(no subject)

I hope people keep in mind that while decapitation is horrendous and awful, and as much as I feel deep sorrow for Mr. Berg's family, this act does not support any arguments that our torturous actions were justified (especially retroactively).

If we hadn't gone into Iraq in the first place, more than 10,000 Iraqi civilians would be alive and untortured, Mr. Berg would be alive and adventurous in some other part of the world, and we wouldn't be left here in America with our current crisis of leadership.

a comment I made in discuss_writing

These are good pointers [for prose]; it's unfortunate that most of these cannot really be used for reading poetry, which is especially demanding.

Poems by nature are difficult to penetrate. All poems should be read more than once, and at least once aloud. When reading critically, it's important to examine each line as an organic whole. Ask yourself: Why did the author decide to end the line where s/he did? What words caught your ear/eye the most? ( Read more... )

(no subject)

My crappy morning began early, when my dad decided to stop for gas, thus making me late for work. I hate when he does that.

I get to work, I try to make headway, and I'm still deluged.

For a job that is not inherently stressful, I'm not having a good day.

I was just wondering about this yesterday.

So why is there no protest music?

I love the opinionists at NYT.

The Abu Ghraib Spin

The administration and its Republican allies appear to have settled on a way to deflect attention from the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib: accuse Democrats and the news media of overreacting, then pile all of the remaining responsibility onto officers in the battlefield, far away from President Bush and his political team. That cynical approach was on display yesterday morning in the second Abu Ghraib hearing in the Senate, a body that finally seemed to be assuming its responsibility for overseeing the executive branch after a year of silently watching the bungled Iraq occupation.

The senators called one witness for the morning session, the courageous and forthright Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who ran the Army's major investigation into Abu Ghraib. But the Defense Department also sent Stephen Cambone, the under secretary of defense for intelligence, to upstage him. Mr. Cambone read an opening statement that said Donald Rumsfeld was deeply committed to the Geneva Conventions protecting the rights of prisoners, that everyone knew it and that any deviation had to come from "the command level." A few Republican senators loyally followed the script, like Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who offered the astounding comment that he was "more outraged by the outrage" than by the treatment of prisoners. After all, he said, they were probably guilty of something.

( Read more... )

(no subject)

There's something wrong with my left eye. Wrong enough that I'll probably have to see a doctor. Not that I have the funds for that.

If it's not one thing, it's another.

(no subject)

The 10:00 Fox News in Detroit will be doing a story on Coricidin this evening, if you're interested.

I have to watch, just to keep abreast of the misinformation out there.

American Idol.

And people wonder why I don't trust the American public.

Here's CNN's take.

as posted in psychology

[We kind of got on a tangent.]

Feminism is what it is. I'm one feminist trying to wrest the definition away from the academic feminists like Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, who are absolutely radical in their philosophy.

Feminism is about reproductive choice and sexual freedom, not "being wild in bed" or "sexpots". Let me rephrase that, because that's not all that feminism is: reproductive choice and freedom, and sexual choice and freedom are some of the issues that begat the movement. But the movement is an organic thing, made up of living beings. Women needed the vote to be realized as full persons. We've come quite far since Victorian times, but prejudices die hard. They aren't nearly as harsh as they once were, in our history, but don't be fooled. There's still some way to go until women achieve even social equality. Equality is what bestows or transfers freedom.

The current social expectations about sex are unfortunate. As are imagery demanding that all women be the same size. It's the same type of pressure: conform to this type of sexuality. But then, who benefits from that image? Not women. So is that feminism?

(Original thread here.)