California Recognizes Gay Marriage

The California Supreme Court today ruled that domestic partnerships were the "separate but unequal" counterparts to straight marriage. Naturally, every foam-flecked pit bull conservative has worked himself into a lather over this non-issue.

Link: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080516/ap_on_re_us/gay_marriage

I suggest that the sanctimonious turn their sights on fixing that horrid, demonic institution known as dysfunctional straight marriage. I don't think that God is smiling on a 50% divorce rate, often caused by the "divinely-appointed" husband "head of the Biblical family" being caught with a prostitute, male or female.

With the way the GOP has been running the country into bankruptcy, gay marriage ranks dead freaking last on the list of threats to national security.
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DC Bookstores Tools of Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy

From Sadly, No we have proof that the right wing in America has completely run out of ideas:

K-Lo is in Washington, DC, and apparently has nothing better to do than cruise the bookstores in Georgetown to ferret out evidence of a conspiracy of liberal book clerks to misfile books in order to demean conservative icons:

Barack Obama's autobiography makes the "African-American" section in the Barnes Noble on M Street in Georgetown. Clarence Thomas's autobiography does not. Wonder how that decision was made.

Sometimes these people are so full of manufactured outrage that it's a wonder that they can find time to breathe. And when book clerks become the object of one's outrage, well, the next thing you know, that same person will be screaming at a "barista" in Starbucks for making the cappuccinos too liberal.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SadlyNo/~3/279349459/9352.html

I take my steaks red (rare) and my ice cream blue (cold). Yet magically I just get on with my life.

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How Baseball Can Teach Faith

Being a Nats fan this year is certainly trying. After charging out of the gate at 3-0 the team lost an abysmal 12 of their last 13. "First in war, first in peace. Last in the National League East" is no longer a humorous catchphrase.

In the AL I am also a perennial basement-dweller fan. The Kansas City Royals have a nice cozy stadium and loyal fans, ever hopeful. So far this season they are posting respectable numbers, led by young guns Ross Gload, Billy Butler, and Alex Gordon, a former Husker National Collegiate Player of the Year.

Rooting for the underdog is a very Christian position. The question for me is Who Would Jesus Play For? The Yankees are the high priests and Boston has recently entered that elite. Oakland's sabremetrics is too much like the legalistic Pharisees. Jesus could be a Royal. He would bat cleanup. He would be the man who hits the game winner walkoff in the bottom of the 9th with 2 outs.

Miss Chatter's musings on the Washington Nationals' travails and the dogged determination it takes to be a fan are worth following. She knows baseball well, understands the purist and the bandwagon mentalities, and loves the new stadium. Most importantly, she keeps the faith, through the happiness and the depression, which I refer to as "fandom."

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A Day Unplugged: Frenzied Blackberries vs. Kwai Chang Caine?

I would probably be ready for an insane asylum if forced to go more than a few hours without my Blackberry or even a wi-fi connection. Fasting is good for the soul, but leaving technology behind for a few hours wuld just be pure torture to me.

This is a fun article about one intrepid individual who tried to take a tech time out:


I Need a Virtual Break. No, Really. - New York Times


In yesterday's New York Times, Mark Bittman wrote an entertaining and thoughtful article about realizing that his need to stay wired, in-touch, and updated was really starting to eat into him. His headslap moment came on an international flight, as he realizes "the only other place I could escape was in my sleep. "He goes on to talk about the difficulty of maintaining even a single day of Sabbath" from electronic communication and media:

I woke up nervous, eager for my laptop. That forbidden, I reached for the phone. No, not that either. Send a text message? No. I quickly realized that I was feeling the same way I do when the electricity goes out and, finding one appliance nonfunctional, I go immediately to the next. I was jumpy, twitchy, uneven.

But, eventually, he settles in and starts to enjoy things that would never appear on his radar screen on a wired day:

I drank herb tea (caffeine was not helpful) and stared out the window. I tried to allow myself to be less purposeful, not to care what was piling up in my personal cyberspace, and not to think about how busy I was going to be the next morning. I cooked, then went to bed, and read some more.

GRADUALLY, over this and the next couple of weekends — one of which stretched from Friday night until Monday morning, like the old days — I adapted (emphasis ASM).

Eventually (natch), he returns to the wired world. So it goes.

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I liked that this piece was written from a personal perspective, which, to my mind, is the best (and, often, only) place to start any kind of experiment around hacking time and attention. And, I do really like the idea of periodically accepting (enforcing?) days without media and wires. Truly, you'll never realize how difficult this can be until you really make it happen. But, as Bittman notes, once you get over the initial crash, you can see a striking contrast in what your life could look like. Good stuff.



But, like a lot of pieces on wired overstimulation, this one comes close to conflating the axis of "work" with the axis of "electronic media." Which, in my opinion, is an unwholesome confusion to abide, even just in appearance especially since it could be seen as blaming inert matter for our problems, while allowing us addicts (and the culture we've permitted ourselves to grow accustomed to) to get off way too easy.

J'accuse!

Let's be brutally honest, here I can "work" at my computer for 10 hours and do nothing but dick around with Wikipedia and YouTube. Heck, even if I do "work stuff" like email and "research," I can easily trail off in a hundred directions that have nothing to do with my initial task. Is that the fault of the computer and the internet? Maybe, kinda. But, no more so than I can reasonably blame this crappy hammer for that awkward birdhouse I built. Stupid hammer.

So, let's start by admitting that one reason we spend so much time in front of a screen (or hooked up to an iPod or SMSing on the phone or updating Twitter) is simply because we can. Because it's fun. And because it's easy. It makes us feelconnected. Is it the fault solely of "my job" that I have to sit here all day? For me: I'm going to say a resounding no.

Okay, then, so what happens when I go off the grid?

From printer paper to rice paper

Well, first, does it strike anyone else as funny that notwithstanding Bittman's desire not to get too "new-agey" the main alternative to stressful, wired work appears to be acting like a monk on Kung Fu? I mean, I wonder if it says anything about us that our first response to unhooking (after initial panic) is to pretend it's the 19th century and all we can do is read scrolls, meditate, or walk amongst the trees.

For myself once I've had my cup of green tea and carried a cauldron of hot coals with my forearms I find there are lots of work-related things I can do without a computer, phone, or internet. Really good and valuable stuff that I tend to forget about or ignore when I'm powered up. Stuff like longhand writing, cleaning out old files, or just making my work area a more pleasant place to be.

I'm not disagreeing with this fine article in any substantial way I mean, it's not hard to sell me on the idea that we allow ourselves to be overstimulated, or that it's hard to stop. But, I do think it's very important to be frank about what parts of our problem come from the hammer versus which parts come from our own hands. I think Bittman clearly gets that, but I'd hate for this article to just land on the CEO's desk in the pile titled "The Internet's Killing The Enterprise!'"

And, speaking of The Enterprise'

So: vaguely (but mostly not) related. Whenever a company proudly announces "No Email Fridays!" I just want to groan, wad up my David Carradine poster, and throw it across the dojo. Because, while I'm sure this kind of rule (or policy or experiment) is well-intentioned, it's about as employee-friendly as ankle weights and morning jumping-jacks.

Email is not the problem, America. The culture around email (and phones and meetings and SMS) is the real culprit. And we're not going to change perverse electronic culture by nailing theses to a door or by social-engineering the crap out of our employees. Plus, I'll just bet you, dimes to donuts, that "no-Friday-email" companies also breed a species of employee who spends most of Saturday making up for the lost time. (Instead of hanging with family or practicing having spears thrown at him by the other Shaolins)

I'd say that if we need anything "enforced" across a company it's periodic, rolling breaks from being accessible to everybody; to create an environment where everyone in the group or company knows the time and day when they will simply be uninterruptible, without exception, consequence, or need for excuse. That's their time to do with as they please.

Now, is this a distinction without a difference from just shutting off email? No way. For one, that email still piles up (even over the eight hours you're commanded to ignore it). And what's to prevent that Friday from being the day someone decides to just hand-deliver all their demands to my cube? What about meetings? And can we still call each other on the phone? Where's the real break? Sane and firewalled time yes, even to process email is what people really need to have and depend upon.

I'd say the company that wants to solve the "too much connectedness" problem would do well not just to focus on the easy solutions that involve masking symptoms. To really get closer to the root cause, it'll require a much more profound rethinking of a culture that's still 20 years behind the technology it supports.

And that ain't gonna happen with a memo and an "email-free" Friday.

It's not you; it's us

On a personal level, accepting these kinds of radical fasts can be a terrific way to detox or to just reconnect with a world that's further than arm's reach from your keyboard. And it reminds us that (apparently) there are alternative approaches to a morning that don't involve a mouse or a keypad. This is all awesome even indispensable. But let's not be lulled into thinking that the medium is always the murderer.

So, yes: take time off from electronics and media, and take time off from work. But, be mindful about which is which as well as which it is that you really need the break from. For most of us, the answer is an unequivocal "both!"

And, finally, is it conceivable that what you really need the break from is new demands on your time? What does solving that problem look like? And can it really be accomplished simply by unplugging a few things for a day or two? (My guess: no, it's actually a lot more complicated)

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Journalistic Laziness Refuses to Hold Richard Land Accountable

Twenty-five years ago my Southern Baptist denomination was hijacked by radical fascists who then proceeded to buy, Wal-Mart style, the Republican party. It didn't take long for them to destroy the Constitution and the economy. The following article from Mainstreet Baptist sums it up:

"When Richard Land criticizes members of the New Baptist Covenant of political partisanship, he doesn't have a leg to stand on.

Bob Allen at Ethics Daily has posted a fine essay addressing the partisan nature of the speakers that Richard Land invites to his conferences.

Land's partisanship, however, is so obvious and the evidence is so widely disseminated over the internet that his statements are hardly worthy of refutation. The reporters who cite them without question are either biased themselves or too lazy to do any research.

Every day in every way Richard Land works to secure votes for Republican candidates. The most obvious and blatant example is to be found in his "values voter" campaigns. It is ridiculous for the national news media to credit his "values voters" with electing President Bush in 2004 and then pretend that he is non-partisan.

There were no voter campaigns at the New Baptist Covenant meeting and none are in the works."

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China and The Olympics

A BBC reporter who has been present for the host city announcement ceremonies gives an insightful analysis on the Chinese perspective of its role in the Olympic games. As a country that has been used by the West for economic gain it cannot understand the hypocrisy of many Western governments with respect to what it views as its internal affairs in Tibet. It also rejects increasing calls from the United Nations and Western governments to intervene in the genocide in Darfur. Basically, China wants to reap all the gains while sticking its head in the sand about its business partners' oppressive policies. China refuses to step up and take on a positive role in international affairs and angrily rejects any call for it to release political prisoners and to stop killing Tibetan citizens and culture.

Chinese communism is the neocon dream -- complete control over the political and cultural life of its citizens, poor working conditions to make companies and politicians rich, and complete disregard for global well-being so long as the party hacks make a buck. The rest of the world, however, is standing up against the evil that both political parties represent. American Christians and Tibetan Buddhists have a common cause: the liberation of fellow human beings through compassion and nonviolence, through strength and resolve. This is so much more important than our myopic American theocons, who would rather pick an unnecessary fights over literal creationism and gay marriage.

Faux News Highlights

Fox's show "Red Eye" is "debating" the burning question "Is Hillary Losing Because She's Got to Spend Extra Time Looking Pretty?"

Insomnia sucks, particularly when this crap is on. This type of so-called journalism is more related to the National Enquirer than to meaningful discourse. If Walter Cronkite were on Fox he would have ended each broadcast with "That's the way we said it was and don't forget to vote Republican."

For the truth about Fox News check out Media Matters For America .

Bush Administration Verdict In

Historians have given their opinion on the historically epic failures and mismanagement by the Bush Administration.

Given that most history is judged in hindsight, the fact that the opinion is in and is nearly unanimous makes me wonder how terrible Bush the Inept's years will seem twenty years from now. Herbert Hoover can move over. His "fiddling while Rome burned" during the beginning of the Great Depression seems like an "oops" in the light of trillion-dollar deficits, international hatred and the breakdown of diplomacy, the unprecedented robbery of tax monies from the pockets of the poor and middle class. The Welfare State became the Corporate Welfare State. The Constitution was burned by a partisan Department of Justice, one that gave its official stamp to an unprecedented concentration of power to the Executive Branch. A war to divert public opinion while allowing no-bid contracts to drain public coffers for the benefit of Bush family insiders distracted the public while Bush-connected oil companies staged an economic putsch. The rich got a lot richer. The poor were left to fend for themselves and we became a banana republic as the son of a former president bought himself a presidency, using his own brother to tip the balance.

Brand Bush is irreparably damaged and neoconservatism is as discredited as Stalinism. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart continues to fund the Chinese military and Americans are decisively not better off then they were before Darth Cheney and Halliburton.

What will the next chapter in that history book say?

Ever Wonder Why Europe Sneers At US?

Oh, yes -- that utopian ideal like 40-hour work week and free elementary and secondary education now joins taxpayer-funded health care as a basic human right.

We currently have a corrupt government that is more intent on taking taxpayer money and lining its friends' pockets. To see for yourself just Google Dick Cheney and Halliburton, Alphonso Jackson, Blackwater, KBR, the entire Hurricane Katrina "recovery" effort, etc.). Why not funnel some of the money that is blown on overpriced, for-profit, non-regulated health insurers that are so glad to take your money when you are healthy but will drop you like a stone as soon as you get sick?

I don't advocate a country-owned system like Great Britain's notorious National Health Service, or the more passive-aggressive Canadian version. Both are plagued with doctor and nurse shortages, overcrowded hospitals, and long waits for basic services. Over half their populations do not have a dentist due to shortages.

If you have read my posts you will know that I loathe pretty much everything French. However, they have a single-payer health system. Doctors, hospitals, and clinics are privately-owned entities. Every year government brokers, healthcare providers, and patient advocates get together and hammer out agreements. No one gets everything that they want, but no one gets shafted by the bullying of an insurance company and its lawyers and Congressional synchophants. One payer means one set of paperwork, one schedule of covered services, one price list. Current estimates place private insurance premiums are eaten up by upwards of 30% of company overhead, mostly given to lawyers, politicians, bean counters who try to reduce costs by denying coverage, and a lot of unnecessary paperwork that eats into your doctor's overhead costs as well. Doctors spend over one hour per day on average on the phone trying to extract denied payments or get approval for care.

The societal costs are huge and will get bigger as health care costs spiral at a rate four times that of inflation. Fewer employers and individuals will be able to afford insurance and will put off routine medical care, seeking it only when it is chronic and requires extremely expensive care. The taxpayer will foot the bill then through Medicaid or charity care. Why not put those emergency room funds to good use before the emergency?

Only one answer remains -- there is no profit in compassion.

Another Bush Crony About to Bite the Dust

Alphonso Jackson, Bush's HUD director, will reportedly resign due to allegations of corruption. Sit back and imagine that for a minute. No, really -- try it.

Yes, our Christian President who blames Jesus for telling him to invade Iraq, the man who talks about family values while he condemns working families to slave wages and higher living costs, the president who supports the free market so long as it benefits the wealthy, is at it again. In our eighth year of The United States of Banana Republic America we have come to expect corruption as normal in our government "of the people, by the people, and for the people."

Just because you talk about God and Christian values doesn't make you a Christian any more than talking about high oil prices makes you CEO of Exxon.

How much more do we need to endure to become angry enough to actually put down our remote controls and do something about it? As a wise man once said, "Democracy always gets the government that it deserves."