tower of the sun

the great paris centennial exposition of 1889 fielded a new wonder of the world, the eiffel tower. this is no surprise to anyone reading this, i'm sure. let's quickly review the "grand moment", though:

On June 10, Eiffel held his grand opening, squiring royalty to the top, including tours of his private apartments. In the coming weeks, guests to to the tower included the Shah of Persia, the Prince of Wales, the King of Siam, the Bey of Djibouti, the President of France, Buffalo Bill and Thomas Edison. Young women purchased special dresses made for the occasion called Eiffel ascensionniste. Over 1.9 million people came to the tower during the Exposition.

The tower left behind a lasting legacy. Today, the Eiffel Tower still gets twice as many visitors as the Louvre. The tower was used extensively by Eiffel over the next years as a serious science instrument. Working with the French Central Weather Bureau, Eiffel installed thermometers, barometers, and anemometers. Later, Eiffel's began experimenting with aerodynamics, building the world's first reliable wind tunnel in the tower.

the shah mentioned above was the last qajari shah before the europeans propped up a military man as the new founder of the pahlavi dynasty, but there remains a qajari contender: texas-raised actress sarah shahi of the l-word (role: carmen de la pica).

clearly, she's my favourite cast member - wish i were the nice dyke standing in the photo with her.

but i digress. what surprised me was learning that there was a remarkable contender project created by jules bourdais (1833-1913) and his team, the phare de paris or "pharos of paris", named for the famous lighthouse of alexandria - and the wealthy quarter it engendered.

also called le tour du soleil "tower of the sun", bourdais' design was intended to light up the entire city at night using arclights.

Although Eiffel won the tower competition, there was another serious contender. Electricity and lighting was the key technology during this period. Edison's carbon filament lamp was first made public at the Paris Electricity Exposition of 1881. Up till then, electric lighting was all arc lighting. [Schivelbusch, p.58]

In the period 1880-1920, electricity "permeated modern urban life". The applications of this general purpose infrastructure were astounding: electroshock therapy in medicine; electrocultured galvanised plants in agriculture; local traffic systems; lifts; telephones; radio; the cinema; and, of course, countless household appliances.

Arc lighting was quite popular in the United States. Detroit had 122 towers lighting 21 square miles. Cities ranging from San José to Flint, Michigan all built huge arc lighting towers. A young French electrical engineer named Sébillot toured the United States and was hooked. When the 1889 Exposition committee launched a competition for a "monumental landmark," Sébillot teamed up with the architecht Jules Bourdais.

In 1885, the team submitted a proposal for a 360 meter Sun Tower. Designed to light "tout Paris", the tower was one of two that were submitted to the competition. The other was by a bridge designer, Gustave Eiffel. Why did the Sun Tower lose out? It was that "the light would dazzle rather than illuminate," blinding viewers with its glory.

imagine the difference it would have made if the phare de paris had been made instead, lighting up the city of paris at night. not necessarily a great idea, the lighting, but when needed, incredible. besides, the eiffel tower is ugly as sin, and the phare looks like it would have been just gorgeous (light pollution aside).

oh, i should also mention another qajari contender: marjane satrapi, direct descendent of the last qajari shah. she's the author of persepolis and persepolis II.

it's almost the sawney beanes...

so here's a make-up for the missing sawney beane story. i promise to get it back online, kay?

true stories of human horror. ick - and i can't look away.

On South Mountain
The Dark Secrets of the Goler Clan
David Cruise & Alison Griffiths
ISBN 0140263691
24 Aug 1998

Imagine a lush green valley, dotted with prosperous farms and towns. It could be anywhere in North America — the Okanagan in BC, the Niagara orchards of Ontario. In this case it happens to be the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia. But on one hill, South Mountain, lives the a clan of impoverished, inbred hillbillies, ignored or shunned by the people in the valley below for two hundred years. Few have much schooling, most are unemployed, and they keep almost entirely to themselves.

Two solitudes side by side, until one day in January 1984, Sandra Golder, aged thirteen, burst into tears in class. When her teacher took her out into the hall to ask her why she was crying, a gruesome story of incest and sexual abuse began to emerge. Within hours the story had spread to the principal, a social worker, and finally the police. Within weeks a full-fledged scandal had been unleashed on the valley: sixteen adults — men and women — from the Mountain were charged with hundreds of allegations of incest and sexual abuse of children as young as five. It gradually became clear that this had been going on for generations, a cycle endlessly repeated.

This book tells the amazing story not only of the court cases that followed, but the way the valley community reacted. Dark secrets weren't the exclusive property of the Golers: the townspeople had their own, including the fact that some of them had known about the abuse for decades and done nothing about it.

man, there's a movie i don't want to see. ick, i feel dirty.

women aren't for breeding

and just to remind us all that women aren't just here to breed, here's an excerpt from one of the million-odd other posts over to 50 Books. the woman is a literary wonder, an activist and an all-around insightful writer.

If I read one more story about parents wanting to ban a kids' book because they believe it teaches homosexuality, ignoring the fact that the book is merely trying to teach tolerance, I'm going to claw my eyes out. (Repeat after me: if the picture book shows two guys fucking, it's teaching your kid to be gay. If the book shows some kid learning not to call someone else names, it's teaching tolerance. Get the difference?)

got it.

pregnancy

sometimes, it's good not to be able to breed. at least, that's my conclusion 'pon reading 50 Books's latest missive, entitled "The Time of Reckoning Is at Hand (Part One) ":

Here's the thing about having an approximately 7-lb organism inside you:

It feels really, really weird.

How's that for stating the obvious? And yet all the parenting books and magazines and websites (oh, let's call a spade a spade... they're mothering books and magazines and websites because men have too much - or too little - sense to read how-to books about something as ephemeral as parenting) don't tell you this. They tell you that being pregnant is wonderful and/or magical and/or empowering, and they may even admit that it can be "uncomfortable", but not once have I read anything anywhere that antes up the fact that harbouring a large organism inside your own body is just plain unsettling, not to mention outright bizarre. (Yes, yes, I know it's "natural" and all that, but so are platypuses and, arguably, Anna Nicole Smith, and that doesn't make them any less strange.)

If you've never gestated a large-ish mammal before, here are some things that may surprise you:

When said mammal "kicks", this event is not the charming once-every-so-often experience that sitcoms would have you believe, in which everyone gathers round with their hands on the gestatee's stomach while she smiles beatifically.

Kicking is a persistent (i.e. sometimes dozens of times per hour) and frequently painful activity. Kicks can be directed at any number of your vital organs, frequently simultaneously. It is possible to be kicked under your ribs AND in the bladder at the same time, resulting in a having-to-pee-with-the-wind-knocked-out-of-you sensation that is not without a certain je ne sais quoi.

Kicking is visible from the outside of your body. This is exactly 87 times freakier than you would think it is. Imagine it thusly: you are inside a large balloon. Whilst pressing your back against one side of the balloon, you are able to leverage both feet against two other sides of the balloon, and you push out, distending the balloon so that it looks like two little teepees where each foot is pressing. Just for kicks, you keep your feet in this position for a minute or two, ignoring the gasps of pain coming from outside the balloon. Whee!

"Kicking" is actually a colloquial term for "fetal movement", which is a deceptively innocuous blanket term for a range of movements that would have made the Red Baron proud: loop-the-loops, barrel rolls, and possibly even the dreaded hammerhead.

Kicking does not subside at reasonable times, such as during important work meetings, while watching America's Next Top Model, or WHILE TRYING TO SLEEP.

i'm always impressed with how funny people can be. i mean, that's a funny-ass post.

some people just have that silver tongue, i guess.

I Almost Forgot ...

great post from kevin drum, who has weathered his larry summers moment swimmingly.

Mouth Meet Bait

lip meet hook.

harvest coop, my local granola-hippie-crunch grocery store, allows all kind of commie liberal types to set up tables to solicit donations and volunteers. i suspect that the percentage of staff and clientele that voted for ralph nader is many times higher than the national average. being a trusting type in a trusting community, i never thought to question the origins of any of the organizations that set up tables there, week in and week out. most of the time, they just want you to write a personal note to state congressional representatives expressing your opinion regarding legislative matters.

one day in late january, a small, thin, middle-aged woman with a youthful face and a shock of thick, iron-tinged hair was manning a table alone. i stopped to determine what that day's 'issue' was, and she began talking. she had an intent gaze that practically demanded attention, so i stood quietly while she spoke of the missing safety net. her gaze was almost too intent, and i personally don't like to look strangers in the eye for long, so i broke eye contact and noticed the calendars. the artwork was beautiful, and it had that strident, old-school leftist style that i like, so i agreed to buy one.

when i met her gaze again, she said that what her organization really needed was people and asked if i would leave my name and number with her so she could call me about volunteer opportunities. she didn't tell me much about her organization. i wandered home, taking away a vague impression that it had something to do with labor rights. when i got home, i examined the calendar. on the back was a section that one could cut out and mail to the National Labor Federation to offer to become a volunteer in the effort to organize the wage slaves of america.

coveralls of the islamic variety

lookit i found whilst browsing online...
NEW COVERALLS FOR EMILY1!

cause girl, you need new coveralls as bad as i need surgical intervention.

thanks, shukrOnline

Redefining Reality

and the conservatives complain about liberals trying to change the meanings of words:

Targeted by Conservatives for Teaching Philosophy
House bill aimed to restrain academic scholars with legal threats
by Jacqueline Marcus

Of what use is a philosopher who doesn’t hurt anybody’s feelings?—Diogenes

One may view the history of philosophy as a history of heresy.—Walter Kaufmann

In the Florida legislature, House Republicans on the Choice and Innovation Committee recently voted to pass a bill that threatens to restrain academic scholars. The law would allow students to sue teachers for beliefs that do not concur with conservative perspectives. If, for example, professors argue that evolution is a scientific fact instead of a theory, and if they don’t devote equal time to creationism, under this bill, initiated by conservative David Horowitz’s campaign, students can sue the professor for being biased.

i know that this generation is no different than the last, but this latest example of the sheer arrogance of college students who think they shouldn't have to be exposed to viewpoints that conflict with their own still shocks me.

more mæzdi tomfoolery

one of the long-standing questions of archaeology, particulary indo-european and indo-iranian studies, is where indo-iranian culture fermented before rampaging into what is modern afghanistan, iran, pakistan, and northern india. a remarkable series of discoveries in türkmeniston has shed light on a lot of fun things, including what appears to be a proto-iranian fire temple and the recipe for that most infamous of drugs, "soma" (IIr. *sauma, Indic sôma, Avestan Iranian haoma, Farsi hum).

A short walk over fine dry dirt - scattered with thousands of potsherds - took us to Gonur South, where excavations were completed a few years before. This was the temenos, as Sarianidi names it, a great religious complex that may have served the entire region in the later Bronze Age.

In it are spaces that housed the sacred fires, storage areas for the pure white ash removed from the hearths, and several large rooms for sacred ritual, perhaps for the seating of the gods. Filling most of the area within the eight-foot thick walls of the complex are many small rooms for the servitors of the temple. These servitors' rooms are like ordinary dwelling spaces except for an unusual architectural element; a large mud brick shelf, covered in white plaster and often holding a large clay vessel.

The vessels appear to contain the remnants of an ancient narcotic drink. Chemical analysis has shown that they held a potent mix of hemp, poppy and ephedra, a heady cocktail that Sarianidi thinks may be the precursor to the [haoma] of the Avesta (and of Aldous Huxley). It is the discovery of fire temples in close conjunction with the ritual use of a hallucinogenic drink, which Sarianidi finds so exciting. This joining prefigures elements of the texts of the Avesta, and according to Sarianidi, may be the first appearance of rites associated with later Zoroastrian tradition. In this religious edifice, and in what Sarianidi calls "ritual contexts" in other sites, he has found miniature columns made of various marble-like stones.

Their exact function is not yet clear, but Sarianidi believes that there is a connection between these objects and the cult libation of the hallucinogenic beverage produced in the temenos.

now iranian religion, which remains as mæzdi or zoroastrianism (link above) amongst the parsis of west india and the few remaining iranian zaloshti indigenes in barren yazd and kerman provinces, split from their indic colleagues' ages ago: many of the ancient gods of india, the dêvas, are named as demons (avestan daevas, farsi divan); in return, the indic works speak of the demonic asuras, which appears in the zoroastrian name for god, avestan ahura mazdâ "the ahura [named] Wisdom" (farsi ohrmæzd).

the discovery of a fire temple is fascinating; both traditions speak of holy fire (sanskrit agni, "[god named] Fire") but zoroastrianism is aniconic and these temenoi seem to have room for statues.

i'll be hunting down more on this as best i can; it's fascinating.

thanks, anahita gallery (which bears my name!)

one, one, one corpse-eating vulture, 'a 'a 'aaaa!

well, i'm apparently not the only person worried about the lack of vultures in india... (see previous post here). ahmedabad newsline reports:

One, Two, Three...
Vulture Count to Start in May
Abhishek Kapoor

Vadodara, March 20: Missing vultures had made news in the late 1990s, following a memorandum by the Parsi community to the Government of India, dependent as they are on the bird for disposal of their dead.

Earlier this month, a two-phase study on vulture census and conservation was launched by Gandhinagar-based Gujarat Ecology and Environment Research (GEER) Foundation in the state, in what could be the first organised effort to salvage the declining population of the endangered species in the country.

The first phase of the study began some days ago and will continue till March 27. The second round involving actual census of the birds will be conducted on May 28 and 29.

The present survey will provide us with valuable information on a number of factors that affect vulture population. Like the number of colonies in the state, nature and dimensions of their nests, quality of habitat. All this will help us prepare a conservation plan.

[...] informs Director GEER, C N Pandey. Also a member of the National Wildlife Board, Pandey, who attended the March 17 meeting with the Prime Minister, says that their effort is different from the central government’s decision. "What the Centre announced is different from what we initiated before that. It might be converged at a later stage," he said.

Officials say the second round of actual counting has been kept for May, as in that part of the year, hatching is over, young ones are out and water is scarce, concentrating population in smaller areas. "This makes the job of enumerators easier," Pandey says.

More than 200 volunteers from NGOs and wildlife enthusiasts have been involved in the statewide exercise. Informs Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife), Pradeep Khanna,

A dedicated team of wildlifers is working across the state. We hope it is a success.

Following the data collection from the first survey, GEER will prepare a map of major vulture colonies, that experts say will help in future initiatives.

Of the nine species in the country, Gujarat is home to six: the White Backed (also called White Rumped), Long Billed (locally called Girnari Giddh) Egyptian White, King Vulture, Cinereous (locally called Jatayu) and Eurasian Griffin.

i have this overwhelming need to count vultures; i wonder if they take volunteers in the united states. to count here, i mean. do we even have dakhmeha here? (and by that i mean a zoroastrian tower of silence, although the term really only means a tomb...)

no problem. i'll just go and count them myself. my dad did that with cougars in new england, and now he's the famous cougar expert of the east coast, so it must work somehow.

left: Gyps bengalensis (White-Rumped Vulture)
right: Gyps indicus (Long-Billed Vulture)

left: Neophron percnopterus (Egyptian White Vulture)
right: Sarcogyps calvus (Pondicherry, Red-Headed or Asian King Vulture)

left: Aegypius monachus (Cinereous or Black Vulture)
right: Gyps fulvus (Eurasian Griffon)

seriously, those are some scary birds, man. i want some. i want to walk around with one on my shoulder and feed it raw meat. they're scarier than my cat spanky, who admittedly does not impress upon first view, but again is a bouncing betty on her own. still, if i kill someone they can eat the body in like, under ten minutes. try and forensify that shit, o dr. jordan cavanaugh!

Dear, Faithful Readers

i feel bad when i see how many of you visit, eager for some new tidbit of wit and wisdom, or some gutsplittingly hilarious ridiculosity of the week. i feel bad that i haven't finished the migration from blogspot to our own domain. i feel bad that i've only changed one font in the new design since last week. a dark curtain has fallen over WfD. the garden of muses is a bone-dry desert, the perfect backdrop to a clint eastwood movie about manliness and big guns.

i am currently recovering from a brush with a political cult operating out of roxbury. remember that great volunteer experience i was so excited about? it turned out to be a front for a 30-year-old marxist political cult. i know i should have known something was up when they said they refused to have an internet presence. anyway, i'm deep in the middle of research on the history of this group. needless to say, this has left me more than a little shaken. more details will follow. i'd also like to hear about the experiences of anyone who is a former member of the National Labor Federation, aka NATLFED, or any of its front organizations. email me at natlfed.project@gmail.com.

just to put everyone at ease, i've cut ties with the organization. i called and declined to 'volunteer' for them any longer. the whole experience has been unnerving to say the least. there are several colleges in the area who give credit to their students for working with the organization in roxbury, and my local grocery coop allows them to set up tables there to solicit for volunteers and donations. i want to gather enough credible evidence so that i can convince the colleges and the grocery coop to withdraw their support from it.

the horrible thing about all of this? despite the fraud and basic dishonesty, this organization actually performs valuable social services for their low-income membership base. their organizational model is actually effective and self-sustaining. even so, i think they funnel the cash donations back to the parent organization, which i find ethically and morally repugnant.

The Sound and the Fury

plucked from web chatter:

Blogs got good early notice and let it go their head, and now the bandwagon rolls on, creaking from an overload of the unemployable, the out-of-work, the creeps, the neglected children, the heathens, summer stock company Christians, the injured, the innocent, the mock visionaries, the propagandists, the disenchanted, the misanthropes - and all with words, words, ax-weilding words, on-the-prowl, looking for enemies, preserving the lost cause, self-exonerating, overplaying their hand and never concerned that Locke might have been right and that such scribbling crackpots, as tech-crazed symbols, are just as bad as the ramparts they want to storm.

Ashlyn Gere

protesting 101: how to protest effectively

have adorable munchkins hold up "democracy!" signs in english

make sure a million people take to the streets

[i should be writing my paper, so i'll stop now]

happy nowruz, mistah prehziden'...

oh, look at the boilerplate holiday greetings the preznident sends to the heathens!

well, the ones he hasn't murderated yet, anyway.

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
March 16, 2005

Presidential Message: Nowruz

March 2005

I send greetings to those celebrating Nowruz.

Nowruz marks the arrival of a new year and the celebration of life. It has long been an opportunity to spend time with family and friends and enjoy the beauty of nature.

Many Americans who trace their heritage to Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Central Asia observe this special occasion to preserve their rich heritage and ensure that their values and traditions are passed on to future generations. This festival also reminds all Americans of the diversity that has made our Nation stronger and better.

Laura and I send our best wishes for peace and prosperity in the New Year.

GEORGE W. BUSH

wow, i'm like, um, moved by that sincere and totally befuddled message. seriously - what kind of fricken' holiday greeting is that? i've seen hallmark do a better job, you cheap bastard!

shit, is that all we get? no

i leapt over the nowruz bonfire in accordance with at least four thousand years of native tradition

& beaten by the islamofascist armed lackeys for my trouble

& all i got was a crappy boilerplate greeting from the US Preznident - & this lousy t-shirt!

i feel gypped. i want my country back.

Why You Must Read Suburban Guerrilla

everybody likes to complain about the fact that the mainstream media is completely out of touch with anyone who isn't upper middle class or above. susan thinks part of the problem is the obsession with credentials. working class college students can't afford to do the unpaid internships that help them meet potential mentors and employers in the media, but mainstream publications won't hire anyone without a college degree. how does an intelligent, articulate person with a completely under-represented point of view get hired and get published?

on that note, why do so many employers demand a college degree for jobs that don't really need one? a friend's elderly grandmother recently told me that she thought young people today have a much harder struggle to face than they did when she immigrated to the US at the age of thirteen. so many jobs nowadays require 'that piece of paper' even though the duties of the jobs often don't. she said, "We had all the jobs we wanted. I didn't speak a word of English, but I could still work." our economy has evolved to the point that even getting an entry level clerical job requires the investment of several years and thousands of dollars in education beyond high school. why is that?

frankly, if we are at the point that even pink collar jobs require a college degree then it's about time we start making college available to everyone free of charge, just like grade school and high school. if someone can't make it with just a high school degree, then our society is either setting the bar for employment too high or we're not preparing young people to enter the workforce. that is, essentially, what public education is for, isn't it?

stop! action time!

i don't ascribe to everything that CAIR does, but this action alert is worthy. the press release with contact instructions follows; i just wanted to add that the book in question is The Life and Religion of Mohammed by J. L. Menezes. the same sale page you find when you search for it is headed,

Mohammed: the ugly truth about the founder of the world's most violent religion, By a priest who lived and ministered among Muslims.

i can find neither hide nor hair of the author or the book in the library of congress, by searching for its ISBN, or by just doing web searches. judging by the quotes, it can't be a modern book - it sounds like it was from the 1800s.

Ask National Review to Repudiate Anti-Muslim Hate
Neocon magazine silent on promoting Islamophobic hate

(WASHINGTON, D.C., 3/22/05) - CAIR today urged American Muslims and other people of conscience to contact editors of the National Review magazine and ask that they repudiate Islamophobia and remove a book attacking the Prophet Muhammad from their online store.

Last week, CAIR called on the prominent national neoconservative magazine to clarify its policy on anti-Muslim hate following revelations that the publication distributed an Internet advertisement for a virulently Islamophobic book that, according to the magazine, is a "guide into the dark mind of [the Prophet] Mohammed" and the "world's most violent religion."

The National Review's review of the book states:

[The author] explains why Mohammed couldn't possibly be a true prophet, and reveals the true sources of his 'revelations.'

It quotes the author as claiming:

Mohammed posed as the apostle of God while his life is marked by innumerable marriages; and great licentiousness, deeds of rapine, warfare, conquests, unmerciful butcheries, all the time invoking God's holy name to sanction his evil deeds.

According to the National Review, the book shows how "Mohammed again and again justified his rapine and licentiousness with new 'divine revelations.'"

CAIR said the book "is the literary equivalent of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion." (NOTE: In 2002, CAIR called on an Arab-American publication to apologize for publishing excerpts from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a 19th century anti-Semitic forgery used to justify the persecution of Jews.)

ACTION REQUESTED:

(As always, be POLITE. National Review WILL use any hostile comments to further defame Islam and Muslims.)

Contact National Review to respectfully that they reconsider promoting a book that attacks the faith of one-fifth of the world's population and harms America's image in the Muslim world.

CONTACT:

Mr. Richard Lowry
Editor
National Review
215 Lexington Avenue
New York, New York 10016

TEL: 212-679-7330
FAX: 212-849-2835

E-MAIL:
Click Here

marburg virus outbreak

yeek! there's been a partic'ly nasty outbreak of the marburg virus in angola.

Negative stain image of an isolate of Marburg virus, showing filamentous particles as well as the characteristic "Shepherd's Crook". Magnification approximately 100,000 times.

the scary bit? two confirmed marburg sufferers left the hospital and haven't been found. frelling nightmare innit.

here's a link to the CDC infosheet on marburg & here's what the BBC has to say:

Angolans die from Ebola-like bug
More than 90 people have died in the past five months in Angola after an outbreak of a haemorrhagic fever in the north caused by the Marburg virus.

The World Health Organization says the disease, which has particularly affected children under five years old, is from the Ebola family.

The symptoms, similar to Ebola, include vomiting, bloody discharge and fever.

The nature of the outbreak was discovered after blood samples were sent to the US for analysis.

The Marburg disease, which was first recognised in 1967, affects humans and primates.

Fled hospital

Mr Van Dunem said 101 cases of the illness had been reported in a hospital in the city of Uige.

Ninety-three people have died and two have left the hospital without being properly discharged, he told reporters.

"We are engaged in an effort with the community to find the two patients who fled the hospital and to detect new cases," he said.

WHO has suggested Angolan figures may include other deaths and said last week that at least 39 people have died.

WHO has had to cope with several outbreaks of Ebola in Africa since 2000.

The biggest was in Uganda four years ago, when hundreds died.

It passes quickly from person to person, through bodily fluids such as mucus, saliva and blood.

yaar, it's worse than lyme 4 sho'. remind me not to visit anywhere where they have haemorrhagic fevers no more. (i've been to places where they are endemic, and it's not an encouraging experience.)

Design Is A Bitch

so, since i last posted about moving WfD to its own domain, i continued to labor over the new design. since that time, i have accomplished the following:

1) moving some things from the left column to the right column
2) changing some fonts
3) dividing the post text into clearly demarcated sections

wow. it's amazing what 8 hours of work on one design can yield. i'm sure a professional would have been much faster. the ability to design a good web template is a mixture of art and science, with art taking the dominant role. web designers do have to have an understanding of some elements of structural syntax that define programming languages. even so, they have to be artists first. hear ye, all potential employers of web designers: you get what you pay for. if you pay well, it's likely that you will receive an elegant, functional design quickly.

if, on the other hand, you are the kind of scum who advertises unpaid internships requiring 5 years of experience, you are going to get screwed. believe me. that sla.. uh, i mean, _employee_ will find a way to fuck you over. it might be in a small way. even so, it will be in an incredibly *annoying* small way. or it may be so small that even if you never know about it, it gives that employee a deep sense of satisfaction... such as sleeping with your wife, or peeing in your soup. especially if that employee actually has the 5 years of experience you require for an unpaid internship.

i think the goal is to move the blog sometime next weekend. i may not make that deadline. so far, it looks the way it should in firefox 1.0.1 on mandrake 10.1. so, that covers... me.... as far as i know. i think i am responsible for most of the hits that WfD gets from users running Linux/Unix variants. all 5 percent of them.

islam: "mary was a dyke"

best. commentary. evaaaar.

this is coming off of a discussion of 'ineffectuals', males who do not function as 'men' with women and therefore constitute a separate category.

The ineffectual can include abstinent women as well as men, and in fact "the abstinent ones among women, who do not hope for marriage" are permitted to "put off their cover" in Sura 24:60.

Another intriguing example of a gender variant woman is Jesus's mother Mary. According to ancient notions about procreation, males were the only ones capable of producing seed. It would be impossible for a woman to give birth to a child, let alone a boy, without receiving seed from a male. In Christianity, this problem is solved by making God the male father of Jesus. According to the Qur'an, however, God does not procreate. This means that the seed that became Jesus came from within Mary. If Mary carried viable seed originating from within her, then by ancient definitions, she was a male, despite appearances to the contrary. So the Qur'an says that, when Mary was born, her mother declared that she was a female baby, but God knew better:

(Qur'an 3:36) Lord, surely, I have brought it forth a female - and [God] knew best what she brought forth - and the male is not like the female..

فلما وضعتها قالت رب اني وضعتها انثى والله اعلم بما وضعت وليس الذكر كالانثى واني سميتها مريم واني اعيذها بك وذريتها من الشيطان الرجيم

There are other traditions about the gender variance of Mary. I have argued elsewhere that Mary's "virginity" is not merely the innocent state of a girl who has not yet known a man, but a more permanent rejection of sex with men, like that of the Vestal Virgins in Rome. In Isaiah 7:14, it is predicted that a "virgin" will conceive bear a son, but the word for virgin used there is not the generic bethulah used throughout the Hebrew scripture for girls who have not yet had sex. Instead, the word [3almâh] is used, a very rare word in the scriptures, which is the female counterpart to [3elem], meaning boy.

לָ֠כֵן יִתֵּ֨ן אֲדֹנָ֥י ה֛וּא לָכֶ֖ם אֹ֑ות הִנֵּ֣ה הָעַלְמָ֗ה הָרָה֙ וְיֹלֶ֣דֶת בֵּ֔ן וְקָרָ֥את שְׁמֹ֖ו עִמָּ֥נוּ אֵֽל

In the other verses in which it is used, it is compatible with a meaning of tomboy or rebuffer of men (cf. Proverbs 30:18-19, in which an [3almâh] appears to be impermeable to men).

‎30:18 ‏שְׁלֹשָׁ֣ה הֵ֭מָּה נִפְלְא֣וּ מִמֶּ֑נִּי3 וְאַרְבָּע וְ֝אַרְבָּעָ֗ה לֹ֣א יְדַעְתִּֽים׃ ‎30:19 ‏דֶּ֤רֶךְ הַנֶּ֨שֶׁר׀ בַּשָּׁמַיִם֮ דֶּ֥רֶךְ נָחָ֗שׁ עֲלֵ֫י צ֥וּר דֶּֽרֶךְ־אֳנִיָּ֥ה בְלֶב־יָ֑ם וְדֶ֖רֶךְ גֶּ֣בֶר בְּעַלְמָֽה׃

[emphasis mine; original language text added as well.]

man, have i got ammunition to smite the armies of the self-righteous now. wicked.

thanks for the great commentary, faris malik.

i'm having a geek moment

star wars iii: revenge of the sith trailer

in case you're the one other person on the planet who hasn't seen this yet besides me.

(oh no... natalie portman/queen amidala is crying... don't cry! your man is a thug and a scoundrel, sista. here, let me comfort you... 0:P )

We Should Post, She Says

"i know, i know," i reply.

i just haven't had anything to say. the progressive blogosphere has already devoted a multitude of posts to the bankruptcy bill and the other activities of the 'kill the poor and rape the environment' contingent of our state and federal legislative bodies, so i didn't write about them myself. why duplicate the stellar research other bloggers have accomplished?

i now volunteer several hours a week with a community organization in boston. i am way more overscheduled than i should be, but i was sick of ranting ineffectually online. pounding out mean, nasty rants is so very satisfying, but it doesn't feed anybody. i'm not sure how long i can keep this up, but for now, i'm willing to devote a big chunk of my time to my volunteer activities. i'll keep going as long as i can, and when i start feeling burnt out, i'll cut back.

the other time sink is the re-design of this blog. we're moving to our very own domain soon. previews of the new design are available at www.waitingfordorothy.com. be warned, it is still incomplete. i also haven't tested it on different browers and operating systems under different screen resolutions. design is a bitch. if you can believe it, the pathetic preview you see there now is the culmination of hours of effort. i started this project in january, but i never finished it because the learning curve was so intimidating: CSS, HTML, PHP, and GIMP.

as if *that* weren't enough, different browers, different versions of browsers, and different operating systems don't render web pages in the same way. some only support portions of the CSS standard, some incorrectly implement portions of CSS, and older browers don't support it at all. despite the all vaunted capabilities of CSS to streamline and standardize the design process by separating content and design, the fact is that design and content are still the grotesque siamese twins of the web.

perhaps in 5 or 10 years, they will dance on the heads of different pins, but not today. currently, to ensure near universal accessibility of a web page, several templates are required. since i'm a geek, i *have* to rise to this challenge. therefore, when i am finished, waiting for dorothy will be accessible even to people using lynx. now, wouldn't that be something?

the wingnuts are going after the seven dwarves

"snow white and the seven dwarves" is promoting the homosexual agenda because it depicts seven men living together. no joke!

i wonder if college fraternities or mens' sports teams will ever be targeted. i hope the wingnuts try to ban NFL games from being shown during "family hours." that should provide for some entertainment... "listen, when i pat him on the butt after being a good receiver, it means nothing!"

LIKE OH MY GOD

the performance of joss stone and melissa etheridge covering janis joplin at the grammy awards (crybaby / piece of my heart) is the featured track on itunes. that was 99 cents well spent!

the next idiot who complains about unelected "activist judges" in new york and california...

...is gonna get ten lashes with the emily2 spanking thing.

new york state trial court judges are elected. ELECTED. E-L-E-C-T-E-D. the only time anyone is appointed at the trial court level is when there is a vacancy. and no, justice doris ling-cohan was not appointed in this manner - she was elected in the general judicial election... with over 230,000 votes in fact. OKAY?! SHE WAS NOT APPOINTED. so please get that through your thick skulls.

likewise, california state trial court judges are elected. ELECTED ELECTED ELECTED.

that's right... subject to the democratic process. not appointed. elected.

and just because i am feeling ornery, even if a judge ISN'T elected, there is this case from 1803 that says that judges have the power to decide whether laws enacted by legislature are constitutional. it's called marbury v. madison; the supreme court may have the final say whether a law passed by congress is constitutional. this case is over 200 years old, okay? it's not going to change. judicial review is here to stay. deal with it.

thank you very much. good night.

hrm...

from emily1's earlier post, italics mine:

He pretty much told me that things had changed, and people weren't putting up with what they felt was deviant behavior any more. Plus, it would have been dangerous to stop the crowd from making their comments. He told me he had tried that a couple of times, and he'd gotten hurt. He also has the place for sale because of the way things are.

I was stunned. While people may not have liked what you did or how you lived, no one ever made comments. The town has always had a huge meth & pot problem, too many unwanted children, and too much poverty. That's OK. It's American.

But if you are a middle-aged lesbian version of the Red Hat Society, active in the museum committee, the humane society, the library guild, and own half the businesses in town, you are deviant and need to get out of the local sports bar.

anyone else thinking what i am thinking? if you already own half the businesses in town, why not own one more? these women should buy up the place and make it into a gay bar. ;)

respek!!!

skip to the bottom of this post. don't mind the rest. (i'm not going to get into the debate over the new translation of the bible, except to say that people shouldn't be changing words in any book, and i see the bible as just another book - yes, one of historical importance - but my point is: don't change words in any book, historical documents, shakespeare, jon stewart's "america," or even julia child's cookbook. the authors put them there; don't mess. however, if the "new" version is closer to the old hebrew/greek texts, i'm all for it.)

anyway, i just think the ebonics version of the ten commandments is hysterical.

1. I am the cool mack daddy of the dope hype flow. Give me props and mad respect.
2. Don't be kneeling for some bling bling.
3. Don't be throwing my name around, be it J. Hovah or Yah Diddy.
4. Yo, Sunday is "funday", ya dig?
5. Respect your moms, your pops, or whoever it was raised you, unless they whack.
6. Thou shalt not bust a cap in someone's ass.
7. Don't be running around on people like they don't know.
8. No five-finger discounts.
9. Don't front.
10. If your neighbor's got a fly crib or a pimped-out set of wheels, that's they bidness, not yours.

The Brownshirting of America

from Blue Bunny at tabletalk:

I witnessed a very scary event in California last weekend. A friend of mine owns a bar in a red town in a red county in the bluest of the blue states.

However, the whole motto of the town has always been live and let live.

One set of his regular customers is a group of e lesbian ladies. They like him becasue he's always been nice to him, and visa versa. They are very outspoken about their sexual orientation,and have been a positve fixture in the community since I was in high school 25 years ago.

Well, last Saturday night, this group of women came in the bar. They had a couple of drinks, some appetizers, and danced a couple of dances.

People started making loud, anti-homosexual comments worthy of anything Falwell has ever spouted, and then one old coot asked them to leave. It sort of frightened me and my date, and we started to get our jackets together to leave in case the place erupted into a bar fight.

My friend, the owner of the place, didn't do anything to stop this confrontation. Feeling challenged, these women left the bar, and the place cheered when they did.

When I left the bar, I confronted my friend - I said, what the hell was up with that?

He pretty much told me that things had changed, and people weren't putting up with what they felt was deviant behavior any more. Plus, it would have been dangerous to stop the crowd from making their comments. He told me he had tried that a couple of times, and he'd gotten hurt. He also has the place for sale because of the way things are.

I was stunned. While people may not have liked what you did or how you lived, no one ever made comments. The town has always had a huge meth & pot problem, too many unwanted children, and too much poverty. That's OK. It's American.

But if you are a middle-aged lesbian version of the Red Hat Society, active in the museum committee, the humane society, the library guild, and own half the businesses in town, you are deviant and need to get out of the local sports bar.

I hate that fucking town, and if my parents didn't live there, I would never ever set foot in it again.

california love!

whaddya expect?

My Zombie Survival Test Results

Armed and Dangerous
Congratulations! You scored 81% You made it out, alive and well supplied. You probably even kept most of your party alive too. You know what to look for, what to take, and when to just run. You even feel a strange inkling to go back. If you did, you'd probably do just fine.



My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 97% on survivalpoints

Link: The Zombie Scenario Survivor Test written by ci8db4uok on Ok Cupid

the zombie scenario survivor test

I took the the zombie scenario survivor test - and didn't do half-bad. my problem was prolly lack of familiarity with weaponry and a soft spot. still, i gotta work on my sk1llz...

official survivor

congratulations! you scored 72%!

whether through ferocity or quickness, you made it out. you made the right choice most of the time, but you probably screwed up somewhere. nobody's perfect, at least you're alive.

how you compared to other people your age and gender: you scored higher than 96% on survival points

the zombie scenario survivor test written by ci8db4uok at okcupid.

dear justice scalia:

on march 2, during the oral arguments for the ten commandments cases, you said the ten commandments are "a symbol of the fact that government derives its authority from god." you also said later on, "our laws come from god."

can you click on this picture please? (in case you're not a firefox user, look at the bottom of the picture. it says the phrase "god" was not found in the u.s. constitition.)

so can you tell me how you arrived at your conclusion?

storytime: rustam & the akwân dêw

this story comes from the shahnama of ferdowsi of tus (فردوسی طوسی, d. 1020), a persian epic that contains stories and legends dating back to the pre-islamic period of irån. this particular story is about the tussle of the hero rustam with "the akvân dêw". cousin with the sanskrit ("indian") word dêva "god" (and more distantly with latin deus "god"), dêw is the middle persian word for a demon.

zoroastrianism, which developed during the pre-islamic sasanian period out of indigenous persian religion, took the opposite stance that the people of india did: of the traditional two kinds of gods, they took the ahuras to be good, as seen in the old persian name for the one true god, ahura mazdâ or "ahura Wisdom" (versus sanksrit asura "demon"), and the second type to refer to evil divinities (worshipped by heretics or "daevics" in the provinces), the dêwas.

in modern fårsi, rustam's name, rostæm, sounds roughly like english "roast am", the word for demon, div, sounds like "deev", and the demon's actual name, ækun, sounds like "racoon" without the r.

so.

the ruler of irån, called kæy kævus, learnt his great herds of fine horses was being depleted. a giant, red-gold onanger (the wild ass, which is native to persia and india) with a wicked black stripe running from his nose to tail, was killing his stallions, snapping their necks. this is how horses fight, but an ass killing his mightiest horses is like a coyote ripping his way through a pack of rottweilers - highly improbable.

"wild ass of persia", colonel h. smith. published in 1841 in the naturalist's library, vol. 'Equestrian' (sir william jardine, ed.)

the kæy had to move fast. he called on the greatest hero he had, the mighty rostæm (who appears wearing a tasteful hat made out of a kitty's face in every painting i've encountered - check below). rostæm agrees to mount his horse, rækhsh (not like that, you pervs!), and kill that asinine problem. (get it? asinine? ha ha!)

bravely did the greatest hero of the land ride out to shoot a donkey on his mighty warhorse, but he was in for a surprise. (though perhaps we weren't.)

see, every time horse-splitting rostæm - whose arrows could cleave a horse perfectly in two so that each half then weighed the same - got a good shot, he missed. he rode around and around chasing that damned ass all day, and when he could get an angle, the evil beast felt it coming somehow and dodged it, like it had eyes in the back of its head.

"rostam chases the onager" by muzzafar ali (c.1530)

finally, rostæm decided to make it a night. lying down with his horse (dirty, dirty! bad reader!), he fell fast asleep. shooting arrows with his magic kitty hat on is tiring work.

unsurprisingly, the plot now thickens. see, the onager was actually a div, and a well-hung one at that - don't believe me, check the miniatures below! once our hero was snoring away, the div ækun snook'd up on him and picked him up, lifting the very ground on which rostæm lay over his head, ready to hurl him into the distance: the original WWF smackdown, only without the acting and trickery. this would be the end of rostæm! he'd be nothing but ros-jam, crushed against the rocks of the mountaintops and then slowly frozen solid by the cold there!

left: "Rostam Carried by the Div Akvan": Folio 158 verso, Shahnama, mid-17th century; Safavi d. Signed by Mu3in Musavvir (active ca. 1638–97), Isfahan.
right: "The Div Akvan Hurling Rostam into the Sea as he Sleeps on a Rock"; probably Qazvin (c. 1570).

now our hero, wearing his requisite kitty-faced hat, had to think fast before he was ros-jam. luckily, he'd been watching buffy reruns the week before and remembered the div ækun had a fatal weakness: you could trick him through reverse psychology. our brave, kitty-hatted rostæm thus spoke:

"oh great-shlonged div, i am so glad you are going to hurl me to a hero's death on the peaks! i am terrified of the ocean: all those beasts and monsters make me piss my pants in terror, and that's a double-lousy way to die. imagine! eaten by monsters while you float in a warm spot! thank goodness you are such a merciful enemy!"

"aha!" thought our great, golden (or blue?) div. "i shall shame this wanker by hurling him 'mongst the eels and fishies!"

and he did. he threw that puny hoo-man right into the ocean, which was lucky because rostæm had a big chunk of rock and earth to break the water tension and prevent him from being splatted like a bridge-jumper. wading to shore, he wielded his brave sword, slicing those ferocious fishes into pieces.

now rostæm was pissed. his kitty-hat was all wet, and so was his bow and armour, which he shucked off as ruined, and not only that, he had to walk all the way back to the wilderness to kick that demon's ass.

but now he was prepared. he snook'd up behind the demon, who was snoring away with many satisfied fillies around him, and snicker-snack! went his vorpal blade.

rostæm, triumphant, returned to the court on her horse, rækhsh, bearing the demon's head. everyone marvelled appreciatively, pretending not to notice he was all gross from the salt dried on him and smelled from a week's worth of hiking, plus his kitty hat was in a sad shape and his hair - just appalling. then they went back to more important things, like last night's episode of lost and cocktail parties.

the end.

i'd say it's unbelievable, but...

muslim wakeup! and the muslim women's freedom tour are sponsoring female-lead public friday prayer ("jum3ah prayers") in NYC.

this is extremely controversial. it's not that women aren't deemed equal to men religiously; the famous jurist tabari (d. 923), founder of one of the four judicial schools of islam, observed that the prophet muhammad (peace) had instructed a woman to lead prayers, thus dispelling any misapprehensions unruly penis-wielders might have on the subject.

however, social patterns don't change just because they are supposed to, and this friday's event will be the first woman-led jum3ah prayers recorded since the time of the prophet (peace).

of course, this has lead to the inevitable. just read:

Those who will gather for the prayer later this week will do so as a result of deeply held convictions that are rooted in our faith. Our understanding of the Qur’an and of the Prophetic tradition has led us to the same conclusions about the admissibility of female-led prayer that led the great Muslim jurist, historian, and Qur’anic scholar Al-Tabari to hold the same view 1100 years ago.

We love and care deeply for our community, and we understand that good people will arrive at varying conclusions regarding the Islamic basis for female-led prayer. This is not an attempt to “change” Islam, nor to condemn others who interpret our religion differently than we do.

If Muslims are to rise to the many challenges that face us, we must create safe spaces for dialogue among ourselves—silencing opposing views accomplishes nothing except the growth of resentment and driving more people away who feel marginalized. As a community, we need to acknowledge the richness of our faith and the multiplicities of interpretation that have existed within our tradition.

Unfortunately, instead of engaging in thoughtful discussion, a small minority within our community continues to favor intimidation and threats over conversing with, to use the words of our Qur’an, “that which is more beautiful,” billati hiya ahsan (Qur’an 16:125).

As a result, due to security concerns, the owner of the space that had originally offered to host the Jum’ah can no longer do so.

We are committed to holding a congregational prayer that ensures the safety of all the women, men, and children in attendance. For this reason, after consulting with concerned members of our community as well as law enforcement authorities, we have decided not to publicly announce the new location for the prayer. Those who are interested in attending must fill out the form below, and we will contact them directly with more information.

that's right, folks: they are holding the location secret as a presidential visit because of serious death threats. death threats.

s.s.t.m.o.t.t.t., people. get a fucking grip. you are gonna kill people because they are praying with a female cantor? don't you have something better to do, like threatening fast-food chains because they offer pork products? hell, you can team up with the jews on that one! or maybe you can blow up catholic schools for their licentious association with those outfits so belov'd by the pr0n industry, the catholic schoolgirl's skirt and sweater. that's an equally noble target innit.

fucking backwards-ass tribal bitches. you're just pissed mukhtar mai won her case. well, get over it.

i always said we should just arm the women...

headline: god has sense of humour

i mean, not that we didn't know this from realising how utterly ridiculous human beings look when enjoying sex, but just so we'd be clear on this fact, there are little jewels like this floating around:

precious innit?

thanks, mr. decent

overturned!

better late than never i suppose, but still... this should have been a done deal. i'm still repulsed by the whole affair.

a quick blurb

an interesting observation in the georgia courtroom shooting case:

Nichols was on trial for charges of rape, aggravated sodomy, false imprisonment, aggravated assault with intent to rape and other charges against a woman he dated for more than seven years.

He was accused of binding his ex-girlfriend -- an executive at a Fortune 500 company -- with duct tape and assaulting her over a three-day period last fall. Howard also said Nichols brought a loaded machine gun into her home and threatened her, her family and her boyfriend.

*sigh*

why do good women fall for guys who don't deserve them? ladies, sometimes the nice guy is a good idea. don't settle for less, and definitely don't settle for a disgusting, bottom-feeding scrub like this.

* p.s. if you think this entry was "heteronormative" i don't want to hear it. :)

Friday Cat-Blogging: The wAitiNG foR doROthY Edition

Friday Cat-Blogging: March 2005
Emily0 and Spanky's Back End

Friday Cat-Blogging: March 2005
Emily0 and Fat Bastard

Friday Cat-Blogging: March 2005
Fat Bastard At Rest

crime pays.

go martha!

To Our Dear, Righteous, Godly, Home-Grown Terrorists: Fuck Off

via alas, a blog, from third wave agenda:

Boston Magazine
Confessions of an Abortion Doctor
by (As told to) Cheryl Alkon
From the December 2004 issue

Ten years after the bloody Brookline clinic attacks, one doctor explains why she still performs abortions.

Ten years ago this month, John Salvi sprayed bullets into two Brookline abortion clinics, killing two people and wounding five. Since then, the number of doctors willing to perform abortions has dwindled, increasing the workload for those remaining. One local obstetrician and gynecologist, whose clinic asked that she withhold her name for safety reasons, now performs as many as 10 abortions a day, twice a week.

One morning years ago, when I was working as a resident, a nurse brought me in to talk to a pregnant girl. When I walked into the room, there was this child -- an 11-year-old. She had come in for a procedure, and it soon became obvious that she had no understanding of sex -- she didn't really understand that she'd even had it, or that it had any connection to her pregnancy. We literally had to teach this girl about what it means to have sex -- about STDS, abstinence, and pregnancy. I remember thinking: In a world where people don't want kids to learn about these things, how can you not give them the choice to terminate a pregnancy? Even if she had chosen to continue the pregnancy and opt for adoption, what would that have done to her own childhood? How can we not provide a child with any education about sex, then force her to become a parent long before she's ready?

more ...

via third wave agenda, from Horror Stories by Molly Ivans:

We already have a parental notification requirement in Texas, so how much different can consent be? Of course you don't want your underage daughter getting an abortion without your knowledge, what parent would?

But there are those occasional horrible exceptions, which is why the judicial bypass exists. If a minor can go before a court and prove she either cannot or clearly should not notify her parents, a judge can grant her exemption from the requirement. The system barely works now, and the new bill would make it all but impossible for most girls by limiting venue to the girls' county of residence and those neighboring it, and other changes. There are 254 counties in Texas, and as surveys have shown, most of the county clerks don't even know there is such a procedure, much less how to file one ("Honey, I have no idea," is the classic response). The problems of small-town application should be apparent to all.

Please believe that you do not know what "dysfunctional family" means until you have studied applications for judicial bypass. These cases are from the files of Jane's Due Process, a Texas organization that provides lawyers for pregnant minors seeking a bypass.

Social worker for a 13-year-old: "She ran away from her foster home and was gone for eight weeks. Now she's in an emergency shelter and is pregnant. Her mother is deceased. Her father raped her when she was 8 years old and is still in prison for it. I knew her when she had to testify against him. I don't know if I can convince her to go back to court, but she definitely wants an abortion."

bush, in a fit of non-irony, unratifies that part of the vienna convention that makes US look bad

today, without fanfare, the US pulled out from part of the vienna convention. we pulled out of the part of the convention we originally insisted on to protect our citizens from improper judicial situations in third world countries.

in what can not be called a stunning turn of events, now we are the scary totalitarian state from whence international intervention is needed regarding the accused.

the best part? the texas attorney general's office comments, "'We respectfully believe' that the president's decision 'exceeds constitutional bounds for federal authority.'"

you know it's bad when the state that faces the most international challenges due to their death penalty position thinks their *airquote* native *close airquote* son is off his fucking rocker.

U.S. Quits Pact Used in Capital Cases
Charles Lane, Washington Post Staff Writer

The Bush administration has decided to pull out of an international agreement that opponents of the death penalty have used to fight the sentences of foreigners on death row in the United States, officials said yesterday.

In a two-paragraph letter dated March 7, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice informed U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan that the United States "hereby withdraws" from the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. The United States proposed the protocol in 1963 and ratified it - along with the rest of the Vienna Convention - in 1969.

The protocol requires signatories to let the International Court of Justice (ICJ) make the final decision when their citizens say they have been illegally denied the right to see a home-country diplomat when jailed abroad.

The United States initially backed the measure as a means to protect its citizens abroad. It was also the first country to invoke the protocol before the ICJ, also known as the World Court, successfully suing Iran for the taking of 52 U.S. hostages in Tehran in 1979.

But in recent years, other countries, with the support of U.S. opponents of capital punishment, successfully complained before the World Court that their citizens were sentenced to death by U.S. states without receiving access to diplomats from their home countries.

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments March 28 in the case of a Mexican death row inmate in Texas who is asking the justices to enforce an ICJ decision in favor of Mexico last year. That case has attracted wide attention in Mexico and caused a diplomatic rift between the Bush administration and the government of Mexican President Vicente Fox.

Rice is scheduled to meet with Fox today in Mexico in preparation for a summit meeting at President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Tex., later this month.

The administration's decision does not affect the rest of the Vienna Convention, which requires its 166 signatories to inform foreigners of their right to see a home-country diplomat when detained overseas. But it shows that Washington's desire to counteract international pressure on the death penalty now weighs against a long-standing policy of ensuring the United States a forum in which to enforce its citizens' allegations of abuse.

"The International Court of Justice has interpreted the Vienna Consular Convention in ways that we had not anticipated that involved state criminal prosecutions and the death penalty, effectively asking the court to supervise our domestic criminal system," State Department spokeswoman Darla Jordan said yesterday.

Withdrawal from the protocol is a way of "protecting against future International Court of Justice judgments that might similarly interpret the consular convention or disrupt our domestic criminal system in ways we did not anticipate when we joined the convention," Jordan added.

The administration's action comes after its Feb. 28 decision to grant 51 Mexicans on death row in Texas and elsewhere new state court hearings, as the ICJ had ordered.

But withdrawal from the protocol means that the United States will not have to bow to the ICJ again, legal analysts said.

Some said the decision would weaken both protections for U.S. citizens abroad and the idea of reciprocal obligation that the protocol embodied.

"It's encouraging that the president wants to comply with the ICJ judgment" in the Mexicans' case, said Frederic L. Kirgis, a professor of international law at Washington and Lee University. "But it's discouraging that it's now saying we're taking our marbles and going home."

The State Department, however, notes that fewer than 30 percent of the signatories to the Vienna Convention had agreed to the protocol. Among those that had not done so are Spain, Brazil and Canada, officials said.

Bush's decision to enforce the ICJ judgment in the case of the Mexicans "should ensure that our withdrawal is not interpreted as an indication that we will not fulfill our international obligations," said Jordan of the State Department.

Meanwhile, the president's decision has thrown the Supreme Court case regarding the Mexicans into limbo. Some legal analysts suggest the case may now be moot.

Attorneys for José Ernesto Medellin, a convicted murderer on death row in Texas who is seeking review of his assertion that a lack of consular access harmed his case at trial, have asked the justices to put the case on hold until after Medellin has had his hearing in Texas state court.

The Texas attorney general's office, meanwhile, issued a statement Tuesday saying, "We respectfully believe" that the president's decision "exceeds constitutional bounds for federal authority."

holy fuck.

i'm gonna go buy guns now. i'll be home later.

hate to say it...

i know they say "don't judge a book by its cover", but take one look at this picture. if your gaydar doesn't go off, maybe it needs new batteries.

good god. send this woman the first season of "the L word." if she wants to know how to look stylish and "feminine" then watching "the L word" or "queer eye" would be more effective than whatever guidance she's getting now from the christian mafia who have "saaaaaaaaaaaaved!(tm)" her from a life of sapphic evil.

and who do you think creates women's fashion anyway, woman? that's right. da queers.

sheesh.

my chinese skills suxx0r...

... but you need not be a genius to follow these images, which date to the han dynasty (2nd century BCE to 2nd century CE). apparently they come from an exhibit of archaeological finds entitled "中华五千年性文化网络第一展”. I know, you don't parle chinois. I don't got all of it, but the first bit is "5000 years of the sexual culture of the people of the middle kingdom (i.e. china)". and boy, there must have been some dykes back at the time of that christ, because that's quite the, erm, diabla doble.

there five images so far. maybe i'll post more later. here's the link.

muchas gracias, bOING-bOING!

MIT Press Gone Wild

i will, without a doubt, be attending this sale. holy six-titted mother of the tcho tcho - an MIT Press sale!

The MIT Press | 3/9/2005

Attention, People of Earth!
The Take Me to Your Readers Sale Has Commenced!

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Alien invaders have infiltrated The MIT Press and used their telepathic powers to enslave the entire staff. Institute UFOlogists speculate that the motive for the alien takeover is an urgent need for "walking-around money" to finance their research and abduction activities on this planet. Officials fear that the aliens have telepathically compelled the zombie staff to liquidate the shelves. The result:

OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD PRICES!
OVER 60% OFF ON OVER 700 MIT PRESS TITLES!

TakeMeToYourReaders

wow, do i need a girlfriend.

ahem. i'm approximately thirty, hot & nerdalicious. pics available upon request. native speakers of akkadian, hattic, urartian and/or hurrian encouraged to apply. emilyzilch ltd. does not discriminate against any near-sapiens hominids. no sausages, please - any of the other three sexes are eligible to apply. offer not valid in new jersey, florida or california.

blah!

"unhelpful" panda farts!

okay if you're going to guzzle so much energy, embrace capitalism, and boss little countries around, can't you at least not censor the internet, allow your people to hold elections and saturate the world with the likes of britney spears, 50 cent and eminem? i mean, once you copied russia half-assedly, and that didn't work out. if you want to copy us, at least go all the way...

quote of the day

from a law professor:

prof: scalia doesn't want to be a judge. he wants to be the pope.
me: ha ha, that's funny.
prof: no, really. i'm not joking. he wants to be the pope.

more about emily zilch

today i read three novels. the first was, as i mentioned in an earlier selfserving post, codrescu's messi@h, from which i learned that Galgal haMazal is how you say Wheel of Fortune in modern israeli hebrew. i liked the story, i liked the weirdness and the female messiahs. the writing was good, but not mesmerising.

the second was a reread: the classic joe haldeman novel the forever war, which has two 'sequels', of which one is a complete rewrite scrapping the entire setting of the original novel but featuring a real-life pub i could hit with a rock from my front door. this novel is a literary response to heinlein's starship troopers - an intellectual challenge to the problematics and quirks of that novel. this prompted several other authors to respond in turn, including le guin, orson scott card-hates-fags and, as i mentioned, haldeman twice more.

third - i just put it down - was the philip dick novel Lies Inc., which was quite the mental strain. it was good, but my favourite dick novel remains, sans doubt, galactic pot healer. the glimmung along is worth it.

if you want to know about the glimmung, read the novel. hell, go read it anyway. it's one of my favourite books of all time, i mention it whenever possible.

anyway, it's 2200h and i've bin not watching television these last few days. i've bin reading and suchlike. i seem to now be able to focus on reading without instant boredom and sleepytime, and i am sooooo pleased this is happening. television is misery, and when you can't focus sufficiently to watch anything less ADD - like, for example, the internet - it sucks. a lot.

the weather is very strange today. now there is frozen hail and snow covering everything, but in the house we have fresh bread, fresh meals, good coffee, good books; it's all good, man. if only there were more women...

anyway, here endeth the lesson. go to bed or something.

about my life...

today i decided to post about me. because it's my thirtieth birthday week, i decided that to talk about myself was in order.

let's see. well, between sunday and monday, i had three panic attacks, one of which was very severe. i have to say i suffered quite a bit physically and mentally; it's extraordinary what your own body can do to you. these happened around my birthday party at the house of my 'rental units in rhode island on sunday, which sucked, but i survived them.

it's been a long time since a real panic attack has struck me, mostly because i avoid stimuli likely to case them. i've been slowly widening my tolerance through slow exposure and biofeedback techniques (controlling symptoms through various techniques; the most effective i learned from my zen master back in high school some ten years before the first panic attack reared its ugly head).

i had a lovely birthday anyway (fuck you, anxiety attacks), with great servings of roast turkey and stuffing and my élite chef sister's scratch-baked cake.

i got presents, but i'm a nightmare to shop for; my transition to crazy old lady with too many cats is clearly underway. my family managed to find things i needed - i'm pretty spartan, though i try to help people who feel they need to buy objects to make me happy. they do make me happy, but i never have a sexy list of things i want like some people do. this makes me guilty, to be honest, because it makes it hard for my family. they have an instinctive need to give worthy gifts, and mostly i just need healthcare, surgery and mental recovery, not things they can get me.

oh, the presents. they were pretty wise. the final season of angel, which i wanted because i never saw they episode where my belov'd "fred" died.

winifred "fred" burkle

man, i love those librarians. mm, mmm, mmmmmm.

i also got a gift certificate for (half) a haircut at my favourite clipper store, judy jetson inc., and some money, which i dutifully put aside for medical needs. (*sigh*)

my actual birthday wasn't sunday, it's in a few days, and i'm not planning on doing anything special. maybe a movie? i dunno.

it's raining today, which is nice because it means the temperature is sufficient for airing the house. i think it's time for some roast turkey leftovers and some housecleaning; i just finished reading a fun novel about the apocalypse - sort of - by andrei codrescu, and i've got a philip dick novel i haven't read before awaiting me for later today's enjoyment. it's my birthday week, so i'm trying to enjoy it.

pigs fly

michelle malkin says "i was wrong." despite my disagreement with almost everything she says, at least she has the integrity to come forth and admit that her speculation of the jersey city murders of a christian egyptian family as being religiously motivated was premature and turned out to be wrong. i saw an article in a newark newspaper reporting the arrests of two drug dealers in connection with the nurder, so i decided to wander over to malkin's site to see if she would say anything about the new developments or continue to hypothesize that the murders were committed by islamists. and lo and behold, she done did it. jihadwatch, however, continues to prattle on, suspecting a jihadist connection. you should check out the comment section too. i think quite a few people on that site have taken a break from reality.

let's just assume that the family was indeed killed in a manner associated with radical islamists. and now the police have arrested the two men who committed the murder, men who weren't radical islamists. however, one of them happened to live directly above the family. if you wanted to murder the family below you and not get caught, wouldn't you hatch a plan to get away with the murder? like say, kill in a manner that would have the police and media sniffing elsewhere? it is awfully stupid to kill someone who lives twenty feet away from you without either an alibi or a means to point the finger elsewhere. just a thought.

8 to nothing

says the little blue town in an otherwise red state

silly wellesley women...

at least we radcliffe women can hold our liquor. :)

who loves hillary?

apparently, almost everyone.

that woman is one smart cookie.

Excellent Post From Daily Kos

yeah, that about sums it up. the post is long, but it's a fantastic summary of the ongoing assault on civil rights.

linking is not illegal, bill o'lielly

so nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah.

explanation of this post here & here, legal explanation that hypertext does not consitute copyright infringement here.

dänke, bOING-bOING.

atrocity.

this is a photo of mukhtar mai, a pakistani woman.

why, you ask, is she crying?

her brother shakoor was raped by members of the mastoi tribe. to cover up their sins, they claimed he was involved with a mastoi woman. they demanded vengeance - and shakoor's tribal council agreed.

the punishment they agreed upon was to have his sister gang-raped. it's traditional tribal law - despite the fact that it is utterly illegal. so she was brought before four mastoi men and brutally raped.

because her brother was raped.

but that's not why she's crying.

see, mai decided to take the courts up on their notion of justice. she filed charges.

the result of this was that fourteen men were charged with various crimes. six were convicted, including the head of the village council.

things got so bad after mai filed that she was placed under heavy guard. endless death threats and multiple attempts on her life; her family suffered. the case eventually made its way into pakistan's antiterror courts because of the increasing pressure from tribal men.

so why is she crying?

here's why.

Five men sentenced to death in 2002 for their role in a gang rape that was approved by a council in a remote Pakistani village had their convictions overturned Thursday. A sixth man convicted in the case, which set off worldwide outrage, had his death sentence commuted to life in prison, lawyers in the case said.

(new york times.)

somebody don't tell ginmar. i can barely handle news like this without exploding, frankly. adrenaline is whooshing through my body; i feel like my heart is going to leap out of my chest with rage.

why are you fat? you don't have the CABBAGE HATING GENE

well, i'm not as skinny now that i'm old and have more estrogen in my system daily than a squad of highschool cheerleaders, but i come from a long line of "skinny-ma-rinks", as nana always called us. my wrists are tiny, my ribs always showed and i emphatically was a healthy eater - my da is newport irish, so food were always meat 'n taters innit.

but i must have the Cabbage Hating Gene, because i dislike cabbage and spinach, though i eat it for the nutrients. oddly enough, i do like kimchi, so maybe pickling it changes the chemical makeup? the article comes from expatica.com.

Germans discover the cabbage-hating gene

2 March 2005

POTSDAM - German researchers have located a gene that makes some people loathe cabbage and spinach in all their forms, and discovered that the same gene often protects people from obesity.

The German Institute for Food Research in Potsdam near Berlin said the gene makes some people extraordinarily sensitive to the bitter substances phenylthiocarbamid (PTC) and propylthiouracil (PROP). Most people swallow those substances with a smile.

The scientists, led by Wolfgang Meyerhof, investigated how the gene affects human taste receptor hTAS2R38. People who cannot taste PTC and PROP tended to eat fattier foods and become overweight, so a single gene ends up having a huge effect on eating behaviour.

The institute said the research was being published in the journal Current Biology.

thanks, fark.

damn, i hate spinach.

moaveni!

azadeh moaveni, whose new work Lipstick Jihad is now available for your purchasing pleasure, is really hot. also, her name would sound really good when said during sex - trust me, i know some fårsi, it's a sexy liquid vowel moan, the verbal equivalent of the right tricky songs cued up.

you can read a funny excerpt from her book here, or just enjoy her photo.

many, many thanks, o muslimWakeup!

terror poker

i'll see your "raised money for hizbullaah" and raise you one "approved bali bombing that killed 202 persons".

fuckmullah bashir, whose sentence could have been death for his part in the bali bombing, got thirty months in jail. fuck me, you'd get more jail time for not wearing long sleeves while swimming on an Acehnese beach. you'd get more time eating in public during ramadhan. what the fuck are the indonesians thinking? gee, nothing boosts tourism, one of the mainstays of your already shitty-ass economy, like telling a mass murderer he's been a bad wittwe boy and has to go to his woom wivout dinnah.

i wish we could engage the eye-for-an-eye thing here: we could just put him inside one of the casinos they are demolishing to make way for a newer, better Las Vegas and then push the button. splat. no more mr. fuckmullah.

Bashir's sentence shocks world

[snip]

A court in Jakarta sentenced the Muslim cleric to 30 months in prison for conspiracy in the 2002 Bali bombings which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, but found him not guilty of three more serious charges, including ordering the attack.

The father of one victim slammed the sentence as representing just two weeks in prison for each Australian killed in Bali.

Judges also cleared Bashir of charges that as the alleged head of the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist group he planned the 2003 suicide bombing of the J.W. Marriott hotel in Jakarta which killed 12 people, and that he incited his followers to launch terrorist attacks.

Bashir, who could be released by October 2006, had faced a maximum penalty of death in the three top charges.

[snip]

Regional security officials had expected Bashir to received at least four-year jail term, which would have made it easier to obliterate his influence among Jemaah Islamiyah and other extremists groups, Malaysian security official said.

The relatively short sentence simply means his links with Jemaah Islamiyah must continue to be monitored, said the official speaking on condition of anonymity.

[snip]

Brian Deegan, whose 21-year-old son Josh was killed in the Bali blast, called the verdict "outrageous."

"What it represents mathematically is two weeks jail for every man, woman and child that was slaughtered and nothing for those that were inexorably injured," Deegan said in a telephone interview. "As far as I'm concerned there is not a shred of justice here."

full AP article here.

note to self: d&d makes you mostly unfit for the israeli army

today on jewSchool, theViewFromHere's Harry notes the following amusing tidbit:

According to this article on YNET news, any potential soldier who tells Israeli army recruiters they play Dungeons and Dragons is automatically given a low security clearance.

These people have a tendency to be influenced by external factors which could cloud their judgment, a military official says. "They may be detached from reality or have a weak personality — elements which lower a person's security clearance, allowing them to serve in the army, but not in sensitive positions.

Ok, I think this is way off base. Now, I never played Dungeons and Dragons — I was more the Marvel Super Heroes, Star Frontiers and Gamma World type — but I think this is ludicrous.

I present to you the Top Ten reasons why Dungeon and Dragon players are an advantage to the IDF.

10. Ability to make split second decisions while simultaneously thinking about how the entire scenario will play out.
9. Axe-wielding skills.
8. Two words: Healing potion.
7. Ability to think outside the labyrinth.
6. Most Dungeon Masters are good strategists.
5. Being a 15th level magic user warrants as much respect as being a soldier in Sayeret Matkal.
4. Elf assassins are stealthy and efficient.
3. Chicks dig chainmail armor.
2. After battling enough dwarfs and mystical pygmies you learn not to underestimate your enemy.
1. Heightened ability to read people — "She may look like a Mermaid but there is definately something nefarious about her and I've been less trustworthy of female lake dwellers since that Siren pulled a fast one on me last year back on the Netherworld."

i don't understand why playing D&D makes you t3h w34k3st l1nk but no-one asks if they played warcraft more than two hours a week. i mean, really. do they ask if you like to dress up like a bunny rabbit during sex, too? oy, you want i should maybe stay at home instead of kill arab children? because maybe i like the dice a little? nu, you're twisting my arm.

anyway, i thought his riposte was worth the repost. *snicker*

the nfl considers "gay" a bad word but not "hitler" or "nazi"

i heard this on the z100 morning show today, so i decided to check it out.

a fan of randall gay, cornerback for the new england patriots, was dismayed he couldn't type in "gay" to personalize his nfl jersey:

link here - type in "gay" and a two digit number (his real number is "21" if you want to be anal retentive).

yes, it will show up on the pop up rendering of the jersey, but when you close it, there will be a warning signal on the form field in which you typed in your entry.

no dice!

now try "lesbian" - same thing. "quickie" also comes up with a warning message.

now try "hitler" - no error.

and "nazi" - no error.

so the programmer for the nfl was given directions to ban "quickie", randall gay's last name, but "hitler" and "nazi" were fine. *scratches head*

oh no they didn't...

once these thugs' identities are found they'll never set foot in chapel hill, nc again. they picked the wrong city in which to gay bash. this is the town where i grew up - we had a gay-straight alliance in my high school. and this was in the early 90's in the south. this is the city where matthew shepard resided in peace before moving to the pacific northwest. the mayor of carrboro (the town over - and if you think chapel hill is liberal, carrboro is twice as liberal) is gay, and his boyfriend is on the town council of chapel hill. these blokes better start packin', because when their mugs are flashed across the front page of the chapel hill news and the daily tar hell, there won't be a place they can hide. heh, maybe a duke frat house, but no duke frat will allow a unc student into its front doors unless the student is a "she" and drunk.

Dear Bitch-Ass Massachusetts Drivers

i can forgive your inability to figure out how to use a rotary. that's understandable since most people can't use a rotary correctly. i can even forgive your love affair with urban tanks that are too big for the lanes on our highways. the rest of america is equally stupid, and the lanes here are too small anyway. i cannot forgive your horrid merging skills.

DO match the speed of traffic on the highway.

DO find an open space for your car.

DO gracefully and easily insert your car into that space while moving at high speed.

DO NOT toodle down the entrance ramp at 20 miles per hour, just hoping one of us will take pity on you.

DO NOT match the speed of traffic only to wuss out at the last minute and slow down to a crawl or a stop, forcing traffic on the highway to slow down because none of us can figure out what the fuck you're doing.

DO NOT vary your speed between 20 and 50 miles an hour on the entrance ramp, thereby setting off a scramble for the middle lane because everyone is afraid you're trying to kill them with a massive pile-up on the interstate.