Home
anomalymine's Friends

> recent entries
> calendar
> friends
> profile

Advertisement

Friday, December 18th, 2009


makinglight
5:12p
Open thread 133

Author William Rosen on Justinian:
...It wasn't merely that pre-Enlightenment Christians drank from a pool of unquestioning faith; during Justinian's time, they grew drunk on it.

Justinian's favorite hobby, in fact, was arguing the most obscure points of Christian doctrine (you can easily see where we get the dictionary definition of "Byzantine"). This was brought home to me by way of one really illuminating scene...; an incident that took place at the Hippodrome, Constantinople's great arena for chariot racing. Justinian was seated in the imperial box, surrounded by 50,000 racing fans, when one of them (no doubt equipped with a megaphone) engaged him directly in a debate about the nature of the incorruptibility of Christ's body. The emperor and the fan went toe-to-toe on the issue in stanza after stanza of extemporaneous verse on the murkiest kind of Christian dogma, with occasional cheers from the crowd when one debater got in a good one. It was as if New York's Mayor Bloomberg spent halftime at a Knicks game debating the finer points of string theory with a physicist seated twenty rows away, and not only did no one think anything extraordinary about it, but the drunks in the cheap seats applauded.


(comment on this)

Thursday, December 17th, 2009


makinglight
3:16p
Chkdsk red in tooth and claw

Noted literary figure Charlie Stross has contributed an essay to that well-established genre, the tale of godawful Windows-installation woes.

For even more fun, see the second comment in the thread, which may be the best explanation of Sony engineering ever written.

Addenda:

Ajay comments:

that well-established genre, the tale of godawful Windows-installation woes.
Another few years and the genre will have its own accepted tropes and rhetorical divisions.

I. Exordium. The narrator introduces himself, establishes his experience in computing (ethos) and exhorts the listeners to gather round.
II. Prolegomenon. Customarily, the hardware spec of the machine is outlined here.
III. Praeinstallatio. The narrator describes his initial attempt to install Windows.
IV. Contrainstallatio. The installation goes wrong.
V. Descendo. The narrator describes his increasingly desperate attempts to get things to go right.
VI. Depilatio. The narrator is reduced to despair and frustration.
VII. Inertio. The narrator sinks into a horrified stupor as his machine gurgles and clunks to itself for anything up to three days.
VIII. Peroratio. The narrator rises into fury as he describes how long and painful an experience the install was;
which may be followed by
IX. Aptenodytes forsteri, the narrator switches to Linux.

To which Patrick replies:
ajay, #6: Somewhere between your VI and your VIII is the last panel of this.

(comment on this)

makinglight
6:39a
Paarfi of Roundwood, author of the Quixote

Ever since high school, when I read Steven Boyett’s Ariel, I’ve been meaning to read Don Quixote, but I still haven’t gotten around to it, partly because I can’t decide which translation to read. (What I really oughta do is learn Spanish so I can read it, and Borges, in the originals, and to get back at Chris for knowing more Yiddish than I do.)

Today, I looked up a bunch of translations on Google Books, and compared their opening paragraphs. These all introduce Quixote, mentioning that he keeps old knightly gear (lance, shield, horse, greyhound), and describe the food and clothing that consume his money. The different approaches to describing Quixote’s food are striking, and seems to have been the subject of considerable scholarly effort.

Here’s Cervantes himself:

Una olla de algo más vaca que carnero, salpicón las más noches, duelos y quebrantos los sábados, lentejas los viernes, algún palomino de añadidura los domingos, consumían las tres partes de su hacienda.

Duelos y quebrantos, according to the Spanish-language branch of Wikipedia (helpfully translated into English), seems to be a dish of scrambled eggs, bacon, and sausage, cooked together in a skillet. It’s often served in a clay pot. Taken word-by-word (according to Google Translate and Chris’s Spanish-English dictionaries), duelos means “duels” or “grief”, while quebrantos means “bankruptcy”, “breaking”, “discouragement”, or “heavy loss”. As an idiomatic phrase, it seems to mean “scraps”.

I have no idea whether that Wikipedia article is accurate. While the dish itself is not at all implausible, the page says that there’s no record of the dish being called duelos y quebrantos prior to Cervantes’s use of the phrase. Given its popularity in the region where Quixote was described as living, it’s not impossible that some (not much) later person assigned the egg dish to Cervantes’s phrase, and it caught on as a semi-tlonian item. I imagine this has been hashed out at length in Spanish-language historical and literary journals, but I’ve got no way of knowing.

The first English translation was made by Thomas Shelton, and published in 1612. Here’s an 1896 edition, The history of Don Quixote of the Mancha:

His pot consisted daily of somewhat more Beefe then Mutton, a little minced meate every night, griefs and complaints the Saturdays, Lentils on Fridayes, and now and then a Pigeon of respect on Sundays did consume three parts of his rents;

The delightful history of the most ingenious knight Don Quixote of the Mancha, is another edition of Shelton’s translation, published in 1909. I don’t know who’s responsible for the changes:

His pot consisted daily of somewhat more beef than mutton: a gallimaufry each night, collops and eggs on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays, and now and then a lean pigeon on Sundays, did consume three parts of his rents;

The Life and Exploits of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote De La Mancha, translated by Charles “Jarvis” (a typo; his name was actually Jervas), first published in 1742:

A dish of boiled meat consisting of somewhat more beef than mutton, the fragments served up cold on most nights, an omelet on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays, and a small pigeon, by way of addition, on Sundays, consumed three-fourths of his income.

The Life and Achievements of the Renowned Don Quixote De La Mancha, published by Peter Anthony Motteux in 1712. Though the front matter of this 1908 edition claims Motteux as the translator, earlier editions credit it as “translated from the original by many hands”:

His diet consisted more of beef than mutton; and with minced meat on most nights, lentiles on Fridays, griefs and groans on Saturdays, and a pigeon extraordinary on Sundays, he consumed three-quarters of his revenue;

Here’s where things start getting serious. In 1749 (and I think Google Books might have actually scanned an original 1749 edition), a Mr Ozell took Motteux’s translation and revised it — The History of the Renowned Don Quixote de la Mancha, translated “by Several Hands […] Revis’d a-new; and Corrected, Rectify’d and Fill’d up, in Numberleſs Places, from the beſt Spaniſh Edition; By Mr Ozell: Who, at the Bottom of the Pages, has likewiſe added (after ſome few Corrections of his own, as will appear) Explanatory Notes, from Jarvis, Oudin, Sobrino, Pineda, Gregorio, and the Royal Academy Dictionary of Madrid”:

His diet conſiſted more of beef than of mutton ; and with minc’d meat on moſt nights, lentils on Fridays, eggs and * bacon on Saturdays, and a pigeon extraordinary on Sundays, he conſumed three quarters of his revenue

* Strictly, ſorrow for his ſops, on Saturdays. Duelos y Quebrantos ; in Engliſh, gruntings and groanings. He that can tell what ſort of edible the author means by thoſe words, Erit mihi magnus Apollo, Cæfar Oudin, the famous French traveller, negotiator, tranſlator and dictionary-maker, will have it to be eggs and bacon, as above. Our tranſlator and dictionary-maker, Stevens, has it, eggs and collops, (I ſuppose he means Scotch-collops) but that’s too good a diſh to mortify withal. Signor Sobrino’s Spaniſh dictionary says, Duelos y Quebrantos is peaſe-soup. Mr Jervis tranſlates it an amlet (Aumulette in French) which Boyer ſays is a pancake made of eggs, tho’ I always underſtood Aumulette to be a bacon-froiſe (or rather bacon-fryze, from its being fry’d, from frit in French). Some will have it to mean being fry’d with eggs, which, we are told by Mr Jervis, the church allows in poor countries in defect of fiſh. Others have gueſt it to mean ſome windy kind of diet, as peaſe, herbs, &c which are apt to occaſion cholicks, as if one ſhould ſay, Greens and gripes on Saturdays. To conclude, the ’forcited author of the new tranſlation (if a tranſlator may be call’d an author) abſolutely ſays, Duelos y Quebrantos is a cant-phraſe for ſome faſting-day diſh in uſe in La Mancha. After all of theſe learned diſquiſitions, who knows but the author means a diſh of Nichils!

“Nichils” means nothings, trifles, or nonsense. “Collops” are thin slices of meat, much like what Americans call Canadian bacon, and the English just call bacon. What Americans just call bacon, the English call streaky bacon. That’s the stuff in duelos y quebrantos.

In 1755, translator Tobias George Smollett fired back a volley of his own footnotes, taking Ozell’s “nichils” more seriously than Ozell may have intended, and coming to a rather dubious conclusion. The History and Adventures of the Renowned Don Quixote (1796 edition):

Three-fourths of his income were ſcarce ſufficient to afford a diſh of hodge-podge, in which the mutton bore no proportion to the beef,* for dinner; a plate of ſalmagundy, commonly at ſupper†; gripes and grumblings‡ on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays, and the addition of a pigeon, or ſome ſuch thing, on the Lord’s-day.

* Mutton, in Spain, is counted greatly preferable to beef.
Salpicon, which is the word in the original, is no other than cold beef ſliced, and eaten with oil, vinegar, and pepper.
‡ Gripes and Grumblings, in Spanish Duelos y Quebrantos; the true meaning of which, the former translators have been at great pains to inveſtigate, as the importance of the ſubject (no doubt) required. But their labours have, unhappily, ended in nothing elſe but conjectures, which, for the entertainment and inſtruction of our readers, we beg leave to repeat. One interprets the phraſe into collops and eggs, “being,” saith he, “a very ſorry dish.” In this decision, however, he is contradicted by another commentator, who affirms, “it is a meſs too good to mortify withal;” neither can this virtuoſo agree with a late editor, who translates the paſſage in question in question into an amlet; but takes occaſion to fall out with Boyer for his deſcription of that diſh, which he moſt ſagaciously underſtands to be a “bacon froize,” or rather fryze, from its being fried, from frit in French; and concludes with this judicious query, “After all theſe learned diſquiſitions, who knows but the author means a diſh of nichils?” If this was his meaning, indeed, ſurely we may venture to conclude, that faſting was very expensive in la Mancha; for the author mentions the Duelos y Quebrantos among those articles that conſumed three-fourths of the knight’s income.
   Having conſidered this momentous affair with all the deliberation it deſerves, we, in our turn, present the reader with cucumbers, greens, or peaſe-porridge, as the fruit of our induſtrious reſearches; being thereunto determined by the literal ſignification of the text, which is not, “grumblings and groanings,” as the laſt-mentioned ingenious annotator ſeems to think, but rather pains and breakings; and evidently points at ſuch eatables as generate and expel wind — qualities, as every body knows, eminently inherent in those vegetables we have mentioned as our hero’s Saturday’s repaſt.

John Ormsby (who described Motteux’s version as “worse than worthless”), translated Don Quixote in 1885, and took the idiomatic meaning of Quixote’s Saturday meal:

An olla of rather more beef than mutton, a salad on most nights, scraps on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays, and a pigeon or so extra on Sundays, made away with three-quarters of his income.

An “olla” is a ceramic jar or pot.

The Life and Achievements of Don Quixote de la Mancha was edited by Mary Elizabeth Burt and Lucy Leffingwell Cable in 1902 out of Shelton’s and Alexander Duffield’s translations (I haven’t been able to find the latter online, except for just the second volume). Burt and Cable have (or perhaps Duffield has) come up with a novel take on the meal:

Almost every night he had a pot of beef or mutton soup for dinner and cold meat with onions. On Saturdays he had a pie that was not much better than garbage: lentils on Fridays and pigeons by way of a treat on Sundays. This poor living ate up three-fourths of his income.

This 2000 translation by John Rutherford, Don Quixote, gets the eggs right, and I think leaves the meat out to better convey the poverty of Quixote’s diet:

A midday stew with rather more shin of beef than leg of lamb, the leftovers for supper most nights, lardy eggs on Saturdays, lentil broth on Fridays and an occasional pigeon as a Sunday treat ate up three-quarters of his income.

(Update: Non-ASCII character correction thanks to Nicholas Whyte in comment #1.)

(comment on this)

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009


makinglight
5:03p
Another ABM on Amazon

Dear students:

Remember back at Viable Paradise, when we taught you not to make the Author's Big Mistake (ABM), which is to respond to a bad review? And how we said to never, ever respond defensively to a bad review in a public forum?

Move over, Anne Rice.

Candace Sams, author of Electra Galaxy's Mr. Interstellar Feller (mass-market paperback, Dorchester/Love Spell), has exploded all over a comment thread on Amazon. She's posting as Niteflyr One, but the comment thread has her ID'd as the author as of comment #8.

At this exact moment, there are 229 comments in the thread, and the author has Flounced. If you don't have the time or patience to read the whole thing (instructive though it is), and just want to get to the serious bloodletting, I recommend reading the first page of comments, then skipping forward to page 15, which is where Niteflyr starts getting seriously weird.

Page 16 starts with reader J. Myrna (who has evidently been enjoying the whole mad trainwreck) cheerfully throwing gasoline on the flames. Other readers help too. By page 17, Niteflyr is invoking the FBI in her threats.

It doesn't stop there, of course. Remember to click on all the links that say "Customers don't think this post adds to the discussion. Show post anyway." For maximum effect, make a nice Schadenfreude Pie to go with it.

(Thanks be to Abi for the link.)

(2 comments | comment on this)

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009


makinglight
10:47p
Scams from the Mailbag

Tis the season (and the economy) for folks to be desperate for money. To their rescue the scammers and spammers who offer too-good-to-be-true jobs: high pay, easy-to-do, no experience necessary, set your own hours, minimal skills required!

Let's look at the Cash Back fraud, recently cropping up as the Secret Shopper scam. This is on beyond the "Send twenty dollars for an instruction manual and a list of companies that use Secret Shoppers" that we used to see in newspaper classifieds, on fliers stapled to telephone poles, and on cards left lying around Laundromats.

You are hired to be a Secret Shopper! The company you're working for sends you a check for, say, $3,000. You're to deposit this, take $200 to use for making your Secret Purchases (you get to keep them!) and another $100 for your pay, and send the rest back to the company by wire transfer (e.g. Western Union). You're warned that you have to make the purchases and send the money back within two days of receiving the check or you'll have to give it all back, and you'll never be hired again!

So you do that.

Some days later, you discover that the cashier's check you were sent was forged, and you're liable to your bank for the whole amount. Sucks to be you.

Remember: If someone you don't know approaches you with a job offer that you didn't apply for, there's a very good chance that it's a scam. Particularly if it involves your sending money anywhere.

Yes, there really are "Secret Shopper" positions. But the way you usually get them is by first getting hired by a legitimate business, the kind that you go to every day, that has a consumer advocacy role.

So: A couple of recent examples dredged from my spam filter.

First: Inviting the question "Why is a company located in Virginia sending e-mail from Japan?"

Received: from irongw2c.sproxy.kddi.ne.jp (irongw2c.sproxy.kddi.ne.jp [210.188.175.140])
for 1 recipient by smtp.sff.net (Greyware Mailman 1.5.b.20090107R)
with ESMTP ID <m3db2226@smtp.sff.net>;
Fri, 06 Nov 2009 05:08:59 -0600
Received: from mail.fukada-kogyo.co.jp (HELO fukada-kogyo.co.jp) ([202.211.40.109])
by irongw1a.sproxy.kddi.ne.jp with ESMTP; 06 Nov 2009 20:05:30 +0900
Received: from User (rrcs-24-97-125-222.nys.biz.rr.com [24.97.125.222])
(authenticated bits=0)
by fukada-kogyo.co.jp (8.12.11.20060308/8.12.11) with ESMTP id nA6B41ti018860;
Fri, 6 Nov 2009 20:04:11 +0900
Message-Id: <200911061104.nA6B41ti018860@fukada-kogyo.co.jp>
Reply-To: <cobinm03@yahoo.co.jp>
From: "FRONT DESK" <frontdesk@bareinternational.com>
Subject: Mystery/Secret Shopper Position.
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2009 03:05:22 -0800
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="Windows-1251"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
X-Exempt-Data: No
X-Exempt-IP: No
X-rDNS-Check: irongw2c.sproxy.kddi.ne.jp
X-Envelope-From: frontdesk[bareinternational.com]
X-Renamed-Executables: No
X-Disabled-Scripts: No
X-Spam-Identifier: [Headers]: Missing or invalid TO address

BARE International is a National Mystery Shopper Service Provider Quality, integrity, strong work ethics are our foundation to success marketing research, mystery shopping, employee development, and strategic planning.

Our goal is to partner with companies who use the program as a means to reward and recognize those people that are doing well. We like to catch people doing things right! We are located near Columbus, Ohio and we offer assignments across the country. We use shoppers that live near the location to be evaluated. We need shoppers in every part of the country, not just Central Ohio. We encourage you, as well as your friends and family, to complete an application. We are always looking for good shoppers!

We trust that you will be a part of our shopping family for a long time. We will do our best to keep you informed of upcoming projects as well as provide you with a clear, concise, and complete understanding of the assignment.

Your identity will be kept confidential. You will be paid 10% for every survey you complete and receive a bonus that can be used for transportation costs. No commitment is required or this job, your hours will be flexible. If you are interested please send this information:
Full name
Address (No P O Box)
City
State
Zipcode
Telephone number
Cellular number
Age
Occupation
Again, thanks for your interest. We look forward to having a professional and personal business relationship with you very soon.
Sincerely,
Michael Bare
3251 Old Lee Highway,Ste. 203
Fairfax
VA 22030
www.bareinternational.com


An even purer version of the Cash Back scam:
Received: from smtp820.mail.ukl.yahoo.com (smtp820.mail.ukl.yahoo.com [217.12.12.249])
for 1 recipient by smtp.sff.net (Greyware Mailman 1.5.b.20090107R)
with SMTP ID <m3ea343d@smtp.sff.net>;
Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:14:16 -0600
Received: (qmail 53165 invoked from network); 14 Dec 2009 21:04:20 -0000
Received: from unknown (HELO User) (recruitment@66.90.109.42 with login)
by smtp820.mail.ukl.yahoo.com with SMTP; 14 Dec 2009 21:04:12 -0000
Yahoo-Newman-Property: ymail-3
Reply-To: <771c9bvely6tl4u@jetable.com>
From: "Cornerstone Gallery"<recruitment@cornerstone.org>
Subject: *** PART TIME JOB OFFER IN YOUR REGION ***
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:04:10 -0800
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="Windows-1251"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000
X-Exempt-Data: No
X-Exempt-IP: No
Message-ID: <m3ea343d@smtp.sff.net>
X-rDNS-Check: smtp820.mail.ukl.yahoo.com
X-Envelope-From: recruitment[cornerstone.org]
X-Renamed-Executables: No
X-Disabled-Scripts: No
X-Spam-Identifier: [Headers]: Missing or invalid TO address

Dear Sir/Madam,

My name is Anthony Adams, I am the Hiring manager of Craft-Fabrics Limited. Our company Craft-Fabrics, needs representatives in the United states. We would want to know if you would like to work online from home and get paid weekly without leaving or affecting your present job? You are not required to pay any registration fee or pay for any application form before you get employed. Instead of paying for anything you will be receiving your weekly salary as soon as you get started.

REPRESENTATIVE ROLE:
To receive and process payments from clients within your region.

JOB DESCRIPTION:
Currently, due to the abundance of fabrics in the USA region, we are pitching our Resource Office there besides our Head Office thats present here in the USA.

Due to the fact that our business has spread to various parts of the world with the help of the internet, we are in need of a Payment Representative in the United States to help in cordinating and handling payments, We have abundant investors in the USA, UK and Europe but sometimes have difficulties getting their investment bids across to us, Your job will entail the cashing in of investment bids from our investors, in any form they may come (Company checks, Cashiers checks or Cash) and cashing it at your bank or any designated cashing point. Whatever the form of payment is you are to immediately deduct your weekly salary (10% of the check cashed) and forward the balance to us or any of our various vendors as you are instructed to do. Our seasoned workers set up this form of employment so it doesn't affect your day job if you have one.

REMUNERATION:
In an instance whereby you cash in an investment bid for our customer, you will be entitled to 10% of the total amount you cash. For example; if you cash an investment bid of $3000, your pay on that bid will be $300, which is subject to change depending on the number of bids that you cash.

MAIN REQUIREMENTS:
18 years or older,
Legally capable,
Responsible,
Ready to work 3-4 hours per week. With PC knowledge
E-mail and internet experience (minimal)

If you are interested in our offer, and would like to work for our company kindly send an email to andrewgibson65@yahoo.com with the below requested details:

FULL NAME:
CONTACT ADDRESS WHERE TO SEND PAYMENTS: NOT P.O.BOX
CITY:
STATE:
ZIP CODE:
PERSONAL CELL PHONE NUMBER:
SEX:
AGE:
OCCUPATION:
BANK NAME:

We will never ask you for anything more than that, no bank account number, routing number, credit card, passwords, SSN # etc. If anyone asks for those on our behalf, please do not give out this info. This is to ensure your security and non-involvement in cases of identity theft. Your job is absolutely legal as our website is open to visitors. Thanks for your anticipated action. And we hope to hear back from you.

Very Respectfully,
Andrew Gibson,
Recruiting Manager,
Cornerstone Fabrics Ltd.


Darned right, "Internet experience (minimal)." Anyone with any Internet experience is going to recognize this as a scam in about half-a-second. But (as with other spam), all they need is a response rate of 0.00001% to make a killing.

(comment on this)

Sunday, December 13th, 2009


makinglight
12:24a
Awesome

A Kickstarter project to translate Cory Doctorow's Little Brother...into Burmese. Run by New York-based outfit Digital Democracy, in partnership with the All-Burma I.T. Student Union.

I'm not someone who believes that information technology will inevitably usher us into a utopian era of freedom. Anything humans can dream up, they can use to shaft other humans. But for reasons particular to the Burma's situation, this seems like a thoroughly good idea.

With your support, we will translate the book into four Burmese languages: Burmese, Karen, Chin and Rohingya. The money will go to support Burmese activists living in Thailand, Bangladesh and India who will be translating it into the local languages. Each page of translation will cost approximately $3.60. By supporting this project, you're not only helping get Little Brother into Burma, you're supporting the livelihood of Burmese activists. The book will help teach people to protect themselves by doing such things as running applications from a USB drive, using block encryption to safeguard data on a USB stick, and hiding your encrypted data in a deniable format in the event of capture and torture.
Elsewhere, Emily Jacobi of Digital Democracy makes a good case for the idea that Burma really is a place where mobile communication tech has made a difference, and can continue to do so.

The idea behind Kickstarter is that you don't actually donate any money until the project in question has met their goal in pledges. For this one, they're trying to get pledges totalling $2200 by December 15, three days from now. They've got $911. Go for it.

(comment on this)

Saturday, December 12th, 2009


makinglight
4:00a
The Swindle

Down underneath the snark and the in-jokes and the whole idea of a well-established journalist writing a blog in the persona of Steve Jobs, there's a terrifying amount of truth in this particular post about American business, American empire, and America's future.
And now here we are. Right here in your own backyard, an American company creates a brilliant phone, and that company hands it to you, and gives you an exclusive deal to carry it--and all you guys can do is complain about how much people want to use it. You, Randall Stephenson, and your lazy stupid company--you are the problem. You are what’s wrong with this country.

I stopped, then. There was nothing on the line. Silence. I said, Randall? He goes, Yeah, I’m here. I said, Does any of that make sense? He says, Yeah, but we’re still not going to do it. See, when you run the numbers what you find is that we’re actually better off running a shitty network than making the investment to build a good one. It’s just numbers, Steve. You can’t charge enough to get a return on the investment.

Now there was silence again. This time I was the one not talking.

Honest to God, blog cliché or not, read the whole thing.

(comment on this)

Friday, December 11th, 2009


makinglight
5:51p
Peter Watts, distinguished Canadian SF writer, arrested by US border police while trying to re-enter

From Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing: Dr. Peter Watts, Canadian science fiction writer, beaten and arrested at US border.

I already linked to this from the sidebar, but on reflection, I have a little more to say.

First, it's worth noting that comment #2 to the Boing Boing post observes "And now the inevitable 'we don't know the whole story so we shouldn't pass judgments but he probably did something to provoke them' comments can commence." Indeed, there seems to be a kind of person who makes it their business to hover around at sites like Boing Boing or Consumerist to explain that probably the police had no choice but to beat up that guy, or that we don't know that Wal-Mart abused that customer, since after all it's her word against theirs. And indeed, comment #5 shows up right on schedule: "It's my observation that most of these cases begin with a person who becomes belligerent when asked to do something he doesn't want to do (get out of the car, step away from the car, etc.) These officers may very well have overstepped their bounds, but I doubt very seriously that Watts is completely innocent."

For what it's worth, I don't know exactly what happened, but a couple of things seem pretty evident to me. One is that this wasn't a routine border search. Rather, American border guards in Port Huron, Michigan demanded to search Watts's car as he was leaving the US for his native Canada. This is very squirrelly. We're conducting exit searches now?

Another is that Peter Watts is, as Charlie Stross observes, the kind of person who's extraordinarily unlikely to throw the first punch, as Watts is being accused of having done.

The final thing I want to note is a comment to John Scalzi's post on the matter, from one-time Watts co-author Derryl Murphy, who says:

Part of me rolls my eyes at Peter for being the person he is, climbing out of the car to question these yahoos. But the smarter part of me realizes that because of people like Peter, we have someone who can push back at the bullshit the first time so that the rest of us don't get the shit kicked out of us when we finally get tired of it all and push back as well.
And that's why I'm donating to Watts's defense fund.

UPDATE: Watts on what happened:

Along some other timeline, I did not get out of the car to ask what was going on. I did not repeat that question when refused an answer and told to get back into the vehicle. In that other timeline I was not punched in the face, pepper-sprayed, shit-kicked, handcuffed, thrown wet and half-naked into a holding cell for three fucking hours, thrown into an even colder jail cell overnight, arraigned, and charged with assaulting a federal officer, all without access to legal representation (although they did try to get me to waive my Miranda rights. Twice.). Nor was I finally dumped across the border in shirtsleeves: computer seized, flash drive confiscated, even my fucking paper notepad withheld until they could find someone among their number literate enough to distinguish between handwritten notes on story ideas and, I suppose, nefarious terrorist plots. I was not left without my jacket in the face of Ontario's first winter storm, after all buses and intercity shuttles had shut down for the night.

In some other universe I am warm and content and not looking at spending two years in jail for the crime of having been punched in the face.

It's possible that Watts's failure to immediate comply with the order to get back into his car constitutes "assaulting a federal officer" according to some point of law. If so, the law is a travesty.

Of course, these things happen all the time, more frequently to young persons of color who don't have readers on several continents. But the macro and the micro both matter. We should fight for justice in general--and we should have our friends' backs.

UPDATE 2: Watts posts again, to clear up a few points, not least the demonstrable mendaciousness of the Port Huron Times-Herald story.

(comment on this)

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009


makinglight
5:01a
Arctic Blast from the Past

With the first major snowstorm of the winter bearing down on us, it's time to list some of the cold-weather stuff I've posted over the years, in one convenient place:

First comes Cold Blows the WInd Today. It's a brief note on hypothermia. Very brief. Just a single screen. None of the really horrifying detail about blebs and such that I could have used. The take-away lesson is that cold kills. Don't let it kill you. The comment thread is over 400 entries long, and filled with good stuff.

Snowed In. A review of a book about the Donner Party.

Stop, Drop, and Roll. Winter time brings new hazards, including heaters that produce carbon monoxide. Some notes on same. Over a hundred comments.

Happy stuff: Cold Weather Drinks, including my favorite, Hot Lemonade.

Weather outside: Frightful. My local weather. Lucky me! (Hey, I volunteered to live here.)

Dashing Through the Snow. How to drive in a snowstorm. Short version: Don't. Longer version: If you must, then slowly, and only if you have good snow tires.

Snowday. Ah, storms past! We gots photos!

Fimbul Winter. From last year's Snowpocalypse. Over two hundred comments, and all of them worth reading.

(comment on this)

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009


makinglight
3:53p
Whisperado in Brooklyn

I'm trying to remember to mention Whisperado gigs a little earlier than the morning of the event itself. Hey! Whisperado will play the venerable Brooklyn dive Hank's Saloon, at Atlantic and Third Avenues, on Wednesday, December 30, at 8:30 PM. Get started on your New Year's Eve drinking 24 hours early while listening to new songs, new arrangements, new harmonies, and new lame stage patter. Forthcoming soon: news of our full-length CD, the recording of which is proceeding with the sprightly alacrity characteristic of all the best geological processes.

(comment on this)

makinglight
2:22a
I Got Yer Contemporary Urban Catholic Fantasy *Right Here*

The Apocalypse Door: A novel of the knights templar Tomorrow, the 8th of December, 2009, will see the re-publication in trade paperback of my novel, The Apocalypse Door. It is a thriller, a spy story, a mystery, a bit autobiographical, a devotion, an explication, and doctrinally correct. It was edited by the perspicacious Claire Eddy.

Here is a review, by Norman Spinrad.

Here is the first chapter.

I humbly beg all who wish to buy a copy to do so, not at Amazon, but by going down to their friendly local big-box bookstore and getting one off the shelf. And I further beg that all who will do so, may do so, sooner rather than later. This will be a positive good.

The main character, Peter Crossman, Knight of the Temple, has appeared in three short stories as well as this novel. (I am, as we speak, at work on another novel, and another short story.) Mr. Patrick reprinted one of those earlier short stories in his New Magics anthology.

  • The Apocalypse Door
  • Paperback: 224 pages
  • Publisher: Tor Books (December 8, 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0765306085
  • ISBN-13: 978-0765306081

(comment on this)



> top of page
LiveJournal.com