"...there is neither judgement nor reward beyond that which we make for ourselves."

Born in Time (Part Two)

I'm totally going to hell.

If, you know, I still believed in that kind of thing. Sinfest.

Congress gives Bush the right to torture and detain people forever.

On this day in American history... it was shown that the politics of fear wins out over higher ideals, real morality and plain fucking decency.

How incredibly depressing.

But it's okay, because somewhere, somehow, swarthy brown people "hate our freedom", so that makes it all worth it.

Congress gives Bush the right to torture and detain people forever

Following in the footsteps of the House, the Senate this afternoon approved the bill which vests in the President the power of indefinite, unreviewable detention (even of U.S. citizens) and which also legalizes various torture techniques.

...Nonetheless, it is simply a fact that virtually every Republican in the House and the Senate (with one sole exception in the Senate and only 7 in the House) voted in favor of this tyrannical bill, while Democrats overwhelmingly opposed it (in the House, 160 Democrats voted "no," while 34 voted "yes"). With those facts assembled, it is fair to say that the Republicans are the party of torture, indefinite and unreviewable detention powers, and limitless presidential power, even over U.S. citizens on U.S. soil.

...and don't forget this most important part of the urgency and haste in passing the bill before the next election cycle, when Republicans may lose one of the houses of Congress -

Veterans, legal experts hit deal on torture

He pointed out that the McCain-Warner-Graham bill does not expressly forbid any of the brutal practices such as “water-boarding” in which detainees are made to feel they are drowning. “But it does retroactively absolve administration officials of legal responsibility for past war crimes.”

Because you've got to know what's important, right?

Some of the best Mixed Martial Arts highlight films I've ever seen.

Not quite what you'd expect, but they're things of beauty.

Seriously.

Furious Angels


The 3rd Man

Ninjaaaaaaa!!!!!!

I Clung to the Ceiling Until the Board of Regents Granted Me Tenure

Japanese professor: The peroxides are very volatile. If you drop them, we have to be out of the building before they hit the floor.
Grad student: I won't drop them.
Japanese professor: And only Japanese ninja can move that fast.
Grad student: OK.
Japanese professor: I am well trained in the art of the ninja.

10900 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland, Ohio

via Overheard in the Office, Sep 26, 2006

Overheard in NY

Ah, Buffy, we miss you so...

Not-So-Christian Scientists

Son: Is there anything we can do to get Buffy back?
Mom: Well, we could join together in prayer.
Son: Uh huh. Is there anything useful we can do?
Mom: No.

--3 train

Overheard by: Jason

via Overheard in New York, Sep 21, 2006

The cover of Newsweek

This week...

On the sidebar of the page

Europe edition- "Losing Afghanistan"

Asia edition- "Losing Afghanistan"

Latin America edition - "Losing Afghanistan"

U.S. edition - [...wait for it...] - "My Life in Pictures"

Explaining America

More at the link. Some astute, some crazy, all worth reading.

Fred on Everything:

“Fred, explain America today. Say something tendentious and irritating about what is going on in this curious country. Why do we do what we do? Sock it to us.”

All right.

The United States is an uneasy, frightened country, yet aggressive, truculent, and looking for trouble—which it finds. Fear: Terrorists are everywhere, like cockroaches and governmental cameras. Citizens should watch each other on the subway and rat out suspicious behavior, such as speaking a language other than English. People need to go through metal detectors in county courthouses, because the government is scared of them, and get spied on by the government to protect them against the ever-present danger of…of, well, the unspeakable and unspoken angst of existence. And so, in the customary manner of large scared bullies, the country lashes out, at Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Afghanistan, Venezuela, wherever.

A friend says, “Fred, gringos want to be controlled. They love this police-state stuff. It gives them meaning. They lead miserable lives in boring suburbs. The husband is a mouth-breathing oaf with his retinas sewed to the football machine. His wife is a pucker-faced shrew with cellulite like the dark side of the Moon and his kids are whining dopers who gawp at the box and gurgle over stupid video games. The guy has no control over anything in his life. He’s scared of the boss and the pissed-off middle-aged man-hating divorcee with thick ankles in Human Resources who would love to outsource his job to Mumbai. He knows he’ll get raped if he splits from the wife. So he wants to kill something. He doesn’t care what, and anyway finding out might require reading a book, which god knows he isn’t going to do.”

This may be harsh. It also may be true of more people than one would like.

Like all things, make of it what you will.

So... Robert Anton Wilson was having an ebay auction for a card randomly selected from a tarot deck. For $5, and an autograph from one of my favorite authors, why not?

So I got this card. One of the Major Arcana.

The Devil.

[Cue spooky "woo-woo" music, if so inclined.]

Make of that what you will.

[Or read some standard interpretations below.]


Wikipedia

The Devil is the card of self bondage to an idea or belief which is preventing us from growing... On the other hand, however, it can also be a warning to someone who is too restrained and/or dispassionate and never allows him or herself to be rash or wild or ambitious, which is yet another form of enslavement.

The Devil is the 15th card of the Major Arcana, and is associated with earth and Capricornus. Though many decks portray a stereotypical Satan figure for this card, it more accurately represents our bondage to material things rather than any evil persona. It also indicates an obsession or addiction to fulfilling our own earthly base desires. Should the Devil represent a person, it will most likely be one of money and power, one who is persuasive, aggressive, and controlling. In any case, it is most important that the Querent understands that the ties that bind are freely worn, and you are only enslaved if you allow the abuse to go on.

In Jungian terms, he is The Shadow. All the repressed, unmentioned or unmentionable desires that lurk beneath.

Aeclectic.net

Perhaps the most misunderstood of all the major arcana, the Devil is not really "Satan" at all, but Pan the half-goat nature god and/or Dionysius. These are gods of pleasure and abandon, of wild behavior and unbridled desires. With Capricorn as its ruling sign, this is a card about ambitions; it is also synonymous with temptation and addiction. On the flip side, however, the card can be a warning to someone who is too restrained, someone who never allows themselves to get passionate or messy or wild - or ambitious. This, too, is a form of enslavement. As a person, the Devil can stand for a man of money or erotic power, aggressive, controlling, or just persuasive. This is not to say a bad man, but certainly a powerful man who is hard to resist. The important thing is to remind the Querent that any chain is freely worn. In most cases, you are enslaved only because you allow it.

...This card explores some very frightening things, things we are taught to view as evil or shameful. Like earthy materialism, sexual desire, valuables, food, drugs. Lack of control, excess, obsession and raw ambition. At its absolute worst, this is either the addict or the stalker, totally obsessed, enslaved. At its best, this is a card about giving into impulse, cutting lose, going for the gold, climbing every mountain. Among all the cards, this is one of the most complex. Interestingly because no other card is so one-sided. Most cards urge balance, unity, restraint, yin-yang. Not this card. Completely tilted toward the masculine, it is a card that revels in extremity. There is a convincing argument that this is the most powerful and dangerous card in the deck. Magically speaking, it is the one card in the deck that holds the secret of how to escape the material and temporal bonds of Earth. It is a very potent and fascinating card.

Sports Day at Katsuura Elementary School

The Japanese love them some synchronized dancing.


Bread Fishing. Pulling pastries from strings using only your teeth.
And they said I didn't learn anything useful in college.






Playing with kids always requires the rear-naked choke.

Hey, I didn't make the rules.

More pictures here http://picasaweb.google.com/Rob.G.Pugh/20060924

Think about it.

"The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation. It has no authority or obligation at all, unless as a contract between man and man. And it does not so much as even purport to be a contract between persons now existing. It purports, at most, to be only a contract between persons living eighty years ago. And it can be supposed to have been a contract then only between persons who had already come to years of discretion, so as to be competent to make reasonable and obligatory contracts. Furthermore, we know, historically, that only a small portion even of the people then existing were consulted on the subject, or asked, or permitted to express either their consent or dissent in any formal manner. Those persons, if any, who did give their consent formally, are all dead now. Most of them have been dead forty, fifty, sixty, or seventy years. And the constitution, so far as it was their contract, died with them. They had no natural power or right to make it obligatory upon their children. It is not only plainly impossible, in the nature of things, that they could bind their posterity, but they did not even attempt to bind them. That is to say, the instrument does not purport to be an agreement between any body but ‘the people’ then existing; nor does it, either expressly or impliedly, assert any right, power, or disposition, on their part, to bind anybody but themselves."

- Lysander Spooner

Lysander Spooner (January 19, 1808 – May 14, 1887) was an American individualist anarchist political philosopher, abolitionist, and legal theorist of the 19th century. He is best known for his role in the abolitionist movement, competing with the U.S. Post Office, and for his contributions to American individualist anarchism.

“A lot of people die for God and they’re not afraid.” “We’re kinda being trained to be warriors,” said another, “only in a funner way."

Words fail.

Except for "insane religious brainwashing apocalyptical batshit craziness."

Those words actually roll right off the tip of the tongue.

Vacation Bible School Has Changed A Lot

...But it seems that VBS [Vacation Bible School] has changed. I found this article at ABC News online about a documentary, “Jesus Camp” and am more than a little concerned.

Speaking in tongues, weeping for salvation, praying for an end to abortion and worshipping a picture of President Bush — these are some of the activities at Pastor Becky Fischer’s Bible camp in North Dakota, “Kids on Fire,” subject of the provocative new documentary, “Jesus Camp.” “I want to see them as radically laying down their lives for the gospel as they are in Palestine, Pakistan and all those different places,” Fisher said. “Because, excuse me, we have the truth.”

Wow. If Ms. Fischer’s comments aren’t enough to make you scratch your head, maybe the comments of the little ones are.

“A lot of people die for God,” one camper said, “and they’re not afraid.” “We’re kinda being trained to be warriors,” said another, “only in a funner way.”

Nope, this is not the VBS I remember. I am certain that there are still camps where paper plate art is the norm, but camps like “Kids on Fire” in North Dakota have little ones taping their mouths against abortion and speaking out on political issues like gay marriage.

As a libertarian, I generally support parental choice on everything. Watching the video makes me cringe though. Between the clips of kids praying in front of a Bush photograph, Ms. Fischer openly screaming, “this is war” and boys in battle fatigues, I see a generation of kids being trained for a holy war. I have to wonder how well this would go over if the kids were calling on Allah.

I do think people of every political and spiritual inclination need to pay attention to this trend. This is our future and they know it.

Worthy Religious Questions.

Thank god I'm agnostic. I'm too cowardly to take a stance and have to deal with questions like these.

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2006/09/what_would_trum.html

Things get trickier when you base your religion on a nice fellow who wants you to give most of your money to the poor. How do you justify buying a third television set when people in New Orleans are living in rolled-up carpets? That’s not a rhetorical question. I actually wonder about the answer. Here are some of my best guesses about your rationalization:

1. Jesus likes me better than poor people. He’d approve of my second iPod.
2. If I give a poor person a fish, he’d only eat for a day anyway. What’s one day?
3. I give 10% of my money to charity. God says that’s exactly the right amount. 11% would anger God.
4. Poor people are lazy or crazy. My money won’t fix that.
5. There’s a loophole in the Bible that says I can keep my money. Woo-hoo!
6. I am bad at economics and I am convinced that keeping my money stimulates the economy and helps poor people indirectly.

Am I missing any reasons? I am actually curious.

The Klingon Language and those who speak it...

This sounds awesome...

But I'm a geek, so that works out that way. And recently, on the recommendations of JM and Spence I'm watching the Star Trek Deep Space 9, having never really seen it. I mean, when you've got Spenser for Hire's Hawk as a Starfleet captain, you can't really go wrong.

But I digress.

Fortean Times: Interviewing Earthlings

David Sutton talks to director Alexandre Philippe and producer David Marchiori about their new documentary focusing on the evolution of the Klingon language and the people who speak it, Earthlings: Ugly Bags of Mostly Water.

FT: Can you describe the genesis of the film and how you came across the Klingon language.

AP: ...I was at Denver International Airport on my way to Europe to visit my family, and had a little time to kill, so I went to one of their bookstores; and that’s where I found a copy of The Klingon Hamlet. I remember looking at this book, and thinking: “This is the strangest thing I’ve ever seen.” And I made the decision, basically on the spot, to somehow make a movie about this.

Originally, I thought it would be wild to do a film version of The Klingon Hamlet; but then, I searched the web and discovered the Klingon Language Institute, located in Philadelphia. So, I picked up the phone, and talked to the Institute’s director, Dr Lawrence Schoen, and convinced him to let us film and interview them during their annual qep’a’ (or conference).

...The real question is: am I wasting my talents making films? Are you wasting your talents editing Fortean Times? Are sports fans wasting their talents watching football on TV? I don’t think so. Earth is a strange place, and it’s up to us to give meaning to our lives. If it’s meaningful to them to learn Klingon – because they have a good time, because it’s a great intellectual exercise, or because that’s how they want to make friends – who are we to say they’re wasting their time? I’d like people to be a little more introspective before they poke fun at Trekkies or Klingon speakers. To me, there’s nothing wrong with doing something you’re passionate about – especially if it doesn’t hurt of offend anyone.

And the Klingon language is, indeed, a fascinating cultural and linguistic phenomenon. It’s the first constructed language based on popular culture that has thrived to the point of being spoken in 55 countries around the world.

So, to me, the question isn’t “Why spend any time learning Klingon when there are so many other languages around” but “why not learn Klingon?”

FT: The interviewees in the movie are a pretty friendly and articulate bunch from a surprisingly wide range of backgrounds. Were they representative of Klingon speakers as a whole?

DM: Everyone we met during the filming process, and all the Klingons we have met since, are virtually the same – gentle, intelligent people. Many of them are genuine Trek fans and this is their way of exploiting their love of the franchise. Many are linguists and language experts; in some cases Klingon is the sixth or seventh language they speak. And many of them are in it for the social aspects. I will say that while KLI members for the most part don’t indulge in dressing the Klingon way, they do take on a different persona when in Klingon mode. The large groups of people who like to dress as Klingons really take on different personalities while in the role. They act boisterous and aggressive... but when they change back, all is normal.

Earthlings: Ugly Bags of Mostly Water will be available on DVD from 16 October.

What America increasingly stands for, if you didn't know...

The Case of Maher Arar

After a two-year investigation, the Canadian government issued a report this week regarding the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was abducted by the Bush administration during a layover at JFK Airport on his way home to Canada, and then brought to Syria to be "interrogated." He was kept in a tiny cell for the next 10 months in Syria and was repeatedly tortured. All along, he was guilty of nothing and had no ties of any kind to terrorism.

[..]Despite the stonewalling and coverup by the Bush administration, the Canadian report was able to conclude "categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offense." It also found that both the American government and the Syrian government lied to Canada about Arar’s whereabouts because they knew the Canadians would object to their citizen being brought to Syria to be tortured. Put another way, our government abducted a completely innocent Canadian citizen and deliberately caused him to subjected, in Syria, to the most brutal and inhumane treatment imaginable (where, among other things, he confessed under torture to training in an al-Qaida camp in Afghanistan even though he was never in that country)...

The wisdom of Jet Li

Jet Li: Not retiring, reinventing

..."I've tried to retire many times," said Li, a devoted Buddhist since 1997. "But I've met many masters, many high monks who have said, `You cannot hide on a mountain for three years. That's not you. Just do your job and then you'll have space to talk to people about what you believe.'"

"Fearless," Li said, perfectly fits his vision of wushu as more than just self-defense but a path to self-discipline and spiritual peace.

Herein lies the central dichotomy: the Chinese characters for wushu are Zhi (meaning "stop" or "do not") and Ge (meaning "fight" or "war"). Together, Li said, they translate to "stop fighting."

...The answer, Li decided, would be to ramp up charity work for his One Foundation (www.one-foundation.com) and to infuse his work with his Buddhist worldview.

"This is the perfect story to match my philosophy," Li says, referencing "Fearless."

The subject of the movie, Huo, turned martial arts into a sport, promoted it as a spiritual discipline and took on all challengers to defend China's martial honor in a series of high-profile exhibition fights against foreigners.

But will "Fearless" really be Li final martial arts movie? Yes, Li said, but with an addendum.

"People always change their minds," he said. "That's humanity, always changing."

Weird Al's got some skills...

This was pretty awesome.

And sadly, struck close to home on occasion.

And sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

http://www.sinfest.net/

Welcome Enkai

For a brand new Fukutsu City ALT. Much food and entirely too much drink was had by all.


Couple more pics here.

Best Full Series Trailer in the Firefly Trailer contest at Fireflyfans.net