I’m going to step up and join my voice to those “privacy experts” who are speaking out against yet still again another affront to civil rights and liberties on the part of the BushCheney juggernaut. Not only do I not think the government has a right to demand anybody’s records of anything without a warrant, and really resent those companies who kowtowed and turned them over without a fight, I don’t believe for one minute their search has anything to do with protecting children. That’s just a soft song to keep the herd passive. Information is power and these guys in Washington are totally drunk on power. They won’t stop with spying on just a few of us, for a good reason; like an alcoholic, one is too many and a thousand is never enough.

I realize they claim this was general data only, and no personal information was included, so it’s not technically a violation of privacy. But it is, you bet your bippy. Check out what Blue Collar Politics blog has to say:

If the fact that, somewhere in our nation, a child molester might use Google to look for a pervert friendly website, and we allow our government to flaunt our right to privacy by getting info from an Internet service we use, then why can’t the government enter 1,000,000 homes, without individual warrants, to search for a child who might be in danger of being molested. Or, why not allow the police to randomly enter homes in the hope that they might catch a child abuser, serial killer or someone smoking a joint?

It’s a random search. For incriminating evidence. Without a warrant. Would it be admissible? No! But it doesn’t matter, because Bush believes with all his Big as Texas heart that he has the authority to throw your cute keester in prison without charges, without a lawyer or a trial, for the rest of your natural life. It doesn’t matter because They have just gone wandering off to the autocratic zoo. It gives me the creeps, no kidding.

Of course we need to protect children from harm, of all kinds. That’s why we have police, who can get warrants from judges. And as much as we need to protect children from abuse, we need to protect them from the wholesale degradation of the American system of justice and liberty. This is not about porn, people. It’s about due process and the checks and balances of power.

Have you not met the renowned author of kids books — such as Holes — Louis Sachar? Well don’t say I never hooked you up, ’cause here’s your chance.

PC World magazine published it’s list of the 100 best products of 2005 in July. I missed it, because I let my subscription lapse. Busy, busy, busy. But I’m intrigued that I’m using the top 2 to write this post to you. #1 is the Mozilla Firefox web browser, in which I’m composing an e-mail to my blog with Google’s gmail .

Ain’t modern life cool? We’re having so much more fun than our ancestors.

Of course, there are drawbacks. For example, see that epigraph at the top, “It is what has not happened …”? It’s supposed to be two lines, broken in the middle, justified right. If you see it that way, you’re using Internet Explorer. If you see one long line, Mozilla. If you’re seeing something else, I can’t help your ass. 🙂
I can’t get it to work right in Mozilla. Suggestions?

People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.

-William Butler Yeats, writer, Nobel laureate (1865-1939)

Excerpts from the speech made by former Vice President Gore on constitutional issues, January 16, 2006. [Washington Post]

For example, as you know, the president has also declared that he has a heretofore unrecognized inherent power to seize and imprison any American citizen that he alone determines to be a threat to our nation, and that notwithstanding his American citizenship that person in prison has no right to talk with a lawyer, even if he wants to argue that the president or his appointees have made a mistake and imprisoned the wrong person.

The president claims that he can imprison that American citizen — any American citizen he chooses — indefinitely, for the rest of his life, without even an arrest warrant, without notifying them of what charges have been filed against them, without even informing their families that they have been imprisoned.

No such right exists in the America that you and I know and love. It is foreign to our Constitution.

…

“The executive branch has also claimed a previously unrecognized authority to mistreat prisoners in its custody in ways that plainly constitute torture and have plainly constituted torture — in a widespread pattern that has been extensively documented in U.S. facilities located in several countries around the world.

Over 100 of these captives have reportedly died while being tortured by executive branch interrogators. Many more have been broken and humiliated. And, in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, investigators who documented the pattern of torture estimated that more than 90 percent of the victims were completely innocent of any criminal charges whatsoever.

This is a shameful exercise of power that overturns a set of principles that our nation has observed since General George Washington first enunciated them during our Revolutionary War. They have been observed by every president since then until now.

They violate the Geneva Conventions, the International Convention Against Torture and our own laws against torture.”

OK, I needed a chuckle to help me off to bed. So I decided to check out the weather forecast at rssweather.com, which is a nice weather site. Clear, uncluttered, but a little confused.

See anything strange? Might have to click to enlarge. The forecast for 1:00am and 2:00am is “Mostly Sunny.” I e-mailed the Webmaster to let him/her know that we’re actually expecting localized heavy darkness. I dunno, it might be “Mostly Moony.”

Now I can rest, and stir again from my burrow when it’s really mostly sunny.

Stopped by the store this afternoon. Needed, inter alia, some toilet paper. Actually it says Bathroom Tissue on the package. Is that better? A rose by any other name …

They had some big deals going on with this stuff, I’ll tell ya. Big stacks of it at the ends of the aisles — $6.99 for a huge lump; I guess that’s a pretty good price. But I just wanted 4 rolls. I was using one of the little hand-held baskets, not a cart. And I’ll tell you this, it’s practically impossible for a man to carry one of those baskets and look remotely heterosexual. Unless you drop it and kick it, you’re going to look gay.

The product I chose today is called Seventh Generation. The only brand I saw, except generic 1-ply, in a 4 roll option. It’s 100% recycled, hypo-allergenic, whitened without chlorine bleach, unscented, and has no dyes. It claims to save natural resources and reduce pollution, which are not normally things I think about when using such a product in my home; I’m usually pondering the vagaries of global power. But this motto caught my attention:

“In our every deliberation, we must
consider the impact of our decisions
on the next seven generations.”
— from the Great Law of
The Iroquois Confederacy

Whoa. It’s getting mighty deep now. Do you realize what this means? It struck me instantly, and with complete conviction: My toilet paper is more environmentally responsible than the present administration of the American government. Somebody find us a Slop Jockey Man, and see if he’ll run in ’08. Tell him it’s the Green ticket, not the brown.

CCR :

Did you guys know we’re holding children – juviniles under 18 – as war criminals at Guantanamo? I didn’t. That’s … not just unAmerican, it’s freaking uncivilized.

Imprisoned by the United States since the age of 15 Omar Khadr has been held under strict security conditions, often in solitary confinement, and subject to interrogation and torture despite his status as a juvenile.

When the military commission commences on January 11, Omar will become the first individual in the modern history of any international tribunal in the world, to be tried for war crimes for conduct allegedly committed as a juvenile. This ignoble precedent of prosecuting children for war crimes – something that was not done at Nuremburg after World War II, in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, or Sierra Leone, Kosovo or East Timor – will be established through American prosecution of a Canadian child. Remarkably, Canada has not uttered a word of public criticism in response.

Are you old enough to remember the song Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd?

Hello.
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me.
Is there anyone home?

It came out in 1979 when I was eighteen, and I remember being intrigued by the idea of a question like that. Could a person be alive and not at home in his body? Amusing. Or so far withdrawn into the darkness of his psyche that he couldn’t be reached by a normal knocking on the eyelids, an insistent rap on the skull? Hmm.

Let me put it to you this way: Where are you? I know, your first answer will be something like I’m at home, in the living room, at the computer desk. OK. That’s where your body is. Where are you?

Maybe you like to think of yourself as a spark of consciousness riding around comfortably (numb) in the damp and mushy mass between your ears, looking out through your eyes. That’s sort of what it feels like, huh? Like the driver at the top of a big machine.

Let me share something I read in a book recently. And yes, I really do push away from this computer from time to time and read a bit.

“The generally accepted belief is that we humans live inside our skin bodies; that we live in there with a peculiar assortment of gadgets which enable us to navigate them around in a limited sort of way. Enclosed in these skin casings we are supposed to get information from the “outside world” through the senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. I was taught this as a youngster and was supposed not to question it as I grew older. And I didn’t for a long time. But the thing puzzled me, bothered me. I could not understand how it was possible for me to live in such a damp, dark, disagreeable, disillusioning, badly arranged, badly ventilated, and uninviting place as the inside of a human body. Nor could I reason how it was I knew so much about the outside of my body while I was supposed to be imprisoned within the thing. It did not seem to make good sense.

Then one day a wise and experience spiritual traveler told me a startling and unforgettable thing. This: that I did not live inside my material body at all. But outside of it. Completely outside of it. Said he: “That skin contraption you call your body is yours, but not you. Keep that distinction sharply in mind if you want to get anywhere in existence. Your body is yours. But not you. It is no more you – that is, the real you – than your overcoat, or your automobile, or your fountain pen. You are consciousness. You are a mental not a physical, being. That which you have been calling your body is a mental concept. It may appear to be physical substance. It may seem to be and feel very real. But sooner or later you will be compelled, in one way or another, to realize that it is a mental concept, a formation of your own thinking, and so subject to your own thinking.”


from Letters to Strongheart
by J. Allen Boone, pp. 13-14.

Now let me pose the question again. Where are you? And just to really piss you off: Where are you going?

[to be continued]

dum de dum dedum …

Oh, hello.  Didn’t see you there.  Get out from behind that ficus, please.

I suppose you’re wondering about the new — tentative — name of the blog.

metaphrast

Bless you.

met·a·phrast   n.     One who renders a text into a different form, as by recasting prose in verse.

And there you have it. 

I like apples. I really do. This past summer and fall, I started eating a lot more of them, as part of an effort to have a more healthy diet. I feel better. I especially like Fuji apples, from Washington State. Apples are high in fiber, which is nice. But I’ll bet you didn’t know this:

Finish up those autumn apples. They’re good for your brain. Apples are high in quercetin, a compound with antioxidant properties that may decrease the risk of neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s by protecting brain cell membranes. Quercetin has an even higher antioxidant capacity than vitamin C, studies suggest. Other ways to get your fill: tea, onions, and cranberries. [Link]

Can we agree it’s a great idea to try to avoid that disease? Oh yeah.