The juice of love’s fruit is sweet
but it is of such quantity
as the skin and meat
which contains it allows
and only then as much
as the Earth has seen fit to package
by its mysterious and knowing hand
and only again as much as the lover’s hands can hold
and mouth drink
In response to this article on a “terror” group caught in NC.
TERROR GROUP Geez, I’m quaking in my boots with fear, aren’t you?…. come on … “Prosecutors said the arrests show that the threat of terrorism is still very real.” Give me a break… weekend warriors who were taken without incident… so I guess this means keep dehumanizing me at airports and keep listening in on all U.S. citizens’ phone calls and what I’m typing right now.. geez
From the article: “These charges hammer home the point that terrorists and their supporters are not confined to remote regions in some faraway land but can grow and fester right here at home,” said United States Attorney George E. B. Holding.
The point that is “hammered home” is that we must be a bunch of scared little chicken sh*ts, if this is what we were supposed to fear AND what we are looking for. Imagine how much cash wasted on this? Funny, you look for muslims doing something strange, you find them. How were these people “growing” and “festering”? Just a bunch of rednecks, like the rest of us… geez
It gets worse:
“There was no indication Boyd wanted to attack targets in the US or in NC, but Emerson said it “certainly tells us that Al-Qaida, and other like-minded groups, are very active in the US to this very day and are able to secure weapons, train, raise funds, and even travel overseas to carryout Jihad in the belief that carrying out Jihad is mandatory.”
It CERTAINLY tells you that Al-Qaida, WHAT? It tells you NOTHING about Al-Qaida, because Al-Qaida is not involved. It’s like telling you that NC State will win the NCAA next year because Duke did this year. Not connected all… just throwing a name to scare.
“secure” weapons, “train”, “raise funds”, “carryOUT”– GEEZ SICKENING! They didn’t do crap but go around pretending they were military anything… like half of the Southern population. Tough guys, for sure.
“I do know that one of the individuals that participated in the plot, in the conspiracy, became an informant for the government,” he said.
AND the cooker! They were infiltrated and ratted out. That’s how the IBF gets it done. Very brave, indeed. Oh yeah, and bring in SWAT team… geez…
I have VMWare Server 2.0 running on an Ubuntu Intrepid host with a Windows 2003 Server guest OS. The network speed, evidenced by SAMBA/SMB connections, was a crawl compared with other XP guests. I scratched my head for a long time. THE SOLUTION: Change the guest VM “Number of Processors” setting from 2 to 1. Network speed goes back to expected speed.
I used Intel PRO 100/1000 NICs, so I thought I might have a bug that was described which required turning off certain features on the card with ethtool. I tried proprietary drivers… I tried putting a different model NIC in… nothing seemed to work.
So, I installed Jaunty and latest VMWare Server 2.0.1 on another box to see if it was a host OS problem that Jaunty would fix over Intrepid. This old box happened to have one processor, so I set the VMs for that, and realized, by the MOST COUNTER-INTUITIVE WINDOWS CRAP on the planet, that this may have been the difference.
In life it is far better to have been a hammer or saw than a nail or board
So I have been taking quite a bit of time I do not have to figure out how to create a Table of Authorities for a legal brief I have to write in Pages (OS X, iWork, Mac). Short answer is: You can’t do it. You can do light Table of Contents, but no index like function. But, OpenOffice can do it right…. with a lot of hassle.
However, if you need to do citation management and bibliography for law/legal or science journals that can be done using BibDesk AND Jim Harrison’s VERY helpful CiteInPages. This won’t get you page numbers associated with citations as needed for a TOA, but it will help you cite.
For simple documents, you can use the Alphabetical Index feature of OpenOffice. Just mark each case (only the short-cite.. e.g. Marbury) in the cite. Then INSERT the index into your document on the Table of Authorities page and choose Combine Identical Entries. This will give each entry in the table as the Short-Cite case name and then all the pages on which it appears.
DON’T WORRY ABOUT THIS FOR BASIC TOA: BUT,IF for some reason you need to include the page numbers like “i,ii” AND “1,2,3″ in the same table, you will need to create a Master Document and make sure that each sub-document has a unique Page Style. This will get the page numbering correct.. e.g. “Marbury……………………. i,iii,1,3,5″. If you do not not structure the master document/sub-document you will get “……….. 1,3,5,i,iii” because open office sorts numbers before letters WITHIN THE SAME DOCUMENT. But, using master/sub-document lets you control this.
I can’t speak to the hacker news consumption side, except for my early temporary watching of slashdot, which I compare to my early experiences with micro-brews. I have moved on generally. I can speak to the indymedia / news production side of things (as opposed to consumption). I posted an article in response to a poster on portland.indymedia.org about indymedia being “dead”. It is over here: http://www.salaud.net/blog/?p=50 and I think that Rabble and I share a lot of common perspective on this…. I would not go so far as to say that iReport.COM or the others are like what indymedia does in the sense of the intent/method.
I see the intent/method as being more important than the ends…. the means are more important. In the same way, I believe that a possible solution to the problem that Rabble is describing is that, just like indymedia, the alpha-hackers (did I just say that?) need to create an INTENTIONAL community. This intentional community can choose whether to sell out its space or not. If the ends are “get page hits”…. that’s one choice, if the ends provide a space for open-publishing of RELEVANT information, that’s another. Just as in a gentrification, which I agree is loaded word, it does not really matter, except in extreme cases, whether hipsters or bohemes WANT to buy homes or businesses in the area, the people already living there have to SELL OUT. Some cases, of course, the city forces out undesirables by taxes or other things. Long story short, prosperous, informative, and empowering hacker news sites need to have PRINCIPLES of unity that are not sold out. If they do this, then a few of these intentional communities will not turn into roving tent cities.
So… in what one can only think is the shaming of the whOregonian newspaper into running a full-page photo and headline about the “opposing” story about a car giving a bicyclist a hard time, the headline is now “Driver chases Cyclist”… again… forget several times in the last 12 months that “Driver kills cyclist with car”… and forget that days ago we had “Cyclist CLUBS driver with his bike”.
Things we know:
1) The Oregonian hates cycling and would love to turn back the clock. 2) The Oregonian loves to sell newspapers… flashy headlines sell. 3) What the Oregonian ADVOCATES, based on its reach/distribution is INCITED.
Let’s take it step by step…
1.. We know based on the phraseology of the headlines and the content of the stories (and anyone who has every glanced at an Oregonian) that the rag is a conservative/PBA stronghold. It is clear that from their perspective that everyone should obey “the law” … and that the law has no context other than that which is “good” for everyone. Never mind the fact that there may be any differences between the people that pay for the laws and the people needing to obey them (ie… bicyclists). In the minds of their editors, like many people stuck in their own little boxes, everyone should obey stop signs and lights, even if they make no sense for that type of transport…. everyone should, in effect, regress to the mean. It doesn’t matter that if you hit a cyclist who ran a light/sign with a car that you do not die, but they do… as opposed to if a car runs a light/sign and hits another car.. et cetera. It’s similar to the NIMBY crap….. e.g. “If I have to sit in traffic, then you have to sit in traffic.” BORING… … OLD FASHIONED!
Cyclists do not generally obey signs/lights because it makes no sense for that type of transportation. Many car drivers in portland do not obey stop signs because, (TA DA!) the stops signs make no sense where they are. Somehow there is this insistence by these conservative newspaper editors (who choose the headlines, by the way) that cyclists “just need to follow the rules.” Who made the rules? What types of vehicles were the rules made for? These questions, especially in the oil crunch, lay naked the fundamental problems with government, capitalism, the status quo. Those, like cyclists, who conserve resources and reap benefits, versus those who consume resources and sit in traffic. That which is outside the “paradigm” and makes more sense, but frustrates those stuck in the box (not the green one), versus those who are bitter because their way is obviously not sustainable.
2) I love the word “War” below:
War between bikes and cars? Not in Portland Bike culture vs. car culture? Nope. Despite two wild and widely publicized confrontations between cyclists and motorists this month, Portlanders who cruise around on four wheels are not out to get those pedaling on two — or vice versa — Portland police and others say.
Over at BikePortland there is a good set of postings about what they term a media “frenzy” about conflicts between bikes and cars. I think the word “frenzy” takes the word “war” and associated headlines and full-page pictures too much at face value. There is no frenzy…. it is very well planned…. or at least, reactionary. The initial headline that the whOregonian ran about ‘CLUBBING’ was an attempt to discredit cycling in Portland. The popularity of that topic caused them, as well as OPB (wisely) to continue to sell stuff.
My point here is that any buzz is good buzz. The whOregonian may have exposed itself nakedly as anti-bike culture, but that realization especially for the readers which it leads around by the nose, will quickly vanish, if anyone ever realized, down the memory hole.
3) If I were one to mince words I would say the initial article about ‘CLUBBING’ with a bicycle was “irresponsible”. “Irresponsible” is a word that people use as a proxy for evil. Take heart conservatives, your fearless leader McBama.. Clinton …OCain….. I mean, Bush would say that this newspaper is merely creating a discussion around the issue. However, the truth is that the Oregonian’s initial article and obvious condemnation of cyclists, INCITES the car driving public to harm against cyclist. For worse (I can’t bring myself to say “better”) the Oregonian’s level of readership gives it a status-quo or status of reliability in the mainstream community. When it essentially says that “Bikers are bad” in one article, the driving public feels sanctioned and goes out CREATES more antagonism. When it turns around and says, “but a drivers sometimes do bad stuff too”, it sells more papers, but the damage is already done to the community. The is no coincidence between the level of antagonism in the community during the period of these articles by the Oregonian… the Oregonian’s articles THEMSELVES are the ones that CREATE and SANCTION the antagonism.
The fact that the, essentially, third article says .. “but there really is no ‘war’” could/should have very well come from a staff lawyer at the whOregonian advising them that THEY THEMSELVES MAY BE HAVE INCITED the violence and antagonism seen immediately following their first article. Creating the illusion of even handedness after the success of creating a stir.
So it is not irresponsibility which allows this series of full-page headlines and pictures, but a depraved indifference to human life. Car drivers kill bikers… bikers do not kill car drivers. To the Oregonian’s editors it is just a question of who finishes the morning/afternoon commute first, to the bikers of Portland it is a question of who finishes it at all.
In response to this article on the “death” of indymedia:
A few of the smaller sites have definitely become less well maintained or gone “dark”. But, some of these sites were never well maintained to start with. The bulk of the network (which is freakin’ huge) is still going very strong. However, unlike corporate media, indymedia can’t MAKE UP news when there is not much. There, in my opinion, is not really a lot going on right now in the social justice world of huge proportions, as there was at the inception of indymedia and through the defeat of the FTAA and WTO, using indymedia as the primary vehicle for carrying the information to and away from those major events. There is a, more or less, always a war and always a “natural” flow to events. Indymedia is a tactic that is a CONDUIT for what is happening in the community. Portland, even in the social just famine times, still has enough social justice activity going on to support a pretty fast moving newswire. However, some smaller locales have “single issues” or not enough community posting to keep inertia through the famine. In Portland, the indymedia tactic is sustainable. There is, like anything that grows over time, a period of digging deeper roots, of sending up more trunk, of sprouting new leaves, and inevitably some die-back that makes room for even more of the plant to grow itself.
Indymedia is in it for the long haul. More than anything indymedia is, like the rest of the tactics/energy born of the anti-globalization movement, like a dog that caught the car that it was chasing after. It is hard to know what do next when you won. It is obvious that Content Management Systems, open-publishing (including blogs), is an area which indymedia pioneered for the news/media domain. It is a great part of the mission of indymedia to make open-publishing of original reporting, commentary and analysis from the community a big “DUH… of course that’s how news is gather and analyzed.” Well, anyone can look around and see that part of the mission has been accomplished in many ways. Corporate media, anywhere from FoxNews websites/channels to OPB, find themselves pressured by the expectations raised by indymedia tactics to allow “regular folks” to report or aid in the reporting… or at the very least comment and discuss articles/pieces on their sites. The corporate media and “professional journalists” bitch and whine about lack of accountability or standards or whatever it is that tries to keep them in control of their jobs and minds of their “masses”, but look… they’re doing exactly what they say they hate about indymedia….real “unqualified” people telling their stories. Indymedia has generated the expectation of at least an “appearance” of involving community input in almost every corner of the news. Even in the whitehouse press pool there are “bloggers” who now hold some sway. This phenomenon, giving voice to the formally voiceless, the other main prong of the indymedia mission has been successful by helping people to find their voice, trusting their own writing/reporting and launching their own websites (blogs) or projects. So, the questions are of the type, “what now?”
Actually, it is very easy to see that even these appearances of asking for community input from corporate media or “independent” media make them no more open than they were before. Indymedia still provides the only truly open-publishing space where the community actually makes the news and where there is space enough for anyone who writes a passionate, original, local telling of first-person experience. This is especially true in the social justice community. Indymedia tactics, similarly to riseup.net and resist.ca, have a commitment to privacy, security and “no money in the process” (ie beyond non-profit).
There is actually a lot of excitement around new versions of the tech/web tools that make indymedias function on the web. The lull in much huge social justice movement gives indymedias time to re-group. There is a movement to create web/multi-media based “indymedia 2.0″ sites, and you can bet that Portland will most likely be one of the first to move to such a platform as it comes out.
In all the communities where enough stuff is actually happening, and/or the volunteers there have enough backbone and foresight, to support an indymedia or where events (like the recent No Borders Camp) are happening, indymedia is still the main avenue for getting the truth out. You can be sure that when the shit really hits the fan in next big flow of the social justice movement, whether about anti-globalization or not, indymedia will be the tactic that carries that information having both roots, flexibility, and commitment to truth and social justice that every other tactic lacks.
When is a hatchet a blunt instrument? Imagine this, if you can: Andre the Giant, Lou Ferrigno, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or more probably one of their incredible fantasy movie characters lifting a 20lb bike over their head and clubbing a poor schmuck repeatedly. Hard to believe….. but, at least possible with the strength of 3 men in one. Incredible perhaps? Well credibility is definitely the issue here. The latest whOregonian full front-page photo and headline reads: “Cyclist clubs driver with his bike”; a very blunt hatchet job. Does anyone remember the full page photos and headlines that they ran every time a biker was killed by a car in Portland: “Driver kills biker with his car” ? No? Well, that’s because they never ran such a headline.
I want to waste a couple of words to say directly how ridiculous such an assertion of “clubbing” is in the context of a large bike and how marvelously biased the whOregonian is against biking. Well, I won’t take the time to get into it because it’s not news to anyone…. and neither is this story.