2012, We Are In You!

Mid-January, is it? Why, it must be time for my annual I-should-be-blogging post!

Let's see, last time around I was... oh. Oh, I didn't even post until March. Well that's an improvement already! 2012 is shaping up nicely!

Actually, there has been quite a bit I've been wanting to post about over the last couple of months, but due to lack of time, or lack of interwebs, or just lack of motivation, I haven't gotten around to it. So allow me to summarize:

• I dedicated November to writing thinking about my novel, which stands right now around 5-6000 words of prose plus several thousand more of notes. The whole writing blitz approach just didn't work for me, and I pretty quickly reverted to note-taking and outlining in place of blind drafting. In the interest of just getting words down and not worrying about editing I declined to post any more excerpts anywhere, but the plot is really shaping up. I'm certain at this point that it will end up being a trilogy.
• Much of December was spent harassing Congress and my fellow citizens over the latest threats to the American way of life, namely the NDAA and SOPA/PIPA. As you are hopefully now aware, the NDAA includes a cleverly worded authorization for indefinite detainment of US citizens by the military, if they are suspected of potential ties to terrorism. Don't worry too much though; our trusty Commander-in-Chief only signed it into law reluctantly, and promises that he won't abuse this new power. In other news, SOPA and PIPA effectively hand executive power of the Internet over to corporate copyright holders, giving them unilateral power to shut down, sue, block, or starve off potentially infringing websites (read: the sites you visit every day) without due process. Thanks to a firestorm of opposition from the interwebs support for SOPA is failing, but some suspect that it was planned that way so that the slightly less draconian PIPA can then be pushed through under the guise of a reasonable compromise. Make sure your congresscritters hear from you on these ones.
• Speaking of politics, the 2012 primary season has begun and your friend Ron Paul is doing quite well. He took a very close third in Iowa and a strong second in New Hampshire, establishing him as the clear alternative to Bachmann Perry Cain Gingrich Santorum Romney. This whole election cycle has been baffling, frustrating, and at times maddening, but I'm glad to see Ron getting so much traction among the Republican base. And for the record, he's still not only the most sensible candidate, but the most electable, regardless of what the media king-makers may try to sell you.
• 2012 is going to be a momentous year. From my best friend's wedding to the London Olympics to the Presidential election to the end of the world on December 21, everything is happening this year. One week last month saw the release of theatrical trailers for both The Hobbit and The Dark Knight Rises. If those titles don't get me to a movie theater twice in one year I don't know what will. And of course, in the meantime we get to enjoy works of genius like this.
• On a more personal note, I have somehow recently acquired a girlfriend. I'm not sure why she insists on being associated with me, but who am I to refuse?

Well that just about brings us up to the present. If anything else happens, you'll find out here- a few months late.

10 Years Later

Woke up to a brand new skyline
We licked our wounds and mourned the dead
Swallowed the story, hook and sinker
Is this what we meant, when we said
That we never would forget?

Those are the opening lines to "Broken Lungs" by Thrice, a mournful song reflecting on the damage inflicted on September 11, 2001 and our collective reaction. I've been thinking a lot lately about that day, but more about the days since.

I don't want to politicize tragedy, but as we commemorate the tenth anniversary of that terrible event we must consider why it happened and what we have done in response. On 9/11 we learned that America was not invulnerable. That we had enemies who could and would do us harm. That the reality of mass violence was not limited to third-world countries that we read about in the news. It happened here, and it happened to us. And we swore we'd never forget.

Now, a decade later, I have to wonder if we have forgotten. Not the attack itself, of course. We still recall where we were when we heard the news. The images of the collapsing towers and billowing smoke are forever etched in our memories. We remember the chaos. The shock. The terror. But have we forgotten what it meant?

Did we ever really know?

We were told that they hated us for our freedom. Are we more free?

We were told that we must must make the world safe for democracy. Are we safer?

That day shattered our innocence, but are we still naive? That day opened our eyes, but do we really see? A decade later, are we wiser than we were on September 10, 2001? Have we asked ourselves the hard questions about why this happened and what we can do- must do- to make things right?

Or are we fools and cowards all?

The Facebook Killer?

Allow me to be a Google fanboy for a moment. As much as I'd been hoping that Google would do something awesome and come out with a Facebook killer, I was taken completely by surprise when they announced Google+ on Tuesday.

Google's latest beta product is all about sharing- bookmarks, photos, group video chats, and more- all with a focus on easily managing who sees what through the social circle metaphor, a helpful layer of control that Facebook is clearly lacking.

The premiere of Google+ was such a runaway success that within the first 48 hours invites had been temporarily suspended due to "insane demand". By then I was already in, probably thanks to a friend at Google who shared a message with me, thus extending an implied invitation.

A site like this can only succeed with plenty of users, and while the field is still a bit sparse it has already taken off much faster than the ill-fated Google Wave (anyone remember that?). Google+ seems somewhat minimalist compared to Facebook- its obvious counterpart, though Google doesn't seem eager to label it as such- but that's where it shines. Everything is simple, clean, and just works. There aren't (yet) third-party apps and games to clutter your stream. Interaction is snappy and intuitive.

If you're a Google user, your existing Chat contacts, Picasa albums, Buzz feed, Google profile, and +1's are all already integrated into your Google+ page. Friend connections combine the asynchronous following of Twitter and Buzz with a simplified versions of Facebook's friend lists to create customizable Circles, which form the audience of everything you post. Like all other Google services, and in stark contrast to Facebook's draconian policies, Google+ lets you easily check out and take all of your data with you using Google Takeout.

There are of course some improvements I would like to see. While Buzz is displayed in your profile, it's still an independent service on its own tab. There doesn't seem to be any integration of Buzz followers, Google Reader sharing, and Google+ Circles yet. I don't see a connection to the new Music Beta, which has obvious social network potential. This week Google has been rolling out new, unified interfaces across Google apps, so I'm hoping functional integration is coming soon.

The real question though, is what does this mean for Facebook? Will Google be able to unseat the king of social networking and grab a significant market share with its cleaner, more user-friendly, and all around more enjoyable alternative?

I can only hope.

'Why Did Police Kill My Dad?'

Jose Guerena was a 26-year-old Marine veteran with two tours of duty under his belt, but he wasn't killed in battle in Iraq. He was murdered while heroically defending his own home and family from armed intruders looking for drugs.

But here's the catch: the men who burst into the house without warning and fired 71 shots weren't part of a gang. They were an Arizona SWAT team.

Just days before the Indiana Supreme Court would rule to deny citizens their Fourth Amendment right to resist unlawful entry of their homes, overturning common law dating back to the Magna Carta, in another part of the country the Pima County, Arizona sheriff's office sent its heavily armed deputies to invade homes unannounced to search for evidence of drugs.

Despite no criminal records or history of drug use, the Guerena family was one of those targeted. After hiding his wife and young child in a closet, Jose bravely grabbed his rifle and prepared to protect them against who he rightly thought were criminal invaders. Seconds later he was dying. The police initially defended themselves with propaganda claiming that Guerena opened fire on them, but it was later revealed that he did not shoot and even had his safety on when he was shot. His injuries may have been survivable, had the SWAT team not then prevented paramedics from reaching him for over an hour.

Now, thanks to an increasingly out of control "war on drugs", a blatant disregard for civil rights, and a trend of government-issued violence that has gone on far too long, a young boy is left with the question "Why Did Police Kill My Dad?"

We should not take this as an unfortunate but isolated event. This kind of senseless violence has claimed tens of thousands of lives in Mexico in recent years, and now it is spreading to this side of the border. This is the kind of authoritarian terrorism that we have to look forward to unless we reign in our emerging police state.

Update: Another example, this time the victim was a 14-year-old boy.