Amtrak

“17 Hours to Chicago?”

“You have to understand,” I replied. “Taking the train isn’t about getting there; It’s about going there.”

Time Out: New MacBook Wheel!

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

I’ll buy almost anything if it’s shiny and made by Apple.

Discrimination is Expensive

TSA Officials And JetBlue Pay $240,000 To Settle Discrimination Charges

In a victory for constitutional rights, two Transportation Security Authority (TSA) officials and JetBlue Airways have paid Raed Jarrar $240,000 to settle charges that they illegally discriminated against the U.S. resident based on his ethnicity and the Arabic writing on his t-shirt. TSA and JetBlue officials prevented Jarrar from boarding his August 2006 flight at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport until he agreed to cover his shirt, which read “We Will Not Be Silent” in English and Arabic, and then forced him to sit at the back of the plane. The American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a federal civil rights lawsuit on Jarrar’s behalf in August 2007.

Raed in the Middle: I Won

Pandemonium at the Capitol

Capitol police officers tried to clear a path for Mr. (Roland) Burris. “You can’t keep a regular citizen from walking into the Capitol,” one officer shouted.

Somehow, Citizen Burris made his way to the office of Nancy Erickson, the secretary of the Senate, to whom he presented his credentials, only to have her reject them. Afterward, the aspiring legislator stood in the rain outside and declared, “Members of the media, my name is Roland Burris, the junior senator from the State of Illinois.”

Not yet, he isn’t. The problem for Mr. Burris, of course, is that he was named to the seat by the embattled Illinois governor, Rod R. Blagojevich. Ms. Erickson had already said that the appointment letter forwarded by the governor’s office did not comply with Rule II of the Senate’s standing rules, which requires signatures of both the governor and the secretary of state.

Burris Is Blocked From Taking Illinois Senate Seat – NYTimes.com.

iPhoto ‘09 Knows Your Face

iPhoto ‘09

Building on its predecessor which introduced a feature called “Events” that let you organize photos around specific events, iPhoto ‘09 introduces “Faces.” The software incorporates facial recognition features. The software identifies faces of people in the pictures you take. You can assign them names, then iPhoto adds a snapshot. It uses facial recognition to identify the same person across multiple photos.

Expo: Apple introduces iLife ‘09 | Macworld.

Apple Announces New MacBook Pro 17″, DRM-free songs

From Macworld 2009

It’s getting close to time for an upgrade. I may just have to get one of these laptops.

10:12AM “I’m proud to show you the new 17 inch MacBook Pro — it’s the world’s lightest and thinnest 17 inch notebook.”

I stopped buying from the apple store because of the digital-rights management. Apple noticed:

10:28AM “By the end of this quarter, all 10 million songs will be DRM free.” About time!

Read more at Engadget.

Action: Anti-Gay Killer Doesn’t Deserve Parole, Write Now

Pam’s House Blend:: SC: Murderer of gay man could be out in 8 months

Stephen Andrew Moller attacked a man for being gay, and killed him. The case was not strong enough for “murder” in South Carolina, so the killer’s manslaughter rap will get him out of jail way too soon. This man needs to rot for a while. Write a letter to the parole board.

From Pam’s House Blend:

What can you do?

The parole board is currently conducting an investigation to decide whether to allow him to have a parole hearing, so it is critical that they hear from you that Stephen Andrew Moller violently murdered Sean Kennedy and should serve the remainder of his sentence! Please consider writing a letter to the parole board and ask them to deny Stephen Moller parole and serve out his sentence. In your letter, please remind the board of the violent and unprovoked nature of Moller’s offense and the pain and suffering it has caused in the lives of Sean Kennedy’s family and friends. If you have the time, please write a personal letter by hand or by computer, as those will be the most effective, and if you knew Sean or his family personally, please include that information. Also, please let Elke know if you send a letter and if possible, send her a copy of the letter, so she can have copies to take with her to the parole hearing. Be sure to include Moller’s full name and ID number:

Stephen Andrew Moller – SCDC ID # 00328891.

Send your letters to: Department of Probation Pardon and Parole Services 2221 Devine Street, Suite 600, PO Box 50666 Columbia SC 29250

Pam’s House Blend:: SC: Murderer of gay man could be out in 8 months.

Mulatto on the Metro, and in the White House

I was on the Red Line yesterday morning, when a young woman caught my attention to show we are both reading The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging. I was on my way out the sliding doors as she wrote her blog name on the final page of my copy.

In visiting her blog, she reminded me that we don’t have a black president, we have a mulatto president.

It is a beautiful thing we have a mulatto President, for we now have a leader, who, by his very existence, represents the epitome of the American Dream of racial harmony.

mulatto mayhem: The American Dream

I wholly admit now that I am mostly ignorant of this word. Wikipedia reminds me that it may be considered “pejorative and demeaning” in some cultures. But we don’t really use it here in the U.S., so I don’t know how people view it. Is it an insult? An “Invisible American Identity?” The woman on the train says she wants to blog to “curb the negative connotation of the word mulatto itself.”

An interestng conversation post by “Ben” on mulatto.org:

To be honest, when I first heard of Obama I never wanted him to become to Democrat President elect incase he won because the media with write him inaccuratly in history as the first Black President. That has happened and I’m very angry that the media are constantly referring to the mixed race Obama with a white up bringing as Black or African American. His white heritage has almost been erased from his public identity. And I find the smugness of both black people and white liberals with them referring to him as black really irritating. I can’t tell you how much anger I have to all these hypocrites who want to live in a multicultural society and less racist one but insist on referring to anyone who’s mixed race or has black ancestry as black.

My ignorance comes from growing up in a completely white suburb in a generally non-racist family. It’s easy to not realize how an innocent comment might be misunderstood to be something heinous. A friend of mine (yes, black) loves to tell the story of how, as we packed up a group picnic years ago, I was prepared to offer our perfectly good extra food to a family reunion at a neighboring pavilion. “Yes, Joe,” he said to me, “You walk your lilly-white ass up to that black family reunion and ask them if they want some fried chicken and watermelon.” I looked down and realized that was the bulk of the remaining food. I just figured they might be hungry.

By calling Obama “mulatto,” am I using a word innocently, or am I offering him fried chicken and watermelon? Is Ben’s anger at Obama being called “black” justified?

Pirates or Protectors?

Johann Hari has another researched point of view:

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: “Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury – you name it.” Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to “dispose” of cheaply. When I asked Mr Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: “Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention.”

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia’s seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by overexploitation – and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m-worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are being stolen every year by illegal trawlers. The local fishermen are now starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: “If nothing is done, there soon won’t be much fish left in our coastal waters.”

This is the context in which the “pirates” have emerged.

Johann Hari – You are Being Lied to About Pirates