A Stitch in Haste

I'm off to Peru for eight days.

Besides the fact that I'll actually be sightseeing, I've been warned by the tour coordinator* that Internet access will be spotty at best. So not only will there be little same-day blogging, but replies to comments and emails will be delayed.

I have a few long-shelf-life posts in the can and set to post automatically while I'm away. And for your in-flight entertainment I have selected a variety of brief video snippets to post here — one for each day I'm away. I call them "Kip Clips." Most are inspired by current events and are meant to spark a discussion in the comments. Please feel free to do so.

As a reminder, a Kip Clip might look like this:


or like this:


or like this:


Regular blogging resumes on or about September 24th.

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*Did I mention that it's a gay tour group? My first one. I can envision quite some lively dinner conversations taking place...

I recently responded thusly to a comment:

I realize that some more vocal libertarians feel a desperate need to loathe and mistrust police the way that I loathe and mistrust politicians. The difference is that my worldview, unlike theirs, is grounded in consistent empirical evidence, not paranoia and stray anecdotes.

So for our first Kip Clip, we turn to my favorite fictional cop, Captain Frank Furillo of Hill Street Blues:


Have ordinary beat cops become "just another vicious street gang"? Or is the problem from higher up the chain of command — perhaps all the way to the civilian leadership (i.e., politicians and bureaucrats)? Who are the true "bunch of nightriders"?

(Note also the relevance of "there are enough guns out there" to the news that the District Of Columbia has asked the Supreme Court to review the broad question of gun control and Second Amendment rights.)

The Larry Craig scandal caused a deluge of debate regarding the propriety of sting operations related to public sexual lewdness. Did Craig even commit a crime? (I say yes.)

For whatever bizarre reason, Craig initially had no lawyer, not even Eugene Young of The Practice:


Was Craig entitled to "the presumption of dignity"? "In the United States of America"? Discuss.

Thinking about Larry Craig again, and the presidential race in general, I will admit that sometimes, every so often, I wonder whether I'm too cynical. Maybe, just maybe, not all politicians are, by definition, moral defectives.

Then I watch House of Cards and the feeling quickly goes away (the men's restroom in this Kip Clip is strictly a coincidence):


Can you guess what Chief Whip Francis Urquhart meant by "this is just the start"?

Today I arrive in Aguas Calientes in Peru's "Sacred Valley." Tomorrow we venture out to Machu Picchu.

I have selected two Kip Clips appropriate for the destination. In the first, we get a reminder from the late Carl Sagan that radical social change, such as "the eradication of anti-gay bigotry," can and often does happen more rapidly than anyone envisions at the time. We also get a warning about what can and often does happen to a society when radical social change does not occur.

To acknowledge my journey to Machu Picchu today, I thought this would be an appropriate Kip Clip, and one that needs little comment from me. You are free to add your own.

In Kip Clip #4, Carl Sagan discussed radical social change and recreated the great Library of Alexandria — which was destroyed in the early Fifth Century, on orders from the (Christian) Roman Emperor Theodosius I that all pagan temples be destroyed. The scrolls the library housed were burned as fuel to warm nearby baths.

Fortunately, in the modern era people would never consider doing such a thing as burning knowledge for the sake of feeling warm, right?


Before there were bloggers and blogging, there was John Boy Walton and his journal. "Words on paper must be very important." Or on a computer screen...

In Kip Clip #2, I mentioned that the Larry Craig scandal got a lot of libertarians thinking about the propriety of public decency laws and "bathroom sting operations." See this post.

Another scandal that led to similar debates was of course the Michael Vick incident. Do only humans have "human rights"? Are different forms of life to be valued differently — and if so, then how is the differential to be determined?

To answer these non-trivial questions, let's jump in the TARDIS and vortex our way down the slippery slope:


I can't get quite comfortable with that last line. There's a similar line in another episode: "If I don't like it, then it will end." As much as I loathe utilitarianism, I loathe the dictator principle even more. Damn activist Time Lord...

Well, not really, but I am all alone in the Lima airport, after my 0830 flight became a 2350 flight (and now delayed to 0025 -- stay tuned).

To which my response is: Thank God capitalism for PriorityPass.

So show me how powerful Web 2.0 is: Where are you stuck right now? And where would you rather be?

And so much for the current Sidebar Sidetrack.

Pop Quiz: Who sang the song, "All Alone in the World"?

Now up at the Flickr page.

Videos at the YouTube page will be forthcoming.

Blogging will still be a bit light this week as I continue to play catch-up.

Carry on...

I think I'm getting better at this "video editing" stuff:


Unfortunately the uploading process seems to skew the synchronization a bit. The version on my hard drive flows better with the end of the music. Oh well.

More videos forthcoming at the YouTube page.

(Incidentally, that's the flag of the Inca nation, not the gay pride flag.)

It occurred to me that I haven't done any Friday Diamondblogging in awhile. I haven't been taking many pictures of her recently.

So here are some Peruvian cameloids instead:





To review: there are four species of Andean cameloid: the (domesticated) llama and alpaca, and the (non-domesticated) guanaco and vicuna.






Cute.

More pictures at the Flickr page. Videos at the YouTube page.

(Carnivalized at Modulator's Friday Ark.)