Post # 800

Blogger is teling me that this is post number 800. My first post was on the 24th of September, 2002 and was a review of caffeinated soap. I had posted it to a mailing list and then posted it to my blog.
And there followed 798 short rants and navel gazing. I started my blog because I was blogging for my mother and periodically sending prolly 799 short rants and navel gazing to all my mailing lists. “Why don’t you start a blog?” somebody asked.
Goodness a lot has happened in my life since I started this project. A few months ago I was blogging about a lack of identity after having had so much occur. Well, I’m settling down to be pretty much the person that I’ve always been. Have the same interests. Act the same way. Do the same stuff. I don’t want to go through all of this and then learn nothing and not change at all, but I dunno, here I am sitting at home on my sofa, typing on a computer, thinking “I should bike more often. I should go to more concerts. I should quit goofing around and go do some actual work.” All these shoulds have been haunting my blog and my life for years. I should stop saying “should” so often.
I like myself, which is newish, but probably not enough yet. Also, I feel your pain. No, I really do. I have way too much empathy. Bad boundaries or something. So my perpetual self re-invention project has new goals: I would make myself less slackerly, better boundaries, less empathetic (oh my what a bitchy-sounding goal) and more self-luvin. I look at that list and think, “my goodness, I am a product of my time.” I distrust personal philosophies that are overly self-centered. But it’s problematic to confuse boundaries with selfishness, isn’t it?
So this is my Saturn Return, right? How have I come around so much stuff and ended up basically the same? Maybe I had it ok to start out with. Maybe I just needed to more know what I had? Maybe any construction needs a solid foundation. Whatever. The day everything suddenly makes sense is the day I reach enlightenment. And I want to do that. But not yet. I like the mystery. I like the journey. I never skip ahead in books to read the end. I want a few more lives to figure stuff out at my lesiurely, slackerly rate of figuring.

Reefer Madness!!!

won’t someone think of the children?? Yeah, pot isn’t good for kids. Neither is fine Kentucky Bourbon and I still seem to be able to purchase that with ID. If we want to keep pot away from kids, who arguably might be harmed by it, shouldn’t we set up a distribution system where adults, who are not harmed by it, can purchase it but children cannot?

Oh, yeah, nobody in the White House cares about kids. If they cared about kids, we’d be doing something about child poverty instead of letting it increase. They must care about something else. Puritanism, perhaps?
The “drug war” makes absolutely no sense to me. I mean, sure, you get to crminialize just about everybody and weird culturally biased sentencing laws against “ghetto” drugs do unfairly target pesky minorities, who we can send to jail in droves and get free labor out of, but, um, everybody smokes pot. Poor kids. Rich kids. White kids. Lots and a lots and lots of white kids. And kids of color. And, like, um everybody. And it’s less bad for you than alchohol. Lets review the risks:

alchohol

  • liver disease
  • heart disease
  • addiction
  • alchol poisoning
  • chocking to death in a pool of your own vomit
  • becoming an angry, violent belligerant drunk

pot

  • lung cancer and all the smoking-related cancers (if you smoke it, but not if you eat it)
  • um, having thoughts that seem really profound but aren’t
  • noticing all the hollywood cliches and conceits in your favorite movie and relaizing that it’s a contrived piece of crap.
  • playing free jazz
  • giggling

How to lie with statistics

Mr Lagoy notes: “And it found the age of youths using marijuana is falling. The teenagers aged 12 to 17 said on average they started trying marijuana at 13 1/2. The same survey found that adults aged 18 to 25 had first tried it at 16. Do you see the problem with that statistic?
you’d have to take all of the answers of ’17’ and up from that second group and scrap them.
that first group hasn’t had a chance to smoke pot for the first time at 18 yet.” Also note that almost all the kids in the first group are under 16. If a kids is 14 now and will try pot for the first time at 16, her answer doesn’t get counted. So the ages come out lower. surprise! Kids under 15 who have tried pot report that they were under 15 when they first tried pot! What does that tell you? Absolutely nothing. What a great way to set national policy.
Also note that this administration has been trying to protect us from the dangers of hemp oil and especially hemp fabric. My hemp pants may be getting me high right now! Except that, um, they’re not. However, they do pose a hborrible danger to cottom and timber interests, since hemp is a far more efficient source of fibers than cotton or trees. An acre of hemp can produce 5 times as much paper as an acre of trees and the hemp can be harvested yearly, whereas it takes more than 20 years to let the trees mature.
Reefer Madness! Reefer Madness Reefer Madness! Reefer Madness!! aieee! we must protect druggie teenagers by sending them to “treatment” and jail!

Cancelling Elections

The Nation is reporting that several states cancelled their Republican primary elections. Why? Because Bush would “obviously” win. Except that instates that did have Republican primaries, up to 30% of registered Republicans voted for Bush challengers. Even a lot of Republicans hate Bush. How do you win an election when every body hates you? Get the voters to stay home. Swing voters hate Bush. Leftists hate Bush. Center-right people hate bush. Only neocons and the far-far right still like Bush. So all you have to do is make sure that only super-conservative people vote. Luckily, the more negative your campaign is, the more likely that folks will stay home. And the more centrist – center-left people are, the more likely they are to stay home. If you go negative enough, only the ultra right wing will show up to vote. Except even that might not work (although I’m sure Fox will be encouraging folks to vote). So why not just cancell elections? They did it in the primaries. Clearly democracy is not that important anymore.
We cannot let them cancell the elections. Alas, they could. The constitution only stipulated that the electoral college must cast ballots. Direct election of the president came from an act of congress, not the constitution. If congress passed it, they could suspend it. What sort of actions should we take to raise aweareness and communicate our rejection of this idea?

More on Daily Issue and how it would work

This is a hypothetical case-study
The issue of the day is posted a few days in advance to a blog dedicated to letting other bloggers know about the issues. One of the editors of that blog learns that Americans for Healthcare Reform is planning to protest in five cities about the sorry state of the health insurance industry in the US. She contacts the activist group and gets their talking points and a press release and posts those as an upcoming issue of the day. Bloggers check the website and find the issue of the day, do a bit of reasearch and post their opinions on it and some links ot the website of Americans for Healthcare Reform and a few related groups. This takes place maybe the day before the protest, maybe a few days, maybe the day of, which ever is going to have the most impact. Then more people go to the protest than would have and folks suddenly become aware that we’re the only country in the industrialized world that doesn’t have national healthcare. Thus, the issue of the day works in concert with an organized event and the two work to reinforce each other. It’s synergy.

Talking point of the day

So everyday, the RNC publishes daily talking points, or rather the daily point. Senators get up in congress and talk about it. Rush Limbaugh harps on it. Other talk radio types talk about it. Fox News does a special report on it. Everyday they take one issue and hammer on it though out the GOP media.

Contrary to what it may seem, there is left media. We’ve got blogs. We’ve got Air America Radio. We’ve got Indy Media. We’ve got the Pacifica Network. It’s not a huge media, but it’s enough to create an echo chamber. If we start talking up a point of the day, it will seep into Blue State news and some mainstream news outlets.
However, we cannot rely on Democratic National leadership to orchestrate this. They’re too busy meeting with business leaders, soliciting donation and trying to argue with the RNC on terms and conditions the RNC has defined. In other words, we should trust the DNC as much as Greens should trust Nader. They’ve abandoned us. They know we want Bush out of office to put up with all sorts of shit, so they’ve got all sorts of shit for us. We need to set the terms of the debate to progressive causes. (Green State causes, if you will)
What needs to happen is some media hound who is on top of what’s going on needs to come up with a point for every day and publish it in some accessible location. The RNC uses GOP.com. We could set up a blog or something and publish the points a few days in advance. Then, on the day a point was the issue of the day, progressive bloggers would post about the issue. Say for example the point of the day is that we’re the only country in the industrialized world that doesn’t have nationalized healthcare. If you were doing a political blog, you could write about the insanely high number of uninsured americans. Or how forcing poor people to wait till they’re about to keel over dead and go to an emergency room is inhumane, violates their rights under the UN Human Rights document and costs more. Or you could write about how expensive medicines are only available to some while others can go just die. Or you, know, maybe the talking oint would be more narrowly defined, but progressives could just say whatever they have to say about it. So it would just be a topic to talk about. And the progressive media could do a story, etc.
The idea is that people will become more aware of these issues. Things people say about them will echo around. More mainstream media will become aware that suddenly all sorts of people are talking about healthcare issues. We will be bringing Green State issues to the public’s attention on our own terms and be setting the debate for Blue State media. If we lead, the DNC will follow. This is already going on now. This is why people are talking about Diebold. This is why people are talking about disenfranchised voters in Florida, because of grassroots Blue media, like the Democratic Underground. I’m suggesting that these guys keep up the good work, but also that grassroots types coordinate a bit, to make sure our issues are heard. We don’t need to all speak in unison, but if we’re all suddenly talking about the same thing, somebody is going to listen.

Site Feeds

Table of Contents

  1. What is it?
  2. Why you really ought to go set this up, really, it would make me happy
  3. Set-up instructions for blogger users
  4. How to read Feeds
  5. Set-up instructions for LiveJournal Users
  6. How paid members of LJ can add feeds to their friends page
  7. How unpaid members of LJ can add feeds to their friends page
  8. Favors I’d like from LJ users

What is it?

Ok, you know how you go to Google News and you see a bunch of AP News Stories and then you go to Yahoo News and see the same AP news stories? It’s because the AP publishes just the content of it’s news stories. Then Google and Yahoo can go get just the content and put it into their web pages with their “look.”
In this great age of personal publishing, you too can publish just the content of your blog! You can tell your journal to create an Site Feed. The feed contains only the content of your blog posts and none of the graphics or look of your blog’s web page

Why you should set this up

Publishing a site feed allows your readers to view your blog posts with a program called a “news aggregator.” This program will show the reader all the new posts on their favorite blogs. This is handy for folks like me who read many blogs. Instead of having to view every blog separately, I can see just new posts. If I want to look at your actual blog, I can sill do that and will if I want to leave a comment. But it’s very handy to be able to see everything that’s new on a single page. This is a lot like the friends page on Live Journal
If you have a Site Feed, it’s likely that more people will read your blog regularly. People will check it every time they check the rest of the blogs that they read. Also, some news aggregator programs not only track your blog for the users, if it’s a web-based service, it tracks references to your blog. This means that when I read your blog (or mine, as I’ve got an Atom feed), I can see if anybody has linked to a particular post. This is interesting, as I can see what people are saying about my favorite blogs and if anybody is saying anything about me.

Setup instructions for Blogger users

  1. Log into your blogger account
  2. Click on the name of your blog from the dashboard page
  3. Click the tab at the top of the page called “settings”
  4. Click the sub tab called “Site Feed”
  5. Select “yes” next to “publish site feed” (this may already be selected)
  6. If you don’t see anything else on the page, click on “save settings”
  7. Select “full” next to “descriptions”
  8. Click “save settings” (even if you already did it)
  9. Copy the site feed url, so you can tell people about it
  10. If you feel comfortable with HTML, click the “template” tab and add a link called “Atom feed” that links to your site feed url. People generally put this someplace on their side bar
  11. Otherwise, click on the “posting tab” and post that you’re doing a site feed now, and include a link to your site feed url.
  12. Check out Blogger’s help files on syndication if you have any questions

How to Read Feeds

You need a program called a news aggregator. A Google search will give you a list of possibilities. I use Bloglines because it’s free and kind of handy. To use it, you set up an account. Then, you add the site feed urls of your favorite blogs. For blogger blogs, the site feed url is almost always http://[blogname].blogpost.com/atom.xml .   Most blogs with site feeds will tell you their url, usually in the sidebar someplace. Their link may say “site feed” or “syndication.”

Setup instructions for LJ users

Yes, even Live Journal users can publish site feeds. In fact, you already do! If somebody asks you about it, point them at http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=149

How paid members of LJ can add feeds to their friends page

You’ve got some real-life friends who are not on Live Journal. They’re on Blogger or some other service. You know the publish a site feed, because they’ve got a link to it on their blog. (The link is called something like “RSS Feed”, “Atom Feed”, “Feed”, or “Syndication”.) But you tire of having to go look at their blog every time you want to read it. Why can’t they just show up on your friends page like all you LJ-using buddies? They can. You need to create something called a “syndicated account.” Fortunately, there exists a Live Journal help-page on how to create a syndicated account. It’s very easy. Just go to http://www.livejournal.com/syn/ and type the site feed url into the text box on the bottom of the page.

How unpaid members of LJ can add feeds to their friends page

Unpaid members cannot create syndicated accounts, however, they can add existing syndicated accounts to their friends page, at http://www.livejournal.com/syn/. It works for them just like paid members, so they should consult the same Live Journal help-page. If you are an unpaid member and want to read a feed which nobody has creates a syndicated account for, you will need to talk to somebody who has a paid account and ask them to create one for you. Tell them read the Live Journal help-page and then give them the feed url for the blog you want to read.

Speaking of which….

I wouldn’t mind reading all of my blogs on the LJ friends page, as it has a nice interface. So, would a paid user mind adding:

  • http://www.euplastic.com/blog/index.rdf
  • http://myrss.com/f/b/l/blogspotGt6mg02.rss
  • http://silversand.blogspot.com/atom.xml
  • http://ethnicallyambiguous.blogspot.com/atom.xml
  • http://ltloink.blogspot.com/atom.xml

also, you know if you wanted to add
http://celesteh.blogspot.com/atom.xml , that might be cool….

Catching Terrorists

Of course, we don’t have to delay the election if we can just catch the evil doers ahead of time. I mean, then terrorists can’t, um, interfere with our democratic processes and Bush gets major props from fearful voters. Wouldn’t it be great if Pakistan caught some important bad guys soon, like during the democratic convention? A July Surprise! Or right before the election? Why, we might reward them with a bunch of stuff, like say, maybe there could be scenario like: “Powell designated Pakistan a major non-nato ally, a status that allows its military to purchase a wider array of U.S. weaponry. Powell pointedly refused to criticize Musharraf for pardoning nuclear physicist A.Q. Khan–who, the previous month, had admitted exporting nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea, and Libya–declaring Khan’s transgressions an “internal” Pakistani issue. In addition, the administration is pushing a five-year, $3 billion aid package for Pakistan through Congress over Democratic concerns about the country’s proliferation of nuclear technology and lack of democratic reform.” Actually, this already happened.
Pakistan wants stuff, so they can be more of a threat to India. We want them to catch some bad guys. We’ve got some good dates in mind.