If you’re like me, then sometimes you find that these new technological phenomena kind of sneak up on you until they break out and become highly popular. I didn’t know much about CSS, for example, until I started doing this blog and had to use it to design the appearance you see now. I’d seen it in other sites without knowing what it was. Probably I’d heard it mentioned many times, but didn’t bother to find about it.

Podcasting was the same thing. I’d heard about it, guessed it had to do with recordings you could listen to on your iPod, but hadn’t really figured it out much beyond that. But today, Apple released iTunes v. 4.9, which includes podcasting just as it does Internet radio and its popular music store, as a source of media beyond your personal collection ripped from CDs.

So what is a Podcast, exactly? Well, as I suspected, it’s an audio file you can download from the Internet and listen to on your iPod, or other iPod-like digital music player. But there are two features that make it different from a standard audio download: first, it’s not just one audio file, it’s a recurring “show” with new “episodes” posted as time goes by. And second, it uses RSS technology so that when a new episode is available, your podcasting program (such as iTunes) gets notified and either tells you something new is available, or just downloads it automatically if you have subscribed. When you connect your iPod to your computer, the episodes go onto your iPod and you can listen to them. Or you can listen to them on your computer via your music app.

What is notable here is that you don’t have to be a professional to be a podcaster. Anyone can do it. You might even get listed in the searchable podcasting directories, such as the one that Apple now provides with iTunes. You could, in effect, start your own radio show, just like blogging made it possible to start your own publication of whatever you want to write about. You need the ability to record and translate that recording into an MP3 file, then upload it to the Internet. But you also need to know how to submit the file with an RSS feed, which is not always so simple. Expect shareware or freeware applications offering just this ability to start appearing in large numbers very soon.

And if I can figure out how to get podcasts going for this blog, I’ll let you know how I did it, as best I can.

Okay, it’s a bit later, and more detailed reports are out. However, a few things still seem unclear, and I’m trying to sort through them. What seems apparent is that the initial reports (should have known better than to take CNN’s word) were incomplete, and apparently only reported on the Kentucky rulings, and not the Texas ruling (or were simply wrong).

First off, the court was very clearly split on the issue, with the swing votes of Breyer and O’Connor making the law here. The case where two Kentucky courtrooms had framed copies of the Ten Commandments hanging in the courtrooms were ruled clearly unconstitutional, because they “went too far” in promoting religion. How that is, is still unclear from news reports at this time.

On the other hand, a 6-foot granite monument of the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the Texas capitol was ruled constitutional, on the premise that it was a historical display and not a religious statement (this is what the press is conveying; I find differently below from reading the actual decisions). Again, the news reports were, at best, nebulous as to how this was determined. The reports referred to the frieze in the Supreme Court which represented Christian as well as other religious legal icons. However, to my knowledge, the Texas monument did not refer to other religions, nor was there any sign that the other monuments nearby represented other faiths–however, there was a hint that since nearby monuments were historical, albeit not religious, that somehow watered down the Ten Commandments display enough to make it acceptable.

One thing that is clear: the court ruled that these displays must be ruled on on a case-by-case basis. In other words, the infamous “I know it when I see it” standard.

This from the news reports, which I read first. The actual decisions, which I read afterward, are of course much more detailed. One thing that stands out, as I mentioned above, is that O’Connor and Breyer were the real movers and shakers in today’s decisions.

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First, the Kentucky courtroom cases [PDF file]. The majority decision clearly states that the intent of making the displays must be secular, but that knowing intent is very difficult. However, it is also noted that this nebulous gray area is not to be taken advantage of, and that claims of secularity which are obviously a “sham” cannot be accepted. Furthermore, the attempt to legitimize the TC displays by surrounding them with other historical documents did not work, at least in part because the other documents highlighted religious statements within historical decisions–in effect, they attempted to bolster the idea that the U.S. is a Christian nation. The written statement that the display was “in remembrance and honor of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Ethics” and other statements of obvious religious endorsement, including an endorsement of former Judge Roy Moore–these probably helped clarify that these displays were more than just a little clearly intended as religious endorsement. (Not to mention the fact that Jesus and the Ten Commandments come from slightly disparate areas of the Bible.)

In the dissent, Scalia rather unprofessionally invoked the country’s reaction in the wake of 9/11, when the president said “God Bless America” and someone from Europe wished his leader could invoke God as well. In other words, simply because political leaders invoke religion in a display that stands simply because it has not been challenged, that proves religion belongs in government. Oy. Scalia goes on to quote religious incursions into public matters which were not challenged and therefore persisted, using them as bludgeons to say that it was OK to do this sort of stuff. In other words, this is based less on the Constitution, legal precedent or court decisions than it is on what religious fundamentalists have gotten away with in the course of this nation’s history. Swell. Glad it was the dissenting opinion.

And you can’t say I didn’t see this coming; four months ago, I clearly stated that “these religious incursions, each one violating the principle of church and state, are used to justify the next step, the new religious incursion.” And that’s exactly what Scalia was trying to say in his dissent. Did I call it, or did I call it?

On this decision, the split was: SOUTER, STEVENS, O’CONNOR, GINSBURG, and BREYER in the majority; SCALIA, REHNQUIST, THOMAS and KENNEDY dissenting.

The second [PDF file], and less fortunate decision was about the Texas case. Breyer was the swing vote on this one.

The primary decision in the finding supported by the wingnut quartet was based upon the idea that the monument was provided by an organization and that “the State had a valid secular purpose in recognizing and commending the Eagles for their efforts to reduce juvenile delinquency.” Furthermore, that a “reasonable observer, mindful of history, purpose, and context, would not conclude that this passive monument conveyed the message that the State endorsed religion.”

Rehnquist unashamedly slipped in a quote which said, in part, that

“the Founding Fathers believed devotedly that there was a God and that the unalienable rights of man were rooted in Him is clearly evidenced in their writings, from the Mayflower Compact to the Constitution itself.”

Now, I haven’t studied the Mayflower Compact, but I can say with a certain amount of confidence is that it is not a legal document which is currently binding. What I do know is that the Constitution does not in any way, shape or form express the devotion to the belief that there is a God and that our rights are rooted in that. The quote borrows language from the Declaration of Independence, not a legal document, and applies it to the Constitution, which not only does not support religion, but in fact negates its place in government, and that where religion is mentioned in the body of the Constitution it is only to point out that religion cannot be injected into governmental proceedings, to wit: Article VI, Clause 3, stating that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” A Constitutional provision which is blatantly violated, as any politician who chooses not to add the unofficial “So help me God” is pilloried in our “secular” government. And yet Rehnquist uses this very violation to uphold his decision, using it as a jumping board upon which he bases his decision. What a sham.

But Breyer was the swing vote that decided this in truth, and since his opinion was separate, it’s going to be the gold standard for the future. Fortunately, it has been noted in the press that “Breyer didn’t join the court’s lead opinion, written by Chief Justice Rehnquist. That means Breyer’s reasoning will set the controlling standard in future cases.” I hope that news reporter’s observation is true, because Rehnquist’s writing was a piece of biased crap wandering far from the truth of the Establishment clause, whereas Breyer’s decision is somewhat more reasonable.

Breyer’s argument is not based on the bullshit idea that since one can trot out a one-sided, purposefully biased list of religious incursions, many of them indirect at best, into government territory, while carefully ignoring the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, that this equals a legal basis for allowing further incursions violating the First Amendment. Breyer, instead, bases his decision closer to O’Connor’s in the Kentucky case, wherein Breyer states that it’s not always so easy to see what the intent was, and therefore we can’t be certain that it’s an attempt to proselytize. In effect, we’re giving these people the benefit of the doubt, but maintaining securely that the Establishment clause truly forbids an endorsement of a religion.

He also backs up O’Connor in the context of the legal test of secularity vs. religious intent:

Neither can this Court’s other tests readily explain the Establishment Clause’s tolerance, for example, of the prayers that open legislative meetings… ; certain references to, and invocations of, the Deity in the public words of public officials; the public references to God on coins, decrees, and buildings; or the attention paid to the religious objectives of certain holidays, including Thanksgiving. …

If the relation between government and religion is one of separation, but not of mutual hostility and suspicion, one will inevitably find difficult borderline cases. And in such cases, I see no test-related substitute for the exercise of legal judgment. … That judgment is not a personal judgment. Rather, as in all constitutional cases, it must reflect and remain faithful to the underlying judgment purposes of the Clauses, and it must take account of context and consequences measured in light of those purposes. While the Court’s prior tests provide useful guideposts—and might well lead to the same result the Court reaches today … –no exact formula can dictate a resolution to such fact-intensive cases.

This is the “I know it when I see it” ruling I mentioned above.

However, Breyer does allow a less-than-satisfying loophole that fundamentalists may swarm through in the future, saying that since the Texas monument imbues “proper standards of social conduct … [and] a historical message (about a historic relation between those standards and the law),” the monument contains a secular message in addition to the religious one. That’s cutting it pretty thin for my tastes, and I have the feeling that the fundies are looking at those words and drooling at the prospect of shamming their way right through those words into erecting countless more religious monuments on public land. “Oooo! Social conduct and history! We can fake that easy!”

Another disturbing element is Breyer’s wording that since the Texas monument is not in a location which “suggests little or nothing of the sacred.” I find that unsettling because again it could be used as a loophole: put a religious endorsement in a place where there’s nothing else religious around, and you’re golden.

Breyer ends with:

That kind of practice is what we have here. I recognize the danger of the slippery slope. Still, where the Establishment Clause is at issue, we must “distinguish between real threat and mere shadow.” … Here, we have only the shadow.

In light of these considerations, I cannot agree with today’s plurality’s analysis. … Nor can I agree with JUSTICE SCALIA’s dissent in McCreary County…. I do agree with JUSTICE O’CONNOR’s statement of principles in McCreary County…, though I disagree with her evaluation of the evidence as it bears on the application of those principles to this case.

REHNQUIST, SCALIA, KENNEDY, THOMAS, and BREYER were in the majority; STEVENS, GINSBURG, O’CONNOR and SOUTER dissented.

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So, what are we left with?

As some have pointed out, a somewhat conflicted message. But the good news is that the Establishment clause has been firmly upheld, and though Breyer has introduced a few loopholes that you can be certain the fundies will try to take advantage of, the basic principle that a display must be secular and not an endorsement of religion stands pretty strongly in place.

More good news than bad, but it could have been a lot worse.

News just out this moment: the Supreme Court, at the end of its term, decided (and quite rightly might I say) that displays of the Ten Commandments on public property are unconstitutional. The weasel claim that these monuments are of “historical” significance only didn’t fly. Score one for the constitution. Bill of Rights: 1, Wingnut Fundies: 0.

More details later.

Went out looking for birds today, and though I found quite a few, they were all the same species: the Great Tit. So it wasn’t the best of birdwatching days, but I did get some good shots, and when I visited the Tama Cemetery, found a few photogenic cats. Apparently, the cats like the area for the same reason the birdwatchers do, but obviously with different intentions!

The first cat was taking a nice, sprawling nap right smack atop a family grave marker. Cats don’t much mind where they are when it comes to resting. I’m not sure if the Yoshida family would mind…

All four photos today, by the way, come with larger versions; just click on any of the images to get the 1000-pixel-wide enlargement.

This particular Tom was hanging about with a very pretty Calico, which was a lot more approachable.

As for the birds, it looks like this is the time for the immature chicks to break out and follow the folks around. Here’s a pair of still-immature Greats in a tree off of the Tama River:

And here are three immature Greats enjoying the bath at Sengenyama Park:

While the 1000-pixel version is good, I like the non-reduced 1500-pixel version even better.

So as I said, not a good day for variety, but some very good shots came from it.

Haven’t you heard about this war? Christians in America have been persecuted, put down, and kept from practicing their faith for a long, long time now. It’s a wonder that any Christians are left in America, after having their beliefs quashed so thoroughly.

For Christ’s sake.

This unbelievable canard was brought up yet again by conservative Representative John Hostettler, when Democrats protested against coercive proselytization at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Hostettler said:

“Mr Chairman, the long war on Christianity in America continues today on the floor of the House of Representatives. It continues unabated with aid and comfort to those who would eradicate any vestige of our Christian heritage being supplied by the usual suspects, the Democrats.”

Liberal Representative David Obey–a Catholic–demanded the words be struck from the record, withdrawn by the speaker.

But this illustrates something I have spoken about again and again: a group of people with unparalleled power and influence crying in outrage about how they have been so unfairly persecuted and marginalized. And its always the same groups: white males, Christian fundamentalists, and conservatives. White males crying that their well-deserved superiority in all things is slipping, bled away in the form of “special privileges” to minorities and women; Christians, mostly but not all fundamentalists, crying about how persecuted they are because their religion cannot permeate every corner of public life; and conservatives, weeping in rage that they only have the presidency, the Congress, the courts–but those nasty, selfish Democrats are denying them five percent of their court appointments! All three groups–though all too often they are the very same people–have unprecedented power and influence in the United Stated, and represent what might be called a privileged super-class. Crying persecution is incredible, and yet they somehow actually seem to believe it’s true.

By the way, remember Dean’s recent statement about the Republican party being the party of “White Christians”? It occurs to me that while the GOP might be a slightly bigger tent than that, the white Republican Christians are the cross-section that runs through these powerful, inveterate whiners. One thing you cannot deny, white Christians certainly dominate that party.

Maybe if we stopped persecuting them so badly they’d shut their yaps.

Want a good, funny, education-oriented story, complete with moral? Read this. Via Cosmic Buddha.

The original link is broken. Here’s the same story, at the bottom of the page. Snopes, as usual, gives the dirt on the story’s origins.

An interesting fold-out photo from Vanity Fair. Click on the image to see a larger version.

So today I saw the film, and felt like giving a review of it. I’ll make a general, non-spoiler review here, above the fold, and give a more lengthy, spoiler-laden commentary hidden under a link at the bottom of this entry (as seen on the main page).

In short, it is a lot like I expected–a special effects festival with mythological themes and the trademark corny dialog so much in Lucas’ style. There is a bigger story underlaying the usual Star Wars flash, the transformation of Anakin to the dark side, a dimension in excess of the past Star Wars films. And then there’s the stitching-together of the trilogies, with Lucas working to make the end of this film match with the beginning of the original film.

As a Star Wars film in the usual sense, the SFX & mythology, this film was brilliant. The visuals are both extraordinary and at the same time hardly worth noting because that’s what you’d expect from a Star Wars film, and no less. Special visual effects fill the movie, wall-to-wall, and it’s a treat for the eyes, from the beautiful to the gruesome. As for the mythology, much is made of that in this film; talk about the light and dark sides of the force, the nature of life and death, the corruption of jealousy and greed, of selfishness and selflessness. Even so, several answers that I expected to see answered in this film about the Star Wars universe were not–and even a few new questions were introduced. But if you like the speculation and the ability to play with the universe with your imagination, there’s nothing wrong with that.

In the sense of this film being about a man’s descent into darkness, Anakin’s transformation into the dark Lord Darth Vader, the film does well to begin and end the process, but falters at the key juncture right in the middle. All the elements, all the reasons are there for Anakin to make the leap–but this is not the kind of story that Lucas is adept at telling, and he falters here. Still, if you can get past that one critical point, perhaps filling in the blanks yourself, then the rest is very well executed.

And then as far as the film is intended to bring us up to the beginning of the original Star Wars film, everything is brought together very well. In fact, it may be brought together a little too well, as there are so many elements that had to be stitched together. It’s hard to be surprised by this film, because you already know exactly what’s going to happen. Still, many of these events are like a familiar echo, a nostalgia reaching back to the first time you went to see the Star Wars films, and are entertaining in that respect alone. When Padme names the twins, when you first see the Darth Vader helmet put on, when you see Obi-wan pick up Anakin’s light saber, knowing it will go to Luke–all of these are elements you expect and have been waiting for, and they work. But too much of the rest seems almost too intentionally laid out, like Yoda dictating where the children will go and how they’ll be raised–like Lucas needs to telegraph all the points, forcing them into their rightful places instead of being able to let the audience assume that things will happen naturally, as the logical thing to do. Again, if you’re able to set that aside, it’s great fun to watch it all come into place, even if some of the pieces are a bit forced.

So as a Star Wars film, it’s great; but as a drama with a believable storyline, it’s very good, but could have been better.

More below the fold…
Read more…

Why is there a troop shortage? With so many Republicans saying that there is a “moral imperative” to fight in Iraq, why Republicans of fighting age not signing up in droves?

The reasons given by Young Republicans at their convention in Los Angeles are stupid and self-serving. Among them (via DKos):

“Frankly, I want to be a politician. I’d like to survive to see that. … [I would volunteer only if the United States faced a dire troop shortage or] if there’s another Sept. 11.”

If there’s a dire troop shortage? With recruiting for the military falling to all-time lows, tens of thousands of soldiers based around the world taken from their duties to fill in the ever-increasing void, the national guard strained to its limits, soldiers torn from family and losing jobs to be sent in for two or sometimes even three tours of duty, the back-door draft… and this young right-wing twit thinks that there’s no shortage? Either they’re too stupid to see the obvious or are just giving a charade of an excuse to chicken out while demanding others go in their place. Which is better?

And what’s this BS about “surviving to be a politician”? Is that why all the top Republicans are draft dodgers? They’re too chicken? What happened to the warrior statesman? What happened to ‘doing your part’? I guess they don’t like their chances well enough to risk doing their duty for their country for what they claim is a moral imperative. I don’t demand that someone has to have served in the military in order to be a politician, but I do demand that they remain consistent with their stated principles–and if they believe the war is necessary, if they consider it an imperative, and are of sound body and fighting age, then they are hypocrites not to go. And while hypocrisy sits well with hard-core right-wing Republicans, it doesn’t with most Americans.

“If there was a need presented, I would go.”

So I guess a dire troops shortage or a moral imperative is not a good enough “need.” But more than that:

“I physically probably couldn’t do a whole lot [in Iraq]. … I think I could do more here. … We don’t have to be there physically to fight it.”

And they call liberals elitists? “Oh, I am too good and talented to waste as cannon fodder. Let the underclass serve that purpose while I sit back at home and tell people what to do.” Swell.

The closest anyone else got to saying they’d volunteer was to admit being “torn” over the idea, and they would “consider” the possibility.

There are your “patriots” for you. I guess the word ‘sacrifice’ is not mentioned in the Republican creed.

Well, I haven’t done birds for a while, so let’s get back to that a bit, eh? The weather should be good over the next week, and midterms have been graded, so I might have a bit of time to do more than just the incidental birdwatching.

I visited the Tama River a few times over the past few days, and I have to say that it’s like a change in the cast of characters. The ducks are all gone (though you can still spot some garden-variety types in the now-water-filled rice paddies nearby), the egrets are rather scarce, and the cormorants have gone elsewhere. The sparrows and starlings have remained. But there are a few new species here as well. The first and most startling was the appearance of the Little Tern (Koajisashi • コアジサシ). Tokyo is pretty far north for this bird’s range, but I saw a pair fishing by the side of the river. It was hard to catch them in flight because of movement and focus, but it was fun to watch. They would fly up and down a small stretch of the riverside, and when they spotted something, they’d go into hover mode, staying in one position for several seconds (see shot below) before diving down and snatching a fish from the water below.

Next, and not quite as clear in the photos is what I am fairly sure is a Long-billed Plover (Ikaru-chidori • イカルチドリ). I saw a few Little Ringed Plovers at the Wild Bird Park, and this one is similar, but the lack of a yellow rim around the eye and the specific white-and-black coloring above the bill seems to tag this one as a Long-billed Plover. Hard to catch, I only got a few blurry shots, as you can see. This bird camouflaged extremely well into the rocks along the beach, seeming to disappear most of the time.

And here’s the definitive shot with the head coloring:

Also on hand was a Japanese Wagtail and its immature offspring.

Then there was this guy, which I’m pretty sure was an Oriental Goldfinch, but it seemed to have almost too much red for that. However, I can’t guess what else it might have been:

This one I also couldn’t identify. There are a bunch of them making an somewhat of a racket in the tall grass, but they almost never came out above it to pose for a photo. I thought it might be an immature starling (the long pointed beak and general shape of the head and body seem to match starlings), but the tail seems too long for that. I think it might be a Japanese Swamp Warbler (Oosekka • オオセッカ), as the general appearance is similar and the habitat is right–but the identification is far from certain.

This guy was a complete question mark for me; I only got the one photo. Maybe an immature wagtail? The coloring seems a bit strange for that…

I should really download the category page for my birdwatching blog entries and take my PowerBook into the Japan Wild Bird Society shop near Shinjuku. They could probably help me identify the ten or so species I haven’t been able the get yet. For later.

And then there were the swallows. Everywhere. These things are out on the river en masse, and they’re flying around all over the place. Hard to get images of them like that, too–but I found a spot where they were resting. A recently-bulldozed slope along the riverside, where the end of land suddenly slopes down maybe 30 degrees until it hits the water. The swallows were flying in there to rest, and I was able to catch a few shots.

All in all, a pretty productive few days, birdwatching-wise.

Hey, a milestone passed and I didn’t even notice. My 1300th post, four posts back (Blog Spam Solution). Yes, I know it’s numbered 1326, but there were 26 posts that were tests over the past 2-years-plus and got erased, but the numbers weren’t taken back.

Okay, 1300 is not a special number. But it’s round. And another one to complement it: 700, the number of days I’ll have blogged consecutively, one week from today.

On June 8, 1977, my 13th birthday, my father announced that the whole family was going out to get donuts. This is something we did from time to time, going to the closest Winchell’s Donut shop (they had great donuts, but have long since disappeared). After we’d been driving for a while, I noticed we weren’t going to the usual shop, and my father said there was a much better store in San Jose. I wasn’t too fast to pick up on the fact that he was spoofing me; in fact, when we came in sight of the Century theaters, I exclaimed that that was where “Star Wars” was playing, and it wasn’t until we turned into the parking lot of the theater that I figured out what my birthday present was.

I was one of those kids who was dying to see the movie. At that time, exactly two weeks after its release, it was still only playing in very few theaters, such as the Century in San Jose and the Coronet in San Francisco. Naturally, I was ecstatic to find out I’d be seeing it that day.

After the film ended, we were walking out to the parking lot when my mother, who’d left the group, caught up with us and gave me something: the button you see pictured here. She had seen one of the theater ushers wearing it, and had asked if she could buy one. When the usher said they weren’t for sale, my mother started to tell the story about how much her son loved that movie and would die to have a button like that, as only mothers can do. Defenseless, the usher gave up his own button, which my mother then presented to me.

Okay, call me geeky, call me a nerd (I fully expect someone to do that in the comments), but I still have the button and I’m going to quietly wear it tomorrow when I go see Revenge of the Sith. (Which is the first day it is showing in Japan, in a delayed release here.) I’ve actually never worn it before, not to any subsequent Star Wars movie screenings (though I probably did wear it to school a couple of times 28 years ago). But this being the last film, I figure, why not? (Actually, a search on Google showed several people with the identical pin had the same idea already. So I can’t be the geekiest, so what?)

And just in case you were wondering, no, it’s not really that valuable as a collectible. Someone on EBay is selling a similar one for $6, though this guy is asking $20 for the one identical to mine. Not that I’d ever part with it–its sentimental value is way too high.

I’ve been using my new Powerbook with 512 MB of RAM, the pre-installed amount, awaiting the delivery of a new 1 GB RAM module. Just got it this morning, and installed it about an hour ago. Got 1.5 GB of RAM now.

Man, what a difference that makes!

My first test with it was to use Virtual PC, which I could now assign 512 MB of RAM all by itself. With the new 1.67 GHz CPU and max RAM for the app, using Windows XP is damn snappy! On my old TiBook (with half the CPU speed and half the RAM I’ve got now), I used to have to wait several seconds for the screen to redraw and for windows and apps to open. Now using that particular CPU- and RAM-intensive app is much smoother; I almost don’t notice that I’m not using a PC.

Even outside of VPC, I could tell that the memory shortage was slowing me down, causing problems when I had several apps open at once. I knew the extra RAM would make a difference–but was still surprised at how much of a difference it made.

One thing I did notice: Dashboard is eating a lot more memory than it was before. Tiger’s new Konfabulator-like widget module feature used to eat maybe anywhere from 2 MB to 13 MB per widget upon opening, maybe averaging at 3-4 MB each. (Though memory leaks in Dashboard would cause some widgets’ memory allocation to bloat up to dozens of MB each if you left them on long enough.) But after installing the new RAM, tripling my memory, it more than tripled Dashboard’s memory usage. One widget started out eating 30 MB of RAM, and the smallest eater was using 15 MB. Each widget was using maybe 20 MB average.

Not that I can’t afford it now; even with Virtual PC eating up nearly 600 MB or RAM total, and with Dashboard, Safari, and Ecto operating, I still have almost 500 MB of RAM free, almost my total RAM amount before the upgrade. I could open up several more apps before memory started getting tight.

I always tell my students that they should, as a matter of course, buy more memory when they get a new computer, and I’d tell the same to you. Computer makers want to offer you a machine at the lowest price they can, and one of the easiest ways to make the unit seem cheaper is to give you the minimum RAM necessary. 512 MB is quickly becoming the new norm, since 256 MB can’t really cut it so well anymore.

Of course, it’s possible you may not need extra RAM. If you only use one app at a time, if you don’t use RAM-intensive apps, and if you don’t expect to upgrade the OS or apps on your machine for its foreseeable lifetime, then you will probably be happy with what you get at the outset.

Many people are not like that, though. You may play some games with 3-D graphics, you may do photo or movie editing, or you may use apps like VPC. You will probably be opening several applications at the same time. And you will very likely upgrade both apps and operating system at some time, meaning that in a few years, your computer will be eating more memory than it does now; in this respect, adding RAM will effectively extend the lifetime of your computer, allowing you to upgrade farther into the future.

I have a friend who has a 1 GHz Athlon PC running XP. She called me up at one point and told me that she was experiencing a big problem. If she had MS Word only up and running, the computer was fine; but if she opened up another app, like Internet Explorer, suddenly her computer slowed waaay down. I asked her to go to her “My Computer” window, right-click on the icon at the left side of the title bar, select “Properties” from the pop-up menu, and report how much RAM her computer had. Turns out she only had 128 MB of RAM, and that, of course, was her problem.

Extra RAM may add a few hundred dollars to the cost of your computer, but you should see that as a part of the whole price of buying one.

One contrast between the two operating systems was one that surprised me at first. At work, there were some Windows machines in the main teacher area (it was a teacher office at a building I usually didn’t work at). I wanted to install a specific application on one of the machines to do a task requested of me by the office staff. But when one of the teachers based in that office found out I was installing an app on one of their machines, he nearly exploded, and told me never to install apps on the machines without asking first. At the time, I didn’t understand why he was so upset; after all, you can just uninstall later, right? But he insisted that one stray app could screw up other stuff–and he was right. I was just too used to the Mac way of doing things.

Recently I was trying to cut down on some of the bloat on my Windows box, so I went to the Install/Uninstall control panel, looked through the list, found several apps that I never used any more, and uninstalled them. The uninstall program obligingly did away with them, occasionally asking me if I wanted to delete shared resources; each time I said “no,” not wanting to screw up anything else on the machine. But of course, it did. Though none of the apps I deleted had anything to do with browsing or even the Internet, my copy of Mozilla promptly developed an incredibly annoying bug: every time I opened up a web page, an error message appeared, telling me that a .dll file could not be accessed. Despite this, the pages I went to all loaded fully, so as far as I could tell, the missing file probably wouldn’t affect my browsing. But the error messages persisted, and if I tried to close them, they would continue popping up immediately after I closed the last one, and would continue to do so as long as any page was loading.

As the error message suggested re-installing Mozilla, that’s what I did. I uninstalled, and then re-installed the app. No luck–the error dialog boxes kept on coming. As far as I can tell, I’ll have to wipe the hard drive clean and re-install everything before I can use Mozilla again. Fortunately, Firefox still works, so I can use that in the meantime. But what a pain.

What’s worse, the Windows uninstall app doesn’t always do the job. Sometimes it just doesn’t work when you try it. Other times it will say it worked, but when you go to the Program Files folder, you’ll still see a folder for the app with some files remaining. And, as I described above, sometimes it will remove resources and files used by or affecting other applications, even when you specify not to disturb shared resources. A damned ugly system, inconvenient and annoying.

On the Mac, it’s pretty simple: to uninstall a program, just drag the app or its enclosing folder into the trash, and empty the trash. Bam, you’re done. But doesn’t that leave files behind? Yes, but they’re usually so small that they don’t take up much disk space, and they don’t interfere with other apps. Furthermore, if you ever decide to reinstall the app you removed, all your preferences and registration info are still in place. And if you really want to get rid of the whole thing, just go to the Library folders and remove any specific files or folders in the Preference or Application Support folders; no big deal. And you never have to worry about one app’s removal screwing up something else.

I should provide a wrap-up on how the blog spam is being handled, in case this could help others with an onerous amount of spam on their sites. I seem to have found a solution that allows for most spam to be blocked or moderated. So far, despite thousands of attempts, not one spam comment or trackback has gotten through the defenses on this site since they were erected. It’s still early in the game, but I have a feeling that this solution will work. I should note that this applies only to people using Movable Type to administer their blogs.

First, a word about the different kinds of spam: first, there is blog comment spam. This is usually generated by marketers who have automated scripts that search out the comment-generating scripts used by blogs, and then use them to generate hundreds or even thousands of spam-laden comments on the blog. The spam is in the form of links either in the comment body or in the URL link allowed under the visitor’s name at the bottom of the comment. The links are not just to bring people from the blog to their advertising site, but just as much if not more to generate “Google Juice,” as more external links to their site will boost its all-important ranking in search engine result lists.

Second, there is TrackBack spam. A “TrackBack” is when someone refers to someone else’s blog post in a posting on their own site; their blog software will send a ‘ping’ to the other person’s site, informing them that their post was referenced in another blog. Often blog software will create lists of TrackBacks with a link back to the source. Spammers, again trying to get Google Juice wherever they can, send out fake pings so they can get free links again.

And finally, there is referral spam (also called “referrer spam,” often spelled “referer spam”). People who keep blogs like to know what attention they’re getting. Their web hosts usually provide statistical data, showing how many people visit their site, which pages they go to, and which sites are sending people to theirs via links. For example, if macsurfer.com creates a link on their page to one of my blog posts, people will follow that link to my site. Their arrival brings with them a string a data about them, including which site they came from via a link. This is a referral, which is counted by the stats on my site. I can see how many people followed the link from MacSurfer. Some people, happy to receive links, will obligingly set up top-referrer lists on their web pages, with links back to the nice people who sent visitors their way, as a way of saying ‘thanks.’ Spammers again take advantage of this by generating bogus automated ‘visits’ that carry falsified link data, making it look like hundreds of visitors came to the blog from the spam site, when in reality, no link and no visitors actually exist. But this faked referral spam will get them on the referrer’s list, and give them even more Google Juice.

Referral spam is loathed by site owners because it goes a long way to making site statistics useless. After all, if you want to know who is really visiting your site and you see thousands of hits from texas-holdem, porn, pharmaceutical and other commercial sites, you know the stats aren’t telling you the true story. With all that spam, it’s next to impossible to know exactly how much traffic is legitimate. Fortunately, a lot of referral spam originates from the same IP Address, and so even hundreds of spams will likely count as only a few “visitors” in the main part of your stats, making them a bit more reliable, though still altered and uncertain. But the list of referrers, the list of sites with links to yours, is utterly trashed.

Often times these tricks will not even get the spammers what they want; bloggers have more or less stopped posting top-referrer and trackback listings. But the ability to spam in massive quantities is so cheap that spammers don’t care if the return is minimal; it’s still worth their few bucks because it will likely get them enough to pay for the spamming and then some. And for the spammers, turning up the volume doesn’t cost much more, if anything at all, and so the volume of spam being sent is increasing more and more. As bloggers try to block the spam, spammers think of new ways around the defenses.

The current programs to block and filter spam usually work from blacklists. However, the blacklists only know what you’ve banned in the past, they can’t know what a new spammer looks like until you tell them unless the spammer is really obnoxious. So the new spammer, or the ever-changing new face of the spammer, is allowed through the defenses at first before the blog admin catches him and puts him on the blacklist. Once on the blacklist, future attempts to spam are automatically blocked. There are a few tricks that the new apps use to detect spam, and so the new solutions mean that very little, if indeed any, spam gets through to appear on the blog at all, even for a short time.

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So, what are the solutions?

First: MT-Blacklist. This is a long-standing spam filter that I’ve used for more than a year now. MT-Blacklist maintains a list of text strings (either words, strings with wild cards, or URLs) that the user has designated as spamworthy. Every new comment and trackback ping that comes in to the blog gets checked against this list, and is blocked if a match is found. Furthermore–and this is what wowed me the first time I used it–it has the ability to “de-spam,” which means that even if new spam has gotten past the filters, if you add a text string from the offending spam messages, MT-Blacklist could access all the archived comments and purge all the spam from there as well. These two combined features–blocking and de-spamming–made controlling spam completely possible.

Unfortunately, the de-spamming feature is missing in the new version. Movable Type itself has a comment filter in version 3, which allows you to single out comments by a common email, name, or IP address, after which you can auto-check all of them and de-spam. This will be useful, but only if the email, name or IP in a huge chunk of first-time spam that gets through is identical in multiple comment spams. However, that is all too often not the case. If Movable Type could add a filter for strings inside the comment text itself, that would plug that hole and bring back full de-spamming power.

However, as the author of MT-Blacklist pointed out here himself in a recent comment, MT-Blacklist, especially when used in conjunction with SpamLookup, blocks so much of the spam that de-spamming may not ever be a problem task. Still, it would be nice to have around just in case.

The new MT-B has some handy new features which makes catching that spam possible. One of them is the ability to filter comments with too many URLs; a common practice among spammers is to leave a comment with dozens of links. Since no real commenters do this, it’s an excellent way to filter out the spammers. MT-B will also now block comments or trackbacks which are duplicates of prior entries, another good filter against spam. MT-B will also automatically update the blacklist from the master blacklist for the app, meaning you get protection even before the spam reaches your site.

The second element to block spam, as I mentioned above, is SpamLookup. A new MT plug-in, it does something similar to MT-Blacklist, using IP addresses of spammers from a master list to help block spam. This method is called DNSBL. This plug-in also uses a good number of other defenses, including multiple-URL blocks, domain blacklist checks, and your own blacklist of text strings to force-moderate or block a comment or trackback ping, similar to MT-Blacklist.

I have both MT-Blacklist and SpamLookup installed. I am not sure which one filters before the other, but I suspect MT-Blacklist does. It catches pretty much all the comment spam. SpamLookup then gets all the trackback spam. Together, they make it extremely unlikely that much spam will get through. And what does get through–maybe one out of every thousand or so spams–gets moderated, where I can give it the boot manually, adding it to the blacklist–which brings us to:

Third, the blog software itself, Movable Type 3.1. The upgrade from version 2 to 3 brought with it very important blog spam safeguards: moderated posts and comment registration. Before, even with MT-Blacklist doing the efficient job it did, the first-time spams I mentioned before would get through, and sometimes stay up on my site for hours before I could spot them and take them down, especially if they hit during the night time here in Japan. Post moderation means that no spam gets through to the blog at all; I might have to moderate it if it doesn’t get filtered, but at least it never gets posted publicly, which is a big thing if you want to de-incentivize spammers. In addition, the Typekey registration allows commenters to post comments without having to wait for moderation, putting the onus of spam control partially on that side of the equation, and allowing legitimate commenters to bypass the moderation in a way spammers can’t.

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So these tools combined make it possible to block pretty much all of the comment and trackback spam. What remains is the referral spam. As yet, there is no fix-all for this problem, but it appears that a patch for the statistics program “AwStats” (my favorite) is doing a fairly good job at keeping most of the junk out. This patch will not de-spam your stats, but it will block any incoming referrer spam by using the MT-B blacklist file as a filter. The spammers may hit your site, but the hits don’t get counted in AwStats.

After having used it for a few weeks now, it seems to be doing its job. In May, before I got the patch, the top 25 spammers left more than 10,000 referral spams in my logs. In the first five days of June, the top 26 referrers were all spammers, and had hit me a total of 867 times between those top spammers, averaging out to about 175 new top-26 spams each day. Since the patch was installed, only 21 of the top 26 are spammers (5 legitimate referrers got back on the list!), and those spammers have a total of only 1434 hits–a total of 567 new hits over the course of 16 days, or just 35 new top-26 spams each day, meaning the major referral spam has been cut by about 80%. Some referral spam is getting through, but mostly it’s just the first-time stuff, before it gets added to the blacklist. Next month, with the patch in place from the beginning, I will be interested to see how little spam gets through at all.

The down side to the AwStats patch (aside from the fact that you need AwStats in the first place) is that it has very little documentation. Because of this, it was unclear to me how the patch would be applied. AwStats itself is a server-level app, meaning that I can’t patch the Perl script that makes AwStats run. However, it seems that only the “.conf” file for AwStats needs to be changed. Again, the project site is unclear, but seems to indicate that a tool called “GNU Patch” is needed to install it. How that works, I have no idea. All I know is that the patch must be worked into the AwStats .conf file, and that the pathway to the MT-B blacklist.txt file must also be added… somewhere.

Fortunately, my web host (might as well give Surpass Hosting a plug, seeing as how they did me a favor) support technician helpfully volunteered to install the patch, and apparently did the job right, as it seems to be working. Unless you know how to use the GNU patch tool and stuff like that, you might want to ask your web host for the same favor. The file that needs to be patched is titled “awstats.domain.com.conf” (replace “domain.com” with your domain name and extension), located in “tmp/awstats” on your home directory. The pathway to the MT-Blacklist file is probably “/home/youraccountname/public_html/blacklist.txt”, though you should check that first. MT-B v. 1.6 allowed you to see the pathway, but I can’t seem to find the pathway listing in version 2.

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So, to sum up: using Movable Type 3.1, MT-Blacklist 2, SpamLookup, and a patch for AwStats, I’ve been able to solve–finally!–most of my spam headaches.

Now to wonder about what the spamming scumbags will come up with next…

In case anyone has forgotten, the Bush administration doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the troops fighting their wars. Once the photo op is over, Bush couldn’t care less about whether they live or die. Beyond cutting their benefits and their combat pay, beyond backdoor drafts and forcing troops to serve far longer than any reasonable expectations would allow, beyond forcing them to pay for hospital food when they get maimed and cutting VA support when wounded soldiers get back home, the Bush administration is simply not giving them the equipment they need to stay alive. The same administration which has no trouble giving hundreds of billions of dollars in new, additional tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires every year can’t even be bothered to spend $600 per soldier on stuff like personal armor to keep them from getting killed:

Marine Pfc. Jeremy Tod called home with news that his superiors were urging him and fellow Marines to buy special military equipment, including flak jackets with armor plating, to enhance the prospects of their survival. …

Besides the essential flak jacket with steel “trauma” plates, the shopping list for the young Marine included a Camelbak (water pouch) special ballistic goggles, knee and elbow pads, a “drop pouch” to hold ammunition magazines and a load-bearing vest. [story via DKos]

Soldiers are being told that they have to buy their own equipment, or “when they get to Iraq they will wish they had.”

This is so typical of this administration–oozing endlessly about how they care about a constituency and then quietly savaging them when the cameras have turned away. Even with all the other crap the Bush administration is doing, this has got to be among the worst. Not that it’s new, of course–if you recall, troops had to (still have to?) use “hillbilly armor” to protect their vehicles from roadside bomb attacks and other assaults because the Bush administration failed to provide them with the armored vehicles they needed, and then lied about the availability of the armor. They only started providing it when one soldier had the guts to press Rumsfeld on it personally.

And when soldiers do fall in battle, don’t expect any respect then. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld–none of them bother to contact the bereaved families or even sign the letters sent to them, and their flag-draped coffins are carefully hidden from public view, firing the people who dared release such images. And when Bush did attend the funeral of one Australian soldier, the widow was purposefully not invited to the photo op.

This is a truly sickening, though not wholly unexpected, aspect of the Bush administration.

It seems as though I reinforced my spam barriers just in time. Although I wouldn’t notice it because my filters keep all but a few bits of debris out of my sight, I can look at the logs and peek at what’s going on behind the dam I’ve erected. And it’s horrific. The spammers are now unleashing huge floods of spam upon this blog, and probably to the blogging world in general. In just over the past one day, more than 2000 attempted spam comments were shot in my direction. And trackback spam, once just a sometimes thing, has similarly exploded: more than 200 in the last day. Incredible. God help the poor wretch with a blog who doesn’t know how to install a spam filter. Think about it: in one month, you could find your blog choked with 60,000 comment spams and 6000 trackback spams. Good lord.

And now it’s no longer the porn or pharmaceutical industries that are leading the charge–the overwhelming offenders are the gambling sites, both poker and casinos. They’re making the porn and pill people look like jaywalkers.

Anyone out there with an independently-run blog (not Blogspot) with comments activated? How are you holding up?

Okay, I’ve fixed the error in the comments that kept giving people a “comment-pending template missing” message. It should now give you a message telling you that your comment is waiting for moderation. The comment system should be working fine now.

The new blog setup is also working fine. MT-Blacklist is blocking most of the comment spam coming in (about 500 spams daily!) and SpamLookup is blocking the Trackback spam (another couple hundred every day), while the blacklist patch to AwStats actually seems to be successful in blocking most of the referral spam, though it doesn’t stop the initial flood from beginning before I can add the keywords to the spam blacklist. So my spam moderation has dropped to just a few per day, and my statistics, while still flooded with spam, aren’t nearly as choked as they used to be. That’s livable. I shudder to think what it would be like if none of these spam filters were available–comments would have to be shut down completely.

Still, comment moderation, while it works and keeps spam out, is less than perfect due to the wait involved for the comment to appear. Using Typekey would solve that problem, but many don’t want to suffer the hassle needed to set up the account, which I can fully understand. So, if you post here even semi-frequently, feel free to ask me to set up a Typekey account for you–just leave a comment asking that. I’ll hand it over to you via email (I’ll give you an address to contact me at if I don’t know yours), giving you the username and password. Then you just click the “sign in” link next time you leave a comment, insert the username/password, have your browser remember the info, and from then on in it’s automatic. That should make commenting easier than before, and the same Typekey account can be used to comment in any other blog using Movable Type 3.1.

Any comments, suggestions or observations about the site?

Is it my imagination, or have we adopted the relativist philosophy that says we are good so long as we are not worse than the bad guy?

Take Iraq, as an example. When the fact is brought up that we have killed tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, the counter-argument always seems to be that more would have died under Saddam Hussein. When the Abu Ghraib prison torture, abuse, and killings by the U.S. came to light, the argument was that Saddam’s torture, abuse and killings were worse than what we were doing.

This is not exactly a new justification for unacceptable behavior, it seems ingrained in our culture. It’s okay for us to do almost anything, so long as we can point to someone associated with the target of our behavior who did something worse, or who did it first (although with Bush, the bad guy didn’t even have to strike first, we just have to think he will). You hit me, so I hit you back; your violence justifies mine. The death penalty is this principle writ large: we can kill this person because he killed someone else. How very Old Testament.

Which brings up another observation: where are the Christians when it comes to the real world? You hear a lot about Jesus Christ from Christians when it comes to the abstract, to belief and prayer and Who’s Your Savior and all that. Who’s your most respected philosopher? Jesus Christ. Whose teachings do you follow? Jesus Christ. Peaceful teachings, teachings of love and restraint. Jesus is the emblem and icon of the faith, the face for the world to see.

But when it comes to actually applying one’s faith to the real world, suddenly Jesus isn’t around so much and Christians tend to go straight for the Old Testament. Eye for an Eye, Tooth for a Tooth, and Smite the Bastards.

Okay, I know this doesn’t describe all Christians, and maybe not even most Christians. If you’re more about forgiveness than vengeance, my apologies and wonderful on ya mate. But from looking at how said application influences our society, it’s certainly the Christians who speak out and do things that affect all of us who seem to fall into this particular category I’m talking about. It’s as if Christianity has a multiple-personality disorder, and when any stress is applied, the God-of-Moses personality suddenly appears. Or even New Testament, but not the parts that came from Jesus Christ.

It just seems to me that if you call yourself a “Christian,” then you should follow what Christ said first and last, especially when it comes to what actions you take in life; everything else in the scripture and dogma should come second, and not at all when it contradicts what Christ said and did, the philosophy and way of living that he personified.

Or do I have it wrong?

A fairly strong quake just hit. Not so much as to make anything fall, but it shook pretty strongly here, in the higher range of strong earthquakes as they tend to go in this region. Enough to make me worry about bolting for a few seconds, at least.

Preliminary reports have it as a 5.1 on the Richter scale, centered on the coastline of Chiba, about 70-100 km east of where I live. On the Japanese scale, it’s a 4 in Chiba, and a 3 in Tokyo and Kanagawa. NHK is talking about it–it was strong enough for them to interrupt broadcasting and show maps and pictures of building-top cameras swaying.

Always interesting when the world shakes.

Update: the quake has been upgraded to a 5.6 on the Richter scale.

I never got an answer to my question from three days ago. I invited any of the many visitors to this site who claimed that Terri Schiavo was clearly conscious and able to talk and swallow, and that her husband clearly abused and strangled her, to come forward and admit they were wrong, pointing out how this is what I do when I’m proven wrong. This after a right-wing visitor accused me of being the obstinate one. So were there any takers?

Silence.

They’re silent in the media, too, none of them admitting to being wrong. In fact, not only are they dismissing the autopsy (often calling it a conspiracy to cover up for Michael Schiavo), but now good ol’ Jeb Bush is demanding an investigation into Terri’s collapse 15 years ago. In other words, he’s been badly embarrassed and burned by his stupid political posturing in the matter, and so wants to divert blame to someone else.

Think about it: the autopsy refutes pro-life claims that Michael Schiavo beat, strangled and poisoned his wife. The results don’t just say it’s inconclusive, they say that it didn’t happen.

After compelling evidence suggests the husband did not attempt to kill his wife, one would think that the matter would be over. If legal challenges were to be brought forth now, one would imagine they would be libel and slander lawsuits brought on by the defamed husband against all those who made such false claims against him over the years. Is that what happened?

Of course not. Instead, Governor Bush, against all standing evidence to the contrary, is effectively setting the law enforcement agencies of the state of Florida to find some way to blame Michael Schiavo for his wife’s heart failure 15 years ago.

Now, can we absolutely rule out the possibility of Schiavo causing his wife’s condition that morning in February 1990? No. We know he didn’t beat her. We know he didn’t strangle her. That doesn’t mean he didn’t actually do anything to her, but it certainly doesn’t support such an allegation, either. There simply is no evidence to suggest he’s lying, and in this country, a man is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. It’s 15 years after the fact. The only existing evidence clears Michael Schiavo of wrongdoing. Is there really a chance of proving anything?

No. This is little more than a cheap politician abusing a man already horrendously abused by the system, so the politician can look even the smallest bit justified for being an idiot.

I’ve been looking around on the Internet for information on what happened the evening of Terri Schiavo’s heart failure, but unfortunately, there is little available. There are mountains of pro-life or anti-Michael-Schiavo sites which claim to tell the story, but such sites are universally so biased and contorted that anything they report is, to say the least, questionable. I did find this report from the New York Review of Books which gave some information, and this St. Petersburg Times article gives even more. They at least lay out a timeline:

Schiavo called 911 at 5:40 am. 12 minutes later, at 5:52 am, the paramedics arrive, finding Terri “not breathing and in ventricular fibrillation.” The paramedics shocked Terri seven times with a defibrillator. It was not until 6:32 am that a pulse was reestablished, and 6:46 for Terri to register “measurable systolic blood pressure .”

What does this prove? Well, those accusing Schiavo claim that he has variously stated that Terri collapsed at 4:30 and 5:00, and this discrepancy makes him look guilty. Why? How could getting the time wrong be a sign of guilt? If he had claimed one time as being iron-clad, and then later changed his story with equal confidence, that might be a sign of guilt. But that’s not what he did. He simply wasn’t sure of the time. You think he was looking at clocks when his wife went into cardiac arrest? After all, if he were lying, wouldn’t it be more likely he would be consistent about the time? And if he’s honest, why would he be any more consistent about a time he probably was unsure of? Besides, doctors have stated that if Terri had collapsed at 4:30 or 5:00, she could not possibly have been revived. Most likely, Michael Schiavo simply didn’t think about the time when Terri collapsed, and didn’t consider it important; had there truly been a delay of forty minutes to one hour and ten minutes, Terri would have expired. That didn’t happen, which means that Mr. Schiavo must have called 911 immediately.

Furthermore, the source of the time claims is flimsy as far as evidence is concerned. The pro-lifers have been acting as if his reports of the time were definite and iron-clad, but they were anything but. When he mentioned 5:00 am in his 1992 trial, he did not state it as an exact time, nor did he say he was sure. He said, “I believe it was almost five a.m.” and he was not pressed to state he was certain. The 4:30 time statement was on a TV interview, even less formal; Schiavo placed the time as “I’d say, about 4:30 in the morning.” These are not certain statements of facts, the man’s being asked to recall something he’s not sure of, and he’s not sure for good reason.

And yet, Bush is citing this “time gap” as his “evidence” that Schiavo is guilty of killing his wife. Bush said this discrepancy was “a significant question that during this ordeal was never brought up,” which is a joke because the pro-lifers have been harping on this endlessly for years.

Schiavo has been consistent in saying that he called 911 immediately. That he didn’t stop to record the time and etch it into his memory at the time is not a sign of guilt.

There are further claims about what happened that morning, but all of them are made by heavily biased sites, and their accuracy is highly questionable. They allege that Schiavo called both Terri’s father, and then brother (who lived in the same apartment complex) before dialing 911. They claim that Terri’s father told him to call 911, but that also Schiavo called Terri’s brother, Bobby Schindler, before he called 911. Schindler also claims Terri was face-down when he arrived. But these articles also claim that the paramedics found Terri face-down, as well. The “face down” testimony is supposed to prove that Michael Schiavo didn’t turn his wife over when she collapsed, as he claimed, or that he shoved her back on her face–either way, signifying cruelty, not care. But if they are true, and Schiavo did call Terri’s brother before the paramedics, that introduces a bizarre scenario: The paramedics took 12 minutes to arrive. Schindler should have arrived at least 10 minutes before they did. So are we to believe that Schindler and Schiavo stood around chatting for ten minutes while Terri lay face-down on the floor? Not to mention that Schindler did not contradict Schiavo on Terri’s position until years afterward, only after the disagreement between Schiavo and the Schindlers erupted. It seems more apparent that these articles are throwing in any and every claim possible to make Michael Schiavo look guilty, without regard to consistency.

If one thing is clear about this case, it is that the conservative politicians aren’t through pandering to their religious-right base yet.