Mr. Galloway,

I am deeply dismayed and disgusted by the lack of basic humanity and consideration you've shown on your recent blog post regarding the situation in Iran.

I have backed you time and time again for one main reason... you may have been a bit biased, but you were essentially correct and a determined advocate and good counterbalance to the unrelenting extremist status quo of the Bush/Blair era. I defended you because your opponents repeatedly attacked you without a shred of evidence that would hold water in a court of law.

Indeed, if anyone were to support you, some might say it should be me. I was the one largely responsible for breaking the story about the "shake and bake" attacks on Fallujah, and the disgusting lack of concern shown by my country's forces in that country for "collateral damage"... that being the common phrase for wives, young children, sisters, and brothers.

I understand what it's like to stand against my country when it is wrong, George. But this article of yours is hardly a brave stand. Rather, it is a way of you protecting your paycheck and defending the indefensible.

Mr. Galloway, today you have disgraced your name, not only by tying yourself to the murderous brutality of the Iranian government, but also by diminishing those who are being beaten, gassed, and killed in the name of the right to freely protest.

Robert Fisk has been right and fair when he reported that Ahmadinejad may indeed have won the election, but that the margin and the votes registered in some specific regions was quite suspicious indeed. To his credit, Fisk has been extremely critical of the government's actions... but you? You ignorantly, flippantly dismiss the young protesters as the educated brats of wealthy elitists, robbing their voice of legitimacy. Never mind that the first Iranian revolution was led largely by the same kind of people... young, educated students being principally amongst them.

No, George. These young Iranians are NOT the same sort as those who oppose Chavez, many of whom are wealthy people who have found themselves having to share some of that wealth through higher taxes and other democratically enacted means. This situation in Iran is completely different.

These young Iranians aren't complaining about being victims of policies that the rest of the country supports, because, frankly, the rest of the country doesn't really want widespread censorship, torture, beatings, arrests, and government thuggery either. Nobody except those in a position of power over others are particularly fond of widespread government repression, George.

"It will soon fizzle out."

Yes, George. It very well may. Soon, the protesters may all be killed, arrested, tortured, and otherwise brutally repressed... while you continue getting your paycheck from the government responsible for such behavior, without uttering a single denunciation of a government that refuses to allow its people to peacefully assemble and protest.

The Iranian government's actions may be horrific, George, but you, in your own words, are willing to "accept it".

You were right when you didn't accept such behavior before from the US and from your own country, George, but you are tragically wrong now.

Your words are certainly no comfort to Neda, a young female who was brutally shot down in front of her father, killed for protesting by the very people who sign off on your paychecks over at Iranian state-run PressTV... the organization that reported to its English audience that Mousavi won the vote in Tehran but lost elsewhere, while the Iranian government reported figures to its own people, claiming Ahmadinejad won in Tehran by over 6%. Indeed, PressTV has become transparent propaganda since the protests started, airing baseless attacks on your country and mine, even as their own country burns and its government supports the murder of its own people for daring to protest peacefully.

Let no young idealist, no follower of non-violence, no protester, no supporter of basic human rights, no friend to the people, and no defender of the innocents forget that George Galloway is no more than a fair weather friend to them... and indeed, is a traitor and a coward when his own interests are on the line.

I denounce you, George, and spit upon your acceptance of this brutal, inhumane violence.

No longer with respect,
Mark Kraft

Just snagged http://www.facebook.com/markkraft ... works for me.

I do most of my posts from there lately, btw, though hopefully they'll mirror to wherever they need to go well enough.

Trying BlogIt.

(Or BlahGit. Your choice, really.)

Ten years ago, my mom was diagnosed with MSA. She was a pianist, and her music was always a love and a comfort for her.

That was the first thing MSA took from her. Then her career. Then sleeping, walking, moving, speaking, and breathing normally... and then, finally, her life.

After years of neglect by the American medical system, which usually misdiagnoses MSA patients, and treats them with Parkinsonian medications which arguably are counterproductive and do nothing to slow the onslaught of the disease, MSA patients are finally getting miraculous treatments with stem cells, treating their symptoms, greatly improving their quality of life, and, apparently, significantly increasing their life expectancy.

Unfortunately, these Americans have to get treated in China.

But there's something simple you can do to help... Take a minute and write the NIH a short e-note, indicating your support for stem cell research.

Act now. Help those Americans who are needlessly suffering get proper care in America too.

So, I -- thankfully -- watched all of Battlestar Galactica over the course of several days, rather than having made it a long, drawn out television affair. Frankly, I think I preferred watching the series this way, because while it was worth seeing, it wasn't really worth obsessing over to any significant degree.

Let's be frank... Battlestar Galactica was a hackneyed, made-for-television pulp sci-fi vehicle back in the '70s... and it took a prodigious facelift and some able casting, writing, and effects to make it redeemable in the '00s. Its fans have talked about it like it was the best thing since tribbles and Romulan ale, but the fact is, it still suffers from an escapist, theological, antiscientific premise that spits in the face of all those who appreciate REAL science fiction... That's not saying it was a bad series at all... it clearly wasn't. But it does leave you with a theological aftertaste faintly reminiscent of cleaning out Aslan's litterbox with your tongue.

So, with that in mind, here is a short list of what I learned from watching BSG:

1> God's invisible messengers work in mysterious ways... especially when they get you to indulge in embarassingly exhibitionistic public sex acts.

2> There is only one God and he has very specific, largely unavoidable plan, designed to effectively rob you of free will only about 99.998% of the time. As such, your fate will be judged entirely based on the .002% where you do, in fact, have free will... unfortunately, you don't actually know which .002% that is.

3> The big advantage to having so little true free will is that you are, by definition, almost certainly following God's plan... which makes you perfect, just the way you are. (Except, of course, when you're not.)

4> When traveling on a long, long voyage across the great expanse of space, you oftentimes can't avoid traveling through perilous territory to reach your ultimate destination... except, of course, for those times when it's necessary to rapidly jump all the way back to where you started from.

5> Due to the nature of faster-than-light travel through space, it is commonplace to run out of raw materials, fuel, and food supplies well before you make a significant dent in your supply of single-malt scotch or imported cigarrettes.

6> Nothing makes a person turn evil quicker than becoming an itchy gimp.

7> What's the best way to explain ________ in a science fiction series? God did it!

8> Science fiction is when you take a brave, futuristic group and give them difficult-to-fathom challenges to overcome with their wits, heroism, and advanced technology.

Fantasy is when you start introducing fairies, unicorns, and gods into the mix, which trump technology and the best laid plans, but which ultimately are overcome through heroism, true love, and/or purity of spirit.

Fraud is when you get 35000+ people to spontaneously reject thousands of years worth of technological advancement, modern medicine, public sanitation, their guns, and every other form of creature comfort they have, all because one sickeningly naive, idealistic prat thinks that enduring a 150,000 year dark age would somehow lead humanity to wisdom. 

9> The quickest, most certain way to get in touch with your place in God's plan is to either take drugs, perform Bob Dylan covers... or a combination thereof. (Everybody must get stooooned!)     
 
10> There's a reason why Japanese and British TV series usually do only around 13 episodes a year. It allows them to actually stay focused on the actual storyline, while editing out all the superfluous drinking, smoking, interpersonal squabbling, and snogging. Japanese and British edit their TV shows... Americans pad their TV series like bad 6th grade history reports.

(Just feel fortunate that the modern series of BSG didn't have another Spaceball episode...)
       

I was reading a Mexican newspaper on the Swine Flu outbreak, and noticed something disconcerting:

"la “incidencia de los casos graves” involucra a personas en edad productiva, de entre 20 y 50 años de edad."

In other words, seemingly healthy, productive people without weakened immune systems who aren't the typical fatality victims of the flu appear to be among the WORST cases so far.

Could this be a flu which triggers a cytokine storm, using our own immune systems to kill us?!

(Crap.  The Spanish Influenza was similar in that regard, btw.)

This also means that children, who tend to catch and spread flus pretty easily, will quite possibly be a major vector of passing the flu on to their parents. Not good.

Steampunk is neither steam nor punk. It's about using old ideas and old technologies to do things that are either banal, unhelpful, inefficient, or all-of-the-above.
 
As a literary genre, it again is neither steam nor punk. Rather, it's the lazy writer's science fiction, because all the difficult speculation of the future flies right out the window. It's the literary equivalent of fanfic for gadget geeks and goth kids turned high-tech hipsters who get off on nihilistic escapism.

This isn't to say that you won't enjoy it... odd are good that it's very much up your alley. But it's worth remembering that your enjoyment is derived from the fact that you're a deviant tech-fetishist who, when the world around them was on the brink, thought that spinning your wheels and grinding your gears with a piston engine was a good thing.

Next time, try teledildonics or building your own f*cking machine. It has similar technical underpinnings, makes people happier, and once you finish with it, you'll likely take a shower and get on with your life.

I attended the first Anatolian Festival in S. Cal. over the weekend, and all I can say is that there was a lot to explore, appreciate, and think about. Here's a well put-together video I found on YouTube that shows a bit of what you all missed... 

 

...on the way to Anatolian Festival, home to 99 delicacies... sure hope they have samplers, 'cause that's too much to do more than a spoonful each over two days. Stopped for gas near Harris Ranch in the middle of the Central Valley... Coalinga. Opened the car door, only to be assaulted by the completely pervasive smell of cow dung. Couldn't smell anything else... and its not even summer yet. Horrid town. I've smelled better whino camps.

Project Peanut Butter is a project run by Dr. Mark Manary, who is doing his best to eradicate malnutrition in Malawi and Sierra Leone.

Dr. Manary was the first to conduct clinical trials of RUTF in the region, which offers a 95% recovery rate for severely malnourished children and is administered in the home. This represents a vast improvement over the milk-based formulas of the recent past that offered dismal recovery rates of 25% - 40% and required hospitalization

So, what is an RUTF? Ready-to-use Therapeutic Food. And the most effective RUTF, hands down, is Plumpy'Nut... which is basically peanut butter, powdered milk, and powdered sugar, fortified with a special mix of nutrients. Fat, protein, and nutrient- rich junkfood for the 3rd world.


Peanut butter is an ideal food, under the circumstances. It keeps for up to two years, and the energy and nutrients from peanut butter are very dense -- perfect for those who can hardly eat due to starvation. The nutrients in peanut butter are absorbed at a better rate than other foods. In fact, because people in Africa with HIV/AIDS oftentimes have similar problems, essentially wasting away, a special formula of Plumpy'Nut is being tested on them as well. 

There are several franchises around the world that produce Plumpy'Nut, locally producing the product to proper specifications. There are twenty million severely malnurished children around the world... five million of which die every year. Plumpy'Nut currently reaches about 3% of these kids, but is expanding rapidly.

So basically, peanut butter + added nutrients might wipe out childhood malnutrition as we know it.

Which perhaps is another way of saying that the invention of a former slave might soon eradicate childhood starvation and literally save millions of people per year in Africa and everywhere else in the world... and it will help restore the local soil at the same time.

Kinda cool, I think.

I generally do not like Jake Tapper, as I think he tends to be a gossipy, grandstanding journalist, and a poor choice for being the public face of the network in Washington, DC.

That said, this article comes via various sources at ABC News, and it excellently sums up the best possible reason to have elected Barack Obama.

Here is a clear example of President Obama doing something that Bush couldn't do, and McCain doesn't do anymore... spontaneously diffusing a confrontation that could endanger his goals by appealing to people's self-interest, laying out alternatives, and getting two generally beligerent and disagreeable world leaders to rapidly work out their differences and enthusiastically move forward in a unified way.

While there are obvious unavoidable structural problems with the world's economy, how people respond to the crisis does, in fact, matter greatly.

My retirement savings thanks you. Keep it up, Barack!

So, you might have thought "blood for oil" was a swindle?
Perhaps you openly wanted Bush failure in Iraq?
And now, a message from Bobby Jindal...
"Have no fear, Rush -- and fifth columnists -- 'cause Bobby's got your back!"

How is it that *he's* complaining about "gotcha games"?!
And the pressure to say  "no sir, I don't want the president to fail"?
"You're either with us or against us", remember,  Piyush Jindal?
Who cares about America, when there's ideology to rail?

Many thousands of Americans went to jail for protesting,
not against a president or party, but against a needless war.
What of your loyalty, Piyush? Maybe you should ask an Arab-American
What those long lines in 2002 outside INS were for?

You so ideologically white as snow, untouched by reality.
Showing remarkably little consideration for similar others.
People seeking refuge deported, sometimes to violence and jail
from Syria... Iran...U.S.-backed dictators. Daughters, sons, fathers, mothers.

You, who overlooked American heroes, indefinitely detained
and others  pigmentally challenged... thinking there's no sin...
never admitting such notions brought human misery, both here and there,
and now afraid that the other guys -- America -- might win.

We get mail... oh yes, we do!
------------------------------------------------------------

From: Kevin ******** <***********@gmail.com>
Subject: your livejournal blog - insomnia
To: markkraft@*********.com
Date: Thursday, March 19, 2009, 7:07 PM
Hi Mark, I'm interested in the topic of
sleep disorders
and would love to
take over your live journal blog because of the
"insomnia" tag and of course
it ranks well in google. Any chance you'd
like to sell
control of your blog?

I know this is a really weird question, but
I thought I'd
ask.

Kevin

------------------------------------------------------------

On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 4:03 AM, Mark Kraft wrote:


Kevin,

I doubt it... but how much were you talking about, out
of curiosity?!


markkraft

... as adapted from his "Politics and the English Language":

"It consists in gumming together . . . strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. . . People who write in this manner usually have a general emotional meaning -- they dislike one thing and want to express solidarity with another -- but they are not interested in the detail of what they are saying."

As for microblogging, twittering, and anything else where you're forced to try cramming meaning into a very few characters... well, that's a form of Newspeak, isn't it?!

As some of you might have noticed, I've been otherwise occupied lately and haven't posted to LJ  in about forty days or so.  Ah well.  It started off as a short gaming and Facebook vacation, and just kind of got longer...

Frankly, it seems to me that the site was becoming noticeably less busy and feedback had dwindled significantly. I've been fiddling with Facebook more, but after giving it a bit of a chance, I have come to the conclusion that it's not exactly a communications solution for me, either.

For one, I'm constrained by the amount of text available at Facebook, which prevents me from doing the kind of thoughtful, multi-linked posts I like to do in order to tell a story or frame an argument... but besides that, ultimately, the community I am looking for isn't there, even if many of the users are.  I'm interested in keeping in touch with others and creating local events within my particular circle of friends, for instance... but Facebook isn't particularly good for anything small, closed, and private.

That said, LiveJournal isn't exactly perfect at that either.

I could be sentimental about things and say you're all a great bunch of people and there's no way of replicating that elsewhere... and I suppose it's true... but the facts are that there are over 700 of you out there, and yet I feel a bit frustrated primarily because I'm not hearing enough from about forty or fifty of you, many of whom are local to me.  And, indeed, I can understand why... in part because I have the habit of talking to all of you at once, rather than specifically targeting any particular group of people lately.   I prefer it that way, in many ways, but the lack of focus also has its own problems.  But a big part of it is that LJ is kind of fading away, at least in the U.S. and amongst friends.  And yet, in the unique, niche communities I am a part of, LJ has been -- and still is -- damn important socially, to the point that there's no real substitute... even though people are moving on or simply posting less often.

It reminds me of a few things in my past... 

Around twenty years ago now, all the odd/geeky/interesting teens in my local area were members of TREX... a local telnet chat site. .. and local chat was good, in a way that web chat and just about everything else that followed on the WWW was not good... it was good for actually getting people together doing things in real life.

Indeed, there isn't a single group chat site out there on the modern internet that can really compare to this 20plus-year-old site, because all the freaks *aren't* together anymore... they're all scattered out there/here/everywhere else nowadays.  There's too much "there" there to come together as a large group, and to build the kind of critical mass required for an honest-to-goodness "scene", of sorts.

Before trex, when I was in high school in a small town, I would bike about two miles or so at night to get to the nearest "scene"... a so-so pizza parlor where there was a Punch-Out videogame, a bunch of young people playing quarters for beer, and a bunch of discontent young teens hanging out in front smoking cigarettes and the occasional clove, listening to music, talking, and occasionally gathering up to go to some dance or nebulous party that hopefully was still happening and not busted before you actually got there.

For all its failings, I miss that. I miss the scene.  I miss the fact that LJ used to be a pretty good place for organizing actual things IRL amongst my local friends and associates. I miss the outside gatherings I'd organize with local LJ friends, with a ton of people in a local pizza parlor, or friends huddled around the chiminea at my house, or soaking in the hottub. And I know I could try organizing regular events again... but it would be increasingly difficult and frustrating, because the critical mass has moved on, or simply moved elsewhere.

I think the scene -- which is *so* integrally tied at the hip to the Internet -- is moving on / has moved on, technologically speaking...  and I don't think many people have given much thought as to the fact that although there are other sites and other communities, there doesn't appear to be much of anything comparable to replace it with.

Over 200 are thought to have lost their lives, over 750 houses have been lost, thousands have had to evacuate... and the fires aren't over yet.

If you'd like to help out, and have your donation quickly get into the hands of those who need it, the Lord Mayor's Charitable Foundation of Melbourne allows you to make an immediate online donation, and rapidly get help to those who need it. 100% of all donations will be distributed to those directly assisting those effected by the fire. 

If you've got a bit to spare, you might want to send something their way...   

 

Amidst all the horrible loss of life and nature in the fires on the outskirts of Melbourne, life goes on...

Okay. I've officially taken the @!#* Facebook bloody plunge with some degree of semi-seriousness, and now classify it as "unspeakably evil, yet useful."

If you exist on Facebook and want to be reached, let me know where to reach yeh.

What Republican Campaign Chairman Michael Steele said to George Stephanopoulos in his defense regarding the feathering of his sister's nestegg with $37K of his senate campaign funds was unfortunately mangled by spin, so I figured I would take a moment to correct it for him...

"Those allegations were leveled by MY FORMER CAMPAIGN CHAIRMAN, a convicted felon who was trying to get a reduced sentence on his conviction. . . "The thing about this George that is so frustrating to me, is that the Washington Post elevated this guy MY FORMER CAMPAIGN CHAIRMAN. And gave him credibility when no one else would. (EXCEPT ME.) That's disturbing. . .  You're getting ahead of yourselves here. You're trying to make a story out of something that isn't a story. We'll provide you with the information THAT I SHOULD'VE PROVIDED EVERYBODY WHILE I WAS RUNNING FOR MY POSITION.'"

Seriously. If I were a Republican, I'd be pissed. He's trying to disassociate himself from his former campaign chairman. It's as if President Obama were to try disassociating himself from David Plouffe, by saying " Well, I *WOULD* have talked about the charges he made against me earlier when I was running for office, but they simply weren't credible because the guy was a convicted crook!!"

Yes, Mr. Steele... But he was *YOUR* crook, and a longtime, close political associate of yours.  Sentenced to prison for nine years for a $32M fraud / money laundering scheme.

I'm not saying Steele is a crook... I'm just saying that he's been deceptive and monumentally obtuse in how he's handled this issue, to the point of disgracing himself and becoming a big liability to his party from Day One.