Peace. mjh
If Nevada Barr wrote my dreams …
I had a very detailed dream this morning. Chuck (a friend I play volleyball with) and I were walking in a landscape like Tapia Canyon, a fairly common New Mexico landscape of steep brown canyon walls and minimal vegetation. At one point, a trail went off to the right, away from edge of an arroyo we were walking along. I said either route would work for us, so we kept waking along the arroyo, which got deeper quickly. Across the now-canyon, we saw men in waist-high dry grass holding rifles straight-up in the air. There were more and more men as I looked at them. They weren’t shooting, they were gesturing desperately, as if to a helicopter or plane overhead. Closer to the canyon edge but still on the other side, several people, including a woman in a red jacket, seemed to be running, but they were actually being swept toward the canyon edge by water we could not see, or rapidly eroding soil. I looked back to see the red jacket swept downstream in a muddy torrent at the far bottom of the canyon. Chuck and I reached a wall blocking our path; the rock was scored in vertical lines, as if from road construction. I said we have to get up from the canyon edge quickly and scrambled up. I turned to offer Chuck my hand. You can’t pull me up, he said. I’ll help you climb, I told him. Chuck scaled the wall and we both collapsed, breathing heavily, hoping for a moment’s rest. I realized we were on some hard surface, like a floor or a gym basketball court. Water was running shallowly but swiftly over this surface. I also became aware that there was ceiling above us, half our height. I realized this space could fill with floodwaters or we could be swept back out, over the wall. We’ve got to move, I said to Chuck. I found a gap, an absurdly sharp corner far too narrow to squeeze around. I woke up suddenly.
Thugs and goons obey their masters: Don’t ignore the Man behind the curtain.
I agree with NewMexiKen’s headline for this photo: There Have Always Been Brutal Bastards. However, thugs and goons distract us from those who can afford to ignore all of this and all problems of any kind.
Photo taken at UC Davis.
If you think this is new, you’ve forgotten DUHbya’s Reign of Error, which gave us Free Speech Zones (cages out of sight). You’ve forgotten our own thug, Darren White, saying “let me at them” about citizens speaking out against a war we never should have entered. You’ve forgotten our police gassing those protestors.
Is this acceptable to you?
At Occupy Berkeley, Beat Poets Has New Meaning – NYTimes.com
at that moment the deputies in the cordon surged forward and, using their clubs as battering rams, began to hammer at the bodies of the line of students. It was stunning to see. They swung hard into their chests and bellies. Particularly shocking to me — it must be a generational reaction — was that they assaulted both the young men and the young women with the same indiscriminate force. If the students turned away, they pounded their ribs. If they turned further away to escape, they hit them on their spines. …
On Thursday afternoon when I returned toward sundown to the steps to see how the students had responded, the air was full of balloons, helium balloons to which tents had been attached, and attached to the tents was kite string. And they hovered over the plaza, large and awkward, almost lyrical, occupying the air.
At Occupy Berkeley, Beat Poets Has New Meaning – NYTimes.com
Conservatives’ mindless opposition
Conservatives’ mindless opposition – The Washington Post
By E.J. Dionne Jr., Published: November 13
[T]hat’s the problem for conservatives. Their movement has been overtaken by a quite literally mindless opposition to government. Perry, correctly, thought he had a winning sound bite, had he managed to blurt it out, because if you just say you want to scrap government departments (and three is a nice, round number), many conservatives will cheer without asking questions. … At their best, conservatives forced us to think harder. Now, many in the ranks seem to have decided that hard and nuanced thinking is a telltale sign of liberalism….
To paraphrase Bennett from another context, where’s the outrage about a conservatism that is losing both its intellectual moorings and its moral compass?
I read a book … an ebook
In honor of NaNoWriMo, I decided to read a novel this month. Many years ago, I read quite a few books in a year’s time, although far fewer than the prolific readers I know. For about five years now, reading online, especially short, newsy items, has eroded my interest in sitting and just reading one thing for an hour or more.
Interestingly, Amazon’s Kindle may have changed that, but not in the way you or Amazon might expect. (And, it remains too soon to tell.) I have never been one to buy a new book, except in college. I bought used paperbacks, but most of my reading has consisted of library books. Praise be to the public library! (How have the penny-pinchers not shut them down … yet?) A year or so ago, I bought a Viewsonic gTablet. More recently, I downloaded the free Kindle software to the tablet. Finally, I figured out how to download books from the library for free! It’s not quite as easy as it should be, though quicker than a trip to the library. Checkout is just for 10 days, instead of two or three weeks – why? Unfortunately, there are far fewer electronic books than real at the library, but I found Nevada Barr’s Borderline.
When I was a real reader, I went through a detective / mystery phase, during which I read Nevada Barr. She knows how to write tension-inducing scenes, although she may string too many of those together. In Borderline, heroine Anna Pidgeon suffers a series of exhausting travails, any one of which would wipeout most people. In the end, Barr goes a little overboard, but it was a virtual-page-turner.
For the most part, I like reading on the tablet and would not miss paper. I like being able to highlight, note, bookmark, and look up words instantly. Holding the tablet wasn’t any more awkward than holding a thick book.
I’ve also used the Kindle software to read a chapter or two of half a dozen books that I would have to pay for (and won’t). That was kinda cool.
One gripe about the Kindle software: although I am an Amazon Prime member, I do not get access to the Kindle library exchange. Amazon wants to sell Kindles. Given Amazon’s crappy selection and worse interface for video (it stinks), I gotta wonder what Prime gets me, especially after my one-day package delivery was flubbed.
“This ain’t a day for quitting nothing.” WTF?!
Rick Perry makes light of gaffe, vows not to quit – Election 2012 – The Washington Post [hat tip to dangerousmeta]
Perry also made that point in an interview Thursday morning with the Associated Press. “Oh, shoot, no,” he replied when asked about getting out of the race. “This ain’t a day for quitting nothing.” [mjh: That’s Texlish / Texican, a dialect of ‘Murican.]
Rick Perry makes light of gaffe, vows not to quit – Election 2012 – The Washington Post
Perry’s prominence proves education has failed in Texas. That anyone thinks twice about the fool proves education has failed the nation.
Package tracking? No. Delivery scheduling? Yes! [updated]
I have a suggestion for Amazon, UPS, FedEx, et al.: Let customers schedule a delivery or set a window. I’ve been a hostage at home all day waiting for a package. Why? Because “tracking” only tells me what happened 12 hours ago. I can expect my package “by end of day.” Seriously, that’s the best they can do in the age of computers?
At the very least, give me real tracking, not “out for delivery” (whenever). I’ll get a text message *after* delivery, but I can’t have one saying it will be here in less than an hour or more than 8?
I know many people don’t particularly care when a package comes. Ironically, I often home all day, anyway. But, when it matters, I should be able to say “deliver after 5pm” or “don’t deliver between 10am and 2pm.” That would that be great service.
Updated 8:33pm
Sigh. After 7pm, I emailed FedEx. I was surprised to hear back within minutes. They say package was never turned over to them. No comment on their own site reporting the package was In Transit.
I chatted with Pedro at Amazon Help. He said sorry, he’d refund the $3.99 I paid for one-day shipping.
I’m normally patient. I let Amazon’s promises get to me. Live and learn. Just another corporation.