Sunday, December 30, 2007
Coltrane's beloved nightmare
Friday, December 28, 2007
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Huckabee's other message
Sunday, December 23, 2007
I miss these guys
Hat Tip: Mickey Kaus.
Friday, December 21, 2007
The Ron Paul Fascination
Ron Paul's historical assessment is actually quite right. Tyranny is old, and an easy choice. Liberty, i.e. self-reliance, individual rights, personal freedom--*that* is new in the world of political ideas. And it is the only idea that can unite prostitutes, academics, pot-heads, ranchers, rednecks, urbanites, and whatever other stripe of American is out there (read the article linked above for that to make any sense).
Go Ron Paul!
Stairway to Heaven
The Doors version is here. The video kinda sux, but it's very musically true--a lot of fun.
And so it begins
For all those CIOs out there in the US aerospace industry that know exactly what I'm talking about, drink this in. You are fat, dumb, and happy multi-millionaires that seem to have no other quality than being both untouchable *and* incompetent at the same time--so congratulations. But you helped destroy a multi-billion dollar industry in your country through your stupidity, sloth, cowardice, and inaction. Sleep well.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Anger Issues
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
When Galaxies Collide

From the article:
"This composite image shows the jet from a black hole at the center of a galaxy striking the edge of another galaxy, the first time such an interaction has been found. In the image, data from several wavelengths have been combined. X-rays from Chandra (colored purple), optical and ultraviolet (UV) data from Hubble (red and orange), and radio emission from the Very Large Array (VLA) and MERLIN (blue) show how the jet from the main galaxy on the lower left is striking its companion galaxy to the upper right. The jet impacts the companion galaxy at its edge and is then disrupted and deflected, much like how a stream of water from a hose will splay out after hitting a wall at an angle."
One question though. If not even light can escape a black hole, how can a "jet" shoot out of it?
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Monday, December 17, 2007
Not Very Nice, Hitch
I've wondered for years now how Hitchens can continue to hold his nose and still support that disaster of man because of a war that he grotesquely mismanaged. I understand how important the war is and how much Hitch wants to fight it, but one would think that would make him more angry--like supporting an orphanage just to find out that it's being run by child abusers.
I just don't understand how Hitchens--a guy who has utter contempt for religion and who has always been a fierce civil libertarian--can continue to support W. And I think it a bit hypocritical of him to publicly skewer Huckabee with that kind of nastiness when W has largely received a pass from him for years now. About the only major differences between Huckabee and W, from what I can see is (1) Huckabee is not morally lazy and (2) he can out-think W with half his brain tied behind his back.
The Softer Side of Hillarah
Chinese "Cyber Militia"
This is old news to anyone in IT security (and Time first wrote about the subject years ago), but the article might be interesting to those who don't work in the field.
What is interesting to me--apart from the article--are all the Fortune 1000 companies that are all too eager to do business with, and in, China when China's government all but openly sponsors intellectual property theft. Believe me, it was just not the US government that was hit by Titan Rain and other coordinated attacks from China. In fact, the running gag amongst some of us IT security weenies is something akin to "why don't we just give them all of our intellectual property and save everyone a lot of time and money?"
Then again, I suppose I would be out of a job if they did. So...I guess we will just have to get used to blatant, state-sponsored, multi-billion dollar theft and hope it doesn't hurt us too badly. The US government is so beholden to Chinese loans that nothing substantial will be done about it for years, if within our lifetimes. I would love to be wrong about that--but I don't think I will be.
Cruella DeVille

She and her husband are accused of, basically, enslaving two Indonesian women and could face 40 years in prison.
From the article:
"They described how the two Indonesian women had been punished for misbehaviour such as sleeping late and stealing food from the dustbin to supplement their meagre meals.
The women said they had been beaten with brooms and umbrellas, slashed with knives, made to take freezing showers and climb stairs repeatedly.
One said she had been forced to eat several hot chillies and then her own vomit."
Hot Chicks for Ron Paul
Putin the Sweetheart
Coronation in Jeopardy?
Getting Interesting
Obama is still leading in Iowa, but not much (if at all) outside the margin of error and Edwards may receive a large endorsement in Iowa. And all of this has the big asterisk next to it in that many of Iowa's caucus goers still claim to be undecided. Bumpy ride ahead for the D's--making NH hyper-critical for Hillarah and SC hyper-critical for both Obama and Edwards. And, perhaps sentimentally, I wouldn't count out Biden too terribly much just yet. If Edwards or Hillarah slip, he could have some big numbers swing his way as he is commonly called the "second choice" candidate for many in both Iowa and NH, if we are to believe the reports. I wouldn't put a lot of money down on the prospect, but who knows what can/will happen in a democracy and a race like this?
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Mental Health Break
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Psycho in Chief
Whatever Dude
Gay marriage is an 'obstacle' to world peace? WTF? Well, with respect to his Holiness, what better moral leaders can one have on the teachings of the family than the Vatican? After all, they are largely old, celibate, men that gather wisdom from millenia-old stories/nightmares about turning women into salt, slaughtering neighboring villagers and enslaving their virgins, and stoning disobedient children that were written by other old (and probably also sexually frustrated, if not celibate) men chasing goats around a rock. Not sure they were pederasts, but who knows? After all, who doesn't want to rape a child? It's just the way God made us, right?
Or.......we can choose to ignore this guy who is, by all appearances, gayer than a maypole. He criticizes gay marriage as an obstacle to peace in the world?! What, as opposed to Vatican bath house adorned in supple young boys? Phuk you, Ratzinger. Phuk you and the ground you walk on (and kneel supplicantly upon--and no, not talking about prayer).
Monday, December 10, 2007
MS on the cutting edge
"Going forward, people will be able to see mini banner ads optimized for their browser type and screen size on their mobile devices when they visit the MSN Mobile portal..."
And--hope you are sitting down--"MSN Mobile will also now enable users to buy movie tickets over the phone with a credit card and download background images and ringtones." Wow! That technology has only been around for about 5 years or so! How do they do it?
Whatever.
Saturday, December 8, 2007
More Obama Propoganda
I really like the article, but the parts that get me most are:
"At its best, the Obama candidacy is about ending a war—not so much the war in Iraq, which now has a momentum that will propel the occupation into the next decade—but the war within America that has prevailed since Vietnam and that shows dangerous signs of intensifying, a nonviolent civil war that has crippled America at the very time the world needs it most. It is a war about war—and about culture and about religion and about race. And in that war, Obama—and Obama alone—offers the possibility of a truce."
And, in speaking of Obama vs. Hillarah:
"The paradox is that Hillary makes far more sense if you believe that times are actually pretty good. If you believe that America’s current crisis is not a deep one, if you think that pragmatism alone will be enough to navigate a world on the verge of even more religious warfare, if you believe that today’s ideological polarization is not dangerous, and that what appears dark today is an illusion fostered by the lingering trauma of the Bush presidency, then the argument for Obama is not that strong. Clinton will do. And a Clinton-Giuliani race could be as invigorating as it is utterly predictable.
But if you sense, as I do, that greater danger lies ahead, and that our divisions and recent history have combined to make the American polity and constitutional order increasingly vulnerable, then the calculus of risk changes. Sometimes, when the world is changing rapidly, the greater risk is caution. Close-up in this election campaign, Obama is unlikely. From a distance, he is necessary. At a time when America’s estrangement from the world risks tipping into dangerous imbalance, when a country at war with lethal enemies is also increasingly at war with itself, when humankind’s spiritual yearnings veer between an excess of certainty and an inability to believe anything at all, and when sectarian and racial divides seem as intractable as ever, a man who is a bridge between these worlds may be indispensable.
We may in fact have finally found that bridge to the 21st century that Bill Clinton told us about. Its name is Obama."
It's not that Hillarah might be "fine" as a president, it's because--at best--she will be "fine" as president. Predictable, practical, triangulating, safe, and, in the end, potentially dangerous for us by being all the latter. Politics as a board game is not what is needed *if* you agree that we are in uniquely challenged times, as I believe we are.I don't think Obama is anything close to a panacea and, if I read him right, neither does he. But he represents an entirely new chapter for the US in policy, party, foreign relations, race relations, and--perhaps most importantly--what the American Dream and what America really is today. 50 years ago the US was arguing about whether or not a man like Obama should be allowed to stay at a hotel, eat in a restaurant, walk down the sidewalk, or go to school with white people. Now he may become president of this same nation despite not having the support of much of Black Congressional and Civil Rights leaders. What a country. What a country, indeed.
Friday, December 7, 2007
Shweeeet
Another Look at McCain
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Gitmo and Habeus Corpus
The parts I especially liked:
"The final argument of the day was the rebuttal from former Solicitor General Waxman. The writ of habeas corpus, he contended, has always allowed prisoners to challenge their detention if they claim they are not warriors and are being wrongly held. The current system, he argued, does not allow for such an argument.
To illustrate his point, Waxman pointed to a case in which he said a detainee was finally released after four years in detention because the detainee, a German man, had "what other detainees have not had — a lawyer." And when the lawyer filed a habeas petition in the federal courts, and the government filed a reply with its evidence, the lawyer saw that the government claimed the detainee had associated with a named terrorist who had blown himself up.
"Within 24 hours, his counsel had affidavits not only from the German prosecuter, but from the supposedly deceased Mr. Bilgen, who is a resident of Dresden, never involved in terrorism, and fully getting on with his life," Waxman said."
FOUR YEARS we held an innocent man and he is only free because he is German...!?! Not exactly winning hearts and minds or demonstrating the US as a shining beacon of democracy, is it?
Then there is there is Scalia, proving himself ever the blowhard, pedantic douchebag:
"Do you have a single case in the 220 years of our country, or for that matter, in the five centuries of the English empire, in which habeas was granted to an alien in a territory that was not under the sovereign control of either the United States or England?" Scalia asked.
"The answer to that is a resounding yes," Waxman said."
Listen to the full exchange on C-SPAN, if fully interested, but Waxman had a hard time convincing Scalia. Waxman is obviously extremely capable, but I wish it was just a bit more of a barroom argument.
One should think that it is astonishingly palpable that the US controls the Guantanamo Bay Marine Base since we've been there for decades. If the Constitution and US law is inapplicable to detainees there in our custody because we don't include Guantanamo Bay within the borders of the United States, is it fully legal to take people out of their homes--to include US citizens--from anywhere in the world, take them out on a boat and slit their throats? Could we put them on a raft in international waters, but guarded by US military personnel, and forget about Habeus Corpus? As Waxman finally stated later, the British Parliament suspended the writ of Habeus Corpus on the High Seas for US Seamen in 1777. If it wasn't applicable, why did it have to be lifted?
Besides which, and what should seem most obvious most of all is, just how in the fuck does someone being denied the writ of Habeus Corpus, held against their will, in strict confinement, appeal to the court system?!?! Especially a seaman in shackles and the bottom of a boat. Just how in the hell is he supposed to pick up his cell phone and call his attorney? OF COURSE there aren't going to be numerous examples of Habeus extended! How are the prisoners supposed to appeal to the court system to get it extended? It's plain phuking bizarre. We're going to forgo 700 years of legal history because of a particular part of a particular war because of a, very arguably, lack of a particular precedent. I hope Kennedy does get in line and help overturn this. What a humiliation otherwise.
sXe Phil
US Pres Primary watch
Even more interesting is the rise of Huckabee. He was single digits as late as September and is now in the lead for the GOP. Don't know how well he will sell in NH (and, so far, the answer is "not well"), but an Iowa win could change his fortunes quite a bit and SC is wide open right now. Guess there is something funny in the water of Arkansas. And, perhaps most encouraging, is that the constant bickering of Giuliani and Romney may have been a waste of time. Huckabee seems to have slid in behind their sniping by like...talking about issues. That seems like a good thing.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Reason 287 or so to support Obama
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
The UK's Privacy Katrina
The questions raised over this are near-limitless, but chief amongst them should be:
1) How on earth can a junior admin have that kind of access? If *1* person without a lot of clout can access that kind of data, couldn't *1* person be bought off rather easily for such information? Multi-person integrity is rule number one through number 2973 or so with such information--force a conspiracy for it to be illegitimately obtained.
2) Disk encryption...ever heard of it? Much of it is free--the rest of it is cheap.
3) Doesn't this prove that a central repository for this kind of information is, generally speaking, a Bad Idea (TM)?
When talk of a national ID card here in the US is raised, I don't fear an evil genius in the basement of a secret mansion sending my information to the Russian mafia, I fear a lazy/uninformed/flawed admin/software product (or a combination of any and all the latter) finding a way to screw up. What if the admin is two mortgage payments behind on his house? What if he likes to gamble a bit too much? What if an organization plants someone on the inside? (Don't think it can happen? Look here). What if...you get the idea.
It's not conspiracy I fear, it's incompetence. And we need look no further than our own White House to fear that. It's not that I don't give out potentially sensitive information to my bank, my frequent flier program, even iTunes, but they need my information and they have an enormous imperative--in the way of massive cost and bad publicity--to keep it from leaking out. If they do, the government is there to hear my grievance and, hopefully, redress it. If the federal government lets it leak out, where do I go?
I feel bad for people in the UK that might get hurt from this, but I hope it shows a few here in the US how the idea of national ID cards (and the need for data security), should be looked at very, very carefully and seriously.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Kasporov in Jail
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Post 101
I'm averaging about 20 posts or so a month, which puts me on the lower end of decent bloggers, but I have a full time job and other shizzie going on, so I don't feel too terrible about it. This was supposed to be more of a journal effort anyway.
I've added blogspot's new slideshow feature which grabs images off of my public picassa album. Look for links on the right hand side. I don't guarantee satisfaction, but it might be interesting to you. Happy Thanksgiving to all, and may Phoenix have but one day that could reasonably be called "cold" before March 1 of next year.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Another Obama perk
It's not that smoking some weed will make you homeless and destitute, but have you ever seen a hard-core stoner? They're pathetic. And heroin, crack, meth...no thanks. That stuff really could make you homeless and destitute (happened to a friend of mine, actually). And the hard stuff doesn't help you get laid so, what's the point?
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Worst President Ever Watch
The Promised Land

For me, it's Central and Northern California. I've been lucky to see much of the world (though there is still much more to see, to be certain), and I have yet to see a place quite as perfect.
A buddy of mine now works for Apple computer, so I have a place to crash if I head up that way. He lives in Los Gatos, near San Jose, and is very close to the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains. So, for the first day, the matter of order was a trip to my beloved Monterey.
Went to the aquarium for the first time in about 10 years and was pleasantly surprised. It's still basically the same, of course, but now they have a young Great White and a couple sunfish in the big tank. It's the only place in the world with a Great White in captivity, and they know it can't last, but they are taking care of him for a little while until he gets a little bigger (he was caught in a fishing net). The sunfish they have there are gi-frickin-normous. The big one weighs about 1000 pounds and looks like a cross between a flounder, a flying saucer, and James Edward Almos. Just take a look at a picture of him here--I can't explain it. The pics of the jellyfish came out much better though.
After that, we did the 17 mile drive thing and had a couple whiskies out on the patio of the Spanish Bay resort listening to the Piper serenade the sunset that wasn't really there--pretty foggy. But listening to a Piper out on the tee box of one of the world's most beautiful and pristine golf courses...the fog just makes it better. Whatever sins Tom Watson may have been guilty of, forgive him. Spanish Bay absolves all.
The next day we went hiking in Big Basin Redwoods State Park. Incredible place--though the hike we took damn near killed me. I agreed to do the 10-mile-and-change hike vs. the 5-mile-and-change hike. Then I was talked into doing an 11-miles-and-change trail because the route looked fairly flat and there was more to see that way. Then, after starting out on it and, conspicuously, not being told about a detour, we were presented with a sign telling us about a controlled burn and an alternate route that added not just another mile or so, but a drastic elevation change for flavor.
Sunny point number 8 or 9, when they talk of an elevation change ranging in 1600 feet, they don't mean it in the same way as a mountain--as in go up 1600 feet and then down, but a continuous range in elevation of 1600 feet--up and down, and up and down....forever. Or so it seemed, anyway. *Then*, sunny point number 14 or so, the route ended up being uphill for the last 3 out of 4 miles. I could feel my legs starting to fail (as in, trembling and stinging quads fail) but, painfully, and thankfully, made it out of there. Enough of my sob story though.
The place is amazing. I've seen the films, the pictures, the documentaries, etc., but one is never quite prepared to really grasp how amazingly huge those trees really are until one actually sees them. And a few of those trees are older than Jesus--some maybe even older than Socrates or Julius Caesar. Most all of them over 200 feet (of which there are quite a few) are older than gunpowder, the Crusades, the discovery of the New World, Azteca, the Ming Dynasty, Islam, the Enlightenment, and the printing press. And these are trees. It's a great place to feel small and temporal. Pictures can be found here.
But before you think I've gone all hippie, know that my friend enjoyed driving his new V-8 Audi on the roads in and out of the place. I was jealous, but glad that he got more out of it than me since I was the one crashing at his place. What made me more jealous was the fact that he lives an hour or less from this place--and a shade over an hour from my beloved Monterey--whereas I live an hour away from......Casa Grande.
I had salmon with a Singapore curry sauce served in a banana leaf for dinner later that night! And it was under 20 bucks! The weather was beautiful. The women were beautiful. The scenery was beautiful. The gas stations sucked, but they are gas stations--they are supposed to suck. People there don't dine on hot dogs and taquitos with a half-gallon of orange Fanta to cleanse their palate, so they don't need nice gas stations. Instead, they eat things like salmon with a Singapore curry sauce served in a banana leaf and cleanse their palate with fine wine or gourmet coffee or ginger lemonade or, perhaps, just plain frickin' water, but it's good. godDAMMit is it good.
If that makes them snobs, fine, let me be a snob with them. But I would submit that they just know a shitload more about living well than most. No wonder they have all the money, talent, and innovation. If you were a gifted person sitting on a multi-million dollar idea, where would you want to live?
Friday, November 16, 2007
OOPS!
As Schneier quotes from the article:
[H]ow did an illegal alien from Lebanon who was working as a waitress at a shish kabob restaurant in Detroit manage to slip through extensive security background checks, including polygraphs, to land highly sensitive positions with the nation's top law enforcement and intelligence agencies?
How indeed? Though, as a person who has worked in US Intelligence, it's not *that* hard to believe. Still very improbable, yes, but some of the cliche jokes about US Intelligence aren't that far off.
My favorite part (and why we in Military MI called the FBI stooges), is this:
Prouty, according to court documents, first entered the United States from Lebanon in 1989 on a one-year nonimmigrant student visa. After her visa expired she illegally remained in the country, residing in Taylor, Mich., with her sister and another individual. In order to stay in the country and evade immigration laws, she offered money to an unemployed U.S. citizen to marry her in the summer of 1990. But according to her indictment Prouty "never lived as husband and wife with her fraudulent 'husband' and the marriage was never consummated sexually."
A shish kabob waitress with ties to Hizbullah gets into the FBI and CIA with one of the most common ploys done in ANY country to get citizenship and what is considered noteworthy for the report is whether or not she slept with the guy. *That* is hard to believe. I would have had my ass shredded about 5 seconds after my superiors read that if I submitted it in a report. And I would have deserved it.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Shallow End of the Gene Pool Watch
One huge step closer to Creeeeeeepy
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Obama
I find myself still supporting Obama, but I am still far from enamored with him. I think that is a good thing though. Were I enamored of a candidate, there would have to be something wrong with me, the candidate, or both.
Obama is normally cool and calm in his demeanor. He is normally very gracious and courteous in his remarks. Somewhat sophisticated (though I think he holds back quite a bit in the campaign), forgivably cliched in his responses at times, but always rational and decent.
He doesn't throw his hands in the air or give a thumbs-up when meeting a crowd, he politely waves and bows--or just bows. He doesn't talk in the patronizing Clinton/Gore/Hillarah style of veeeeery sloooow woooooords as if we're retarded chimps that have to be taught about the dangers of fire. He doesn't prattle on about bumper sticker slogans or pickup trucks or butterflies or bears in the woods. And he seems so....honest. One gets the impression that he has a hypersensitive bullshit meter that he has worked very, very hard to temper (I really like that part--if I'm right--because it shows much more discipline than I have).
He is a politician, so he has to round the corners of some political stances, yes, but he is very honest about his childhood and early adulthood (notice how no one brings it up now that he's been honest, btw), he tells Black church leaders that there is a problem with homophobia in the Black community, he tells an anti-war Democratic base that there will likely be a bump in his defense budget the first year or two he is in office, he tells teachers unions that--though he would dismantle the No Child Left Behind Act--accountability is still a good aspect of it and that he will maintain that part of it.
He tells us that there is a terrorist threat, but we're fighting it the wrong way. That there are threats to us, but none unmanageable. And consistently tries to remind us that we really are a great nation capable of so much more than we want to give ourselves credit for. I truly, truly believe he sees the potential of America in the same spirit Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, TR, Truman, and JFK did. Not in the Hollywood way Reagan did, but in the true, rational, tempered, and beautifully sensible way of this:
"Look at us. We are the most powerful nation in the annals of History. We have a better way. We are the only country on earth founded by the Enlightenment. We can do more, with less, and better, than any country on earth not because we are that innately brilliant or capable, but because we are so much better equipped to do it. We are the lucky ones, but we must not only realize our luck--we must act upon our luck. The only demise foreseeable for us can come from within."
And with all the above that I like so much, it worries me a little. I don't know if it will sell well to the majority. And, even if he wins the nomination, I don't think he would win a large majority in a general election--though I do think he would win. He is just too much for so many. Like, love, hate, or dislike him, I doubt any would say that he doesn't represent a substantial change for the US. And people are often, and understandably, wary of that very thing. But what a change it could be.
An end to the baby-boomer psycho drama that has been going on since the Vietnam War, an entirely new bent on foreign policy not born of realpolitik or the Messiah, a reformation of American Liberalism that is not built upon the Great Society (Noam Chompsky be GONE!)... Ahhhh, a boy can dream.
Friday, November 9, 2007
More Bireli
(UPDATE: Original source was unavailable--trying to fix that now, 11 November).
And so it Ends
Anyway, I never liked that dog--sometimes hated her guts--and wanted to, literally, kill her on more than one occasion. Freak weirdo of a mammal that cost me more money than I even want to think about (in the thousands). And, as you might imagine, she wasn't overly fond of me either. But, strangely, she was never really afraid of me or timid around me unless she knew I was mad. More strangely still, until her death she would always come up to me with a doggy smile and say hey. It was never overly affectionate, but more of a "Hey dude, what's up?" without really being too terribly interested in the answer.
I guess we just understood each other. And, if we were ever alike in anything, we realized that we can be annoying pains in the ass and that we deserve to get put in our place for it sometimes. It doesn't mean we have to hate each other afterwards. There's just not enough time for that.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
JR Don't Love Me
I'm sure that latter part gives JR pause as well, but I guess we will have to wait and see.
Monday, November 5, 2007
A Conversation about Torture II
"Wow! I wasn't expecting a response at all, much less this prompt of
one. In all honesty, thank you for your attention to this.
The short answer is that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, technically, is not
(or at least should not be) covered by the Geneva Conventions--you are right. Ideally, he should be tried by U.S. Federal law and New York State law for mass murder and a number of other charges. I still don't think torture should be condoned under those circumstances either and, as an investigator who has performed a number of interrogations, realize that if you simply scare the hell out of guy long enough he will tell you that it was him and Liberace that really stabbed Julius Caesar on the steps of the Roman Senate if that's what you want him to say. It doesn't make it necessarily so.
That aside, I wasn't talking about just him. I was talking about enemy combatants met on the the field of battle by our Armed Forces. If this is a war on terror, and I believe it is, then we should abide by the laws of war and we should abide by the Army field manual. Further, as a moral, rational, and traditional imperative, we should abide by the standard set down by George Washington during our Revolutionary War and treat enemy combatants humanely.
Which brings us back to the Sheik. If he was being held in custody by our military, (1) how was he not, at that time, considered an enemy combatant, and (2) if he was, why would our military not be subject to the same rules it has observed since George Washington, much less the Geneva Conventions?
Then General Washington wrote, after we had captured 1000 Hessians in the Battle of Trenton in 1776, "Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to Complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British Army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren..."
And, yes, piling on, John Adams wrote to his wife in a letter in 1777 about the subject "I know of no policy, God is my witness, but this — Piety, Humanity and Honesty are the best Policy. Blasphemy, Cruelty and Villainy have prevailed and may again. But they won't prevail against America, in this Contest, because I find the more of them are employed, the less they succeed."
President Lincoln Lincoln instituted the first formal code of conduct for the humane treatment of prisoners of war in 1863. Lincoln's order forbade any form of torture or cruelty, and it became the model for the 1929 Geneva Convention. Dwight Eisenhower made a point to guarantee exemplary treatment to German POWs in World War II, and Gen. Douglas MacArthur ordered application of the 1949 Geneva Convention during the Korean War, even though the U.S. was not yet a signatory. In the Vietnam War, the United States extended the convention's protection to Viet Cong prisoners even though the law did not technically require it.
To stray from this tradition and this law is, in my view, not only harmful to the war effort and unintelligent, but a betrayal of our traditions and the beginning of becoming like our enemy.
Thanks again for your attention to this.
Regards,
Travis"
A Conversation about Torture
I won't give his response in full unless he agrees to allow me (and I haven't asked as yet since I have no idea if this will continue), but I appreciate him taking the time to respond. So please read his article in full and I will post my letter to him below--grammatical errors and all.
"Sir,
Actually, torture has already been defined by the United Nations as:
"any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or
mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as
obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession,
punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is
suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a
third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind,
when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of
or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other
person acting in an official capacity."
Article3 of the Geneva Conventions prohibits "[v]iolence to life and
person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment
and torture; …outrages upon personal dignity, in particular
humiliating and degrading treatment."
Article 75 prohibits murder, "torture of all kinds, whether physical
or mental," "corporal punishment," and "outrages upon personal
dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment, … and any
form of indecent assault."
The United States is a signatory to all the above. Further, after
WWII, the United States prosecuted Nazis that claimed they only
participated in vershaerfte Vernehmung--what translates, roughly, as
"sharp questioning" or "enhanced Interrogation"--using these
definitions of torture and articles in the Geneva Conventions. Why
not deal with the matter of law and torture as it exists on the books
now? If your argument is that we should withdraw from the Geneva
Conventions, fine, say so. But to say we are not in violation of them
is palpably wrong.
Lastly, if water boarding is not torture, why did the Khmer Rouge find it so useful? If prolonged sleep deprivation is not torture, why was it the preferred method of Stalin? Does it not give you pause to be defending them as well? Does being stripped naked and shackled to a metal bed in a stress position while in a chilled room and having water poured over one's head until shaking violently from hypothermia and then having to be immediately treated by a physician so one doesn't die not qualify as torture? Would you simply dismiss such things as "not commendable" if they happened to US citizens? And as for the "threat of death" being a necessary component of torture in your view, does the death of detainees while in our captivity not prove to you that sometimes the threat of death was, indeed, quite real?"
Dig that Ron Paul
I should say that I am no sort of conservative and I disagree with much of Ron Paul's platform--in fact, a very large amount of it. But I would much, much, rather have Goldwater conservatives push the GOP platform than self-righteous evangelicals. More importantly, Ron Paul shows that one can be a conservative and anti-war, conservative and a civil libertarian, and conservative and tolerant. It has always been that way, but the last 10 years or so of American conservativism would lead one to believe otherwise.
Though rather sad to think of now, believing in civil liberties (to include Habeus Corpus, of course), a non-aggressive foreign policy, and a deep reverence for the Constitution used to be things American liberals and American conservatives didn't have to negotiate on--they were just a given. The Cold War did challenge that common ground--particularly the Vietnam War--but it seems to be eroding at a terrible, and frightening, rate now. Here's hoping we will move closer to those days of common ground again. And, paradoxically, perhaps Paul will help the Democrats grow at least a few vertebra in a new defense of civil liberties vs. capitulating to the Decider every time they have to show a spine.
The Humiliation of W
Now we see something like this. A tragicomic retelling of what has been known for some time--our CIA knew *nothing* of any accuracy regarding Saddam's WMD capacity. And the most powerful nation on earth being played the fool by a shit-can engineer looking for a green card. Is it all Bush's fault? Of course not. Is it all, ultimately, his responsibility? Of course it is. And that's the point.
Our current President has left behind nothing in the way of legacy. Nothing--except for failure. Nixon was, quite fairly, reviled by many and left the Presidency in shame. But he left behind an all-volunteer Army, took us off the antiquated gold standard, started the Environmental Protection Agency, normalized relations with China and initiated detente. Clinton was actually, legally, impeached but left behind a budgetary surplus, stopped the genocide in the former Yugoslavia, lifted millions out of poverty, pushed through the crime bill that was Giuliani's real platform for success, founded NAFTA, and reformed welfare (Giuliani's second platform of success, btw). One can have many disagreements with the former two presidents mentioned, and I have my share--even with the latter legacies they left behind. But it cannot be denied that they left something lasting.
W has left nothing of value. Nothing. He is, as Bill Maher has said, a disaster that walks like a man. His legacy is of suspending Habeus Corpus, of authorizing torture, of making America not a symbol of freedom and democracy, but a symbol of bungling neo-colonialism. A nation that spies on its citizenry, treats its great Constitution as an obstacle, the antithesis of the Enlightenment, the nightmare of Thomas Paine and George Orwell. We have become a lugubrious joke. We have played into the hands of the short-sighted, and dishonest, cynics that claim America is a collection of superstitious dimwits that worship only money in the end and care very little for anything beyond our own borders unless it makes us richer in the short term.
The aforementioned cynics saw only our potential weaknesses. And this President is the manifestation of all them. A morally lazy, elitist, superstitious plutocrat with no sophistication, no vision--a man-child that was not disciplined appropriately as a child or as an adult.
But much more than the humiliation that W may or may not feel, W is our humiliation as a nation. And we will long be apologizing for him. Or at least I hope so.
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Why I could never be a programmer
Animator vs. Animation by *alanbecker on deviantART
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
A Glimpse into the Gap
This is positively brilliant. A near-perfectly done, and very funny, article in the style of someone who isn't funny but thinks he is. I stand amazed, Roger Dudek. Amazed. I'm not sure if this is a look at a generational gap, a hipness gap, perspective gap, etc., but this article seems to embody something that a lot of us have wrestled with, meaning, something akin to the question of "what does he see that I don't or vice versa, and how can he honestly be entertained by this drivel?" One's sense of humor is a strange thing--and an insight into how the person thinks and sees the world, I would submit.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Patton Oswald
Birthday Cake
Doubt that will happen--particularly since I'm probably old enough to be at least her uncle--but she became the most beautiful woman in the world in an instant. I have not had the best few months lately and, without getting into any form of a sob story, her timing could not have been better. I actually almost became emotional. Yes, me. It's both scary and nice to think that small gestures like that can cut right through me.
So if you are ever in or around Mesa, AZ and are looking for a great breakfast place, go to TC Eggington's. You will very likely have to wait, but it's worth it. And if your waitress is an angelic looking young woman by the name of Tricia, count yourself doubly lucky--and give her a huge tip.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
German "Eccentrics" Again
The kicker: "Police estimate that around 10,000 people in Germany alone share Meiwes' fascination with cannibalism -- either eating human flesh or being eaten." What is with Germans?
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Another Possible Reason to Visit New Zealand
Anatomy lesson in Pettiness
Sunday, October 7, 2007
The World is Upside Down
Damn Hillarah Redux

I keep droning, and so does this guy and Andrew Sullivan, but too few are interested in listening thus far. Hillarah continues to be thrown up as the one with the experience and ability for the presidency, but just what the hell has she ever done in government? Thus far, her political career has been as a junior Senator and woman responsible for banging her husband (and, apparently, she's not too good at that or her hubby wouldn't be chasing the chubby chick at the office for a quick hummer). She did try to push Billy's health care agenda that, of course, was a complete disaster and that was close to 15 years ago.
Don't give me "politically active" crap, Hillarah. Jerry Falwell and Sean Penn qualify for that--doesn't mean they are experienced politicians or were ever fit for the Presidency of the United States. And everyone on the stage running against you has held elected office longer than you, save John Edwards. Yes, even Obama has more when including his state legislature experience. What have you done, Woman, officially, while in office?
And why are the D's so goddammed convinced that she is the answer for the GOP in a general election? A baby boomer with a warehouse full of baggage, intensely disliked by millions across the nation before she even opens her mouth, with nothing in the way of success to point toward political achievement, who is distrusted and even disliked by much of the base, almost no cross-over appeal, disliked by every single military person I've ever met (and I was in the Army during the Clinton administration), and is more transparent than ziploc bag in her feigned sincerity. Yep, there's a winner!
Does anyone honestly see any of the GOP candidates beating Edwards or Obama? Please. Hell, Biden or Dodd would pummel the GOP candidate as well. Gravel or Kucinich...ok fine, they can't win, but Good Lord! This year has to be year to win or it's time to dismantle the party. Can we not get out of this baby boomer psycho drama and elect someone who has actually had an original idea or two in his life? Someone who is not running as "GOP-lite?" Someone who can actually define an alternative to the current political landscape beyond some collection of boring wonk bills?
The D's have turned into battered wives. They hate it when they get beaten, but still go back to the same old crap because it's all they know and are afraid of making a stand on their own or changing their environment in any substantial way. It's ironically almost a reactionary, ultra-conservative stance. Hillarah is not a statement. Hillarah is an attempt to go into a cacoon of familiarity and a misguided attempt at not taking a risk. It might end up costing them the general election. But it will definitely cost them a chance to win a generation.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
A New Day Dawns
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Churchill was Right
It has gone almost ignored in the MSM, but a tri-partition settlement seems to make the most sense and, as mentioned in the above posting, it has large GOP support as well. What are the other options? How else can we save Kurdistan, keep a civil war from continuing unchecked, not give up the second (possibly the first) largest oil reserve in the world to terrorist organizations, and still get out before any of us die? I'm sure Senator Biden would be all ears should you have a better idea, but he has actually been in similar situations before and, nobly, called for action in Bosnia when Europe was inexplicably detained from doing anything about the genocide. He further helped craft agreements that stabilized the region after hostilities ceased. I see him far more qualified than any presidential candidate running for either party to address the issue and certainly more qualified to address the issue than our standing President, but who isn't?
I can only hope this gains even more traction. An idea that has this much support on both sides of the aisle must have some sort of compelling notion to it. I am hesitant to jump on the bandwagon with the majority most of the time, but this is far from populist and has been the minority view for quite sometime now. It's finally being viewed as the only real option left after, as I referenced above, all other options have been exhausted--and it has probably been the best idea for sometime.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Get em' Billy
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Sarah Chang
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Friends and Family
At my cousin's place, the exception to the rule was when people were not laughing. Old and new stories, off-color jokes, some booze, some food, and...well, love. It's a good way to be.
At my friend's place, I didn't know too many people there and, truthfully, she's more of my brother's friend than mine, but she's a fantastic woman and I was just flattered that I was invited. One of her friends from childhood flew in all the way from Maryland to come to the party (we are in Phoenix, AZ). And, as I was excusing myself for the evening, that same friend had left just prior to go back to Maryland. S (the birthday girl) was in tears, and I've never seen her emotional before. When I asked why she was crying, she just said, "because my best friend left again." It was enough.
I've always been distrustful of people that can't have deep emotional attachments to people, and S isn't one of them. Neither is my cousin, or members of my family, or the many friends I'm fortunate enough to have. It makes us messy, emotional, sometimes impractical, sometimes illogical, flawed, silly, and vulnerable, but human in the best way. And beautiful.
French Badass?
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
No Mercy
It was actually hard to sit through. The level of incompetency could not be captured in this close to two hour film and I can only hope that a documentary series comes out about this failed effort someday so we can have a fuller understanding. What really got me was the part when a former Iraqi general came to our Director of Strategic Policy (an Army Colonel) and said, during the height of the looting and lawlessness immediately after the fall of Baghdad, "I can have 10,000 troops on the street here next week," and it wasn't acted upon. The Colonel wanted to take him up on the offer, mind you, but couldn't get word from Washington. It's a theme throughout. In fact, he found out that the Iraqi Army was disbanded via TV news. Apparently, so did the President.
It would be a failed effort to try to go through all the things in the documentary that makes one cringe, so just go see the thing. Regardless of Party or principle, I find it hard not to call this President the worst that has ever sat at 1400 Pennsylvania Avenue in at least 100 years. It actually almost numbs the mind to think of. The damage done by this administration is just too painful to even fathom at this point.
Radical Moderate?
What surprised me somewhat was their more general assessment in that, in the end, I'm more of a left-leaning moderate on the basics (see graph below). It seems like this invalidates their test somewhat. If I'm far left here and far right there, then I average a moderate? Whatever, it's a simple test. For your amusement:

Thursday, September 13, 2007
Just About Perfect
I've always thought that the moment one calls President Bush stupid is the second one lets him of the hook. He is not stupid. He is not an irretrievable dolt. He is just lazy in his morals and cowardly in his conscience. He knows, he knows that things are terribly, terribly wrong in Iraq. He knows thousands of people are dying because of his incompetence. He knows it is only becoming worse. He knows all of it and, I would venture to say, feels at least much of it. But he lacks the courage to say "I was wrong." He will leave it to history to decide, leave it to the military to resolve, leave it to God to vindicate him and soothe his conscience, but will never, ever, until the day he dies, take responsibility precisely because it is too painful to admit to.
Bush is a leader, but an awful one. He is a leader that acts like a stressful teenager--put out of the mind all things that might be stressful. Stand aloft the critics, patronize those that disagree, scoff at those who howl, roll one's eyes at criticism as so much banter from the dirty people that "just don't get it." This is the method--juvenile behavior that condescends upon those that he knows are probably right. Selfishly, vainly, cruelly, and recklessly does he continue to wrap himself into a cacoon of happy thoughts of Jesus and vindication and prescience that no one seems to be able to understand but a select few--thus the huddle of sycophants he surrounds himself with.
It's simultaneously sickening and pathetic--beyond lugubrious, beyond rational, beyond Party, and beyond principle. And I say all of this as one who once supported this Iraqi war effort and, perhaps very naively, I think it had a chance. But no more. How anyone of even the slightest conscience can continue along this path of failure and death and insanity with this childish disaster of a leader at the helm is beyond me. To do so only feeds into the hands of the petty "no blood for oil" cliche Left and the just as petty "they hate us for our freedom" cliche Right--not to mention the continued mindless deaths of thousands more.
I don't envy W Bush, though I don't pity him either. LBJ made his mistakes in Vietnam and--though far from fully--accepted and apologized for his error. He retreated from politics, grew his hair out, privately admitted that he "felt the weight of all those dead boys," and it killed him--pretty much literally. But at least he died as a man. I fear, President Bush will die as he is, a self-righteous child.
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Sex and Conscience
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
New World?
I would still submit that it is the largest form of production and wealth creation, as services produce no wealth--they just pass money around. However, the development would still be silly to dismiss--and though we will likely not live long enough to know how it really effects society in the future--it seems reasonable to say that it will effect society greatly.
We may well have had some tastes of it already without knowing it. Agriculture in general, farming in particular, does force community. Community roads, markets, and water; fair land taxation, trade with neighboring areas. To a point, a reasonable agricultural society compels everyone from the richest to the poorest to take a common interest in, well, the dirt and everything that makes it yield production. In a service economy (and, of course in other modern industrial production), not so much. We still need markets and roads and the like, but we can pick and choose more easily from our modern abundance of options. We don't feel a common, communal suffering or a common success because we aren't nearly as dependent upon each other--or so it seems, anyway.
Perhaps now the emphasis is more upon the abstract as a result--individual liberties, privacy, equal opportunity, etc. since it's just that wide open and there is no true "common good" that is empirically obvious in nature. Perhaps we are now trying to define ourselves more as individuals and less as community members because we recognize the community as almost an abstraction itself. Or, most likely, I just don't know what I'm talking about. Still it's interesting to cerebate about.
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Friday, August 31, 2007
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Ding Dong, the Bitch is Dead
Chew your gum, Honey
Self-loathing pervs
He has supported a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, telling his colleagues that it was "important for us to stand up now and protect traditional marriage, which is under attack by a few unelected judges and litigious activists."
So be traditionally married and just blow guys in the men's room, that's healthy and protects America. Amazing...
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
No End in Sight
Monday, August 20, 2007
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Whole Ass
“The dividers, over the last six years,” he said, “have been the Democrats, who have routinely said he was not elected, he’s illegitimate, he’s a liar, he deliberately misled the country.”
Isn't that just precious? Why didn't he just call them poopyfaces while he was at it? And, for the record, I think it's pretty much proven that Bush did not win the popular vote in 2000 (though he certainly did in 2004--that is not disputed). He is a liar. And, he deliberately tries to mislead this country almost every time I hear him speak.
He misled conservatives into thinking he was going to be humble about foreign policy and control spending and the size of the government. He misled liberals into thinking that he would reach out to them--though he doesn't appear to reach out to other conservatives either, so I guess they shouldn't take it personally. He misled the American public day after day after day about the situation on the ground in Iraq. He misled the entire nation into thinking that a Homeland Security department was able to handle disasters and that we were safer.
Sometimes, Karl, a spade really is a spade. Your boy and his administration is a failure--just is. It may hurt, but I wouldn't point the finger at the other guy. Instead, you may well be wise to just bow your head, say goodbye and, most especially, "I'm sorry."