Lots yet to arrange - 13 May 2008

Only two days left to convention. Am very, very excited. Should probably buy/obtain more than a few batteries for my camera to chew through in its quest. Either that, or obtain a few disposable cameras and have them do all the work. I’m thinking lots of batteries will do the trick. Assuming that the camera doesn’t eat a couple AAs per picture or something. I think I’ve got just about everything I’ll need. I’ll be on the plane when I forget something important, whatever it is, I know it, but I have most things packed already.

Oward to the news, then.

In Myanmar/Burma, what little aid that has entered the country is being substituted for by the government, handing out low quality and potentially spoiled food aid instead of the promised materials coming from foreign countries. The military junta’s continued refusal to accept and distribute food aid should be causing riots soon, I would think. At least there is some amount of aid getting into the country. Now it needs to get where it should go. The junta needs to let in the aid, or be held responsible for the deaths of all those who could have been saved.

In Afghanistan, the commander of NATO forces has suggested that UK troops take a longer tour of duty so as to make more progress toward the group’s goals and to have more continuous time to perform operations.

The face of battle is changing for the United States. Increased automation and the use of unmanned drones permit the Air Force to use more power for longer with less risk to the people involved. Only a fractino of the unmanned wing is actually local, to take care of those logistics that need local presence. Everywhere else, it’s a bit like Ender’s game, with monitors and cameras and remote-control warfare. If we build ground troops and robots like this, will most of the battles be fought with humans in video-game style rigs?

It may have to be, considering contractors associated with KBR are building base electricity units that are ungrounded or poorly grounded, resulting in several electrocutions. Hrm. Bases back at home falling apart. Bases abroad falling apart. How much money has been spent so far, and with dangerous buildings the result? Just how much money are these defense contractors making as profit by doing things shoddily?

Further changing the face of battle, Col. Charles L. Williamson III thinks the U.S. military should develop a combat botnet that can be unleashed against particular targets, utilizing already-existing cyberwarfare machines. The ability of the military to do DDoS is a truly frightening possibility, and would have to be used with extreme care. And then there’s always the possibility that the military’s botnet could be hacked and then turned against its fellows. I can also just imagine another country’s botnet, like, say, China, deciding to DDoS the U.S. for one reason or another. If the Intertubes are crowded now, imagine what they’ll be like if countries start throwing out swarms at each other.

The troops in Iraq are enjoying donated "dang-it" dolls sent their way as stress relievers. The dolls are meant to take the abuse that can come with stress, and are less expensive and dangerous than small breakable objects at high velocity. I’m sure the best de-stressing, though, would be to have some time at home. At least one solider found another way - getting an amputee Iraqi a pair of prosthetic legs.

The Weekly Standard is certainly doing its part to play up Iran as a big threat, accusing Tehran of trying to influence most of the Middle East’s politics, through Hamas, Hezbollah, and training and directing militants into Iraq to fight. The solution offered, in addition to keeping the surge working, is to take some strikes at Iran’s current nuclear potential and keep them away from obtaining any enriched materials at all. This continued bellicose rhetoric is justification enough for Justin Raimondo's insistence that the United States' foreign policy is being directed completely by Israel for the purpose of going to war and using missile strikes against Iran. For a lot of logistical reasons, the United States really shouldn’t be engaging Iran with weapons strikes or anything else, but there’s still seven months of the current administration left - no matter who wins the next election. Especially if the results should turn out unfavorably, there’s a chance that Mr. Bush will decide to do something extreme right before he’s supposed to leave office.

Domestically, The increasing price of gas is causing problems for gas stations still fitted with mechanical readouts. The profit margins for the station owners aren’t enough to permit wholesale upgrades to electronic pumps (even as oil companies post record profits), and so new solutions have to be put in place so that an accurate price is shown.

With regard to candidate matters, a new poll suggests that being associated with Mr. Bush's party is as damaging to the Republican candidate as Pastor Wright is to Senator Obama. The one association might actually be damaging, because Mr. Bush and Mr. McCain share the same political views by belonging to the same political party. Pastor Wright and Senator Obama don’t have to share the same views to be part of the same church. So why is the Wright association as damaging as the Bush association? It shouldn’t be. The wright association is more like which candidate would pair well with which Doctor, really.

Senator McCain displayed a plan to combat global warming with a cap-and-trade system on carbon dioxide emissions, drawing criticism from Senator Obama and Clinton on his voting record against climate change while a Senator. As the Republican candidate, Senator McCain doesn’t seem to be the person who would campaign on climate change, but if he’s serious, then a good debate on his solutions should follow.

The Libertarian Party has an additional candidate now, Bob Barr. More on whom the actual Libertarian candidate is when their party convention/elections are finished.

The Wall Street Journal reviews "Gross National Happiness", a book that says, based on self-reported data, that conservatives are happier. The habits of the conservatives, like religious attendance of religious services, marriage, and children (who then turn out like them) are touted as the reason why they’re happy and liberals aren’t. It’s probably a difference in outlook - conservatives like to focus on how good things are right now and why we don’t need to change, liberals are focused on what isn’t good right now, and what change needs to happen to correct that. Might be that liberals want everyone to be happy as much as is possible, while conservatives want to make themselves happy and don’t worry as much about others. I don’t know. It just seems very odd to me that someone would claim a particular political stance as contributing to more or less happiness.

Technology time - Google has introduced FriendConnect, a way of adding social capabilities to just about any website. From the looks of things, it wants to leverage already-existing profiles on social networking space and let people identify and comment and see each other using those on sites taht aren’t social-networking sites. More information about FriendConnect available from Google. I think I’m beginning to see a bit better how these things can work. I just wonder if everyone will add those gadgets on without really thinking about whether they need those capabilities. After that, astronomy data is turning into virtual telescope tours. With all these nice images, it’s good to see them appearing in software packages of that others can use them and get fascinated by the stars and planets in the universe. Closing out technology, Cubicle Culture shows off the ten best and the ten worst workspace in tech, in their opinion.

Of interest to our Unabashed Feminism department - an ad in poor taste from the 1970s. For pants. Which are apparently good enough to turn women into rugs. There are a lot of things wrong with that advertisement, but I wonder whether the underlying sentiment is still around. Also of interest, and a lot better, anonymous rape evidence collection kits will be made available nationwide, which will hopefully make it much more likely for women to both give evidence and then press charges against their assailant in the appropriate case.

Of interest to those in unions and those wishing to organize around the world, some unions are making secret agreements with companies that give the companies final say on where and how many workers can organize. Which kind of defeats the purpose of having organized labor in the first place. No doubt these agreements have made it possible for many workers to become parts of unions, but the companies are likely to make sure that any actual organization of organization is too small to be effective in any manner if push comes to shove. And the unions have also apparently given up the right to strike worldwide.

Last for tonight, an exhibit from the National Archives - When Nixon Met Elvis. Elvis wanted to be an enforcement agent for the federal government against drugs, Nixon agreed to meet him, they talked, and Elvis got his badge. Although with the dispatches from the drug war that are in the New Yorker today, I’d say that things have only gotten worse instead of better. A man who couldn’t get a liver transplant because he was using marijuana on recommendation from his doctor, a woman who may have to go back to prison for twenty years after walking away from a twenty year sentence garnered by being peripherally involved in heroin (okay, that one I can understand - fleeing the sentence is no good. But twenty years on the charge? Ouch.), and a study funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse showing that while tobacco smoking leads to lung cancer, marijuana smoking does not and might even be preventative. Of course, that study an story got buried fast, and the Institute was probably not happy that the conclusion it wanted had not been obtained. As Cory Doctrow notes, "The War on Some Drugs is as unwinnable and destructive as all the other wars on abstract nouns. Who needs terrorists to rip America apart when you’ve got drug warriors killing off, imprisoning and shunning its innocents?" With more than 1% of the nation’s populace in jail, I wonder how much space in overcrowded prisons could be freed up by simply letting go of many small quantity drug offenders.

Okay, one last thing. The Vatican has given its stamp of approval on the belief in extraterrestrial life forms. We can all sleep safer knowing now that Catholics can believe in aliens as well as angels, saints, and G-d. Then again, human can create the Passively Multiplayer On-line Game which apparently has missions and such for browsing around the web as one might normally do, or more directed browsing. Yes, there’s XP and other things like that, too.

Time for me to go to bed, though.

That's all until Monday, probably - 14 May 2008

Just one more day until I get on a plane and fly out the convention space. Convention doesn't officially open until Friday, of course, but there will be a grand time had by all when it comes to the JAMS reunion Thursday night, before we all scatter to the five winds. After this entry, I'm basically out of contact until Monday, so take care of yourselves and don't let anything too important happen while I'm gone.

Onward to the news.

Showing a common humanity in times of struggle, Tawian has offered search and rescue personnel to China to help with the earthquake recovery.

The United States government has been drugging persons scheduled for deportation, against their will, using drugs that are designed to control serious psychological disorders. Often without any indication that the detainees have any sort of disorder at all, unless you count annoyance at deportation to be such. And against the rules of the government itself. Isn't it nice to know that the government will treat deportees in a humane manner? Just wonder what they must do to their prisoners... or even their citizens. Getting some scope of how far and wide the media propaganda goes, Media Matters counts more than 4,500 instances where the propaganda contributors were referenced, cited, appeared on programs, or were otherwise used as experts.

In further news from the domestic sphere, the government has dropped all charges against the "20th hijacker" of the 11 September 2001 attacks. Said charged were dropped "without prejudice", allowing for them to be filed later.

With regard to Iraq itself, Iraqi troops are being allowed into Sadr city once more, under a new cease-fire. What is potentially more interesting, though, is the somewhat uncensored take of Mr. Bush's order to take the city, which seems more in line with his image of people a regular Joe... or in being The Chimp. Paired with Mr. Bush's great sacrifice in not playing golf while the Iraq War is on, I think we're all confirming what we already knew - despite all of the media's fawning attention on George Bush, he was exactly as he appeared - someone without the faculties for international politics. And now, we have ample evidence of what this war in Iraq has wrought. Pictures, stories, accounts, all of them in living color and captured by various media. All this is our legacy, and the legacy of the current administration. Have a look and see the consequences of war.

Mr. Bush is much less optimistic about the peace process between Israel and the Palestinian authority, with his optimism slowly being eroded away into something else entirely.

Fourteen counts of perjury were filed against Barry Bonds, contending that he lied about his use of performance-enhancing drugs to a grand jury and that he impeded the federal investigation by doing so.

Surprising no-one, Senator Clinton thumped Senator Obama in the West Virginia primary, but did very little to disrupt the momentum of Senator Obama's campaign and likely nomination. CNS News plays up the general election as being a much more hotly contested race by claiming approximately 20 percent of Democrats will defect to the Republican if their candidate does not receive the nomination. That seems odd to me, but maybe it's because I would think the Democrats would want to believe either candidate is better than the Republican. If that's not the case, I wonder what sort of faith the Democrats have in their own nomination process. Is it that they actually take stock in silly things?

Following up on an earlier story, the Arkansas prisoner claiming that he was being starved has been caught trying to give some of his food to other inmates.

The United Kingdom has unsealed a comprehensive archive of UFO sightings, giving plenty for the skeptical and the believers to go through and make their own conclusions about.

In technology, scientists are using Second Life as a virtual lab, designing experiments and teaching science classes to those who stop by. This seems to be the second phase of new toys - after playing with it lots just to play with it, then the play organizes into playing to do things and accomplish stuff. Then, once it's figured out what the game does well and what it does poorly, things tailor further to making it really enjoyable, if you're into that sort of thing. Kind of like naming a new spider species after Neil Young.

Getting into the opinion columns, Mark Helprin says the U.S. needs to step up its military spending to become a deterrent to China, suggesting that soon the U.S. and China will clash on policy issues and that if they decide to launch an attack, the U.S. won't be able to stand up to it.

Thomas Sowell thinks people understand supply and demand just fine, especially when it comes to gas prices going up or land prices skyrocketing, but that people prefer to see themselves as victims and politicians as heroes to rescue them from greedy corporations.

Because I trust CNS News about as far as I can throw it, I'm looking for more information on a University of Toledo employee supposedly dismissed for writing an opinion column on whether homosexuality really is a civil-rights issue. If there are other reasons for dismissal, I'd like to see them appear - after all, they appeared in the "wizardry" dismissal case. And if the university really did dismiss her because of that opinion, then there needs to be an accompanying statement of policy that backs them up on this. Then the campaigns can begin to get the policy changed. To see the editorial for yourselves, in all its Jesus-praising, "they choose this lifestyle, so they can un-choose it", God hates fags way, The Toledo Free Press has it for all to see. And, as a good newspaper does, here are a selection of responses to the opinion column, with several raising the point that regardless of the content of the speech, speech alone is not usually sufficient to invoke dismissal or administrative leave.

In other "family values" types of matters, a candidate for the Idaho State House says that homosexual students should have to use separate bathroom facilities, among other planks of his platform. Um, we already did the "separate but equal" thing, and that didn't turn out to work all that well, so what makes him think that introducing a mandated inequality will work? At least he's not an established legislator with a chance of having his proposals come to law. I'm hoping that he stays unestablished, myself.

The religion section also has Albert Einstein's letter that called belief in the Abrahamic God "childish" and remarked that the Jews were no different than any other people.

Last for tonight, to be cheery right before heading out, Impending Doom, which has several countdowns to the end of the world as we know it. Well, for now, I feel fine, but we'll see. Actually, let's counter that doom with a laugh - the marriage rating scale devised by an APA member in an attempt to scientifically determine whether one's wife or husband was poor or excellent. Consult the entire test yourselves and see how yours stacks up statisically.