meta-roj

just a thought that deserves its own space. i keep talking about it, so it’s time to get it in writing.

first, the non-partisan plea:

i encourage everyone to volunteer to get out the vote, regardless of your party affiliation. there will be lawsuits in this election – the combination of close races and un-auditable voting technology makes that pretty much inevitable. it’s important that everyone that can participate does participate, preferably on paper. ask your friends and neighbors if they need help voting. help anyone that needs one get an absentee ballot. offer your car to get those disabled veterans and little old ladies (and everyone else) where they need to be to vote. seriously.

and now, the partisan message:

there are less than two weeks to go until the mid-term election, and it seems that the best way to end the shredding of the constitution is to send a bold message to the current regime that their disregard for fundamental american values will not be tolerated any longer. these are not the republicans i know – the republicans of small government, fiscal responsibility, and personal responsibility. these republicans have expanded government more than any other time in history, placed the bill on your childrens’ credit cards, sacrificed every american ideal and value in the name of phantom security, and passed the buck to anyone but themselves in every manner possible. these are not republicans – at best, they are autocrats. at worst, theocrats (but that’s a strech, since they have given nothing but lip-services to their religious “base”).

that message comes down to three states: missouri, tennessee and virginia.

so, if you have a few spare dollars laying around (and you are eligible to contribute to an american senate campaign), i encourage you to make a contribution to the challenger in each respective senate race, claire mccaskill (missouri), harold ford (tennessee), and jim webb (virginia).

1428 years

i’m sure this will haunt me for quite a long time, but… it has to be said.

you, the general public, including anyone capable of expressing themselves in any manner whatsoever, are hereby granted a perpetual and irrevocable license to thank me for anything at any time and in any manner you see fit. no specific authorization will ever be demanded of you for any expression of gratitude you may find appropriate.

have a nice day.

for real this time

thank you for your service.

bush’s off-the-cuff estimates and iraq body count have the iraqi death toll in the mid-five-figures. then come the scientists.

peer-reviewed and published in the lancet [pdf], this study suggests that the real death toll in iraq is in the mid-six figures.

Iraqi Death Toll Exceeds 600, 000, Study Estimates [wall street journal, 2006.10.11]

“Since March 2003, an additional 2.5% of Iraq’s population has died above what would have occurred without conflict,” the report said. The country’s population is roughly 24 million people.

Human Rights Watch has estimated Saddam Hussein’s regime killed 250,000 to 290,000 people over 20 years.

i’m going to be very generous and thumbnail some death rates from this quote. under us-occupied iraq, that means in 43 months (march 2003 to october 2006), the dead-iraqi-rate has been just a shade under 14,000 per month (600,000 / 43 = 13,953.5). under hussein, the dead-iraqi-rate was just a shade over 1200 per month (290,000 / 249 = 1208.3). that makes us-occupied iraq over ten times as efficient at killing iraqis than the evil saddam hussein regime.

this means that 14,000 families have a new reason to hate america every month, and some of those 14,000 families might just have some crazy cousin willing to do something about it.

it also means that at this rate, we will have depopulated the entire country in 1714 months, or about 140 years. is that your exit strategy?

a first-person account of rock-confiscation brought to you by the transportation security administration…

No Stone Unturned [hartford courant, 2006.10.05]

When is a rock not a rock? When you pass through airport security. Then it becomes a potential weapon, one capable of bringing an airplane down.

it’s things like this that give news media a bad name among… well. people that know better.

U.S. doubts Korean test was nuclear [washington times, 2006.10.09]

A successful nuclear detonation requires a properly timed and triggered conventional blast that splits atoms, setting off the nuclear chain reaction that produces the massive explosions associated with atomic bombs.

the thing about conventional blasts is that they don’t split atoms… unless someone out there is aware of a neutron-producing conventional explosive?

it’s been here before, and i guess it’ll keep happening, so i’ll keep pointing….

a teacher has been suspended because some of her students were “exposed” to nudity in art.

Museum Field Trip Deemed Too Revealing [ny times, 2006.09.30, registration required]

“Keep the ‘Art’ in ‘Smart’ and ‘Heart,’ ” Sydney McGee had posted on her Web site at Wilma Fisher Elementary School in this moneyed boomtown that is gobbling up the farm fields north of Dallas.

But Ms. McGee, 51, a popular art teacher with 28 years in the classroom, is out of a job after leading her fifth-grade classes last April through the Dallas Museum of Art. One of her students saw nude art in the museum, and after the child’s parent complained, the teacher was suspended.

Although the tour had been approved by the principal, and the 89 students were accompanied by 4 other teachers, at least 12 parents and a museum docent, Ms. McGee said, she was called to the principal the next day and “bashed.”

sooner or later, this society will have to come to grips (literally, perhaps) with the concept that while violence is optional in the span of a human life; nudity (and sex) is not. we’ll have to deal with the fact that when we’re young, we use naked breasts for food, and when we’re old, we’ll probably have people wiping our naked asses – that sometimes nudity isn’t about sex.

and we’ll have to deal with the fact that our parents all got naked and had sweaty, passionate sex. we’ll have to deal with the fact that we get aroused and most of us do something about it. and hopefully, we’ll embrace the idea that knowledge is empowering and it’s impossible to shelter everyone from the world, so we might as well know something about it.