Here’s a unicorn chaser for the euthanasia post.

Happy New Year!

Image used totally without permission.

I have a diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome. Google it if you want the exposition.

One of the things that interests me about this diagnosis is that it’s named after a neurologist who did his work in Austria in the mid-1940s, during which time the Nazis were shipping ‘defectives’ off to die in concentration camps along with the Jews.

I have a narrative in mind where Hans Asperger did his work in order to show the value of the autistic children under his care, so that they would escape the camps. I have no way to prove it, and I really haven’t done as much research into it as I could.

I got started thinking about this because dingus6 linked to an article about gay sheep, and a controversy over ‘fixing’ their homosexuality through some kind of therapy. This issue isn’t as silly as it seems at first blush.

But Googling around for something to link in comments on dingus’ site, I ran across a blog called Respectful Insolence, which has a lot of information along these lines, including Nazi propaganda and arguments for and against euthanasia from US scientists of the time.

Notable is that the main US scientist working on coining the term ‘autism,’ Leo Kanner, argued against euthanasia, though he provisionally agreed with the idea of forced sterilization.

Via wikipedia’s T4 article:

English translation: “60000 RM. This is what this person suffering from hereditary defects costs the Community of Germans during his lifetime. Fellow German, that is your money, too. Read ‘[A] New People.’ The monthly magazines of the Office for Race Politics of the NSDAP”

I really get tired of reading exposition on ‘blogs. I really do. I read someone like Glenn Greenwald, and wish he’d just get on with making the point, rather than re-capping the details. But of course that’s just me being impatient.

And when I talk about political stuff, I have a little bit of trouble in that I build what I’m saying on facts that I understand to be true, and can support, but which I only offer in a sort of shorthand or omit altogether. It’s frustrating for me to have to restate the same thing over and over to people, who then complain that I’m obsessing on those things and that’s why they can ignore me. Either I go on and on and explain my multifaceted line of reasoning to an impatient audience, or I just offer the summary. And either way I often fail, because I can’t spend the next day and a half offering footnotes and citations.

And with that in mind, I’m going to talk about the execution of Saddam Hussein.

He was a US ally longer than he was an enemy. We made him. Without the US, there wouldn’t have been a Saddam Hussein as we know him. That’s simply a fact, and if you disagree, you can take it up with United Press International, among others.

If Hussein had been tried in the International Criminal Court, he would have been tried for greater atrocities, and not only that, would have testified in front of the world about his ties to the US, and our complicity in some of those atrocities. And that would have been good for the world, for Iraq, and ultimately for the US, because we’d stop doing stuff like that.

But instead, he was hanged in a jail cell by guys in hoods after a trial by a government that only kinda-sorta really exists, at a time dictated by the US: After the elections and during a slow news week when everyone’s trying to get over their Xmas party hangover.

As other commentators have pointed out: This was basically a kangaroo court, designed to get Hussein out of the way as quickly as possible. And that’s how everyone but those of us in the US see it. The point of the article I linked to before is that this reality does us no real service. We can swagger and pat our own backs for having hanged a man, but ultimately it doesn’t help our cause, regardless of what anyone thinks about Hussein himself.

We have less and less legitimacy as this war in Iraq is prosecuted, because it’s being prosecuted without competence.

Also: Darryl does the footwork so I don’t have to.

From hanging chads to hanging Hussein, where’d the legitimacy go?

Josh Marshall on this spectacle:

Myself, I just find it embarrassing. This is what we’re reduced to, what the president has reduced us to. This is the best we can do. Hang Saddam Hussein because there’s nothing else this president can get right.

You want some validation? OK. I love you. Really.

You want some web validation? Run your xanga site through w3c.org’s validator. Be sure and specify a text encoding of iso-8859-1, since xanga doesn’t specify anything.

Here, check this page. As I mentioned, you’ll have to fiddle with the text encoding before you get any useful results. You might also have to select ‘HTML 4.0 transitional.’ You’ll get something like 90 errors.

I’m griping about this right now because my mom wants to read my ‘blog, but she can’t because it’s a Xanga ‘blog, and she has an iMac running OS 9, with IE 5.1. It’s the only site that doesn’t work for her. It works under Mozilla 1.2.1, but switching over is not an option, nor should it need to be.

Xanga HANGS IE 5.1, requiring a force-quit! This is without any flash or funky javascript or anything.

I went to the bookstore today and nearly fell down laughing at this Texas Monthly cover:

The irony being, of course, that they performed reconstructive photographic surgery on Cheney’s face to do it.

I love it. The grimace, the suit, the smoking shotgun.

I’m anosmic. (“How do you smell?” “Awful.”) I never really thought to look it up or anything, either, since my situation is congenital and thus as far as I’m concerned, I’m not missing anything.

But here’s an entry on Metafilter with links to an Anosmic Association, and of course email discussion groups.

Sometimes I experience what can only be described as ‘greasy gray,’ sort of the aromatic equivalent of a ‘server not found’ error, and that’s it. And, presented for all my anosmic homies out there, this entry is presented in Smell-O-Web. Scratch here: [ ]

Via metafilter:

YouOS, a web-based operating system desktop. Not explicitly Safari-compatible yet, but I didn’t run into any problems.

Via GoogleEarth:

The Heart Forest, planted near Kansas City, MO, in the shape of a giant heart.

Each year we recommit to the Heart Forest as a symbol of rejuvenation from the Heartland. We continue to take encouragement from the quote of Margaret Mead. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Also, the International Forest of Friendship

The International Forest of Friendship in Atchison, Kansas is a memorial to the men and women involved in aviation and space exploration. The Forest was started for the Bicentennial by the city of Atchinson and the Ninety-Nines, the international organization of women pilots. The forest contains trees representing all 50 states and 35 countries.

Via This Modern World:

See also.