Living the Liminal

Darknote provides an excellent analysis of some of the problems and failures of the new Doctor Who series. If you are a fan, definitely give it a read.

In the history of the revived Doctor Who series, there have been ten multi-episode stories thus far. If we classify these multi-episode stories into three rough categories of “hits”, “misses”, and “neutrals”, most of them frustratingly fall into the category of misses than anything else. The most recent two-parter helps to further solidify a theory i have as to what makes more of these New Who multi-episode stories disappointing and also touches upon a fundamental problem with the series overall.

[From mutli-episode stories in the New Who » darkblog resonate ]

Of course, only fans get to critique the show like this.

Can someone explain to me why Obama gets dragged over coals because of his association with Reverend Wright and McCain proclaims this jackass a “moral compass” and the mainstream press just skip merrily on past the hypocrisy of someone like McCain pandering to a dangerous, religious ideologue who probably has more in common with Osama bin Laden than with Christ:

Of course if you want to see America become embroiled in a holy war against all of Islam, then by all means, vote McCain. Just don’t be surprised when the economy tanks, all of our constitutional rights are flushed down the toilet, and our use of violence breeds millions of enemies who see the US as a bully and a rogue nation.

This is a great hint that can help make your workflow go a bit more smoothly. I especially like it when I’m uploading items via ftp. After you do the Terminal command, if you hover over a dock icon while dragging a file:

. . . the item will open and be shown. So if you hover over an app, it comes to the front and you can drop things onto its window. If you hover over a folder, you can drop into it. If you hover over a file, it will open the file and bring that window to the front. You could, for instance, drag an HTML page onto a web browser, and then to a previous tab to load that page in that particular tab. Or, you could drag an image file to drop into a rich text document at a particular location all in one fell swoop.

[From macosxhints.com - 10.5: Enable Dock spring opening and Stacks item finder]

The world is a violent and chaotic place. Ok, I can accept that. I can accept that governments are corrupt and capitalists are greedy and that bigotry and hatred are, perhaps, inevitable consequences of being human. Ok. It’s a tough place out there and life isn’t for the faint of heart or the overly sensitive. Got it.

But can we stop being so goddamned mean to each other?

So much of our mediascape, from Top Model and Trading Spouses to Fox News to our political campaigns, seems designed around the principle that there is nothing so entertaining as setting people up to be judged and ridiculed. There is a growing meanness of spirit to our culture that has nothing to do with ideological differences but seems, in my mind, to do with a basic lack of empathy and of manners.

I blame—at least partly—the Trix cereal commercials from when I was a kid. A generation grew up with the idea that it’s perfectly all right, perfectly innocent to be deliberately cruel to another sentient being. Sure, the rabbit was a bit of a cereal junky and probably needed an intervention and I am well aware that the rabbit was a cartoon and, therefore, not real. But the message of the commercials was quite clear: hey kids, it’s ok to be mean and cruel to someone not as fortunate as you, someone who may need some smak cereal real bad.

mean 2 |min| |mi?n|

adjective

1 unwilling to give or share things, esp. money; not generous : she felt mean not giving a tip | they’re not mean with the garlic.

2 unkind, spiteful, or unfair : it was very mean of me | she is always mean to my little brother.

• vicious or aggressive in behavior : the dogs were considered mean.

3 (esp. of a place) poor in quality and appearance; shabby : her home was mean and small.

• (of a person’s mental capacity or understanding) inferior; poor : it was obvious to even the meanest intelligence.

If you think about it, the connection between these different definitions (selfish, spiteful, vicious, and mentally inferior) are not so much different definitions of the word “mean” but are actually four sides of the same coin.(1) To be any one of those is to be the others. Perhaps it’s no surprise then that, as we dumb down our entertainment, it becomes vicious, as we become increasingly aggressive toward the world at large, we learn selfishness and spite. As we become less generous of spirit, we degrade our mental capacity.

Being Mean = Being Stupid

So stop it. Please.

Thanks.

1. Don’t ask, I have no idea.

Ok, I’m all for making up words. Hell, as a Joss Whedon fan, I buy into the validity turning almost any word into an adjective or adverb, and I don’t have too much trouble turning nouns into verbs on a regular basis since most things are process in a philosophical sense, but reading this publisher’s description of Jeffrey Archer’s A Prisoner of Birth, I have to draw the line:

Thus begins Jeffrey Archer’s poignant and unputdownable novel of deception, hatred and revenge, in which only one of them can finally triumph, while the other will spend the rest of his days in jail. But which one? This suspenseful novel takes the listener through so many twists and turns that no one will guess the ending, even the most ardent of Archer’s many, many fans

[From audible.com: | A Prisoner of Birth (Unabridged)]

“Unputdownable?”

That’s not clever or cute, it’s just damn lazy!

Recently, I’d done a major change to the look of LtL:

And I liked it, I really did. I was proud of the background and how it integrated with the header image, and I liked the header image too - the colors really pop and provide a cold luminescence that is both bright but also gives the sense of something gritty. But after only a few days I’ve returned to a very simple and clean look because, in the end, the experience I want to offer on this site is primarily one of reading. I mean, sure, I’ve got my music and sound design pages, and I post YouTube videos on a regular basis to share neat stuff with friends, family and the few strangers who stop by, but the main purpose is to communicate thoughts, ideas, essays, stories, half-baked arguments, crazy theories, daily minutia, etc. I found the new design to be overly aggressive, distracting from the main point.

I’m glad took the time to play around with the CSS to the level that I did, and I may very well clean the theme up and post it on the WordPress themes site for others to use. I’ll probably use the background over at my Sound Design site LtL Sound. For now, at least for Living the Liminal, I’m sticking with an aesthetic that highlights the text and the entries and offers little to no distraction. I’m even going to leave the header sans image for now, until I find something I feel fits the aesthetic that I’m going for.

I want to give Ash Hague a big thanks for his simple and clean designs. I’m actually using them on both LtL and Letters to Lost Friends. I find that I tend to tweak the fonts and font sizes a bit, but other that that, his themes are simple, clean and elegant (and though rounded corners would be cool, my recent experiments with themes over at Letters showed me how tricky those can be).

She has a new cd out and you can listen to the full album at her site: JenniferMinuto.com

You can then buy it in MP3 format from Digstation.com encoded at 192 kbps VBR and that includes album art and liner notes.

So you think that McCain is against the use of torture? After all, he was tortured so he must be against it. He says he’s against it, so he must be against it (because politicians never ever lie).

Well, not quite:

In September, 2006, McCain made a melodramatic display — with great media fanfare — of insisting that the MCA require compliance with the Geneva Conventions for all detainees. But while the MCA purports to require that, it also vested sole and unchallenged discretion in the President to determine what does and does not constitute a violation of the Conventions. After parading around as the righteous opponent of torture, McCain nonetheless endorsed and voted for the MCA, almost single-handedly ensuring its passage. That law pretends to compel compliance with the Conventions, while simultaneously vesting the President with the power to violate them — precisely the power that the President is invoking here to proclaim that we have the right to use these methods.

[From John McCain and Bush's torture powers - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com]

Furthermore,

In 2005, McCain led the effort in the Senate to pass the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA), which made the use of torture illegal. While claiming that he had succeeded in passing a categorical ban on torture, however, McCain meekly accepted two White House maneuvers that diluted his legislation to the point of meaningless: (1) the torture ban expressly applied only to the U.S. military, but not to the intelligence community, which was exempt, thus ensuring that the C.I.A.—the principal torture agent for the United States—could continue to torture legally; and (2) after signing the DTA into law, which passed the Senate by a vote of 90–9, President Bush issued one of his first controversial “signing statements” in which he, in essence, declared that, as President, he had the power to disregard even the limited prohibitions on torture imposed by McCain’s law.

McCain never once objected to Bush’s open, explicit defiance of his cherished anti-torture legislation, preferring to bask in the media’s glory while choosing to ignore the fact that his legislative accomplishment would amount to nothing. Put another way, McCain opted for the political rewards of grandstanding on the issue while knowing that he had accomplished little, if anything, in the way of actually promoting his “principles.”

[From John McCain and Bush's torture powers - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com]

So yeah, McCain can talk all he wants to about how awful torture is as long as he doesn’t stand up against the White House and its culture of violence, lawlessness and torture. Not exactly the type of courage and strength I want in my President. What about you?

How do you think Mr. Limbaugh would respond if a bunch of Democrats started riots at the Republican National Convention in order to sow fear and chaos in the minds of the American public? Don’t you think he would find that kind of behavior to be un-American at best? In fact, I would bet money that if Democrats used violence in pursuit of political power, Mr. Limbaugh would be quite shrill in his condemnation of such tactics. And yet . . .

Talk show host Rush Limbaugh is sparking controversy again after he made comments that appear to call for riots in Denver during the Democratic National Convention this summer.

He said the riots would ensure a Democrat is not elected as president, and his listeners have a responsibility to make sure it happens.

“Riots in Denver, the Democrat Convention would see to it that we don’t elect Democrats,” Limbaugh said during Wednesday’s radio broadcast. He then went on to say that’s the best thing that could happen to the country.

[From Rush Limbaugh 'Dreaming' Of Riots In Denver - Denver News Story - KMGH Denver]

When you start urging violence as a political tool, as a tactic to disrupt a political party you don’t agree with, you are heading down a path that leads straight to the heart of fascism. As “has_te” points out over at Pandagon’s discussion of Limbaugh’s statements, political violence was the modus operandi of Hitler’s Brownshirts. For those who don’t remember:

They were the thugs Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) used in their drive to power: beating up opponents; destroying polling booths; driving off opposition party voters at the polls; stealing ballot boxes; attacking and trashing opposition party headquarters; and generally brutalizing anybody who dared to oppose their beloved fuehrer.

[From Brownshirts on the March]

There should be a public and non-partisan outcry over Limbaugh’s statements. As a mouthpiece for Conservatives and the Political Right, Limbaugh wields considerable influence - and increasingly that influence is being crafted in the language of violence and fascism.

I was really disgusted to hear his call for the riots, and I couldn’t just do nothing, so I decided to create a petition that I am going to deliver to the Republican National Committee’s Chair, Mike Duncan. The petition urges the RNC to publicly denounce the tactics urged by Limbaugh in order to ensure the public that the Republican Party still has some semblance of respect for the democratic process.

Below is the link to the petition. I hope you will take a few moments to read the letter and sign the petition and maybe even a few more extra minutes telling some friends about it. I really do see this as a non-partisan issue, even though I see myself as a progressive, and I hope that people of all political persuasions will join with me in urging the RNC to distance itself from the brutish, bullying and un-American voice of Rush Limbaugh.

If you don’t have Java enabled on your browser, you can go to http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/republicans-to-denounce-limbaugh to see the petition and the letter.

Listening to Radio Paradise after uploading the new episode of Letters to Lost Friends, and David Bowie’s “Life on Mars” is playing. Damn but this is a good song: