Quirky Alone

omigod, and I always just thought I was antisocial or at least just poorly socially adjusted. quirkyalone.net

Oh, I should add

Oh, I should add: that should be *ex-patriate* Iowa Democrat.

But an Iowan and an Iowa Democrat nonetheless.

Being a Democrat

I love being a Democrat. Specifically, I love being an Iowa Democrat. I love that the primary season starts with the Iowa Democratic caucuses.

I'm watching the Des Moines Register debate with the Democratic presidential candidates, and it's the best run debate I've seen so far this season. A real debate, with good questions, including questions submitted by Iowa Democrats.

I'm not a Deanie, or whatever those people are called, but of these Democrats, the only one that is vaguely presidential is Howard Dean. Of course, he's not presidential in the traditional sense, but the rest of them I'd have a hard time voting for. No question, I'll vote for the Democrat, and will never vote for George W., but jeez, you've got Gebhardt, who's so 80s. Lieberman who is such a wimp. Kerry who is such a politician. Carol Moseley Braun is good, but she'll never be President. Edwards is too young. Kucinich (I think I misspelled his name) has a good heart, but his idealism, as much as I agree with his statements, needs some pragmatism.

What's interesting is that all these candidates... it's like they are there so that a complete, clear picture of the issues can be drawn. By debating and airing their positions, they are creating the Democratic platform which the final candidate will run on. And, if the candidate can integrate those positions and articulate them well, the Democrats will be giving George W. a run for his money. I'm not sure a Democrat can win, but this collection of candidates can create a platform that will finally give the Democratic party some definition again. This they will need in 2008.

And, I think the Democratic candidate will be Howard Dean.

Best line of the campaign so far: the topic was balancing the budget and it was Dean's turn. He ran through some arguments and positions and ended by agreeing with Kerry that balancing the budget won't happen right away. Then he said "but by the 6th or 7th year of my term..."

!!!

I didn't see reactions of the other candidates. the DMR moderators looked stunned then amused. The audience laughed. Dean paused, looked around, and said "What??" and gave a look like he'd been joking.

But, I don't think he was joking! I think he got caught up in the moment and came out with what he'd really been thinking, and only after backpedaled to make some comedy of it.

Honestly, I loved it. It really is refreshing to see someone playing the game and still having some truth underneath.

Catching up on reading

I've been on vacation this week and catching up on my reading. In doing this, I've had the pleasure of encountering some of the worst writing I've seen in some time.

In the academic writing category, this is from "To Be Indian, to Be Bolivian: "Ethnic" and "National" Discourses of Identity" by Thomas Abercrombie, in _Nation-States and Indians in Latin America_, edited by Greg Urban and Joel Sherzer, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991, p. 105:

"Indians" came, at least by the mid-seventeenth century, to regard themselves as civilized sons of (a solarized) Christ; their pre-Columbian ancestors as the defeated satanic race of a prehuman age; and the underworld place-deities that they continued to ritually celebrate as the sources of necessary chthonic potencies that, domesticated by Christian powers, could still sustain them (Abercrombie 1986). These anti- or pre-Christian underworld beings and powers are portrayed (by today's "Indians") in the likeness of the Spaniards' image of Indians as Others (un-Christian and without bueno policía regardless of Spanish efforts, as many colonial Spanish and contemporary urban accounts paint them). The asymmetrical power of the colonial gaze ensured the alienation of the Indian self (pushing it into the nearby and well-remembered past), but guaranteed its retention, in the shape of the transformed Indians' Other's Other.

Ok, I want to know the difference between "Indians" and Indians. One would imagine that Indians are "real" Indians while "Indians" are pseudo- or ex- Indians or Indians in name only, basically not-exactly-Indians. But that still doesn't help in understanding why he'd drop the quotation marks in some places. On the other hand, Tom's got an apparent fascination with punctuation in general -- I don't see his parenthetical phrases as particularly parenthetical -- so maybe it's got more to do with that.

Beyond that, I have to ask: did you get lost in the Others?

And in the category of academic trying to write for a popular audience, from _Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping_, by Paco Underhilll, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999, p. 12:

[added later: let me correct myself. Paco isn't an academic. So he has even fewer excuses for producing the following "paragraph" (a paragraph only by 2 criteria: it goes on for several lines, and it's set apart by indentation)]

Well, if, say, anthropology had devoted a branch to the study of modern shoppers in situ, a fancy Latin way of saying shoppers out shopping, interacting with retail environments (not only stores, but also banks and restaurants), including but not limited to every rack, shelf, counter and table display of merchandise, every sign, banner, brochure, directional aid and computerized interactive informational fixture, the entrances and exits, the windows and walls, the elevators and escalators and stairs and ramps, the cashier lines and teller lines and counter lines and restroom lines, and every inch of every aisle -- in short, every nook and cranny from the farthest reaches of the parking lot to the deepest penetration of the store itself -- that would be the start of the science of shopping. And if anthropology has already been studying all of that ... and not simply studying the store, but what, exactly human beings do in it, where they go and don't go, and by what path they go there; what they see and fail to see, or read and decline to read; and how they deal with the objects they come upon, how they shop, you might say -- the precise anatomical mechanics and behavioral psychology of how they pull a sweater from a rack to examine it, or read a box of heartburn pills or a fast-food restaurant menu, or deploy a shopping basket, or react to the sight of a line at the ATMs ... again, as I say, if anthropology had been paying attention, and not just paying attention but then collating, digesting, tabulating and cross-referencing every little bit of data, from the extremely broad (How many people enter this store on a typical Saturday morning broken down by age, sex and size of shopper group?) to the extremely narrow (Do more male supermarket shoppers under thirty-five who read the nutritional information on the side panel of a cereal box actually buy the cereal compared to those who just look at the picture on the front?), well, then we wouldn't have had to try to invent the science of shopping.

I want to know, who was Paco's editor at Simon Schuster and where was he/she when ol' Paco submitted his manuscript. It occurs to me that, after reading the above paragraph, the poor editor resigned Paco to hopeless status and just sent the MSS through, being fearful of reading further.

Actually, I myself haven't gotten much farther than that, but I'm going to keep going.

Tom Abercrombie's article actually improved some following his exercise in jargon quoted above. Maybe Paco's book will improve as well.

Black white gray

There's an article in today's New York Times Magazine.

I think that article expresses a key characteristic of what's going on in the US now -- the complicated, mixed feelings and opinions I hold and, I suspect, more than a few people hold -- at least those who are letting themselves think about it.

There have been a couple of key points over the past 40 years in American social-political life. One was the realization that the justification for the Vietnam War that they'd been given wasn't valid. Another was Watergate, when whatever trust people had in American politics was shattered.

In a way, however difficult those two were, I think that both were simple compared to the thinking that Americans are facing and will be facing as the active war phase of current events comes to an end. Maybe that's why people are watching FOXNews ... whatever else FOXNews is, it presents things as though they were simple, and in the face of nothing being simple, maybe that's part of the appeal.

War reporting

With the war in Afghanistan in late 2001, the complaint was the limited access to military sources that reporters had. And, as they recalled the 1991 Gulf War, the media had the same complaint. So, this time, there are embedded reporters ... reporters who went through a training program and who agreed to the military's rules of embedding, and in exchange, travel with a unit, file reports, and transmit what's billed as real-time video. Thus, from this, we're supposed to feel as though we have a true view of the war, and even the things the military doesn't allow the reporter to say or show at a particular time will be available as a record of the war after it's over.

Maybe that's true, who knows. But, nevertheless, one of the interesting things with watching this war is the information war that's going on.

Last night seems particularly telling. We see Walt Rogers filing audio and video supporting the impression that the US has control of the Saddam/Baghdad International Airport (you know... the US admits they don't have *secure* control of the airport, but they're already renaming it... propaganda is part of war, I don't fault them for that, manipulation is a tactic, but we still have to recognize it as a tactic and not necessarily a reflection of anything else).

US Central Command starts saying they have military in "central Baghdad" or "the heart of Baghdad" (depending on what time it was you heard them talking). Simultaneously, we see the static video shot of somewhere in what's presumably central Baghdad with cars, taxis, buses, all moving in what looks like a normal manner.

The Iraqi information minister does his daily briefing, and says they've defeated the US military at the airport and once they finish cleaning up, they can take the press out there to show them they have control of the airport.

Nic Robertson calls in to say his sources in Baghdad have seen some of the US military in the streets, not a lot, and not seeming to be doing a lot, but there. But Nic is in Jordan. But it's Nic, who we would ordinarily trust to provide an accurate report.

Rula Amin reports that the Arabic press has reporters in Baghdad who don't really contradict the Iraqi information minister, at least as they report on the Arabic language media. But she's in Jordan too, and working for CNN, but she's also filed in past situations (e.g., re: Israel and Palestine) with an Arab slant.

A few days ago, the topic of reports was selling water to Iraqis in the south. Reports varied: the UK were selling water and the US deplored it. the US was selling water and the UK deplored it. Maybe they both were selling water. Maybe neither was.

The point is, who knows what the reality is.

.....

I notice that, now that things are starting in the north, it's Brent Sadler who's with the Peshmurga and filing on their activities with US Special Forces as they approach Mosul. I really don't have a sense of him as a reporter, just that he's been the CNN Beirut bureau chief for some time.

But, with Brent with the Peshmurga, the question is, where's Ben Wedeman? Is he not with the Peshmurga because they're with the US Special Forces and so embedding rules would apply? .... ah ... well, Brent in a filing at this moment (1:27 pm CST) mentioned Ben as being with another group of the Kurdish army. Man, it seems like whatever is the more dangerous situation at a given time, that'll be where Ben Wedeman is. God bless his wife (I'm assuming he has one).

......

Now, the US military is using the offer of citizenship to people with green cards if they enlist. Who needs a draft if you can bribe people into drafting themselves? Sheesh.

.....

It's reported that some among the US citizenry complain that 24/7 war reporting is causing them anxiety, interrupting sleep, generally making them uncomfortable and unhappy. So, the advice is that they not watch. Duh.

Yet, it's outrageous that they're complaining. They *can* just turn off the TV, or at least change channels. But more importantly, for them, turning off the TV is actually an option. Consider the people who are in the middle of the whole thing: armies on both sides, reporters, citizenry. Its seems like the least we can do, here in the calm, prosperous, safety of our living rooms, to watch the war, become involved in whatever unpleasantness we're shown, to live the war in our imaginations while others are forced to live it in real life. How else can we have any idea of what's really going on. How else can we develop and maintain some sense of understanding of the human conditions there. How else can we keep ourselves from the propaganda that's coloring media reports from both sides.

CNN had an antiwar night last night

CNN had an antiwar night last night. Well, not precisely antiwar, but for about 3 hours of primetime, the message from analysts, including ex-US military, and reporters, mostly not embedded but some embedded as well, was that this war is a big mistake. We're pretty much back to normal today, still, of what's available on broadcast and cable here, CNN is the best choice.

And for the Bill Hemmers who wouldn't know hard news if it hit him in the face -- or unless his producer spoke in his ear -- there are the Ben Wedemans. He interviewed Al-Qaeda guys who were at Tora Bora in Afghanistan in late 2001. In February 2002 he was in Pakistan reporting Daniel Pearl's abduction and murder. A month later he was in the West Bank during the terrible siege by the Israeli army. Back in fall 2000 he was shot while covering a story in Gaza. And a year after the West Bank siege, he's in northern Iraq with other CNN Middle East bureau chiefs: Jane Arraf who was in Baghdad before she was expelled and Brent Sadler from Beirut.

Aaron Brown was talking to him during a report the other night. Aaron mentioned being embedded in northern Iraq and then corrected himself, confirming with Ben that Ben wasn't embedded, and then adding "and knowing you, you probably prefer it that way", meaning not being embedded. Ben didn't respond -- it was the end of the spot -- and who knows, but my sense is that Aaron probably made a true statement.

I trust Ben Wedeman's reports, and I look forward to thte stories he tells. I hope he's got a book in him from his years of living in the Middle East and observing the world. The book of his reporting observations is written in the CNN archives, but the book of his own observations isn't part of that.

Horizontal and vertical prayer

Who'd have thought a movie critic would clear up a lifetime of puzzlement about religion.

Religion as such was never much of a part of my childhood. We were Episcopalians, but the times I remember going to church with my parents I can practically count on one hand. As a young child (my childhood has two parts: before and after my dad died, which was about a month before my 7th birthday) my favorite holiday was May Day, when I'd make paper-woven baskets, fill them with violets picked from the yard, and leave them on the doorsteps of our neighbors.

But I was always interested in religion, and as an older child and a teenager, I even started going to church, belatedly got myself confirmed, and even taught Sunday School for a while.

At the same time, at youth group meetings, our priest almost just told me to shut up, because I kept asking those questions -- you know, like, just who was it that Cain married? and what about those dinosaur fossils? why did Mary have to be a virgin -- and wouldn't it have been even more miraculous that a normally born human being would become the Son of God?

And then there was the time when I was in college that he got so worried about how I was getting involved with Judaism that he drove the 90 minutes to drop in on me to try to convince me out of it. Sheesh.

I liked the Episcopal Church though -- I liked the singing and the structure of the services, but mostly I respected that nobody seemed to really much care what people believed ... whatever they believed was between them and God (or whatever). Everybody was happy to leave it that way, and the point of actually going to church was to provide some social or psychological benefit not some religious benefit. Even a religious benefit of communing with your creator privately-in-public was that in-public part ... you could commune at home or anywhere privately, but for some reason, doing it privately-in-public filled some need of its own, and not a religious one.

It's just that I was always looking for something else -- what came before in human's religious thought? (thus the explorations in Judaism) Out of respect, I refrain from asking the question of my Muslim friends, the one that goes "[X Middle Eastern country] has such a long, ancient history ... don't you wonder about the religious and spiritual beliefs and practices of your ancestors before Muslims from another country came in and converted people?" (which actually stands for the question "don't you ever feel the urge to explore your pre-Islamic roots?" which is even less respectful)

So, over the years I dispossessed myself of organized religion. Although the standard explanations held, I still felt vaguely disquieted. Maybe I just didn't believe enough to want to find people who shared my beliefs. Maybe I was just masking antisocial tendencies by not wanting to join up with people for the purposes of something religious.

But I never really believed those things, and while I know that I thought that religion as an institution was about politics and social control rather than spirituality, it all finally came into focus with the distinction between the horizontal and the vertical. Thanks Roger!


Changing the subject ....

Here's an update on the UTA student who was deported. They gave his friends 25 minutes to get his things together and drive to Dallas to give them to him to take home with him. What's the point, when it takes 25 minutes just to drive to Dallas from UTA, let alone packing up his stuff, getting it into the car, and then parking once you get there.

The print version of The Shorthorn had a sidebar to that story:

The Road to Jordan

Jordanian graduate student Tahir Ibrahim Aletewi's month-long detention by U.S. authorities ended Thursday [Feb 28, 2002] with his deportation to Jordan. His departure is the latest in a joint terrorism task force investigation that apparently began last year.

• Spring 2002 FBI and INS agents initiate regular interviews with Aletewi at his apartment on Center Street near campus. Friends familiar with the questioning say they began as informal conversations, and at one point officials attempted to recruit Aletewi to provide intelligence.


• Sept. 10 The State Department notifies Aletewi by a letter sent to his family's residence in Jordan that his student visa has been revoked. According to friends, Aletewi was later assured that the matter was resolved by one of the immigration officials who had been interviewing him.


• Fall/Winter 2002 Aletewi tells friends that the federal interviews are growing more intense as agents pointedly question him about his political and religious views.


• Jan. 31 Federal agents ask for and are given consent to search Aletewi's apartment and later ask him to accompany them to their office for an interview. He later tells friends that he was interrogated extensively over the next week while being held at the Euless City Jail.


• Feb. 2 After not hearing from Aletewi for two nights, roommates try contacting the FBI, but cannot reach anyone on a Sunday.


• Feb. 3 FBI Special Agent Robert Fowler notifies Aletewi's roommates that he is in federal custody awaiting a deportation hearing for violating his student status. The detainee is allowed to speak with friends on the phone, and, later that week, receive visitors after he is transferred to the Dallas County Jail.


• Feb. 7 U.S. Immigration Judge Anthony Rogers orders Aletewi deported, reportedly within five days. A court spokeswoman now says there was no time stipulation on the order.


• Feb. 22 A friend is allowed to visit Aletewi in jail for the first time since the judge's ruling, the friend says.


• Feb. 27 Aletewi is deported, according to a government source. He is not known to have contact with any friends here since his departure.

Oh boy ....

Oh boy ....

here's a version from the Albany paper

Amazing -- at least people in Albany are protesting.

But, hearing about how wearing a t-shirt can get you arrested, after hearing about the draft of "Patriot Act II" ... boy, makes you start thinking about all those frequent flyer miles you've got saved up...

On rattansifan.tripod.com

http://rattansifan.tripod.com/

I like that site and try to visit every weekend to see what she's got to say. Sure, it's a fan site -- appealing to newsies, CNN-lovers, those lucky enough to see Shihab on CNN (I never do, but I only see CNN US which rarely includes its international feeds anymore). But she's always got something insightful to say. Since the page changes more or less weekly, I'll reprint her essay below:

"Why, of course the people don't want war ... but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

-- Nazi military leader Hermann Goering interviewed by G.M. Gilbert, Nuremberg trials, 1946. From Gilbert's "Nuremberg Diary."


I Ain't Too Proud to Beg

for our "leaders" to rethink our military's spring agenda, but it seems a lot of Americans are. In an article in the 3/02/03 NY Times by Tom Zeller, Mark A. Schulman, the president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research gives us one take on the matter:

"It's the general thrust of things, the symbolism and the ideas those symbols evoke," Mr. Schulman said. "That's what people take away with them."

If that's true, then assuming anything less than the worst of Mr. Hussein, particularly with the monthslong buildup toward war, may simply seem unpatriotic to a sizable chunk of the populace.

"To say that there is no involvement of Saddam Hussein in Sept. 11 is implicitly to question what our leaders are saying," Mr. Schulman said. "And that is to start down a road toward suspicion and Watergate-like politics that no one wants."

So, I guess, what this boils down to is that a large chunk of the population of this country is too proud to admit that it may have elected a self-serving, power-hungry, megalomaniac for a president. Ouch, the truth hurts, doesn't it?

But it doesn't hurt quite as much, I wouldn't imagine, as the pain those innocent Iraqis who lose their mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and children will feel. And I shouldn't even have to mention the pain those U.S. servicepeople's children, whose sad faces have already been so extensively presented to us in news footage from shipyards and military bases in practically every state, will feel when they find out their mothers and fathers won't be coming home because they've been killed in this selfish war.

Oh, but to this administration, the numbers of "collateral damage" look fine, good, very promising, I'm sure -- nothing that can't be quickly forgotten or supressed sufficiently with large amounts of cash or the application of a little carefully applied pressure to the media. Ah, the pursuit of happiness in its ugliest form ever. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams would weep.

I've never been so close to denying my American citizenship as I am right now. But I'm not alone. Nope. My father, a moderate until this past year (he even voted for Reagan the first time around -- do you realize the shame I feel at admitting that?), told me that Canada's looking pretty good to him. He feels unrepresented by the democrats in congress. He feels the problems of this country's senior citizens are being ignored. And, like his daughter, he's embarrassed by how uninformed and easily fooled so much of this population is.

My dad served in the Navy in the 50's. His dad was in the Navy during WWII in the Pacific. There's an American Legion post in Arizona named after this grandfather of mine. We are not an unpatriotic family. We are, however, a family who makes use of each and every liberty afforded to us: we vote; we right letters to our congresspeople when we don't like something; when we sing the national anthem, we sing it like we mean it ... or, at least, we did. But lately, every week, it seems, another of those much coveted liberties vanishes in the interest of "national security". We ain't buyin' that angle. And if the left-brained 68 year old engineer and his 38 year old right-brained (he may argue bird-brained) artist daughter agree on something, well, that is news. In this case, pretty bad news.

We both agree this current administration is the last bunch of people who should be responsible for setting up any democracies anywhere. We're both convinced that if a democracy is defined as government ruled by the voice of the people then France, Germany and Turkey are far better examples right now than the government of this country or its so-called allies. If things don't change pretty soon, Canada may want to think about putting on the coffee and changing the sheets in the spare room because company's coming. Let the proud sheep be herded into the barracks by the madmen. Their slaughter is nothing we care to watch. Angela


Keeping Quiet
by Pablo Neruda
translated by Alastair Reid

And now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth
let's not speak in any language,
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines,
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fisherman in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victory with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
(Life is what it is about,
I want no truck with death.)

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.

Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I'll count up to twelve,
and you keep quiet and I will go.


Penelope in Montreal sent me this in email. She was nice enough to let me put it on the site. Please, if you're against the idea of a war with Iraq, find a demonstration in your area and show the world how you feel.

"I have to tell you my war story.

On the weekend I was cleaning out stuff at my parents' place, and I found a letter that my grandfather had written to my uncle (my father's brother) during the war. I brought it home in order to send it to my aunt who is the sole remaining member of the family. What is so sad is that it is dated 18 June 1944 and my uncle was killed on 25 June 1944, which of course means he died before the letter arrived. It was returned and I guess my grandparents decided to save it. What I couldn't handle were statements like "when you and Garry (my dad) get home, we are going to have a big party". By the time I was halfway through the letter I was sobbing. Then he talks about an officer in my uncles division who was killed and he says "we all know that not everybody comes back". The idea that my uncle died while the letter was in transit is too much. Then he told him some mundane stuff like "your cousin got married and we went to the wedding". And even that simple stuff was making me cry. By the time I got to the end I was bawling hysterically. Quite an experience, really. I could just feel the heartbreak my grandparents suffered when they got THE telegram a few weeks later. They kept that telegram too. How awful.

I wish those who are rah rahing for war would think of things like this. It's so damn sad."

The US Presidency is trying to have a war -- if only this time it'd be a war where nobody came.

Too much complication in the world

See, this from the New York Times is what I've been trying to talk about.

Too much complication in the world. I can't do anything about it. I can just live day by day, go to work, try to be nice, try to have people be nice to me, have a lifestyle I can pay for, and try to have it work out that I can afford to live after I'm not able to work and earn money anymore.

Last weekend I bought a copy of "The Sims" -- the Deluxe edition, so it's got the extra doodads to give to your Sims that the "Livin' Large" expansion pack provided. It's a pretty engrossing game, at least so far. Though, it occurs to me that it's a version of playing Barbies (i.e., a potentially solitary activity where you control everything) and of playing whatever games we played as kids with our friends -- house, cowboys & indians, other invented scenarios we played out in the backyards and open spaces in our neighborhoods.

Like in real human life, life as a Sim can be hard, unless "God" (or whatever you want to call it) mysteriously blesses you with a lot of money (i.e., the human player uses the money cheat to finance Sims families). And like in real life, when fate seems to do something good (i.e., the human player decides paying bills is a drag and deletes the mailbox), there can be unforeseen consequences (without a mailbox, you can't interact with people who come to visit so you eventually die of loneliness, and the visitors can't leave the lot so they eventually die of whatever they're in need of -- if this goes on long enough, the whole neighborhood will die).

But even God can get help to make things better again (i.e., the human player can get a nifty little program somebody made that will put the mailboxes back on the lots), if God is so inclined. Of course, that means God is willing to intervene, that God actually is interested in the well-being of his/her/its Sims, that God is actually watching the game, that God is actually there.

Ok ... no theological stuff right now ....

As far as we know, he made no threats

The Shorthorn (which, by the way, is the student newspaper at the University of Texas at Arlington) ran an editorial today related to the topic of the UTA student who was deported:

As far as we know, he made no threats, he conspired in no plots and he built no bombs. But in post-9/11 America, just admitting to certain thoughts can be enough to change your world forever.

A week ago, U.S. Immigration Judge D. Anthony Rogers ordered Aletewi deported (within five days) based on an FBI interview in which he allegedly said that possible U.S. military action in Iraq had revived thoughts of being a martyr, The Shorthorn reported Tuesday. You can be deported for what you think, even if you never do a single thing wrong.

Also in today's Shorthorn there was an article reporting on a memo we all got on Wednesday telling us what to do if the FBI comes calling looking for information.

If they come without a court order, we don't have to say anything. We can defer all responsibility to the campus. But with a court order, not only do we have to provide whatever information is asked, we are forbidden to say anything to anyone else ... we can't tell anyone what they were asking about, we can't even tell anyone that the FBI was there. Not a friend, not a family member, not a workplace supervisor. Presumably, not even our own attorney.

Boy, if that doesn't encourage someone to keep a low profile, I don't know what does.

Hmmm... so ... if an FBI agent comes with a warrant and asks me questions ... and then later a different agent comes asking me questions about the time when the first agent talked to me ... heh.

But the point is, where does it stop? How many steps does it take for it all to have gone too far, and we find ourselves living in a country under unsupportable conditions?

Is this why reality shows are so popular, when they're barely reality? Is it because real reality is getting too freaky?

Points of view ...

Three of the people I work with:

one girl, I know when she hears music, it's not what I hear. I can't confidently put into words what it is, since I can't hear it, but I'm thinking it's a type of multidimensionality that she can hear. Maybe it's not uncommon. Or maybe it's normal among musicians. I don't know. But it's out of my experience.

another girl, she's got to see color, shape, and visual composition differently from me. What it is, I can't say for sure, but it's the only explanation I can come up with for why our reactions to the visual are so different between her and me.

and then there's the guy who makes magic with color, image, layout and visual design, and he's color blind. I believe that "most people" would think that someone who's color blind isn't supposed to be able to put colors together effectively. There's more to it than memorizing a color wheel, after all.

We get access to a point of view, and because we have a reason to believe it, trust it, accept it as valid, we then say it's true. How do we know that the reasons to trust, believe, and accept are themselves trustworthy? When we later get access to a different point of view, with its own reasons to believe, trust and accept as valid, how do we decide which to "vote" for?

A guy from UTA is being deported. It's reported that he confessed to once considering becoming a suicide bomber, however the deportation seems to be based on his student immigration status.

Yet his friends wonder about the confession:

"We don't know why he said that -- we know it's not true," said Khan, a permanent resident from Pakistan who lives one apartment down from Aletewi and considers him a roommate. "He abhorred the idea of suicide bombing. It is a complete mystery to us."

But they do have a theory: After a week of interrogation and jail, Aletewi made up a confession to speed his return to Jordan.

"We think maybe he decided to just get out," Hussain said.

and also from The Shorthorn article:

A Dallas representative of the American Civil Liberties Union said interrogations of Middle Eastern students became routine after Sept. 11, 2001.

"There are people from specific countries whom they question all the time," said Michael Linz, an ACLU cooperating attorney. "You hear anecdotes all the time about law enforcement telling people things would be easier if they just admitted to this or that, and off they go."

Points of view: .... he's a nascient terrorist .... he's a guy who discusses political philosophies, mentally explores alternative pathways, but who rejected the option of taking a path of violence .... he just wanted some peace and said what they wanted to hear ...

We can't know which of those is "real" ... were his friends deluded about his political beliefs? did he really represent a threat to anyone's safety? does the deportation of a person in this way "succeed" in that it promotes fear, distrust, and the suppression of individuals' discussion of political or philosophical topics?

Is my co-worker imagining multidimensionality that isn't there in the music she hears? Or am I just unable to hear the truth?

Unforseen consequences

unforeseen consequences --

once I said 'yes' when I should've said 'no'. Although 'yes' wasn't the right answer then, if I'd said 'no' I wouldn't be living a dream now -- I know that's true -- I'm sure an alternate chain of events wouldn't have led to where I am

once I said 'no' when i should have said 'yes'. At that time and place and point in life 'yes' likely would have been disastrous, but because I said 'no', I closed a door that can't be reopened, the path that led from that door is now unexplorable, and a different dream is unavailable for living

why can't roads be clear so you can see the landscape, where you're going, what's ahead. It's a defect of perception, us not being able to do that

and all this (overly ?) philosophical (crap ?) is because I'm afraid a war's going to start in 3 weeks or so

Bush likes to say this is Saddam's last chance.

maybe it's *our* last chance to find an alternative to destruction

if we say 'yes', will we wish we'd said 'no'?
if we say 'no', will we find we should have said 'yes'?

... experimenting ....

ok ... the template for this page's look, one of the choices of pre-made templates at blogger.com, is called "Sandbox at Night". I hope you like the look -- I do. Besides, "Sandbox at Night" is a pretty fitting concept for a place like this