Everything I’ve been reading about the DoJ reminds me of how I moderate online forums (most recently, though it was last year, the hlcomic forums). I don’t like banning people, because in my opinion, you can’t solve forum (social) problems with technological solutions. If you kick someone out, they’re just gonna find another way in. So I maintain civility with the force of my personality and writing ability.

However, I knew the end would come, because 1) hlcomic necessarily caters to a primarily younger (and less mature) crowd, and 2) my patience is limited. I can handle small amounts of idiotic influx, but too much at once and the control requirements are more than I’m willing to expend. And as hlcomic got more and more popular, that inevitably happened.

This interview with a former DoJ employee–”I Left Due To ‘Institutional Sabotage’”–makes me think of that. One or two lousy managers, you can work around. Too many at once, there’s too much of a culture change to deal with, and the people who actually care about it start leaving.

Got this story from Greg. It’s really way too long, but the top half is the most interesting. Left-wing blogger The Lower Manhattanite has a strongly right-wing, Rush-lovin’ brother in the Navy, and they haven’t agreed on a political issue in decades. But when the brother was home for leave and saw VTech news in the paper, he shocked TLM with his surprisingly not-entirely-pro-gun-ownership view:

“You know what we do on the ship if somebody bugs out with a weapon?”

I shook my head “no.”

“You secure your station and get the fuck off the boat. Get your people off the boat. That’s if you’re in port. Under weigh, there’s a different ‘protocol’. But even then, you don’t play that Jack Bauer/Die Hard shit. Unless they’re real slow, or you’re real close. Still stupid. Psychos with guns. Don’t fuck with ‘em.”

This here, I find highly interesting, in light of various blogs and pundits saying that the fact the kids didn’t fight back or try to tackle the psycho is a sign of weakness, that the US culture is being “feminized” or whathaveyou. Because I’d really like to know if that’s a written Navy policy somewhere. I’d imagine it would have to be. And if I had a forum big enough to get the attention of those who blame the victims, I’d like to know how they feel about the military essentially condoning by established procedure what the kids did (i.e.: getting the hell away, rather than going towards the psycho).

I wanted to align A1 pics left to have something different, but I guess I shouldn’t do it just for that reason. The centering just works best for me; here’s my current version. That navigation I want, I’ll do it somehow on the right, maybe with some div popup thing.

Anyone using IE7? I’m not sure if the layout will work properly there; if something goes wrong, the picture will be a little lower than the left and right columns.

Saw a really neat interview with Daniel Metcalfe, formerly the director of the Office of Information and Privacy at the Department of Justice. It centers around the current mess the DOJ is in, and is filled with the sort of candor that only retirement can bring. For me, it dropped some pieces into place that finally make sense of the whole mess: it’s not a vast right-wing conspiracy, it’s not dozens of people lying about overt political firings, it’s just drastically bad mismanagement coupled with reckless self-interest.

Metcalfe was a career attorney who’d worked in the DOJ since the Nixon administration, and he says there were ups and downs over the years, but in terms of politicizing the department, “nothing compares to the past two years under Alberto Gonzales.” Two themes caught my attention:

…there was an almost immediate influx of young political aides beginning in the first half of 2005…whose inexperience in the processes of government was surpassed only by their evident disdain for it…

…that strong tradition of independence over the previous 30 years was shattered in 2005 with the arrival of the White House counsel as a second-term AG. All sworn assurances to the contrary notwithstanding, it was as if the White House and Justice Department now were artificially tied at the hip — through their public affairs, legislative affairs and legal policy offices, for example, as well as where you ordinarily would expect such a connection (i.e., Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel). I attended many meetings in which this total lack of distance became quite clear, as if the current crop of political appointees in those offices weren’t even aware of the important administration-of-justice principles that they were trampling.

So, again, appointments made on the basis of loyalty, rather than competence. Holy Christ I am getting sick of that one. This, in turn, requires people under those appointments to emphasize management’s pre-conceived correct results, rather than fact-based results. I mean, anyone who ever had an ass-kissing boss knows how that goes. But that’s one thing if you’re working for a company that makes plastic forks. How much more friggin’ scary is that when it’s the United States Department of Justice.

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I’ve been working on a song…here’s a draft version of a clip:

arcanta2.mp3

It repeats once for context. The first part’s where the main action of the song’s going to happen, and then the key change is the bridge to the next part.

I can’t seem to prevent my stuff from sounding Casio-demo-buttony, though. Still not sure how to tell this software to fill the sound out better.

Fox News extending its comedy show coverage. Unfortunately I can’t find a clip or a transcript of where this was used, unfortunately, so ironically this picture lacks full context, but still…

April 1, speaking about the current conflict between the Senate and the President over war funding, Barack Obama says this (from USA Today):

“I think that nobody wants to play chicken with our troops on the ground,” said Obama. “I do think a majority of the Senate has now expressed the belief that we need to change course in Iraq.”

Yesterday, this graphic comes up on Fox:

I’m not happy I lack context on a picture that lacks context, but…man. Just look at it.

Ugh, well, as is my wont, I’m stuck on a detail. I’m not sure where to go from here with layout:

That’s what I have thus far, with the addition of some elements down the right side. Top is picture nav; after that is the pic number (#14) and maybe some info about it on the right; under that, any editor comments; under that, the entry form. I don’t like this so much because I feel like the elements for the current pic should be grouped better, and the pic nav at the top interrupts that.

However:

I like this for the organization of the elements associated with the primary page focus (the current pic), but it pushes the pic nav down too far. Especially because the editor comments are variable length, so the vertical position of the pic nav isn’t constant. (And I like having them right over the entry box, so you have to look past them to get to the entry form.)

Then there’s this mess, which I don’t really like at all, but it does put the entry form right under the existing captions, but they’re variable length too, so that could go any distance down the page.

dude it’s April

From Linkless Bob:

JPL.NASA.GOV: News Releases

I’m astonished by this. One, how can such a large geometric structure exist in nature? Two, how come I never saw someone mention this on X-Files?

Here’s what I’m workin’:

a1 thus far

Idea being, captions will be on the left, and you can view either one at a time, or all at once. What do you think about the pic size? I’ve increased it again, but I’m a bit concerned that the pic probably doesn’t fit on an 800×600 screen, what with nav bars and whathaveyou.

Ugh, also,  for some reason the up/down is not very responsive in IE, and the formatting of the caption options bar is fine on every browser I’ve checked, except for IE. So the one browser I care the least about has problems, and of course it’s that browser that most people are still using.

A jar of peanut butter as proof of the existence of God.

Apparently, since you never open a jar of peanut butter and see a fully-formed marmoset looking up at you, evolution is bunk.