Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Politics and Foreign Policy
I continue to enjoy reading Richard N. Goodwin's excellent book "Remembering America: A Voice From the Sixties" and had a sudden inspiration while reading about how America backed and stumbled into the Vietnam war. Conventional wisdom is that America became involved in Vietnam as a result of the continuation of a foreign policy practiced steadily since the end of World War II, a foreign policy centered on resistance to communist expansion. Why was United States policy geared to focus on the expansion of communism rather than the spread of totalitarianism? On the surface, it may seem to be a small distinction, for many people the terms are synonyms. The truth is that communism can be anywhere on the spectrum between democratic and totalitarian, and while it is true that most of the world's attention on communist nations through 1965 was exclusively focused on totalitarian communist regimes, there have been a few examples of communism that are more democratic (mostly amongst Native Americans). A change of policy so that America would focus on resistance to totalitarianism would also prohibit the support of capitalist totalitarian regimes as a way of blocking the spread of totalitarianism. What I am getting at, is that the terms used to justify a policy matter, and by focusing American attention (in 1965) on communism, the U.S. government felt free to back the regimes in Saigon, despite the knowledge that those regimes were repressive and authoritarian. Is it possible that if the fight had been against the real problem, governments that did not represent the people, that the United States would never have gotten involved in Vietnam? Guatemala? The Philippines? Angola? Of course this ignores the business interests of certain companies who always profit from war and from exploitation of humans; but I remain convinced that they are a small group with well funded lobbies, but lobbies that are easy to shame with public opinion if one can pick the right terms. Imagine if Lyndon Johnson (or even Ike or Kennedy) had been able to frame a policy of non-involvement in Vietnam in terms of not supporting one authoritarian regime against another, rather than getting caught up in a reactionary resistance to expansion of communism? Might that same policy have kept Reagan out of Grenada in 1983? We'll probably never know for sure, but it sure makes an interesting idea. I have no problem with the foreign policy rhetoric that George W. Bush keeps pounding home again, and again: the attempt to spread democracy everywhere. The problem is that I trust neither him, nor his cronies, to actually carry out that lofty goal. They have shown no interest in actually improving the democracy we have right here in the United States (verified voting, anything better than pluralistic voting, really open debates, proportional representation), and they continue to back repressive and authoritarian dictatorships around the globe so long as it is good for business. Even if you help democracy in one country, it does not count in your favor if you have prevented it in other countries.
# posted by Scott Nolan @ 5:57 AM
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Sunday, November 27, 2005
Movies
This long Thanksgiving weekend has held both Erci and I house bound with colds, so we have been very domestic, cleaning, watching movies and shows off the Dishplayer, and catching up on kitty-play time with Bailey the cat and ferret chasing time with Leonardo. Spanglish good clean fun. I have been wanting to catch this for ages, and it finally came up on HBO and got captured on the Displayer for viewing. I normally do not like Adam Sandler, but he managed another decent role here, and Paz Vega is amazing as Flor. Brother Sun, Sister Moon looks to be beautiful, but our Netflix copy was scratched on arrival (that does not happen very often, only about three out of 60 discs so far), and it had to go back only partially viewed. It looks to be beautifully shot depiction of Francis of Assisi. though some of the costumes look a little anachronistic. Rome (the HBO and BBC series) is really shaping up to be awesome. The physical settings, clothing, and material goods are 95% spot on dead accurate, which is astonishing for a mainstream production. I guess having so many great living history groups in England is really helping producers get this stuff right finally. There are some occasionally glaring anachronisms, but they are few and far between (stirrups!?). The show is making a point of graphically portraying a society with social morals very different from our own, and I love that about it. There have been scenes with full frontal male nudity, and scenes were servants and slaves of the great magnates of Rome stand by ready to serve their masters while their master have passionate intercourse. The raunchier side of Rome is show perhaps a bit too much, but I think they may be catering to a demand from their audience. I confess I was slow to warm up to this series because I saw it as bumping Carnivale off the air (grrr!) - but I have to confess Rome probably has much wider appeal. 24 was playing all day on Friday, and it is quite riveting, I was getting hooked by the end of the day. I totally missed this when it was in it's first run, but wow the acting is great (though I saw several continuity and logic flaws that I'd probably have not noticed except for the all day marathon nature of my viewing them). Great stuff, I may have to find season two someday when I am home sick. Donnie Darko - WOW! I cannot believe I missed this in on screen or even in the first rental runs of the DVDs. My SciFi buddies who saw it let me down by not making me go see this awesome causal time loop adventure. Stunning, beautiful, and artistic the way Dark City is, but far more intellectually engaging. If you have not see it, go rent Donnie Darko now. If you liked Being John Malkovich or Memento or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, you will like Donnie Darko too. Thanks very much Katrina for raving about Donnie Darko, I would not have seen it but for your recommendation.
# posted by Scott Nolan @ 12:58 AM
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Saturday, November 26, 2005
Blogging
This is a first post with Dan Schimpf's MacJournal to see how it works as a blogging tool. In theory I can blog the same content to both bogger and livejournal from one source. Thanks to Dan Schimpf for writing this tool, and to Anthony Coco for pointing it out to me. One of the trick things for me is to get out of the habit of writing embedded HTML tags on the fly (too many years at this). One of the advantages to the web based tools (blogger, livejournal), is that no matter where you are, you can see all your posts and tweak the content. I people who use only one machine for all their blogging do not need this feature, but I bounce around between several machines, so I am not sure that MacJournal, or WordPress will suit my needs as well as the web based tools. Though this MacJournal is interesting as a electronic note taker too.
# posted by Scott Nolan @ 11:19 PM
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Web Site Design:Saady Khan has an informative post over at Spicing it up!!! :D - The Rain Machine that lists many ways you can update your own blog's template and design. Thanks Saady! I added an Atom stream/feed to my blog, and submitted it to the LeftyBlogs web log index hoping to see a little more traffic. I have to figure out how to automatically, or at least more easily, put content into my sidebar - modifying the template at blogger every time is a PITA (pain in the arse). I really like the book and music lists I see at tsuredzuregusa and Liberal Rage, and I need to figure out how to get the Search field into my design such that viewers can search my blog easily. Blogger offers a great NavBar with search, but I don't like what the NavBar does to my site's appearance, so I want it inside the sidebar of my blog.
# posted by Scott Nolan @ 4:43 PM
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Thursday, November 24, 2005
Pointless Fun:Saw a link to this on John Evans' blog, a web based map that generates a list of the places in the world, or in the country that you have been to so far...   Create your own visited country map if you like, interesting and fun, but quite misleading because it colors the whole state or country red, even if you've only been to one or two places in that state or country. For example, a brief stop in Anchorage is my only visit to Alaska, but the whole state is colored in red as if I'd travelled extensively throughout Alaska.
# posted by Scott Nolan @ 7:36 AM
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Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Politics:Folks, we have until April 14th, 2006 to file in the State of Virginia to be considered a candidate for U.S. Congress in the 2006 general election. So far, according to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, no one has filed (yet) to run against incumbent Republican Frank Wolf in the 10th district. Will someone please step forward? I am volunteering to work in your campaign. Seriously folks, the race over in the 11th district is already hot enough to have three candidates with campaign websites (at least, I did not spend long looking): There are even three challengers to Jo Ann Davis (incumbent Republican) over in the 1st district, though none have websites up yet: Shawn O'Donnell (challenging Democrat) Marvin Pixton III (challenging Independent Greens) Carl Stephen Wolfe II (challenging Democrat) So why have we no one challenging Mr Wolf in the 10th? He voted to cut veterans benefits. He's been in office since 1981, and is a member of the House Appropriations Committee. He steadfastly refuses to participate in the NPAT survey, and does not respond to letters from voting citizens in his district (me). At least his voting record is a matter of public record, and he cannot hide from that. Sources: www.politics1.comdccc.org
# posted by Scott Nolan @ 9:44 PM
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Monday, November 21, 2005
Computers:I know I am engaging in post-mortem equine floggery, but Rob Pegoraro over at the Washington Post agrees with what techies have been telling the computer shopping public for several years now: choose a Mac over a PC as your home computer. The nice thing about Mr Pegoraro's article, is that he's a much better writer than most of us techies, and he sums it all up very succinctly when he says it is no longer a case of "why should I buy a Mac over a Windows PC?" but that it is now a case of "why should I buy Windows at all since it is so insecure, so unstable, and after years of patches it remains insecure?" - Bravo. Mr. Pegararo also gets points for mentioning the Sony decision to include what is essentially a trojan horse rootkit on some of their new audio/music CDs, a format previously thought safe from viruses and malware - and true ISO 9660 Audio CDs are, but Sony/BMG/Epic/Columbia music CDs are no longer standards compliant.
# posted by Scott Nolan @ 6:43 AM
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Sunday, November 20, 2005
Dance:Erci and I spent yesterday and last night at the Fall Showcase and Medalist Ball put on by the Arthur Murray studio we've gone to since May of 1996. As usual, the event was very well run and the dancing was more beautiful than usual. Erci and I piled on the Tango routines for this event, she did Argentine Tango with her teacher, Dan Calle, and I did a Tango routine with her and did it again with our teacher, Lenora Shea. Erci's routine with Dan looked amazing, I am sometimes a wee bit jealous of their connection, which Dan jokes is his goal. I have not seen how we looked as a couple, but the our routine felt good to perform.
# posted by Scott Nolan @ 5:20 AM
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Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Consumer Rights:More fallout from the Sony/Columbia/Epic/BMG XCP rootkit exlpoit is detailed on Wired (first time I've read Wired in a while). Yikes, the after-effects of such a stupid corporate blunder, compounded by so many people running their MS Windows systems effectively wide open (no security to speak of), are turning out to be huge. Hopefully there is a very real cost from all this that is billed to First4Internet, Sony, and Microsoft. BoingBoing has a nice map of the spread of the infection here.  If you want to find out the impact to yourself, the EFF has a great quick page describing which CDs are infected. Basically only CDs made after March of 2005 have any chance, and apparently only a few of them.
# posted by Scott Nolan @ 3:08 PM
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Environment:Erci went ahead and ordered a Prius, she has details at In my Field of Paper Flowers. She chose red, which we expect to be a bit darker than the one in this picture:
# posted by Scott Nolan @ 3:03 PM
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Monday, November 14, 2005
Activism:So it is nearly a week since the election and I am still thrilled to have taken an active role in it. The hours of work, the challenge of doing things I never thought I'd like doing, and the pain in the wallet of political contributions are all worth it! In exchange you get to feel connected, you learn enormously, you have a little more faith in our strange American democracy, and you meet some of the most amazing people. You certainly are not left at home or work furiously clicking the refresh/reload button on your browser trying to get the latest campaign updates (because you are already in a precinct helping count the votes). I recommend highly that everyone get involved! As part of my goal to stay involved, I went and checked out the Sunday Supper Club over in Fauquier County last night. They are a non-partisan group of socially aware and active people concerned about their region. They have a pot-luck supper once a month in Warrenton (usually the 2nd Sunday). At this pot-luck supper, they usually have discussion about various activities, sometimes a guest speaker (they've had guests from all parties, and candidate announcements), and typically a movie or documentary is run with more discussion about that. Last night the group heard the announcement of Shawn O'Donnell (co-author of " Rebuilding The Democratic Party From The Grassroots") who is running for U.S. Congress in Virginia's 1st District. We also watched " Wal-mart - The High Cost of Low Price" (though Erci and I had to go home before it was over). It was a lot of fun, and lots of people shared their pet projects. We will be calling our congressman about the Department of Peace as a result of last night's meeting. Regardless of your political leanings, go out and get involved. Make a difference. Make your presence felt while you are still around.
# posted by Scott Nolan @ 9:31 AM
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Saturday, November 12, 2005
Site Design and Veteran's Day:I continue to wrack up a debt to my good friend Anthony who added more graphical elements and design suggestions for me. My niece, Christina, is now publishing poetry and blogging via blogger - she's doing it anonymously for the moment. It has been a really nice visit with my Mom, her beau Ralph, and the nieces visiting from Rome and Camden, New York. I spent veteran's day thinking of several veterans I have met, but mostly of Harvey Yuh, who was a supervisor of mine when I was stationed at Hickam AFB, Hawaii, packing parachutes for Harvey, who had been in some firefights in Vietnam and told me how terrifying it was. Thank you, Harvey, for revealing to my mind some of the true horrors of war.
# posted by Scott Nolan @ 8:12 PM
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Friday, November 11, 2005
Economics and Politics:Barry Ritholtz has a very interesting write up on why financial markets like coalition governments so much over at The Big Picture, it makes an interesting read if you are into relationships between capitol markets and politics.
# posted by Scott Nolan @ 4:30 PM
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Web Site Design:Decided to revise the blogger template for a prettier design taken from Point of Focus. I am curious what various readers think of it. I know - the comments stopped working ( update: they work on new posts, but not old ones), I have to figure out why. My good friend Anthony helped me out by drawing up some dragonflies to replace the default butterflies - because dragonflies are cool, and there are lots of them by our pool every summer. My Mom, her boyfriend, and two of my nieces are visiting from New York State this weekend and for Veteran's Day. It is going to be a hectic and fun-filled weekend. My the nieces have grown... they are lovely young ladies now, and it is harder and harder to call them by the pet nicknames I dubbed them when they were babies: Squishy-fish and Snuggle-bunch ( Silly-stinkpot and Cutie-pie are not visiting me at this time). I gather Ikea and the Container Store are on the list of pilgrimages this trip, as are some of the monuments in Washington because of Veteran's Day.
# posted by Scott Nolan @ 8:45 AM
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Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Politics:It has been a fabulous experience working so hard on the Bruce Roemmelt campaign for the past 6 months. My only regret is that I did not discover Bruce's candidacy earlier and work that much more. We got close, very close for a first time challenger running against a 13 year incumbent in a district that normally votes for the incumbent's party by a 25% margin. The State Board of Elections, with all precincts reporting is giving Delegate Bob Marshall by only 11.3% - so I am encouraged that we can beat him next time. Interestingly, in Loudon county, Roemmelt won by a narrow margin. I firmly believe that by working so hard in the districts that we lost, we helped put Tim Kaine over the top, and that is great news. Even more good news: several wing-nut idealogues have been beaten in other house races! I did the numbers reporting on the Sudley North precinct, where Democrats won all races handily with 554 ballots cast (one was provisional). The machines at both my district and Sudley North were those horrible touch screen machines with no paper trail (grrrrr), but aside from that the election officials were professional an honest and the election looked well run in the two districts I saw personally. Erci said there were lines outside the voting place in Claude Moore park. I knocked on about 140 doors today (election day) and put flyers on them trying to get people out to vote. That brings me to about 60 hours volunteering, $1300 donated to various campaigns, and one fund-raising/meet-the-candidate party hosted with Erci and help from Steve, Jeannie, and Kate (thanks guys!). If I start now, I can probably get hundreds of hours in trying to point out to voters of the mighty 13th district how silly their Delegate is now and how much we need to change. I am also going to fight to get any future debates televised, everyone who saw the debate between Marshall and Roemmelt agrees that Marshall is a wing-nut and Roemmelt is a decent man trying to work to reduce our problems. Easy choice.
# posted by Scott Nolan @ 11:14 PM
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Sunday, November 06, 2005
Entertainment: Last night Erci took me to see Cavalia which is playing for one more week next to Pentagon City Mall. It is a magical combination of horses (a lot of stallions), horsemanship, dressage, trapeze, gymnastics, tumbling, art, fantasy, and hauntingly beautiful music. It is perhaps not quite as impressive as many of the Cirque du Soleil shows I have seen, but in other ways, even more impressive. To get the focus and cooperation of so many fine horses is amazing. So where a Cirque show broadens my definition of humanity, this show broadens my understanding of how well humans can work with horses. If you like either Cirque style shows or horses, you should consider trying to get to your local showing of Cavalia.
# posted by Scott Nolan @ 7:56 AM
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Friday, November 04, 2005
Politics:Words cannot adequately display how disgusted I am with Virginia Delegates Bob Marshall and Dick Black. I just saw a commercial on Newschannel8 paid for by the Delegate Black campaign where he took credit for road improvements that he voted against. This is exactly the same pattern the Delegate Marshall campaign has taken; taking credit in his mailed flyers for road improvements he voted against! The sad truth is that both campaigns know that people are unlikely to look up their public legislature records, which make it clear exactly what this pair of cretins have been working on, and it certainly is not improving our roads nor public safety. Please look for yourselves: Marshall's LegislationBlack's LegislationThomas Frank writes it so eloquently in his book "What's the Matter with Kansas?" when he writes: American conservatism depends for its continued dominance and even for its very existence on people never making certain mental connections about the world, connections that until recently were treated as obvious or self-evident everywhere on the planet. For example, the connection between mass culture, most of which conservatives hate, and lassez-faire capitolism, which they adore without reservation. Or between the small towns they profess to love and the market forces that are slowly grinding those small towns back into the red-state dust -- which forces they praise in the most exalted terms.
Pages later, from the same source: Kansas is ready to lead us singing into the apocalypse. It invites us all to join in, to lay doen our lives so that others might cash out at the top; to renouce forever our middle-American prosperity in pursuit of a crimson fantasy of middle-American righteousness.
On the surface it appears that this all has nothing to do with the local battle between Marshall/Black/Craddock (with their neo-conservative supporters) and Roemmelt/Poisson (with most rational and aware voters); but it is exactly that same sort of self-righteous blindness that brought neo-cons to power in Kansas that we are seeing here in Virginia. My hope is that the difference is that Virginia, with it's proximity to other, more advanced public forums (like West Virginia, Maryland, and Washington DC) will be reminded of those connections that the rest of the world holds as self-evident: that Black and Marshall get elected every two years based on their anti-abortion stands, and that every term in office they fleece middle-class Virginians of more and more of those same things we all love (slow, managed growth; local small businesses; communities that care about their members).
# posted by Scott Nolan @ 7:17 AM
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