User:	fengi
	Date:	2009-07-13 15:11
	Subject:	Question to Fellow Users: Scam or Legit?
	Security:	Public

Below is the third in a series of emails I've received recently.

1. Has anyone else gotten this?

2. Does it seem legit or is it some type of long form hack/prank?

Dear LiveJournal user,

Last week I invited you to participate in a research project about LiveJournal users' reactions to the January 2009 SUP layoffs and user loyalty to social networking sites. I wanted to let you know that I am still interested in having you participate. This participation consists of two things. First, I will read and analyze your posting(s) about the layoffs. Then I will ask you to participate in a short (not more than half an hour) interview about LiveJournal and other social networking sites. The analysis of the blog postings and interviews will be included in a paper to be presented at an academic conference in October and will be prepared for possible publication in an academic journal thereafter.


If you are interested in participating, please go to http://tinyurl.com/LJCritical and fill out the Informed Consent form that you find there. I will then get in touch with you to schedule an interview.


Thanks in advance for your participation,
Sarah Ford
***********************
Sarah Michele Ford
Department of Sociology
University of Massachusetts - Amherst
ford@soc.umass.edu
http://snowplow.org/sarah/

	User:	ludickid
	Date:	2009-07-13 10:45
	Subject:	You will have Sarah Palin to kick around lots more
	Security:	Public

The inexplicable career of Sarah Palin continues, as her followers, whoever they are, have managed to turn having prematurely quit the only government job she’s ever had as a kind of promotion, or at the very worst, a lateral move. Proving herself a quitter at one more career, and sacrificing the one chance she had at establishing something, anything, like real leadership experience doesn’t seem to have had much effect on the faithful, at least according to Palin’s champions. (See Star Parker, here, explaining that a poll which indicates that twice as many people having a negative reaction to her Nixonian resignation speech as a positive one in no way hurts her chances of becoming President in 2012.)

Who, exactly, comprises Sarah Palin’s political base? The pundits are constantly trying to convince us that it’s made up of “real America”, that largely fictional demographic of simple working-class folk whose credo of Bible, billfold and belligerence carries them through every travail and without whom no one can win an election. We’re also frequently assured by these professional propagandists that she is beloved by women, sportsmen, cockroach capitalists, and the Religious Right. But is this accurate? It seems more that she represents a sort of caricature, a cartoon of these subgroups held by the creepy campaign strategists of the right. Her position as a champion of the working class is too easy to assail; though not born rich, she’s fully embraced the heartless arriviste bootstrappery of the New Right, and her husband’s role as a union man won’t fool any real unionists (who will simply note her preeminence in the nation’s most anti-union party) or placate real conservatives (who already hate her for her state’s dependence on so many federal aid programs.

Likewise, her ‘strong-woman’ role is a joke to anyone who really along those lines; most female voters who were drawn to Hillary Clinton (or, for that matter, most female voters who were drawn to Margaret Thatcher) found the appeal in her policies, not in her mere lack of a Y chromosome. Her policies are, if not explicitly anti-woman, at least aligned with those of the party perceived as anti-woman, and if she were ever to express any kind of progressive sexual politics, or to define her womanhood as a quality that exists absent a defining male presence, she would be thought of by the Republican right in the same way as Michael Steele: a demographic token who got beyond her place.

Genuine sportsmen find her air-spotted wolf hunts detestable; genuine small businessmen are distrustful of her selective policymaking as regards federal regulation and government assistance; and to the Religious Right, she is a woman of dubious parenting skills, no one to be ashamed of, no doubt, but not nearly vociferous enough to stand as a national symbol of their ethos. Even traditional neo-conservatives frown on the lawsuit-happy hatchet-woman she became after her Checkers speech. Aside from the rump organization of morons who have had nowhere to go since the Know-Nothing Party fell apart, her main constituency, more and more, seems to be that curious segment of the G.O.P. who do things based on their crude calculation that it will ‘piss off the liberals’. This has probably won a few elections here and there, but as far as I can see, every liberal in America is loudly cheering for Sarah Palin to stay in the public eye for as long as humanly possible.

Recent polls show that almost no Republicans take her seriously as a party leader; any reasonable reading of the 2008 election shows that her presence hurt rather than helped John McCain’s chances; and her own unpopularity with liberals, combined with the rather vocal elements of the conservative movement who are likewise disenchanted, gives her numbers that rival those of George W. Bush’s second term. Unless you think her boosters are moles planted by the Democrats to make the GOP look bad, the only explanation is that the party is pulling a Herb, putting a deliberately horrible spokesperson in hopes that the negative reaction alone will propel her to the stars.

Remember Herb, the cretinous spokescreature for Burger King in the late 1980s? Exactly.

	User:	slammerkinbabe
	Date:	2009-07-13 01:45
	Subject:	burned toaster pastry: probably not because you're a lesbian
	Security:	Public

NOTE TO ALL: Yes, I am back on with the Sims thing again. I don't have Sims 3 yet, though I probably will do at some point over the summer. In the meantime I shall update on Sims 2. Enjoy! Unless you don't. In which case -- Ignore! OK, right then.

Goodness, my adherence to canon in refusing to put a fire alarm in my Songcatcher Sims' household just got Janet McTeer killed. Poor Tom; they were actually in the process of getting married when the fire broke out. And because I was watching the wedding, I missed the whole fire until it had spread beyond the point where it could be put out. I'm not really sure why Lily was the one stupid enough to jump around directly within the flames, since she had more logic points than anyone but Harriet, but perhaps Sims logic does not correspond to human logic. Either way it is an unfortunate turn of events, as Tom seems to have gone crackers and has been cradling and singing to a flour sack for days under the impression that it is a child. Indeed, everyone's aspiration meters are as far red as they go -- except for Harriet, who apparently doesn't care. She is immersed in hunting bugs. ::shrug:: Whatever floats your boat.

So anyway, how do I Resurrect Lily Penleric? Tom and Deladis are both insisting that I do this, but the only option that comes up when I click her urn is "Mourn". And would resurrecting her turn her into a zombie? Because they are both afraid of her turning into a zombie. Not that I can't see their point. I have to admit I'm kind of curious as to how that would go, but I'm not sure I want to send a six-foot-one Janet McTeer zombie loose on their household just to satisfy my curiosity. She's formidable enough as a human being.

Oh, the other awesome thing is that Deladis is terrified of smashing Lily's urn, which is lovely and sentimental, except for the part where she then started a full-on knock-down drag-out with Polly right on top of the urn. Dude, I know you guys are love rivals or whatever, but could you maybe fight anywhere but on top of the urn? However, it did not break. I am wondering how you *can* break an urn, if having a giant rolling-around-on-the-ground fistfight directly atop it won't do it.

This is the first time one of my Sims has ever died, except when Mrs. Tottendale died in a different fire, but back then I was a wimp and canceled out the game so it wouldn't save and she could be alive again. I am very curious to see how this plays out.

Oh Sims. How do you be so addictive?

	User:	ldragoon
	Date:	2009-07-12 22:25
	Subject:	Home Again!
	Security:	Public

I'm back home, but I'm still a bit like death warmed over. Got a cold the second week of the workshop that kind of kicked my ass.

	User:	fengi
	Date:	2009-07-11 23:10
	Subject:	Your Mask, It's Slipping...
	Security:	Public

Thanks to jonquil who pointed this out with a really great essay.

I despise David Brooks and pretty much everything he writes. This week, during a discussion about sexual mores in Washington on MSNBC, Brooks said the following:

You know, all three of us spend a lot of time covering politicians and I don’t know about you guys, but in my view, they’re all emotional freaks of one sort or another. They’re guaranteed to invade your personal space, touch you. I sat next to a Republican senator once at dinner and he had his hand on my inner thigh the whole time. I was like, ehh, get me out of here...I can only imagine what happens to you guys.

Dear Mr. Brooks,
Yet you refused to say, "Take your paws off of me."

Was it good?
***
Way to go, Brooks.

There are ways of saying NO...and meaning it.

If a big macho guy like you has an unwanted hand on his inner thigh (the whole time, no less), I guarantee you welcomed it.

Now tell us what happened after dinner.
***
Did David Brooks just quasi-come out on national television? Cuz...if you don't like the hand being there, remove it. Letting it stay there the whole time indicates enjoyment.....just sayin.
***
in the immortals words of Riley of The Boondocks cartoon N***a you gay
***
and he loved every minute of it - I bet he said to the senator - "I'll give you till tuethday to get your handth off my legth" - and anyway, where was barnyard Cranks all this time?
( There's more, if you want. )

	User:	deanarae
	Date:	2009-07-12 00:42
	Subject:
	Security:	Public

I just had a really beautiful, awesome, lovely marriage, and I'd tell you all about it, but I desperately need to go to sleep.

	User:	fengi
	Date:	2009-07-11 12:43
	Subject:	"It will come out no more." "What? WHAT will come out no more?!?"
	Security:	Public

This 100% real story falls somewhere between The Onion and Lovecraft:

WASHINGTON – CIA Director Leon Panetta has terminated a "very serious" covert program the spy agency kept secret from Congress for eight years, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a House Intelligence subcommittee chairwoman, said Friday.

Schakowsky is pressing for an immediate committee investigation of the classified program, which has not been described publicly. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has said he is considering an investigation.

"The program is a very, very serious program and certainly deserved a serious debate at the time and through the years," Schakowsky told The Associated Press in an interview. "But now it's over."

Democrats revealed late Tuesday that CIA Director Leon Panetta had informed members of the House Intelligence Committee on June 24 that the spy agency had been withholding important information about a secret intelligence program begun after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Schakowsky described Panetta as "stunned" that he had not been informed of the program until nearly five months into his tenure as director.

Panetta had learned of the program only the day before informing the lawmakers, according to a U.S. intelligence official. The official spoke on condition of anonymity Friday because he was not authorized to discuss the program publicly.

Panetta has launched an internal probe at the CIA to determine why Congress was not told about the program. Exactly what the classified program entailed is still unclear.

The intelligence official said the program was "on-again/off-again" and that it was never fully operational, but he would not provide details.

	User:	fengi
	Date:	2009-07-11 12:04
	Subject:	The littlest techno
	Security:	Public

	User:	fengi
	Date:	2009-07-11 08:37
	Subject:	"Status: Looking at trees!"
	Security:	Public

docmanhattan comments on a dubious metaphorical claim in ads for Coleman camping gear:

You didn't really invent "social networking" either. Camping can be social, but it's the exact opposite of a network. If there were a trail in the woods where I would randomly run into people from my past, who would then shout what they were doing every so often, believe me when I say: I would not hike that trail.

	User:	doraphilia
	Date:	2009-07-11 08:01
	Subject:	perma-internet!
	Security:	Public

Norman and I now have EnV touch phones with internet!!!!!

I've always thought getting internet service on your phone was overpriced and too much of a luxury for us to afford. But then over on google reader a friend of disolvinggirl  told me she and her guy had an iPhone with a family plan and paid $125 (pre-tax) for both of them to have phones (I misunderstood and thought both of them had iPhones). Meanwhile, Norman and I are paying $120 after taxes for our family cell service. Our contract was up at Verizon (we got "phone married" two years ago, awww). Looking into it further proved that it wouldn't be that cheap for us (more like 170 pre tax!!) so we gave up the dream.

But we were still intrigued. I'm at a desk about 40% of the time at my job and I really hate coming home to 15 pressing emails in my inbox.
Since so much of my social life is back home in NYC the internet has been really central to keeping me from getting too lonely.

So yesterday I went into the Verizon store to see what they could do for me to keep me as a customer. It turned out the prices available were REALLY affordable. Our bill is only going up about $25/month, and the fancy new phones cost us around $50 each after the contract-resigning-rebate.

I'm super excited. I have the internet ALL THE TIME now!!! These phones are nowhere near as advanced as an iPhone or a Treo, they aren't "real computers" in quite the same way. But just giving us basic access to important things like our email and other very important websites like facebook is really all we wanted and the price was really right. And I love the many other functions and applications the phone has.


Now we just have to make sure we don't get our identical new phones mixed up.

	User:	fengi
	Date:	2009-07-10 12:23
	Subject:	Turn The Beat Around
	Security:	Public

This week is the 30th anniversary of Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park on Chicago's South Side.

The Chicago Reader recognizes it with a story on a new exhibit of photos taken by someone who was a teen in the bleachers. Her camera ran out of film before things turned violent. This turns out to be significant, for while the article details some historical and class context, it doesn't mention questions about racism and homophobia, even though they were raised at the time. It comes up in the comments, resulting in some strong denials centering on the assertion conscious intent is all that counts.

The best response is by John Dugan, who also wrote an essay about Disco Demolition nostalgia for Time Out Chicago. Excerpts from his comment:

( Cut to skip to the key quote )Had disco's boom gone on too long? Probably, but the DDD wasn't about embracing new music, it was about rejecting it for hard rock...which had been around for ten years already and was still packing stadiums and radio playlists. If there was a point being made at DDD, and I'm not sure there was, it was that we prefer male oriented monoculture to a pluralistic culture. Decadent individualism but not for everyone.

( More musings on disco, Chicago and the politics of nostalgia. )

	User:	slammerkinbabe
	Date:	2009-07-10 12:45
	Subject:	a secret no longer
	Security:	Public

I do not like Fiddler on the Roof.

	User:	crepedelbebe
	Date:	2009-07-09 17:55
	Subject:	(commute + newly-refilled iPod)
	Security:	Public
	Music:	Jay-Z....thaaat's riiiiight

I got 99 problems, but a bitch ain't one.

...oh wait.

	User:	ludickid
	Date:	2009-07-09 15:49
	Subject:	Quotarama
	Security:	Public

I did this a while ago on the Face Book and I kept meaning to port it over here because I'm pretentious bored that kind of guy. So, here you go.

*******

First off, if I could distill my entire philosophy of life down into one single quote, it would be the first two lines of the theme song to Diff'rent Strokes:

"Now, the world don't move to the beat of just one drum;
What might be right for you might not be right for some."

Second, there is a holy trinity of Homer Simpson quotes that has rarely steered me wrong:

1. “Boy. Everyone is stupid except me.”
2. “Just because I don’t care doesn’t mean I don’t understand.”
3. “It’s because they’re stupid, that’s why. That’s why everybody does everything.”

Third, I was once given what I believe to be an incredibly sage piece of advice by a friend of my dad’s: “There are a lot of people in the world who desperately need to have the shit beat out of them.” I was already impressed by this wisdom as a young fellow, when, years later, I found it stated more elegantly by Flannery O’Connor, who has the Misfit say at the end of ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’: “She would have been a good woman, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”

Fourth, most of the quotes that really punch me in the soul seem to be written by Russians, who have a keener grasp than most folks of the odd combo of misery, insanity, and gallows humor that makes up our funny little world; here’s three of my faves which I’ve loved and referenced constantly since I first ever read them:

1. “Is it not possible to eat me without insisting that I sing praises of my devourer?" (My man Fyodor Dostoevsky, who might just be the greatest writer who ever was. More of it: “Everyone pretends to hate evil, but deep down they all love it, all of them.”)

2. "Whatever he tried to be, whatever he engaged in, the evil and falsehood of it repulsed him and blocked every path of activity." (Leo Tolstoy, from the pretty amazingly insightful Chapter I of Book 8 of War and Peace. Tolstoy again: "I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means -- except by getting off his back.")

3. “All this life is senseless and tragic in which the endless slaving labor of one man constantly goes to supply another with more bread than he can use.” (Maxim Gorky and ain’t it the truth.)

Fifth, I could basically drop in here almost anything ever written or said by Mr. Gus Flaubert or Mr. Ray Chandler.

Anyway, I’m gonna cheat a bit with the actual dozen and double it: 12 great quotes I love, believe and live by in life, and ditto for art. Here goes.

LIFE IS ART

“If you look really hard at things, you’ll forget that you’re going to die.” (Montgomery Clift)

“I’m not religious about God. I’m religious about man.” (D. Boon)

"People who are much too sensitive to demand of cripples that they run races ask of the poor that they get up and act just like everyone else in society." (Michael Harrington)

"The map is not the territory." (Alfred Korzbysky)

“The only difference between lilies and turds is whatever difference humans have agreed upon.” (George Carlin)

"Our laws make law impossible; our liberties destroy all freedom; our property is organized robbery, our morality an impudent hypocrisy; our wisdom is administered by inexperienced or mal-experienced dupes, our power wielded by cowards and weaklings; and our honor false in all its points. I am an enemy of the existing order for good reasons." (George Bernard Shaw)

"People with advantages are loath to believe that they just happen to be people with advantages." (C. Wright Mills)

“Solidarity is not discovered by reflection, but created. It is created by increasing our sensitivity to the particular details of the pain and humiliation of other, unfamiliar sorts of people. Such increased sensitivity makes it more difficult to marginalize people different from ourselves by thinking 'They do not feel as we would,' or 'There must always be suffering, so why not let them suffer?'” (Richard Rorty)

“There are plenty of people to whom the crucial problems of their lives never get presented in terms that they can understand.” (George Chapman)

“There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.” (Albert Camus)

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." (William Shakespeare)

“There is no way you can use the word ‘reality’ without putting quotation marks around it.” (Joseph Campbell)

ART IS LIFE

"In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

"The metaphor is probably the most fertile power possessed by man." (Jose Ortega y Gasset)

"Never compose anything unless the not composing of it becomes a positive nuisance to you." (Gustav Holst)

"No artist wants to be understood. If he's understood, he feels superficial. What an artist wants is not to be misunderstood." (Ned Rorem)

"The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting." (Henry James)

"Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality." (T.S. Eliot)

"So I have loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing to make me happy, but wanting that have wanted everything." (William Hazlitt)

"There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common ­-- a need to create an alternative world." (John Fowles)

“There is no ‘must’ in art because art is free.” (Vassily Kandisnky)

“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action. And since there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.” (Martha Graham)

"A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns." (P.L. Travers)

"A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid." (William Faulkner)

-ENDUT -

	User:	deanarae
	Date:	2009-07-09 16:39
	Subject:
	Security:	Public

I know I am getting emotional when I feel deeply touched by our landlord coming down to weedwhack.

I'm doing pretty good. I don't love that I feel stressed, but I guess that's to be expected.

	User:	fengi
	Date:	2009-07-09 11:56
	Subject:	It's a day for reaching
	Security:	Public

Caveat: this is another observation which might be come off as another simplistic, overstated stretch without seeing the entire film involved.

I see a small connection between a private pool club blithely admitting to kicking out a majority black group for racist reasons and Transformers 3 2.

I mean, it's the twenty fucking first century and a major blockbuster got through an entire production without anyone - at least anyone with power - objecting to minstrel characters (voiced by a white guy) so overt even typically anti-PC bloggers say WTF (this blogger bothered to include images of the characters). Meanwhile a liberal white blogger acknowledges the racism (without showing the characters) then still writes: "I am with the people, not the critics. "Transformers 2" is a fun summer blockbuster." instead of suggesting there's other fun which doesn't involve giving money to a hack who dismisses his racist material by saying "I purely did it for the kids".

While there is no direct connection, I will say as a white guy these both reflect how white guys will continue not to give a shit about what comes out their mouths until held accountable about a billion more times. When some self proclaimed asshole is more willing to say don't support this shit than a major lefty blogger, well...it continues to be stuff white people do.

	User:	fengi
	Date:	2009-07-09 08:47
	Subject:	Potentially Bogus Thought
	Security:	Public

Warning: This notion is an impression based on the most cursory look at the topic. It may be dramatically off base or misinformed.

My first reaction to the 2012 prophecy is that it's a crazy appropriation by privileged white "spiritualists" and: a) has an underlying attitude which can't accept an ancient culture's math and science skills without framing it in "magical primitive" crap; and b) despite living evidence, imposes simplistic and selective reading on a religion which, like most, ritually combines the symbolic, philosophical and literal in ways where intent and interpretation has shifted and evolved over centuries.

My first metaphorical impression is the 2012 prophecy is like saying Gregor Mendel had some correct theories, so it only makes sense to read Sinners In The Hands of An Angry God as a warning of our coming transformation into spider creatures by enraged superbeings for the purpose of dropping us into a galactic bonfire.

	User:	fengi
	Date:	2009-07-09 06:58
	Subject:	Days of Yep: Disaster Porn
	Security:	Public

The blog io9 has served up a huge pile of awesome by recutting the trailer for 2012 to be more honest - and true to its roots.

	User:	fengi
	Date:	2009-07-08 11:37
	Subject:	Disclosure
	Security:	Public

Upon reflection there are two things motivating my recent overly earnest and self-serious grousing about Jackson's funeral.

First, celebrity in general involves our anxieties about about wealth, fame, talent, body image, happiness and so on. It's a glitzy Rorschach blot and death brings up even more intense issues.

For me, the hype and scandal plays upon fears of being shamed for being human and flawed. I know Jackson made his own choices, musical talent can come with self-destructive impulses and rich eccentrics who refuse help don't need pity. Yet I still felt someone should have helped him long ago, but didn't out of greed. Fair or not, my response to post-funeral gala was wondering where the organizers were when he was alive and at risk of an early death marred by scandal.

Second, the city of Chicago, my home, is in fiscal turmoil and our Mayor is trying to get the Olympics, perhaps the worlds biggest boondoggle of a spectacle. It's already resulted in millions of taxpayer dollars we don't have has been committed to bullshit deals which will benefit special interests, all for a private sporting event. So finding out LA is seeking donations to cover the costs of an event - a cost produced by the city's decision, not Jackson or his fans - just pushed my buttons.

	User:	slammerkinbabe
	Date:	2009-07-08 12:15
	Subject:
	Security:	Public

Hey, everyone, it is my λ’s birthday and she is amazing! She is 28 today, and the prime factors of that (λ loves prime factors) are 7 and 2, which I’m pretty sure means that she is going to live for 72 more years, meaning she will top out at 100 years old, which is just a fantastic thing for the whole universe, so everyone applaud now. Also, wish a happy birthday to halfacricket! and I will pass the birthday wishes along to her. Or she can just check the comments.

We are currently accepting HTML, Rich Text (whatever the hell that is, but LJ gives me the option every day), e-mails, e-cards, lolcats, extraordinarily large sums of money, and birthday cakes thrown at Ann Coulter. Right now we have no good method for accepting extraordinarily large sums of money because our PayPal is ded, but if you want to send one I guarantee you we will help you find a way. Also, if you manage to throw a birthday cake at Ann Coulter, we will pay you the extraordinarily large sums of money. Just make sure the cake says “Happy Birthday λ” very clearly on the front in frosting, so that just before it hits her face she will see it and understand that it does not represent a well-intentioned, if oddly delivered, birthday wish for Ann herself.

...Happy birthday λ! Oh my wife is so great.