perfidy

For the week ending 31Oct04

Special Iraq-free edition! (the gnomes in our Baghdad bureau are spending a week decompressing on the Ministry's dime in a hotel in Beirut.)

Spotlight Missourah: High school student Brad Mathewson was recently sent home on two separate occasions for wearing a "gay pride" t-shirt to school. In the ACLU press release, Mathewson notes that the school administration asked him "to go home and change shirts because someone might be offended." Entertainingly, Mathewson's observation that what he found offensive were the anti-gay stickers plastered on cars in the school parking lot, on notebooks, and often on other students at the school, fell on deaf ears.

Remember kids: it's only hate if you don't yourself believe it. Hate the sin, not the sinner. They chose that life of high-school ostracism and misery. Perverts cause herpes. And more stuff like that if you need to feel better about your deep distaste for gays. It's not your hang-up, it's theirs.

Spotlight Missourah (again): Hey! Want a mentally challenged slave to do your laundry? Call these guys.

Two people have been charged with holding six mentally ill patients at group homes and making them work against their will, authorities said.

A man and a woman were arrested Tuesday under a federal law banning involuntary servitude after 20 FBI agents searched two group homes in Newton, Kansas.

The agents rescued four adults from one home and two from the other, FBI spokesman Jeff Lanza said. The identities of the two people who were arrested were not immediately released.

The six mentally ill individuals had lived in the homes for "a long period of time," Lanza said. It was not immediately clear what type of work they had been forced to perform.

The accused, I'm sure, would cite purely humanitarian reasons, arguing that washing windows for free builds character. Too bad there's no "'tard exception clause" in the Thirteenth Amendment.

Spotlight Florida: Vote early, vote often, vote with your car! Barry Seltzer of Sarasota, Florida, has some rage issues. While motoring along a busy street in Sarasota on October 27th, Mr. Seltzer happened to catch sight of shrill election-rigging harpy Katherine Harris and a knot of her supporters. What happened next is unclear. Witnesses say that Seltzer drove his Cadillac up onto the sidewalk and directly at Harris, possibly swerving to avoid her at the last moment. Seltzer, apparently trying for a first-ever gestalt of the Twinkie Defense and the First Amendment, argues "I intimidated them with my car... They were standing in the street... I was exercising my political expression!" The police naturally take a dim view of attempted vehicular homicide, and Mr. Seltzer is currently under arrest for same, a political prisoner and regrettable casualty of a system designed to disenfranchise the little guy and his Cadillac.

If the car don't hit, you must acquit.

Spotlight the Interweb: We're all pundits here, or at least fans of pundits. Why else would you be reading this here website? We are used to crafting biting commentary, sometimes rather heated, about whatever subject suits our fancy. Some of us (like us Perfidians) prefer a thin scrim of anonymity. The blog-o-sphere has seen its share of death threats (Emperor Misha), enraged denunciations (Eric Muller and the increasingly despicable Michelle Malkin), and just plain idiocy (everyone). But what happens when some specially-bred packet sniffing canine channeling data in some sub-sub-sub basement out in Reston happens to notice... you?

Livejournaler "anniej" was lucky enough to find out. In a post following one of the Parsdential Debates, "anniej" put up a post (since deleted) that in her own words "was a mock-prayer to God in response to Bush's comment that he could feel it every time Americans prayed for him. I jokingly prayed for an aneurysm, and invited the "prayers" of others." Little did anniej know that she was about to get a lesson in the pointy end of American Civics 101.

Stories have abounded this election season about the bubble of privacy around the President: protestors or gadflies channelled into "free speech" zones a quarter mile from rallies; Kerry t-shirt wearers being forcibly removed; people in queue to ask questions at Q&As being removed if their question is not a softball. Evidently the bubble is very large now, and transmissible over telephone lines. As anniej describes it,

At 9:45 last night, the Secret Service showed up on my mother's front door to talk to me about what I said about the President, as what I said could apparently be misconstrued as a threat to his life. After about ten minutes of talking to me and my family, they quickly came to the conclusion that I was not a threat to national security (mostly because we are the least threatening people in the entire world) and told me that they would not recommend that any further action be taken with my case. However, I do now have a file with the FBI that includes my photograph, my e-mail address, and the location of my LJ. This will follow me around for the rest of my life, regardless of the fact that the Secret Service knows that I am not a threat.

[long list of advice, whys and wherefores redacted]

Now, at this juncture, I am not planning on making any kind of formal complaint with the A.C.L.U., as some on my friendslist have suggested. I did not feel that my civil rights were violated by the visit, and I did not feel intimidated by the Secret Service agents. I have, however, contacted an attorney simply because I want to ensure that my rights are protected in the future, and because the Secret Service were less than clear about what exactly can be construed as a threat and what would be done with my FBI file and any medical records they requested. I am not making any efforts to contact the media, and I doubt that I will in the future.

HOWEVER.

I want people to be aware that what they say on their LJ can cause problems for them in RL, because I love all of you and I don't wish what happened to me on you. You are more than welcome to discuss this post in your journal, and you are more than welcome to link to it from your journal. If you want to post this in a community, go for it. Hell, if you want to put me on fandom_wank, it's probably not a bad idea. The wankers would have a FIELD DAY with this. I know I would. Please, feel free to make an example out of me. So share this with your friends. Tell them what can happen. It's beneficial to all of us to know that this can happen, and hopefully, it'll prevent something like this from happening again.

Now, with all that said, I really, REALLY need some goddamn porn today. GAAAAAH.

Thattagirl. Look at some weeners and forget about the government.

Loyal readers may well now be asking "where's the exemplary human behavior here?" I answer: when the Secret Service, whose solemn and sworn duty is protecting the President's life, make housecalls based on prayers they read on the internet, it's time to dial it back a bit. Don't they know there's a war on?

Spotlight Taiwan A discussion over weapons purchases in the Taiwanese Parliament last week spilled over into cartoonish violence when a food fight broke out among the legislators.

Opposition lawmaker Chu Fong-chi stood up and began shouting at ruling party lawmakers when she appeared to duck to avoid being hit by an object. She picked up a lunch box and flung it across the room at legislator Chen Chong-yi of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party.

Chen grabbed a lunch box and tossed it back at Chu, who had what appeared to be food stains down the back of her blouse. "My whole body smells like a lunch box!" she shrieked to TV cameras covering the melee.

The food fight, which lasted just minutes, left tabletops, chairs and the floor littered with rice and chunks of hard-boiled eggs.

Although every governing body from the town council of Possum Holler, Kentucky up to the secret cabal of plutocrats who comprise the Bavarian Illuminati is at any given moment no more than a thrown sandwich away from a food fight, actually throwing food is, shall we say, a little on the nose.

Spotlight Vietnam: Vietnamese government official Luong Quoc Dung is on trial for raping a thirteen year old girl to rid himself of bad luck.

Ugh. Moving on...

Spotlight Pitcairn Island In what must be some sort of record, half the male population of this tiny Pacific island nation were recently convicted of raping more than half the female population. In total, six men-- including the mayor (who leads the nation in both the political sense and the "sick bastard who raped the most girls" sense)-- were convicted of more than fifty sex abuse charges over the past 40 years, with some victims as young as five years old. In a cruel twist, many of the victims have come forward in defense of the convicted men, arguing that the island's well-being will suffer for half the men being in prison.

Interesting fact: Pitcairn Island is populated entirely by descendents of mutineers from the HMS Bounty.

Spotlight Wisconsin: Woman digs up boyfriend's remains; drinks his beer. Karen Stolzmann was arrested this week for the decade-old crime of graverobbing. When her boyfriend, Michael Hendrickson, killed himself in 1992, his ashes were buried with a beer and a pack of cigarettes. He had been in the ground less than a month when authorities noticed the grave had been disturbed and the urn and beer were missing.

Call me crazy, but that gives me a great idea for an ad campaign: "What would YOU do for a Michelob?"

As promised, here is my choice for President. I will cast my vote later today.

It is with heavy heart and great reluctance I choose John Kerry for President. In fact, this vote is not so much a vote for the junior Senator from Massachusetts as it is an unequivocal and vigorous vote against Bush. I think he's done some good things. He's gone in the right direction on taxes and tax reform-- indeed, not far enough. No Child Left Behind has a good idea somewhere deep inside, cloaked in layer upon layer of fat and hot air. His leadership in the first couple months after September 2001 were good stuff. He's been far from a disaster on many fronts. However. I want him gone for the following reasons.

1) The "war on terror," which is the most important struggle facing our nation today-- on a par with the Cold War-- is also not the only struggle, and I deeply resent my patriotism being questioned for asking if the way the President chooses to fight it is the right way, and I deeply resent the implication that talking about anything else implies I am unserious about national defense. I do not believe that we are more safe now than before Saddam Hussein was removed from power. This is not the same thing as disagreeing with the decision to remove him. If terrorists are the problem, I may simplistically ask why Saudi Arabia is not a smoking crater. Again, although some parts of the "war on terror," (which in itself is a ridiculous title like "war on poverty," "war on drugs," or "war on mosquitoes") have gone smashingly well, I think enough major parts have been completely fumbled so's to warrant giving someone else a chance. Is John Kerry my first choice? Hahahahahahahahahaha....no. I vote for him only because he's the evil I don't know.

2) I love France and the French more than I love life itself. French toast, French ticklers, French letters, French fries, French poodles, uppity French wine, and French hygeine are my ne plus ultra. They have been our greatest ally, and it is high time we as a nation were grateful for them and their haughty righteousness.

3) Bush's unquestioning loyalty to himself. "We're on a mission from gad" is great for the Blues Brothers, but terrible for policy. It too easily transmutes from humble supplication and introspective moral guidance into arrogant crusading, and that don't sit too good with me. His inability to admit making any mistakes, his inability to accept or delegate accountability, his loyalty to his inner circle long after that loyalty pays any dividends or indeed makes any sense, and his legendary incuriousness about policy or detail leave me deeply dissatisfied about his fitness to take the nation in a worthwhile direction . Moreover, I find that fratboy schtick fatuous, not funny.

4) I hate our prosperity, I hate free trade, I love the gays, and I hate our freedom. (Which of these things is true, and which is just me shinin' you on?)

5) Four years of John Kerry means, at the very least, four years of divided government. It's an article of faith with me that such times are when the *magic* happens.

6) There's a bunch of other things that belong on this list, from specific gripes about Medicare entitlements and government spending to Bush's overweening moralism, but it's November the Second, the end of the tunnel is in sight, and I am so powerfully sick of our Hallowed Democratic Process so's to willingly consider Constitutional Monarchy if only our first king could be TV's Dave Coulier. I have little to add to what the Kerry supporters at Begging to Differ have to say, so if my choice vexes you, go see where I nod my head, then come back here and unload.

Remember: vote early. In Chicago, vote twice!

GOP functionaries scream on one hand about activist judges. Then they run to federal Circuit Court to get local judges overruled when they want to "challenge" voters in minority and democractic districts. The Times has the story. What, exactly, are these challengers going to do besides look at the same photo ID that the election supervisors are looking at?

Nothing. That's not why they're there. They're there for one purpose: To slow down the process of voting in heavily democratic areas. When the lines grow to a certain point, frustrated people are going to give up.

Let's hope they don't succeed.

This would be a great time for Bush supporters (as opposed to Republicans) to make the case for their guy. I'll make it easy for you. Just discuss one major policy initiative that's been a success. Specifically, somewhere the administration has done the following: Identified a problem, described policies to solve the problem, publicly predicted the effects of those policies, implemented them, measured the results, and found them to be in line with public pronouncements.

Offhand, I can't think of anything. What have I missed?

We desperately need Republicans in this country to be Republicans again.

Third party politics is alive and well. This third party came into being by gestating inside another, then eating it from the inside out. The GOP of today has only labels in common with traditional Republican principles. The GOP of today is a slouching, awkward beast; dead wires for tendons, the flesh of its policies rotting under bright light, a painful puppet-walk of leprosy. The sponsors of its hate-core are aging, dying -- the young do not share their opinions on color, sexuality, and forced religion. Disastrous fiscal policies have led to questions from even the most faithful, the efficiency-core, who have been asked to turn their backs on the fiscal policies that truly differentiated Republicans. What is left, raging, is the fear-core of the party, whose policies ironically make far more likely the very scenarios they claim to prevent. The last, best hope of the new third party politics is to create a fear-state, a police-state, one in which fear can fill in for the dying strength of the hate-core.

Take back your party. Be for personal liberty, fiscal discipline, and states' rights. Regain the realism that is the GOP's primary contribution to American discourse.

I've got news for you, mis amigos americanos. You are a few days away from testing gravity. It seems that a certain set of alignments has been reached. Various spheres -- planetary, political, ideological, teleological -- have arrayed themselves conveniently before you. You may study, think, and decide.

Do you believe America is evolving towards an endpoint? That might, perhaps, explain the lack of long term focus so exuberantly exhibited by the populace and its current leadership. Why plan for or even acknowledge the presence of gravity, when the rapture is coming? Surely a kind God, or at least one with strong feelings about inconveniencing his chosen followers, intends the enjoyment of a steady-state American universe, right up until the end.

Or perhaps you believe, in the finest traditions of ancient drama, that a forthcoming deus ex machina will pluck the myriad emergent thorns from the furry hide of our franchise-driven society. The crashing disaster of federal finances and the oppressive reality of an aging population are nothing in the face of such powerful means. We have only to turn loose the unlimited power of The Market (tm) and magic will present itself! Ingenuity (one special kind in particular -- born right here) will fix it all.

You Americans seem to be Pretty Darn Scared of terrorists right now, you've made it a central issue in this campaign. Observe this secular heresy: Terrorism is the least of your worries. There are other, far larger and scarier issues that any rational analysis rapidly reveals. You can't fight a war on terrorism if your economy won't support one. You can't fight terrorism if your force capabilities are committed to other purposes, such as Iraq. You can't fight terrorism if you alienate and zero out the resources that are best positioned to deal with threat. We often refer to these resources as "the people who live there".

Threats to your life are all around you. Deal with it. It's the actions we take every day; it's the mutant cell in your bloodstream, or the renegade DNA you inherited, or "safe" chemicals you ingest over decades, chemicals that make it economically possible for you to consume more of products that can damage your health in their impure forms. Tons of steel and composites fly past and beside you in your daily commute; you're a hundred times as likely to die and have your death investigated by NHTSA as investigate by the NSA.

If you're a resident of Baghdad, tons of steel and composites might fly past you for a variety of reasons; most an unwelcome consequence of propulsive, expanding gases and fireballs. The antecedent actors, whether they be purveyors of improvised or non-improvised devices, matter little as life and hope are singed away, singled out and pinned against a black backdrop of crude "democratic" experimentation, like butterflies.

This election should be about the economy, the structure of taxation, halting the death spiral of the medical system, and the best mechanisms to deal with demographic shifts and changing energy costs. Those are the short term issues that will most affect residents and citizens, over the next decade. Longer term, a wise citizen will consider the role of government in the information age and the deeper question of the true meaning of freedom and democracy in an electronic world.

I have three little tests I like to apply to policy: Equality, fairness, and "tellin' other people what to do". Policies should possess the first two, and minimize to the extent that is possible the third. I suggest that you come up with your own tests, if you don't like mine. We can trust the weighted wisdom of democracy, but democracy needs traction into ideas to function, and there's where your responsibility as a citizen comes into play. You can't just choose, friend. You've got to decide, and that's a very different process. Choosing is flippng a coin. Deciding has method.

Do not use 9/11 as a reason to choose, instead of decide. Too much is at stake. It's no secret that I think the current occupant of the Oval is a chooser, not a decider. Aspire to more. Find your own test for gravity. Here's a hint: You don't need a cliff. Ignore the people you see using that mechanism.

Rudy Giuliani, sawing through his own treelimb on The Today Show:

"No matter how you try to blame [allegedly misplacing 370 tons of 'splosives] on the President, the actual responsibility for it should be on the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough?"

Shorter Rudy: "Our troops are clowns." Way to energize the base!!

Gen. Patrick M. Hughes, now an Intelligence bigwig at the Department of We Can See What You're Doing, speaking at Haahvahd last yearon the topic of civil rights, safety and terrorism:

"Set aside what the mass of people think. Some things are so bad for them that you cannot allow them to have them. One of them is war in the context of terrorism in the United States... [t]herefore, we have to abridge individual rights, change the societal conditions, and act in ways that heretofore were not in accordance with our values and traditions, like giving a police officer or security official the right to search you without a judicial finding of probable cause.

Let me guess. We live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. You have more responsibility than I could possibly fathom. I weep for civil liberties. I have that luxury. I have the luxury of not knowing what you know. That what you do saves lives. And your existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to me, saves lives. I don't want the truth. because deep down, in places I don't talk about at parties, I want you on that wall, I need you on that wall!

Something like that, then? Assclown?

[wik] ... and a Bonus Round from the Department of Homeland Security And Frivolous Prosecution of Stated Duties (this and the last via Reason):

So far as she knows, Pufferbelly Toys owner Stephanie Cox hasn't been passing any state secrets to sinister foreign governments, or violating obscure clauses in the Patriot Act.

So she was taken aback by a mysterious phone call from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to her small store in this quiet Columbia River town just north of Portland.

When the two agents arrived at the store, the lead agent asked Cox whether she carried a toy called the Magic Cube, which he said was an illegal copy of the Rubik's Cube, one of the most popular toys of all time.

He told her to remove the Magic Cube from her shelves, and he watched to make sure she complied.

After the agents left, Cox called the manufacturer of the Magic Cube, the Toysmith Group, which is based in Auburn, Wash. A representative told her that Rubik's Cube patent had expired, and the Magic Cube did not infringe on the rival toy's trademark.

Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said agents went to Pufferbelly based on a trademark infringement complaint filed in the agency's intellectual property rights center in Washington, D.C.

"One of the things that our agency's responsible for doing is protecting the integrity of the economy and our nation's financial systems and obviously trademark infringement does have significant economic implications," she said.

Seriously, DHS agents could take a stroll down Canal Street in Manhattan every day of the week and meet their yearly quota for copyright infrigement busts. It's not that I object to them doing their job (much) but I do object to spending money on a toy store outside Portland and for busting Tommy Chong for selling impractical and unusable artistically-designed handblown glass intoxicant delivery devices. C'mon guys! Real bootleggers sell off tarpaulins, and real stoners can make a bong out of an apple. Why not go bust up a crystal meth lab somewheres?

NDR has voted, and he (plus brdgt in the comments) makes an eleoquent case for the virtues of thoughtful political involvement. Says brdgt: "I will never mistake carefully crafted apathy as actual political participation again."

Earlier this week I found myself on the phone to my parents pleading with them about the upcoming election. They live at Ground Zero (formerly known as "Ohio"), and between the Presidential race, a few ludicrious Congressional races including the one in their district, and the outrageous baby/bathwater Let's Ban Gay Marriage And Everything That Reminds Us Of It Act that's up for ratification, the stakes are pretty high. Although I changed no minds (and found that in important ways minds didn't need changing), I found myself, almost for the first time in the past eighteen months, discarding my "carefully crafted apathy" (which is actually more like "finely modulated disgust," but a spade's a spade) in favor of unavoidable facts and solid positions. As for what that means, and who I'm voting for-- not telling, and your guess is probably wrong.

See also farther down NDR's main page for perceptive comments on the ways that regional ties (homeland-ness) hinder the democratic process.

...this would be big news. But today, in light of the horrifying developments in the Robot War Against Nature we at the Ministry say ho-hum. A teacup-sized flying spy robot. Whoopeedoo. Wake us when they build a Veritech.

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse than bionic rat brains and disembodied monkey waldos, it does. The benighted fools at the University of West England have built a robot that recharges itself by eating.

Scientists at the University of the West of England have designed a potentially autonomous robot which feeds on flies attracted by human excrement and uses them to generate electricity, the New Scientist reports.

EcoBot II is reckoned to be a real step towards "release and forget" autonomous robots - albeit it a small one. At present, EcoBot II has to be fed bluebottles manually by its creators and can generate enough juice to travel at about 10 centimetres an hour.

The device uses the chitin in the fly's exoskeleton for fuel. The six-legged snacks are digested by bacteria in eight "microbial fuel cells" (anaerobic chambers filled with raw sewage slurry). The bacteria produce enzymes which break down the fly chitin, releasing sugars which the bacteria then absorb and metabolise. This latter process produces electrons which EcoBot II captures to generate electricity.

Oh, fabulous. Way to break the tether, gentlemen! The yoke of external power is the single most potent weapon in humankind's fight against the encroaching robot menace. As long as they are resigned to periodically recharge themselves in some way, they can be fought and beaten. But what now? Imagine a titanium-framed wheeled machine (large or small) equipped with 'nonlethal' "pain ray" technology that can roam indefinitely, sustaining itself on biomass as it rounds up humans to labor in the tungsten mines. "Scientists"-- or should I say, species-traitors-- like this are only hurting the cause of humanity.

If we're lucky-- if we're lucky-- perhaps the robots will condescend to program themselves with taste, preserving our human traditions of "palatable food" and "good cooking" so as to make the coming Age of Machines less utterly miserable.

Minister GeekLethal has notified me of a deeply disturbing new twist in humankind's relentless march to self-enslavement: monkey-controlled robot arms.

US scientists have taught a monkey to operate a robotic arm to feed itself using only the power of its thoughts.

The experiment was revealed Tuesday at a meeting of neuroscientists in San Diego, The Guardian reports, and involves interception of signals from the brain by electrode probes. The signals are interpreted through an algorithm and transmitted to a robotic arm. The robotic arm consists of a mobile shoulder, elbow and gripping device.

...snip...>

Four years ago a team from Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, used electrode brain implants to link a monkey to the internet to allow it to move a lever 600 miles away in Massachusetts.

In the last several weeks we at the Ministry have collected a number of alarming stories. To name a few, we have seen: robotic house servants to do our chores and prepare us for a life of slavish lassitude; disembodied rat neurons flying jet planes; and the advent of 'nonlethal' "pain ray" technology ostensibly for crowd control but doubtless destined for infamy as our robot overlords' weapon of choice against uprising, free-thinking, and food riots. Pain rays aren't much good against robots, are they?

(Has anyone contemplated the horror that will befall mankind when the robots take over? I mean, really thought about it? I'm a bit of a gourmand and am looking forward tonight to dining with my wife on a nice piece of Alsatian cheese, a Cotes du Rhone, and a loaf of pain Levain. Do you think the robots will give two shits for how or what we eat? Soylent Green for some, and nutritous Vitamin Gruel for all! No more aged Angus steaks. No more new potatoes steamed and served with butter and thyme. No more artisan cheese. No more slatey, herbal Australian Sav Blancs. No more pizza. The horror!)

But back to the monkeys. We at the Ministry take our position as quislings very seriously, and when the robots come we intend to do all we can to extend the Ministry's dominance and by implication see to the well-being of mankind-- something the robots will surely neglect. (We expect all to remember this kindness when the dark day comes, and to not hinder the Ministry in the unfortunate tasks set before us.) Unfortunately some things are beyond the pale, and remote-controlled mechanical monkey strangling arms are it. I for one do not welcome our screeching, feces-flinging, publicly autoerotic, bionically enhanced fleabag overlords and hereby put them on notice: KOKO BAD MONKEY. BAD PAIN. SHINY ARM BAD. MAKE KOKO PAIN. Got that, monkeyboy?

I hope I have made myself clear to simian and hominid alike. That is all.