arse poetica

Human Doings

Odd sign I saw this afternoon in the bar where db and I met our pals JM and PM for a quick drink to celebrate JM's happy news. Odder still: the rednecks who gave db grief for taking a picture of the sign. Whatevs, dudes. How do they know we're not going to spread the word and help DR out? Pfft.

What a day. Maybe this will be a public service announcement after all. Ready? Do yoga! My pal PM and I did yoga this afternoon, and everything about it was wonderful. Walking out of work at 11:45 a.m. and across campus under the gorgeous trees and the warm sun (nice and warm for the first few minutes because my office is cold), being in a beautiful space, stretching and breathing and moving in the middle of the day, walking back with senses alive, staying in my yoga clothes for the rest of the afternoon, because I just didn't feel like changing into my jeans, doing my work on the porch (though more chatting than working). Then capping the day off w/ drinks and dinner w/ pals after work. I don't want summer to end.

Post title comes from our yoga teacher's reminder to just let ourselves be, that we are human beings not human doings. How easy it is to forget that. Before yoga -- true story -- I thought to myself: I'll just bring this work w/ me and read over it on my walk and before class starts. How damn unyoga-ish is that?? Best thing about yoga for yours truly: brain OFF.

Faster, Internet! Thrill! Thrill!

Suh-weet! Everything's better in my fantasy homeland!

Swedish Woman Gets Superfast Internet.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- She is a latecomer to the information superhighway, but 75-year-old Sigbritt Lothberg is now cruising the Internet with a dizzying speed. Lothberg's 40 gigabits-per-second fiber-optic connection in Karlstad is believed to be the fastest residential uplink in the world, Karlstad city officials said.

In less than 2 seconds, Lothberg can download a full-length movie on her home computer -- many thousand times faster than most residential connections, said Hafsteinn Jonsson, head of the Karlstad city network unit.

Jonsson and Lothberg's son, Peter, worked together to install the connection.

The speed is reached using a new modulation technique that allows the sending of data between two routers placed up to 1,240 miles apart, without any transponders in between, Jonsson said.

''We wanted to show that that there are no limitations to Internet speed,'' he said.

Oooooooh. I'm jealous, because apparently a T-1 connection is not fast enough for me. I hate waiting even 1 second (2 is unbearable) for a page to load. Dial up? Bah! Never again!

Ingmar Bergman, Famed Film Director, Dies at 89

Unmatched. His films are legend and, as they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I always loved French and Saunders' send up of Bergman.

Ingmar Bergman, Famed Film Director, Dies at 89.

Ingmar Bergman, the “poet with the camera” who is considered one of the greatest directors in motion picture history, died today on the small island of Faro where he lived on the Baltic coast of Sweden, Astrid Soderbergh Widding, president of The Ingmar Bergman Foundation, said. Bergman was 89.

Critics called Mr. Bergman one of the directors — the others being Federico Fellini and Akira Kurosawa — who dominated the world of serious film making in the second half of the 20th century.

And Now Slavery. Of Course.

You know, maybe we live under a mass hallucination and the Bush Cheney madministration didn't really happen to us after all. Maybe all of this is just a deeply manipulative and ethically corrupt science experiment to measure human limits for managing the untenable reality of Cheney White House corruption. Maybe? Possibly? Anyone? Bueller?

Because after electoral fraud, perjury, graft, rejection of habeas corpus and the Geneva conventions, spying on Americans and general disregard for the Constitution, deception of the highest order in every level of governing, war crimes, treason, and torture, I guess slavery was just f*cking inevitable.

Slave labor used to contruct U.S. Embassy In Baghdad.

Testimony today at the House Oversight Committee by Rory Mayberry, former subcontractor w/ the firm responsible for constructing the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, who asserts that Filipino nationals were used as slave labor on the project:

Mr. Chairman, when the airplane took off and the captain announced that we were heading to Baghdad, all you-know-what broke out on the airplane. The men started shouting, it wasn’t until the security guy working for First Kuwaiti waved an MP5 in the air that the men settled down. They realized that they had no other choice but to go to Baghdad.

Let me spell it out clearly: I believe these men were kidnapped by First Kuwaiti to work at the US Embassy… I’ve read the State Department Inspector General’s report on the construction of the embassy. Mr. Chairman, it’s not worth the paper it’s printed on. This is a cover-up and I’m glad that I’ve had the opportunity to set the record straight.

Dear God. Your tax dollars at work.

It's Articles Like This That Make Me Want to Jump Off a Cliff

I know! We could do an entire article in the paper of record about how no one can hear your message if everyone's talking about your clothes/hair/cleavage, which just aren't important but they really, really are, because secretly they tell us if you're gay or you're butch, because that is apparently the most important indicator of leadership potential, so we revel in these ever-changing codes and distractions and play at pooh-poohing these LCD "concerns" while perpetuating high drama at the expense of our ever-floundering democracy.Yeah!

Yes, we really need to jawbone this to death, because it is so relevant and meaningful, and adds so much to the discourse. Thank God it takes up valuable column inches in the New.York.Times.

Campaign Chic: Not Too Cool, Never Ever Hot.

“You neither want to be seen as somebody who cares too much about appearance or too little,” said Jay Fielden, the editor of Men’s Vogue. His magazine’s July-August cover shows John Edwards looking model-handsome and yet sufficiently populist. He wears, as Mr. Fielden pointed out, a Carhartt field coat from his own closet, presumably in an attempt to deflect scrutiny away from his wealth, his North Carolina McMansion and his costly grooming habits and toward the antipoverty agenda he pursued last week on a sweep through the South.

Please, baby Jeebus, please. I can't take any more! What, pray tell, is "looking sufficiently populist"? And how, pray tell, does one ensure that a Carhartt coat deflects from one's wealth, and why, pray tell, does that have anything to do w/ anything??

“There’s a strict code that’s kind of understood, but that you know these guys can’t talk about,” said Mr. Fielden, referring to sartorial guidelines whose very existence is subject to Beltway omerta. “If you get into a situation like McCain did, it ends up seeming like you’re being dressed by your mother. It’s not very macho.”

What "situation" did McCain get in? The completely manufactured one about "gay sweaters"?

Please, baby Jeebus, please, the Repugnicans have ruined our country. They've lied us into wars, looted the treasury, rendered entire words meaningless, lied, cheated, and stealed in every possible aspect of governing, engaged in an unprecedented and anti-Constitutional powergrab, and created a foreign policy based on torturing anyone who gets in our way. Why in heaven's name would "macho" be a positive consideration?

So, when a candidate appears to be dressed by others, immediately that candidate is interpreted “as gay or effeminate or not butch enough to be president,” Professor Miller said.

::ae falls in a heap weeping::

There's more (and worse), but I just don't have it in me to go on.

Flip

˙ǝuılpɐǝp ʎɯ ɹǝʇɟɐ dn ǝʞɐʍ ı uǝɥʍ ǝɹoɯ

¿ɥǝ 'ǝʇnɔ ˙ʍou ʇɥƃıɹ ɹoɟ ʎƃɹǝuǝ uıɐɹq ǝɥʇ ǝʌɐɥ ı llɐ ʇnoqɐ sı sıɥʇ

..........................

Want to send a special someone a secret message of your own?

[via]

Everything Will Be OK

On January 20, 2009.

[photo: ae | Asheville, NC | June 2007 ]

John Edwards, How Tweet It Is

Missed the Dem YouTube debate (though I caught the derision @ Wonkette), but I had the chance to catch the post-debate Q&A at johnedwards.com -- which I heard about directly from John Edwards on Twitter. Edwards' Twitter updates are 1) frequent and 2) worthwhile, and I have to admit I think it's a great idea for him to embrace this potentially fadish, now rampant technology, too. Edwards is the Dean of 08.

Anyhoo, he did a great job in answering the questions I heard. He was relaxed, respectful, even in tone, sincere, savvy, and straddled the line well between policy wonk and accessible to the rabble. He's never too wonky, never too flip. I was disappointed in his use of the phrase "secure the borders" in his discussion of immigration --man, do we need a new discourse in this country -- but his answer to the question about farm families/food distribution was amazing. It's astonishing how ill-informed dumbyass is. Though this is hardly news any longer, I cannot help but be astonished still.

Oddly (?), this exchange, sitting alone in a room reading from a computer screen the questions that folks submitted electronically (see screenshot), made Edwards seem more human. He was quiet, patient, possibly a little tired, and respectful of the queries he got. But then I'm predisposed to like him, unlike my coworker who, when I asked if Edwards had a chance in 08, looked at me w/ pity in her eyes and said, "bless his heart."

Oof.

Global Warming Flooding

An incredible shot of the flooding around around Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, England (Stephen Hird/Reuters). It's even scarier when you click and enlarge it.

Heavy Floods Inundate Britain, Texas and China.

Flood waters caused misery, cut essential services and forced evacuations in widely spaced parts of the globe today, including southwest England, Texas and Asia.

Thousands of people were forced from their homes in Gloucestershire and Herefordshire in western England after a month of heavy rain forced the rivers Thames and Severn out of their banks and into neighborhoods. More than 48,000 homes in those areas were without electricity as the flooding closed a power plant.

Clean water supplies were also threatened as water plants were inundated and more rain was in the forecast.

The country’s Environmental Agency warned that water could rise to a “critical level” in the affected areas and issued nine severe flood warnings for different regions. People in the areas covered by the warnings were advised to evacuate their homes.

“The situation is looking critical at the moment,” a spokesman for the agency said. “Unfortunately, the misery is set to continue.”

In south and central Texas, the floods began receding after 17 inches of rain fell in some areas over the weekend. Helicopters were used to rescue dozens of people isolated by flooded roads. An Amtrak train was stopped about 75 miles west of San Antonio after rising water covered the tracks.

[snip]

In Asia, the monsoon rains produced the usual floods, landslides, evacuations and loss of life. In China alone, more than 150 people were reported to have died in the last week and 3 million were displaced across vast tracts because of the heavy rain.

The usual? Inured to disaster, are we?

God Bless the Interwebs

I don't know why, but these things always give me hope for humankind.

1500 Filipino Inmates Do Thriller.