i am the resurrection
Alright, just flip the lights on...yeeeah, lessee...the warp core reactor's still humming, but though I really should get around to reversing the polarity of the neutron flow...ah, but the Zero Room's just as I remember it...well, aside from the particle wave generator needing a good scrub, the Lab and everything in it's where it should be.
Been away "celebrating" the dubious end of an all-around dubious semester - though I can't quite sort out getting drunk enough to pee all over the kitchen floor early Monday morning as all that, ah, celebratory a gesture - and today I spent on a field trip away from The Lab, working my first day on what's sure to be a superfantastic internship with the superfantastic Denver Urban Gardens, delivering transplant seedling thingys, so a whole buttload of old people in Auroria and Denver will get to eat some good greens tonight thanks to yours truly and the superfantastic "Speedy" Juan, who came from Eurasia South when he was 15 (Two exciting things I learned today: I learned that I don't weigh enough to pull the back door down on those biggish rent-a-trucks and that Juan referees amateur futbol on the occasional weekend, and plans to get licensed to ref pro games in the fall).
And though I feel as if I've been away for ages - but that could just be disorientaiton from the pee fumes - here's a quick musing or three while I make the blogrounds and get to whipping all the Lab's hi-tech splendifery back into tip-top shape:
*I have not been able to take in the whole reaction to The Big Plan To Save Us All From The Brown-ening. It is worth recalling, however, that the current militarization of the border began in full flourish under Clinton I with the beginning of NAFTA, which should've hepped the keener among us to what sort of opportunities were being created for Mexico's poor. With that in mind, anything Junior might do is more than likely going to be cosmetic at best, and just another turd in the toilet at worst: indeed, Kevin Phillips has said in his latest foray into mentioning the previously unmentionable (to wit, you lie down with dogs, you get fleas. And armageddon), Da Base gets all hot and bothered over Men In Uniform, and I can think of no elected official in recent memory who used the military to bracket rhetoric and bolster appearance more often than the current Resident. I honestly believe the 6,000 National Guardspeople (where he's going to get them is anyone's guess. I can only assume he's planning to grow them in water) is less a policy maneuver than a purely political gesture.
* I have been a-thinking about The End of Privacy, for two reasons. First, I interviewed Sherman Austin's mother about three or four times, sometimes over periods running well over an hour, back in 2004 (alas, the story ended up going to my betters elsewhere), and I have to admit a certain tingly excitement at the notion I've got a file. Ooo, fuck yeah, I wanna file!
Secondly, JMM @ TPM has written aboutan election-day phone-jamming plot that very possibly originated out of Karl Rove's office. There seems very little logic overall to not only the defense of the plan, but to the plan generally...so it got me thinking, and it got Robert Parry thinking kind of the same thing (via the mighty mighty Cursor):
An even more troubling trade-off is the possibility that Bush or some future President could exploit the stockpiled data for political ends.
The Founders enacted the Fourth Amendment because they considered freedom from unreasonable search and seizure an “unalienable” right of all citizens. The principle has been largely upheld over more than two centuries of American constitutional history, including moments of danger arguably far more extreme than what is presented today by a small band of al-Qaeda terrorists.
But after the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush quickly assembled a system of secrecy and snooping that may have been unprecedented in U.S. history. While some of Bush’s supporters cite prior suspensions of constitutional rights during the Civil War and World War II, those eras lacked today’s technology to pry into the most personal details of the lives of Americans.
Even in the late 1960s and early 1970s, President Richard Nixon had relatively crude means for invading the privacy of Americans. Bugs were placed on phones; agents were infiltrated into political organizations; and burglars were sent into homes and offices searching for embarrassing or incriminating information.
By contrast, today’s modern technology would let the government collect and analyze trillions of bytes of data from transactions and communications. Indeed, in 2002, the Bush administration did explore the creation of a system for capturing the electronic footprint of just about everybody as they move through everyday life.
As they say on the big blogs, go and read my son/daughter/person of unspecified gender.
* Here's your obligatory climate change link. Obligatory, obligatory, obligatory - what a fun word to type!
* I caught a trailer for 'Breakfast On Pluto' (directed by the always-interesting Neil Jordan) this weekend, which is also a somewhat slightish book I recall enjoying nonetheless a few years back. Anywho, I think I also caught a kid in a Dalek costume. Anyone who can confirm or deny existence of said is invited to fill our Lab techs in down there in the comments, as this may catapault BOP into true cinematic greatness.
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