Bukovsky and Sullivan on torture

Andrew Sullivan quotes Vladimir Bukovsky on the consequences of the toleration of torture by Russian leaders:

… in its heyday, Joseph Stalin’s notorious NKVD (the Soviet secret police) became nothing more than an army of butchers terrorizing the whole country but incapable of solving the simplest of crimes. And once the NKVD went into high gear, not even Stalin could stop it at will. He finally succeeded only by turning the fury of the NKVD against itself; he ordered his chief NKVD henchman, Nikolai Yezhov (Beria’s predecessor), to be arrested together with his closest aides.
So, why would democratically elected leaders of the United States ever want to legalize what a succession of Russian monarchs strove to abolish? Why run the risk of unleashing a fury that even Stalin had problems controlling?

Andy then observes:

It is one of history’s great tragedies that American conservatism, born in part in resistance to Soviet torture, should end by endorsing it in America, by Americans. And not just endorsing it, but brandishing the use of it as a tool to gain re-election and maintain power.

But this what happens when an amoral, historically ignorant clique takes power and seeks to exploit fear for partisan political ends. With the capitulation of McCain and his Republican colleagues, Edmund Burke’s words ring truer than ever….

20 words

I was updating my profile at the UK social networking site, Friends Reunited, and decided to pay attention to a question that I’d hitherto ignored: “What are your 20 favourite words”. This is what I came up with:
love, peace, new, unexpected, honest, whimsy, intense, tranquil, touch, trust, humanism, experiment, imagination, learn, reflection, evolution, revolution, reason, create, teach

Can I take my PowerBook on an airliner now?

The replacement batteries for my PowerBook finally showed up last Friday, which is a bit quicker than Apple promised. The instructions state that you should drain the old batteries before changing them, by (for example) playing a DVD. In my experience DVDs don’t really stretch the machine: I found a nice Java applet at the National Weather Service which did an excellent job of pegging the CPU at 100%. So I changed the batteries on Sunday, and mailed off the old ones today. (Note that you may have to take them to a Post Office in person; my company’s mailroom policy forbids the mailing of personal packages.)

I have found my music

Over the years, I’ve tried to find the best record store wherever I happen to be living. The place to go to browse, discover long-lost musical friends, or find the obscure CD reissue of an equally obscure LP. Yes, I know that I have access to vast online resources, but there’s still a place for physical browsing. When I lived in the Boston area, the best spots were on Newbury Street and places like Mystery Train on Mass Ave in Cambridge.
Today I found what must be the best place in the Pacific Northwest: Silver Platters. I was driving up I-5 to the Northgate Mall, and as I slowed to leave the freeway I noticed a small strip mall close to the highway. I went to check it out, and found Silver Platters.
They have a good stock of all kinds of music and DVDs, but the heart of the store is the section labelled, innocuously, “Popular”.
I started with the A’s. By the time I reached the Zs I had an armful of CDs, and I realized that I’d been there more than two hours! I reluctantly decided to put most of the CDs back; after all, I know that I’ll be back there again. And again. And again….
Life is good.
Just for the record, the CDs I bought were the legendary “Oar” by Skip Spence, “The Best of Manfred Mann’s Earth Band” (so nice to hear “Davy’s On The Road Again” for the first time in about ten years), and “Smiling Phases”, a double-CD “best-of” compilation by Traffic.

Getting in gear….

The food cupboards and refrigerator are now fully stocked. Until now, they looked like what you might find in an Embassy Suites hotel during an extended business trip. I also have a fairly full selection of drinks, but I haven’t yet got somewhere to put them; none of the cupboards will accomodate a (vertical) bottle of Laphroiag, and the shelves seem to be immovable. Back to IKEA, I guess; until then, they’re cluttering up the kitchen.
This morning I removed the last of my stuff from the temporary apartment in Belltown. I spent a few minutes enjoying the glorious view from the balcony, then lugged all my bags down to the garage and departed. I still have to sort out the return of the keys, but for all practical purposes I’m out of there. It feels good.
The mountain of cardboard is substantially reduced, and there’s a good chance that it will be (temporarily) eliminated by this evening. [UPDATE: Success! See pictures.] Only temporarily, of course, because I still need to order a guest bed and some patio furniture. I’d like to think that all of the cardboard I’m disposing of will be recycled, pulped, turned back into more cardboard, and shipped out to China to help to package the interminable stream of stuff that flows east across the Pacific. For some reason, I fear I’m deluding myself.
Now for a happy ending. When I was preparing to ship my stuff from Brookline to Seattle, I spent a lot of time washing clothes. One morning, hurrying for no good reason, I mixed up my loads, and managed to dump some bleach (chlorine, not peroxide) into a machine-full of T-shirts. Most of them started out black, and wound up mottled black and rust-coloured. Among the shirts I ruined were all of my favourites from ThinkGeek, as well as a couple from J!nx. When I got here, I ordered some replacements, and they just arrived:

  • “There’s no place like 127.0.0.1” (I love wearing this one. Once I was standing in line in San Jose airport, and a passer-by pointed at it and asked if that was my IP address. You could tell that he was so pleased that he’d got the terminology right. I hadn’t the heart to tell him, “Yes, this is my address. And yours. And hers. And his. And….”)
  • “I’m blogging this”
  • And the geek’s love poem:
    ROSES ARE #FF0000
    VIOLETS ARE #0000FF
    ALL MY BASE
    ARE BELONG TO YOU

Equilibrium has been restored….

Time for a random 10

Sitting back, sipping my first gin and tonic in the new apartment, I realize that it’s been a long time since I posted a Random 10. I roll the dice, and the new iTunes 7 is kind; it serves up a couple of the best of Brit-pop, together with several newer gems and a couple of classics:

  • “Champagne Supernova” by Oasis (from (What’s The Story) Morning Glory)
  • “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me” by Culture Club (from Billboard Top Hits – 1983)
  • “Everybody’s Selling Something” by Men Without Hats (from …In The 21st Century) personal favourite
  • “Everything Will Be Alright Tomorrow” by Faithless (from No Roots)
  • “Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick” by Ian Drury and the Blockheads (from Fantastic 70’s) personal favourite
  • “Long Way Home” by Enter The Haggis (from Soapbox Heroes)
  • “Mother And Child Reunion” by Paul Simon (from Negotiations And Love Songs)
  • “Peach” by Blur (from Modern Life Is Rubbish)
  • “The Bad Photographer (Radio Mix)” by Saint Etienne (from The Bad Photographer)
  • “The Nostalgia Factory” by Porcupine Tree (from On The Sunday Of Life)

Counting down….

I made really good progress on the furnishing of the apartment over the weekend. I have somewhere to sleep, somewhere to put my socks and t-shirts, somewhere to shelve some(!) of my books, etcetera. There’s a TV, and WiFi, and a bottle of wine in the fridge.
Today I started transferring my clothes from the temporary place in Belltown to Uwajimaya. I’ll probably shift over there tomorrow, although I won’t be able to finish clearing the temporary place for a few more days.
Even though I’m close to moving in, I still have to cope with the huge pile of empty IKEA boxes. Apartment policy is that all boxes must be broken down to fit flat into the recycling bins, and I’ve been dutifully hacking away with a box cutter to meet these requirements. Of course I then find that many of the other residents simply ignore the rules. Maybe I should ask the ethicist?
Meanwhile, my personal rule is NEVER to leave the apartment without an armful of cardboard…..

Remembering 9/11

Tomorrow is the first anniversary of 9/11 that I won’t be able to visit the memorial at Sun (see picture) to my friend and colleague, Phil Rosenzweig. Phil's benchI hadn’t thought much about the fifth anniversary until I read this powerful essay by Martin Amis in today’s Observer. And that put me in the mood to watch the DVD of United 93. I saw the film back in May, and bought the DVD yesterday evening.
I didn’t have any good words back in May, and I’m not sure that I do now. I do think that the film does a brilliant job of capturing the chaotic confusion, the disbelief, the cognitive dissonance that we all felt that day.
I may not be able to express this without being misunderstood, but I’ll try anyway: In a strange and awful way, that bundle of emotions – confusion, loss, pain, anger, questioning – is precious. I know that I haven’t dealt with it, “processed it” (or whatever the psych term is) yet. I know that I want need to do so, that’s it’s important, and it will take time – perhaps my whole life. And I know that I’m not alone in feeling this way.
Don’t misunderstand me: this doesn’t mean waiting until I’ve sorted it all out in my mind. Part of that “processing” includes thinking about (and supporting) the urgent acts of justice and, yes, retribution against those responsible.
But having said that, I am deeply angry that Cheney and his gang have used and abused these emotions for their own bloodthirsty and inexcusably thoughtless warmongering. They cheapen and despoil our feelings by lying about them. Quite apart from my opinion of their policies, this cynical exploitation of our most precious emotions simply disgusts me. I’m not naive – I understand how politics works – but the visceral reaction to those scumbags won’t go away. Nor should it.

The end of an era

So Michael Schumacher has announced his retirement at the end of the season. During today’s Italian Grand Prix, the commentators seemed to spend more time speculating about this than they did actually describing the race….
I’ve never been to Monza, but some day…. When I think of Formula One, the first image that comes to mind is of a gaggle of cars, shimmering in the heat, streaming out of the Parabolica onto the start/finish straight. There have been more Grands Prix at Monza than at any other circuit, and even though I have a soft spot for Silverstone, Monza is the track.
Today’s race was more interesting than I expected. With Alonso banished to the 5th row of the grid, and with the Renault looking more and more underpowered compared with the competition, I expected the McLaren to falter and the Ferraris to run away with things. Instead, it was a close-fought competition throughout, even after Alonso’s spectacular departure. The star of the day was Robert Kubica, who followed his impressive debut in Hungary by taking third place today. Felipe Massa may have been the darling of the crowd two weeks ago, but today he seemed very tentative, and never looked likely to overtake Kubica or Heidfeld.
And after Michael had won, there was the post-race interview, and he ended the speculation. I thought he was unusually eloquent.
[When I got up to watch the race, it was still dark, but Elliott Bay was ablaze with lights as two huge cruise liners and a hulking great OCL container ship were all heading into port. Tugs fussed around them, while the ferries continued to criss-cross the bay as though they owned the place. By the time Michael Schumacher took the chequered flag, it was a soft-grey pearly pre-dawn, and now it’s a gorgeous, sunny Sunday morning. with a hazy Mount Ranier just visible. Time to get dressed and hunt down some breakfast!]