And while I’m on the Bill Hicks jag….

This might qualify as a ‘where we are.’

Ads at airport security checkpoints. Ronald McDonald smiling at you from the bin that holds your laptop and wallet.

On the up-side: Consider an ad that says, “Do you know your rights? ACLU.org.” My favorite quote in the article:

As long as the advertising does not distract passengers from security, it’s a great opportunity, said Scott Montgomery, principal at Indianapolis-based Bradley and Montgomery Advertising (BaM).

Um… Isn’t the whole point of an ad to distract you? Or are you just supposed to learn to accept the encroachment of ads into every single solitary aspect of American culture?

Update: And… What he says. (Note: Adult language and so forth. Cuz it’s Bill Hicks.)

Over on Wired: Analyzing password-guessing software so you can choose a more secure one.

I betcha more people watch this video than watched Bush’s address.

I’m down. It opens here on the 12th (day after tomorrow).

Who wants to go?

I wish CaptainScurvy were still around. Then I could link him to this, particularly the latter half which is about businesses and governments discovering sustainability as a much more viable model.

However, the article begins with a section on perception:

It happened to me most recently at Madrid’s new airport. One minute I was admiring Richard Rogers’ gorgeous roof, and the play of light upon curves.

But I suddenly stopped perceiving these effects as aesthetic. In place of elegant forms and vistas, I started to contemplate the vast amount of energy embodied in the artefacts, structures and processes that surrounded me.

A big new airbus, taxiing in to park, made me wonder how many thousands – millions – of pounds of matter and energy must have been used to build it.

Beside me was an elegant concrete pillar. It looked benignly tree-like with a gently curving trunk and branches, higher up, that supported a soaring roof.

But how many carbon dioxide emissions were generated during its fabrication? A ton of CO2 is emitted for every ton of concrete that ends up in a pillar – or the miles of concrete apron that stretched, in Madrid, in every direction.

Millions of tons of concrete visible to the eye. Millions of tons of emissions out of sight.

And you know what? That’s exactly the kind of thing I see when I go to an airport, too. Or sitting in traffic, I’m thinking of waste, doing some dark calculation of the expense in terms of all the fuel being wasted by idling cars and lost productivity and standard of living. Or ordering a latté, I appreciate the vertiguous sense of being at the top of a continent-spanning economic chain (I buy fair trade).

Sometimes the systems-thinking vertigo is thrilling, and sometimes it’s tiring.

Ultimately, I have selfish reasons for being a sustain-o-nerd, and they involve wanting to be able to go to some public place and ‘seeing through’ the walls like this to the other side, where something nice awaits for a change.

Of course, we all know that liberal college professors are anti-American traitors. And that’s why, in 2003, it was an absolute necessity for Republicans to pass their Higher Education Act reauthorization and amendment, which would take all college grant-money programs and put them under the oversight of an ‘advisory board’ made up of political appointees. We don’t want those liberals to tell our bright young minds that there’s a place outside the US, where things might be better, do we? Or maybe learning that there are some Muslims that *aren’t* terrorists. Who’d want to know that?

But of course, there’s no trend here. We’re not seeing an advance of a right-wing agenda of eliminationism against liberals. At all. I mean, we haven’t seen the opening of concentration camps yet. They’re being built, but we have yet to *use* them, so obviously nothing’s wrong. It’s not like the US Attorney General and members of Congress are talking about locking up ‘fifth columnists’ or anything.

And yes, of course, everyone knows that liberals should be locked up or killed or whatever, but it’s not like anyone’s actually saying so. To do so wouldn’t be beyond the pale, of course, but the only problem is that liberals are so good at taking it personally. If only they’d laugh it off.

Barak Obama’s middle name is ‘Hussein,’ and he’s just the same as Osama Bin Laden, terrorist, mass murderer, and enemy of the United States. And if Osama — er, I mean, OBAMA — were Muslim, he should’ve been forced to swear in on a Christian Bible.

But surely that’s all just a bunch of marginalized right-wingers, right? I mean, it’s not like a US Representative wrote a bigoted screed of a letter about it or anything. Surely it can’t give us any insight into ‘where we are’ as a nation. Right?

And for sean:

Yes.

Sean Hannity says Sean Penn is an ‘enemy of the state.’ Gretchen Carlson (same network… guess which one), in her role as news anchor calls Ted Kennedy a ‘hostile enemy right here on the homefront,’ equating him with the Iraqi insurgency. Video if you follow the link.

Does she still have a job? Do you think Fox will apologize?

Allow me to illustrate where we are as a nation. Hopefully, I don’t need to comment on this.