AND SOME ARTICULATE WHAT WE SHOULD…
0831 by Jeff Hessi will not be a good girl,
not for you, not for you
i will not walk away from what i want
just to make things easy for You
From how ive managed to sit with the problem: Molly Danznger.
17 March 2008
17 March 2008
FROM MY DAD… THE ST. PATRICK’S DAY EDITION…
0800 by Jeff Hess
I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning Irish chuckle I present: From My Dad.
Paddy was driving down the street in a sweat because he had an important meeting and couldn’t find a parking place. Looking up to heaven he said, “Lord take pity on me. If you find me a parking place I will go to Mass every Sunday for the rest of me life and give up me Irish Whiskey!”
Miraculously, a parking place appeared.
Paddy looked up again and said, “Never mind, I found one.”
17 March 2008
GOOD AFTERNOON MYANMAR…
0430 by Jeff Hess
Like the use of the word recession here in the United States in recent months, the term Olympic Boycott has become increasingly politically charged as China finds itself in the international spotlight following protests in Myanmar and now Tibet. Laura Bush may have been the first to suggest a boycott by not suggesting a boycott.
The chant of the people is growing louder.
From the AFP:
Myanmar democracy activists called Monday on people across the world to boycott televised coverage of this summer’s Olympics in Beijing, in protest at China’s support for the ruling military junta.
The 88 Generation Students group, which includes some of the country’s top pro-democracy leaders, also urged viewers against buying any merchandise linked to the Games.
The Olympics are set to open on August 8, the 20th anniversary of a pro-democracy uprising led by students in Myanmar.
The military, which has ruled the country formerly known as Burma since 1962, opened fire on the crowds, killing an estimated 3,000 people.
Leaders of the uprising were handed lengthy prison sentences, but when released they formed the 88 Generation Student group.
The group began new protests in August last year, harnessing public anger at a surprise hike in fuel prices that left many unable to afford even meagre bus fares to work. Continue Reading »
17 March 2008
FROM MY CHAPBOOK…
0400 by Jeff Hess
My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.
This is a passage I copied from Midrash and Literature edited by Geoffrey H. Hartman and Sanford Budick.
Didactic: 1 a : designed or intended to teach b : intended to convey instruction and information as well as pleasure and entertainment2 : making moral observations- didactical \-ti-k0l\ adjective- didactically \-ti-k(0-)lÃŽ\ adverb- didacticism \-t0-9si-z0m\ noun [43]
17 March 2008
17 March 2008
TIME POWER: TODAY…
0001 by Jeff HessToday, as I go about my tasks, I’ll think about: People are incessantly jumping at trivial twigs because they seem urgent but ignoring the camouflaged rattlesnakes that don”t appear to call for immediate action. p. 20.
16 March 2008
GOOD MORNING MYANMAR…
2030 by Jeff HessA common tactic of dictators down through the ages has been the disappearing of political opponents in the middle of the night. A knock comes at the door at 3 a.m., there is a rush of thugs and the quickly bound and gagged dissident is carried off into the night, never to be seen or heard from again. In Myanmar the generals disappear whole buildings.
A monastery in Kyauktaw Township was set on fire after being bulldozed by army authorities because the abbot of the monastery was involved in the recent Saffron Revolution.
The 79-year-old abbot, Tilawka, told Narinjara News about the incident soon after he arrived in Bangladesh from Burma.
“The army authority set fire to my monastery after bulldozing it for two reasons. The first reason is that I was involved in the Saffron Revolution and the second reason is that I accepted four monks, who were also involved in the revolution, to take shelter in my monastery,” the abbot said. Continue Reading »
16 March 2008
WHAT THEY SAID…
1752 by Jeff HessI have a serious question, though, regarding the point of view that treats the handjob as just another form of manual labor, no different from laying bricks or mowing lawns. There”s been a lot of talk during this whole debate about the fact that many prostitutes were sexually abused as children, and from my point of view, of course, this correlation makes perfect sense: If you”re abused by others as a child, you”re more likely to seek out self-destructive behaviors as an adult.
In the Wilkinson-Howley worldview, I presume, the correlation has more to do with our unjust war on sex than with anything inherent to the sex trade: If prostitution is outlawed and pushed to the margins of society, only marginal, damaged people end up becoming prostitutes. You”d have more well-adjusted call girls, presumably, if streetwalking were legalized.
Now this is fair enough so far as it goes, but it seems to beg an important question: Given the premises of the pro-prostitution worldview, what”s so abusive and damaging about incest and molestation in the first place?
If there”s no moral distinction between giving a handjob in exchange for twenty dollars and getting paid twenty bucks to wash dishes or mow lawns, then why is there a moral distinction between a father who teaches his daughter how to pound nails and one who teaches his daughter to do something more intimate and (to go all wisdom-of-repugnance on you) disgusting?
I understand that the kids involved aren”t “consenting adults,” but if selling sex is just like selling labor, and adults force kids to perform all kinds of menial tasks as part of their education, why can”t adults force kids to have intercourse too – especially if they”re safe about it? If selling sex is no big deal because sex itself is no big deal, what”s the big deal about incest? Ross Douthat
16 March 2008
MUCKING OUT THE BLOGPILE…
1430 by Jeff Hess
I’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is Ten tips for living a better life, one day at a time.
16 March 2008
16 March 2008
FROM MY DAD… THE ST. PATRICK’S DAY EDITION…
0800 by Jeff HessI could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning Irish chuckle I present: From My Dad.
Father Murphy walks into a pub in Donegal, and says to the first man he meets, “Do you want to go to heaven?”
The man said, “I do, Father.”
The priest said, “Then stand over there against the wall.”
Then the priest asked the second man, “Do you want to go to heaven?”
“Certainly, Father,” was the man’s reply.
“Then stand over there against the wall,” said the priest.
Then Father Murphy walked up to O’Toole and said, “Do you want to go to heaven?”
O’Toole said, “No, I don’t Father.”
The priest said, “I don’t believe this. You mean to tell me that when you die you don’t want to go to heaven?”
O’Toole said, “Oh, when I die, yes. I thought you were getting a group together to go right now.”
16 March 2008
GOOD AFTERNOON MYANMAR…
0430 by Jeff HessLong before the monks marched, the military dictators of Myanmar have struggled to control and repress their citizens use of the Internet, without crippling the economic benefits that accrue from modern communication technology. The latest move is to license all Internet cafés and require extreme record keeping protocols.
From Irrawaddy:
Burma”s military regime plans to monitor the flow of all information in and out of the country by registering all public Internet cafés.
Myanmar Info-Tech Corporation Ltd announced earlier this month a plan to compile and update a list of Internet cafés throughout Burma. The list will be given to local authorities, include police, so they can closely watch every Internet facility in the country. Apart from distributing the list to the authorities, the corporation affirmed that it would not be involved in any legal action arising from the licensing process.
Myanmar Info-Tech was founded to implement Burma”s information and communication technology projects and became the license provider for government-recognized Internet cafés in 2005. Since then all Internet café owners seeking a “Public Access Centers” license have had to apply to Myanmar Info-Tech and pay the company a signing-on fee plus a monthly fee.
According to a report in the Myanmar Times, the corporation”s general manager, Sein Win, said that all Internet cafés with licenses that are expired have until March 25 to renew them. Those who miss the deadline or decide not to renew their license will be erased from the list of Internet café licenses, he said. Continue Reading »
16 March 2008
FROM MY CHAPBOOK…
0400 by Jeff HessMy name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.
This is a passage I copied from Midrash and Literature edited by Geoffrey H. Hartman and Sanford Budick.
Dialectic: The art or practice of logical discussion as employed in investigating the truth of a theory or opinion.[x]
16 March 2008
16 March 2008
TIME POWER: TODAY…
0001 by Jeff HessToday, as I go about my tasks, I’ll think about: My theory of accessibility states that if a goal is meaningfully, directly and continually visible, your chances of achieving it increase. p. 18.
15 March 2008
GOOD MORNING MYANMAR…
2030 by Jeff HessNews continues to flow from Tibet about the latest brutal oppression of the people there by the occupying Chinese forces. Observers and participants are quick to draw parallels between the monks in Lhasa and those in Yangon, but there is a huge gap between oppression by a client-government of China and oppression by China itself.
Tibetan exiles in Britain vented their anger against China amid escalating violence in their homeland.
Protesters banged on the doors of the Chinese embassy in London before holding a prayer vigil as unrest threatened to spiral out of control on the streets of Tibet.
The British Government was urged to “end its silence” over human rights abuses in the autonomous region and was criticised for double standards in view of its condemnation of Burmese repression.
There is no double standard. England, and the rest of the western nations, have one standard for petty, tin-pot dictators and another for petty, tin-pot dictators with nuclear arsenals.
This is the lesson that the United States and its allies have taught other nations. If you don’t have nuclear weapons, like Iraq, we will feel free to interfere with your internal politics. If you do have nuclear weapons, or at least we suspect that you might, we will tread lightly lest you go nuclear on us.
Every nation with actual or suspected nuclear capability understands that a nuclear attack on American soil will result in massive retaliation. But no American president wants to be remembered by History as the commander and chief that allowed a nuclear attack to take place. We don’t crowd those who might be crazy enough to push their own button first.
The exiles in London miss the point. Instead of haranguing the British Government, they ought to asking why the marches in Myanmar in September weren’t generalized as the beginning of protest by every Buddhist on the planet?
Why did the marches end where and when they did?
If you don’t stand up for your brothers and sisters when they stand up and risk everything, don’t be surprised when there’s no one around when the bullies come for you.
What would you tell the monks in Lhasa?
15 March 2008
MUCKING OUT THE BLOGPILE…
1430 by Jeff HessI’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is 10 Tips for Life”s Greatest Challenge: Love Thy Enemy.
15 March 2008
15 March 2008
FROM MY DAD… THE ST. PATRICK’S DAY EDITION…
0800 by Jeff HessI could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning Irish chuckle I present: From My Dad.
Paddy was in New York.
He was patiently waiting and watching the traffic cop on a busy street crossing. The cop stopped the flow of traffic and shouted, “Okay, pedestrians.” Then he’d allow the traffic to pass.
He’d done this several times, and Paddy still stood on the sidewalk.
After the cop had shouted, “Pedestrians!” for the tenth time, Paddy went over to him and said, “Is it not about time ye let the Catholics across?”
15 March 2008
GOOD AFTERNOON MYANMAR…
0430 by Jeff HessEvents in Lhasa, Tibet, less than six months before the opening of the 2008 Summer Olympics, do not bode well for the authoritarian government of China. A BBC report yesterday morning described truck-loads of camouflaged dressed Chinese soldiers flooding into the city. Will those leading protests in Tibet and Myanmar connect?
From The International Herald Tribune:
China kept government workers confined to their offices Saturday and ordered tourists out of Tibet’s capital while lines of soldiers sealed off streets where riots had erupted, witnesses said. A Tibetan exile group said at least 30 people were killed in protests Friday.
Chinese state media reported that at least 10 people were killed when demonstrators rampaged in Lhasa Friday, protesting Chinese rule. The Dalai Lama’s exiled Tibetan government in India said it had confirmed at least 30 dead but said the toll could be as high as 100.
There was no confirmation from Chinese officials of the death toll and the numbers could not be independently verified.
Their brothers and sisters are dying. When will the monks of South and Southeast Asia begin to walk?
[Update — 1736: Boing Boing has a round-up.]
