"Do you know what the chain of command is here? It's the chain I go get and beat you with to show you who's in ruttin' command here."

I assume that by now all of you have read that there is a Firefly-derived MMPORG in the works. There seems to be some disagreement as to whether or not Firefly will (will? can?) work in that medium.

Okay, so let's think this through. What exactly was it that created the "Firefly feel"?
- the writing, which means not only the sparkling, insouciant dialogue, but also the characters, the plot twists, and the very disciplined editing. Didn't advance the plot or characters? Out it went.

- The very good-looking but slightly odd actors. Not a single blonde cheerleader or big-chinned Hero among them. For example, the conscious decision to have Jewel Staite put on a few pounds before they started shooting.

- The Alliance, which is itself a writing challenge. They must be implacable, huge, determined, but kinda ineffectual at the end of the day and with a consistant bullying but sincere desire to "do the right thing." They are not Nazis, or the Empire from Star Wars. Many of them truly think that they are doing what's best for everybody and while this makes some of them prissy, it also makes the whole situation much creepier. So Alliance stuff, from things they say to their policies should be self-important, intolerant, and a bit insulting. But not simply Eeee-vil.

- The same goes for the "sympathetic" characters. Inara supported the alliance. Look at Jayne. We never did get the lowdown on Shepard Book; he may have been simply waiting for his moment. Even your friends may rat you out. Everybody has an agenda and you almost certainly don't know what most of it is.

- The mixed grimy/ornamented/bazaar/gleaming tech esthetic. All, mind you, mixed with ten percent Chinese and two percent other non Euro-American. Not only is this difficult to pull off, but it was used, again, in a very disciplined fashion such that each look went with a particular venue.
Miserable weather, old west clothes and setting and grimy 1930's industrial exceptions means outer world. Usually with some bits of gleaming Rollerball white and chrome in the hands of the bad guys.
Beautiful, elegant, but usually just a bit sterile, cluttered and harried means inner worlds. Kinda New Age fantasy tech as run for ten years by Edwardian Brits.
Funky, exposed rivets and cramped, with improvised bits of decoration and Cuisinart/Mac Plus looking appliances means the good guys, whether we're talking Firefly or the brothel, which exchanges rivets for wood beams.
The same complexity and specifity goes for clothes, music, and lighting and each, except for Alliance spaces like the hospital, requires a subtle touch.

- The shooting esthetic. Lens flare, the camera "having trouble" following the subject, the subject moving off camera, and, best of all, the lighting. I am so bloody sick of aren't-I-clever, M.Night Shymalan, massively unnatural lighting and palates. It's cute the first time but enough is enough people! And Firefly has consistantly given this trend a miss. Does this matter for other media? I think that it does. It speaks a naturalistic approach that applies to everything from ASCII on up.
The same goes for movement. Actors were given a positively sacriligious option on Firefly. Don't worry too much about hitting the mark - we'll have the camera follow you. This changed their body language, where they would sit down, lean against a wall, and so on. Again, naturalistic.

- The ages of the characters. Liberation from the world of twenty-three-year-olds. Characters are old, young, and in between. Most of the protaganists have seen some hard wear in their time, to the point that the few comparative exceptions, Dr. Tam and Kaylee, seem odd. Like NYPD Blue or so much of British television, it's a hard world out there and you're seeing it in the company of folks experienced enough to know it and act accordingly.
Many shows have taken this excuse to become enervated, passive. That wasn't done here. Anybody who doubts that the captain was willing and ready to kill Jayne as they talked across the cargo door wasn't paying attention.

There are some other issues about the Firefly universe that deserve some attention. Joss Whedon modeled much of his world on the south and west after the Civil War. If this holds true, then there is probably at least one sizable and possibly growing secret organization of veterans, romantics, and others, earnestly squirelling away arms and talking about how it was only because of flukes that they lost and next time, AND THERE WILL BE A NEXT TIME, they assure you, they'll win. There are probably also browncoat enclaves w-a-y out there. Someday it would be nice to see one. If there had been more episodes, I would like to think that Joss would have shown us such people and chances are that they would come across as wrong-headed.

Now, I'm not saying that these are all good or all bad. But they are all deviations from the big media s.f. norm. OTOH, to me they all seem like they'ld be right at home in a game of Traveller. Now, personally, there are a few things that I think are more than ripe for change.

First of all, what the hell happened to the rest of Asia? Some more bits of Indian-derived culture would be long overdue. Serve up some curry there, dudes; add a few words of Hindi slang. And also where are all the Asian actors? Let's see some more Asian faces. Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Thai, whatever. I know that Joss' premise is that America and China made it and everybody else didn't but he's sure willing enough to turn to Indian culture for clothes to give the impression that Indian influences are out there. So let's see some in less surreptitious ways.

And we still have an awful lot of questions, don't we? I'm delighted that the Reavers have been explained but there are plenty more big ol' enigmas. What is it like in those floating cities that the Alliance uses to project force? Look again at the first episode. That thing isn't the size of an aircraft carrier - it's the size of an apartment complex.
How did the Companions come to be? How elite is their status? We can be damned sure that they played a significanr part in the war and oh my, there must be some stories to tell about that.
How did Shepard Book really choose Serenity? I'ld lay odds that there was lot more going on than he ever said about why he was there.

So, what now? The Dark Horse comics are finished for now. The mini-eps of River cracking up are done. If the folks at Fox or Universal wanted the show to do well, then they at least could be shooting an occasional additional mini-ep. A snippet of video now and again for Youtube distribution and eventual high-res release. Failing that, animated episodes would be great. I would love to see fan-produced content get done.I wish that I had the time to properly help the folks at Into The Black.
And someday, not too far away, the rights will start to revert to Joss Whedon.

Well, I guess that we simply don't know what that will mean, do we? Thoughts?

-Rustin

Looks to me like we've got a full-on revolt going on in Oaxaca. And a shadow national government being created, complete with consulates and bureaus. Anybody but me wondering why the U.S. media seems to be burying a possible revolution on our borders on page 47?

Now, first of all, as a guy who's got a hell of a lot of ties to Oregon, this is pretty important to me given the large and growing population of Mexicans, disproportionately from Oaxaca, living in Oregon. A population, I might add, that is becoming increasingly politicized as this year's protests in far away places like Pioneer Courthouse Square make amply evident.

And, as some of you may know, I've got some family ties to all of this. When I discuss this with my mother, her primary reference point is her most recent trip to Oaxaca and the political protests that she was part of then, earlier this year.

This may seem far away to many of y'all but this is a major nation undergoing some serious fracturing. Frankly, if I lived in Mexico, where tortillas are controlled by a monopoly, as is phone service and much of the media to a degree far more extreme than in the states, well, I'ld be kinda pissed myself.

Disorder seems to be going around. Planning a Pacific island vacation? Looked at the news in Fiji or Tonga this week? Howsabout those rich hippie destinations, Nepal and Butan? People are getting fed up and I wouldn't want to be in, say, Khatmandu these days unless my purpose in going was political. Lots of folks are losing patience, in part, oddly enough, because better living conditions and more open media are enabling them to look beyond their next plate of food.

Anybody feel like giving odds on what the next outbreak will be?

-Rustin

So, of course, given my linkage a day of so back, it follows that now Consumating has a thred about /..

Round and round we go in that internet game that we all play.

- Rustin

Somebody over here asked "what's in your canon?" So I did a brief answer. I decided to copy it to here as well but here I'll little by little edit and improve it. For now it's just print.

Abbey, Edward - Monkeywrench Gang, various essays
Austen, Jane - all of it.
Cherryh, C.J. - Union-Alliance books, including Chanur & Cyteen serieses
Bester, Alfred - The Stars My Destination
Delany, Samuel - Dahlgren, Triton
Edjhill, Rosemary - the Bast mysteries
Fowles, John - The French Lieutenant's Woman
Fraser, James - The Golden Bough
Garson, Barbara - her books on industrial organization
Hardy, Thomas - Return of the Native
Heinlein, Robert - Moon Is A Harsh Mistress
Mccrumb, Sharon - Bimbos/Zombies books
McLoughlin, John C. - Helix and the sword
O'Neill, Gerard K. - everything, but High Frontier is a good start
Poquelin, Jean-Baptiste better known as Molière - Tartuffe & The Misanthrope
Pratchett, Terry - Night Watch, Montstrous Regiment, and just about all fiction since 1990.
Richmond, Walt & Leigh - Gallagher's Glacier
Shilts, Randy - Conduct Unbecoming
Smith, Cordwainer - all of it, including propaganda manuals
Sloane, Eric - all of it, though his stuff on colonial woodworkers is a great place to start
Shakespeare, William - As You Like It, Romeo & Juliet, Julius Caesar, Merchant of Venice
Stephenson, Neal - Snow Crash & Diamond Age
Stone, Merlin - When God Was A Woman
Sweetman, John - American Naval History
Wharton, Edith - House of Mirth
Zapf, Hermann - any of his late books of type and collected layouts

All for now.

-Rustin

1. What is your occupation?
  Publisher and consultant.

2. What color are you socks right now?
  None.

3. What are you listening to right now?
  Construction noise downstairs.

  4. What was the last thing that you ate?
  Thai ramen with veggies and fresh lime juice.

  5. Can you drive a stick shift?
  In theory, yes, but it's been a very long time since this theory was tested.

  6. If you were a crayon, what color would you be?
  Something subtle, obscure, but of value to those few who used it.

  7. Last person you spoke to on the phone?
  A friend I called from a payphone to bitch about how hard it is to sign up new bookstores for my company.

  8. Do you like the person who sent this to you?
  Haven't met him. Seems like a nice guy.

  9. How old are you today?
  39 years old.

  10. Favorite drinks?
  Coke. Lapsang souching & pu-erh tea. Sac Sac. Water. Good ginger beer. And an ever-changing favorite wine; these days it's a Muller-Thurgau.

  11. What is your favorite sport to watch?
  Sports? What are those?

  12. Have you ever dyed your hair?
  No.

  13. Pets?
  Nope.

  14. Favorite food?
  No one favorite.

  15. What was the last movie you watched?
  A Mighty Wind. Or, if this counts, the Battlestar Gallactica pilot.

  16. Favorite holiday?
  Yule.

  17. What do you do to vent anger?
  Fix things.

  18. What were your favorite toys as a kid?
  Things and places I could rebuild, most notably an abandoned streambed in NY's Central Park.

  19. What is your favorite: fall or spring?
  Fall.

  20. Hugs or kisses?
  Hugs. Big, brawly, "good to know ya, ya son of a bitch" hugs.

  21. Cherry or blueberry?
  Blueberry.

  22. Do you want your friends to send this back?
  No.

  23. Who is the most likely to respond?
  People with time to burn.

  24. Who is least likely to respond?
  Don't know.

  25. Living arrangements?
  Kinda in transition right now.

  26. When was the last time you cried?
  Watching the West Wing episode about neglected veterans.

  27. What is on the floor of your closet?
  Shoes, two vintage tennis rackets, some old lab equipment, some wooden hangers in a bag, some plastic hangers in a different bag.

  28. Who is the friend you have had the longest that you're sending this to?
  I'm not sending it to anybody.

  29. What did you do last night?
  Tried to sign up two more bookstores, saw a folk singer and a band at the second bookstore, looked into taking out an ad in a political magazine, worked on my overall task list, hung out on Consumating, cooked, did dishes, read more of Temp Slave.

If they're not, then everybody who signed off on this article needs to be taken out back and shot. Today.

That is all.

Rustin

Just droppin' by. Got much to write about. Sometime soon I'll start that.

In short:

I'm now splitting my time between Portland and NYC. Currently in NYC and snippy about it.

My company has a product line. Two editions of the timeline professionally offset, third on the way, my DIY Manifesto, the America At War poster, and a few bumper stickers that I haven't eve picked up yet. Buying ISBNs soon, still broke but gettin' serious.

Sara and I have much going on on one project in particular. It's weird out there, folks!

Probably rebuilding both websites in the next few months. They're both kinda 1994-looking, no?

For the first time in many years I'm seeing television. Netflix is muy cool. So are boxed sets. I now have made my way through big hunks of Farscape, Babylon 5, the first season of West Wing, and assorted other oddments.

Still running around like a maniac, still overworking. But not as much as the old days. About two months back I told my apartmentmate that I would start a mini-vacation in a few days. The next day I tripped on a sidewalk crack the size of the East River, broke two bones in my hand. Life is not dull.

Meeting many cute young ladies, doing more dating then I have in a long time, but no actual serious relationship stuff in the offing.

All for now,

Rustin

SPOILERS!!

Saw the latest Wachowski bros. tip a couple days back. Bleagh! Not good. Very not good. It was like a two hour beer ad. A not very original beer ad. No content, slick colors, by-the-numbers directing. A few flashy visual tricks. Several intrusive bits of special effects business. But the thing that got me most is how reliably they didn't even really believe their own shtick.

- Everyone lives in fear in a paranoid society saturated with sensors and spies. But with one exception, every time somebody has a secret, they just yammer on like a bunch of southern Californians in group therapy. Cop trusts inspector and vice versa. Aide trusts television star and vice versa. And on and on.

- What England really needs is the return of democracy and policy from the people. But everything 'productive" in the movie is done by one lone freak, consulting no-one, teamed with no-one, advised by no-one. And his "solution" for everything is killing people. The other ninety-nine point nine nine percent of England is there to look worshipful, be fans, and bear witness to The One Strong Man's acts of greatness.

- Oh, the new England is a dirty, sad, ugly place. But somehow, except for members of the ruling regime and Our Tragic Hero, everybody who matters is attractive and charming in proportion to their effectiveness or significance. And oh, the clothes are so very pretty and tasteful.

- This is the new, tough, raw, ADULT Natalie Portman. Who, coincidentally is constantly seeking daddy figures, is first seen in a freakishly girly top, and, best yet, does her one bit of assistance to the Cause Underway in pigtails, literally dressed to attract a pedophile.

Blah, blah, fuckin' blah.

No Lexus ad was ever so incompetent at maintaining a tone.

And, ya know what? Seen as a political document, as my points above demonstrate, the real messages of this film are straight out of fascist propaganda, or, more specifically Cultural Revolution period Maoist propaganda, right down to the evil, physically disgusting, Capitalist Bosses who are also the ruling clique, opposed only by oppressed Workin' Folk who have, literally burst the chains of intellectual/capitalist oppression. The Soviets woulda loved this shit. Woulda played it all night long. Except that they, at least, would have given actual normal citizens more of a role in getting their freedom.

If I get the chance to obtain cheaply copies of this muck, I'll take 'em. So I can recycle the paper, piss on the discs, and throw them away.

Call me when somebody does a real political movie.

-Rustin

So back in the day, all these folks came out with web content sites of one sort or another. Online magazines, what we now call blogs, comics, and so on. And damn near all of them built their UIs around a structure that assumed that a neatly matched unit of content, be it a journal entry, a movie review, comic strip, or item of medical advice, would be added to the system on a regular and frequent schedule, just like legacy print media.

New entry every Wednesday!
New comics monday through friday!
A new tip every week!

And, of course, it hasn't worked out like that.

The obvious reason is money. First folks thought that their little beanie baby fan site was going to make them rich. Hence the assumption of time being available to do such prolific and predictable content.
Then they thought that they wouldn't make any money at all as the equally clueless backlash hit. So most of them shut down entirely rather than "face the stress of having to do a new [content unit] every week." (How many of those letters have you read? I've read far too many.)

Now busy sites make a few bucks off print content, a few more off CafePress shwag, and some more off ads. So now they're trying AGAIN to do daily content, as if every form of entertainment or data needs to be formatted like a fucking soap opera.

And this odd, reasonless assumption warps the whole field. "Oh, I could never do a podcast, 'cause some weeks I'm just too busy." "I stopped writing in my blog because I kept missing days."

WT-ever-living-F!!!

THIS ISN'T GRADE SCHOOL, FOLKS. There's no teacher behind you with a ruler to punish you if you don't "turn your work in on time". And while plenty of people will drift off if they can't get a new fix every day or week or whatever, they will come back if you offer some other means of access to what you create.

So, what is he really on about this time, you'e wondering, because surely it's not some broadly distributed sense of sympathy for content providers, let alone a concern that there's not enough being generated.

How very perceptive of you. What I'm on about, gentle (yeah, right) reader, is formatting and procedures. Why is it that the vast majority of online content, from podcasts to Homestar Runner to Sinfest, act as if all that really matters is "this [weeks/days] [item]" with some itty-bitty grudging link to some pathetically ill-sorted archive? Even the goddamned media giants like the New York Times still assume that sorting by date created is the One True Faith of content management.

Are bookstores filed by date? No, they are not. Are movie theatre listings done by date? No, they are not. Are libraries or music stores or any goddamn media outlet worth a moment's attention sorted by date? No, they are not.

They are sorted by subject. They are sorted by author. Because that's how people choose most of their frickin' content.

Do I feel like a prophet in the wilderness after having been pushing this since the early nineties? Yes, I do. And every time I have to do a search to find an article on a site (/., anybody?) that generates thousands of articles a week, I get annoyed all over again. I think that it's safe to say that XML is workable by now. Electronic, automated sorting by keyword is over thirty years old. And I damn well hope that someday the great big world out there wil begin to get a clue.

I'm out,

-Rustin

Nice little thred developing in Ask /. on VoIP security issues. I figure that I'll wait a few weeks for the posts to stop, drop by, and read it all properly.

Just looked today at the package that Vonage is pushing through (gag) CompUSA. No signup (+$50, get back $50), pretty looking Uniden two line system, supposed discount on rates thoough it didn't sound that great to me.

In truth, I've pretty much already decided to go with Packet 8 since Vonage's customer service ratings are teh sucking. But the phone sure looked purty. Looked physically solid, would like to know what type of speakerphone it is (full duplex?) and I've had good luck with their cordless handsets.

Of course, whatever I buy has to be something I can plug in anywhere as I plan to do muy traveling in the next year and a half.

Anybody got any thoughts?

-Rustin

As most of you know, I'm in the midst of completing my chronology of U.S. warfare and these days my attention is committed to the Civil War. Well, not to sound like a northerner or anything[1], but as far as I can tell, on the large scale, this was truly a war between philosophies and it really came down to self-centered romanticism versus get-the-job-done modern pragmatism.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm well aware of the backwoods Confederates who had never owned slaves, hated the Louisiana ballroom/white columns plantation planter culture, and fought and died for the right to simply be left the f*ck alone. But at the strategy level, up where I'm looking at army versus army, government versus government, the Confederates fought for glory and against the Union armies while the Union just damn well set out to chop up and shut down the Confederate nation.

Even the "cold-blooded" arms of the Confederate military, like the commerce raiders or Quantrill's Guerrillas sought to do harm to Union emotions, spreading fear and panic, I'ld even say fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Meanwhile the Union relentlessly attacked industrial capacity, transport, ports.

Now, inevitably, this was partially a matter of relative strengths and maybe, had they had the means, the Confederates would have blockaded instead of just commerce raiding, advanced into and occupied Union land instead of just doing night raids and terror sweeps.

But I wonder.

As I sit here reading account after account I keep coming across yet another brave advance into fire by Confederates, yet another piece of Union canal digging or dam building. I just read last night about Confederate lancers riding in frontal attack against entrenched Union infantry.

How brave, how gallant, how utterly and completely dimwitted.

The Confederates were acting out their childhood fantasies of being brave cavaliers. The Union armies ran like a Vanderbilt shipping firm.Now, of course, I'm far from the first to point this out. Documentation of Southern officers quoting Walter Scott or epigrams in Latin and Greek while their Union counterparts studied numerical data and industrial capacity is ample. But I hadn't expected it to be so significant on the scale of campaign strategy and tactics. They didn't do the same things with a different feel, from campaign level to squad level, on average, they did different things.

Northern and Southern decisionmakers seem to have genuinely thought differently, an odd thing indeed given how many had been classmates at West Point and Annapolis.

But maybe that's exactly the point. After all, Lee was offered a Union command, as were many other Confederate officers. They chose to be Confederates. And given the number of seccesion movements within the Confederacy by the end of the war and the strength of northern Copperhead strongholds like New York City, maybe that's one of the most important things to understand.

North and south were where they, by and large, lived, but to describe them just as the people who happened to be on one side or other of the Mason-Dixon Line on the day Fort Sumter was taken is a dangerous misapprehension.

The Civil War played out through different approaches because it truly was a war of opposing codes of human conduct. Claiming anything less is a crippling distortion.

-Rustin

[1] For those out there who care about this sort of thing, my father's family probably had soldiers on both sides and my stepfather's on the Confederate side. So I've stood on Lookout Mountain being lectured by my stepfather on how crucial this was and all the rest.

geek + easily amused + annoying neighbors in endless committee hell = Heh, heh, heh.
(Starting at about 1:30 in the morning for fewer witnesses.)

What does that mean? Well, this neighborhood in specific and New York in general has huge quantities of planters, big 'uns three or four feet to a side, that are, at best planted with some ill-cared for single species or in many cases, simply empty, with the occasional empty bottle, a few cigarrette butts, and the like.

For years I've been asking residents and occasionally supers of such buildings what the deal is and do they need help? Uniformly they say that:
1.) the person "in charge" of that isn't around. This is then followed by could I come back on, say, Tuesday afternoons between two and three-thirty and talk to Luis. Invariably if I try that, then "oh, Luis don't live here no more"
or "Yeah, I'm Luis; you gotta talk to Mr. [managing agent]" (fill in more deadended conversations)
or "I'm real busy today, come back again next week" (repeats)
or "we got no money for that" (I offer to pay and do the work myself) "yeah, well, I dunno [strange, contentless, usually non-sequitur answer that is a transparently invented excuse]"
or
2.) "Oh, we're deciding that in our tenants association right now. We're going to do some wonderful things this year." (I ask how long this has been "about to happen" and puzzle out that it's some period greater than ten years, I ask when the tenants association is next considering this and am told July.) or
3.) "No, we gotta leave it like that. Don't wanna attract nobody to hang out in front of the building, ya know? Having stuff growing in those will just make the [drug] dealers stick around or those homeless guys."(Usually followed by self-aggrandizing racist speech about homeless people.)
or
4.) "No man, can't nothin' grow in those. Nobody gonna water it and people throw their shit in there, and all that. You can't have plants there; they'll just die 'cause nobody gonna care for them." (I point out that New York is full of abandoned lots overflowing with lush plants that nobody cares for) "Naw, those ain't plants, those is weeds!"

and so on.

I've been having these conversations, a building or three a year, for sixteen years. Not once has anybody in a building with barren planters said "Okay, sure, it would be nice to have something growing in there".

Note, by the way, I am talking exclusively about raised planters. Big, deep containers of soil too high for passing dogs to piss into, big enough for real variety, deep enough for perennials to build decent roots and for microorganisms and worms to be viable through the winter.

Ya see, back in the sixties and seventies, when these were put in (and a few added on to existing buildings in the eighties), they did do a good job. When I was younger, many more of them *were* filled with plants. But in buildings like mine, with tenants at war with the landlords, nobody is willing to spend on the common areas. Landlords because they want the building to be as ugly as possible to get out long-term tenants like me, tenants to spite the landlord because "that's his responsibility". In the smaller housing projects because the overpaid, slothful union workers aren't paid to do it beyond the bare minimum. And in some of the other rentals and coops because they're tied up in committee hell and they'd each rather waste DECADES than give in on their petty power games.

I hate these fuckers.

So last night, at a bit before two in the morning I fucking went out and planted thousands of seeds in planters and raised beds from 98th to 87th, from Central Park West to Amsterdam. I'm sick of these pathological fucking sons of bitches and I'll fucking well do what I think best to their planters whether they know or care or not.

Does that make me a presumptuous asshole? Yeah, probably. Too fucking bad. Boo hoo. I hate, hate anybody who chooses to make their world ugly. When people start making intentional decisions to make my world ugly, well, I kinda lose interest in what they want. I'd say that they're scum, but, well, scum has nutrients in it. They're toxic waste. And I'm sick of living with them and being surrounded by the kind of world that they create.

So over the past few months I've been accumulating my materials. Ten carrot seed packets bought at ten cents a packet. Sixteen ounces of organic amaranth and sixteen ounces of sunflower seeds from a high-end health food store, the remains of my seed packets from past years, which means some snow peas, nasturtiums, spinach, pumpkin, cucumber, and assorted oddments.
Added to this is about a tablespoon of various seeds bought as spices before the fire and now stale - poppy seeds, anise, a.k.a. fennel, a little assorted this and that, all poured in a bowl. Increasing the legume stash is about two tablespoons of mung beans.

Then on the way home last night I bought the last supplies: six bags of beans, Goya and Jack Rabbit, bought for a buck a bag. Red beans, black eyed peas (best in hotter climates, but oh, well), and so on. I wasn't too particular. Just grabbed a bag of each variety that was near where I stood and dropped 'em in my basket.

I went upstairs, half-filled my shirt pocket with mixed beans, and headed out.

I had hoped to start with my own building, behind the scraggly bushes, but the soil here is so compacted that I'ld have to come back down with sharp objects and spend at least twenty minutes prepping the soil. So I put some bean seeds in where I could (maybe thirty in a block of soil about a hundred feet by eight feet) and moved on. Next were the three huge planters (about six feet around each) in front of the supermarket across the street. I put little clusters of beans, about four beans to a cluster, about six clusters to a planter, in each of those. And on down for a few blocks. I ran out pretty quickly.

I went back upstairs, filled my shirt pocket again , poured about a ping pong ball worth of amaranth into a baggie and shoved the baggie into my jeans, grabbed some seed packets, and went back out.

This time I was a bit more systematic. I've been thinking about doing this for years and years and I've done spontaneous planting of a few seeds now and again, but round one this night was the first time that I had actually set out to do this, with materials, targets, and goals.

Conclusions:

- Man, amaranth seeds are teeny!

- Soil in a lot of places around here is outrageously impacted. Maybe I'll bring worms around some rainy day.
In fact, I'm thinking of creating a worm-addition starter system, by adding a cup of soil and a cup of chopped up veggies into a large takeout soup container, filling the rest with water, and bringing that somewhere along with some worms in a bit more soil, ideally still on a rainy day. That way I can dump the muddy stuff onto the planter, drop the worms and soil on top, and hopefully thereby give them enough water and food to keep them going while they start the job of aereating the soil.

- Even at two in the morning, you never know what witnesses will turn up.

- Speed is of the essence.

- Pine bushes are a menace.

- Now I hate this area even more.


- Rustin

I'm obviously missing something. WTF is going on with these pink bits? I don't come to /. for pink bits. If I want pink bits online I'll go to GBOTW or something.

If I want girly I'll go somewhere like this.

A girly /.? The mind boggles.

-Rustin

There's a nice space travel thred in yesterday's top stories. Actual facts and analysis in the comments, good signal to noise ratio. I've been through the first and third pages so far and plan to go back in a few weeks and save an offline copy of the whole thing.

Makes me miss the /. of a few years ago to see so many scientists and engineers with relevant expertise dominating the discussion. Gives me fantasies of someday helping to create a discussion site (say, in five more years) purpose-built to encourage that sort of thing, maybe even with an architecture that explicitly encompasses meatspace interactions like conferences and more digg-like fuzzy ground between "first page" and "journal entries".

Of course the tagging experiment (I'm taking the time to tag - are you?) and such are admirable moves in that direction. Maybe my pessimism about /.'s future is misplaced and we're just seeing the awkward adolescence of an interaction space nowhere near its mature effectiveness.

That would be really nice.

-Rustin

P.S. Check out the "Vital Stats" JE with something like fifty /.ers laying out our personal profiles and beliefs. Man, that was a blast from the past.

Evidently an ex-military, right-wing, self-styled "adventurer" by the name of Micheal Yon took some photos in Iraq. A U.S. Army guy got a copy and circulated it worldwide, getting it on the front page of Stars&Stripes and all over the commercial media, all without paying a nickel to Yon.
Yon sued, saying that he never gave reproduction rights.

The army response? Since Yon is an embedded journalist, the U.S. givernment can seize any property of his they want, in fact, commit any crime against him they want because the agreement embedded journalists sign holds the U.S. harmless against any form of "injury".

To quote the article:

Army lawyers in the Office of the Judge Advocate General investigated and rejected the claim, arguing that by signing a "Hold Harmless/Release from Liability Statement," Yon agreed to release the Army from liability for any "injuries" -- which the Army lawyers found included the financial injury of the distribution of copyrighted photos.

We are increasingly living under a government that literally considers themselves unaccountable to anybody and entitled to do anything to anybody whenever and however the fuck they please.

There is a word for such a government. Such a government is a dictatorship.

We are deep shit.

-Rustin