(ORDER LIST: 544 U.S.)

THURSDAY, MARCH 24, 2005

ORDER IN PENDING CASE 04A825 SCHIAVO, EX REL. SCHINDLER V. SCHIAVO, MICHAEL, ET AL.

The application for stay of enforcement of judgment pending the filing and disposition of a petition for writ of certiorari presented to Justice Kennedy and by him referred to the Court is denied.

I'm absolutely addicted to this case. The bullshit over the weekend in the congress was incredible. The most amazing thing was a 1/2 hour press conference by some democrats on CSPAN. (Only problem with the awesome (totally awesome) vid feeds on CSPAN is that the video archive seems to only last for 15 days. So this video will die on April 5th. I've emailed CSPAN and asked them why the don't make it easier to use their video. RSS feeds would be quite nice.)

More blurry shit.

I'm going to do Dive Into Accessibility over the next few days. I had a lot of problems using my computer when I was disabled and I'm going to do my part to make my part of the web better. Most of the problems I had related to browsers not having the greatest accessibility features (I particularly needed a black background and white type to see) but a big part of the responsibility lies with web designers.

Terri Schiavo is lying in her bed dying right now. I'm rather happy for her. This is the third time the tube has been out. Every time it's been re-inserted by some last minute antics but this time I think it's going to stay out. What a saga this has been. I've been watching it for years actually. It's been an endless cycle of court orders and judges and press conferences and pleas. Just when you think the final death-sentence has come down her parents get some politician or judge somewhere to keep her body alive.

This is the super bowl of morality folks. It may seem stupid that the fight is over something that should be so clear and simple to decide with common sense, but this is the world we live in. A world we're forced to live in. It's a world where some senators thought they could 'make a difference' by subpoenaing a woman who has been a vegetable for 15 years to appear before congress. The move would have granted her protection as a witness in a congressional inquiry and forced them to keep her alive. Some serious entertainment can be had by reading the televised pleas and editorials of these 'right to lifers'. Three men have been arrested on trespassing charges after trying to storm the hospice this morning, carrying bread and water. Although Schiavo cannot eat or drink, supporters say the move had symbolic value.

Ho my god. The web developers are pissed. Reading this whole thing shows you how crazy I am. New IE7 is coming (if not already here) and everyone who writes websites is crazy curious about what it's going to look like.

I recently started taking blurry photos.

When you show photo people a photo that is ‘defocused’ they will tell you, “please, blurry is so overdone.” and I have to agree, you can’t really make a photography career out of it. It’s not a style. However, I’m not trying to do that. I actually was seeing the world like this when I took these pictures and I honestly couldn’t see if they were focused or not so I just racked the focus back to macro distances on every shot. I also began to actually appreciate blurriness for its own sake and my photographic intent shifted away from narrative to the quality of the ‘bokeh’.

World Transhumanist Association

I probably shouldn't be getting all crazy about how special I am now with my eye implant, but it has started me down the road toward total subsumption with the global machine mass. I kid. I kid.

In my college days I was into this magazine called Mondo2000. It really changed my life. I read a couple issues and was completely hooked on the future. There were a number of things in my environment (punk, acid) that turned me away from the backwards-looking classic-rock-listening cold-war-thinking generally-anything-as-it-is-done or-was-done retro-prison stuff that regular people believed in. But it was Mondo2000 that gave tendrils to all these new awakenings. It was a clearing house for all manner of nuts and I latched on to their ideas rather forcefully.

I came to the website of the World Transhumanist Association because a guy there was discussing the work of Paul W. Ewald on that site. (There are precious few places where it is discussed, sadly.) Those lovable fruit cakes, the Transhumanists, who use words like ‘superhuman’ that scientists have to stay away from, are kind of like having a smart inventor uncle that I admire but is a little too wacky to hang out with full time.

From STELARC's website:

Bodies are both Zombies and Cyborgs. We have never had a mind of our own and we often perform involuntarily conditioned and externally prompted. Ever since we evolved as hominids and developed bipedal locomotion, two limbs became manipulators and we constructed artifacts, instruments and machines. In other words we have always been coupled with technology. We have always been prosthetic bodies. We fear the involuntary and we are becoming increasingly automated and extended. But we fear what we have always been and what we have already become—Zombies and Cyborgs.

Cool. But it turns out now I’m more into medically-related scientific speculation. Evolutionary biology is so hot.

And Paul W. Ewald got me going on it with his article, “Mastering Disease” In The Next Fifty Years (listening on my iPod at the hospital because I could no longer see text on paper) and now I’m going to read Plague Time: How Stealth Infections Cause Cancer, Heart Disease, and Other Deadly Ailments. It’s what all disease sufferers do I guess. Read about the perfect future to help deal with the not-so-perfect present.

They were afraid there was something behind my left eyeball that was making it buluge out and they didn’t want to operate on me it if there was so they ordered up a CT scan of the area around my eyeballs: Orbits with Contrast.

Orbits with Contrast

:09 seconds
or download 625kb

The video scans through slices of my head from the bottom of my nose to just above my eyes. You can drag the movie controller back and forth to scrub it.

Steve put a picture of me on his MU L L E R S T U D I O website so I put him in my blog. That’s how it works people, it’s a WEB. A WEB of life. But the WEB is fickle baby. So I’m gonna freeze dry it here.

I was so excited when DeeDee gave me my official registration as a cyborg. I think she forgot she had it so I just got it tonight. I guess they gave it to her after the sugery.

As an official cyborg, I’m supposed to carry this around at all times. In case they need to re-build me from scratch like Steve Austin, they’ll need this info. So it’s a good thing I have it. My favorite part has to be that it lists the serial number of the lens. I might need that if I have to call for product support or something.

DeeDee and I signed up our house with GreenCine tonight. I put 30 movies in my queue real quick (there’s new version Raging Bull!). I was on NetFlix a few years ago but this is waaaay better for the movie geek. Perfect to try out my new vision system on.

I especially love the Movie Primers section where you can setup your film school curriculum much easier. I’m really into the Iranian New Wave and they have a really good essay on it. They use extensive IMDB links for stuff they don't have. I once heard that they best way to get a film education was not to watch a bunch of movies by different directors, but to just pick a director and watch their whole cannon, beginning to end. I've done that with quite a few and I have to recommend it. You get a much better idea of how technique and theme work together from the perspective of a single artist. GreenCine lets you do this when you click on a director, you can just queue up all their movies. Another one I like is the new releases.

Anyhow, if you're a NetFlixer, I say switch.

There is no way to explain eye surgery. In some ways, especially if you're a sensitive bugger like me, it's easier than putting a contact lens in. You're drugged and locked down and numbed. in other ways, it's kind of horrifying. You have to watch it all and you are in charge of holding your eyeball still by looking at a light. I had my first taste of what it's like when I got a steroid injection in my eyeball. But that was really nothing. Yesterday I got a cataract extraction and lens replacement in my right eye as a result of my (in case you didn't know) cronic uveitis.

I'm now officially a cyborg. Part man, part plastic.

My vision in my right eye is 20/25 today. It may fluctuate a little bit as I get used to the lens but things are looking good.