Given a good pitch and the right amount of capital, any educated person ought to be able to make a small secure living out of a bookshop. Unless one goes in for ‘rare’ books it is not a difficult trade to learn, and you start at a great advantage if you know anything about the insides of books. (Most booksellers don’t. You can get their measure by having a look at the trade papers where they advertise their wants. If you don’t see an ad. for Boswell’s DECLINE AND FALL you are pretty sure to see one for THE MILL ON THE FLOSS by T. S. Eliot.) Also it is a humane trade which is not capable of being vulgarized beyond a certain point. The combines can never squeeze the small independent bookseller out of existence as they have squeezed the grocer and the milkman. But the hours of work are very long — I was only a part-time employee, but my employer put in a seventy-hour week, apart from constant expeditions out of hours to buy books — and it is an unhealthy life. As a rule a bookshop is horribly cold in winter, because if it is too warm the windows get misted over, and a bookseller lives on his windows. And books give off more and nastier dust than any other class of objects yet invented, and the top of a book is the place where every bluebottle prefers to die.

From Collected Essays Of George Orwell.

Roldo Bartimole writes:

How will the Cleveland news media play the debate over the sin tax?

So far it’s pretty much business as usual.

The Plain Dealer jumped on the wagon before it even started rolling. The editorial board endorsed the tax on January 25.

That’s more than 100 days before the election. One hundred and two days actually. A hundred days before they even examined the issue.

It should be embarrassing to an honest editor.

It suggests the Plain Dealer wasn’t interested in giving the issue any real thought.

They pulled the trigger before asking questions.

“It should be renewed,” it said. Quick decision.

It stated that if “the sin tax isn’t extended, the city and county, per the team leases, will still have to come up with at least a share of the money for major capital repairs…”

Well, not if the leases were changed. A possibility not even mentioned.

Why make waves.

Why question authority.

I’ll tell you way. Because the newspaper is part of the pro-tax team. Not independent. Indeed, the paper itself endorsed that 1990 pro-tax ad in the PD, which has now been discredited by its promoter, as even the PD has quoted, him saying the claims were “lies.”

I should add, however, that the PD printed an opposition response I did after requesting an opportunity to counter a previous Continue Reading »

Endeavour has inspired me…

PZ Myers writes:

I think it’s cute what you did there: Protestants have superstitions, but you have traditions. You really are peas in a pod.

Also, no one is making you change your traditions or telling you what to believe. You don’t have to get married to someone of the same sex. Your church doesn’t even have to carry out gay marriage ceremonies. You get to do as you want.

Except where it hurts people. [Emphasis mine, JH]

That’s the thing. Where you think you are just so fucking special because you’re Catholic, the rest of the world is trying to grow up and recognize that every one of us, gay or straight, man or woman, brown or pink, are human beings who deserve equal treatment under the law, and that ‘tradition’ is not a sufficient excuse to refuse some people their rights.

I would also ask how, if a pair of gay atheists marry, it makes you abandon your Catholic tradition? Or what if it’s a pair of liberal Lutherans, or a pair of ex-Catholics? Is it just violating your Catholic tradition of treating some people as less than human?

Glenn Greenwald writes:

By publishing these stories one by one, our NBC reporting highlighted some of the key, discrete revelations: the monitoring of YouTube and Blogger, the targeting of Anonymous with the very same DDoS attacks they accuse “hacktivists” of using, the use of “honey traps” (luring people into compromising situations using sex) and destructive viruses. But, here, I want to focus and elaborate on the overarching point revealed by all of these documents: namely, that these agencies are attempting to control, infiltrate, manipulate, and warp online discourse, and in doing so, are compromising the integrity of the internet itself.

GCHQ describes the purpose of JTRIG in starkly clear terms: “using online techniques to make something happen in the real or cyber world”, including “information ops (influence or disruption)”.

Now, won’t that make you feel safer if you actually own a business?

Greenwald concludes:

We submitted numerous questions to GCHQ, including: (1) Does GCHQ in fact engage in “false flag operations” where material is posted to the Internet and falsely attributed to someone else?; (2) Does GCHQ engage in efforts to influence or manipulate political discourse online?; and (3) Does GCHQ’s mandate include targeting common criminals (such as boiler room operators), or only foreign threats?

As usual, they ignored those questions and opted instead to send their vague and nonresponsive boilerplate: “It is a longstanding policy that we do not comment on intelligence matters. Furthermore, all of GCHQ’s work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework which ensures that our activities are authorised, necessary and proportionate, and that there is rigorous oversight, including from the Secretary of State, the Interception and Intelligence Services Commissioners and the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee. All our operational processes rigorously support this position.”

These agencies’ refusal to “comment on intelligence matters” – meaning: talk at all about anything and everything they do – is precisely why whistleblowing is so urgent, the journalism that supports it so clearly in the public interest, and the increasingly unhinged attacks by these agencies so easy to understand. Claims that government agencies are infiltrating online communities and engaging in “false flag operations” to discredit targets are often dismissed as conspiracy theories, but these documents leave no doubt they are doing precisely that.

The troll you hate, the friend egging you on, the lover enticing you in, may be on the government payroll. Inducing paranoia is part of the strategy.

Only West Virginians grow up knowing the difference between a “right near” and a “right far piece.” They also know that “just down the road” can be one mile or 20.

My Hess line moved to Palantine, Virginia (now Fairmont, West Virginia) in 1723. My father and his parents moved to Marietta, Ohio during World War II. My dad is fond of joking that he raised the average intelligence in both states when he moved.

Glenn Greenwald writes:

[Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, also acknowledges that the very human nature of the bureaucracy he controls virtually insures that more mass disclosures are inevitable. “In the end,” he says, “we will never ever be able to guarantee that there will not be an Edward Snowden or another Chelsea Manning because this is a large enterprise composed of human beings with all their idiosyncrasies.”

That is indeed true, and it’s good news: more Chelsea Mannings and Edward Snowdens are inevitable, and there is nothing the U.S. Government can do to stop them. That’s good news because it means government officials will have to operate on the assumption that what they do in the dark will become public (an excellent deterrent) and because that type of transparency is inherently healthy in a political culture where secrecy is rampant and the institutions designed to check it (Congress, the media, the federal judiciary) have all profoundly failed.

This also underscores why the U.S. Government has been so vindictive in trying to punish the likes of Manning and other whistleblowers. Since they have no means of preventing these sorts of leaks, their only hope is to create a climate of fear and intimidation: if you are thinking about exposing our bad acts, look at what we did to Chelsea Manning or Tom Drake and think twice. That’s why it’s been so vital – and, for the U.S. national security state, so devastating – that Edward Snowden has remained out of their grasp: rather than getting to parade him in front of the world in an orange jumpsuit and shackles, U.S. officials are forced to watch as he is hailed as an international hero, receives award after award, and participates freely in the debate he triggered. That, in turn, allows the template he used to be a positive one, one that will undoubtedly inspire future whistleblowers.

And the Bush-Obama Security Scheme slogs on…

I’ve devoted a great deal of time over the past few years to railing against Walmart, but in many ways Amazon is a greater problem because we never actually see the workers.

PZ Myers over at Pharyngula links to a story at Salon this morning about the ongoing inhumane practices at Jeff Bezos’ company.

I left this comment:

Good morning P.Z.

I stopped buying from Amazon years ago for just these reasons.

Mother Jones reporter Mac McClelland went under cover at an unnamed Internet warehouse and lasted three days before she quit.

When we buy from Amazon we are, as I see the situation, taking part in a real-life Milgram experiment.

Do all you can to make today a good day,

Jeff Hess
Have Coffee Will Write

Best comment of the thread:

Rainmaker42 asked, With the world economy pretty much set up thus, what is one to do?

Greta Christina replied, What we can, when we can. When we can: Buy from small local businesses. Buy from companies with reasonably ethical practices. Boycott companies with truly horrible practices. Support unions: don’t cross picket lines, buy union when you can, use social media to spread the word about unionizing and labor events. Talk with people about this stuff. Unionize.

Via Zen Pencils…

Previously…

*I like Green, but he should loose the This Machine Kills Fascists sticker on his laptop. Woody Guthrie had a concept and I’ll give Pete Seeger a pass as righteous homage, but everyone else, you’re just sad.

And, oh, about awesome. (Yeah, OK, Louis C.K. was talking about amazing, but you get the idea.)

That is now official United States’ law, at least as far as U.S. District Court Judge William J. Martini is concerned.

In the case of spying by the New York City Police Department Judge Martini wrote:

None of the Plaintiffs’ injuries arose until after the Associated Press released unredacted, confidential NYPD documents and articles expressing its own interpretation of those documents. Nowhere in the Complaint do Plaintiffs allege that they suffered harm prior to the unauthorized release of the documents by the Associated Press. This confirms that Plaintiffs’ alleged injuries flow from the Associated Press’s unauthorized disclosure of the documents. The harms are not “fairly traceable” to any act of surveillance.

Now, if the NYPD had been spying on members of the Tea Party…

The Bush-Obama Security Scheme knows no bounds.

Mel Brooks discusses his writing with Playboy:

Brooks: Young Frankenstein is nothing like Blazing Saddles. It’s in black and white; the photography by Gerald Hirschfeld is magnificent. Everything is back-lit and bathed in antique radiance. So often, the image on the screen looks like a Rembrandt. And the story is very strong, very serious and noble. It’s based on Mary Shelley’s book, and it’s the story of a scientist who challenges God by creating life; you could also interpret it as a story about womb envy. This creator loves his creature so much that he risks his sanity and his life to help his brainchild survive. In our picture, Dr. Frankenstein starts out like Yahweh and winds up like Christ.

That’s the serious side. But the funny side is terrifically funny, though not in the same way as any other movie I’ve made. There’s a lot of dangerous laughing in this movie. You got to have good strong veins to watch it. And when you’re not laughing, you’re shivering. But everything is done in the grand manner. The actors move like singers in a grand opera. I take my time and work for big moments. What can I tell you? I really think we’ve delivered a landmark film, a never-to-be-forgotten movie. Maybe even good.

Playboy: How much of it is you, how much is Wilder?

Brooks: A big, big part is Gene. He wrote the screenplay in collaboration with me and he plays Dr. Frankenstein.

Playboy: How did you write together?

Brooks: We holed up in the Bel Air Hotel, where Gene was staying, and we acted all the parts out. Sometimes he’d be the monster, sometimes I’d be the monster. “Rraawwrr!” “No! No! Back! Back!” We really had fun, we were like a couple of kids. When I’m writing a script, I don’t worry about plot as much as I do about people. I get to know the main characters—what they need, what they want, what they should do. That’s what gets the story going. Like a child, I listen to the characters. “Oh, so that’s what they want! I hope they get it. I love them!” You can’t just have action, you’ve got to find out what the characters want. And then they must grow, they must go somewhere.

I think every human being has hundreds of separate people living inside his skin. And the talent of a writer is directly related to his ability to give them separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living within him. That’s why we like Tennessee Williams’s plays so much. He does all this so well. But I think Gene and I did it pretty well, too. Anyway, only after the characters are developed and the main action laid out is it safe to add the gimmicks: Kenny Mars’s wooden arm, Cloris Leachman’s wart—which, by the way, she ate. Fell in her tuna-fish salad and was swallowed in a glob of mayonnaise.

And on comedy:

Brooks: There’s one thing you’ve got to understand before you can direct comedy. Comedy is serious—deadly serious. Never, never try to be funny! The actors must be serious. Only the situation must be absurd. Funny is in the writing, not in the performing. If the situation isn’t absurd, no amount of hoke will help. And another thing, the more serious the situation, the funnier the comedy can be. The greatest comedy plays against the greatest tragedy. Comedy is a red rubber ball and if you throw it against a soft, funny wall, it will not come back. But if you throw it against the hard wall of ultimate reality, it will bounce back and be very lively. Vershteh, goy bastard? No offense. Very, very few people understand this.

Brooks’ finish is brilliant.

I’m planning a Mel Brooks weekend…

Ryan Devereaux writes:

The [Human Rights Watch] report also calls on the U.S. government to explain how the attack could possibly have complied with the new policies President Obama announced in May 2013, and repeated less than three months before the wedding strike, that he had “limited the use of drones so they target only those who pose a continuing, imminent threat to the United States where capture is not feasible, and there is a near certainty of no civilian casualties.”

Obama administration officials have insisted since the strike that only members of al Qaeda were killed. Defense Department spokesman Bill Speaks reiterated to The Intercept on Wednesday “that the Yemeni Government has stated that the targets of this operation were dangerous senior al Qaeda militants,” but he declined to provide any details or evidence to support that conclusion. National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden also declined.

The Associated Press reported Thursday morning that, according to three anonymous U.S. officials, two government investigations concluded that only members of al Qaeda were hit in the strike:

Lt. Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of Joint Special Operations Command, ordered an independent investigation by an Air Force general and the White House requested another by the National Counterterrorism Center. Both concluded no civilians were killed. Votel’s staff also showed lawmakers video of the operation. Two U.S. officials who watched the video and were briefed on the investigations said it showed three trucks in the convoy were hit, all carrying armed men.

But the officials provided no details, no evidence — and were not quoted by name. The AP explained:

The officials said the Pentagon can’t release details because both the U.S. military and the CIA fly drones over Yemen. By statute, the military strikes can be acknowledged, but the CIA operations cannot. The officials said that if they explain one strike but not another, they are revealing by default which ones are being carried out by the CIA.

But at its core, the Human Rights Watch report makes the case that a swirling mix of competing accounts surrounding the strike demands a transparent investigation and publicly available findings. In an interview with The Intercept Wednesday, Letta Tayler, the author of the report, said the contradictory claims her team uncovered investigating the strike were “mind boggling.”

And the Bush-Obama Security Scheme rolls on…

So, what are you obsessing over?

Could it be that Dropbox has been letting government snoops riffle our drawers?

From an email this morning:

Hi Jeff,

We want to let you know about some upcoming updates to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. These updates will go into effect on March 24, 2014.

You can find more details on our blog, but here’s a quick overview:

• We’re adding an arbitration section to our updated Terms of Service. Arbitration is a quick and efficient way to resolve disputes, and it provides an alternative to things like state or federal courts where the process could take months or even years. If you don’t want to agree to arbitration, you can easily opt out via an online form, within 30-days of these Terms becoming effective. This form, and other details, are available on our blog.

• We’ve added a section to our Privacy Policy that discusses our recently launched Government Data Request Principles. We’ve also made clarifications to better explain how our services will use your information. For example, we explain that when you give us access to your contacts, we’ll store them so that you – and only you – can do things like share your stuff easily, no matter what device you’re using.

• We’ve also updated our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy to better explain and reflect our growing list of features for Dropbox for Business customers. [Italics mine, JH]

While we’ve simplified much of the language, our commitment to keeping your stuff safe and secure hasn’t changed. We don’t sell your personal information to third parties. We don’t serve ads based on the stuff you store in our services. As always, your stuff is yours.

If you have any questions about these updates, you can read more on our blog or email us.

Thanks for using Dropbox!

– The Dropbox Team

I’ll be opting out.

From Progress Ohio:

Earlier this month, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio cast the deciding vote to kill renewed unemployment insurance, letting down more than 50,000 Ohioans who are looking for work. Sen. Portman chose party politics over his constituents, particularly those who have fallen on hard times.

Sen. Portman can still make right by us. Senate leadership has promised to bring unemployment insurance up for a vote again, and he’ll have one more chance to restore much-needed economic security for millions of families struggling to find a job.

Since December, 1.7 million Americans have lost their modest unemployment insurance benefits, and more Americans lose their benefits every day that Congress does not act to extend this vital program. The Senate is literally ONE VOTE AWAY from being able to extend this safety net for our unemployed friends and family members, and that’s why Sen. Portman’s vote is so crucial. It is simply unthinkable that Congress — and our Senator — would further burden unemployed Americans while they’re just trying to find work and contribute to society.

Tell Sen. Portman: Don’t turn your back on your unemployed constituents. Vote to extend unemployment insurance.

Anthony Fossaceca, candidate for Ohio House District 6, writes:

In 2012, we knew that to have any chance of winning our race, we had to win Solon. It’s the largest city in the district and it acts as the geographical corner of the “backwards L” that is the 6th.

We placed considerable time and attention on building relationships and proving our commitment to the city.

Along the way, we picked up several endorsements from community activists and city council members. And even though we won Solon, there was one endorsement in particular that we wanted, but didn’t have.

Today, that changed.

I’m proud to announce that Solon Mayor Susan Drucker has given our campaign her full endorsement. Her support means a great deal to me and I’m excited to have her on the team. Most of all, I look forward to working with her next year as Solon’s new State Representative.

Roldo Bartimole writes:

Don’t you love the way the downtown gang holds together.

When Alan Glazen told the truth about the sin tax lies he brought all hell down upon him I guess. He said the promises of the campaign were simply made up.

A bitter letter appeared in the Plain Dealer Feb. 19th decrying Glazen’s honesty in spilling the beans on the downtown gang. The money-spongers.

The Gateway promoters lied about what it would do for Cleveland. And they lied big in retrospect.

The letter taking Glazen to task was written by David Abbott, Oliver Henkel and Dennis Roche.

They all have history with the Gateway robbery.

Further, they have some explaining to do if anyone is to take them serious.

Abbott was on the original Gateway board. More to the point, he was County Commissioner Tim Hagan’s top aide. Hagan was a major pusher of Gateway and a signature to the very list of promises not kept.

I don’t think Abbott should be putting himself out there supporting claims that someone else – Glazen – has some explaining Continue Reading »

Because my current project involves writing a 19th century novel, I’m continuing to read in and listen to music from the period. Right now I’m reading Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House Of Seven Gables (the pronunciation of the les drives me nuts, it ought to be GAB-less not GAY-bells, and don’t get me started on angels and angles) and while the reading is slow, I’m enjoying the story and finding that I’m greatly expanding my vocabulary.

In the first 88 pages I’ve noted 17 words that I either flat out have never used or whose meaning I was unsure of.

First up: Hucksteress (p. 54) All such proofs of a ready mind and skillful handiwork were highly acceptable to the aristocratic hucksteress, so long as she could murmur to herself with a grim smile, and a half-natural sigh and a sentiment of mixed wonder, pity and growing affection. Feminine of huckster, someone who sells or advertises something in an aggressive, dishonest, or annoying way. (13th century)

More to come…