Bury Me with It

By request, here's a little more investigative post-journalism. In contemplating how to blog out the year, I had initially decided to identify what I thought should have been heralded as the most important news stories of 2007. But someone else beat me to it, and really, in this post-modern world of ours, isn't originality so last year?

So. According to some other guy, here are the Top 25 Censored Stories of 2007! I underlined my favorites.

#1 Future of Internet Debate Ignored by Media
#2 Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technologies to Iran
#3 Oceans of the World in Extreme Danger
#4 Hunger and Homelessness Increasing in the US
#5 High-Tech Genocide in Congo
#6 Federal Whistleblower Protection in Jeopardy
# 7 US Operatives Torture Detainees to Death in Afghanistan and Iraq
#8 Pentagon Exempt from Freedom of Information Act
#9 The World Bank Funds Israel-Palestine Wall
#10 Expanded Air War in Iraq Kills More Civilians
#11 Dangers of Genetically Modified Food Confirmed
#12 Pentagon Plans to Build New Landmines
#13 New Evidence Establishes Dangers of Roundup
#14 Homeland Security Contracts KBR to Build Detention Centers in the US
#15 Chemical Industry is EPA’s Primary Research Partner
#16 Ecuador and Mexico Defy US on International Criminal Court
#17 Iraq Invasion Promotes OPEC Agenda
#18 Physicist Challenges Official 9-11 Story
#19 Destruction of Rainforests Worst Ever
#20 Bottled Water: A Global Environmental Problem
#21 Gold Mining Threatens Ancient Andean Glaciers
#22 $Billions in Homeland Security Spending Undisclosed
#23 US Oil Targets Kyoto in Europe
#24 Cheney’s Halliburton Stock Rose Over 3000 Percent Last Year
#25 US Military in Paraguay Threatens Region

You can read the full text of each story by clicking here. I've got to say, looking back at all the things that no one bothered to look at this year, I think I'll ring out 2007 with a hat-tip to Mario Savio:

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!

Ah, be still my bleeding heart. In honor of Mario Savio and Dick "Halliburton" Cheney and everyone in between, my new year's resolution for 2008 is to read stories like these as they happen, and maybe even do a little throwing myself on the gears. Viva la revolución, baby!

Lost in Translation

The English language, while home to nifty words such as nifty, seems to be a bit clunky more often than not. Like its speakers, it is unorthodox and of myriad descent; at times beautiful (see "cellar door") and at times confounding (Who? Whom? Hoo?). While I'm rather fond of the English language, I admit that there are ideas and phrases that seem to lose that certain... je ne sais quoi when they enter through its New World portal. A few examples...

Before: "C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre." — French General Marshal Pierre Bosquet
After: "It is magnificent, but it is not war."

Before: "Veo en tu vida todo lo viviente." — Spanish Poet Pablo Neruda
After: I see in your life all that which is alive.

Before: Abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit. — Latin phrase
After: He has left, absconded, escaped and disappeared.

And finally, a particularly illustrative transformation:

Before: Esprit de l'escalier. — French phrase
After: A concise, clever statement you don't think of until too late. (In effect, the wit of the stairs.)

Then again, it goes the other way too. In Star Wars III, the subtitles for Darth Vader's dying "Nooooo!!!" become "Do not want!!!" in the Chinese version**, which while in possession of that certain... je ne sais quoi seems like it would be a bit of a deathbed mouthful.

** Props to Lauren for that delightful piece of cultural trivia!

Nimble Jugglers That Deceive

What better way to bury a news story than to sneak it through on a day when the vast majority of Americans are guaranteed to be distracted by mountains of tryptophan or embarrassing antics courtesy drunken co-workers? Thanks to the internet, I bring you the top ten most common ways to bury a news story.

My favorite technique is the Friday-afternooner. Did you know that the Environmental Protection Agency lowered the clean air standards about a month ago? Me neither. But you know who did? People who watched the news at 4:30 p.m. on Friday, November 15. So that would be, um, my retired world history teacher, that weird guy who works at the gas station, and Karl Rove.

Go Team Democracy!

Peeve-ish

Speaking of truth in labeling (which I was), I have a proposed addendum to the current movement. Henceforth, whenever a restaurant decides to garnish a perfectly normal dish with some bizarre, unexpected and virtually impossible to remove substance, the customer must be informed in advance on penalty of death. By elephant trampling.

For example, if one were to order, I don't know, cheese and broccoli soup, and the restaurant had a habit of putting, oh, say, a gigantic mound of salsa freaking fresca on top, the server (under my proposed legislation) would have two options:

A. Inform the customer.

B. Submit to a painful, smushy death.

I know which one I'd choose.

So, petition anyone?

The Panopticon

Social theorist Michel Foucault was fascinated by the idea of the panopticon, an architectural structure for a prison wherein the cells are pin-wheeled around a central watchtower thereby creating the perfect surveillance machine. The watchtower itself is covered by one-way glass, and any given cell at any given time may be under inspection by a prison guard; conversely, at any given time, most cells are under no surveillance at all. The panopticon represents the ultimate utilitarian design. Prisoners internalize the possibility of external regulation and so begin to regulate themselves; the possible prison guard without becomes the eternal prison guard within.

The crux of Foucault's description is this:

Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers.

This, of course, predated the invention of even more efficient tools of power such as video surveillance and high-powered online search engines, but the implications are even more relevant in the wake of so pervasive a technology. For isn't that the ultimate outcome of new technologies that allow infinite, public access to all information — that we become caught up in a power situation of which we are ourselves the bearers? This is truly a boon for our elected hall monitors. We don't need to be regulated if we regulate ourselves, which is precisely what we begin to do if we may at any moment be the subject of intense external scrutiny. Admit it. You've googled yourself.

To better regulate myself, I have installed Google gadgets on my desktop, allowing me to surveil myself more thoroughly than ever before. Plus, it has a neat Magic 8-Ball feature.

I am such a tool. (Of power.)

Free Range Chicken Not So Free

Free or not, I don't eat chickens. I became a vegetarian during junior high school, ate meat during college largely due to an inadequate school cafeteria, and then stopped again once I graduated. (Yes, I did it backwards.) I am currently what's called "ovo-lacto-pesco" meaning the animal stuff I am willing to eat is comprised of eggs, dairy and fish.

I'd like to dwell a moment on the ovo in my ovo-lacto-pesco, particularly those eggs which, like Elsa the beleaguered lion cub, were born free. Or so I thought. When I buy eggs at the hippie-dippie-you-clearly-live-in-California grocery store where I shop, I purchase free range eggs — ostensibly lain by chickens who roam free and happy through majestic fields, dropping eggs thither and yon to be collected at the leisure of their kindly keepers. Like most product pitches that sound too good to be true and thus are, my cursory research into the nature of so-called free range poultry products indicates that animals living under "free range" or "cage free" conditions are actually not much better off than their no-range counterparts. Please, hold the gasps of disbelief.

Basically, instead of putting each bird in its own cage, most free range birds are crowded together into tiny sheds in which they can technically move about, and have a hole in the wall through which a few birds at a time can travel outside into a tiny pen; however, inch for inch they're just as hemmed in as they would be in cages, and their general health and welfare is just as poor. This is clearly a far cry from the gleefully sunbathing chickens portrayed on the front of your garden-variety (or should I say crappy-shed-variety) free range egg carton. But hey — so long as a determined, intrepid chicken could, while obeying the laws of physics, gain temporary access to some modicum of sunlight, the U.S. Department of Agriculture will allow labels such as "free range" and "animal friendly" (not a legal term) to grace the front of the packaging.

"Oh, how misleading!" you say. "I am shocked — shocked — to learn that these mercenary farmers can get away with such dastardly deeds! Will no one think of the chickens?"

Well, you can. There's an ongoing truth in labeling campaign designed to target these types of misleading statements on the food products you consume. Alternately, you can wipe your KFC-grease-covered fingers on your jeans and close this window.

Just be glad I'm not posting pictures.

Unto Us a Day Off Is Born

This blog is officially on vacation until the 26th, so for now I leave you with...

Your Moment of Zen:

The Spirit of Insert-Holiday-of-Choice-Here

Today I was at Barnes and Noble doing a bit of last-minute holiday shopping and barely made it into the store. Not because I was almost run over by a herd of ill-managed children, which I was — and why don't they have leash laws, by the way? — but due to the presence of the most adorable three-legged dog I'd seen all day . You'd think the time-frame would be a bit longer than that, but there's actually a three-legged dog I pass on his morning walk while on my way to work every day, so go figure.

I of course instantly accosted her owners, inquiring if I could introduce myself, and they (possibly fearing that I'd beat them silly with my embroidered handbag if they declined) acquiesced. After learning her life story (freeway bad, Spaniel Rescue Society good), the little tricycle and I bonded over the fact that she and I had something in common — the belief that she was utterly fabulous. Despite her missing limb, she was the embodiment of all things doggy: enthusiastic, affectionate and fuzzy. With all of the excitement, I nearly forgot that I'd gone there in the first place to be a good little capitalist, not to love all over a differently-abled spaniel. As it turns out, she was actually in front of the store as a walking, barking advertisement for the fact that the rescue society folks were manning the gift-wrap table inside... kind of like one of those little kids selling chicle down in TJ for their parents, only with more frequent access to clean water. That's actually not funny.

Anyway.

The moral of this rambling anecdote is that if a three-legged dog can have an awesome holiday sitting in front of a store having her ears pulled on by passing ill-managed children, then we humans can probably do the same.

Merry Christmukkuhkwanzyule! And watch out for freeways.

We've Come a Long Way, Baby

Sistine Chapel, located in the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City.



Pathways Church, located in the former site of an out-of-business grocery store in East San Diego County.

I feel that no further commentary is necessary.

Motherless Invention

I love gadgets. I do. Give me a remote control that doubles as a flashlight, checks my email and does the Time Warp and I'm a happy camper.

But air conditioned shoes?