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This was originally a “page” on my blog that I updated from time to time. But I like using the chronological format of a blog better now. Be sure to check out the Reading, Watching, Listening category of this blog!

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(4-11-08) Caught Jerome Bixby’s The Man From Earth. Enjoyable

(4-2-08) Saw Being There. I absolutely loved it.

(3-29-08)I’ve been perseverating on the movie Fearless for a while. I hadn’t seen it in years so I rented it with Charlotte. I considered for a long while exactly -why- I was so engrossed with the film. It’s that life-changing moment, such a change is, in part, put upon the character and part of it comes from within. I took a look at some other movies and found that awakening-moment in a lot of them.

Fearless – 1993 – Max knows the plane is going to crash, he looks out the window to see a blinding reflection of sunlight on the plane and realizes that he isn’t afraid.The Matrix – Neo is shot at by the agents, he raises his hand serenely and says “No”.

Run Lola Run – Lola is lying face up, dying on the street, befuddled at how the day could have ended up going so poorly. She decides what “has to be done” and says “Stop.” The day begins again.

Ratatouille – 2007- (1:36:27) Anton Ego tastes the Ratatouille Remy made. The experience throws him forcefully back to a moment in his childhood. The wheels on his busted bike still spinning, he comes home nearly in tears and his mother serves him the greatest comfort-food a boy could ever have.

L.A. Story – 1991 – Quoting the characters:

Sara: And if I were to go?
Harris: All I know is, on the day your plane was to leave, if I had the power, I would turn the winds around, I would roll in the fog, I would bring in storms, I would change the polarity of the earth so compasses couldn’t work, so your plane couldn’t take off.

That isn’t the moment. The moment is when it actually happens.

Eraserhead – He is staring at the murmuring radiator.

Waiting for Godot – This from the script, the last lines in the play:

VLADIMIR:
Well? Shall we go?
ESTRAGON:
Yes, let’s go.
They do not move.

Henry V -1989 – The St Crispin’s Day speech

Groundhog Day – it’s hard to tell… I suppose the entire movie was about that realization moment.

Koyaanisqatsi – There is a crowded escalator, people are decending, the music is… well, the music is Phillip Glass, and I make eye contact with one person in the throng.
Movie Reviews3-22-05: Run Lola Run is a beautiful film. This is the first action movie I’ve ever seen who’s main focus was playing with determinism. There is a moment in the film that is quite comparable to the brilliant moment in The Matrix (before all those other Matrix movies ruined it) after Neo is shot, he stands up again and says, “No” to the rain of bullets coming at him. But this movie is far more direct. Far more simple. It’s about love causing transcendence.

8-9-03: Monsters Inc. Why didn’t someone command me to see this movie?! I laughed out loud for an hour and a half! The details bedazzled me (did you pause the movie to read the headlines of the newspaper Roz was reading?), the animation rocked, the story warmed my heart and was tight and…. and …. gush gush gush. Wow. I’m in awe of the completeness of this zany world they created. Thank you, Pixar people, Disney people!

3-3-03: Donnie Darko is an incredible movie. I found it much more interesting the second time through, with the Director’s commentary turned on. Director commentary tracks can really change and expand the way the viewer sees a movie!

2-24-03 Princess Mononoke. I’ve said in the past that I’d like to see more films where the line between good guys and bad guys isn’t so distinct. Where it’s not as simple as good vs. evil, good wins, fade to black. I recall being very impressed with Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven several years ago. Well, Princess Mononoke pretty much freaked me out because it struck so hard at that chord, my head is all a-jumble. It’s set me off kilter and it saddens me. The forces at work in this world are stronger than most of the characters that are led by them. Everyone is led by destiny, or vendetta, or instinct, or honor, or rank. And most of the time, their motivation is their Achilles heel. Furthermore, the forces at play are ones that, at their most fundamental level, must tear and destroy their opposing forces. Never mind the finale music at the end of this movie, each surviving character…. or to put it more appropriately… each of the forces that we saw at the beginning of the film is just as ready to tear the throat out of anyone else that would oppose them.

“When the forest has been cleared and the wolves wiped out, this place will be the richest land in the world.” Lady Eboshi. And to do that, she has to get her team of leper engineers to design the best rifle possible to kill the very Spirit of the forest (and anyone else that would oppose her) and set ambush for an army of boars attacking because she had poisoned their god. And she’s just one of the amoral lead players in this film.

“We are not trying to solve global problems with this film. There can be no happy ending to the war between the rampaging forest gods and humanity. But even in the midst of hatred and slaughter, there is still much to live for. Wonderful encounters and beautiful things still exist.”–Miyazaki, in a statement quoted in PRINCESS MONONOKE: THE ART AND MAKING OF JAPAN’S MOST POPULAR FILM OF ALL TIME

2-15-03: Notes… I find that I really appreciate media with absurdist elements. The TV show Scrubs is a good example… It’s a mostly realistic drama, but the viewers get a humorous, absurdist slant on character motivations. The characters sometimes say EXACTLY what they are thinking instead of just what a real person would say. The show then keeps it’s feet on the ground by having the other characters respond (for the most part) to what the original speaker meant to say, instead of what we all actually heard. We get a window on their id.

Want to watch a good movie? Find one at the IMDB Top Rated Films list.

The following lists don’t necessarily represent films that I think are
“good”, they are about films I think are “important”. Films
that have changed the way I look at the world include:Major effect

• Genghis Blues. 7-3-01. It’s moving… moreso that it’s a true story!
• Wings of Desire – The ’98 film “City of Angels”, though sporting a nice soundtrack, is a poor copy of this masterpiece.
• Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory I didn’t realize how important this film was to my psyche until I saw it on Pier 25 in NYC in Aug 2001. At one point, the projector stopped but the sound kept going and I knew that I didn’t have to -see- the film to remember it frame-by-frame. It’s a far more adult oriented film than it was billed as. To this day, I use phrases from that movie in my everyday life. I couldn’t tell you offhand which ones they are because they are so ingrained in me.
• L.A. Story
• Grand Canyon
• Better off Dead
• Clerks
• Psychos in Love Read my review of the film on the IMDB.
• Breakfast Club The quintessential ’80’s teenager film (Hey, I was an ’80’s teenager)
• Eraserhead I caught this in a tiny viewing room in the Tufts Library in… ’90 or ’91. I admit that I saw this film with a heavy hand on the Fast Forward button. But there are all these important images and “concepts” (yes, I put “concepts” in quotes) that it puts forth.
• so many short films!
• Buckaroo Banzai
• Wargames
• Holiday Inn – Dancing with Fred Astaire and Marjorie Reynolds
• Henry V – After the St. Crispin’s Day speech, I would have gone to war for him too
• Groundhog Day – I know, it’s just some cute little comedy with Billl Murray. Ask me sometime in person why this film had a major impact in how I think about the world.
• Fearless

Minor effect

• Office Space – 11-19-02. I’ve seen it a bunch of times before but it is even more poignant now that I’m rethinking my continued Dilbertness.
• Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within – I finally got to seeing this 10-8-02 with Shara on Tivo. It was just so frigging cool! The visual was so more than real… transcendently pushing though the envelope into another level of existence! Wow. Wow. Wow. Of course, I don’t understand quite what it was about either… it looked like they forgot to mention a couple things before the closing credits but it way more than made up for it in sheer coolocity! Did I tell you yet that it was cool? Shara unfortunately didn’t quite share my enthusiasm for this film’s coolness, leaving me to rant on my web page instead of to a real person. Ah! I figured out what it was about! It took me about 3 viewings and some daydreaming before I got it. The message is as transcendental as the visuals. Rebirth, reincarnation, the resilience of the human spirit (and other spirits), forgiveness, wonderment, the innate beauty of life and the importance of that beauty. And I’m honored that the film makers didn’t just explain these concepts to us, the viewers. He demonstrated them by putting up a mirror to our own souls and letting us gaze. Heavy. Cool. Yeah. :-)
• Des Morceaux de ma Femme – a 6 min short I saw 5-16-02. I understand the main character’s need to cast away his old life in the face of lost love.
• Brainstorm
• Strictly Ballroom
• The Dead
• Romeo + Juliet -1996,West Side Story meets Shakespeare! This version is the most accessible, the sexiest, the fastest, the coolest.
• Big Night
• Metropolis
• The Man Who Fell to Earth
• Field of Dreams
• Koyaanisqatsi
• Chasing Amy– Been there, done that.
• Harold and Maude – Been there, done that.
• A Single Girl – This French flick where we get to watch this woman working as a maid in a hotel in PAINSTAKING real time.. One can learn from their cinematic mistakes too.
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
• Deathstalker and Deathstalker II – Bad warrior flix at their best
• Excalibur Through the entire film, all the knights are either in full plate or naked. Not bad, eh? But seriously, this portrays (and develops on it’s own) the King Arthur legend like no other.
• Highlander There is only one Highlander film. Forget the other two.
• Heavy Metal
• Cinema Paradiso
• Casablanca
• Blade Runner This -is- cyberpunk.
• Reservoir Dogs
• Das Boot
• The Princess Bride
• The Boys in Company C – I really didn’t like watching this film. It’s extremely critical of the Vietnam war by introducing the “war is hell” genre. Made a year before Apocalypse Now, Platoon and Full Metal Jacket feel like re-makes of this film. I hated it. It gives me nightmares. That is part of the reason why it is an “important” film.
• So many Hong Kong Kung Fu movies! – Especially the wacky ones… ones with Pogo Stick Vampires for instance! And ones with exploding chickens and rooms filled with ladders! Wee!
• Repo Man – It’s so surreal… or is it? It pulls on several strings… the fear of nuclear things, that primal fear most people have of being too close to weird people..
• The Four Corners of Nowhere

General ratings: These films might not have changed the way I think about the world but I recommend them.

• The Matrix.
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (saw twice, spring of 2001) What a magical tale it tells :-)
• The American President – (seen again for the 2nd or 3rd time 5-11-02) – The story was written with such grace. It’s such a refreshingly pleasant ride. It makes me want to believe in politics again, in love again, in the strength of human character again. It inspires me to be a patriot. The story makes me think of the speech that Senator John Glenn gave upon his retirement from politics. (I looked for this speech online and was very disappointed to not find it. If you can locate it, I’d be very grateful!) It was the kind of speech that makes you want to believe in something as sappy as truth, justice and the American way. But the absolute best thing about this movie is that it shows that dignity can be sexy.
• American Beauty – (saw Wednesday November 24, 1999 with my folks in Florida)
• The Red Violin – (saw Jul-Aug? 1999 with Miriam and Rebecca) On the way out, I asked if we could go see the next showing of this film. It was that good.
• Spirited Away / Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi – (saw November 2002 at AMC 25 in NYC) A rich tale, probably suitable for children as well as adults because of the layering of themes. A beautiful escapist film. It really takes to to another world.

Writer/Directors I admire and the works I favor:

• Richard Kelly – Donnie Darko
• M Night Shyamalan – Signs, Bound, The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable

Sloppy/Bad Directors:

• Wes Anderson – The Royal Tenenbaums. Script needed work, Direction needed work
• Kinka Usher – Mystery Men. This could have been a really good movie, but it was brought down by directorial sloppiness and suckiness

7-15-03Here are my ratings from my 6 month subscription to Netflix.

Over those 6 months, I rented 39 titles… $120/39 = $3.08 per title… delivered to my house. Personal conclusion: Yes, Netflix is worth it. I extended the membership by 1 month. Well, actually I forgot to cancel it before the due date. So I decided to fill up my Tivo for a month. I captured 17 movies in that month, lowering my overall cost to $2.53 per title. That’s a lot of movies!

You probably don’t want to see this this, but here is my rental history from February to August 2003

Movie Title                                                 Shipped        Returned

The Deep End                                                08/26/03       08/28/03

Happy Accidents                                             08/25/03       08/27/03

Baraka                                                      08/25/03       08/27/03

A Beautiful Mind (2001)                                     08/22/03       08/26/03

Space: 1999: Vol. 1 (1975)                                  08/15/03       08/25/03

Frequency (2000)                                            08/19/03       08/25/03

Powaqqatsi (1988)                                           08/18/03       08/22/03

Road to Perdition (2002)                                    08/11/03       08/18/03

Sabrina (1954)                                              08/11/03       08/18/03

Wide Awake (1998)                                           08/12/03       08/15/03

No Man's Land (2001)                                        08/08/03       08/12/03

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988)            08/07/03       08/11/03

Old School (2003)                                           08/06/03       08/11/03

The Reduced Shakespeare Company (2000)                      08/01/03       08/08/03

Like Mike (2002)                                            08/04/03       08/07/03

The Pianist (2002)                                          07/15/03       08/06/03

Shanghai Noon (2000)                                        07/29/03       08/04/03

Children of Dune: Disc 2 (2003)                             07/28/03       08/01/03

Children of Dune: Disc 1 (2003)                             07/15/03       07/29/03

Autofocus (2002)                                            07/22/03       07/28/03

Punch-Drunk Love (2002)                                     07/15/03       07/22/03

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002)               06/17/03       07/15/03

Koyannisqatsi (1983)                                        06/02/03       07/15/03

South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut (1999)                 06/17/03       07/15/03

City by the Sea (2002)                                      06/06/03       06/17/03

Catch Me If You Can (2002)                                  06/06/03       06/17/03

Best in Show (2000)                                         05/09/03       06/06/03

High Fidelity (2000)                                        05/21/03       06/06/03

The Four Feathers: Collector's Edition (2002)               05/21/03       06/02/03

Moonlight Mile (2002)                                       05/08/03       05/21/03

Glengarry Glen Ross: Special Edition (1992)                 05/13/03       05/21/03

The Emperor's Club (2002)                                   05/06/03       05/13/03

Grave of the Fireflies (1988)                               04/21/03       05/09/03

K-Pax (2001)                                                04/30/03       05/08/03

Chocolat (2000)                                             04/30/03       05/06/03

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)        04/22/03       04/30/03

Short #6: Insanity (1999)                                   04/14/03       04/30/03

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001)                       04/10/03       04/21/03

13 Conversations About One Thing (2002)                     04/10/03       04/21/03

Legend of 1900 (1998)                                       03/26/03       04/14/03

Cirque du Soleil: Novelle Experience (1991)                 03/26/03       04/10/03

Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997)                         03/17/03       04/10/03

Dark Star: Director's Cut (1974)                            03/21/03       03/26/03

Memento (2000)                                              03/11/03       03/25/03

XXX: Special Edition (2002)                                 03/17/03       03/21/03

My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002)                             03/03/03       03/17/03

Jackson Pollock: Love and Death on Long Island (1999)       03/05/03       03/17/03

Fight Club (1999)                                           03/04/03       03/11/03

Donnie Darko (2001)                                         02/25/03       03/05/03

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)                                 02/26/03       03/04/03

The Matrix: Revisited (2001)                                02/20/03       02/28/03

Princess Mononoke (1997)                                    02/20/03       02/26/03

Mystery Men (1999)                                          02/21/03       02/25/03

Changing Lanes (2002)                                       02/14/03       02/21/03

Mr. Deeds (2002)                                            02/03/03       02/20/03

Signs: Special Edition (2002)                               02/14/03       02/20/03

Panic Room (2002)                                           02/03/03       02/14/03

Minority Report (2002)                                      02/03/03       02/14/03

You probably don’t want to see this either, but here is my queue list (movies that I want to see next), July 15, 2003

Seven Samurai

Wide Awake

Space: 1999: Vol. 1

Powaqqatsi

Frequency

Heathers

Randy Newman: At the Odeon

The Master of the Rings

Mysteries of Magic: The Impossible �

Lord of the Rings: Fellowship: Bonus Disc

Dogtown and Z-Boys

Faust

Heavenly Creatures

Meet the Feebles

Lathe of Heaven

America's Most Scenic Drives: Disc 1

Unsolved Mysteries of World War II: Vol. 2

Aelita, Queen of Mars

Secret Agent A.K.A. Danger Man: Vol. 1

Shanghai Noon

Auto Focus

Insomnia

Once Upon a Time in China

24: Season 1: Disc 1

Taxi Driver

Evolution: Disc 1

Phone Booth

---DVDs Awaiting Release---

Naqoyqatsi

Head of State

Blue Car

Shaolin Soccer

The Way Things Go

Swimming Pool

This is just a gripe at Citibank Credit Card Service.

Here is the exchange I had today:

Continue reading ‘No Help from Citibank’ »

Rick T Tweeted at me recently:
@leesonko The five stages of Twitter Acceptance http://tinyurl.com/5wh72w

Here is my reply:

The 5 stages of Twitter Acceptance (Lee’s version)

1) How could 140 characters be enough room to write anything intelligent to anyone?

2) Stop bugging me, I’ll get a freaking account already.

3) Hey, this is just like blogging except 140 characters isn’t enough room to write anything intelligent to anyone.

4) Oh I get it, it’s like mobile IRC… except the interface isn’t as advanced as that 1988 standby. And the whole world can see your conversations that are automatically eternally publicly archived. I could get a (non-mobile) Twitter client like Twirl and make the process of… umm… what was I doing? Oh yes, microblogging/chatting easier… wait, isn’t that was the whole Web 2.0 / AJAX revolution was about: making websites “live” with XML messaging? So why doesn’t Twitter.com use that? Wait, why don’t I just use SMS and email for private text messages, and my blog for public messages? Boring, eh? I mean, I have my phone everywhere and it supports email and texting. And my (non-mobile) computer supports email and multimedia and and stuff. Well, at least I can put my friend’s twitter accounts into my RSS reader. Sure their Tweets aren’t as descriptive (140 char limit), intelligible (can’t follow conversations), or useful (“Can’t Tweet now, pooping”) but at least I’m finding a way to keep in contact with my friends without having to hear their voices on the telephone or see them in person. Good thing, eh?

Crap like this:

(audio version)

 
Letter of the Law
May 09, 2008
Last November the FBI used a top secret National Security Letter to demand user information from the Internet Archive, an online library. Internet Archive co-founder Brewster Kahle decided not to comply. Instead he sued and the FBI backed down. Kahle describes what it’s like to challenge an NSL.

BOB GARFIELD: Last fall, an online library of webpages called the Internet Archive received a National Security Letter, or NSL, from the FBI. It’s a secret demand for information, and when the government issues one the recipient can’t talk about it, can’t even acknowledge that it exists, except to his or her lawyer.

In this case, the FBI wanted the email address, contact information and usage information for an Internet Archive user. The Archive chose not to cooperate and instead was the third recipient of a National Security Letter to fight the government in court. And this week, the government settled.

By now, Internet Archive co-founder Brewster Kahle is well versed in all things NSL, but last November, when he first heard from his lawyers at the Electronic Frontier Foundation about the FBI’s demand, he faced a serious decision.

BREWSTER KAHLE: The Electronic Frontier Foundation — it’s like an ACLU for the digital world — wasn’t able to call us and tell us about it. They actually had to physically come over because as part of the gag order, the lawyers representing us couldn’t use the telephone to discuss this.

So the EFF lawyers came over and talked to me about it, and it then put me under a gag order. I couldn’t discuss it with the board, any of the other staff members. I couldn’t even discuss the issue with my wife.

I had to make a decision of whether to give patron information over to the FBI or do what libraries do and protect their patrons and go against the United States government.

BOB GARFIELD: It’s hard to even fathom the frustration that you must have felt. But, unlike almost everybody else who has gotten such a letter, you did something about it. How did that play out?

BREWSTER KAHLE: The Electronic Frontier Foundation, with the ACLU and the Internet Archive, decided to file suit to go and stop this demand and get some judicial review. If a judge had gone and said that they need certain information, then we would have tried to comply. But this has gone completely outside of the judicial system as it stood.

So we fought back against it, and not only did they decide then to withdraw their information request, they didn’t want a judge to decide whether this whole law was constitutional. So they wanted to settle. The only way that we would be willing to settle is so that we could talk about this and remove the gag order.

BOB GARFIELD: Now, previously, a recipient of a National Security Letter did litigate the matter and did win, and the court ruled that such letters are unconstitutional. But the government appealed that ruling, so the final result is pending.

In the meantime, what you’ve done is published what you call [LAUGHS] a cookbook for how to deal with an NSL, should you be unfortunate enough to receive one.

BREWSTER KAHLE: The first step is to go to one of these pro bono firms, like EFF and ACLU, and you can file a lawsuit. It’s legal, perfectly legal to push back on these, to get a court to go and say whether it’s actually required.

And if you go through that, in every circumstance they’ve been washed away.

So there’s now a cookbook of the forms that they use and how you can go about pushing back on these — is now all up on public websites.

BOB GARFIELD: When you spoke to the EFF about this and discussed your options, did you consider the idea of just going public and risking prosecution from the outset?

BREWSTER KAHLE: No. The jail sentence is kind of onerous, but the wondrous thing is the EFF and the ACLU didn’t blink. They said, of course, we’re going to help you with this. Because imagine what the alternative would be. If I’m running a library, I can’t even tell anybody about this. If I started incurring legal bills, I’d have to explain it to the board. There’d be no way to deal with getting this in front of a judge without incurring tens of thousands of dollars.

BOB GARFIELD: And yet, when the Congress learned that the FBI has been issuing these letters indiscriminately, Congress didn’t seem to get all that exercised about it. I mean, for example, this provision to date has not been repealed. Do you know of any attempts in Congress to deal with this particularly terrifying tool for a federal police agency?

BREWSTER KAHLE: In 2006, they tried to make some exemptions for libraries, but then a library gets served with one of these things. It’s still happening. And, unfortunately, because of the hyper-secrecy of this, there have been 200,000 of these requests over a course of four years. So 50,000 a year are being issued, and there are only three that have actually been challenged.

BOB GARFIELD: The FBI apparently, when they issued the letter to you, did not regard the Internet Archive as a library, I guess. I mean, I don’t know what they thought of your vast digital repository of — is it every page that has ever appeared [LAUGHS] on the Internet?

BREWSTER KAHLE: Yeah.

BOB GARFIELD: But they weren’t thinking of it as a library. So when they settled with you, was it because the scales had finally fallen from their eyes and they realized that they had overreached and abused the National Security Letter privilege or because they realized they’d been caught on a technicality — oh, I guess he’s a library after all?

BREWSTER KAHLE: We don’t know. The speculation is that they just don’t want these cases brought before a judge. And there are perfectly reasonable warrants and subpoena approaches for getting information that you need. These are just a shortcut that they use currently, and they’re using it wildly. And that’s the reason why we pushed back, so that people can start to see what it is that’s going on out there.

BOB GARFIELD: All right, Brewster. Well, thank you very much.

BREWSTER KAHLE: Thank you. Appreciate the time.

BOB GARFIELD: Brewster Kahle is director and co-founder of the Internet Archive.

and this:

(audio version)

Scott Bloch(ed)
May 09, 2008
The Office of the Special Counsel is supposed to protect government whistleblowers, but watchdog groups charge that under director Scott Bloch the agency has been ineffectual and worse. The FBI raided Bloch’s office this week amid these allegations. Jeff Ruch, director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, describes the investigation.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I’m Brooke Gladstone. Three years ago, we interviewed Scott Bloch, Chief of the Office of Special Counsel. That’s the government agency that is supposed to shield civic-minded government whistleblowers from retaliation. We had him on to answer charges from watchdog groups that he was burying investigations and politicizing his office. He denied it.

SCOTT BLOCH: Sometimes I wonder if you have to fall through the rabbit hole to live in Washington. Things seem to be turned on their head in the media. The truth is I took an oath of office to defend whistleblowers and to take the meritorious claims and push them to the limit. And that’s exactly what we’re doing.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: But controversy once again swirls around Bloch. This week he was back in the news, when FBI agents raided his home and office, seized computers and issued subpoenas to 17 employees. One of the organizations that first blew the whistle on Bloch was Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. Executive director Jeff Ruch says his group’s complaint ultimately led to the FBI raid.

JEFF RUCH: The Special Counsel is, as we understand it, being charged with obstructing the investigation into our complaint.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: What was your original complaint back in 2005?

JEFF RUCH: It was a multipart complaint that involved purging the staff, retaliating against whistleblowers, issuing illegal gag orders, improper refusal to enforce laws and politicizing the Hatch Act enforcement.

We filed this complaint back in March, 2005, and we still don’t have the results of that investigation. What we have is this interim step where the FBI has now intervened.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So do you suspect that there was actually criminal misconduct going on in the Office of Special Counsel?

JEFF RUCH: There have been many media reports about his efforts to obstruct the investigation, prevent his staff from interviewing with investigators as well as destroying documents on office computers. All of those could potentially fall under the realm of criminal misconduct — so, yes.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Another one of Bloch’s responsibilities was to enforce the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in partisan political activity. But wasn’t one of the principal charges against him that he politicized his own office?

JEFF RUCH: Yes. What he was accused of doing by his own staff was blocking investigations of prominent Republicans, like Condoleezza Rice, and pushing investigations in the activities of prominent Democrats, like Senator John Kerry.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Before we go any further, what does the Office of Special Counsel do? Is this really the high moral accountability office?

JEFF RUCH: He is supposed to be the guardian of the merit system, the merit system being the principles that govern federal service. And it’s a very important office that Congress invested with a certain amount of independence in that the person cannot be removed by the whim of the president. He may only be removed by the president for cause.

Mr. Bloch has told people that the White House has twice previously asked him to resign, and he’s refused.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Really? Why do you think it asked him to resign?

JEFF RUCH: Scott Bloch has been accusing the White House of being part of a gay rights conspiracy to persecute him. He took a position that the laws against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation couldn’t be enforced, and it was a position that, from what we could tell, didn’t match with the law and was reversed on the order of the White House.

And the Bush Administration’s not really known to be a proponent of what some would call the gay rights agenda, and so it took a fairly extreme position for their intervention. That appeared to start a cascade of bad blood that may have culminated in recent events.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: We spoke to you in 2005. You said then that Bloch had dismissed 1,000 whistleblower cases without investigating them. Did that pattern continue despite the complaints against his office?

JEFF RUCH: Well, yes. Even though it’s the Office of the Special Counsel, not once during Scott Bloch’s tenure did they go to an administrative body and represent a whistleblower. So they never acted as a counsel.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Not one time?

JEFF RUCH: Not one time.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: You would say, then, that the people that he was supposed to protect, that is, government employees who are trying to blow the whistle on government misconduct, could find very little aid or comfort in his office.

JEFF RUCH: Whistleblowers have, in essence, been abandoned by the Office of Special Counsel, and never in the history of the federal government, in my view, have whistleblowers needed a champion more than during the Bush years.

We’re taking the position not only should Scott Bloch be fired but Congress should consider abolishing the office and starting over again. It’s to the point where this institution is now so compromised and distracted and paralyzed that it may be worse than nothing.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: If you really think that maybe the office should be eliminated and we should start all over again, what kind of replacement office would you create?

JEFF RUCH: We would design a system that would give the whistleblower much more autonomy over their own case and fate rather than depending upon a federal official to come in and save them, if you gave them the options – that would range from mediation to litigation to resolve their complaints – and take the remaining functions of the Special Counsel and put it in agencies that are competent, like the GAO, or moving Hatch Act prosecutions back to the Justice Department.

Certainly for the next few months, you’re not going to see anything productive out of an office where a fifth of the remaining staff have also gotten subpoenas to testify before a grand jury against the person who’s supposed to be supervising them. And if you’re a whistleblower that depends upon this institution, it’s just a recipe for disaster.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Jeff, thank you very much.

JEFF RUCH: You’re welcome.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Jeff Ruch is the executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

A close friend found out that they need a dental implant, some crowns replaced, deep cleaning and some fillings repaired. The total bill will be in the $10,000 range. Money is pretty tight. Should they get this work done via medical tourism?

The whole thing (airfare and a week of luxury accomodations included) might cost $4,000 overseas.

Of course, there are issues like that right now it’s difficult to get to Bumrungrad hospital in Thailand because of political unrest…. hmmm. :-(

My sister and Niece Julia at Rockefeller Center Sunday. And my view of them via a webcam :-)

I still don’t know how but I got a keylogger malware on my computer. Apparently I’ve had “HellzLittleSpy” on my computer for maybe 2 weeks. Grr! So I’m off to change all my passwords and crap. Maybe I’ll still have to reinstall Windows too.

I noticed that every evening around 7 or 8pm my computer got wonky. iexplore.exe would start and consume a lot of CPU (20-80%) for minutes at a time. I couldn’t “kill/end process” iexplore.exe but I could “end process tree” it. But it would restart in a few seconds.

Then my computer talked to me. A couple nights ago it said something in Japanese with an announcers voice. Last night there was a 5 second clip that sounded like a porn movie. First a few seconds of modern but cheesy “ba dum dum dum” on a Casio and then some “Oo, ahh!” noises. I went away from my computer for a few minutes last night and this website was showing in my browser: http://sms.7988.net/goto?q=qm&company=9ying&9vuid=53662

To test a theory, I uninstalled Vuze/Azureus last night and my computer flipped out. Now I can only boot in safe mode. I ran Spybot in safe mode and it found HellzLittleSpy. I had previously run Spybot but it hadn’t detected the malware.

Update: Spybot also found the following that is a keylogger. :-(

{F03BDE84-4DB2-4DAB-B350-B07E6B918021} ()
location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Browser Helper Objects\
BHO name:
CLSID name:
Path: C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\
Long name: JvtnNt64.987
Short name:
Date (created): 12/9/2008 8:54:18 AM
Date (last access): 12/9/2008 11:01:10 AM
Date (last write): 12/9/2008 8:54:18 AM
Filesize: 49789
Attributes: hidden sysfile archive
MD5: 8D596C51291946C6D0AFAB926C21F801
CRC32: 02B3C9BE

A few days ago I came up with the idea of a T. Pen. More to follow.

I saw Carl Pistaturo‘s machine art for the first time last night. I was astounded. If you ever get the chance, see these “amusements”!

I had caught his listing on The Squidlist.  

Rotating Amusement Devices of Carl Pisaturo

Experience and celebrate mechatronic devices with inverse commercial potential. These are highly artgineered Rotating Amusement Devices – smooth motions, illusion, spatial-spirographic streaks.

 

10+ machines will be on display and demo’d throughout the evening, including the first public demos of RING WAVE, a new type of high speed light streaker.  

 

in association with MAPP, the Mission Arts Performance Project.

I note that the performances had an element of danger even more extreme than an SRL show. His amazing “rotating amusements” have spinning parts that weigh a pound or more and appear to spin at upwards of 1,000 RPM. If they weren’t perfectly weighted, they could fly apart and… well, hence the danger. As seen, they did not appear dangerous, but wonderfully elegant. Pure applied engineering.

My friend Will O’ writes:
Why I Love the World Wide Web
http://www.stopabductions.com

I concur!

From the site:

Since trying Michael Menkin’s Helmet, I have not been bothered by alien mind control. Now my thoughts are my own. I have achieved meaningful work and am contributing to society.

 My life is better than ever before. Thank you Michael for the work you are doing to save all humanity.

Make yours today!