Afflicted by hiccups, posting anyway - 10-11 August 2010

Good morning, everyone. Here’s hoping that if you quit your job because your boss is being an ass and thinks you're just a piece of ass, you have at least as much awesome as this person does. Or did, anyway, considering the whole thing appears to be a hoax and that nobody actually quit in such a manner. Comment about awesome still stands, however. And one that did happen involved a JetBlue flight attendant who told off a passenger over the intercom, grabbed some beer and quit by deploying and using the emergency slide while the plane was on the tarmac. Finally, if you were working for the man characterized by these memoranda, I suspect that you’d be looking for new work as fast as you could try and find it.

Reports currently indicate that Senator Stevens, Internet-famous for his "series of tubes" statements, has been killed in a plane crash flying him and others to Alaska for a fishing trip.

Google fails to live up to their Don't Be Evil policy in pairing with Verizon to offer a false net neutrality where some content is given primacy over others, even though they claim agnosticity over what in that premium content band will be prized. Furthermore, they’re not claiming net neutrality on everything - wireless networks are off-limits, and wired networks can still be traffic-shaped anyway.

In regular news, $26 billion dollars in emergency stae aid passed the House and received the President's signature, even as the opposition repeatedly claimed the bill was serving “special interests”, meaning unions, and was a bailout to states with already out of control spending. Because government services and infrastructure, are totally the same as war contractors, lobbyists, and corporations, who did get bailed out to a far bigger chunk of money than this state aid bill. That doesn’t stop The WSJ from saying that class sizes are too small and should be made bigger and educators aren't important professionals worth keeping and cherishing with adequate funding. Because, as “everyone knows”, what you achieve in your life is solely the result of the choices you make and the results you achieve, not by whether you happen to win the lottery of being in a good family, having a good neighborhood, and going to a good school. And if a school happens to be 47 percent Asian and 41 percent white based on a test administered to the students in a city, then that’s just an indication that whites and Asiasns are better at making good choices and promoting good values. The person Sowell’s complaining about? Has the good sense to realize that he won the lottery, based on appearing gifted at a point where his potential was mostly untapped, feels some guilt that he won while others lost and were forced into an inadequate system, and wants to change the system to be better. (PDF) The kid took the knowledge he was given and came to an appropriate conclusion - innate intelligence cannot be distributed by neighborhood, and there are plenty of smart people floundering in places because they will not get the opportunities that the lucky ones do.

The anti-gay candidate in Minnesota is all for the execution of gays and lesbians, apparently in admiration of extremist Muslims who do so regularly, calling them more moral about the laws in the Bible than Christians and Jews are. The following, however, is a good example where digging into the past is just for shock value - in a previous, before-politics life, Rand Paul apparently kidnapped a woman, forced marijuana from a bong on her, and then asked her to worship at a stream. Significance? None, unless this somehow ties into the libertarian perspective or Paul’s positions. Really, people - we can do better and not have to resort to this. Even if it is true, which GQ claims it is and well-sourced.

A former B-2 bomber pilot was convicted of selling secrets to China and helping them design a missile. For a little over $100,000, apparently. Bad economies mean even that selling out the country comes cheap. The defense contended the entire time that all the information given to the Chinese was unclassified material and publicly available. Even if it was, we suspect a conviction would have been obtained, just because we don’t want to set any precedents where it’s okay to sell that kind of stuff to China.

A ruling has finally appeared in a 40 year-old land claim by the Oneida native tribes that the state of New York illegally seized their land in the 18th and 19th centuries - the tribes waited too long to press their claim, so it would be too much hardship on those already living there, so claim denied. It’s not like they could have pressed the claim when it was first taken from them...

Attempting to create a scandal, Fox reports that the imam of Park 51, a planned mosque and cultural center to be built near the site of the 11 September attacks, will be sent on State Department dime out to explain to different Islamic communities what America really thinks about religion in society and how our society treats religion. If it wasn’t related to the New York mosque, it wouldn’t garner a peep, but because there’s still plenty of ginned up anger about how The Bloodthirsty Religion is building a testament to their attack right near where it happened, we can expect this to be part of at lest Fox News’s cycle for a while. At least they haven't criticized someone supposedly not doing what he did in spades, and that they recognized he did when he did it.

He’s about to see just how inviolate military spending is to the Congress and its opposition, but kudos to defense secretary Gates's attempts to find major funding cuts for the Pentagon and its commands. $240 million is a good start - I’m betting there’s more that can be slashed out, especially after the troops leave Iraq.

In our politics, candidate Angle is running a very specific game to election - she's been accused of shutting out Hispanic and Latino media, while her opponent, Mr. Reid, seems to be courting that demographic to vote for him in the Nevada Senate race. Ms. Angle does herself no favors with her strong support of SB 1070, the Papers Please law, which is almost guaranteed to disproportionately target Hispanic and Latino residents of Arizona, even though it claims such targeting will be ilegal.

Technology makes a short stint with an interactive model of the known universe.

In opinions, The White House press secretary believes progressives should be grateful to the administration for all the progressive things they've doen for them so far. Which, if you look at the Politifact Obama-meter, you’ll find that he has done a lot of progressive things. He’s not getting credit for them, though, because he looks to have basically bailed out on all the big ones - public options, real reforms of Wall Street, climate change, actual liberal nominees to court positions, that sort of thing. Telling someone they should be grateful when it looks like they’ve shafted you at every major turn is pretty dumb. Digby points out that the Democrats need to find a way of working with liberal activists, instead of despising them and playing to the center, a center that doesn’t contain enough people to really win you an election.

More stuff about the possibility of the Obama/Clinton 2012 ticket, which could be good for the voting base, or bad for the voting base, depending on whether they see it as a shakeup to get things moving or as solidifying a centrist position and shutting progressives out in the cold.

Mr. Carrol takes the news of declining public services, the laying off of teachers and public servants, and blames it squarely on deficit spending - of Nancy Pelosi's era, that is. Because public servants are uninoized, caring about them is only a ploy to make sure that the unions are happy at the expense of raiding the private sector's coffers - not to keep essential state and local government services going. Spending by government only drains the private sector, including the all-important Small Businesses, of resources, as if things were zero-sum at best between the two. And heaven forbid we raise taxes to help with all the spending that’s already gone on - that’ll only make the rich angry, and they’ll just try harder to hide their income so as not to pay their fair share of taxes. Nowhere in there, of course, is anything that started the slide - bank bailouts, mortgage bubble collapses, two land wars in Asia that were not paid for from the beginning...you know, deficit spending from the previous administrator. It’s all Obama, all the time, now. Which is why people can say the Obama administration is delusional when they cite numbers indicating things are recovering, because the situation as it stands is still pretty bad, and then claim that everything that is trying to be done to avert the slide will only cause it to happen worse, and that only tax cuts like Saint Reagan's can save us from the economic slide. While accusing the other side, that is, of ignoring practicality for ideology. (And soem are spiking their previous friends under the bus while also almost committing grievous fouls against budgetary economics. It’s technically true that lost revenues should be matched with lesser spending, but I’m curious to know where Mr. Stossel expects the cuts to come from, so I can further evaluate his claims.) Speck. Plank. Problem.

It makes the insinuations that everyone Obama uses is corrupt, tainted, and that his pomise of clearing up Washington was a smokescreen for backroom deals a breath of almost-fresh air. How short our memory is that we latch on only to how much the current administrator has corruption in his circles, forgetting the previous administrators that had corruption in theirs. And then when the twin to this argument, that the President has fallen from his lofty heights to never recover because he tried to make the American people accept something they didn't want, and that he should become far right if he wants to hope for recovery, much like Saint Reagan did.

And then they merrily go off to claim that the government-sponsored enterprises are what's causing the continued recession, and that if they stopped making it so easy for people to afford houses, the economy would spring back to life. Why not, instead, have a look at, say, three-paycheck months and their effect on the economy? It’ll probably provide much better data than continuing to harp that there’s somewhere that’s deliberately buying up bad mortgages to save the asses of the banks that would otherwise crumble in flames.

Stepping away, although not that far, from the politics, Ms. Seifert worries fo the possible consequences for women of Taliban rule returning, whether outright or in government coalition, because the Taliban have not given any signs that they intend of softening their hardline stances towards the rights and duties of women in the country. That question will soon become one of “Is the culture right in Afghanistan for the government to fight for the rights of women?” If that’s not the case, then things will return to what they were until the next occupier arrives. We don’t have to have a majority in favor - just enough of them that they’re willing to make noise, run for office, and get the government to see that it’s worth making them into freer members of society.

As a particular statement goes, if the junior Senator from Minnesota's colleagues don't like him and his opposition doesn't like him, he must be doing something right. If for nothing else than Al Franken in the Senate is a joker and admits to it. Most of the other people there don’t.

Last for tonight, intending to hold something like a Burning Man event on the water, a group ran into insurance cost troubles. They decided to go ahead and hold an event like it anyway, same place, just a gathering of private citizens. And further along, Dr. Hawking insists that humanity's continued survival rests solely on whether or not we can get humans off Terra and on to other inhabitable worlds before humans, Sol, or random cosmic disaster destroys us.

Perhaps the best idea, though, is the opinion that suggests the religion of computers and technology, to give souls to the soulless and make the ensouled more soulless, is coloring how we view and research our technologies negatively. The idea expressed there is to return technology to the realm of making humanity better, instead of expecting technology to take on some of our humanity and ability.

At the end of our post, Happy fiftieth birthday, book written on a bet that it could use only 50 words or less. And Theodore Seuss Geisel was just the man for it.

Fun and Games - The Five Icon Shuffle

The icon game returned for a moment, and I thought it would be fun to play again. So, from syntheid, here’s a set of five to talk about.



This one was crafted by a very talented artist, either on the CRFH!!! boards or the Pocket Otaku boards, whose name/handle escapes me right now, of course. If you look carefully, you’ll find all the letters in my user name are there, in what looks kind of like a lily pad in a swamp. It’s usually a change of pace icon, or for when I’m introspective and talky and it doesn’t fit any of my other icons. It might also be the icon I use if I ever reveal lots of personal data about myself to the blog audience at large.



I think I got this one from 2dlife or from a picture that he pointed me to. It’s not actually rain - I think it’s a light or cosmic phenomenon, but it looks like rain, and the image on it feels kind of rainy, so I’ll probably use it in situations where rain is the appropriate mood or element. You can probably guess that I don’t actually use all of my icons all that much.



Speaking of an icon without much use - that’s Mo Willems’ Pigeon, flapping his wings excitedly, as one of a set of three Pigeon icons I have. I’m sure that I’ll have reason to use that icon here and there, like I did when the Prop 8 decision was handed down. Perhaps I’m focusing on the wrong things in life, because I don’t usually have call to use that icon lots.



I think I got permission to use this icon from or through sharkcowsheep, the Reverend behind The Egregious Adventures of the Wom-Wom Coconut, with sidekicks Bat-Radish and Space Durian*. It’s supposed to be Gamera the Turtle, tipsy on spirits but itching for a fight. It gets into the regular rotation when I feel like I want a change from Domo-kun or the trombonist kodoma.



Hey, speaking of! It’s my default icon, the kodoma with the spirit trombone. This particular icon started out as just the regular kodoma with a trombone, drawn as part of a shirt and mimicing Princess Mononoke. It was since spookified and given its eerie music as part of a “Halloweenize my icon” posting on the CRFH!!! boards, transforming the icon immensely and making it that much cooler. There’s also a Winter Holiday version and there was a Red/White Day version created as well. That icon has received the most usage over time than any other, and it still encapsulates me in an effective way, assuming you know how to peel the onion back.

News-type Entry - 12 August 2010

We open today with a case of mistaken identity - One Walt Disney received a letter intended for a Walter Lantz asking for some pictures of Woody Woodpecker. Considering Disney is the more famous Walt, it's a pretty understandable mistake, and leads to a gentle teasing from Disney to Lantz about how he's blamed for everything. For those looking for something a bit more sentimental, the beginning of what was likely a very happy marriage.

MRI scans indicate that the brain processes intent when witnessing an act - we feel good about watching people do good, and we shun those we perceive as being stingy or motivated by bad ideas. We interpret what people's actions are according to our own perceptions. Which makes art all that much more interesting, as the creative professions are banking on you interpreting things the same way they are, or something reasonably close.

The solution to the unemployment problem is very simple - the unemployed have skills that can repair our crumbling infrastructure. The solution to our deficit problem is simple - the unemployed have skills that can repair our crumbling infrastructure. The Slacktivist points out the painfully obvious - the employed pay taxes and do not require unemployment insurance. More revenue, less spending. The infrastructure of our company needs major improvements - and we have basically 14.5 million people available to work on that, if we would just front the money to get it done. There's your stimulus - and think of the knock-on effects - all those workers doing repairs need materials, tools, safety equipment, supervisors, trainers, and somewhere to go to knock back a beer at the end of their shift. You want to kickstart the economy? Spend the money we need to repair our infrastructure. Need a boost to your ratings and the confidence that the American people have in your economic leadership? Put the unemployed to work. It'll solve a lot of problems with an up-front investment. It might even help prevent more near-riots over getting applications for public housing, aid that will likely never come to them. 30,000+ people, more than 10,000 applications, and all of the 600 or so vouchers and places are already full. Anyone else think we needed a bigger stimulus and to not insist the unemployed are that way by choice?

(And perhaps scarily, note the military-industrial complex might well be one of the few places that we are doing this kind of jobs program, continuing to build things and employ people and spend money.)

Out in the world today, keeping the story consistent about the readiness of Iraqi troops to assume control when United States troops leave is apparently more difficult than previously thought - the U.S. insists they're ready, the Iraqi commanders say they're not. Like "Not for another ten years" not.

A confession extracted through the threatening of rape is considered admissible in a Guantanamo Bay military commission trial, according to one of the judges there. There's also the issue that the person captured and accused of crimes was fifteen at the time. The Khadr case just went sideways, unless the jury is convinced that confessions wrought cannot be admitted or used based on the treatment Mr. Khadr received at the facility. Rule of law? Only when we want it to be.

Inside the United States, a new advertising campaign is underway to convince Americans that Mormons are normal people, instead of scary polygamists with bizarre beliefs. Best of luck to them, actually - although the timing is a little odd, considering the insitution was involved heavily in the Proposition 8 campaign, and so they might receive some resistance from that. As with most religious things, though, the truth is that the followers, once you get to know them, are usually pretty normal, sane, well-adjusted people. It's the institutions that generate the perception of scary fringe or not-real-Christians or other such things. For example, when the Pope refuses to accept the resignation of bishops who covered and shifted pedophile priests around instead of turning them in to authorities, you might conclude that Catholicism is apparently totally okay with pedophile priests. Most Catholics aren't, but the institution certainly is. That's not good.

Is the FBI walking away from some of its core purposes to feed the paranoia of media cabals? If the FBI is increasingly doing copyright work to the exclusion of identity theft, fraud,and missing persons, then there are some seriously messed-up priorities going on there. Not to mention that it took six years after the intiial National Security Letter for a judge to release some part of the gag order, even though the request for information covered in the NSL was dropped well before that point. We also mention, yet again, that giving an agency the ability to secretly demand information without a court order that also compels the person not to talk about the request they were just served runs pretty far in the face of what open and democratic societies do. USAPATRIOT is still an awful piece of legislation and should be expired or repealed.

If I were feeling cynical, I would title the following story as "A link forged between two people suffering from disasters", but instead, I'll just mention that a bottle dropped in memory of a solider who was killed in Afghanistan was found by workers cleaning up the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on a Louisiana shore.

The American Bar Association tells its members to get on board with the Century of the Fruitbat.

And finally, President Obama signed a law today preventing foreign courts from enacting judgment against United States publishers for libel if the case would not pass First Amendment muster in the United States.

In technology, successful spacewalk removes faulty component of space station cooling system, a successful device to use the spin of electrons to store and retrieve information, finding segments of DNA that might explain why humans turn out so differently - depending on where those segments appear in the genome, they contribute different effects.

Opinions opens with opposing viewpoints - first, a plea from Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf for sanity and tolerance, both from American Muslims and to American Muslims. The Imam was recently in the news for being tapped to go on a State Department trip to try and show the way that one can be faithful to the religion and still exist peaceably in a democratic society. Now, for his opposition, or at least the caricature thereof. I'd love to beleive they're caricatures, but unfortunately I can find people who want to criminalize the practice of Islam or commit religicide against all Muslims, based on the belief that Islam is the Bloodthirsty Religion out to kill all the non-Muslims, utter idiots saying that we should abandon our First Amendment principles because other countries do not reciprocate them, and flat-out morons demanding we spike those same principles on an extraordinary claim that all Muslims are in favor of the overthrow of the United States government and all Islamic houses of worship are potential terrorist recruitment centers, and they're all serious about it. That said, perhaps my worry should be checked - the fact that despite the palpable distrust, unease, and malaise permeating the opposition, they haven't done anything violent or mobby is enough to convince Ms. Dalmia that America handles its hatreds better than most, including, I'll add, the American past, where that mob behavior and violence was a lot more widespread. Sure, the people have a temper, but the fact that they're still only loudly declaring the election of certain candidates and pressuring people politically, instead of taking up those "Second Amendment remedies" and going out says somewhere that we still believe in the system enough to think we can control it or influence it to our ends.

Sticking with the trope of someone willingly grabbing the Idiot Ball, Bill O'Reilly suggests that single motherhood and a message saying that women don't have to settle for men to have children is "destructive to our society". I'm going to stay away from the armchair psychology - if you want that, talk to Olbermann - and point out that Bill's sitting on the wrong side of the fence, even with his own argument. He suggests the argument is about demeaning the role of the father and diminishing dadhood. While traditionally in the media, fathers are usually troped as buffoons, clowns, and ignorant Luddites, usually for cheap laughs, out here in reality, when we say "You don't have to settle for a man to have children", we're trying to raise the standards bar. Hopefully not impsosibly high, but telling women that they can raise kids on their own if there isn't good father material around them is empowering. And a swift kick in either the arse or the nuts to men to get our evolutionary game going better. If we want to be dads and have kids, we've got to be able to put on a really effective mating dance, which includes having the skills to raise the kids once they're here. Otherwise, the women can adopt or inseminate and they don't have to deal with us - they can seek out the right kinds of male role models for their kids. If I were a reactionary, I wouldn't be claiming it's destructive to society, I'd be hollering about how it pushes men entirely out of the process and makes us obsolete. The wimmens would be taking over and displacing our God-given rights as MEN, and they'd have to be put in their place fast. I'm betting that argument gets more traction than a retread of "one man, one woman, married households are the anchor of society and should be prized above all else."

And then, with an excellent volley pass, Mr. Carroll bumps the Idiot Ball off his chest long enough to continue characterizing the state aid bill as a bailout to Medicare and government unions, the first he can get away with, but the second he only gets to through "the money will hire teachers, who are unionized, and pay dues. Thus, unions are being bailed out." And the teachers, apparently, are unimportant.

Mr. Morris and Ms. McGann narrowly miss being brained by the Idiot Ball, by going further than just the notation that the Michelle Obama trip to Spain will trigger backlash from people who wish they could take vacations like that into suggesting that the Obamas take no vacations ro do them at home.

Mr. Elder returns to a familiar well, detailing all the hope people had that Barack Obama could do better and then almost gleefully pointing out all the ways that he's made things supposedly worse or done exactly what his predecessor did, with no mind paid at all to his opposition or to the continually changing situations in the world. I think I've said this before, but if the President had half the power the conservatives think he does, he'd be more than able to impose whatever he wanted to the people of the world. Maybe that's the idea - conservative dictatorship, done just so in such a way that we wouldnt' notice it until the last piece clicked into place.

But it is truly Mr. Williams who receives the full brunt of the earlier Idiot Ball repartee, getting hit squarely on the head by a very heavy Ball, in a column saying that the best way to stop our deficit spending trends is to cut entitlements from the elderly, people he claims have very high net worth and who could, y'know, reverse mortgage their houses and put the burden on their children to pay for their old age, instead of getting government subsidies and assistance like Social Security and Medicare, so that when they die, they won't have anything to bequesath to their children, and the government won't have to pay for their long-livedness nor fulfill the promise it made to them about Social Security. While citing statistics of net worth of the young and the old, and then the statistic of the age of people who actually own their homes, Williams looks ready to break through and come to the right conclusion, only for him to abruptly start digging a hole so he can blame the government, instead of noticing that people who are under 65 tend to have debts. Big ones, like mortgages and student loans. Net worth, I'm guessing, is assets minus liabilities, which means those loans and mortgages count against young people and drives their worth down. Once you've paid for the house and the college, suddenly your net worth goes up a lot - the house is now an asset, not a liability! It's a big effing swing. Think about it.

Last for tonight, crafty lemmings.

Small Thinky - What we remember about institutions over time.

Is there a word of phrase that indicates the situation of accidentally saying something that was offensive, but upon further examination, it also might be true? It's not merely a Freudian slip, revealing something about the author's thought processes, but that something that might turn out to have objective truth. Because I stepped very thoroughly in that one today, and I'm sorry about the offense I caused.

In a discussion with regard to the campaign to make people realize that Mormons are actually normal, sane people instead of polygamist nutjobs, I said the following:

"As with most religious things, people find out that the people in the institutions aren't usually the monsters the institutions themselves turn out to be."

I was pointedly reminded by the journal owner that it sounded like I had just called the entire membership of the LDS church monsters. Which was totally not what I was thinking at the point I wrote it. I was trying to affirm that the campaign idea was a good one - someone who thinks all Mormons are polygamist nutjobs has to reform their mental view when the friend they've had for years reminds or tells them that they're Mormon, too. People who believe Catholic priests are all pedophiles will have to adjust their idea when they meet one who isn't. So I walked that comment back - since I was dealing in perception when I wrote the original statement, I added that it should have been that people turn out to be different than what the institution is perceived to be. This is a true statement, and one much less offensive than the older one.

(Additionally, insulting the host in their house is an easy way to be shown the door unceremoniously. Since that was not my intent, apologies are needed.)

And then my self-flagellation mechanisms kicked in - since I hate to give offense unintentionally, and especially serious offense, I tend to analyze, and likely overanalyze, what I said. Perfect me, of course, could say exactly what he wanted to and not offend anyone. Imperfect me, however, has to deal with consequences and resolve to not do stuff like that again. (Yes, it's a bad think-loop - how can you stop yourself from unintentionally offending someone? Doesn't mean we won't try.)

This is the part where I may re-offend, or sound like I'm weaseling or otherwise trying to justify myself. It's totally not the case - this is just an insight that struck. I'm still sorry for saying the offensive thing when that was not what I meant.

And if I'm going to offend someone, it's going to be just about anyone who has faith in any institution, religious, secular, or otherwise. We're going for broader things. Because what I said above is true, not just for religion, but for every institution.

Call it Ozymandias's Second Principle: The longer institutions exist, the higher the probability is that they will do something monstrous.

It'll take more brilliant minds than mine to figure out the equation for the curve, though. The origins of the word indicate that monsters and monstrous things are there to warn people of something. (That would have been a cute dance to try to get out of apologizing, excepting for tha part where I'd hit myself for doing something like that.) And the longer an institution exists, the more likely it is to do something that will serve as a warning for others. Recently, the LDS church got heavily involved in Proposition 8, earning the institution derision from the opponents of the proposition - with the repeal currently underway, the church will join several other Christian institutions as being a place of "gays and lesbians not welcome". For some, that serves as a warning to stay away. The conservative movement that seems very interested in demonizing anyone not a WASP throws up monstrous things normally, like SB 1070. The Democratic Party and the Dixiecrats were monsters in the way they continued to advocate for segregation. Slave-owners, the government of the United States, the Inquisition, the pedophile priests, the sacking of the library at Alexandria, the persecution of Christians, the Jews, both in what happened to them in the Shoah and the killing and genocide they attempted in their own accounts when they took the land YHWH promised them, and the conquests, crusades, and wars fought across time and territory, using ever more destructive weapons, including atomic bombs. All of these things are monstrous and serve as warnings to all of us about why not to do them again or to do them differently so that lives are not lost and people are not killed.

The longer an institution lasts, the more likely it is that they will do something monstrous. Whether they are just following standard procedure at the time and later temporality finds their methods appalling and destructive, or they deliberately decide to do harm and people find out, or whether the winds of opinion shift on them so that they become the terrorists instead of the freedom fighters, institutions will always end up with at least one black mark on their record once they've been around for long enough. Corporations especially, considering the profit model is basically built upon being as monstrous as you can get away with. Strong belief systems can inspire their followers to act on the principles of the system - including the ones that say someone else is inferior and deserves to be treated with contempt or violence. (We are here to protect you. Do not trust the pusher robot.) Or an institution will get big enough that eventually a person who is a monster will do something big enough and the media will associate the person with the institution and the institution with the crime and make the institution the monster by linking what the institution did with what the person did.

Over time, those faults accrue, and get recorded into history, and passed on from generation to generation, kept as ammunition where needed, as reminders where wanted, and with enough time, the institution becomes a monster, the combination of all the bad memories given form. A warning to the future of all the things the past did that we want to remember. A monster capable of great cruelty and great compassion.

(Incidentally, if you wanted to know, Ozymandias's First Principle is entropy. All things, no matter how great, solidly built, famous, or otherwise, will eventually be destroyed and pass away.)