Keeping Up With “Reality”

Iraq => the old 9/11: Old and Busted

Iran => a new 9/11: The New Hotness

 (The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, on Wednesday compared the threat from Iran’s nuclear programs to the September 11 terror attacks on the United States.

“Just like September 11, only with nuclear weapons this time, that’s the threat. I think that is the threat,” Bolton told ABC News’ Nightline program.

“I think it’s just facing reality. It’s not a happy reality, but it’s reality and if you don’t deal with it, it will become even more unpleasant.”)

Achewood Died for Our Sins

Achewood has had an incredibly gripping storyline going for a few weeks (as I mentioned here), and it’s at or near a climax.  No new strip was up this morning, but eventually a note appeared on the site that a new strip would be up at noon PST (3 pm our time).  At the promised moment, it was impossible to pull up the Achewood page.  It timed out.  So many people refreshing and refreshing the page hoping to see the update?  The situation went on for an hour or so at least, and rather than getting better it started redirecting to this Portland ISP — Achewood’s provider perhaps?

Did we kill Achewood, at least for today?  Yikes!

ACLU Releases First Concrete Evidence of FBI Spying Based Solely on Groups’ Anti-War Views

American Civil Liberties Union : ACLU Releases First Concrete Evidence of FBI Spying Based Solely on Groups’ Anti-War Views

Two documents released today reveal that the FBI investigated gatherings of the Thomas Merton Center for Peace & Justice just because the organization opposed the war in Iraq. Although previously disclosed documents show that the FBI is retaining files on anti-war groups, these documents are the first to show conclusively that the rationale for FBI targeting is the group’s opposition to the war.“It makes no sense that the FBI would be spying on peace activists handing out flyers,” said Jim Kleissler, Executive Director of the Thomas Merton Center for Peace & Justice. “Our members were simply offering leaflets to passersby, legally and peacefully, and now they’re being investigated by a counter–terrorism unit. Something is seriously wrong in how our government determines who and what constitutes terrorism when peace activists find themselves targeted.”

And the departed shade of J. Edgar Hoover smiles.

Berry vs. The Geekosphere

“The most radical influence of reductive science has been the virtually universal adoption of the idea that the world, its creatures, and all the parts of its creatures are machines—that is, that there is no difference between creature and artifice, birth and manufacture, thought and computation. Our language, wherever it is used, is now almost invariably conditioned by the assumption that fleshly bodies are machines full of mechanisms, fully compatible with the mechanisms of medicine, industry, and commerce; and that minds are computers fully compatible with electronic technology.”This may have begun as a metaphor, but in the language as it is used (and as it affects industrial practice) it has evolved from metaphor through equation to identification. And this usage institutionalizes the human wish, or the sin of wishing, that life might be, or might be made to be, predictable.”

— Wendell Berry

Mind Performance Hacks provides real-life tips and tools for overclocking your brain and becoming a better thinker. In the increasingly frenetic pace of today’s information economy, managing your life requires hacking your brain. With this book, you’ll cut through the clutter and tune up your brain intentionally, safely, and productively.

— The O’Reilly & Associates book catalog.