Doing homework ahead of time

I already announced that I have no plans to watch tonight’s debate. But according to Ken Layne, it doesn’t matter - the debate’s already over! (Emphasis Layne’s.)

The Associated Press filed this at noon Pacific time:

CORAL GABLES, Fla. Sept. 30, 2004 — After a deluge of campaign speeches and hostile television ads, President Bush and challenger John Kerry got their chance to face each other directly Thursday night before an audience of tens of millions of voters in a high-stakes debate about terrorism, the Iraq war and the bloody aftermath.

The 90-minute encounter was particularly crucial for Kerry, trailing slightly in the polls and struggling for momentum less than five weeks before the election. The Democratic candidate faced the challenge of presenting himself as a credible commander in chief after a torrent of Republican criticism that he was prone to changing his positions…

The debate’s focus on Iraq was sharpened by bombings in Baghdad Thursday that killed three dozen children.

Ahead in the polls, Bush could afford to settle for a debate draw while Kerry needed something to break the status quo. Some Democrats saw the debates as the last chance for a Kerry breakout.

Thursday night’s meeting at the University of Miami was the first of three Bush-Kerry debates over a two-week period. Neither side was underestimating its importance with a TV audience of 30 million to 40 million expected. Almost a third of people surveyed say the debates will be a deciding factor in how they vote…

Jesus, the media gets lazier every goddamned day. They’re just going through the motions and apparently can’t even be bothered to hide it. Read’s Layne’s post for his take on it. I’m too disgusted to comment.

Blogging off the company pier: A gentle warning

Blogging while at work? Well, of course you are. Go ahead - your job sucks, after all - but observe these important safety tips (Blogger article link defunct) and continue to be gainfully employed:

We understand that you can’t work all day. In fact, a healthy dose of intellectual distraction is necessary for productivity. Theoretically. For all we know, there may even be statistics that prove two hours of actual work per day is enough to keep the world running smoothly. In any case, a traditional boss will want to see you working when they visit your cube, not blogging. Gary Turner has got you covered with his invention: the Web Fire Escape (link defunct). Also, if your blogging is covert there is less chance of being caught in the act. We recommend using a bookmarklet to blog quicker, more efficiently, and less visibly.

[...]

Remember too that your blog posts are arranged by date and time. So it is very easy for anyone reading your blog to discover that you were posting at 10:23 AM on Monday when you were supposed to working on your TPS report. Here’s a tip: change the time of your posts. (Waveflux note: Does anyone really need to know what time you posted an entry?)

[...]

Additionally, if you think your employer might be blog-friendly, you could take preemptive actions to stave off getting “blogcanned.” Try asking if your company has a Blogging Policy and then adhere to it. Or, meet with your boss to find out if it’s okay to blog. (Waveflux note: Ha! Why not just ask to be fired? It would save time. But if you work at some socialist Neverland that smiles on blogging, then have at it.)

Take heed, blogger! George Bush’s economy is unforgiving, and the job you save may be your own.

Register. Now.

You’re either on the bus or off. Ken Layne warns that if you haven’t registered to vote, you need to do so. In person. Right friggin’ now. (Link defunct, so just trust me.)

I should’ve registered as soon as I moved to my current address, but I didn’t. Some two months ago, I finally did it by mail. The registration forms, which I got off one of those FEC-approved Web sites, were mailed to my Secretary of State — 30 miles away in Carson City. Many weeks passed and I didn’t get the little Registered Voter card. Finally, with two months passed and the deadline creeping up, I went down to my county elections office to register in person.

You want to meet some unfriendly people? Try my local elections office! After a pointless wait, a scowling woman doesn’t look away from her computer screen as I explain why I’m there. I’ve got a new, official county registration form on the proper heavy paper, all filled out neatly, no coloring outside the lines. My driver license is right there with it. She cuts me off, halfway through my brief story, and says, “You’re in the system.”

“Since when?” I ask. “I’ve been checking your little Web database twice a day.” My county has such a thing, where you can allegedly check the status of your registration.

“I don’t know since when. You’re in the system.”

“Okay. But I don’t have a registration card.” She briefly looks up to give me a really good scowl. Eventually, she admits that I’ve been “in the system” since 9:28 p.m. last night. Eventually, I figure out that the Web database is updated once a week. Still, I have no proof that I’m registered. I ask for a printout. Nope. What if I don’t get a voter registration card in time? Finally, she concedes that my driver license is acceptable ID for voting, if she takes the trouble of looking at it and clicking some box on her computer screen. I guess she clicked it.

Register in person. Get a receipt. Do it now.

You’re on the bus. Or you’re off.

Beyond debate

Have fun watching tonight’s presidential debate. I won’t be joining you. The reason’s simple: nothing’s going to be said that I haven’t heard a couple dozen times over, and I’m just not in the mood. It’s not exactly campaign fatigue…more like political skepticism. The relentlessly formatted nature of the journalist-driven events (tonight in Miami, next Wednesday in Tempe, and the veep debate in Cleveland) render them nothing like debates at all. They’re just opportunities for each candidate to spout talking points. Like I said: I’ve heard it before. The second presidential event, in St. Louis, promises to be slightly less scripted because of its town hall nature, but if these “debates” are more about political drama than discussion of the issues and actual analysis (and you know it’s so), then who needs them?

So as I said, have fun. I’ll be watching Antonio Banderas instead.

[The movie is not playing on HBO tonight, but on the DVD I rented from Blockbuster]

MacArthur bark

Both tuckergirl and P6 weighed in on the recently-awarded MacArthur Fellowships. Their reactions pretty much amount to the same thing: they want one. So do I. Who wouldn’t want to be a MacArthurite if that’s all you had to do all day?

I met one of these MacArthur genius guys a while back. Cornell Fleischer, back when he was teaching at Wash U as one of the very few Islamic studies professors in the area. Nice enough guy, and (if I remember correctly) married to an absolutely stunning woman who was also an Islamic scholar. I remember being ever so slightly envious. Of course, that was a long time ago.

The annoying thing about the MacArthur Fellowships is that you have to actually have produced something. Maybe that’s what’s holding me back, eh?

Well. Guess I better get started.

P.S. - Kevin Drum is sighing heavily as well. I feel a little better now.

The tragedy of Sudan

Via The Passion of the Present, this week’s Time cover story:

From the story:

Fifty thousand are dead, thousands more will die, and more than 1 million have lost their homes. Simon Robinson visits Darfur and witnesses what is happening while the world dithers

The first sound Zahara Abdulkarim heard when she woke that last morning in her village was the drone of warplanes circling overhead. Then came gunshots and screams and the sickening crash of bombs ripping through her neighbors’ mud-and-thatch huts, gouging craters into the dry earth. When Abdulkarim, 25, ran outside, she was confronted by two men in military uniform, one wielding a knife, the other a whip.

They were members, she says, of the Arab militia known as the Janjaweed, which over the past 18 months has slaughtered tens of thousands of black Africans like Abdulkarim across the western Sudanese region of Darfur. Another man, rifle in hand, was standing over her husband’s body while others set fire to her home. Two of the intruders, she says, grabbed her and forced her to the ground. With her husband’s body a few yards away, the men took turns raping her. They called her a dog and a donkey. “This year, there’s no God except us,” Abdulkarim says they told her. “We are your god now.” When they were finished, one of the men drew his knife and slashed deep across Abdulkarim’s left thigh, a few inches above her knee. The scar would mark her as a slave, they told her, or brand her like one of their camels. By nightfall, says Abdulkarim, more than 100 women in the town of Ablieh had been raped and dozens of people killed, including two of her sons, four of her in-laws and her husband. The only survivors in her compound were Abdulkarim and her son Mohammed, 6. “They also wanted to kill me, but when they saw I was pregnant, they released me and let me live,” she says. That was eight months ago. Sheltering in a refugee camp in neighboring Chad, Abdulkarim, her baby Mustafa playing in her lap, says she will never go home.

The regime in Khartoum continues to play for time while it oppresses its own people. The international community makes half-hearted motions toward censure that are ignored by the Sudanese government. And people keep dying. Every day.

Et tu, Iconoclast?

Sweet news from Crawford, TX, via Maryscott OConnor at Daily Kos. George Bush’s hometown paper, which had endorsed him during his first run for the presidency, has had a change of heart.

Kerry Will Restore American Dignity

2004 Iconoclast Presidential Endorsement

Few Americans would have voted for George W. Bush four years ago if he had promised that, as President, he would:

• Empty the Social Security trust fund by $507 billion to help offset fiscal irresponsibility and at the same time slash Social Security benefits.
• Cut Medicare by 17 percent and reduce veterans’ benefits and military pay.
• Eliminate overtime pay for millions of Americans and raise oil prices by 50 percent.
• Give tax cuts to businesses that sent American jobs overseas, and, in fact, by policy encourage their departure.
• Give away billions of tax dollars in government contracts without competitive bids.
• Involve this country in a deadly and highly questionable war, and
• Take a budget surplus and turn it into the worst deficit in the history of the United States, creating a debt in just four years that will take generations to repay.

These were elements of a hidden agenda that surfaced only after he took office.

The publishers of The Iconoclast endorsed Bush four years ago, based on the things he promised, not on this smoke-screened agenda.

Today, we are endorsing his opponent, John Kerry, based not only on the things that Bush has delivered, but also on the vision of a return to normality that Kerry says our country needs.

[...]

In those dark hours after the World Trade Center attacks, Americans rallied together with a new sense of patriotism. We were ready to follow Bush’s lead through any travail.

He let us down.

When he finally emerged from his hide-outs on remote military bases well after the first crucial hours following the attack, he gave sound-bytes instead of solutions.

[...]

Bush said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction trained on America. We believed him, just as we believed it when he reported that Iraq was the heart of terrorism. We trusted him.

The Iconoclast, the President’s hometown newspaper, took Bush on his word and editorialized in favor of the invasion. The newspaper’s publisher promoted Bush and the invasion of Iraq to Londoners in a BBC interview during the time that the administration was wooing the support of Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Again, he let us down.

Once and for all, George Bush was President of the United States on that day. No one else. He had been President nine months, he had been officially warned of just such an attack a full month before it happened. As President, ultimately he and only he was responsible for our failure to avert those attacks.

We should expect that a sitting President would vacation less, if at all, and instead tend to the business of running the country, especially if he is, as he likes to boast, a “wartime president.” America is in service 365 days a year. We don’t need a part-time President who does not show up for duty as Commander-In-Chief until he is forced to, and who is in a constant state of blameless denial when things don’t get done.

[...]

Kerry’s four-point plan for Iraq is realistic, wise, strong, and correct. With the help from our European and Middle Eastern allies, his plan is to train Iraqi security forces, involve Iraqis in their rebuilding and constitution-writing processes, forgive Iraq’s multi-billion dollar debts, and convene a regional conference with Iraq’s neighbors in order to secure a pledge of respect for Iraq’s borders and non-interference in Iraq’s internal affairs.

[...]

The re-election of George W. Bush would be a mandate to continue on our present course of chaos. We cannot afford to double the debt that we already have. We need to be moving in the opposite direction.

John Kerry has 30 years of experience looking out for the American people and can navigate our country back to prosperity and re-instill in America the dignity she so craves and deserves. He has served us well as a highly decorated Vietnam veteran and has had a successful career as a district attorney, lieutenant governor, and senator.

Kerry has a positive vision for America, plus the proven intelligence, good sense, and guts to make it happen.

That’s why The Iconoclast urges Texans not to rate the candidate by his hometown or even his political party, but instead by where he intends to take the country.

The Iconoclast wholeheartedly endorses John Kerry.

Iconoclastic, indeed. I think they stated the case rather nicely. Don’t you?

The price of irony: a visual aid

Via Body and Soul:

“The enemy shows no concern for the Iraqi people.” — Army spokesman Lt. Col. Jim Hutton

Jeanne D’Arc underlines the irony with accounts of Iraqi deaths at the hands of coalition forces. But sometimes you need a graphical aid to bring it home.

Hope this helps make it clear.

Interview with the officer: The Waveflux guide to impending arrest

During my last trip home, my brother and I chatted a bit about Cops. We love that show. My brother is always amused by the standard biographical spiel offered by an officer just before the lights come on and the hammer comes down. “I love this job” is how it usually goes, followed by something like “It gives you a chance to help people, help the community.” Then next thing you know, it’s “Get on the ground! Get on the ground now!” Not much touchy-feely “helping the community” jazz after that.

Most Saturday evenings will find me watching the usual two half-hour episodes of Cops. This usually follows the standard run of home shows on PBS, unless (like this week) the local affiliate is running one of their annoying, interminable, all too frequent pledge drives, in which case the home shows are replaced by Wayne-freakin’-Dyer, for the love of…but back to the topic. M usually watches Cops with me, though for the life of me I can’t explain why. One night as we witnessed the inevitable undoing of some meth dealer or other, M shook her head. “This show is all about people making bad choices,” she remarked.

“I’d say so,” I replied.

Of course people who commit crimes suffer from bad judgment; it goes with the territory. The problem on Cops - the problem in many intersections between lawbreakers and the police - is that the offender chooses to compound that initial bad choice. As a result, we have chases and shootings and other dire consequences. Many such regrettable incidents could be easily avoided, to the benefit of the offender, the officer, and society at large.

This is where yours truly, Waveflux, steps in. I am here to help.

Understand that there are indeed bad police officers out there: racists and homophobes and bullies and borderline psychopaths. However, they are relatively few in number. In my dealings with the law (and I’ve had a few, never you mind exactly how many), my officer was always professional and polite. Urban or rural, white or black, male or female; they were all very nearly courteous, actually. It’s certainly possible to aggravate any situation by way of bad choices, even situations involving heretofore polite police officers, and make it worse. Cops teaches us that, if it teaches us nothing else. However, it doesn’t have to be that way. Heed these tips and make your interview with the officer a survivable experience:

Ask not for whom the light flashes - it flashes for thee. This should not be a “judgment call.” Always assume that the squad car with the blinking lights and blaring siren wants you to pull over. If that’s not the case, you’ll know it when the officer drives by. Pull over immediately, rather than seeking a clear parking space a block away, or across town. This helps to avoid misunderstandings.

Do not attempt to flee the interview. Car chases endanger officers, fellow motorists, pedestrians, and you, the offender. Willingness to put the world at risk for your own sake does not speak well of your character, and officers take character into account when they decide how tight the handcuffs should be. Besides, officers have resources such as radios, fellow officers, spike strips, and helicopters that make flight a dubious proposition.

Sit still. You’ve pulled over; the officer is approaching. This is not a good time to move around in your car. You may want badly to stash the crack pipe or pour the beer out of the window, or to fumble for the Glock 18 you received as a graduation present. All of these are bad choices. Resist them. Instead, put the car in park, shut off the engine, and place your hands on the ten and two o’clock positions of your steering wheel. Do not get out of the car until and unless instructed to do so by your officer.

Show the papers. Surrender all documentation requested by the officer. License, registration, proof of insurance. Of course, the chances are good that you lack any or all of these documents. That’s part of being an offender. If you don’t have it, say so.

Do not pretend to be somebody else. Giving an alias never works. It takes mere minutes for the officer to determine that you are in fact Joe Blow, wanted felon, and not Bill Gates, software tycoon. Deception only irritates the officer, undermines trust, and promotes hostility.

Do not run. This bears repeating: do not run. Shows like Cops may give the impression that police officers enjoy a good foot pursuit. You may be certain that this is not the case. You’ve started the interview with an officer who is suspicious and alert; you do not want to make the officer hot, sweaty, tired, and footsore. Politeness pretty much goes out the window after a chase. You want politeness. Again: do not attempt to flee the interview.

Follow all commands promptly. Police officers usually speak in imperatives; the upside of this is that their instructions are unambiguous. “Get on the ground” is not subject to interpretation. “Put your hands behind your head” is similarly clear. You lose points by not obeying such commands quickly. Officers have an internal timer by which to measure your response. It goes like this: “one.” And that’s it. As with the flashing lights, always assume that such commands are directed toward you and not, say, the onlooker across the street.

No surprises. Children and spouses like surprises; police officers do not. This pertains particularly to anything you have on your person that can cut, puncture, or fire a bullet. Confess immediately to your interviewing officer that you have a syringe in your left pocket, or a switchblade in your right, or that Glock 18 you received as a graduation present stuffed down your crotch. While the officer will not be pleased that you have such objects on your person, volunteering this information ahead of time can spell the difference between a cordial interview and your face suddenly becoming one with the pavement.

No hide and seek. Similar to to the previous tip, but pertaining specifically to contraband in your vehicle. Trust is undermined when you deny the presence of drugs or weapons in your ‘78 Pacer and the officer subsequently discovers such items on his/her own. If it’s in there, it will be found. Lying to an police officer shows a lack of respect. Officers are big on respect. The intelligent offender keeps this in mind at all times.

Courteous is as courteous does. This speaks to the concept of respect mentioned above. Do not seek to antagonize your interviewing officer with insolent speech or a surly manner. This works against your own best interests: you want your officer calm and focused on the facts at hand. Forcing the officer to deal with bad manners on your part will swiftly turn the interview into an arrest. I’m assuming that you would like to avoid the arrest.

Stop resisting. If you hear that, it means that you have continued to make bad choices even after the beginning of the interview. Your options now are severely limited, and your prospects poor. The intelligent alternative is to give no officer cause to yell “stop resisting.” When you feel the cold bite of steel around your wrists, comfort yourself with the knowledge that the cuffs will be removed just as soon as you’re in a warm holding cell. Under no circumstances should you attempt to threaten an officer or fight him/her in any fashion. The officer’s right to return safely home to his/her family considerably outweighs your right to resist arrest. Remembering this is one way to emerge from the interview process healthy and whole.

I hope you keep these tips in mind during your next interview with a police officer. Following them may not keep you from being arrested - after all, that is your crack pipe on the floor of the Pacer. But intelligent actions during the interview can still make for a cordial and survivable experience. Sometimes that’s the best you can hope for.

Tinkering behind the scenes

Not much posting here today, as you may have noticed. This would make sense, since I’m blogging off the company pier. Of course, that doesn’t explain the days when I post six entries in a row, but never mind. In addition to the work I actually get paid for, I’m currently keying my “blogroll” into, uh, Blogrolling. I’ve put off doing the Blogrolling thing for months and I’m hard-pressed to explain why. Part of it was that I had a simple enough list of links and didn’t see the need to employ an outside service to handle the upkeep. Part of it is that I seem to loathe popular things (which is why I never watched Seinfeld until after the last episode aired). I dunno.

Well, I’m doing it now. It’ll get done when it gets done. It’s not the longest list in the world.

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