Non Fluffy Wicca

Anyone who has read The Handmaid's Tale likely remembers how the malevolent government in the book began to assert its control. It all began with national identity cards that stored all personal information electronically. These cards were then linked to banking and credit accounts. It became a trivial issue for "the powers that be" to shut off access to certain people or classes of people, forcing them to comply with government mandates in order to continue to eat. Those who attempted to run were easily tracked since access to just about everything in this world was controlled based on the ID card.

Well guess what? H.B. 418 which passed the House 261-161 mandates exactly that scenario. In a world where we have at least weekly reports of data piracy and identity theft, it seems counter intuitive to gather it all into one place so that it's even easier to compromise. These new ID cards, complete with RFID and "undefined" personal information encoding would be required to fly (despite ongoing lawsuits like John Gilmore's that attempt to force the government to reveal WHAT particular law mandates that we "show our papers" for domestic travel), required to enter many types of government buildings, etc.

How easy it would be to have a "glitch" that shut off access to "suspected terrorists." How about those who had passed an RFID checkpoint too close to the home of a "suspected terrorist?" Or even those who used a particular terminal in a cyber cafe that was linked to anonymous speech advocating US withdrawl from Iraq? Or perhaps those pesky Pagans even.

Far fetched? Go take a look at H.B. 418 at http://thomas.loc.gov.

Posted by mikki at 10:47 PM | Permalink

A very sad day in the history of the Mac. Perhaps it's a coincidence that my Powerbook hard drive also died the same day.

The computer interface expert who launched the Macintosh project for Apple Computer dies of cancer at age 61.
[CNET News.com]

Posted by mikki at 11:21 PM | Permalink

New Zealand: The Phoenix Astronomical Society has unveiled it's own version of Stonehenge, designed to work properly in the antipodes.

The astronomical society's volunteers supplied 11,000 hours of labour over the 18 months the henge took to build.

The result of that toil is a henge of 24 upright pillars and connecting lintels that is 30m in diameter and about 4m high. In the centre of the henge is a 5m-tall obelisk, the eye of which points at the south celestial pole.

Set into a tiled mosaic that runs out from the obelisk along the meridian is a 10m analemma, the figure of eight pattern that the path of sun traces over a year.

Outside the circle of the henge stand six heel stones, the markers for the rising and setting points of the sun at solstice and equinox.

Maori astronomical achievements are also celebrated in the new monument:

To make the henge truly of Aotearoa (the Maori name for New Zealand), the astronomers have ensured that their creation marks the stars and constellations that Polynesian navigators used on their epic voyages across the Pacific Ocean, and they have also incorporated Maori lore.

NZ unveils Stonehenge replica - BBC News, 14th February 2005.

Posted by mikki at 06:03 PM | Permalink

I'm not exactly certain why the story of the 9 month pregnant woman who had to fight off and kill a nutcase who wanted to steal her unborn child bothered me so much. (Located at http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/02/14/woman.attacked.ap/index.html?section=cnn_topstories) The story truly yanked at something primal inside of me. The mix of emotions is difficult to separate, but here's my best shot.

Most people realize that I am a mother, and as such would do anything within my power, including give my life for my child. It's something that you hear from most mothers. The idea that a pregnant woman would defend her unborn child in this way is not surprising, although being 9 months pregnant and physically defending oneself is not easy. What IS surprising to me is the recent rash of women who SO want a baby that they would kill another human being and cut the child from her womb.

Why in the world would someone do this? What possible drive is SO strong that one MUST have a child; a child of one's own ethnicity (if not one's own genes)? I don't buy the argument that women are driven by something internal to become a mother. I realize I will likely get flamed for this notion, but I think that a lot of the issue is external pressure.

I remember the B.C. (Before Child) time when I was perfectly happy, and feeling perfectly fulfilled with a uterine occupancy rate of zero. Perfect strangers would tell me that I would never be complete without a child. Wouldn't be complete? I was then pretty complete in my relationship with my husband. No man that I had ever known had been told that HE would not be complete without a child, however plenty of men AND women were quick to tell me about my lack of completeness.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that "society is to blame." Far from it. Insane people who believe that killing others because they covet something as personal as their unborn child have no possible excuse that lies outside their own twisted psyche. But I do think we need to look carefully at a society where so many people spend billions of dollars per year for in vitro fertilization, people travel the world to adopt children that look like them, and seem completely surprised when a married couple chooses to remain childless.

A woman's completeness is NOT measured by her uterine production rate.

UPDATE: Last night in a chat room, someone actually attempted to tell us that women "think differently" when they are post menopause. That the hormones that "determine their thought patterns" shift and so she thinks differently. That falls directly into this same rubric of sexism that mandates that a woman must have a child to be complete. Hormones govern emotions, not base cognition. Hormones and emotions can alter perceptions, but they do not change HOW we think, or even necessarily WHAT we think.

The whole idea that someone would blatantly say that women "think differently" due to hormonal shifts has been used to keep women "in their places" for millennia. How can a woman be trusted with authority or responsibility if she has those pesky shifting hormones running around? I had hoped that this fallacy had died in the 50's but instead, it is alive and unwell, and living in a few pagan clergy who should know better.

It pains me to see how much further we have to go.

Posted by mikki at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'm sorry, but as a lawyer, my confidence in "the system" gets pretty much destroyed when I see stories like this. It makes me wonder what total dweeb attorney took a case like this, and what the idiot judge could POSSIBLY be thinking.

This CNN Story pretty much made me want to go back to bed and pull the covers over my head. Two teenage girls thought they'd do something really nice and baked homemade cookies, wrapped them in little packages with little hearts, and brought them to their neighbors. Some worthless imbecile got "so scared" that she had to go to the hospital. I guess that when the census comes to her house, or the Jehovah's Witnesses, or even the damn mailman or UPS, she winds up in the hospital too? I wonder if they also get sued, or if she saves it up to go after teenage girls trying to do something nice?

What's worse, the families offered to pay this stupid beast's 900.00 medical bills (I wonder if that included psychiatric testing that this 49 year old woman obviously needs). The beast declined because "their apologies were not sincere." Oh man. So let's use the legal system because people's apologies for doing something nice are not sincere enough for a psycho who can't handle chocolate chip and sugar cookies.

And some judge actually awarded the psycho the $900.00 and let this travesty of justice play out. I wonder how much the poor girls' families had to pay their lawyer to defend them against this stupidity. I also wonder if OUR insurance premiums for our homeowners insurance will go up or we'll now have a clause inserted that says they don't pay if we try to do nice things for our neighbors and they turn out to be mentally ill and sue us for it.

Posted by mikki at 10:18 AM | Permalink

This is just plain HILARIOUS

The caption to this photo from the United Church of Christ reads:

SpongeBob meets with the Rev. John H. Thomas, the UCC's general minister and president, in his office. Explains Thomas, "No matter who you are or where you are on life's journey, SpongeBob, you're welcome here."

This one of series of photos illustrating SpongeBob's visit to UCC after his encounter with the "Focus on Family" Group.

A concerned reader asks:

"Infringement? Dilution? Or just a sponge in a church?"

Posted by mikki at 04:16 PM | Permalink