Monthly Archives: July 2013

Retro Post: 10 Years Ago Today, 23-July

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For the next few weeks, I’ll be observing an anniversary: 10 years since we left San Francisco and moved to Ann Arbor. I’ll repost articles Frank and I wrote at that time for our Ann Arbor blog, aSquared. Bittersweet, very definitely they will be, bittersweet.

Beginning of the End

‘Sorry for the few-and-far-between updates, folks, but things are a might busy around Le Maison du Beagle. See, we’re moving from San Francisco to Ann Arbor, MI, in just a very few weeks (in just a mere 23 days, in fact), so I’ve been a bit frenzied, flying to Detroit, looking for a new place (we scored a fairly spiffy new townhouse with plenty of outdoors for beagle to roam around in and not far from campus and Michigan Stadium) and packing up the books and DVDs, figuring out all the nagging logistics of a 2,800-mile, cross-country move and wrapping things up here.

‘It’s turning out to be possibly a month-long orgy of goodbyes … visiting favorite spots in San Francisco, taking final pictures, saying goodbyes to friends and the doctor and his staff and so on and on, so the ‘blogging is lagging. But I’m going to try to keep up. In fact, in a few days, I’m going to start a side journal, a little log of the beagle’s cross-country adventures, along with some pictures. So stay tuned.

—Posted by Steve at 23:33 | 23-Jul-03’

WN345 Nose Gear Collapse at KLGA

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“LEAVE. YOUR. CRAP. ON. THE. PLANE. DURING. AN. EVAC!!!”

Me, Many Times

WN737-700 N753SW, operating as Southwest 345 from Nashville (KBNA) experiences nose gear collapse on arrival at KLGA. Left here at 2:33 p.m. TeeWee news channels (thank god) are so focused on serial killers and the Windsors’ latest reproduction that they’ve given very little air time to the incident, and so we’re spared the horror of their overwrought and willfully stupid coverage. Local news here in Music City is not much better. Given the local connection, they’re frothing only marginally less than the nationals. Read avherald.com tomorrow for real coverage.

[Insert the usual rant here.] LEAVE. YOUR. CRAP. ON. THE. PLANE. DURING. AN. EVAC. «No cell phone, no purse, no rollerboard full of vacation souvenirs made in China is worth people getting injured or killed because you have to wrestle your kitchen sink down the aisle and through the door». Think about someone besides yourself for a change.[/rant]

And the appalling/hilarious background to this photo is unfolding on Twitter as “social media producers” with the likes of CNBC, Fox, etc., pressuring the photog for rights to publish the pic. Not sure whether to throw up or laugh myself into a heart attack …

Sorry We Destroyed Your Life After You Saved Our Country

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“I am certain that but for his work we would have lost the war through starvation.”

Lady Trumpington, 2013

Ooops. «Sorry about the whole castration/murder even though you were actually a major war hero, couldn’t have done it without you, thing.». Fags are cool, now. So. Yeah. Like, we good? We good here?

“Alan Turing, the Enigma codebreaker who took his own life after being convicted of gross indecency under anti-homosexuality legislation, is to be given a posthumous pardon.
“The government signalled on Friday that it is prepared to support a backbench bill that would pardon Turing, who died from cyanide poisoning at the age of 41 in 1954 after he was subjected to “chemical castration.”
…
“The announcement marks a change of heart by the government, which declined last year to grant pardons to the 49,000 gay men, now dead, who were convicted under the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act. They include Oscar Wilde.
…
“The government threw its weight behind the private member’s bill, promoted by the Liberal Democrat peer Lord Sharkey, after a debate that featured a contribution from a peer who worked at Bletchley Park. Lady Trumpington told peers: “The block I worked in was devoted to German naval codes. Only once was I asked to deliver a paper to Alan Turing, so … I cannot claim that I knew him. However, I am certain that but for his work we would have lost the war through starvation.”
“Turing broke German ciphers using the bombe method, which allowed the code-breakers to crack the German Enigma code. His colleague Tommy Flowers built the Colossus computer. Ahmad described Turing as “one of the fathers, if not the father, of computer science.”
…
“Sharkey said: “As I think everybody knows, he was convicted in 1952 of gross indecency and sentenced to chemical castration. He committed suicide two years later. The government know that Turing was a hero and a very great man. They acknowledge that he was cruelly treated. They must have seen the esteem in which he is held here and around the world.””

The arc just bent a little more towards justice, in this case, only taking 70 years.

At Least One American Gets It

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“America currently has no functioning democracy. ”

James Earl Carter, 39th President of the U.S.

“Amerika hat derzeit keine funktionierende Demokratie … Ich glaube, die Invasion der Privatsphäre ist zu weit gegangen. Und ich glaube, dass die Geheimnistuerei darum exzessiv gewesen ist. [Snowden’s revelations] wahrscheinlich nützlich, da sie die Öffentlichkeit informieren … nie zuvor dagewesene Verletzung unser Privatsphäre durch die Regierung. ”
—Jimmy Carter

Loose translation: “America currently has no functioning democracy … I think the invasion of privacy has gone too far. And I think that is why the secrecy was excessive. [Snowden’s revelations were] probably useful because they inform the public … [we’ve] never before seen our privacy violated by the government.” «[Der Spiegel]»

Jimmy is probably at the top of an NSA watch list somewhere, something which would no doubt greatly please those on the right.

The only quibble I have with this, Mr. President, is that you make it out to be a recent thing. We’ve had no functioning democracy to speak of since A.) You lost your re-election bid in 1980; B.) When the Democrats lost the house in 1994 and ushered in their “Contract on America”; and/or C.) When the Supreme Court dictated the results of the 2000 election, giving the presidency to the loser of the election, each of these being a signpost along the road to our present corporatocracy. Otherwise, bang-on, Jimmy!

I Believe …

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“Individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity.”

Edward Snowden

“I believe in the principle declared at Nuremberg in 1945 … Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.’
— Edward Snowden

Yes … but, Mr. Snowden, you are up against a public-private entity unprecedented in its power and hypocrisy and self-delusion. We have those duties, yes. But what does that look like? Surely it doesn’t look like a press conference in a Moscow airport. But what?