Bush and History

How many academic careers--history, political science, sociology, etc., do you suppose will be built on studying the George W. Bush administration and the responses, attitudes and thoughts of the American people?

Watching Us

Update: The ACLU, of which I used to be fond, continues to be pretty useless in all matters except those involving eliminating Christmas displays and protecting Larry Craig's right to have sex in a public bathroom. (And I don't fully disagree with the ACLU on these points.) But really. I wrote an email a couple of weeks ago after receiving yet another donation request. I outlined my issues with this DHS plan. Got an email back this week bragging about everything the ACLU has done recently; not a word of direct response to this question. Not one single word.

This pisses me off. I'm in the Department of Homeland Security database because I adopted a kid overseas 11 years ago? Bullshit. Don't I get a say in this? Who has access? To get cleared for a foreign adoption, potential adoptive parents have to have their prints checked by the FBI--it used to be it was done at the local police station and turned over to the FBI, though apparently that's not allowed anymore. Why would anyone want to keep this information? And why wouldn't anyone be told?
I used to get stopped ALL THE TIME, well before Sept.11 when I went through airport security--someone always had to poke around in my bags, though I never got an explanation other than a BS claim that it was completely random (though when I protested finally one day at JFK Airport, I was told no, it really wasn't random, that I must be on some sort of list, though no one could tell me why. And of course, if it happened all the time, it was no longer random.
Anyway, this is becoming a creepy surveilled country we're living in.

From the Washington Post:
The DHS already has a database of millions of sets of fingerprints, which includes records collected from U.S. and foreign travelers stopped at borders for criminal violations, from U.S. citizens adopting children overseas, and from visa applicants abroad. There could be multiple records of one person's prints.

And this--your employer can decide whether the information should be stored?!!!! And then the FBI will rat you out?:

The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law.

12 Days of Christmas and Lots More

But They Know All About Britney

On the Upbeat

Clap on the upbeat, folks. Not the downbeat. It isn't a march. Years ago, a black friend mentioned that white people always got this clapping thing wrong. She was right--most of the time, we do!
Right way.



Wrong way.

Body English

Can't nobody speak this language? Which sort of reminds me of a great t-shirt I got at a Native American Journalists Association convention several years ago, depicting a long line of Pilgrims awaiting a food handout, offered up by natives, with the caption, "World's Oldest Welfare Society."

Kill Me Now.

Things Other People Have Accomplished by Your Age

Ew.

Older white women join Kenya's sex tourists
Jeremy Clarke
Reuters North American News Service
MOMBASA, Kenya, Nov 26 (Reuters) - Bethan, 56, lives in southern England on the same street as best friend Allie, 64.

They are on their first holiday to Kenya, a country they say is "just full of big young boys who like us older girls".

Hard figures are difficult to come by, but local people on the coast estimate that as many as one in five single women visiting from rich countries are in search of sex.

Allie and Bethan -- who both declined to give their full names -- said they planned to spend a whole month touring Kenya's palm-fringed beaches. They would do well to avoid the country's tourism officials.

"It's not evil," said Jake Grieves-Cook, chairman of the Kenya Tourist Board, when asked about the practise of older rich women travelling for sex with young Kenyan men.

"But it's certainly something we frown upon."

Trouble at the NRO

The National Review Online, which went after The New Republic, accusing it of printing fake reports from a soldier in Iraq, has run into its own problems with veracity.
Thomas B. Edsall, formerly of The Washington Post and now of the Huffington Post, writes:

There is a growing dispute over the veracity of reporting from Lebanon by former Marine W. Thomas Smith, Jr. who is posting reports on his blog, The Tank, published by the conservative website, National Review Online (NRO). Smith is a supporter of the war in Iraq, and is affiliated with two politically conservative organizations, the Counterterrorism Research Center and the Family Security Foundation. He is the executive editor of World Defense Review, and the co-author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Intelligent Design.

At question are two reports filed by Smith on The Tank -- reports which appear to be designed to bolster support for the ongoing presence of U.S troops in the Mideast.

Did They Really Do This?

This should give a whole bunch of cable commentators something to kick around.

Writer's speech 'too Christian' for carol service
By Jonathan Petre
London Telegraph
The Royal Commonwealth Society is at the centre of an embarrassing row after it barred a well-known Roman Catholic commentator from attacking intolerance towards Christians at its annual carol service.

Cristina Odone, the former deputy editor of the New Statesman, was to be one of the "celebrity readers" at the service in St Martin in the Fields church in central London next month, which is attended by diplomats and politicians.

advertisementBut she has pulled out of the event, accusing the society of demonstrating exactly the kind of intolerance she had planned to criticise.

"I am incandescent," she said. "I was told that the words I had written were not appropriate because the congregation would include people of little or no faith who presumably would be upset. Even more insultingly, I was asked instead to read a passage from Bertrand Russell, a militant atheist."

Ms Odone was invited three months ago to take part in the service alongside George Alagiah, the broadcaster, Gareth Thomas, the Government minister, and Don McKinnon, the Commonwealth Secretary General.

As an experienced writer and broadcaster on religion, she was asked to write a short piece on the theme of "opportunities for all" that could be "political and controversial".

She developed the theme of secular intolerance towards believers of all faiths, from the British Airways worker suspended for wearing a cross to the Muslim schoolgirl banned from wearing the veil.

"When it comes to expressing their faith, this country's believers have found that opportunities are blocked," Ms Odone wrote.

"Whether it is the boss at work or the head at school, the local authority or the chattering classes, people of faith know that their worldview is under siege, and their allegiances under suspicion.

"To parade this allegiance by wearing a cross, a cap or a veil is red rag to the secularist bull. What little opportunity believers have to bear witness to their faith is being quashed. If you are black or gay or female, your plea for equal opportunity is met with respect, and your campaign is applauded by supporters. But not if you are a believer. In a culture increasingly hostile to God and his followers, expressions of faith have become taboo. The only opportunity we have is for silence."

Who Needs Privacy?

Privacy? on Facebook? Nah.


About your purchases.

From the Wall Street Journal

Facebook's Tracking of User Activity
Riles Privacy Advocates, Members
By VAUHINI VARA
November 21, 2007; Page D8

Some users of the Facebook Inc. Web site have been startled by a new feature that tracks their activity outside of the site and shows it to their friends -- renewing questions about the privacy implications of a growing practice of exploiting personal information in online advertising.

The social-networking service earlier this month began posting updates about users' activities on Web sites outside of Facebook and on commercial pages within Facebook -- in some cases, alongside ads from the companies behind those Web sites or pages. Facebook is posting users' photos alongside certain advertisements, another feature that has alarmed some privacy advocates and users.

Why Blogging Matters