December 8, 2007

Paddington Bear ARRESTED

Prime Minister Brown is set to take on illegal immigration in the U.K. and has served notice by going after one of the most loved and well-known illegal immigrants in the U.K. - Paddington Bear.

"It's an outrage!" claimed Paddington from his home West London after his initial release pending further investigation. "I was a mere cub and was forced onto the boat by my auntie. I knew nothing of immigration papers or applications."

However, a neighbor in Notting Hill recalls a gleeful young Paddington bragging about beating the system. "He was constantly laughing at me and telling me to call the Border and Immigration Agency but that it would do no good. He said he knew someone on the inside and that I was simply a cranky curry to be tossed in the bin and thought of no more."

"I may be from darkest Peru," the angry bear stated early in the day from his holding cell, "but I know this is just a ploy to boost his polls. I don't understand why the government must persecute me in this way."

The Home Office had this to say: "We are taking a robust approach to tracking down people who have no right to be here and removing them from the UK."

However, Mr. Bear's family and friends claim this is all a dark plot to paint Mr. Bear as a terrorist. "We just don't understand why the government would make these claims! Certainly his fur is a sand tan colour, but he is Peruvian, not Middle Eastern. This is racial profiling at its absolute lowest form - because it's not even based on facts, just the appearance of a different ethnicity."

Long-time friend and companion, Pooh Bear of 100 Acre Woods, declared he overheard two bobbies claiming Paddington Bear quite obviously fit the profile of a suicide bearer. "I mean, indeed!" exclaimed Mr. Pooh Bear. "Everyone is quite well aware that the phrase is suicide bomber, not bearer. This is simply gross bearism in its most heinous form."

Mr. Bear has resided at 32 Windsor Gardens, Notting Hill, west London since his arrival in the U.K. some fifty years ago.

BBC article regarding the arrest here.

Posted by Red Monkey at 9:59 AM | Comments (5) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | People Say I Have ADHD, But I Think - Hey Look, A Chicken | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble

November 10, 2007

Geeked Redux

I love Apple. I do. But they have really pulled a Micro$loth this time.

I finally got everything backed up, wiped the hard drive and did a clean install of Leopard. I am seriously contemplating going back to Tiger.

Firefox is acting squirrely: it won't download; it crashes the program. If I do a restore session after the crash, some of the tabs will not reload, giving a Server not found error, even though the page had been loaded earlier.

Thunderbird is still not working right. Messages with an attachment will not open; if I do try to open the message, it crashes the program. I've re-installed. Same issues. Made a new profile. No joy.

YIM and AIM are both problematic. AIM is completely doa. YIM works for a while and then will quit unexpectedly.

I've flitted around the Apple discussion boards and the Mozilla boards and found no joy so far. However, it does seem that the issue might be something that Apple apparently "added" at the last minute. Besides the usual "permissions" for various folders and files in an Apple machine, there are now also ACLs (access control lists). Apparently there are conflicts and they're not easy for the computer novice to untangle. In fact, I'm not really sure that I want to try to tackle this issue myself.

My guess at the moment is this: there's a file or directory that Thunderbird requires for attachments whose ACL is set to something it shouldn't be. Why do I think this? Because when the issue first began, I noticed that the Library directory had a permission which was set to Read Only. I reset the entire directory to Read/Write permissions. It worked for a while, then it locked back down. Fixed it again. Worked for a while. Now the permissions appear to be set correctly, but the issue is still there. Unfortunately, I have no idea what file or directory might have a conflicting ACL from what Thunderbird thinks it should be.

So, until someone creates a third part app to help us manage the ACLs (so we don't have to delve into the command line) or until Apple fixes the mess they made at the last minute, I guess I'm just going to limp along until I get so ticked off, I re-install Tiger. Hopefully there will be a fix before that.

Apple? Ya listening? Here's a big hint. No matter how much we might wish a new operating system might come out sooner ... please, please, please ... we'd much rather deal with it coming late than it shipping before it's truly tested and done. I mean, you guys know better. You're not Microsloth. Sheesh.

Oh, and my opinion of Leopard minus the issues? Dunno. I'm still fighting it too damn much to notice what the changes have been. I haven't fired up any of the new apps like Time Machine or Spaces.

Posted by Red Monkey at 9:37 PM | Comments (2) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Stumble

November 9, 2007

Geek Alert

*sigh*

So, I thought I had the computer straightened out. Was waiting for Super Duper to be upgraded for Leopard, and was gonna run a bootable backup, delete the hard drive and then get everything all settled again.

Thunderbird started acting goofy again. Checked the permissions ... they'd reset. Grr. That's what I get for running a "repair permissions" utility. So, I reset the permissions, Thunderbird worked again. For about four hours.

I decide to get out my new USB Snowball mic from Blue and see how it works. I'm not gonna get into podcasting, but I have been thinking of performing one of my short stories and putting it out there. Hmm, it's a plug and play mic. Plug it in ... suddenly flurry of "this extension and that one aren't properly installed." The sound drivers are, apparently, fried.

Frustrated and ticked off, I said, screw it. I'll just back up everything I can on the new 500 gb backup drive. Plug it in.

Flurry of similar messages. No firewire capability either.

So, now I am truly in computer hell. I have the older laptop hooked up to the new one via firewire. Starting the old one in "firewire target mode" works fine since that really bypasses the screwed up OS.

But I only have the one firewire port on this old machine. So that means I'm hooking up to the nifty backup harddrive by USB 2.0. Shit. Slower than hell.

So, I now have 2 17" laptops on my drawing table, wires everywhere, the backup hard drive. Oh, and the extra power cord for the old laptop? That has to be plugged in exactly right or it won't register. It is actually taped down in one spot to help keep it from jiggling around too much.

It took about 6 hours to back up the Applications directory. It has taken over 15 hours so far to backup the Users directory and I still have about an hour to go on that folder. I still have the Library and the System Folder to go.

And, ultimately, this is what I get for loading some "haxies" on my machine. This is not a typical Mac kind of upgrade problem. However, I had APE loaded on my machine ... and then had promptly forgotten about it. APE "hacks" into the core systems of the computer ... and there was a new version out. I didn't know. Didn't pay attention. (Bad computer user, BAD!) Apparently, this old version of APE causes the upgrade to Leopard to misfire, which has caused the bulk of my problems.

*sigh*

So, once everything looks to be upgraded, I'm going to wipe the drive and then do a "clean install" of Leopard. Then slowly move all the pieces back over. At least by then I'll be able to move the second laptop back into the "server room" and get the printer hooked back up.

What a mess. And all for two reasons:
1) I did not keep all my software updated
2) I did not have a good, solid, bootable backup

Bad, bad computer user. The sad thing is, I know better. And I'm lucky. I kept my old laptop to use as a server, so I had something of a backup plan going. And I do know how to pull files off of an apparently "dead" computer without wiping down the hard drive and starting over again. I'm lucky. I'm sure there are plenty of Mac users out there who are pulling their hair out trying to figure out what to do. I know there are, I've been to the discussion boards at Apple.

And here's the deal about that. Most of us Apple users have become too complacent. Apple upgrades work. Apple hardware rarely fails. We're used to small company software and shareware because so many of the "big boys" haven't wanted to develop for the Mac. And we're used to these "hobbyists" being at least as professional as the second tier software makers for PeeCees. We're used to automatic updates.

The Mac market is getting larger now. More machines means more hardware failures ... that's a fact of our manufacturing and capitalist life. Apple delayed the Leopard release some this year, but apparently not quite long enough. (And hey, it's still a damn sight better than that Vista crap.) Apple has warned us for years to be careful hacking around in the system ... that things could change that would make the machine behave erratically. And, as the Mac market continues to grow, we're going to get more viruses as well ... and spyware ... we've been incredibly lucky so far.

We've got to stop being so darn complacent and remember that if we really want to continue relying on these machines ... we need to be more vigilant and protect our data actively.

*sigh*

Another 53 minutes is the latest estimate on that Users directory. At least I'm getting caught up on my reading.

Posted by Red Monkey at 10:45 AM | Comments (0) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Stumble

November 6, 2007

Politically Correct

Oh, how most of us just dread that phrase, including me. It's become an epithet of everything that's wrong with Western society ... with people too frightened, too cowed, too weak to call a spade a spade. (I was in college before I understood that the previous phrase was not really talking about shovels and then I was horrified ....)

The way most of us now use the phrase "politically correct" came about in the 1970s. At that time, it was used to begin a movement to use neutral language with regard to sex (the he/she issue). But it goes beyond that original s/he issue and has truly attempted to move into neutral language. And here is where complexity meets intentions and confuses the whole damn mess.

An attempt to use neutral language is an attempt to be polite, to consider the feelings of other people. It is not an attempt - or it shouldn't be - to dilute experience and identity. It is not an attempt to emasculate anyone. It is not an attempt to do away with "plain speech."

And yet, over its evolution, it has often become those things by misguided people eager to right every wrong and react to every word in a far too sympathetic way.

Wikipedia discusses the word "deaf," for example. Often described as "deaf and dumb" - an obvious value-negative phrase - doubtless some well-meaning group decided that "hearing-impaired" was a better term. But like many do-gooders, they forgot to ask those within that group what they thought of each label. As it turned out, the deaf preferred that word and were offended by "hearing impaired."

Does it really matter if I call someone who can't hear me "deaf" or "hearing-impaired"?
Does it really matter if I call the latino kid down the street a "wetback" or "hispanic" or "latino"?

If I walk into a job interview and say something about the "spics" down the street, am I likely to get the job?

There is a time and a place for all kinds of language. We humans have, through centuries of development, found ways of communicating with different groups of people. We speak differently with our grandmothers than with our best friends. We do not necessarily speak any less truthfully with Grandma than with Tim, but we do not use the same word choices.

Using value-neutral language is the same concept. When we are with people we do not know, we revert to a more value-neutral language than that which we might use with close friends.

Another example:
homosexual, gay, gay woman, lesbian, dyke, queer, lesbo, friend of Sappho, fag, faggot, fairy, queen

In the company of people I don't know, if someone who loved a person of the same sex became a topic of discussion, I would assume that most people would default to a more value-neutral word. They would probably use one of the first four phrases to talk about this individual. Our society has, by general consensus, declared those terms as the least negatively charged phrases to describe someone who loves a person of the same sex.

However, whilst I was in high school in the mid to late eighties, I heard news report after news report with the phrase "crazed lesbian." "Today, a crazed lesbian broke into Sharon Gless' home." The two words seemed to always be paired together. For me, "lesbian" became a very value-negative word. As I went to college, I met a fair number of people in the field of writing and rhetoric. They were all about the power of words and the taking back the power of words as symbols. Thus, I heard the word "dyke" used in a very positive manner. Because of this set of experiences, my personal "value-neutral" phrase for a woman who is homosexual is not homosexual, is not lesbian. Either the word gay or dyke seems the most value-neutral to me.

Do I correct the random person on the street for saying "lesbian"? No! Not at all! I know that for the largest segment of the population, that word is fairly value-neutral. (Or as neutral as the topic itself can be.) I might grit my teeth a little because the word annoys me, but that's it. The random person on the street using the term "lesbian" is usually attempting to be either friendly or non-judgmental.

Among friends, I will use the word dyke. Not with all of my friends, just those who are relatively like-minded.

Why? Why do we put ourselves through these gyrations of multiple words all meaning the same thing? Why are we afraid to call a spade a spade?

It's about respect.

As a word comes into our common vocabulary with a new definition (gay, for example), it also begins growing its own history. With that history comes emotional ties. I respect someone I do not know enough to want to choose a value-neutral word in regard to them. I don't wish to upset someone I don't even know just by a sloppy choice of word. Of course, given the varied experiences of every human, it's impossible that I will always choose the correct term. But I try to make the effort and I try to listen and adapt my vocabulary when the language, once again, shifts.

For me, choosing one term over another has nothing to do with being "politically" correct. It has to do with being polite, with being empathetic, with being cognizant that our words can hurt.

Consider the shift from Indian to Native American. The people already indigenous to North America were called Indians because the whites thought they'd landed in India ... the term Indian, therefore, was grossly wrong and reflected a heritage completely different. And, while it might not be as fun for kids to say they're playing Cowboys and Native Americans ... it would be, in my opinion, even better if the kids said they were playing Cowboys and Comanches instead.

You see, I think that even referring to all the indigenous people as Native Americans is a disservice. There are at least 335 recognized "tribes" in the U.S. alone, many of them sharing few similarities. Those 335 can be subdivided into bands which don't necessarily have a lot in common. I would rather talk about the Navajo or the Acoma Pueblo than talk so generally about such a diverse group.

And absolutely ALL of this mess goes back to our biological and psychological imperative to categorize. As humans we are creatures of patterns. We look for the patterns in life, events, people and we attempt to box them. We know, intellectually, that people fit into multiple boxes, and yet it's easier to categorize Catholics one way, Jehovah's Witnesses another. To categorize latinos one way and whites another.

But I am more than any of the boxes one might stick me in.
The English teacher in me cringes at the dangling preposition in that previous sentence. The writer in me knows that this more colloquial way of speak-writing finds a larger audience.

To my mind, attempting to use a value-neutral term is to respect and acknowledge that while we are discussing a generalization (people born in Latin America), we are not necessarily putting someone in a derogatory box. We are attempting to acknowledge that we are all more than just one box.

And people ask me why I hate About Me boxes ....

Posted by Red Monkey at 1:06 AM | Comments (2) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Stumble

October 13, 2007

Serenity: Oh God, Oh God, We're All Going to Die

Martin Lee Anderson was sent to a boot camp for juvenile offenders at the age of 14. The first day there, he threw a fit at the exercises, like most 14 year olds faced with what looks to them like pointless indoctrination. He wanted to stop, he called it bullshit. Typical 14 year old rebellion. And, of course, you can't have that in a boot camp. You have to have fast discipline. So, the guards jumped the kid and "forced him" to continue the exercises. They held him down, they put him in take-down, they applied pressure points ... and I gotta say, I'm not sure how those things are forcing the boy to continue exercising ... sounds pretty much like forcing him to be still, to me. Finally, they forced him to inhale ammonia.

During this process, the boy went "unresponsive" in official-ese.

The first autopsy declared that the boy had a previously-undiagnosed blood disease which the staff couldn't have known. And that this was the cause of death. Announced five weeks after the boy's death.

Video showed the boy being kicked and punched. And ammonia capsules being shoved up his nose.

The family screamed.

A second autopsy was called for, the dead boy exhumed to be examined again, this time by the coroner of the county as well as several other forensic pathologists and a New York State Police coroner as well. The results indicated that the boy did have the "trait" of the blood disorder (meaning it was pretty much a non-issue rather than an active disease). They also noted that despite the bruising, the boy was not beaten to death.

According to the press release by the state attorney, nearly 5 months after the boy's death:

Martin Anderson’s death was caused by suffocation due to actions of the guards at the boot camp. The suffocation was caused by manual occlusion of the mouth, in concert with forced inhalation of
ammonia fumes that caused spasm of the vocal cords resulting in internal blockage of the upper airway.

Governor Jeb Bush claimed he was disturbed by the findings and that he would ensure that justice was served.

Was Martin a bad kid who deserved to be beaten the first day at the camp?

According to the BBC, "The teenager had been sent to the camp for violating probation by trespassing at a school after he and his cousins were charged with stealing their grandmother's car from a church parking lot."

So, the eight various employees found themselves embroiled in a criminal suit.

Their defense? They used the procedures of the camp, designed to instill discipline. They claimed the boy was faking illness to get out of the exercises.

The response to Martin's death has been that all of the state's bootcamps are now closed. The head of the department of law enforcement stepped down.

The verdict has now come back after just 90 minutes of deliberation. Despite the fact that Governor Charlie Crist recommended the state pay $5million to the family, the jury has found the 8 defendants not guilty.

The all-white jury. Sitting in on the trial in which a 14 year old black boy was killed.

For whatever reason, I don't normally think of Florida as a part of "The South." Georgia is, of course, but for some reason, Florida is just kind of a separate entity, I suppose, in its own way like Texas is and Alaska and Hawaii.

When I look at an all white jury taking just 90 minutes to decide this case dealing with the death of a 14 year old black boy ... I have to re-think my gut reaction to not consider Florida a part of The South.

And I know better, really. I know that it doesn't matter what state we discuss. There are still numerous cases of racism around the United States, on a regular basis.

When Martin was killed, there had been ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY complaints of excessive force at the boot camp where he'd been killed.

After Martin's death, the use of ammonia capsules was banned. After Martin's death the use of violent measures such as punching and kicking the inmates of the camps was banned. Approximately four months after Martin's death, the boot camps were closed.

Was Martin Lee Anderson killed because he was a black boy?
Were the employees directly involved in his death acquitted because they were judged by a white jury?

I don't know.

I suspect these things are true. I suspect this because of my own experience. I fear that this is true and it hurts me.

Recently, a young man on BlogCatalog asked Do You Care About Racism?

And I had to respond, hell yes I care. I had to respond that I do think about this every day.

Do I care because of Martin Anderson? Yes, it's true that his story makes me care. It's true that the story of the Jena 6 makes me care.

But I also care about the issue of racism because of what I, personally, witness every day. Not in "The South." I witness it in northern Indiana. I watch as people cringe from the dark-skinned black man across the street.

I watch as people make fun of the Orthodox Jews who walk through our neighborhood on their way to shul.

I watch as people treat the latinos in town as less than human.

I watch, and I try to not stay silent. I try to NOT be the voyeur witnessing the pain of others.

And I get "that look" from my "fellow" whites. They are not happy with me, and I don't care.

For whatever reason, as a child, I knew that there was no difference between myself and "them mexicans." There was no difference between me and Jon Comb, who happened to be Jewish. There was no difference between me and Paula, the black girl who befriended me in junior high.

The only difference between "them" and "us" was circumstance. Colour did not enter into it. Other people's perceptions of us coloured who they thought we were. But it really didn't matter which of us was white, brown or black.

I mostly do not see colour, myself. I haven't seen colour since I was about seven.

Why can't everyone else? Why does it matter to ANYONE if someone is black, brown, yellow or white? What does it matter if they are Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, Hindu or Muslim?

Why must we keep sticking our noses into other peoples' private lives?

Do I care about racism?

I hurt knowing that people cannot celebrate differences but must instead rail about anyone different from themselves. So, yeah. I care. Not about the various colours of the people I know and don't know. I care that others are not colour blind. I care that people even fucking notice the difference between Jamaal and Chaim and John and Juan.

But what really haunts me?

What really haunts me this month of October ... this month of the dead ...
are the number of dead in the name of "I'm right and you're not" ... whether we're talking race or religion or just good old-fashioned us versus them.

Does this haunt you?

Posted by Red Monkey at 8:12 PM | Comments (7) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Struggles | Stumble

October 2, 2007

Quit Pulling My Leg

People will save anything. I should know. I'm a consummate pack rat myself. When I moved from Texas to Indiana, I broke down and got rid of a bunch of stuff. And I do mean stuff.

Eight big, black, bloated bags of umm. Well. I feel kinda sheepish explaining it to you. They were filled with cardboard and umm packing materials and bits of plastic and string and umm, nifty looking stuff.

Now, in my defense, I'm a crafty li'l bugger. I make things. Things like this toy. Or this wall desk. So while I hoard "stuff" ... I try to keep it down to stuff I will actually use. (And I took all eight of those bags of good stuff over to a friend's house ... he is also a consummate stuff-maker.)

But there is stuff that you keep and trade and even sell. And there is stuff that you simply don't mess with.

For example, this dude in North Carolina. He was in a plane crash back in 2004.

Well actually, let me start with the recent events instead.

Ya see, if you don't pay your bill at a storage facility, they sell your crap. You know, to make their money back and stuff. So, this bloke buys a decent little smoker and thinks, hey, I can have a barbecue this weekend. He gets his sales slip that says he owns the smoker and its contents.

Yeah, about that.

Mr Whisnant gets home (have you noticed his name? I tell you, you can not make this shit up ... he sounds like a pissant to me) and he opens up the smoker ... ready to fire it up. Luckily he looked inside first. (Is the suspense killing you yet?)

Inside the smoker is ...

really, you won't believe this one.

An amputated leg.

See, back in 2004, Mr Wood was in a plane crash and his leg was amputated. But he wanted to be buried "a whole man" (several religions require this, so it's not quite as odd as it might sound). So, of course, Mr Whisnant calls the cops, who determine that it was not removed by a serial leg collector or anything, and they toss it at a local funeral home so that Mr Wood can have his leg back. (Are you kidding me? I mean, really? His name is Mr Wood? There are sooooo many places you could go with that name. But I'll leave that to Happily Anonymous instead.)

Meanwhile, Mr Whisnant has been selling tickets to the nearby vaguely sentient creatures that somewhat pass for human in his locale. Tickets to what? To look at the inside of the freaking empty grill. The one that used to hold a human leg.

And, apparently, business in looking at an empty grill is just BOOMING in Maiden, North Carolina. I mean, really, what else is there to do there? Skip stones like Opie and Andy Griffith? So, Mr Whisnant asked the funeral home to give him the leg back. After all, it was found in his cooker and it ought to be his leg, right?

The funeral home refused. Mr Whisnant contacted Mr Wood and asked for, get this, shared custody. Why? Because he can charge more money for his tickets it being close to Halloween and all.

Mr Wood insists he doesn't really want to make any money off his leg.

Naturally, this has pissed off the intrepid Mr Whatsit, I mean, Mr Whisnant. He has a receipt, dammit. He paid for the thing! By gum and by golly, that's his leg now and he can dance around as the three-legged wonder man if he jolly well wants to. It's his god-given american RIGHT by virtue of the almighty dollar!

Yeah, he says if they don't give him his furry foot back ... sorry, that's a kid's halloween story, my bad ... if they don't give him Mr Wood's amputated leg back, he's gonna take 'em to court.

According to the BBC, he claims: "Everybody knows it's mine, period," he said. "And if anyone tries to take it, I want everything they got."

Now there's a real humanitarian for you.

I'm pretty sure you can't really buy and sell actual body parts. I think he maybe doesn't have a legal leg to stand on. I'm thinking he might just have to stand on his own two legs with this one.

Questions for the astute among you:
1) How badly does Mr Wood want to be buried a whole man if he forgot he left his leg in a smoker in a storage facility in North Carolina? (he lives in Greenville, South Carolina, now)
2) What does that leg look like after it was amputated THREE frigging years ago? Is it preserved in some way? Has it already been embalmed?
3) Despite the fact that I am a Southerner, I firmly believe that Mr Pissant must be a buck-toothed yokel from the sticks to really think he's gonna keep that leg. What do you think? Is this guy that one from the trailer park the media keeps "on tap" for every natural disaster which occurs in the South?

(I know, I know. I'm so going to hell for this post.)

Posted by Red Monkey at 3:12 PM | Comments (4) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Stumble