Ozbervations

Observation at the Sav-On Drug tonight, 10:15 pm: The receipt is congratulating me on my GOTH ANNIVERSARY. I'm not a goth. I didn't think the drugstore was goth. What the... Oh. They're having their 60th anniversary.

Observation on turning from Pacific Coast Highway onto Brookhurst Avenue: Christ on a crutch, "MEDUSA" is a terrible name for a hair salon.

Observation while driving up Brookhurst thinking about New Orleans and Burning Man: One group paid for an anarchy vacation of sex 'n' drugs 'n' art in a remote location. Another group was dumped into an anarcho-klepto-military dystopia by a colossal storm and a wicked, inept government. The Mad Max vacation and the Waterworld calamity at the same time. Amusement park anarchy is the new conspicuous consumption and Burning Man is the new Club Med. There's no experience we can't turn into a dude ranch for the children of the middle class.

Observation while traveling west on Victoria Avenue toward Pomona Avenue: That disoriented-looking old person carrying grocery bags in the middle of the opposing lane of traffic is probably not doing so well. Let's call the Costa Mesa P.D., shall we?

Observation on checking email when I returned home: Well look at that. The objectivist "future Heinlein heroine" woman who blogged for a lover and travel companion to accompany her on vacation found a kindred spirit, a fellow named Terrence Chan, and they're off to enjoy umbrella drinks, the Virtue of Selfishness, and finding out what other extensive requirements they have in potential mates. Bon Voyage, Jacqueline!

Don't believe the hype

Watch out for hysterical urban legends, unconfirmed reports, and exaggerated nightmare scenarios about looting in New Orleans. There's looting and violence all right, and when all is told there are going to be some sad and frightening stories about it.

But who benefits from a lot of scare talk about masses of armed looters, snipers, and great crowds of the unwashed attacking rescue personnel? The people who want to blame the victims, that's who.

All those officials who failed us are going to talk long and loud about the breakdown in civil order and the need for zero tolerance and lots of soldiers with guns. Don't forget the real villains here: the people who didn't give the evacuation order in time, the local agencies that left people on their own without transportion to leave, the federal agencies that pulled the funding for the levees, the President who couldn't be bothered leaving his vacation until the corpses were floating already. They'd just love for you to concentrate on all those grimy underclass losers stealing beer and taking potshots at helicopters.

Keep your focus. The "grownups" in suits who were supposed to spend our tax money to save lives stood around while Americans died. If they try to look good later by shooting some pathetic losers for boosting a beer, it's doubling their own crime.

I move for a bad court thingy.

In the middle of the Gulf Coast remix of the Raft of the Medusa, we have the oddly synchronistic criminal "failure" of a hedge fund called Bayou, as beautifully reported by the Wall Street Journal. Entire latest article is behind the cut, because it's sorta long. Here are the salient points for TL;DR purposes:

1. $60 million "unaccounted for"!
   
   
2. $101 million turned over to a gang of Arizona con artists who said they'd make up the shortfall for the fund manager!
   
   
3. Fund manager's attorneys have withdrawn from the case due to unspecified ethical considerations. Read: Oh shit we can't defend this guy, oh shit he's so fucking dirty, oh shit shit shit!
   
   
4. Sham accounting firm! Sham accounting firm! Sham accounting firm!
   
   
5. $3.5 million in Spongebob Squarepants checks!
   
   
6. CFO writes suicide note, is checked into mental hospital!

I tell ya if we're gonna fix this country, we have to run it like a business. That means into the ground after looting it, in case you're curious.

( story )

Three Things.

From 2001, here's a Scientific American article that accurately describes what just happened.

From this week, here's a speculative news article about shoddy archaeology. My favorite sentence is "Barkai is convinced this study is immensely valuable, despite the methodological flaws.". The article is oddly truncated, as though the Templars got the reporter in mid sentence.

From tonight, this very strange boy wants me to post my pictures in many, many spammy Flickr groups. One is interested to find out that he is a qualified computer technologist and was president of the Gardening society at 11 years old, also Initiator/Founder of Global Online University! What the...

Looting: My story.

The word "looting" is a hot button. Push it and people reliably react with their prejudices about poverty, property, race, violence, and law. Use it on me, and I get a tape replay from the Los Angeles riots of '92. Here's what I saw then, and what I learned.

In 1992 I was living in West Los Angeles and working at home and downtown. I had a small failing DIY medical records business and my best friend Greg had a small failing DIY courier business. I used his courier business to deliver my work to California Hospital, which is in the industrial part of Downtown Los Angeles. I was also working part-time at Good Samaritan Hospital, which is just west of Downtown in the Westlake/Pico-Union district.

On the day of the Rodney King police beating verdict I was at a computer store run by some Iranian friends. When the news came out they shook their heads and said "There will be a riot". I didn't believe them and thought they were exaggerating or misinterpreting an adopted country. I went home that night feeling awful about the miscarriage of justice.

( Good morning. Your city is on fire. )

So, that's what I see when I hear the word "looting". Sad, fucked-up people making life worse for other people who aren't much better off. And civil unrest means theft, and score-settling violence, and opportunistic crimes of all kinds. Exaggeration isn't necessary; excuses cannot excuse.

The questions to be asked, when looting and civil unrest occur, are: How did we get to this point? Who was in charge, and what could they have done better? And what problems, still unsolved, mean that this may happen again? If we can't focus properly on the immediate and long-term causes of communal violence, we'll get ample opportunity in the future to appropriate someone else's misery for our own failed ideologies.

what

Greeting Card Fashion.

Unpopular suggestion

Conservative religious types are saying that the destruction of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast was an angry God's response to abortion, or homosexuality, or our failure to teach the Ten Commandments in schools.

A lot of countries abort, and tolerate gays, and fail to teach Biblical morality in schools. I haven't seen a lot of massive natural disasters in Sweden or New Zealand lately, though.

I wonder how many conservative Christians have considered that the Old Testament God of Wrath might be upset at us over the war?

Let's dare the nation's pastors to ask that question this Sunday. Amos, Isaiah, and Jeremiah would.