What I Talk About When I Talk About 9/11

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I’m not going to write about what I was doing on 9/11. I had a morning like most other Americans, stuck to CNN. Also, for most of it I was naked and had a face half-covered in shaving cream. You’re lucky I don’t have pictures.

I have no interest in distant naval-gazing about Our National Tragedy. A bad thing happened. Lots of people died. That happens a lot. I’m blessed — which is exactly the wrong word, since MOST people are in this group with me — that no one I knew and loved was lost 10 years ago today. Those who aren’t have a different reason to reflect today, but if I had been that unlucky, I doubt I’d want to commemorate the event with network news specials.

What I suspect isn’t being said today, because it’s a complex idea requiring actual self-reflection, is what 9/11 got us. I have yet to see a single bit of discussion about how we as a nation allowed 9/11-based fear to drive us to extremes of reaction and irrationality that continue every single fucking day, with no signs of stopping. And because of this, something ugly happened:

Osama is dead, but he won.

9/11 was an enormous success by any metric I can imagine AQ leadership using. Not because they killed 3,000 Americans, but because they convinced us to change who we are. They drove the US crazy. They got us to start a wholly unnecessary war in Iraq, killing thousands of civilians. Osama baited us into become an nation that openly tortures, that is more than willing to abrogate the rights we say we think are universal with bullshit like PATRIOT and imperial-presidency ideas that people like David Addington whispered into Cheney and Bush’s ears. In a post-9/11 world, the Executive Branch can detain anyone they want, at any point they want, for any reason they want, and without filing charges, just by insisting they’re an “enemy combatant.” We have trials short-circuited by state secrets privilege claims, and absolutely terrifying doctrines of “secret laws” are being cited in US Courts. And having done these things, they are now part of our political and legal landscape until someone takes specific steps to remove them — which is hard to make happen, because who wants to be “soft on crime” or “soft on terra” enough to say that, just maybe, carting innocent people off to be tortured in Syria might not be something we should do. Ever.

THAT is horror all Americans must face. The government can now disappear you, just like in Argentina. People who work for us waterboarded prisoners, and the only ones in who spent any time in jail were people at the bottom of the chain of command who most certainly did not create the policy. We imprisoned hundreds of people at Gitmo and God knows how many other black sites, and tried very hard to establish a legal Catch-22 that prevented any innocent people from escaping that Kafkaesque disaster. This legacy is way scarier than 9/11 to me, and it boils down to this:

We had choices to make about how we’d respond, and in almost every case we made bad ones. And we’re still allowing those choices to stand, and to define who we are. And in so doing, we are shaming the values that we say we stand for — those things enshrined in our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and our Bill of Rights.

So yes, anniversaries are good times to reflect. This one would be a good time for us to pull our collective shit together and repudiate the frightened, absurdist choices we made in the immediate wake of 11 September 2001.

But I’m not holding my breath. It’s easy to sell stupid to people. It’s way harder to unsell it.

If they get their way, it’ll just become illegal to vote for Democrats

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I’ve said this before, in very simple terms: If your party is taking active steps to reduce voter turnout by making it harder for people to vote, you are well and truly evil.

Heritage doofuses like this guy cherrypick data to suggest that Voter ID bills like Georgia’s don’t impact turnout — despite clear evidence to the contrary. Conservative jackasses on talk radio suggest that registering the poor to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals.

There is no voter fraud problem in this country today. If there were, there’d be indictments, or at least arrests. There are essentially none:

A major probe by the Justice Department between 2002 and 2007 failed to prosecute a single person for going to the polls and impersonating an eligible voter, which the anti-fraud laws are supposedly designed to stop. Out of the 300 million votes cast in that period, federal prosecutors convicted only 86 people for voter fraud – and many of the cases involved immigrants and former felons who were simply unaware of their ineligibility.

Poor voter turnout helps the GOP. High voter turnout hurts them. That this is their solution amazes me. I can think of few political initiatives that are more fundamentally un-American and anti-democratic.

Today in Awesome Labors of Love

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Roger Evans loved Jonny Quest, so he made his own stop-motion, action-figure based version of the opening titles. N.B. that, as there were no official action figures, he had to make his own.

Here’s the original, for comparison.

Something I did not know until I wrote this post: in the original ’60s cartoon, Jonny Quest was voiced by Tim Matheson, whom you may remember from later roles such as “Otter” in Animal House and The West Wing‘s VP Hoynes.

Today in Heathen Deals

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I don’t need one, since I already have a very similar watch from Oris, but if you’re in the market for a decent automatic wristwatch, Amazon has a good Seiko for less than $60.

Spring-driven (“real”) watches with decent movements don’t usually get this cheap, so if you’re considering jumping into the world of Proper Wristwatches, this is a great place to start.

Dept. of Surprising Connections

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I’ve had this story starred for a while in my Google Reader, about the anniversary of the passing of Ishi. He was the last surviving member of the Yani people, and lived out his days with a noted anthropologist called Alfred Kroeber who was bright enough to realize the opportunity Ishi presented. This part of his life was the subject of a pretty good TV movie 19 years ago, with Graham Greene and Jon Voight.

What’s finally got me off my ass to post this is a surprising fact buried in the first link: Kroeber is Ursula K. Le Guin’s father.

Dear George Lucas

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FUCK YOU.

It’s sad, but I must accept the fact that it is impossible for me to see the movies I saw in the 70s and early 80s again. They’re gone. Lucas has destroyed them, and made it clear they’ll never be available again. And I’ll be damned if I’ll give that goatfucker any more money for ham-handedly re-edited versions.

Dept. of Computer-Aided Campfire Games

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When I was a kid on Boy Scout campouts, we’d sometimes play a game called “telephone,” which I’m sure you know: With everyone in a big circle, a leader tells one kid a secret, who whispers it to the next person, who whispers it to the next, etc. Amusement arises at the way in which the phrase has mutated by the time it reaches the origin point again.

Via MeFi, we find two Internet personalities who have leveraged Youtube’s new “automatic closed captioning” feature to play the same game.

Dept. of YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME

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A friend just sent me the mail the Red Cross’s Charley Shimanski is circulating to drum up donations in light of the East Coast’s hurricane panic. Here’s the lede:

Hurricane Irene, potentially the worst U.S. storm in 70 years, is now heading toward the East Coast, and thousands of Americans in its path are preparing for the worst.

Dear Red Cross: Give me a fucking break. Heathen HQ is on the Gulf Coast, buddy boy, we know a little about hurricanes, and your little embellishment is ridiculous. Don’t believe me? Let me introduce you, Charley Shimanski, to a few folks who’ve come to visit me and mine:

and a bitch called Katrina that erased the Mississippi Gulf Coast and damn near killed New Orleans.

Maybe you’ve heard about one or two of these, Charley. Maybe if you’d been thinking, you wouldn’t have resorted to this kind of hyperbole. Sure, the good folks of the East Coast need to take appropriate precautions. People in flood-prone or low-lying areas in danger of the surge should evacuate. Further inland, people in permanent buildings just need to hunker down and wait it out.

Irene is a category TWO, people. Jesus.

An excellent idea

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Writers should be more like rock stars:

Oscar Wilde. Ernest Hemingway. Hunter S. Thompson.

Each, a rock star in his own right. Oscar Wilde was put on trial for sodomy and indecency. Hemingway killed bears, fought in wars, crashed planes, had an FBI file on him. Hunter S. Thompson consumed every drug known to man, was a certified gun nut, and started FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS as a piece for fucking Sports Illustrated. Oh! And had his ashes shot out of a cannon made to look like a fist.

Who do we have like that these days? Neil Gaiman? He’s close, but let’s be honest — he’s just too nice. Too normal. A positively lovely human being by all reports. You never hear, “Famous author Neil Gaiman caught with seven stewardesses in a Wichita bus depot.” He doesn’t throw Bibles through stained glass windows or get into drunken beefs with other speculative fiction writers. You won’t see him roving about in public with exotic swords bought at a flea market looking to cut any dude who looks at him sideways.

Go read the whole thing.

ALERT: New Heathen

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This is Norah Anne. She joined planet Earth yesterday, August 23, 2011. She lives in Louisville, and joins two other miniHeathen in the care of Mrs Heathen’s sister and her delightful husband. Everybody’s doing fine, but Mrs Heathen is beside herself to meet Norah, and I’d be lying if I suggested I wasn’t kinda jazzed about it myself.

norah-anne.jpg

Speaking of Wallace

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After reading this rambling blogger broadside about Wallace (from someone who should, really know better) in yesterday’s Times, it seems like a good moment to point something out:

People can bitch and moan and whine about David Foster Wallace being to blame for this-or-that trend in the written word, or for being impenetrable, or for being long-winded, or whatever, but pretty much none of those people will write anything as inventive or as widely read as Infinite Jest, either.

Obviously writing about books involves criticism (that’s why they call it “criticism”), but now that we have some distance from his suicide I’m perceiving a bit of piling-on by wannabe pseudotransgressive pundits. Put simply, snarking about Infinite Jest or his other work now that he’s gone is kind of tiny. My thinking is that, just as with any other serious work, you need to have something genuinely interesting to say. Noting that Wallace wrote in a very conversational style, and that — holy cats! — this has become the norm online isn’t a particularly sharp observation. Newton and the Times both know better.

Warren Buffett isn’t the only wildly successful billionaire who thinks Republicans are full of it

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Anil Dash points out something hilarious; I’m quoting the whole thing because it’s brilliant:

For the past several days, Apple’s stock has been rising high enough that the company has flitted between being the first and second most valuable company in the world. Regardless of the final value of the stock on any given day, it is without a doubt the greatest comeback or turnaround story in the history of American business: A single company has gone from being just 90 days away from shutting down to becoming the unequivocal leader in innovation, design, branding and now valuation, and the transformation happened in less than a decade and a half.

Most interestingly, there’s a unanimous consensus, from fans and detractors alike, both within and outside the company, that a single man bears the lion’s share of the credit for the vision, leadership and execution that’s made this achievement possible.

So, who is this man? He’s the anchor baby of an activist Arab muslim who came to the U.S. on a student visa and had a child out of wedlock. He’s a non-Christian, arugula-eating, drug-using follower of unabashedly old-fashioned liberal teachings from the hippies and folk music stars of the 60s. And he believes in science, in things that science can demonstrate like climate change and Pi having a value more specific than “3”, and in extending responsible benefits to his employees while encouraging his company to lead by being environmentally responsible.

Every single person who’d attack Steve Jobs on any of these grounds is, demonstrably, worse at business than Jobs. They’re unqualified to assert that liberal values are bad for business, when the demonstrable, factual, obvious evidence contradicts those assertions.

It’s a choice whether you, or anyone else, wants to accept the falsehood that liberal values are somehow in contradiction with business success at a global scale. Indeed, it would seem that many who claim to be pro-business are trying to “save” us from exactly the inclusive, creative, tolerant values that have made America’s most successful company possible. I side with the makers, the creators, and the inventors, and it’s about time that the pack of clamoring would-be politicians be put on the defensive for attacking the values of those of us on this side.

By the way, before people whine about Apple stock being expensive, there’s a case to be made that AAPL is actually undervalued. Put simply, they’re just about printing money in Cupertino, get great return on what they spend, and don’t make stupid choices like some companies we could name.

Class Warfare, Fox News Style

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So Warren Buffett got shouted down this week by the chattering right wingers for his utterly reasonable op-ed noting that he pays too little in taxes. Fox was, of course, livid, and called Buffett a socialist, among other things.

Thank God for Jon Stewart. Just go over and watch.

Look! MORE Evil Prosecutors!

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Over at the Agitator, we find this:

Back in 2007, the Grits for Breakfast blog noted that Williamson County, Texas, District Attorney John Bradley gave some curious advice on a discussion board to another prosecutor. The other prosecutor was asking about how to construct a plea agreement in a way that would forfeit any future right to DNA testing. Bradley responded, “Innocence, though, has proven to trump most anything.” How unfortunate! He then added:

A better approach might be to get a written agreement that all the evidence can be destroyed after the conviction and sentence. Then, there is nothing to test or retest. Harris County regularly seeks such agreements.

Destroying evidence is an odd way to seek justice, especially given how many “slam dunk” cases and convictions based on false confessions have later been overturned after DNA testing.

How completely fucked up is that? No prosecutor who seeks to prevent DNA exoneration should ever be allowed in a courtroom again; that’s madness.

More madness: Rick Perry just loves this guy:

If you’ll remember, just before the Texas Forensic Science Commission was set to open up an investigation into the Cameron Todd Willingham case, Perry abruptly replaced three of the commissioners with nominees who were more friendly to prosecutors, all of whom opposed reopening the case.

One of the replacements Perry nominated was . . . you guessed it . . . Williamson County, Texas, District Attorney John Bradley.

In which we discuss very, very precise rifles

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The rifle being used by more elite sniper units today than any other is actually made by a British firm called AI, for Accuracy International. Wired has a great piece about them. Go read it. In 2009, Craig Harrison was using an AI rifle (in .338) when he made two consecutive kill shots in Helmand Province at 2,475 meters.

That’s a mile and a half. Twice. In a row. My guess is that you can’t do that with a deer rifle.

Read it even if you loathe baseball

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This account of the best at-bat ever is a complete delight.

If you’re not a fan, all you really need to know is that the guy holding the bat in this story — Casilla — went to the plate with no intention whatsoever of swinging, made no secret of it, and the other team still managed to walk him for no good reason. (The hows and whys of the situation are in the article, but you can just accept it as the Argument and still enjoy the writing.)

Casilla had pitched in the eighth inning of a close game because Casilla is a pitcher. Specifically, Casilla is a reliever. A decent reliever, but still a reliever, and a reliever who had never batted in the major leagues. It’s weird when relievers go up to hit. But what happened with Casilla turned out even weirder.

(Yes, a veteran relief pitcher like Casilla might never, ever bat. Mrs. Heathen can explain why.)

Casilla walked to the batter’s box under strict orders not to swing. Why would he swing? Nothing good could come of Santiago Casilla swinging, and if he took a bad swing, he could hurt himself. Casilla was batting not because [Giants manager] Bochy cared about the at bat, but because Bochy cared about keeping Casilla on the mound, and if Casilla were to watch three strikes and turn around, it wouldn’t matter. The at bat didn’t matter

Now, it’s one thing to bat with no intention of swinging. If the catcher and pitcher don’t know you have no intention of swinging, they’ll attack you like usual. But Casilla didn’t even try to hide his approach. […] For the Marlins, there was absolutely no mistaking what Casilla was going to do: he was going to stand there and not do anything. […]

Casilla, then, made himself the equivalent of a tall plant. Marlins reliever Jose Ceda was, for all intents and purposes, pitching to a tall plant in a major league baseball game. His only challenge was to throw three strikes to a plant that posed zero threat on account of its plantness.

Ceda should been able to connect with the middle-of-the-box catcher’s mitt 3 times in a completely casual manner, no muss or fuss, and retire Casilla. And yet three pitches in:

Think about this for a minute. Jose Ceda is a pitcher in the major leagues. It stands to reason, then, that Jose Ceda is one of the very best pitchers in the entire world. Sunday afternoon, he was tasked with throwing three strikes to a tall potted plant, and he fell behind 3-0.

There’s bad video.

(Via MeFi.)

Texas Court: Cops delete dash cam footage? No problem.

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Via Balko:

Drivers have no recourse if police say the tape from a dashboard-mounted video camera is not available, according to a ruling Wednesday from the Texas Court of Appeals. Mark Lee Martin wanted to defend himself against drug possession charges filed in the wake of an August 29, 2008 traffic stop, but he was told no video was available.

and

“The officers intentionally destroyed the video and thereby put exculpatory evidence as far as the search is concerned or evidence favorable to the accused out of the reach of the accused,” Martin’s attorney claimed. “We feel that for no other reason the search is invalid and any evidence found as a result of that search should be suppressed.”

The appellate court found no merit in this argument.

“We agree with the state that the record supports a finding by the district court that the police did not act in bad faith,” Justice Bob Pemberton wrote. “The United States Supreme Court has held that ‘unless a criminal defendant can show bad faith on the part of the police, failure to preserve potentially useful evidence does not constitute a denial of due process of law.'”

In case this isn’t clear: this ruling means cops can alter or delete the dashcam footage if the video might contain something they don’t want the courts to see, and there will be no recourse for the defendant. “Gee, sorry, must’ve been broken” is the new mantra.

More on this here.

Lines that made us plotz today

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In the Houston Press’ Rocks Off music blog, there’s an entry from a few days ago about “10 semi-obscure Led Zeppelin facts,” presumably run to coincide with Bonham the Younger’s band being in town. Said entry includes this bit:

At the beginning of “Immigrant Song,” the weird series of clipped noises are the sounds of the count in and the tapes beginning to record the tracks for the song. We always thought it was a bad rip when we first heard it online when we were young.

Emphasis added. I submit that the notion that there exists someone writing about music for a living who first encountered Zep not on scratchy vinyl or warped cassettes, but in pirated online rips may well be enough to put 99% of Heathen Nation into a full-blown, “You Kids Get Offa My Lawn” conniption fit.

Astros Failure Update

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Over the weekend, the Giants of Enron Field crossed an important milestone. When we started this process, I noted that they could still theoretically reach a playoff-worthy record if they won all the rest of their games. Nobody thought that could happen, of course, but it was technically possible at the time.

Back then, too, it was of course even MORE possible that they might finish above .500 — but this weekend, those Mighty Astros dropped their 81st, 82nd, and 83rd games. Should they win out from here — in an unprecedented 41-game streak — they’ll still only be at .488.

Their current record is 38-83, or .314 — which represents a slide from the .330 they boasted when I first started this sequence of posts. Since then, they’ve lost 18 of 24, which is not QUITE as bad as the 28 of 35 they dropped before the break, but give them time. They start a three-game home stand against the Cubbies (.438) tonight, and then play three at home against defending champs San Francisco (.545) this weekend. They’ll play SF four more times before we get to September.

Frankly, a final record of under .300 is looking increasingly possible.

In which we find the TSA screwing up again

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Bruce Schneier points out that apparently, all you have to do to get weapons onto an airplane is dress like a pilot.

I agree that it doesn’t make sense to screen pilots, that they’re at the controls of the plane and can crash it if they want to. But the TSA isn’t in a position to screen pilots; all they can decide to do is to not screen people who are in pilot uniforms with pilot IDs. And it’s far safer to just screen everybody than to trust that TSA agents will be able figure out who is a real pilot and who is someone just pretending to be a pilot.

He’s right. Make the screening sane, of course, but we screened folks before 9/11 just fine. Security is all about unintended consequences. Putting TSA in charge of figuring out which people are legitimate pilots is a really bad idea.