Speaking as a scientist, etc.

In what context, Charlie?

2008-11-09T09:59:00.005-05:00

Not to pile on. Because (a) I was willing to believe the "is Africa a continent?" thing was either bogus or taken out of context without any defense or explanation, and (b) Sarah Palin is now utterly irrelevant. (The fun story if you axe me is the GOP smear machine turning on her, but I digress.) The explanation is pathetic enough to merit especial ridicule:

“So, no, I think that if there are allegations based on questions or comments that I made in debate prep about Nafta, and about the continent versus the country when we talk about Africa there, then those were taken out of context,” Ms. Palin said.

Sigh.

Shorter everything-I-have-heard-on-the-news-the-past-few-days

2008-09-21T19:02:00.003-05:00

Failed conservative ideology has dug us into a hole so deep that it is now, officially, a crisis. So we must set aside partisan differences and implement a conservative solution to the problem.

And that's good news for John McCain.

In what respect?

2008-09-13T07:24:00.002-05:00

She apparently didn't know any of them. But it doesn't matter. If you're going to vote for McCain, this sort of ignorance makes you like him more. And if you're not going to vote for McCain, you'll waste 60 seconds of your Saturday morning writing what I just wrote.

Nobody expects

2008-04-21T17:33:00.002-05:00

I apologize for letting this place die. But I lost one job, became a corporate tool, moved to a new state, and found myself paying two mortgages in very short order.

Cut me some slack.

SASETC shall rise again. Just let me get settled at my new job and stuff. (By the way... I have no idea how people manage to maintain real jobs and weblogs at the same time.)

In other news. If I hadn't been such a lamer, I probably would have written something in the past few days about the Pope and torture and how no one expects the Spanish Inquisition.

This is fun.
Filthy, filthy

Scary, but oddly refreshing

2007-12-29T09:49:00.000-05:00

A senior aide to Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee admitted Friday that the former Arkansas governor had "no foreign policy credentials" after his comments reacting to the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto raised questions.

Keyser Söze

2007-12-19T10:10:00.000-05:00

A Master's course in paranoia: Vanishing Point: How to disappear in America without a trace.

Note: I have better things to do (and I don't need a Master's degree), so I kinda just skimmed it. But this part (from Section 5) leapt out at me:

Satellites can bounce LASER light off of your windows and, by measuring the minute distance differences between a vibrating window and the satellite, reconstruct your speech -- from orbit!

I leave it as an exercise for the interested reader to count the ways in which this is utterly ridiculous.

· - ·· - - - · - ·· !

2007-12-19T09:08:00.000-05:00

[CHRIS] MATTHEWS: You have passed over a lot of Democrats that you know pretty well. You serve in the Senate, obviously, with Dodd, with Biden, with Clinton, with Obama. You've known Bill Richardson for a long time, and all the others. Are all the others out of your consideration? Are they just not strong enough for America for you to endorse?

[JOEMENTUM] LIEBERMAN: Look, these are a lot of fine people. A lot of them are my friends. But you got to go with the best at this time in American history. And I think particularly on national security and the ability to work across party lines to get things done, including in the war on terrorism, John McCain is the best, so I decided to go with the best.

Incidentally, you and I are both students of the great Tip O'Neill. All those Democrats, not one of them asked me to support them. John McCain did ask for my support. I thought about it…

Daily Planet

2007-12-19T08:38:00.000-05:00

This Daily Planet image from JPL is pretty slick:

This mosaic is continuosly [sic] updated with images from MODIS TERRA, which has almost global daily coverage. This layer is the most current, near-global image of the earth available. The resolution is 250m per pixel in the middle of the swath, less on the edges. Visit the MODIS Website for more information.

New images are added on top of the old data, in the order in which they become available. In general, the newest images are between 6 and 24 hour late, possibly more.…

If you play with Google Earth, you can see the Daily Planet image (and archives) here, courtesy of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And if you play with NASA World Wind, here's the OnEarth add-on.

Much more of this kind of stuff from UWM.

Retro

2007-12-18T13:24:00.000-05:00

There was a dust-up in the Senate yesterday. Much of the dust-up involves whether telecommunications companies get retroactive immunity for breaking the law when they agreed to help the government wiretap without warrants. This is a complicated story--made more so by the fact that it involves politics and, thus, does not receive fair or objective treatment by the news media--but there is one aspect that I think is worth writing out as clearly as possible. (For the gory details, I recommend my primary source for this post.)

Read the rest…
1. It has long been the case that telecommunications companies are allowed to assist the government in wiretapping even without a warrant or a court order. The law says it's okay as long as, "the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General, the Associate Attorney General, or [a] principal prosecuting attorney" certify in writing that it is okay. Note that the "White House Counsel" is not on that list.

2. In March of 2004, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales went to bother Attorney General Ashcroft in the hospital about a warrantless surveillance program. The Acting Attorney General (Comey) had refused to approve this program, saying it was illegal, and Gonzales hoped Ashcroft would sign off. Ashcroft did not.

3. There is this October 2007 report (pdf, see also here) from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence--a committee populated by tools and chaired by Senator "suspicious campaign contributions" Rockefeller. They report that since September 11, 2001, there has been only one stretch ("of less than sixty days") during which an Attorney General failed to authorize warrantless surveillance with letters to the telecoms. This would be when Ashcroft was in the hospital. And according to the committee report, for that sixty-day period, "the activities had been determined to be lawful by the Counsel to the President."

1+2+3. The issue of retroactive immunity to the telecommunication companies is mostly bogus. They already have immunity--via letters from an Attorney General--for all but about sixty days of warrantless surveillance. The big problem, the political problem, and the reason they need blanket retroactive immunity is because they relied on letters from a White House Counsel (Gonzales) for those sixty days.

A hell of a lot more abstract

2007-12-18T08:06:00.000-05:00

Fred08 sent me an e-mail last night. It's kinda fun. Thought I'd pass along some bits.

It opens with, "Today is an exciting day on the campaign! Tonight in Dubuque, Iowa, I kick off my 'The Clear Conservative Choice: Hands Down' bus tour. I will spend all my time between now and the Iowa Caucuses talking to voters about my vision for our country." "Exciting" and "all my time" are shots at the he's-too-bored and he's-too-lazy schools of thought as to why he has no chance at winning the nomination or the election.

Then Fred gets serious, "We're too far along in this campaign for me to be coy about things." And just as I'm about to crack wise about how chilly it must be in hell thanks to Fred's change in style, I read, "We've said all along that this campaign is built on a Southern strategy that includes South Carolina's primary on January 19th." Wow. That's not a bit coy. For those who don't recognize the term:

Listen to the late Lee Atwater in a 1981 interview explaining the evolution of the G.O.P.'s Southern strategy:

"You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' - that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

"And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me - because obviously sitting around saying, 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'Nigger, nigger.'"

Also worth remembering, as Digby notes elsewhere, "Before it was a television show, 'Law and Order' was the slogan for the southern strategy." And one more thing, then I'll let you go.

Okay. Dismissed.

Match Game

2007-12-16T08:03:00.001-05:00

Amaze your friends! Match the following snippets of recent e-mails sent by political campaigns to the candidates involved:

1. "What an amazing mission you and I are on. What great ideas we uphold -- the legacy of the most important thinkers of liberty in our country's history, and the most important doers of liberty in America. At the top of that list are the donors and volunteers of this campaign."

2. "As we head into the final 20 days before the first in the nation Iowa Caucuses, the campaign is asking for the help of its strong grassroots organization to carry _____ across the finish line on caucus night."

3. "Over the last year, you've constantly heard the phrase '_____ is right' echoing throughout the presidential debates.…"

4. "Today is the day you can re-dedicate yourself to our founding principles by pledging your support to the one Presidential candidate who is fighting to defend our Constitution.…"

5. "The dramatic upswing in our campaign is due to the tremendous volunteer effort of the friends like you who have believed in me, not because the conventional wisdom said we would win but because your convictions said we should win."

6. "Running for president means asking a lot of people to put their faith in you -- and putting your faith in a lot of people. You've never let me down, and my promise to you has always been this: if you put your faith in me, I will fight for you every day when I'm president."

7. "Write to an Iowa Precinct Captain or a volunteer now. Let them know you appreciate the effort and sacrifice they are making to win Iowa for _____.…"

Any boldface is reproduced from the original e-mail. If that helps you. Also, the possible choices are: Fred Thompson, Barack Obama, Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Mike Huckabee.

Click here for the answers...
1 -- Ron Paul ("doers of liberty")
2 -- Fred Thompson ("carry Fred across the finish line")
3 -- Joe Biden ("echoing throughout the presidential debates")
4 -- Dennis Kucinich ("the one Presidential candidate")
5 -- Mike Huckabee ("your convictions said we should win")
6 -- Hillary Clinton ("you've never let me down")
7 -- Barack Obama ("write to an Iowa Precinct Captain")

Ten Boring Scientific Discoveries

2007-12-13T15:52:00.000-05:00

Maybe I'm just having a bad day, but this top-ten list from TIME magazine bores the hell out of me:

10. Real-Life Kryptonite "a white, powdery mineral that … had the same chemistry … as the fictional kryptonite"

9. The World's Oldest Animal "a 405 year-old clam … researchers had to kill it"

8. Man's Migration Out of Africa "fossil evidence that modern humans left Africa between 65,000 and 25,000 years ago"

7. A Big Birdlike Dinosaur "the skeleton of an enormous, birdlike dinosaur"

6. "Hot Jupiters" Discovered "three new planets outside our own Solar System"

5. Building a Human Heart Valve "A team of researchers … grew bone marrow stem cells into functioning human heart-valve tissue"

4. Hundreds of New Species "including carnivorous sponges and giant sea spiders"

3. Brightest Supernova Recorded "the largest and brightest stellar explosion … ever observed"

2. Human Mapped "Venter published … all the DNA in both sets of chromosomes inherited from each of his parents"

1. Stem Cell Breakthroughs "may someday allow scientists to create stem cells without destroying embryos … '[It] changes both everything and nothing at all.'"

Okay. After reading them all and not just skimming the headlines, I retract my above claim that they bore the hell out of me. Numbers 4 and 5 are actually pretty cool. Not my cup of tea, but cool nonetheless. And all of them (except "Kryptonite," which is just plain stupid) are at least slightly interesting.

But is this really the best science had to offer this year? I doubt it.

The Game

2007-12-12T11:43:00.000-05:00

Two quotes pass in the night…

"[C]ountless Americans have worked to reduce the demand of illegal drugs. It's one thing to affect supply, but when you reduce demand, it affects the capacity of people to supply. If we have people -- fewer people using, there's not going to be a need to supply as much."
-- George W. Bush, actual President of The United States

"What you're thinking is that we have an inelastic product here. But what we have here is an elastic product."
-- Stringer Bell, fictional drug dealer on The Wire

I'm not sure I understand the point Bush is flexing his MBA mind to make, but Stringer is talking about the difference between selling photocopies (elastic) and selling heroin (not so elastic).

(In fairness, I'm not so sure I understand the point I'm flexing my Ph.D. mind to make, but I thought the "wavelengths" of these two quotes were too similar to let them pass without note. The "juvenile snarkiness" center of my brain sometimes kicks in and I can't control myself. Heh-heh-heh!)

Oops

2007-12-10T08:56:00.000-05:00

I knew this would happen eventually. I just accidentally posted notes I was making about something I had decided not to post to the website. (I'd given the notes post the title "delete" to remind me to delete it from by Blogger drafts; after typing "delete" in the title form box, I hit return out of habit… hitting return while the cursor is in the Title form box, apparently, posts what you've written. Stupid habits.)

Anyway, I quickly un-posted the notes, but they went out over the RSS feed before I could stop them. Consider it a rare window into my silly thought process for the dedicated readers slash lunatics who subscribe to SASETC.

UPDATED to include the draft text... (because why not?)

Here is what accidentally went out over the RSS:

Nice to hear a bigshot like Marty Lederman express something I've been wondering about for awhile:

Conduct that is revealed to persons outside the government -- such as the way we treat detainees -- should not be classified.

No shit. Or does the CIA make suspects who've been interrogated in an "enhanced" manner sign confidentiality agreements? Because it's pretty ridiculous when the torturers in our government get mad about leaks (a tame example):

"It's troubling," White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto said Friday. "I've had the awful responsibility to have to work with The New York Times and other news organizations on stories that involve the release of classified information. And I can tell you that every time I've dealt with any of these stories, I have felt that we have chipped away at the safety and security of America with the publication of this kind of information."

. t newspapers etc. for writing say No shit. The CIA interrogates some guy in an enhanced manner, and then makes him sign a confidentiality agreement?

NOTE: I added a piece of html code to close the boxed quote from Fratto. And you can find that quote here (though I'm sure it's also available at more reliable links.)

The tears of irregardless cure cancer

2007-12-07T09:15:00.000-05:00

Too bad irregardless has never cried.

(Yikes. I almost wrote "But seriously, …" as a throw-away transition. Far from it. And now I'm telling you about it.)

Setting aside the Chuck Norrisness of irregardless, dude could totally kick its ass.

In Churmany…

2007-12-02T08:46:00.000-05:00

In Churmany, our robots have a lot of spare time on their ~~hands~~ clampy pincer gizmos.

Two comments on the link:

1. The post's title is genius. I welcome them, too.
2. The author writes, I have no idea what is so upsetting to people about this robot, but please don't send me insults. I encourage both insults (of me, not the aforementioned author) and speculation as to why the robot upsets people. Leave them as comments to this post.

It's Tommy Vercetti, right?

2007-11-30T21:01:00.000-05:00

I avoid Wired. But I ended up there just now after this sent me to this sent me to this. (I've been enjoying this ~~Joke Line~~ Joe Klein saga all week--if you are even remotely interested, start at the second of the above links.)

Anyway, while at Wired, I noticed the headline Cryptographers Use Sony PlayStation to Predict US Presidential Race Winner in the margin. How fucking stupid.

I continue to avoid Wired.

2008 Campaign Crap

2007-11-30T08:16:00.000-05:00

I'm still not quite sure why I did this, but I just created a shell address and signed it up for e-mail updates from everyone running for President. A few notes on this little project.…

For one thing, none of the Democratic candidates' websites required my phone number or street address to sign me up for e-mail updates. Similarly, they did not demand that I open an account at their campaign websites, join their "teams," or any such horseshit. Basically, all they needed was my e-mail address, ZIP code, and (in some cases) my name. I regret that I gave all these websites the same fake name. It would have been smarter to give them each a different name so I could track which ones shared/sold my e-mail address. Oh well.

On the Republican side, not surprisingly, things were a bit more--oh, let's just call it thorough. Ron Paul demanded my phone number (I gave him the 800 number for Empire Carpet). Rudy and Mitt demanded that I open accounts and join their "teams" ("Team Rudy" and "Team Mitt"). In order to join Team Mitt, I had to give them my street address (123 Fake Street). Fred Thompson didn't call it "Team Fred," but he did make me register an account and surrender my address on Fake Street.

The only two candidate websites that demanded more of (fake) me than I was willing/able to provide were those of Alan Keyes and Tom Tancredo. Alan demanded that I sign his creepy "Pledge for America's Revival." No fucking way, Alan. And Tancredo, pathetic lunatic, demanded that I join "Team Tancredo," ~~but had his web form didn't work~~… Strike that. It's just that the Team Tancredo website doesn't work with the Firefox browser; I was able to join the Team using Internet Explorer. Had to give the Team my Fake St. address.

Who polls the pollsters?

2007-11-21T08:52:00.000-05:00

I've been hoping someone-not-me would do something like this for awhile. It's the Huffington Post Polling Project:

We're asking everyone to share their polling experiences with us via a simple form … telling us exactly how they have been polled. For too long, the polling industry has had the luxury of operating largely under-the-radar. The Polling Project aims to move polling from under-the-radar to under the microscope.

Alas, I have a hard time stomaching the Huffington Post, so if anything interesting comes of this project, I'll probably only learn about it through Josh Marshall (that's how I learned of the project's existence in the first place). But if either of my readers hear that anything has come of the project, it would be sweet if you'd let me know.

Quantum freakout rant

2007-11-20T14:42:00.000-05:00

This reminded me of quantum theory.

Uninformed fixation on quantum stuff is one of the things that has long made me crazy. It's time people took it down from its pedestal. Quantum theory is nothing special. That's right: it's nothing special.

Sure. There was a time when it was radical, mind-blowing stuff. Quantum mechanics was special. It shook worldviews. It made us scientists all philosophical. It called a lot of things we thought we knew cold into question. It dealt with a freaky side of nature that we never saw in our daily lives. It was mysterious and counterintuitive.

But that was a long time ago. Anyone who's been trained as a scientist in (at least) the last 25 years has been hearing quantum theory since the first day. Like all (interesting) science, it's a little mysterious at first. A little counterintuitive. But no more counterintuitive than the one about dropping a feather and a bowling ball in a vacuum. It certainly doesn't break anyone's brain nowadays to learn about wave-particle duality. Or that you can't pin down the location and momentum of an electron with arbitrary accuracy.

The universe is not a clockwork mechanism. Does this come as a surprise to anyone?

(Note: none of this is to say that quantum theory is easy. It's difficult. The math, in particular, sucks on a deep and profound level. But so does the math underlying most science. Again, quantum theory is not special.)

I couldn't pick a "worst"

2007-11-20T06:19:00.000-05:00

The Atlantic is having an 80s music video contest. I was not at all surprised that (a) I voted with the plurality for "best" and "best worst," and (b) my runner-up in each category was also the runner-up in the vote tallies.

Weird. Just went back to check on the total votes cast. Again, I line right up with the other 1000 or so participants: the fewest votes have been cast in the "worst" category. Got my finger on the pulse of the average. Sigh.

Brand new

2007-11-16T07:44:00.000-05:00

"Slate readers on how to improve America's image in the world":

And so the most prominent suggestion on how to improve America's face in the world—a suggestion made by well over half of those who wrote me—is to send the world more American faces and to bring more of the world's faces into America.

In other words, these readers say, there should be a vast expansion in the Peace Corps, in Fulbright fellowships, and, above all, in student-exchange programs.

Huh. I'd have thought the best way to do this was to deploy an arrogant, Texas gasbag to lecture the world on how their cultures may someday catch up to ours. Maybe sweeting the deal with a series of generous arms sales? Everyone likes arms sales.

Also, is it just me or does, "send the world more American faces and to bring more of the world's faces into America," remind you of the conventional wisdom on "trade" and "markets" these days?

So petty

2007-11-14T13:17:00.000-05:00

The President on the topic of, "[rejecting] a $606 billion bill to fund education, health and labor programs":

This bill is 44 days late and nearly $10 billion over budget, and filled with more than 2,000 earmarks.

It's one-sixtieth over budget. La-de-da. That's one (1) objectionable egg out of five dozen (60). I know $10 billion is a lot of money. But, come on. No education, health or labor programs for any of us (300,000,000) because there are a few (>2,000) instances where someone may be taking advantage.

Fantastic little movie

2007-11-09T12:51:00.000-05:00

Just go watch this, "Animation of all flight movements tracked by FlightAware during a 24-hour period in September, 2005. 1 frame per 5 minutes; 12 frames per second." It runs in a loop, so don't worry if you miss something the first time through.

Ratta-tat-tat-tat! Pow! Ka-pow!

2007-11-09T07:46:00.000-05:00

The man's all class. Take that evildoers!

(When I grow up, I wanna be a roadrunner. Beep-beep! Zip-zang!)

UPDATE: Ugh. "White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Bush helped 'shoot the bad guys' in a Baghdad neighborhood, albeit virtually." (via the almost-always-worth-reading-all-the-way-through Froomkin daily weblog.)

I Love the Internet Vol. n + 1

2007-11-04T10:40:00.000-05:00

I was looking around for an mp3 of local ABC affiliate WPVI's kickin' Action News theme when I stumbled across the library page at News Music Now: Glorious. News jingles are great.

Anyway, it turns out that the Action News theme (available in polyphonic ring tone at the Action News website, by the way) is so famous it has a whole Word-on-the-street page about it. It's as old as I am.

If you want to listen, go to News Music Now and scroll down to Move Closer To Your World in the "Al Ham Music" section. I recommend the version labeled "Long Close w/ Lyrics." It's all about the bongos and the chorus singing along at the end ("Ba-ba, ba-ba, ba-baba-ba.…") If the theme sounds familiar, it might be: here is a list of other stations that have used it.

Ignorantia juris non excusat

2007-11-04T07:30:00.000-05:00

Following up on the half-assed post from a few days back. This "war crimes" talk is not isolated to unhinged lunatics like former lawyers for Richard Nixon. Today I see an AP article in which Robert F. Turner, unhinged former Reagan administration national security official and associate director at the Center for National Security Law at the University of Virginia weighs in:

Senate confirmation of Michael Mukasey as attorney general has snagged on a complex legal question of whether some Bush administration officials would face lawsuits or war crimes charges if, as Democrats insist, he defines waterboarding as torture.…

If Mukasey agrees that waterboarding amounts to torture, he is admitting the United States has willfully broken international law, said Robert F. Turner [the above-credentialed, unhinged lunatic].

As a result, any of the other 193 nations that signed the United Nation's Convention Against Torture in 1984 could investigate or prosecute interrogators who used waterboarding against detainees. Top administration officials who authorized waterboarding — from President Bush down — also could face lawsuits, Turner said.

"The standard is, if they knew or should have known that war crimes were being committed and they had the power to stop them, then they're liable.… If we are dealing with good government employees who carried out instructions, it seems to me we have a duty to them to not make it easy for them to spend the rest of their life in a foreign jail."

Anyway, that's the story. Supposedly. Mukasey can't say torture is torture because it would expose Bush--and all the apples rotting underneath him--to liability for war crimes: If nobody goes on the record and officially says torture is torture, these good employees who ~~just followed orders~~ carried out instructions are in the clear.

It sure is a good thing, then, that nobody has ever officially called torture torture. Except, as you might be able to guess from the fact that this is a gotcha weblog!, written by an unhinged lunatic (and that there's a "Read the rest…" link below), it turns out that plenty of people have been saying waterboarding etc. is torture--and that it's illegal--for some time.

Read the rest…

Here, for example, we have a letter to the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee written by a quartet of retired Judge Advocates General. Their combined rank would be something like a Major Double-Rear Admiral Brigadier Double-General (their combined branch of the armed forces would be the U.S. Marmavy [dates of service, off-and-on from 1985-2002]).

In the process of condemning waterboarding ("[it] is inhumane, it is torture, and it is illegal") these retired JAGs remind the committee Chairman of what the not-retired Judge Advocates General (combined rank and service: Rear Double-Major Brigadier Double-General Admiral, U.S. Air Marmavy) said to the committee about the practice back in 2006:

[T]he sitting Judge Advocates General … unanimously and unambiguously agreed that ["the use of a wet towel and dripping water to induce the misperception of drowning (i.e., waterboarding)"] is inhumane and illegal and would constitute a violation of international law, to include Common Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions.

Zoinks. Sounds official. Sounds like someone trying to prosecute those good government employees might want to talk with these unanimous and unambiguous agreers. But, then again, maybe 2006 is too recent--maybe the U.S. Air Marmavy had already forgotten the lessons of Sept. 11 by then? Okay. Let's take it back to 2003, courtesy of links found in one of my posts (I love it when a plan comes together):

Notes from a series of meetings at the Pentagon in early 2003 -- obtained by ABC News -- show that Alberto Mora, General Counsel of the Navy, warned his superiors that they might be breaking the law.

During a January 2003 meeting involving top Pentagon lawyer William Haynes and other officials, the memo shows that Mora warned that "use of coercive techniques … has military, legal, and political implication … has international implication … and exposes us to liability and criminal prosecution."

And, though the link is dead in that old post of mine, there was an incident (also in 2003) in which more active-duty JAG officers contacted the chair of the New York City Bar Association's Committee on Human Rights law and, "expressed apprehension over how their political appointee bosses were handling the torture issue":

[The JAGs] specifically warned him that Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith, one of the most powerful political appointees in the Pentagon, had significantly weakened the military's rules and regulations governing prisoners of war. The officers told Horton that Feith and the Defense Department's general counsel, William J. Haynes II, were creating "an atmosphere of legal ambiguity" that would allow mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan."

The NYC Bar examined what they could and concluded, "that the practices revealed at Abu Ghraib violated both U.S. and international law."

Anyway, that's my follow-up on John W. Dean's sensible call for a special prosecutor to investigate the war crimes question as a quid pro quo in exchange for confirming Mukasey.

BONUS: Why did I boldface that bit about "significantly weakened" in the blockquote just above? It's because of this passage in the AP article (linked above) about that idiot John Yoo:

John Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California, Berkley, helped write the controversial 2002 memos [one of which is, "'smoking gun'-level evidence of a war crime"]. He said the Justice Department should not go "about, willy-nilly, changing its opinions about what's legal or not."

Come on, John. From the dawn of time until roughly 2002, torture was torture. Then you and sitting Federal Judge Jay Bybee came along and significantly weakened the definition with your foul memos. And now it would be "willy-nilly" to return to the way things were under centuries of settled law?

John W. Dean

2007-11-02T18:35:00.000-05:00

A good idea from reformed Watergate criminal John W. Dean:

Bush is under … suspicion for activities far more serious than anything Nixon engaged in for there is evidence Bush has abused the laws of war, violated treaties, and ordered (or approved) the use of torture and political renditions, which are war crimes.

Since Judge Mukasey’s situation is not unlike that facing Elliot Richardson when he was appointed Attorney General during Watergate, why should not the Senate Judiciary Committee similarly make it a quid pro quo for his confirmation that he appoint a special prosecutor to investigate war crimes?

…

Before the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee completely cave-in to Bush, at minimum they should demand that Judge Mukasey appoint a special prosecutor to investigate if war crimes have been committed. If Mukasey refuses he should be rejected. This, indeed, should be a pre-condition to anyone filling the post of Attorney General under Bush.

In other news, it's been a long week for me.

Do ya think so?

2007-10-28T19:50:00.000-05:00

Calpundit:

So Democrats have gone from 30% of all health industry donations in 2000 to 44% in 2004 to 57% this year. This is, obviously, good news and bad news. The good news is that lobbyist money follows winners, and the healthcare lobby seems pretty confident that a Democrat will become president next year. The bad news is that they might just get what they paid for.

Of course they're going to get what they paid for. And what they're paying for is not what we want. Just go skim through some polls on this. CBS News, September 2007:

Which do you think would be better for the country: having one health insurance program covering all Americans that would be administered by the government and paid for by taxpayers, or keeping the current system where many people get their insurance from private employers and some have no insurance?

Read the rest...
Government-administered, taxpayer-funded health care trounces the current system: 55% to 29%. Don't like the wording of that question? Here's CNN asking it even more directly, back in May:

Do you think the government should provide a national health insurance program for all Americans, even if this would require higher taxes?

Over 60% yes, only 35% no. Even if this would require higher taxes. Back in May, before the S-CHIP debacle.

We want the government to pay for health care. We don't mind paying more in taxes if that's what it takes. Employers--many of whom probably respond to these surveys--don't want to provide insurance any more (unless they are suicidally conservative ideologues, I suppose). But none of that matters. The health care lobby will get what they want. And government-run, taxpayer-funded health care is not what they want.

Probably not the best source for this, but I'm sleepy:

Biden … would expand health insurance for children and relieve families and businesses of the burden of expensive catastrophic cases. [Not taxpayer-funded universal coverage, in other words.]
…
Clinton wants universal health-care coverage by the end of her second term. [Why the rush?]
…
Edwards … would provide health care for all Americans while also making coverage more affordable for uninsured families and [blah blah blah] easier for businesses and employers to insure their workers. [Not taxpayer-funded universal coverage, in other words.]
…
Obama hopes to provide universal coverage by 2012. [Take that Hillary!]
…
Richardson sees affordable health care for all as the ultimate goal of the health care system. [What a visionary.]

Unless Dennis Kucinich or Chris Dodd get elected, the health care lobby is going to get what it's paying for.

Fun reading (and so can you!)

2007-10-27T11:57:00.000-05:00

Paul Glastris writes about going on the Colbert show:

The only other person I know who's been on the show, journalist James Fallows, once told me that it's a bit disconcerting to be twelve inches away from a guy who's doing a very believable impression of a total lunatic.

That's all I got right now.

Oh yeah. There's some poll out there (not going to dig up a link, but I saw someone's weblog mention it this morning if that helps you find it.. poll was by architects or something [go figure {and so can you!}]) that says some absurdly high percentage of Americans think recycling is the most important thing they can do to help offset climate change.

Close enough.

Serious cons

2007-10-22T09:06:00.000-05:00

"On November 8th, the Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1441, finding Iraq in material breach of its obligations, and vowing serious consequences if Iraq did not fully and immediately disarm. Today, no nation can possibly claim that Iraq has disarmed. And it will not disarm so long as Saddam Hussein holds power."
-- Bush, a few days before the war

"The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences. The United States joins other nations in sending a clear message: We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon."
-- Cheney, yesterday

Bonus Cheney Quote From Yesterday
"It's been given to us, ladies and gentlemen, to live in an era crowded with decisive events, and we've had to face challenges that no generation would choose for itself."

O.mi.god.

2007-10-20T22:28:00.000-05:00

Note this down. This hasn't ever happened before. I agree (!) with President Bush (per WIIIAI):

The striped bass -- I don't know if our citizens follow the striped bass, but it's a good fish to catch. It's a lot of fun. It's also a good fish to eat. We've got to make sure we've got enough to catch as well as enough to eat, and we can do both in a smart way.

Striped bass range from the St. Lawrence River in Canada to the St. John's River in Florida. They inhabit parts of the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico. Some people call them stripers or rockfish. I guess we're going to call them rockfish today. (Laughter.) They can live up to be 30 years old. In the old days you could catch them up to 55 to 70 pounds pretty easily. And what we're trying to do is to make sure that the old days come back; that the striper is plentiful and that you can catch some good-sized ones, too -- nothing like catching a big striper.

From the archives: Fishin' Accomplished (worth a click, in my humble opinion, for the picture of the fish with the pixelated face).

UPDATE: Oh, fuck it. Only a jerk would make you click a link when he could just copy the damn html code from his old post. And if there's one thing I'm not, it's a jerk. Here's that picture:

(photo by M.F.)

Pop quiz

2007-10-20T12:05:00.000-05:00

In highway driving, how many flaccid penises does does the Hummer H2 get per bathtub of gasoline?

Click here for the answer.

ANSWER
Word on the street has it the H2 gets 13 miles per gallon on the highway.

And the totally awesome WEIRDCONVERTER (hat tip to Holly) tells me:

1 mile = 16896 flaccid penises
1 bathtub = 36 gallons

Doing the math . . .

(13 miles/gallon) x (36 gallons/bathtub) x (16896 penises/mile) =

(Gallons cancel, miles cancel, so we're left with . . .)

13 x 36 x 16896 penises/bathtub=
The H2 gets 7,900,000 penises/bathtub on the highway.

Bonus question: Assuming three Jennifer Anistons weigh two kegs of gasoline, how many Weinermobiles does the H2 get per Tom Cruise?

Other bonus question: Does anyone else find it unlikely that--as the WEIRDCONVERTER alleges--the average human stomach is 14 gallons? For what it's worth (and with the WEIRDCONVERTER, you can work out what it's worth), this site disputes the 14 gallons number.

Ho-hum

2007-10-20T09:35:00.000-05:00

Here's something not to care about--"nano-managed" Guantanamo show trials, designed to influence the 2008 election:

Politically motivated officials at the Pentagon have pushed for convictions of high-profile detainees ahead of the 2008 elections, the former lead prosecutor for terrorism trials at Guantanamo Bay said last night, adding that the pressure played a part in his decision to resign earlier this month.

Senior defense officials discussed in a September 2006 meeting the "strategic political value" of putting some prominent detainees on trial, said Air Force Col. Morris Davis. He said that he felt pressure to pursue cases that were deemed "sexy" over those that prosecutors believed were the most solid or were ready to go.

But seriously, there is a real issue here: what skeletons this resigned prosecutor and blabbermouth has in his closet. I bet we'll find out soon. (I hope it's granite countertops!)

Always low prices

2007-10-20T08:26:00.000-05:00

Op-ed dude Paul Krugman, yesterday:

[I]n the current election cycle every one of the top 10 industries making political donations is giving more money to Democrats. Even industries that have in the past been overwhelmingly Republican, like insurance and pharmaceuticals, are now splitting their donations more or less evenly. Oil and gas is the only major industry that the G.O.P. can still call its own.

That's good, right? Well, it might be good if we Democrats weren't just as crooked as the Republicans. Well, okay, "just as crooked" is an awfully high bar. But we sure are pretty damn crooked sometimes:

Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) is reportedly steering the secretive Senate Intelligence Committee to give retroactive immunity to telecoms that helped the government secretly spy on Americans.

He has also recently benefited from some interesting political contributions.

Click that link and go look at the graphs--bought him for less than $25k per company. "When asked about the [comically obvious efforts at bribing a Senator], an AT&T spokesman [said], 'AT&T employees regularly and voluntarily participate in the political process with their own funds.'" Nice.

Read the rest...

Krugman ends his little column thusly:

I’d put it this way: many progressives, myself included, hope that the next president will be another F.D.R. But we worry that he or she will turn out to be another Grover Cleveland instead--better-intentioned and much more competent than the current occupant of the White House, but too dependent on lobbyists’ money to seriously confront the excesses of our new Gilded Age.

That's not my "worry," it's my assumption. I singled out Rockefeller up above because this telecom money makes him such a hilarious and easy target. But it's really unfair to him: with a negligible number of exceptions, anyone who has a big enough power base ($$$) to get elected to national office is going to be too compromised to do the peoples' work. That's just the way it is.

Job search further cont.

2007-10-19T09:08:00.000-05:00

Another thing that made me smile. The preview description of some job somewhere:

The Repair Development Engineer will be a member of the Glob...

I am a motivated self-starter with excellent communication skills and a lifelong interest in the Glob.

Job search cont.

2007-10-17T09:59:00.001-05:00

Yeah, it's coming along. I'd rather not talk much about it.

Except to say that yesterday I instructed the monster dotcom website to give me RSS-feed updates when jobs matching certain search criteria were posted. I get such updates when new articles are posted in science journals that match my interests--seemed sensible to do the same for job listings.

Well--surprise, surprise, surprise. Monster's implementation of the feature sucks. It mostly (but not entirely) ignores my search terms. I get a lot of listings for IT jobs, for example. And for types of engineering that I've never even heard of (let alone told a search tool to locate). So I'll probably turn their RSS off today and go back to my regular "manual search" approach (supplemented by e-mail updates... updates that also tend to suck).

Before I go, here's an excerpt from one of the irrelevant listings the RSS thing sent me today. A couple of aspects of it made me smile. Maybe they'll also make you smile. (Recall that I am a scientist/engineer with a Ph.D.):

PRINCIPLE DUTIES:

1. Observe and interpret readings on gauges, meters, and charts that record various aspects of the system's operations at specified intervals to verify operating conditions.

2. Adjust controls to ensure safe and efficient operation of the system to meet the demands for the specified service. . . .

Ta-da!

2007-10-16T07:37:00.000-05:00

Also uttered at that event yesterday that I just bitched about in another post:

You got to just understand that after September the 11th, I made up my mind I would do everything in my power to protect the American people. Secondly -- (applause.) And on the one hand, that means finding these people before they come and hurt us. In other words, defeat them overseas so they can't come here to hurt us.

And this, from a New York University Center on Law and Security study (via CNN and JMM):

The study . . . tracked 510 cases billed as terrorism-related when arrests were made. . . . only four people -- including confessed al Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui and "shoe bomber" Richard Reid -- were convicted of planning attacks within the United States.

"The vast majority of cases turn out to include no link to terrorism once they go to court," the report found. The analysis "suggests the presence of few, if any, prevalent terrorist threats currently within the U.S."

See? The system works.

Bonus infantile snark inside the fold...
This one never gets old (#3F20):

Homer: Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm.
Lisa: That's specious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you, dear.
Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Oh, how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn't work.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: It's just a stupid rock.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you?
[Homer thinks of this, then pulls out some money]
Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.

"because of your generosity you are not monsters"

2007-10-16T06:52:00.000-05:00

President Bush said this yesterday:

[I]t's important for our citizens to understand that we spend $35 billion a year for poor children's health care, through Medicaid -- $35 billion. So if you hear rhetoric out of Washington saying we're not taking care of poor children in America, they're just not reminding you of the fact that because of your generosity, we're spending $35 billion a year.

I'm sure I could go on and on about how about how $35 billion is less than four percent of the President's $933 billion. And I'd probably have a thing or two to say about what "less than four percent" really means in practice (perhaps by putting it in terms of drawing to an inside straight, or somesuch.) And there's no doubt I could dig through the budget (or articles about it) and play the old, "Look how much we're spending on X, Y, or Z!!" game. Like these guys did.

But I don't really want to do that. I just want to draw attention to that one word in the statement that makes my skin crawl: generosity.

Sorry, Mr. President. The word you're looking for there is "humanity." It's hard to believe that you and so many others don't understand that.

Rant

2007-10-15T13:22:00.000-05:00

From ScienceDaily:

Consumers have unknowingly put the plastics recycling industry in the United States on a starvation diet by failing to recycle sufficient quantities of soft drink bottles and other waste. . . .

Yeah, well, here's the thing. And these are just the personal ravings of guy who happens to know a thing or two about plastic; your mileage may vary. But my city's recycling collectors--or whoever trained them to do the job--are an incredible bunch of idiots. And it's always about the plastic that they're idiots.

Steel, aluminum, glass of any color, cardboard, newspaper? No problem. They just chuck that shit in the truck and drive away, yo.

But plastic? My god. It's sheer. Fucking. Idiocy. Always. And it's very frustrating.

They pick over it. They scrutinize it. They sort it at the curb. They take half and leave half behind. Next time, they reject the stuff they took previously. They accept 2-liter bottles if they once contained cola. They reject 1-liter bottles made of the same plastic if they once contained seltzer. Unless you peel off the label so they don't know it was seltzer. Or unless you throw away the cap? Or whatever (I'll admit it--I have no idea what their criteria are).

And don't get me started about those clear PET egg cartons--the ones made from recycled plastic. Those suckers cannot be recycled in my community. (Though, at least the collectors are consistent about rejecting them.)

And so on.

So listen here plastic recyclers of America--before you blame us consumers, you'd better make double-dog sure that we're the problem. Because the only data I have on the subject suggest that it's your trucks that are screwing everything up.

Pootie Poot

2007-10-14T06:17:00.000-05:00

And another thing. Because I was just reading this "well duh" article, "Bush, aides 'grossly misjudged Putin.'"

Look. Everyone remembers Bush's idiotic 2001 remark about Putin: "I looked the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul." The comment has been pretty thoroughly (over)analyzed for the past six years: Bush was a dupe to sense a democratic streak in Putin; Bush is also undemocratic, so it's obvious he would have had a soul-sensing moment with Putin; and so on.

I think "a sense of his soul" was just typical Bush PR crap--meaningless (if ill-chosen) words like "mission accomplished" and "compassionate conservative." Someone (probably Condoleezza Rice) mentioned in a briefing that the Russians have always had this thing about their Russian Soul. So rather than say, "the meeting went well," Bush and/or his scripters dropped the S-Bomb.

Of course, there is nothing more galling to a Russian than when a (sober) foreigner claims insight into the Russian soul. And given what we all know by now about Bush--that he is somewhat of an asshole--he may have gotten the briefing I imagine above, then dropped the S-Bomb deliberately: trying to piss off Putin and the rest of his country. It would be totally in character. Or maybe Putin baited Bush into using the S-Bomb (and thus annoying most Russians) by feeding him the line: "Mister President, it is a rare American who can sense our Big Russian Soul. You should publicly pat yourself on the back."

Aw geez. Look what you made me do. Now I'm the guy overanalyzing Bush's soul moment.

Oh well.

BONUS: From the article I'd stopped reading while I wrote the above nonsense:

Bush and his aides "grossly misjudged Putin," considering him "a good guy and one of us," said Michael McFaul of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

The former KGB officer created that illusion partly by appearing to share Bush's political and religious convictions, standard tradecraft employed by intelligence officers to recruit spies, he said.

Please. If that's what Putin was up to, then he's hopelessly out-of-touch. Touchy-feely psychology ("Every human being has needs, and we learned those needs and exploited them") is so pre-September 11. "Standard tradecraft" for recruiting spies and informants these days is to beat the crap out of them.

I just don't get it

2007-10-13T15:24:00.000-05:00

The text of this thing has already changed since Josh Marshall posted an excerpt. (And I expect it to be disappeared sooner than later, so I'll copy-paste it all). But can anybody explain to me why the Republicans on a congressional committee thought a "hilarious" Simpsons-joke press release was a good idea? Or why it was anything other than a horribly stupid idea? And how is it that my imagination has so failed me that I can't make heads or tails of what they're even trying to say with this?

Bipartisanship on SCHIP!*

October 12, 2007

‘Excellent!’

Bipartisanship on SCHIP!*

[Here is where there is a cute, "kid-style" inline graphic that I'm not going to copy; it reads "Children's Health Fact of the Day" -&y]

Republican businessman Montgomery Burns today joined with Mayor Joe Quimby, D-Springfield, to support the Senate’s gazillion-dollar SCHIP bill.

“If the poor children can get a piece of the action, why can’t I?” explained Burns at a MoveOn.org rally in Capital City. “The little darlings are needy? Me, too. I need somebody to pay. Quimby here says he knows a bunch of low-income nobodies who are ripe for the picking. Excellent.”

“You need this?” wondered the mayor. “Well, why not. I’ve got needs, too. Why, I’ve got 27 paternity suits pending and to quote the Speaker, ‘suffer the little children.’ The Quimby Compound is overflowing with those little sufferers. Vote Quimby.”

Inexplicably, the mayor then leaned toward a comely MoveOn organizer and whispered in her ear, “Ah, if anyone asks, you’re my niece from out of town and you don’t get SCHIP.”

“But Uncle Joe, I am your niece from out of town, and I do get SCHIP.”

“Good Lord, I’m a monster!” exclaimed the mayor.

Mr. Burns shrugged and pressed on with a stirring call to arms: “Truth and fairness, these are the demons we must slay if we wish to save the tykes.”

His patience was tested when a ruckus arose from a restive crowd of backdrop-toddlers who’d been rented by MoveOn for the photo-op. “Get these props away from me,” Burns hissed.

“Kids? Who needs ‘em? Rahm, release the hounds!” added Quimby with a spreading grin. “Ha, I’ve always wanted to say that, Burns.”

The 37 rental children fled and were not seen again, but the arf-arf-arfing of their pursuers could be heard well past sunset.

*Actual facts and events may vary, but really, how much?

If the website has been hacked (as Josh notes that the LiberalOasis guy Bill Scher thinks might be the case), then why has the first paragraph changed since Josh copy/pasted his quote? (His version has Burns as a "Republican Senate hopeful" and the version I copy-pasted is above.) Would hackers hack back in to change their joke? Would they hack back in to make that change?

A Mad Lib Sort of Thing

2007-10-13T12:35:00.001-05:00

Choose:
1. A country
2. Its capital city
3. A President (or Vice President, I suppose)
4. A high-ranking bureaucrat of some sort
5. The office and/or residence of 3
6. The people who elected 3
7. The legislative body of 1

The ___1___ government under ___3___ has amassed so much central authority that the power-grab may undermine ___2___'s commitment to democracy, ___4___ said Saturday.

"In any country, if you don't have countervailing institutions, the power of any one president is problematic for democratic development," ___4___ told reporters after meeting with human-rights activists.

"I think there is too much concentration of power in the ___5___. I have told the ___6___ that. Everybody has doubts about the full independence of the judiciary. There are clearly questions about the independence of the electronic media and there are, I think, questions about the strength of ___7___," said ___4___. . . .

If you haven't figured it out already, you can read the original in Forbes (hat tip to Atrios).

I've always been amused by how close the authoritarian right in our country are, ideologically, to the majority of Russians I've ever met. The reds and the red-staters are freakin' peas in a pod.

Which reminds me--I still think "GOP 2008: Miracle, Mystery and Authority!" would make a kicking bumper sticker (from the "infantile snarkiness" school).

Job search

2007-10-09T13:29:00.000-05:00

So I'm looking for a better job--as in, one that isn't scheduled to expire in January. It's pretty grim work, looking for work.

Resume, meet vacuum.

Vacuum, resume.

I reckon I'll have more to say about all this as time passes, but for now, a few questions for you, my beloved reader(s).

Do I even want to work for a company that that demands, "excellent oral and written communication skills," but lists a job opening for "Principle Scientist?" Assuming I choose to apply, should my cover letter express an interest in their "Principle Scientist" job, or should I correct the error? Assuming I choose not to apply, is it worth sending in a fake application, with a fake resume that details my background experimenting on principles?

I also saw a listing for a "techinical writer." It almost makes sense that that one's a test.

Noted without comment

2007-10-04T17:43:00.000-05:00

Chimps don't mind being chumps in raisin game

Unlike humans, chimpanzees will gladly accept a rotten deal from one another, suggesting they have a very different concept of fairness, a new study shows.

Experiments reveal that chimps are more focused on the immediate outcome of a transaction than the overall fairness of the deal. . . .

Source

I'd have never guessed this

2007-10-03T14:13:00.000-05:00

Not in a million years. From The Myth of the Rational Iowa Voter:

If this is a typical election, somewhere between 6 and 10 percent of voting-eligible Iowans will bother to show up to a caucus.

I'm speechless.

Housekeeping while the computer thinks

2007-10-03T11:40:00.000-05:00

1. MIL won the contest. Congratulations! The next contest will have to be a contest to determine what the prize should be for contests.

2. I have not forgotten about my alleged future plans to deal with this allegedly fatigue-immune aluminum sandwich stuff. But I want to do my follow-up "right," which means I must wait for information about CentrAl to show up in one of my science journals.

3. Speaking of ridiculous fatigue-related claims. I love this one ("Nanotubes Can Detect And Repair Cracks In Aircraft Wings, Other Structures"). I have no plans to discuss this further. Or at all. And by "I love this one," what I really mean is "I laugh at this one."

4. If you were not aware, A Way With Words almost got canceled. But it didn't.

5. The computer is still thinking (it's running a big calculation), but I'm about out of yammer. Oh well.

They call it HAPPY in Australia

2007-09-29T07:41:00.000-05:00

Quick thoughts on this:

If you notice that your mood, energy level and motivation take a nosedive each November only to return to normal in April, you may have Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), according to Loyola University Health System doctors.

First: Is it just me, or are there others who incline toward dismissing this ailment as bogus because it has a cutsey acronym?

Second: I propose a contest to rename SAD!

I should probably avoid playing in my own contest, but isn't talking to yourself publicly the whole point of keeping a weblog? My entry: Winter Malaise Disorder. Because I want everyone to take it seriously.

Raining and pouring

2007-09-26T10:16:00.000-05:00

I seriously have no time for this today, but I know that if I file it away for later, nothing will ever come of it. So I'm filing it away publicly for later--in hopes of shaming myself into following up when I'm not on deadline.

What I have no time for today (something I heard about thanks to these guys who reprint press releases and call them news):

Building aircraft wings with a special aluminium fibre combination makes them nearly immune to metal fatigue. . . .

Yeah. Sure it does.

Per usual

2007-09-25T19:21:00.000-05:00

Digby said it better.

Also: saw this the other day. Lizard brain.

Good post that ends with . . . .

2007-09-25T19:09:00.000-05:00

And if Democrats can't make it clear that these are the stakes, we might as well fold and go home.

Thinking critically

2007-09-24T15:10:00.001-05:00

Senator trying to give 100,000 tax dollars to the Louisiana Family Foundation.

Just skimming around the LFF website, it seems they blame the Holocaust (and most racism) on Darwin. The also have a cunningly crafted set of evolution-related addenda they'd like to see in a standard biology textbook. Example:

Thinking Critically: When all of the factors just presented are considered plus the fact that all of the mutations must be passed on to the future generations how reasonable is it that naturally occurring mutations can account for new species arising?

Also, the LFF lists four corporate sources of "General In-Kind Contributions" on their website. One supplies office space, one gives database services, one provides event food, and one handles pest control.

Unreachable

2007-09-24T11:35:00.000-05:00

Pretty much says it all:

JJ: You [Seymour Hersh] turned 70 this year. Why keep working so hard?
SH: I don't work that hard. I write four or five pieces a year. Secondly, what do you want me to do? Play professional golf? I can't do that. You do what you can do. And I'm in a funny spot because I have an ability to communicate with people I have known for a number of years. They trust me, and I trust them, so I keep on doing these little marginal stories.

JJ: That's all they are? Marginal?
SH: With these stories, if they slow down or make people take a deep breath before they bomb Iran, that is a plus. But they are not going to stop anybody. This is a government that is unreachable by us, and that is very depressing. In terms of adding to the public debate, the stories are important. But not in terms of changing policy. I have no delusions about that.

How I spent my summer lack-of-vacation

2007-09-22T07:40:00.000-05:00

So those of you who know me (which is to say, both of the people who read this site) know I've been working for weeks on this crazy science experiment at the Navy base. The experiment is now done. The science went down according to plan. The stuff that I was supposed to do (detect invisible fatigue cracks in a full-size airplane wing), I did. Beyond that, I'd rather not talk about the job over the Internet.

I will say this, though. At one point during the job, I was driving within range of C-SPAN radio out of DC and caught that Toy Safety hearing. A major pull-quote from the hearing was about how a guy named "Bob" is the sole employee of the CPSB's small-parts testing laboratory. You remember that hearing, right? Here's a decent link for background. And another.

One of my favorite lines from the hearing came from Carter Keithley, president and CEO of the Toy Industry Association, when he was laying out his vision of a world where the government is hands-off: a world where even one government-employed toy-testing Bob is too many, "Clearly, there is an important role for government to play as a watch dog and an enforcer of conformance with private sector standards. But history has proven the success of our reliance upon private sector safety initiatives."

I thought that bit (and it wasn't just Carter who was talking like this) was pretty rich, especially given what I'd been seeing at the Navy base. Not to go into any details that might get me in trouble, but I think it's safe to say the Navy's testing facilities are extensive: more than a few guys named Bob. And the range of things they test--again, this is no secret--can be reasonably summarized as every fucking thing in their inventory: from bolts, to missile systems, to aircraft carriers. I don't know for sure, but it would not surprise me in the least to learn that they have a lab where they verify that Navy-acquired #2 pencils meet some MILSPEC for #2ness. Needless to say, the Navy does not trust "private sector initiatives" when it comes to safety. The package on the rope may say "rated to 500 lbs force," but the Navy will not support a 500-lb piece of hardware with it until they've tested it.

And that's about all I got right now. It's tough to keep up with the news when you're away from the Internet for most of a month-and-a-half.

----------------
BONUS
----------------

Oh, right. About the "General Betray Us" ad from MoveOn that's caused such a kerfuffle? Come on. Name-calling? Is that all we've got--stupid, playground crap? MoveOn needs to grow up if they want to be taken seriously. That said, the Senate's vote this week to condemn the ad was far stupider. And we have to take the Senate seriously, no matter how childishly they behave. Sigh.

Damn my juvenile mind

2007-06-21T17:00:00.000-05:00

Sounds like a desperately unfunny fart joke:

Tens of thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops are involved in Operation Phantom Thunder, an effort to crack down on al Qaeda militants and other insurgents in various parts of Iraq that began at the weekend.

In other desperately unfunny news, Cheney's wrong. No surprises there, I guess. It sure would be nice if everyone just laughed at his foolishness, though.

"Yeah, and if wishes were horses, we'd all be eatin' steak." Jayne.

Going to the mattresses?

2007-06-08T11:19:00.000-05:00

I guess we'll find out what this is about in due time (per TPM). Would be helpful if we knew what flavor of consigliere (wartime or peacetime) each new kid was. I'm sure some go-getter at Kos will write (or has already written) a diary on them. I'll check later.

The Surge

2007-06-06T09:10:00.000-05:00

Me: Do-over!
Holly: Best two out of three?

Moment of silence, anyone?

2007-06-05T15:18:00.000-05:00

This cracks me up:

Vice President Dick Cheney released a statement late Tuesday afternoon which said that he was "deeply saddened by this tragedy," and expressed hope that Libby would eventually prevail through the appeals process.

Scooter's sentencing and conviction, a "tragedy." Other tragedies Dick's commented on in the past: The Oklahoma City bombing, Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, ~~Shooting Harry Whittington in the face~~ (oops--seems that one wasn't an "official tragedy"), "what happened to Enron",...

You get the idea.

UPDATE: Kid Oakland reminds us:

What goes less reported in the press is this twofold reality. Convicted felon Scooter Libby held three positions in the Bush White House including one, Special Assistant to the President, that reported directly to President Bush himself and not the Vice President.

Another long day

2007-06-05T07:32:00.000-05:00

[Updated with a picture of the experiment, courtesy of my toy phone.]

Today, I'm doing another one of those calibration tests that I was bitching about last week. For those of you who can't read my mind, haven't read the "statement of work" in my research group's grant, didn't attend my dissertation defense, missed the last quarterly report, etc....

I work with an experimental metal-fatigue sensor. It can detect small fatigue cracks in things like airplane wings. I have a simulated piece of such a wing clamped into a (noisy) machine right behind me. The machine has been programmed
Today's experiment. Can you find the sample?
to stress the fake wing in a pseudorandom manner--meant to simulate what a real wing experiences during takeoff, maneuvering, combat maneuvering, and landing. My sensor (two of them, actually) is waiting for fatigue cracks to form. Once I detect a crack, I need to run the test until the sensor thinks it (or they--there will probably be two big cracks) are around a half-millimeter long. Then I need to stop the test, cut open the fake wing, and check to see if the crack really was the length that the sensor thought it was. If the actual length doesn't match the length reported by the sensor--and it wont--I will use the new data to improve the sensor signal/actual crack length calibration.

Predictions: Two cracks will have formed by 3 p.m. this afternoon; the sensor will report that they are over 400 microns long by 8 p.m.; they will be long enough (around 500 microns) for me to stop the test, clean up, and go home at 8:30 p.m.; I will be on the train heading home just after 9 p.m. tonight; I will skip work tomorrow.

--------------

Oh. Libby sentencing today. Since the computers I'm chained to here at work don't have soundcards for streaming, I'll try to keep up with what goes down at the hearing by reading emptywheel's liveblog (I'm assuming this will happen at firedoglake... and there's sure to be a liveblog diary of it at The Great Orange Satan).

Predictions: Libby gets a disappointingly short sentence; he doesn't have to sit in prison while he's waiting for his appeal.

Jesus saves (the rest of you take damage)

2007-06-02T12:35:00.000-05:00

The other day, I'm looking through the Wikipedia for reasons that don't concern you and I get to reading the entry for Ebola. Down toward the bottom of the entry, I find (my emphasis):

Much of the representation of the Ebola virus in fiction and the media is considered exaggerated or myth. One pervasive myth follows that the virus kills so fast that it has little time to spread. Victims die very soon after contact with the virus. In reality, the incubation time is usually about a week. The average time from onset of early symptoms to death varies in the range 3-21 days, with a mean of 10.1. Although this would prevent the transmission of the virus to many people, it is still enough time for some people to catch the disease.

As one of those geeks (scroll down and read the wg comment) who plays Dungeons and Dragons, that span of time (3-21 days between early symptoms and death) set off little bells in my head.

~~Roll for initiative~~ I mean, read the rest... I just started to write a brief background into the game (for non-geeks and/or not-that-type-of-geeks). Forget it. Anyone reading this site who doesn't know what D&D is can leave a comment and I'll be glad to explain.

Back to Ebola.

So you know how you generate a character's ability scores in D&D by (among other methods) rolling 3d6 ("three six-sided dice") and adding the total? It gives you scores that lie on the range of 3-18. There is only one way to get a 3 with 3d6 (roll a one on each die), and there's only one way to get an 18 (duh). Since there's only one way to arrive at them, those ability scores are rare. All the scores in between are more probable, and the most probable one is 10 or 11. Sketching a graph, the sum of 3d6 is a "bell curve" with a maximum (likeliest roll) between 10 and 11, and tails (least likely rolls) at 3 and 18. A graph exactly like the one I just described appeared in the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide (or maybe the PH, my copies are in the attic).

Aside: Without resorting to too much math, you can get a sense for why "10 or 11" is the most probable total of 3d6 by knowing (from not having lived in a cave your whole life) that 7 is the most probable total of 2d6. If that's true, then the average roll of a single d6 must be 3 or 4 (because 3.5 = 7 / 2 and you can't roll a 3.5 on a die). And if that's true, the average sum of 3d6 is 3.5 + 3.5+ 3.5 = 10.5 (i.e. ten or eleven). End of Aside.

This is all to say that I've finally found an actual, real-world phenomenon that is (roughly) governed by the rules of D&D. If you contract Ebola, roll 3d6 when the symptoms first appear. Assume you'll live as long as the total of those dice. The odds are slim that you'll roll/live only 3 days or as long as 18 days; the odds are good that live around 10 days.

If you manage to live for an (unrollable) 19+ days, you must have an excellent CON score or some sort of resistance bonus.

I'm always (except when I sleep and eat and have a life) on the lookout for other instances where D&D game mechanics coincide with reality and vice versa. Why, just the other day Holly pointed out how Lola failed at an attack of opportunity--attempting to disarm Hugo by taking away the toy--when he moved out of a threatened space. It was a textbook AoO.

Anyway, if you notice or can think of any examples of D&D meeting reality--especially examples with numbers involved--let me know (anonymous comments accepted; there's also that e-mail address on the contact page).

Aww

2007-05-30T16:18:00.000-05:00

I could really care less about Paul Wolfowitz and his troubles, but this quote made me smile a bit. It's Paul talking to the BBC a few days ago:

People were reacting to a whole string of inaccurate statements and by the time we got to anything approximating accuracy the passions were around the bend.

Strings of inaccurate statements sure can be a bitch sometimes, eh Paul?

"No Blood, No Foul"

2007-05-30T08:42:00.000-05:00

Wow. Liberal crybaby, Andrew Sullivan:

What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact [Oops, Mr. Sullivan--that's a rookie mistake -&y]: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn't-somehow-torture - "enhanced interrogation techniques" - is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever. Old Europe. Geneva is quaint. 9/11 changed everything. Jack Bauer 4 preznit! Blah blah blah.

But seriously. Wow. Literal Gestapo tactics. I hope a moderator asks the Democrats the same sort of stupid question Hume asked the Republicans in South Carolina. And I hope they all hit it out of the park. But they wont. They'll probably just say, "I agree with whatever John McCain says." Fools.

Memo to myself

2007-05-30T07:57:00.000-05:00

When the other postdoc says we (read: I) should do these calibration tests in two stages--an initial high-frequency stage, then a slower stage once the sample's been testing long enough for fatigue cracking to be a reasonable possibility--agree with the other postdoc.

Today's going to be a long day. But however long it ends up being, it would have been shorter if I'd not said, "No way, we should do the calibration tests at a constant frequency, even if it means they take a long time."

Dumb &y.

It's all such bullshit

2007-05-26T22:10:00.001-05:00

October 2006...

Absolutely, we're winning. Al Qaeda is on the run. As a matter of fact, the mastermind, or the people who they think is the mastermind of the September the 11th attacks is in our custody.

Three days ago...

The enemy in Vietnam had neither the intent nor the capability to strike our homeland. The enemy in Iraq does. Nine-eleven taught us that to protect the American people, we must fight the terrorists where they live so that we don't have to fight them where we live.

Yesterday...

As to al Qaeda in Iraq, al Qaeda is going to fight us wherever we are. That's their strategy. Their strategy is to drive us out of the Middle East. They have made it abundantly clear what they want. They want to establish a caliphate. They want to spread their ideology. They want safe haven from which to launch attacks.

For the record

2007-05-26T06:37:00.001-05:00

From the Government's Memorandum of Law in Support of its Proposed Sentencing Guidelines Calculations (pdf courtesy of The Next Hurrah, emphasis in original):

As this Court is aware, evidence establishing Ms. Wilson's actual status as a covert agent whose employment at the CIA was classified at the time of the leaks was excluded from the trial on the ground that it was not relevant to the question of whether the defendant made false statements or endeavored to obstruct justice. Defendant sought the exclusion of such evidence on the ground that it would be unfairly prejudicial.

In other words, many of these people can now answer their own questions, and many of these people can now shut the fuck up.

If only

2007-05-25T09:32:00.000-05:00

Bush, yesterday:

"See, people have got to understand that if that government were to fall, the people would tend to divide into kind of sectarian enclaves much more so than today," he said. "That would invite Iranian influence and would invite Al Qaeda influence, much more so than in Iraq today."

If only someone had said this before the war. Sigh.

Terrorism

2007-04-27T10:41:00.000-05:00

Fill-in-the-blank:

A bomb was left in a duffel bag in the parking lot of ______, but a bomb squad safely detonated it.

Answer here.

Extra Busy

2007-03-26T07:54:00.000-05:00

Sorry about the silence. I'm extra busy lately:

Specifically, it's the little one who's making me (and Holly) extra busy. Old puppy's a model dog--mostly.

Yawn

2007-03-16T12:44:00.000-05:00

I'm spending the day ~~babysitting a machine~~ conducting an important science experiment. The work consists mostly of not forgetting to look at a certain computer screen every 5 minutes. I'm on my sixth straight hour of this.

Hang on....

Okay, I'm back. The machine is doing fine. Metal fatigue continues apace. Same as it ever was. It's a bit of a pain that "my" computer, which is on a cart right next to the computer I need to monitor, has been locked out of the Internet by the IT clowns. It's also a pain that these same clowns haven't returned my calls or e-mails about getting that computer unblocked. Oh well. It's just that this babysitting job is pretty damn boring. And I'd rather be reading the Internet. Or doing almost anything else. As it is, to look at the Internet (and write this post), I have to walk all the way across the lab and borrow someone else's computer (when it's free).

Hang on....

Oooh. There's a tiny blip in the data graph, so things might be getting interesting. I'll know in five minutes, I guess. Actually, I should probably hang up and go watch things more closely. This is why they pay me the big bucks, after all.

Crap. And now people need to use this computer for real work. Back to the blip.

Utility post

2007-03-11T14:14:00.000-05:00

This is a comment-catcher for the crossword (one post below this one). I figured this (people posting answers) might end up being a problem, but I kinda forgot to do anything about it. D'oh.

Apologies to Magnum (the reader who left answers in a comment). I'm not mad at you or anything--I don't have enough readers to get mad at anybody. I just wanted to make sure everyone had a chance to enjoy the fun. Such as it is.

Click here for comments (and crossword answers)...
Here is a copy of the comments that were left in the crossword post at the point when I disabled them. Sorry about the formatting. View source, copy, paste = ugly formatting that I don't feel like tidying. It's a utility post, after all.

xox,
&y

3 OLD Comments:

3/11/2007 11:42 AM; Crap. Forgot to mention that the previous crossword can be found , in case anybody wants to try one of my unplaytested offerings.

Also, there's no PDF version of that first crossword. Sorry. It's not like I couldn't make one, it's just that I hate you all. And the only reason I posted it in the first place was to see if it would work.

Eventually, I'll have put enough crosswords up on this site to justify an archive page collecting links to them. Not there yet.
&y: 3/11/2007 11:49 AM; Double-crap. I screwed up the link in that comment I just wrote. The first crossword is here.
&y: 3/11/2007 1:13 PM; Can't quite finish it:

peels-f*nt-jeep
april-l*ie-ursa
sigma-i*ma-dept
----eft-tar-sao
ales-fitzgerald
rout-sno-stolid
monad-gb*-twine
amulet-i*l-eves
dickcheney-last
---valerieplame
agee-iras-aspen
corn-unit-lasso
toad-mens-steal
Magnum

Crossword 2

2007-03-11T11:20:00.000-05:00

After about a zillion drafts, I'm ready to release the second Speaking as a scientist, etc. crossword puzzle. This one's topical! (Just don't get too ~~war~~ far out on Wilson.)

If you'd rather not jack around with the Java-applet version, here is a printable PDF of the puzzle. I'll post the answers when I'm good and ready (they're not uploaded yet, so it's no use fishing around the server trying to find them.) Major thanks to my playtester, Holly. You're the best one.

UPDATE -- some answers were posted as a comment

So I disabled comments for this post and hid the existing ones. To see copies of those comments (including some answers, I remind you), AND/OR to leave any new comments, click here. The link takes you to my comment-catcher utility post, just a few pixels up the page. Thank you.

Or just click here for the Java-applet version of the crossword...

You need Java enabled to view the crossword applet.

If you do not have Java installed you can obtain it from java.com. If do have Java you may need to check your security settings to make sure that applets are enabled, especially if you are viewing the puzzle from your hard disk. In Windows XP you may be able to enable the applet by clicking on the yellow bar at the top of the window and selecting "Allow blocked content".

Four out of five counts surveyed . . .

2007-03-06T13:04:00.000-05:00

. . . say Scooter Libby is guilty.

But you already knew that. And yet, you still came here. That's sweet, but I wont be offended if you go read the real coverage, starting here at firedoglake.

In other news, remember back when I used to post stuff here while I was waiting for MATLAB to process data for me? Good times.

Well, guess what? The good times are back! That's right. Through the miracle of fread.m (and affiliated MATLAB routines), I can convert the stupid LabView files that get saved by my research group's data-acquisition routines into data files that I can manipulate and study. (There's a trick to doing this: you need to know that default LabView binary files are "big endian"; if you add the 'ieee-be' switch to your fread calls, everything works just fine.)

Oops. The conversion ended while I was typing that last paragraph. So I should probably get back to work.

That's good news about Scooter, though.

P.S. I think I've successfully (unless you use Safari?) jacked the site's template around so it shows one of those silly little "favicon" doo-dads in the url pane and tabbar when you're on this site. Let me know if this causes any trouble.

The grown-ups

2007-03-06T08:58:00.000-05:00

Here's Ira Glass talking during the overture to this week's This American Life (the podcast--I think it's a rerun):

These stories are like jokes, and they're also like poems--I think because there's this "aha" quality to them. Some connection is made between things--a surprising connection: a wrong connection, actually. And part of what makes these so satisfying as stories is that the logic in them is perfectly reasonable and, at the same time, completely and utterly wrong.

Quick quiz: Is Ira talking about stories of children, or stories of the Bush followers in our government? Read the answer.

The title of the episode is "#188 Kid Logic." Glass is talking about stories that illustrate such (children's) logic.

An example of kid logic from my childhood: I'd learned it was dangerous to look at the sun and concluded it was too risky even to look at photographs of the sun. Another one: noticing that I could "see through" some of my fingers if I held them close to my face and looked past them to the distance, I concluded that I had a limited form of x-ray vision. Save me, Parallax Boy!

I was young. I grew out of it. When I realized I didn't have x-ray vision, I accepted that I didn't have x-ray vision; after I'd taken the plunge and stared at a photo of the sun (without going blind), I also let that one go. I did not make up lies to justify my earlier, "completely and utterly wrong" beliefs.

You see, even kid logic adapts to reality. I know--nothing really profound about that. (I hope you don't come to this website in search of The Profund.)

Anyhow, I bring all this up (partially) because of something Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-Craqerstan) said when he met the press this past weekend:

Sen. Graham: I’m here on your show, and you can get clips from my past appearances, I was wrong [!] about certain things. The weapons of mass destruction issue, the whole world was wrong about it. I think Saddam believed he had the weapons, but apparently he didn’t.

Just let it go, Sen. Graham. You were wrong about certain things. Full stop.

Great lede [sic]

2007-03-05T15:41:00.000-05:00

I'm not going to go look this up right now (because I don't care), but I'm 90% sure The Official Journalists' spelling of that word they use for the first sentence of an article is "lede."

Anyway. Here's the best lede I've seen in a long time:

Philadelphia's mayoral candidates face a populace distrustful of city government, dissatisfied with public schools, and remarkably ignorant about the candidates in the May 15 primary election.

Inquirer staff writer Andrew Maykuth--you rock.

If any of my remarkably ignorant fellow Philadelphians want to get informed, here's that website they never shut up about on WHYY: thenextmayor.com. Also, if you want to meet Candidate Michael Nutter, I've seen him gladhanding near the entrance to the commuter rail area of 30th St. Station twice in the past few weeks (early a.m. commute). There's probably a more efficient way to meet him, but that's what I got.

Oh. One more thing. He's not featured at thenextmayor.com, but if you want to pick your mayor based solely on who's the most hilarious candidate (I'm talking to you, you people who voted for Ross Perot), look no further than the current Mayor's brother: T. Milton Street.

Pronoun trouble

2007-02-28T08:45:00.000-05:00

The AP asks:

Who was the mystery official on Vice President Dick Cheney's plane? There were plenty of clues about his identity if you read a transcript of his remarks.

[...]

"Let me just make one editorial comment here," the official said. "I've seen some press reporting says, 'Cheney went in to beat up on them, threaten them.' That's not the way I work. I don't know who writes that, or maybe somebody gets it from some source who doesn't know what I'm doing, or isn't involved in it. But the idea that I'd go in and threaten someone is an invalid misreading of the way I do business."

Duly noted. But I wonder why nobody asked the briefer the obvious follow-up to this editorial comment: "We understand that's not the way you work, oh great anononymous, official briefer. But what about the Vice President?"

Also, the reports of what Cheney told Musharraf generally boil down to something like (this is the NYT version):

The White House would say little on Monday about the message Mr. Cheney was sent to deliver, though it did not deny reports that it included a tough warning that American aid to Pakistan could be in jeopardy. Democrats have threatened to link aid to Pakistan to its effectiveness in combating both Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

This makes me smile.

First, there's the obvious implication that if we'd lost last November, a reelected Republican Congress would have continued their longstanding policy of not giving a shit about what happens at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Our new majorities in Congress appear to be having an effect on Bush Administration policy (wow, it's been a long time).

Second, how sweet is it to read about that shoot-em-in-the-face thug Dick Cheney hiding behind our Congress? The President and I haven't cared much about this terrorism stuff in the past, but we're up against Democrats now--they're strong and they're serious. Do something about the Taliban and al Qaeda on your border, or the Democrats will take your military aid away.

Ha-ha.

Crossword solution

2007-02-27T16:30:00.000-05:00

If you haven't seen the puzzle, it's here.

Click here for the solution.

Podcast report

2007-02-27T09:02:00.000-05:00

It's been over a week since my discovery of the podcast. Time for a report.

Item: Sean Hannity's podcast
I tried. I really did. But, ugh. No--sorry--UGH!!!!!!!!!! First off, the Hannity podcast comes through (roughly--it's hard to judge volume thanks to that logarithm thing) twice as loud as all the others. My efforts (I tried!) to have its volume automatically reduced by iTunes failed. Second, even after I've yanked the earphones from my head, fished the iPod out of my pocket, and manually lowered the volume to a normal level, it's still Sean Hannity talking. And he's an idiot. So, sorry, Sean. Your crap's just too much to stomach.

Item: Bill O'Reilly's "Talking Points" podcast
Also a waste of time. It doesn't blow my eardrums out, but it definitely blows. The man's just such a buffoon.

Item: The Slate Gabfest Politics Roundtable Thing (or whatever it's called)
Silly, but not bad. Even when they're talking about stuff that doesn't interest me (like how the 2008 presidential race is heating up), they're still entertaining. The other day, they were yakking about some topic and one of the guys admitted that he didn't know anything about it. No big deal, right? Most pundits don't seem to know much about the things they discuss, right? Well, get this--after admitting ignorance of the subject matter, this Slate Gabfest guy proceeded not to pontificate endlessly about it. It was sadly refreshing.

Item: News Updates From CNN Radio
They're garbage, but they provide a nice "reality" contrast to the similar updates from NPR. By "reality contrast," I mean that they report the news the way I suspect most other people hear it. Where NPR might accompany a report on Congress debating The Surge with a clip of someone discussing The Surge, CNN would accompany their report with a montage clip designed to ridicule the debate (Listen to how many times congressional Democrats said 'obfuscate' yesterday!)

Note: I sometimes get a similar update from one of the TV networks' radio syndicates; they are nearly indistinguishable from the CNN updates; in fact, the report about how many times so-and-so said "obfuscate" may have been on an ABC or CBS news update, not CNN. It's all garbage.

Item: New York Times front page
Pretty odd. It's some guy skimming the front page of the NYT for us. An advertisement for today's NYT, essentially. It's really only useful if you plan, later, to pull up the website and read the articles.

Item: BBC Newspod
Tolerable. Not outstanding. I'm sick of writing about podcasts.

Stupid contest

2007-02-26T22:37:00.000-05:00

Fill in the blank (source):

"Cheney doesn't go someplace unless it's very serious," said Barnett R. Rubin, a New York University scholar of South Asia who has been critical of the Musharraf government. "The government of Pakistan is paralyzed, and Cheney is there to _____________.

I'm going to go with feed for the blank, but that's just because it's the first thing that popped into my head. Contest winner get the answers to the crossword I posted last night (as will everyone else as soon as I get around to putting up the answers).

2 [ENTER] 2 [+]

2007-02-26T10:01:00.000-05:00

I noted this the other day (loc cit):

It is part of the White House plan to go after targets and people [in Iraq] that were previously exempt from attack for political reasons.

Since then, a few curious news stories have come to my attention. First up is the detention of, "the well known national personality Sayyid Ammar al-Hakim," son of SCIRI bigshot Abdel Aziz al-Hakim. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said, in a statement, "the treatment of Sayyid al-Hakim was uncivilised and indecent, and he has demanded that the American leadership hold those behind it responsible."

Read the rest. . . .
Oh--I forgot to mention this part:

The political storm over the treatment of Hakim junior broke as his father's Baghdad house was targeted by a suicide bomber, who detonated his deadly load of explosives nearby after coming under fire from police.

And the part about how President Talabani ended up in a Jordanian hospital later in the day for some health problem.

Then there's this one, from this morning:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's Shi'ite vice president and a cabinet minister were wounded in an apparent assassination attempt on Monday when a bomb killed six people at a ministry in Baghdad where they were attending an official ceremony.

And if you haven't read Seymour Hersh's latest, do not pass go, do not collect $200:

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria.

The Cheney administration settles all family business.

Crossword

2007-02-25T22:26:00.000-05:00

Trying out my sneaky new crossword-publishing scheme. This is with everything set, pretty much, to default. Let me know what you think. The puzzle is a weak one I wrote a long time ago. Tolerable for a Monday, I guess.

Update: solution here.

Update: I moved the crossword inside the fold.

You need Java enabled to view the crossword applet.

If you do not have Java installed you can obtain it from java.com. If do have Java you may need to check your security settings to make sure that applets are enabled, especially if you are viewing the puzzle from your hard disk. In Windows XP you may be able to enable the applet by clicking on the yellow bar at the top of the window and selecting "Allow blocked content".

From the blogopause

2007-02-24T22:51:00.000-05:00

Now that I'm a big evil postdoc, serving at the pleasure of the Military-Industrial Complex, I've begun taking Aviation Week and Space Technology (thoroughly buried behind a firewall, eerily unavailable at newsstands).

So I was reading this article (I read it for the articles) in the Jan. 22 issue called "A Need to Succeed: Time runs short for the White House to influence military events in Iraq," when this sentence kinda poked me in the ribs. The authors are talking about the latest, intelligence-based plans to "target the insurgents and their supporters":

It is part of the White House plan to go after targets and people that were previously exempt from attack for political reasons.

Shudder, shudder, and shudder.

Shudder #1: "the White House plan" ("too big a fool"). Shudder #2: "previously exempt" ("exercise restraint"). Shudder #3: "political" ("and I mean everything").

Also, for what it's worth, I'm inclined to grant Aviation Week the benefit of the doubt about this sort of stuff. If you're going to "build the death planes," you need reliable information. Other parts of the article above are cited to anonymous intelligence and Pentagon "officials" (not senior). And, anecdotally, a friend of mine who used to run a gigantic Pentagon research lab tells me he and his research-lab cronies called the magazine "Leak Week" because of all the stuff, "we shouldn't have been reading" that they found in its pages.

Leaving home

2007-02-24T09:31:00.000-05:00

Before getting on with the post proper, I'd like to set the mood with a little music. I hate a website that plays (unsolicited) music at you ~~as much as~~ considerably more than the next guy. So I'm not going to do that to you. Instead, I'm going to open up a can of "interactive multimedia" on your asses and just tell you which song you should be hearing. It'll then be up to you to play it at your leisure, hum it to yourself, whatever. If all goes according to plan, the song will be stuck in your head for days (and no messy copyright infringements!)

The intended song is Superstition by Stevie Wonder and the part I want you to focus on is the badass funky riff at the beginning. This part also loops endlessly throughout most of the song (note: hi-hat and assorted cymbals not transcribed):

bass drum, snare drum, bass, snare, bass, snare, bass, ba-dum-dum-dum, dummmmmm, etc.

Rock your foot back and forth--heel for the bass drum, toes for the snare, heel, toes, heel, toes. Nod your head in time if you go in for that sort of thing. That's it. Feel the funk flowing through you. Let go your conscious self and act on instinct.

Excellent. Appropriately set mood: check!

Read the post proper . . .
You see, I intend to make this the first in a series of posts about Russian superstitions. Standard disclaimer: I'm not Russian, I just spent three years of my life living in Vladivostok (on your dime, if you pay U.S. taxes... thanks for that, by the way). When I was in Russia, I collected dozens of superstitions. (I have a list, but I don't feel like counting them all--"dozens" is a fair estimate.) And unlike a lot of other Russian-culture crap, I "assimilated" on a few of the superstitions, adopting them as my very own.

Today I'm going to focus on three superstitions that are related to leaving the home/apartment. [Note: if the abovementioned funk is no longer coursing through your skull, go back and reread the top of the post. Don't cheat yourself out of the interactive fun.] This is probably a good time to mention that these three are among the superstitions that I have assimilated. That is, I believe wholeheartedly in them and always strive to protect myself from their ill effects.

The first is fairly straightforward: right before leaving on a long trip, you should sit quietly for two minutes. Failure to do so will lead to something bad^a happening on the trip. To my knowledge, there is no way to cancel the ill effects of this one after the fact. You either put in the two minutes up-front, immunizing yourself while you're still at home, or you're screwed. Sitting quietly in the cab to the airport doesn't count. Sitting quietly on a bench while waiting for a bus doesn't count. If you arrive at the airport (or wherever) and realize that you forgot to heed the two minute warning, you cannot retroactively claim that you put in your two minutes while sipping tea (or whatever) earlier that day--the two minutes must be spent mindful of the fact that you are heeding the superstition.

^aTranslator's note: This notion of "something bad [but unspecified] happening to you" comes up often in Russian superstitions. I suspect there are a lot of cases where the real superstition specifies the sort of bad thing that might happen, but I never understood (or never heard) the details. In the case of "sitting quietly for two minutes," I believe the potential ill effects are left deliberately vague in the superstition: anything from a flat tire to a plane crash is possible. But I'm not sure. This superstition is, alas, not one that came up very often. And when it did, it was seldom in the company of any Russians who could help me understand the point of it all.

That's only for a long trip. The other two "leaving home" superstitions come into play every time you cross your threshold. (By the way, the threshold figures in many Russian superstitions and will be the subject of its own post later in the series.)

The first of these is about forgetting stuff when you leave: never go back to get something you've forgotten. It's very bad luck. For example, say you've just stepped out the door on your way to work when you realize you left a packet of papers you graded the night before on your desk. Oops. Just let it go. Forget about the papers--they're dead to you until tomorrow. If you go back for them now, something bad will happen.

Unless . . . (and here we encounter a common theme in Russian superstitions: The Loophole) unless you know about The Loophole. The loophole for this one allows you, say, to go back for the papers and completely cancel any potential for bad luck related to your return. It's what I like to call "a perfect loophole."

So how do you take advantage of the loophole (I hear you cry)? Easy. You go back in and collect the item(s) you've forgotten, then you say hello, aloud, to your reflection in a mirror:

Andy [to mirror]: Hello, Andy.

Ta-da! Just like that, the bad luck is canceled. Note that the loophole works if you greet your reflection in any language you understand (slang is okay, too). For example, this works just fine:

Andy [to mirror]: Zdorovo, Andriukha!

And this would probably work, too (though I haven't tried it):

Andy [to mirror]: Yo, Andy.

This, on the other hand, doesn't work (because it does not identify the defendant by name):

Andy [to mirror]: Hey, dude.

Summarizing--the specifics of the greeting don't matter, as long as (1) it is a legitimate greeting, and (2) you identify your reflection by name.

Supplemental notes: In my "assimilated" (i.e. unofficial) version of this superstition, the reflection need not need to be in a true mirror--any surface that is reflective enough for me to recognize myself is good enough. Also, in my version of the superstition, items that I generally carry with me (like my wedding ring) do not count as mirrors, regardless of how shiny they are. Also also, I heed this superstition whenever I leave any space that is nominally under my control--not just when leaving home, in other words. If I forget my ipod when I get out of the car, I say hello to myself in the rear-view mirror (but not in the shiny back of the ipod, because it's something I generally carry with me) if I go back to get it. Because I jump through similar loops when I forget something at my office or in the lab, I maintain reflective surfaces there. Just in case.

The final superstition of this round, again, is one that I continue to heed in my daily life, even though I'm no longer in Russia: It is bad luck when you are leaving home and an article of clothing catches on the doorknob, gets pinched in the door when you close it, etc. Like with the "forgetting something" superstition, this one has a loophole: if you go back inside and change the offending article of clothing, you're in the clear.

A sad note: what I've just described is my version of this superstition; the "official" version is one of those things (e pluribus unum) from my "Russia Years" that I can barely remember. That is, I know there is a superstition about clothes getting caught in the door, and I know there is a loophole. But I can't remember the official loophole, so I've created my own. It's possible that the official loophole involves a mirror. It's also possible that the ill effect associated with this superstition is not simply "bad luck"--it could be something more perverse--like that if your clothes catch and you leave without canceling the superstition, you will "lose money" (a common thread in Russian superstitions), or you will never get married (another common thread in Russian superstitions).

I don't remember.

Anyway, that's today's installment of Russian superstitions. You are now free to let that Stevie Wonder song leave your head (but I hope it stays with you a little longer).

Next time on Russian superstitions: Whistling.

Judge, Judy, and Executioner

2007-02-19T11:12:00.000-05:00

This week in the Libby trial, expect closing statements and the judge's instructions to the jury. For details, go read firedoglake, The Next Hurrah, Needlenose, Talk Left, and the sites cited therein.

In related, if old, Libby news--throughout the trial, Judge Walton has instructed the jurors to stay away from news reports until the proceedings are over. He's also told the jury often that such-and-such a piece of evidence (a newspaper article, typically) should not be treated as fact, but only as an indication of what the newspapers were saying at the time. An example from last week (emptywheel liveblog, not an official transcript; my emphasis in bold):

Walton: I'm going to give this instruction apply these limiting instructions. These articles have been admitted have not been admitted for truth. You may not assume that anything said in articles is true or consider anything as establishing facts.

Sound advice--not only in a court of law, but also in our daily lives.

The New York Times
~~All the news that's fit to print~~
You may not assume that anything said in articles is true or consider anything as establishing facts.

The Log Log

2007-02-18T10:26:00.000-05:00

Now that it's truly gotten cold here, we've been supplementing the heat from our fuel-oil furnace with the fireplace (and insert) that came with our house. I'm not the kind of guy who can just build a fire, think of it as pretty or romantic, then just walk away and let it heat the house.

No way. I have to study the fire like a thoroughgoing nerd. Which brings me to The Log Log (a notebook, not pictured inside the fold, where Holly and I record data relevant to fire performance), the logLogGraphics.m software package (also not pictured--it's software, fercryin'outloud) that presents the data in a moderately useful manner, and so on.

Read the rest, and see the photos. . . .

Aside: As a rule, I wouldn't call Holly a "thoroughgoing nerd," but she's definitely got a nerdly attitude toward The Log Log. End of aside.

The picture at the right shows (unfortunately, an old version of) our experimental setup. We fill a coffee mug (labeled A) with water and set it on the fireplace insert's shelf. As the fire burns, we monitor the water temperature using a digital oven thermometer--the wire that connects the thermometer probe to its display (not pictured) runs up and off the top edge of the picture. We also monitor the house's thermostat temperature, the outdoor temperature, and the fuel input (logs added).

For awhile, we had a k-type thermocouple inside the firebox--the sort of thing you can do when you work at a materials science department--but it proved to be a pain in the ass. And the mug+thermometer technique gives a good-enough approximation of the fire temperature for our purposes.

Note: I added the B and C labels to the photo before I realized that I have nothing to say about B (the insert door, where the logs go in) or C (the ash drawer).

The photo at the left shows one of the many representations of the data that are available thanks to logLogGraphics.m. You'll have to click the image to see it in fuller detail, but the gist is that the graph shows mug temperature--for the seven most recent fires individually, as well as their average--as a function of elapsed fire time. The curve that gives the average is colored "middle green" and is marked every five minutes with circles. The other colored curves show two standard deviations above (redder) and below (bluer) the average temperature.

When we have a fire going, we can plot its progress on one of these graphs (taped into The Log Log) and see how it stacks up alongside the average.

Anyway, that's about all I have to say about The Log Log right now. I'll probably come back to it when things get slow. For now, let's just open the floor up for questions and/or let you talk among yourselves.

BONUS: In response to reader (one reader) request, I have turned my RSS feed back on. I disabled it a long time ago, right after I reconfigured my blogger template to allow these posts with stuff inside "the fold" because the with-fold version of the template requires me to edit posts just after I post them: manually adding the "Read the rest . . ." link. I shut off RSS partly because I was afraid that this manual-edit thing would cause two copies of every post to appear in the feed, partly because I didn't think my writing throughput was high enough to merit syndication. Also, I don't use RSS myself because it's a pain in the ass. Whatever. The point is, if anyone does use RSS and finds that two copies of this post show up in the feed, would you please leave a comment and let me know?

You heard it here last

2007-02-18T09:17:00.000-05:00

My iPod broke awhile back ("It's a hardware problem. . . . [I]f you want to fix it, try sending it to ikaput.com" --person at Apple authorized service center downtown). So, American through and through, I opted not to repair the thing: replaced it with a newerfangled iPod. And this acquisition finally prompted me to poke my nose into the iTunes Music Store "podcasts" section.

You know, to see what all the hype is about.

I know, I must live in a cave if I'm just discovering podcasts. But imagine my surprise at learning, upon investigating "all the hype," that Barack Obama has a podcast and that it's "highly rated." Now, I'm probably never going to listen to his podcast--it's at the end of a very long list of things I'd rather be listening to on the commuter train--but I'm impressed that his is the most conspicuous (if not the only) candidate podcast at the iTunes music store. The man is serious. I don't find similar podcasts at iTunes (or even looking around at the other candidates campaign websites).

You heard it here last: As stupid as they seem at first glance--even to a political junkie like me--these political-ad podcasts will ultimately prove not to be as irrelevant as they should be.

Aint no stoppin' us now

2007-02-13T08:44:00.000-05:00

First off, go check out the nutball congressman who never took civics class:

HARDBALL: . . . Let me ask you Congressman Cantor, very clearly, to clear up our discussion, if the U.S. Congress were to discuss tomorrow morning whether to declare war on Iran, would you vote yay?

CANTOR: This congress is not going to do that because it's the commander in chief's role, Chris, and Steve knows that as well. It's not Congress that will ask for that. It is the commander in chief that will make that decision. Every president whether republican or Republican or Democrat since the War Powers Act was in place has interpreted it as being the commander in chief's role to do that.

Just once, wouldn't it be nice if Congress held a debate about its role in wartime--and, more importantly prewartime--when there wasn't another fucking war pending? From a comment I gave Congressman Conyers at Daily Kos awhile back:

Please, the next chance you get--2006, if all goes according to plan--please make an effort to pass a law, establish a rule, etc.... do something to stop future presidents from swindling us all into more wars that didn't have to happen.

Read more...
When I wrote that, I hadn't counted on Cheney lobbying this hard for another major war, this soon after having destroyed Iraq. When sociopaths are banging the drums for war, it's hard to have any meaningful debate about war powers. But sooner or later we will have to have such a debate. Whatever the original point of the War Powers Act was, it's now used primarily as a shield by ignorant members of Congress, too gutless to face reelection within two years of an unequivocal for or against the war vote, and by power-hungry presidents (which is to say all presidents) itching to try out the Situation Room and break a few eggs for the old Legacy Omelette.

At some point, we're going to have to fix (or just clarify) the War Powers Act. Because it's possible that I'm quaint and Rep. Dumbass is right--perhaps representative government is just incompatible with wartime. Maybe we should officially amend the Constitution so Congress casts wishy-washy (later spinnable) votes about authorizing the use of force etc. and presidents declare open-ended ("long," "generational," etc.) wars when they decide it's in our nation's interest. Maybe not.

But it's all very frustrating. We desperately need to rein in the executive branch's war powers at the worst possible time to do so. People ask me if there will be a war with Iran (as if, somehow, I'd know because I "read the blogs"). I don't know what to say. Clearly, if Bush wants a war with Iran, there will be one--there is no institution in the world powerful enough to stop him from bombing Tehran if he "decides" that's what needs to be done.

Anyway. It's snowing here--I'm using it as cover to stumble into work late. I'm a bad man.

Avoiding the appearance of propriety

2007-02-09T09:02:00.000-05:00

This is one of those posts that goes nowhere. But I'm trying to get back into the swing of this weblog thing, so bear with me. In the Washington Post today:

In a telephone interview yesterday, Feith emphasized the inspector general's conclusion that his actions, described in the report as "inappropriate," were not unlawful.

And that Bush quote that keeps on giving, again (only this time I'm taking it from a more recent source--you know, for freshness):

Let me say a few words about important values we must demonstrate while all of us serve in government. First, we must always maintain the highest ethical standards. We must always ask ourself not only what is legal, but what is right. There is no goal of government worth accomplishing if it cannot be accomplished with integrity.

P.S. I'd like to dig up that (oh, is it Friday already?) inspector general's report (about Feith) when it's released later today. If you see it before I post an update linking to it, drop a comment. Thanks.

UPDATE
Forbes puts this headline, Pentagon: Pre-War Intelligence Was Legit on an AP story that starts like this:

Some of the Pentagon's prewar intelligence work, including a contention that the CIA underplayed the likelihood of al-Qaida connections to Saddam Hussein, was inappropriate but not illegal, a Defense Department investigation has concluded.

legit /adj/ inappropriate but not illegal. A panel of ethics experts concluded that the congressman's lewd instant messages were legit because their teenage recipient was, technically, above the age of consent.

SECOND UPDATE (2/10/7)
Here's PDF link to the unclassified executive summary. Not much there, but if you read it you can take comfort (?) in knowing that you'll be better briefed on the subject than the President of the United States is.

Hysterionics

2007-02-05T16:19:00.000-05:00

Atrios reminds me that today is Powell day and quotes (among other things) the following from George Will:

People committed to a particular conclusion will get to it and will stay there. So the facts that Powell deployed, and the pattern they form, will not persuade people determined to be unpersuaded. But Powell's presentation, its power enhanced by his avoidance of histrionics, will change all minds open to evidence.

God bless our arrogant, bully leaders.

Regime of national unity

2007-01-25T08:49:00.000-05:00

Check out how Dick Cheney drops The R Word when referring to the new Iraqi government--not Saddam, but the latest "sovereign," "Iraqi" "government" that we installed after Saddam:

BLITZER: But there is --

CHENEY: No, there is not. There is not. There's problems -- ongoing problems -- but we have in fact accomplished our objectives of getting rid of the old regime, and there is a new regime in place that's been there for less than a year, far too soon for you guys to write them off. They have got a democratically-written constitution -- first ever in that part of the world. They've had three national elections. So there's been a lot of success.

I don't think that's a very good sign.

Maybe it's that Dick thinks governments are quaint. You know, We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect regime. . . . Or maybe Dick's heard his own government referred to as a regime so many times that he doesn't recognize the negative connotation.

Most likely it's as Digby points out at the link above--Dick "has totally lost touch with reality."

Birth, School, Work, Death

2007-01-11T12:42:00.000-05:00

You devoted readers don't deserve a bunch of pathetic excuses for my latest bout of silence, so I'll just offer this one: I've been starting up my new job (and looking for a better one).

The new job ("postdoctoral researcher") is a lot like the old one, but the pay is a bit better and I occasionally have to/get to travel into the heart of the Military-Industrial Complex. I went to a "naval air station" earlier this week in preparation for some tests I'll be doing there soon. (I'm just going to go ahead and call the naval air station a "base.") The base has this fancy lab where you can shake entire airplanes--or giant chunks of them--to pieces and study how they break. That's what I'm going to be doing.

But enough about me. I didn't watch last night, but I gather the President laid out a scheme that boils down to something like, "exhaust all military options before resorting to diplomacy." Oy.

Enough about Bush (I've cracked my joke). Back to me. Me, me, me! So the truth is, I haven't been paying much attention to the news lately. I could lie to you all and say that I've been avoiding the news so I can find out how hard/easy it is to live in utter ignorance of the world. Or because it's too depressing, or because after __________, I needed a break from it all. Or for reasons of outrage fatigue. Or, or, or. But that's all malarkey. Truth is, I've just felt like doing things other than sitting in front of a computer, and reading things other than the news.

So I could tell you, say, that John Swartzwelder's book The Time Machine Did It is not as funny as I'd hoped it would be. And that Spy--The Funny Years is worth paging through at a bookstore (assuming you read Spy during those same funny years), but you shouldn't buy the book until you've given it a good skim. And that the George Smiley spy books by "that Frenchman" [sic] are great. And that Crime and Punishment is a truly lousy choice of reading material for a regional rail commute.

Or I could post photos and a failure analysis of the fireplace poker that broke recently at my house. Or of the handaxe that also broke. Or I could put up the graphs I've been making of the fireplace temperature as a function of time and logs added. Or I could finish the draft of the monograph on Russian superstitions that's been loitering about my computer for so many months.

But I think I'm just going to get back to work.

What I get for not checking e-mail often enough

2006-12-06T11:59:00.000-05:00

Oh man. After all that (and the Ph.D. thing is now, officially, both done and done), I finally get around to checking my e-mails from the past several years--I am such a chump!

OBTAIN A PROSPEROUS FUTURE, MONEY-EARNING POWER,
AND THE PRESTIGE THAT COMES WITH HAVING THE CAREER POSITION YOU'VE
ALWAYS DREAMED OF. DIPLOMA FROM
PRESTIGIOUS NON-ACCREDITED
UNVERSITIES BASED ON YOUR PRESENT KNOWLEDGE AND PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE.
If you qualify, no required tests, classes, books or examinations.

I probably wouldn't have qualified, but I definitely should have applied. You know? Could have saved me a lot of trouble.

Tonight is D&D, so I gotta work on that. Coming soon, the publication of a post (about superstitions) that has lingered for months and months as a Blogger "draft." You wont want to miss that.

This is it (this is it!)

2006-12-05T09:30:00.000-05:00

I'm down to the last few hours of graduate school. My final exit interview is at 2 p.m. I've made all the corrections etc. to my dissertation. The office staff at the department assure me I will have the necessary signatures on all the forms they keep track of for me. I've printed out canonical copies for deposit with the department, my advisor, the library, and with the microform people. I've filled out the mandatory survey of earned doctorates form to the best of my ability. I've taken the university's "opinion survey" (I was angry--my answers included the words/phrases "wretched," "monumental waste of time," and "nameless administrators.")

I have no library books or fines. I have no "holds" of any sort to my name. My bursar account balance is $0.00. Slightly amusing story about that: as of last week, the university somehow owed me about $42 (I don't understand how this happened). Anyway, rather than go bicker with the bursarocrats about this money, I phoned the exit interview people to see if a slightly positive balance was okay, or if it had to be $0.00 exactly. Ans: It must be precisely zero. I am not allowed to say, "keep the change" at my exit interview. It's the only time I've ever known the university not to scrape and clutch at nickels rolling down the street.

What else? There's some other form for copyright something-something. It's filled out. There are extra copies of the title page and abstract: printed. OH... right. There is (irritating) page 34 of the dissertation. When carefully paging through my canonical copies yesterday, I discovered that the box around one of my figures encroached on my 1-inch left-hand margin by approximately the width of a 2-points-wide line. So I had to reprint this page. If the exit interviewer (who does brandish a ruler, according to my contacts) randomly selects page 34 and finds that encroachment penalty, I cannot graduate until May. I decided to fix the margin, rather than gamble on the 1/285 chance that the offending page will cause trouble.

So that's about it. I haven't (obviously) posted in awhile--something about not having to sit at this computer all day makes me, well, not want to sit at this computer all day. Whatever.

Fishin' accomplished

2006-11-20T19:40:00.000-05:00

Unless you count the part (I do not) where we stayed up drinking till 2 in the morning the night before, the expedition commenced by automobile at the insane hour of 4:30 in the morning. My memory of this part is sketchy, but I do recall hearing both "Immigrant Song" and "Spanish Techno"--these two songs would bounce back and forth in my skull all day long. I also drank coffee. And I sat in the back seat because I was also too sleepy to call shotgun. At some point along the drive, I ate the biscuit-based, fast food product that I would later puke over the side of the boat for my seagull buddies.

Read the rest . . .We arrived at the dock, waited 45 minutes for the member of the expedition who overslept, then weighed anchor (not really) and set out in search of the elusive striped bass, a.k.a. "striper" (not to be confused with Stryper), a.k.a. "rockfish." And they do rock (still not to be confused with Stryper).

Recognizing that my readers are not all as rugged and badass as I am, I feel a few words are in order about the striped bass. First, you should know that this is one crafty fish--among the most intelligent and dangerous in the world. (Little-known fact: Ian Fleming based his fictional SPECTRE organization on striper society.) Striper are vicious predators, typically hunting in packs of 10-15. A striper pack can pick a cow's carcass clean in seconds. In addition to cows, striper also feed on sharks, whales, bathers, aligators, kayaks, and the like. Striper have even been known to attack ships on the high seas--sinking them, eating their crews in a frenzy of blood and bones, then looting the wreckage for treasure. Striper are fond of booty.

As we steamed (not really) out to the rocks where we suspected striper might be found, the mood on the boat was tense. We'd all made peace with our loved ones before departing, but the thought of striper--lurking somewhere out there in the cold Atlantic waters--terrified us all.

And so on. Here's me with the first fish I ever caught (I had to pixelate the faces for my own protection--in case this fish's family has Internet access):

(photo by M.F.)

Fish

2006-11-17T08:28:00.000-05:00

Going fishing this weekend. I'll be somewhere down in Virginia, if I understand the plans. I decided to join the expedition a few weeks ago and confess that I didn't really pay much attention to the details--all I needed to know then was that the fishing would occur after Defense Day, so I'd either be free and happy or free and bitter. Free, either way. And someone else is driving. I'm to bring a sleeping bag.

I'm not a strong fisherman. (Come to think of it, given my new status as Officially Overeducated Liberal, I should probably ~~use~~ ~~employ~~ utilize obscuring synonyms and pretentious gibberish whenever possible.) I have but a passing acquaintance with the sport of angling.

For example, I'm pretty sure I've never caught a fish. And I'm definitely sure I've never caught a memorable fish. I once dragged--seriously--a "tin" can out of a lake while fishing. That was at the Monroe Reservoir ("The largest man-made something-or-another this side of something-or-another") when I was a kid. I forget what bait I was using, but it was likely something simple like worms. This was the same day I saw a sign at one of the bait shops you pass driving down to the Causeway: "Used Firewood."

Alas, I have yet to catch a boot while fishing. The tin can has cliche value (and some comic value), but the heart of fishing comedy is the boot. Or maybe it's that part in Fishing with John when John and Willem freeze [SPOILER ALERT!] to death. Maybe I'll catch a boot this weekend. With a license plate jammed down inside it. It must've come up the gulf stream from warmer waters down south. Something like that--once I've caught a boot, the jokes will write themselves.

Assuming, reasonably, that we end up fishing with shotguns--I promise to do all I can to maintain the Speaking as a scientist, etc. safety record. Which reminds me, I need to update the About page.

Done a

2006-11-15T07:15:00.000-05:00

I successfully defended the dissertation yesterday. Turns out I solved the hell out of that problem I'd set out to solve, so now I'm a doctor of philosophy. I have exhausted our educational system (24th grade, by my count).

"Commanding knowledge of the subject area..." --One committee member
"Excellent work." --Another one
"Thorough." --Yet another
"Impressive. Most impressive." --Darth Vader

It feels good. This stupid task that has grown ever louder, ever more cacophonous, and ever more annoying for 7 years is over just like that. E-major, baby. Freakin' glorious.

^a As is customary with these things, my examination committee gave me a list of typos and stuff that I'm supposed to correct before I print out the final draft of the dissertation--the the copy that goes to the binders and ends up gathering dust in the library's high-density storage facility. I also haven't written a 350-word abstract for the thing. And I have some overdue library books to return, etc. So I'm done (they called me "doctor"), but there's still some junk to deal with before I'm done-and-done.

I'm gonna miss that guy

2006-11-12T14:55:00.000-05:00

Quick hit, via Laura Rozen (go to the original link through that one--one extra click's not too much to ask, is it?) This is Ken Adleman talking about Rumsfeld to The New Yorker:

[Rumsfeld] was in deep denial--deep, deep denial. And then he did a strange thing. He did fifteen or twenty minutes of posing questions to himself, and then answering them. He made the statement that we can only lose the war in America, that we can’t lose it in Iraq.

The minute Rumsfeld launched into one of those, "How are we doing? Okay. Can we do better? You betcha," things talking only to himself, I'd have lost it--uncontrollable laughter--and been fired on the spot.

There is probably at least one grim joke conflating "we can only lose the war in America . . . we can't lose it in Iraq" with "we're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here," but I'm not feeling funny enough to work on it today. Smartasses are always welcome in the comments. Spambot? Anyone?

Third verse, . . .

2006-11-11T20:56:00.000-05:00

Gen. Peter Pace (New York Times Nov. 11, 2006) and other senior military types have been conducting a review of Iraq and the War on Terra since September. Their plan appears to be to come up with a plan. And they're on top of that plan to craft a plan:

Pentagon officials said that the team’s objective was to outline a range of options that General Pace might draw on in advising President Bush and Robert M. Gates, selected by Mr. Bush to become defense secretary, as the White House adjusts its strategy in Iraq. Ideas that have been discussed include increasing the size of the Iraqi security forces, along with the American effort to train and equip them, and adjusting the size of the American force in Iraq.

It's mind-blowing, outside-the-box shit, to be sure (not your daddy's "stay the course"). That's why they pay you the big bucks, Peter. But I kid. They probably don't pay you anywhere near the big bucks. Don't take it personally, though--they don't believe in paying anybody the big bucks (except themselves).

Speaking of themselves. This military review is not the Baker-Hamilton "pretend grown-ups" Iraq Study Group thing, though the NYT article mentions them. They'll begin meeting with a shocking list of incompetents--Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld, Negroponte, Hayden, Khalilzad--starting on Monday. I wonder if they're calling these meetings "fact-finding" missions. I certainly hope they all take notes. (By the way--how come Big Dick isn't on the list?) The Bakerbots are supposed to roll out their product "around" the 65th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, so I expect great things from them. Something tasteful, in the holiday spirit.

Updates inside the fold . . .Update: Cheney's on the list--they just didn't mention him in the NYT article. Here you are (Washington Post Nov. 12, 2006). "Many of the ideas reportedly being considered [by the Bakerbots]--more aggressive regional diplomacy with Syria and Iran, greater emphasis on training Iraqi troops, or focusing on a new political deal between warring Shiites and Sunni--have either been tried or have limited chances of success, in the view of many experts on Iraq."

Further Update: More on the Pace Panel (Washington Post Nov. 11, 2006) including this bit, "'You are not going to do away with terrorism,' Pace continued. 'But you can provide governments in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere with enough security capacity to keep the acts below a level at which their governments can function,' he said." Hmm. That sounds familiar. Right, I remember now.

Cherrypicking

2006-11-11T12:09:00.000-05:00

NEWSWEEK poll has Bush at 31%:

President Bush’s job approval rating has fallen to just 31 percent, according to the new NEWSWEEK Poll. Bill Clinton’s lowest rating during his presidency was 36 percent; Bush’s father’s was 29 percent, and Ronald Reagan’s was 35 percent. Jimmy Carter’s and Richard Nixon’s lows were 28 and 23 percent, respectively.

I know this is totally pointless, but I feel compelled to stick up for President Clinton (and mathematics) here. That "36 percent" thing might be true of one data point from one poll conducted once during his two terms. But according to Prof. Pollkatz and his summary of presidential approval ratings for several Presidents (data from "one prominent pollster"), Clinton's ratings were generally much better than that.

Read the rest . . .The prominent pollster recorded Clinton ratings at or below 40% six times in eight years; these sub-forty ratings never lasted for more than two consecutive polling cycles. Clinton steadily gained support for most of his time in office. There was some scatter in his first two years--with approval jittering about at around 45%--and Monica slashed his approval toward the end of his second term from around 65% to around 60%. Ouch.

Bush, on the other hand, has never ever shown any sustained increase in favorability: just sharp spikes followed by rapid drops. The spike at Sept. 11, 2001 was gone within two years. The spike at the beginning of the Iraq war was gone by the end of the Bush regime's third year. The spike at the capture of Saddam Hussein lasted about a month. His dishonest 2004 reelection [sic] campaign bought a reversal in the steady decline--just enough to get reelected--but as soon as he set out to spend that "political capital" on the things he really wanted to do (things like phasing out Social Security that he was too gutless to use as a major campaign issue), the familiar decline resumed.

Bush's latest spike (caused by midterm-timed terror talk + shameless exploitation of Sept. 11 anniversary) also appears to be in the process of vanishing. If this 31% result from NEWSWEEK holds up as a trend in other polls, Bush will find himself with an approval rating that is half the one Clinton enjoyed from impeachment till the end of his second term. Given all that, how dishonest is it to compare a single number (like 36%) for Clinton with a single number (like 31%) for Bush?

Anyway, I guess there's probably a deeper lesson about trends and outliers buried in this post, but I'm sick of writing about trends and outliers in data. So I rush the conclusion. And I skip the thesis. See you in the comments.

Committee watch

2006-11-10T11:44:00.000-05:00

LA Times via Billmon:

Rep. Ike Skelton knows what he will do in one of his first acts as chairman of the Armed Services Committee in the Democratic-led House: resurrect the subcommittee on oversight and investigations. The panel was disbanded by the Republicans after they won control of Congress in 1994. Now, Skelton (D-Mo.) intends to use it as a forum to probe Pentagon spending and the Bush administration's conduct of the Iraq war.

[...]

Since Bush took office, Waxman [Government Reform Committee] has written letters to the White House seeking information on a wide range of subjects — often getting no response. Now, with the power to issue subpoenas, he is likely to get answers.

More at the link. Enjoy.

Washington Post via Needlenose:

After repeated criticism of the Bush administration, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee yesterday [June, 2005 -&y] gaveled a hearing to a close and walked out while Democrats continued to testify -- but with their microphones shut off.

Sensenbrenner ("a dick ... who enjoys abusing his position of power" --fubar at Needlenose) will hand the gavel over to John Conyers (D-MI). Conyers'll do just fine.

I'm looking forward to keeping up with the "action" at some of these committees once we take over.

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The more things change

2006-11-08T16:41:00.000-05:00

Bush in victory (Nov. 3, 2004):

So today I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent: To make this nation stronger and better I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust. A new term is a new opportunity to reach out to the whole nation. We have one country, one Constitution and one future that binds us. And when we come together and work together, there is no limit to the greatness of America.

Bush in defeat (Nov. 8, 2006):

I'm confident that we can work together. I'm confident we can overcome the temptation to divide this country between red and blue. The issues before us are bigger than that and we are bigger than that. By putting this election and partisanship behind us, we can launch a new era of cooperation and make these next two years productive ones for the American people.