Not One Damn Dime

Proving that blogtopia (yes! skippy coined that phrase!) isn't always ahead of the curve, here's a meme that apparently has been going around in email for weeks. My partner Debbie says that she's come across it in email from three independent sources. The owner of this Web site says that he didn't originate it:

NOT ONE DAMN DIME DAY

Since our religious leaders will not speak out against the war in Iraq, since our political leaders don't have the moral courage to oppose it, Inauguration Day, Thursday, January 20th, 2005 is "Not One Damn Dime Day" in America.

On "Not One Damn Dime Day" those who oppose what is happening in our name in Iraq can speak up with a 24-hour national boycott of all forms of consumer spending.

During "Not One Damn Dime Day" please don't spend money, and don't use your credit card. Not one damn dime for gasoline. Not one damn dime for necessities or for impulse purchases. Nor toll/cab/bus or train ride money exchanges. Not one damn dime for anything for 24 hours.

On "Not One Damn Dime Day," please boycott Walmart, KMart and Target. Please don't go to the mall or the local convenience store. Please don't buy any fast food (or any groceries at all for that matter).

For 24 hours, please do what you can to shut the retail economy down. The object is simple. Remind the people in power that the war in Iraq is immoral and illegal; that they are responsible for starting it and that it is their responsibility to stop it.

"Not One Damn Dime Day" is to remind them, too, that they work for the people of the United States of America, not for the international corporations and K Street lobbyists who represent the corporations and funnel cash into American politics.

"Not One Damn Dime Day" is about supporting the troops. The politicians put the troops in harm's way. Now 1,200 brave young Americans and (some estimate) 100,000 Iraqis have died. The politicians owe our troops a plan -- a way to come home.

There's no rally to attend. No marching to do. No left or right wing agenda to rant about. On "Not One Damn Dime Day" you take action by doing nothing. You open your mouth by keeping your wallet closed.

For 24 hours, nothing gets spent, not one damn dime, to remind our religious leaders and our politicians of their moral responsibility to end the war in Iraq and give America back to the people.

Please share this as an email with as many people as possible, and please express your opinion at www.NotOneDamnDime.com .

Great Chips Have Little Chips....

Gambling Magazine reports that Shuffle Master has aquired patents for the use of RFID technology in casino chips, which would enable casino management using the technology to track betting and chip movement throughout the establishment:

"Say I sit down at a black jack table and I have a player's card. I place it and a $100 bill on the table. My card is swiped which places me at that table," explained [Shuffle Master CEO Paul] Meyer. (A player's card is another way for casinos to track frequent gamblers. They earn points on the card for free meals, or other rewards.)

Without RFID, "as I play over time, the only way the casino can estimate the kind of player I am, is by using pit boss estimates. That's a pretty rough estimate. That's where table tracking comes in. Every chip is associated with me and is tracked using a reader. Exactly what I'm betting and losing or winning is tracked automatically. Without tracking, they (casino) don't know what I'm betting." In other words, the reasoning behind RFID utilization is that the casino will know what every player is doing at every table.

"Say you move away from one table with $500 in chips. You now go to cash in those chips. Those RFID chips can be read at the cage and associated with you. In your moment of generosity, you give a cocktail waitress a $25 chip. When she cashes it in, we know how generous a tipper you are."

The article also mentions security applications, such as being able to know when a dealer has covertly palmed and pocketed a chip.

There's another "security" application that goes unmentioned: When you can track players wagers, wins, and losses on a bet-by-bet basis, you can see who wins and who loses over even comparitively short times. The winners will stand out. If a blackjack shoe were to have an optical reader that tracks every card dealt, the house could follow when the card count favored the dealer and when it favored the player. The bet-tracking would be able to correlate player betting patterns to deck quality. It would show that the "drunk" staggering around the casino floor, occasionally making a big bet at a table, was picking out the tables with favorable point counts, tipping management off to the activity of a card-counting team and helping to finger which players were on the team.

"Abdul Jalib" once wrote that he thought that casino managers could make more money by lessening the heat on individual card-counters, most of whom are amateurs and are prone to making expensive mistakes when they get the count wrong. This technology could make this possible while still protecting the casinos from the ravages of coordinated counting teams.

(via boingboing)

Calamity Brings Out Our True Nature

The enormity of the calamity in the Indian Ocean is beyond human comprehension. The death toll, as I write this, is now above 76,000 and counting. There is every reason to expect it to top 100,000 when all is said and done, and that's before whatever epidemics break out in the afflicted areas. To put that in perspective, the quake and tsunami was just about as deadly to humanity as a whole, proportionately speaking, as the 9/11 attacks were to Americans.

My mind can't encompass this much loss and grief. I can get a handle, though, on some of the imbecility and pig-headedness the disaster has exposed:

• Topping the charts of the most egregious news story that I've come across about the disaster is the Associated Press report that a Czech supermodel vacationing in Phuket survived the tsunami. Petra Nemcova was the cover girl for Sports Illustrated's 2003 Swimsuit issue. Does this somehow make her life worth thousands of others?

• As Josh Marshall put it, President's latest response to the tsunami tragedy: badmouth Bill Clinton. A report in the Washington Post quoted a White House aide who explained Bush's absence from the quorum of world leaders cutting short their holiday vacations to return to work in response to the crisis: "The president wanted to be fully briefed on our efforts. He didn't want to make a symbolic statement about 'We feel your pain.' " Another top White House official said, "Actions speak louder than words," a top Bush aide said, describing the president's view of his appropriate role. Bush's actions while the bodies are being buried in mass graves: to stay on his ranch, where he is clearing brush and going bicycling. Once again, Bush's reaction to crisis and calamity is to hide. I wonder if he used the opportunity of his seclusion to reread "The Pet Goat"?

• The otherwise-sensible Juan Cole sees the Indian Ocean quake and tsunami as a foreshadowing of rising sea levels due to global warming. This is about as silly as seeing a series of storms in Tornado Alley as a warning about a growing threat to nationwide highway safety. It is sufficiently silly, in fact, that Cole has found it necessary to rewrite this post a number of times to make it more and more clear that he knows there is no connection between the earthquake and global warming. Nevertheless, the size of the gaffe can only give ammunition to the little green facists who would like to see Cole silenced, or at least ignored.

Baaaaabyeldergods!

Especially for Stef Maruch: It's Hello Cthulhu!

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. – H. P. Lovecraft

(via Avedon Carol)

Republicans Are Thieves!

You thought those crybaby Democrats were exaggerating, but it's true: Republicans in Congress really are thieves! The Daily Kos has the story (filched from Roll Call, which requires a subscription):

The House Small Business Committee's chief economist was charged by Capitol Police with the attempted theft of a plasma television Thursday night.

According to a Capitol Police memorandum, officers apprehended the suspect, Thomas Loo, in the Rayburn House Office Building at approximately 10 p.m. Thursday after a Financial Services Committee staff member discovered Loo removing a plasma television from a room on the building's second floor.

According to Kos, Thomas Loo is a Republican staffer.

Sméagol Diagnosed

Diagnosing medical and mental conditions from literary descriptions has many years of tradition and precedent. Researchers in the Department of Mental Health Sciences at the Royal Free and University College Medical School, in London, have published a paper examining and diagnosing Sméagol, the hobbit whose lifespan was stretched unnaturally due to the effects of possessing the One Ring:

Gollum displays pervasive maladaptive behaviour that has been present since childhood with a persistent disease course. His odd interests and spiteful behaviour have led to difficulty in forming friendships and have caused distress to others. He fulfils seven of the nine criteria for schizoid personality disorder (ICD F60.1), and, if we must label Gollum's problems, we believe that this is the most likely diagnosis.

(via boingboing)

Joe Job

How could a person rise to the level of Vice President for Governmental Affairs of a Fortune 100 company without knowing about about Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the US federal law prohibiting discrimination by gender (among other things) in hiring?

My partner Debbie Notkin thinks that one simply can't. That's why she thinks that the email from Viacom VP Gail MacKinnon to Republican members of Congress announcing a lobbyist position open to men only is a Joe job – a forgery sent out by a malicious third party who is seeking to make MacKinnon and maybe Viacom look bad.

Why would MacKinnon want that junior lobbyist position to be male-only in the first place? One reason might be that she doesn't feel effective in taking congressmen to titty bars and that a male subordinate could do that part of the job better. But if that were to be the case, everyone knows how to hire a man for the job: you list the position, keeping your illegal hiring agenda to yourself, and simply pick a man from the top applicants. (You might want to include some of the top women candidates in the interviewing stage, simply to avoid the appearance of impropriety.)

It's illegal; everyone knows it's illegal; it's trivially easy to make an end run around the law; there's no need to draw unwanted attention to yourself or your company by openly flouting the law. Occam's Razor says the MacKinnon email is a Joe job.

No Gurls Aloud

From "In the Loop," Al Kamen's political gossip column in the Washington Post:

You Can Tell a Republican by His Stripes

Job Alert! There's an excellent job opportunity at media giant Viacom International Inc., which owns CBS among other things, judging from an e-mail we just got from Gail MacKinnon, Viacom vice president for government relations.

MacKinnon sent the note Tuesday to House Republican offices and to the offices of GOP Sens. John Ensign (Nev.), Gordon Smith (Ore.) and George Allen (Va.).

"Subject: Looking to fill a position in our office

"Importance: High We need to hire a junior lobbyist/PAC manager. Attached is a job description. Salary is $85-90K. Must be a male with Republican stripes.

"If you know of anyone who might be interested in interviewing for this position, would you please let me know? Thanks so much. Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday."

Unclear where the stripes are to be located.

I find myself wondering precisely why Viacom wants the person they hire for the job to be male. Is Grover Norquist's "K Street Strategy" now demanding that Republican members of Congress not deal with women lobbyists?

Just as a reminder: discrimination by sex in hiring is illegal. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is already demanding investigations by both Congress and the EEOC.

(via Josh Marshall)

"We Had to Destroy Marriage in Order to Save It"

Rorshach at No Capital found the following item on 365Gay.com:

(New Paltz, New York) The Social Security Administration is refusing to recognize any marriage – straight or gay – performed in New Paltz, New York.

The tiny hamlet north of Manhattan burst onto the national scene in February when its mayor followed San Francisco in allowing gays to marry. (story) New Paltz officials are now under a court imposed ban on conducting gay marriages, but the federal government is taking no chances.

A temporary directive from the Social Security Administration not to accept any marriage certificates issued in New Paltz as identification has now been made permanent.

The move came as a shock to one straight couple in the town. Susie Kilpatrick Wilkening recently married Jeremy Wilkening, but when she went to the Social Security office in Kingston, New York to get her surname changed to Wilkening she was told the federal government would not accept her marriage.

"I presented my marriage certificate, and I was told that it was not an acceptable form of ID because it was from New Paltz," she told the Daily Freeman newspaper.

A spokesperson for the administration said that the policy began with the State of New York.

"The state has said that it does not consider (any marriage certificates issued in New Paltz) legal documents, so we are waiting until all of the legal issues on the state level are resolved," Jane Zanca told the Freeman.

But, officials at the New York Department of State, which maintains all state records, also said they had nothing to do with the Social Security policy.

Last February when San Francisco began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples Social Security instructed its offices nationwide not to accept any marriage certificates from San Francisco as proof of identification. (story)

(via Holden, who is posting for skippy)

On the Fabrication from Clay and Subsequent Animation of Loyal Servants

Fafnir has conducted researches into a subject dear to the heart of all friends of magic:

For those of you playin at home here's how YOU can make a golem! First make a big thing outta clay an earth which is but a shadow of the true glory that is divine creation. Then write the hidden name of God on its forehead an pronounce the secret invocation:

I had a little golem, I made it out of clay
And when it's dried and ready, Prague armies it will slay.
Golem, golem, golem, I made you out of clay.
Golem, golem, golem, with golem I will play.

Fafnir has obviously modeled his method on the one laid out by Jacques Belasis in The Instructions. The other known version of the incantation was recorded by Walter de Chepe, who, disdaining violence in any form, put the second line as And when it's dried and ready, with golem I will play. It is recommended that beginners use de Chepe's spell, leaving Belasis' to magicians of greater experience and ability.

"Emperor Norton Bridge" Crosses First Hurdle

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a resolution by a vote of 8-2 to recommend to the California Department of Transportation and the state legislature that the San Francisco Bay Bridge be renamed in honor of Joshua Norton, a.k.a. Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico.

The move to rename the bridge has been promoted by cartoonist Phil Frank (who draws the local strip "Farley") and taken up by a committee of prominent San Francisco citizens.

"The resolution, if approved by Mayor Gavin Newsom," writes Chronicle staff writer Suzanne Herel, "next will travel to the Oakland City Council and on to the California Legislature."

Herel fudges the detail of precisely what is being renamed. According to the Web page of the SF Board of Supervisors, it is the "new additions to the San Francisco Bay Bridge," i.e. the controversial replacement of the eastern span that is currently under construction.

Norton I decreed in 1872 that the Bay Bridge be built, and the job was finally completed in 1936.

The Misuses of Fantasy

Henry at Crooked Timber points us to "The Uses of Fantasy," a review by Jennifer Howard of Susanna Clarke's novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell that appears in the December 2004/January 2005 issue of the Boston Review:

But aren’t the showier sorts of magic – magic that battles for the soul of the world – exactly what we need, now more than ever? “There are people in this world,” says one of the fairy gentleman’s human favorites, “whose lives are nothing but a burden to them. A black veil stands between them and the world. They are entirely alone. They are like shadows in the night, shut off from joy and love and all gentle human emotions, unable even to give comfort to each other. Their days are full of nothing but darkness, misery and solitude.”

This sounds very much like a description not of enchantment but of clinical depression. Throughout Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, wondrous if familiar conceits fight to break through the tangles of literary reference Clarke has planted, yet she cannot, or will not, free her story from its many progenitors. Clarke’s novel doesn’t parody the genre; it displays in a lifeless cabinet of wonders all its elements – every element, that is, but the epic sense of Good and Evil, of things larger than ourselves, that makes the best fantasy so powerful and so necessary.

If a writer of epic fantasy isn’t willing to trust her imagination and her story – is afraid to let it matter – can a salve for the troubles that afflict us still be found in books? There was a time when one could turn to fantasy, if not for escape, then for a working-out, a cathartic reimagining, of the world’s crises. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell takes epic fantasy down a road that leads away from large moral conflict and instead doubles back on itself and the reader. There is no help and no escape for any of us in a story that can’t escape its own bookishness.

Howard seems to believe that it is the the job of fantastic fiction to provide escape from the sorrows of the everyday world. I wonder whether her reaction to, say, Isak Dinesen would be to disparage her because her protagonists are not cut from the cloth of Allan Quatermain or Lord Greystoke, on the grounds that these are the sort heroes about whom readers of African adventures wish to read.

Are We Supposed to Believe Ahnold Didn't Inhale?

As the scandal machine continues to unfold the sordid spectacle of baseball players like Barry Bonds revealed to be drug steroid users, Maria Shriver has stepped forward in Bonds's defense:

California first lady Maria Shriver Tuesday defended San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds as "a father, a great baseball player and a great Californian'' and said parents -- not politicians -- might be the most effective influences on young athletes about the dangers of steroids.

Shriver said the news from the BALCO scandal had prompted her to talk with her children about the subject of steroid use, adding she didn't think that politicians, including her husband, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, can substitute for parents when it comes to helping young athletes avoid the dangers of steroids.

"I don't look to politicians to take the lead on that,'' she said. ...

Shriver said the story had become a breakfast table topic in her house – in part because her son goes to the same school as a daughter of Bonds.

"My son asked me about it because he's a big Barry Bonds fan" and felt badly for the baseball star's daughter, she said. "All his friends were talking about it ... and that's how it came up in our house.''

Shriver said she had told her son that compassion was in order, and "we can't forget that there's always a personal side to these things.''

Shriver should understand very well about the "personal side" of atheletes using steroids: Steroids are the foundation of her husband's career.

It's interesting that Shriver, not Schwarzenegger, did the dirty work of talking to the children about the dangers of steroid use. What's the matter, Ahnold? If you can't face awkward and embarassing questions from a basically sympathetic member of your family, why should anyone think you have what it takes to face the press?

Christmas Time Is Here, by Golly!

If you aren't dismayed by the mumblety-umpth rebroadcast of stop-motion reindeers cavorting to the music of Burl Ives, perhaps you should take a look at John Scalzi's The 10 Least Successful Holiday Specials of All Time:

Ayn Rand's A Selfish Christmas (1951)

In this hour-long radio drama, Santa struggles with the increasing demands of providing gifts for millions of spoiled, ungrateful brats across the world, until a single elf, in the engineering department of his workshop, convinces Santa to go on strike. The special ends with the entropic collapse of the civilization of takers and the spectacle of children trudging across the bitterly cold, dark tundra to offer Santa cash for his services, acknowledging at last that his genius makes the gifts – and therefore Christmas – possible. Prior to broadcast, Mutual Broadcast System executives raised objections to the radio play, noting that 56 minutes of the hour-long broadcast went to a philosophical manifesto by the elf and of the four remaining minutes, three went to a love scene between Santa and the cold, practical Mrs. Claus that was rendered into radio through the use of grunts and the shattering of several dozen whiskey tumblers. In later letters, Rand sneeringly described these executives as "anti-life."

(via RJ)