Seth in CA (for the summer)

Nope, not even in the USA this time…

…but it looks like our man Russ Warner is going to have another go at it. Good for him. This blog had some coverage of the pre- and post- primary race last time around (Warner lost the primary, quite disappointly; I’m sure his campaign won’t let that happen this time).

Now, I don’t anticipate restarting the blog, but if someone else starts to cover the race, drop me a line (flaxter at gmail?com) and I’ll put up a link. (I also might have some contacts for you.)

Nope, not back in CA (just making use of my pagerank)

Joe Lieberman – “Seasonal Memory Lapses” by Paul Bass (Hartford Courant)
Joe Lieberman – “Truth About Joe”
Joe Lieberman – “Lieberman Wins Republican Friends, Democratic Enemies… (WaPo)
Joe Lieberman – “Joe Lieberman is a Big Oil Republican” (LamontBlog)
Joe Lieberman – “Kerry Calls Lieberman the New Cheney” (ABC)
Joe Lieberman – “Joe Lieberman Doesn’t Care About Handicapped People” (Wonkette)
Joe Lieberman – “Joe Lieberman is Running With a Bad Crowd” (Firedoglake)
Joe Lieberman – “116 Reasons Not to Vote for Joe Lieberman”
Joe Lieberman – “How Joe Lieberman Tried to Kill Rock ‘N Roll (Huffington Post)”
Ned Lamont – Official Campaign Website
Ned Lamont – Ned Lamont, the Political Entrepreneur
Ned Lamont – “Democrats Back Lamont; Lieberman Files Independent Run” (F0x)
Ned Lamont – Unofficial Ned Lamont Resource
Ned Lamont – Unofficial Lamont Blog
Ned Lamont – “The Democrats Mean Business” (WSJ)
Ned Lamont – “Ned Lamont vs. Joe Lieberman” (The Nation)
Ned Lamont – “Lieberman Loses Debate With Challenger Ned Lamont”
Ned Lamont – “Lamont: Lieberman Sounded Like Cheney”
Ned Lamont – “Lamont Fires Up Naples” (New Haven Independent)

(Back home again in) Illinois

I’m tired of people not getting my references. Okay, not really, but I think the title is cute, so go find out why.

This blog has been basically defunct for weeks, but now that I’m home and in the midst of a Joomla=>Drupal migration I think it’ll stay that way for the time being. Head on over to Dem Apples if you’re looking for me in the future. And drop me an e-mail at flaxter (at) gmail (dot) com otherwise.

(Comments have been disabled henceforth since they were all spam anyway.)

Giving this a try

The Getty

Jul 8, 2006 – 5 Photos

Reloading obsessively…

For posterity:

• MyDD
• Local news
• Local paper
• NYTimes
• WFSB

Lieberman Website Troubles…

First this screenshot is from Tim Tagaris:

Then I took this one later that night:

And even later:

Unfortunately I neglected to take a screenshot even later (1:30 AM Pacific, I think) when it was back up because I figured it would be back up for good. But believe me, their website was completely online late last night.

A weird collection of books

My blogging seems to have faltered. Alas…

Amazon has some funny recommendations for me:

* Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases
* A Comprehensive Introduction to Differential Geometry, Volume 1, 3rd
Edition
* The Power of Nonviolence: Writings by Advocates of Peace
* ML for the Working Programmer
* Purely Functional Data Structures
* How We Know What Isn’t So
* Introduction to Algorithms, Second Edition
* A Force More Powerful: A Century of Non-Violent Conflict

The first and second to last are psychology books (although I’d love to read a computer science book with the title, “Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases”), the second is a math book, it’s obvious what the third and last are about, and the fourth, fifth, and seventh are computer science books. Nice…

Tragic

I don’t know what to say, other than that the loss of life is always, unconditionally, a tragedy.

Also, this:

“The fate of Haifa’s dogs also tells us something about their owners and the situation in which they have found themselves. As we were walking around our neighborhood, after a few hours of quiet, we noticed a number of ownerless dogs looking for their homes.”

And I just heard this on Pandora:

Read this: Why international law matters from Jonathan Edelstein (via Dove’s Eye View):

But there is an even more fundamental reason why international law matters. It is very rare for a military victory, no matter how decisive, to end the underlying conflict, and when the war is over, the issues will still have to be resolved and the conflicting parties rebuilt. Any measure that conserves human life and civilian infrastructure during the war will make those tasks that much easier, while scorched-earth warfare might win an immediate victory at the cost of making the underlying conflict more intractable. Israel, for instance, has won all its wars, some more decisively than others, but even its most spectacular military victories have failed to resolve the political conflicts that lie at their root. The ultimate solution has to be political, and in those cases where wars must be fought, it’s important to fight them in a way that doesn’t make reconstruction and mediation more difficult. That means doing everything possible to protect civilian life on the other side, and not damaging infrastructure in a way that might threaten the postwar stability of the opposing state.

Israel clearly has the right to defend itself against Hizbullah’s attacks, and it can be frustrating to follow the rules when the enemy doesn’t acknowledge them. It can be difficult to hold back and be discriminating in the choice of targets when the enemy claims the right to attack civilian targets or even denies that there is such a thing as an Israeli civilian. Nevertheless, even aside from the fact that conserving human life is a moral good, following international humanitarian law and limiting the scope of warfare is critical if there is to be a hope of multilateral resolution and a postwar political settlement. The law is not meaningless either to the short-term realities of war or the politics of the underlying conflict, and the long-term dividends of conserving civilian life are much greater than the immediate costs.

Blog back?

The last two weeks saw a notable lack of blogging on my part. Meanwhile news in the real world went from gee-that’s-bad to oh, my, goodness. More on that later. In the meantime:

The appeal of the title does not derive from its simplicity or its specificity but rather from the existential truth of it. It’s as if the author read the screenplay aloud to his two sons and asked them what the film should be called. The first son might reply, “Death Flight! Wait, wait, no! Poisonous Air!” The second son, if he were autistic, would reply, “Snakes on a Plane.” The second son would be right.

San Francisco was fun. I’ll post pictures tomorrow.

First they ignore you…

This is a press release from the conservative Catholic League. Religious Left Seeks to Silence Church’s Voice:

A coalition of religious leaders in Massachusetts who are pro-gay marriage has lashed out at Boston Archbishop Sean Cardinal O’Malley and other Catholic leaders for opposing same-sex unions. The coalition accuses the Catholic leaders of practicing “religious discrimination” and has requested that they stop campaigning for laws that protect the institution of marriage.

“We respect the Roman Catholic Church’s desire to speak in a public forum about this, but it has come to a point where the advocacy about same-sex marriage has come to impinge on our own religious practices, because not everyone believes same-sex marriage is wrong or sinful or against religious beliefs,” said the Rev. Tiffany Steinwert, a United Methodist minister who works with homosexuals. She added, “What happens when the Roman Catholic Church seeks to create public policy based on their religious beliefs is that they negate other religious beliefs that might be contrary to that.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue responded as follows:

“It is important that the religious coalition stop practicing religious discrimination against Roman Catholics and stop campaigning for laws that weaken the institution of marriage.

“We respect the religious coalition’s desire to speak in a public forum about this, but it has come to a point where the advocacy about same-sex marriage has come to impinge on our own religious practices, because not everyone believes that same-sex marriage is not wrong or sinful or against religious beliefs. What happens when the religious coalition seeks to create public policy based on their religious beliefs is that they negate other religious beliefs that might be contrary to that.”

The full quotation is, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” And yes, you read that right, Donohue basically responded with a big f u, but in a mocking sort of way. Over at Street Prophets, Frank Cocozzelli argues that this is a victory:

Why is this a victory? Simple: because the Catholic League, a significant player of the Religious Right, has finally felt threatened enough to attack us. It means that our side has made a significant impact on an issue now in the public discourse. But most of all, a reactionary group such as the so-called “Catholic” League has effectively admitted that it can no longer claim to reflect the sole voice of religious thought on any given matter.

Frank is right: we’re certainly past the ignore stage. Still, I hope we’re not stuck in-between the laugh at you and fight you stage.

…by the way, that quote is attributed to Gandhi all over the Internet, but I’ve learned not to trust the Internet when it comes to verifying a quote’s provenance. (Long story short: this quote should really be attributed to John F. Kennedy, Jr., misquoting Dante.) This longer version seems more believable as the original: “It’s the same each time with progress. First they ignore you, then they say you’re mad, then dangerous, then there’s a pause and then you can’t find anyone who disagrees with you.” — Tony Benn (b. 1925), British Labour politician. Quoted in Observer (London, October 6, 1991).

Oh, hopefully this will help some future Google searcher:

“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crisis maintain their neutrality” — John F. Kennedy, misquoting Dante.