Things I Didn't Know about Che Guevara

From Slate:

The cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time. Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster. Many of the early leaders of the Cuban Revolution favored a democratic or democratic-socialist direction for the new Cuba. But Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's "labor camp" system—the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims.

I didn't know any of this. I know of Che only from T-shirts and Evita. Yikes.

Hatch Falls into Himself

From Wired News:

CD burners, jukebox programs and Wi-Fi routers are just a few of the technologies that could be threatened under a new version of the Induce Act, critics say. Like the first version of the controversial bill—which is championed by the music and movie industries—the latest language says that a company that intentionally induces a person to infringe copyright is liable.... Thus, the proposed law could deter companies from investing in new products that may make them liable for billions of dollars—even if they never intended the product to be used to infringe copyright. In addition, the bill would nullify the so-called Betamax decision, which sparked 20 years of innovation in technology. This legislation introduces a new kind of infringement—inducement—which Betamax does not protect.... "Hatch's staff still has not heard what the technology companies have been shouting as loud as they can," Schultz said. "He just rejected them all and went back to his own version. It makes you wonder how much he was actually listening to what people were saying."

This is a terrible development. This government is completely beholden to big business, and apparently whichever big business throws the most money its way, even if that screws over other big business. In 10 years, repeating a conversation will be illegal.

Doctor, My Eyes!

Very cool and very bizarre at the same time. What strange creatures we are. More info here.

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News Report from Iraq

This is a very funny video clip. I'm told it's very "Monty Python-esque."

Thou Dost Protest Too Much

From Slate:

Depending on where you stand, Brett Bursey is either the world's greatest protester or a giant, unmitigated pain. He's been a thorn in the side of Columbia, S.C., authorities since 1969—when he got two years in prison for spray-painting "HELL NO, WE WON'T GO" on the wall of his draft board office. Except for a stretch in the early 1970s spent hiding in the mountains of northern Georgia, Bursey's been a fixture of Lexington County, protesting everything protestable since Nixon and Vietnam. So, you'd be excused for thinking that Bursey's recent federal conviction stemming from his protest of a 2002 visit by President Bush—a conviction upheld last Wednesday—is his own, special problem. But it comes at a time when hundreds of protesters are being rounded up at presidential visits all over the country, making Bursey the 56-year-old canary in a demonstrators' coal mine.

Read this article!! I can't believe this is America. I can't believe that anyone thinks this is a good idea. I don't want to be a "slippery-sloper," but good God! Why aren't people up in arms about this?!

Bumper Sticker Insubordination

From Slate:

Lynne Gobbell of Moulton, Ala.... was fired from her job... for driving to work with a Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker in the rear windshield of her Chevy Lumina. The person who did the firing was Phil Geddes, who owns the company and is an enthusiastic Bush supporter.

Now, maybe it's just me, but I can't imagine the reverse of this happening. Only on the right is there so much intolerance and disrespect for what this country is supposed to stand for. With another four years of this sort of behavior, no one will even remember a time when you could think for yourself. "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength." At least there's a sort-of happy ending to this story.

Sign #424 of the Impending Apocalypse

From Slate:

After years of working in the 'leisure oxygen field' marketing oxygen for salons and spas in the U.K., businessman Dominic Simler came up with a novel idea: Why not create a device that would allow users to inhale vaporized alcohol along with oxygen? The machine Simler invented, called Alcohol Without Liquid, or AWOL, which takes hard liquor and disperses it as vapor in an oxygen mist, has been available at a small number of bars in the U.K. for several months; recently, a Greensboro, N.C.-based company called Spirit Partners purchased an exclusive license to sell the machines in the United States.

As the article goes on to say, this has a far greater potential to create addiction than the standard liquid form (and that form is no slouch at creating addicts). Always building a better mousetrap, I guess.

First Class

From Slate:

Very often, when black people see me alone with my white-looking biracial children, they demand to know that I'm going to teach them that they're black. They do this with great seriousness, usually glaring into my eyes as if they caught me about to steal change from the collection plate. (Most whites, on the other hand, either think I'm the nanny or search for a polite way to ask if they're my biological children.)

Another fascinating article from Debra Dickerson. Or maybe just fascinating to me. It's interesting when life puts people in places they never thought they'd be and forces them to examine their preconceptions.

Running Mate

This New York Times Magazine short interview with Elizabeth Edwards, John Edwards' wife, really shows off her sense of humor. She's funny.

Underground Cinema

From The Guardian:

Police in Paris have discovered a fully equipped cinema-cum- restaurant in a large and previously uncharted cavern underneath the capital's chic 16th arrondissement.

This kind of thing is really fascinating to me—the secret communities under Paris, London, New York. I think everybody is at least somewhat interested in this sort of thing, which explains the success of Dan Brown's suspenseful but poorly written The DaVinci Code. Maybe the Paris police have stumbled onto the subterranean rec-room of the Priory of Sion!!

Bacteria Turn Toxins Into Plastic

From Wired News:

This week, scientists Kevin O'Connor and Patrick Ward, of the Department of Industrial Microbiology at University College Dublin, announced that they have discovered a bacterial strain that uses styrene, a toxic byproduct of the polystyrene industry (which produces Styrofoam, among other things), as fuel to make a type of biodegradable plastic, polyhydroxyalkanoate, known as PHA.

Hmm. I wonder what other things bacteria could be trained to eat... maybe Karl Rove's brain? Seriously, this is a great thing. I hope they're succesful in applying it to real-world situations.

How Kerry Became a Girlie-Man

From the The New York Times :

Only in an election year ruled by fiction could a sissy who used Daddy's connections to escape Vietnam turn an actual war hero into a girlie-man.

Good op/ed by Frank Rich about the paradox of paradoxes in this election. It's fascinating how people are so enslaved to marketers that we believe anything we see on TV.

Imperial President

From Slate:

In a democracy, the commander in chief works for you. You hire him when you elect him. You watch him do the job. If he makes good decisions and serves your interests, you rehire him. If he doesn't, you fire him by voting for his opponent in the next election. Not every country works this way. In some countries, the commander in chief builds a propaganda apparatus that equates him with the military and the nation. If you object that he's making bad decisions and disserving the national interest, you're accused of weakening the nation, undermining its security, sabotaging the commander in chief, and serving a foreign power—the very charges Miller leveled tonight against Bush's critics. Are you prepared to become one of those countries?

'Nuff said.