A year and a half ago, when I first visited Washington D.C. as an activist and not a tourist, I was a little worried, uncomfortable, and put off when the organization I was about to join, the Campus Antiwar Network, turned their chants from the illegal occupation of the nation of Iraq into “Free, free Palestine! Long live the Intifada!” I had never before read anything or studied anything about the Palestine/Israel conflict, and all I knew that I had Jewish friends and a Jewish aunt, and they were all nice people, and there was a lot stuff happening on both sides I didn’t understand. For that protest in January 2007 and for many months afterward, I respectfully maintained a silence during that particular chant, as I was unwilling mentally commit myself to supporting the Palestine cause as many of my fellow activists did.

However, a year and a half with activists in meetings, discussions, and watching some rather disturbing films with eyewitness testimony have resulted in a sick feeling of revolting similarity between the illegal occupation of Iraq and the illegal occupation of Palestine. I just finished reading Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, the controversial treatise by former president Jimmy Carter, and found my concerns about Israel’s insane foreign policy justified. I wish that I had read the book when it originally came out in late 2006 instead of over a year later, but I’m ashamed that I had no inkling or interest in activism at that point.

I found Carter’s frankness and colloquial writing style very engaging, and was able to read the ~250 page book within a couple of days. Carter’s description of his earliest engagements with Israel as a man who was “infatuated with the Holy Land” having taught Bible lessons for 20 years and visiting in 1973 before becoming president, viewing the “Palestinian problem” with a sideline concern provides details of his perspective’s metamorphosis. This is a man who has arguably spent more time in the occupied areas of Palestine than the vast majority of Israeli citizens and therefore would be considered by an objective audience to be a very qualified, non-biased reviewer of the situation.

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I was on my way home after walking a friend back to her apartment when I saw the flashing red lights of a fire department vehicle about a block away, just across the street from my office building. I walked up to see what was going on, and was treated to this beautiful sight of the fire hydrant being flushed, framed in the glow of the fire truck behind it. Fire hydrants put out a lot of water, and I stood for a few minutes and watched the huge arc the jet of the hydrant made, the droplets fanning out and almost reaching the other side of the street about ten feet away; quite the distance. Behind me, trickles and rivulets streamed down the slight slope of Charter Street and vanished beneath darkened cars, gurgling away into the hidden drains. The fire department guy monitoring the whole situation sat on a bench nearby, smoking a cigarette and watching me with bland curiosity as I snapped a few pictures. I guess he was too used to the whole thing to notice how beautiful it was.

We had just gotten back home from watching Wall-E, which I haven’t yet heard a single bad review of from either professional nor word of mouth (we agreed that it was an amazingly adorable film). My friend and I had planned on just biking from my apartment to the theater, then catching the bus back, but I seem to have this gremlin-like ability to repel Madison Metro buses away from me when I need them. So we ended up taking an unplanned bike-back as well, for a total of around 15 miles or so. Ironically, we were a mile into the trip when the very bus we thought we’d missed roared past us, getting all the green lights (as we got the red ones shortly afterward) and vanishing quickly over a massive hill. The route took us through Speedway, which is a darkened path with a cemetery on either side. Lightning was already crackling in the distance, which of course made for a stereotypical Frankenstein-esque scene on either sides of the road as we biked through it. I wouldn’t have been half-surprised to see a hunched figure, illuminated in a dim glow, unearthing ancient remains beneath a crumbling tomb.

After I got home, the heavens pulled a fire hydrant imitation and started roaring, just barely missing drenching me completely with bullet-sized droplets and soaking the windowsill of my bedroom. At least that part of the night worked out well!

What happens when the hyper-connected people of the digital age are cut off from communications with their digital world? As many of us know from personal experience: rants, frustration, general ill-temper. I was just reading this New York Times article about the subject, and its contents caused a few raised eyebrows on my part.

Web addicts who find themselves shut out of their favorite Web sites tend to fill blogs and online bulletin boards with angry invective about broken promises and interrupted routines.

I’m just as technologically-connected as the next person, and probably more so, but I think this connection has given me a calming perspective on what computers and the Internet are capable of doing for us. If a website is down when I try to access it, why is it such a big deal? Even if it’s down for a few days, like what many of these people seem to be complaining about it – is there any reason for you to feel personally put-upon? It’s not like the webmaster of the site wants you to leave; he or she would be quite happy reeling in your page views for advertising dollars. They’re working as hard as they can to get their site remodeling, or transferred, or working in general – this is not an attack on your pointless Twitter routine of telling people what you ate for lunch.

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Microsoft has officially made today, June 30th, the end of the line for further Windows XP sales and has declared the operating system to be dead. Unless you’re a OEM disc-purchaser, in which case you can still get ahold of it. And of course, what with the millions of users around the world that use it (and will be still using it, if the popular viewpoint on Vista doesn’t change), Microsoft made sure to make it clear that support and updates will continue for the venerable operating system until 2014, which in my opinion is an amazingly long time to continue to update an operating system you’ve just declared dead. Seems to me like an “official talking point” that will make people irritated, but very few people (proportionately speaking) will actually seek out the alternative methods to continue to acquire XP.

I think people’s reactions to XP’s death, and Microsoft’s subtle hemming and hawing as it suggestively pushes Vista to them, are quite interesting. I’ve frequented a few forums and blogs today to see what the talk on the internet is about it, and many forums are filled with frothing, caps-lock filled posts about how Windows XP IS TEH BEST EVER, and raging that Microsoft expects people to buy Vista. What do they expect Microsoft to do? They’re a corporation who wants the people to buy their new toy, same as any other company would. While I’m certainly no Microsoftie (anymore at least), I have to say that my thoughts on the whole operating system debacle have mellowed somewhat.

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Shakespeare is one of those playwrights which I always felt like I had to grit my teeth and bear him during high school English studies, and in the past, seeing his plays performed were often a test of mental fortitude and the ability to quickly decipher rhyme, riddle, and jest and not fall behind. If old Bill could see his work being performed by the talented actors of the American Players Theatre in Spring Green, WI, I’m sure he would be quite proud of their adaptation of his famous A Midsummer Night’s Dream that I had the pleasure to attend last night.

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Even when I was in the mountains of Colorado, I found time to watch Steve Job’s new keynote speech announcing the latest updates to the iPhone software and the phone itself, the long-awaited iPhone 3G. Everyone knew it was coming for the past few months, and most people (including myself) were looking forward to it.

But seriously, Apple – if you’re going to jack up the fees for monthly rates to AT&T from $60 a month to $70 a month, then at least have the decency to tell your customers on your website. It’s glaringly obvious to anyone who saw the old Apple Store option for the iPhone; the entire box with the monthly subscription fees has vanished. Now, I understand that technically Apple is only a manufacturer and they are not the controllers of AT&T’s prices. But Jobs knew that his partner would be upping their rates, and he says nothing?

The cost of the iPhone plus the old smallest minimum monthly fee (approx) for the 24-month contract: $399 + ($60 x 24) = $1839

Cost of the new iPhone and the new rate: $199 + ($70 x 24) = $1879

It’s not the comparably small increase, it’s that they’re blatantly hiding that it was made. Bad form, Apple. But I suppose you’re no stranger to removing information from your website.