Once we start letting the fear of offending some group of people control what books are published, where does it stop? Books are about ideas. I might viscerally hate the ideas in a book, but I don’t think my hatred of those ideas should prevent the book from being published or sold. Publishers should have the courage to market books wherever they think they might sell.

Trying to avoid offending people is a race to the bottom leading to pablum and mediocrity.

Link to B92 article ganked from Jamie Larue’s wonderful blog.

Why is the Defense Department and Bush Administration even going through the motions of the military commissions for the Guantanamo Bay detainees if they are seriously talking about not releasing them after they are acquitted or have served out their sentences:

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said it has always been the Defense Department’s position that detainees could be held as enemy combatants even after acquittal at military commissions or after serving a prison sentence. “That’s always been on our minds in terms of a scenario we could face,” he said. “He will serve his time for the conviction and then he will still be an enemy combatant, and as an enemy combatant the process for potential transfer or release will apply.”
– http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/08/09/ST2008080900876.htm

Having demolished the prestige and respect of the United States on the world stage, now they start worrying about how their actions will look?

Defense Department officials said there are concerns about the public perception of holding Hamdan after his prison term runs out, because it could label the military commissions a “show process” with no meaning to its sentences. They also worry about possible precedents that could be set in U.S. courts if Hamdan’s attorneys immediately file a habeas corpus petition seeking his release in five months. Hamdan previously won a Supreme Court case that invalidated the Bush administration’s earlier military commissions procedures. – ibid

I almost hope they do decide to detain him and Hamdan’s attorneys file a habeas corpus petition. The government would lose.

Someone finally captured the essence of air travel today.

The following is the text of an email my girlfriend sent to her family today.  I can’t think of a worthy introduction, so I’ll just let her words stand on their own.

This hit hard for Lance and me. We go to a UU church in a conservative area, and Lance is even on the coordinating council. Lance has personally been to this congregation when he was in graduate school at Univ of TN.

While obviously I think that this was a desperate act by a deranged man, this story reflects a deeper concern for me, one which fuels the political climate today. The last 8 years of President Bush’s conservative, Republican administration has lead to an increased intolerance of people who are not of the main stream religion, Christianity, which includes Lance and I. If you’ve been keeping up with the news, the Bush administration has even gone so far as to stack what are supposed to be non-partisan offices of government with a majority of employees that believe in his conservative agenda.

Report Says Partisanship Reigned in Justice Department Hiring Program

Believe what you will from the media, but the truth is that Lance and I actively refrain from mentioning our spiritual and political beliefs frequently, because we are aware of the negative repercussions this will have and the confrontations that could ensue. I have the seen the look of disbelief and disgust on people’s faces when I tell them that I am not Christian; God forbid I mention the word “pagan” to them. One acquaintance has not spoken to me again, although I have seen him on several occasions, after I told him some of my spiritual beliefs. I will not wear shirts with certain logos, obvious pendants, or put political or religious bumper stickers on my car–all these things could out me as a liberal, non-christian at an inopportune time. I will continue going to UU services, supporting liberal groups, and attending public pagan rituals and celebrations. To alter my activities in the slightest out of fear would undermine my person creed and allow the other side to win the ongoing and not-so-subconscious battle of wills.

I am a good person. I deserve to have the same rights and freedoms as any other person, which includes being able to choose and actively participate in the religion that works best for me. This not a new principle; it was one on which our country was founded, but is conveniently forgotten today. Unfortunately, some of the loudest Washington proponents would utterly disagree with my assertion of my rights. I think it is seen most notably with Islam, but believe me it doesn’t end there. It’s only a jumping off point for the intolerance that is sweeping this nation. I believe, whether consciously or not, conservative Republicans are encouraging and increasing the religious hostility prevalent today. My point in writing all of this is to implore you to fight for tolerance with your actions, words, and votes.

While I am nuanced enough to realize that there are always more than one issue to consider when choosing a candidate, I would ask you to consider my above words in your decision for President. I do not trust the Republican National Committee or John McCain to improve the religious and political schism in this country and restore tolerance. I believe that they will continue to cater to conservative religious groups and further divide this country. I do not believe that the right or left should win, or one should have more power than the other. Rather, I believe that balance between the two would more justly serve the needs of all instead of some, and the only real chance for this, however slim, lies with the Democratic party. More importantly, maybe I wouldn’t be worried that I’d get that look of disgust and loathing or worse if, for instance, I’d slip and say something “liberal” in a gas station in the middle of no where in the bible belt when my car’s broken down and I am in need of assistance, or perhaps in some similar but wholly likely situation.

Please do not see this as an over reaction to an obviously sad and troubling event. This tragedy merely served as a source of inspiration to relay the realities that I am faced with everyday as a religious minority in this country. This is my life. My fear and concern are as real as the words on this page, and my desire to see change as strong.

If you’re still on the fence, I hope this pushes you left.

I’m a bit wigged out just now. My then-wife and I visited TVUUC back when we moved to Knoxville for me to attend graduate school. This is the closest I’ve come to such violence in my life and my thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the deceased, the members of TVUUC, and the Knoxville community. It’s a sobering thought to consider that had I found a job in Knoxville after quitting grad school, I might have been sitting in that sanctuary yesterday morning.

I love Thinkpad notebooks.  Short of a Panasonic Toughbook, they are the most rugged notebook computers I’ve ever used.  Yesterday, while traveling home from General Assembly, I stopped in the men’s room at the Atlanta airport.  I hung my backpack on the hook on the door, turned away  to do my thing, and heard my pack *crunch* sickeningly onto the floor.  I finished up, then opened my pack and peeked in.  Nothing appeared to be out of place so I closed it up and left.

I sat down in the gate area, took the notebook out, and looked it over.  The back left corner is cracked and the main chassis has a slight arc now along the back edge.  With a deep breath, I opened the lid and watched it come out of sleep mode!  Keyboard and trackpad worked, but it wouldn’t find any wireless networks available at all.  Feeling sick, I packed it up again and got ready to board my flight thinking that I was going to have to repair this laptop or buy a USB wireless dongle just one month before buying a new laptop.   How bad is that.

My flight from Atlanta to Raleigh-Durham went quickly, helped by the new XM radio system available on the flight.  At home, I did a full shutdown/reboot of the laptop and the wireless system came back to life!  This afternoon, I downloaded the hardware service manual, disassembled the main chassis as far as I could, vacuumed out all the cat hair (yeesh!) and reassmbled it.  This removed the curve from the rear of the chassis and everything is working well again.

I’m virtually certain had I been carrying a Dell notebook yesterday I would have found it in parts in my backpack.  They just don’t have the same rugged quality as Thinkpads.  I don’t know about Toshiba or HP notebooks.  I look forward to the new Lenovo ThinkPad T61p I’m planning on buying very soon.

I’m not getting as much written about GA this year as I hoped. Partly because I’m struggling with finding/recognizing my voice on this blog and partly because I’ve been busy enjoying myself and working on the web team.

Thursday morning, I video-taped the “Green Forum: Beyond Darwin and Lincoln” workshop. Interesting factoid: Abe Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the same day in the same year. Both candidates for the 2009 UUA Presidential election spoke and answered questions from the audience. I’m almost entirely apolitical about UUA governance so this was my first experience with the candidates. Both impressed me. I may say more about them at a later date. The workshop was interesting and some very cool questions about the interface between liberal religion and science came up. In response to a question about engaging advocates of Creationism and Intelligent Design in science classrooms, Rev. Morales presented a powerful argument I had not encountered before: Creationists who claim there is s in the scientific community over the theory of evolution are bearing false witness. They are flat out lying. I knew it was lying, but couching it in the traditional biblical terminology confronts Creationists with the actions on their own ground.

Thursday evening I monitored streaming video for the Service of the Living Tradition. The SLT always impresses me, even when I’m sitting in the production area off to the side of the hall instead of the in the audience.

Today was my heaviest workload: Streaming video coverage for Friday Morning Worship and the third Plenary session, than videotaping the “Theology of Peacemaking” workshop right after lunch and back for more streaming coverage for the Bridging Ceremony in the evening. I don’t remember much of the Morning Worship although the music was very cool. I just wasn’t awake yet. I love watching Gini Courtier manage the the Plenary sessions. It takes a special person to do that job and she’s definitely got the skills for it! I about fell out of my chair laughing at some of her humorous lines….

I really enjoyed the “Theology of Peacemaking”(video) workshop. It was a reprise of a similar workshop given last year that was scheduled into a too-small room for the massive crowd that showed up. UUA volunteers had to herd protesting GA attendees out of the room because they had gone past ‘full’ and ’standing room only’ to ‘packed in like sardines’ to see the Rev. Dr. Bill Schultz speak. One attendee protested so strenuously that he caught the attention of Rev. Schultz and ended up getting asked to join the workshop as a presenter this year. I encourage everyone to watchi this workshop. Rev. Schultz is an amazing speaker.

Given his past work with the UUA and Amnesty International, his position on peacemaking surprised me. He falls in between the “Just War” and “Pacifist” positions on the scale of using force to oppose oppression and violence. I thought he was a full-on pacifict type. His argument is that sometimes the only possible response to violence is use of appropriate force. Force employed only when all peaceful solutions have failed and with conscious decision to use it to protect the helpless and innocent from the actions of malicious and malevalent agents. He strongly supports the recent developments in the UN that provides for emergency response forces that can act in such situations. I need to explore this more, but my gut feeling is that he’s right.

More later. I need to sleep and get up early.

Imagine President George Bush with his fingers in his ears yelling, “La la la la la la la la! I’m not listening!” That is exactly what he did to the Environmental Protection Agency last December. The White House simply refused to open emails containing the E.P.A.’s response to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling requiring it to determine whether greenhouse casses represent a danger to health or the environment. The Bush administration didn’t like the result so they just ignored it. “La la la la la la la!!!”

Now, six months later the E.P.A. is releasing a watered down version of their results. Watered down after intense pressure from the Bush administration to remove entire sections the administration didn’t like. *sigh*

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, you made a grave mistake when you said, “Impeachment is off the table.” President Bush and his cronies and handlers fear nothing, because there is nothing for them to fear. You screwed up.

Once again I’m at the UUA General Assembly working on the UUA GA web reporting team doing streaming and tape videography, computer geek support, and support for the new web-based system we are using for the writing/editing/publishing workflow.  Fort Lauderdale at midsummer is just way too hot for reason.  Too. Damn. Hot.  Have I made myself understood on this point?  I definitely plan on minimizing the number of trips I make between the GA webworkers office and the convention center even though the office in the hotel catty-corner across the street from the convention center.  I’m not sure which is worse:  the heat outside or the blast of air-conditioned air when you enter center or the hotel.  I’ll be very surprised if I don’t get some of cold or sore throat from repeated temperature changes.  Anyway, enough about the heat.

I’m impressed with the convention center so far.  It seems to be laid out nicely so I won’t have to lug a video camera and tripod hither-and-yon to reach my various assignments.  Last year’s center was a sprawling complex and I routinely had 10 or 15 minute walks just to get from room to room for my assignments.  This year everything seems to be close by.  I’m glad.

As I write this, I’m sitting at our table behind the production crew monitoring the streaming video for the opening ceremony and worship.  The opening always makes me proud to be a UU and be part of the effort to bring General Assembly to UUs who can’t be here with us.  Currently, our steaming service has 135 connections, which easily blows out our max connections from last year.

I hope to write more about GA this year as it happens.

Peace
–[Lance]

I’ve been a fan of Dave Brady’s Insect Picture of the Day website since I first ran across it. It’s in my “read every day” folder in Google Reader. He’s inspired me to try my hand at insect photography and I got my first chance recently. I own a Canon Powershot A610 so most of these aren’t all that much to talk about, but there are few good ones in my first photo set.

I found these two hanging out in a random web nestled into the angle between a set of steps and the edge beam for the porch on the mess hall at Millstone 4-H Camp. I think they were mating when I first saw them; they were tangled up with each other. I didn’t have my camera with me and when I came back they were just hanging out in the web separately. They look frighteningly big in the photos, but were actually tiny. Only about 2cm leg tip to leg tip the long way, if that. I had to get right in there with my camera in macro mode to get the closeups. If anyone can identify them for me, I’d appreciate it.