New fractal.

I'm playing with flame fractals in Apophysis these last couple of days. Just a phase, no doubt... but I love the feel of flame fractals thus far, so who knows?

This is the best result I've gotten yet.


Clouds for Dani

There may not, unfortunately, be prints of these. I have yet to figure out how to bully Apophysis into rendering them at the size I need for that, and they lose something in the transfer if I try to render them from UltraFractal. And I still need work on gradients, as is made obvious by the blinding blue/white at the bottom. But it's a beginning.

So, the anniesj furor.

You've probably all seen the anniesj post by now. We're going to assume for the moment that she's telling the absolute truth, because I'm quite sure someone else somewhere is reading about that and thinking "hmmmm, there's this left-wing liberal scum I know who should definitely get a visit like Annie got!" And some are, no doubt, disappointed that the SS didn't do their job (or she'd be in jail or getting fined) and some of you are going "OMG SS harassment!" And neither view is truly realistic.

( Here's what she said in the original post. )

Got all that? 'kay. Now, here's why calling the Secret Service about that is idiotic, and why reporting speech like that to get someone in trouble is almost always going to be a waste of time and leave you dissatisfied.

It's not a threat.

There is a difference between saying "I'm going to kill the President!" and "I wish the President would die" -- or, in this case, "God, please kill Bush." One expresses intent. The other expresses sentiment. And even if she had said "I'm going to kill the President," there'd still be the matter of determining whether she actually poses a danger to him -- is she mentally unstable? Is she armed? Has she taken any actions that would make a reasonably cautious person believe she means to carry out her threat? In this case, though, those things don't apply, because what she said didn't express intent. So, a visit happens, she may be frightened, but the determination is made that she's no real danger, and that's that.

Now, on the other hand, the SS do have to investigate once a report's made. They probably didn't even see the post themselves at first. All they got is a report of someone posting threats against the President on a website. So, no, they're not harassing her to show up to check it out. If you're going to be upset with anyone, be upset at the utter asshole who called in a report. And then be happy that the SS guys had sense enough to know that what she said isn't worth their time and effort. After all of the administration's attempts to curtail rights and freedoms, the flying rhetoric, the flaring tempers and the real abuses of power, folks in the SS still understand that, at the end of the day, merely expressing dissent isn't illegal.

I call that a reason for optimism, myself.