What will it take to stop this war? Have we killed enough of their innocents? Have we ruined enough of our own? Iraq War vet Jon Michael Turner tells one of thousands of horror stories. Witness.

Does this scare you as much as it does me?

Government lawyers told federal judges that the president can send the military into any U.S. neighborhood, capture a citizen and hold him in prison without charge, indefinitely.

Context? Well, we have to catch terrorists, don’t we? And they need to go to jail right away. And we don’t have time for trial, or evidence that we can show you without shooting you. This is just business as usual. The frog is still comfortable, the water is not too warm, is it.

“The president is not a king and cannot lock people up forever in the United States based on his say-so,” said Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer who represents al-Marri and other detainees. “Today it’s Mr. al-Marri. Tomorrow it could be you, a member of your family, someone you know. Once you allow the president to lock people up for years or even life without trial, there’s no going back.”

Familiar words, no?

…structured procrastination (hat tip to AndrewS).

I have been intending to write this essay for months. Why am I finally doing it? Because I finally found some uncommitted time? Wrong. I have papers to grade, textbook orders to fill out, an NSF proposal to referee, dissertation drafts to read. I am working on this essay as a way of not doing all of those things.

Wow, today was a big day for Alex. He was confirmed in the Roman Catholic church today. This is something that he decided on his own was important to him. Certainly Mary and I have expressed enough frustrations with the church that Alex is going in with his eyes wide open. He was very excited about the confirmation and did a great job of taking care of the preparation. Bravo Alex!

I got a posting that included this bit from a friend of the family responding to this op-ed this morning:

Nicely written article but it does not address the interesting point that the war was brought to our shores first on Sept, 2001. We were not looking for a war. We were doing our thing, quietly in our open society.

The op-ed itself is worth a read. My rant probably much less so. But for the record, my rant lies below the fold. It is much more a riff on the “brought to our shores on 9/11″ than the cogent arguments of the op-ed. But it is early, I am bleary, and I wanted to capture this before I was clear eyed and in control enough of my faculties to edit myself.

Read the rest of this entry »

A brief, but very nice interview with Brad Bird at Gigaom last month. Among many bits of wisdom: “there are some [things] that only need to be good enough to not break the spell.”

Mary just handed me Here Comes Everybody and I hope I get a chance to read it soon. Meanwhile, in this video Clay Shirky discusses where we all get the time to participate in a web 2.0 culture. His notion: we are giving up just a little of our addiction to TV sitcoms, the opiate of the masses, for a bit of participatory media. Not a bad thesis.

These sketchnotes by Mike Rohde are great. I was particularly impressed by Good Design Hurts from SXSW. Both the content (Gruber etco.) and the presentation (Rohde) are worthwhile.

Here is a clear visual about each of our impact on greenhouse gasses. Pretty effective, I think. (Tip o’hat to information aesthetics).

Twenty years ago today Mary and I shared our vows with a few hundred friends. This is how we shared those words in 1988.

We cherish this opportunity to see God’s web become visible among us. We know that for many people, especially our gay and lesbian friends, that opportunity rarelly, if ever, arises. We would like you to share in making this web even stronger and more visible by joining us—and joining hands—in a prayer for the people in our lives whom we love for better and for worse. Friends, family, lovers, community—all share bonds that stretch rather than break, and expand instead of explode. Please join us in this prayer with the one or ones you are committed to:

Before God and this community I promise that I will be honest with you, that I will share with you who I am and who I am becoming, that I will respect you and celebrate the ways you are different from me, that I will care for you always, that I will seek your forgiveness when we fail to live up to our shared covenant, and that I will dream with you and work with you to make those dreams come true.

I know I have failed to live up to this covenant countless times, and I thank Mary for her forgiveness and patience. I hope that many more years of dreaming together lie ahead, and I am so pleased we now get to share our lives with Alex and Nathaniel as well. Thank you, Mary. Ich liebe dich.