This is pretty shady.
The practice of detaining suspected terrorists indefinitely without trial will continue under Obama's presidency. The hypocrite in me who was outraged at Bush for doing this recognizes that this may be a political necessity for Obama. Nobody wants to be the president who releases a terrorist who goes on to attack Americans, but it is still wrong. Innocent until proven guilty my ass.
Based on a true story
My story is a tragedy. I am a lonely wasp. Although my stinger is sharp and strong, I never intended to use it. I had always wanted to mind my own business and raise a small family in the warm summer sun. But life is cruel and things don't always work out as planned.
The location I chose for my home, in the eave of a covered porch, provided safety and shelter from the wind and rain. When it rained, not a single drop fell on my nest. When the wind howled and the lightning flashed my home was safe and warm. When the sun beat down baking the mud and grass, my home was cool and shaded. It was an ideal location.
There was another benefit of building my nest under the porch. The people who owned the porch were great entertainment as they toiled about the yard. They never seemed to mind my presence just as I never minded theirs. During the day we both worked and in the evening, while they nestled into their chairs to read a magazine or drink some wine, I retired to my nest to dream about the eggs I would one day lay and the offspring who I would never know. I thought that we had a genuine kinship which made our tireless work more bearable and our solitary lives just that much richer.
My nest itself was a good nest. I spent many hours mixing my saliva with wood pulp to craft the finest of paper. I built several combs, layered on top of each other radiating out from a central axis. In each comb I laid a single egg. It was the pride of my life, indeed my whole point of being. And then it all came toppling down. While I was away to feed, someone inundated my nest with toxic insecticide, suffocating my poor defenseless young. I was overcome with equal parts rage and sorrow. My poor innocent larvae would never know the joy of flight, or the satisfaction of creating a nest of their own.
Who? Who could have done this to my young? I did not want to believe that my human friends could have done this, but it couldn't have been anyone else. Yet still I refused to believe it. But then I saw it. Through the kitchen window. Sitting on the counter. A can of bee and wasp killer. The bastard humans betrayed me. They betrayed our life together, the sanctimonious fellowship of living beings. They betrayed the inner workings of the universe, our roles in nature. They betrayed harmony itself. So I plotted my revenge. Hell hath no fury like an insect scorned.
It was days before I could exact my revenge. The weather was foul and the humans never set foot on the porch. I watched them through the kitchen window, laughing as they ate their dinner, oblivious to the pain that coursed through my being. It was three days of torture watching them live their lives without a second thought about what they had done to me. Until finally, the man walked out to the porch and in a fury I stung the son of a bitch on his nose. And now I lay here dying.
The Construction Safety Monster, as I like to call him, was given the national spotlight on
npr today. Or rather his creator, Joe Carnevale was. He was also on local radio the other morning. He seems to have a natural gift for PR.
Previously:
Beware the Construction Safety Monster
The Construction Safety Monster made its brief but stunning debut on Hillsborough Street in Raleigh, thrilling motorists and pedestrians alike. The only problem is, Joe Carnevale, the man who built it has been arrested for destruction of property and larceny as he used the materials to build it without asking. But I like it. It is creative and seems to fit snugly in the category of spontaneous urban art which serves graffiti artists so well. The city ought to resurrect the Monster and pay the construction company for the materials Carnevale used as his commission while dropping all charges.
Meanwhile, across town sits the Time and Light Tower in the middle of a nondescript highway median. To be honest, I drove by the tower every weekday for nearly a year and always wondered what it was, but never guessed that it was a work of art. My best guess was that it powered some mundane piece of electrical equipment like a nearby crosswalk signal. Do I think it is a lesser work of art than the Construction Safety Monster? No, but it certainly isn't as audacious or conspicuous and in a way I think it is audacity that powers great art.
Art enriches our lives and our communities. The city should recognize any creative effort that makes the city a more interesting place and ultimately a better place to live.
This actually hasn't happened to me since that dream where I dropped out.
This is from a while ago:
Just the image of being green is not enough. How big of a footprint do those supposedly earth-friendly shoes really leave on the planet?
Pretty green actually, if you go on to read the article.
Jon Stewart dissects varying coverage on Fox, MSNBC, and CNN. It's shameful that some of this "reporting" can be passed off as journalism, and furthermore, that millions of Americans tune in daily to keep themselves "informed". Seriously, watch
NewsHour, the only program I know of that pays respect to our soldiers who have fallen in combat.
[via
MediaBistro]
iTunes had
John Cage's 4'33" for free a while back. Now it is just 2 bucks. 4'33" is Cage's 3 movement composition of nothing but "silence" though I suppose silence is hard sought on Earth.
A tad late, but here is
my submission to the
Vintage Web, a blog that catalogs the outdated web designs that we all grew up on. In the red shorts we have
Hernias weighing in with animated gifs, tacky wall paper and waaaaay more information about hernias than anyone needs. And in the blue shorts,
Hemorrhoids with all its missing plugin splendor (at least for me).
This is seriously funny human behavior. I wonder if it is real. It kind of looks like
Improv Everywhere.
[via
John Battelle]
Over the next several days I hope to clear out my starred items in Google Reader. Here is a goody,
do you talk too much? [via
kottke.org]
...follow The Traffic Light rule of thumb: During the first 30 seconds of an utterance, your light is green: your listener is probably paying attention. During the second 30 seconds, your light is yellow—your listener may be starting to wish you’d finish. After the one-minute mark, your light is red: Yes, there are rare times you should “run a red light:” when your listener is obviously fully engaged in your missive. But usually, when an utterance exceeds one minute, with each passing second, you increase the risk of boring your listener and having them think of you as a chatterbox, windbag, or blowhard.
Alas, I know too many people who consistently run red lights.
95% of blogs are abandoned. I know this one practically is. Though delusions of financial independence through blogging was never my goal. I even stated in my
first post that there would be no advertising on this blog. Ultimately, I started blogging as I am a total geek about gadgets and Subtext (my blogging engine) has been fun to play around with.