Shucks, sir, you shouldn’t have.  And we wonder why he couldn’t ask most Americans to sacrifice a goddamn thing.

Two kids were suspended from school in Lodi, California this week for making the letter “T” in their prom picture. The worry? It could possibly be confused with slang for “thizzin” which refers to - gasp - using MDMA.

Three eighth graders who didn’t stand for the Pledge of Allegiance were suspended yesterday. Setting aside that this won’t pass Constitutional muster (we’d hope,) the psychology is what’s bothering me.

Kim Dahl, mother of one of the punished students, is disturbingly quick to point out that her son “wasn’t being defiant against America” - as if that’s some unfathomable crime. Ms. Dahl: I submit that at this point in our history what America needs is more defiance, not less.

And from a similar frame of mind comes the school district’s community education director, Mel Olsen. Olsen said that “being a veteran and a United States of America citizen, [he] absolutely” backs the punishment. Olsen served in the Marines in the Vietnam war and I find myself wondering what it was, exactly, he thinks he was fighting for.

Standing up and ritually chanting something you don’t understand is absurd enough - but being forced to sorta wipes out any meaning there was left, no?

But I guess that’s what we’re asking of our kids today - blind, unquestioning allegiance. Our founding fathers would be so proud.

These things were a somewhat regular fixture in my young life.

Anyone else? Are these things actually effective? Do people believe them and think they portray any kind of reality? Or are they brilliantly auto-ironic, intended instead to skewer those who believe the world really is so simple? Ah, nevermind.

This is an issue that affects all of us. We spend billions of dollars enforcing marijuana laws, and distract good cops from enforcing real crimes. Almost a million people are arrested for marijuana possession each year. Many of them end up with permanent criminal records and are barred forever from receiving federal student aid. People don’t just have their lives ruined; some have even died as a result of marijuana law enforcement (e.g. shot to death in paramilitary style raids - yes, it happens.)

The criminalization of marijuana was pure foolishness driven by racism, hysteria and corporate special interests.

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Google has been trying to prohibit people from photographing their trade show booth at the Web 2.0 Expo. I’m getting really sick of all this. While this pales in comparison to the kind of photographer harassment I’ve whined about in the past, it does demonstrate a continuing odd attitude held by many toward photographers in public places. It’s one thing if you’re a badge-drunk sheriff’s deputy in San Antonio -but quite another for a forward-thinking technology company. It makes even less sense for a company that takes pictures of public streets and buildings and then makes them publicly available.

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Hey pork-lovers: remember the pig brain mist story?  Well, mother nature’s delivered us a fresh little firmware upgrade, just like I promised!

Here’s a fun little list of brain oddities.  I remember as a kid my brother and I used to fuck with our heads by saying the same thing over and over again, say for a minute or so, until the phrase seemed so ridiculous that it no longer felt real - it would take on an alien, unrecognizable sense.  Try it yourself - pick a word, or a phrase, anything that makes sense to you at the moment.  Repeat it to yourself at a comfortable pace over a period of a minute or so.  It will shortly seem absurd.

ABC is reporting that the “National Security Principals Committee” held dozens of meetings in the White House specifically planning who and how to torture. The principals conspiring to commit these war crimes included the vice president, then-CIA director George Tenet, Attorney General John Ashcroft, National Security Advisor Condi Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell. According to ABC, Ashcroft at one point asked, “why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly.”

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Whenever I hear about a poll telling me what a group of Americans think, I generally write it off. Now, folks, I don’t think everyone is stupid - I just think the average American is too distracted or preoccupied or apathetic to pay attention to the stuff that some of us feel is important.

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“… We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government…”

[so old it's cool again.]

A good piece from Noonan - choice quote:

“What, really, is Mrs. Clinton doing? She is having the worst case of cognitive dissonance in the history of modern politics.”

Years ago, I read Pinchbeck’s Breaking Open the Head, and found it to be a good and interesting book, even if somewhat inconclusive.

Somehow I missed Rolling Stone’s profile of him over a year ago. It’s a really interesting story - his influences and where they took him. I saw Pinchbeck on the Colbert Report a few months ago talking about his new book, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl and I was quite confused.

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Some great emergency tips, with visuals.

This study reminded me of the piece I wrote a while back about Myspace hysteria and the media.  Also, see Pogue’s piece.

Teacher fired for modifying oath to “non-violently” support the constitution.  I guess we need to keep that possibility open with our teachers.

At first, this seemed like it could have been a Rudy Giuliani ad.  But no, it’s the work of a desperate Senator Hillary Clinton. 

I wonder what President Clinton would say about this?  Here’s something apropos: 

He’s right.  

A few years ago I used to opine that those faux-daredevil shows like “Fear Factor” were only interesting to see the gross (but undangerous) things people would do for small amounts of cash - and I joked that they’d only really be good when the people were actually in danger. Sure, it’s sickly fun to watch a cute 19 year old girl in a cutoff t-shirt struggle to eat a dozen plump, fresh bull testicles - but hardly is there any real risk involved. Those shows need real stakes, I thought.

However, having been exposed to FOX’s “Moment of Truth” show tonight, I see that we’re there, and in a much more tragic way than I had imagined. Read the rest of this entry »

The guys behind Spamalot just changed a show song reference from Britney Spears to Posh Spice.  On why, Eric Idle said:

“We don’t laugh at sad people.  Britney Spears is being tortured to death and we don’t want to be on that side.”

[Source: Olbermann]

Hayden wants to “make it very clear” that we only waterboarded three people.  Oh, then in that case it’s not torture.

Refreshing - especially since the last time he said he wanted to make something clear, he was fucking up the Fourth Amendment.