Catching Terrorists

Of course, we don't have to delay the election if we can just catch the evil doers ahead of time. I mean, then terrorists can't, um, interfere with our democratic processes and Bush gets major props from fearful voters. Wouldn't it be great if Pakistan caught some important bad guys soon, like during the democratic convention? A July Surprise! Or right before the election? Why, we might reward them with a bunch of stuff, like say, maybe there could be scenario like: "Powell designated Pakistan a major non-nato ally, a status that allows its military to purchase a wider array of U.S. weaponry. Powell pointedly refused to criticize Musharraf for pardoning nuclear physicist A.Q. Khan--who, the previous month, had admitted exporting nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea, and Libya--declaring Khan's transgressions an "internal" Pakistani issue. In addition, the administration is pushing a five-year, $3 billion aid package for Pakistan through Congress over Democratic concerns about the country's proliferation of nuclear technology and lack of democratic reform." Actually, this already happened. Pakistan wants stuff, so they can be more of a threat to India. We want them to catch some bad guys. We've got some good dates in mind.

Delay the Election???

In case you missed it, the Depart of Homeland Security is deciding whether or not to delay the presidential election. (see CNN Article) The election day, a highly inconvient Tuesday, instead of across a few days including, say, a weekend day, is set in the constitution. You vote that day or you vote absentee before that day. This was what our "founding fathers" decided. To change the voting day ought to require a constitutional amendment. But the supreme court has been voting straight party line sometimes, regarding elections, and had no problem simply appointing our president before, so hey, why not let him delay the election?

Um, cuz it would scare ths shit out of people and effect the outcome of the election. And also, an election is like the day your final paper is due. It's a snapshot of that moment. On that particular Tuesday, everybody who wants to and is elligible can stand up and be counted. Your state goes with whatever the most people in your state say. Woot. Democracy in action. Apparently Bush feels he's going to be unprepared for that day. He wants to take an incomplete this term. Have some more time to do his research and work on his final project. Our constitution set an election day to prevent this. A sitting president isn't allowed to delay an election until he feels ready for it. This would be unthinkable. Election are what seperates us from a feudal monarchy. And with our current state of things, elections are the only thing seperating us from a feudal monarchy.

The Administration has been planning on delaying the election for months. As soon as that bombing in Spain happened right before their election (thus letting the Socialists win), Republicans have been claiming that Al-Quaeda will want to interfere in our elections. On May 2, 2004, the article on the cover of the New York Times Datebook contained an aside by Condeleeza Rice that terrorists would certainly try to interefere in our elections. Is there actual data on this? Is it speculation? Is it wishful thinking? With our current state of "intelligence," is there really any difference between data points, speculation and wishful thinking? I'm still waiting for them to find the WMD in Iraq.

It seems obvious that any attempt to move elections is an assault on democracy itself. Bush says things would be easier for him if this were a dictatorship. He had no problem getting into office through massive election fraud. But even then, he barely made it. why have the election at all? Or why not use federal resources to scare the shit out of people and delay thigns until he knows he can win?

Right now, they're just preparing us for it. Talking about the eventual "possibility" to see how people are going to react. will we sit quietly at home watching thigns unfold on TV like we did while he stole the election? If so, then why not go for it?

you know all that patriotic stuff? We're the World's Oldest Democracy. We invented a new system of government. Liberty and Justice for All. All that nice sort of fuzzy stuff about our government and the ideals of democracy that we're supossed to represent. Those ideas are ideals. We've never reached those ideals. But they're ideals worth having. Throwing them away is throwing away America. We cannot allow this to happen. Jefferson envisioned that freedom would periodically be threatened by corrupt men. He imagined that we would need to periodically have new revolutions, to protect our democratic ideals. In the Declaration of Independence, he wrote, ". . . in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them . . .." If Bush tries to delay the election, if he decides that constitutionality no longer applies to him, that he is entitled to lead us not because of our laws, but because of his own will and political might, he will have broken the contract we have with our government. It will "[become] necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them." We will have revolution.

We must, as citizens of this nation, pledge that we will do whatever it takes to save our country. We must all stand together and say that we will not allow this to happen. We will not go to work. We will not go to school. We will be in the streets. We will not disperse. We will not follow the orders of a police that is defending a state no longer based on laws, but based on the whim of powerful men. We will not back down. If Bush's people are seeing how we'll react if he tries to destroy our democracy, we need to let them know that we will not take it lying down. We will not sit at home and watch it on TV. We will shut down the machinery that makes the economy and the country run. We will sit down strike in our office dorrways, in our factories, in our streets.

It is therefore necessary to put this position forward, so that those who would destroy our country know that we are willing to defend it. It must be blogged. It must be written to the editor. We need chatter saying that this would be a very bad idea for them.

would it be bad for us, though? I have no question that we would win. Citizens would again have power. Our "leaders" would be reminded that they rule at our consent. Huge strikes in the 30's yielded results that were very very good for the people. We have nothing to lose but our chains.

whining

Yesterday was the first day since getting the cold from hell that I've been able to stay awake all day without a nap. I feel sleepy right nw, but I'm fighting it. So there ya go. Go topless at Dyke March, get sick for a week and a half! bah. damn it all.

I keep having dreams about death and about my parents and especially about my mom. Ok, I'm ready to stop having those dreams now.

Yes, I feel all stressy right now, for no particular reason. Let me say to you, "grrr!" and also "grrrrr!"

Finally, I don't pretend to know the ultimate meanings of things in the universe, but I suspect that the relationships that we have with each other are ultimately more important for ourselves than any other factor. There are many things that are very important on a macro level, but on a micro, personal level, it's about getting along well with others. Which is why having flame wars with your friends is a stupid, bad idea. Yeah, there are somethings that you can't "agree to disagree" on: I think it is my duty to save you from eternal damnation by getting you to drop your silly life style choice. You have declared your love of Beanie Babies to be an intergral part of your identity. As long as nobody but the Beanie Babies are being harmed, we ought to part company. However, most things aren't worth ending friendships over.

Some people in the world are good writers. You can read some folks and laugh till you cry. You can read other folks and cry till you ... um.. laugh. Most of us are more verbal than literary. That means that when we communicate, we tend to rely on cues that do not come across on the printed page. It is possible for a good writer to convey tone. But most folks, alas, are not good writers. (Before you get offended, let me note, that you are good writer. I'm talking about other people. (also, some people are bad readers.)) What is my point here? People end up typing arguments that they would never have in a face to face conversation. And sometimes people end friendships over that.

I mean, hell, friendships and relationships in general don't last forever. But if you're going to end them, end them over something worthwhile. That's all I'm saying. Don't end a friendship because you can't convey tone well in your writing. That would be stupid.

Also: grrrrrrrrrr!

Esperanto

Esperanto is a human language invented by Dr Zamenhof in 1887, designed to be the International Language. Zamenhof envisioned a world where everyone spoke, proudly, their national language and were bilingual and could speak the International Language to communicate with others. Thus Esperanto is easy to learn, with only a few grammer rules.

While not as widely spoken as Zamenhof hoped, Esperanto is spoken by people in more than 200 countries and is especially popular in Eastern Europe. It is useful for people who want pen-pals or for travellers. Esperantists can get lists of addresses and contact information of other Esperantists through the Esperanto Passport Service. More than 1200 people in 79 countries have signed up to host travelling Esperantists. Travellers get a local contact and free or very cheap lodging.

Because Esperanto is so easy to learn, some folks feel like it can be catalyist for social change, allowing workers around the world to communicate. The SAT is a progressive rognization, which uses Esperanto as an organizing tool.

The easiness to learn also makes it useful for students who must pass launguage exams. A student can become fluent in Esperanto in a year or less. Free courses exist on-line at Lernu.net, or you can sign up for a free correspondence course, or, if you call 1-800-ESPERANTO, Joel will be happy to help you find a class in your area. If you can round up some friends and a location, the Esperanto League for North America will find you a teacher who will come to you and teach you for free.

There is a weekly Esperanto conversation group that meets Thursdays 6:30 - 7:30 at Original Pollo's at 100 Shattuck in Berkeley and this coming weekend is ELNA's summer open house and Icnic, Sunday July 11th, 10:00am- noon at ELNA's offices, which are located at 5712 Hollis St., Emeryville. Then, at noon until 4:00 pm is a Picnic at the Emeryville Marina.

Hustler

Meanwhile, as we debate women-only space, President Holmgren of Mills College has issues a response to Hustler's recent article about Mills. Yes, in the normal, non-exclusive parts of society, anybody who wants to can read Hustler without violating anybody else's them-only space. Yes, absolutely anyone who wants to look at degrading images of women as sexual objects is free to walk to their corner smut shop and proudly tell the cashier, "I would like to purchase one copy of Hustler, please!"

Well, I mean, within the bounds of heteronormativity, at least. I mean, a woman buying Hustler needs to make sure she's someplace where the cashier is open to the idea of women buying degrading images of women as sexual objects, otherwise she might get denied in her request or harassed or who knows what. I mean, hey, sometimes women get called "dykes" and beaten up for such things in some parts of the country. Sad but true. And you know, some women don't really like the idea of looking at degrading images of women as sexual objects, cuz they're not into sexualizing women at all or cuz they object to the degrading part or something. And you know, some men don't like degrading images of women as sexual objects either cuz they're gay! Or they're feminists who might as well be pansies! Yeah, really, Hustler is best viewed by manly men who enjoy the idea of degrading women and viewing them as sexual object. It's really the target audience. Anyone else either shouldn't buy it, or else they're taking a risk of being harmed or at least wouldn't enjoy it.

I'm sure glad society is a whole is so open and freedom loving. I mean, I would hate to see the world divided into little exclusive enclaves where certain identity groups try to carve out niches of power for themselves by excluding others. That would suck.

bah

why am i posting to defend the idea of women-only space? what decade is this? didn't everybody have all these arguments during the 1990 Mills Strike against going co-ed? why do these arguments happen over and over again? bah bah bah. i'm tried and i'm going to take a nap.

No, not all men are assholes

I posted a comment to Nicole's blog and I want to repete it here. It was in reply to Matt's comment, which I will quote from: "there are MANY ASSHOLES IN THE WORLD. some of them are men, some of them are tall people, some of them have brown eyes, some of them are baptist. it's so much simpler to just slap a label on someone and deal with them that way. . . . i'm just fucking fed up with misdirected hostility." I feel like it's appropriate to respond to this here, cuz some guys were unhappy about my facetious suggestion of creating a testosterone-targetting virus.

it's true.

unfortunately, sometimes assholes organize. like white folks organized for a long time to keep black folks down with jim crow and whatnot. the people behind that were assholes, but they were assholes with power who organized according to their power structures.

and now we've got some problems with some male assholes and there's a social power dynamic where men tend to have a certian sexual power over women, which is a bad thing. but some assholes like that and want to exploit it. and since the identity and power dynamic all centers around gender issues, the problem in this case is actually asshole men. and, unfortunately, many men, who are assholes like rush limbaugh and micheal savage and many conservative guys have adopted an ideology where they deserve power imblanaces and want to work to maintain it. that does create a "war between the sexes" sort of situation. this causes two seemingly paradoxical things: it creates value for women-only spaces and it creates a need for male allies. i mean, there's no need for tall-only spaces cuz so far tall people have not organized to opress short people, at least in this country that i know of. however, men do organize to opress women. those men are assholes. and they must be stopped. since the dynamics are centered around gender and identity, then using gender labels is essential for the folks resisting the assholes.

so yeah, not all white folks are racist. not all men are sexist. but some are and there's an imbalance of power. so the power to opress has to be taken away from men and white folks. unfortunately, because this power is social in nature, even men and white people who oppose this power imbalance end up benefitting from it. which is why having actions or events specific to the disempowered group at hand can be very empowering and useful for that group. this can cause some men to feel threatened, prolly because they sense somehow that it's taking power away from them. so they write articles to hustler. or leer with cameras. or whatever.

unfortunately, in the case of dyke march, the no-men rule is only repected by allies and ignored by assholes. so really it's a no-supportive-men rule. rather than give up on creating the march as a woman-only space where supportive men can cheer on from the sidelines, there's got to be a way to convince asshole men not to march. i dunno how to do that.

but you know, men opressing women isn't some isolated incident. it's not one guy. it's not disorganized assholes. it's men with a particular ideology working to push it on the world couples with indoctorinated males working to maintain power they feel entitled to since birth. that's a problem.

I want to say further that alliances are useful and attacking allies or would-be allies is not useful. i want everybody to work together and get along. but sometimes that doesn't work. or other social forces take over. cuz the people trying to change the culture are still functioning within the culture. so you end up with a group trying to advance black women being lead by white males. that can happen way too easily. also, all these -isms are tools of the elite ruling class. They create systems where one group of people has a bit of power over another group of people. So I can tell some white guy that all the presidents have been white men. But that guy isn't in Skull and Bones and is never going to president either. The British land-owners can let the Protestants opress the Catholics while they buisly export all the food during a crop failure. And so the Catholics end up fighting the Scotch-Irish, another colonized group the Brits imported to help keep the Irish under control. Really, both groups should turn on the British landowners, but they're too busy killing each other. And southern american slave-owners can appoint white overseers who have a smidgen of power the slaves to help disguise the fact that slaves and poor whites had a hell of a lot more in common with each other than poor whites had with the ruling class. That same dynamic happens now. And the Bushes and Saudis and the Bechtels laugh all the way to their Cayman Island accounts. So, yes, we need our heterosexual, white, male allies for when we rise up and destroy the ruling class. But you know, maybe we should work out some of these issues first so the the het white boys don't end up just taking over...

Cold

Apparently, walking around in the San Francisco cold without a shirt on, drinking vodka to stay warm, is a good way to catch a cold. *sniffle* At least it was fun.

Music schools

So I went across the country to go to music school. Why? Cuz I had already attended the best music school on the west coast. And also, alas, there are some cultural problems in the grad school. Specifically with the attitudes of male grad students. Undergrads hate grad boys. I hated grad boys. this illustrates why I hated grad boys and part of the reason I didn't want to go to Mills to study composition for my masters. Mills need to radically adjust the cultural attitudes of the music department, or they will continue to have difficulty attracting women to their program. at a women's college. It's disgraceful.

Of course, there's a perception in society at large that lesbians and women in general exist for the benefit of men. Dyke March provides some examples of that dynamic in action. The problem here is a sence of entitlement plus a massively sexist culture. San Francisco and Mills College are supposed to be and ought to be enlightened areas. But they're not. why is it that I couldn't imagine the above-linked Hustler Article coming from a wesleyan music grad boy (and wesleyan could provide the same material...as could probably any undergrad institution aside from Bob Jones), but when I saw it on T's blog, I thought "must be a music student."? I don't think Mills used to be like that. In the glory days, in the 70's, I dunno, I can't imagine.

How Do We Fix This?

um, some mad scientist could come up with a disease that kills anybody whose testosterone levels are over some certain amount. Guys would have to stay calm and inoffensive or die of dred disease. What? Practical ideas? If you've got one, leave a comment. Obviously, we need to push a cultural shift.

Politics

Nader

I was standing in line to see Farenheit 9/11 and somebody was selling T-shirts which said, a "A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush." Not true. For pete's sake, if you're upset at Bush, take it out on Bush, don't turn on fellow leftists. But on the other hand . . .

What is Nader thinking? He's not Green. He's not building a third party movement. He's not even spending any money. He's not trying to win. He's not going to win. He's not representing a party or a principle or anything. He's hurting the Greens, even. I voted for him once and I would have voted for him again if he were a Green and if he were serious. But he is neither of tose things. Is he on drugs? Does he just want to see his name in the paper? Is something wrong with him? Do we need to have an intervention?

Farenheit 9/11

the experience of seeing it in a leftist town

Saw it at the Grand Lake on the opening night. They are not enforcing the R rating, which is very nice. There was a carnival-like atmosphere waiting in line. Folks were registering people to vote. I signed up for an absentee ballot, finally. Other folks were holding anti-Bush signs. The theatre has politics on 1/3 of it's marquee since the coup, so it seemed the best place to see it. Many other people apparently agreed, as the movie sold out every single showing on the first night and the line to get in streched around the entire block. I showed up an hour early and was not too close to the front.

An Oaklander is in the movie. He said something about Bush being an asshole at his gym and the FBI showed up to question him. Moore interviewed him at Lake Merrit. You can see the theatre in the background of some of the shots. woot.

Content

The movie is very nearly news, but has some editorial content. But much less than any of Moore's other movies. The points he makes are well documented. He shies away from controversial assertions. The non-controversial points speak for themselves. You don't need to say "Bush knew" to say "Bush exploited this." It's very well done. He addressed many important points. The movie does not have misleading edits. The only thing I would have changed is identifying administration officals all the time, cuz, yeah, I don't watch TV news, I have now idea what Wolfowitz looks like. The movie is solid. Much more solid than his previous movies, really. I reccomend it.

Al Gore

I finally read the text of Al Gores democracy speech. (You can read it at Salon after watching a short ad. bleah) And the question: Where the hell were you during the last presidential election, you creep?! Yeah, all the points you make now are right on. But how could you just stand by and watch Bush steal the election? Why did you tell Jesse Jackson not to lead people down to Florida not to protest? Why couldn't any of your colleagues in the senate co-sponsor a bill to challenge the election results? Why did you just stand there and watch African Americans get disenfrachised? Or was that it? Was it worth giving up the election for racism? Or, did somebody promise you something? Did you self-destruct for the hell of it? did your whole party just curl up and die? Or was there wheeling and dealing? Why did you do it?

The Supreme Court

Apparently it's ok just to hold citizens with no charges. I think the court may be unaware of some amendments to the document that they're supossed to interpret. Seriously, what the hell? This court is one of the worst that we've ever had. This is the worst president that we've ever had. Things are bad enough the very sensible and moderate Jon Caroll is starting to question whether the next election will be our last.

I'm going to say we're in a constitutional crisis. It is widely ignored. This, maybe is not a new thing. It started with Reagan. But it's gone farther now. Al Gore's analysis is quite good. I would add, tho, that the supreme court is highly partisan now and doesn't seem to care about the constitution at all. I can't see a way out of this except for civil war, really. I mean, if the election isn't stolen, Kerry might fix things, but I have low hopes. And a civil war, well, the biggest gun folks can get is 50 caliber. That could take down a helicopter. But the military will side with Bush. And I don't see him hesitating to bomb blue states. He didn't seem overly concerned about inciting North Korea to nuke the west coast. So, really, um, we're doomed.

gmail invites

i got 'em. first folks to respond get them.

Google press release explaining what it is
People who love it
People who hate it
gmail.com

crisis of faith

Today Ellen asked rhetorically, "where do we go when we die?" damned if i know. I think i'm having a crisis of faith, which is interesting as i didn't think i beleived in anything. my cousin talked to dead people. she was heavily invested in the catholic cosmology, what with being a nun and all.

she was very left. very against opressive authority. the american embassy told her it was dangerous to join the catholic underground in prague, but she did it anyway. at the same time, she had taken vows as a nun. she subject herself to patriarchy. she resisted patriarchy. the underground in prague had a severe preist shortage and ordained at least one woman, who catherine knew. this woman priest was asked by the vatican not to say mass anymore after the wall fell. she obeyed but has written her biography. i don't know anything else.

Catherine was arrested protesting US-backed attrocities. She worked the WHO and the National Science Foundation. She was outside the system. She was inside the system.

She was intensely spiritual. She talked about God over martinis. She got involved with Zen meditation and came to see non-silent prayer as a distraction. She was able to quiet her mind. She told somebody a few weeks ago that she was happier than she had ever been. I have no doubt that reached nirvana. I think she got to be too happy to be alive anymore. She became pure energy or something. At her funeral, I learned that the other nuns were as mystified by her and in awe of her as I was. After the graveside service, John O'Grady turned to the woman standing next to him and said, "I just have to spend the rest of my life trying to follow her example." Sister Mary Eleizabeth agreed with him.

So how do I follow her example? I'm kind of radical right now. I avoid institutions that I see as corrupt as much as possible. So I avoid the catholic church because it's terribly conservative. And I avoid the HRC because they're too conservative. And I don't like giving money to charities that seek to help the deserving poor, like habitat for humanity, because the "undeserving" poor need housing just as much and elevating a few individuals to the position of being owning class does not solve the problem of homelessness and poverty, it just helps a few individuals and makes a bunch of donors feel good about themselves.

so what am I doing exactly? Obviously, there's a place inside the system to create change. Corporate Personhood, an issue I currently care about will not be overturned by street activists. It will be overturned by the courts after a lot of arguing by folks who have gone to law school, resisted indoctornation and passed the bar. I mean, with the help of street activists.

I've believed for a long time that radicals are important because they pull the debate towards themselves. They move the middle. The fringes don't convince the mainstream, they convince people near the fringe. Radical leftists create a left-pulling ripple effect. Without radicals, radical thoughts would never become a reality. If you want sopmething to happen, you can't sit around saying ti's impossible, you have to do something. So what am I doing?

On the other hand, working inside systems . . . . Man, I dunno. I'm on the board of an arts nonprofit. I beleive strongly in their goals of advancing new music. The government ought to support the arts. Patronage is a traditional role of government. Adam Smitch said that the arts shouldn't be traded like functional capitalist commodities because they were special and valuable and above the fray of supply and demand. But, oh well. And how does this help anything? I mean, radical ideas can come from radical artists. But isn't it elitist to set up a special class of people to do art while others toil for wage slavery? I mean, are artists some sort of vangaurd of the proletariat? Are John Cage's ideas about anarchy important because he wrote 4'33"?

I dunno. I dunno. where do we go when we die?

bleah

Cousin just died. Mom's birthday. Bought a bike to make myself feel better. I mean, I think it's a handy and useful bike, but anyway. Went to concert in a columbarium / mausoleum. Saw my bass teacher play. he is so great. walked around a bit. ran away and got food with Cola and Mitch. Came back to see Ellen play. She played very well. Felt overwhelmed by death. Went to Cato's. Got drunk. Mitch took me to retrieve new bike from home. Went to Cola's house. Imbibed further. Ameliorated the crushing pain of existence.

Woke up this morning and Cola's apartment is very messy. It's small and gets messy easily and cleans up fast. But it's drunk messy the next morning. Felt like ugh. Stumbled around the apartment finding my clothes, feeling queasy. Biked back to truck. Drove home. Felt like barfing. Emailed bass teacher to say I was sick and would miss this mornings lesson.

I think that I'm not on the right track right now. no. now i will sleep.

today

today is the Garden of Memory Concert at the Oakland Columbarium, the Chapel of the Chimes. (vocabulary: columbarium noun - a building where the cremated remains of of deadfolks are kept above ground on shelves or whatnot. see mausoleum) Today is also my mother's birthday.

Ellen is playing at the Chapel of the Chimes concert. Christi played last year. So this will be the second year in a row I have spent my mother's birthday by graves that are not hers. I have never visited her grave.

Nevertheless, it was a very musically interesting event last year and will prolly be this year too. How it works is that performers pick out rooms in the columbarium and then set up and play in that room. There are many performers and many rooms. The audience walks through the space and listens to the concerts and installations that are set up. This happens every year on the summer solstice. So you get four hours of music by a bunch of different folks for $10 ($5 if yer a student).

So, while I have mixed feelings about this event for personal reasons, it will probably be very interesting and good. And you should go. In the 30 groups performing, you can certainly find somebody you like.

biocoastal

me: . . . and on the East Coast, people think I'm mellow . . .
my friends: hahahahahaha! Liar!
me: no really
my friends: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Life is filled with suffering and woe

and not everything is going to go my way. Many things will not go my way. But I still think I'm really lucky as far as things go. I mean, things could be much worse. Reagan could have actually started a nuclear war and I could be living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. That would be lots worse. Immeasurably worse.

Still, things have not been going as well as they could be. And I don't want to complain too much. The order of the universe is controlled by entropy, you know. It causes life, but it also causes death. It brings people together, but it tears them back apart. It's just the way things are. There's no point in complaining about it. So a bunch of things aren't going my way. C'est la vie. A bunch of other things are going my way or have gone my way in the past. You know, it's groovy that all the people who are leaving my life were ever in it. So really, I feel woe cuz I've been lucky.

Just the same, I feel like I've been smacked around kind of a lot in recent months. I don't want to have any kind of sense of entitlement, but I would like to encourage some amelioration of some kind. And since you're reading . . .

I really want to be able to compile supercollider routines as jMAX externals. Either that, or be able to drop jMax windows into supercollider. Because MAX (and jMAX) are really good at MIDI. And they're great at quick and dirty, especially quick and dirty GUIs. Whereas, SuperCollider is really good at synthesis, scalability and data-handling. If you want somrthing to have lists or to have states and to synthesize sounds, SuperCollider is for you. If you want something that reads MIDI, that has an easy, decent GUI and can draw your waveform right on the screen and read your MIDI sliders as you wiggle the loop points until they look and sound right, why, jMax is your thing. If you want both, well, you either need to figure out SuperCollider's somewhat obscure, but Java-like GUI libraries and weird MIDI classes or you need to deal with byzantine graphical connections and oddball order-of-operations schemes in MAX. There are some Java-based music programming libraries which are nice and are probably the best of both worlds, but they cost money and I'm cheap. Futhermore, I already know MAX and SuperCollider and don't want to learn another audio language. I just want Max and SuperCollider to be seamlessly integrated in some way. And for people to stop dying. Is that so much to ask?

Funeral

So on Friday, my cousin's body is going to arrive at the Carondelet Center in LA at 1:00-something. Then there's a "vigil" with prolly rosaries and eulogizing at 4:00. The choir practices after that. Then I get to practice my part. Then food. Then the funeral mass is at 7:00 pm or so. Then, she's being buried the next morning around 10:00.

Apparently, Catherine's will says that she wants me to do the first reading which is Ephesians 3:16 -21. I dunno why she picked that, but first readings are, I think, always stuff from Saint Paul. So the first reading can't be by the Dali Lama or something, which maybe she would have prefered.

I used to read in church quite often when I was still a Catholic. I also played trumpet in mass every Saturday evening for years. The trick to reading in church is go really really slow, cuz they're echo-y as hell. Go so slow you sound like a parody to yerself and then slow down 5% more. Even if yer clear to the people in the front, the people in the back can't hear you unless you slow down. And enunciate. Oh, and don't cry. Yeah, reading at funerals sucks. Don't sniffle. Keep it together.

Sister Mary Elizabeth wanted me to know that Catherine (She calls her Mary tho, Everybody calls her Mary. Walk into a convent cafeteria and yell "hey sister mary!" and they'll all turn to look at you. They all had different names before they joined up, but now they're all Mary except to their families... Sistery Mary Elizabeth. Sister Mary Magdelena. Sister Mary Leahy. anyway.) always spoke highly of me. ok.

She was so frail for so long. I remember being a child and my mom warning me to not get to close to Catherine if I had a cold, cuz she was old and frail and might get it and then get pnemonia and die and it would all be my fault. (guilt much? geez.) But Catherine went and outlived everyone of her generation and my mom too.

So back in my youth, the comic strip For Better or For Worse had a sequence where Micheal's friend Lawrence came out. Micheal is the same age as me. and he has a kid! geez. Anyway, When Lawrence came out, I clipped all of the strips related to that and put them on my wall. Catherine was visiting and was in my room and looked at the comic strips and then looked at me with an expression that just said, "oh." And then started sending me stuff. She sent me a newsletter for gay monks. She sent me two books written about why gay catholics should come out and why they should stay in the church. She clipped articles from religious publications. Obviously, she wa sinvested in Catholicism and wanted me to stay in the church. She had disagreed with poltical stances of the church before. I remember once I saw her she was all annoyed because a letter had been published in the LA Times or the New York Times saying the church should be pro-choice and hundreds of nuns had signed it. But nobody had thought to send it to her! There it was in the paper, missing her signature!

MY mom, however, was not pro-choice and was not ok with me baing gay and wanted to tell me that frequently and was on my case about it and thought i was going to hell and wanted to prevent that. But then Catherine and Brother Bob both started talking to her and sending her books and articles and reassuring her and eventually their campaign (plus how much my mom liked Christi) paid off. Catherine was massively helpful to my mom and thus to me.

bah. must talk to dad about plane tickets and hotel and car rental.

The Leahys

When I was a kid, my grandma (on my mom's side) had three first cousins, Tom & Catherine and Cyrill. They were all siblings and grew up in San Francisco, which made them cool. They were from the Sunset District, iirc, and Catherine used to steal her mom's ironing board and take it surfing. They were irish. thier mother was the church organist. I don't know much about their dad. Catherine told me that he used to sing while washing the dishes when her mother had organ rehersal once a week. For Catherine's birthday and/or Christmas, her parents would pay for her to attend classes at a school for young women on various academic subjects. She and Tom loved learning. Cyrill was more adventerous.

Tom went off the seminary and then Catherine went off to the convent and finally Cyrill also went off to the seminary. I don't know where Tom and Cyrill went, but Catherine went to St. Mary's in Los Angeles. She spent ten years teaching grade school, which must have drove her nuts. She joined the order of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet. Tom became a Jesuit.

Cyrill

Cyrill eventually left the seminary without becoming a priest and moved back to San Francisco, where he was a patron of the arts and rode his motorcycle and drank like the irishman he was. He died when I was pretty young, so I don't that much about him. He and his roomate were great friends and went everywhere together and rode their motorcycles together. One time Herb Cain saw them on their bikes in tuxes on the way to the symphony and mentioned it in his column. In the 60's, my mom, my grandma and Tom & Catherine and Cyrill went to Europe a couple of times. There's pictures of them all standing in front of the Eiffel tower. Eventually, late in life, Cyrill met Bobby and married her.

Tom

Tom went to the ivy league where he got advanced degrees in semetic languages. He could speak a bunch of languages, including French, which was useful on their european trips. He may have been stationed in europe at the time, which could have promted these trips. One time, he tried to order dessert and a fish came instead. when the group went to the vatican, he went off to talk to a priest there for a while (in italian or latin) and returned to say that they had an audience with the Pope. My mom was very excited, but it turned out to be one of those thigns where throngs of people stand out in the square and the pope comes out on his balcony and gives a short speech and a blessing.

Tom was one of the translators of the Dead Sea Scrolls and was at the Berkeley Theological Institute for many years. He was published in the Jerome Bible companion. Apparently, he was quite the procrastinator, or perhaps he was just very thorough in his un-speedy research. He had an acient Hebrew typewriter. His work put him in many inter-faith efforts. As a Berkeley-ite, he volunteered feeding hungry people in People's Park. One time, he was serving rolls and a guy asked him if they had unbleached flour. His friends joked that in Berkeley beggars could be choosers.

He was an avid bicyclist. Folks were surprised when he had to get a quadruple bypass surgery, since he exercized so much. He came out ok, though. I remember going to the huge dinner in celebration of 40 years as a priest. It was at an East Bay Restuarant called His Lordships. Tom and Catherine were very close and were often mentioned together. they gave the best Christmas presents. Always something fascinating and educational. They were both highly esteemed in the family for being so brilliant.

Catherine

Catherine was a biologist who specialized in parasites. She invented something called the Leahy Petri Plate Method and discovered the existance of parasites in ticks. She's done work on six continents in more than 40 countries. In the 60's, she was sent to Prague. She couldn't wear the habit (somethign she wasn't so keen on anyway) or tell anyone that she was a nun. She was always oppositional to authority and quickly joined the Catholic Underground. She had her first massive stroke there. Her order told her that she could and should come home, but she refused, saying she didn't want to abandon her graduate students. Her research also took her to Africa. When she came to visit me in Oakland, I think for graduation, I took her and my family to an Ethiopian Restaurant. She was confused by this idea. The food in Ethiopia was so boring when she was there!

She used to travel with her ticks. When she came to visit my grandma in Cupertino (California), she kept her vials of ticks in her bed, where they would keep warm. Apparently, she would also feed them. One time, when I was visitting her in LA, some of her former students were reminiscing about being asked to volunteer to let ticks bite them, to feed the ticks. One of the nuns was explaining that it takes a special type of community before you can get people to volunteer to feed ticks.

She was staunchly leftist, a Catholic Democrat in the old tradition. Unfortunately, my grandma's branch of the family tree defected to the Republican Party. One time Catherine scandalized my grandma by comparing three prominent Democrats to the Blessed Trinity. I can't remember who was involved, except that Jesse Jackson was the Holy Spirit. During the Reagan administration, US-backed death squads were running amok in Central and South America. US backed forces murdered six nuns. Hundreds of religious people went to the local federal building to protest. Catherine was arrested while praying and singing, blocking the entrance to the building. She brought her plastic crowd control handcuffs with her to the family holiday dinner and spoke impassionedly about how beautiful it was to stand in solidarity with so many people and to stand against injustice. I remember examining the handcuffs, inspired by her story and her civil disobediance.

She was adventerous and would try anything. I remember at one family dinner, probably Easter, we were talking about edible flowers, so she took one of the roses from the centerpiece and put the petals on her salad. My mom was always applying chemicals to the roses in her battle with aphids. I got my mom's attention, asking loudly down the table, "Mom, are the roses sprayed? Catherine's eating them!" Years later, my mom would still giggle madly, remembering my grandmother's shocked expression. I wonder if Catherine really shocked my grandma as much as I remember her doing?

My mom wanted me to grow up just like Tom and Catherine, but not too much like Catherine and maybe without the becoming a nun part. The leftism, she was deinfitely not ok with. the academic achievement and intellectualism, she encouraged as much as she could. My mom used to use Catherine as a warning to be careful. Catherine in her travels picked up many weird parasites, including a dissentary which she was sick with for years. I should be careful where I went, or I too could catch such a thing. A few years ago, while discussing possibilities of third world travel, I mentioned these risks to Christi and then it struck me that Catherine was the happiest person that I knew and if she had been sick, she certainly wasn't emotionally suffering. So I endeavored to be less cautious than I was raised to be.

Catherine told my dad that the reason she retired from being a researcher was the politics involved in getting funding. She was posted in a convent in Oakland and her job was to visit sick people in hospitals. She made many friends this way. Those nuns there were all super-busy. Nobody had time to cook. They used to go eat at the happy hour in a local bar.

And then...

Around the time that my grandma died, about 11 years ago, Tom began to have problems with his sort term memory. He was moved from Berkeley to the Seminary in Los Gatos, which also had care for elderly priests. His health slowly but steadily declined. I remember visitting him there several times. Catherine was sick with worry about him. Everytime his health got worse, hers did too. She had minor strokes when he lost a function or became more ill. Finally, she needed more help than she could get at the Oakland convent and was sent to Los Angeles. She was not pleased about this. She came up to visit as often as she could. She couldn't travel alone, so her friend John would take her. Finally, she had to travel with a nurse, so a nurse would come with her. The nurse was an ex-army nurse who had gotten Gulf War Syndrome. Catherine had twice as much energy as she did and would occasionally go running off without her.

As Tom got more ill, so did Catherine. I remember after his funeral at Santa Clara University, family members glumly worrying about whether she would last much longer without him. thankfully, she was relieved of worry and her health improved a lot. However, she was still very old. Eventually, when her superiors told her she could make a visit to the Bay Area, she would get so excited that she would have warning signs of strokes, so they quit letting her travel. I went down to see her in Los Angeles many times. Several of those times, I stayed at the convent. They lock the doors early in the convent and there's not so much to do. Catherine went to sleep around 6:00 or 7:00 (maybe 8:00) then. I remember when I had just gotten back from Europe in 2001, Christi and I went to see her. I went to a bookstore in Santa Monica and picked a book on Joan of Arc, who I had decided to study and a copy of Teach Yourself Esperanto. So I started my first studies of Esperanto.

Catherine was surrounded by friends at the LA Convent. Her former teachers, classmates and students were around her. I was struck by how similar it was to dorm life and imagined what it would be like to be 80 and in a dorm with all the people who lived in my dorm when I was 18. Most of the nuns were eccentric in their own way. Meal conversations there were fascinating and entertaining. Catherine was slowly losing her sight due to glacoma and strokes. She finally only had about 10% of her field of vison left. The other nuns there took turns reading to her. She had them reading philosophy by Ken Wilbur, teaching by the Dali Lama, the meditations of Eckhardt Tolle. They laughed about the difficulty of the books she wanted them to read. One time, I was standing in her room and one of her neighbors hear us talking. "Who is the Dali Lama?" she asked. Catherine struggled a minute to come up with a succint reply to convey his holiness and greatness. "He's a saint!" she exclaimed.

Even though she couldn't see well, she still wanted to go look at art. I took her to the Getty Museum in her first outing with a white cane. She couldn't see at all on her left hand side, but had some vision on her right. And she was having a heck of a time with the cane. Apparently, it takes a lot of skill to use one. finally, she got frustrated and was just carrying it, but she couldn't see it was sticking out on one side and she smacked a wall and maybe a person with it. Fortunately, she also couldn't see folks staring at her misuse of it. She finally gave up on the cane, which was too bad, as one of her favorite things to do then was walk and she needed help to go at a fast pace, which she liked to do. So when Christi and I would come see her, Christi would take one of her hands and I would take the other, and we would walk at a quick pace around the convent grounds.

I went to see her before I went to school. I went by myself that time. Christi didn't want to go. I almost never went alone. I was sitting with her and reading to her about bunker busters from the Journal of the Atomic Scientist and we were complaing about George Bush and I said something about warfare and a short rant about capitalism. Catherine smiled a big smile and said, "I can't tell you how much it warms my heart to hear you talk like that!"

The last time I saw her, she couldn't really talk and kept dozing off. But when I said "goodbye, Catherine." and toched her arm I could tell from her smile that she knew it was me. She's been an inspiration to me since I was a child. she was a role model and a hero. She was the happiest person I knew. Even in her physical decline, she found serentiy. I want to be just like her. She was my last female relative. She told me last August that she talked to our dead family members. She knew they were in heaven and they were happy. They were waiting for her, but she liked being alive and wanted to do it for as long as she could. I know she died happy and I know she's whever everybody else is now. I'll miss her so much

PROTEST TO DEMAND AN IMMEDIATE END TO THE INVESTIGATION OF STEVE KURTZ AND THE CRITICAL ART ENSEMBLE

from email-land. art is not terrorism. this would be a good protest to go to. Recall that Steve Kurtz was the installation artist charged with bioterror for posessing some lab equipment he was going to use in an art project about genetically modifying food.

Friends,

Here is the call for the solidarity protest on June 15 here on the West Coast (SF). Please circulate to people on the West Coast. This protest will happen in solidarity with protests in Buffalo, NY, London, Paris, and Amsterdam.

Trevor

---

PROTEST TO DEMAND AN IMMEDIATE END TO THE INVESTIGATION OF STEVE KURTZ AND THE CRITICAL ART ENSEMBLE

WHEN: 9 AM, June 15, 2004

WHERE:

San Francisco Federal Building
450 Golden Gate Avenue, between Larkin and Polk
San Francisco, CA

PLEASE CIRCULATE THIS CALL AS WIDELY AS YOU CAN.
Check http://caedefensefund.org/demonstration.html for updates.

For background, please visit http://caedefensefund.org/overview.html and http://caedefensefund.org/press.html. For PDFs of signs that you can print out, please visit http://caedefensefund.org/demonstration.html#signs For information on June 15 protests in Amsterdam, San Francisco, London and Paris, please visit http://caedefensefund.org/demonstration.html#world

SUPPORT FREE SPEECH AND FREEDOM OF KNOWLEDGE

Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) is a collective of internationally recognized artists who work in public, educational, academic and art contexts. For the past few years, their principal aim has been to help the general public to understand biotechnology. By making scientific research accessible to laypeople through participatory performance experiences, CAE aims to demystify what is safe and clarify what is dangerous about today's biotech industry.

For the rest of the information about stuff and why the CAE deserves your support, go see http://caedefensefund.org/demonstration.html. Ok, and so the protest is early on a school morning, but hey, it's a good cause. And I know many of you reading this don't have a job that you need to be at at 9:00. I'll go protest if you go protest. If these guys get convicted for violating the patriot act for making art explaining what's hazardous about biotech, well, we're doomed.

gmail invite

I got one left. It could be yours.

Catherine (Sr. Mary) Leahy passed on with God into her new life about 3:45 this Saturday morning. The nursing staff had checked her at 3:30 and she was resting peacefully, when they checked again 15 minutes later, she had slipped away - just the way she would have wanted to.

Her Vigil and Funeral Services are pending - possibly on Friday with burial on Saturday or on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday of the next week. I will email you when they are finalized today or tomorrow.

update on my cousin

from an email:

As of this afternoon, Thursday, about 3 p.m., Mary (Catherine) is still with us but just barely. She has steadily declined since you visited with her and now she seems to be just waiting quietly within herself and seems calm and peaceful. Her breathing is shallow and her heart beat weak so the end of her present journey seems to be very near its end but we can't be sure.

AC Transit Cuts

California's new, um, governor ran on a platform of cutting taxes. Yay low taxes. We can all keep the money we would have paid to register our new Hummers. Yay. Um, but there's a bit of a problem. No money left for everything. So we'll cut public transportation. Only poor people don't have cars and they don't vote. Or they can take advantage of the new low car registration fees and buy themselves Hummers! It's like having your own bus.

My girlfriend, though, is not happy about this as she is one of those carless types. Yes, one of the things that I like about San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley is that you don't need a car to get around. Cola does not even have a driver's liscence. Somehow, though, she knows more about car engines and how they work than I do. Anyway. The AC Transit Press Release thingee has a sample letter to send to the Governor and a link to find your local assembly member. Click on "find my district" on the left. Even if you are not a Californian, you can contact the governor. The smog from California's cars warms the whole globe. Cutting public transit is penny wise and pound foolish. Less transit means more cars on the road. This means more air pollution, which means global enviromental catastrophe, higher rates of asthma, which increase public health costs, greater wear and tear on the roads, which inscreases road repair costs, and it creates difficulty for low income people or carless people getting to and from work, which increases the unemplyment rate, which increases public assitance costs. Really, the smartest economic choice for California would be to hike car registeration fees tremendously and make all public transit free while extending it's reach and hours. This would cut pollution, cut traffic and make it easier for people to get to work. Every hour that somebody spends commuting is a non-monotized, zero-production work hour. It's a tax on the worker and on the economy. So then the economy of California would rebound from the recession. Asthma rates would decline. The state would suddenly be awash in funds again. Maybe we could use them to fix the schools or fund the arts or something.

Here's the Sample Letter:

MMDD, 2004
Dear Governor Schwarzenegger:

I am writing to urge you to exempt AC Transit from the ERAF shift you proposed in the May budget revision. 230,000 East Bay residents rely on AC Transit every day to get to school, work, retail and recreation sites and medical appointments. Many of these people have no other transportation alternatives. AC Transit provides essential service to our East Bay community.

Your proposal places a disproportionate amount of the burden of the statewide ERAF shift (9%) on the shoulders of Bay Area transit riders.

AC Transit has faced severe budget cuts over the past three years and has taken prudent measures to respond to the economic challenges. It has made significant reductions in expenditures and personnel, deferred capital expenditures and increased fares. AC Transit has already cut 10% of its service in response to the current budget crisis. The additional revenue reductions that you have proposed via an ERAF shift - $20 million for AC Transit - will result in further personnel layoffs and service reductions, decimating critical services by forcing the elimination of routes, many of which are essential for school children, senior citizens, and workers.

As a consequence of your proposal AC Transit would lose 8% of its budget and have to cut the equivalent of all of its weekend or all of its school service (AC Transit carries 60,000 school children daily).

I urge you to reconsider the burden you have placed on AC Transit and all of those who depend on AC Transit every day, and to continue to exempt transit districts from the ERAF shift.

Sincerely,
 
cc: Legislative Delegation:
Senator Liz Figueroa
Senator Don Perata
Senator Tom Torlakson
Assembly Member Joe Canciamilla
Assembly Member Wilma Chan
Assembly Member Ellen Corbett
Assembly Member John Dutra
Assembly Member Loni Hancock

update

I just wanted to note that the bay area voted overwhelmingly against the recall and did not vote for the governator, which might be why East Bay transit is facing disproportionate budget cuts. Just an aside.

gmail invite

what would you do for a gmail invite?

Dirty Bombs, Dirty Tricks

The government just released some of the henious plot by Jose Padilla, US Citizen arrested and held extra-constitutionally for months, accused of being in al-Qaida. He was denied many constitutional rights and has yet to be charged. But, recall, we was accused of trying to build a dirty bomb. Today the feds said that he was giong to explode a dirty bomb made out of uranium. To which several nuclear scientists said, "oh no! not uranium! It might, um, not hurt anything at all." One reported that he uses a brick of uranium as a door stop.

Yes, it's radioactive. If you get a whole mess of uranium, you can start a chain reaction where it will all explode and create a huge of a mess and cause highly dangerous radioactive waste to go everywhere. That kind of device is called a nuclear bomb. If you just take some uranium and attach it to some dynamite to make a dirty bomb, well, it's not so bad. The radioactive waves emitted from uranium won't even penetrate your skin. You can stand around in the same room with it an not be harmed. Simply, it's not dangerous unless you eat it or inhale it. that's why using oodles of depleted uranium in warfare is dastardly, because it gets blown up into a fine dust which people breathe. And it's why exploding a small amount of it in an urban area is kind of lame. It could be cleaned up by folks with protection from eating it or breathing it.

Also, spent fuel rods are dangerous to handle, dangerous to transport and would kill anyone who handled them in a dirty bomb plot. But once exploded with dynamite? Not so dangerous at all. Dirty bombs are interesting to al-Qaida only because they are scary to people. And why are they scary? Because the Bush administration, instead of preventing the populace from coming to harm by arming it with information, has decided to increase risks, play up fear and cause panic. But hey, any city big enough to merit a dirty bomb probably votes democrat anyone, so who cares, right?

It would be nice to see the Bush administration follow the law and respect the rights of Padilla. I mean, he's a citizen, even. What's up with the FBI and federal law enforcement anyway? Do they have no ability to back off when they have no case. Remember Wen Ho Lee, Los Almos lab guy who had his reputation smeared for months while they claimed he was spying for China. They finally had to give up when it turned out the only thing he was guilty of was being of the same race as the government of China. There's defeinitely a spy-like connection there. Or not. And the latest? The FBI just arrested an installation artist who had some lab equipment in his house for an installation he was working of for Mass MoCA. It should be obvious by now that Steve Kurtz isn't guilty of anyhting more than being an artist, but he and two others have been served subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury that will consider bioterrorism charges against them. There's a defense fund set up to help the artists involved in this: http://www.caedefensefund.org/ and you can read some media accounts of it at: http://www.appliedautonomy.com/cae/, An AP story, Editorial in the Buffalo News, and The Washington Post.

Ding Dong Reagan's Dead

The blogosphere reacts. Actually, that's my girlfriend reacting, but she's smart. But she leaves an important question unanswered:

What circle of hell has Reagan been sent to?

This requires some thought. How much did he know. Was he smart enough and present enough to understand his evil actions? Was he lightly dozing or unable to recall? Or was he activelty participating? (The structure of Hell) What levels are good canidates? I'll create a handy guide, skipping levels which are totally unsuitable, such as "unbaptized infants"

Level	Sub level	sin	Pro	Con	eternal punishment
Vestibule of Hell		The neutral; uncommitted	Reagan wasn't all that aware. perhaps he was a neutral non-participant	His talk wasn't at all neutral. Also, I think he merrits more than the vestibule	Stung by insects; running after banners
Circle 4		avarice (extreme greed)	Chomsky described Reagan as "throwing a party for the rich." He defunded social services while cutting taxes.	Supporting reaigns of terror seem to be about more than just greed. And the punishment, while ironic is kind of light.	Condemned to useless labor
Circle 7	Round 1	Violent against neighbors and fellow men: murderers, war makers, homicides	Well, cutting social services to the point where mentally ill people are dying in the streets is really a form of structural violence. It's also directly violent to attack Nicaragua and support genocide in Guatemala.	He didn't recall anything about the Iran/Contra thing. Maybe nobody bothered to tell him about it.	Submerged in hot blood and Guarded by centaurs, who shoot any soul which attempts to rise
Circle 9 - Cocytus - Realm of Compound Fraud	Round 2 Antenora	Traitors to country	Well, he was the worst president we ever had and he really screwed the majority of the people in the country. He appointed people to comissions who dismanteled those commissions, such as Clarence Thomas to the Equal Opportunity Commission which did not persue one claim under the Thomas tenure.	Was his intense patriotism real or a sign of his extrme deviousness?	Gripped by ice
Circle 9 - Cocytus - Realm of Compound Fraud	Round 3 Judecca	The Ultimate Destroyer	Lots and lots of nukes. Was the world going to end?	Didn't actually bring about nuclear war.	Lucifer's three wings send forth freezing blasts of impotence, ignorance and hatred. Also, he chews three guys in his maw, including Judas.

Conclusion

I think Reagan is probably in Circle 7, but might be in 9.

Corporate Power

(Read previous post about corporations)

• The Profit Motive
• What to do
• How to do it
• Obstacles

The Profit Motive

The purpose of a corporation is to make money and only to make money. In fact, they are legally obligated to make as much money as possible. And legally obligated to make said money in the short term. If a corporation fails to make as much money as possible, they can be sued by their stockholders who would argue that the corp had not done enough to increase the stockholders' wealth. Corporation must always think of the short term financial interests of their stockholders first and everything else second.

This means that if they can figure out a way to make money, they must do it. For example: tobacco companies. They sell cigarettes to children in the third world. They park logo-decorated vans outside of elementary schools and tell kids that American kids smoke their brand. And they have to do it. If company X stopped doing that while all the other companies still did it, they could be sued by their shareholders. Tobacco companies have to lobby against laws designed to protect people from second hand smoke. They have to fight public health measures against them. Nicotine is one of the most addictive drugs on earth. More so than heroin. And smoking-related deaths are a major problem around the world. Tobacco companies are shortening lives and hurting quality of life around the world. Yet the US government blocks any efforts to outlaw smoking in other countries. Even ones that really cannot afford the additional health costs brought about by smoking (life long smoking, starting from elementary school). Countries that try to create minimum smoking age laws are bullied by the Us government. Why? Because the tobacco industry has super-good lobbyists. They have to. It maximized profits. It's the law.

Ok, now take an example of a company that produces 7 tons of dioxin every year. This is a fictitious example. (However, dioxin is an extremely common pollutant, produced ad a byproduct of many process, including burning diesel and bleaching paper. It's also one of the most carcinogenic chemicals on earth and was a major "inactive" component of agent orange and currently lurks in Monsanto product Roundup.) Let's say the dump all 7 tons into the San Francisco Bay. Right now, it is illegal to dump dioxin into the bay. (And in fact, most dioxin pollution in the bay is no longer from industrial dumping, but comes from things like folks burning dino-diesel in semi-trucks.) Let's say it would cost $100 million to alter their production lines so they produce 75% less dioxin. Lets' say it would cost $2 million to dispose of the dioxin in a legally allowable manner. Let's say the fines for dumping dioxin in the bay are $3 million and 4 inspectors work in the entire Bay Area and only visited the factory once in the last two years. All these numbers are made up. So, on average, if the inspectors only come every other year, the fines for illegally dumping dioxin would be $1.5 million per year. And if they only produce dioxin on Tuesdays and the inspectors do not time their visits accordingly, the cost of dumping dioxin in the bay is $300,000 per year. That means, that it's cheaper to pay on average $300,000 in fines for dumping carcinogenic toxins in the bay than disposing of it legally. That's the behavior that would maximize short term profit for stockholders. That's a cost of doing business. That's what capitalism is all about. And they'll lobby against higher fines with their vast wealth. And they'll lobby against being mandated to install equipment to reduce dioxin. And they'll hire a team of extremely good lawyers when people sue saying they've gotten cancer. So the only way to make them reduce output is if a concerned public hounds government with the same tenacity as the corporate lobbyists or if they threat of lawsuits becomes strong enough that they feel they can best protect their assets by taking action now to prevent future losses.

This is how the system has been legally and socially structured to work. Corporate structures limit financial liability. They also function to limit moral liability. It's a bunch of people just doing their jobs. Who do you point at and say, "that's a bad guy!"?? Chomsky says, in the movie The Corporation (I highly recommend this film), that the system is monstrous. Individuals in the system may be great people, but the system itself is evil. The system itself must be radically altered. Either the character of corporations must be entirely rethought, or they must be come much less powerful and forced to look at the interests of society. Because when the most powerful institutions in society are working against the interests of society, there is a huge problem.

What to do

Reducing corporate power! It's the answer.

Revoking Charters

Recall that corporations are chartered in a particular state. If they keep violating the laws of that state, they can have their charter revoked. They cease to exist. However, this is like putting out spot fires. It's a good idea to give regulatory agencies more teeth for sure. Our fictitious dioxin-producing company would be more likely to follow the law if they could be de-chartered for breaking it. But you still would have to challenge every corporation separately while the still lobbied against you and donated money to all politicians involved. In California, citizens cannot sue to revoke a charter. Only the attorney general (an elected position) can.

Ending Corporate Personhood

As I've said before, clearly corporations are not people. I mean, what if a real person was only concerned with making as much money as possible and saw hurting people and paying fines for breaking the law as just part of that quest. We'd say they were nuts. A sociopath, even. The legal "decision" giving corporations the rights of people must be overturned. I've put "decision" in quotes because no written decision exists. Before the Supreme Court was set to heart oral arguments in SANTA CLARA COUNTY v. SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD CO., 118 U.S. 394 (1886), the chief justice just announced that the whole court agreed that corporations deserved the rights of people and didn't want to hear arguments about it. And thus it became law in that once sentence. No public debate. No legal reasoning.

How to do it

In the past, the court has made decisions that were ultimately overturned. For example, the same court that decided that corporations deserved equal protection later decided (with only one dissenting vote) that African Americans did not. That decision was overturned in Brown vs The Board of Education. The Bauer decision, which said it was ok to make sodomy illegal was overturned last summer. Roe Vs. Wade is currently under attack and may be overturned. These fights seem to have some elements in common.

Activism

People were in the streets protesting against anti-sodomy laws. Protesting against Jim Crow and now protesting against abortion rights. Activism increases public awareness, gets attention, lets the other side know that you're serious. The Montgomery Bus Boycott ended segregation on public transit. It was a court case and direct action. Both elements were needed.

Legal Action

there is now a huge mass of precedent saying corporations are people. That precedent must be challenged. A body of anti-corporate people arguments must be produced. This means getting think-tank-types: law students, professors, interested professionals, together to start writing stuff. It also means getting lawyers to start arguing stuff in courts. We need law students and some law professors to get on board. Labor Law is probably a good recruitment area.

Other Actions

I was surprised to see a note in The Corporation that two cities had passed ordinances saying they would not consider corporations people. This sounds like something Berkeley could get on board with. These ordinances may not have much legal power, but they have huge symbolic values. They show that people care about the issue and are engaged in government and politics. They show that voters care. Which can affect court appointments.

Obstacles

I think this is something that could happen and something that's worth working on. However, right now corporations have way more resources than us and have more rights than us. They will fight this any way that they can. Heck, they have to. It will not be easy. But something must be done. Our system is unsustainable an cannot be fixed without radically changing the dominant institutions. Institutions that control resources must be publicly accountable. We cannot put essential life-sustaining resources in the hands of organizations that only look for short term-profits. It's suicide. We can do this. We must do this.

Lyrics

The American Composers Forum is sponsoring a Christmas Carol Contest. They're looking for music for choral groups, SATB (Sopranao, Alto, Tenor, Bass). Lyrics can have a winter or a Christmas theme and must either be public domain or have written permission of the author.

So I'm having a contest too. Write lyrics! I'm looking for mostly winter or Solstice themed, but feel free to submit Christmas lyrics too. One lucky person will have their lyrics set to music and submitted to this contest. Woot. Also, I will endeavor to find a performance of the work in another venue in the case that it doesn't win the contest... You will receive a copy of the sheet music, a recording of whatever performance I can put together, all the benefits of being a lyracist, um, and other fun things, like, um, dinner.

The deadline for turning in the music is September, but obviously, I need lyrics well in advance of that. Send as many sets of words as you want. Thenk you

I am in Los Angeles

I came to visit my cousin. She is 86 years old, owing to her actually being my grandmother's first cousin and my first cousin twice removed. She lives in a convent in Brentwood, as she is a nun. She is my sole remaining female relatives. How many relatives have I watched slowly die? I sat at my grandmothers' bedsides. I sat at my mother's. Now, at my cousin's. She hasn't eaten anything in three days and barely takes liquid. She nearly died a few weeks ago. She had an anti-biotic resistant infection in her blood. The nuns called my dad saying that they didn't think she would live through the weekend, but then she did. My dad didn't tell me, because I was so far away. I've been complaining about this to other people and not him, but actually, I'm not mad. You can't undo the past. And I'm kind of glad I didn't know.

It's been nearly a year since I last came to see her. Last July or August I came by myself. Normally, I came every time with Christi. Now I'm here with my dad. She didn't open her eyes to recognize me. I'm not sure if she was asleep or awake when I held her hand and talked to her about grad school. I can hear her voice so clearly in my head, being excited when I told her I was going away to school. But now she's nearly mute. Sister Jeanne said that she can be more talkative around lunchtime.

I didn't come over fall break or thanksgiving or winter break or spring break. Now, I'm finally here. And she. like everyone I love, will die or leave. I expect to be back here soon.

Corporate "People"

Our country is currently controlled by moneied interests who donate vast sums to both major parties. Corporate money now has greater voting power than humans in the United States. Legal systems have been set up that make this situation difficult to combat. This is a bit about how they work and where they're vunerable

• What is a Corporation? - Definitions
• Corporations are People too
• What does it mean for corporations to have human rights?
• Corporations have too many rights
• Things are bad, but we can undo them

What is a Corporation? - Definitions

The Daytrader's Glossary defines a corporation as a "form of business organization characterized by a state charter or articles of incorporation enabling certain rights separate from its owners. Common features of a corporation include limited liability of the owners, issuance of stock in evidence of ownership, election of directors and officers by vote of shareholders and taxation of the corporation separate to that of the owners." Ok, so what that means is that a corporation is a type of buisiness organization with many owners. The corporation is considered a legally seperate entitiy from it's owners. It is a thing that exists in the world, seperate from it's owners. Corporations limit liability of the owners. What this means is that the owners are not personally responcible for the debts of the corporation. If the company runs out of money and owes many debts, the company can go bankrupt, but the owners are not responcible for the debt. So if Mitch and I own a corporation that owes $50,000 to Sophie, and the corporation only has $20,000 in assets, Mitch and I personally don't owe the remaining $30,000 and too bad for Sophie.

Corporations issue stock. A stock is a share of ownership in the corporation. A person who owns one or more stocks (also called "shares") is a stockholder. The percentage of the corporation owned by any stockholder is the number of shares owned divided by the total number of shares issued. Stockholders get to vote on resolutions and on the directors and officers of the corporation. One share is one vote (except in special cases, like the Google IPO). So if you own 50 shares, you get 50 votes. Corporations also, as a seperate legal entity have tax liability. The organization owes taxes, but since liability is seperated, the owners do not owe those taxes.

Corporations are chartered. This means that some state causes them to come into existance. People who want to start a corporation file paperwork in some state and pay some fees and then they have a corporation. The state could, at some point, decide to revoke the charter of a corporation and then it would cease to legally exist.

Ok, so corporations are collectively owned and the owners have no liability. They are chartered in some state. Under law, corporations exist as things in the world. what sort of things?

Corporations are People too

In 1886, the supreme court of the Unites States decided that corporations were legally people. There was a case about corporate taxation before them. SANTA CLARA COUNTY v. SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD CO., 118 U.S. 394 (1886) And they decided that the 14th Amendment and Equal Protection applied to corporations, as they were legally people. An excellent explination what what this means and how it came about. This is called a "legal fiction." So when corporations are in court, judges employ a fiction and pretend that corporations are people. This means that corporations, as people, get all the rights that people get. Free speech. The right to bear arms. Protections against unlawful search and seizure. The whole bill of rights and every other constitutional right too. All the rights that were written for actual, real-life, non-fictional people.

But corporations have limitted liability. You can't send a corporation to jail, obviously. And the owners can't lose more than their stock. So coporations are super-people. They have all the same rights that you and I do, plus they don't get sick, fall and break their arm, go to jail, die of old age, or have any human frailties. The only bad things that can happen to corporations s that they can run out of money or they can have their charter revoked.

What does it mean for corporations to have human rights?

The idea that corporation deserve human rights, and, in fact, deserve more rights than humans is deeply troubling. One of the "rights" they have is freedom of speech. This means that a corporation can officially say whatever the heck it wants, just like a person can. Nike argued that this meant the have the right to lie about whether or not their shoes are made with sweatshop labor. It also means that corporations have the right to political speech, such as trying to influence the outcome of a poltical contest. Donating money to a politician is cirrently viewed as a type of "speech," so corporations have the right to give money to candidates that they agree with. Many coporations have way more resources than individuals. This means, practically, they have more freedom of speech than us lowly humans. And they're basically feudal. Corporations are heirachical. your boss tells you what to do. You, as an employee don't get to elect leadership or have any influence in anything aside from worrying whether or not you're going to get fired. Yeah, some employees own stock, but in their role as an employee they do not have any rights in influencing the direction of the corporation aside from what the corporation chooses to grant them. Which means that a textile company which employees 1000 people at minimum wage and 100 highly paid managers and who has 100 rich stockholders can use it's wealth to lobby to have the minimum wage reduced. It can publish ads in newspapers saying the minimum wage is too high. It can give sums of money to politicians that want to elmininate minimum wage entirely. It can put posters on the walls telling emplyees that minimum wages are a bad idea and unions are evil. It can make them watch videos saying that. So there would exist a company where 200 people controlled the wealth generated by 1000 (or 1100) people and decide in what political direction the money should be thrown. The 1000 workers could all decide to vote in favor of minimum wage increases, but they proabbly don't have much money to give to politicians, and the corporation does. A politician in favor of minimum wage increases would be at a financial disadvantage. And many the company gives equal sums to both major parties as long as they keep wages down. Then the workers can either vote Green or it doesn't matter who they vote for, because the company, working against their interests, bought the major parties.

Corporations have too many rights

and they keep getting new ones all the time. All these weird trade organizations, like the WTO have secret ruling councils that periodically decide that corporations should have more and more rights. Ones that humans don't get. As citizens, you and I can't vote about the WTO. So we work for feudal institutions who are given extra rights by pseudo-government bodies made up of the same people who own the corporations. Oh, and your pension fund? It's invested in those same corporations. The fund managers want the stock of the companies to go up. So they vote to lobby for lower wages. What this means is that your own retirement fund money is controlled by a financial manger who is activelly lobyying to lower your wages. You own money is being used as a weapon against you. when coporations have too many rights, we are serfs. The product of our labor is being sued to harm us. Our own prpoerty is a weapon against us. And our laws can be overtuned by super-national bodies, like the WTO, which we get absolutely no say in.

Things are bad, but we can undo them

The proplem is this stupid legal fiction. Corporations exist to make money for their owners. That's not a person! First of all, people can't own each other! What should happen is that SANTA CLARA COUNTY v. SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD CO should be overturned. Stupid descisions have been overtunred before. The will of the people does influence the court. So step one is letting people know about this. Human people. And human people need to let their voices be heard, corporate personhood was a bad idea and needs to stop now.

No more yahoo personals

Way back in January or February, I put an ad up on Yahoo personals. Today, I cancelled it. They asked me why. I said something about having a girlfriend and the Connecticut lesbian dating scene being unfathomable. But they asked me again to take a survey.

What did you like most about your Yahoo! Personals service?

um, honestly, mocking the ads of the other users.  

What did you like least about your Yahoo! Personals service?

 going to coffee shops to meet women with mullets who think /i'm/ weird

What changes would you suggest we make to the service that would improve the experience?

This is a large problem which requires a multi-facetted approach. First of all, personal ads are still viewed with suspicion by members of the lesbian community, especially in New England. It might be a good idea to advertise in MetroLine, a gay publication that seems to be popular. This would make people less embarrassed when their lurker friends found their ad and would increase the size of the population placing ads.

Secondly, many people have poor written communication skills, which makes their ads subliterate or causes misunderstanding in their ad-realted correspondence. You may want to lobby for better writing programs in highschools. The whole on-line industry depends on the reading and writing skills on the general populace, so it's in your best interests to improve education.

Um, I really don't know what you can do about the over-representation of TV-addicted women with mullets. Maybe start offering free haircuts with a subscription?

But gos, that makes me sound like an asshole. And while I'm not really into northeastern suburban lesbian hair fashions, it's not so auful as I make it out. And while I really had little in common with the women I met, they were actually nice people and some I would like to keep around as friends. Maybe I bare some blame for the oddness of my internet-dating experiences.

Her: what popular bands do you like?

me: i don't listen to popular music

her: oh, um, what tv shows do you watch?

me: i don't watch tv

her: what kind of car do you drive?

me: i prefer bicycling due to the general unavilability of vegetable-based fuels in this area

her: uh.... ok... so what do you study?

me: I compose experimental electronic music with my laptop.

Phillip K dick wrote in Radio Free Abelmouth that once you become a Berkeley radical, you can never leave. Thishas happened to me. I can really never leave Berkeley. I can go to visit other places anywhere in the world, but always as a foreigner. They sell t-shirts on Telegraph Ave that say "The People's Republic of Berkeley." I could never decide if I wanted one or they were too touristy and deserved to be mocked. I think I might get one for East Coast wearing.

Art Installation

So a few weeks ago, I went to a music festival and symposium at Wesleyan, called the For a Long Time festival. One of the symposium speakers was Michael Schumacher, who runs the Diapason Gallery in New York City. This gallery specializes in sound installations. One of their current projects is sound installations for people's homes. People who really like such things pay a fee and get an installation put into their homes. Depending on the amount of money they put in, they get a certain number and quality of speakers put up around their house. So somebody might pay a few thousand dollars and get a killer sound system and some pieces to play on it. The deal, though, is that it's an installation. It's self-directing art. The customer does not controll the art. Meaning, they don't know what they're getting ahead of time. Furthermore, there is no volume control. It plays what it plays when it plays it, which might be just on the full moon or something, who knows. If you don't like the installation, you can turn it off, but you can't turn it down. Schumacher told us of an early customer who said that it completely changed her life. I bet it would.

Personally, I wouldn't want an installation in my home, because I work in my home. It would be hard to write stuff for my own installation if there was one already going. But if I were not a composer and I really loved sound art, I could totally see getting one. Fortunately, Cola has an installation in her apartment of the same sort by accident. Her intercomm is freaking out. (Read her account of it.) Sometimes it plays street sounds into her apartment. No volume control. It's even more hardcore than Diapason's venture, since there's no off switch. I kind of liked it as it reminded me of this project. But sometimes, randomly, it will switch and play sounds from the apartment to the street. This is a bit more distressing because, well, few people would want all the sounds from their studio apartment to be played out of a speaker on the stoop. No. Not good.

Cola, however, is a good sport and while she was upset about this (I would be upset too), she is willing to let me take advantage of this situation. The stoop speaker masks everything with a bad 60hz hum. A bad hum. Something is clearly ungrounded. Well, I mean, obviously the wiring is screwed up or this wouldn't be going on. So anyway, what we did was duct-tape a speaker over the intercom and then set my computer to play out of the speaker. It's playing my tuning ratios but retuned to be overtones of 60hz, the same frequency as the hum. The effect is subtle. (Maybe a bit too subtle, but when it was louder, it ended up alarming the other tennants.... anyway, I turned it down.) It's kind of nice. However, I was unwilling to sacrifice my laptop during the day, so it's not going when I'm not there. What I clearly need is a second laptop that can run osx so I can leave this up 24/7 until the intercom is fixed. Really. heh. I am too pleased with myself about this.

casaninja?

This post killed.

I am keeping casaninja.com as is.

Media Machine

I got some audio of Ann Coulter from MediaMatters.org and I was struck by how everybody kept talking on top of each other so you can't even tell what's going on. You get bombarded with bombasticness and somehow, at the end, feel like information has been communicated, but none has. It's fake news. It's a media machine trying to pass itself off as the news story. "Hey, look at me!" the media says. So I thought, what if this got layered more and more of the same stuff on top? And not having much more ranting handy as I don't have cable, I just layered the same clip. And I think it sounds like a machine after several layers. How Ironic! What do you think?

http://www.xkey.com/~celesteh/music/wesleyan/media-machine.mp3

say hi

That is a picture of Cola aka Nicole, whose apartment I've frequently been lurking in. Cola is nifty. I know her from my undergrad days. She's a geek. Was a history major and a CS minor, now works at the seond largest toy company in the US programming toys and also takes nifty pictures. She is also my new girlfriend. Say hi.

fixed comments?

anon commenting should be working now...

Creative Commons Liscence

Ok, let's talk copyright. Anything that you say or do that gets recorded somehow is copyrighted. So recording or writing down a new song is copyrighted. Making up a new songs and singing it in front of 500000 people is not copyrighted unless it's recorded. So copyright is somewhat stupid. Furthermore, all of your blog ranting is copyrighted. It belongs to you you you and nobody else. Which means that nobody can rip off your woe over Krispy Kreme's Atkins Woes and set it to music without having to first secure your permission and possibly pay you. This is somewhat stupid. Why is my ranting that I do over the telephone not copyrighted, so that anybody could overhear, find it amusing, later it somewhat to fit in meter and make it into a song, but my web ranting in a different class? Because of stupid copyright laws. Let's face it, most blog posts do not deserve copyright protection. They're on the order of found writing. So why give it copyright protection? Why not do a less restrictive copyright so other people can do stuff with it if they feel somehow inspired?
All text on this website, with the exception of poetry and song lyrics, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Check it out!

New Template

Yes, my blog looks different. I wanted to take advantage of new blogger features and unfortunately, the easiest way to do that was to pick a new look. My old look was also designed by blogger, but, i dunno, this one feels so corporate to me. i tweaked the colors, but it's still dull. oh well. the content is what matters, right?