I’ve been reading about conservatives’ use of langauge, from various sites, and found a good one: LuntzSpeak.com. Frank Luntz is the god-emperor of Orwellian conservatism, and LuntzSpeak gives you the Cliff notes on how his system works. Complete with actual decoder rings.

Update: More Luntz-O-Mania, this time about how MSNBC used Luntz as an on-air ‘political pollster’ who interviewed ‘undecided voters’ in the 2000 election. If you’re interested in how politicians use language the way accountants use fractions of pennies, then go read it.

Time magazine goatse.

If you know what this refers to, then you already know about it. If you don’t know what it refers to, then you might consider not actually finding out. You’ve been warned.

I spent a lot of today downtown at the library. I poked through the photography section, but mostly I took pictures.

When I got back, I spent a lot of time discovering that I had a bad FireWire cable between my iBook and my external hard drive. Isn’t it funny how you think it’s the USB media reader, or you think it’s the Finder, or you think it’s malformed EXIF headers on the pictures, but it’s just a shorting cable.

Meanwhile, outside the library…

This image looks like a collage, but that’s Rem Koolhaas‘ doing, not mine. The building reflects the surroundings back to you, wrapping itself up in the nearby facades.

Same area of the building. There’s really no way to capture the whole shape of the building in a long shot, since every angle you’d shoot from would distort the dimensions. Put more simply: The building doesn’t look like a building. It doesn’t really have a shape; it’s just some geometry.

So we go in.

There’s an interesting thing about all the doors and entryways. Despite the massive scale, the doors look small. Almost claustrophobic. You wonder how you’ll ever fit through them, but you do.

Not too far inside, it’s the mirrored hall of donors, and another photographer. Or, I should say, a real photographer; she’s documenting Seattle’s contribution to The September Project.

The funny story here is that I got into position to shoot her with her eye to the camera, while a gaggle of folks were being led around on a tour behind her. By the time I got set, the elevator had arrived and whisked off the tour group, and she had noticed that my lens was pointed straight at her.

Skipping a lot of interior space on our little photographic tour, we’re riding the escalator up to the ‘reading room.’ Which is, apparently, in the sky.

We’ve taken the elevator to the very top of the publically-accessible part of the library, where there’s a very large area for reading or using the free Wi-Fi. It’s also where you see lots of people with cameras. And it’s very, very punk. The punks said, ‘No Future!’ The postmodernists said, ‘The future is now!’

At least one postmodernist said, ‘No ceiling!’

This is a view from over the Dewey decimal spiral, across Koolhaas’ version of an atrium, at the top of the building. The cement wall on the right is actually the core of the building, and it houses the elevators.

The parapet is totally extraneous, and serves no other purpose than to provide you with a place to stand and take a picture. I stood there, and all I could think about was how much information was either standing still or in motion in this city block. Even invisibly, through the air, in the form of WiFi. And that’s only the human- and machine-readable information; there’s plenty else going on inside, too.

I wrote before about the library, and I cited ‘Wings of Desire’ as something that came to mind. It came to mind again, while I was up on the parapet. There’s a certain quality to this building, from the massive odd shape to the design of the railings (which you can see in the above picture), that make it seem to defy gravity. You feel you could simply form a conduit between two books by effortlessly floating down to a lower level, or folding space so you can hold both at the same time. One hopes real research there would go so smoothly.

Guess what?

George W. Bush missed his filing deadline to be on the Florida ballot.

Guess what else?

The Democrats are folding on it, despite bringing lawsuits against the Green and Reform parties. In the state where Katherine Harris (gag, spit) kept talking about the ‘rule of law’ as she deflated their campaign.

Fukkin’ Florida Democrats. They fight the small parties, but when they have the legal opportunity to keep Bush *off the freakin’ ballot,* they cave.

Like I said: Violence.

Sixbillion.org rawks.

16 Washington Monthly articles hope to answer the question: What if Bush wins?

You really should also be reading Aaron Swartz’ web log. While it’s very politically-oriented, I would be wrong to say it’s political.

I had this idea once that I would make a ‘blog, or an email list, or what-have-you, that would be a primer on logic and reasoning as applied to rhetoric, especially political rhetoric. There are numerous guides to logical fallacies, and there are sites like mediamatters.org, which provide the raw material for debunking rhetoric after it’s happened, but nothing in between. Nothing to teach people how to decode language they didn’t know was encoded to begin with.

With that in mind, Aaron Swartz recommends ‘Don’t Think Of An Elephant!,’ which is exactly what I’m talking about, except in book form. You really should read his recommendation, too.

I don’t feel bad about telling you that you should do something. I’m arrogant that way. Jesus said you should love your enemy as yourself. Was he wrong?

I’ve been reading ‘Voyage of a Summer Sun,’ the travelogue by Robin Cody, the tale of canoeing all the way down the Columbia River from the wilds of the Canadian Rockies to the Pacific Ocean.

That’s what books are for, right? So you can have the adventure you were going to have, without actually having it?

Anyway, it’s a really good read thus far. Here’s a passage that I read, and said to myself, for some reason, ‘I have to ‘blog this.’ Used without permission.

Cody has enlisted the aid of a local, Houlbrook, in order to make his way through a treacherous canyon. On their way to the canyon mouth…

A faint hissing sound rose from the canoe, and then it faded. Both of us heard it, and neither of us knew what it was. It sounded like air escaping from an inner tube. The hissing came from insie the canoe, yet we carried nothing that could make such a sound. No more than a few drips of water lay at our feet. Houlbrook said the canoe’s two flotation compartments, fore and aft, were filled with foam, not air.

The hissing faded and then came on again, very strong, as we passed the influx of a glacial-white stream to starboard. And then it dawned on me. Glacier-ground rock, suspended in fast water, was playing the canoe like a long fiberglass instrument. Here was the sound of pulverized Rocky Mountains on their way to flat white beaches that flank the mouth of the Columbia river, up and down the coast. We were listening in on geological time. A river’s riddle had unfolded into a fresh view of the planet, and I was pleased beyond all reason as we rode nature’s slow machinery at the forming of landscape.

And Houlbrook was vastly relieved we hadn’t sprung a leak.

So I wonder when 9/11 is going to be officially recognized as International Blowback Day, the day when all world leaders are supposed to contemplate the far-reaching effects of their foreign policy.

You know what sucks? I said something like that soon after 9/11. I said 9/11 was blowback for all the meddling the US (and other major powers) have done in the oil-rich arab states. And some people said I was un-American, and that I was ‘blaming America first.’ Can you believe? I decided it was their unprocessed grief and fear, striking out at me because they didn’t have any other way to deal. And that’s what sucks: There was no way for them to process their uncertainty than to verbally kick my ass.

Because the fact is plainly true: 9/11 was blowback. National security hardliners had been warning us about blowback for decades.

Earlier this week, I rented season 1 of ‘Star Trek.’ It’s been Trek-a-thon around here all week long, to the point that I’m sick of it. Earlier this evening, I finally had overload, and fell right over asleep while watching ‘A Taste Of Armageddon,’ which is actually a pretty good episode, taken in moderation.

Woke up a couple hours ago and returned the DVD set in the night slot.

Earlier this week, while I was enthusiastic, my impression was that Trek is a minor miracle. Just that it got made, and that they could show you all those special effects and fantastical sets, and have decent writing. The dedication to the concept was also outstanding; they went where they felt they needed to go, and the Trek universe was expanded to cover the gaps.

Back when I was a little kid, I’d watch Star Trek obsessively. I wanted my real life to be as full of danger and intrigue as the Trek universe, where everyone seemed purposeful and decisions were hashed out in impassioned dialogue. I also related to Spock’s detachment and Bones’ passionate connection to life. Those were two sides of me that were really struggling to find expression, even as an 8 year old.

As that obsessed 8 year old, I missed a lot of what was actually going on in the show. I think that’s part of the success of the show; they were able to make it multi-layered enough to appeal to little kids who want to see planets explode, while also covering heavy topics. Today, even 8 year olds would see right through it, though. We’re much more sophisticated about these things. Little kids have already seen planets explode, so what’s the attraction?

And there’s something else that struck me… The whole cast overacts. This is a given. But they have to, or else the whole thing falls apart. There’s a really great scene in ‘The Man Trap’ where Kirk is attacked by the salt vampire, which feeds off the salt in living creatures by sucking it out through their face somehow. So you begin with a shaky premise about a creature that lives on salt and gets it by attacking other living beings. Then you see these big ugly hands with suction cups all over, encircling Kirk’s head. They’re obviously fake hands. They don’t even really move; they’re not articulated. So what’s an actor to do? How can he make the audience believe he’s being attacked by these stupid hands? Scream, Shatner! Scream the most outrageously forced scream you can! No need to make it believable, since we’re past that point already.

The whole series is like that. It’s balls-to-the-wall acting in broad strokes and grotesque form, which is exactly right for the show.

But also hard to watch for a week straight.

ooola (with three ‘o’s) offers forth this link to a chat board posting about the strange case of Robert Durst.

I did a little digging (meaning, I typed the name into Google), and found a few things. This NY Daily News article is pretty comprehensive. The story is a creepy one: The facts are that Durst killed a neighbor, hacked him to bits, and dumped the bits into Galveston bay. The prosecution story is that Durst murdered the neighbor and hid the evidence; the defense story is that it was self-defense, and Durst had a subsequent Asperger Syndrome-related freakout, wherein he disposed of the body rather than reporting it.

I don’t believe the defense story, myself. But that’s just me.

Other searching led me to this huge list of links on the topic of AS and violence. Durst is well-represented, and there are lots of other interesting things. The parent site for that list-o-links is ASPIRES, which I haven’t read through, but which looks interesting. Their focus is on talking through the difficulties AS and non-AS folks may have in long-term and intimate relationships.