searching for the ineffable
Dear brain,
This note is to remind you that when there is any suspicion of a possible ulcer,* getting a cup of coffee with your bagel is a really stupid idea. Deciding to keep drinking it when it makes you feel crap, however, breaks the idiot meter altogether. Please stop.
Cordially,
-YOUR OWN INSIDES OF WHICH YOU ONLY GET ONE SET
*went to the doctor yesterday. hopefully will find out what the hell is wrong with me early next week.
Harper’s has published “Bluebirds over Baghdad” – a great, short read that puts our current villainy there in some perspective.
This sort of news doesn’t usually make it out to the general public; it stays in the crowd to which it pertains, people just don’t tend to hear about it unless they’re actively searching. If you’re an unconnected party, especially if you’re an academic, please spread the word.
On August 20th, a 90-strong SWAT team raided an electronic music event – a rave – that was legitimately taking place an hour’s drive from Salt Lake City in Utah. They brutally beat people, pointed guns at their foreheads, drew Tasers. They proudly announced having confiscated many drugs, their largest drug “bust” being the stash of stuff that contracted security had confiscated from partygoers. There was at least one helicopter. There were dogs, and at least one person is claimed to have been attacked by a police dog.
Drug Policy Alliance article: According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Utah County detectives wanted to “get their point across that such activity was not welcome in their area”… Since when are police officially sanctioned to do anything but uphold the law?
Another article by the Daily Herald in Provo:
Recently released documents show Utah County Sheriff Jim Tracy made plans to break up an August party in Spanish Fork Canyon days before he had officers raid the event.
The pages of documents, including police reports and memos from officers involved to co-workers and the sheriff’s office, indicated Tracy knew about the party as early as Aug. 18, two days before it happened, and contacted other law enforcement agencies for assistance in shutting down the event.
Several days after the raid, the Daily Herald sent a request to Utah County under the state Government Records Access Management Act for any documents relating to tactical planning received or sent by the Utah County Sheriff’s Office. Chris Yannelli, an attorney in the Utah County Attorney’s Office, told the newspaper at the time the documents didn’t exist.
But those documents do exist…
Utah County Departmental News release about the rave bust: “A 17 year old female from West Jordan, found by officers, had overdosed on ecstasy. She was treated and released to her parents.”
Another report stated that the young woman was “close to overdosing on Ecstasy”, whatever that means. Which Ecstasy? MDMA? GHB, sometimes referred to as “liquid ecstasy” and with markedly different effects? an unknown substance? Let’s assume MDMA, the most common. What are the symptoms of “overdosing” – hell, what are the effects considered to be within normal range for people taking a drug? What are the negative effects? Was she hospitalized? (No.) Her pulse was said to have been 176; hell, if she was on “Ecstasy” and saw SWAT all around her, I can see how she’d have an elevated heart rate. That last link above reports palpitations nowhere near as high as the report stated. We’re talking a difference of 85-100 beats per minute.
Salon has a great article on this, here. It’s free if you watch a short ad. They do present both sides of the story.
The ACLU got involved in a suit against the sherriff: a federal judge asked to prevent future raids on electronic music events. The ruling was in the sherriff’s favor.
Finally, here’s a two-minute video (.mov viewable with Quicktime, 15.76MB) shot by an attendee (I’ve put it on my own site just in case it ever gets taken off elsewhere). The police claim there was no brutality.
I’ve received an unexpected gift from a stranger. It totally floored me.
It began innocently, with a blog comment. Joe, you see, wrote this post about the Moscow Cats Theatre performances going on right now in New York.
Omigod, Kuklachev and his cats!!1! I grew up watching them on television. The clown’s art has a special place in Russian hearts: the circus still comes to town, indeed lives permanently in most major cities, and clowns are a huge part of that. The skits are generally mimed, or nearly; it’s all physical comedy, but not all of it is slapstick. They make you think, they tug on your heart strings.
I’m getting all nostalgic here. If you want to know more about Russian clowns, this article in The Moscow Times is a pretty good start.
Anyway, so I react to this effect in a comment to Joe’s post. Go see them if you can!, I wrote, I’d sure be there in a heartbeat if I had the money.
A couple of days later, a letter arrives from Charlottesville. I’m all confused; I was just recently in Charlottesville for the digital tools summit, and don’t remember meeting someone by the name on the return-address stamp. I open it, and out comes a color printout of the poster for the show and another one with the Ticketmaster blurb. And money to cover a ticket.
Well, holy shit.
Ethan and I were so excited about the prospect of going (we can swing another ticket, and no way I was gonna see this without showing him a part of my childhood) that we talked some of my family into going with us. So at the end of December, when my mom flies into New York for New Year’s with my brother-and-family and us, we’ll all be going. The two of us, and my brother, and my sister-in-law, and my nephew (who is going to LOVE this), and my mom, for whom this is possibly more nostalgic than it is for me.
Thank you, Joe. You’ve brought me back some beautiful memories from the old country.
current mood: pretty damn thankful
Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web, by Daniel Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig, is out. The online version is free; there is a print version as well, and links to online stores selling it are on the site referenced above.
I’ve only read a couple of chapters, but already it’s one of my favorite recent books. The language is measured and easy to follow. The site itself looks great, and the color scheme is well chosen. I’m no expert in historical web resources, but this looks like a great collection of fundamentals, most of which are bound to apply to other fields in the humanities. If you want a slightly disciplinary perspective on humanities computing, read this.
She died yesterday. She was 92.
Thank you for your courage and lack of sensationalism. Long live your memory; may it remind us what’s really important.
All I have for a company is a URL. The whois information on the domain name gives me a company name. They’ve registered the domain through Domains By Proxy in Arizona, and their info is mostly private, although the domain server names are different from both the company name and DBP and so may help. I want to find out whether they’re legit, and whether they might have anything to do with (drumroll) SPAMMERS. Is there any publically available information that might help me with this?
Heh. I think I’ve finally gotten so fed up with the misinformed propagandistic drug-war polemic that I’m becoming a self-appointed spokesperson for correct information. [Article is not mine; two of the many comments are.]
Not that I’ll get it right every time. But, damn. When academics stop thinking and start implicitly equating a glass of wine with alcoholism, it’s a sad scene.
Although this isn’t new: just this morning E. and I were talking about scientific nomenclature. So much of it is legacy code, based on incorrect assumptions. As just one example based on Ethan’s current coursework, different algae are often grouped together by being named the same thing. Another example is “inorganic carbon,” another name for carbon dioxide, most of which is – well – organic. The thing is, even when we realize our mistake the language stays the same. For HUNDREDS OF YEARS. This is actively damaging, because we end up teaching and learning incorrect information, and then have to unlearn it, which is very difficult to do. Language defines and constantly mediates our world for us, and so learning why our naming practices are incorrect requires reorganizing a world view.
Sometimes I get sad. Or SAD. Wellbutrin helped last season, and I’m counting on it this season too, but just now…
it’s bedtime.
Things will be better tomorrow.
It’s odd to be this detached from myself, and to feel okay about being sad. Maybe today’s first meeting of a dissertation-writing support group had something to do with it.
right. bedtime.
E: “….Wow. OK, I don’t know why I thought I needed to talk to God just now, but now that I have I’m going to bed.”
V: *dies laughing* “Can I post this?”
