Fiat Lux

A rare shot: all three of Da Boys on my desk hutch. Gimi usually doesn't go up there.
This time next week I'll be spending 24 hours in NYC, and after that I'll head out to Spain. I have a lot to get done before I go.

I decided that I have too much else to get done before I head out for Europe to deal with finding a new web host this month.

However, MT-Blacklist is still hosed and at this point I don't believe that Powweb is either willing or able to help me fix it. So until I have the time to really deal with this issue, I've turned off all trackbacks on the site and I am going to be very aggressive about turning off comments after a couple of days. I don't like doing this, but there's no other way to keep the blog spam under control for now.

The guy who got me to start a weblog doesn't blog all that regularly these days, but he put up a post recently that I liked, not least because purple is one of my favorite colors. His "Can I Choose Purple?" is a rant about his frustration with the whole blue state / red state thing and expressing a wish that people could spend their time looking for the purple areas of agreement instead of the things that divide Americans.

Here's a sample:

It’s only when you force someone to pick sides that you start to polarize the issue. “Well gee, I guess if I have to choose between a rock and a hard place, I’ll go with that team.”

I don’t care what color you choose, but by putting up the context that you have to choose, you’re forcing people to go to one extreme, or another. Then with everyone entrenched on being either liberal, or conservative, you’ve created extremists for both sides and isn’t that what the whole War On Terror is about stopping?

Sure, America is divided when you force the artificial constructs of liberal or conservative, but for that matter, you might as well do a program about north versus south, because there are just as many differences there. The simple fact is that America is a diverse nation and whatever type of American you’re looking for, if you look hard enough, you’ll find it.

By and large, I agree with him. If you look hard enough, you can find common ground on at least some issues with people whom you utterly disagree with on other issues. And that's a good thing. It fosters communication and a sense that we are all in this together.

But here's the problem: what happens when not everyone feels that way? What happens when people crank up their fervent rhetoric higher and higher to the point that there is simply no way to deal rationally with them?

There are unfortunately way too many examples of the kind of behavior I'm talking about. But the one that got me posting about this issue today was something Glenn Greenwald looked at in extensive detail this weekend: how an article in the New York Times Travel section can be so completely misconstrued by people firmly settled into the " Us / Them" mindset.

The short version of the story is that the Times did an article about the vacation possibilities in a Maryland town, and happened to mention that two top Bush administration officials have vacation homes there.

If you read any newspaper's travel section, you'll notice that articles about 'new' vacation spots are very often capped by mentioning which famous person happens to go there or own a house there. This is utterly normal stuff. Yet somehow, the fact that the Times dared mention Cheney and Rumsfeld in the article transformed it from a typical piece of travel journalism into ... I am not kidding about this ... an instruction manual for al Qaeda on how to assassinate those men, planted in the Travel section by Times editors who are pissed off that the Bush administration is not happy with their recent reporting in other sections of the paper.

No, I'm not kidding. Go read Greenwald's piece.

So, how do you start to find common ground when people can look at the same thing and come away with such completely different responses?

Anybody?

Members of a party abide by primary results. There is no such thing as an "petitioning Democrat." If there was, [Lieberman] could accept the Republican endorsement and run as a "Republican Democrat."

Indeed.

UPDATE: Funny comment in the Atrios thread on this topic:

"What the hell is a "petitioning Democrat?"

It's kinda like a compassionate conservative.

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.

By way of William Gibson:

“A nation,” he heard himself say, “consists of its laws. A nation does not consist of its situation at a given time. If an individual’s morals are situational, that individual is without morals. If a nation’s laws are situational, that nation has no laws, and soon isn’t a nation.” He opened his eyes and confirmed Brown there, his partially disassembled pistol in his hand. The cleaning, lubrication, and examination of the gun’s inner workings was ritual, conducted every few nights, though as far as Milgrim knew, Brown hadn’t fired the gun since they’d been together.

“What did you say?”

“Are you really so scared of terrorists that you'll dismantle the structures that made America what it is?” Milgrim heard himself say this with a sense of deep wonder. He was saying these things without consciously having thought them, or at least not in such succinct terms, and they seemed inarguable.

“The fuck—“

“If you are, you let the terrorist win. Because that is exactly, specifically his goal, his only goal: to frighten you into surrendering the rule of law. That's why they call him ‘terrorist’ He uses terrifying threats to induce you to degrade your own society.”

Brown opened his mouth. Closed it.

“It's actually based on the same glitch in human psychology that allows people to believe they can win the lottery. Statistically, almost nobody ever wins the lottery. Statistically, terrorist attacks almost never happen.”

There was a look on Brown’s face that Milgrim hadn’t seen there before. Now Brown tossed a fresh bubble-pack down on the bedspread.

“Goodnight,” Milgrim heard himself say.

I have officially had it with my 3G iPod. Although it works beautifully as a stand-alone MP3 player, I'm sick to death of having to spend 1-2 hours hammering on my PC trying to get the damn FireWire connection to work every time I want to sync it with iTunes.

I'm going to put them both up on eBay when I get home.

Less than 3 hours and I'll be in the air.

I have a new travel blog set up for tourist blogging here although right now all that's there is a placeholder post.

Whether I will actually have time to blog much I don't know. This trip feels like a huge leap into the unknown right now; I'm just going to have to see what happens once I get there.

In other words, consider this fair warning: there may not be much new here until the 23rd. Or maybe there'll be a new post later today. There's only one way to find out.

And with that, I need to hit the showers and toss a last few odds and ends into my suitcase. Ciao!

Greetings from Barcelona. I'm running around like mad and generally having a good time.

With all that's going on here, frankly I wasn't really focusing on exactly how badly things are going over in the Middle East. Then Dad forwarded an update e-mail from the cousins in Haifa and it started to sink in that this isn't just another crisis. With the news that shells have started to fall in Haifa, all I can do is to hope some sanity prevails before more people get killed.

Doves of Peace, looking out over Barcelona.

Let us all keep a thought for peace tonight.

And jetlagged, and very happy to be with Scott & the kitties again.

I had a great time in Barcelona. About half my photos are already on Flickr. I have more photos still to upload, and I want to add some commentary to the travel blog.

I read a fascinating book on the flight home that I want to talk about, and that will find its way online fairly soon. Plus other stuff.

However, it's hot as hell in San Mateo and we have at best spotty A/C, so what I can't get done in the cooler hours will have to wait.

This isn't an optimal solution, but if it stops the sectarian mayhem going on in Iraq these days, then maybe it's worth considering....

"Iraq as a political project is finished," a senior government official was quoted as saying, adding: "The parties have moved to plan B." He said that the Shia, Sunni and Kurdish parties were now looking at ways to divide Iraq between them and to decide the future of Baghdad, where there is a mixed population. "There is serious talk of Baghdad being divided into [Shia] east and [Sunni] west," he said.

Peru. Here's why:

More than half of all Peruvian women over the age of 15 say they have suffered sexual or physical violence by men during their lifetime -- one of the world's highest rates.

....

Some 51 percent of women in Lima and 69 percent of women in the southern Andean city of Cuzco said they have been victims of sexual or physical violence, [a study by Amnesty International and Peruvian organization Flora Tristan]added.

Indeed, the level of violence surges dramatically in Peru's impoverished rural areas.

In the southern Huancavelica province where 90 percent of the population lives in extreme poverty, the rate of sexual and physical violence against women is ranked as one of the world's worst in a recent study by the World Health Organization.

The good news is that Peru's President-elect Alan Garcia has made it one of his stated goals to try to combat this pervasive violence against women, but it remains to be seen exactly what that will entail and whether it will actually help matters.

There's two kinds of crazy in this world. Good crazy, and bad crazy.

This would be an example of the first kind (hat tip, Jason, and click through for the big version):

Who on earth thought this up and then spent the time to put it together? You've got to be a little bit crazy -- the good kind. The world needs more of this.

And then, there's the other kind of crazy. (No, I am not going to take a swipe at Ann Coulter, other people are doing a great job of that already). Who would have thought that a nominally neutral news station like CNN would broadcast something like this?

For the second time in three days, CNN featured a segment on the potential coming of the Apocalypse, as indicated by current conflicts in the Middle East. The July 26 edition of CNN's Live From ... featured a nine-minute segment in which anchor Kyra Phillips discussed the Apocalypse and the Middle East with Christian authors Jerry Jenkins and Joel C. Rosenberg -- who share the view that the Rapture is nigh. At one point in the discussion, Phillips asked Rosenberg whether she needed "to start taking care of unfinished business and telling people that I love them and I'm sorry for all the evil things I've done," to which Rosenberg replied: "Well, that would be a good start."

There's a large number of TV stations where this issue gets discussed regularly. But none of them (until recently) have been CNN, and that's how it should be. The possible coming of the Apocalypse is NOT news, it's a religious belief. It is in a completely different category from the rest of the news of the day and should be treated as such. It's crazy to think otherwise. The bad kind of crazy.

Disclaimer: Yes, I am being very flip about the use of the word crazy in this post. Consider it a lame attempt to be funny and smash two very different topics into one unified blog post. Mental illness is a serious issue, I know. Don't get your hate on.

This makes me very sad.

One person was killed and five others were wounded, three critically, in a shooting at the Jewish Federation in downtown Seattle, Washington, police said.

Police have detained a suspect who is a U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent.

And yet, I've been debating internally if I should even post it, because some troll might come along and tell me thay they "deserved it" because of what's going on in Israel.

To which I say, screw that.

Oh, and one thing more: I support Israel.

That does not mean I like or approve of everything that the Israeli government does, any more than being an American means that I like or approve of everything that this government does.

The way I see it, though, I can't sit here in the relative safety of California and tell people who are sleeping every night in bomb shelters because of the rockets being dropped on their heads how they should be thinking, feeling, or reacting to being attacked. It's not my ass that is on the line.

So because of that, when push comes to shove, Israel gets the benefit of the doubt from me. You can call that "dual loyalty" if you want to. Maybe it's even true.

Frankly, I don't care.

Heh:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said Friday it plans to sell its 85 stores in Germany to rival Metro AG, a move that effectively ends a nearly decade-long effort by the world's largest retailer to crack the market in Europe's biggest economy.

Terms were not disclosed, but Wal-Mart said it expects to incur a loss before taxes of about $1 billion related to the deal in its second quarter.\

...

Sy Schlueter, chief executive of investment house Copernicus in Hamburg, said Wal-Mart had trouble winning over German consumers, who tend to be very price-focused and would rather drive to a different store if they know they can buy something cheaper. National discounters such as Lidl GmbH and Aldi Einkauf GmbH put the heat on Wal-Mart's sales, he said, by offering the same products at competitive prices.

Furthermore, Schlueter said consumers rejected some of Wal-Mart's signature features, like stores outside of town centers, employees required to smile and heartily greet customers, or baggers at checkouts.

Well said, Josh:

And along those lines, I wanted to finish this post by flagging something ominous that keeps coming up in the Israeli press. There's a mix of public and private communications going on between Jerusalem and Damascus. Israel is trying to assure Damascus that they don't plan or want to expand the war to include Syria. Syria is clearly worried that they will and has their troops on full alert. Israel is also warning in no uncertain terms that Syria getting involved will spark massive retaliation.

But there are persistent signs that the US is egging Israel on to bring the war to Damascus.

...

The world has sat by for six years and let Hizbullah's anamolous position in south Lebanon be Israel's problem. Whether their response was wise or just, I'll set aside for the moment. It's not about totalitarianism or Afghanistan or Iraq, at least not in an operational sense, or dingbat fantasies about Freedom and Terror. But there do appear to be forces in Washington -- seemingly the stronger ones, with Rice just a facade -- who see this whole thing as an opportunity for a grand call of double or nothing to get out of the disaster they've created in the region. Go into Syria, maybe Iran. Try to roll the table once and for all. No failed war that a new war can't solve.

I really hope Josh is wrong about the US's motives, but I fear he just might be right.

So I was chatting over IM today with my friend Jason about the whole Mel Gibson thing.

"It's too bad," he said. "I really liked his Mad Max movies."

The implication being, with Gibson's anti-Semitism front and center, what Jew will want to watch his movies anymore, much less buy them on DVD or go to see any new works of his? That sounds about right to me.

I've enjoyed a number of Mel Gibson's movies over the years. Mad Max isn't my thing, but I have seen the entire Lethal Weapon franchise (#1 and #3 are the best), plus at least 8 or 9 other films he's starred in. His Hamlet was excellent; so was Maverick. It's not every actor who can do a good job in such wildly different roles. And until this past weekend, I was prepared to overlook any possible private beliefs Gibson had in favor of his obvious talent. Even during all the hubbub about The Passion... I was prepared to take him at face value and believe that he didn't have any real deep-seeted issues with Jews.

Now? Not so much. Alcohol can certainly encourage a person to say things that they wouldn't have said when sober, but to launch into a full-out tirade against Jews; well, it had to have come from somewhere. The booze didn't make him an anti-Semite, it just brought it out into the open. At least, that's how it seems to me.

I'm not going to be able to enjoy looking at his face any time in the near future. It's like when Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor; reality crowds in so much that it's hard to suspend disbelief and enjoy the show. And why should I spend my time and my hard-earned money on someone who has so little good to say about people like me?

On the other hand, I like Wagner's music too, and not only did he hate Jews, but he was also one of Hitler's favorite composers. The difference being, Wagner is not around to get rich off the money I pay for his CDs, and Gibson is still very much alive and kicking.

Does that mean I'm in a self-imposed lifelong Gibson boycott? I don't know. Maybe a few years from now, I'll feel differently; we'll see what happens. But for now, as much as I've been a fan, I'll find other entertainers to spend my time and money on.