12/29/2010; 10:51:27 PM.   .

When I see a situation like this, I wish I had a can of bright orange spray paint to mark this guy's bike. Nothing that would hurt him physically. But this is crazy. Old frail people use the sidewalk. Parents with children. People on cell phones. They can't compete with people on bikes, and they should be able to use the city too. We should all be able to use the city, and bikes don't belong on sidewalks. It's not fair to pedestrians. Or safe.

Yeah I sometimes ride on the sidewalk (I'm not a saint), but when there are people around, I dismount, and walk. We have bike lanes and streets, and cars are fuckers, but that's no excuse for bikers to be fuckers like this guy is.

To the people's credit in front of him, they didn't make way for him, despite his pleading, and he had to pedal at a walker's pace to the corner.

One more thing, it's three days after the storm. Why isn't the sidewalk clear?

 12/29/2010; 10:26:47 PM.   .

I'm probably a fool for stepping into the middle of this, but here goes.

I skimmed Glenn Greenwald's scolding of Wired, and it was a scolding, trying to pick out the core issue, which seems to be this: Wired has the complete transcript of Private Manning's confession to Adrian Lamo and Greenwald wants it, and thinks other members of the press should have it, and Wired isn't providing it. He has some theories about why Wired is withholding it, but I didn't read that stuff carefully to get the gist of it.

Then, last night, I read the two-part response from Wired from editor Evan Hansen and reporter Kevin Poulsen. The gist of their response is that there is stuff in the transcript that has no bearing on the story, that would be embarassing and/or damaging to someone, presumably Manning, and that to release it would be irresponsible. They also make some pretty nasty statements about Greenwald, that I find really disturbing. I've met Hansen, and respect the work they do at Wired.

I also admire Glenn Greenwald. I try to read everything he writes, esp on WikiLeaks. Then I started to read his response to Hansen and Poulson, and got to the part where he says: "I'm going to address each and every one of their accusations in order" and hit the Back button. No way am I going there. (Note: I eventually did read both his pieces today.)

There's a lot of bad blood here, obviously, but please, just drop it for now and focus on the core stuff.

Wired, could we get a third-party opinion to confirm your belief that the transcripts shouldn't be released in full? Perhaps a couple of j-school profs could review the material, and decide independently which parts would help other journalists covering this story? I'm not volunteering myself, to be clear.

Hoping we can put the feelings aside for a moment, and make a good collective decision here?

 12/29/2010; 11:28:45 AM.   .

Of all the great literature our species has created the story we repeat most seems to be the naked emperor who everyone compliments on how nice his clothes are.

An amazing scene in a Frontline episode in the Iraqi parliament while Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq. It was time for a purge. Saddam had decided to execute the whole legislature. I guess they didn't know this, when the doors were locked and they started taking out people one by one and shooting them. Saddam, sadist that he was, videotaped it. So you could see what these guys were doing as they figured out, one by one, what was happening. So what did the condemned legislators do while waiting to be shot? They gave speeches, denouncing each other as the real enemy of the state, and proclaiming their love for Saddam, the best friend he ever had. Didn't work, they were all killed.

I'd love to see that video. Such a perfect example of our species at its most basic.

Let's see. Over the last decade we've seen the US start a war based on lies, a crazy war that probably bankrupted the country. A war without hardship, no draft, rationing or higher taxes. To keep the people quiet, we had tax cuts. Unless you watched the news, and the reporting was lame anyway, you wouldn't have known there was a war. We lived high, financing our lifestyle by inflating a bubble around our last asset that was worth anything, our houses. As if that wasn't bad enough, when the bubble burst, we learned that the banking industry had built a house of cards around our homes and when it came down we found out that if we didn't bail them out, we would be left without a financial system. That being unthinkable, we bailed them out. Ouch!

And the Republicans, who were in power for all of this, blame the Democrats!

We're so crazy, what did we do? According to the Republicans, we decided that government was the problem and to get them out of the way of the bankers, until of course they need the taxpayers to bail them out -- then government is the answer and it's time to get out the checkbook and (we) take it up the ass. Really? Did we really do that?

Yeah.

It doesn't matter what any of us say because no one is listening.

We want to hear that everything is all right. So we can keep believing in the things we believe in, and everything will be as it always was, when we were pre-teens and eating at home, riding bikes, with parents keeping an eye on us, making sure we didn't screw up too badly. That's what we want. Or so it seems.

Dennis Lehane, the American novelist, in an interview with Chris Lydon, told a story about radical radio commentator Glenn Beck. Apparently Beck is in his mid-40s. When he talks about the good old days, as Lehane tells it, Beck is talking about the 70s. Nixon, Kent State, Watergate, Vietnam, spiraling stagflation, the hostage crisis, OPEC, it goes on and on. It's conceivable that Beck doesn't know that the world was totally crazy when he was growing up.

And then Lehane says something that is so obviously true. What people want is to be children again.

I think that's the story of the human race!

BTW, on a micro level, everything is great. That's because we're in another bubble. We paved over the problems of the last bubble by creating a new one. Not sure how many more times we'll be able to do that.

 12/29/2010; 10:40:40 AM.   .