I got a new Palm Centro yesterday, to replace my old trusty cellphone, which I sort of dropped [*] while talking to Sprint Customer Support, and cracked the display. The Centro is the first modern PDA I've owned, and it's a pretty sweet little machine. PalmOS, lots of PIM functionality, expandable up to 4GB with a MicroSD card, USB connectivity, BlueTeeth, etc.

HOW-ever. I depended on my trusty old cell to wake me up at 6:30 every morning so I could begin the process of prying my 11-year-old out of bed for school. So after getting the Centro, I spent probably half an hour trying to do this extremely simple thing: set a repeating alarm for 6:30 every weekday morning. Finally I resorted to Google, where I found this post with a bunch of supporting comments basically saying, "oops sorry you can't do that".

It turns out you can set repeating alarms of this sort, and I describe how over the fold.

[*] Dropped kind of, uh, horizontally across the room, when after ten minutes of trying to validate my account information, the Sprint service person tried to tell me that I didn't know the name of my first elementary school. Stupid security questions...

OMG, I cannot believe what a *TOOL* Fox is!

You have to understand, it's extremely unusual for me to turn on the TV. Sometimes I'll watch SNL, or the Daily Show, or Colbert, but in general I ignore the box. I've seen some of MoveOn's "Fox Attacks" spots, which lampoon Fox News, but I didn't really "get it" until recently.

A few days ago, I stopped at my bank to make a deposit over lunch time, and of course there was a line. Also, Fox News was on the 50-inch flatscreen in the lobby, and I had no choice but to take it in. And boy, what a hoot! They were running a story about congress's refusal to grant immunity to the major telecoms for participating in the Bush administration's domestic spying program. I swear, the anchor lady had trouble enunciating clearly because her tongue was so far up Dubya's ass. "If congress refuses to renew this legislation, it will be putting ordinary Americans -- that means YOU and ME -- in danger!" Jeez, play the Scare America card, why dontcha? (Oh wait, I forgot -- the Right's deck doesn't actually *have* any other cards.)

It shocks me that some people not only can take this crap seriously, but actually buy the whole "Fair and Balanced" BS. It is as if everyone has forgotten that we *do* have a right to our privacy (since the Constitution specifically reserves to The People all rights that it does not explicitly grant to a branch of the Federal government or to the states), as well as an explicitly enumerated Constitutional right to be free from unreasonable search.

And you don't get much more unreasonable than the domestic wiretap program. It is as if people think that there is some practical use for the data obtained by wiretapping literally every voice and data stream in the US (the telecoms have already admitted that they tap everything, not just "international calls to known terrorists", as the nice Fox anchor asserted). Who the fuck is going to analyze all this data? How do you know they're not making illicit use of it? Wouldn't it be a lot more efficient use of resources to actually, y'know, keep track of the activities of actual known terrorists? It is as if people think that these BS "anti-terror" provisions have ever actually accomplished anything other than to keep the US population scared and compliant (not to mention dumping billions of dollars into the coffers of the corporations chosen to implement these boondoggles).

War is Peace.
Love is Hate.

Meh.

Willam Rivers Pitt says this on Truthout:

"Libby was part of a White House plot to discredit Ambassador Joseph Wilson, whose early criticism of the administration's Iraq claims were deemed a grave threat to the policy. The White House attacked Wilson by exposing his wife, Valerie Plame, as a deep-cover CIA operative. This exposure destroyed the intelligence network she had created to track any person, nation or group that might give weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. Libby lied under oath and obstructed justice to cover up these White House activities, and to protect Vice President Dick Cheney from scrutiny and censure for his direct role in the plot." (http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/070307R.shtml)

He's not the only one. Many sources are saying, in so many words, that the Bush administration and its lackeys have _broken the law_. Many are saying they've undermined the Constitution of the US, _which they are sworn to defend_. (The VP isn't part of the Executive branch? Come ON, people! Pull the other one, it's got bells on.)

I don't see _anyone_ defending any of them. I don't even see them defending themselves. Why might that be? Seems to me, if these nincompoops weren't guilty of what they're being accused, slander suits would be flying all over creation. They can't sue anyone, of course, because that would require them to present actual evidence that they're innocent.

This is a reaction to Michael Yon's latest dispatch from Iraq, here: http://michaelyon-online.com/wp/bless-the-beasts-and-children.htm

I am no longer quite so certain about cause and effect, when it comes to Muslim (or Christian) fundamentalism and terrorism. I'm an atheist, and a fan of Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. But I'm beginning to think that faith itself is not a cause of such lunacy as Yon describes, but rather an enabler. A faith that sorts the world into black-and-white categories, and sanctions the most horrible acts in defense of the white, must powerfully attract psychotic personalities. Which doesn't mean religion doesn't contribute to much of the world's nastiness. It's probably a wash, amplifying both positive and negative tendencies in different individuals.

Still, a worldview that denies the evidence of one's own senses and valorizes fairy tales probably contributes more craziness than reason to the world, on the whole.

For Christ's sake, *when* are we going to impeach these people?

http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_10_09/print/reviewprint.html

I just read a Weekly Standard article by Bill Kristol http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/711lzwcj.asp to which Andrew Sullivan http://www.andrewsullivan.com linked today. When I got to the part about the "vague Article 3 standards", I decided to, y'know, Google the Geneva Conventions (http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/91.htm). And now I really have to wonder if Kristol's editors, or any of his readers, or even Kristol himself have ever bothered to do that. I wonder which provisions of Article 3 he thinks are "vague"? Would it be the part where "the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever"? Or could it possibly be the descriptions of the acts themselves, which include "Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment"?

Apparently Kristol doesn't expect anyone to notice this discrepancy between Article 3 and his characterization of it. Which makes me wonder: are Weekly Standard readers *always* so easy to manipulate?

But of course, he's just parroting the Bush administration's take on the matter. Any reasonable and reasonably intelligent person would have to agree that Article 3 is perfectly clear about what it prohibits. Therefore, we are left with two possibilities: the Bushies are either (a) stupid, or (b) unreasonable. In the first case, the USA is a laughingstock for electing such a nincompoop. In the second case, we are setting an example of "creative" interpretation of international law that will make a mockery of the Geneva Conventions themselves. If it's not obvious to these guys that such a course is going to come back to bite us in the ass, we're back to case (a): they're stupid.

Two weeks ago, I received my 3rd-degree black belt in American Kenpo Karate. I'm not going to say too much about that, other than it was a very intense weekend-long affair, and I'm glad it will be at least three years before I have to do it again.

However, in the process of preparing for and participating in the belt test, I realized a couple of important things. The first is that I haven't been taking my karate sufficiently seriously. I have much knowledge, not so much understanding. The second is that in spite of that, my journey so far has been completely worthwhile. Considering that I didn't begin serious study of the martial arts until I was in my thirties, I've come a long way, and gained some very useful skills. What I need to do now is to concentrate on hands-on application. To this end, I plan in the near future, along with another recent third-degree graduate, to initiate a free-fighting class at my karate school. We normally have some free-fighting time during normal classes, but black belts are usually too involved in teaching the classes to participate; and since few of our students are adults, even when we do fight during class, it is usually in a pedagogical role. I want a class that's purely for free-fighting, and which caters mainly to adult students.

I would also like to run a hands-on self-defense class. The Kenpo discipline consists of two essential bodies of knowledge: free-fighting (or kumite), which is closely related to the practice of kata (form); and self-defense, which consists of a large number of discrete techniques, each of which is a defense against a particular attack. Free-fighting is how we learn to dynamically respond to open-ended combat situations, normally with trained opponents. On the other hand, self-defense is (at least in my conception) oriented toward swift and decisive response to an unexpected attack by one or more individuals, who may or may not be trained fighters. If someone walks up to you on the street and tries to hit you, you would not normally want to engage in drawn-out combat; rather, you would simply discourage, disable, or kill that person in the most efficient way possible. If that person turned out to be a trained fighter, you may end up in a free-fight, but the goal of each self defense technique is to completely neutralize the attack without delay. In this respect, Kenpo is one of the more practical styles of martial art, which is one of the reasons I've pursued it for a number of years.

This is a little premature, but here are some things I'd like to hear from a presidential candidate:

• "I am basically a libertarian. In general, I do not want to spend your money, and I will work to reduce the size of the government. I believe that people mostly should be allowed to live their lives in whatever way they see fit, provided they do not harm others. However, there are a small number of areas in which I see an important role for the federal government, which I will outline below."

So, House leadership is going to institute tougher ethical rules. They "continue to be the party of reform", according to some wag I just heard on NPR.

So we're supposed to believe that the same guys who had no problems breaking the existing ethical rules are going to start obeying them because they're "tougher". Sounds to me like they're just expanding their opportunity to break rules.

Ed Brayton is on my wavelength. Or vice versa.