Never mess with a drunken giant monster - 05 August 2008

Welcome back, everyone. Hope your weekend was fun. There’s a lot to get through, so the link list will be long, even if the comments are short.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has perished at 89 years of age, hailed as a great writer, but exiled by the country he wrote about most.

PBS may be taking Mister Rogers's Neighborhood off of the airwaves, which would be really sad, considering I think everyone has a lot to learn from the minister.

Internationally, this probably says something about the easy availability of drugs, but live on a morning radio show in Vancouver, Canada, a person dressed as a beaver carried a sign advertising his desire to buy heroin... and five minutes later, had completed the deal. Police confiscated the drugs, of course, but decided not to make an arrest.

Also in Canada, it looks like mobile home owners are facing the same problem of owning the house, but not the land underneath it, and the consequence of being told they have to move when the landowners sell or decide to develop something else on top of it, leaving people paying mortgages on places they can’t live in and that may not even exist if the landowners knock them down after the grace period has expired. At least, in some places, complaining to the right people can get your hot water turned back on - although renters are also in a difficult situation if the company they’re renting from goes under or sells the building to someone else.

A true story - an African king working as a nurse's aide in the United States. Now that the Ugandan government is willing to recognize his kingship, he’s headed home to rule and administer. You can’t make this stuff up, I swear.

A historical item of possible interest - Upstairs, literary salon, downstairs, torture and research chambers - the complex life of Mariana Callejas. Are there others in this world leading similar double lives, infiltrating peaceful groups and then trying to destroy them?

Domestically, Karl Rove as The Fugitive, now that a judge has officially ruled that "executive privilege" is bullsh*t - at least, until appeals are all settled out. I hope that there’s some compelled testimony here so we can see how rotten things have gotten.

Attempting to ensure that the military keeps to its promises about length of tour, a potential bill would give any serviceperson kept past their tour date an extra $500 per month of additional time in addition to their regular pay. The reward is also retroactive, which may help ease some of the pain of being kept out all the time. That said, troops are being ordered to stay on in Afghanistan, so if it was supposed to be a disincentive, I don’t think it’s going to work that much.

Domestic drilling will continue to be hammered by the Republicans as the Congress breaks until after the nominating conventions, including a protest asking Republicans to stay in the chambers until the Speaker calls them back to vote on ther bill. The Speaker has said that she will not vote on any bill that considers more domestic offshore drilling, offering alternatives that she thinks will be more effective, such as diverting some supply from the Strategic Oil Reserve. Mr. Boehner, the House minority leader, details his proposed gains from drilling and exploiting, which apparently leads to innovation, lower prices, and more money available to the government. (On what timetable?) Truthfully, it looks more like domestic drilling is a way to try and get people mad at the Democrats for "doing nothing" while claiming, through, something like magical thinking, that the mere presence of more drills will somehow reduce the cost of oil immediately. This, when not blaming environmentalists and their "reduce carbon emissions by reducing fossil fuel consumption" policies for higher gas prices. They may be more interested in campaigns that want children to think about conservation by offering them a way to "ticket" climate crimes committed by family members if they’re interested in investigating environmental ideologies.

In candidate matters, the Lansing, MI, police unexpectedly welcomed Senator Obama's rally in a uniquely Lansing way - a police car caught fire, after the officers abandoned it, guns and ammunition still inside.

Significantly less funny, look at all those campaign donations from oil company workers to John McCain, now that the Senator is in favor of drilling. And some of them are even the maximum amount from people for whom it would be a significant amount of their yearly income, although they might be doing better than this indicates. I wonder if they know what kind of work is being done in their name. Either way, The General reminds us that we need to update our textbooks on how the legislative process works. And out at The Edge of the American West, a reminder that oil meddling in politics is not new to this era.

There’s also Senator McCain's campaign putting Senator Obama on currency, then complaining about it when Senator Obama says that Senator McCain is trying to play up that he doesn't look like all the other people on the money. The accusations that both sides are playing race cards without actually outright saying it says that they know it’s a third rail is anyone can actually prove it. The race issue isn't going away, naturally, and if it comes down to it, there are still apparently a lot of people who wouldn’t vote for Senator Obama because he’s too foreign to them.

Of course, it could all be moot, depending on whether the machines and the people are or are not actively trying to interfere with the vote tally. If they are, then nobody’s vote is actually counted the way it was cast, and democracy devolves to “who can hack the machines better”.

Attempting to do some "ha, ha, only serious" work of his own, David Zucker, director of comedies such as Airplane! and The Naked Gun, is crafting a comedy about the excesses of liberalism in America, including terrorists who have a bag search stopped by the ACLU, a Michael Moore-type character being used as an obvious propaganda machine for terrorists, and a story that involves three ghosts visiting people trying to get the Fourth of July banned as a holiday. Considering Zucker’s skills, the film will be funny - assuming the political messages don’t stomp all over the comedy.

In commentary, Angry Zen master does not find the recent Mr. T commercials to be homophobic, just funny. Because speed-walking looks funny, and there’s no GLBT subtext at all.

Steve Champan says that we just have to get used to the fact that our wealth has gone down, not the economy, and the sooner we adapt to living on a smaller standard of living, the better. Harold Ford, Jr. takes a WSJ prompt and says that investing $10 billion as seed cash for a National Infrastructure Bank, the country could finance and complete a gigantic amount of benefit, just from improved infrastructure.

Walid Phares says the secret to Europe's policy towrad Muslisms is to be able to distinguish between Islam, the religion, and the extremist ideology that captures media attention. Makes sense...but haven’t we been hearing this for years now? Apparently, though, we aren’t listening, or we need to do more, as Frank Salvato thinks Senator Obama's choice as Muslim liason is horrible for suggesting that the strategies that work for American women to advance equality causes might need tweaking to work in Muslim contexts. Salvato considers it an acceptance of the brutality that accompanies some of the worst repression to suggest that anything other than over-the-top pressure would be effective at say, winning hearts and minds.

BillO suggests that if the FAA regulated takeoff times and airline access, the aviation experience wouldn't be so bad. Well, it’s a thought, but apparently one that was discarded when airline deregulation began several decades ago. The service on the arilines and the lack of space isn’t helping, and for many, the TSA is just the cherry on top. So there’s more than just regulation that would improve airline service, but who knows? Maybe BillO can get the campaign to reregulate going again. He’d certainly lend an important voice to the calls.

On candidate matters specifically, the Wall Street Journal is unsure what the standard for windfall taxes are, pointing out that depending on the criteria, there could potentially be a larger amount of companies to tax the profits of. Additionally, the WSJ smells a potential flop on drilling, depending on whether it's serious or a political move to block any traction from the McCain campaign, and continues to run worst-case scenarios about what proposed tax plans would look like, inviting the Obama campaign to clarify them.

In a call and response fashion, an open letter asking Barack Obama to stand firm to the principles he articulated in the primary campaign, the things that make him an actual liberal, rather than a centrist trying to appeal to liberals and certain other demographics, and John Halle's reply, penned in the style of Barack Obama, where the Senator shows that he was a centrist all along, in the power and pocket of corporations and lobbyists, and the liberals who believe in him are suckers with no real power, projecting what they want to hear onto the Senator.

William S. Lind expresses his opinion that anyone claiming that we won in Iraq, and especially because of the surge, is mistaken, because we assume the surge is the reason why things are better there, instead of tactical errors by the opposition, paying off the opposition, and then putting troops in places that they can actually help people. Plus, because a stable Iraqi state has not yet emerged, then we can’t claim any sort of victory. Plus, I’m not sure entirely what to make of Senator McCain going to a bike rally, saying he prefers the sounds of Harleys to Germans, and encourages his wife to enter the beauty pageant, an event known for the women being topless. Shameless prole pandering, perhaps? Or trying to look like he’s prole pandering while talking to more members of the elite?

Getting special mention today, one of the Jezzies says that honest-to-Prime ice-queen bitches are in woefully short supply, and that the art form of displaying no weakness while finding your opponent’s, and then using that knowledge to drive icicles through those weak spots requires more use and practice by women. The actual point, though, appears to be “Enough of this passive-aggressive backstabbing bitchiness. If you want to bitch someone out, do it to their face, get all the hurtful stuff out, and then be done with it.” I, personally, prefer the tscheese approach - make allies, not burn bridges, and leave the bitchiness to those that think The Clique was the perfect novel for school and life. After all, there are already people who think any woman who doesn’t fit the madonna part of the madonnna/whore complex is a bitch (and a whore), so why try to reclaim the word while promoting all its negative aspects?

In science and tech, Thirty years later, Queen's lead guitarist publishes his doctoral thesis in astrophysics, finishing the cycle that made him Dr. Brian May. Also, a quick look back at the official that made cable possible, not quite being able to send James Doohan's remains to the stars where they belong, and a symptom of norcolepsy that causes someone to collapse under strong emotion.

It’s getting tougher to be a researcher at UC Santa Cruz if your research involves animals - violence against researchers by suspected animal-rights people is increasing. The terorism has become bad enough that even the Humane Society is offering part of the reward for information on the perpetrators. Besides, haven’t we seen enough historical examples to know that terrorism is ultimately self-sabotaging?

The Unabashed Feminism department alerts us to an article in Time about the wholesale abandonment of research on hormonal birth control for men, with drug companies citing money concerns even when several of the projects looked like they might produce viable drugs. The other sides pops eyebrows, citing statistics that say a large percentage of men would be very interested in taking birth control. The only possible hangup would be figuring out a way of making it work for the men in general, but thing - the ability for men and women to decide when they want kids, and not having to endure arguments about how barrier methods reduce pleasure? Hell yes! Believing that men can't do something as simple as a pill or a shot is an insult to men, drug companies. Yet you trust them to take pills when they want to get it up and have sex. Why would companies drop research like this?

Last for tonight, Apocalpytic Tokyo. Or, what the city might look like if the end of Final Fantasy VII were to come true. Trying to prevent the WALL-E future, however, is GOMIstyle, which looks to transform the things we discard into things that we find useful once again.

And your daily dose of humor for today. Circuit City got mad at MAD for lampooning them, ordered the removal of the magazines from the few stores that carried them. When contacted about this, a retraction was issued, and the people with egg on their face declared it delicious.

Gone with the Wind - 06 August 2008

Today marks a momentous occasion - the first atomic strike by one nation against another, to great loss of life. History records that if not for this and the followign strike, the Second Great War would have been even more costly in lives. It also opened most people’s eyes to the reality of atomic warfare and accelerated the pace of developing newer and even more destructive weapons.

My professional self notes a dazzling array of statistics showing that librarians are often a cynical lot, feeling a disconnection from their communities and their Board, unequipped for the reality of the job, and sometimes having administration that seems out of step with the front-line staff. So far, only some of that applies to me.

Internationally, the current administrator will speak to the Chinese government about easing up on its authoritarianism, after having already spoken to North Korea about possibly sharing in South Korea's prosperity if it following hte disarmamnt plans exactly. The administrator may want to makea short stop to place in the Middle East and give his support for ending the practice of promising young children to get married, without their consent, and long before they can even have sexual relationships, putting some pressure on the government there to pass a minimum age for marriage, at least, and hopefully with that, a way of preventing male guardians from marrying off their charges without their consent or consultation.

Considering there are athletic games in China, soon, though, expect a barrage of material about China’s unique perspective on the word “freedom”. Ex-Olympic speed-skaters have their visas revoked for being associated with a Darfur advocacy group, Olympic cyclists wearing smog masks when arriving have to apologize for slighting the government's efforts at smog control, the question of Tibet hanging in the air, including attempts already made to prevent journalists from covering protests, despite the guarantees of journalistic freedom, the crackdown in progress in the name of "security", and the rather Orwellian attitude and actions the Chinese government has, there’s the possibility of quite some story to reported on. The question is whether the news will be reported on, or whether it will be buried in favor of the sport.

The hot spot of fighting is likely to move farther east, given new intelligence that suggests Pakistani spy personnel assisted in the bombings of India's embassy in Afghanistan. The War on a Concept is neverending, only front-changing, it looks like, and it looks like the perpetual military debt spending will continue, as well.

In domestic matters, the current administration flatly denies they forged and backdated a letter linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda so they had a justification to attack Iraq. This allegation comes with other allegations that the current administration already knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before invading, buried it, and cut off the intelligence that was repeatedly saying this. The problem with this administration is that such a tactic seems credible enough that it can’t be denied out of hand. Considering how much the populace has already been lied to on Iraq, having conveniently created the sought-after justification would not be out of character. Who can we trust in this administration, if anyone at all? After all, they supposedly got a memo seven years ago detailing a plot to attack the United States and didn't do anything about it. To be fair, though, they probably didn’t really think all that much of it, because terrorists say a lot of things, but rarely actually do them.

11 people charged in the giant data breach that compromised millions of credit an debit card numbers, including people who shopped in the last couple years at TJ Maxx and other stores. One of the people charged turned out to be both helping the government and the hackers.

The Tom Dispatch tells us how conservatives have stayed true to their roots and ideology - and in doing so, have effectively wrecked the United States government and pilfered as much as they could while doing so. Paired with Clyde Prestowicz's assertion that multinational corporations are siding with and working to advance the edconomic interests of authoritarian regimes such as China, and it seems like there isn’t anyone who’s fighting for the republican form of government, or the people that power it with their votes and taxes.

Wall Street is on an uptick, based on the Fed not changing interest rates and oil prices dropping. In some ways, Wall Street is its own thing. Why we base economic success on that, or talk about it so much is somewhat beyond me. No doubt, some people will be taking credit for the oil price drop, but “market forces” are probably to blame here.

In the candidate folds, Paris Hilton: 1, John McCain: 0. A response ad from Ms. Hilton, after Senator McCain’s campaign released an advertisement comparing Barack Obama’s popularity to Ms. Hilton’s and suggesting that this popularity was the only thing going for him. Whether done in genuine offense to the comparison or in playing up the “dumb blonde”-nes that has been a hallmark of her television appearances, Ms. Hilton does an excellent job of ridiculing the McCain campaign’s reasoning. So, we must ask: Whose brilliant idea was this?

Revoking the parental license in three, two, one... a father, wanting to teach his son "how to party", taught him to crush and snort powerful painkillers. The 15 year-old son died from the encounter. That’s not the father-son bonding time most people would think is healthy. In other parenting matters, letting kids play and take risks is normal and healthy, even if it does make a parent’s heart stop every time one of the kids could fall down or get hurt.

Opinions strike with Richard Spetzel expressing skepticism that Bruce Ivins did the anthrax attacks in 2001, based on the inability of prosecutors and investigations to trace the material and its construction back to the lab that Ivins worked in, and the supposed lack of training Ivins would have had from his workplace. Thomas Sowell would like to see an end to the media circus that surrounds investigations like these, considering that people are often tried and judged and attacked all in the media before any amount of actual charges and evidence becomes available. Even when found innocent, the media attention follows them wherever they go, and it’s hurting putting good people in office, according to Sowell, because they don’t want to deal with the mud-dragging that goes on.

The Wall Street Journal makes a logical sidestep, accusing the NEA of wanting to keep taxes high and spending more money on political action than on trying to fix bad schools. Except the fund they’re talking about comes from member contributions, for one, and considering that most schools are funded by property taxes, the NEA has a vested interest in getting all schools enough funding so that they can concentrate on doing well, rather than on worrying whether their test scores are going to cut their funding yet again. Besides, if the NEA did spend that money on helping schools out, no doubt the WSJ and others would be right there to criticize how that money was spent, probably in the advancement of “liberal causes” or somesuch.

John Bolton continues to accuse everybody of letting Iran build nuclear weapons while they try to find a diplomatic solution that, in his opinion, will never work. All the signs point to nuclear weapons building, because it’s not like Iran is being threatened by several other nations that they will level it if they continue enrichment, or anything.

In candidate opinions, Denis Prager finishes his analysis of Senator Obama's Germany speech and finds very little praiseworthy material. Ed feulner criticizes the Senator's plans to increase taxes on the very rich, considering it an obvious fact that increased taxes means less production, higher unemployment, and lower revenues, where as Reagan-style lowering of taxes would spur the economy back to previous heights. Republicans seem to have finally found a message they’re comfortable with - Drill, drill, drill, and we'll lower taxes, too. Just force those Democrats to let us do something, and never mind whether it works immediately or not. Even with the apparent Democratic stubbornness on oil drilling, oil prices did go down. The Republicans have figured out something they can offer a magical quick-fix on, with the promises of lower gas prices immediately, if only they could drill.

Last out of this section, Mark Morford has suggestions on how all the Bush supporters can apologize to liberals for their choice to put him in office, by buying environmentally sound and gas sippers, while saying it’s all about better meat, saving money, and keeping cash out of the hands of terrorists. But really, all he’d like is for Bush supporters to recognize that America is interconnected a lot more than they think, even if it is supposedly the world’s only superpower.

Scitech opens with some art - the P53rd Pslam, and pictures of the Martian skies. Beyond that, the intermediate stage between quasicrystals and regular repeating patterns follows Fibanocci, with triangles and squares repeating on that pattern. Huh. What other applications does Fibanocci have?

German police have access to a brassiere intended to be worn underneath bulletproof vests. It lacks wires and other pokey plastic bits, which could break through when the vest takes a bullet and distributes the force into the chest of the police officer.

A train design that seats a single person in a compartment, so you don’t have to deal with anyone else on the ride. Good for those that want privacy, not so good for those that want company, although the design does have a couple 4-person lounge seating areas.

Attempting to build a functioning Apple IIe-type computer for $12, so that people in the Third World can have computer labs and computing power for hopefully an amount that they can save up to get - or that a benefactor can buy for them in bushels.

Five tiny mistakes that had large consequences. For those occasions when someone asks, “Hey, what’s the worst that could happen?”

Last for tonight, exchanging vows on the wings of planes, clockwork insects, generated by adding gears and such to actual insect bodies, and a manual for sexual positions inside an automobile. We don’t make this stuff up, really.