This morning at work, a co-worker who enjoys sending all kinds of annoying stuff through the internal mail system decided to help us fight mosquitos this summer. Apparently putting bowls of water with Lemon Joy in them around your yard will deter mosquitos.

Being a fan of Snopes, I had already read about this. Plus, being a fan of urban legends in general, I recognized all the hallmarks of one when I saw it.

I used to inform people when they were passing on urban legends, but eventually I stopped. I noticed that saying, “Actually, that story isn’t true, it’s an urban legend. Take a look at this info…” was about the same as saying, “Hey, your religion is a lie and your mother was a whore.” The effect was the same. People got outraged when you informed them of a story’s urban legend status.

I have no idea why this is. I don’t know why people act as if finding out that this goofy story that showed up in their inbox randomly wasn’t true it would shatter their world. Urban legends have this quality to them that appeals to people, that makes them want to believe them. Debunking one is like blasting a hallowed truth, even if they just heard it twenty minutes ago. I think for many of these people, these are harmless bits of knowledge, and only someone completely callous and unfeeling would bother to dispute them. After all, so many of these emails (as did my co-worker’s) say something like, “I don’t know if this works, but it can’t hurt to try!”

Of course, nobody cares if Lemon Joy keeps mosquitos away. If my co-worker wants to flood her yard with dishwashing detergent, it hurts me not at all. My problem with it is just the absolute automatic parroting of information. “I received this thing in my inbox from god knows where and now, with no thought as to its content, I am spreading it on.” I find this to be a dangerous way to process information, especially in these days where it seems that the truth depends on what people believe. That’s what I caution against. And one could argue that casually throwing a Snopes link (such as this one) is similarly regurgitating spurious information, but I don’t buy it. Snopes has sources, has a reputation that your friend Mary Sue and whoever forwarded this thing to her don’t have.

So anyway, on the whole, I tend not to say anything about urban legends to people for the same reason I don’t kick crutches away from people with broken legs. But in this case something about it really bothered me, and this particular co-worker annoys me to no end. So I threw a Snopes link back. And surprise, surprise, she wasn’t happy about it.

It’s a seemingly trivial thing. So the mosquito story isn’t true. Big deal. What’s the harm? The harm, as I said, is in the unquestioning repetition of information from spurious sources, and the fanatical desire to avoid any contrary evidence. When it’s about mosquitos, it is trivial and harmless. When it’s about war, less so.

Again, too busy for a good, proper entry, but here’s some stuff to tide you over. We leave Champaign on Thursday, and begin our trek to Massachusetts. We’ll miss everyone in Champaign. It’s very sad. Our stuff left in the moving van on Friday, and our house is empty (not empty enough, unfortunately).

We’ll be in transit until Monday, and our stuff won’t arrive until Tuesday (crosses fingers). Broadband doesn’t come until the following Monday.

In other news, I’m more than a little disappointed by what I’ve been reading about Howard Dean, who I was starting to favor as a Democratic candidate. This comparison of Dean and Kucinich is pretty eye-opening. Granted, the source is openly pro-Kucinich, but I think Bob Harris is a good guy and wouldn’t intentionally distort facts. Besides, it’s not like it’s hard to believe that a guy presenting himself as a Progressive Democrat could be, in reality, a typical moderate conservative. Sure, I could just jump over to Kucinich - he’s not bad on paper, but look at that chart again. Does this guy stand a snowball’s chance in the current climate? Would it be better to support someone less extreme, in the hopes that we can effect some change through gradual steps, or is that the same betrayal of values that I criticize the Democratic party of? It’s a thorny problem.

Finally, here’s some reading material on why this problem needs to be solved:

Truth Is The Weapon Of Bush’s Self-Destruction

Republicans for Sharpton: the kind of political crap that the Republicans would be whining their whiny asses off about if it were being done to them.

Media Silent on Clark’s 9/11 Comments

The Justice Department doesn’t seem to know when to stop

Bush Declares Student an Enemy Combatant - Use slashbot/slashbot to read. Terrifying implications here.

Poll: Majority Backs Use of Force in Iran - and here.

What’s most frightening about this list of thinks is that every one of them came from This Modern World. So it’s not hard to find out this stuff, and this only represents a small, but important sample.

Too much to do today to post a real entry, but this story at Daily Kos is a must-read. And this entry in the comments section, from one “POd” is an absolute gem:

Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Illinois),

“There is a visibility factor in the president’s public acts, and those which betray a trust or reveal contempt for the law are hard to sweep under the rug…They reverberate, they ricochet all over the land and provide the worst possible example for our young people.”

Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin)

“The truth is still the truth, and a lie is still a lie, and the rule of law should apply to everyone, no matter what excuses are made by the president’s defenders. We have done so because of our devotion to the rule of law and our fear that if the president does not suffer the legal and constitutional consequences of his actions, the impact of allowing the president to stand above the law will be felt for generations to come–laws not enforced are open invitations for more serious and more criminal behavior.”

Steve Chabot (R-Ohio)

“It would be wrong for you to tell America’s children that some lies are all right. It would be wrong to show the rest of the world that some of our laws don’t really matter.”

Steve Buyer (R- Indiana)

“I have also heard some senators from both sides of the aisle state publicly: I think these offenses rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors. Now, to state publicly that you believe that high crimes and misdemeanors have occurred but for some reason you have this desire not to remove the president — that desire, though, does not square with the law, the Constitution, and the Senate’s precedents for removing federal judges for similar offenses.”

Rep. Lindsey Graham (R - South Carolina, Now Senator)

“The president of the United States sets atop of the legal pyramid. If there’s reasonable doubt about his ability to faithfully execute the laws of the land, our future would be better off if that individual is removed. And let me tell you where it all comes down to me. If you can go back and explain to your children and your constituents how you can be truthful and misleading at the same time, good luck.”

All statements made, of course, back when lying to the public was considered a bad thing.

Yesterday I ran an errand at lunch, picked up some cardboard boxes at the hospital for packing and brought them home. I then returned to work, but decided to grab some lunch while I was out. I had a hankering for Taco Bell, so I pulled in there. There was a loooooong drive-through line, so I parked and went in. The woman behind the counter asked what my order was. I looked up at the menu board…

…and realized I was in Dairy Queen. Somehow I had ended up in DQ instead of Taco Bell. I had no idea how this happened. Then I realized I don’t ever get lunch at DQ, so I had no idea what to buy. I only know how to order Blizzards there! I ended up with a bacon cheeseburger and a confused expression on my face.

The night before, our friends John and April had been helping us do some last-minute packing. John and I were in the garage, and he asked what I was going to do with the canister of gas for the lawnmower that was nearly full. I told him we couldn’t move it, so we’d probably give it away. He said, “Why not put it in the car?” I replied that we didn’t want to drive 18 hours with a canister of gas in the car. He said, “No, put the gas in the gas tank,” and the light dawned on me. All the college degrees Becky and I have, and neither of us had thought of that. I promptly dumped the gas into the car.

On top of these events, Beebo has been freaking out. He stares into space and his eyes dart around the way he does whenever there’s a fly in the house. And yet, there’s nothing there. He chomps at something in the air, the way he does when he’s trying to catch a fly in the house, and yet there’s nothing there. Last night he was in bed, under the covers, doing his chomping thing. We’re almost certain there are no flying insects underneath the covers in our bed.

Clearly whatever is happening is happening to all of us. Beebo, with his smaller body, is experiencing the effects to a larger extent, to the point of visual and auditory hallucinations.

The only thing I can conclude is that some kind of brain rays are being beamed at our house. And who has access to brain rays other than the CIA?

In a move that has left many people stunned and irony detectors across the planet sparking and smoking, Bush declared in a recent speech that he was fed up with “Revisionist Historians” who seem to feel that existing, ready-to-use weapons of mass destruction were the primary reason we went to war against Iraq. It seems that a few people out there (”some Democrats”, according to CNN) are not aware that we actually went to war because of $CURRENT_IRAQ_WAR_REASON. Thanks to the Internet, we now live in the best documented era of human history. Sometimes a little too well-documented for some peoples’ tastes. And yet he wants to claim he didn’t say something there’s overwhelming evidence that he said.

This war has ushered in a whole new era of foreign policy. We’ve gone from “Go to war because these people are a threat” to “Go to war because these people may someday be a threat” to “Go to war and we’ll figure out a reason afterwards.” Since we no longer care if the rest of the world likes us or not (in fact, we prefer they be terrified) this is the easiest way to cow them into submission.

The Republicans are similarly outraged at the suggestion that something is fishy about those WMD claims. In a typical Republican strategy, anything they don’t like is “political,” as if to say that anyone questioning the administration is being unfair and doing so solely for personal gain. Congressman Nick Smith of Michigan says: “The implication is–prove to me Mr. President that you knew what you were talking about, that it is somewhat of a critical effort to obtain information to prove wrong. I think you either trust your administration or you don’t.” Yes, Congressman Smith, that’s EXACTLY the implication — in fact, that’s the outright text. Prove that you had the information you said you had. Suddenly we’re just supposed to accept everything the President says? That’s called a dictatorship.

The Republicans, as always, are interested only in the good of the country, not in mere politics. After all, it was in the interest of national security, not mere politics, that we have a six-year inquiry into Bill Clinton’s sex life. It never ceases to amaze me how much the Republicans hate their own tactics when they’re used on Republicans.

But that shouldn’t stop anyone from using their tactics. So I hereby offer, free of charge, this plan for the Democrats to win the next election. Whoever gets the nomination, please consider this approach. Don’t promise stuff about health care, education, the economy, or whatever. Nobody cares about that stuff. Instead, you need to promise the following:

• A free big-screen TV to every registered voter.
• No income tax at all.
• The original Star Wars trilogy will be released on DVD.
• Every person will be granted the ability to fly.

Now, you’re probably saying, “Legomancer, we can’t possibly deliver any of this!” That’s the beauty of it. After the landslide, as you’re delivering your victory speech, say the following: “I have no idea where these people are getting the idea that I promised such things. This is clearly a bunch of politically motivated revisionist historians who are trying to discredit me for their own selfish purposes. One thing is certain, though, I…was…elected! (hold for applause.)

“But but but Legomancer, that’s lying!” Relax! Unlike a few short years ago, lying is now okay. A recent court case argued that corporations should be allowed to lie, and such lies were protected free speech. TV is flooded with highly produced and convoluted “reality” shows. And now this: Bush lies about Iraq and then lies about lying about Iraq, saying, essentially, “Those things I said weren’t lies and I didn’t say them anyway.” Nobody seems to care, and those few that do are written off as a bunch of troublemakers. Not that this is his only lie, of course, or even his most recent, just the biggest one. The one that, until this administration, might have been enough to bring a president down. This is the guy who was going to “restore integrity” to the Oval Office. Apparently he’s got a dog or something named “Integrity”.

(Want to try to do something about this? MoveOn.org, a political action group, has a petition to get Congress to actually, like, investigate if we were lied to or not. Show your supposed representatives that you really do care about this.)

Thanks to John Middeljans for providing the Nick Smith quote. He is the proud winner of a hundred of my finest oxen.

We’ve got a lot to talk about today, so I need everyone to get in their seats and get their notebooks out. Please hold all questions until the end.

The move is almost upon us. Supposedly the truck is taking away all of our stuff on Thursday, leaving us in an empty house with an air mattress and the few things we’re taking ourselves (such as my computer). Then, on the 26th, we leave for good. I have a hard time really seeing events that are more than a week away, so this is only gradually coming up on me. We’re excited, of course, and sad to be leaving our friends behind. This town’s been pretty good, and we’ve liked our little house here. We’ll miss a lot of people, places, and things. One of our projects before the final day is to go around town with the digital camera documenting stuff.

We’ve been packing like crazy people. That’s not true actually — Becky’s been at it a lot harder than I have, I’m afraid. But we’ve been going at the job steadily now, so it hasn’t been too overwhelming. Mostly we’re just tired of it. Packing is no fun. Unpacking is - deciding where things will go, and that sort of thing - but packing, no. We’re both glad to have big burly men coming in and loading this stuff into the truck. I have several boxes marked “ATTIC - HEAVY” which is kind of a cruel trick, but the boxes are heavy and they go in the attic. What can you do? There’s all the scrambling about to get utilities connected and disconnected, and we still need to clean the place once everything’s moved out.

(Our lack of furniture, dishes, and entertainment devices isn’t stopping us from having a party this weekend. Bring Your Own Beer (and Chair)!)

The plumbing is fixed, hurrah, and all the little fiddly repairs on the house are done. The nice thing about dropping over a thousand bucks on stupid repairs is that after that, what’s $60 more? So we went to Best Buy and got some new CDs. New acquisitions are The White Stripes - Elephant, Rooney, The Thorns, and the new Fountains of Wayne!

The newest CD from FoW is called “Welcome Interstate Managers”. It sort of continues on their constant theme of life in and around New York and New Jersey, but this time the characters are a little more grown up — physically if not mentally. Some are handling the transition to adulthood better than others, and some aren’t handling it at all. There’s some great stuff on here, and I still don’t know why this band isn’t huge.

The other CDs are also good (I don’t know much about the White Stripes — Becky’s listened to that more than I have, as I’m not the hugest fan of theirs, but what I heard sounded pretty good). The Thorns is a band consisting of Matthew Sweet, Pete Droge, and Shawn Mullins, all imitating Tom Petty covering Crosby, Stills, and Nash. It’s really nice stuff, especially considering I usually don’t go for that early 70s granola-folk-rock sound. Rooney is classic Californian power-pop.

It looks like I’ve done the last RPG gaming I’ll do here in Champaign. But I think the group we started has enough momentum to keep going, and I know various people in it have games they’re looking to run. Supplementing RPGs with board games is a good idea. Last week we played Frag, which I’ve had for over a year but only played once or twice. It’s a board game based on computer first-person shooter games, and it was a lot of fun with five people. It’s from Steve Jackson Games, which means it’s a lot of fun, but damn, Steve, $40 is pretty steep for a game that doesn’t come with the dice you need to play it. Yeah, sure, I have plenty of dice, but when I open the box and see a map, a 4-page rulebook, some cards, and some cardboard counters, I seriously have to wonder where that $40 is going. Throw in an extra map, a blank map page for creating your own, some character sheets, four dice, and your costs might go up by a buck, but the buyer will feel a lot better about dropping money on your game.

I’ve been lax in writing up the last Arnheim session, but I will get to it soon. I got distracted with my Linktank project, which is helping me learn some MySQL and revisit PHP a little. I always forget how much I enjoy programming; I don’t do it very often, but when I do, I have fun.

So. Any questions?

Perhaps the chickens are finally coming home to roost. Finally a few people are being bothered by the fact that this country waged war on another country and sent troops into harms way to be killed for a lie. Not an exaggeration, not a spin, not fuzzy data, but an outright lie.

Sure, there’s still a bunch of people who want to say that the problem may have been “faulty intelligence.” But as Tom Tomorrow points out, the problem with blaming your intelligence agencies is that they keep very detailed records — that’s their job — and will nail you with them if backed into a corner.

Whatever the blame, the truth stands: there are no weapons of mass destruction. We were told, before this war started, that the weapons themselves were there — tons of them — ready to be used, with lots of ways for them to be delivered. We were told that this was not a future threat but a present one, and we couldn’t afford to spend any more time looking for them, as Saddam could strike with them at any moment. Hence, we need to go to war RTFN (right the [hell] now). (But don’t take my word for what we were told, see for yourself.)

And we did. Boom boom boom, shock and awe, rat-a-tat-tat, imbedded journalists, sorry about that Baghdad media building, and a few days later we cheered as a statue was toppled several million times.

The war isn’t that old, folks, and already we’re coming up empty on WMDs. None of the sites we had fingered have panned out. Many of the teams who were searching for the weapons now have nothing to do. We found two trailers that might be able to be used to make something scary, but now it’s looking like that’s not the case.

So what about the weapons, our reason for being there? Well now we find out that (pick as many as you like): they’re hidden very very well; they were given away to terrorists; we weren’t talking about weapons, we were talking about weapons programs; they’re in Iran and Syria hint hint; doesn’t matter because Saddam was a Bad Man; hey look an ice cream truck! (points, runs); and it looks like we had a little problem with intelligence gathering.

I’ll say. It seems either our intelligence services were incorrect about the weapons in the first place or somehow failed to notice “thousands of tons” of chemical weapons being transported in Iraq to terrorists or other Islamic countries with lots of oil, during a war when, presumably, we’re keeping a pretty good eye on them.

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s not the intelligence agencies that were lying. God knows I’m no fan of the CIA, but we’re starting to see exactly how this all worked. Here are three stories, for example, that discuss how intelligence was distorted and invented by an administration that refused to accept any evidence that Iraq was not building a Death Star:

Weapons of Mass Deception - SF Chronicle, via Alternet

Bad Iraq Data from Start to Finish - Alternet
Standard Operating Procedure New York Times, June 3, 2003. (This last one is an abstract only - you will need to refer to the print version for the full text.)

So let’s recap. First our marketing research said that customers were unhappy with the bombing of the World Trade Center and wanted something to do about it. R&D suggested bombing Afghanistan even further back into the stone age, but that product didn’t sell well. So we sent it to the boys in Design, who revamped it into War With Iraq. “But how?” asked the board of directors. “Don’t get us wrong, we’ve been wanting such a thing for years, but how do we roll this product out?” Marketing then came up with a plan for selling this product. First, link it to 9/11, even though there’s no sane way to do so. Second, suddenly pretend like you care about U.N. Security Resolution compliance. “Don’t worry,” said the boys in Sales, “Few of our customers know or care that the biggest non-compliers of U.N. resolutions are us and our friends.” (If anyone piped up at that point and said, “How can we both be angry at noncompliance with the U.N. and declare the U.N. as obsolete and irrelevant in the same breath?” he was told to pack up his desk.) “Then,” continued Sales, “we put the fear of God into the customers.” And hence the weapons of mass destruction. When the Research department failed to come up with convincing evidence of such a thing, they forced them to produce some anyway, or just reinvented what they did have. So now they had the disease and the cure, but how to advertise it?

Enter Public Relations. Also known as, the Media. Also known as “the liberal Media”. The liberal media which so hates conservatives and so loves liberals couldn’t disseminate the White House’s incorrect information fast enough! It was a beautiful relationship. The media could say the info came from the White House, which in turn defended the truth of the info because it was in all the papers! And the media got all kinds of ride-alongs during the war so it could, without bias, report on the atrocities of war (that the bad guys were committing.) Incidentally, not long after the war ended, the FCC approved a measure giving all sorts of new power and perks to the media. Isn’t it great when friends help friends?

But unfortunately, the public is slowly, cautiously, asking some questions. Not the majority, good lord no. It’s still considered treason if you don’t think the war was a good idea. After all, Saddam was a bad man who killed his own people, and we got him out of there. Do you have something against freeing people from bad men? Well, no, but there’s plenty of other bad men we don’t seem to feel especially angry about, and anyway, that wasn’t why we went over there in the — I SAID, DO YOU HAVE SOMETHING AGAINST FREEING PEOPLE FROM BAD MEN? Well, but but but… Why do you hate Freedom?

For many folks this is a problem with intelligence. Shame on the CIA and such for providing us with bad data! Unfortunately, some of those people are Democrats. Fortunately, the intelligence communities are piping up. Fortunately there’s an investigation into these allegations, but unfortunately it’s being led by Senate Republicans in a closed-door session who are concerned with “criticism of the intelligence agencies”. (In fact, that story from the “liberal media” makes this statement: “The Bush administration has come under fire from some Democrats and critics abroad because no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq.” So, you see, the only people who think this is a big deal are Democrats, and for that matter, only some of them.)

The whole scheme is falling into place. It couldn’t be more transparent. And yet, we’re still not as outraged as I think we should be. This is big stuff, folks. This is Watergate and Iran-Contra material. Remember a few years ago when it was considered an impeachable act to lie about your peepee and its whereabouts? It seems that lying about the reasons for war and sending troops to die for that lie should be worth looking into. Some folks are talking impeachment, but not enough. One of those folks is John Dean, who worked with Nixon during Watergate (so he knows a little about crime in the White House) who discusses his take here. (Don’t confuse John with Howard Dean, Democratic presidential candidate.) Naturally, we can’t trust anything he says, since he was a convicted criminal, unlike Henry Kissinger, originally fingered for the 9/11 investigation committee who can’t even leave the country or else he be arrested for war crimes.

The story is right there. It’s obvious. It all makes perfect sense, requires no mental gymnastics (unlike the current stories about hidden weapons). You’ve got means, motive, and opportunity, and a pile of smoking guns all laying around in the open. And yet the public can’t get fired up about it like they could with Monica Lewinsky. THIS IS BIG STUFF, PEOPLE. And no, it doesn’t matter that Saddam was a bad man and did bad things. That’s not the issue. The issue is, the President lied to the people, the U.N., and Congress about weapons that don’t exist and started a war over them. The point is, U.S. soldiers are dead, dying, and in danger because of a blatant lie perpetrated on them. This is something to be angry about and take action on.

(Sorry about the length, but I felt it necessary. Links came from This Modern World, Alternet, and Cursor.)

Like many who have an internet connection on their desktop at work, any average day results in a plethora of funny, weird, informative, and fun links discovered through surfing or supplied by friends. Some of them end up being things I permanently bookmark, but most or oddities, one-time things that are looked at and then forgotten.

However, some of this ephemera is worth hanging onto, if only temporarily, to share with others. Hence, the LINKTANK!

This is a repository for these links. Here they can live and perhaps enlighten or amuse others at some point. Some of the friends of this site will also be contributing links to it. If you have something to contribute, by all means send me email. And as usual, we invite your suggestions and comments.

Thanks go to Team Chizat for their SQL help and testing, as well as their ideas. And, as always, to Slithytoves for allowing this foolishness on their servers!

To get to the linktank, click on the link in the left hand column, under “Features.” Enjoy!