I am SO ███████ ████ ██████ who don’t ████ ██████████ how the ████████ █████ ████ the █████ to ███████, and, ██████, █████, a █████-████ ██████ ████ has ██████ the █████ and ██████ █████████ ███████. The Big $ has ██████ our ██████████; our so-██████ ███████████████ are too ██████ and too ██████ to ████ ████ ████ ██████ ████ are █████ to the ███████ ██████ in the US and ██████ the █████.█████ all the █████████ who are ████ █████████████ ██████ for ████ ████ – do ████████ you ████ to do, █████ of ████████, to ████ ███████ █████ █████████ are ██████ out of ██████ and ████████ by ███████████, ████████, ██████ █████ ██████!!

Hubby dragged me, with some friends from work, to see “The Black Swan”.  I knew nothing about it except there was a ballerina, a white swan & a black swan. Not a movie I’d have chosen on my own. Didn’t know I was in for a wild ride…

What a psychotic movie! Don’t get me wrong. This may be the most perfectly crafted movie I have ever seen. Nothing was left to chance. I plan to watch it 2 or 3 more times (after it comes out on Netflix), just to catch all the details I missed the first time. One hint – watch the earrings…

No spoilers, although that’s sooo tempting! They’ve been very guarded in what images they’ve allowed out, for good reason. This movie is a visual feast, with sparse, concise dialog. It should translate extremely well into almost any language.

If you haven’t seen it, there’s no way for me to describe the impact of being dragged down a psychotic black hole with a brilliant, unstable, (understatement there!) anorexic dancer. All I can say is, when I walked out of the theater, I was glad for the icy air; it helped me re-orient myself to the here & now.

If you have PTSD, psychosis, anorexia, or an aversion to lesbians or blood – don’t see this movie! It is exquisitely crafted & delivers itself perfectly. Maybe too perfectly? Go judge for yourself, but only if you have a very, very firm grip on your ego!!

Art: Dragonmum

In this article (above link) by DAVID SEGAL, published Jan 8, 2011, in the NYTimes, miserable law school graduates with gynormous debts whine about:

1. Not being able to get a high-paying job with a m ajor NYC law firm
2. Not being able to find a job
3. Not being able to find a job that pays $160,0 00/year
4. Not being able to pay back huge debts accrued going to law school
5. Having been tricked by law schools into believing they’d automatically get a job making $160,000/year
6. Being lied to by an institution
7. Having been robbed by law school because of high tuition
8. Having to pay back loans they took to pay for law school
9. Having to also pay back debt they accrued as undergraduates
10. Not having someone tell them it wasn’t a good idea to go to law school
11. That lady at law school didn’t tell me NOT to apply
12. Bad, bad law schools tricked them into going in debt
13. Law school accepted me, even though they knew I’d have to borrow money
14. Not having someone tell them how much it would cost to pay back hundreds of thousands of dollars
15. Not being told they shouldn’t borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars
16. Not having someone point out they’ll have to pay it back
17. If they have a job, being made to work under conditions usually reserved for slaves & first grade teachers
18. Being disrespected by employers, if they find a job
19. Being fired for disrespecting their employer
    
20. Thinking law school was an investment & finding out it wasn’t any more an investment than sub-prime mortgages or hedge funds
21. Finding out that even with a job, most lawyers don’t make $160,000/year
22. Not being told there was a good reason that particular law school was ranked in the bottom 25%, and finally
23. you can’t eat a JD degree.

Warning! Warning!

Compassion block! Compassion block!!!

How stupid do you have to be??? I can see, if it were the 1980s, how they’d have something to complain about – after all, lawyers ruled that decade! But it’s not. DUH. It’s the 21st century. We have the interwebs. College students are supposed to know how to do research, or at least search the interwebs to buy copies of term papers… College students have even, occasionally, been suspected of the capacity for critical thinking – or at least buying a book called something like “What you should know before you apply to law school”. I can not weep for a “man” who chose his law school because he thought it would be nice to live in San Diego.

Or a boy who already had excessive debt from undergraduate & masters programs, and then decided to take on law school debt, too. Or the girl who thought they’d just hook her up with someone and a job would happen. The young women & men who continue to live in NYC, despite no job prospects & miserable living conditions.

Much Dragonmum compassion block.

Guess what? A fact of life: EVERYONE lies. Including US News & WP, law schools & your mother. (she told you about Santa Claus, right?) The more money involved, the bigger the lies. Get over it. It’s not going to change.

It’s your responsibility to check the facts.

Since it seems that no one gave these pathetic children any guidance in making responsible choices, or taught them critical thinking, research techniques or how to handle money, they had to rely on nothing but their exceptionally poor decision-making skills. In an attempt to save a future generation from making these same hideous mistakes, I offer here a small multiple choice test quiz game:

Are you too stupid to be a lawyer?

Please read the following 20 questions carefully. Choose the best answer based on your own reality & beliefs. Check your answers carefully; once you get to the bottom, you will have no chance to go back and change your answers. Keep track of your answers so you can use the ratings scale at the end. Good luck! Have fun!

1. Do all lawyers make at least $160,000/year?

a) Yes

b) No

c) As long as they pass the Bar exam

d) That’s the interest on my trust fund.

e) Only if they have a second job as a stripper

2. Are all lawyers employed by law firms?

a) Of course!

b) I think so; Daddy is.

c) as long as they pass the Bar exam

d) No

e) Only the ones willing to whore themselves for a living & give up their life

3. Does everyone look up to lawyers?

a) Of course!

b) I do! Daddy’s taller than me!

c) only if they pass the Bar exam

d) No

e) What’s a bus full of lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?

4. Do all lawyers work in New York City?

a) Yes

b) Well, I want to.

c) All but Uncle Orsiruss, and he drinks.

d) No

e) Not even all lawyers in NYC work!

5. I graduated from:

a) a public university with a great GPA

b) a small, elite private school with an OK GPA

c) that place Daddy paid for. What’s a GPA?

d) the school of hard knocks with lots of experience

e) umm, college… well, I mean, it took 6 years, and I transferred… that’s why my GPA looks so low…

6. I have:

a) next to no undergraduate debt. I worked my way through school &/or had scholarships.

b) no undergraduate debt, but Mom & Dad saved since I was an embryo & mortgaged the house.

c) a lot of undergraduate debt, but, hey, it was Columbia, so it was worth it, right?

d) those people who keep calling me. Why do they have to inform me it’s an attempt to collect a debt?

e) Daddy, what’s debt?

7. Do you know at least 3 lawyers under 40?

a) Yes

b) Yes, but I don’t tell anyone I know them

c) No

d) There are lawyers under 40?

e) They’re all really nice to me at Daddy’s office, too!

8. Do you know at least 3 lawyers under 40 who think it’s a good idea for you to go to law school?

a) I told you I don’t tell anyone I know them!

b) No one has ever said I should go to law school

c) Yes, they think I’ll be really good at it & be able to find just the job I want. Really!

d) Yes, but they were rolling on the floor peeing themselves when they gasped it out.

e) Daddy says I shouldn’t listen to them

9. I want to go to law school because:

a) I want to make a lot of money

b) I want to be an advocate for a good cause; I can make a difference as a lawyer

c) I want to be a consultant for  Law-related TV shows

d) People will be impressed when I tell them I’m a lawyer

e) Daddy, remind me why I want to go to law school?

10. I think $160,000/year is:

a) enough to have a great apartment in NYC, wonderful social life, take a month’s vacation in Aruba, and comfortably pay back all my law school debt.

b) barely enough to rent a one bedroom apt & eat in NYC, much less have a family or pay student loans.

c) enough to have a life, a spouse, 2 kids, a nanny, a 2,500 sq ft house, a Mercedes, good health & dental and pay off student loans , too.

d) a pretty decent income in most parts of the country, especially without much student debt.

e) what my last car cost, wasn’t it?

11. At the school I want to attend, I will speak with:

a) the admissions office

b) a) and the 3 alums they said would love to talk

c) b) and 3 alums I selected randomly from a list of graduates from the last 5 years and current students

d) no one. They don’t say I had to do that on the application.

e) sooo many people! I meet them every time we go back for Daddy’s reunions.

12. The research I will do on this school includes:

a) Looked at their brochure & their USN&WP rank

b) a) and visited the school website

c) b) and doing extensive Internet searches to find out who graduated, where they are working & how much they actually earn

d) talking to a friend of Daddy’s who went there 30 years ago

e) research?

13. It is important to me to go to a school in:

a) a place close to home so I can take my laundry for Mom to do

b) a place it stays warm all year long

c) a place they speak English

d) a place I can live comfortably without fear of bodily harm

e) the town where Daddy has an apartment for me to use.

14. Graduating from law school entitles you to:

a) a cup of coffee at Starbucks if you have $5.

b) put J.D. on your resume

c) admiration from friends, relatives & strangers

d) live in NYC the rest of your life

e) a Porsche. Isn’t that what you said, Daddy?

15. The Bar exam is:

a) a test on what you learn in law school

b) only important if you actually intend to practice law

c) impossible to pass unless you take a $1000 Kaplan review class

d) hard & has little to do with law school classes, but I know how to learn new things quickly

e) Umm, do I have to take another test?

16. If I borrow $300,000 at 5% interest:

a) I can pay it off in 10 years if I get that job on Wall Street

b) it better be for a mortgage on a really nice house, not to go to law school!

c) I won’t worry about it. I mean, they don’t have debtor’s prisons, right?

d) Daddy will invest it for me, and I’ll have made $300,00 after I pay it back.

e) I’ll take out life insurance so my great-grandchildren won’t still be paying it off in 2080.

17. Law school is:

a) a great place to meet chicks

b) fun, if you’re into that sort of thing

c) hard work if you want to do well, no matter where you go

d) where the entire family expects me to go after college

e)  a great place to find a husband, right Mommy?

18. The government & academic institutions:

a) have high ethical standards & always act morally.

b) are usually trustworthy

c) lie.

d) lie and don’t care if you know it.

e) Isn’t an institution where Aunt Jenny is?

19. Employers:

a) often reward you if you work hard & do a good job

b) should always be respected & obeyed

c) are so awed at a law degree, they will hire you instantly

d) have to look out for their own bottom line; they usually don’t do much hiring in a bad economy

e) are just like Daddy!!

20. Life is:

a) like a box of chocolates

b)  a bowl of cherries

c) a long & miserable slog through brutish madness

d) what I make of it

e) That magazine?

Scoring – Here comes your reality check, bro!

• You took this quiz: -5
• It took you more than 5 minutes: -5

(Not starting out so well here, are we?)

The answers are in columns under their point score. Give yourself the appropriate amount of points for each question.  And look, if your total isn’t a multiple of 5, I’ll KNOW you cheated!

******** ** 10  *   5   *   0  *    -5  *    -10 ** ***
************************************

• 1.         e         b       c        a         d
• 2.         e         d       c        a         b
• 3.         e         d       c        b         a
• 4.         e         d       b        a         c
• 5.         d         a       b        e         c
• 6.         a         b       c        d         e
• 7.         a         b       c        d         e
• 8.         c         a       b        d         e
• 9.         c         b       a        d         e
• 10.       b        d        a        c         e
• 11.       c         b       a        d         e
• 12.       c         b       a        d         e
• 13.       d         c       a        b         e
• 14.       a         b       c        d         e
• 15.       b         d       a        c         e
• 16.       b         e       a        c         d
• 17.       b         d       c        a         e
• 18.       d         c       b        a         e
• 19.       d         a       b        c         e
• 20.       c         d       a        b         e

Your reality check…

If you scored:

195-135 You are WAY TOO smart to consider going to law school. Really! I can’t stop you, but you might be happier if you go into something lucrative, like plumbing, auto maintenance or mythbusting.

130-70 Congratulations! You are probably the perfect candidate to go to law school, do well & be a decent lawyer.

65-5 Not so bright, are we? If you go to law school, don’t count on finding a job that will help pay back any loans. Better start working on your stripper skills! Have you considered selling real estate, instead?

0- -100 You are too stupid to be a lawyer & don’t even know it. Well, I’m telling you now. You are too stupid to be a lawyer. Don’t go to law school. I hear the local auto parts store is looking for a new salesman. You probably think I really do know you cheated!!

If you scored -101 or lower, you’re definitely too stupid to be a lawyer, but you might as well go to law school anyway. You’re never actually going to practice law. Daddy’s giving you a free ride, you’ll push up everyone’s average, you’ll find a wonderful spouse, too. Isn’t that right, Daddy?

What world do these entitled, IQ-challenged young JDs live in??

My daughter  is too smart to go to law school. She’s in law school anyway, but she has a plan!  Having gone to NC State University on full tuition scholarship, she has little undergrad debt. She has a degree in Forestry & Public Policy, has worked as a high-tech forester, and is now studying Environmental Law at Pace on a full tuition scholarship. This year, she’s on Environmental Law Review, has a part-time job & has an on-line business.  She will OWN you & be Empress of the World. Bow down before her awesomeness!!!

Take THAT, stupid lawyers.

Artwork by me, the magnificent, grandiose Dragonmum

A bus full of lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A good start…

How do I know this? I use it. Or, am used by it? Trapped, anyway. It came on my lovely new ASUS; only choice at the time. Damn you, Microsoft!!

Alright, I know I’m 2 years behind in my hate-o-gram, but I managed to hang on to my XP laptop until it literally fried.

I’m sure I’ll learn to hate Windows 7, too, but it will probably be for an entirely different set of problems…

I am only waiting to upgrade to Win7 because I have to get my cracked screen fixed (the boys were playing…). I don’t know if they’ll fix my machine, or switch it out. It’s going to take at least 2 weeks; I’m not sure I can go that long using Hubby’s desktop or commandeering Nik’s netbook. Sigh.

Over the last few months, I’ve been plagued with dropping Internet connections, messed up web browsers, Photoshop crashes & an entire host of other, annoying but not as critical, failures. Tiring of having to reload sites in Firefox 2 or 3 times, I started on the trail of a solution (or at least a mild sedative…). Spent several days last month in an attempt to figure it out myself. (as if!) Finally I surrendered to the world of multiple tech support forums. A couple sites, clearly used to the “did you plug your computer in?” type of response,  made the now-obviously  simplistic suggestion of a conflict between recent updates of my antivirus & firewall sounded plausible.

Naively, I tried to uninstall AVG & COMODO firewall. Little did I know, I had plunged into a tar pit. Thrashed around for a couple of weeks before I realized I might die right there next to the saber-toothed tigers.  Those two programs get so entrenched in your system, they might as well be, as another user remarked, viruses themselves. Gave up for a while to free my holidays of computer-related despair.

Got brave again this week. The victory over Nik’s XP Home got me all narcissistic about my computer skills. Ready to take on AVG & COMODO again. Found out there are special removal programs written specifically for each product.

Even these couldn’t remove all the sticky gunk. Two more removal tools, registry cleaners, junk file cleaners….   and this wasn’t even the fix!!!

More tech forum. Now, these are the good guys - techguy.org and various other groups of people who actually volunteer to help with this shit. The real problem is, no one knows what the real problem is!! So they try… and try… but it all comes out  Blah Blah Blah Blah…. Incredibly convoluted theoretical code that sometimes worked by re-writing what MS had gotten wrong -  And it was different for EACH USER!! These were interactions with motivated users, usually drawn out over several days. Unfortunately, most  were long & painful, like this:

At the MS Restaurant…

Customer: Waiter!

Waiter: Hi, my name is Bill and I’ll be your support staff. May I please have your telephone number, and address? Your visit may be monitored for training purposes. Now, please tell me your problem.

Customer: There’s a fly in my soup!

Waiter: Please exit the restaurant and re-enter through the front entrance. Is the fly still there?

Customer: Yes, the fly is still in my soup

Waiter: Maybe it’s the way you’re using the spoon. Try ladling with the other hand

Customer: Whichever hand I use to spoon the soup, the fly is still there.

Waiter: Maybe the soup is incompatible with the bowl; what kind of bowl are you using?

Customer: A SOUP bowl! Waiter: It looks like a configuration problem; how was the bowl set up?

Customer: Your colleague brought the bowl on a saucer; what has that to do with the fly in my soup?

Waiter: Did you have bread or crackers with your soup? They may have attracted the fly

Customer: No, just soup! Waiter: What was the last thing you did before you noticed the fly in your soup?

Customer: I sat down and ordered the Soup of the Day!

Waiter: Was the fly immediately visible, or did it take a while before he floated to the top?

Customer: It was right there! In the soup!

Waiter: What did the fly look like? Customer: Dead. It looked dead.

Waiter: Did you bring something in to the restaurant that could have contained the fly?

Customer: No!  It was just me! And there’s a screen on the front door.

Waiter: Maybe there’s a hole in the screen; did you make sure you closed the door?

Customer: The screen is fine. I want my soup!

Waiter: Let me look at the bowl so I can see where the fly is.      Customer: IT IS IN THE BOWL!!

Waiter: I see. Now dump out your soup and see if the fly goes away.

Customer: That’s ridiculous! Then I won’t have any soup!!

Waiter: Have you considered upgrading to the latest Soup of the Day? That Soup of the Day may be having problems with dead flies.

Customer: You have more than one Soup of the Day? Waiter: Yes, the Soup of the Day is changed every 10 minutes.

Customer: Well, what is the Soup of the Day now?

Waiter: The current Soup of the Day is mushroom. Customer: OK , I’ll try the mushroom soup

Waiter: Here is your soup of the day. Customer: Wait! This is celery soup. And it has a fly too.

Waiter: No, can’t you see? That’s the beta version of mushroom soup.

(I modified this from a site of free Vista jokes)

********************************************

10 gazillion people, all with the same or similar issues. Some brands of computers, worse than others. Some issues fixed by moving around code, adding or deleting programs, following arcane tech support advice, combofix files… but most were completely hopeless. I had visions of a sea of pitiful users staring hopelessly at the altar of Microsoft, chanting “How could you do this to us???”.

Since I tried several of said “fixes”,  I had to invoke the sacred “system restore” by Saturday night.

A few things had become clear to me at that time:

*Microsoft is evil. (I understand that sea of users coming for Bill Gates with pitchforks and torches.)

*Microsoft didn’t make Vista compatible with a large number of commonly used routers.

*Much of the problems could be traced to a 10/2 Windows “update”.

*None of this will go away completely while I’m still being used by Vista.

*I was going to have to upgrade to Windows 7 and buy a new router, in order to have any hope of my computer  working as well as my old XP machines – and this wasn’t going to happen very soon.

What could I do now? At the very least, I could optimize the heck out of what I had!

Now system was restored to beginning of December, when I had just uninstalled AVG 2011 the first time. Time to go for it!

Got rid of COMODO & AVG as much as I could. I see no reason to buy software when there are so many good free programs available. Decided to return to avast!, which I’d used a few years ago. Zone Alarm as firewall.

SpywareBlaster for good measure. Cnet editors highly recommended a new utilities suite, WinUtilities, so I went with that.  There are 2 other tools I found ERUNT, an emergency registry restorer & NTREGOPT, a unique tool that optimizes registry hive architecture (not a defragger). Kept my updated CCleaner & Malwarebyte’s AntiMalware.

Fiddled around with a few other things (decreased some indexing, disabled windows search). Cleaned & defragged & cleaned some more. There are still pieces of AVG junk stuffed so far in files, I’ll need a microscope to find them!

I do have to say, though – WinUtilities Free from YL Software ROCKS!!! I think it has every utility you could possibly need on a machine, even if  you’re an advanced user who likes to mess with code yourself! It cleans disks, registry, programs lists, defrags everything, protects documents, covers your tracks with shredding & ultrasecure deletion, searches, backs up & restores registry, accesses the built-in Windows tools…all through one elegantly simple interface.

OK, so I hate Vista even more – but at least I have a new good buddy!

And my machine is lots faster & friendlier – even if the dropped connections & page loading problems still linger on.

Of course, that’s not to say I’m going to like Windows 7 any more…

I just couldn’t do it. I knew if I started, I’d be sucked so far into the blogosphere, they’d have to send a search party to get me to go to bed.

Instead, I read What Would MacGyver Do? by Brendan Vaughan, starting myself in another direction, which – as usual – came back to the very issues I was attempting to ignore… MacGyver is now part of our cultural heritage & English lexicon. Anyone capable of reading this bog ought to know what “to MacGyver” means. If you don’t, go look it up, or you’ll be a bit confused.

MacGyver burst on the scene only a couple of months before my daughter burst into the world. Since I was finishing my master’s thesis at the same time, naturally I spent plenty of time watching TV. A little 14″ cutie from a pawn shop, our TV kept me entertained on long Sunday afternoons, soothing me to sleep with football commentary. We’d actually bought it to play Atari, but … (slap face. get back on topic!) The series spanned a my new career, 2 children, a divorce & start of  medical school, so it swam in & out of my consciousness. Through the wonders of syndication, I could catch an old episode every now & then.

When I was a kid, I thought I wanted to be James Bond. Now I realize I would much rather have been more like MacGyver.   Not only could he jury-rig himself out of almost any situation, he was also a truly good human being. What Would MacGyver Do? contained stories of real human beings improvising brilliant solution & saving themselves from the perils of arrest, embarrassment, angry spouses & heat stroke. (That whole drinking your pee thing makes me gag, but I’m sure I’d do it too if the circumstances were bad enough…) I was impressed by how imaginative deceptions people invent, but many of those are not in the good-hearted MacGyver spirit.. On the other hand, use of common sense, the tools at hand & basic scientific principles, in the face of other people wringing their hands or stomping around having temper tantrum, is what I consider truly MacGyverish.

When faced with an impending crisis, most people tend to react in one of 3 ways.  Most frequent & most familiar is the “OMG! Whatever will we do? We’re going to die! Or something horrible! Or at least have to put up with the running toilet for 4 days until the plumber comes!!!”. You can’t tell them anything; all they see is the sky falling & they must run & tell Farmer Brown. Now. Something has to be done now. Extremely short-term results oriented – they’d escape the chicken house, then get eaten by the fox.

There is also the “Whatever” denial group. Hearing some horrible crashing, grinding sound, these guys (yeah, usually guys) will poke their head up from whatever they’re doing. They’ll then look at their immediate surroundings, determine nothing can be touched, tasted, smelled or seen (yet), and promptly resume watching the 24th re-run of  “Whatever”.  Until they start roasting, they never know a B-52 crashed in their front yard, engulfing their entire neighborhood is in flames. Unobservant & immobile, these rock-like mules will never see or hear anything that they don’t already think they know or believe. Uh huh – read that one again!

Both OMG! & Whateverare maladaptive responses to fear: Fear of the unknown, the known, the might be, the what if & I might have to do something different.

In contrast to incompetent frenzied flapping chickens & self-centered  snoring ostriches, there is a third group. We’re the people who say “I’m sure we can figure something out…I don’t know quite how, but we’ll get through this…Whatever happens, I can handle it…Here, let me fix that toilet for you…”.  We’re the people who will spend 18 hours learning HTML by trying to figure out how to keep the funky script from appearing on our (pre-made) template on website x, when it worked fine on y. Having taught themselves before they were 14 to repair toilets & re-wire the Christmas lights (sometimes out of self-defense), they think – high school dropouts can do this, so can I. We know never, ever leave home without duct tape, rope, a knife and – of course – a wire clothes hanger. (Yes, that’s all based on personal experience…)

I’ve noticed there are several characteristics that set the “MacGyvers” apart. One is a sense of competence, of one’s self as a competent human being. It’s important to believe you will be able to handle whatever comes your way, including failure. Another is the ability to pause & evaluate the situation, before doing anything else. I mean really evaluate the situation & environment, making as few assumptions as possible, only as reasonable extrapolations of what you know. Willness to admit you don’t know, to be wrong, to ask for help when appropriate – these are all MacGyverish characteristics. A big helping of (un)common sense, a basic understanding of the physical world & knowing what you don’t know is needed, too.

Here’s where it comes full circle. I see state, national & international governments being shredded by the tug-of-war between the OMG! & Whatever factions.  Various groups take turns playing those roles in different situations. Currently, as US is over-run by squawking Democrats & Republican rocks, Obama has been trying to MacGyver the government. Unfortunately, there’s too much chaos & volume to accurately assess the situation, much less to expect to implement any brilliant solutions. Mr. Obama’s willingness to “be wrong” has made him a target of ridicule, instead of admiration.  Most Western politicians have been squawking about wikileaks, but the US is screeching most loudly. I believe it was the Israelis who made a comment about the US being so busy reacting to wikileaks that they didn’t have time to have talks. Not, I think, an admirable face to show the international community, eh?

Meanwhile, there are some MacGyvers in the international community, but they don’t belong to a government or any particular political ideology. They are the hackers, the new “freedom fighters”, the ones who say – it’s out there, I’ll find it… this shouldn’t be hiding under a rock, let me shine some light in there…   They have networks of resources, contingency plans, others who’ll get their back, and, above all, confidence. Often mistaken for arrogance, confidence is more self-understanding than self-glorification.

I see this in Julian Assange. He is confident that he has taken the best course. He understands he’s not the only or even most important part of the wikileaks movement anymore & has been quite willing to let it be so. He used his resources, took time to consider his actions and turned himself in to the British in a quite calculated move.

In many ways, I identify with JA. I’ve never been one to follow the crowd unquestioningly. Somehow, I know, like me, he’d never settle for “because that’s the way we’ve always done it”. Like JA’s mother, I’m working hard to make certain my home-schooled son doesn’t develop an unhealthy respect for ‘authority’!!

In an attempt to further simplify my life & connect with the on-line community, I try to keep the same user name & avatar (now a gravatar…). That way, all the same people who comment on the NYTimes, NPR & BBC sites can recognize me in the Comedy Central forums too! The problem comes when someone else has sneakily acquired it first, & I have to modify it.  I’ve also had issues when the sign-in is an email address that’s not my primary email.

Usually, I’m OK, as long as my browser picks up the pw correctly. Not all sites let me save info in my browser, nor do I want all of it in my browser! I get around this by keeping bits & parts of this info in various files on my system. None of this is any help, however, if I’m attempting a log-on from a remote site!!

Earlier this year, I password protected the administrator ID on my son’s netbook,  using a combination of letters, numbers & symbols – in what I thought was a fairly simple phrase – in order to keep it safe from teenage hacking fingers.  Now, despite the “hint” I set up, I can’t for the life of me remember them! I’ve even tried doing an algorhythm matrix to test all the probable combinations I might have used… Massive fail. Now I can’t access the security OR maintainance features… or upload new, protective firefox add-ons. What I get for being so clever, I suppose – defeated by my own cunning!!

(UPDATE!! 1/2011. My cleverness returned with the new year, I realized there must be a back door in XP Home for all the other idiots who’ve done the same thing… Found it! Also finally pressed the right button at the right time, to get into SAFE mode. It’s one of those computers with a proprietary start-up; it doesn’t have that old fashion black screen. I, once more, have the “Mommy hacker of the House” crown…)

I also use numerous add-ons which allow me to browse fairly anonymously. My next step is to set up a rotating proxy, which is about as far as I am willing to go – there’s just not that much I have to hide & so much time I can devote to dealing with privacy & security features.

Meanwhile, we continue to be bombarded by the convoluted saga of stolen, leaked government documents, Julian Assange’s trumped-up Swedish charges, bail or no bail, Anonymous attacking “anti-wikileaks” sites, etc….

So who needs to spend time on privacy & security features??? Repeat after me – “The US Government”! A very low ranking soldier (what is he, a private?) is accused of up-loading bunches of supposedly sensitive documents from Afghanistan to wikileaks. He’s probably not the same guy responsible for the latest 250,000; there are probably quite a few leaks in that dam. Here’s one of the big problems – these documents were in a place that’s security is roughly equivalent to boxes in my Grandmother’s basement. She wouldn’t let just anyone in the front door, but there were at least 3 half windows downstairs. Like anyone was going to want diplomatic cables, right?

Now, it turns out that most of them are really, really just trash. The “what are you doing Tuesday night? Let’s have dinner” sort of trash. Why do you think only a few have been released? How long will it take to sift through a quarter million potential junk mails, in order to find something actually interesting? As an scientific information specialist in one of my former lives, I spent LOTS of times sorting through confidential corporate documents, most of which were exactly the same sort of trash. Much sympathy I have for the wikileaks sorters!

Why is so much trash considered “confidential”, “classified”, “secret” or “top secret”? And if it’s so important, why is it in Grandma’s basement? Here’s my theory: It’s been shown that government correspondence suffers from “over-classification”;  those red stamps are so pretty! Government officials are notorious for thinking anything they do is much more important than it actually is. So, the ones in charge of security know most of it was completely drivel, and, as such, didn’t think it was worth extra-special security. By this, I mean “security that a high school graduate can’t hack”…the equivalent of using a password more secure than “123456″ or “password”. Unfortunately, that also means worthless paper is mixed with documents that truely might be important (or embarrassing…)!

Even though Grandma would never let a stranger through her door, she invited several of these sweet young leakers in. After all, they were her grandchildren’s friends. Some of them may have even been her grandchildren… She wasn’t aware of it, but she really did need help cleaning out the basement!!!

Thank you, Mr. Assange & wikileaks.

Dec. 8th NYTimes Lede blog>

‘Operation Payback’ Attacks Fell Visa.com

I started reading this article with the thought “now they’ve gone too far. Is this the world we really want?”. However,  as I read further, I became more & more disturbed at actions taken by multinational corporations, such as Visa, who have targeted smaller companies they believe (or know) support Wikileaks.

Visa, now you’ve gone too far!

Once a company starts involving itself in international politics – especially in an arena where it should (theoretically) have no particular interest. After all, aren’t they the ones who want to be accepted everywhere?? Why are they now rummaging through their files  & spending time threatening businesses – who are using their service & making them money? How far does this go, and where does it stop?

Money police?

Visa & MC have set up a virtual global monopoly on money transfe r, along with eBay‘s more evil twin, PayPotty. They are throwing their collective weight around, in an attempt to shut down an organization that some governments don’t like. (OK, hate, despise, fear, etc) Who’s tail is wagging these big dogs? Or are they the tail?

Here are a few of the key paragraphs from the blog that, shall I say, pissed me off?(my bold)

The move against Visa comes after a Web services company in Iceland, DataCell.com, which has supported WikiLeaks and still hosts a Web page facilitating donations to the organization, complained that the credit card company had tried to force it to stop working for the non-profit media site… the company also hosts the Web site Wikileaks.ch.

…Mr. Sigurvinsson told Iceland’s national broadcaster RUV that “he finds Visa and MasterCard’ s request that DataCell stop serving WikiLeaks highly distasteful, asking what business two private companies have dictating terms to another private company.” He added, “It is clear that they will never close WikiLeaks except by taking the whole Internet down.

The chief executive of DataCell, Andreas Fink, explained in a statement that his company has been operating “a payment gateway so people can donate” to WikiLeaks for two months. On Tuesday, Mr. Fink said that Visa had asked DataCell to stop accepting payment details from Visa cardholders who wanted to donate money to WikiLeaks. The company declined to do so, because, Mr. Fink explained:

After discussions with our lawyers, we have decided that we can not honor such requests based on the pure simple fact of untrue and unverified accusations.

Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship and/or limitation. The right to freedom of speech is recognized as a human right under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and recognized in international human rights law. Furthermore freedom of speech is recognized in European, inter-American and African regional human rights law. (US courts can’t argue with this, now that they’ve pronounced corporations “people” in terms of $ = free speech)

It is simply ridiculous to even think WikiLeaks has done anything criminal. If WikiLeaks is criminal, then CNN, and BBC, The New York Times, The Guardian, Al Jazeera and many others would have to be considered criminals too as they publish the same information. Nobody even tries to touch them though. You can still buy a New York Times subscription and pay with your credit card I guess.

On Wednesday, Mr. Fink added an update to his statement, in which he said that Visa and MasterCard had stopped processing all online payments facilitated by DataCell, affecting up to 3,000 clients, apparently to ensure that no money would make it to WikiLeaks. Mr Fink added that his company was taking “immediate legal actions to make donations possible again.”

He also wrote:

The suspension of payments towards WikiLeaks is a violation of the agreements with [Visa's] customers. Visa users have explicitly expressed their will to send their donations to WikiLeaks and Visa is not fulfilling this wish. It will probably hurt their brand much much more to block payments towards WikiLeaks than to have them occur. Visa customers are contacting us in masses to confirm that they really donate and they are not happy about Visa rejecting them. It is obvious that Visa is under political pressure to close us down. We strongly believe a world class company such as Visa should not get involved by politics and just simply do their business where they are good at. Transferring money.  They have no problem transferring money for other businesses such as gambling sites, pornography services and the like so why a donation to a Web site which is holding up for human rights should be morally any worse than that is outside of my understanding….

This is not about the brand of Visa, this is about politics and Visa should not be involved in this.

I knew there has to be more than one reason I don’t use credit cards… besides keeping out of debt & out of their great greasy paws….

Cut off its head – how many more will grow back?

(Bold/underlines by me; red is obviously my biased, snarky commentary. I altered photographs & art to suit my purposes. )

Today, JA turned himself in to the British authorities. They’re holding him without bail, which is only a bit bizarre, since he turned himself in… He’s fighting extradition, so, I believe (gotta check this fact) that the British judge has to look at the evidence to see if there are actually any grounds.   That’ll b e a fun one – the charges now are something like… “the condom broke” and “I was half asleep”…

Can we all say “Witch! Witch!“? Now, who were we talking about???

Even before today’s less-than-momentous events (Just ’cause JA is in the brigg doesn’t mean WL stops!!), the forces have been massing (or is that “the masses have been forcing???). I’ll get back to the Hydras in a bit. First, I need to let this out….

Why is there a huge amount of hysteria around the release of information that is already public???? From NYTimes article of 12/7/2010:

British Court Denies Bail to Assange…

“Perhaps in a warning shot of sorts, WikiLeaks on Monday released a cable from early last year listing sites around the world — from hydroelectric dams in Canada to vaccine factories in Denmark — that are considered crucial to American national security.

Nearly all the facilities listed in the document, including undersea cables, oil pipelines and power plants, could be identified by Internet searches. !!!!!But the disclosure prompted headlines in Europe and a new denunciation from the State Department, which said in a statement that “releasing such information amounts to giving a targeting list to groups like Al Qaeda.” (How dumb do you think they are???)

Asked later about the cable, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the continuing disclosures posed “real concerns, and even potential damage to our friends and partners around the world.””… (How dumb do we think she is?)

Justice Department prosecutors have been struggling to find a way to indict Mr. Assange since July, when WikiLeaks made public documents on the war in Afghanistan. But while it is clearly illegal for a government official with a security clearance to give a classified document to WikiLeaks, it is far from clear that it is illegal for the organization to make it public. (especially when they aren’t American, anyway – you have NOOOOO jurisdiction!!!)

As to the burning question, When Do Governments become Terrorists?... On Sunday’s Meet the Press

GOP Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, said of Assange:  ”I think the man is a high-tech terrorist. He’s done an enormous damage to our country, and I think he needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And if that becomes a problem, we need to change the law.” As usual, when wielded by American authorities, the term “terrorist” means nothing more than: “those who impede or defy the will of the U.S. Government with any degree of efficacy.”  Anyone who does that is, by definition, a Terrorist.  And note McConnell’s typical, highly representative view that if someone he wants to punish isn’t a criminal under the law, then you just “change the law” to make him one. (in this case, the bold was added by GLENN GREENWALD, color by me)

Umm, let me see – no law for someone to break. Hate that someone. Make up new law, so can say “he break!!. I don’t want to sound like, gasp!, Glenn Beck, but, OMG!!

Hitler Did This.

Will ou r government actually cross this line? I’m peeking through my fingers; I don’t want to look. It’s like one of those awful movies where you see someone standing with their back to a cliff, slowly walking backwards… Cliff! Cliff! Look Out!!!

The Atlantic:

Wikileaks is a powerful new way for reporters and human rights advocates to leverage global information technology systems to break the heavy veil of government and corporate secrecy that is slowly suffocating the American press. The likely arrest of Assange… has nothing to do with the importance of the system he has built, and which the US government seems intent on destroying with tactics more appropriate to the Communist Party of China — pressuring Amazon to throw the site off their servers, and, one imagines by launching the powerful DDOS attacks that threatened to stop visitors from reading the pilfered cables.

(OMG! NOOoooo! It’s not even a slippery slope, it’s a CLIFF!!!…)

Now that I’ve given myself a headache, back to Hydras!

Wikileaks isn’t the only group with all the info:

Again, today’s NYTimes:

So far, the group has moved cautiously. The whole archive was made available to five news organizations, including The New York Times. But WikiLeaks has posted only a few dozen cables on its own in addition to matching those made public by the news publications. According to the State Department’s count, 1,325 cables, or fewer than 1 percent of the total, have been made public by all parties to date.

In recent months, WikiLeaks gave the entire collection of cables to four European publications — Der Spiegel in Germany, El País in Spain, Le Monde in France and The Guardian. The Guardian shared the cable collection with The New York Times.

First 5 heads – the allegedly free press...

Since Nov. 28, each publication has been publishing a series of articles about revelations in the cables, accompanied online by the texts of some of the documents. The publications have removed the names of some confidential sources of American diplomats, and WikiLeaks has generally posted the cables with the same redactions.

From WIRED:

A truly free press — one unfettered by concerns of nationalism — is apparently a terrifying problem for elected governments and tyrannies alike… The greatest threat we face right now from Wikileaks is not the information it has spilled and may spill in the future, but the reactionary response to it that’s building in the United States that promises to repudiate the rule of law and our free speech traditions, if left unchecked.

Scary Scary Free Press!!! Where’s “Deep Throat” when we need him? Oh, that’s right – he’s already said he supports WL.

Then there are the members of the “great unwashed masses” – that’s everyone who’s not a diplomat or the press…. Examples:

Quote from yesterday’s NYTimes about the backlash:

“an orchestrated effort [by an Internet group, Anonymous] was under way to attack companies that have refused to support WikiLeaks and to post multiple copies of the leaked material. The Anonymous manifesto singled out PayPal, which cut off ties with WikiLeaks for “a violation” of its policy on promoting illegal activities, a company statement said. “The reason is amazingly simple,” Mr. Housh said of the campaign. “We all believe that information should be free, and the Internet should be free.”…

By late Sunday, there were at least 208 WikiLeaks mirror sites up and running. “Cut us down,” said a message on the WikiLeaks Twitter feed on Sunday, “and the stronger we become.””

PC World:

WikiLeaks has asked the Web community to open mirror sites so it cannot be downed or censored and said Monday that 355 new sites are already up.

McCarthy? Watergate? Hypocrisy? Stupid threats that are going to get a LOT of people in trouble, eventually? You decide….

HuffPo (with Wired & NYTimes):

Talking about WikiLeaks on Facebook or Twitter could endanger your job prospects, a State Department official warned students at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs this week. The State Department said they never told anyone to say this. Well, yeah. It was one of their guys just sayin’ (the obvious).

Here’s the email:

From: Office of Career Services
Date: Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 3:26 PM
Subject: Wikileaks – Advice from an alum
To: “Office of Career Services (OCS)”

Hi students,

We received a call today from a SIPA alumnus who is working at the State Department. He asked us to pass along the following information to anyone who will be applying for jobs in the federal government, since all would require a background investigation and in some instances a security clearance.

The documents released during the past few months through Wikileaks are still considered classified documents. He recommends that you DO NOT post links to these documents nor make comments on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter. Engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government.

Regards,
Office of Career Services

To their credit:  On Monday, John H. Coatsworth, the SIPA Dean, reversed the university’s earlier position, affirming that students “have a right to discuss and debate any information in the public arena…without fear of adverse consequences.”

I think they are afraid of even more heads from this Hydra.  They should be.

We’ve come full circle. Our government using threats, international pressure & lies (what do you call someone who terrorizes???). A press wavering in its tracks,   unable to decide whether to stand up for democracy or cringe like a cowering dog. Hydras, brave people popping up all around the world, dedicated to restoring sanity & spreading

the truth that information is freedom.  (Isn’t that what the West keeps trying to tell all those dissidents

in “repressive” countries?) All followed by more massive hypocrisy from previously mentioned Western government. I don’t like playing this game, but Who’s the Terrorist?

NNNOOOOoooooo!!  I told you IT WAS A CLIFF!!!!!

Been sleeping under a rock for the last few months? Here’s the background on Wikileaks .

You’d think the world would have learned. You’d think the countries known for their supposedly free-speech principles would be less blatantly hypocritical. Perhaps you’d even think they’d remember what happens when you persecute someone seen by a large part of the world as a hero.

No. Of course not.

Martyrs are pretty hard to kill!

Sometimes they turn out to be hydras: Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former WikiLeaks’ spokesman, has announced plans to launch a new and more transparent platform on his own, the German news magazine Focus reported.

Suddenly, all these “democratic” countries, which put down all those ol’ repressive regimes, are bound and determined to repress information that they don’t want you to have.

And you know what? It’s silly stuff, really. Reminds me of the guy from Burn Notice who says ” you know those spies – a bunch of bitchy little girls…”  So what have we learned? Diplomats are catty? People say one thing & do another? Human beings run our governments?

OH NO!!! Stupids.

Today, eBay, via paypigpal, cut off wikileak’s donation account.

This follows Amazon kicking them off their servers, hackers continuously attempting to shut down the site, denial of service cyber attacks on servers & sites seen as friendly to them (remote computers commandeered by rogue programs bombard a website with so many data packets that it becomes overwhelmed and unavailable to visitors), Interpol putting out an alert for JA, Sweden deciding they’re going to try to arrest him on a (bogus) rape charge, and the US & UK “powers that be” roundly denouncing the release of all these nasty embarrassing documents (’cause that’s all they are!)

Pitchforks. Torches. Angry… diplomats? Where are the peasants? Oh! They LIKE Mr Assange!!  So does brave, handsome Stephen Colbert, who courageously interviewed this evil? treacherous? world-destroying? Oh! I have to stop! It’s too funny… Here’s the Interview.

Me likes Julian, too. Thinks him HOT! Brains, guts & cool Scandinavian looks, with that great mashed-up Australian/European accent. What’s not to like? Me must be peasant.

OK. So he’s no saint. Who is? Oh yeah, her.

Are these “the Pentagon Papers” of 2010? Daniel Ellsberg has given his backing to Wikileaks. You remember? The one who leaked the Pentagon Papers on the Vietnam war in 1971? The papers that, in the end, had little, if any, impact – except for giving jobs to a lot of journalists.

Today (Dec 4, 2010), on the BBC News Web Site, News Analyst Anatol Lieven writes: (my bolds & italics)

Finally, there is the wider question as to whether such leaks are a good or bad thing. After careful thought and with certain reservations, I’d have to say that on balance they are good.

On the security threat which has so often been cited as an objection, it seems that Wikileaks have taken care to exclude anything that can endanger specific US agents or actions.

Another objection is that for the need for confidentiality in diplomacy – so that diplomats can express candid views to their home governments without fearing that they will be spread all over the media.

This is a much stronger argument, but in the end it is outweighed – in the West, not obviously in Russia – by the fact that we are after all supposed to be democracies, and our electorates have the democratic right to know more than they have done in recent years about the conduct of their government’s foreign policy.

Far too much misinformation and outright lying has surrounded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Overall, we in the West now live in an atmosphere of security hysteria and obsessive secrecy that would have filled our ancestors with horror.

If the threat of more Wikileaks releases makes this less likely in future, so much the better.

As to the effects on the tender sensibilities of Silvio Berlusconi, Vladimir Putin and Hamid Karzai of private US official opinions of them – well, how very tragic.

The more these people know of how the outside world regards them the better for their countries. From this point of view, Wikileaks might almost be seen as rather a good way for a US administration to pass on candid messages that it could not possibly deliver officially.

On Saturday, media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders issues a statement condemning  personal attacks on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and “the blocking, cyber-attacks and political pressure” in what it called the first “attempt at the international community level to censor a website dedicated to the principle of transparency… We are shocked to find countries such as France and the United States suddenly bringing their policies on freedom of expression into line with those of China.”

Oh Yeah!

The Wau Holland Foundation, named after a German hacker & the organization’s main (known) private financial backer, is actively collecting donations. So far they have collected euro750,000 ($1 million) for WikiLeaks, covering the organization’s expenses. Following WikiLeaks’ recent releases, they are now experiencing an enormous number of contributions. On its website, the foundation says “the huge and in this form unique amount of donations has caused the delay of issuing contribution receipts” — which allow Germans to deduct donations from their taxes. If you want to contribute, they have instructions on their site. Of course, you can’t use PayPorker.

If I write that I strongly support his efforts to encourage global information transparency & think Wikileaks is a brilliant idea, am I committing treason?

Bwahahahahahaha!!!

Reasonable Intelligent Freedom-loving People of the World Love You, Julian! You can come hide at my house. We’ve got this great closet under the stairs. I’ll even move out the kitty litter box & wire you in a light bulb. You can pretend you’re Harry Potter…  We won’t tell my husband. He’d be afraid of the government & all that!

Just remember to watch out for the Stupids!

A note:

This is one of my favorite articles about JA run on the musicians4freedom site:

Wikileaks’ Julian Assange Homeschooled to Avoid Unhealthy Respect for Authority

More Wikileaks fun:

Check out  the cynical, tongue-in-cheek coverage on Anorak News,  an independent online sensation exposing prejudice, inhumanity, stuff shirts, misogyny, a biased news agenda, conformity, misanthropy, spin and the worst and best of human culture in words, pictures and video.

http://www.heraldsun.com/view/full_story/10404711/article-Jails-tackle-tough-issue?instance=homefifthleft.

Guess what?

Somebody noticed that that a huge percentage of  inmates have mental health problems…

And the NC “Mental Health” system has problems… No. Excuse me. No longer exists…

And it will make things in the prisons (ie what’s left of the state mental health system) even worse…

So now the Jails are tackling a “tough issue“.

Who are all these brilliant people?

And where were they 10 years ago when the state was trashing their mental health programs?

Is there  a polite way to say “bat shit stupid“?

Didn’t think so.

Maybe they can move all their mentally ill inmates into Dorthea Dix.

After all, Central Prison IS right across the street.