If you haven't read or heard the story of Hiu Lui Ng in the news the last couple of days, do me a favor. Go read it now, before you finish this post.

Ng died in the custody of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division of Homeland Security. He died agonizingly, having spent the last 16 months of his life imprisoned on U.S. soil for the heinous crime of having one time, years ago, overstayed a tourist visa. The ICE effectively executed him because of that minor infraction and because he had the temerity to hire lawyers and battle their attempt to deport him despite his being married to an American citizen.

How could my wonderful, uplifting, dream-fulfilling country have stooped so low? It is well past time to rid our nation's corridors of power of the vermin that now occupy it. I just hope it's not too late for untold other Hiu Lui Ng's out there.

I just posted an entry on my spiritual blog about a marvelous series of TV interviews I've just been connected to by my friend Tony Seton. The particular video in question features an interview of Astrologer and Mystic Caroline Casey by On Faith's Sally Quinn.

In the interview, Ms. Casey says, among other things, "We are electing a story. We're electing ourselves. This is the most mythologically potent election...probably ever, or at least since the Founding Fathers." She has a few other mightily interesting tidbits to share in this highlight and the extended interview is also there. This is part of a collection of dozens of such topical interviews. What a find!

Molly Holzschlag has a cool idea on her blog. She suggests a new microformat called "Microtude" that would use the class attribute with various values to delineate an attitude associated with a post. For example, you could code a blog entry like this:

<p class = "sarcasm">Now there's an idea we can all get behind!</p>

I like it. Molly asked for suggestions for classes that ought to be included. Here's my start on such a list:

• anger
• disgust
• justkidding
• preachy
• belligerence

That post led me to another interesting one over at Glenn McAnally's site where a new style called "sarcastic" is being touted and a whole new movement being born.

I like WebWhimsy.

Sen. Hillary Clinton won Pennsylvania tonight by a margin that was less than half her lead a few weeks ago. It's a victory nonetheless and I don't think the outcome should result in her deciding to drop out of the race unless she's broke, which may be the case.

But this logic her staff and surrogates keep trying to foist off on the voters and super-delegates is starting to grind at me pretty badly.

Put as simply as possible, here's their key "battleground states" argument.

Candidate A won State X
If Candidate B is the nominee, he will lose State X
Therefore Candidate B is unelectable

What kind of bullcrap is that? This assumes that many or most of those who supported Candidate A in this election will either stay home or vote for the Republican in the General. In other words, if I lose to a Democrat when the Democratic vote is divided between two of us, I will necessariy lose to a Republican when there's only one Democrat in the race. On what basis is that conclusion drawn?

I'll tell you.

It's drawn from the certain knowledge that Obama will have more delegates, more popular vote and more state victories than Clinton. So the only way they can hope to present themselves as the winners in this brutal campaign is by changing the definition of "winner" and then fudging their own definition.

It is, indeed, as Obama says, the old-style politics.

And it's hogwash.

The annual TED conference is one of the premiere events on the planet that is all about ideas. “Ideas Worth Sharing” is its slogan and the videos of presentations made at TED are often among the most intriguing, thought-provoking and entertaining anywhere.

Now the folks behind TED are behind a new event called Pangea Day. On Saturday, May 10, for four hours beginning at 1800 GMT (which happens to be 11 a.m. here in Monterey), a worldwide audience of potentially millions of people at thousands of locations in 180 countries will watch a collection of 24 short films together. The intent is to help “them” become “us”, to help us discover the true common thread of humanity that runs through all races, cultures and religions.

In the Monterey area, there are two showings, one at Monterey Peninsula College and the other at something called the Punky Lil Kid Independent Film Festival. The Pangea Day web site helps you find a location near you.

I hope you will take the time to attend this one-of-a-kind event. It has been famously said that movies don’t change the world but people who watch movies do. Here’s to a world-changing experience for all of us.

A friend shared this photo with me. I don't know if it was real or Photoshopped but it's cool anyway. (Hey, that may be the 21st Century equivalent of "is it live or is it Memorex?")

Smile!

Google came up with a pretty cool April Fool stunt today from its GMail page. A new red link appeared labeled "New! GMail Custom Time!". That link takes you to this page where all the virtues of being able to send email from a past date are extolled.

The copy is clever and a clear give-away of the Foolish nature of the "announcement."

Two news stories in today's newspaper combined to give me an idea that I'm offering for free to Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia.

The first story was about Wikipedia and their ongoing money woes. They can't sell ads without violating the spirit of their mission and they can't raise enough money to operate purely by donations. What's a non-profit foundation to do?

The second story was about a very creative couple in Colorado who are selling their home in this horrible market by holding an essay contest with an entry fee. For $100, you submit an essay. They have a judging team set up. The winning essay gets the house. If they can get 2,000 essays submitted (they have a couple hundred so far), they can get out of their financial dilemma and help someone in the process.

So, my somewhat twisted mind said, "What if Wikimedia Foundation held regular contests to judge the most informative, most interesting, best-written, funniest, weirdest, etc., entries in Wikipedia? If you author a particular essay or just really like one, you submit it for consideration along with an entry fee of, say, $10. The Wikimedia Foundation board appoints a panel of judges to review the entries (or submits them to site content editors and contributors), selects a winner (or a 1-2-3 winner set) and awards them cash prizes.

Seems to me this has the salutary potential side effect of increasing the quality of content on the site at the same time as it could generate huge piles of money for the foundation.

I'm emailing this to the new Executive Director of the foundation today. Who knows, maybe she'll like it.

Florida Democrats -- all except for their elected Congressional representatives at least -- want to schedule a do-over of their party's Presidential primary in a way that is so fraught with possible fraud that it puts even Florida's previous election shenanigans to shame. Party leaders, whose acquiescence to the staging of a primary before Democratic Party rules permitted resulted in the DNC de-certifying their election, want to hold a combination of mail-in and walk-in election June 3.

Ludicrously enough, Sen. Hillary Clinton is maintaining that both the Florida vote and the Michigan vote should count exactly as held, outside party rules. She'd love that. Obama wasn't even on Michigan's ballot and Clinton's appearance there was, if not against Party policy at least unfair to all other candidates. She took 55% of the votes but as the only named candidate, that is hardly surprising. Obama reacted to Clinton's proposals by saying, "The notion that somehow it would be fair for her to obtain significantly more delegates than me in a contest we agreed wouldn't count and I wasn't on the ballot and I didn't campaign there just defies logic," he said.

In Florida, no candidate was allowed to campaign and all of the Democrats stayed away. But Hillary bent even that rule; within a very few hours after the Florida primary ended, she made a clear campaign stop there to tell voters that their opinion should count. In other words, she flaunted party rules to her own benefit again. She has amply demonstrated that rules and fair play will not be allowed to stand in the way of her now all-but-impossible effort to win the Democratic Presidential nomination.

I am in favor of the DNC sticking by its guns and just not seating the Michigan and Florida delegations. But if they are going to allow a do-over, then the plan must be one that provides both remaining candidates an equal opportunity to win delegates.

More than that, I am in favor of Clinton just stepping gracefully aside and letting the peoples' choice unite the party and begin preparing for the November general election against Bush III, aka John McCain.