William F. Hatke aka. Bill, a long time resident of Lawrence Kansas, reportedly died September 7, 2007 at the age of 61. I’ve heard that he’d been diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer, and that he died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Bill Hatke played by his own rules. When I was in my twenties, I heard about a man who lived in Lawrence off the grid, independently of city services like electricity, gas and water. I had to meet him. Through friends, I set up an interview, went to his house and taped a long conversation on a borrowed tape recorder. My expectations were that Bill would be a strident advocate for environmental stewardship. What I came to realize was that Bill wasn’t a zealot, living a life of self-sacrifice in order to serve the greater good; but that he treasured autonomy and worked hard to have it. He got up when he wanted, and lived off the fruit of his own labor - beholden to nothing and no one. He was a hermit in a crowd, and had a rich social life. Many people knew him through playing games–chess, scrabble, bridge, raquetball. He was an active participant in the community, regularly participated in the Peace Vigils in front of the courthouse in Lawrence. He had a doctorate, had been in a seminary, and apparently was a military veteran, eligible for Veterans Affairs benefits.
More links:
I listened to a podcast on Open Source featuring Philip Zimbardo, the Stanford psychologist who ran an experiment in 1971 studying the psychology of imprisonment. During the experiment,
24 normal, healthy, well-adjusted, college-age males were randomly divided into “guards” and “prisoners.” The “prisoners” were arrested and put in “jail,” and the guards were given custody over them. The experiment was supposed to last for two weeks. But by day two all hell broke loose; the guards were behaving sadistically and the prisoners were rebelling and having mental breakdowns.
The experiment was canceled early. Guards very quickly fell into stereotypical roles, often treating their fellow students sadistically, particularly when they thought they were unsupervised. Prisoners became submissive and complicit in the abuse of their fellow students.
The United States seems to be falling victim to the same kind of mindlessness that characterized fascist regimes in Italy and Japan during the 1940s. The American people have stood by while the Bush II regime has spent taxpayer dollars creating secret prisons, a watch list that would make Nixon blush, secret police with the ability to make warrantless arrests, more stringent requirements for travel papers, a unilateral signing statement stating the executive branch can read our mail without a warrant, bulk domestic spying of internet traffic, all against a backdrop of the most secretive administration in the modern era.
I find it totally annoying when websites force new windows. I can do that myself, if I want, thank you very much. There’s a greasemonkey script for Firefox that disables one common way web developers use in the attempt to control the user’s browsing experience. To install it, see these instructions on how to install this greasemonkey script.
