On the death of the good doctor Hunter S. Thompson... That you sought fit to take your leave now could only mean that you felt it truly was time for you to check out. However your judgment in the past has strayed from even the most generous definition of reasonable, of your own charter and fortune we cannot question your command. Because you gave so much you will be missed. Because you gave so much you will not be forgotten. So drive off into the night, good doctor, and godspeed.

It cannot be a good omen for the American economy that the most compelling reality shows echo the class tension and overnight success fantasies of movies produced in, or set in, the Great Depression. But the unquenchable appeal of "The Apprentice" and "American Idol" lies at least in part in their poignancy: both series combine the preposterous feel-good optimism of "42nd Street" with the desperation of "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?"

One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the oval office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.

--From Bill Moyers' acceptance speech for the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School's Global Environment Citizen Award. (PDF version here. Thanks Maria for pointing this one out...)

For the first time, a scientific study has statistically shown that eating fast-food predisposes you to Type 2 diabetes and heart troubles.

I don't think there's much to talk about in the world right now except this.

Peace on earth, goodwill to all men.

With all the shit that goes down in this world, it's important to remember that there are many wonderful people working on many amazing things.

Remember folks, on the "biggest shopping day of the year", it's important to Buy Nothing.

For the religious right, Bush was like any other stealth candidate. No matter his unqualifications, he delivered for them in his first term, and so they rewarded him with their votes in record numbers.

"In a critical commentary, the Australian medical research scientist Raymond Johnstone noted that the annual death rate from lung cancer among the non-smoking wives of non-smoking men is around six per 100,000, whereas among the non-smoking wives of smoking men the corresponding figure is eight per 100,000. Now this may be reported as an increased (relative) risk of 33 per cent. Yet in absolute terms it amounts to an absolute (or exposure) risk of one in 50,000, which is, for practical purposes, negligible."
Because the war on smoking anywhere at all is all about science, right?

Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important. --Eugene McCarthy

Ignore the internal politics and scroll down to Radley Balko's excellent point by point dissection of David Frum's suggestion of a fat tax on soda. Also, what the hell are conservatives doing planning for more taxes? I though the one thing that you could count on them for was opposing taxes?!

Is Wal-Mart Expansion A 'Moral' Issue?

Greens for Impact is a group of Green officials trying to convince Greens and independents in swing states who might vote for Nader or Cobb to support Kerry instead. Take a look.

About those political ads that the Feds have made illegal to broadcast...

The RAND Corporation has completed one of the first studies to analyze the relationship between suburban sprawl and health: Researchers found that people who live in areas with a high degree of suburban sprawl are more likely to report chronic health problems such as high blood pressure, arthritis, headaches and breathing difficulties than people who live in less sprawling areas.

She's too modest to post it herself, so I will: Opensewer's own part-time blogger Jana Prikryl has a wicked good piece over at The Revealer.org about gays and the Christian church. Check it out!

There's a new film on everyone's favorite icon, Ernesto Guevara, and his younger days. Terror and Liberalism author Paul Berman weighs on the flick and the man: Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster. Many of the early leaders of the Cuban Revolution favored a democratic or democratic-socialist direction for the new Cuba. But Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's "labor camp" system—the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims.

The only man who might have saved Roger Ebert from spending eternity in cinema hell is dead. RIP Russ Meyer.

Scholarly books often resemble the pyramids erected for minor officials in ancient Egypt. Impressive in their way -- and built to last -- they are, nonetheless, difficult to tell apart. By contrast, The Sources of Social Power, by Michael Mann, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Los Angeles and a visiting research professor at Queens University Belfast, is "audacious in scope, ambitious in objective, and provocative in challenge," as the American Sociological Association put it in presenting Mr. Mann its 1988 award for distinguished scholarly publication.

Gary Taxali: There are some things better left unsaid, not because I have nothing to say because that would be contrary to my character. Rather, the pictures I make are themselves narratives that provide the viewer with many statements, many of which I myself am not aware. And if I were acutely tuned into this I'd have created a picture that shouldn't have been made in the first place.

Gary's gallery has been updated with all new work.

Bush sees war against terror that never ends.

From Orwell, 1984, Chapter 1: The Ministry of Truth ... was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air. From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

The same workers in poorer countries that knit sweaters, make athletic shoes and fabricate bargain-priced granite countertops for the Western World are now playing MMOGs around the clock to produce virtual goods that relatively wealthy American and European gamers can purchase.

DO NOT WALK TO SCHOOL! You must drive!

In reality, this situation is of course a product of circumstance...but on a symbolic level it certainly is representative of the machine that traps us in a nonrenewable resource dependant lifestyle.

So today is John Alston's birthday (he's our most active blogger these days). John, I want to take this opportunity to publicly thank you for being so active on Opensewer during all your moving about (from Ithaca, to NYC, to San Francisco). You really kept the website going while Rose and I became increasingly occupied with certain other "life responsibilities" (i.e., baby Maximilian, who is now 1 year old). Thanks so much, John, happy birthday, and don't blog over this! --Jason

President Bush and the Republicans in the Senate have failed — for the moment — to bring the Constitution into conformity with Judeo-Christian teachings. But even if they had passed a bill calling for a constitutional ban on gay marriage, that would have been only a beginning. Leviticus 20:13 and the New Testament book of Romans reveal that the God of the Bible doesn't merely disapprove of homosexuality; he specifically says homosexuals should be killed: "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death." (login:opensewer, password:ispuking)

The way the Olympics used to be. Naked, oiled and deadly!

For all modern society's promises of leisure, liberty and doing what you want, most of us are still slaves to a schedule we did not choose. Why have things come to such a pass? Well, the forces of the anti-idle have been at work since the fall of man. The propaganda against oversleeping goes back a very long way, more than 2,000 years, to the Bible. Here is Proverbs, chapter 6, on the subject:
Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler,Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.
(I would question the sanity of a religion that holds up the ant as an example of how to live. The ant system is an exploitative aristocracy based on the unthinking toil of millions of workers and the complete inactivity of a single queen and a handful of drones.)

Did you know that every year numerous "dead zones"--areas of water so devoid of oxygen that they cannot support acquatic life--form around the world?

Oh, this is the kind of news I like to hear!