I like this take from wired news (via boingboing)- I even understood despite not writing any code for 6 years:
It occurs to me now that the whole 94-page bill really amounts to a common, one-character programming error.
if (person = terrorist) {
punish_severely();
} else {
exit(-1);
}
I believe a link to this comment is in order.
You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! Damn you all to hell!
It's not PNH - some commenter. PNH just pulled it up from a thread.
7 -- "some commenter" is Avram Grumer, whose current top post is just great.
I suspect I'm a bad person for thinking several times over the last few days some variant of "chill out, folks- it's all gonna be okay," particularly when I first read this poem. The comfort of naivete, I suppose. The death of John Ford upset me more.
8: I remember both those scenes. That's such an awesome book.
Sperm, sperm, sperm! I thought the book was all about dry boring whale stuff and Ahab monomania. Looks like it might be a good read.
Also via Grumer's site: I missed this Onion article first time around and am glad I did not continue to miss it.
For everyone who keeps telling me it's all gonna be okay: care to give me an estimate for when this law will be repealed? Two years? Four years? Ten?
You can't go back home, Stras, you can only move forward -- think of it as evolution, a new era in America, a new day for the Constitution.
I thought the book was all about dry boring whale stuff and Ahab monomania.
What do you think you get when you bore into a whale?
Moby Dick is a very difficult audiobook, especially if your attention span seems to get shorter every year.
#4 stole my comment! Damn you all to hell for stealing my inappropriate giggle reaction.
w00t! Praise from Mr. McManus -- my day is complete.
For everyone who keeps telling me it's all gonna be okay:
Oy. It's not going to be ok. It's not going to be ok because the Republic has been crumbling for decades. There is no party of the Constitution. Everyone vies to overturn existing precendent to get something important done. The price gets paid later.
The latest insult to (amoungst other things) rule of law, is just that: the latest insult.
care to give me an estimate for when this law will be repealed? Two years? Four years? Ten?
It'll collapse of it's own weight. There's a perfectly reasonable bill in there for dealing with 'unlawful enemy combatants' (in NewSpeak 'terrorists', in the real world partisans/insurgents/guerillas) properly, in line with treaty, will bowing to the authority of the Supreme Court. Then they slapped some idiot provisions in there to provide cover for what they actually want to do: treat every Iraqi or Afghani offering armed resistance as a terrorist, AND to collect a percentage of them and torture them. Also, get themselves off the hook for anything they've done in the last five years and make another frivilous attempt to bury the issue permanantly (the jurisdiction strip). If the jurisdiction strip holds up, you have a problem; if it doesn't the entire incoherent jury-rigged mess will collapse. Seriously: they embedded the treaty they are not adhering to in the law itself.
Meanwhile, in the real world, the US has racked up a hundred thousand kills in a country we invaded for no discernable real purpose other than simple power-hunger and ego-aggrandizement (I'm not talking just about the loon in the WH) and we're set (meaning we WILL attack) to invade another country for more or less the same non-reasons and kill another 100k while systematically destroying the American army in the process, all while losing to Osama bin Laden and the Pakistanis.
Well done there!
1> Things have been bad for some time. 2> They're going to continue to get worse over the long term, regardless of this particular bill. 3> Having demonstrated their lack of moral conviction by declining to filibuster the bill in question in exchange for a bag of nothing, the D's leadership also demonstrated that in addition to being basically amoral, spineless worms, that they have the tactical sense of overripe grapefruit by voting against the bill when they had already handed victory to the other side.
Therefore 4> things are going to get a LOT worse. You have nothing to worry in the immediate future however, unless you're Ogged.
max
['Fin de Siecle decadence came late this century.']