This disgusts me

The Washington Post reports that 63% of Americans find the NSA spying program to be "acceptable". I'll quote it all so you don't have to register.

By Richard Morin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 12, 2006; 7:00 AM

A majority of Americans initially support a controversial National Security Agency program to collect information on telephone calls made in the United States in an effort to identify and investigate potential terrorist threats, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The new survey found that 63 percent of Americans said they found the NSA program to be an acceptable way to investigate terrorism, including 44 percent who strongly endorsed the effort. Another 35 percent said the program was unacceptable, which included 24 percent who strongly objected to it.

A slightly larger majority–66 percent–said they would not be bothered if NSA collected records of personal calls they had made, the poll found.

Underlying those views is the belief that the need to investigate terrorism outweighs privacy concerns. According to the poll, 65 percent of those interviewed said it was more important to investigate potential terrorist threats "even if it intrudes on privacy." Three in 10–31 percent–said it was more important for the federal government not to intrude on personal privacy, even if that limits its ability to investigate possible terrorist threats.

Half–51 percent–approved of the way President Bush was handling privacy matters.

The survey results reflect initial public reaction to the NSA program. Those views that could change or deepen as more details about the effort become known over the next few days.

USA Today disclosed in its Thursday editions the existence of the massive domestic intelligence-gathering program. The effort began soon after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Since then, the agency began collecting call records on tens of millions of personal and business telephone calls made in the United States. Agency personnel reportedly analyze those records to identify suspicious calling patterns but do not listen in on or record individual telephone conversations.

Word of the program sparked immediate criticism on Capitol Hill, where Democrats and Republicans criticized the effort as a threat to privacy and called for congressional inquiries to learn more about the operation. In the survey, big majorities of Republicans and political independents said they found the program to be acceptable while Democrats were split.

President Bush made an unscheduled appearance yesterday before White House reporters to defend his administration's efforts to investigate terrorism and criticize public disclosure of secret intelligence operations. But he did not directly acknowledge the existence of the NSA records-gathering program or answer reporters' questions about it.

By a 56 percent to 42 percent margin, Americans said it was appropriate for the news media to have disclosed the existence of this secret government program.

A total of 502 randomly selected adults were interviewed Thursday night for this survey. Margin of sampling error is five percentage points for the overall results. The practical difficulties of doing a survey in a single night represents another potential source of error.

This kind of apathy is far more dangerous to America than terrorism could ever be.

USA Today: NSA has massive database of Americans’ phone calls

I wish I could say this was shocking, but it's really not. It makes you think twice about labeling people "conspiracy theorists" because if anyone had suggested a year ago that this was going on, they would have been called batshit crazy.

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

Read the rest here

Keep in mind that the guy who presided over all of this, General Michael Hayden, is Bush's pick to be the new Director of Central Intelligence.

They claim that the program does not actually listen to the phone calls, but that screams of a half-truth. I'm sure that it's technologically impossible to actually listen to an analyze the content of every call, but it's absurd to think that they don't use this data to pick out a subset of people to monitor constantly.

There's no doubt in my mind that there are more shocking revalations to come. 

Fantastic coffee

I couldn't be more pleased with the results of my first roast. In particular, the beans from Papau New Guinea produced the best cups of coffee that I've ever tasted.

I roasted two more batches tonight. I'm a little concerned that the popcorn popper isn't going to be reliable enough for regular use. It might not be getting hot enough because I'm finding that it won't take the beans past a Full City roast. The roast was also a little less even this time, although by no means unacceptable.

Statistics that made me say “Holy shit!”

A report from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy:

Nearly 31% of girls ages 15 to 19 who have had sexual intercourse at least once become pregnant, and more than 13% of sexually active teenage boys say they have been involved in a pregnancy, according to a report released Wednesday by the Washington, D.C.-based not-for-profit group National Campaign To Prevent Teen Pregnancy, the Chicago Sun-Times reports (Herrmann, Chicago Sun-Times, 5/3). The report presents statistics from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth for teenage boys and girls on age of "first sex," whether a contraceptive was used during first sex and the number of subsequent sexual partners. Nearly 50% of teenage girls who have sex for the first time before age 15 report having been pregnant, compared with almost 25% of girls age 15 or older, according to the report. In addition, 22% of sexually active boys age 15 and under report having been involved in a pregnancy, compared with 9% of teenage boys age 15 or older, the report finds. The analysis shows that more than one-third of sexually active girls who have had three or more sexual partners have been pregnant, compared with one in four who have had one or two partners. In addition, the report finds that 27% of girls who used a form of contraception when having sex for the first time said they became pregnant, compared with 43% of girls who did not use contraception during first sex (National Campaign report, 5/3). About 57% of teenage girls nationally give birth, 29% undergo abortion and 14% experience a miscarriage, Bill Albert, senior director of communications, publications and technology at the National Campaign To Prevent Teen Pregnancy, said (Chicago Sun-Times, 5/3). Statistics for various racial or ethnic groups show that 52% of sexually active Latina girls have been pregnant, compared with 40% of sexually active non-Latina black teenage girls and about 23% of sexually active non-Latina white teen girls (National Campaign To Prevent Teen Pregnancy report, 5/3).

Granted, I'm not very familiar with this issue, but I think those shockingly high numbers speak volumes about the effectiveness of our current sex education programs. I wonder how those numbers would work out if the study controlled for whether a child went through an abstinence program or one that dealt with contraceptives. Perhaps these are an improvement over years past, but it seems like we can do better, doesn't it?

Photoblogging: My first coffee roasting experience

I first stumbled upon some websites about home coffee roasting exactly two days before leaving for the dorms last summer. I've been dying to do it all year, and the day I got home, I navigated to www.sweetmarias.com, the best site I have come across, and bought four pounds of assorted green coffee.

It had never occured to me that it was possible, let alone easy, to roast coffee at home. The reasons for it are numerous. First of all, green coffee is cheap. Four pounds of some of the best coffee in the world cost $17 plus $11 UPS shipping – considerably less expensive than four pounds of shitty roasted coffee from Starbuck (what do they charge… $9 for 12 ounces of crap?). Most importantly, home roasting is the only way to get the most out of coffee. Beans oxidize and are considered stale only five days after roasting. If you grind the coffee, it will be stale after only 24 hours. Chances are, no matter what you think, you have never had "fresh" coffee before. I never have.

Basically, I'm obsessed with coffee, I tend to be an obnoxious purist about everything I like, and I'm a huge dork. Obviously I need to roast my own coffee.

It's actually quite simple. You just need an hot air popcorn popper (you can buy specialized roasting equipment, but it's really not necessary for a beginner).

Here is the green coffee:

The popper:

Yes, it's gross. This is old and probably fossilized.

I used a broiler pan to cool the beans.

This is the first batch, four ounces for Organic Peru "El Guabo" just before I started the roast.

About a minute into the roast. Not much of a change yet.

This is about three minutes into the roast.

This is about five minutes into the roast. The beans are now a dark brown. As a novice, it can be hard to judge whether they are done or not.

I ended up taking them out after six minutes, but they are still not as dark as I would have liked. Certainly not a failure by any means, however.

I roasted a second batch, this time a coffee from Papau New Guinea. I also roasted these for six minutes, but the roast progressed much faster this time and I got them exactly where I wanted them. Notice the patches of oil that have appeared.

It only took about 20 minutes to roast eight ounces of coffee, so you can see that home roasting is an economical and fast way to get coffee that would put even the best coffeeshops to shame.

Of course, I say this without having actually brewed a cup. It's best to let the beans sit overnight before grinding and brewing. I will report back tomorrow.

Cover the Uninsured Week 2006

This week is Cover the Uninsured Week 2006. I meant to post about this earlier today, but I was too wrapped up in the first stage of my summer project to craft the ultimate guacamole and salsa: learning how to make guacamole and salsa. My lack of kitchen knowledge is almost comical – I blame my mother. Both turned out well, but I digress…

You should check out their fact sheets for some quick figures on appalling number of uninsured Americans. There is also a small army of bloggers out there who write about this stuff on a daily basis. Some of my favorites include:

http://healthypolicy.typepad.com/blog/

http://matthewholt.typepad.com/the_health_care_blog/

http://www.joepaduda.com/

http://www.tpmcafe.com/flexinode/list/19 

Check out the blogroll

You might notice that I added a new section of links on the right. The links lead to the blogs of various people that I at least sort of know. You should check them out.

Also, since starting this blog, I've been unable to accurately judge my readership because a lot of traffic tends to come in spurts when I post links on other sites (like with my Silver Jews post). I know that I have at least a few regular readers and/or RSS subscribers, because WordPress says so. But I don't know who you are, so it'd be great if you could leave a comment or something so I know who I'm writing for!

Neil Young – Living With War (continued)

First of all, you can download the entire album here.

Of all the artists that dominated the 60s and 70s, Neil Young is arguably the only one that has managed to remain relevant throughout nearly his entire career. Perhaps not popular, but never treading water. A lot of his albums from the 80s and 90s are average at best, but he's always had a knack for maintaining a sense of artistic integrity that eludes peers like Bob Dylan (Victoria's Secret, anyone?). Some of his latter-day triumphs like Freedom, Ragged Glory, and Greendale deserve to be spoken of in the same sentence as the best of his 70s work.

For the last, oh, thirty or so years, he has bounced back and forth between using 1972's Harvest and 1975's Tonight's the Night as jumping off points for his next musical tangent. I don't necessarily mean in terms of style, although the albums that recall Harvest are numerous, but in terms of attitude. There's Neil the elder country statesman, and there's Neil the crotchety, eccentric old man. And let's face it, he's always seemed kind of old, even when rocking the fuck out with Crazy Horse.

I'm sure this exercise in Neilology has been done many times before, but the take-home point is that he's still awesome, and he has two modes of awesome. Last year's Prairie Wind was the work of "Harvest Neil". It was sufficiently affable, but I think we can all agree that "Tonight's the Night Neil" is the Neil of legend, and for every Harvest Moon, I expect a Greendale.

I just never expected one so soon.

Less than a year after Prairie Wind, he announces this album, Living With War, a protest album about President Bush, the war in Iraq, and the state of America. Needless to say, many were skeptical. Although when I heard it described as "a brilliant electric assault", I must admit that my fears were at least partially assuaged. The feverish pace of it all was also a reason for optimism. The album was made available to steam over the internet yesterday, but it was recorded just weeks ago. Clearly Neil had a message that he considered urgent, and even if we all knew what it was going to be, it was refreshing to see him so energized after coming off as so erudite on Prairie Wind and its companion film Heart of Gold.

And now that I've lived with the album for a good 36 hours and 10+ listens, I can tell you that it surpasses any conceivable expectations. It's great, it's the best album he's made since Tonight's the Night, it's likely to be the best album of 2006, and it ought to be a clarion call for America to wake up and stop embracing the Team America approach to evaluating political activism. Living With War is a masterpiece.

As a self-proclaimed Neil Young obsessive, I reached that conclusion right about when the drums on "After the Garden" kick in. The track is reminiscent of "Country Home", the first track of Ragged Glory; a craggy rocker with a soaring, sublime melody. He makes his intentions clear with the first line: "Don't need no shadow man runnin' the government". The rest of the lyrics are more ambiguous, but the song is nothing if not upbeat. This is exactly the song that I've been wanting to hear from Neil for years.

The choir that was just barely audible in "After the Garden" is more prominent on the reflective, gorgeous title track. Throughout the album, the use of the choir is always tasteful, and it always adds to the song. In fact, it's one of the things that really propels to Living With War to great heights. Neil's idiosyncratic use of the choir is charming on "The Restless Consumer", where the choir dominates the verses, only to disappear as Neil's voice cracks (as only his can) and dies in the first chorus.

The propulsive "Shock and Awe" co-opts the Bush Administration's slogan in the album's most angry track. He decries the tragedy of the war. We all know the story, but what's striking about this song (apart from how perfectly it brings the rock) is how he avoids placing direct blame for the war, instead approaching it as a tragedy. He doesn't overlook the key observation that there was a clear majority of Americans who supported the war, and it is not just Bush's mess, but our mess.

And that insight is the key to the albums success. It deftly avoids sinking into partisan cheese by presenting a vision of America that is shameful, but entirely optimistic. It doesn't appeal to a hatred of President Bush, it appeals to a love for America and what our nation stands for. He appeals to the strength of the American family on "Families", one of the most moving tracks on the album, despite its brevity. Instead of dwelling on how bad our situation is, he tries to remind of us how much better we could make it.

And, you know, that's that one song that everyone's dying to hear, the ostentatiously titled "Let's Impeach the President". When the lyrics first appeared a couple weeks ago, reactions ranged from "Holy shit, this is bad" to "Well, they might sound better than they read". Here's a snippet:

 

Let's impeach the president for lying

And leading our country into war

Abusing all the power that we gave him

And shipping all our money out the door

You see what I mean? I think Neil fans everywhere let out a sigh of relief when they discovered that the song is, in fact, utterly amazing. It's as anthemic as anything Neil has ever written, and the man has written some anthems. It's angry, it's uplifting, it's unifying, and it's actually kind of hilarious. Midway through the song he juxtaposes soundbytes of President Bush contradicting himself with Neil yelping "FLIP…….FLOP" in his best angry grandpa voice. It couldn't be more effective. I suppose it's too much to ask that this song might be a hit single or something, but I won't give up hope.

The elegiac "Roger and Me" is an achingly beautiful story of a man losing his childhood friend to war. It's as good of a song as he's ever written. I'm hesitant to call it the highlight of the album, because every song is absolutely flawless, but I haven't been so moved by a song in a long time.

Roger and out, good buddy

I feel you in the air today

I know you gave for your country

I feel you in the air today

Simple lyrics, but drenched in that mournful, highway-at-sunset distortion that Neil practically invented, they are crushing. And to follow it up with a rousing rendition of "America the Beautiful" is a masterstroke.

I can honestly say that this is the most moving album I have ever heard. I've never heard music that appealed to my patriotism so genuinely. Lately I've felt a deep sense of despair at the direction the country is headed, but with one fell swoop, Neil Young has turned it around and made me proud to be an American (let's not get into the perversion that arises when you consider that Neil is Canadian by birth). He's going to be denounced by the right-wing and blasted as being un-American, and that's a crime. Living With War is the Great American Album.

Update: Download link updated