perfidy

Phil Dennison has an indignant post up about the flaming bag of poo that is the 20 Century Fox film version of "I, Robot" starring-- get this-- Will Smith as the wisecracking future cop. Forget "Starship Troopers," "Johnny Mnemonic," and "Lawnmower Man." This will go down in history as the worst science-fiction adaptation of all time.

And it will, of course, make a fortune.

Let me take you back to Ohio, December 1991. I was a senior in high school, and deeply into music. It was all the wrong music, Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, and Jane's Addiction excepted, but music nonetheless. It was the era of hair metal, big ballads, and soaring, heroic guitar solos, and the radio was full of Warrant, Extreme, and other truly barrel-scraping dreck my memory refuses to give name to.

Then one day my friends and I started hearing this sound on the rock stations… crunchy and dumb, aggressive and sullen. Some band called Nirvana, and they were awesome.

I don't really want to mythologize it, but the genre of rock criticism-- the genre of rock itself-- kinda begs for it, so I might as well. I can’t quite describe what it was like for me. It was as if someone flipped a switch, and one day me and my friends were driving around in the Lust Bug or the Deathtrap Toyota listening to a tape of AC/DC or Pink Floyd and the next we were driving around obsessively combing the radio dial for that sound, that one song, named after a deodorant or something. For me at least, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was a total break with the past, a Big Bang replete with loud guitars. In five minutes flat, the horizons of my world unfolded a thousand times. Music was reborn, a million possibilities surged forth, and Rock and Fucking Roll wielded infinite glory and power.

I can't overstate how different (and how incredibly good) Nirvana sounded, but I can't for the life of me figure out why that is. I was already into what we called at the time "progressive music," and was passingly familiar with the history of Rock from "Hound Dog" to "Pretty Vacant, so it wasn't like punk was terra incognita. Neither was the Black Sabbath-meets-Ramones riffage that was the song's bedrock. So Nirvana didn't contain anything new, but the way it was all put together sounded perfect... like the future.

I'm starting to get that feeling again. I've been hearing Chicago-born hip-artist Kanye West's music everywhere, and I love it. I don't understand what’s so great about him, really. His debut single, "Through The Wire" (off his major-label debut “College Dropout”) shouldn't add up to anything special. I can think of half a dozen hip-hop songs in the last year that are as hooky, that have as much soul. So he used a sped-up Chacka Khan sample-- who cares? Wu Tang did that in 1994, and now everybody does. The rhyme is interesting, not a 'ho in sight, but Eminem was funnier on "Slim Shady" and more poignant on "Stan." Even the central gimmick of "Through The Wire," namely that he's rapping through a wired-shut jaw thanks to a car accident, is nothing compared to 50 Cent's rhymes about multiple gunshot wounds. What's the big deal?

West raps about mundane stuff. His records sound kind of like Jay-Z's, which makes sense considering he’s on Jay-Z’s label and produced some of the big guy’s hits. On the surface, Kanye West should be no more or less interesting than Aceyalone, Mr. Lif, or any one of a thousand quirky local MC's with plenty of talent but no spark of genius.

But for some reason he is different. Despite the protests of my cynical, rational, music-industry-veteran mind, "Through The Wire" is totally irresistible and utterly perfect. I can't get it out of my head. Friday night I stayed awake waiting for MTV to play the video. Yesterday morning I heard “Through The Wire” twice on the way to the grocery store, but only because I was looking for it. Later, Goodwife Two-Cents and I drove up to Maine, and the whole time I was changing the radio, pretending to be sick of Journey and Missy Elliott, but really hunting for that song again. Last night I saw him perform on a rerun of Chappelle's show, doing a song about working a steady job for shitty pay, opposite a live performance by rap superstars N.E.R.D. on Saturday Night Live, and Kanye West made Pharrell & Co. sound like a bunch of uptight posers in an airport karaoke bar. That hook! That bass! That flow! That sound! Holy shit!

I’m usually wrong about what America will like, but I’m positive about this one. Kanye West is modern hip-hop’s Nirvana moment. Something about his sound seems to be from the future, or at least a map of how to get there.

Nice place.

[wik] How white am I? I'm going to refer you to an article in Slate for some background on who Kanye West is.

[alsø wik] How white am I? When I link Kanye West:[other epochal event], I think "Teen Spirit," not "The Message," "Roxanne, Roxanne/Roxanne’s Revenge" or "My Adidas."

[alsø alsø wik] How white am I? I like Kanye West so much, I wrote an essay about it! On the internet! I'm so white I make Alan Greenspan look like Chuck D!

[wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?] And yet, there's the bass playing thing. I can bring the funk when I come to play.

Now that Australia's banned people from having guns, people are arming themselves with swords (seriously!). Guess what? They've decided to ban them, too.

One can imagine a future Australia where glass bottles, coin-filled socks, and cricket bats will all be banned. But it's all good. They'll never think to ban the single most effective weapon in a street fight: the dreaded poo stick.

(Thanks to the ubiquitous Eugene Volokh.)

A mentally ill woman in Utah has been charged with murder of one of her unborn twins after she refused her doctor's advice to deliver her twins via Caeserian section. One of the twins died of an apparent infection two days before she delivered naturally. The woman was warned repeatedly that in her case, an immediate Caesearian was the only guarantee that both her children would live, and she declined the procedure. There is a bunch of hearsay about what she said and did, and why she refused the C-section, but at this point, the facts is just what the facts is.

Look, I understand and respect the growing concern for the rights of the unborn in this country, even if I think this issue is waaay too complicated for the law to handle. But this case is particularly disturbing for a number of reasons.

First: multiple births are always risky, and the risk of miscarriage or stillbirth is much higher than with single-fetus pregnancies. How do the law and the health care system deal with the implications of a "guilty" verdict, which would set a precedent by which any woman who delivers a stillborn fetus could be charged with murder?

Second: in this country, doctors can only give advice-- they cannot mandate that people follow it. You can't force people to have surgery. Unfortunately, an unborn fetus cannot give consent, and I don't see how a government can presume to speak on behalf of the unborn in every case without compromising the rights of the parents, health care providers, etc. The thorny moral calculus aside, there's the dirty issues of patient insurance, liability insurance, tort law, the costs of health care, patient rights, and hospital rights. It's just too complicated a set of issues to be resolved ad hoc by a patchwork of legal rulings, and I seriously doubt that an omnibus bill speaking to this could do anything but make matters worse.

Third: are we going to charge women with child endangerment for having a beer during pregnancy? For skydiving? Smoking? Sleeping on their back? Eating shellfish? Where is the bright line?

Fourth: this case, like the Scott Peterson murder trial is yet another attempt to subvert Roe v. Wade, which is currently the law of the land, like it or not.

Yet again, the law is stepping into dangerous territory, dealing with moral issues it's ill-equipped to manage. I guess activism isn't confined to the left side of the aisle. I don't like the implications of this one bit, much less the utter freakiness of the whole situation.

[wik] Eugene Volokh, an actual lawyer, weighs in on the legal quandaries.

[alsø wik] For his next trick, Eugene Volokh quotes a reader, an actual OB/GYN on the matter.

Much has been made in the right wing press of a "liberal" focus on "Bush's lies". What, exactly, are we supposed to do when we have a clear-cut case of it right in the middle of extremely serious public debate?

Tony Pugh of Knight Ridder writes about the senior's drug benefit cost analysis process. The short version is that the real number, $550 Billion, was available from the Office of the Actuary well before the debate. The administration knew about this number, but squelched its release by threatening to fire the analyst who came up with the figure.

$400 Billion was bandied about extensively as the "cost" of the program. To their great dishonor, GOP and Dems voted for this boondoggle intergeneration wealth transfer, a giveaway to the drug industry. And I almost forgot; while they were voting an open-ended benefit to seniors, they also chopped off the government's hands by writing into law that they government may not negotiate on price with drug companies. Every other nation in the world that has a public drug plan negotiates, except this one.

But back to our saga...the country was shocked (to the extent that is possible any more) to learn, only two months after the drug benefit was signed into law, that its costs were off by nearly 50%. "How did this happen?", we all asked ourselves...and now we know.

I call it a lie when you deliberately falsify budget numbers to deceive congress, in order to get your way in the political process.

This is, of course, simply the tip of the iceberg. Knight-Ridder obtained copies of emails that prove that this incident occurred.

We've had years of bullshit job estimates from the Bush crowd. Do we have any reason to believe that these estimates originated anywhere else other than Karl Rove's head?

Calpundit points us to a parallel-universe press conference transcript with House Speaker Dennis Hastert (have you ever noticed that "Hastert" sounds a lot like "Hastur," as if an Ancient Evil were now empowered to speak on behalf of the duly elected representatives of the citizens of the USA? I wonder if you go insane if you look into his eyes long enough... that sure would explain a lot...)*

The trouble is, this parallel-universe conference was only parallel if you reduce our n-dimensional space to n=1: that is to say, it actually happened. In this universe.

Hastur^&^&^&...Hastert, sorry, was a little steamed over trouble with the President's people and a transportation bill. Read on!

Q You met with the administration yesterday. Did they say they would support the target number?

Speaker Hastert. We need to go forward, we need to go to conference with the Senate, and then if they want to be involved in that conference, they certainly will be able to be involved in it.

Q But did they say they would sign?

Speaker Hastert. They didn't make a commitment.

Q Did they say they would veto it?

Speaker Hastert. They didn't say they would veto it.

Q Is that with the President or with the people?

Speaker Hastert. That is with the President. I don't deal with his people anymore.

[snip]

Q Sir, what did you mean by that last comment: That was with the President; I don't deal with his people anymore?

Speaker Hastert. Well, we weren't getting straight numbers from his people, and they changed their mind in the middle of the process. So we are going to do what we feel we need to do.

Q Just on this issue or on

Speaker Hastert. On this issue.

Q Or in general?

Speaker Hastert. On this issue.

Q Sir --

Q What kind of numbers were you getting from them?

Speaker Hastert. Different numbers.

Q Different from?

Speaker Hastert. Where they added up.

Well, all-righty-ho, then. I'll just leave this up with no comment.

[wik]* Vote Yog-Soth-Oth in 2004! Why settle for lesser evil?

One of my bosses is a native of Spain, and his sister, a nurse, spent yesterday treating victims of the Madrid terrorist attack. Everyone he knows is okay, thank God, but for thousands more that is not true. Spain has now faced its turning point, its "M-11" as they're calling it. If the perpetrators are possibly Basque seperatists, the tactics reek of Islamofascist groups, and it wouldn't surprise me if they had worked together. After all, if the strongly Catholic IRA could train with al Qaeda, why not the Basques, who, Christians though they may be, are also an irritant to the perfidious Spanish "occupiers" of the ostensibly Muslim Iberian Peninsula?

After 2001, I accepted the fact that life was never going to be as easy as it had been before. The confident assumption of insularity-- even of invulnerability on our own soil-- that Americans had taken almost for granted, was shattered. Another random attack of similar kind has since then been a constant possibility. Now, after Madrid, I'm starting to deal with the fact that another attack is a constant probability.

Sometimes it amazes me that humanity has survived this long with such obvious flaws as rampant stupidity and gullibility. What amazes me more is that the stupid and gullible-- such as terrorist fanatics-- are also the most dangerous ones among us.

[wik] Glenn Reynolds suggests sending flowers to the nearest Spanish Consulate General. A fine idea.

[alsø wik] There's some very good analysis of the Madrid bombings from people who actually live in Spain over at Iberian Notes, starting with this post.

My thoughts are with the citizens of Madrid today. Whether it was the homegrown nutjobs of the Basque separatist movement, or the usual Islamofascist nutjobs, a terrible atrocity has been carried out at the expense of hardworking regular Spanish citizens. Like the Onion said two years ago, "we must respond with measured, focused rage."

No... not that kind!

The Transterrestrial Musings kind! They're a group blog dedicated mainly to space stuff. Go look!

Well, isn't this just the shit?

Victorinox, they of the massively accessorized cutlery, have teamed with Swiss tech company to offer a version of the Swiss Army knife featuring a USB flash memory stick, in 64MB or 128MB flavors.

In ten years I'm going to read this post and fall into peals of laughter over the tininess of 128 megabytes, much as I now scoff at the 1GB hard drive that was the SHIT back in 1995 but now isn't even big enough to run a Microsoft OS. But for the time being, look on in wonder at the utter sweetness of it all.

Belle and John have a fascinating brace of posts (part one, part two) on the huge, yawning chasm that stands between libertarian theory and practice.
Belle goes on the attack first, writing on the pony thesis of libertarian dreaming:

Now, everyone close your eyes and try to imagine a private, profit-making rights-enforcement organization which does not resemble the mafia, a street gang, those pesky fire-fighters/arsonists/looters who used to provide such "services" in old New York and Tokyo, medieval tax-farmers, or a Lendu militia. (In general, if thoughts of the Eastern Congo intrude, I suggest waving them away with the invisible hand and repeating "that's anarcho-capitalism" several times.) Nothing's happening but a buzzing noise, right?

Now try it the wishful thinking way. Just wish that we might all live in a state of perfect liberty, free of taxation and intrusive government, and that we should all be wealthier as well as freer. Now wish that people should, despite that lack of any restraint on their actions such as might be formed by policemen, functioning law courts, the SEC, and so on, not spend all their time screwing each other in predictable ways ranging from ordinary rape, through the selling of fraudulent stocks in non-existent ventures, up to the wholesale dumping of mercury in the public water supplies. (I mean, the general stock of water from which people privately draw.) Awesome huh? But it gets better. Now wish that everyone had a pony. Don't thank me, Thank John.

John writes in the second part on the problems that occur when you can't, say, fire the police, much less summon them:

Finally, I know that libertarians are sick of hearing about the Wild West (or the eastern Congo), but if you propose a model of rights enforcement whose nearest analogue seems to be the Clint Eastwood movie "A Fistful of Dollars", then you just have to suck it up. It can hardly be irrelevant or illegitimate to point out that in our world, which my people call "Earth", there already exist places where people must band together for self-defense and form militia-like organizations for private rights enforcement. In all these places, some bastard gets in charge of it and starts treating everyone like shit. Quis custodiet, etc. How do I fire my private-rights enforcement group again?

It's important not to fetishize the right of self-defense out of all proportion. I could be as heavily armed as I like, but I have to sleep sometime, and if I'm home alone with my children and fifty armed guys show up, I'm still screwed. Personally, I'd like to be able to call 911 and have the cops show up (I figure I could hold even 50 guys off that long, with a defensible position and a sniper rifle). In the libertarian utopia, those guys outside would be the cops. I know that there are places in the world where the cops are the bad guys. But this is a problem which we know, empirically, can be fixed. It seems to me there are insuperable, structural difficulties in proposing that private organizations take over all the functions of the state, which have to do with human nature. People will be bastards if you give them a chance. Stipulating this feature away does not make for good political practice. See: communism, passim.

And that is why I blogrolled them. They got long knives and steady hands.

So it turns out I wasn't imagining things. My fair state of Massachusetts shed jobs faster than any other since 2001. Guess when I moved here? Guess how long Goodwife Two-Cents has been looking for a full-time job? Guess where we're thinking of moving out of?

Just another bit of the scintillating glory that is the Bay State. It's a matter of tradeoffs. Want salt air, quaint villages, colonial houses, fried full-belly clams, polo matches open to the public on Sundays, a plethora of organic farms, the best Universities in the world, Moxie, Sky Bars, and cod fresh of the boat? You got it! Want miserably corrupt state politics, miserably corrupt local politics, bad roads, terrible signage, crumbling infrastructure, job loss, a cultural divide, meaningless traditions, outrageous local pollution, a cost of living higher than almost any other, and a yearly crop of the products of the best Universities in the world willing to work for much less than you? Well, ya got that too! Enjoy, sucker!

Yesterday, while home sick nursing a case of what, if it wasn't actually the SARS or at least the Avian Flu, certainly felt like it-- shapes in the wallpaper, struggling to breathe, disturbingly high tolerance for daytime television-- I had occasion to watch Fox News.

Now, I kind of enjoy Fox News' teletabloid style, reminiscent of the New York Post (another News Corp. holding) or the nad-hammering attack-doggery of the Boston Herald. But sometimes-- often, for my moderate blood-- they just go too goddamn far.

I was watching coverage of this story, about the two unfortunate civilians working for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, who were shot at a fake roadblock checkpoint yesterday. The TV version of the story referred to this as a "terrorist" incident.

No, No, NO!

I remember what a terrorist attack looks like. This was an act of war. It makes me crazy that acts of terrorism and acts of war are so often conflated by the press and politicians. To be sure, the two are often hard to pick apart these days. We are at war with terrorists and thugs. But if Fox News wants to be horribly irresponsible in the name of ratings and call two victims of a checkpoint shooting "terrorism" than the word becomes weaker, less able to describe the mayhem and horror of a true terrorist attack, especially in the same news cycle that sees nearly 200 die in Madrid at the hands of extremists.

The Justice Department "is dropping its demand, at least for now, that six Planned Parenthood clinics around the country produce medical records on abortions, officials said Tuesday." This according to the New York Times. Thank God.

In their zeal to prosecute offenders under the new Partial Birth Abortion law, the Justice Department has stated that patients now have "no reasonable expectation" that their medical records may remain private, and goen ahead with wide-ranging subpoenas of individual patient records. Excuse me, what the fuck? Didn't the "Patients' Bill of Rights" pass in 2000, and with it a law protecting the privacy of medical records? Part of the very fabric of the doctor-patient relationship is based on the absolute confidentiality of what goes on.

And now that it's politicially convenient, the Patients' Bill of Rights is no good? Look, this is crazy. There are still subpoenas outstanding elsewhere demanding individual patient records. The bitter, rancorous debate over abortion notwithstanding, this is just crazy and has to stop.

[wik] William Safire opines.

[alsø wik] Now I remember! I first saw this on Kathy Kinsley's site! Yesterday was a bad, bad day for my brain.

The works of man may come and go, but Perfidy is eternal.

The sun has made three hundred sixty-five diurnal transits of the sky since the idea for the Ministry of Minor Perfidy first burst upon the world. One year of ever embiggening reach and power, one year of cresting wisdom, sarcasm, and scantily-researched attacks on transient issues of the day, plus some really kickass writing.

From its humble beginnings at johnnytwocents.blogspot.com to a temporary home at the ignominity of the .biz domain, the Ministry of Minor Perfidy is far greater than one simple interweb address that resolves to http://old.perfidy.org . Such towering achievement is beyond the capability of simple language, simple digits, to describe, much less encompass. Lo, history will record the truth! The Ministry now stands as the single greatest achievement with which publicly-funded grade-schooling, a combined two decades of college and trade-schooling, and oodles of cheap liquor have yet graced the world. My it ever be this way, and may its heroic exploits long be recounted by wonks, geeks, and basement-dwellers for generations to come.

Let us now have a moment of silence for the uncounted legions of pixies, homunculi, gnomes, sprites, weirds, gremlins, and assorted faeries who sacrificed their lives for the greatness of Perfidy*.

The Ministry applauds its Ministers, readers, commenters, and sundry onlurkers. We are watching you, and we like what we see. Each and every one of you must remember one thing: nobody said anything about giant fighting space robots, and it is crucial that you remember that fact in the weeks and months to come. Soon enough, my children, soon enough you will look on in awe and wonder. Until that day. . . Excelsior!

[wik] No leprechauns were harmed in any way during any Perfidious endeavor.

[alsø wik] In response to the cowardly anonymous commenter who clearly fears the retribution of the Ministry's minions, and rightly so... this being a so-called "leap year," the Ministry's lifespan would equal three hundred sixty-six diurnal transits, if the so-called "leap year" were not an utter fiction concocted by shadowy forces working on behalf of the erstwhile British Royal Society.

You see, the 1582 transition from Julian to Gregorian Calendar-time was not without its temporal casualites. As the great sage Pynchon observes in his magesterial "Mason and Dixon," the world lost eleven days in 1582 that, it was thought, can never be got back. Little do you know of the subtle plans of great men and women. Do you really think that you actually lived "February 29" this year? Ha!

Remember harder, o benighted one, and tremble at the power shadowy forces can wield!

Krugman gives us the picture that's worth a thousand words.

See the distance between the grey line and the black line? I have a name for that: The Credibility Gap.

When it comes to tax cuts, we know they're good for the GOP's political donors. They get the tax cuts (refunds provided by the social security fund, of course). What we've been told is that this is good for everyone, and results in a better situation for everyone. What we've been told is that these tax cuts would provide massive stimulation to the economy, which would result in more jobs.

Three years in a row Bush's economic team has predicted massive job gains because of tax cuts. They did this in spite of the fact that no serious economists agreed with them.

This leaves us with only two possibilities: Either Bush and friends are really piss-poor at predictions, or they're doing it deliberately. Are there other possibilities I haven't considered?

And let's dispense with the axis of 9/11-recession-war crap. All of that was known early to all parties, and Bush's team was the only one making these outlandish projections.

Left: "Earth is round."
Right: "Earth is flat."
Press: "Shape of Earth: Views differ."

I am such a fan of Firefly...even though it's the show that permanently wrecked my enjoyment of any other sci-fi series. Everything else just sucks in comparison. So imagine my surprise tonight when I read this:

Universal Greenlights Firefly.

For fans of the series, this is great news. For the rest of you, buy or steal the DVD set and watch'em in order. You'll love it.

I hope it's a success. The Firefly two hour pilot episode was better than any given Star Wars movie; most of the episodes that followed it were better than anything any other sci-fi franchise show has ever produced...

This MSNBC report describes a rather jarring situation. Apparently US intelligence had Zarqawi placed in northern Iraq (in the no-fly zone) prior to the war. On two separate occasions plans were formed to kill the bastard off...the first time it died in the National Security Council (good show, there).

The second time it was killed off by the White House directly.

“People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists,” according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey.

Two thoughts come to mind. First -- if the Zarqawi was present in Iraq, Bush's position that terrorists is bolstered. But (you knew that was coming, didn't you?)...the guy was in the no-fly zone. There wasn't much that could happen there without US say-so. The US probably had the ability to take him out at will.

So we are left with the question -- did Bush decide not to take out Zarqawi's camp, when presented with that information? If he decided against it, why?

Note that the quote comes from a former National Security Council member.

Ishkur has replaced his old and busted internet guide to electronica with a new and enslickened version. It made even me, a mid thirties blues and americana entusiast, long for the days when I used to go to the raves back in Ohio, before they got all corporate and shit. 
 

Murdoc has posed an interesting question:

There's been a lot of talk about how we might know where Osama is and how there might be a big operation along the Pakistan border soon. There's also been a lot of talk about how the capture of OBL might be "managed" by the Bush administration for maximum political effect. I get the feeling that whenever he's caught, there's going to be a general outcry of "politicization."

So I'm taking a poll to attempt to determine what window is available to
capture OBL without appearing to have staged it.

Whether the capture will have appeared to be politicized will depend on two things. One, the party affilation of the beholder, and the backstory behind the capture. For some, no matter when bin Laden is captured, it will be a nefarious Rove-orchestrated plot designed to seduce the befuddled masses away from the clearly superior Democratic candidate.
Others might think so if there is any indication that the intelligence services and armed forces had knowledge of his whereabouts for a significant length of time befoe the apprehension. How long "significant" is will again likely depend on party affiliation.

Absent that kind of information, I think most people will assume that we just caught him. The only capture date after which a majority of the public would wonder if it had been stage managed would be in the month before the election. Indeed, it might almost be better to intentionally capture him after the election.

So I voted for Oct 1; but for many on the left, it will be anytime after right now.

In any event, go over there and cast your vote.

While that word was invented by the Germans to describe the pleasure they experienced in observing the misfortunes of teh French, I think that many Americans have shared that pleasure in hearing that Martha Stewart has been found guilty of obstructing justice and lying to the government about why she unloaded her ImClone stock just before the price plummeted. Me, I will miss her warm presence on the airwaves, and her helpful tips which might (if I applied myself diligently) make me almost as good as her.

I wonder what tips she could come up with for celebrating a fine and gracious prison Christmas when constrained by a nine by nine cell.

Dude.

This Sunday the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees will play their first game since the spiritual and literal beating that was Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS.

Sure it's just a stupid Grapefruit League matchup, devoid of larger meaning, but do you seriously believe it won't be a kickass game, a prologue to a tooth-and-nail dogfight of a regular season? In my nightmares I still see that Pedro pitch hang fat over the plate like a full moon in the September sky, and improbable "hero" ("dickhead') Aaron Boone smack that dinger over the fence. The sports reels here in New England were for the next week full of self-lacerating hair-shirtery and endless replays. Then came the offseason: The Wooing of Jose Contreras. Jose Contreras joins the side of Evil. The Wooing of A-Rod. A-Rod too dons the Pinstripes and joins the side of Evil. Executive sniping and backbiting. More of the same. And all that was before the snow started to melt.

Ass: meet couch. Beer, Pretzels and Mayhem will be here soon.

Researchers at the University of California at Berkely have developed working, strength-enhancing exoskeletons. The device fits over the legs, and allows the 'pilot' to carry both the weight of the exoskeleton and aseventy pound backpack as if the whole thing weighed only five pounds.

The device's success where many others have failed is apparently in the software that the system uses to effectively cooperate with the human wearer. The researchers say that there next goal is to increase the capacity of the system, and to work on miniaturizing the engine and other components.

One of the biggest problems facing the Army today is the weight of all the gear that they have to carry. If soldiers can carry 120 pounds of gear like it was a fanny pack with a camera and water bottle, that will kick ass. Or more to the point, they will kick ass. Soldiers can be better armored, carry more ammo, and yet still have the endurance to fight at the end of the march.

Powered armor is clearly right around the corner. And giant fighting robots can't be far behind.

[wik] This link might actually work, and gives you more links to more information as well.

Could someone please tell me why the crying fuck this wasn't tried before?

U.S. forces searching for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden along the mountainous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan will soon implement high-tech surveillance tactics in the region, enabling them to monitor the area 24 hours a day, seven days a week, CNN has learned.

It's believed that the constant surveillance of the border region and the "squeeze play" by U.S. and Pakistani forces surrounding the mountainous frontier will present the best chance ever to net the world's most-wanted terrorist.

We've suspected for TWO YEARS that's where the shitrat has been hiding... why only NOW with the spyplanes and the satellites and the squeezing and the m'd'hoy glavinating?

Could the war in Iraq have been a... distraction?

[wik] Asked and answered. Though I'm not completely talked out of my tree yet, Buckethead and GeekLethal have provided plausible explanations for the news story. Thanks, gents!

Winds of Change's "Armed Liberal" has a thought-provoking post up on the topic, as related to electronic voting and the US on the world stage, that should be widely read. Although I disagree in part with his conclusions (the most important problem?), that doesn't mean I disagree with the underlying premise whatsoever.

Before he gives us another musical masterpiece, and we all live to regret it. Oops! Too late! Junkie XL is back with RadioJXL. I bought the double CD ($13 at Tower, for the moment); I bought the online extras for $6.99. You should too.

Highlights so far are Broken (vocals by Feeder's Grant Harrison), and Tennis...really fantastic stuff if you're into the Electronica thing.

Just like Merrill Lynch, I'll rate this as a strong buy.

I picked up a pair of M-Audio BX-8 reference monitors for my home studio (Cakewalk Sonar, Propellerhead Reason, Spectrasonics Atmosphere, Echo Audio MiaMIDI), and rapidly encountered the terrible low fidelity of your average MP3 files. I have a ton of CDs, and I've carefully encoded using "recommended audiophile settings" with high bitrate MP3s, over the past couple of years. The new speakers have shown me that MP3 is crap.

What is NOT crap is AAC, Apple's format for iTunes and iPod. I've done encodings at the 160k bit rate, and they are dramatically better than the equivalent rate MP3s. Next stop is Ogg Vorbis, for another quality check. I like the ideas behind Ogg, but the fidelity just has to be there...

Readers may not know that our own Johno is a fairly badass bass player. Next time I'm around I think I want to hear the amplified version, instead of the thwacky sounds we should only hear after all the oil is gone and we're living off seal fat in igloos.

Noted author, songwriter, raconteur, salsa merchant, barbecue chef, friend to transvestites, and all-around hero to Johno, Kinky Friedmanis running for Governer of Texas. That's right. The craziest Semite west of the Pecos, and genius behind the song "They Just Don't Make Jews Like Jesus Anymore" is running for the same post that bred our currect pars-dent.

"I want to fight the wussification of the state of Texas. I want to rise and shine and bring back the glory of Texas," Friedman said. "I am a writer of fiction who tells the truth."

According to the Houston Chronicle,

"There are no skeletons in my closet. They are all bleaching on a beach somewhere," he said.

You want to know Kinky's stand on gun control?

"I do not carry a gun myself, so if someone is going to shoot me, they better remember to bring their own weapon."

On abortion?

"I am not pro-life, I am not pro-choice, I am pro football."

On the serious side, Kinky would like to establish a Texas Peace Corps where people could volunteer and help the state. He was a member of the Peace Corps in Borneo, where he taught agriculture to people who had been successfully farming for 2,000 years.

He would like to see nondenominational prayer in school and make Texas a state that does not allow animal shelters or pounds to kill abandoned or stray pets.

He has no plans to get a make-over for the campaign. He will smoke his cigars and wear his cowboy hat low over his curly hair.

"I got a straight perm a few months ago. It was so bad that it made me look like Hitler as a used car salesman," he said.

Let's all move to Texas, buy a shotgun, and cast a vote for Kinky!

I have discovered a new version of the famed whack-the-penguin game so graciously shown to us by Minister Buckethead in January. Check out the gory version here. The trick is to get the severed penguin head to hit several landmines in succession, launching it much farther than the yeti can do on its own.

Some have been complaining about the delays in the adoption of the Iraqi constitution. Der Kommissar has an interesting take on the events surrounding the adoption of another country's constitution.

Erstwhile Cincinnatti Reds owner, Nazi apologist, and walking argument for enforced eugenics Marge Schott died Tuesday, March 2, 2004. I don't know what withered Valhalla waits for people like her, but I bet it looks like a Waffle House.

There may be some proof that Microsoft is behind SCO's recent raising of capital. SCO has been trying to suppress Linux usage through a series of highly doubtful IP lawsuits. But...a while back they were suddenly funded to the tune of $50 million. There is nothing that this company can conceivably do that merits that money, so many of us have been wondering about the thinking.

"I realize the last negotiations are not as much fun, but Microsoft will have brough in $86 million for us including Baystar. The next deal we should be able to get from $16-20, but it will be brutial as it is for
go to makerket work and some licences. I know we can do this , if everyone stays on board and still wants to do a deal. I just want to get this deal and move away from corp dev and out into the marketing andfield dollars....In this market we can get $3-5 million in incremental deals and not have to go through the gauntlet which will get tougher next week with the SR VP's."

If this memo is true, it all makes sense. The $50 million was nothing to Microsoft, who wants Linux damaged. The investors who supplied it are...not interested in their investment...

Is this anti-trust? Will this White House investigate Microsoft?

This landed on Winds of Change. Maybe it's a bit clearer than the ones I've written before on the same topic.

Supply/demand charts don't mean a thing to people who don't have jobs. We're not particularly close to one of the historical lows for employment at the moment. Employment to population _is_ worrying low at the moment, and it seems to keep dropping.

Let's be clear on what's happened since trickle-down economics became popular. You can easily look up the studies for yourself on income and employment (Saenz and Piketty, IRS site, CBO site), but the gist of it is this: Since the late 70's, capital gains taxes have been cut in half, as have income taxes on the wealthiest 2% or so of the population. The line being force-fed to the public was that this would "stimulate" the economy and raise all boats with the tide. What has in fact happened?

Constant dollar income from 1972 to 2000 rose by 4%, if you are in the _bottom_ 99% of income earners. If you're in the top 1%, constant dollar income increased by over 500% (Saenz, Piketty). Furthermore, if you were in the 99% to 99.5% bracket, your income increased by about 40% (which weights the upper bracket even further).

Meanwhile, as we were dramatically cutting taxes on the wealthiest political donors, we _increased_ social security taxes, circa 1983. Why did we do this? To "save" the system, so it would have enough money to pay for baby boomer retirements, amongst other things. Note that because social security taxes cut off at 87k (today, somewhat less earlier), social security taxes fall disproportionately on the poor and middle class. Three quarters of Americans pay MORE in social security taxes than they do in income taxes.

Instead of setting aside the money, the geniuses in BOTH parties simply added it to the general fund and spent it, leaving a shiny IOU in place of the cash.

So poor and middle class people have been _overpaying_ into the social security fund. Where is the extra money going? Why, it was given to the highest income earners in the form of a tax cut! So we cut taxes on the wealthiest because there is a "surplus", and we pay for it by transferring money out of the social security silo, to balance the general fund's budget.

There is only ONE fair solution...if too much money is in the social security fund (and over the past 20 years there has been), GIVE IT BACK TO THE PEOPLE WHO PUT IT THERE. We call them the poor and middle class, in this country. Why on earth would we give THEIR RETIREMENT MONEY (and YOURS) to the highest income individuals?

Our "conservative" friends tell us that by letting top income earners avoid taxes, we somehow stimulate the economy. Exactly how much "stimulation" does the economy need to undergo to make up for the MASSIVE THEFT of retirement savings from the poor and middle class.

Go figure out for yourself...the general fund has borrowed over $1.8 trillion from social security. What part of that did YOU contribute? Would you be better off with that in your retirement account, or are you better off with trickle-down BS and tax avoidance schemes for the wealthy?

I think the election is all about the economy, and all about ethical fiscal management of public resources. There are a lot of folks who orbit this blog who'd want to say it's about security. I agree, but security has both a long term and a short term. Short term is military, and is not really all that much of an issue. The course has been set, and a President of either party isn't going to vary too much. Longer term we need a solid economy to _sustain_ that security. Taxes as a percentage of GDP are at their lowest levels (around 15%, down from 19.5% recently) since the 1950s. What, YOUR taxes are way higher than that? You're right. They are; you pay way too much in tax, between federal income, social security, and medicare. The reason you pay way too much is that there are others who don't pay their share.

Guess it's not hard to figure out which side of this I'm on. But here's the thing: Exactly what does Kerry have to say about this situation? So far...nothing substantive. Hopefully it'll come. Bush's policies have clearly favored the same failed trickle-down policies we've been suffering under for the past twenty years.

We have two decades that shows us that the effect of cutting taxes on the the wealthiest of Americans has the effect of...reducing how much tax they pay.

This essential flaw has been masked by steadily increasing and incomprehensible public debts. Out of sight, out of mind...

The recent announcement that NASA scientists have concluded that surface of Mars - at least where the opportunity rover is exploring - was once a wet place has space enthusiasts rather excited. For those who don't see why this is a good thing, nevermind. It's a space thing and you wouldn't understand.

Just kidding. The fact that at least one place on Mars was certifiably wet has many implications. It means that there was once another place in the solar system that was habitable. This does not by any means guarantee that there was at any point life on Mars, but by studying the geological history of Mars, we can learn things that we could never learn by studying the Earth alone. Science moves much faster when researchers have two things to compare. We will learn from Mars how life didn't evolve under conditions similar to those on Earth, and from this learn more about how it did on Earth. We can learn about climate, and how it goes wrong. (Maybe Mars was hit by global warming? The sky is falling!)

Also, the fact that there was once surface water raises the big question, "Where is it now?" If this water is bound up in the rocks, or in subsurface permafrost or ice deposits, that means that we could potentially get at it, and use it for human settlements or even for terraforming.

And besides, it's just plain cool to imagine what Mars might have looked like with oceans and seas. Like this:

A view down the Valles Marineris.

Or imagine sailing on these seas:

Or sailing up to the very base of the tallest mountain in the Solar System:

... and a case of scotch. Let's go to Disneyworld! Well, not quite . But Roy Disney did lament the lack of rifles at the stockholder's convention, and expressed frustration that things will be much harder to sort out using peaceful methods. In another surprising statement, Roy compared the prospect of Eisner's departure with the death of the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz. Many were shocked that Roy referred to a Warner Bros. film.

Associated Press is reporting a minor leak of trace amounts of sarin from a storage bunker in AL.

Sarin, for the uninitiated, is a chemical weapon of the nerve variety, meaning it messes with your nervous system and ultimately causes suffocation. Not so different from a can of Raid, except sarin has no odor or color. And presumably no flavor.

Thing is, last fall I took a slightly unorthodox vacation and was fussing about not far from those bunkers. The bunkers I was around were long abandoned, and USED to hold WMD munitions. The only one I was actually in was empty, but....

Maybe I should wonder about this rash...?

John Kerry on the American Urban Radio Network:

President Clinton was often known as the first black president. I wouldn't be upset if I could earn the right to be the second.

Two viewpoints: First, Leon Kass (bioethics council member) claims that the council is balanced and that politics are not involved.

Or, you could read this article, in which Elizabeth Blackburn (one of the ejected scientists) is quoted as saying, "I think this is Bush stacking the council with the compliant".

You might also want to read Glenn Reynolds' take on it. He's pretty harsh, and he's GOP.

As with foreign policy, economics, taxation and religion, this President doesn't like being inconvenienced by opposing views.

Now you know. If you need a gas mask, these people have an ill-designed website where you can acquire one. Then you need to learn the care and feeding of gas masks.

Bonus picture:

It is the centenary of the birth of Theodore Geisel, the man who made it possible for Jesse Jackson to read "Green Eggs and Ham" on SNL and permanently damage my brain. For all kinds of nonsensical activities involving crude and perversely drawn creatures and words that don't mean a thing but rhyme very well, go here, or here. 

"The Lorax speaks for the trees!" If there is anything aside from the sanctimoniousness, lies, arrogance and delusion that turned me away from the environmentalist movement, it's that phrase.

[wik] It has been pointed out that I got the quote wrong. Here is the correct quote, in context - we're all about context:

"Mister!" he said with a sawdusty sneeze,

"I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees.

I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.

And I'm asking you, sir, at the top of my lungs"

he was very upset as he shouted and puffed

"What's that THING you've made out of my Truffula tuft?”

It should be noted that the Lorax' fear is overwrought. Clearcuts are, after all, only temporary meadows. Who hates meadows?

[alsø wik] While looking for the actual words the actual Lorax spoke instead of the wrong words in put in my quote, I found this:

Rejected Dr. Seuss Books:

1. One Bitch, Two Bitch, Dead Bitch, Blue Bitch
2. Herbert the Pervert Likes Sherbert
3. Fox in Detox
4. Who Shat in the Hat?
5. Horton Hires a Ho
6. The Flesh-Eating Lorax
7. How the Grinch Stole Columbus Day
8. Your Colon Can Moo---Can You?
9. Zippy the Rabid Gerbil
10. The Cat in the Blender
11. Marvin K. Mooney, Get the Fuck Out!
12. Are You My Proctologist?
13. Yentl the Lentil
14. My Pocket Rocket Needs A Socket
15. Aunts in My Pants
16. Oh, the Places You'll Scratch and Sniff!
17. Horton Fakes an Orgasm
18. The Grinch's Ten Inches

Yesterday was the Massachusetts Democratic Primary, in which resident dirtbag John Kerry stomped the opposition like Warren Sapp playing pee-wee league. Although I am unimpressed with Kerry (call it anti-impressed; null-impressed; I got my hate on) as a candidate, a person, and a user of valuable oxygen, I have been deeply impressed by the efforts of another Democratic contender: Dennis Kucinich.

Now, I know what you'll say. "He's crazy! He's incompetent! He'll get us all killed! Have you ever been to Cleveland?" And yes, he's all that and a box of hammers, and Cleveland was a stink-pit for a while there thanks to him, but consider this. In the weeks before the Primary, only one candidate's supporters were out stumping in my district. Only one candidate's supporters were flyering, signing, speechifying, and pressing the flesh. Only one candidate's supporters took the time to personally hand me a flyer and ask if I had any questions-- and then proceeded to answer questions. Only one candidate's supporters wrote my wife (a registered Dem) a very nice and poorly-spelled personal letter making a case for his campaign and asking for her vote. Guess who.

He might be crazy, but his organization cares enough to keep trying for the sake of their message. He might be incompetent, but of all the men running for President, Dennis Kucinich is the only one who has the courage to stick to his insane, dangerously radical convictions. He's got integrity.

Why's he the only one?

I will be mostly absent from this site for a little while: "real life" intrudes.

But I would like to take a second to plug Bravo's series "Keen Eddie," which is one of the best new shows on TV. Watch it in reruns this weekend, and start tuning in Wednesdays at 10:00. Really fantastic.

From murdoc, we hear that there is a new Heinlein movie-book-adaptation thingy in the works. Heinlein's classic juvenile novel Have Spacesuit, Will Travel has been given to the Oscar winning screenwriter David Reynolds (Finding Nemo) for conversion into what hopefully will be the first decent adaptation of a Heinlein book. No word on when the movie is planned to be released.

As I commented in mudoc's post, the track record for Heinlein movie adaptations is abysmal. %$#&^&#$#*ing Verhoeven crucified one of my favorite all time novels. He and his @#$%head screenwriter completely missed the point of the book. And worse, in the HBO 'making of' special, they went on and on about how this movie is a tribute to the master, and how much they admired his work. After seeing just the preview, I wondered if they had even read the blurb on the back of the book. The Puppet Masters wasn't quite as bad, but didn't go beyond mediocre.

What I would most like to see would be for some talented indie-type director to create a film noir version of Heinlein's novella "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag." First, because it's a great story. It's creepy, ingenious, and has some of Heinlein's better dialog. Second, because short works make better movies. A page of a movie script is equal to about a minute of film time. And also roughly equivalent to a page in prose. So, for a two hour movie, you need about 120 pages of text. Anything more, and you have to start cutting. Get a really big novel, and you have to cut a lot. This is one reason why Dick's stories make better movies - they are the right length. And also why Dune and LoTR are so difficult.

Heinlein's early novels tended toward short, most are less than 200 pages. Better targets for adaptation. Though they can still be screwed up, as witness the two Heinlein movies we have. (And I hope they never make a movie out of Stranger in a Strange Land) There is great potential in several Heinlein books. Double Star is a great political thriller - and could even be removed from the science fiction context and still be a great movie. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a ripping yarn about a revolution, an intelligent computer who likes practical jokes, and dropping really big rocks on the Earth. Starman Jones is a great adventure, as is Red Planet. The first half of Glory Road could be better than all but three fantasy movies ever made.

And frankly, I'd still like to see a real version of either Starship Troopers or Puppet Masters.

gwiawnt wobowt sowushowns gwowp: 

[hat tip: Mapgirl]
 

The Village Voice is reporting that John Kerry did some very, very bad things when he was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on P.O.W./ M.I.A. Affairs in the early nineties. The POW issue has been a contentious one since the end of the Vietnam War. Many people are convinced that the government in general, and the DoD in particular have acted to cover up evidence that the Vietnamese still had living American prisoners. And there is a lot of evidence to support that contention. The general apathy of a public eager to 'move on' and put painful memories behind them has contributed to an atmosphere where this is possible.

But this article makes the claim that Kerry actively participated in these activities when he was chair of the select committee.

In the committee's early days, Kerry had given encouraging indications of being a committed investigator. He said he had "leads" to the existence of P.O.W.'s still in captivity. He said the number of these likely survivors was more than 100 and that this was the minimum. But in a very short time, he stopped saying such things and morphed his role into one of full alliance with the executive branch, the Pentagon, and other Washington hierarchies, joining their long-running effort to obscure and deny that a significant number of live American prisoners had not been returned. As many as 700 withheld P.O.W.'s were cited in credible intelligence documents, including a speech by a senior North Vietnamese general that was discovered in Soviet archives by an American scholar.

Here are details of a few of the specific steps Kerry took to hide evidence about these P.O.W.'s.

• He gave orders to his committee staff to shred crucial intelligence documents. The shredding stopped only when some intelligence staffers staged a protest. Some wrote internal memos calling for a criminal investigation. One such memo—from John F. McCreary, a lawyer and staff intelligence analyst—reported that the committee's chief counsel, J. William Codinha, a longtime Kerry friend, "ridiculed the staff members" and said, "Who's the injured party?" When staffers cited "the 2,494 families of the unaccounted-for U.S. servicemen, among others," the McCreary memo continued, Codinha said: "Who's going to tell them? It's classified."

  Kerry defended the shredding by saying the documents weren't originals, only copies—but the staff's fear was that with the destruction of the copies, the information would never get into the public domain, which it didn't. Kerry had promised the staff that all documents acquired and prepared by the committee would be turned over to the National Archives at the committee's expiration. This didn't happen. Both the staff and independent researchers reported that many critical documents were withheld.

• Another protest memo from the staff reported: "An internal Department of Defense Memorandum identifies Frances Zwenig [Kerry's staff director] as the conduit to the Department of Defense for the acquisition of sensitive and restricted information from this Committee . . . lines of investigation have been seriously compromised by leaks" to the Pentagon and "other agencies of the executive branch." It also said the Zwenig leaks were "endangering the lives and livelihood of two witnesses."
• A number of staffers became increasingly upset about Kerry's close relationship with the Department of Defense, which was supposed to be under examination. (Dick Cheney was then defense secretary.) It had become clear that Kerry, Zwenig, and others close to the chairman, such as Senator John McCain of Arizona, a dominant committee member, had gotten cozy with the officials and agencies supposedly being probed for obscuring P.O.W. information over the years. Committee hearings, for example, were being orchestrated to suit the examinees, who were receiving lists of potential questions in advance. Another internal memo from the period, by a staffer who requested anonymity, said: "Speaking for the other investigators, I can say we are sick and tired of this investigation being controlled by those we are supposedly investigating."
• The Kerry investigative technique was equally soft in many other critical ways. He rejected all suggestions that the committee require former presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush to testify. All were in the Oval Office during the Vietnam era and its aftermath. They had information critical to the committee, for each president was carefully and regularly briefed by his national security adviser and others about P.O.W. developments. It was a huge issue at that time.
• Kerry also refused to subpoena the Nixon office tapes (yes, the Watergate tapes) from the early months of 1973 when the P.O.W.'s were an intense subject because of the peace talks and the prisoner return that followed. (Nixon had rejected committee requests to provide the tapes voluntarily.) Information had seeped out for years that during the Paris talks and afterward, Nixon had been briefed in detail by then national security advisor Brent Scowcroft and others about the existence of P.O.W.'s whom Hanoi was not admitting to. Nixon, distracted by Watergate, apparently decided it was crucial to get out of the Vietnam mess immediately, even if it cost those lives. Maybe he thought there would be other chances down the road to bring these men back. So he approved the peace treaty and on March 29, 1973, the day the last of the 591 acknowledged prisoners were released in Hanoi, Nixon announced on national television: "All of our American P.O.W.'s are on their way home."

...A year after he issued the committee report, on the night of January 26, 1994, Kerry was on the Senate floor pushing through a resolution calling on President Clinton to lift the 19-year-old trade embargo against Vietnam. In the debate, Kerry belittled the opposition, saying that those who still believed in abandoned P.O.W.'s were perpetrating a hoax. "This process," he declaimed, "has been led by a certain number of charlatans and exploiters, and we should not allow fiction to cloud what we are trying to do here."

If this is true, and it seems plausible, then there we have another very big reason not to like Kerry. [Hat tip: Dad.]

Sooner or later we're going to run out of cheap oil. There's plenty of disagreement about when that's going to happen. Ingenious humans will do clever battle with oil fields to pull more out; that pattern has already repeated. Still...the US was the world's premiere oil supplier until the 1950s, when the Hubbert Peak was reached. Domestic oil production is significant, but has declined substantially. The energy profit in the US has dwindled substantially.

Oil currently supplies around 85% of the world's energy needs. That's far too high, and we need to be doing something about it. The reason we need to start now is that if we do, we'll be able to soften the blow when oil starts getting more expensive. Estimates on when oil prices will increase substantially range from 2007 to about 2020, which provides us with a rough time frame.

Energy itself is not a problem. Solar energy provides everything we could ever use; its most convenient manifestation is wind. Hydroelectric power is also derived from sunlight (water becomes vapor, is carried by wind to mountains, flows down mountains). Gravity provides tidal forces, which can be used to generate rather incredible amounts of energy.

The price of wind power has dropped dramatically in the last two decades; at the same time, the efficiency of the equipment has risen steadily. We can now seriously consider wind as a legitimate alternative to other sources on a cost basis. We're not quite there yet, but with increases in oil price we won't be that far off. A generator/tower/battery system that can easily power an entire home (or ranch, for that matter) costs about $13,000 these days. When compared to the cost of a house, this is a small cost. On certain power grids, you can even sell excess power back to the utility grid...under those situations the grid acts as your storage device. You push power back into the grid when you have too much. The grid can shift this power to where it's needed. When you don't have enough, you can pull.

Hydroelectric-capable watersheds in the US are largely exploited at this point, but are capable of delivering a pretty large amount of power. We do pay a price in environmental terms for this, but maybe that price is acceptable.

Tidal forces are particularly power, yielding an energy profit of at least 15 to 1 (for each unit of energy expended to collect, you yield back 15). Tidal is capital intensive, but incredibly clean and possesses almost unlimited capacity.

Since I'm Canadian, I'll point out that Canada's hydroelectric watershed is mostly untapped, and is capable of generating far more power than the population could ever use. Likewise, we could turn most of the northern parts of our provinces into giant wind generating farms and nobody would notice. The Bay of Fundy is the world's premiere site for tidal generation; with tides in excess of 50 feet every six hours (due to the Bay's length matching the resonant frequency of global tidal patterns) the amount of energy being generated by the bay on a continous basis could supply all energy we need on the continent, if we could collect and transmit it. So Canada is good. ;)

The thing is, let's say there's effectively no oil. We can create plenty of electricity, though. Farms will need to convert their machinery to use electric engines. In fact, just about everything is going to have to convert to be that way. Suburban sprawl is going to be more of a necessity, because homeowners will want to have their own generators. Each house might end up having two or three large generators, possibly generating around 10 kilowatts or more a day, feeding into a battery bank. This overcapacity can be used to charge up the family vehicles; we can anticipate improvements in battery technology that will greatly extend the range of electric vehicles.

We've seen market corrections at work over the past couple of years. The market corrects very harshly. Can we not use a little foresight here and soften this particular landing? Can we not use our government to guide technology development and infrastructure development in the right direction? If the economy must absorb the shock of increasing oil prices, we need to spread that shock out across the biggest stretch of time possible.

We also have a tremendous opportunity to become world leaders in all of these technologies. The long view depends on it.

Occasionally coherent news site Al-Bawaba is reporting a "social and political crisis" over shooting an Arab version of the tacky reality show "Big Brother" in Bahrain.

Production was suspended after a "general outcry" over the show, meaning 1000 protestors hired by Islamist MPs made alot of noise about the show violating Islamic traditions. Whatever that means- does the Koran specify a particular television show over another? How would one watch TV in a properly Islamic manner? Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC), the channel producing and airing the show, made some mild protestation about the hubbub but readily caved.

But if you read the whole piece, substituting "Clear Channel" for "MBC" and "Howard Stern" for "Big Brother", you will probably be amused at first... then that icy knot forms in your gut and you realize that it's really not as funny as it is terrifying.

So it seems the West and the Arab worlds are really not so far apart culturally. Each world allows a tiny but angry religious right to decide what people can see and hear.

From the New York Times:

The entertainment industry's pursuit of tough new laws to protect copyrighted materials from online piracy is bad for business and for the economy, according to a report being released today by the Committee for Economic Development, a Washington policy group that has its roots in the business world.

While this may be unsurprising to some, it will certainly come as a shock to the RIAA, should they ever read the report. The article continues:

Until recently, those who opposed strong copyright protections have been characterized by the entertainment industry as a leftist fringe with no respect for the value of intellectual property.

"The ideas of copy-left, or of a more liberal regime of copyright, are receiving wider and wider support," said Debora L. Spar, a professor at Harvard Business School. "It's no longer a wacky idea cloistered in the ivory tower; it's become a more mainstream idea that we need a different kind of copyright regime to support the wide range of activities in cyberspace."

...The group called for a two-year moratorium on changes to copyright laws and regulations to allow for more public debate. "Our first concern should be to 'do no harm,' " the report said.

Sensible advice that.

This whole gay marriage thing reminds me of the original women's suffrage debate all the way back in the 1850's. (Yes, the 1850's. Now, ask yourself why the 14th and 15th Amendments, passed after the Civil War, specify "male[s]" as citizens and voters.)

In particular, a great quote comes to mind. Judge Hurlbut of Massachusetts wrote to Susan B. Anthony in the early '50s on the question of why women couldn't be allowed to vote: "[y]ou have the argument, but custom and prejudice are against you, and they are stronger than truth and logic."

Arab News, an English-language daily that covers the Arab world, discusses the new sandy action flick "Hidalgo". The movie is based around a hoss race across the desert, ca 1900, in which uber-stud Viggo Mortensen out-hosses the locals.

Apparently the film has run afoul of culturally sensitive Arabs everywhere due to portrayals of Arab characters conforming to unspecified stereotypes. Ibrahim Cooper, head of CAIR, said:

"Given the growing prejudice against Islam, Muslims and Arabs, we believe a film with this type of dialogue and imagery could have a negative impact on the lives of ordinary American Muslims and Arab-Americans", and adds, “We sincerely hope that anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bigotry will not be added to historical inaccuracy in a film that is being marketed to families".

So.... we all know it's just a movie right? Like, for fun?

If you read the whole article, you'll find that Disney agreed to give CAIR an advance screening. You know, to make sure it wouldn't upset people of Arab decent or Muslims in America. Seemingly they failed, but the larger point is unmistakable. And ironically the new stereotype that Hooper and other commenters on this piece perpetuate is that of the dour, literalist, humorless Arab rumor monger who sees a Jewish plot behind every "negative" portrayal of Islam or its followers, whether in real life or in make-believe.

It's interesting that the Arab press, which is largely anti-American and its reportage can be cover for terroristic propaganda, blames America for its own portrayal in modern media. Yet for a fanciful adventure story, set well over 100 years ago, and a movie to boot, THAT's bigotry.

It seems that this is the future of filmmaking. Develop an idea, wash it through the lawyers; produce a rough cut, wash it through the focus groups; edit a final cut, wash it through every ethnic, cultural, fraternal, and linguistic organization conceivable; once more through the lawyers, then to your local megaplex for you to sort of enjoy. If there's any fun left in the thing.

As part of my cunning plan to become the next Donald Trump, I now have a townhouse to rent. Anyone in the DC metro area who is looking for a place to live, I have for your consideration a three bedroom, two and a half bath townhouse. It has a finished basement; washer and dyer, dishwasher, and new refrigerator; and a fenced-in brick patio. It's in Springfield, Virginia in the Newington Forest area, and is a nice brick faced townhouse located on a cul-de-sac. It's very convenient to the Metro, being right off the Fairfax County Parkway five minutes from Franconia Metro on the Blue Line. All this for $1650 per month. If you're interested, send me an email at [email]rent@perfidy.org[/email].