This article on kuro5hin provides an excellent overview of the case and responds to each argument posed by the neo-conservatives. Some excerpts:
Tom DeLay stooped to an all-time low calling Florida Judge Greer a “murderer and terrorist”…
In 1996 a CAT scan showed, according to 2nd District Federal Court ruling, “severely abnormal structure” and that her cerebral cortex is “simply gone and replaced with spinal fluid”. EEGs were flatline.
…in a transcript of one of Frist’s speeches to the Senate floor on March 17th, Frist reveals his ignorance of PVS: “I mentioned that terry’s brother told me that terry laughs, smiles, and tries to speak. Doesn’t sound like a woman in persistent vegetative state.”
In truth, patients in a PVS do show such symptoms: “Patients in VS can demonstrate behaviours that are associated in non-brain injured individuals with emotional experience, such as crying, grimacing, smiling, or laughing (Royal College of Physicians, 2003). When the patient fulfils diagnostic criteria for VS, these behaviours must reflect subcortical functions and are not indicative of subjective distress. Not surprisingly, this can be difficult for relatives to understand, and many families reasonably perceive these behaviours as signs that the patient is intentionally trying to ‘wake up’ (Jacobs et al., 1986).”
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The Terri Schiavo case/issue/hype has nothing to do with life or death. The neo-conservatives have selected this case because it can easily be used as an appeal to emotion [1 2]; people will be distracted by the emotional elements of the case and not notice the real issue at stake: courts and states are losing power, law makers and the federal government are gaining power. Some people might say that this is by definition the first step toward Fascism.
Here are some excerpts from an excellently written email that MoveOn sent out:
Even many right-wing activists are concerned about Congress’s interference in this case. GOP pollster Tony Fabrizi told the L.A. Times, “It becomes a more crystallized proof point that we are no longer the party of smaller government. We have become a party of ‘It doesn’t matter what size the government is as long as it is imposing our set of values.’”
The New York Times talked to David Davenport of the Hoover Institute, a conservative research organization, who said, “When a case like this has been heard by 19 judges in six courts and it’s been appealed to the Supreme Court three times, the process has worked even if it hasn’t given the result that the social conservatives want. For Congress to step in really is a violation of federalism.”
“It’s disturbing that doctors who would never venture a comment about the health of anybody from a homemade video are sitting on the floor of Congress making declarations,” said Art Caplan, chairman of the Department of Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine. “My own impression, from a distance, is that they’ve subverted what they know to be good medicine for the aim of achieving a political goal.”
And reporters are now raising questions about a right-to-die law Bush signed as Texas governor, contradicting his position in the Schiavo case. Just last week, the law was applied for the first time, allowing doctors to remove a critically ill infant from life support against his mother’s wishes. According to the Houston Chronicle, this marks the first time in American history that courts allowed a pediatric patient to die against the wishes of their parent. …
“The mother down in Texas must be reading the Schiavo case and scratching her head,” said Dr. Howard Brody, the director of Michigan State University’s Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences. “This does appear to be a contradiction.” Brody said that, in taking up the Schiavo case, Bush and Congress had shattered a body of bioethics law and practice.”
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If you have a video file that is 16:9 stretched into 4:3, but the “widescreen” flag isn’t set, and you either don’t have access to the source material for reexporting, or you don’t want to because of time or other logistics, you can edit the video file and set the flag manually.
Short answer: use a hex editor and change
00 00 01 B3 2D 01 E0 24
in line 0 to
00 00 01 B3 2D 01 E0 34
I tried using 2 hex editors for OS X, HexEditor and HexEdit. Neither of them worked, I’m not sure why. HexEdit seemed to not like huge files, and I couldn’t get HexEditor to modify any file (a shame, too, the interface is really nice).
Long answer (if you don’t have a working hex editor, or if the one you have can’t handle a huge file):
- You are going to be creating several different types of files, and a lot of them, so to keep things neat, first put your movie into its own directory.
- Create a hex “rendering” of your video file like this:
xdd myfile.m2v myfile.m2v.hex
- That is still a huge file. Chop it up into a bunch of 100 meg files like this:
split -b100m myfile.m2v.hex (this will take a long time).
- Now you see many files name with 3 characters, starting with
xaa. Edit this first file with your favorite text editor, such as emacs: emacs xaa
- Change
00 00 01 B3 2D 01 E0 24
in line 0 to
00 00 01 B3 2D 01 E0 34
Save the file and exit out of your text editor.
- Next we will stick all the pieces back together. To make this easy, move everything we don’t need anymore out of the directory. This includes:
myfile.m2v, myfile.m2v.hex, and other files that your text editor might have created (such as xaa~ in the case of emacs).
- Run this command to stick all the pieces back together:
cat * > myfile_widescreen.m2v.hex(this will take a long time)
- Run this command to convert it from hex back into its original format:
xxd -r myfile_widescreen.m2v.hex myfile_widescreen.m2v (this will take a long time)
Ta da! Even if you did have the option of reexporting, this probably took less time.
Note: this worked perfectly when viewing the movie in VLC, but didn’t seem to work for DVD Studio Pro. I am a complete DVD Studio Pro newbie though. Investigating…
update: i haven’t tried it out yet, but this is probably a little easier: The Anamorphiciser.
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My journey began many months ago when I was living in Houston. I was spending a lot of time at the computer and needed to have a chair with good ergonomics. From my experiences, and a little research, I determined that a healthy chair would require the following at the minimum:
- adjustable seat height
- adjustable seat angle, including being able to tilt forward
- adjustable back angle
- either no arm rests, or very adjustable arm rests
I dove into my research for an affordable chair that would meet my needs. I initially set my price limit around $200. That very soon started to creep up as I discovered how expensive the market was. It seemed pretty inflated to me, but I figured since I spend so much time in front of my computer, it was worth it for my health and happiness, and hopefully the chair would last me five years.
Well, the price just kept going up. It was truly amazing. Everything that seemed sufficient was $600 or more. There were some around $300 or $400, but for one reason or another they seemed unconvincing.
Then I stumbled upon the Raynor Mobility Multifunction Task Chair at Office Depot. This chair had everything listed above, plus adjustable back height, and it was $100!!! And now it is even cheaper.
I bought the chair and have been very happy with it for many months. I sold it when I moved, and when I arrived here in Durham I bought another one.
My only small gripe is that the seat padding could be a little denser. It’s actually fine how it is, but if I was a little heavier (I’m 170 pounds) it might be uncomfortable. Also there is some play in the mechanisms, but that barely affects my experience, and for the price the construction is excellent.
- Features: A. The only reason it doesn’t get an A+ is because it could have adjustable back depth.
- Seat cushion comfort: B+
- Construction: B+
- Price: A+
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An actor on the nbc show “the restaurant” (if i heard correctly) makes some very interesting comments about her experience on the semi-improv show. I never saw or heard of the show. Does anyone know if it was sold as being a reality show? Or maybe I am out of the loop and most such shows these days are known to be staged?
link
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I just registered for the National Conference for Media Reform, May 13-15. I’m really excited. Here is a list of panels and workshops at the conference:
Media policy 101
Media reform activism 101
Case studies in local organizing
What we have won – how past media activism has made a difference
International perspectives on media policy solutions
News, information and corporate media
Media ownership
The Telecom Act of 2005
Policies for advancing independent media
Media literacy for media reform
Media justice
Localism and diversity in radio
Public broadcasting
Cultural diversity and free trade
Media accountability: policy and activism
Broadening access to the Internet
Media policy & racial justice
Labor & Media reform
Advertising and commercialism
Copyright & intellectual property
Globalizing the media reform movement
Fundraising for media reform
Organizing around cable franchise renewals
Challenging broadcast license renewals
Media monitoring & accountability
Citizen pressure and media policy
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I have no opinion on the Terri Schiavo issue, and Tom DeLay is a motherfucking maniac.
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Okay, I finally sliced off the street argument from the beginning. I also added some more great street footage, and cleaned up the subtitles.
March 16 Rough Cut (Quicktime - 60 minutes - 316MB)
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Lots of new street interviews. Cut out some boring parts. Came out 2 minutes shorter. Tell all your friends.
March 13 Rough Cut (Quicktime - 67 minutes - 362MB)
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