I got in a tiff with one of my fellow defense-industrial complex compadres on the way back to the office from going to get coffee this afternoon. Some guy was heading down the road on a tricked out Cannondale wearing full team kit. You could tell he was way cooler than I’ll ever be since a) he was in shape, b) he was riding on a Wednesday afternoon, and c) he had all his crap in his jersey pockets instead of slung under his seat in a bag.

Anyway, the guy who had driven was waiting behind said roadie to turn left, and got exceedingly impatient as the cyclist went through the left turn lane. Having been in spandex and in the same situation many times, I came to the cyclist’s defense. After all, it is the middle of June, we were turning onto a road dedicated by the county of Rhode Island as a cycling road, and the guy even used the proper hand signal. The concensus, still, was that I was in the wrong.

Ah well. Peak Oil will put me in the right.

I’m too close to this one to be trusted, but I thought you would all probably want to hear my POV on this, anyway.

There are more themes in this movie that I empathize then most would realize, so it was a little difficult to see it with other people in the theater. Many will consider this to be an almost pure black comedy, and it might be intended that way, but the scenes of ultra-religious teenagers and trying-to-be-hip youth pastors and singing songs with raised hands were all things I’ve experienced first hand…and I have never felt they were deserving of ridicule. Mandy Moore was a little over-the-top in her role, but otherwise the treatment of charismatic Christian youth was not insulting, although the gay couple in the row behind us unknowingly insulted me a few times with their laughter. (Wow, a straight white Christian male feels the tables turned…)

For me, Saved! was touching and honest and wonderful. I struggle with the idea that most people will either consider it a farcical fairy tale and the rest will consider it blasphemy, but when the movie was over I had one of those “I want to stay in the theater and never let the movie end” moments.

So I’m doing a little cruising around in the ITMS, and decide I need to actually buy some of the music I’ve been thinking about in my cart:

Hmm. Free Dre is good.

Jose Contreras’ family has fled to freedom.

Miriam Murillo-Flores, the girls, her sister Yamile Murillo, and Murillo’s husband, Omar Rodriguez, survived a harrowing trip across the shark-infested Florida Strait in a crowded smugglers’ boat that was chased through the dark by the Coast Guard.

It’s not like Contreras wasn’t living the high life in Cuba: The reunion closes an agonizing chapter in the life of the 32-year-old pitcher, a Cuban national team star who infuriated dictator Fidel Castro when he fled Oct. 25, 2002, seeking freedom and financial security for his family.

It’s enough to make me root for a Yankee.

On a positive note, the U.S. has dropped a U.N. resolution of immunity for U.S. soldiers on peacekeeping missions from the International Criminal Court. Honestly, it’s embarassing for the U.S. to even ask for special protection from war crimes. On a negative note, James Cunningham (the U.S. ambassador to the U.N.) sounds really petty when he (a) points out that we’re only dropping because we were getting almost no support at all, and (b) the United States will need to take into account the risk of ICC review when determining contributions to UN-authorized or established operations. He’s got a point in that the U.S. does the majority of the U.N.‘s peace-keeping work and should get some consideration for that , but he still comes off sounding really petty.

Today’s reason: avoiding responsibility at all levels.

A little known proposition from the U.S. government is requesting that government funded contractors in Iraq be immune from prosecution.

Iraq’s new government has been resisting a U.S. demand that thousands of foreign contract workers here be granted immunity from Iraqi law, in the same way as U.S. military forces are now immune, according to Iraqi sources.

… When private military contractors break the law, what can be done to discipline them?

This Slate article about discipline for military contractors tries to clear the legal muddy waters of this issue.

Misbehaving firms can have their government contracts terminated; they can be barred from competing for future contracts; and they may also be subject to civil and criminal liability. However, nearly all of these penalties are at the discretion of the agency that issued the original contract. Procurement officials, political leaders, prosecutors, and judges get to decide whether to sanction contractors for allegedly breaking the law in Iraq.

…the Justice Department told the Wall Street Journal on Monday that it has no current plans to prosecute any contractors involved with the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

This strikes me as odd considering Ashcroft’s prosecution of the CIA agent under the Patriot Act from yesterday’s news but conflicting messages are nothing new for this adminstration.

The Times explores a possible career-change path – that of the artisanal cheesemaker.

Non spoiler review: Generally a good movie, The Terminal starts pretty slowly and drags in a couple spots, but if you don’t enjoy your share of laughter, righteous indignation and a few tears…well, you don’t have a soul.

Spoiler and my “big complaint” follows.

At this site :

This is from our pond. Our neighbor saw a ball bouncing around kind of strange like and when he went to investigate, it was a flathead catfish with a child’s basketball stuck in its mouth and the pictures tell the rest of the story. His wife did have to cut the ball in order to deflate the ball and release the catfish.

(File under public bookmark.)

Here’s an index of stain removal techniques.

Wired’s got a report on a Reporters without Borders study of interenet censorship. Among other things it lists:

• 40-year-old activist Du Daobin was charged with subversion earlier this month and sentenced to four years of house arrest (for voicing dissent in China)
• Instead of blatantly blocking sites, authorities in Uzbekistan change or strip out the content deemed unfavorable.
• Cuba bans the sale of computer equipment to private citizens and limits Internet access to government workers. The public only has access to an intranet that consists of sites that have been hand-picked by communist authorities.

etc, so on and so forth.

In the interest of “balance”, though, RSF and Wired insist on bringing down the western world at the same time: Dictatorial regimes aren’t the only ones restricting the free flow of information on the Web. The report criticized the Patriot Act for allowing the FBI to step up Internet snooping in the United States and a new French law that makes ISPs responsible for content that their customers post online.

That’s it. No specifics on what “step up Internet snooping” is, no examples of prosecutions under the “repressive laws”, nada. But it’s got to be thrown in there to make sure that western democracy is put on the same moral footing as every tin-pot dictatorship out there.