Patrick M Brennan

I’m grateful to Republican State Representative Ben Bridges of Georgia for pointing out some interesting facts which I had somehow never heard of.

It seems that this “Evolution” thing – you know, the idea that plants, animals and people are descended from older forms which evolve over geologic time – isn’t just untrue. No, friends, it’s much, much worse. The ideas that, for example, the universe is billions of years old, that it is billions of light years across, even, apparently, the idea that the Earth moves in space – are all lies. And not only that, there is a sinister conspiracy to spread these lies and fix them in our minds.

Who do you think is spreading these lies? That would be the Jews.

Oh, and this “Gravity” thing is a Jewish lie, too.

You know, it’s one thing to come across some crank’s web site. Honestly, I’d rather just talk about that, because, Jesus Jones, is it hilarious. We’ll come back to it.

But here we have a really scary brew: we have a lunatic who has a crackpot theory of the world, driven to invent an evil conspiracy which is suppressing his theory. And where does he turn to supply the bad guy? To the closest little nub of hate he has in his heart, naturally. But then he gets support from not one, but two elected officials in two different states. The mixture of fanatic belief, conspiracy theories, scapegoating minorities, and government power, even though it is sort of small and comic in this episode, is something to keep a careful watch over. It’s like a pile of paint-soaked rags in your basement – you don’t want to tolerate it, even if you think the risk is small. You can expect that if there ever is a fire like that in America, this will be the place it starts.

The two elected officials in question are scrambling to backpedal their support for the kooky crank. They didn’t mean for a lot of people to notice that they were endorsing the view that Mathematics is a conspiracy to destroy Christian America. Just the kooky cranks in their districts. It’s entertaining to watch little men twist themselves into pretzels trying to pretend they don’t actually agree with this view, while putting out the wink to show the True Believers that, yes, actually, they do.

It goes without saying that they’re Republicans, doesn’t it? I think it’s probably true that the majority of Republicans would admit that the Earth moves, but in every important way, they truly are the party of reality-denial. We have been and will continue to pay the price for having them in office, as we shoulder the burdens of bad decisions based on delusions and lies.

But enough of that. Let’s get back to FixedEarth.com, a product of a gentleman named Marshall Hall.

I had thought that the battle between actual, enlightened, reality-dwelling people and kooky fanatics had moved off of the question of whether the Earth moves around the sun, and had moved into the issue of how human beings came to evolve into their present form. That’s what I thought the last time I wrote about this issue. It seems that, at least as far as Mr. Hall goes, I was wrong. He wants to take up the battle against Copernicus all over again. It’s too bad he’s about 460 years late to the party. His site (which is incidentally, a masterpiece of clueless Web design), shouts:

The Earth is not rotating…nor is it going around the sun. The universe is not one ten trillionth the size we are told. Today’s cosmology fulfills an anti-Bible religious plan disguised as “science". The whole scheme from Copernicanism to Big Bangism is a factless lie. Those lies have planted the Truth-killing virus of evolutionism in every aspect of man’s “knowledge” about the Universe, the Earth, and Himself.

Marshall Hall is a wheel in the political effort to remove evolution from the public schools in Georgia. Since he’s a fundamentalist, he’s gone back to the fundamentals. He feels he needs to demolish Copernicus in order to topple Darwin. I suppose he’s on to something, although it seems to me the facts of biology would remain the same if the Sun went around the Earth. But never mind that, and never mind the fact that even though Darwin is bedrock biology, Copernicus is even more deeply embedded in astronomy. In another part of the web site, he proclaims:

…the Copernican Model of a rotating, orbiting Earth is a factless, observation-denying deception that is the keystone which is holding up all of modern man’s false “science” and “knowledge". It’s time for the truth.

See? He’s right! There are no facts and no observations which support the idea of a rotating Earth! Stellar parallax? Poppycock! The retrograde motion of Mars? A Kabbalist illusion! Foucault’s Pendulum? A clever trick. There really is an entire section of the website devoted to showing how any observations which support the motion of the Earth are, in fact, lies and deceptions.

He even explains why geosynchronous satellites prove that the Earth does not move, and it’s such a mishmash that’s it’s damn near impossible to figure out. I don’t think he quite understands how geosynchronous satellites work in the first place, and comes really, really close to disavowing that there is such a thing as Gravity. (He also confuses gravity with atmospheric pressure, which is very funny if you’re a nerd like me.) As best as I can reckon, his explanation for why geosynchronous satellites prove that the Earth does not move is :

1. The Earth doesn’t move.
2. Geosynchronous satellites rely on the “earth-is-moving” hypothesis to work the way they claim to be.
3. But since the Earth isn’t moving, there can’t be any geosynchronous satellites.
4. If this gets out, it will expose The Conspiracy.
5. Therefore the Earth doesn’t move!

(Actually, it’s right there on his page, right after his paragraph which begins “Five things are certain at this point:"… I’ve just clarified the language.)

I also think it’s fun to note that his web site only vaguely implies that the Earth might be a sphere. Nowhere does he set that out explicitly.

At what point do you think Mr. Hall will admit that the Earth moves, and is more than 6000 years old? Let’s ask Thomas Kuhn:

During the century and a half following Galileo’s death in 1642, a belief in the earth-centered universe was gradually transformed from an essential sign of sanity to an index, first, of inflexible conservatism, then of excessive parochialism, and finally of complete fanaticism.

Well, Galileo’s been dead for more than three hundred years now…

This is rather bizarre. I got a letter from the Army today:

Now don’t imagine I’m not flattered. I think it’s about time the Army decided they needed a guy of my caliber. But, you know, I have read that they’re having a tough time finding new people to ship off to Iraq, and it seems to me that they’re kind of deluding themselves if they’re sending this to me. Right? Clearly they think I’m about, oh, half my age or something. They got my address right. I am the only Patrick Brennan living at this address. And I’m sure my records are good, judging from the other junk mail I receive. Commercial marketers know very well, for example, that I have a mortgage, a wife, a baby girl, and a degree. They know I’ve paid my student loans off. They don’t send me solicitations geared toward recent high school graduates. So how come the United States Armed Forces can’t figure that out?

There are all kinds of ways this letter diminishes my already infinitesimal respect for our current government’s ability to manage information properly. I mean, I’m not even trying to hide. What chance have they got against the terrorists? Speaking of which: talk about the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing! While the Army is trying to recruit me, the Department of Homeland Security thinks I’m someone who needs special scrutiny before I’m allowed to board an airplane. I suppose I’d rather the government thinks I’m a potential soldier instead of a potential terrorist, but they’re so laughably wrong on both counts that it just makes my head spin.

I’m not down on service. I even gave it some serious thought myself, for about ten minutes back in the eighties. The early eighties. (When, you know, I really was a recent high school graduate.) But ultimately I decided it wasn’t for me. (Believe me, I made the right decision for me and for my country.) Twenty-odd years later, I’m more sure than ever that being an infantryman is not really what I want.

Maybe I’m wrong about the Army. Maybe – just humor me now – they’re just being clever. Too clever by half, perhaps, but still. Maybe they think that if they flatter me, I’ll be more disposed to sign up. (Sure, I’m too old to join the Army now, but they’ve recently raised the maximum age for enlistment. Maybe by the time I’m 50, the maximum age will be 51 or something.) The letter was accompanied by a postcard which promises a cool knit cap with an Army logo. All I need to do is fill it out with all my personal information (or fill it out online). They’re gonna need that data in 2009, when they’ll need lots of new guys to occupy Tehran. And I’m torn about filling out that card, because on the one hand, I want to help the government keep its records straight. They only have all my tax returns, after all. On the other hand, if I fill out the card, I’m taking the risk that the Army won’t stop pestering me. When I retire, they’ll be asking me what I’m planning to do with my college degree. When I’m 90, I’ll be getting letters asking me about serving in the National Guard (”one weekend a month“). And they’ll still be promising the same lousy pay, bad benefits, and the constant possibility of being shipped off to a hostile country to be maimed or killed.

But maybe – just maybe – if I sign up, they’ll take me off their no-fly list.

No promises.

I’ve rekindled my enthusiasm for Orbiter recently. I had stopped playing Orbiter for a while, not so much because I lost interest in it, but because I had to explore some other games. (Oh, and also, contrary to what you might think after reading this post, I do have a real life.)

“Astronaut” isn’t the only fantasy I have. This past year, I also wanted to play “Gangster” for a while, so I played through The Godfather; and I took another couple of turns as “Badass“, so I played through Quake 4 and F.E.A.R.; and even now I take an occasional sojourn into being a “Zombie Apocalypse Survivor", so I am playing through Dead Rising. I’m also quite enthusiastic about Second Life, but I’m not sure exactly what I’m gratifying when I’m playing Second Life – my inner Libertarian/Capitalist/Sprawl-Dwelling/Gambler/Chat-Addict, perhaps.

In the end, though, my strongest fantasy is still “Astronaut", which is also why my lovely wife gave me a fantastic Christmas gift: she sent me to Florida to participate in the Astronaut Training Experience at the Astronaut Hall of Fame. ("Just think,” I said, “I get to hang with a bunch of middle-aged white male nerds just like me! When do I ever get a chance to do that?") It was actually a lot of fun, and I ended up participating in a “simulated Space Shuttle mission,” and even though I didn’t get to “fly” in the “shuttle", and was relegated to “Mission Control,” it was all actually pretty good – but not as interesting or as detailed as Orbiter. (Well, you know, they have to cater to their market. Make it too hard and you turn away potential customers, like the family who were there – Mom, Dad, and three teenagers, who were all acting like they’d rather be at Universal Studios.) All in all, the trip engendered in me an even greater desire to download the latest version of Orbiter and lose myself in it again. (But I don’t get a cool polo shirt from playing Orbiter.)

My new fling with Orbiter was also catalyzed by the recent NASA decision to build a new generation of space hardware, called the Constellation system. Constellation will be used to return to the moon by about 2020, and establish a permanent base on the Moon’s south pole by about 2024.

I don’t know if Constellation will ever fly. There will be four presidential and seven congressional elections between now and then. It seems to me that the moon base, while technically feasible, may not get the kind of sustained political support it will require. However, just because it may never come to pass, that doesn’t mean I can’t “fly” the proposed hardware; so I turned back to Orbiter. Orbiter has recently been updated, and there is an extensive online community of fans and modders, contributing add-ons which make it a very rich environment for the space flight enthusiast. As luck would have it, there exist a couple of add-ons which implement NASA’s Exploration System Architecture Study, a 2005 precursor to Constellation. That was close enough for me.

Orbiter is a very complex program - it’s not a game. It’s a lot of fun (if you’re a space nerd like me), but it doesn’t hold your hand, and there’s no guarantee it’ll even work, let alone that you’ll be able to do what you want to do. Sometimes, you even need to do a little math. (Horrors!) Although I’d flown a lot of Orbiter scenarios previously, I’d never done it with a vehicle as realistic (read: as limited) as Constellation. What a difference the realism makes! Flying these vehicles is difficult, but I have managed to do it pretty well. In the process, I got stuck once, trying to figure out how to launch toward the moon when it seemed as though the rocket I had didn’t quite have enough fuel to do the trick. It turned out that I’d only had Astronaut 101, and I needed the 201 class in order to pull off the maneuver. (But that points out another great thing about Orbiter: there’s a very friendly on-line community of sympathetic folks who are always willing to help you out.) Being able to fly to the moon has given me a real sense of satisfaction and accomplishment which I don’t really get from games.

You might be saying: “Accomplishment? What accomplishment?” And I take your point. See, beating a boss in a video game isn’t an accomplishment - games are purposely designed so that 10-year-olds can do them with just a little practice, after all. On the other hand, in Orbiter I’ve guided my boosters from launch into orbit, performed orbital rendezvous and docking maneuvers, left the Earth, entered lunar orbit, and landed, only 1.7 km away from where I intended to land, near the lunar south pole (In Shoemaker Crater, actually). Do these things really count as accomplishments? I’d argue they do, because I learned a lot about how these things are actually done in practice, even if Constellation never flies.

I’ve learned something else new: getting to the moon is actually pretty easy, compared to getting back. Every step of this trip has been more difficult than the previous step – and I’m told that reentry is the hardest part of all! I’m looking forward to it.

(PS - My wife also gave me “The Godfather,” “Quake IV,” and “F.E.A.R.” How cool is she?)

For the first time ever, George W. Bush has said that “We’re not winning” in Iraq. But, just so everyone’s clear, he also pointed out that we’re not losing, either.

See? Every time he holds out the tantalizing possibility that he’s actually capable of perceiving reality, he yanks it away the very next moment.

So … if we’re not winning in Iraq, and we’re not losing, than what exactly are we doing? Linning? Wosing?

Hey, news flash, Mr. “War President“: it’s a WAR. If you’re not WINNING, you’re LOSING. And the fact that you can’t perceive this, or talk straight about it, is one more tiny brick in the enormous edifice you have built – positive proof, for all who care to look, that inherited privilege and virtually inherited office is a prescription for bad government.

She’s very fetching. Unfortunately, that’s not an adjective which can be applied to the search engine she’s fronting for. Google doesn’t need a Flash preloader, either, or tell a joke even before it’ll let me search.

True story…

The middle of the night. HE and SHE are in bed. HE is vigorously shaking his wife.

HE: Honey, wake up!

SHE: (waking from a nightmare) What? Huh?

HE: Are you OK?

SHE: (Still disoriented) What? Why did you wake me up?

HE: You were having a nightmare!

SHE: I was? What – did I say anything?

HE: You were yelling.

SHE: Oh, that’s right.

HE: You remember?

SHE: Kind of.

HE: You were yelling, “You’ll never get away with it!”

SHE: Oh, yeah, that’s right.

HE: Who were you yelling at?

SHE: White House Press Secretary Tony Snow.

HE: (suppressing a chuckle) White House Press Secretary Tony Snow?

SHE: Yeah. It was a dream, OK?

HE: OK. What was he doing?

SHE: He was about to molest a child.

(A long beat.)

HE: Was her name Truth?

This week, the US Congress passed a bill, known as the “Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA)“. The corporations fought for (a.k.a. bought and paid for) this legislation, and they’re just jizzy over it. The act severely increases the criminal penalties afforded to animal-rights activists for some activities which were already illegal, and arguably for some activities which are just acts of civil disobedience. But this isn’t really about amending the criminal code; this act is purely political, and its real political goal is clearly to expand the rhetoric of “terrorism” well beyond all sensible bounds. Under this act, for example, you’re a terrorist if you and your friends chain themselves across the entrance to an animal-testing laboratory to prevent trucks coming and going.

Think about that for a moment. According to your Corporate Masters in the Republican Party, a bunch of animal-loving hippies singing in the Merck parking lot is exactly the same as Mohammed Atta and his band of suicidal thugs crashing into the World Trade Center. Isn’t that special? Doesn’t that warm your heart? Aren’t you glad they’re in charge?

Sure, folks, there are some people out there who have committed crimes – against property and people – and in their own minds, they may be doing it for a noble cause. Well, number one, we already have laws on the books to deal with these people, and number two, anyone heard of Paul Hill? How about Eric Rudolph? Why does nobody call these guys “terrorists"? (Any guesses?)

This new law has no other purpose but to chill dissent and shut down peaceful protest. Its impact on actual criminal behavior will be minimal; its impact on the rhetorical war against animal-rights activism and eco-activism will be large. Sure, today the targets may be the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Rights Militia. Today. Tomorrow, the targets will be PETA and Greenpeace. Green is the new Red.

The political program which is being deployed in our country is depressingly familiar. It should be obvious to anyone who actually reads. Those of us who do read have been expecting this for a long time.

We’ve already seen that in our country, those who are tagged as “terrorists” have no rights – no right to contest their imprisonment, no right to trial, no right to see the evidence against them – and they may be jailed indefinitely on the mere say-so of the executive.

“He’s a terrorist,” says George W. Bush, and nobody challenges that, and off goes someone, into a black hole where we will never hear from him again.

Once that bulwark has been established – once there is a distinct class of people without any rights – it only remains to enlarge the sphere of that class. It only remains to enlarge the definition of who is a “terrorist".

It’s a program which has been repeated over and over again, in many times and places. You probably know about a few of the more famous places; repeating them here would be redundant.

First they come for the terrorists.

They may take a while to work their way to you. (How do you feel about eating meat? Inhaling mercury? Having a private conversation with your attorney?) But they will, eventually.

Have you heard about Chad Catagana, the guy who just got arrested for sending fake anthrax and death threats via the mail to a number of prominent Americans whose politics he disagreed with? Turns out that intimidation via post was only one of Chad’s many gifts.

This guy obviously had so much “talent on loan from God", he clearly needed a second career. Or possibly a third.

Not content to merely be a cranky wannabee right-wing commentator (by way of the Free Republic), he also seems to have tried his hand at being a kooky right-wing terrorist-by-mail; and apparently he’s also a bitchy wannabee right-wing sci-fi critic!

Here’s Catagana railing about the state of SF on TV:

How about creating a new sci-fi anthology with none of the puerile baggage of Rod Serling, Gene Roddenberry, Rockne O’ Bannon, etc., etc. It is time to end their reign of Left-wing innuendo, their anti-American, anti-mankind cynicism and fatalism.

(See this post for more.)

Boy, I bet he was pissed at Season Three of Battlestar Galactica! After two seasons of the Cylons standing in for The Terrorists, I’m sure he was absolutely appalled at the turn the plot took as the Cylons became the occupying power of the human colony and the humans resorted to suicide bombings. It probably flustered him so much, he got sloppy in his threat-mailings; and that’s how the Feds finally picked him up.

I bet Chad and his fellow travelers on the crypto-fascist message boards were just tickled when Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Jon Stewart received their death threats. Chad had an extra-special chuckle, of course, because he knew something his friends (probably) didn’t. Nevertheless, they were all sure that people who stand in the mildest opposition to the thing that calls itself “conservativism” deserve to die. Doesn’t that just warm your heart?

Unlike moronic asshole right-wingers like Chad Catagana, I don’t gloat when Americans receive death threats in the mail; much less would I ever send those threats. However, I do reserve the right to gloat when moronic asshole right-wingers like Chad Castanga are exposed for what they are, and when they receive a measure of justice for their crimes.

You’ve probably heard about Ted Haggard, the (former) pastor of the New Life Church, in Colorado Springs, and (former) president of the 30 million member National Association of Evangelicals. Until just recently, he was a big wheel in the Christian evangelical movement and in the Republican Party, participating in weekly conference calls with George W. Bush, Karl Rove and other senior strategists of the Party. It’s no secret that Haggard was in the vanguard of a movement which stokes up hatred against gay people in order to cement their political power, which is why there is a poetic element of rough justice in last week’s revelations that in secret, Haggard was abusing methamphetamine and availing himself of the services of a gay hooker.

The specifics are Haggard’s alone, of course, but the general outline of the story is so familiar, it’s become a cliche. Another highly-placed hypocrite gets hoisted by his own petard. Not very surprising, right? But what is it about these particular people that have made it such a cliche? After all, you wouldn’t think that the population statistics of leading evangelical preachers, who all agree that homosexuality is a vile sin, would track the distribution of homosexuality in the general population. In other words, you wouldn’t expect that some fundamentalist preachers are drug-abusing homosexual fornicators; you would expect that none of them are. And yet, here you have it: some of them really are drug-abusing homosexual fornicators, just like some of the rest of us. I’m not judging; I’m only pointing out what it means, which is just this: we’re all human after all.

But there’s another point that occurred to me when thinking about Haggard. One of the cornerstones of Haggard’s career, and the power of the movement he is a part of, and the power of the Republican party he served, is hatred. It might be impolite to point that out, but it’s true. Haggard was a willing participant in a system which stokes hatred, not exclusively against gay people, but largely against gay people. Encouraging and fomenting hatred is a political skill, and some people are better at it than others. I bet the people who are best at hating others are so good at it because they’ve had lots of practice hating themselves.

I feel very sorry for Haggard, and for all the victims of the corrosive ideology that he represents.

Let’s recap:

First there was the national debt, which has ballooned to the staggering figure of 8.5 trillion dollars ($8,500,000,000,000.00!!!) (I hope you have a spare $30,000 handy).

Then, of course, there was 9/11.

Then there’s the war we’re about to lose in Afghanistan.

Then there’s the war we’ve all but lost in Iraq.

Then there was the city we lost to Hurricane Katrina.

And now we have a North Korean nuke.

It’s quite an impressive list, isn’t it? Call it The Axis of Failure.

And the most impressive thing about this list is, it’s all Bill Clinton’s fault.

You’d have known this if you’d been paying attention, but you haven’t, have you? What are you anyway, some kind of fucking Democrat? Stop reading blogs and start watching FOX News, and you’ll know what the score is!

It’s all Bill Clinton’s fault.

George W. Bush and the Republicans had nothing to do with this sorry list of fuckups. I mean, hey, how could they have? After all, the Republicans have only controlled the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the Supreme Court, the Pentagon, Wall Street and the Media for the past 6+ years. How could they have had anything to do with all these problems?

But if it wasn’t for Bill Clinton sending out those dirty IMs, we wouldn’t have had all these problems.

Yes, that was him, too.

So now the Bush gang and their lickspittles in Congress have passed the disgusting “Military Commissions Act". This piece of legislation is so vile, so corrupt, so evil in its core that reading its myriad details left me sick to my stomach.

Besides legalizing torture, this bill gives the President the power to arrest anyone, US citizen or not, and hold that person indefinitely, without charge or trial, and without ever having to show cause. The person so detained would have no recourse whatsoever. Should the President or his agents decide to torture that person, there would be no restriction. “Evidence” obtained from such torture would become admissible in court. Some “evidence” could be deemed “Secret” and could not be challenged by the defendant. These are just a few of the shockingly unconstitutional provisions of this new law.

For those of you who only watch FOX News, let me clue you in. This is one of the worst bills ever passed in the entire history of our country. Should we ever regain our freedoms, this day will be considered a low point for the republic. The things that have been swept away by the Republican congress weren’t just legal niceties – they weren’t just nice things we do cause we’re nice and we like to coddle terrorists. Stuff like Habeas Corpus are the very cornerstones of Liberty. Back in the days of the Revolution, there were guys who wanted to arrest people without cause, detain them without trials, and torture people. And guys like Jefferson and Washington and Tom Paine and Franklin had a name for them. They called them Tyrants, and rightly so. They fought a Revolution against them. And when they won, they created a Constitution which enshrined their values and helped to guard against any new Tyrants who might come along. This much should be clear to anyone who paid attention in high school civics class. It’s clear to me, even though I wasn’t paying attention in high school civics.

I had thought even Republicans wouldn’t stoop so low as they have. I had thought that even Republicans might love their country. The proof is now before me. The Republicans Hate America. I’m so angry right now, just to realize that some fucktard could have voted for this and then dared to call himself or herself an American. Well- actually, it looks like 253 fucktards voted for it. Nobody who supported this grotesque bill should have any position of responsibility whatsoever, let alone as a member of Congress. This bill is sick, disgusting, repellent, repugnant, shameful, un-American, and reprehensible.

Or to sum it all up in a word, Republican.

This legislation, if I may call it that; this stain on our great democracy, this spit in the face of freedom, must be repealed or struck down by the courts immediately.

I’m very happy to report that my play Milgram’s War was selected as the Second Prize Winner at the Attic Theatre’s 2006 One-Act Marathon in Los Angeles. A satirical play about prisoner abuse in an unspecified war zone, Milgram’s War was directed by John Timmons and featured Los Angeles actors Dave Huber, Scott Charles, and Rosemarie Li.

I received a $100 cash prize from the Attic Theatre!

Why has it taken me so long to post this news? Well, now you know how my life has been lately.

Bush says bin Laden is really Hitler …

On the very same day our “ally” Pakistan cuts a sweet deal with him. Tells him he’s free to stay as long as he lives a “peaceful life” …!

I’m confused. I’m not sure if this means Pakistan is really Austria or Czechoslovakia. Or maybe Neville Chamberlain. Somebody get back to me on this, will ya?

A Federal judge has ruled that the Bush administration’s warrantless spying program is unconstitutional and has ordered it halted immediately. It’s about time the rule of law was reasserted around here.

I don’t feel too sanguine about this, unfortunately. I expect that the judge’s ruling will be ignored by the people who actually run the program. I expect the administration to appeal the ruling to their reliable friends in the Supreme Court.

(Also, do I smell another TERROR ALERT coming?)

Seriously, here’s the question I’ve been wondering about ever since I learned about the warrantless surveillance program: Who are they really spying on?

In defending the indefensible spying program, reliable blowhard David Brooks says that if the US military in Afghanistan found an Al Qaeda laptop with 4000 telephone numbers on it, he’d absolutely want to have those numbers monitored, implying that liberals like me would rather not. Well, guess what? We’d all like to have those numbers monitored. And there isn’t a judge in the world who wouldn’t issue a warrant based on such information. So that brings us back to the same question: if the NSA was monitoring legitimate targets, why didn’t Bush seek warrants for it? The FISA court is extremely deferential: they’ve turned down 4 requests out of 15,000. It’s also easy to seek a warrant after the monitoring has begun: the law allows up to 72 hours between the start of a wiretap and the seeking of a warrant, and somehow I suspect that nobody would ever be punished if they slipped that deadline by a few days – again, assuming the target is legitimate.

The only reasonable conclusion to be drawn from these facts is that Bush and his pals were not monitoring legitimate targets, i.e., they weren’t monitoring terrorists or suspected terrorists.

So who are they really spying on?

Political opponents? Journalists? Business rivals? Other assorted friends, enemies, family? Me? You?

Remember, this program has been going on since 2001 - since before September 11th, in fact. 9/11 only gave them some political cover for something they were already doing.

Who are they really spying on?

I’m a little obsessive about Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs. I think we should all be switching to CF bulbs in our homes. Don’t let the high initial cost of the bulbs fool you: they will save you money in the long run, and you don’t have to change them nearly as often. They use a lot less electricity, so they cost you less and they’re better for the environment. That’s a win-win. Around our house, I’ve been changing them in slowly, trying to get my wife used to the idea. She was afraid that she wouldn’t like the quality of the light, but the latest bulbs actually give off a very pleasant light. She was happy enough with the results that she hasn’t stopped me from switching out a bunch of lights in the house, and she even bought some additional bulbs. There are some fixtures where a CF won’t fit, unfortunately, and there are others attached to dimmers, which are generally CF-unfriendly. Then there are the decorative fixtures, where a CF just looks bad. I’m stuck using incandescent bulbs in all those places, at least for now.

Now, what I’m really waiting for is the day when I can replace all the incandescent bulbs in the house, and all the fluorescents, too, with LEDs! That day is coming, and it’ll be a great day.

I certainly agree with Dick Cheney when he says that the primary election of Ned Lamont to be the Democratic candidate for Senator from Connecticut is a victory for the “Al Qaeda types". After all, Joe Lieberman, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush know very well – it’s simple common sense – that the only way we can protect our airports and airliners against native-born passengers carrying bombs aboard is by launching a ruinously expensive war against a far-off country, and bogging us down for God knows how many more years in a long and bloody insurgency without any idea how we’re going to get out of it. The Defeat-O-Crats know this just as well as Joe, Dick, and George. Like we said, it’s just common sense. But they want the terrorists to win. That’s why this result can’t be allowed to stand.

(Of course, Joe, Dick, George, and all the rest of their buddies only want what’s best for America. They would never, ever exploit this issue for political gain.)

The Washington Post asked about 1,000 random Americans what year the September 11 attacks occurred in – and 30% of their respondents didn’t know. I mean, I guess I always knew Americans were generally ignorant of history. But this makes me feel like I’ve been too easy on America, because we’re not talking about, you know, what year the Gadsden Purchase occurred in. We’re talking about one of the defining moments of our own time, and 3 out of 10 of my fellow citizens can’t be bothered to remember that it happened on September 11, 2002. … or 2000. Or some year, who cares?

Guess which is the best toy? My daughter knows.

My wife gave me a TiVo. I like it a lot more than I expected to, especially considering I am nobody’s idea of a couch potato. I also try to convince myself that I don’t love gadgets excessively, but this is getting harder and harder all the time. For now, though, I’m happy with TiVo.

Of course, right after I thought my gadget lust was sated, this thing comes out…

Tonight is opening night of Attic Theatre’s Homeland Insecurity. Milgram’s War is the opening play.

I was thinking about my friend “Fred” a few days ago, as a TSA officer pulled me aside for “extra scrutiny", and my bag and laptop case underwent a shallow and perfunctory search by his colleagues. My boarding pass had big bold S’s written across it ("Search"? “Security"? “Stupid Waste of Time"? I don’t know). This is now routine for me; I get this treatment every time I fly.

I have written about the absurdity of finding myself on a so-called “No-Fly List” before. Fred is one of my five loyal readers, and he responded to my post by submitting the following comment:

“Oh no - we had better accept that truce! Osama alone holds our safety in his cowardly hands. LOL.”

(Fred is referring to the so-called “truce offer” in the January 19, 2006 tape of Osama bin Laden )

Fred’s politics, you may have gathered, are opposed to mine. Fred didn’t mean any harm, of course, but when he posted this comment, in his own way, he was calling me a cheese-eating surrender monkey. It’s a common accusation hurled at anyone who doesn’t uncritically and unconditionally support every tiny detail of the Republican right-wing agenda. Anyone who isn’t completely with them is just a filthy traitor who wants the terrorists to win, and that includes me, of course. This is what passes for debate these days.

Fred has uncritically supported everything done by George W. Bush and his corrupt crony government since January 2001, up to and including the many steady erosions of our liberty perpetrated by that crowd. My inconvenience at the airport is just a minor aspect of this trend. I’m much more troubled by the news about all the myriad new ways the NSA and the Bush Administration, with the help of the big telecom companies, are creating to ensure that whenever they want to listen in to anyone’s phone conversations or read their email, they don’t actually have to deal with the inconvenience of justifying their actions in front of a judge.

Based on what I know about Fred, I’ll assume he supports this illegal and unconstitutional wiretapping program 100%. I’m sure that he’d say, “if you’re not doing anything wrong, you’ve got nothing to worry about.” Fred is also a full-throated supporter of the war in Iraq. What’s really hilarious about Fred, though, is that in all of this, my friend considers himself to be a patriotic American.

I thought that the Fourth of July would be an excellent day to point something out to Fred: The United States of America was formed in direct opposition to the values espoused by its current government. This should be evident to anyone who has taken any time at all to learn about the history of our country. Exhibit A is the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

See, the Founders didn’t believe that if you’re doing nothing wrong, then it’s all right for the government to search through your stuff. The Founders believed that if you’re doing nothing wrong, your stuff is none of the government’s god damned business.

“But we’re in a war,” Fred says. “And it’s a war against a different kind of enemy.” To which we Americans reply: Bullshit.

You know, during the Cold War, from roughly 1950 through 1990, the United States squared off against a nuclear-armed Soviet Union. That was a different kind of enemy, too. The Soviet Army was poised to overrun Western Europe and the Soviet nuclear arsenal was ready to utterly destroy the United States - not merely as a political or economic entity, but as a biological entity. During this same period, the United States underwent a tremendous growth in liberty. There were still many abuses (such as COINTELPRO ), but by and large the Cold War was marked at home with an expanding sphere of personal liberty. All this happened despite claims that the Communists were “a different kind of enemy.” Now, compared to the real threat that the Soviet Union posed to the United States (and by way, the real threat posed by the Russian nuclear forces, which still exist), what sort of a threat is Al Qaeda? The answer is not much. Al Qaeda is nothing more than a band of criminals, who should be brought to swift justice with all appropriate legal means. However, there’s nothing about Al Qaeda which necessitates the creation of a surveillance state.

If the President or anybody else in authority wants to listen in on telephone conversations or read email or detain American citizens, all they have to do is justify what they’re doing to a judge, and get a warrant. Why is that so hard? What is the objection to that? That’s the point of this whole NSA story. It was never terribly hard for Bush to get warrants, but he chose not to. Why not?

The Founders of America knew perfectly well that oversight helps prevent abuses of power.The Constitution was specifically created to stop the USA from becoming a monarchy or a dictatorship. Anybody who wants to call himself an American should know that.

I don’t know which rigidly authoritarian Eastern European police state Fred’s ancestors came from, but my ancestors came to America to get away from that shit. My ancestors, along with a lot of other proud and free Americans, stood together and fought a Cold War and a handful of hot wars to defend the liberties which define America, and I’m not prepared to surrender them because I’m spooked over a bunch of criminals.

Happy Fourth of July!

More Spine-Straightening Reading:
Are we such a bunch of wimps?
Big Audio Dynamite

A couple of weekends ago, we closed the Playwrights’ Platform Summer Festival. I’m happy it’s over, and I’ll be caught up with my sleep in about another month. (I’ll never be caught up with my blogging, but you knew that already.)

The best thing for me this year was the fact that we completely sold out the first weekend of the festival! It was literally Standing Room Only each night! It was a nightmare to keep handling people as they came in, but that was more than compensated for by the enormous energy and joy the playwrights and the performers derived from a packed house. It really makes a difference!

My one-act play Milgram’s War has been selected as a finalist for the Attic Theatre’s 2006 One-Act Marathon in Los Angeles. Milgram’s War will be one of six finalists produced as part of the Attic Theatre’s Written Word Festival, which starts on July 7th, 2006, and runs for six weeks. A panel of judges drawn from the LA theatre community will see all six of the plays produced, and vote on the winning script. The judges’ final ruling will be announced on August 12, 2006, and cash prizes will be awarded to the second and first place winners.

I’m pretty sure this will be the first play of mine produced in LA. Wish me luck!

I have to admit I’m a little annoyed by “writers” who don’t bother to learn how to use their word processors. Since I am a well-known techie in my circle of writers, I often field questions from my fellows, and I’m happy to help. But I’m also dismayed by the lack of knowledge some writers exhibit about their primary tool. Simple things like properly setting up a page can utterly defeat otherwise intelligent people because, as they lamely explain, “I don’t know anything about computers.”

Well, look: if all you want to do is bang out letters, you don’t need to know much about your word processor; it’s push-button simple. There’s not much formatting involved. On the other hand, if you are creating documents of any complexity at all, you should know how to manage that. Plays are rather complex in terms of their formatting. But there are simple commands in every decent word processor to create the formatting you like (and there are programs you can buy that will do the formatting for you, if you’re rich and lazy). It’s not hard, though, and it’s not “computers".

Things like highlighting a block of text, pointing to a menu, and clicking on a command aren’t arcane any more. They don’t belong to the realm of “computer literacy". In the age of the $500 laptop computer, they’re just everyday nuts and bolts stuff. It’s easier than driving a car (and less dangerous). Nobody is too stupid to learn this stuff. If you don’t know how to do it, then you just haven’t bothered to learn it – which isn’t a value judgement, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person – unless you’re a “writer". In that case, as I said, I’m a little annoyed. Are you a writer? Then be a writer. Take the time to learn how to use your tools.

I thought back to this on my vacation, when we took an afternoon to tour Ernest Hemingway’s house in Key West. One of the highlights of the tour, for me, was visiting Hemingway’s writing room, which still has his portable Royal typewriter. This humble machine was the instrument Hemingway used to create some of his best work. Hemingway, obviously, was not a mechanical engineer, but I’m sure he knew how to change the ribbon and set the margins on his typewriter. In fact, given the amount of travelling he must have done with it, I’m confident he was able to make simple repairs to the machine.

Now what would Hemingway say to you if you told him you couldn’t figure out how to make your word processor format your document correctly? I’ll tell you.

He’d laugh. In your face.

A memory from high school visited me very vividly last night. I recall sitting in my high school library, and I was working on some science assignment, but I’ve forgotten the details. Nerd that I was (and am), I was solving the problem by creating a program on my handy TI-59 Programmable calculator. To create this program, I had written the program steps – essentially keystrokes – in a column on a couple of sheets of paper. A program would look something like this:

RCL 1
x
RCL 0
x2
+
RCL 2
x
RCL 0
+
RCL 3
=

The paper was at my left hand, and my calculator on my right as I keyed the steps into it (in “learn” mode).

As I was doing this, an older woman – whom I had never seen before or since – toodled up beside my table and without a word of introduction, she said:

“In my day, we didn’t need a calculator to add up a column of figures.”

And then she shambled away, smugly, without even waiting for an answer.

I think she was an administrator of some sort at the school.

PMB replies to a comment from Hey, They Were Right :
why isn’t that “made in china” picture on the cover of the Wall St Journal?

I thought it was pretty obvious that the Wall Street Journal wouldn’t care to call attention to that fact. The business types who read the WSJ have been the enablers of the sale of America to the Chinese, which is the awesomest historical joke I can think of (Also, that the biggest Communist country in the world would become the biggest outsourcing company in the world, once they had the market on Chinese labor cornered – oh, it drips with irony). So, those who already knew what was going on with China, didn’t need to read it in the Journal; and those who didn’t know, well, best not to upset them with the truth.

It was an awkward moment when I had to tell my manager and my coworkers that I had accepted a new job. I was working at a great company, and I was happy to work there, and I liked the people I was working with … but I received a really good offer from another company and it was just – well, it was one of those opportunities that only comes along once or twice in your career. The only problem was that I had been working at the new job for only about a month! Talk about your inconvenient timing. (Well, it’s not the worst problem I could have had; after all, how often do I get a chance to choose between two really good jobs?)

Here’s the thing: I left my last job to go to this new company in February. I didn’t continue my job search at that point – I wasn’t still looking for a new position somewhere else. However, little did I know there was an old friend who was looking for me. The timing was bad, but the job was exactly right – developing software for robotics applications.

Now, I don’t have any problem with selling paper and ink for a living, and there certainly were plenty of technical challenges at this place. Also, I am not easily bored – I find a lot of things to be interesting, and this of course has served me well in my career. But robotics isn’t just something I find interesting, it’s something I am fascinated with, and it’s something I went to school to study. I haven’t done it in a long time, however, having been diverted into various other sidelines by the vagaries of life and career. I thought I had left robotics behind forever, until my friend called me with an offer. It entailed a small pay cut and a big increase in my commute, but it offered the possibility that I could work on something that I loved, rather than just something that paid.

I told my supervisor that although it was awkward to leave a new job so soon, I didn’t want to turn the offer down and end up regretting it for the rest of my life. Fortunately, everyone at the old place let me know they understood. In fact, my immediate manager said that in my position, he’d do exactly the same thing. What can I tell you? They’re great people. They’re hiring, by the way – you should apply.

I’m now almost a month into this new job (– the new new job), and so far I’m really, really glad I jumped. (My friend has said that I was exactly right for this job, and what do you know? She was right.) The work is extremely interesting and the people are better than I hoped for. I jumped right into it and I felt exactly right. I am already making a contribution and it feels really good.

PS: If you’re one of the three people on the planet wondering why I’ve been so remiss with updating the blog lately, now you know. Getting up to speed at two new jobs while helping to raise my infant daughter and producing a small local theater festival has a way of eating into one’s blogging.

PPS: Comments are working again.

I guess a picture really IS worth a thousand words.
On the other hand, a US dollar is worth about 8 yuan – but don’t expect that to last.

I broke comments on my blog today, trying to install a plugin. I’ve been losing the battle against the comment spammers lately, and I thought I would make it harder for robots to post to the blog, but I seem to have shot myself in the foot instead.

I love my TV-B-Gone. It’s been a favorite gadget of mine for about a year now. TV-B-Gone is a universal TV remote with only one function: it turns televisions off. Now I’m not an anti-television fanatic, but I prefer not to be bombarded with TV in certain situations, such as when we go out to eat, or to have a nice drink out. It’s getting harder and harder to find public places without a television clutching at our eyeballs. Lately, even the local grocery store has installed TVs, in the aisles as well as at the checkouts.

Here’s the thing: having a television in the room makes it hard for me to pay attention to what I’m doing. A bit of movement, a flash of color, an unexpected sound, and my eyes will be drawn involuntarily to the screen. It’s very difficult to avoid being distracted by it. This drives me bonkers, since I don’t want to give my attention to something I don’t choose to give my attention to. For one thing, it’s rude to the person(s) I’m out with. Besides that, I am starting to feel cramped by advertising. Is there no time at all when I can be free of the relentless deluge of pitches to buy more?

Well: TV-B-Gone is made for such situations. It is programmed with the OFF codes for hundreds of models of televisions, and it will beam them all out at the push of a button. Most TVs will turn off instantly; the older the set, the longer it will take TV-B-Gone to work its magic. TV-B-Gone is discreet: it’s small, easily concealed, and it looks like any other electronic fob on a keychain, such as one might use to manage a car lock. I have found that even when I feel very conspicuous in my use of the device, it isn’t noticed.

There is a certain level of etiquette involved in using the TV-B-Gone. If the television is truly being watched by someone, I will not turn it off. I won’t turn off the TVs in a sports bar, for example. But you may have noticed that most of the time, a television in a public place is not actually being watched by anyone. It seems to be there for no other reason than the proprietor’s belief that someone, at some time, will wish to glance at the giant blaring tube. In these cases, not only has my use of my TV-B-Gone been appropriate, but I’ll bet that some of the other people there were actually glad that the TV had been turned off.

I recommend that anyone wishing to reclaim a bit of their mental space back from the advertisers go out and purchase a TV-B-Gone.

Last night was the first of two (only two!) performances of No Politics at the Theatre Cooperative, and it was an excellent debut! We had a full house! (In fact, the management of the house turned people away at the door, which I will have more to say about shortly.) The performance itself was perfect! And the audience went right along with it the whole time. They laughed! They gasped! They clapped! I stood in the back of the house with my director, and we were a pretty proud pair as the play unfolded. At each of the critical moments where we knew we’d have to have the audience, we were rewarded with the reactions we’d sought. It was a beautiful thing. After the performance, we had a Q-and-A with me, the director, and the cast. That part was OK, and I did in fact learn some things I hadn’t known about the script, but I’d already learned what I needed to know through the laughter and the applause of the audience, and through the smiles on their faces when the lights came up. The play worked, it was entertaining, and people weren’t sorry they came to see it. Of course, I was extremely blessed to have been paired with such a skilled director and such a talented and energetic cast. (If that hadn’t been the case, and the play flopped, I might be stuck wondering whether it was a bad script or just a bad performance; and I’d probably just blame the performance.)

Last night, we opened. Tonight, we close. It’s a small theatre in a backwater of the city. But today I feel a flush of accomplishment and pride unlike anything I’ve ever felt as a playwright. It’s a good feeling.

For the past three years plus, I’ve been working for Convoq, and it’s been a great time. They’re a great company to work for and I’ve really enjoyed myself. I’m proud of the work I did there and I like to think I contributed to their success.

Now I’m moving on to VistaPrint, where I’ll be doing a very similar sort of work. The technology is a little different, and I’m hopeful that I’ll be up to the challenge of tackling it. I can’t hope that the people at VistaPrint are nicer than they are at Convoq, because the people at Convoq were nicer than at any job I’ve ever had; but I can hope that they’ll be as nice. Wish me luck!

A few years ago, you may recall, some religious fanatics in Georgia managed to push a measure through their local school board mandating that biology textbooks should bear a disclaimer sticker which states:

This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.

The fanatics insisted that they had no intention of advancing creationism in the classroom. (Of course not!!) They swore that all they wanted was to have students aware that a diversity of viewpoints existed on the question of the origin of life. This is the same line that the “Intelligent Design” (a.k.a. “Rebranded Creationism") crowd recently tried to use in Dover, Pennsylvania, when they managed to cram down their baloney into the local curriculum. Their main talking point is that we should “Teach the Controversy“. George W. Bush clucked approvingly of this talking point, and said that he thought teaching the controversy was a good idea.

Well, now that they’ve opened the door, I don’t see why teaching the controversy needs to be limited to science education. There’s plenty of controversy between religions, for example. People have fought wars over things like whether priests should be allowed to marry, after all! But you know, I’d like to get even more basic than that. How would the fanatics like it if we put this on the front of every catechism – or even every Bible? Here’s my first draft:

This book contains material about God. Students should be advised that God is only a theory, not a fact. The existence of God has never been proven. Most theologians and philosophers believe that God’s existence cannot be proven or disproven. There are many gaps and inconsistencies in the theory of God, and there are alternative explanations for every phenomenon routinely ascribed to God. Students should be aware of these alternatives, and should know that they do not need to believe in any God at all in order to understand the world and be successful in it. Belief in God can be beneficial, but it has also been known to have many potentially life-threatening side effects, such as feelings of moral superiority, delusional behavior, blind obedience to authority and even the commission of acts of heinous sin in the mistaken belief that God has commanded it. Students should be careful in how they think about God and know that no matter what they believe, the world is as it is. Reality is still there whether you believe it or not.

Hmm. That would be pretty hard to fit on a sticker, wouldn’t it? Well, it’s only a first draft. While I’m working on it, you can take a look at these alternative disclaimer stickers, made up by a biology professor.

Seriously, I think we should teach our children more about religion, not less. I think the Bible ought to be required reading – so that students can see for themselves a) what a magnificent work of mythic storytelling it is, b) what a fundamental piece of literature it is to this culture, c) how many truly appalling ideas it contains, and d) how anyone who thinks it’s literally true either can’t possibly have read it or is an idiot. (or is selling something.)

Oh, and P.S. If you haven’t read my post carefully, you may go off believing that I am hostile to belief in God. That’s not true at all. I’m just saying that you can’t say, on the one hand, you want people to have open minds, but then turn around and declare that some things are off-limits to open minds. Minds are either open or closed.

Thank goodness I don’t need to travel for business any more. A few weeks ago, I had to attend a family function, and there wasn’t any other way to get there except to fly. I don’t often fly, because I don’t do a lot of traveling, and when I do travel, I usually investigate all the other options before I’ll settle for flying. Flying is just too much of a hassle for me. But, sometimes, as in this case, there was no choice.

So just imagine the scene: I had my e-ticket, and I walked up to the electronic kiosk to retrieve my boarding pass. They’re not optional anymore, by the way; the airlines will not let you talk to a human unless there’s a reason you can’t use the kiosk. And, as it turns out, I couldn’t. The kiosk told me it wouldn’t issue a boarding pass, and I had to speak with a person. So I queued up to talk to a service rep. (Typical airline stupidity, I thought. After making me wait in line to use the kiosk so I wouldn’t waste their valuable time talking to a service rep, here I was waiting to talk a service rep, and the whole transaction ends up taking twice as long.) When it was my turn, I walked up to the desk and gave the rep my credit card and my e-ticket. She punched something up on her terminal, and I saw a look cross her face, and I wondered, is this what I think it is? And then I thought, Nah! You’re being paranoid! And then she picked up a phone and spoke into it in hushed tones, and I said, “is something wrong?” And she looked back at me and she said, “No, sir. Nothing wrong.” (Sure there isn’t! I whisper over the phone all the time here! It’s part of the job!) Then she said, “I’m just calling for a supervisor.”

By now I was starting to get a little nervous. The supervisor came over, and he peered at her screen, and he looked at me, and he furrowed his brow, and he asked me for some photo ID, which I gave him. I asked, “Can you tell me what’s going on?”

“Well sir,” he said, quickly looking around to see if anyone else was listening, “it looks like you’re on one of the no-fly lists.”

Ummm…. WHAT?

I started to get a little frightened, because I have no idea what this is going to mean. Am I going to be searched? Am I going to be arrested? Am I going to be forbidden to fly? And after all, I mean, look at me. Even to the untrained eye, it should be immediately clear that I pose no conceivable security threat to the United States, or indeed to anyone. “OK … How did I get on a No-Fly list?”

“We don’t know, sir ; they don’t tell us.”

He then asked me what my middle name was, and I told him, and he thought about it for a few moments as he looked at the screen. Then he punched a few keys, handed back my credit card and my ID, printed up a boarding pass, and handed that to me. “You’re all set,” he told me. “We can’t print you a boarding pass for your return flight, though. You’re going to have to get that at the airport on the way back.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “What happens now? I mean, I’m on a no-fly list, right? So how do I get off that list?”

“We don’t have anything to do with it,” he told me. “You’re gonna have to talk to one of the TSA people at the security station.”

I thought about asking why, if I’m on a no-fly list, I’d just been handed a boarding pass, but you know, I really did need to fly that day, and I didn’t want to give them any opportunity to take that pass away.

Anyway, I got to my gate in plenty of time. (The airport is one place where I’m always early.) I was not scrutinized more closely than usual. I wasn’t searched or questioned. I didn’t even have to take my shoes off. I did seek out a TSA person to ask how I should remove myself from a no-fly list.

She had no idea, but she did ask a bunch of other people, including her supervisor, and ultimately, she told me to phone Homeland Security when I got home. They didn’t have the phone number. She just shrugged.

When I finally got to my hotel, I had a little time to do some research. The first thing that becomes crystal clear is that the no-fly list is not highly regarded among security experts. Bruce Schneier, who knows as much about security as anybody alive, thinks that the no-fly list is a bad idea. He writes:

There’s something distinctly un-American about a secret government blacklist, with no right of appeal or judicial review. Even worse, there’s evidence that it’s being used as a political harassment tool: environmental activists, peace protesters, and anti-free-trade activists have all found themselves on the list.

But beyond being un-American, the list doesn’t actually help catch terrorists. Why? Because

Any watch list where it’s easy to put names on and difficult to take names off will quickly fill with false positives. These false positives eventually overwhelm any real information on the list, and soon the list does no more than flag innocents - which is what we see happening today, and why the list hasn’t resulted in any arrests.

I got off easy. A lot of people have experienced much more hassle with the no-fly list than I have. A man who wrote a book critical of the Bush administration, for example, is routinely searched when he flies. Why? Nobody tells him. It’s not unreasonable to believe that the no-fly list is used to harass political opponents of the administration. (Without transparency and oversight, these things are always used to harass political opponents of the administration. Any administration, but particularly this one.)

In one particularly high-profile case, Ted Kennedy found himself on the no-fly list and it took him three weeks to straighten it out. He’s a US Senator, and he’s rich and famous. What chance have I got?

Well, the TSA web site says there is a procedure, but the process is lengthy and the form is, shall we say, intrusive. In order to comply with their procedure, I need to provide my name, current address, gender, place of birth, date of birth, Social Security number, height, weight, hair color, eye color, and home and work telephone numbers. Then I need to supply certified or notarized copies of at least three of the following: my passport, my visa, my birth certificate, my naturalization certificate, my voter registration card, my driver’s license, or my government or military ID card. This really sucks because I don’t even have three of these, let alone notarized! So in order to comply with this procedure, I’d have to track down this paperwork, get it notarized or certified, and then file it with Homeland Security. And then, I’d have to wait at least 45 days, after which TSA will do whatever it is that it does with this information. And after all that? What do I get? TSA is helpful enough in spelling out the futility of my efforts:

“Please understand that the TSA clearance process will not remove a name from the Watch Lists.”

So even after going through all that rigamarole, I’ll still be on the list.

I’m not paranoid. I don’t think I’m on a no-fly list because of anything I’ve personally done or said or written, or because of anything anyone thinks of me personally. The most likely plausible explanation is that some person of interest, at one time or another, either has the name Patrick Brennan or has traveled under the name Patrick Brennan. It’s a common enough name, after all. (Just take a look: http://www.google.com/search?q=patrick+brennan) That person may be a terrorist or just a political foe of the administration; I don’t know. But from what I can gather, the No-Fly list isn’t a list of people; it’s just a list of names. So my name is on it, for whatever reason, and apparently, it’s going to stay there.

And here’s the thing about my experience with the No-Fly list: Whether you’re left, right, or center, there’s something in it to scare the shit out of you. You tell me which scares you the most:

• I found myself (and so can you!) on a secret government blacklist for no appreciable reason, with no explanation given, and which might at any time have grave consequences for me. I have no recourse, no redress, no appeal. There is no due process. I can be denied travel, detained, arrested, searched, or God knows what else, for secret reasons, and I can’t do anything about it.
• I can’t get off the list. The process of attempting this is a Kafkaesque labyrinth of pure pointlessness, seemingly calculated to bring joy to the heart of Soviet-era East European bureaucrats everywhere.
• But, even though I’m on the list, and even though I’m told I’m on the list, a boarding pass is given to me and I walk right through security without the slightest additional scrutiny. Everyone who works in the airport knows it’s bullshit, and pays it very little attention. I surmise from that fact that there must be a large number of false positives. So how many actual terrorists haven’t been caught even though they were on the list?
• What’s the real point of the list, after all? It is manifestly ineffective. Is it merely to provide the appearance that our government is doing something to help stop the terrorists? Is it to harass political opponents? Is it there because our government can’t really think of any better security measures? Maybe a little bit of all of these?

Like I said, you tell me. All I know is, I thought I heard Osama laughing his ass off that day.

I’m very excited to announce that my one-act play, No Politics, is being performed at the Theatre Cooperative in Somerville this February 3rd and 4th! We’ve got an outstanding cast and crew, and I’m expecting it to be a really fun show!

No Politics is a comedy about the challenges of keeping the peace in a family where everybody has a different political opinion. If you’ve ever been to a family gathering where the mere mention of “George W. Bush” or “Bill Clinton” could ignite another War Between the States right in your own home, then this is the play for you! Somewhere between Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and What’s the Matter With Kansas?, No Politics is a hilarious and provocative exploration of a group of people who love each other, even as they look at each other across the Red-Blue divide. No matter what your politics are, you’ll enjoy No Politics!

As part of its New Play Series, the Theatre Cooperative is mounting a special two-night full performance of No Politics on Friday and Saturday, February 3rd and 4th, 2006, at 8:00 PM.

Tickets for No Politics are $10.00 and are available at Theater Mania : (http://www.theatermania.com/content/show.cfm/show/116299)
Or you can call the Theatre Cooperative Box Office at (617) 625-1300.

More information about the Theatre Cooperative’s production of No Politics is available here (http://theatrecoop.org/newplays06.html).
More information about the Theatre Cooperative is available here (http://www.theatrecoop.org/) and here (http://www.theatermania.com/content/theater.cfm/int_show_id/116299).

The Theatre Cooperative is located at 277 Broadway, in Somerville. A map and directions to the theatre can be found here (http://theatrecoop.org/map05.html). A cool bird’s-eye view can be seen here (http://local.live.com/?v=2&sp=adr.277%20Broadway%2c%20Somerville%2c%20MA%2002145).

I’m proud and honored that the Theatre Cooperative has chosen No Politics as part of its New Play Series, and I’m confident that it will be a great show! I hope to see you there!

The thing about changing a baby’s diaper is that it’s not a two-handed job. I need three hands, minimum, to change my daughter when she’s gone “number two". Unfortunately, I only have two hands. So without going into too much detail, please just believe me when I say it’s nigh-impossible to get away from the scene of the crime unscathed. Her little suit is going to get soiled, or the changing pad, or my hands, or more likely, all three, and it’s not a pretty sight.

I was in the middle of one these clean-up operations, and it occurred to me that all by herself, without even trying very hard, my daughter refutes the doctrine of “Intelligent Design". I mean, after all, an intelligent designer would very likely have come up with a built-in method of waste disposal which was a little neater, don’t you think? Say, something which makes it possible for me to change her diaper with only two hands, and avoid leaving streaks on her pajamas (or my hands)? In fact, if we had been intelligently designed, wouldn’t a diaper be unnecessary?

I don’t know, but I’m willing to bet that not one single man in the ID camp has ever changed a diaper. It’s not the only way they’ve avoided reality, so who knows if it would help, but it sure couldn’t hurt.

The web is a wonderful thing. Once upon a time, it was difficult to find rambling, incoherent, grandiose, paranoid delusion in a single narrative. It used to be that the best way to get this stuff was to be a celebrity, in which case the paranoid-delusional out there would send it to you in the mail. Nowadays, you can find a veritable smorgasbord of conspiracy on the web. This is one of the tastier samples out there:

“…The US government controlled all of my conversations since my birth with a computer program, beam weapons, and subliminal messages that went back in time to control us, so that I have been isolated most of my life from the rest of society. Government agents and secret society agents, claimed that the US military and the CIA had been targeting my person and associates with beam weapons, and that the CIA had done most of the time travel beam weapons body possession of my person back in time that changed my physical form from one form to another.”

Much, much more where that came from here.

I admit I’m a junkie for this kind of material. Aside from its sheer surface entertainment value, I’m also drawn to the people who write it, though I’m a little hard-pressed to explain what I find so fascinating about such characters. There’s mental illness here, sure, but there’s more. They’re a little sad, I think, that the world is altogether too mundane to contain their fantasies, or that they didn’t turn out to be as important as they deserve to be. Well … there but for a well-regulated prefrontal cortex (or lack of a good thought screen hat) go I.

Someday I’d like to write about one of these guys.

(ENTER BILL. BILL wears a short-sleeve white shirt with a name tag, a black tie, pressed slacks, and unassuming black shoes. He is in a television commercial:)

BILL:The looks on their faces when I’ve done my best to help ‘em – that’s what makes the job worthwhile.

ANNOUNCER 1:(Voice Only)Bill O’Keestis. Father of three, and a Flawed-Mart employee for fourteen years.

BILL:We’re here to help the customer find exactly what they’re looking for, and when they’ve found it, they need to know that they’re going home with the best price they could possibly pay.

ANNOUNCER 1:He’s been an assistant manager for the past eight years.

BILL:And if that means that we have to work a few hours off the clock, well, we’ll do whatever it takes.

ANNOUNCER 1:He’s finally got enough time with the company to qualify for health insurance.

BILL:I’m not asking my people to do anything I don’t do.

ANNOUNCER 1:And he’s finally got a wage that lets him afford it, unlike most of the people he manages.

BILL:It’s been a long time since I had that health insurance.

ANNOUNCER 1:He used to run the hardware store downtown. But the hardware store isn’t there any more.

BILL:People want low prices!

ANNOUNCER 1:Neither is downtown.

BILL:I don’t mind working a little overtime. Neither do any of the people I manage.

ANNOUNCER 1:Of course, it’s completely against Flawed-Mart policy to ask or expect our sales associates to work off the clock.

BILL:I was only doing what the store manager told me to do.

ANNOUNCER 1:And we don’t expect our managers to alter employee time cards.

BILL:He told me to do that, too.

ANNOUNCER 1:I said, our managers don’t alter employee time cards.

BILL:I have three daughters at home.

ANNOUNCER 1:Of course there are targets to meet. Flawed-Mart works hard to keep payroll costs down, in order to pass the savings to you.

BILL:I need this job.

ANNOUNCER 1:We don’t tell our managers to time-shave. We don’t have to.

BILL:My wife is sick. I need health insurance!

ANNOUNCER 1:And it’s men like Bill O’Keestis that keep Flawed-Mart the kind of place it is.

BILL:It won’t happen again. I swear!

ANNOUNCER 1:A place where you can find the finest Chinese-made products at the lowest rock-bottom prices.

BILL:Please!

ANNOUNCER 1:Flawed-Mart. Always willing to find a scapegoat. Always.

BILL:It’s the fucking media! If they hadn’t run this story, who’d've cared!

ANNOUNCER 2:(Voice Only)Now seeking sales associates in your area! Apply at your nearest Flawed-Mart.

Someone who knows asks the question: If this suite’s a success, why is it so buggy? Andrew Brown’s got a good point. I like OpenOffice and I use it on a daily basis, though I don’t think it’s terribly buggy. It’s never mangled my documents the way Microsoft Word has. However, I have never contributed money or code to OpenOffice, even though I really should.

I sometimes listen to the “alternative music” channel on XM radio. One of their shticks is to use the station ID break (which is wholly unnecessary on satellite radio, isn’t it?) to taunt their listeners, who are hip and ironic enough to enjoy having their hip ironic hipness ridiculed.

So the other evening, while I was driving home, my XM radio said of the alternative music channel, “…the music that used to make you cool … The way the minivan and the stock options don’t now.”

And meanwhile the XM radio display, which usually displays the artist and the track title in big bright amber letters, read:

You’re out of Huggies, alt boy.

And I thought, “I do NOT own a minivan. And we use Pampers, so there.”

They think they know me. Hah!

Was it simple intolerance? Xenophobia? Class resentment? Insecurity? Mental illness? Self-loathing? Or a combustible mix of all of these? Whatever it was, put on display on this video segment from Trading Spouses, it made for a hell of a show (in more ways than one, apparently). This poor woman from Louisiana loses it when she returns from “dark-sided” Massachusetts, and launches into a tirade about being a “prayer warrior,” about “gargoyles,” about the horrible “soltice party” [sic] she attended, about how she had to force her hosts’ children to go to a Catholic Church! I watched slack-jawed – appropriately enough, I suppose – as this woman screamed at her husband and children, humiliating herself and her family on national television. (and I thought, “those girls aren’t going to let their mother ever forget about that“) At one point, she tries to throw out all the crew members who aren’t Christians, and screams, “Get the hell out of my house – In Jesus’s name, I pray.” Brilliant.

It was great TV. I feel sorry for her, because there are no do-overs on national TV, and she’s had her bite at the apple, and she will forever be the fundamentalist crazy fat lady on the TV who doesn’t even know what a solstice is. (Hint: It has nothing to do with Satan.) However, sorry as I feel for her, it was still great TV.

If I had written her words as dialog, I would have been accused of being an anti-Christian – or anti-Southern – or anti-fat bigot, a hater of people who are not like me. If I had written her words as dialog, they would have been dismissed as totally unrealistic and over-the-top. Now I have a counter-example. Serious, steadfast, insular, raging lunatics really exist, utterly convinced of their own rightness and the rightness of their particular version of reality.

It’s sad, and I pity this poor woman and her family – not that she would care. I come from the hated state of Massachusetts, and I’m not a Christian, so I must be dark-sided. For what it’s worth, I agree with Margaret Perrin that astrology, psychics, and tarot cards are baloney; where I part company with Margaret is that I don’t think they’re evil. Also I eat less.

Somewhere at a secure, undisclosed location, a grey-suited government official gives the word to a junior officer. In the other room, a prisoner waits. He knows where a bomb is hidden, and when it’s going to explode. Clearly, the gloves are going to have to come off…

Milgram’s War is a black comedy about the war, terrorism, and torture. It’s a one-act play which we will read for the first time on Sunday, December 4th, at Playwrights’ Platform. It’s not a polemic – I wanted to write a real play which, while being thoughtful and interesting, would also be funny and entertaining. I think I’ve largely succeeded. I’ll see how close to the mark I got on Sunday.

My short plays Simbiotic and dog_eat_dog.com have just been published by JAC Publishing & Promotions of Burlington, MA. I just received some copies, and they really look great. JAC Publishing is lately picking up a lot of the good local work – there are some terrific pieces in their latest crop – and I’m very proud to be counted among that group. If you’re looking for a good play to perform, or if you just want to help me justify my writing habit to my family, please go spend some money there.

Spammers really bug the crap out of me. I manage my own spam filters, and naturally I don’t have any interest in Viagra, so one of the words I add to my filters is “Viagra". If you’ve had email for 5 minutes, you already know where this is heading. It’s true that I no longer receive any mail exhorting me to buy “Viagra". In other words, the filters work! Instead, now I am solicited to buy “V1A G’ra” and “vi 4grA” and “V!a6ra", and so many more permutations that the mind reels.

What are they thinking? I mean, when I set up my filter to reject Viagra ads, wasn’t that sufficient to convince someone that I’m, I don’t know, not interested in buying Viagra? Someone obviously thinks that the fact that I’m not interested in Viagra, spelled correctly, clearly implies that I am interested in “V1A G’ra". Some moron, somewhere, must actually imagine that I’m sitting there saying, “Say, that’s not how I usually spell Viagra! That looks interesting! I think I’ll click on that message!”

And of course, it’s not just Viagra. I’ve had my current email address for an Internet Age (since 1992), and it’s been exposed on the web more than once, so it’s had time to get on a lot of lists. Prescription drugs and every variety of the Nigerian scam are big hits on my inbox, along with viruses, worms, and phishers, and I can’t even begin to tell you some of the varieties of stupid, vile and disgusting spam which comes across my email queue. (Hm, maybe I should rephrase that.) I’ve taken to adding even the common mispellings to my filters, but this is a sucker’s game, obviously.

And obviously, the spammers know that I’m not really interested in “v i g a r a". They just don’t care.

The economics of the spam game are rigged in favor of the spammer, and they’re rigged in favor of the spammer doing things which would be irrational in other contexts (say, direct mail advertising). The marginal cost of sending out a spam is essentially zero, so there’s no penalty for sending out millions of messages to addresses which don’t exist, or to people who aren’t apparently interested. And spammers don’t pay for bounced messages, since they forge the return header. So maybe I’ve changed my mind about Viagra since setting up my spam filters, and maybe this message is the one I impulsively click on the exact moment after I’ve changed my mind, so the probability that I’ll return this message isn’t zero, it’s just really, really tiny; and that is enough for a spammer, since sending the message cost him nothing. Therefore, he has a perverse incentive to beat my spam filters by spelling his product wrong, because even though I said I didn’t want it, maybe, maybe … maybe, I do today.

Talk about not taking no for an answer.

What do you do when your brand of politics isn’t the same as your in-laws’? When you can’t agree on whether George W. Bush is the greatest president ever or … well, not, you might do what Jack and Amy do when they’re hosting their parents. In their house, when the in-laws are visiting, the rule is, “No Politics". But in a family of strongly-held opinions, it’s hard to stick to rules like that…

No Politics is the title of my new comedy, which will be playing at the Theatre Cooperative in a workshop production on February 3rd and 4th, 2006. The performance will be followed by a talk-back session with the director, the cast, and me.

I’ve been writing No Politics since 2003, when I had the sense that a lot of people are experiencing the strains of our current political situation in their families. Family comedy is a new genre for me, and I’m really pleased at the opportunity which the Theatre Cooperative has extended to me in offering this workshop production. If you’re in town on those nights, please consider coming to the show! Whether you vote Blue or Red, whether you’re celebrating or seething at the current administration, I promise you a lot of laughs!

(No American soldiers, “former Hill staffers", or New York Times “reporters” were harmed in the making of this play.)

Lizzie Grubman took her truck
And backed up over some white-trash fuck.
When she saw what she had done
She backed up over another one.

I saw this today while waiting in the checkout line.

You know, most things I see in the supermarket aren’t this honest.

I see that George W. Bush has nominated John Roberts for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, even before Rehnquist’s body is cold. Bush sure can move quickly, when it’s about something he gives a shit about.

Coming up on the Katrina front: first, Michael Brown gets the Medal of Freedom. Second, some sort of commission gets convened to “investigate” (i.e. whitewash) what went wrong.

I just saw George W. Bush on the television, announcing his program to help the victims of the terrible disaster on the Gulf Coast. In response to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, Bush has announced that the United States will invade Cuba. “We can either fight the hurricanes in the Caribbean, where they spawn, or we can fight them on our own soil,” he said. Makes a whole lot of sense to me. Let’s Roll!

I’m sorry, but Larry King is an idiot. For proof, see this actual quote from last night’s program :

LARRY KING: “…how can you out-and-out turn down creationism, since if evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?”

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, he really said that. And that is why Larry King won’t do two shows a night. He just won’t. It wouldn’t be fair to him or to his audience.