APOLARITY

Why I won’t buy an iPad (and think you shouldn’t, either) – Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow on the iPad and Apple’s stifling of creativity:

[C]learly there’s a lot of thoughtfulness and smarts that went into the design. But there’s also a palpable contempt for the owner. I believe — really believe — in the stirring words of the Maker Manifesto: if you can’t open it, you don’t own it. Screws not glue.

(…)

The way you improve your iPad isn’t to figure out how it works and making it better. The way you improve the iPad is to buy iApps. Buying an iPad for your kids isn’t a means of jump-starting the realization that the world is yours to take apart and reassemble; it’s a way of telling your offspring that even changing the batteries is something you have to leave to the professionals.

Yeah, I won’t be getting one.

How the GOP Purged Me – Chris Currey with a historical look at the Republican party from a lifelong conservative.  Well worth a read.

I grew up in an era where William F. Buckley fought the John Birch society and kicked them out of the Republican Party. I grew up with — in fact voted for the first time for — Eisenhower. In 1956, he ran a campaign of dignity. A campaign that acknowledged that there are certain projects better suited to be handled by the government. See, business thinks in the short term, as he said. That’s the imperative of the marketplace. I invest and I expect that in a few quarters, I garner the fruits of my investment. Government, on the other hand, has the luxury to wait a few years, maybe decades, for a return on a given investment. As a former businessman, I know that first hand. Am I a Marxist for thinking that?

I have long thought that a truth commission such as the post-apartheid Truth & Reconciliation Commission in South Africa may be the only way to move forward, loath as I am to see the boastfully guilty pardoned.

How Should Obama Deal With Bush Era Torture? puts it succinctly, along with photographic and documentary evidence from torture regimes of the past: the Khmer Rouge, the Inquisition, the Gestapo.

Torture will remain an ugly stain on the U.S. until it is dealt with openly and transparently. The truth is, to me, more important than seeing punishment meted out on the offenders.

Jónsi Birgisson, the lead singer of the delightful Icelandic band Sigur Rós, is releasing a solo album “Go” in April. In January he did a live acoustic set on WNYC radio.

I took the liberty of separating the three songs he played into discrete tracks. Enjoy (please).

Go Do
Boy Lilikoi
Around Us

a.k.a. Links for the week.

I haven’t figured out a good workflow, a way to publish and comment on the things that I read and that are important to me. I’m still working out the kinks.

Here’s what I’ve been focused on lately:

The Proposition 8 Trial

As I wrote earlier, I’ve been very interested in the federal trial over the unconstitutionality of Prop. 8. It seems important and potentially ground-breaking. The courtroom provides an ideal environment for the societal and cultural stigmas surrounding homosexuality, the economic and social factors involved in the push for marriage equality, the role of religion in the democratic process, the nature of civil rights, the makeup of how a group of people is granted protected status, and other such issues to be discussed calmly, rationally, and with the input of experts.

But so anyway, here are some links, analyses, summaries, that have caught my attention lately, for what they’re worth.

• Prop. 8 Trial First Week Roundup – an AFER (American Foundation for Equal Rights, one of the organizations bringing the court case against California’s Proposition 8 ) summary of the trial’s first week of arguments and witnesses.
• “Home Court Advantage” and Determining Scrutiny, both from Prop 8 Trial Tracker, are helpful explanations of the process by which the case will be decided, and which side will be deemed to have the burden of proof.
• An Explosive Afternoon: LDS Church – It’s fascinating the length, time, and manpower the Mormons put into the passage of Prop. 8.
• Chinese Christians Are the Focus of Same-Sex Marriage Case – NYT article on one of the official proponents (one of the five people who officially filed Prop. 8), Hak-Shing William Tam, and his testimony this week. His testimony went a long way toward illustrating the animus involved in the push to pass the measure. Mr. Tam was more than willing to propagate falsehoods (read: lies) linking gay people to all sorts of societal ills: pedophilia, incest, molestation, prostitution, and recruiting children.
• An Odd Couple Defends Couples That Some (Oddly) Find Odd – NYT op-ed about the “odd couple” of the two lawyers arguing the case. An interesting comment regarding President Obama’s reluctance to support marriage equality:

Obama sees himself as such a huge change that he can be cautious about other societal changes. But what he doesn’t realize is that legalizing gay marriage is like electing a black president. Before you do it, it seems inconceivable. Once it’s done, you can’t remember what all the fuss was about.

• Why I’m Joining the Fight for Marriage Equality – well-written Fox News (!) piece with another conservative perspective on marriage equality.

Miscellaneous

• How to live to be 100+ – TED talk covering research on “Blue Zones”, areas of the world where people frequently live active lives into their 90s and 100s.
• EVIL little cameras – from Metafilter, an interesting collection of articles about a new type of camera (Electronic Viewfinder, Interchangeable Lenses) which has the quality of a dSLR in a compact size.

Personal

I’ve been making tasty concoctions.

• (faux-) Bailey’s Irish Cream – for the instant coffee, I used Starbucks Via. It turned out great.
• Hot pepper infused vodka – I used two green jalapeños, one red jalapeño, and a habanero, with a half-bottle of vodka. It smells delicious – I have tasted it but not yet made a drink with it. It’s going to be quite a kick in bloody marys!

This is getting to be too much for one post (and I’m running out of time for now). I’ll put the next installment in a post of its own.

Shalom,

Adrenalin Tim

Haiti | To Hell With Altruistic Capitalism – Kester Brewin on the deeper, systemic issues that allow the horror of what’s happened in Haiti, as well as some musings on a critique of capitalism in view of Jesus’ teachings.

And it is particularly pertinent in the aftermath of the horror of the earthquake in Haiti. We see the politicians on both sides of the atlantic with their bleeding-heart messages about the disaster…. when in reality the West has f*cked Haiti over time and time again – preventing proper development, forcing the poor into cities and sweatshops to create cheap clothing for the US, suffering coups supported by the CIA… and now told that they deserved this earthquake because they sold their souls to the devil when they bought themselves out of slavery from France.

Please, please give generously to help Haiti get back on its feet. But in a week or so when the story has gone from our screens, let’s not forget them, and let’s try to get the systemic issues sorted out. They need debt forgiven. They need minimum wage agreements. They need symmetric fair trade agreements. They need to be given a fair chance, especially by the US.

As I say in the post on what looks like being a great conference, Oscar Wilde had it right when he said that the worst slave owners were the ones who were kind to their slaves. Why? Because they prolonged the horrors of an abusive system. And yes, that, on the grand scale, is what altruistic capitalism looks like.

If you want to help in the short term, here’s some good advice for choosing how to maximize the impact of your dollars by choosing the best NGO. (We went with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières.)

The court challenge to California’s state referendum disallowing same-sex marriage began Monday. I’ve been wanting to write about it and to share links, but my perfectionism has fueled my procrastination. There’s a lot of information, and I want to distill the most relevant, most salient, most persuasive, most informative data for those who cannot absorb, or are not interested in absorbing, as much information as I have.

Let’s do it this way: if you only click one link, watch Rachel Maddow reporting on the trial. She captures the background details that make this case historically significant, and interviews the lawyers working to overturn Proposition 8.

This New Yorker article is my next recommendation. It’s somewhat long, but gives a fairly comprehensive view of the context in which Perry v. Schwarzenegger is coming about, the strategies involved in building the case & choosing the plaintiffs, what the various parties will need to demonstrate in order to win, and the possible end game of a Supreme Court decision, given the assumption that the loser of the trial will appeal to higher courts.

Other noteworthy things about the trial:

• The two main attorneys for the plaintiff (those seeking to overturn the ban on same-sex marriage) are Ted Olson and David Boies, two top lawyers known for being “conservative” and “liberal” respectively. They most famously opposed each other in 2000′s Bush v. Gore. Olson was Solicitor General under G.W. Bush. If you’re curious as to how a renowned “conservative” attorney comes to be supporting gay rights, check out his article (the current cover of Newsweek), The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage. Quote:

Many of my fellow conservatives have an almost knee-jerk hostility toward gay marriage. This does not make sense, because same-sex unions promote the values conservatives prize. Marriage is one of the basic building blocks of our neighborhoods and our nation. At its best, it is a stable bond between two individuals who work to create a loving household and a social and economic partnership. We encourage couples to marry because the commitments they make to one another provide benefits not only to themselves but also to their families and communities. Marriage requires thinking beyond one’s own needs. It transforms two individuals into a union based on shared aspirations, and in doing so establishes a formal investment in the well-being of society. The fact that individuals who happen to be gay want to share in this vital social institution is evidence that conservative ideals enjoy widespread acceptance. Conservatives should celebrate this, rather than lament it.

Legalizing same-sex marriage would also be a recognition of basic American principles, and would represent the culmination of our nation’s commitment to equal rights. It is, some have said, the last major civil-rights milestone yet to be surpassed in our two-century struggle to attain the goals we set for this nation at its formation.

This bedrock American principle of equality is central to the political and legal convictions of Republicans, Democrats, liberals, and conservatives alike.

• As to the trial itself, here is Ted Olson’s opening statement. It’s worth reading as to the scope of where the plaintiff’s arguments are headed.
• One of the earlier witnesses was Professor Nancy Cott, Trumball Professor of American History at Harvard, author of 8 books including Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation. As an expert witness on the history of marriage in the U.S., her perspective was very interesting in demonstrating the evolution of “the institution of marriage”. A sample, from the liveblogging at Prop 8 Trial Tracker:

[In the early 20th century] Marriage fell into the common law view of “coverture” which was the French that meant she was covered by her husband’s life. She lost her individuality, hence becoming Mrs. John Doe. This was the marital bargain to which both spouses consented.

The point is that this was a mutually agreed upon separation of labor. Men were deemed to be providers; women, the weaker sex, were deemed to need protection. Hence there was a division of labor. All socially conventional according to the times.

(…)

By the 1970s, with the women’s rights revolution, the Supreme Court stepped in and the states had to stay out of assigning spousal roles according to gender. Now, both spouses are required to support one another, but no longer by specific gender assignment. In other words, the law is now gender neutral.

The more that this has become gender neutral and the more society has evolved, the more same-sex marriage makes sense. Now, the coverture doctrine is dead. The state no longer assigns gender roles in marriage. Couples may choose to take on those roles, but its not up to the state any more.

That’s all for now. I’ll try to do better at excerpting news, quotes and links as I come across them, rather than holding off for an all-in-one that no one will care to read.

This is important. This is big. I feel like I’m watching the moral arc of history swinging toward justice, in the words of MLK. This has the potential to be a groundbreaking case. This could be Brown v. Board of Education; this could be Loving v. Virginia.

May justice prevail.

Wow. This video is hauntingly, staggeringly beautiful. Do yourself a favor and watch it full-screen.

Kuroshio Sea – 2nd largest aquarium tank in the world – (song is Please don’t go by Barcelona) from Jon Rawlinson on Vimeo.

(Found via Vimeo’s 25 favorite videos of 2009.)

• Just Asking – a must-read 2007 musing by David Foster Wallace – a thought experiment on “what is the price of freedom”. It seems particularly prescient given the recent revelations of the torture policy. Quote:

What if we chose to accept the fact that every few years, despite all reasonable precautions, some hundreds or thousands of us may die in the sort of ghastly terrorist attack that a democratic republic cannot 100-percent protect itself from without subverting the very principles that make it worth protecting?

Is this thought experiment monstrous? Would it be monstrous to refer to the 40,000-plus domestic highway deaths we accept each year because the mobility and autonomy of the car are evidently worth that high price?

Just wanted to pass along this primary documentation about the unquestionable torture that the former administration directly authorized.

• International Committee of the Red Cross – Report on the Treatment of Fourteen “High Value Detainees” in CIA Custody (pdf) and some analysis at The New York Review of Books.
• Abuse of Power: The Bush Administration’s Secret Legal Memos – four secret memos used by the Bush administration to justify torture.

Here’s the president’s full statement (via):

The Department of Justice will today release certain memos issued by the Office of Legal Counsel between 2002 and 2005 as part of an ongoing court case. These memos speak to techniques that were used in the interrogation of terrorism suspects during that period, and their release is required by the rule of law.

My judgment on the content of these memos is a matter of record. In one of my very first acts as President, I prohibited the use of these interrogation techniques by the United States because they undermine our moral authority and do not make us safer. Enlisting our values in the protection of our people makes us stronger and more secure. A democracy as resilient as ours must reject the false choice between our security and our ideals, and that is why these methods of interrogation are already a thing of the past. But that is not what compelled the release of these legal documents today.

While I believe strongly in transparency and accountability, I also believe that in a dangerous world, the United States must sometimes carry out intelligence operations and protect information that is classified for purposes of national security. I have already fought for that principle in court and will do so again in the future.

However, after consulting with the Attorney General, the Director of National Intelligence, and others, I believe that exceptional circumstances surround these memos and require their release. First, the interrogation techniques described in these memos have already been widely reported. Second, the previous Administration publicly acknowledged portions of the program – and some of the practices – associated with these memos. Third, I have already ended the techniques described in the memos through an Executive Order.

Therefore, withholding these memos would only serve to deny facts that have been in the public domain for some time. This could contribute to an inaccurate accounting of the past, and fuel erroneous and inflammatory assumptions about actions taken by the United States. In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution.

The men and women of our intelligence community serve courageously on the front lines of a dangerous world. Their accomplishments are unsung and their names unknown, but because of their sacrifices, every single American is safer. We must protect their identities as vigilantly as they protect our security, and we must provide them with the confidence that they can do their jobs. Going forward, it is my strong belief that the United States has a solemn duty to vigorously maintain the classified nature of certain activities and information related to national security.

This is an extraordinarily important responsibility of the presidency, and it is one that I will carry out assertively irrespective of any political concern. Consequently, the exceptional circumstances surrounding these memos should not be viewed as an erosion of the strong legal basis for maintaining the classified nature of secret activities. I will always do whatever is necessary to protect the national security of the United States. This is a time for reflection, not retribution. I respect the strong views and emotions that these issues evoke. We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history.

But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past. Our national greatness is embedded in America’s ability to right its course in concert with our core values, and to move forward with confidence. That is why we must resist the forces that divide us, and instead come together on behalf of our common future. The United States is a nation of laws. My Administration will always act in accordance with those laws, and with an unshakeable commitment to our ideals. That is why we have released these memos, and that is why we have taken steps to ensure that the actions described within them never take place again.