The Null Device
2004/11/4
The Museum of the Middle Class, featuring historical and anthropological exhibits addressing the socioeconomic category that once existed between the upper and lower classes, opened to the public in Schaumburg, Illinois, on Monday.
One of the 15 permanent exhibits, titled "Working For 'The Weekend,'" examines the routines of middle-class wage-earners, who labored for roughly eight hours a day, five days a week. In return, they were afforded leisure time on Saturdays and Sundays. According to many anthropologists, these "weekends" were often spent taking "day trips,"eating at chain family restaurants, or watching "baseball" with the nuclear family.
British foreign secretary Jack Straw has stated that a war on Iran is "inconceivable". Well, that's me reassured.
Asked if he thought that the world would back a strike on Iran, either by US or Israeli forces, Mr Straw said: "Not only is that inconceivable, but I think the prospect of it happening is inconceivable."
That's very convenient phrasing; note that Straw does not state opposition to invading or bombing Iran, as, after all, it's not his decision to make. After all, if something unconceivable does happen, then the rules go out the window, and Britain would immediately get in line, just as it did on Iraq and the abandonment of the Oslo accord.
Pissed off about Bush winning a second term? Planning to leave the US or renounce your citizenship? It's not that easy. Getting permanent residency in Canada takes more than half a presidential term in itself, and other countries are equally difficult (unless, of course, you are fabulously wealthy, in which case various Caribbean tax havens are more than willing to sell you citizenship, or if you prefer, you can live on a Liberian-registered ocean liner on the high seas with other cranky rich people). Meanwhile, the US State Department won't let you renounce your citizenship unless you have another one to fall back on, and apparently even if you do go overseas, the IRS will still require you to keep sending the income tax cheques back to fund all those wars of conquest and faith-based missile-defense systems and such. (via bOING bOING)