It turns out the IT person for my company has been to many of the rallies and protests, both large and small in San Francisco. He's been to not only the major anti-war rallies, but the small action-oriented protests aimed at shutting down the city. His website is full of great pictures with interesting commentary.
This weekend he went to a pro-war rally. Yes, a pro-war rally in San Francisco. The statements and actions of the more far out elements of the pro-war crowd can easily outdo the strangeness of the anti-war bunch, as you can see from the pictures. I think Tom Tomorrow's feelings are justified: as loony as the left can be in America, at least it's not a scary loony like some of the right. Of course, we have to remember that militant socialism is what inspired Orwell's 1984, not fascism. But in America, that sort of socialism just isn't in the political landscape, while the more fascist element of the right-wing party is well-known.
Last week I plowed through Neil Gaiman's first Sandman collection, and his book Neverwhere. I didn't choose those deliberately, but I knew he was writing books, and I liked his work on the Sandman when he was doing that. So those two books were what my local library had to offer. I'd say that Neverwhere was good, maybe great. It had a lot of imagination, and offered a very rich world in which the plot only scratched the surface. I especially liked how the main character just sort of faded out of society, and no one could quite remember him or really notice him. On the other hand, the plot was confusing, especially in retrospect. I don't want to give anything away, but, considering the ending, most of the apparent danger to the girl Door must have been fictitious. At any rate, it was still a good read. Next up is the rest of the Sandman series, and his book American Gods, which everyone seems to love.
The Straight Dope Message Boards is an interesting place. For my money, the quality of discussion that goes on there is much, much better than most other message boards like Kuro5shin or Metafilter. The resident expert on the Middle East, Collounsbury, recently started a thread on the Iraq War. His view from the Middle East is quite scary. Here's his take on the mood there:
Extremely angry. As I said here or elsewhere, I have never seen it this bad. My own driver told me he was happy to see Americans dying. So did my secretary. Neither are radical people. It gives you pause.On the views of Iraqi expats:
Yes, I have number of good friends in the Iraqi community. In large part they are looking forward to a post-Saddam future, but again there is little to no support among them for the war, and the manner in which it is happening they find humiliating and are very angry. My housekeeper, a Shiite told me she was happy to see Iraqis fighting back, to teach Americans a lesson.On the impact of the American "diplomacy":
Now, let me be clear, this was not inevitable. Before the fiasco of such glaringly incompetent diplomacy, there was no small reservoir of anticipation that perhaps this could be done right. That is, the type of anti-Americanism was different. Resentment for the big boy, but a desire to see the thing done in the right way. I.e. coming in with an international coalition -- not the transparent charade -- would have, in my judgment, resulted in a sort of superficial resentment and anti-Americanism, and secret approval. What I am seeing is a really visceral reaction. The manner in which this has happened so far has been stunningly damaging. I am fairly skilled at navigating these waters and normally people talk to me in a kind of 'Arab to Arab manner, but let me be clear, I have begun to question my own safety to a certain extent.(spelling errors corrected in quote).
Read the whole thread here. It's fairly long.
I found an interesting article from a blog I had never previously heard of. It's contrasts the Iraqi invasion with the Spanish-American War. While history never really repeats itself, certain similarities with regards to our takeover of the Philippines are interesting. We should learn that whether we call something a "liberation" is irrelevant, it's what the locals think of it that matters.
Found this nice link on San Francisco history today. It has a selection of artices and books, all free. I've read one of them already, Herbert Asbury's Barbary Coast. Asbury also wrote Gangs of New York which was adapted into Scorcese's movie. I recommend reading Barbary Coast it truly is an amazing look into the absolute craziness that went on in San Francisco from the chaos of the Gold Rush to about the 1920's, when the Barbary Coast was regulated into submission. I'm going to have fun exploring this site...
I think this year was the year I most enjoyed watching the Academy Awards. First interesting thing was Michael Moore's win and his impassioned speech against the war. Definitely the highlight of the evening. Not quite so sensational but still amazing was Adrian Brody's very wise speech, as well as the speech of the Oscar winners from Frida and Talk to Her. And Polanski winning the Best Director was a great moment. Bush, you don't know me, and I don't like you, but do me a favor and pardon the guy, will you? He's contributed so much to the world with his films, and he's suffered enough in his life.
One little thing I forgot to mention in my last entry about The Pianist. I'm a bit puzzled why people always read the "If you prick us, do we not bleed" part from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. That play is very clearly, and very strongly anti-semitic. Why, for instance, in The Pianist would Vladik's brother be reading it for comfort? And why would they quote again from this play during the Academy Awards snippet from the movie? I just don't get it.
I was able to get out yesterday and catch Roman Polanski's The Pianist. As a big Roman Polanski fan, I've been looking forward to seeing this movie for a long time. It's not Polanki's usual material (evil apartments and Satan), but seeing as how he was a Holocaust survivor himself, it probably was only a matter of time before he did a film on the subject.
I really liked the film. It was incredibly unflinching in it's look of the horror of the times. I found myself wincing and covering my eyes at certain parts, and I'm about as desensitized to violence as you can get. There was a lady behind me that took it even harder, I had to listen to her gasps, "No!"'s, and "Oh my gods!" the entire movie. I guess I can't blame her, it's a pretty natural reaction. The story itself was interesting, since it seemed the only reason the protagonist survived was because he was a famous pianist. Everyone seemed to look out for him, without him even asking. The scenes near the end with the Germans in prisoners camp was unusual twist, very interesting.
Anyway, good movie. We'll see if it wins anything tonight at the Academy Awards.
Now that war has started, I feel I have to blog about it somehow. I'm not sure what there is to say. It seems like the Bush administration was going to go to war no matter what. No matter that Iraq has no connection to 9-11, or that Hans Blix says that Iraq was showing real cooperation, or that the evidence showing they were after nuclear weapons has fallen apart, or that the UN rejected this war. So what is there to say? What's the fucking point anyway, this invasion of Iraq could not have been stopped.
I remember reading Lies My Teacher Told Me. Towards the back, it had some interesting statistics about how people will tend to believe that the government is doing the right thing. For example, if the government has not said anything about Issue A, polls might show popular support at 50%. Then if the government supports Issue A, the popular support would skyrocket. Illogical, right? But obviously the same thing is happening with regards to the Iraq war. How many Americans supported invading Iraq 2 years ago? Now, it seems that 75% of Americans support this war. Would 75% have supported it two years ago? I sincerely doubt it. But those who didn't support it two years ago, and now support it , I wonder what the difference has been. It could be Bush's fear-mongering. It could be Bush's circular logic regarding inspections (We know they have WMD's, so if we don't find any that means we have proved they have hidden their WMD's). It could be public confusion between supporting the war and supporting the troops. I don't know what it is, but it certainly doesn't mean that the invasion is justified.
Interesting entry on the Eschaton blog, where Atrios gets a letter from the Heritage Foundation who wants to send bloggers like him "useful resources". Great. Now the PR machines are trying to get their stuff on blogs, as if their exposure via the traditional media isn't enough.
I remember when my father and I marched in the anti-war march in San Francisco, Feb 16th. The seemingly lone pro-war viewpoint came from a plane that flew twice overhead, trailing a banner with pro-war slogans. On the first flyover the banner said "Saddam gasses his own people". On that one, well, maybe, maybe not. The second said that "Iraqis says the protesters betray them". That second one seemed strange to me. That Iraqis might want regime change is not surprising. But the idea that they would actually want war, in which they would surely be caught in the middle, caused me to doubt the truth of the banner. After that, I heard of the Where is Raed blog. In Sunday's article Raed states what should be obvious to us. The people of Iraq do not want to have the world "bomb us to democracy". It's a good read, and to hear an Iraqi viewpoint is very refreshing.
On further reflection, that plane above the protest was such a good symbol for what is happening. While tens or hundreds of thousands were marching on their own two feet below, one person with enough money for a plane stated their right-wing message. It reminds me of how much more money the Republicans have. It reminds me of the superior technology of the US, who intends to impose its will on the rest of the world, protesters be damned. It reminds me that no matter how many people are on the ground protesting, the Republicans can use their money and their corporate connections to get their message out. And from the looks of things now, it seems like none of it mattered. Those in power in the US, the UK, and Spain are, like the plane, on a different level of existence. The will of the people mean nothing to them, and they fly above, pursuing their goals, where nothing can affect them.
I looked through my referrer logs today, for the first time in, well... ever! I noticed that famous geek (well, famous as geeks tend to get) David Hyatt had, a long time ago, wrote about my reference to him in his weblog. Now, I link back to his linking. The circle of blogging is now complete.
But it is interesting to see some of my referrers. Actually, Dave Hyatt's one is pretty much the only one of interest. Somewhat distressing is that the search that brings the most people to thehyatts.net (which is both this blog and my family blog) is "potty". I'm guessing this phrase appears on my sister's page in regards to my 2.5 year old nephew. Ugh. I gotta get a higher class of clientelle here.
Great. I'm still getting over my cold, and I have to read this. At the rate I'm catching viruses there's like a 100% chance I'll catch this when it comes over here.
This blog needs a new name. "Andy Hyatt's Blog" just isn't interesting enough. Factual, yes. Accurate, yes. But it seems blogs these days have zippy names, sort of like band names. So I'm just pondering what I should name this blog.
After thinking about this for a while (4 minutes, to be exact), I've decided that "Dresese" would be a good name. What is "Dresese"? Well, my friends from high school called me Dres, and my rambling nonsense I frequently muttered was termed Dresese by my roomates Jay and Jeff. No one except me can understand it. I think it's a good description for this rambling, inconsequential blog.
However, this name may not be memorable, so I'll think about it some more for a few days, and if I still like it, this blog will get renamed. I'll even give it it's own address: http://dresese.thehyatts.net.
I've been sick for the third time in as many months. The last two times included some fever. This is really strange, since I previously would only get sick maybe once a year, and I previously hadn't had a fever for probably about 8 years. Then this. It only really started with my children being born, but I can't blame them since they haven't gotten sick yet. My current guess is that it's just from stress. Or, it could just be just normal random fluctuations in my health. What's odd is that I even got a flu shot, so I should have been healthier than normal.
I purchased a GameCube over the weekend, which helped with the more boring parts of my cold. I played some Super Mario Sunshine. I'm currently trying to defeat the return of "Petey Pihrana". I hate that Petey Pihrana.
A great graph (along with an attached article) produced by Valdis Krebs shows the links between books bought by the same people. So, if people who bought book A also bought book B then there would be a connection between them. All the connections make an interesting graph where you can see that pretty much all left-wingers stick to left-wing books, and all right-wingers stick to right-wing books.
So, unsurprisingly, people don't tend to seek out all points of view. They want that which will reinforce their previously held beliefs. I know I'm that way, although I do make an effort to seek out debates on which you can hear all points of view. Perhaps that is why blogs are popular - they tend not to have the debates of a message forum, and those debates just confuse matters...
It's interesting to note that certain books such as Manufacturing Consent are far to the left, meaning that anyone who bought those is really not likely to buy anything even close to a right-wing book. The one book that seemed like a bridge is What Went Wrong: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East. So if you get this book, beware lest you cross over to the dark side.