Some of you may already know that I’m going to be heading off to upstate New York this week, for a six week stint of TAing a Logic class for gifted junior high and high school students. (If you didn’t, well, now you do.) I’m in the process of preparing some comments in response to the (excellent, thoughtful) responses to my recent post Why We Marched, on abortion, law, democracy, and the courts. The short version is that I’m still right and the objections elucidate important issues but don’t derail my point. For the longer version, however, you’ll have to wait a few days, while I prepare to move and take the long Greyhound bus ride to New York (as usual, Rad Geek rolls in style).

See you soon!

(I owe the links to feministe)

Mel Gibson’s film distribution company is suing a US cinema chain for more than $40m (?@ef;bf;½21m) in a dispute over revenues for The Passion of the Christ.

Gibson’s Icon Distribution says Regal Entertainment Group – the country’s biggest cinema chain – owes it the amount in unpaid box office receipts.

–from BBC 2004-06-09: Gibson sues over Passion takings

… only $12.99 from the official merchandising website!

Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is being called a lot of things — brilliant, anti-Semitic, sacrilegious. And some Christian leaders are now criticizing the production for trying to turn a profit out of the story of Christ’s death. They point to the merchandising– a hardcover book, a soundtrack C.D., lapel pins, witness cards, nail necklaces and inscribed nail pendants.

–from MSNBC 2004-02-26: Merchandising "The Passion"

19. Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:
20. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
21. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. …
24. No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

The Gospel According to Matthew, Chapter 6, KJV

A cheap shot? Sure, I’ll cop to that. Just let me add that interpretive charity is not always the top item on my list when it comes to creepy Holocaust-denying weasels.

Sorry, Mel.

I, like Roderick Long, haven’t had much to say about the war on Iraq lately; Roderick chalks it up to outrage fatigue. I think that’s right, but I don’t think–as one might take Roderick’s post to imply–that it’s merely a matter of personal psychology. The issue itself is tired: in the presence of such callous and brutal disregard for the truth, for rational argument, for other people’s lives and livelihoods, or for basic human dignity, there is no commentary left; at most you can only point out what you already said, and anything else is just more talk. The moral, political, and human disaster is, at this point, something so searingly obvious that it can only be shown, not said.

The War Party has surpassed both calumny and satire; there’s nothing left to us but the methods of Karl Kraus: to simply repeat what is being said verbatim, without comment. Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, dar?@c3;bc;ber mu?@c3;178; man schweigen.

One more thing before I go. Thanks to Max, I’ve learned that Atlanta’s Hartsfield airport is so abominably congested that it made the international news.

ATLANTA (AP) – Thousands of frustrated travelers waited in two-hour-long lines to pass through security Tuesday morning at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, slowed by a rush of business and post-holiday passengers.

Until the crush cleared up by early afternoon, departing travelers at the country’s busiest airport stood in a labyrinthine line that wound through ticketing and baggage claim areas and the food court before even nearing the security gate. … Lines also have spilled outside at least twice in the last month. …

By early afternoon, travelers’ waiting time was down to about 10 minutes, but airport officials say people should expect more long lines on busy travel mornings throughout the summer.

from The Guardian 2004-06-01

What is causing such insane bottlenecks? Federal bureaucracy, of course–did you really have to ask?

Hartsfield-Jackson officials have warned for months they could not handle the summer travel crush without extra help from the federal Transportation Security Administration. … The airport has asked for more security lanes but the four additional lanes now being built haven’t been completed. All 18 security lanes were in use Tuesday.

Airport managers are also waiting for 59 more screeners promised by federal authorities. …

Travelers wondered whether security measures should be loosened now that air travel has bounced back to pre-9-11 levels.

Quincy Osborne, who was headed to the Cayman Islands for a vacation, expected to miss his flight even though he arrived at the airport three hours early.

Not everyone should be considered a threat, he said. Look, you see the elderly, little kids, expectant mothers. They should think of another way to do this.

from The Guardian 2004-06-01

Your thought for the day comes courtesy of M. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon; this one goes out to all the folks waiting in line in Atlanta:

To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.

—P.-J. Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century (trans. John Beverly Robinson), Epilogue ¶ 39

L. and I are heading off tomorrow to the land of the metric system and rudimentary socialized healthcare for a couple days’ vacation with her family. We’ll be seeing Mamma Mia! (!), a musical based on the songs of Abba, and hanging around the city for a day.

I’ll have more to say on abortion and the courts (including, hopefully, some replies to my critics) when I return. See you on the other side of the week!