Why?

It seems that the City of New York doesn't want to be photographed. This defies sense. I don't recognize my country.

So historians will make a prominent note of Darfur

Not because of the failure of will of the West to stop ethnic cleansing -- hell, history will show that when we did something about ethnic cleansing it was the exception. No, apparently Darfur is the first in a series of conflicts triggered by climate change. And it won't be the last. Not by a damn sight.

Conflicts over water. Mass migrations caused by the rising sea levels. Starvation on a continental-scale. This is the stuff of dystopian science fiction and it certainly looks like our future. Watch the Sahel for the next 5 years and Southeast Asia for the next 10 for a glimpse of what 50 years from now will look like all over the world.

What Americans really think

I've said for a long time that it wasn't possible that most Americans believed like the GOP. Now there's a great big poll that shows I was right: Americans are progressives.

And why wouldn't they be? It's the only decent way to think. Help those that can't help themselves. Make those who are the most able carry more of the load. Keep the environment clear so that we can pass a liveable world on to our children. Don't force your religion on anyone, ever. Let people live their lives in peace without unwarranted intrusion.

These also just happen to the be core beliefs of the Democratic Party. There is a difference. A Big Difference.

Cutting off all aid to Saudi Arabia

It seems that the House has wised up, somewhat and has added an amendment to the foreign aid bill that will cut off Saudi Arabia.

Now, somebody explain to me why were giving aid to Saudi Arabia in the first place? The per capita income is $13,600. The budget surplus is $70.7 billion. Jeeze.

How can educated people be so stupid?

I'm appalled.

Linguistics

More on the Pirahã language.

Absolutely glorious

Today's wallpaper is simply stunning. And, say what you will about the lack of science being done on the ISS, or what kind of station we could have had, it is still a monumental achievement.

Iesu Christu

It seems that the rumors we heard in September '01 had more credibility that we had thought. It seems that when planes were allowed to whisk members of the Saud and binLaden families out of the US in the week after the attacks, the FBI didn't know who had chartered the planes. Could have been the Saudi royal family. Could have been OSAMA BINLADEN. For Christ's sakes. And they didn't know who was on the planes. And they thought some people were that may not have been.

On the basis of nothing but past performance, I'm not going to chalk this one up to the investigative ineptitude of the FBI (which is very, very real, despite the myths that Hoover promulgated that still linger). I'm going to attribute this one to the administration making every effort to accommodate the families of their business partners: the Sauds and the BinLadens.

Never ever ever forget that the Bush family is in business with the BinLaden family. And they don't deny it. They claim that Osama is a black sheep that was disowned. Why should we believe that? Because they say it's so?

The money for the 9-11 attacks came from Saudi Arabia. It was funneled to Afghanistan through the Pakistani intelligence apparatus. The attackers were Saudis. And we invaded and occupied Iraq.

Impeach the motherfucker. Then prosecute him for treason, convict him, and imprison him.

Hunh

Israel launches its satellites (spy stuff mostly) into retrograde orbits. That means they head west. They do it to avoid dropping rocket stages on their nervous neighbors.

It is left as an exercise for the reader as to why everybody else heads east.

Not as bad as I expected

Mingle² - Online Dating

Seems that the words "gun" and "torture" are more serious that the expletives I often employ. I like that.

The vice-president asserts that his office is not an executive branch entity

I think he thinks it is an Imperial branch entity.

It seems that Mr. Cheney has issued an order exempting himself from the law regarding protection of classified documents. He's covering his ass on La Plame. He's afraid that Scooter might roll over on him to keep from going to prison.

Where does Cheney get the authority to issue any kind of order? He has no Constitutional powers. None. I still get hacked off when I remember him giving operational orders to fighter planes defending Washington on 9-11.

Let's all say this together: Dick Cheney has no Constitutional authority.

Impeach the motherfucker, prosecute him, convict him, and imprison him.

A Jim Hightower column about Bush & Co. and enriching their cronies

There are some really startling numbers in this related to how great an increase there has been in federal contracts for formerly government services since Bush came into office.

Good vs Evil and the Bush Administration

An excerpt from a forthcoming book by Glenn Greenwald. It reinforces the opinion that I hold from time to time that Bush is a True Believer, in the way that only reformed drunks can be. Cheney and the rest are bastards aiming at making money for themselves and their buddies.

If you wanna buy this book, use this link. I'll make a nickel.

Stipulating that Bloomberg is a credible candidate...

...which I think I dispute, does this mean that we're looking at an election season where among the viable, serious candidates are a woman, a black, a Mormon, and a Jew? The mind boggles. Just imagine what's happening in George Wallace's grave right now.

But really, a 5'7" Jew? America is not ready.

It seems that we've really messed up Iraq

I knew it was bad but I didn't realize that it was 2nd worst in the world. Seems to me that it can't get much worse so we should just leave.

Come to Jesus

http://christiancondoms.com/

Single men and single women

Anybody got any idea as to why there seems to be such a geographical split, vis a vis, east-west?

The blue represents an excess of single males, the red an excess of single females. It's from the February issue of National Geographic.

A little Tuesday science

Seems that this fellow believes that black holes don't exist. And, of course, he's done a buncha calculations and people who think he's wrong have done a buncha other calculations and other people will study both sides' calculations and one of these days the Large Hadron Collider will be on-line and there will be experimental data to compare to the calculations and the theories will be refined further and, thus, is science made.

But, let's pause a moment and think about how the Large Hadron Collider would work in a comic book. And let us be afraid. Very afraid.

Week-old news

I had to ruminate on it a while. I mean, how could I quickly analyze something that makes so little sense as arming the Sunni insurgents in Iraq.

Let's walk through this: we are attacked by Sunni Saudi Arabian terrorists, funded with money from Saudi Arabia that is funneled through Pakistan. So we invade Afghanistan, which, in all fairness, is being used as a safe haven and base by the these Sunni Saudis. Then the president spins a web of lies regarding Iraq: he says that helped al-Qaida, he says they're trying to buy materials for nuclear weapons, he says they're lying about destroying their weapons of mass destruction, he says they're violating all the UN resolutions that imposed sanctions on them at the end of the last war, etc etc etc. All lies. The Republican Congress gives him a blank check; don't forget that the Democrats went along -- wouldn't want to appear soft on terruhists.

So we invade Iraq. Oh, we're supposed to be hailed as liberators by the people of Iraq. They're going to swarm to us with flowers. That was another one of those lies. The Pentagon knew better and told the White House but, no matter. So the war is over in just a few days because, honestly, no Third World country can stand up to the US armed forces -- they don't have the training or equipment or will. Ah, but the occupation begins. And it is a long one. Keep in mind that Saddam's Ba'athists were secular socialists, not religious at all -- hated by Osama bin Laden for that very reason. But, they were nominally Sunni and they hated the Shi'a with a passion because the Shi'a are funded by Iran, as close to a traditional enemy as a 90-year old country like Iraq can have.

We purge the Iraqi army and police of Ba'athists. This means we also purge it of Sunnis. The Saudis don't like this. Al-Qaida doesn't like this. We go further. We install a majority Sunni government, and in short order, hell breaks loose. The Sunnis blow up an especially favored Shi'a shrine and the war is on: Sunni vs Shi'a. And we're standing around watching. And getting killed for our trouble and the civil war grows. Car bombs and roadside bombs are the favored tools of the Sunni. People disguised as police or the police themselves are the favored tools of the Shi'a.

After a few years, Bush & Co. decide that a increase of 20,000 combat troops will make it look like they're trying to pacify the country when, in reality, all they want is for the Shi'a and Kurds to hand over the oil. But the Shi'a and the Kurds won't do that until they've defeated the Sunnis. So we "surge." And, no surprise, it doesn't work. Because we still aren't dis-arming the militias.

It is important to keep in mind that we in the US only think we have a gun culture. Sure, they're easy to get and relatively inexpensive but there are numerous families who don't have firearms almost nobody takes to the streets shooting to celebrate weddings or births or to even the score in the tradition of the Hatfields and McCoys. The Iraqis? They've got a gun culture. And WE'RE LETTING THEM KEEP THEIR GUNS which THEY ARE USING TO SHOOT AT AMERICAN SOLDIERS and at their co-religionists who do or don't believe in the sanctity of the Imam Ali, depending.

So every Iraqi male over the age of 13 thinks his manhood cheapened if he doesn't have an AK-47 with which to impress chicks and Allah. So we let them keep them.

So the surge doesn't work. The civil war grows worse.

And then a brilliant idea comes to someone. Hey! Let's buy the loyalty of the Sunnis with guns! They love guns, right? And everybody is just as greedy and materially oriented as we are, right? Great! We give them guns if they promise to quit fighting...with...al-Qaida...I....guess. Oh! And they have to quit fighting...with...the Shi'a.

Waitaminute. I musta tole it wrong.

I know this is a serious matter but...

...it seems that the Democrats mainly want to get all het up about things that the average voters will be dismissive of. I can't help but believe that this is to avoid being pushed to begin impeachment proceedings.

Seems that the e-mails story is going to catch some traction as it turns out that people in the White House purposefully used RNC e-mail accounts to conceal official business and then lied about it. People in the White House breaking the law and lying?? In the Bush White House?!?? Yawn.

Yes, I've succumbed to ennui about the wrongdoings of the White House. I'll feel better later in the day, I'm sure.

This never occured to me

I hadn't thought through all the implications of Bush's call for more ethanol fuel. My analysis stopped at: so he's aiming for world-wide starvation and environmental degradation. Hunh. Seems mighty short-sighted and even dangerous but it wasn't a terribly surprise that he was proposing something he hadn't thought through.

I just didn't consider that I hadn't thought it far enough through and that it could be construed as simple political cover for the obscene profits that the oil companies (his patrons) are making. They can simply whine that it would be foolish for them to build more refinery capacity if the US is expected to cut consumption of gasoline by 20%. In fact, the ethanol push practically guarantees that gasoline prices will skyrocket and the oil companies can wring their hands and bemoan the burden on the poor, poor consumer, but what are the supposed to do?

Ads

Some of you may have noticed that all the way down at the bottom of the page there's a little set of Google AdSense ads. They're context driven, in that they pick out words from the posts and put up appropriate ads.

If you click on them every once in a while, I make money. And all you're doing is sharing a cookie. Unless you don't.

Maybe if you said you need lab equipment to make bullets...

Seems that you have to register to buy some lab equipment in some states. What on earth would we do if terrorists and/or drug dealers wanted to buy guns? Waitaminute. I musta tole it wrong.

My copy has endnotes

Seems that Andrew Ferguson, a writer for the Washington Post, hates Al Gore. Hates him so much, in fact, that he made up stuff about Gore's recent book, The Assault on Reason. seems that Mr. Ferguson didn't like the fact that the book had no footnotes. It's got endnotes but I'm imagining that Mr. Ferguson didn't read that far. He seems to have gotten to page 88, where there is a Lincoln quote that Mr. Ferguson believes to be unreferenced. It isn't. But that doesn't stop the media in their never-ending quest to take one of the men most qualified to be president of the United States (and who won the election in 2000 despite their efforts) and make him seem like something he isn't.

Why do you think the media feels this way about Gore? Is it because he's handsome? And rich? And smarter than they are? And that he's got a good-looking wife? And a heart? Did I mention that he's smarter than they are?

This is the sort of shit that got us Bush in 2000

Well, shit like this and the cheating.

But.

My point is that we cannot let the media get started again telling us that this campaign isn't about issues because it sure as hell is. If you can't tell the difference between the positions of Fred Thompson and Dennis Kucinich, you're blind and deaf and stupid. Hell, the differences between John McCain and Hillary are legion.

This election is not about "authenticity" or "character" or any of those other things that the media tried to sell in 2000. This election is about the future of democracy in the United States and the lives of Americans and innocents all around the world caught up in the "war on terror."

There is no question that any of the GOP candidates would continue the occupation of Iraq. There is a chance, slim though it is, that the Democratic candidate will not. It is a cinch that any of the GOP candidates would appoint conservative ideologues to the federal bench; the moderates to get the support of the right, the right-wingers to shore up that support. The Democratic candidates are far less likely to appoint someone the bench that doesn't believe in the Bill of Rights.

Yes, they've all sold their souls (except for Kucinich and the guy from Alaska). Yes, they are beholden to the multinationals. But at least the Democrats have just enough soul left to pretend to be ashamed of it. The GOP revels in it; they don't know why anybody thinks there's anything wrong with it; it's the American way, aint' it? Yes, it's a pack of millionaires on all sides (except for etc etc etc), but Hillary and Edwards didn't come from money and their talk about their concern for those less privileged is backed up by their actions.

Oh, yeah, and another thing: The GOP thinks that health care for profit gives us the best health system in the world. They don't seem to understand that we have the worst health care in the industrialized world. No. Wait. It's not that they don't understand, it's that they don't care.

Don't swallow the lie. There's plenty of difference.

Joshua Crust

Is there a sadder, more heart-wrenching song than Judy Collin's "Song for Martin"? No, no, there is not.

I am shocked -- shocked -- to find out that Dan Rather is a bitter old man

and that CBS can't think of anything better to do to defend their worthless newscast than to make remarks about what Dan said when they damn good and well what he meant. When Dan Rather was on his game, there was not a better television journalist. He and Bill Moyers were the last of them. Now, there are news readers whose primary qualifications are that they can read and people look at them with lust. They are not journalists. They aren't even "pundits." They're models.

Feh.

I am shocked -- shocked -- to find out that in an unconstitutional program the FBI went ahead and broke some more laws

Seems that the FBI decided "in for a penny, in for pound." Over 1000 violations of rules or laws while collecting information on American citizens' domestic phone calls, e-mails and financial transactions. There has never been a more criminal administration: not LBJ. Not Nixon. Not the Iran-Contra Reagan. These people are criminals and need to be prosecuted.




ITMFA and then prosecute them, convict them, and imprison them

I beleive I'd appeal

But then, I'm not the State of Texas. Seems that prayer is how juries decide things down thataway.

So, they didn't have enough evidence to find the guy guilty of reckless driving but they prayed on it. "Dear Lord, show us that he was reckless."?? "Dear Lord, show us that the evidence is true."???? What the hell did they pray?

Our solar system isn't really very tidy

There are lots of objects in our solar system that are only now being discovered and studied. Who knows what else lies out there?

Today's wallpaper

An exceptionally beautiful, and somewhat eerie, nebula.

The list is over a half-million names

It seems that the FBI's terrorist watch list is over a half-million names. The mind boggles.

For those who like chocolate

But don't like the idea that Nestle's and Hershey's and Mars are supported by slave labor, there is this website and the associated products.

I know that it is probably not a good idea to start looking at where everything you eat comes from. The damage to the environment, human rights, animal rights -- we'd have to give up food. But when it's something that isn't essential and when an alternative that doesn't lead to child slavery is available, why not explore the options?

The bees

This is the latest bee article. It has been suggested that this is just an environmental scare caused by the fact that environmentalists are a little on edge with so much dire climate change news in the last year.

I don't think so.

I am not an entomologist of any sort and I have not done a population survey. But. Many of the green spaces on the campus where I work are covered in white clover (Trifolia repens). In the past, the clover would be alive with a carpet of honey bees when the flowers bloomed in May. This year? Walking across the campus nearly every day, I have seen 1 (one) honey bee. My yard (not a lawn) has a fine healthy stand of english plantain (Plantago lanceolate). It is usually very popular with honeybees, bumble bees, and wasps of all sorts when it starts blooming in April. This year? Three (3) honeybees.

I have not put out any bait to see if I can attract honeybees. High fructose corn syrup softdrinks are probably a good bait. I'll try it.

I also should note that all the stories that I've seen published about the loss of bees does not mention, much less discuss, wild populations. I have no idea if the bees that I have regularly seen in the past are wild bees or "domesticated" bees but they are not around this spring.

So. "Eco-scare"? Perhaps. Real? Oh, yeah.

My desktop background

My daughter suggested that re-introduce a feature that this blog had back when it was spam: Wallpaper of the Day!

The Plame Affair

I guess I wasn't paying enough attention last year. Why didn't more people tell us that it wasn't that Cheney and Company wanted to "get even" with Joseph Wilson, they actively wanted to expose La Plame in order to end her career. That's the "underlying crime."




ITMFA and then prosecute him and convict him and imprison him

Why isn't Al Gore president?

Yep, he should be winding down a successful presidency right now. He was just too smart for Americans. Shame.

He is a man full of insights but he has one about himself that he makes* in this op-ed from the Times.






*You will probably need username: lipstickonapig and password: lipstickonapig.

And still more bad news

One more in the growing litany of "it's happening faster than we thought"s. The ice is melting in Greenland earlier and staying gone longer and the melt goes further inland than models said it should.

I'm ashamed to say that I was thinking: "I'd kinda like to go to Greenland" and then I read that last paragraph and hung my head.

Climate and migrations of peoples

A very cool animated map-thingee about when and where the great migrations occurred.

Iraqi parliament gets uppity

I'm a bit confused. It seems that the Iraqi parliament is on the verge of telling us to leave their country. Didn't the previous, *functional*, Iraqi government tell us not to come in the first place? I suspect that when the bill is actually passed, Lesser Dear and Glorious Leader will damn near laugh himself into an embolism.

We'll have two choices: ignore the parliament, which is what I would expect, or stage a coup, which is just a lot of bother. But I can guarandamntee you that we will not be leaving Iraq. There's too much money invested and too much oil to steal and we need a base from which to attack Iran and from which to support the Bushes' business partners, the Saud and binLaden families.

Do you think Watson and Crick ever imagined this?

DNA analysis is just pretty damned cool. Looking at prehistoric chicken DNA to determine if Polynesians came to South America from Easter Island is just -- way damned cool.

Vote caging

Just another name for one more dirty tactic in the GOP's voluminous bag of dirty tactics and tricks. Send a registered letter to an address you know to be wrong and then deny the voter the right to vote because, you claim, he's registered at a fake address. These are really, really sorry bastards. Criminals and traitors. And we deserve 'em because we're no carrying pitchforks and torches down to the local federal building and demanding redress of our grievances.



ITMFA and don't vote for anybody in '08 who didn't scream for impeachment


UPDATED: There's now a link to the Slate article that prompted me to make this post.

Why are some people so fascinated with Legos?

I mean, they're fun. I like to fiddle with them but I don't have enough time on my hands to make a harpsichord from Legos. I do appreciate the amount of planning that must go into these kinds of projects and the engineering that sometimes has to be worked out.

We Livein a Science Fiction Universe, part 1,122,417

Data encoding through genetic engineering of bacteria? No good will come of this. I can see the monstrous half-computer, half-protozoan beasts attacking New York or Tokyo now.

Oh! Better yet! People coming down with horrible bacterial infections that cause them to become automatons, slaves to the hive mind of the Bacterial Intelligence.

Seriously, this is cool beyond words. Are we the smartest chimps around, or what?

Messianic Judaism doesn't get a lot of press

but some of you know that I've spent far too much time fiddling around with 1st century CE Christianity and Judaism, when messiahism was hot stuff. So I've always been interested in it, in all eras. This is a cult about which I wish I knew more. Now that I think about it, a book of Jewish messianic cults would be a pretty interesting read. even one based on secondary sources.

Old-timey lunar bases

Dwayne Day is a pretty cool space historian. I have a couple of his books. Here's his essay on proposed missile bases on the moon.

There are some really interesting alternate universes out there. I think any of the ones where Chesley Bonestall paintings became reality would be something to see. Well, maybe not that one of the mushroom clouds over Manhattan but just about any of his others.

We have torture guidelines

And apparently the guideline isn't: Don't do it. It seems that the United States, the land of the free and the home of the brave, the country that saved the world from despotism, has a set of rules about how to go about torturing so that it's legal. It makes me sick.






ITMFA and then prosecute them, convict them, and imprison them

It really can't be both ways

This could be the CIA's subtle way of trying to influence the Plame case. By stating that her tenure dates are classified, they're saying she was a covert agent, something they've declined to do before.

I'd say that means that Cheney and Co. are criminals.




Impeach the Mother Fucker Already and then prosecute him and convict him and imprison him

And look how much our presence has improved life in the Korean peninsula

It seems that the president had no exit strategy for Iraq because he never intended to exit. Of course, when we heard about the multiple permanent military bases being built all over the country, we kinda figured we were there for the long haul.

Need a place to base troops in a volatile region where your very presence is an offense to the people and your so-called "allies" don't want you? Hell, just illegally invade a country you don't like to begin with, steal its oil and build your bases there. Win-win, right?





ITFMA, and then prosecute him and convict him and imprison him. (I got that last part from Greg but I like it so I'm going to use it)