Patrick M Brennan

It’s pretty clear from her profile in New York Magazine^[1] that Isabel Kallman is an intensely annoying person, and I’m really glad I don’t know her. (Not that she’d get caught dead knowing me, but that’s a different story.)

This woman has found her own uniquely psychotic solution to the anxiety which faces almost everyone who becomes a parent: that we won’t be good enough, that we’re not up to the job, that we’ll fail as parents.

Her solution is equal parts denial, shameless shilling, amphetamine abuse, business contacts, more denial, and gobs of cash. She’s launching a TV network! She will become the Martha Stewart of parenting, the “Alpha Mom” who will show all the slobs out there how much better she is than they are. Her empire will grow “from television to radio, to broadband and wireless, and on into toys, beauty products, books, and music … The end goal is for the Alpha Mom brand to become like Oprah, … who is ‘the template for success in media today.’”

Oh, yeah. Somewhere in her to-do list, there was a baby. How does she find time to take care of her child while she’s out conquering the universe? Answer:

[T]he hottest experts… talked about the right way of parenting: …You wear him on your body so that he gets used to your voice, develops language skills more quickly, “becomes,"… says Isabel, “a smarter baby."… But she could never pull that one off. The more Isabela’s child demanded of her, the more she went out to learn. And the more she learned, the more she was told to stay close; and the more people she hired who could do that for her.

This was motherhood’s magic bullet, the most valuable lesson Isabel learned in her studies: “It takes a village.” Isabel quickly hired one. Her son was just 2 weeks old when she retained a night nurse. When he was 5 months, “I started realizing I needed to get out more,"… and she brought on a nanny. Then after about a year, when she started working, “I obviously needed more help,"… so she hired a regular babysitter as well; also often employing her father and an Alpha Mom intern.

Isabel began to see that all things were possible again, that with her village, she could pursue the extraordinary goals she had both for herself and for her child. While the village watched him, she set out to master motherhood.

Where “motherhood", I guess, means something other than “being a mother to your child.” To Isabel, it means, “getting rich(er) by exploiting other people’s feelings of inadeqacy.” As for the actual motherhood thing, well hey, that’s what servants do while you master motherhood.

Hey Isabel, here’s a hint. There’s a name for a village when the “villagers” are actually your employees: it’s called Potemkin.

footnote: I couldn’t honestly tell from the article whether the writer was fawning over Isabel or mocking her, even sometimes in the same sentence. Then again, they mocked Martha, didn’t they? And look where she is.

Thanks to my lovely wife for pointing out this article, via a little pregnant.

It’s the 36th anniversary of the first moon landing, and Google is celebrating by debuting Google Moon. This is just the thing when you need driving directions from Mare Tranquillitatis (site of the Apollo 11 landing) to the Descartes Highlands (where Apollo 16 set down). Just don’t look too closely at the moon…

At several points in my career, I worked for companies which did business with the US Government, and as part of that work, I was sometimes obliged to handle secret information. Before I was allowed to do so, I was thoroughly checked out by the government, and I was required to fill out a small mountain of paperwork to promise that I would never, ever reveal anything that I learned in the course of my work.

I don’t remember any more whether I actually filled out a Standard Form 312, but it’s likely that I did, and if I didn’t, I certainly filled out something which is essentially the same. Everyone who handles classified information fills one of these out. That applies to drones like me, and it applies to everyone else up the chain, all the way up to the top. It’s worth reading, but intimidating.

The sort of information I used in these jobs was boring and technical, and was classified at the lowest level of security, but even so, I’m here to tell you that the US Government takes the protection of that information very seriously. In addition to the original mountain of paperwork, I was also required to submit to random drug screening (the first and only time in my career), the office was subject to periodic security audits, and I worked in a locked and electronically sealed windowless steel vault, where I couldn’t even take a bathroom break. The hard drives for the computers were locked up in a safe every night, and the computers could absolutely never be left unattended with the drives in them – even though they were in a locked vault. I once spent an entire night in the vault while the computer churned through a complex (and secret) calculation. In order to start working on a more normal day, I would have to enter no fewer than seven access codes or passwords (that’s counting doors, safes, and computers, and we didn’t have swipe cards). Of course, disclosure of the secret information I handled, even if inadvertent, was a firing offense, and would also be investigated as a possible crime.

Now, I say the information was boring and technical, but I have no idea where some of it came from, and for all I know, it was extremely valuable. It’s not for me to say whether “my” secrets were important secrets. I made a legally binding promise to keep them secret, and I have kept that promise. That’s not just because I fear the legal and career consequences of breaking that promise – it’s because I want to do what’s right, because I obey the law, and because I love my country. (Apparently these days, unless you shout that loudly in public, often, then it’s not true.)

I’m fairly annoyed, therefore, at some talking points being circulated around the outing of a covert CIA employee (Valerie Plame) by somebody in the Bush White House (Karl Rove, probably Scooter Libby) as an act of political retribution against somebody (Joseph Wilson) who had the nerve to use facts to criticize the one of the administration’s main rationales for attacking Iraq (they were supposedly developing nukes, and buying uranium from Niger). Some of the people defending Karl Rove say that the identity of Valerie Plame wasn’t a “real” secret, or an “important” one. But Karl Rove doesn’t get to decide which secrets are freely available to share, and which ones aren’t. He made the same promise I did, and he should be held to the same standard. Period.

Eric Rudolph was sentenced yesterday to two life sentences for a series of deadly bombings he committed. Rudolph issued a statement in which he justified his crimes by claiming to be a part of the movement to end abortion. One of Rudolph’s bombs did in fact target a women’s clinic (and killed an off-duty policeman), so that checks out. I didn’t know that abortions were also being performed in gay nightclubs and at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, where two more of Rudolph’s bombs exploded, but that just goes to show that you learn something new every day.

Of course, after having killed two people and injured 150, Rudolph’s spree, in the end, never prevented a single abortion. There are plenty of people out there, who are both for and against a woman’s right to choose, who work on the issue legally and nonviolently. Some activists have found common cause in working from people on the opposite side of the issue to reduce the number of abortions. If Rudolph was so concerned about abortion, there were lots of things for him to do that didn’t involve explosives. Unfortunately, they did involve hard work, and apparently that just wasn’t exciting enough.

I don’t think Eric Rudolph is a hateful Christianist terrorist of the Paul Hill variety. I think it’s closer to the truth to say that Rudolph never really cared about abortion. What Eric Rudolph really wanted was to be the hero in his own action movie. He only needed a cause, but not to give his life meaning – he needed a cause as a plot device. In action movies, it doesn’t matter what the backstory is; all it needs is a good guy, a bad guy and the thinnest veneer of plausibility. Beyond that, nobody cares as long as the chases are cool and the explosions are big.

Rudolph got his explosions and his chase scenes. It’s too bad he left so many destroyed lives in his wake. It also kind of sucks for him that the real heroes of the story were the men and women who tracked him down and brought him to justice. May he rot in prison, and may we never hear from him again until the footnoted obituary; with luck, nobody will even remember the name by then.

My blog is currently under attack from the vermin known as comment spammers. You may have heard of these cockroaches. Striking from cleverly-hidden bases in their parents’ basements, they boldly overwhelm the defenses of unsuspecting blogs’ comment systems, turning what was once an interesting, fun and useful tool for socializing and intelligent discussion into advertising space for their useless and parasitic web sites. In this case, it’s impotence pills and hair-loss products. I mean, gosh, where’s a guy to go when he needs to pill to produce an erection, after all? Or something to prevent hair loss? These products are so difficult to get, you know? Clearly, he needs to turn to the comments posted in a very obscure, rarely updated, and nearly-unread blog!

In the time it took for me to write this post, 13 new spam comments appeared. No doubt by the time I’m done typing this sentence, another two or three will show up. Fun, huh?

I’ve had to put up some additional defenses against these worms, and I’m confident that I’m not done yet. For one thing, I will have to personally approve all new comments. For me, that means that simply maintaining this blog, and guarding it against fat assholes with no talent, no brains, and more time than they can usefully employ – oops, sorry, I got off on a rant there. Now where was I? Oh yes …

For me, it means that guarding my blog against these lowlife scum becomes yet another chore, not unlike the daily grind I already endure guarding my email from mail spammers. USENET isn’t even useful any more due to spam. It’s sad and pathetic that there are jerks who have nothing better to do than waste good tools in this way, and it’s even sadder that people who have something to contribute must spend their time fighting the abuse.

Words to make all free people proud:

I wish to speak directly to those who came to London today to take life.

I know that you personally do not fear giving up your own life in order to take others – that is why you are so dangerous. But I know you fear that you may fail in your long-term objective to destroy our free society and I can show you why you will fail.

In the days that follow, look at our airports, look at our seaports and look at our railway stations: Even after your cowardly attack, you will see that people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world will arrive in London to become Londoners and to fulfill their dreams and achieve their potential.

They choose to come to London, as so many have come before, because they come to be free; they come to live the life they choose; they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live. They don’t want that and nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail.

    – London Mayor Ken Livingstone, in the aftermath of the bomb attacks in his city.