from becoming a whole and complete city.

The Case for Voting, or Death to the Lazy!

I'm just going to repost this in its entirety, because people are lazy and don't click through enough. Thanks to John Scalzi for making me blackout due to oxygen loss brought on by laughing too much. Fucker.

Election List X: Some of The Horrible Things That Will Happen To You If You Don’t Vote

1. Your penis will fall off. If you are a woman, you will grow a penis, which will then fall off.

2. Your peers will point and laugh at you more than they already do.

3. You will have to listen to smug voters say “if you didn’t vote, you can’t complain” for at least two years.

4. You will be consumed by pillbugs whilst you sleep. They will leave behind nothing but your penis, which as you’ll recall, has already fallen off.

5. You will smell of sour buttermilk until the next New Hampshire primary.

6. Uncontrolled flatulence.

7. Cars will swerve to hit you, even when you are inside your own home.

8. Your World of Warcraft party will turn on you and smite you mightily.

9. Impotence. And not just because your penis has fallen off.

10. Stairs will rise to trip you.

11. Boils. In Biblical plague amounts.

12. Static cling that no amount of Bounce sheets will ever cure.

13. Your cat will take a dump somewhere in the house that you will never find, and the smell will be carried through the air vents for months, all the while the cat will stare at you with that “you’re a real asshole” look they sometimes have. If you do not have a cat, one will be provided for you for the length of time required for it to crap in said undisclosed location.

14. Your credit card will be canceled and your creditors will send someone to repossess your penis. Which has fallen off.

15. Your favorite TV show will be canceled and every time you try to buy the last season on DVD, retailers will be out of stock.

16. Your children will disown you. If you have no children, you will be summarily adopted by a family, and when you attend Thanksgiving at their home, you will be told how disappointed they are in you. For six hours straight. After which they will disown you.

17. Your cabbies will henceforth always take the long route to any destination to which you travel.

18. Zombies, and you without a shotgun.

19. Everyone on your street will win the lottery. You will get a rock.

20. I swear to God, I will learn your address, come to your house, and when you open the door, I will totally kick you in the nads. Which will hurt even more because they’re the only reproductive organs you have left. Because your penis has fallen off.

I trust now you will be sufficiently motivated to vote.

The election lists are now completed. Thank you for your attention.

The Happy Opposition, The Conservative Obama

To start the morning off, via Andrew Sullivan and then Hendrik Hertzberg, we have a description of a member of the old conservative literati, Jeffrey Hart, who has become one of those loathsome Obamacons. Hart is an example of the conservative-mentor who bred the likes of Laura Ingram and Dinesh D'Souza. Despicable though those two luminaries of intellect may be, Hart is a true intellectual and seemingly recognizes the pragmatism of Sen. Obama, calling him the real conservative of this presidential campaign. More importantly, perhaps, is Hart's recognition of Sen. Obama's effectiveness as an orator, claiming that Edmund Burke would have "admired the cogency" of Sen. Obama's 2002 speech against the Iraq war. That Sen. Obama was able to effectively express his thoughts in a civil but terse way left an impression on Hart.
So now Professor Hart has come out in favor of Sen. Obama and announced that he intends to vote for the senator from Illinois. He bases his decision on the positions Sen. Obama has taken--his opposition to privitizing Social Security, the understanding of the social implications of denying women access to early abortions, and his desire to see greater stem-cell research--and the reasoning Sen. Obama has given for taking such positions.
The McCain campaign has done its best to argue that Sen. Obama is the most liberal senator there is, but what Hart sees is an individual who operates under the recognition of reality and how far one can push social change before breaking the society. Hart stands against the sacralization of conservative ideology that seeks such society-breaking change. Hart's agreement with Sen. Obama on the issues of stem-cell research and abortion is based entirely on emperical thinking, a core element of Andrew Sullivan's support for Sen. Obama. In other words, as many conservatives have come to see, Sen. Obama is no ideologue. Rather, Sen. Obama, while a progressive in his perspective, is not willing to let theory override reality, a thoroughly conservative notion.
Professor Hart is just another example of the distaste for how far conservativism has strayed from its origins under the pressures of political life. If anything, I believe Professor Hart would stand as the happy opposition to a President Obama--the opposition that challenges and improves ideas and legislation rather than aims to win political points and seats. It's policy rather than politics that drives Hart's support of Sen. Obama, a distinction few of the conservative punditry understand. It's also why Hart and his thoughts will remain relevant while those of the Laura Ingram mold will fade into obscurity.