Chomsky on the 2004 election

As ever, Noam Chomsky has insightful comments on the 2004 election. My favorite passage is this one:

In 2000, “issue awareness” — knowledge of the stands of the candidate-producing organizations on issues — reached an all-time low. Currently available evidence suggests it may have been even lower in 2004. About 10% of voters said their choice would be based on the candidate’s “agendas/ideas/platforms/goals”; 6% for Bush voters, 13% for Kerry voters (Gallup). The rest would vote for what the industry calls “qualities” or “values,” which are the political counterpart to toothpaste ads. The most careful studies (PIPA) found that voters had little idea of the stand of the candidates on matters that concerned them. Bush voters tended to believe that he shared their beliefs, even though the Republican Party rejected them, often explicitly. Investigating the sources used in the studies, we find that the same was largely true of Kerry voters, unless we give highly sympathetic interpretations to vague statements that most voters had probably never heard.

As usual, Chomsky also calls for organization and sustained action. He is optmistic, because he sees more mobilization and awareness of issues now than he saw in the 1960s. Let’s hope he’s correct.

Deserters? Or clearthinkers?

CBS is running a story about the over 5,500 (according to the Pentagon) US soldiers who have declined to participate in the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.

There are more of them than I thought.

I applaud them. The soldiers interviewed for the story are saying the right things (right, at least from where I stand):

“I found out, basically, that they found no weapons of mass destruction. They were beginning to come out and say it’s not likely that we will find any — and the claim that they made about ties to al Qaeda was coming up short, to say the least,” says Hughey. “It made me angry, because I felt our lives were being thrown away as soldiers, basically.”

“People should have a right to say, ‘I’m not fighting in that war. That’s an illegal war. There’s illegal stuff going on the ground. I’m not going,'” says House. “And anyone who says soldiers should go to jail if they don’t fight in an illegal war is persecuting them.”

Wasn’t he supposed to follow orders? “I was told in basic training that, if I’m given an illegal or immoral order, it is my duty to disobey it,” says Hinzman. “And I feel that invading and occupying Iraq is an illegal and immoral thing to do.”

It’s good to see that so many soldiers are seeing these truths, and recognizing Empire’s invasion of Iraq for what it is. But the last quote is most interesting in terms of war criminals. If this invasion/occupation is indeed illegal and immoral, then those who participate in it are not only NOT doing their duty by obeying an immoral/illegal order, but also are war criminals.

And please don’t give me the “support the troops” nonsense. What exactly does that mean? I’ve written about this before; the best way to support them is to get them out of an impossible situation where they cannot do the right thing. I reagrd these soldiers, despite their choice to participate in this illegal invasion, as victims of this war. Their lives will require rebuilding; their souls will be marred with their participation in this war.

I hope the US recognizes its insanity and gets these people out of Iraq where they are so clearly not wanted by the local people.

But hey, at least the oil is somewhat safe, where safe means under the control of American corporations…

permanent wageslavery

Well, I got some good news at work today. Effective tomorrow (12/13), I am no longer a “seasonal” employee; I will be permanent part-time. This is good, though I am working Every Single Fucking Weekend, the schedule actually works pretty well for me as it means i don’t have to come in during the week (unless I want to pick up some extra hours).

Anyway, yay me. Or something.

Laptoppage

still working on my laptop. Getting used to it. I accidentally hosed my Ubuntu graphical system through my own carelessness. Luckily, I was able to rebuild it. My task now is to get my PCLinuxOS install working correctly, which means fixing the 1280×800 resolution problem. Now that Ubuntu is working correctly again, I should in theory be able to fix that fairly easily.

Not much else going on. Still haven’t even begun to tackle the studio computer. I still have to finish editing George’s book, George’s other book, The Commoner, and stuff for radicalpolytics.org. Yes, in a manner of speaking I’m falling behind. Lots to do, but it’s all good work.

I’m looking forward to Yule. I’ll have more thoughts on that in due course.

Ubuntu and Toshiba, sittin’ in a tree….

I’m writing this from my new Ubuntu Linux installation on my new Toshiba laptop. I’m thrilled with how well this machine gets along with this Linux distribution. Everything seems to just work, with a few exceptions like the obligatory libdvdcss foolishness to get Linux to play DVDs. I still have more tweakage to do, but so far everything works, even suspend works.

Furthermore, I’m getting used to GNOME again, after having been a KDE user for a long time. I do have to admit that GNOME 2.8 under Ubuntu runs really smoothly. So far, so good.

I first tried to install PCLinuxOS on this machine as well, but it couldn’t get the screen resolution right. I may try to futz with it some more; in theory I should be able to tweak it.

I’ve wanted a laptop for many years. I’m so glad that this one fell into my lap. It was an unbelievable deal, and it plays well with (at least some versions of) Linux.

more laptop stuff

Well, a new laptop has caught my eye. It’s a Toshiba Satellite M35X-S149, which is widely available for $899. Good news is that it has a firewire port, as well as USB 2.0. Decent hard drive size at 60GB, though I’d need to bump up the RAM to 512, especially because it shares video memory with RAM. Plus it comes with a DVD/CDRW drive, as well as built-in networking and wireless. It actually looks to be a better match for me than the Dell, all things being equal and assuming it runs Linux OK.

The thing I need to do is see how well it runs Linux. The best way will be for me to go try it with a Linux live cd and test it. There are some question marks. This machine uses a Celeron M processor, which I’m not sure about. And I don’t know which chipset it’s using. It uses the Intel 855GME graphics system along with the Realtek ALC250 sound system. It’s a 15.4″ screen capable of 1280×800 resolution.

So, yeah. This should be a really nice laptop for me, assuming that it runs Linux OK. I’ll have to go to Best Buy or Circuit City and test it. this page has very useful info on running a Toshiba M30, which presumably is the older version of the M35. They seem to have very similar specs. Additionally, this page shows that Mandrake runs on the M30 pretty much out of the box; he had video issues but his M30 uses an nVidia graphics board, something this M35 doesn’t have. Also, this page gives a very detailed outline of a Gentoo installation, which is arguably an order of magnitude more complex than a PCLinuxOS installation.

Wow. I just called a local store, they have them in stock, and there is a $300 rebate on it! Wow! I think I’m going to go pick it up this week….

Bears should not use computers

Where to begin. I’ve been an utter Bear to deal with lately; the owl part of my personality has been dominant in dealing with logic, hardware interactions, and inflexible corporate pricing policies. Put another way, let’s just say that this week has been a challenging one for me in terms of computers. This is true mainly on two fronts.

First, as I’ve mentioned I’m in the market for a laptop. I’ve been a bit intimidated by the process of finding a laptop, because a) I’ve never purchased a laptop; and b) I want to make sure the one I get will do everything I want it to do (ie, run Linux, record audio, etc). So after quite a bit of research, I found a Dell machine that seems to fit the bill, as others have run Linux on it and it should have plenty of power to record audio. Anyway, I poked around Dell’s website, got the configuration I wanted, got a price I could live with, and hung out until all my fundage fell into my lap in a couple days, feeling good about my decision and my ability to find what I wanted at a good price. This was Wednesday.

Well, yesterday (Friday), I called Dell to make sure that the price I saw was indeed the best price, to see if I could talk them down a bit, and then to place the order. Silly Freaking Me. Apparently in the 36 hours since I saw the price online, the price for the laptop had gone up by $100. I went round and round with the operator, but she told me all about Dell’s “24 hour pricing” policy, and that they were willing to lose a sale over this matter.

So much for Dell. Bastards. Fuck ’em. At least now I have cash in hand and if I see a good deal on a laptop, I can jump on it. But now the laptop research wheel begins turning anew. Sigh. I hate wasted labor.

But the story just begins here, because the more serious and more disconcerting area of my computer dissonance has to do with the studio computer. All this time I’ve been running the studio computer with just one hard drive, which of course goes against any sane backup strategy (never keep your data in only one place!). So I decided to add a new hard drive. My computer is compatible with a new type of hard drive (SATA) that is faster and more capable than a normal (IDE) hard drive. So I added it, and got everything to work after some small hassle.

The problem is, now every time I record audio, I get pops and clicks on the resulting audio tracks. I’ve tried several solutions (I may post a detailed account in a bit…posterity, you know) to no avail. The problem seems to be in regulating how data moves through the motherboard. Recording high definition multitrack audio requires some serious data transfer, lots of info moving in and out of the machine. The machine accomplishes this through what are called IRQ channels. One thing to do is ensure that the audio card has its own IRQ channel with nothing else on it to interfere; so far I’ve not been able to accomplish this. Until now it hasn’t been a problem, but the new hard drive means more data is flowing; hence the pops and clicks. It’s never been an issue in the past.

To make this matter even more frustrating, Matt and I this week had arranged for 2 full days in the studio so we could focus (sans interruption, sans kids,etc) on “making tracks” for this album. Both days were lost, as I spent the entire time wrestling with the computer.

So my owl is exhausted, and my bear is rampaging.

I think I need to smash something with silicon in it…take that metaphor any way you want.

bizzybizzybizzy

Blogging on this channel has been somewhat lighter than normal over the past couple of weeks. I’ve been very very busy. So some updates are in order.

First, I’ve created a new politically-oriented website, radicalpolYtics.org. The goal of the site runs something like this:

We are dedicated to those who question the current state of politics in America and in the world. We are not dedicated to any one particular viewpoint, however we do recognize that alternatives to the party lines in the mass media are necessary. These two party lines are so overexposed, many people don’t realize that there many alternatives out there. The purpose of this site is to provide reading and listening material that involve these political alternatives.

We are radical in the mathematical sense; we look to get to the root issues that define politics today. And we are poly in the sense that we look at the many paths through the forest.

Our plan is to host a dynamic archive of articles and audio recordings in the furtherance of alternative political dialogue in America and in the world.

Related to this new site is some typesetting work I’ve been doing, helping to format various texts for publication in various media. One huge benefit of all this is that it looks like I’ll finally be able to purchase a laptop computer, so researching this has also taken up some time. I’m very much a computer geek; I’ve built several desktop computers and have no trouble installing operating systems, etc., but I’ve never really worked with a laptop before. There are some issues running Linux on laptops, most notably getting the winmodems to work, getting the power management features (ACPI or APM) to work, and then the normal sound/video issues that still lurk in the background of any Linux installation.

So among my tasks has been seeing what’s involved in running Linux on laptops, though my preferred Linux distro is a LiveCD so I can just insert the CD into the laptop, boot directly from the CD, and get a working Linux desktop within minutes. This will be a great test for the new system, as any config problems will reveal themselves quickly.

Ideally, then, I’d find a local dealer and try everything from the laptop before purchase. However, prices are typically much cheaper online. I’ve also been considering getting a used laptop to save some money. But, with some various discounts that are available to me, it may be just as cheap to get a new one.

More research is necessary, but my laptop budget won’t land in my lap for another week or two. By the time I have the cash, I will hopefully know just what I want to get.

In other news, this will be a big week for the Freakwitch album. Matt and I have booked out 2 solid days this week, where the kids are with other people, so he and I can just focus on getting some solid guitar and vocal tracks recorded. I’m very much looking forward to it. With any luck, I’ll have some oggs up for your listening pleasure in about 10 days.