Month: November 2003

I missed this

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date November 25, 2003

When I started reading references to the FBI and its new spying tactics, I assumed it had to do with the FBI spying on protestors against the Iraq war. I didn’t realize there was a second story, this one about the FBI’s expanion of powers through NSLs, or national security letters.

Seems the government not only wants to know about us when we protest, it also wants to know about us when we breath.

Here’s a solution to the St. Louis crime problem – if we can get half the city residents to attend an anti-Bush rally, we’d generate enough interest to probably result in a whole lot of FBI people being assigned here. Since we assume that they would actually act on a real crime, rather than just imagined ones, they should help cut the crime rate here. If nothing else, all those suits hanging around wearing dark glasses and peering into windows should make for an interesting time, and it can get kinda dull sometimes in the winter here.

See, my mama always told me to make the bad stuff work for you.

Healthcare

Being healthy or rich

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date November 25, 2003

Being an independent today is not too viable an option, primarily because of corporate malfeasance, but also, indirectly, because the government in this country doesn’t support it.

For instance, most companies won’t hire an self-employed person because of the infamous IRS Twenty Question bias, which basically boils down companies forcing people who should be employees into being contractors so that you don’t have to pay benefits, but then the contractors don’t pay their tax and the government gets stiffed. The government invented the Twenty Questions to be able to go after the companies when this happens.

The side effect of this is that a lot of companies won’t touch independents, and you have to incorporate. Believe me, who has incorporated in not one but four states, that’s not a great option, either.

If you do get gigs, a new corporate ploy lately, called the Wal-Mart gambit is to basically not pay your contractors. You hold on to the money and you hold and you hold and you hold, because the longer you have it, the more interest you get. Smaller sub-contractors don’t have the resources to force a payment, and most don’t want to antagonize the bigger company. Years ago, there used to be a level of trust between businesses and their sub-contractors, but no longer. In today’s corporate world, all that matters is bottom line. Quarterly profits, and bonuses to chief executives.

Jeneane is facing this with a company, most likely a major, well known company, not paying her in a prompt manner. Of course, she’s independent now because she way laid off from her company, so she didn’t have years to accumulate the funds to tide her over through the ‘corporate asshole’ payment system.

To add fear to the uncertainty, though, she also found out her COBRA payments are being increased to $1300.00 for coverage for her, her husband, and her daughter. That’s 1300.00 a month. Not a lot of people in this country can pay $1300.00 a month for insurance. But not a lot of people can afford to take the risk not to have the insurance.

You see, it’s a catch 22 situation – the laws and the business climate in this country force people into becoming employees, at about the same time that companies are fudging their profits by using contractors, or offshorting their work. No matter which way you turn here, well, you’re fucked.

Of course, Congress, outside of some Democrats, care little about this, as demonstrated by passing the only major medical initiative the President would tolerate – a Medicare ‘reform’ bill that basically gives subsidies to HMOs for people that can afford to subscribe. Doesn’t help Jeneane though. Doesn’t help the millions in this country who don’t have insurance, or have to pay rates they can’t afford.

I, myself, just came home from the oral surgeon today with not good news, not good news at all, and I have some dental insurance. I go to the doctor this afternoon because my foot I injured earlier this year, when I didn’t have medical insurance to get it checked, has lost feeling in some of the toes, and one is starting to turn a not very good color and to look a bit odd. But at least I now have medical insurance. As long as I keep paying that $203.00 a month, I can afford to get sick.

Today comes the good news that the economy is just blistering, it’s doing so well. Now this could be that the economy is doing better, and this is good. Or it could be because companies are making a profit using their lessons learned from Wal-Mart; while unemployment is driven lower because less people are being counted because their unemployment insurance has run out.

Or there are people like Jeneane, who took a chance to go independent when she was laid off – only to feel her heart in her throat everytime the postal worker delivers the mail, because she has to pay a $1300.00 health insurance bill, and she can’t get paid for her work.

Burningbird

No worries

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date November 25, 2003

I rarely get the poetry writing bug, preferring to expose others’ excellent work when I do my poetry-photography pairs. I loved the pic, though, and couldn’t find a poem to fit it for the life of me.

(Well, that’s really an excuse – everyone is a poet wanting to show their friends their bits of verse. It’s just that, thankfully, most people don’t have weblogs.)

Of course, when he reads the poem, Joe may regret his school’s efforts into bringing poetry to the computer scientists and engineers at his college.

Other news: In addition to closing down the Practical RDF weblog, I will also be closing down the Semantic Web for Poets weblog. I think that the act of writing about the semantic web is really the act of writing about everyday uses of everyday technology, so I’m adding other sites in its place, including a MySQL/SQL for Poets. Besides, I find myself falling between the cracks of the Great Debates around here – not glowing enough about the twitchy bits for the Semantic Web folks; not condemning enough about the overall concept for the “Keep Your Meaning out of Our Web” folks.

(Should make more than a few of the techies around here quite glad – I think they were beginning to view me in a manner similar to how the butterfly viewed that bee in the last story. )

update

I originally wasn’t going to point out this post, because what could one say, but I did think the condemnation of the RDF supporters in regards to the Atom effort was a bit tactless, considering how much work the RDF supporters (such as Danny Ayers and Ken MacLeod) put into maintaining the ATOM wiki, as well as helping with the other non-RDF bits of the effort. I guess that grace in code is valued in some circles more than grace in behavior.

All the rest of the Wayward webloggers have been moved, and aside from finding that some files transferred as zero bytes, we’re all cooking now. Including Loren who has Been Doin’ a Litl Read’n:

Did I tell ya I’d been wanderingm doin a little read’n? Read’n ain’t always a good thing. Ups and gives ya ideas. Me and Tom Joad gots ideas.

Don’t be telling no Ashcroft and his assholes I nos how to read. Don’t wanna be on nobody’s LIST.

I need to finish my clean up and move, but I’m not much in a mood for it. Maybe tomorrow.

Diversity

Use the board, Luke

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date November 24, 2003

What’s the best way to get a man to fall over? It isn’t by hitting them with a board, and hoping you have enough strength and they have enough vulnerability to fall over. It’s by finding the board that they’re leaning against, and then pulling it away.

I wrote that in a comment to the “Beating Swastikas into Nose Rings” post, and it forms a good introduction to this one. What I was saying, in effect, is that you if you want to get people to change, you have to bring about change using language they can understand and accept – not batter at them repeatedly with concepts both confusing and threatening.

To use ‘Nazi’ to describe Bush’s use of media today will not cause Middle America to suddenly come awake and decide that Bush’s actions are a threat to our way of life. There is too much baggage associated with this word for it to be used effectively, as either comparison or possibility of threat. Tommy Franks introduction to the possibility of the Constitution being discarded and martial law being put into effect based on terrorist actions does far more for invoking the appropriate concerns and responses than a thousand uses of ‘Nazi’ and ten thousand uses of ‘Fascist’.

(Some would say my battering the bandwidth with continued exhortations about inequality of women will not lead to change among those that dominate our immediate environment – primarily white middle-aged (over) educated men. I would agree, but frankly, I’m not trying to get these men to change; I’m just trying to sour the milk for the ‘boys only’ milk-and-cookie fests. I’ll leave it to others to use the girly-girly approach to get these men to change.)

That’s why I so admire David Brooks recent op-ed at the New York Times. Brooks writes:

The conservative course is not to banish gay people from making such commitments. It is to expect that they make such commitments. We shouldn’t just allow gay marriage. We should insist on gay marriage. We should regard it as scandalous that two people could claim to love each other and not want to sanctify their love with marriage and fidelity.

The most pugnacious opposition to same-sex marriage in this country will come from the Fundamentalists, the Christians who have a deep and abiding belief in their faith, and, unfortunately, an equally deep and abiding set of rules to govern how we all should act. They have already started their campaign with claims that homosexual marriage will be the destruction of home and family, and the door to promiscuity and sin.

Brooks, who understands these people’s language, has couched this issue in terms they can not only understand but accept: that gay marriage, rather than leading to promiscuity will enforce a standard set of behaviors as regards sexuality on all people in this country – straight or gay. He’s found the board on which the fundamentalists have based their battle, and pulled it away before there war was even begun. Absolutely brilliant.

Every gay woman or man in this country, and every straight woman and man in this country who believes in equality regardless of sexual orientation should send this man roses. Instead, at least within weblogging, we’re treated to an exhibition of virility that, if pooled into liquid form, could scent every tree between me and China.

Glenn Reynolds and others respond to Brooks’ statement:

Anybody who has several sexual partners in a year is committing spiritual suicide. He or she is ripping the veil from all that is private and delicate in oneself, and pulverizing it in an assembly line of selfish sensations.

Reynolds responds with:

Actually, I had quite a few years like that before I was married, and I consider it a good thing, though I’m quite happy to be married now and wouldn’t have wanted to live that way forever. (But I think that one reason that I’m happily married now is that I did live that way for quite a while first). But I agree with David Brooks that gay marriage is a good thing, and actually strengthens traditional values rather than harming them.

What Reynolds said, paraphrasing him is, I agree with Brooks, but I don’t want you all to think I don’t like sex. I like it. I like it a lot.

Later, when he’d received several emails condemning his free-spirited ways, Reynolds wrote:

Yeah. But my point was that to arrive at what is, in fact, the kind of marriage that Brooks describes (except perhaps for the “I am you” angle, which seems a bit creepy to me), I had to pass through the kind of conduct he deplores. Only I think that I couldn’t have the one without the other. I’m deeply suspicious, frankly, of people who assume that all sex outside marriage is somehow depraved or corrupt or instrumental. Perhaps they are projecting, or perhaps they are just ignorant. It certainly seems to me – as I indicate above – that sex is to some on the right what violence is to some on the left: something seen as so dangerous, and so powerful, that if it is not kept entirely in check, it is sure to go completely out of control. I regard both kinds of thinking as misguided.

From there, the issue then became a matter of ’sex’ rather than equality, with Stephen Green (VodkaPundit) writing:

But some people don’t like sex. Or at least they don’t like it when unapproved couples are doing it in unapproved ways at unapproved times under unapproved auspices. Those are the folks who sent the InstaPundit a “surprising amount of hatemail” over the weekend.

Glenn always struck me as the kind of blogger who wouldn’t get a whole lot of hatemail —reasoned, calm, and often sympathetic on hotbutton issues. Yet a simple admission that ‘ gasp! ‘ he enjoyed his not-asexual single days gets his inbox filled with angry letters. And I’m not going out on a limb here, guessing that those angry people probably agree with the good professor on a lot of things. Just not about sex.

Lest you think this is a boy’s only milk-and-cookie fest, Reynolds also referenced Beth Green who wrote:

Sex is the greatest thing ever. Trust me, facing a year without Nerdstar around sucks beyond imagination, missing out on our sex life is a big part of why. I spent a few years celibate by choice – being so not by choice is the worst.

This was not about sex. Not really. This was about communicating for change using the tokens of language the intended target will understand. Brooks didn’t tailor his op-ed to the stud muffins among the warbloggers – he was trying to reach out to those most opposed to gay marriage, using a shared form of communication. For once I must agree with Andrew Sullivan when he writes about Brooks, He leaves me awed..

Brooks’ also wrote:

When liberals argue for gay marriage, they make it sound like a really good employee benefits plan. Or they frame it as a civil rights issue, like extending the right to vote.

He’s right on again – many in this country who are for gay marriage, or against Bush’s re-election for that matter, tend to use our terms and concepts in attempts to communicate our fears and worries to those unlike ourselves. We use ‘Hitler’ in comparison with Bush to reflect each man’s use of fear to obtain and keep power; and ‘Nazi’ in comparison with the Bush Administration to reflect the manipulation of media to control viewpoints of events. No matter whether we are just expressing our viewpoint (elegantly), or trying to invoke in others our own fears, the use of these ‘loaded’ terms works effectively, and consistently, only with those most likely to share the same internalization of these terms. Outside of this sphere of common understanding, the opposite reaction can, and does, occur.

I read the essays written by both sides of the fence and am struck again and again how many skilled pro-Bush journalists use terms and scenarios that would be identifiable by the so-called masses, with appropriate hooks to same. I compare this with their anti-Bush compatriots who tend to use recitation of the same facts, over and over, speaking with such intense ernestness about the evil of Bush that they are literally left puzzled and frustrated when people don’t immediately respond with, “Of course. You’re right.”

(For a demonstration of the conservative journalistic ability to adapt brilliantly, like ideological chameleons, see Sam Schulman’s Gay Marriage – And Marriage.)

But before I end this, I did want to assure one and all that, yes, I like sex, too. A lot.

(Thanks to wKen for the -Pundit links.)

Just Shelley Photography

Vertigo

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date November 23, 2003

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Today was cold but clear and I had to get out of the house or implode. Exploring around at the Missouri State Parks site I discovered a park not far from my home that I hadn’t been to before — Castlewood State Park. It was only 20 minutes away, 30 if I obeyed the speed limit, and it promised wonderful views of the Meramec.

During the drive I thought about this last week, and it seemed as if it was a tough week, or at least, it felt like a tough week. Do you know that feeling you get when it’s Saturday and you wake up feeling emotionally evaporated? I felt that way yesterday, and it was only Friday. I needed a walk, but not on paved roads and elegant little paths — I wanted to push myself to the limit.

(Of course, my current limit isn’t much beyond elegant little paths these days. But I wanted to find a new limit.)

After parking at Castlewood, I found the trailhead and looked up the hill and knew I’d found what I was seeking.

About half way up, tired from both the sudden steep climb and trying to keep footing on dead leaves layered over loose shale and wettish clay, I stopped by the side of the road to see if I was truly having a heart attack, or if I just needed a breather. However, instead of standing there panting my life away, I fooled around with my camera, taking pictures of other hikers and trail bikers. “See”, my actions told the people passing by. “I’m not standing here because I’m out of shape and any second I’m going to keel over in exhaustion. I’m a photographer, taking photos. And my face is always this red.”

I never knew how handy it was to have a camera with you until I used it for a prop during my uphill breaks today. However, if I had carried my full photographic gear instead of just my little digital, I’d be dead now and you’d all be fussing with your blogrolls, removing my link.

There’s time to think on a hike like this and my thoughts soon turned to the topic most on my mind lately, my impulsiveness and my temper — my passion, as the kind would call it. Yes, I also thought about weblogging, and the people I’ve met weblogging, too; both friends and foes, though at times, I’m not sure which is which. I thought about the discussion this week here and over at Misbehaving, by Gina and others, and how the topic was on being woman and invisible but the conversation ended up focusing on ‘look at me’ men.

We are too easily baited, too easily derailed, no, I am too easily derailed, slipping on these discussions as easily as I slipped on the rocks today. A mistake we/I make is to be defensive about our/my writing. If we believe what we write, we let it stand on its own — we don’t have to justify it, we don’t have to defend it, we don’t even have to debate it unless it gives us satisfaction and enriches the conversation. When we respond to criticism with ‘I meant to say…’, and it’s not true because we really did say what we wanted to say, then we’ve lost the high ground. No matter how outrageous or provoking the writing, the only one who can truly prove it false is the writer.

On the other hand, though, sometimes the high moral ground is lonely, and you think to yourself, “Pick your battles”, because it would be good to have others there fighting with you. The risk with this is that at some point you may find you’re no longer the one doing the picking and your high moral ground is reduced to a pebble in the ground that wouldn’t trip even the ungainly such as myself. What a conflict: we want to speak what we perceive is ‘the truth’, but we want to please. Rarely do the two go hand in hand.

These were the thoughts on my mind as I pushed my way uphill, cheeks billowing like a blowfish, forcing thoughts out between great gulps of air. When I reached the top I had to push all these thoughts aside and focus on the trail. It led along a bluff 250 feet above the river floor, and though the leaves were gone and the ground dry, the rocks were numerous and I had to watch my footing because there was little room for error. Particularly since this trail was literally at the bluff’s edge at times, and I suffer from vertigo.

Remember those scenes in that great Hitchcock movie, “Vertigo”, when Jimmy Stewart would be overcome with his fear of heights? That spinning that would kind of make you feel sick? Unlike Jimmy, my vertigo isn’t crippling, though I cannot for the life of me walk to the edge of a cliff. I can and will walk along a bluff, but I have to push myself just to go out onto an outcropping.

When I reached my first outcropping and saw the view, I had to take some pics. I found a tree to lean against because when I would look through the viewfinder, I would get dizzy and start to lean forward, and slip about. But this bluff was just the first of many; there was one outcropping after another, each with a view better than the one before, and I found that my vertigo actually got a bit less with each occurrence. I started out leaning against a tree, but towards the end of the trip, I could actually push myself out to within a couple of feet of the edge and look down at a passing train below and snap one quick shot, feeling enormously pleased with myself.

(Before grasping behind me for something secure to hold on to because I was frozen to the spot, and ended up grabbing this poor little twig in the dirt and almost mauling it out of the ground just to get back on to the path.)

The wind was gusting today, at times, and at the top, looking down at river below and feeling the sun and experiencing the beauty, I’m glad I did push myself to hike today, though my foot is paying for it tonight. Every time you push yourself beyond your edge, you’ve created a new edge, and how can you not feel good about that?

I left my hike for later in the day, as I usually do, and there were few people about when I stood at my last bluff and watched the sun starting to set. I hiked alone and though sometimes I wish I had someone to turn to and say, “Isn’t it marvelous”, I’ll still hike, though I may choose different paths.

I write as I hike, alone, and not always looking for the easiest path, or the one most comfortable and secure. When I am finished though — walk or words — I feel good, though this is a poor word to use to describe the experience. I also feel lonely at times, too, like today while still feeling the glow from going that close to the edge, but wishing I had a hand to hold on to instead of that poor little twig.

Same with my writing — I wish with all my heart that I could write of lightsome things and beautiful dreams and could find my way into all your minds and hearts and pull your secret words out and publish them here so that you’ll all universally love me. Then my words would never have to sit here on this page, alone. Perhaps, like my hikes, what I need is to find a different path.

It is close to the end of this story, and the end of my hike. I was near the end of the bluff and tired, very tired. A rule of hiking is always go hard going up, easy coming down. What this means is to climb up the toughest part of the trail, because you have better balance and you use your stronger muscles when you walk uphill. You want to save the easiest part of a trail for descent, because descent isn’t much more than a controlled fall.

I wasn’t sure what I’d find to take me down hill at the end of the bluff, but I was fairly sure it would be the easier walk because of the location of the trail head where I started. And I was right, and pleasantly surprised to find a set of wooden steps zigzagging all the way down to the bottom. Best of all, I could use the guardrails on the sides of steps and use my arms to bear some of the weight because at this point I was limping rather distinctly.

The guardrails were worn smooth after years of helping other walkers climb up or down, and at the end was a tunnel under the tracks to the path along the river. When I got to the bottom, I met a party of mothers and daughters out for a walk who obviously were not familiar with the path and had started from the opposite direction. As they were about to start climbing the steps I called out asking if they were familiar with the path, but they didn’t hear me, chatting among themselves. I thought to warn them of what lay ahead, but sometimes people just have to find these things out themselves.

Besides, they had hands to hold at the top if they got tired.