The vast majority of folks in our wing of the building moved to the new building today across the street, leaving behind cubicles, full trash cans, scattered bits of debris,…
The vast majority of folks in our wing of the building moved to the new building today across the street, leaving behind cubicles, full trash cans, scattered bits of debris, and a dearth of office supplies.
It’s very quiet, and a little depressing. Maybe I should put on some music.
Google has issued a new “Labs Edition” of Google Talk. It pulls in some features from the Google Talk gadget — but, unfortunately, drops file transfer (which I never use)…
Google has issued a new “Labs Edition” of Google Talk. It pulls in some features from the Google Talk gadget — but, unfortunately, drops file transfer (which I never use) and voice chat (which I do), so I’ll not be downloading it any time soon.
Google suffers a bit from a plethora of Chat/Talk clients, just in the Windows platorm — there’s a downloadable Talk client, the new Labs Edition thereof, the Chat functionality in GMail, and the Google Gadget version (which is Flash-based in a browser). Each has a slightly different set of functions, though they all fundamentally work together, but it does make it difficult — even though I like the client quiet a bit.
Meanwhile, no sign of any changes or improvements in the problems with Google Calendar Sync for Outlook. Disappointing.
Yes, I’ve put it off a bit — and since I’ll be out of town next weekend, time to crack down and get it done. My two pieces of advice:…
Yes, I’ve put it off a bit — and since I’ll be out of town next weekend, time to crack down and get it done.
My two pieces of advice:
I don’t claim any special virtue or abilities when it comes to tax accounting. But those things just make life easier, I find.
UPDATE: 8:30 p.m. and all’s well. Took a few hours off to go to dinner with the family along with Jackie and Kaylee, to White Fence Farms. Yum. And …
Between what we have to send to Uncle Sam and get back from Uncle Bill, we’re only about $200 in the red, which isn’t too bad, all things considered.
Okay, a cheap joke, but no matter how one feels about Charlton Heston being the NRA leader/patriarch over the past decade or so, he did some fine, memorable acting work….
Okay, a cheap joke, but no matter how one feels about Charlton Heston being the NRA leader/patriarch over the past decade or so, he did some fine, memorable acting work. Famously a bit overwrought at times — William Shatner with actual talent, you might say — but still memorable. Moses, Judah Ben-Hur, El Cid, Michelangelo, even George Taylor, Robert Neville, Robert Thorn, or the Cardinal Richelieu … he brought a majesty and gravitas to anything he did.
And his style was always eminently quotable.
RIP.
Well, not quite, but Margie did volunteer to do a breakfast and lunch for a diocesan event down at the church, planning for the 65 who RSVPed (though the actual…
Well, not quite, but Margie did volunteer to do a breakfast and lunch for a diocesan event down at the church, planning for the 65 who RSVPed (though the actual total was closer to 50). Muffins and croissants and yogurt and granola for breakfast (plus fruit and juice coffee). For lunch, two yummy soups (potato cheese bacon and italian chicken), plus five different salads, bread, cookies and fruit for dessert. And lemonade.
Yeah.
Katherine and I did go down to help with final prep and setup and serving and cleanup for lunch, but Margie deserves the kudos. It was all quite yummy. And, given how ostensibly easily she did it, quite marvelous.
(No, it wasn’t actually that trivial an effort on her part, by any means. But if I had to do it, it would have been five times the work for something a third as good, so Margie really does deserve a big round of applause for it all.)
(Kitten was helpful, except when she was deciding not to be helpful, in which case she was passively helpful by staying out of the way.)
New UK coins. Very … very … cool. Actually, not only are they cool as a puzzle, but they remind me of old coins that are offset or slighly…
Very … very … cool.
Actually, not only are they cool as a puzzle, but they remind me of old coins that are offset or slighly misprinted. Neat.
(via Ginny)
I loved this show when it was on back in 1985 or so. I’m glad to see my nostalgic fondness — unlike so much else from the 80s — is…
I loved this show when it was on back in 1985 or so. I’m glad to see my nostalgic fondness — unlike so much else from the 80s — is well-placed.
| Overall |  | ||
| Story | | Acting |  |
| Production | | Features |  |
Story: Tapping into the Reagan-era cynicism and fear of urban crime, and channeling a bit of John le Carré, The Equalizer tells the tale of Robert McCall, a former CIA (agency not named) agent who, tired of bureaucrats, politics, and promises he’s not been able to keep, quits* and sets up a private detective/troubleshooting service to atone for all the Little People he’s not been able to help or save — the folks who are too small for the justice system to help. He advertises in the classifieds (“Odds against you? Need help? Call the Equalizer.”) and mixes spycraft, intimidation, suavite, and unswerving resolve to take down everything from drug lords to political assassins to psychos to slumlords to Donald Trump (or a reasonable facsimile thereof).
The cases always have a personal touch — he’s not out to be a hero, he’s out to help an individual, a couple, someone lost, someone who can’t fight for themselves. Interspersed with all of this is McCall’s continued informal involvement in Agency business — using old contacts, borrowing help, his friendship with his old Control, and dealing with snarky Agency politics that consider him a dangerously loose cannon at best, an outmoded dinosaur at worse.
The writing is generally good. There’s still a degree of “social / crime issue of the week,” and 80s fashions and hairstyles and portrayals of “hipness” and painfully socially awareness and occasional preachiness are ghastly. On the other hand, there’s plenty of grim and gritty, and the spy-stuff and bits where McCall takes the stage hold up extraordinarily well. The show is quite violent for its day — not blood-spattering violent, but quite a few off-screen (sometimes barely) killings, often either brutal or coldly efficient.
The show also marked the early days of story arcs. The Equalizer has several, from McCall trying to rebuild his relationship with his son (for whom he was “never there”), to the political infighting in the Agency (as personified in the smarmy Jason). It’s worth noting that while the episodes are largely “done in one,” and justice is almost ultimately always done, there are plenty of cases where it’s not all skittles and unicorns and happiness at the end, times where McCall may have won, but at a cost and with failures that clearly haunt him.
While sometimes there are aspects that are straight out of 1985, much of the show hangs together quite well, even for today’s more sophisticated TV audience. Or, at least, for me.
Acting: Show creator Michael Sloan had to fight (and shop the show to a different network) to get Edward Woodward into the lead role, against naysayers who wanted someone more craggy and obviously heroic (and slender). It was the right course to take, as Woodward both looks and acts perfectly as the former ex-spy, alternately charming and lethal, beset by amateurs and leading professionals. He does a great job of dealing with the old Inner Demons from his past, and the challenges of the present — always with a smile that never goes very deep, and the constant threat of an explosive, deadly anger.
The continuing supporting cast is primarily McCall’s colleagues in and around the Agency. Robert Lansing does his usual enjoyable job as the lean and aging Control, McCall’s friend and alter-ego on the other side of the professional divide. Saul Rubinek is appropriately despicable as (first season) Agency antagonist Jason. Keith Szarabajka plays the younger, trigger-happy Mickey Kostmeyer, the most frequent of Agency “assets” McCall borrows. There are a variety of others, almost all of them decent or better, as recurring cops, customers, or back-story elements.
Guest stars read like a who’s-who of 80s and 90s talent. Filming in New York, just as Law & Order does, meant being able to drawn on a huge pool of actors.
But the show centered on Woodward/McCall — as demonstrated when a heart attack left him unable to participate late in the series, which rapidly went downhill despite some fine talent brought in to backfill. He nails — or creates — the character perfectly as someone you want to be able to call, but perhaps don’t want to really know …
Production: The Equalizer was the first TV series to film in New York for a long time, and it makes effective use of the city … from the shiny and aristocratic to (more often) the grimy, run-down, decaying and dangerous.
The cinematography, in general, is quite good in this season. There’s a lot of conventional TV angles, but also a lot of more sophisticated tricks and techniques.
No discussion of the show is complete without mention of the soundtrack by Stewart Copeland (The Police). Alternately driving, disturbing, humorous, and rich, it set the tone for the show (literally) as much as the city did.
Features: This 5-disc set is slender on features. The premiere episode has a good commentary track by creator Michael Sloan, and there’s an episode from Season Two included, but that’s about it.
Overall: While I put on a brave face and wallow in nostalgia all to often for TV shows from my youth, The Equalizer is truly worth the watching and has been worth the wait.
So, when is Season Two coming out?
Other links:
The Equalizer – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
“The Equalizer” (1985) (IMDB)
*According to the premiere commentary track, the original main titles was a Prisoner-esque silent montage of McCall slamming down his resignation.
Okay, so I do a lengthy status report each week to my boss, compiling and distilling down submissions from my direct reports, max 3 pages. Each of my boss’s directs also…
Okay, so I do a lengthy status report each week to my boss, compiling and distilling down submissions from my direct reports, max 3 pages. Each of my boss’s directs also does such a report. We all CC each other, and usually CC our respective directs, too. So, in effect, my report goes to my boss, my four peer managers, and my four directs.
Last Friday, I included, two-thirds down, this little line item.
HOS – STATUS REPORT REVIEW: D Hill will buy a beer for anyone who sends him a private e-mail confirming they read this item by COB 3-APR. (D Hill)
HOS is the name for my group (Home Office Systems).
I got, on Monday, one claim for a beer from one of my peer managers.
This morning, in submitting this week’s report, I drew attention to the previous week’s entry. It’s been very amusing to me seeing the reactions (and/or lack thereof) from the various recipients. Including my boss.
Disclaimer: I am not all that good about reading my peers’ reports — but I read every item from my directs, and I read the summary report that my boss sends up the food chain.
It turns out the Popline kerfuffle was, in fact, an excellent example of the “chilling effect.” That’s what happens when a subject becomes forbidden by those in power to talk…
It turns out the Popline kerfuffle was, in fact, an excellent example of the “chilling effect.” That’s what happens when a subject becomes forbidden by those in power to talk about — all of a sudden, people restrain themselves even further than necessary just so that they don’t accidentally cross the line of rhetorical doom. So, for example, if your dad sends you to your room if you talk about Uncle Fred’s drinking, then maybe you avoid talking about drinking, Christmas dinner, or Uncle Fred altogether. Or if it’s illegal to assert that someone isn’t a good employee because they are a woman, you refrain from criticizing any women employees even if a particular one’s actions are grossly incompetent, just so that you avoid any chance of the accusation.
In the case of Popline — an academic reproductive health database that decided to ban the word “abortion” from its search terms — it turns out that it wasn’t on order from the Administration (Popline is funded via USAID, which is forbidden by executive order from anything that smacks of advocacy of abortions), but the database administrators being overly sensitive to the whole affair.
Apparently, someone at USAID inquired about two articles in the database that actually seemed to be advocacy pieces in favor of abortion. The administrators not only removed the two documents from the database, but, just to play it safe, deleted the search term as well.
Publicity about the case brought it to the attention of the Dean of the John sHopkins School of Public Health, which runs the database. He’s weighed in that the “solution” was improper.
USAID, which funds POPLINE, found two items in the database related to abortion that did not fit POPLINE criteria. The agency then made an inquiry to POPLINE administrators. Following this inquiry, the POPLINE administrators at the Center for Communication Programs made the decision to restrict abortion as a search term.
I could not disagree more strongly with this decision, and I have directed that the POPLINE administrators restore “abortion” as a search term immediately. I will also launch an inquiry to determine why this change occurred.
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge and not its restriction.
And bravo for that.
Still, it’s telling that (a) USAID is busy ferreting out items that “don’t fit POPLINE criteria” (since I suspect strongly that the “inquiry” was based on the ideological dictates of the Administration), and (b) the administrators of Popline were so concerned over their funding that they took this improper action, doubtless just to be “on the safe side.”
Sandra Jordan, director of communications in USAID’s office of population and reproductive health, could not identify the documents that prompted her office’s complaint, but said the publications were one-sided in favor of abortion rights.
“We are part of the Bush administration, so we have to make sure that all parts of the story are told,” says Jordan. “The administration’s policy is definitely anti-abortion, and the administration does not see abortion as a part of family planning policy.”
Jordan says that the Johns Hopkins database administrators blocked the word “abortion” on their own, and had misunderstood USAID’s request.
That’s the chilling effect. And that’s why making X illegal often has a greater consequence than its supporters (openly at least) will argue.
Looks like this year’s Blogathon will be on Saturday, 26 July. I have those TPBs/GNs all ready to go, even more than last year….
Looks like this year’s Blogathon will be on Saturday, 26 July. I have those TPBs/GNs all ready to go, even more than last year.
It seems everything is available these days powered by USB — the little rectangular connection ports on your PC. Not only a communications channel to your printer and other peripherals,…
It seems everything is available these days powered by USB — the little rectangular connection ports on your PC. Not only a communications channel to your printer and other peripherals, the USB port can provide power — thus we have USB powered hard drives, USB-powered fans, and, now, USB-powered … pregnancy tests.
No info on whether you can speed up the pregnancy if the port is USB 2.0 compliant.
Mark Harris reports on the latest-greatest from Rev. Don Armstrong and his Grace CANA crew — including their novel new assertion that they really left the Episcopal Church back…
Mark Harris reports on the latest-greatest from Rev. Don Armstrong and his Grace CANA crew — including their novel new assertion that they really left the Episcopal Church back in 1973, so the Colorado diocese really-truly-ooly doesn’t have any claim to the Grace & St Stephens Church property.
Hey, don’t the Chinese do this kind of thing related to “Tibet” and “Tiananmen Square”? U.S. Funded Health Search Engine Blocks ‘Abortion’ | Threat Level from Wired.com A U.S. government-funded…
Hey, don’t the Chinese do this kind of thing related to “Tibet” and “Tiananmen Square”?
U.S. Funded Health Search Engine Blocks ‘Abortion’ | Threat Level from Wired.com
A U.S. government-funded medical information site that bills itself as the world’s largest database on reproductive health has quietly begun to block searches on the word “abortion,” concealing nearly 25,000 search results.
Called Popline, the search site is run by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland. It’s funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, the federal office in charge of providing foreign aid, including health care funding, to developing nations.
The massive database indexes a broad range of reproductive health literature, including titles like “Previous abortion and the risk of low birth weight and preterm births,” and “Abortion in the United States: Incidence and access to services, 2005.”
But on Thursday, a search on “abortion” was producing only the message “No records found by latest query.”
The database manager says it’s because of federal funding. USAID is forbidden, by executive order, from funding NGOs that perform abortions or “actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations.”
“We recently made all abortion terms stop words,” Dickson wrote in a note to Gloria Won, the UCSF medical center librarian making the inquiry. “As a federally funded project, we decided this was best for now.”
There was no notice of the change on the site.
Dickson suggested other kinds of more obscure search strategies and alternative words to get around the keyword blocking.
This isn’t an advice line, or a political advocacy site. Popline touts itself as “Your connection to the world’s reproductive health literature,” and “the world’s largest database on reproductive health, containing citations with abstracts to scientific articles, reports, books, and unpublished reports in the field of population, family planning, and related health issues. “
Except, of course, if you try to find them using the “A” word.
Whether this is an excellent example of the “chilling effect” (folks self-censoring for fear of breaking the rules), or of the Bush Administration once again demonstrating its desire to reframe scientific information only in acceptable ideological limits, it’s outrageous.
Well, that little digression turned into a big time sink. A few weeks back I converted my WIST quotations site into a static published site, rather than dynamic. That took…
Well, that little digression turned into a big time sink.
A few weeks back I converted my WIST quotations site into a static published site, rather than dynamic. That took a chunk of disk space, but the performance for calling up individual pages (and having them index) should save time.
So, today it I was in the mt-config.cgi file (to turn off the autosave function), when I realized it had been three weeks since I renamed my comment and trackback scripts. I’ve found that’s a moderately helpful way of foiling certain spammers.
I was about to do that, when it suddenly occurred to me that, unlike before, not all of my individual entry pages in my various blogs were still dynamic. WIST’s pages are static (actual HTML files generated at creation, vs. dynamic pages generated from the database on the fly). If I changed the names of the comment and trackback CGI files in the configuration, I would have to rebuild all my pages. Which, last time I did it, was a multi-hour task (that may have been in part because it was the first time I’d done it; I haven’t timed it again lately).
Ugh.
So instead, I needed a way for the script names to be dynamic when a given page is called, but the rest of the page to be static the rest of the time. Here’s what I did.
1. Create two new index templates, one for each script name.
I figured I could use Server Side Includes (SSI) as the dynamic source of the CGI script names. You can create SSIs from MT without too much trouble (as the output file associated with a template), but to have them “built” with the value they need, so they need to be done as Index Templates (vs Template Modules), flagged to rebuild with each rebuild.
So I created a “dynamic comment script” index module that creates dynamic_comment_script.inc, and has as a single line:
<$MTCommentScript$>
That tag will return the of the comment script. Then I did the same trackbacks.(“<$MTTrackbackScript$>” etc.)
So now whenever a rebuild happens, those two .inc files will have the name of the script (e.g., “xyztrackback.cgi”) in them. And when I change the name of the two scripts in my mt-config.cgi file, instead of rebuilding all the individual entries in WIST, I just have to do an index rebuild (which takes just a minute). And if I forget, it will still update the next time I add a new entry.
Note that SSI is not available on all hosts. It is on mine, though.
2. Change the comment form.
Now to change the reference to the comment script. In the comment code, there’s a form call that starts something like:
<form method=”post” action=”<$MTCGIPath$><$MTCommentScript$>”
That’s the part that needs to be fixed. And, fortunately, it’s simple.
<form method=”post” action=”<$MTCGIPath$><!–#include virtual=”/dynamic_comment_script.inc”–>”
That’s an SSI call there at the end. It’s calling the contents of that .inc file I created in step 1, literally sucking it in at the time the page is loaded. Thus, the page is static (on file), but that particular piece gets pulled in dynamically. And recall that .inc file contains the name of the comment script, as most recently generated (even if that’s after when the entry’s static file was generated).
3. Change the Trackback text.
I still have the default trackback address text at the bottom of the individual archive page, in case someone’s doing a manual ping that isn’t doing an auto-discover on the file. That line usually looks like:
TrackBack URL for this entry: <$MTEntryTrackbackLink$>
Instead, I do the same trick as above:
TrackBack URL for this entry: <$MTCGIPath$><!–#include virtual=”/dynamic_trackback_script.inc”–>/<$MTEntryTrackbackID$>
MT has all sorts of tags for this sort of stuff, so it was easy enough to (by looking at what was actually generated) find the surrounding pieces and substitute in the SSI of the TB script in the middle.
4. Change the Trackback autodiscovery code.
A lot of blogging software can autodiscover trackback addresses for a file through special RDF tags embedded in it. So MT has a simple tag to generate the RDF tags:
<$MTEntryTrackbackData$>
That actually creates a 14-line set of tags and info for the trackback discovery process. Unfortunately, part of that info is the location of the trackback script (so that the autodiscovering system can generate a trackback entry).
Fortunately, though long, the format of those tags is pretty straightforward and the content is reproducable. So in my Individual Archive template, in lieu of the one line above, I now have:
<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf=”http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#”
xmlns:trackback=”http://madskills.com/public/xml/rss/module/trackback/”
xmlns:dc=”http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/”>
<rdf:Description
rdf:about=”<$MTEntryLink$>”
trackback:ping=”<$MTCGIPath$><!–#include virtual=”/dynamic_trackback_script.inc”–>/<$MTEntryTrackbackID$>”
dc:title=”<$MTEntryTitle$>”
dc:identifier=”<$MTEntryLink$>”
dc:subject=”<$MTEntryCategory$>”
dc:description=”<$MTEntryExcerpt$>”
dc:creator=”<$MTEntryAuthor$>”
dc:date=”<$MTEntryDate format=”%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S-07:00″ />
</rdf:RDF>
All the stuff in the first block is literal info as generated currently by MT. The next stuff is all use of MT tags — including, note, the SSI to get the current trackback script info into place.
The only thing I didn’t bother to look up or figure out how to do is on the last line. The “-07:00” is the GMT time zone offset, in this case Mountain Time. I don’t know if MT has a tag to do it, and I really didn’t feel the need to look it up (since I don’t plan to permanently move out of my time zone any time soon).
5. Kick back and relax.
And that’s it. With those steps, I now can change my comment and trackback script names, do a simple index rebuild on WIST (or even — given that the trackback and comment traffic isn’t all that heavy — let it rebuild itself when I add more quotes each weekday), and the changed CGI script will be present in all of my entries without having to do a full rebuild.
Of course, you might say, I could simplify things by eliminating trackbacks — but I’m stubborn about this, as I think the TB concept is delightful, and use it a lot for internal cross-references if nothing else. I hate to let the spammers “win” on that one. Ditto for comments — the WIST site would not lose a lot by losing comments — but I’d be irked and saddened. So, to me, it’s worth the effort to have done this.
And to have shared the wealth with anyone else who’s looking for something similar.
Interesting article here on Waste Management suing SAP based on promises broken. Which is leading some to think that “IT Malpractice” suits are just around the corner. Which, honestly, might…
Interesting article here on Waste Management suing SAP based on promises broken. Which is leading some to think that “IT Malpractice” suits are just around the corner.
Which, honestly, might not be that bad a thing, despite the gloom and doom:
Even when the project fully meets the specs, it rarely meets the user’s needs, since it is so hard to write a perfect project specification and requirements document. In other words, even the most perfect project could be wide open to these kinds of lawsuits.
Even worse, “programming malpractice” suits could drive out what little innovation is left in IT. Programmers will not be willing to write new software unless their company has the deep pockets and slick lawyers to protect them. Open source projects will collapse, since the lack of incorporation will make the individual contributors legally responsible.
Perhaps it’s because of the industry I work in, but I really don’t see the big deal. The model is not like doctors (suing the snot out of individual practitioners), but engineering companies. You perform to the agreed-upon requirements and specifications, you get paid. You don’t, you either negotiate to settle or you go to court. The individual practitioner (engineer) isn’t usually party to such suits, because the agreement is with the company involved.
It all boils down to specifications and change management. If either side in a relationship doesn’t do that well, you’re in trouble, whether it’s a kitchen contractor or a CRM consultancy. I well believe that the requirements and specs agreed upon may not make the customer happy. That doesn’t mean you can’t write solid specs — it just means the customer doesn’t always know what s/he wants. That’s not (and isn’t being proposed here) actionable. Saying that writing good specs is impossible, though, is just laziness.
Actually, using the term “malpractice” is misleading — this is basic contract law we’re talking here, or should be. Developers are more like a service provider than an “expert” artisan/scientist like a doctor or lawyer. We’re not being hired for our expert opinion or our one-man performance, but to provide something specified by the client and certified by us to meet those specs. It may be hard for folks to hear this, but we’re carpenters and masons with bits and bites. The guy who builds your house doesn’t get sued for malpractice — he gets sued for breach of contract.
And, honestly, given the costs and potential impact on lives of major development projects (and the dismal failure of so many of them), I think a bit of “Jeez, we really do have to do what we promise, so we should only promise what we can do” might make the world a better place in IT. If we can be considered as reliable (and responsible) as engineering firms, that’s a good thing.
There’s really two types of IT things being talked about here:
1. Off the shelf software – This should be held to the same standards as anything else you buy off the shelf, from a car to an apple pie to a How To book. This isn’t (shouldn’t be) new law. The only “innovation” I see vanishing is among software publisher advertisers. Regardless, that’s not what’s being addressed in this suit, or in the idea of “malpractice.”
2. Implementation projects – SAP offers to come in and install their software and implement it for our company and make our life So Happy. Why is that different from what any other contractor would be offering us? If they were building us a new building, or selling us a fleet of cars, or anything else, we’d reserve the right to get them to fix stuff that was broken, and sue them if they didn’t live up to their obligation. Why should it be that an IT project is somehow magically exempt from the same considerations? Write good contracts with appropriate caveats and recourses and you should be golden.
The doom-saying about Open Source is also wrong. It’s perfectly acceptable to write a contractual disclaimer offering the software “as-is” and that downloading it means you accept you have no resource if it blows up. That’s pretty much what’s already done, and if you bet the company on something like that, it’s your lookout.
What about small, one-man independent programmers? Again, it’s all a matter of contracts. Granted, an individual “malpractice” suit could be very expensive to fend off, even if contractually protected, but that’s true for any sort of individual contractor.
In a way, this is all the IT business “growing up” — seeing the services and products provided as not inherently different from any other services and products. “Free” gets you what it gets you. Small providers carry risks (and advantage). Big companies have to live up to what they promise.
It’s not the end of the IT world as we know it — it’s actually the beginning of its maturity. That’s a good thing.
A soft, steady rain down at home as I started off this morning, turning a bit slushy as I got up to the office. All the ops folks in my…
A soft, steady rain down at home as I started off this morning, turning a bit slushy as I got up to the office.
All the ops folks in my wing are packing up to move to the other building this weekend. I have no idea when I am slated to move over there, as it’s a different floor and the move coordination is being handled with all the planning, coordination, and aplomb of a bunch of three-year-olds (with IT saving the day more often than not).
Someone I’ve worked with for many years — in fact, who I hired into the company — is shifting their base of operations to the downtown office we gained in the acquisition last year. And someone else I’ve known here for some time is, rather goofily, being made redundant by that same office/acquisition, so I’m busy trying to figure out if I have a position in my department for them.
Last night was Family Art Night down at Katherine’s school, with a (mostly) Asian Art theme. Katherine performed in a puppet play about the building of the Great Wall of China, and there were various calligraphy and painting projects, free food, Chinese dancers, dragon dancers (Katherine’s favorite), and some Ultimate Martial Arts guys who were as much dancers and Power Rangers as actual self-defense masters (no matter how many degrees of black belt they claimed or how high they kicked). Good fun for all.
We’re getting ready for some travel coming up. We’re off to New York in a week for Doyce and Kate’s wedding — we’ll be staying on a couple of days beyond so as to do some whirlwind touring (it’s my First Time). Jim and Ginger are coming out on Monday to stay for a couple of weeks, including taking care of Katherine while we’re gone; they have some fun touring plans, too.
While I’m glad that tomorrow’s Friday, Saturday Margie’s volunteered to do breakfast and lunch for 65 down at the church, Which we’ll be helping her with, of course.
A busy, unsettled, changing, promising time.
Enchanted Tiki Room Swag! On the occasion of its 45th anniversary. Sweet … Six travel issues likely to be ignored – CNN.com – Well, travel issues aren’t sexy enough…
Okay, not only did the DoJ claim it was okay to torture folks if the President said to do it, someone at the EFF spotted a footnote in the original…
Okay, not only did the DoJ claim it was okay to torture folks if the President said to do it, someone at the EFF spotted a footnote in the original memo.
… our Office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations. See Memorandum for Alberto R. Gonzales, Counsel to the President, and William J. Haynes, II, General Counsel, Department of Defense, from John C. Yoo, Deputy Assistant Attorney General and Robert J. Delahunty, Special Counsel, Re: Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States at 25 (Oct 23, 2001). [emphasis added]
That memo hasn’t yet been released (and it’s not clear whether it’s ever been rescinded).
Now, wait … the Fourth Amendment? Which one’s that? I get so confused by all those silly Constitutional protections …
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Oh, that Fourth Amendment.
In other words, if the Administration asserts (whether it believes it or not) that something is a “domestic military operation,” then it can search (including wiretap) anyone or anything to its heart’s content. It can also take whatever the heck it wants. There’s no Constitutional protection against it. Or so said the Dept of Justice.
But that’s talking about “military operations,” right? Like, army men and all that, in case of a national emergency, right? Well, what the Administration deems to be a “domestic military operation” is a bit broader than that.
In 2006, the Department of Justice has asserted that “that warrantless communications intelligence targeted at the enemy in time of armed conflict is a traditional and fundamental incident of the use of military force authorized by the AUMF.” The DOJ also asserted that “the NSA activities fit squarely within the sweeping terms of the AUMF. The use of signals intelligence to identify and pinpoint the enemy is a traditional component of wartime military operations.” As the DOJ sees it, “In the present conflict, unlike in the Korean War, the battlefield was brought to the United States …” The NSA is part of the Department of Defense.
AUMF is the “Authorized Use of Military Force” passed by Congress in October 2001.
In other words, if the NSA wants to listen to your phone calls, all it has to claim is that it’s in pursuit of the “enemy” and it’s fully authorized (by the AUMF, according to this memo) to do so. Which is what the Administration has claimed — only hypothetically, until very recently — it was doing, and why the telcos that supported it (perhaps because the above-mentioned memo was waved around at them) need immunity (according to the Administration) so that judges aren’t in a position to rule on these various assertions of essentially unlimited executive power by the DoJ.
In a government of Laws, not Men, we’re not supposed to have to rely on the benignity and goodwill of those in authority to preserve our rights and not do anything evil or tyrannical. That’s why we have a Constitution in the first place. If we can only rely on this Administration — or the next, or the next, or the next — all being good eggs and not exploiting any of the “We’re from the government — trust us, it’s an emergency” security crap that this one has put on the record, we might as well all give up and move to China.
It’s an announcement right out of left field! Episcopal Church named “official denomination” of Major League Baseball: As a part of opening week festivities, Commissioner of Baseball Bud Selig…
It’s an announcement right out of left field! Episcopal Church named “official denomination” of Major League Baseball:
As a part of opening week festivities, Commissioner of Baseball Bud Selig and Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori announced today that the Episcopal Church has been designated the Official Denomination of Major League Baseball. The move was announced today in a teleconference with reporters.
[…] Selig said that Episcopalians bring the right mix of arcane tradition, an appreciation of minutiae and a tolerance for long stretches of relative inaction that make them “a good fit for us.”
“We believe that Episcopalians understand the nuances of the game and won’t meddle with our traditions too much.”
(Emphasis mine)
Plus, we have a fondness for seasonal activities and pretty uniforms!
(via Deb)
Spiffy — a newly declassified 2003 Justice Dept. memo (rescinded 9 months later) that told the Defense Dept. it could do pretty much anything it wanted when it came to…
Spiffy — a newly declassified 2003 Justice Dept. memo (rescinded 9 months later) that told the Defense Dept. it could do pretty much anything it wanted when it came to interrogating prisoners.
Sent to the Pentagon’s general counsel on March 14, 2003, by John C. Yoo, then a deputy in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, the memo provides an expansive argument for nearly unfettered presidential power in a time of war. It contends that numerous laws and treaties forbidding torture or cruel treatment should not apply to U.S. interrogations in foreign lands because of the president’s inherent wartime powers.
“If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network,” Yoo wrote. “In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch’s constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions.”
Interrogators who harmed a prisoner would be protected by a “national and international version of the right to self-defense,” Yoo wrote. He also articulated a definition of illegal conduct in interrogations — that it must “shock the conscience” — that the Bush administration advocated for years.
“Whether conduct is conscience-shocking turns in part on whether it is without any justification,” Yoo wrote, explaining, for example, that it would have to be inspired by malice or sadism before it could be prosecuted.
In other words, don’t worry your little head about “treaties” and “law.” Do whatever you think is “necessary,” as long as you don’t openly chortle maniacally whist doing it.
Justice and Law in the Bush Administration. How invigorating.