Many tributes to Rosa Parks have been given upon the occasion of her death, most far better than any I could possibly write or from a viewpoint I cannot match.

However, those tributes have focused upon what her simple act of defiance began, and what her quiet and honorable demeanor both in that act and afterwards accomplished in starting a positive change in culture that is still underway.

Perhaps it is a reflection of my personality, but I believe it is important to highlight exactly what she was defying, for it has not died, it has merely changed form and target.

You see, when and where I grew up, all the “right-thinking people” believed that the “niggers were inferior” and not deserving of equal treatment, despite the decades that had passed since the defiance of Rosa Parks, despite the decades since the intervention by President Eisenhower to enforce federal court rulings in Little Rock, Arkansas, despite the passage of years since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Anyone who proclaims themselves and their fellow-travelers as “right-thinking” and any and all others as inherently wrong are immediately suspect in my eyes.

For me, “right-thinking” equates with an inwardly focused group that only feels powerful by excluding and oppressing others, for that is what I saw first-hand when I was a child, and in some respects that attitude still exists in the region where I grew up.

Even now, half a century since the defiance of Rosa Parks against an injustice that seems obvious today but was widely accepted as a fundamental truth at the time (and in some circles is still advocated), there are those who proclaim that their method of thinking is the absolute truth, completely unwilling to even consider even the possibility that they might be wrong, just as those five decades ago who thought of themselves as “right-thinking” were wrong.

This thinking is not limited to racists, neo-Nazis, or other seemingly insane cults.

As a matter of fact, this thinking is reflected in the vast majority of weblogs I read.

In other words: If you do not doubt yourself, can you truly consider yourself intelligent and thoughtful?

I have written repeatedly upon what it means to be a moderate. I repeat it here:

A moderate is one who acknowledges that their beliefs are not absolute, that there is room for doubt, that at least some of what they believe just may be wrong, and they are willing to consider that possibility.

The inverse of moderation is what I mean when I categorize a post as exemplifying “Amber and Cruelty,” the thinking is frozen, as if it is embedded in amber, and the outcome is the cruelty that is the inevitable result of rigid, inflexible, judgmental thinking.

For example:

Rape victim: ‘Morning after’ pill denied

By Carla McClain
ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Although it is safe, effective and legal, emergency contraception - the “morning after” pill - can be hard to find in Tucson.

After a sexual assault one recent weekend, a young Tucson woman spent three frantic days trying to obtain the drug to prevent a pregnancy, knowing that each passing day lowered the chance the drug would work.

While calling dozens of Tucson pharmacies trying to fill a prescription for emergency contraception, she found that most did not stock the drug.

When she finally did find a pharmacy with it, she said she was told the pharmacist on duty would not dispense it because of religious and moral objections.

If you cannot see the example of Amber and Cruelty embedded in this story, nothing I can write will persuade you to see.

Take a step outside your own beliefs.

Look in the mirror, are you judging others without any consideration that you may be just as wrong as that white man 50 years ago when he demanded that Rosa Parks give up her seat on the bus because he was white and she was not?

Take a step outside of your own prejudices and the labeling that is so easy to assign to the “moonbats” or the “wing-nuts”…

THINK…

There is more to the world than the labels or the simple, comforting belief systems we set up for ourselves.

It may be uncomfortable, but then again, when is doing the right thing easy?

Technorati Tags: amber and cruelty, Civil Rights, culture, human nature, left wing, left wing politics, left wing weblogs, left-wing, left-wing politics, left-wing weblogs, right wing, right wing politics, right wing weblogs, right-wing, right-wing politics, right-wing weblogs, Rosa Parks, weblogs

I’ve been wrestling with this issue and how to illustrate it in a reasonable fashion for a few weeks now.

Since I do have a day-job that takes more than the “normal” amount of intellectual effort, I have had some difficulty in expressing my concerns when I try to post during the work week.

Despite the definite leaning of the source compiling the quotes, what you find here at Think Progress exemplifies the fundamental problem that the administration of President George W. Bush currently has (emphasis and formatting retained from the original post):

A significant moment during today’s White House Press Briefings:

QUESTION: Scott, a couple of years ago you told us that Scooter Libby and Karl Rove had nothing to do with the CIA leak. It appears that you may have gotten bad information before you made that statement.

Now today we learn through extrapolation that, when the vice president said in September of 2003 that he didn’t know who sent Joe Wilson to Niger to investigate the claims that Iraq was trying to buy yellow cake, that he was not speaking the truth.

My question is: Can we be confident that when we hear statements from the White House in public that they are truthful?

MCCLELLAN: I think you can be, because you know that our relationship is built on trust. And I have earned that trust with you all.

As you pointed out, you pointed back to some past comments that I made, and I’ve talked to you about the assurances that I had received on that.

McClellan is emphasizing to the reporter that he was just relaying the assurances he received from Rove and Libby. In other words, they lied to me.

McClellan’s answer differs significantly from when he was asked the same question back on July 11, 2005… (the post continues)

Despite the claims of the mindless cheerleaders of the administration, there does come a point where (using the correct expression, not the mangled version of George W. Bush), “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me,” begins to take hold and people begin to question the credibility of those who have been proven so wrong more than once.

How can you tell a politician is lying when he speaks?

His lips are moving.

Perhaps, just perhaps, those Founding Fathers of ours who are revered so highly that we try to keep the interpretation of their beliefs frozen in amber for our Supreme Court Justices (according to one school of thought, that is…), perhaps their belief in the wisdom of the majority was not unfounded.

Eventually, no matter the spin, no matter the biases of the press or the blogs, the truth comes out and the consequences follow.

This is not related to the Miers nomination, nor to anything else other than the spin-machine of the administration that seems to have been focused on gaining or retaining power for the administration, not doing what is right for the nation as a whole, for the entire nation, even those who do not agree.

I am pulling together a number of threads of this nature, this is only one piece. I hope to have something to publish soon, when I am not distracted.

…boy, this site (found through the Esoterica blog at Cnet News.com) seemingly dedicated to all the different types of cassette tapes sure brings back memories.

Of course, when I call it “old” I am also condemning myself to that same, dubious status. I recall well searching for a good brand of tape, and I also remember all the different techniques used to overcome the inherent problems with the technology, such as the brilliant idea underlying the Dolby System.

You don’t know what the Dolby System is if it isn’t referring to surround sound for movies? Well, someone (Dolby? I haven’t done the research) had the subtle but great idea to record the frequencies of music or other audio content for the tape that matched the frequencies of the background noise (or tape-hiss) louder than the other frequencies. Then, during the playback, the relative volume of the frequencies matching the tape-hiss would be reduced back to match that of the other frequencies, thereby reducing the relative level of the tape-hiss.

A simple idea, but it made a huge difference to the sound quality in those pre-digital days.

Then there were the different technologies used in the tapes themselves, metal tapes, high bias tapes, chromium dioxide tapes, Type I, Type II, Type IV (I never knew what happened to Type III), longer time tapes were thinner so they would fit, but they could stretch in a bad player and change the speed and tone of the music, wow, the complexity was dizzying.

And this doesn’t even discuss cleaning the tape heads and calibrating the speed of the player.

Nowadays, slap a CD into the computer and tell iTunes (or your favorite media software) to make a CD of your favorites, hit go, and you’re done.

No tape-hiss, no worrying if you have enough time on the side to finish recording this last song from the LP (the software tells you if there’s not enough room), no worrying about accidentally bumping the stereo and making the needle skip a groove, no worrying about if you have the recording level set too high for the Dolby noise reduction, no worrying if you need to use Dolby I or Dolby II, no worrying if you have the bias set for “high” or “normal” to match the tape you are using, and no need to write all of this stuff down sow you can set these parameters properly when you are playing the tape back.

I still remember back in 1982 or so, when I bought my first CD player, I thought about how the mechanical system underlying even the new, supposedly perfect reproduction inherent in digital technology was fundamentally unreliable, and I conceived of the idea of saving the music in a non-volatile, solid-state based memory would be the best system that avoided all the problems related to a storage system based upon physical motion (as even hard disk drives are, like CDs and DVDs). Of course, the volume of data even using all known compression techniques that would need to be stored in a non-volatile, solid-state memory was far beyond the technology of the time, not to mention the processing technology needed to decompress the music on-the-fly.

So, it was just a dream I had.

I should have patented that idea, darn it!

Ah, well… I’m just glad I have access to the technology now.

Geek cool. Eventually we all enjoy what the geeks find cool first.

Last Saturday I took a walk around Grenoble with my camera. Here are a few photos (click on any image to see a larger version).

This is from the square that is near my apartment. The building is the old Palais de Justice for Grenoble. I’m not sure how old the building is, but it dates back to at least the Renaissance. I liked the way the shadows fell on the complex carved stone.

I found this sign amusing. It reminded me of the Church Lady skits on the old Saturday Night Live (strangely relevant now given that appellation has been pinned to Harriet Miers). The caption for this photo - “Could it be… Satan?!?!”

I haven’t been able to adjust the contrast on this photo to my satisfaction yet, but I liked the juxtaposition of a city street and the buildings lining it framing a view of a centuries old fortification wall.

The cliff between the (relatively) new building below and the fort above caught my eye.

Another contrast, the 13th century church steeple against the architectural monstrosities of some 1960s vintage apartment buildings.

Apparently, for some in town, Saturday is wash day.

Technorati Tags: letters from Europe, photography, photos, photos of Europe

Thank you to all who expressed concern. I have spoken with my father on the telephone, and the good news is that they are certain this is not related to the cancer he was treated for a year ago.

The bad news is his pancreas is not functioning properly, so he is on an IV to remain hydrated because he is not allowed food or water beyond ice chips to keep his mouth from drying out. This treatment is expected to continue for a day or two until the level of some enzyme reaches a certain point, then they will slowly increase the amount of food and water he can have. He sounded pretty weak on the phone, almost as weak as he did in the midst of his chemotherapy.

The cause of the problem is understood, it is related to some muscle relaxers his physician had prescribed to address a persisent pain my father has in his upper legs and hips. Despite following the directions of the prescription, apparently the medication had a deleterious effect on his pancreas, creating the current illness.

Unfortunately, the doctors at the hospital are not looking into the cause of the muscle pain, which started the chain of events leading to the hospitalization.

At times, I think although we have one of the supposedly most advanced and sophisticated health care systems, we still do not treat the person as a whole, instead focusing on isolated symptoms and syndromes, and not how everything fits together and on occasion makes a chain that can be broken before a more serious condition is arrived at.

Regardless, thank you again to all who expressed concern. My father is expected to leave the hospital at the end of the week, so he is on the mend.

It is still raining in my kitchen, though…

…when it pours.

I just noticed I had a voice mail on my cell phone from yesterday. The phone number on the caller ID was from Mississippi, so I assumed it was my parents calling to wish me a happy birthday.

Well, that was in the message, but the main part was telling me that my father had been in the hospital since Saturday with some kind of problem with his pancreas.

Compared to this news, the rain in my kitchen from the apartment above is trivial even though I’m having to deal with it using my very weak French skills, but this is not adding up to a good week for me…

…inside my apartment. Outside it is nice and sunny.

Apparently, the flat above (which I believe is vacant) has some type of plumbing problem.

Bloody Hell…