served with pride

Posted on September 14, 2013 by greg

So this morning, in an effort to avoid doing the work I really need to be doing, I decided to wade through rabidly conservative FreeRepublic.com again. I usually do this once a week or so.

A lot of my friends think I’m masochistic to read FreeRepublic, but I don’t think so. It’s true that I often find myself offended, or even pissed off, by what I read. And sometimes I find the comments funny in a ‘holy shit, can people really be this stupid’ sort of way. But I should also say that every time I read that site, I find a few people who make logical and valid points. I almost always disagree with those points, but it’s sort of comforting to know that even on FreeRepublic there are rational conservatives.

Sadly, that wasn’t the case this morning. I was most discouraged by a discussion thread grounded in an article in The Guardian: Gay marine bids farewell with show of support from colleagues. I fully expected to find anti-gay comments and slurs in the discussion, but the universal depth of the hatred surprised me. Here are some of the comments:

I support heterosexual troops only. maddog55

The site of that flag dishonored in that way, makes me want to throat punch this homosexual. svcw

You can’t be gay and a Marine. It’s an Oxymoron. It’s like saying you can be a Homosexual and be a Christian. Sorry, direct opposites. Just because the deviant-in-Chief, and his sycophants have (hopefully) temporarily allowed it, does not make it right, correct, or good. SoConPubbie

This is actually a desecration of the flag. You might as well have the queer stripes on our national flag! Disgrace and dishonor. Viennacon

Gay marine bids farewell with show of support from ~~colleagues~~ fellow faggots… Chode

Probably glad to get this c**ks***er out of their unit. Well, he is isn’t he! Ruy Dias de Bivar

United States Maureens. twister881

Fag. servo1969

i wanna puke but working here in faggotland, my puke levels have reached the bottom. americana

Another daily reminder of what a sick, utterly deviant country this has become. A disgraceful abomination. greene66

I’m a veteran. I served four long full years as a medic. I come from a Marine Corps family (I was the only member of my family NOT to serve in the Marines). I may not always like what the military does, or how they do it — but anybody who puts on a uniform and serves the nation deserves a certain amount of respect.

Bryan Eberly, U.S. Marine

Not to get dramatic, but there are occupations in which you have to rely on your comrades. Police officers, firefighters, military troops. You don’t have to like the person you’re working with, you don’t have to agree with them, you don’t need to be friends with them, but you goddamn better be able to rely on them. And they goddamn better be able to rely on you. Religion doesn’t matter, sexual orientation doesn’t matter, race doesn’t matter, gender doesn’t matter — not when you need a hand. When you need a hand and that hand is extended, you grab hold. When somebody else needs a hand, you extend yours and you hang on tight. It’s just that simple.

The military depends on unit cohesion. Bigots like maddog55 or SoConPubbie argue that openly gay troops are a threat to unit cohesion. The fact is, they are the threat. If you’re unwilling to extend your hand to help somebody because of some immutable aspect of that person’s being, then you make the unit weak.

The marine in the article, Bryan Eberly, needed courage and trust in order to come out as gay. That’s what you look for, courage and trust. I’d much rather serve in a unit with Bryan Eberly than any of the so-called ‘patriots’ above, who apparently believe only certain people deserve respect.

Addendum: And just to prove my earlier point about FreeRepublic.com, there’s this new comment in the discussion thread:

I’m grateful for his service. onona

The odds are I probably wouldn’t agree with onona on many issues, but he now has my respect. I’d extend my hand to him. Hell, I’d even extend my hand to maddog55 — but I wouldn’t trust the hateful bastard to extend his to me.

VICE, fashion, and what’s truly offensive

Posted on June 19, 2013 by greg

First, let me be clear about this: I’ve always liked VICE. I’m talking about the magazine here, not about…well, let’s not get into that. The magazine, originally from Canada, where it was The Voice of Montreal. That was in 1994. A couple years later they changed their name to VICE, and three years after that, they moved to New York City

VICE has published some serious journalism. VICE has also published remarkably trashy journalism. They’ve published amazing photographs and interesting works of serious fiction; and they’ve published photos just because they’re trendy, not to mention some really shitty fiction. But I like that. I like that they’re unpredictable, even when I don’t like what they publish.

I like VICE, but I don’t always like what they do. And I like that I don’t always like what they do. I like it when conventions are challenged. But over the last couple of years VICE seems to be pulling shit just for shock value. Shock value is almost always heavy on shock and light on value. An example? It was VICE that sent Dennis Rodman to North Korea. There’s nothing clever in that. Sending Dennis Rodman to North Korea is as clever as a twelve year old boy’s fart joke. It’s more about being able to say ‘fart’ out loud than anything else.

But that’s not why I’m pissed off at VICE.

The current issue of VICE is the fiction issue. But nobody is talking about the fiction in the fiction issue. Why? Because VICE also published a fashion spread. Of models depicting famous women writers. Who killed themselves. In the moment they killed themselves.

The caption of each photograph includes the name of the writer depicted, the date she was born, where she was born, the date she killed herself, where she killed herself, and how she killed herself. It also includes the fashion credits for what the model is wearing, in case you want to order the tights the model depicting novelist Sanmao is hanging herself with.

A lot of people are understandably upset and angry with VICE for this fashion spread. I’m one of them. A lot of people claim VICE is glorifying suicide. I don’t think they are, but I see their point. A lot of people are pissed off because the photographs all depict women writers, when far more male writers have killed themselves. They have a valid argument. Some people are irate because suicide isn’t a fashion statement. I agree.

But those aren’t the reasons I’m pissed at VICE.

VICE has since pulled the fashion spread from their online magazine. They’ve issued the standard corporate non-apology apology:

  The fashion spreads in VICE magazine are always unconventional and approached with an art-editorial point-of-view rather than a typical fashion photo-editorial one. Our main goal is to create artful images, with the fashion message following, rather than leading.

“Last Words” was created in this tradition and focused on the demise of a set of writers whose lives we very much wish weren’t cut tragically short, especially at their own hands. We will no longer display “Last Words” on our website and apologize to anyone who was hurt or offended.

That’s bullshit, of course. I expect VICE to be transgressive. I expect the magazine to occasionally be deliberately offensive and tasteless. I expect VICE to do stupid shit just to shock people. I expect to be offended by some of what they publish. But I never expected to be offended by the policies of VICE.

What I don’t expect — and what pisses me off most — is for VICE to be offensive, tasteless, and shocking for commercial reasons. The fashion spread is called Last Words, but it doesn’t include the last words of these writers. It doesn’t mention anything they wrote. Because it’s not really about last words, or about what these women wrote. It’s not even about these women at all, or that they killed themselves.It’s about selling shit. It’s about advertising income. It’s about monetizing the VICE brand.

That’s why I’m pissed at VICE. They’ve shown themselves to be the same sort of corporate swine they like to mock. If VICE wants to include a photograph of a model pretending to be Sylvia Plath about to stick her head in the oven, yeah I’ll certainly be offended — but I’d defend it as trangressive art. If they want to show a model acting like Iris Chang about to eat a handgun, damn right I’ll be offended and angry (I met Iris Chang and liked her) — but I’d still defend VICE for making art. But if they want to pull that shit just to sell a scarf and some silk tights? If they do that just to make a buck and sell more advertising? Then fuck VICE. Fuck them in the neck.

you’re too late in asking

Posted on June 2, 2013 by greg

If you’re a fan of John Prine, you’re familiar with his song Paradise. If you’re not a fan of John Prine, well damn…what the hell is wrong with you? But if you’re not a fan I’ll educate your sorry ass. Listen to this:

That song is based on actual events. There really was a town in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky called Paradise. You can still find it on Google Maps, though all you’ll see is a coal processing plant in the bend of a chalky river. And in 1962, just as the song says, the Peabody Coal Company did, in fact, bring in the world’s largest shovel to dig for coal. It was a monstrous fucking shovel, as you can see by this old post card.

Be sure to look in the lower right hand corner. Those soft little squishy things? Those are people.That’s how big this shovel is. The scoop could hold 115 cubic yards of…well, of whatever it scooped up, and I suspect it could scoop just about anything it wanted. Peabody Coal named the shovel Big Hog, and just like the song says, they used it to dig for coal until the land was forsaken.

Big Hog was retired from service in the mid-1980s, after twenty-some years of faithful service. Okay, the service was destroying the land — but Big Hog did it faithfully, day after day, week after week, year after year. Peabody Coal honored that service by burying the massive shovel in what’s probably the world’s biggest grave for a machine. They interred the shovel in one of the pits it dug. It’s still there.

If only Peabody treated its human workers with that same respect and dignity.

The Peabody Coal Company is now Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private coal provider. They provide coal to China, Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom, Indonesia, and Singapore, as well as the United States. In fact, they generate 10% of the electricity used in the United States and somewhere around 2% of electricity generated throughout the world. Peabody Energy is big. They hold majority interests in twenty-eight surface and underground mining operations.

One of those operations is Patriot Coal. Peabody created Patriot in 2007, giving them around 13% of their coal reserves. That made Patriot a major player in coal. But Peabody also gave Patriot around 40% of their health care liabilities. That’s right, Peabody dumped the health care costs for more that 8,000 men and women who retired from Peabody onto a new company.

You won’t be surprised to know that coal mining is hard work, and coal miners — both those who work on the surface and those who work underground — experience a lot of long-term health problems. Unions for coal workers naturally include health care costs for retirees in the contracts they negotiate with coal providers. By shifting those costs to Patriot Coal, Peabody Energy was no longer responsible for them.

So what does Patriot Coal do? They soon buy Magnum Coal, which was a subsidiary created by the Arch Coal Company — the second-largest mining company. Arch Coal had saddled Magnum with the health care costs of more than 2000 retired Arch coal miners. So by acquiring Magnum, Patriot — a company that’s only five years old — suddenly found itself overwhelmed by health care costs for more than ten thousand workers who never actually worked a day in their lives for Patriot.

Here’s a surprise: Patriot Coal couldn’t afford to pay for the health care needed by all those retirees. As a result, last summer they were forced — forced — to file for bankruptcy to protect the company from all those health care expenses.

Last week, Bankruptcy Judge Kathy Surratt-States ruled Patriot would be allowed to disregard the health care benefits the mine workers had been guaranteed in their contracts with Peabody and Arch. The judge, who was appointed in 2003 by President George W. Bush, acknowledged that Patriot Coal may have actually been “created to fail.” But the transfer of retirement benefits to that company was legal — and some sacrifices have to be made in order for the company to survive. So tough shit, mine workers. In her ruling, she even suggested the mine workers union was partly at fault for “demanding benefits that the employer cannot realistically fund in perpetuity.” As if the union was to blame for management’s decision to sign the contract.

That wasn’t the only recent decision Judge Surratt-States issued in regard to the Patriot Coal Company bankruptcy. About three weeks ago she agreed to allow Patriot to distribute US$6.9 million in bonuses to 225 of their corporate executives and salaried employees.

Mine workers denied the benefits guaranteed them by contract, executives given bonuses, coal companies relieved of the burden of keeping any promises they made — but hey, at least Big Hog got a decent burial. That’s pretty cool.

And daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River, where Paradise lay.
Well, I’m sorry my son, but you’re too late in asking.
Mr. Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away.

is it too early to start drinking?

Posted on May 13, 2013 by greg

So as near as I can tell from reading FreeRepublic.com, the latest take on the Daily Ultimate Benghazi Scandal of the Century!!!! is this: President Baraq Hussein Obama was selling arms to al Qaeda so they could attack Syria (or maybe defend themselves against Syria — to be determined), but Ambassador Stevens found out and so had to be eliminated, so Hillary had her lesbian assistant contact her (the lesbian assistant’s) Taliban relatives and ordered them to attack the U.S. mission compound in Benghazi, then they all lied about it, thereby guaranteeing Obama’s re-election.

Or wait, maybe Obama arranged for Ambassador Stevens to be kidnapped and raped, after which he would be exchanged for the Blind Sheik Omar Abdul-Rahman, thereby guaranteeing Obama’s re-election, but it all went terribly wrong when two former SEALS who were in Benghazi to investigate missing surface-to-air missles interfered with the assault, so Obama had Hillary sabotage any rescue attempt in the same way she ordered a helicopter carrying members of Seal Team Six to crash, preventing them from telling the REAL STORY of why Osama bin Laden was killed (or maybe the REAL STORY of why bin Laden wasn’t killed — to be determined), thereby guaranteeing Obama’s re-election.

Or wait, it was George Soros who ordered the gay Muslim President of the United States to send possible lesbian (to be determined) Valerie Jarrett — the daughter-in-law of Obama’s U.S. Communist Party mentor — to Iran in order to something something Benghazi kill Americans jihad jihad ACORN, thereby guaranteeing Obama’s re-election.

So obviously there was a cover-up at the highest levels of government. What? You want evidence? You want proof? Here’s your evidence and proof, taken directly from FreeRepubic.com

Why did we have 30 operatives in a CIA complex in Benghazi? What were they doing there? Were they running guns to Syria? Were the recipients of those guns Al Qaeda? Were anti-aircraft missiles included? The deeper question is beyond political, it is TREASONOUS. I suspect 0bambi was knowingly arming Al Qaeda, our ENEMY. Uncle Miltie

Obama is obviously covering for his Jihadi friends. That is why there has been no investigation, NO suspects, NO arrests, NO names mentioned of who is responsible. Telepathic Intruder

al Qaeda is within the Gates of the White Hut, CIA and State Department. Texas Fossil

Identities SEAL Team Six are now known to our enemies thanks to Taliban operatives in the White House. Bounties and rewards for SEAL their scalps are being collected. Tugo

the US government had an iman desecrate their bodies at the airport with some moslim prayer condemning the infidels to hell. Sunny48

The SEALs have been the object of onama’s revenge since they shot that poor somali pirate and saved an American. I must have said it now a hundred times. Mesta Machine

We need to expand the search. Zero is a puppet as are all presidents. Who is he a puppet for? Who is try to spread Islam as far and wide and as fast as possible? Answer those questions and we will have whomever is behind Benghazi, Sandy Hook and Boston. B4Ranch

The question which nobody is asking: Did Bork Obunga and his puppet-master George Soros generate an immense reservoir of hatred against Americans in Libya in 2011 by taking down what amounted to the best government in the Islammic world for motives amounting to little if anything other than pure greed, and THEN set the stage for a US ambassador to be tortured, raped, and then killed by sheer fecklessness with no meaningful response in the picture even eight months later? Varmintman

The whole event was staged as an assasination of Stevens, who had become aware that the CIA was arming the Syrian “rebels” through Benghazi with Obama’s full approval. Stevens disapproved of that operation, being the true pacifist that he had been all of his life. editor-surveyor

we have a ghazi running the muslim outreach center from our white house….. soon to be their customary color…Black.\ Black House with minarets. himno hero

I think trading the blind sheik in exchange for the 30,000 SAM’s & other weapons for a kidnapped Stevens was the October surprise…why else would you send him to such a danger zone stripped of all protection…nothing else makes any sense! Stayfree

Bengazi assault was led by a radical who was released from Gitmo —clearly this plan wasn’t hatched and executed on-the-fly; that nut was released for a very specific reason and his REAL boss was and possibly even IS NOW Vallerie Jarrett. gaijin

Eric Nordstrom said ‘the Taliban is inside the building”….what building, the WHITE HOUSE with Hussein, the Muslim…..the State dept, with Hillary, who hired the released GITMO Al Queda detaineee named Qumo… and Muslim Brotherhood HUMA ABEDIN???? The Pentagon? The CIA with the LYING General Patraeus?? Ann Archy

They meant to kill the seals! It was an al-Qaeda operation to stop America from taking back the manpads! Obama and Hillary lost those missiles! If those missiles get fired, it’s Obama and Hillary’s fault! It will have been their Democrat designed policies and actions that put those missiles in our enemies hands! The real story is that Americans died because Obama and Hillary’s incompetence gave anti-aircraft missiles to al-Qaeda! Obama needs to increase hs personal security now! The Democrats got rid of Kennedy for less! blueunicorn6

You can be sure VJ (Valerie Jarrett) is in action on Tehran. She was born there, and is the leading marxist in the Kenyan Whtie House. Her father-in-law was Frank Davis, Obama’s US communist party member mentor. Flying Eagle

I know, that’s discouraging as hell. It gets worse. According to a recent survey by Public Policy Polling, 74% of Republicans believe Benghazi is a worse political scandal than Watergate — and 41% of them believe it’s the worst political scandal in American history. Would you be surprised to learn that 40% of Republicans don’t even know where Benghazi is? Nearly 40% of those respondents who stated Benghazi was the worst scandal in American history don’t even know where it is. Some of them thought it was in Cuba. Seriously, Cuba.

Is it too early to start drinking?

some uncomfortable thoughts on the marathon bombing

Posted on April 16, 2013 by greg

I heard about the bombs at the Boston marathon about twenty minutes after they were detonated. My first thought — and it was an ugly thought — was this: homegrown terrorists. Why did I think that? Three reasons.

First, today was Patriot’s Day in New England. Homegrown terrorists invariably think of themselves as patriots. Whether they’re part of the Sovereign Citizen movement, anti-tax protesters, white supremacists, neo-Confederates, Posse Comitatus, Christian Identity members, racist skinheads, Constitutional Patriot militia groups, Christian Patriot Defense League — they all devoutly believe they are the True Americans. It wouldn’t surprise me to see them act on Patriot’s Day.

Second, today was the traditional deadline for filing US income taxes. For a lot of so-called ‘patriots’ the notion of paying your taxes is seen as government oppression.

Third, this week ends on April 19th, which is an important date in the warped mythos of anti-goverment hate groups. It’s the date on which the American Revolutionary War started in 1775 (which is why it’s celebrated as Patriot’s Day). Many anti-government groups refer to the war as the First American Revolution, suggesting another revolution is coming.

Battle of Concord and Lexington

April 19th is also the date in 1985 on which the FBI and the BATF began the siege of the compound belonging to The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord. The CSA was a Christian Identity and white supremacist hate group, with affiliations with the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations. In 1984 one member of CSA, Richard ‘Wayne’ Snell, murdered the owner of a pawn shop in the mistaken belief that he was Jewish. Shortly thereafter, Snell murdered an African-American police officer. He was caught, tried, and sentenced to death. Richard ‘Wayne’ Snell — remember this name.

April 19th is the date in 1993 on which the siege of the Branch-Davidian compound in Waco, Texas ended. The BATF and the FBI had surrounded the compound for 50 days; on the 51st they decided to move in. A fire was ignited inside the compound, resulting in the deaths of 76 members of the Branch-Davidians. The government maintains the fires were started by members of the group themselves; anti-government groups claim the men, women, and children inside the compound were deliberately killed.

Branch-Davidian compound

Even though most anti-government groups disagree with the religious philosophies of the Branch-Davidians, they still see the Waco siege in terms of a conspiracy — primarily because the underlying criminal complaint against members of the compound involved the possession of illegal weapons. Several anti-government activists traveled to Waco during the 50 day siege as a show of support. One of them was Timothy McVeigh, who was briefly interviewed by a local news affiliate.

Timothy McVeigh at Waco

Two years later, on April 19th, 1995, Richard ‘Wayne’ Snell — the member of The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord community convicted of murdering a pawn broker and a black police officer — was executed by the State of Arkansas. Christian patriots believed the date chosen for his execution was a deliberate insult.

On the morning of his execution, Snell asked the correctional officer assigned to his death team if he could watch the news on CNN. The officer agreed. Shortly after he changed the station, CNN reported a breaking news story. A massive bomb had been detonated outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. According to the death watch log, Snell “smiled and chuckled and nodded” as he watched the devastation. It’s worth noting that a decade earlier, Snell and one of his CSA compatriots had planned to attack that very same building. Their plan was scrapped when one of the rocket launchers they’d acquired for the assault malfunctioned and exploded.

Alfred P. Murrah Building, Oklahoma City, OK

Snell was unrepentant. A few hours after watching the destruction of the Murrah Building, moments before being given a lethal injection, Snell spoke his last words — a threat to the Governor of Arkansas:

“Governor Tucker, look over your shoulder; justice is coming. I wouldn’t trade places with you or any of your cronies. Hell has victories. I am at peace.”

Timothy McVeigh, who’d visited Waco to show his support for the Branch-Davidians, killed 168 men, women, and children that morning — April 19, 1995. He stated he’d chosen the site and the date intentionally.

Timothy McVeigh, terrorist

Obviously, I’ve no idea who is responsible for this horror. What I know is my immediate thoughts turned to homegrown terrorists and hate-mongers. I hope that’s not the case. I also hope it wasn’t foreign terrorists. That leaves me in the unappealing position of hoping the bombing was the work of a lone crank — an angry, delusional individual who decided to punish humanity because his satellite television was disconnected or because he was ordered to do it by the voice of Siri in his iPhone.

If it was a lone crank, then we’re not in for more bombings leading to April 19th. If it was a lone crank, then Islamophobes might stop foaming at the mouth. If it was a lone crank, then it’s a mental health issue, not a terrorist conspiracy.

I hope it’s a lone crank. But I’m afraid it probably isn’t.

idiots, applebee’s, and a gun that shoots machetes

Posted on April 12, 2013 by greg

This guy? His name is Jeff Duncan. He’s a Congressman from South Carolina, serving his second term in the House of Representatives. He’s an idiot.

Congressman Jeff Duncan, Republican Idiot

I know, I know…it’s rude and juvenile to call people names. But I don’t really consider this as name-calling. It’s more of a political taxonomy — a system of classification. Jeff Duncan falls into the class of Republican Idiot.

I base that classification entirely on statements made by Jeff Duncan his ownself. For example, there was the time when Duncan believed President Obama was somehow going to issue an Executive Order that would…well, he wasn’t quite sure what the Executive Order would do, but it was something about guns, and dammit Jeff Duncan was not going to stand for it. Whatever it was. Or might have been. If Obama had actually done it. Which he didn’t. But this is what Duncan said in response to the Executive Order That Didn’t Exist Dealing with Something about Guns:

“The Founding Fathers never envisioned Executive Orders being used to restrict our Constitutional rights. We live in a republic, not a dictatorship. I will use every means at my disposal to combat the agenda of the Executive branch to undermine our Second Amendment rights. I will also fight any legislative action that is taken to implement more gun control. Americans don’t want their Second Amendment freedoms restricted in any way.”

A dictatorship? That’s idiotic on two levels. First, I guess it never occurred to Duncan that in an actual no-shit dictatorship anybody who suggested the president was a dictator would have a short shelf life. But Duncan felt perfectly safe in publicly suggesting the president is a dictator. Perhaps he thought President Obama just wasn’t a very good dictator, because any dictator who’d put up with Jeff Duncan would need some remedial dictatorship lessons. The second reason this was idiotic is because there was no such Executive Order. This is all based on something Duncan believed the president might be considering. Not even something he thought Obama might do; just something he thought he might be thinking about doing.

But okay, everybody over-reacts on occasion. You can over-react without being an idiot. If those comments were the extent of Jeff Duncan’s foolishness, I’d be reluctant to classify him as an idiot. But he’s built on that foundation of idiocy.

Jeff Duncan likes him some guns. That doesn’t make him an idiot, either. A lot of smart people like guns. But anybody who thinks he needs to be able to tote a firearm into Applebee’s in case he might need to shoot somebody for some reason (because you know how lawless Applebee’s is), well that person is an idiot. Duncan complained that the South Carolina legislature refused to pass a law permitting people to carry concealed weapons in establishments serving alcohol.

“[W]e can’t even pass [a law] to allow CWP (concealed weapon permit) holders to eat inside restaurants like Applebees and Ruby Tuesdays because they have a bar.”

Of course, CWP holders can eat in an Applebee’s in South Carolina. They just have to leave their firearms in their vehicles. Jeff Duncan is far more at risk from eating the desserts at Applebee’s than from its rowdy clientele*.

Troublemakers and hooligans hanging out at Applebee’s

In case there was any doubt left about Duncan, he established his Idiot bona fides recently by posting a lengthy screed on his Facebook page. Here’s some of what he says:

There is a reason that some want to end private gun ownership, limit ammo purchases, limit magazine capacity…. Ask yourselves about a National gun registry database and how that might be used and why it is so wanted by progressives.

Read about the Rwandan genocide, the Hutu and Tutsi tribes. Read that all Tutsi tribe members were required to register their address with the Hutu government and that this database was used to locate Tutsi for slaughter at the hands of the Hutu. (Since the government had the names and addresses of nearly all Tutsis living in Rwanda (remember, each Rwandan had an identity card that labeled them Tutsi, Hutu, or Twa) the killers could go door to door, slaughtering the Tutsis. Not with firearms, mind you, but with machetes.

I use this example to warn that national databases can be used with evil consequences.

That’s right, Congressman Jeff Duncan is apparently afraid that ‘progressives’ want a ‘National gun registry database’ so they can can go door to door and slaughter decent gun owners. With machetes.

Unidentified ‘progressive’ with a gun that shoots machetes

Is there any legislation under consideration by Congress that includes a national gun registry database? No, there is not. Is there a Federal law prohibiting the creation of a national gun registry? Yes, there is — since 1986. Is the United States in 2013 just like Rwanda in 1994? No, it’s not, and you’d have to be an idiot to think so.

Jeff Duncan is no natural-born idiot. He’s come by his idiocy the old-fashioned way; he earned it.

Editorial note: In Duncan’s defense, a 30 year old man and his girlfriend were shot in the parking lot of an Applebee’s restaurant in Georgia in January of 2012, following a play-off game between the New Orleans Saints and the San Francisco Forty-Niners. The shooter, a Saints fan, got into an argument with the victim (oddly enough, not a Forty-Niners fan – just a guy cheering on the team because his girlfriend was a fan). The shooter was forced to go to the parking lot to get his pistol, since it’s illegal to carry a concealed weapon in a bar in Georgia. The shooter was then forced to wait for two more hours until the victim and his girlfriend left Applebee’s, at which time he shot them. If Duncan had his way, the poor shooter would not have had to waste those two hours.

troublemakers are my heroes

Posted on March 22, 2013 by greg

I’ve been noodling around with computers for about a million years. Seriously, a million years in tech terms. I bought my first computer in the autumn of 1982. It looked like this:

It was a Kaypro II. State of the art, motherfucker — portable (only 26 pounds), with a 9-inch monitor (the Osborne only had a puny ass 5-inch monitor), a CP/M operating system, and two (yes 2) internal disk drives that could handle those sweet 5 1/4 inch floppy disk each of which was capable of holding 195k of data. Arthur C. Clarke had a Kaypro II. It cost me about US$1500. A few months later I bought a Hayes 300 baud modem; I could put the telephone receiver into a coupler and magically connect with a Bulletin Board System in Boston.

That’s what we had. BBS’s. There was no Internet, no World Wide Web, no information superhighway, no cyberspace — just a green phosphorus monitor linked by telephone to a bulletin board.

Back then I was a geek. I took computers apart, fixed them, replaced and upgraded motherboards and disk drives. But along the way I lost interest in the tech and became more intrigued by the culture and the utility of computers.

Now when I need to do something technical — like, say, hook up my laptop to an external monitor — I have to ask somebody how it’s done. Or find a YouTube video to explain it to me. And when I’ve needed that information, this is who I generally turned to:

Adria Richards. Smart, funny, relaxed, smart, easy-going, knowledgeable, and smart. She’s all over the tech world. If you haven’t heard of her, it’s because you haven’t paid attention.

Richards recently attended a Python development conference called PyCon (okay, here’s where I have to admit I don’t have a fucking clue what Python is). In one of the sessions, a couple of guys behind her began making jokes about ‘forking’ and ‘big dongles.’ You know, the sort of humor common among fourteen year old boys.

I’m a guy. I was once a fourteen year old boy. I still am, sometimes. I know I’ve made similar jokes in my life — because all guys are capable of being idjits. But somewhere in the growing up process I learned not to make jokes around strangers who might be uncomfortable with them. It’s just good manners, right?

This is what Richards says about the incident in her blog:

I was going to let it go. It had been a long week. A long month. I’d been on the road since mid February attending and speaking at conferences. PyCon was my 5th and final conference before heading home.

I know it’s important to pick my battles.

And that’s usually what happens, isn’t it. Men say something offensive, women stay quiet about it. They stay quiet because making a fuss will get them labeled as humorless lesbians who hate men. If women say something, they’ll make men feel uncomfortable that they said something that made the woman feel uncomfortable. And the women will then be punished for making the men feel uncomfortable. You know this is true.

So women usually let it go. But this time was different. Richards didn’t let it go. This is what happened:

I saw a photo on main stage of a little girl who had been in the Young Coders workshop.

I realized I had to do something or she would never have the chance to learn and love programming because the ass clowns behind me would make it impossible for her to do so.

Okay, that’s overly dramatic. Those two guys wouldn’t make it impossible for the girl in the photo to learn and love programming. But guys just like the guys behind Richards would certainly make girls just like the girl in the photo feel they didn’t belong in the techno-boy’s club.

So Richards sent a tweet describing the situation and asking the PyCon staff to resolve it. And hey, they did. They escorted the two guys out of the session (and, presumably, told them to grow the fuck up). Richards had stood up for herself and women in tech, the guys had been properly put in their place, and the green grass grows all around, all around.

That should have been the end of it. But it wasn’t (otherwise I wouldn’t be writing about it). In her tweet Richards had also included a photo of the guys who were making the jokes. As a result, one of the guys was fired from his job. His company issued a statement, including the following:

[A]s a company that is dedicated to gender equality and values honorable behavior, we conducted a thorough investigation. The result of this investigation led to the unfortunate outcome of having to let this employee go.

That seems an over-reaction. I suspect it would have been more appropriate for the CEO of the company to sit the guy down and tell him not to be such a dick in the future. But here’s something to remember: it was the company that fired him — not Adria Richards.

When word of the firing began to spread, Richards became the villain of the story. Her blog was hit with a Denial of Service attack. She received rape and death threats on Twitter (those tweets have been deleted by Twitter). The company she worked for, SendGrid, also became the target of DoS attacks, shutting it down.

So SendGrid fired Adria Richards. They released a statement:

SendGrid supports the right to report inappropriate behavior, whenever and wherever it occurs. What we do not support was how she reported the conduct. Her decision to tweet the comments and photographs of the people who made the comments crossed the line. Publicly shaming the offenders—and bystanders—was not the appropriate way to handle the situation.

After Richards was fired, the DoS attack stopped and people could access the SendGrid site again.

There is, of course, a huge furor in the tech world over this. I won’t bother repeating all the arguments and counter-arguments; they’re easy to find, if your interested (and they’re all represented in the comments on Richards’ blog post). I’ll just say this.

Adria Richards over-reacted. And yay for her for doing it. The only way to change culture is for some people to push back and push back hard. They’ll get punished for it, they’ll be called names, they’ll be labeled as troublemakers. But it’s the troublemakers who initiate change. The only way to overcome systemic discrimination and bigotry is to make a huge fuss.

The civil rights marchers and freedom riders of the 1960s were troublemakers. The first wave of feminists were troublemakers. If troublemaking gay men and lesbians hadn’t pushed hard against the boundaries of hetero-culture, same-sex marriage wouldn’t be a reality in some states (and eventually throughout the U.S.).

Adria Richards got fed up and acted. Did she act wisely? Maybe not. I don’t care. She acted and she caused trouble (even if she didn’t mean to). She shook the foundation of tech culture by telling the guys it’s way way way past time to stop being 14 year old boys.

After this, any guy who publicly makes those sort of jokes at a professional conference will be doing it knowingly and deliberately just to be offensive. And that, folks, is how mainstream bigotry gets driven to the fringes.

jackassery

Posted on February 19, 2013 by greg

I’m a big believer in academic freedom. I’ve managed to acquire a handful of degrees from various colleges and universities, and for a brief time I was actually an academic my ownself. When I heard the State of Oklahoma was considering legislation promoting academic freedom, I was understandably pleased.

I said to myself, “Yay Oklahoma!” I started to read HR1674, the Scientific Education and Academic Freedom Act, with a song in my heart. The legislation begins like this:

[A]n important purpose of science education is to inform students about scientific evidence and to help students develop critical thinking skills they need in order to become intelligent, productive, and scientifically informed citizens.

Who could argue against that? We totally want our students to develop mad critical thinking skillz. Yay Oklahoma! Yay critical thinking skills! The proposed legislation acknowledges that encouraging the development of those critical thinking skills can lead to controversy.

[T]he teaching of some scientific concepts including but not limited to premises in the areas of biology, chemistry, meteorology, bioethics and physics can cause controversy, and that some teachers may be unsure of the expectations concerning how they should present information on some subjects such as, but not limited to, biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.

So far, so good, right? Yay Oklahoma! Yay critical thinking skills! Yay controversy! Controversy is good. Controversy makes you think. Controversy requires you to…wait. Wait a minute. Wait just one fucking minute here, buddy. Biological evolution? The chemical origins of life? Global warming?

Are you crazy? There’s no scientific controversy about evolution. There’s no scientific controversy about the origin of life or anthropogenic climate change. Those are established scientific facts. What jackass wrote this proposed legislation?

This jackass.

Gus Blackwell (Jackass – Oklahoma)

This is Oklahoma state legislator Gus Blackwell. Would you be surprised to discover Blackwell is a Republican? Or that he’s a Baptist minister? Or that he’s spent the last two decades employed by the Oklahoma Baptist General Convention?

I’m not suggesting Blackwell is a jackass because he’s a Republican or a Baptist. There are lots of Republicans and Baptists who go through life without engaging in jackassery. No, Blackwell is a jackass because he’s introduced legislation that would give his Baptist theology the same credibility as science. Blackwell is a jackass because his proposed legislation goes on to say this:

[N]o student in any public school or institution shall be penalized in any way because the student may subscribe to a particular position on scientific theories.

What does that mean? In effect, it means if students were to write a report claiming climate change is a hoax or arguing that the Earth is only 6000 years old and women were created from the rib of Adam, they couldn’t be ‘penalized’ with a bad grade. In an interview, Blackwell said,

“I proposed this bill because there are teachers and students who may be afraid of going against what they see in their textbooks. A student has the freedom to write a paper that points out that highly complex life may not be explained by chance mutations.”

Blackburn is a jackass, but he’s right about that. A certainly student does have the freedom to write a paper arguing against evolution. But if that paper was written for a science class, then the student should expect a failing grade. Not because the teacher may disagree with the student’s belief system, but because that student would be what we academics call ‘wrong.’

Blackwell and his ilk (yes, there is an entire ilk of jackasses like Gus Blackwell) propose this sort of legislation under the guise of promoting ‘academic freedom.’ I’m sorry to say they know as much about academic freedom as they know about science.

Academic freedom, like evolution or gravity or anthropomorphic climate change, is an actual thing. It has an actual meaning. It’s not a matter of opinion. And it’s got nothing to do with students having the freedom to write papers about humans cavorting with dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden.

Academic freedom doesn’t apply to students representing a personal point of view. Legally, it doesn’t even apply to teachers or college professors. In the United States, the courts have ruled that academic freedom resides in the university. Academic freedom gives the university the power to appoint faculty and set standards for their behavior.

All major universities in the U.S. abide by the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, which insures that:

Teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of the results, subject to the adequate performance of their other academic duties.
Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject. Limitations of academic freedom because of religious or other aims of the institution should be clearly stated in writing at the time of the appointment.
College and university teachers are citizens, members of a learned profession, and officers of an educational institution. When they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community imposes special obligations. As scholars and educational officers, they should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.

It was academic freedom that enabled Blackwell to attend Oklahoma Baptist University and Southwestern Baptist Theology Seminary and study Baptist theology. Yay academic freedom! But academic freedom doesn’t mean he can legislate that his theology be given equal credibility as science. Boo jackassery!

Happily for Gus Blackwell, though, nobody has proposed legislation limiting his freedom to be a jackass.

gregfallis.com

it's this or get a real job

Category Archives: stuff that pisses me off