29 January 2010

Domestic terrorist convicted

Domestic terrorist Scott Roeder's been found guilty of murdering Dr. George Tiller in Wichita last summer. As Mithras noted earlier today, the judge disallowed a jury instruction that would have allowed the jury to consider manslaughter. This is because abortion is legal, and there is therefore no necessity defense for killing someone who is scheduled to go to work the next day and perform them. Though Mithras provides a more reasoned explanation for why it all shook out the way it did.

The jury returned their guilty verdict in under an hour.

Tonight: Phillyist Framed 2010 photo contest show

Tonight at Studio 34 (4522 Baltimore Ave) is the opening reception for the Phillyist Framed 2010 Photo Contest. The gallery show includes work by such talented local artists as Phillybits.

The reception starts at 7:00. It's free, as in no cover charge, but you're encouraged to bring a can for the local food relief organization PhilAbundance. After-party is at Local 44 (44th and Spruce).

28 January 2010

iPad irrelevancy

I would give a good goddamn about Apple's new iPad if my finances were anywhere remotely near a condition where I could afford one. As it is, the release of the iPad is completely irrelevant to me, right now and for my immediate future.

In related news, I counted six empty storefronts on one side of a single block of South Street yesterday.

27 January 2010

No 2010 CineFest; what about the Film Festival?

Word on the street is that there will be no Cinefest (the spring film festival) this year.

The spring film festival used to be the only film festival: the [insert integer here] Philadelphia Film Festival, run by the Philadelphia Film Society. But that organization was split by creative and business differences in the past few years. One group, the Philadelphia Cinema Alliance, kept the spring festival and renamed it CineFest; and they continued the summer LGBT festival and renamed it QFest. The Philadelphia Film Society moved their festival to some largely irrelevant post-Toronto date in the fall.

This year the Cinema Alliance has encountered some serious funding problems, so no spring CineFest. Likely, the creative and business differences that divided the organization conquered it, too: the Cinema Alliance says they can't find sponsors. Maybe a critical mass of sponsors have fled to -- stayed with? -- the Film Society.

I'm sad to lose the spring festival, and not just because it's usually a full-contact sport for me. It's a weather thing as well. In this climate, there should be more to do in April than to eat ham or bitter herbs and pray for winter to end. I even call it "film festival weather": a cold night followed by a surprisingly warm, humid day, where the sun is shining one moment and then a rain squall blows through. By the time you're done standing in line to take your seat in the cinema, the weather has changed three times and you've lost your umbrella to the storm and you've lost your festival program to the poor fellow next to you who didn't have an umbrella at all when the rain started.

It's simply not the same in the fall. You don't get the same equinoctial storms, and you don't get the same sense of relief from winter cabin fever.

State of the Union address tonight

The State of the Union address is tonight.

I haven't had a TV since the digital changeover last summer, so I guess I'll listen to it on the radio like Great-granddad used to do, only he wouldn't have because he was Canadian, not United Statesian, so I don't imagine he would have cared much.

Huh, a google search for "live stream state of the union address" yields Citizentube and a live video page at the White House -- future shock for Great-granddad, who died in the mid-1970s.

And who had an excellent recipe for dandelion wine, I am reminded, because, hey, when I think "state of the union address," I think "drinking game."

26 January 2010

Driberally tonight

Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at Triumph Brewery's upstairs bar, where there are drink and food specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. I hope to see you there!

Triumph Brewery is at 117 Chestnut Street in Old City. It's conveniently SEPTA-accessible via the Market-Frankford El (2nd Street station), all the buses that turn around at or near Penn's Landing (5, 12, 17, 21, 33, 42, 48), and a few other buses that pass nearby (9, 25, 38, 40, 44, 47, 57, 61).

This week's topic: Not to get all cane-shakin', "back in my day," and "get offa my lawn" on you, but today was the first time in my life that I've walked into a supermarket and found that the lowest price for a pound of generic macaroni is over $1. We are so freakin' doomed.

"Come for the beer, stay for the check"

22 January 2010

Friday jukebox: The Marmalade

Mostly live:

Paging George Soros

So Citizens United has come down, predictably eliminating caps on corporate donations to political campaigns by expanding the notion of "corporate personhood" to apply the same level of fundamental free speech rights to corporations as individuals enjoy (PDF). As Justice Stevens observed, why don't we just give corporations the fundamental right to vote, too (dissent, 33-34; 120-121 of the PDF file)?

The only way it'll go away now is if the Open Society Institute ends up swaying an election in a very big way.

19 January 2010

Royal Caribbean cruise ship stops . . . in Haïti

Royal Caribbean keeps it classy and makes a cruise's planned stop at Labadie, a resort village that the cruise line leases on the northern coast of Haïti.

Was Royal Caribbean worried about potential lawsuits from passengers upset that their exact itinerary wasn't followed? Did the ship need a refueling with no other ports in range? Did the ship need repairs that required it to dock there for any period longer than it would take to deliver some relief supplies to the country?

Dig the last two paragraphs of the article there, where CEO Adam Goldstein defends the stop with the trickle-down theory that the debarking passengers will "generat[e] economic activity for the straw market vendors [and] the hair-braiders."

Driberally tonight

Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at Triumph Brewery's upstairs bar, where there are drink and food specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. I hope to see you there!

Triumph Brewery is at 117 Chestnut Street in Old City. It's conveniently SEPTA-accessible via the Market-Frankford El (2nd Street station), all the buses that turn around at or near Penn's Landing (5, 12, 17, 21, 33, 42, 48), and a few other buses that pass nearby (9, 25, 38, 40, 44, 47, 57, 61).

This week's topic: Media analysts for French TV news are much better looking than their American counterparts. Discuss.

"Come for the beer, stay for the check"

18 January 2010

"Lynched" census worker not lynched

Mithras follows up on the story about the census worker found hanged in Kentucky in September, with the word FED scrawled across his chest. I was quick to suspect lynching. The Kentucky State Police concluded more prosaically that the man suicided, and had tried to make it look like murder so as not to void his life insurance policies.

17 January 2010

Rainy Sunday in the neighborhood

Since I am not in Haïti, I got to spend the morning at my local coffeeshop, where I finished up a spy novel and solved the New York Times Sunday crossword that someone left behind after they'd finished reading the paper. Thanks, paper-buying-and-leaving guy!

Is it cheating when I take a break from a frustrating clue, flip to a book review a few pages back in that section of the newspaper, and find the answer to that very clue in the book review?

Too rainy to go grocery shopping, because it's a farther walk than the coffeeshop, so I think I'll stay in, do housework, and scrounge in the pantry for dinner.

I'm having trouble understanding the outrage and uproar about Jay Leno vs. Conan O'Brien vs. NBC considering other news in the world.

15 January 2010

I'm not alone in my low opinion of NPR's Car Talk show

Finally, I've found someone who agrees with me that Car Talk needs to be killed with fire:
[H]umor is subjective and rarely, if ever, do two people see eye-to-eye on what is funny. I couldn't agree more. I'm am not an expert on what is funny. What I am is an expert on what is not funny: Schindler's List, for example is not funny (despite the presence of some very silly German accents). Puppy mills are not funny. Cardinal Bernard Law getting away scot-free was not funny. And Car Talk is not funny.
Ever notice that when a woman calls the show they repeat her name dreamily, ask her how she spells her name, and then repeat it a few more times again before getting around to finding out what her car trouble is?

Study: banning gay marriage harms traditional marriage

FiveThirtyEight did the math and found that, while the overall divorce rate in the U.S. has declined in the past several years, the decline has proceeded more slowly in states that have enacted legal bans to gay banns. In other words,
[t]hose states which have tended to take more liberal policies toward gay marriage have tended also to have larger declines in their divorce rates.
In other words, it's not same-sex marriage that harms traditional marriage. What actually harms traditional marriage is putting up legal roadblocks to the civil recognition of same-sex partners' happiness.

14 January 2010

Voltaire: Pat Robertson is a despicable human being

(Tip to BooMan for the idea for this post.)

The city of Port-au-Prince, Haïti, was flattened in an earthquake on 12 January 2010. Pat Robertson has stated that the earthquake is an act of Jehovah's unleashing his wrath against the sinful Haïtians who made a "pact with the devil" to drive "Napoléon the Third and whatever" from Hispaniola. Of course this assertion despicable, and it should make you feel sick to your stomach, whether you're Christian or not. I'll address that in the second half of this post. But more stupidly, it's also simply ahistorical, which I'll address first.

In fact, Haïti won its independence in 1804, during the reign of Napoléon Ier. This first Napoléon was so vexed by trying to prosecute a war against much of Europe that the slave revolt happening in Haïti was sort of a last straw for his ventures in the Western Hemisphere. Napoléon abandoned Haïti in 1804, sold the Louisiana Territory to the U.S. in 1812 to finance a war against Britain, and stayed in power until 1814, when the European powers got together a coalition strong enough to finally kick his worn-out, mutinous army's ass.

Napoléon III was his nephew, born in 1808. Napoléon III focused not on the Caribbean but on Mexico, where he sought to establish an income-producing French monarchy, and on the Confederate States of America, to which he supplied arms in the hopes of getting their reciprocal support in his Mexico venture. He had interests in Algeria and Indochina, too -- basically preparing France for the military and political quagmires it would get itself into in the 20th century -- but he had no particular interest in Haïti.

The city of Lisbon, Portugal, was flattened in an earthquake and subsequent fire on 1 November 1755. Many influential clergy preached that the earthquake was an act of Jehovah's unleashing his wrath against the sinful Portuguese. Protestants preached that the Portuguese were being punished for not embracing the Reformation; Catholics preached that too many Portuguese were turning to Protestantism.

Voltaire's reaction is as apropos against Pat Robertson today as it was against those clergy 250 years ago. A lot of electrons are being spilled today about Robertson's insane, historically inaccurate claim, but I think Voltaire took care of him already:
Direz-vous, en voyant cet amas de victimes :
« Dieu s’est vengé, leur mort est le prix de leurs crimes ? »
Quel crime, quelle faute ont commis ces enfants
Sur le sein maternel écrasés et sanglants ?

[ ... ]

Les tristes habitants de ces bords désolés
Dans l’horreur des tourments seraient-ils consolés
Si quelqu’un leur disait : « Tombez, mourez tranquilles ;
Pour le bonheur du monde on détruit vos asiles ;
D’autres mains vont bâtir vos palais embrasés,
D’autres peuples naîtront dans vos murs écrasés ;
Le Nord va s’enrichir de vos pertes fatales ;
Tous vos maux sont un bien dans les lois générales ;
Dieu vous voit du même œil que les vils vermisseaux
Dont vous serez la proie au fond de vos tombeaux ? »
À des infortunés quel horrible langage !
In English prose, which doesn't capture the outrage of the original French:
Will you say, when you look at this heap of victims,
"God is avenged; their death is the price for their crimes"?
What crime, what fault did these children,
crushed and bloodied on their mothers' breasts, commit?

[ ... ]

The sad inhabitants of these sorry shores,
Would they be consoled from the horror of their torments
If someone were to say to them, "Fall, and die happily;
Your safe havens have been destroyed for the happiness of the rest of the world;
Other hands will rebuild your flooded palaces,
Another nation will be born within your flattened walls;
The North will enrich itself from your fatal losses;
All of your ills are a good in the natural law;
God sees you the same as the lowly worms
That will prey upon you at the bottom of your tombs"?
What horrible language to the unfortunate ones!
Voltaire, Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne (1756), Glomarization, trans.

12 January 2010

Kansas judge will allow "necessity defense" in Dr. Tiller's murder

Here's your WTF of the day: the judge presiding over the murder trial of domestic terrorist Scott Roeder, who murdered Dr. George Tiller execution-style in his church on a Sunday morning as services began, will allow the defendant to proceed with the necessity defense. That is, Roeder will be allowed to present his case in a way that will allow the jury to consider convicting him of voluntary manslaughter rather than first-degree murder.

Kansas defines voluntary manslaughter as "the intentional killing of a human being committed [ ... ] upon an unreasonable but honest belief that circumstances existed that justified deadly force." Kan. Stat. Ann. § 21-3403 (2008). The defendant here wants to justify his use of deadly force to save unborn children.

"Unborn children"? Dr. Tiller's clinic served women whose pregnancies had gone horribly, horribly wrong and who desperately needed late-term care. He saved the lives of mothers whose pregnancies were life-threatening. He terminated pregnancies where a fetus was so tragically malformed or damaged that any post-birth "life" would be meaningless, or where a normal delivery would likely kill the mother. Examples include hydrocephaly, which generally can't be diagnosed until the second trimester, or irreparable spina bifida.

(You know who else gets late-term abortions? Women who have been forced to jump through hoops that delay their seeking care -- whether from anti-choice legislation or a shortage of physicians since the vast majority of medical schools don't teach abortion procedures. When you make it harder for women to get abortions, they still get them; they just get them later, and with more risk. In a 1987 study, nearly half of the respondents who had a late-term abortion explained that the delay was caused by legal and logistical roadblocks. 20 Family Planning Perspectives 169-176 (Jul/Aug 1988).)

As for the facts of Dr. Tiller's murder, you know that photo by Eddie Adams, of Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong officer in 1968? That's pretty much how Roeder murdered Dr. Tiller. Only Dr. Tiller hadn't been handcuffed in a street after taking out a couple of American soldiers during a war; rather, Dr. Tiller was standing in the foyer of his church after having performed his ushering duties before the day's service.

Roeder's execution-style murder of Dr. Tiller, in front of Dr. Tiller's fellow parishioners and in view of the congregation (including born children), did not do and will not do anything to save "unborn children." Instead, his actions will put at risk of death, injury, or permanent infertility the couple of thousand women every year who will continue to need late-term abortions in America.

Driberally tonight

Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at Triumph Brewery, this week at the downstairs bar, where there are drink and food specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. I hope to see you there!

Triumph Brewery is at 117 Chestnut Street in Old City. It's conveniently SEPTA-accessible via the Market-Frankford El (2nd Street station), all the buses that turn around at or near Penn's Landing (5, 12, 17, 21, 33, 42, 48), and a few other buses that pass nearby (9, 25, 38, 40, 44, 47, 57, 61).

This week's topic: My daughter's been bugging me to let her have a Facebook account. The Internet is, of course, the first place I always look to for parenting advice, and I found a rule that one mom created for the situation: As long as you are under my roof, and I am paying for the Internet provider that supplies this "free" service, if you want to be on Facebook you will friend me. I think I can dig that. Also I think I may create the account first, myself, and set all the privacy settings to the "absolutely bugfuck paranoid" level, as they are on my own Facebook account.

"Come for the beer, stay for the check"

11 January 2010

Another unpaid gig

I've been invited to be a member of the board of a small local arts organization. While I guess every networking opportunity is a good networking opportunity, I sure do wish I could find steady, paying work.

Maybe I can condition the performance of my board participation duties on a quarter-page ad in the program of every show the organization puts on.

07 January 2010

Best free website I've found this year

FreeDocumentaries.org offers free access to streaming video, without commercials, of documentary films. The films are not totally agenda-free: unfortunately a 9/11 truther piece is a prominent "featured video" on the home page; and the rest of the library is dominated by left-wing movies that likely deservedly never found a distributor. But the library does include The Road to Guantanamo, Super Size Me, and The Fog of War, three docs I missed when they were in general release.

06 January 2010

Frozen river report: not yet frozen

When we get a good, serious cold snap, the Schuylkill freezes over where it passes by 30th Street Station, and ice on either side of the Delaware forms around the piers and creeps toward the shipping lanes. The sight on the Delaware is more impressive than on the Schuylkill because the river is wider between Philadelphia and Camden than the Schuylkill is between 24th and 30th Streets. We haven't had a good, serious cold snap for a few years, so it's been a while since I've seen chunks of ice floating down the Delaware from Trenton and more exotic points north.

On the way home from lunch with a friend yesterday, I stayed on the El for a couple of extra stops to see if the Delaware was icy yet, but no. A little crusty around the edges, but isn't it always? Nothing more.

05 January 2010

Driberally tonight

Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at Triumph Brewery's upstairs bar, where there are drink and food specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. I hope to see you there!

Triumph Brewery is at 117 Chestnut Street in Old City. It's conveniently SEPTA-accessible via the Market-Frankford El (2nd Street station), all the buses that turn around at or near Penn's Landing (5, 12, 17, 21, 33, 42, 48), and a few other buses that pass nearby (9, 25, 38, 40, 44, 47, 57, 61).

This week's topic: Keep your resolutions to yourself.

"Come for the beer, stay for the check"

04 January 2010

Fireworks and minivans and lynching effigies, oh my!

Well, that was a relaxing vacation. I bathed only irregularly, I saw fireworks, I went out to the suburbs twice and came back alive, and I did laundry.

Happy New Year in Plains, Georgia!