Will they ever learn?
So, the presence of specific details means that the threat must be real.
I don't think so. It's only slightly more work to cook up a "terror alert" with a few specific targets in mind (and how much imagination does it take to pick financial institutions in Washington and NYC?) than it is to produce a generic, vague one. And it's happening right after Kerry gets nominated. Just like it was leaked it might.
Moreover, if there's intelligence that terrorists are going to strike at some very specific targets, might it not be a better idea to make less of a scene about the news and just quietly beef up security at the targets in question, in hopes of catching the bad guys?
None of this proves the alert is bogus, of course. But it does make it all look mighty suspicious.
If anyone thinks my occasional use of the word fascist to describe Monkey Boy's policies is extreme or unwarranted, take a look here for the Bush Administration's latest innovation in the freedom of expression department.
Now they're reporting that the intelligence they were "acting" on was four years old. Not completely fabricated as I conjectured, but effectively close enough as far as any allegation of an immediate threat goes. To sum it up, it appears that the alert was, in fact, bogus.
And more "August surprises" are coming out of Pakistan. Why is this not a surprise?
AI pioneer John McCarthy once quipped "He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense." I'd like to rework that to "He who does not know statistics is doomed to talk nonsense."
A number of the big, popular blogs have featured this site as a supposedly no-nonsense predictor of who's going to win. I beg to differ; far from giving a good idea of who's ahead, the most prominently-displayed numbers are pure nonsense.
Right now, the big headline at the top of the page says Kerry 307, Bush 231. The problem is the "barely" states on the map below, the ones outlined but not colored in. In those, the leader and the trailer are within the poll's margin of error of each other. What that means, in plain English, is that far from saying one candidate is winning, the poll in question says it's too close to call.
Subtract those states from the count, and you have Kerry: 231, Bush: 186, too close to call: 121. Since neither candidate has the requisite 270 electoral votes locked up, that means if the election were to happen today, we have no idea who would win.
This kind of statistics abuse is depressingly common in the media. Next time you hear poll data in the news, pay attention. If they don't give the poll's margin of error, then the numbers that follow are meaningless garbage. Especially if the they are close.
Will they ever learn?
First point is some of that hand-wringing is misplaced. For those computer systems whose roots date back to the fifties and sixties, a two-digit year field was a completely reasonable choice. Data storage was extremely scarce and expensive in those days. Often records were stored on a Hollerith card, which only allows for 80 characters per record. With data cells that scarce, a programmer would be foolish not to make a decision that reduces the size of the year field by 50%.
Well take a look at the receipt above. Note how both the human-readable date and the one in the human-readable rendition of the bar-code use (you guessed it) two-digit years. Organizational idiocy is alive and well.
I say "organizational", because I doubt any competent programmer would make a decision like this on his own. Based on my experiences in the technology sector, some authoritarian idiot in management told the programmer to shut up with his objections and write it that way.
Normally I want nothing to do with the New Age movement; it's hard to respect something that churns out mental opiates while behind the touchy-feely façade being completely elitist and pro-ruling class (see here and here).
But the cover of this month's New Connexion, a local New Age rag, was so beautiful that I had to grab a copy. And by some miracle an great article by Kurt Vonnegut was inside. You know, the sort of bitter vicious savaging of the savages on top which I get so much enjoyment from and most New Agers recoil at because it's so "hateful" and "negative."
Makes me wonder how it got in there. However it did, it was an enjoyable read.
As part of my effort to start an eBay-based business to support myself, I'm going to be opening a PayPal account soon. The cheapest way to get money into and out of such an account is an electronic funds transfer to a bank account.
EFT's are a fraudster's dream. They require no special proof of authenticity other than a string of numbers; no signatures, no personal data, no verification over the phone. Once it's set up, nothing. For some reason, that makes me nervous.
I'm mainly interested in extracting money from a PayPal account, but the authorization for transfers out implicitly allows transfers the other way. And none of my banks are willing to put a flag on my account so that I'd be contacted for authorization should a transfer out of my bank account be attempted.
Oh, sure, I'd be "allowed to dispute" the transfer. Absolutely lovely. Let me review here: I'm forced to leave the door open to PayPal to rip me off, and if they do I may be able to eventually get my money back (but no promises). Fuck you very much, guys.
It looks like I'm going to be opening a separate account for the express purpose of receiving PayPal transfers. It will have no minimum balance, so I can keep it drained down to nearly nothing at all times. That way, anyone who attempts hanky-panky by transferring funds the other way won't be able to get much. I suppose I'll still have to fight the overdraft charge the bastards will try and hit me with if this happens, though.
It appears that the cat cloners are at it again. I've outlined some objections to cloning already. Here's another:
Cloning absolutely will not work on any cat with white patches (or paws) or any tabby or tortoiseshell cat. If your beloved is one of those, forget it. You may get a cat out of the cloning attempt, but it won't look the same (even though it will contain the same genetic information).
White patches come from a gene that blocks melanin development in a few cells very early in the development of the embryo. The cells not such blocked are from the area of the embryo that eventually forms the back of the cat. That's why cats with white spots tend to have white areas on their underside, and "stockings" on their paws: these areas are the most distant from the source of cells capable of producing color.
The gene that tells if a cat will have normal or orange pigment is on the X chromosome. Female mammals have the information from one of the X chromosomes disabled in each cell, to prevent excessive development of female characteristics. Which X gets disabled is something that gets decided early in the development of the embryo; in different parts of the female body, first one then the other gets disabled. So a cat with X's that disagree on pigment color will have a patchy coat that mirrors which X chromosome is disabled. If the cat also has the gene for white patches, it will be a calico; if not, a tortoiseshell. This is also why tortoiseshells and calicos are almost inevitably female.
Here's the rub: how the patterns develop depends on subtle environmental factors influencing cells early in the development of the embryo, not genetics. A cloned calico, tortoiseshell, tuxedo, or cat with "stockings" will therefore not look the same as the "original".
Not surprisingly, if you'll look at the picture of the cloned kittens in the article linked to above, you'll notice that they don't contain any of the troublesome (for genetic engineers) characteristics.
More information on cat genetics here.
Just realized that in this entry I had promised to explain sometime later my comment that "the manipulation of life is in general a technology that poses a worse threat to the future of the world than Hitler and the Nazis did."
Here goes. The Nazis created an extreme racist society where people were dominated, enslaved, and in some cases exterminated based on their ethnic heritage. It was all backed up by some pseudoscientific drivel about "Aryans" and racial superiority. It didn't last.
The end result of genetic engineering in a capitalist society is for the technology to be sold, first to the rich, then to the middle class, as a way to benefit their children. It'll progress that way gradually; first genetic screening will be done so parents that are the carriers of fatal recessive traits can avoid having children (this is already being done, I believe). Then, in-vitro fertilization and selection of embryos will be done to wipe out the undesirable traits in future generations. Then perhaps gene-splicing technology will be used to eliminate the undesirable trait so parents with such genetic diseases can give birth to healthy children.
Then the ability to insert beneficial traits (for intelligence, athletic ability, longevity, disease resistance) will be offered. At first, this will be a boutique technology not covered by health policies and thus only available to the super-rich. Technological "progress" will inevitably lower the price barrier. Eventually, some form of it will not only be covered by insurance policies, but insurers will mandate it or refuse to cover the resulting children in their policies. Why should they put up with a higher incidence of sickness if it's possible to inexpensively lower the risk?
Pay attention now, because here's where it gets really scary. The genes inserted will first be copies of naturally-occurring human genetic sequences, but it's not unreasonable to assume that artificial ones will be discovered (and used). Also, like all technologies in a capitalist society, this will be available disproportionately to those at the top of the economic pyramid.
The capitalist class structure will thus become indelibly etched into the human genetic makeup. Wait. It's actually worse than that. Can the organisms resulting from inserting totally artificial (and therefore non-human) genes really be considered "human" in the sense that we know the word today? Thus, the end result of unrestricted genetic technology is the enslavement of the human race by an artificially-created alien species race of non-human exploiters and rulers.
Think I'm being a pessimist? Actually I'm being an optimist. I'm assuming that the alien species has enough compassion in whatever emotional makeup its minds have to be squeamish about killing humans. They may just decide that we are too much trouble and wipe us out.
Hitler's genetic race of "supermen" was a myth. The genetic engineers, plus the capitalist economic system, paves the way for Hitler's sick dream to become reality.
I'll close with a few thoughts. Suppose an old science-fiction horror plot were to become reality and a race of aliens from outer space would invade Earth and start killing us off or enslaving us. What would be the appropriate response on the part of us humans? (Clue: it's the response that's so obvious it always is found in the plots of the horror stories.)
Is it really that unreasonable, therefore, to propose an alien species which arises here on Earth with the same ends as its goal should receive the same response? Is it unreasonable to suggest that such a scenario is not desirable? Is it not reasonable, therefore, to do whatever it takes to avoid such a nightmare before it starts?
He immediately radioed for help. Soon after, a team of Oregon Army National Guard soldiers swept into the yard and found dozens of Iraqi detainees who said they had been beaten, starved and deprived of water for three days.Full story here.In a nearby building, the soldiers counted dozens more prisoners and what appeared to be torture devices - metal rods, rubber hoses, electrical wires and bottles of chemicals. Many of the Iraqis, including one identified as a 14-year-old boy, had fresh welts and bruises across their back and legs.
The soldiers disarmed the Iraqi jailers, moved the prisoners into the shade, released their handcuffs and administered first aid. Lt. Col. Daniel Hendrickson of Albany, Ore., the highest ranking American at the scene, radioed for instructions.
But in a move that frustrated and infuriated the guardsmen, Hendrickson's superior officers told him to return the prisoners to their abusers and immediately withdraw. It was June 29 - Iraq's first official day as a sovereign country since the U.S. invasion.
And really, how could anyone expect it to be any other way? As I said well over a year ago, expecting democracy to arise in the wake of an Iraq invasion out-Pollyannas Pollyanna herself.
And something tells me there'd be much less reluctance to interfere if the Iraqi puppet government (and really, there's no other way it can be defined) were to pursue any truly independent act of foreign policy.
Having dissed Ward Churchill's Pacifism as Pathology last year, I feel compelled to say that it's not completely false. I think there really is some truth to Churchill's observation in that the professed pacifism of the crowd I call the Nice Liberals is a form of cop-out by which they can avoid taking personal risks.
It's not (as Churchill keeps trying to frame it) a question of violence versus non-violence; it's a question of action versus risk evasion and denial. It's the desire to enjoy the fruits of a liberty without being willing to make the efforts and sacrifices necessary to create or preserve them. As Frederick Douglass once said: "Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both."
The Bulgarians and the Danes were willing to take personal risks and confront the Nazis on a large scale (nonviolently, in both cases); they both stopped the Final Solution from being implemented in their countries. The people of most other occupied nations largely chose cooperation and risk-aversion, with the predictable results. Or look at the Jews themselves — most of them peacefully did as the Nazis told them, and ended up dead. A few in the Warsaw Ghetto chose to (violently, this time) fight back. Many got killed, but many also managed to escape and go into hiding, with the net result that the fighters had a better survival rate than the passive cooperators.
And those stereotypical pacifists, the ones led by Ghandi and struggling for the end of British colonialism in India, also were not averse to taking personal risks. Many were jailed and beaten multiple times; some endangered their health by threatening to fast to the death.
Contrast with the current crop of Nice Liberals who aren't willing to do something as trivial as leave some of their income tax unpaid in protest of how the government is spending those monies on war and imperialism. It's why I feel so bleak about the future sometimes; it's not so much the wickedness of the ruling class as the uselessness of the tactics of those claiming to oppose it that depresses me. The epitome of the Nice Liberal is the Jew marching silently and obediently to the Krema at Auschwitz.
Benjamin Franklin once wrote: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." And people generally get what Franklin observed they "deserve."
Not the GOP, for openers.
And pay special attention to who got the California State Assembly to pass the Mulford Act, the piece of legislation which ushered in the modern era of gun-control laws in the USA.
I've been too busy to type much here in the past few days, but get a load of this.
Really, now. We can't let cash-strapped seniors import cheap prescription drugs from Canada because that's letting the terrorists win. Right. That sounds approximately as convincing as a third-grader telling his teacher that really, his homework was all finished but the dog ate it this morning.
Ya know, I thought the Bush Regime was like something from a B-grade Hollywood movie about a fascist regime arising in the USA when Monkey Boy was caught stammering and fighting for words when a reporter asked him an unscripted question (head on over here and search for "i wish you would"). And yet again, they've managed to outdo themselves in this department.
And the scary thing is all the sheep who are going to believe this fish story and act as if it's actually a serious explanation. If anyone wants to study how a nominally democratic state becomes a fascist one, they need to do nothing but study contemporary America.
The failure of the recall drive against Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez merely mirrors what nearly every opinion poll was saying.
Despite Chavez remarking on his victory "Those who voted for the 'yes' should not feel defeated. I want us to send them our respect," the opposition is throwing a temper tantrum — the vote must be in error, because it didn't go the way they wanted. And this kind of exceptional tolerance (remember, many of the crowd pushing to recall Chavez tried to unseat him forcefully in a coup d'etat) is the rule for Chavez: the same private media networks that tried to instigate the coup were left untouched and are still to this day spewing propaganda against Chavez.
A few months ago, I read an editorial which stated that whatever the results of the election, one side would accept them no matter which way they went, while the other would only accept them if they went the way they wanted. While there's never been definitive proof of the former claim (because Chavez hasn't yet lost an election), Chavez' demonstrated tolerance lends credence to it. And the opposition certainly has been acting in a manner consistent with the latter claim.
And that opposition is funded by your tax dollars.
Black cottonwood, Mt. St. Helens blast zone
The first time I visited Mt. St. Helens, it was in the late 1980's, shortly after moving to the Pacific Northwest. The volcano's active phase had ended just a few years earlier. Driving into the devastated area was like visiting the desert — there was almost no vegetation and it felt like one had left the Pacific Northwest and been magically transported to Arizona or New Mexico.
I returned twice in the early- to mid-1990's. By then, the new highway had been built up the Toutle Valley from the west, greatly shortening the drive into the devastated area. Clumps of lupine, pearly everlasting, fireweed, and grasses were making the area look a little less desert-like, though it was still stark enough to not feel like the Pacific Northwest.
I had a chance to return yesterday. The amount of regrowth floored me; it no longer feels like a desert, more like a very large clearcut that's in the process of regrowing. Some of the trees (like the cottonwood yours truly is standing in front of) are large enough it boggles the mind that they are growing in what amounted to a desert just a decade ago.
How anyone (especially a war veteran) can consider voting for Monkey Boy based on the history of the Vietnam War is beyond me.
I mean, one candidate used his rich boy's privilege to opt out of combat duty, and then didn't even bother to show up for most of the cushy assignment he did get in the National Guard. The other volunteered for service, then when he realized he had volunteered to participate in a mistake had the guts to admit it was a mistake he had been suckered into risking his life for. How any griping over the utterly insignificant (in comparison) issue of how Kerry chose to protest that war or what he said when applying for medals while serving in it can change these essential facts is beyond me.
And regarding veterans, Monkey Boy has shortchanged the VA health system so badly that even his own VA secretary has complained, "rewarded" veterans with a batch of new fees and co-payments, and cut back research funding at the VA.
After an extraordinarily hot July and August, the past twenty-four hours have been nothing but heavenly. Over an inch of rain has fallen and today's high was a cool 66 degrees. And it started off during an afternoon nap yesterday in which I dreamed it was raining heavily, to wake and find that the soundtrack to that dream was actual rain.
Apropos yesterday's comment, I simply must link to this.
One of the oft-cited benefits of the breakup of the Bell System by fans of markets is the drop in long-distance rates. And yes, such rates have dropped. But head on over here and enlarge the chart entitled "the highs and lows of reaching out." (For those who can't remember, divestiture happened in the early 1980's.) Puts an entirely new perspective on this purported "great achievement", doesn't it?
And the part the capitalism fans don't tell you about is how local service rates most emphatically did not drop, especially for residential customers. Most normal people ended up with higher total phone bills.
Not that the establishment media would bother pointing out such an obvious part of a graphic in their article or anything. Facts that don't jibe with capitalist orthodoxy are facts not worth pointing out.
At the end of that article are an interesting few paragraphs:
Network capacity expanded steadily until Congress passed the deregulatory Telecommunications Act of 1996. Eager to cash in on the newly opened market, dozens of companies spent billions of dollars laying long-distance lines across the country and around the world.Any idiot who had studied the earlier history of utility competition (pick your utility -- it pretty much applied to all of them) about 100 years ago could have told you that would happen. I remember getting into Usenet flame wars with the free-market-fundamentalists over things like this when deregulation was really gathering steam in the mid-80s.The huge oversupply led to the demise of some high-flying firms, including WorldCom.
The sudden surge in capacity sent wholesale-rates plunging. The cost of a link capable of carrying 2,000 simultaneous calls has fallen from $155,000 a month in January 2000 to $6,200 now, according to Beckert of TeleGeography.
Beckert sees no end to the oversupply of long-distance network capacity. Less than 4 percent of the long-distance lines now in the ground are being used, he said.
People talk about things that get subsidized below market rates by governments all the time. What's happening here is subsidy by bankruptcy -- creditors lend money for foolish redundant multiple networks, and get in return a white elephant worth a fraction of what they invested. Money that could have been spent on something useful is thus wasted on a boondoggle. We're all paying for this waste by giving up the use of more sensible investments that could have been made with those funds.
But you can't un-build a boondoggle, so there's not much to do except try and get what little you can out of it. Hence the rock-bottom rates.
Meanwhile, while Portland's urban core was being wired with three or four wasteful parallel networks (walk down the middle of a street and you see manhole after manhole, each with the name of a different fiber company on it), most of the world's people still have never even touched a telephone set or used a web browser.
So don't waste any blather on me about how markets always promote an efficient allocation of resources.
PANAMA CITY, Aug 26 (Reuters) - Panama pardoned four Cuban exiles jailed for plotting to kill Cuba's President Fidel Castro in 2000, the Justice ministry said on Thursday, a move that could rupture diplomatic ties between the two nations.Full story here.The ministry said conservative President Mireya Moscoso, who leaves office next week, had pardoned the Cubans and media reports said they had already been flown out of the country, possibly to Miami [emphasis added].
The four men were among six sentenced in April for their part in a failed plot to bomb a University of Panama auditorium where Castro was due to speak during a summit of Iberian and Latin American leaders in 2000....
Update: As reported in the Kansas City Star, they have indeed returned to Miami. So that means you-know-who are now guilty of harboring terrorists. Does this mean it's OK for Castro to threaten to bomb the Capitol unless Bush turns them over?
Craig Rosebraugh (see here, here, and here for some background) has earned the Willamette Week's "Rogue of the Week" award. For firing workers. For trying to organize.
And I can't say I'm very surprised.
Full story here.
And let me say that A-Noise Radio has considerably more interesting coverage of the neo-fascists convention in New York City than does Air America Radio. It's not just a matter of the former's politics being more in line with mine, it's that the they are airing live reports from the streets, which have a much more dramatic air to them.
As well as simply being more realistic, because that's where I'd be were I there. Then again, that's likely a function of their views being similar to mine. So I guess politics does play a part after all.
Now of only I had an alternative to the Internet for listening to A-Noise. As I've said before, streaming audio has a ways to go before it gets to the level of reliability a vacuum tube radio set was able to offer sixty or seventy years ago.
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