Calton and Randolph have it right, and the "stepping on a face" crew basically have it wrong - the Japanese have kawaii/chibi icons for pretty much everything - OS-Tans, governmental departments, military units (and not just in Japan - the Korean Army's mascot is an anthropomorphic tiger named hogugy, and food stuffs (except when they get even weirder, like Kikkoman Man).
And the little helicopter dude looks an awful lot like the one of JSDF mascots. I suspect this is just a matter of taking an existing icon and applying it to a related subject.
You can argue about whether or not the Japanese trend to chibify anything that stands still long enough to be dressed up in a Pokemon outfit is infantilization, culturally weird, or whatever - but arguing that it's some bit of sinister social engineering designed to make us all feel good about the war is, I think, a little over the top.
Man, Thomas "I gots me a 'stache and the chicks all dig it, see?" flipping Magnum looks at that keyboardist, and goes "You know, you think you might be taking the whole 'Righteous Stache' thing a little too far?"
(Actually, Thomas would just look at the dude, and either sigh that sigh of his, or his laugh his "What the hell?" laugh... but I digress).
Idaho governor says he will support public hunt to kill off all but 100 of Idaho's re-introduced Gray Wolves.
You know, I was really hoping that we had finally started to grow beyond the "Wolves are teh EV1l!!" memeplex that ranching (and cold Russian winters, if you believe certain paintings...) fosters, but apparently it's alive and well in the wonderfully enlightened state of Idaho....
Too bad - I used to have at least a modicum of respect for CL Otter, when he was a congresscritter and at least giving lip service to the idea that the Patriot Act was a Bad Thing.
Defenders of Wildlife has a pre-built fill-in and push Post letter you can send, if you're interested.
Lydia wrote -
If I could edit the post, I'd remove the remark about Lesbian Separatists. I agree with your friend that men and women interact in sick ways. I don't know if separation is a better answer, but I can see why it might be.
The problem with this is that, as far as I can see it, while men and women (sometimes) interact in sick ways, so do men and men, and women and women (again, sometimes). This is not, to my mind, inherently a "women and men" thing - it's a "people" thing, and is as much about society as it is any inherent interaction constructs between men and women
Abi wrote -
Myself, I was wondering what the singed Shaker felt, but realised the answer was "a little too warm, thank you, brother."
Reminding us, of course, of the gentle unwisdom of that infamous homily -
"Light a man a fire, and he will be warm for an evening. Light a man on fire, and he will be warm for the rest of his life."
Alan Braggins scribed -
I think shooting at pirates or drug smugglers who are refusing to stop (and possibly shooting at you) is law enforcement, not national defence. Whether there's a serious need to do that on the Great Lakes is another question.
Living on Lake Ontario (Rochester), I can say that I've never heard of a situation where the USCG had to do more than run lights to get a boat on the lake to stand to and prepare to be boarded.
While officially they are the "first, last and best line of defense" against an invasion on the Lake (a *what*? Like, Torontians in yachts, trying to invade us for cheap retail goods without VAT? They use *busses* for that...), realistically the CG here spends most of their time doing searches for drowning victims, pulling over dudes what have imbibed a bit too much to be boating, and the like. Not many eevill cocaine smugglers with bad accents and bad mustaches running cigarette boats full of white gold into our harbors....
There was a fairly large - for Rochester - foofawraw recently when the USCG was going to mark off a (fairly large - for the Lake) section of the lake for a firing range for a few days, so the cutter crews could actually test and qualify on their machine guns - M-60s mostly (I don't think they have many/any M2HBs actually mounted - it's a bit of a weapon for the typical traffic on the lake). Last I recall, the plan was tabled temporarily while they evaluated other options (the problem being that qualifying on the ground means a trip, at this point, to Ft. Drum, and doesn't take into effect the differences of firing at a target from a deck up off the water, on a moving target, against moving targets, in rolling waves...).
As for the passport bullshit - it's amazing. Even when I was working in Mississauga for a while for Citi, I never had more of a hassle than "where ya been, anything to declare, what was your purpose, blah blah." My teammate, otoh, got stopped at the border pretty regularly, and one time nearly missed a whole day of work while he was detained and waited for bullshit to subside.
The difference, of course, is that I'm white, and he's brown (New Jersey by way of Puerto Rico). Never mind we're both native US citizens, both ex-military with (lapsed, on my part - his was still active at the time) security clearances (and he's a veteran, having served in Iraq I), papers (or those papers you needed at the time - drivers license, SS card, etc.) in order, etc.
(Well, that, and I usually did not travel over the Rainbow Bridge, and he often did - he had a girlfriend in Buffalo, and I was travelling from Rochester - the Grand Island bridge is not only less hassle, it's closer as the road travels - I'm sure travelling the Lewiston-Queenston or Grand Island bridges is less hassle today as well).
But, even then (2002) we stayed in Canada as much as possible - most weekends I didn't bother going home, just because the border was such a pain even then. Now? I don't know how one of my team members (who has a GF in Canada) manages it.
Alex wrote -
Hmm, there's enough strawmen in there to hold bayonet drill..
There is?
Hmm - there certainly wasn't intended to be? Perhaps, instead of accusing me of strawman tactics, you should, instead, refine what you meant? After all, I'm just an American of Very Small Brain, so doubtless your agile and cunning meaning was lost on me.
You see, I see the words as follows
Alex -
"That aside, let us briefly reflect on Joe Crow's sick genocide fantasy as a strong argument that people should not have guns. At least, not him.
Sick - in this reference scheme, doubtful that it mean "ill" as in "possessed of some illness or disease". Rather "Psychotic" or "not right in the head" or "disgusting, perverse" seem rather more likely meanings
Genocide - There are those who have started to use "genocide" and "Genocidal" to merely refer to "mass murder", yet it actually has a deeper and more sinister meaning. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines it as -
"any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
by this definition, Darfur is genocide (however much the world might not want to say it, because then they'd have to get off their asses and actually do something about it). The WTC was not, despite killing thousands of people, in that its intent was most likely not to "destroy, in whole or in part" the national group known as Americans.
Fantasy - I find it doubtful you refer to the genre of fiction in this case, which leaves us with either the connotation of a psychological fantasy ("a situation imagined by an individual or group, which does not correspond with reality but expresses certain desires or aims of its creator") or a sexual one (which is more unlikely - but much more creepy).
So it certainly appears to me (being, as noted, an American of Very Small Brain) that you are accusing JoeCrow of harboring perverse or psychopathic fantasies of killing or destroying some ethnic, national, religious or racial group - which, exactly, you don't specify. You further suggest that, on this basis alone, he - and perhaps all peoples - should be denied gnus.
So, where, exactly, did I go wrong? Perhaps by "sick genocide fantasy" you actually meant "fluffy bunny rabbits" and meant to impugn that, because Joe is an owner of cottontails, that he should not be allowed to own firearms?
Please, do enlighten me.
I dunno - I think building your own Google pointer has got to be pretty close on the list.
Although the crop circle is really well done.
Alex wrote -
Dr. H.S. Thompson, of course, opined that he should have guns, but not just every kid who wanted them.
Yes, elitists* often think in such fashion. Gingrich wants only those who agree with him to have freedom of speech - doesn't make him right, either.
Alex again wrote -
That aside, let us briefly reflect on Joe Crow's sick genocide fantasy as a strong argument that people should not have guns. At least, not him.
Perhaps some reading comprehension - or forgetting your "skim reading" lessons and actually taking time to actually read the whole thing - is in order?
Joe Crow wrote -
Understand, this is not the direction that anybody sane wants to go. But the potential for this sort of madness is one of the things that keeps the folks at the top of the machine from getting more ambitious than they've gotten thus far.
While I may not agree with his rather bitter comments about the Founding Fathers, the idea that Joe's interested in killing all dem rich white folks is - a bit hyperbolic given the statement above, don't you think? (and realistically - genocide? This word does not mean what you think it means, I think.)
*I have quite a bit of respect for the late, great HS Thompson. But there is no doubt in my mind that there was a latent streak of elitism in some - maybe even much - of his writings.
gren knight wrote -
Why does this university employ such a large number of police officers in the first place? What are they afraid off? (I've attended universities in Germany and Britain. They employ security guards to make sure doors are locked and people park their cars in the right places. The idea that there would be armed police on campus as a matter of fact is frightening on its own.)
UCLA is a campus of about 35k students and 3500 faculty and staff - so it's essentially a small city of almost 40k people, located in a city district (the Westwood district of Los Angeles) of slightly larger. size (about 50k). If the numbers given above are correct, they've got a "safety officer" to student/staff ratio of about 212:1 - which is about half that of the city of LA (LAPD has about 7 thousand officers, and LA proper has a population of about 4 million, giving a ratio of about 600:1 not counting LA County Sherrifs, the CHP, etc.).
Why they have armed police? That's fairly standard with many State school systems, which often use their state police forces for part or all of security duties on their campuses - this was a sticking point for students at the SUNY schools when I was younger, as at RIT or UofR you were likely to get yelled at and possibly written up if you were overly rambunctious or caught with alcohol underage at a party - at SUNY Brockport, you could get arrested and jailed.
Do they need them? I dunno - I know most of the dudes at SUNY Brockport were pretty damn bored most of the time, but the only real problems they had were on-campus (thefts, occasional fights, date rapes, etc.) and incidents with the townies once in a while. But SUNY Brockport is fifteen some-odd miles of suburb and nothing from the nearest city (Rochester). While UCLA isn't exactly next to the barrios (unless you consider Brentwood and Hollywood the barrios...), it's still in a major metropolitan city of 4 million people - slightly different demographics and security concerns.
Clark E Myers wrote -
I'd really like to know why the official version just can't be true?
Because it's Los Angeles, and they have had, what, half-a-dozen bits of video footage surface this week regarding seperate police brutality incidents in the city?
Because former police chief Bernard Parks (now an LA councilmember) sent a letter to the LA Police Commission this week regarding "an ongoing discipline problem" at the LAPD - which is almost undoubtedly responsible for training many of the officers that are employed by UCPD
Because the LAPD and associated departments have had a severe decades-long problem with police brutality?
Because we hold police officers to a higher standard than twenty-three year old college students?
Because it appears that the situation was exacerbated, not ameliorated, by the UCPD and their tactics?
Because the entire situation revolves around a bit of bureaucratic nonsense like showing an ID?
Clark E Myers wrote -
That is why then do people here and elsewhere assume facts favorable to the victim as in "he was leaving","he was trying to leave","he was on his way out", "why he was on the floor", "it's reasonable for", "what if like the student, I belonged in my location?", "he was complying" "He was complying with directives" ,"The student was leaving when the campus police showed up" and others.
Assertions contradicting each and all of the above can be found in press as well as in the blogs and journals.
Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. Anybody who knows for sure what the unreliable narration really means is cordially invited to explain all of Gene Wolfe to me in an open topic comment.
Can you provide non-UCPD sourced cites for the above?
Because honestly, so far as I've seen, the only people claiming that Mostafa Tabatabainejad was in any way resisting are the UCPD. Every eyewitness report that I've seen that regards the incidents leading up to the video suggests that he was, in fact, leaving the building when the police grabbed him. I've heard some people state opinions that if he was refusing to leave that the UCPD should have taken reasonable steps, but that's not the same thing. If you have other credible sources, please, share them.
But, these assertions not withstanding, stating he was leaving when confronted by UCPD is by no means shrouding him in an angelic cloak of beatific innocence. It's pretty clear he's a pretty angry dude even before he got tasered - the question is whether or not he has a right to be.
By his own admission (through his lawyer), he refused to show his ID not because he didn't have it, but because he thought he was being profiled by the CSO (and he might have been - we don't know one way or the other) - so the whole situation could have been avoided if the CSO had been seen asking some other dudes for their IDs before getting to him, or if Moustafa had decided not to make an issue of it. By his own admission, when they grabbed him, he got grumpy and dumped his ass on the ground - but there is nothing that I've seen to suggest he went beyond tactics that are commonplace in peaceful protests, none of which warrant using a taser on a dude.
Was he an angel? Nah. But to the best of my understanding at present, he was certainly not someone the UCPD needed to be manhandling, let alone handcuffing and then tasering multiple times while ordering him to do something he was likely incapable of doing. Maybe information will surface to get me to revise that opinion. But I can only judge based on the facts available to me - and so far, those support the decision I've come to.
Hundreds protest UCLA Tasering
Looks like the student body isn't completely taking this sitting down. There will, apparently, be an independent investigation, in addition to the UCPD Use of Force review.
My biggest problem with the situation is the gross incompetence of the UCPD officers from the very beginning - leaving aside any questions of profiling/racism on the part of the CSO who was asking for IDs (since there is some question as to whether that was real, perceived, somewhere in between, or something else entirely).
Brother was leaving. He was complying with directives. On the Use of Force continuum, he doesn't need anything more than Spoken Word - if that, since he's doing what you want him to do. But apparently one of the officers felt it necessary to escalate to Restrain and Detain techniques (grabbing or restraining the subject) - an action that was not only outside the profile in the continuum, but unnecessary as well, which triggered the dude's escalation of the situation.
That is where the UCPD officers failed. If they had stayed back, observed for a while, made sure the dude left, and then hung out for ten-fifteen minutes to make sure the brother stayed gone - or came back with ID - they would have been utterly righteous in their approach - even commendable.
Now? Now they have confirmed everything Mostafa Tabatabainejad - and many other Muslim-American students, on that campus and elsewhere - feared about the US. He believes - and with justification - that he is an outsider in his own country.
Because some more of LAPD's "finest" couldn't keep their goddamn (metaphorical) dicks in their pants. Way to go, dudes. Congratulations on alienating yet another batch of folks we didn't need hating the US.
(Events beyond his handcuffing - and possibly the first application of taser (but not likely - see below) are, of course, completely beyond the pale, as was threatening innocent bystanders with tasing if they didn't disperse, and the cops should, at the least lose their badges for that).
*Tasers are usually considered to be Hard Hand (striking actions - punches, kicks, etc.) or Tool/Baton level on the Use of Force continuum (some make a difference between unarmed and armed aggressive maneuvers, others don't). Such actions are usually only justified in the continuum if the subject is presenting a clear and present - but non-lethal - hazard to himself, the officer, or others, or is very aggressively resisting arrest - particularly in regards to the baton (and sometimes electronic-discharge weapons), because of the potential lethality.
Paul wrote -
Because, you know, all people in a party are all absolutely identical.
I must admit this kind of generalisation is something Making Light has been doing more and more often lately, and it's not good. I agree with Damien at #11 - think and vote, don't just vote for someone because of what party they're in.
This isn't about the person, to be honest.
This is about the party.
There are, in fact good Republicans - there may even be good Republican candidates (I wouldn't know - the ones I have to vote for at the Federal level are all pretty rotten, from what I can tell).
But the party as a whole has a disease. It needs to be woken up.
Up above, someone asked "how many Democrats voted for (Patriot act, suspension of Habeas Corpus, etc.)" - and that's a serious problem, because the answer (from both parties) should have been "none".
But the counter to that question is "how many Republicans voted for them - in total numbers, and in percentages of membership in Congress?
The Republican party needs to wake up.
They need to haul out the long knives, and put paid to the worthless, venal, greedy, and frankly fascist fucks who have taken over their party. Those bastards need to be cut out of the body politic - by force, if necessary - and never allowed anywhere near power again. The party needs to reformulate itself based on its original ideas - ideas that the Liberals and Democrats here may, in fact, be repulsed by (in some cases) but the intellectually honest ones will, I hope, admit that they need a counterbalance - or they will go too far, just as the Republicans have this time.
As a nation, we are perilously close to losing the Mandate of Heaven. The Republicans may already have done so. We are closer to open revolt than anytime in the last forty years - we've gone from nutcases shouting about it, to perfectly sane folks wondering about it.
They need a wakeup call, and the only thing they respect is votes against them - those that still respect that. Their influence juggernaut needs to be broken - and the only way to do that is to isolate the White House (which we can't do anything about for two more years), and give control - and solid control - to their opponents. We need to break the never-ending cycle of redistricting and suppression of voters in the States - so we vote Dems into the offices in the States that have influence over voting - Secretary of State, Comptroller, Governor. We need to break their hold on our local schools, so we vote them out of local offices.
Straightline Democratic ticket. Even if you're holding your nose. Not because you agree with them. But because you need to send a message to the Republicans that what they have done and what they have become, is unacceptable.
After this election, if the Republican party puts paid to the jackasses that are in office - send them to the Hague, try and convict them here, dump them on their asses at the curb and throw bottles at their heads, disappear them in the night - in some cases, at this point, I don't fucking care what happens to them, as long as they never darken my TV screen or legislative ballot again - then by all means, vote your conscience, vote by default against incumbents, vote Green - hell, vote purple, for all I care (and I do - old-school members of RASFF may recall I argued against the very position I now am taking, a few years ago - which should suggest how seriously I take this now).
But this year, the message needs to be "shape up, motherfuckers!" to the Republican party - and the only way for them to get that message is to lose - and lose big - throughout this nation.
And that is written as a registered Republican.
Randolph Fritz wrote -
This is stunningly dishonorable. Isn't this lying a violation of the officer's oath?
Recruiters - at least in the Army, and I believe all branches - are rarely if ever commissioned officers - they are normally NCOs - staff sargeants, typically. Worse, they are often operating without direct supervision by an officer - many recruiting offices are small hole-in-the-wall kind of places (even if well-placed and not-cheap in rent), usually with little more than enough room for a handful of desks with computers, some filing cabinets holding paperwork and recruiting materials, and a closet and maybe a W/C. There are rarely more than a handful of personnel assigned to each.
This does not excuse such behavior - and it would in fact be "behavior unbecoming an officer", imho - but it can help explain how such things can happen. As can the fact that these NCOs (and the officers above them) have quotas to fill - and failure to fill quota can result in a bad review (at best).
John M. Ford once wrote -
And though I had slain a thousand foes less one,
The thousandth knife found my liver;
The thousandth enemy said to me,
'Now you shall die,
Now none shall know.'
And the fool, looking down, believed this,
Not seeing, above his shoulders, the naked stars,
Each one remembering.
The Naked Stars remember, John.
So do we.
Against Entropy.
Rikibeth wrote -
#81 Scott -- I feel I have to thank you for producing Cyberpunk 2020. It was in that system that I originally created my character Tetsuko, and since the campaign for which she was created fizzled out, I recycled her when I got the chance to join a homebrew Star Wars game in '91/'92, and I've been playing her ever since.
She wouldn't have existed, in some way, without your game.
Ack!
I don't want to give the impression that Cyberpunk (the RPG, not the genre) is my fault - far from it! CPunk (original, 2020 and v3) are all the brainchild of Mike Pondsmith - he just let me play in his backyard a few (well, maybe more than a few) times when he needed a writer.
(insert obligatory "All die. Oh, the embarrassment." story here).
Rob Rusick wrote -
Pro gaming geek? Elaborate a little (please).
Been involved in tabletop RPGs since... well, a long time (I remember when the original Little Black Books edition of Traveller came out, and a time before the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons hardcovers existed - although only barely in both cases). I worked for a time for Paul Meyer (Crazy Egor), and have been a published RPG author for... umm... well, my first book published was the first or second released for Cyberpunk 2020 in the early 90s.
I've done a fair job supplementing my income with gaming supplements ever since. I don't have as many words under my belt as, say, Bruce Baugh, or Geoff Grabowski - but I've been at it a fair bit longer (just not as intensely, and with occasional breaks for sanity checks and "real" jobs).
I thought I'd finally removed the "Gamewriter" beanie a couple of years ago, but here I am in 2006 with a book on the shelves (Manual of Exalted Power:Dragon-Blooded, for White Wolf), a project in the works (which I can't talk about right atm), and bits and pieces of some PDF projects that will likely see release early in the next year, if I can find a good, cheap, artist or two to do the (scant) illos for them.
So while I might be a part-time freelance for hire, a profession it has been, of sorts.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2007 | 5 |
| 2006 | 33 |
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