Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Sneaky ChiCom Espionage

War

This is fascinating and disturbing.  Those who think that China is a “strategic partner” should think again.


Posted by Buckethead on 08/30/05 at 06:41 PM
War • Permalink

Well no wonder I was a Hendrix fan

Music Wonkery

In my high school, there were basically 2 sorts of people: the kids who listened to crap, and the ones who didn’t. 

We were too small to have a distinct division between the usual clans.  The heads and jocks, for example, were oftentimes indistinct as the top athletes smoked dope or juiced.  Since I wasn’t into drugs or sports, or combining one with the other, I found I identified most with people who listened to similar musics.  As an interesting side note, most of us had little musical talent; the band kids listened to the pop/pap.

Via Begging to Differ and about three other people comes a harmless, yet peculiarly irritating little music game. 

Instructions:

A.) Go to musicoutfitters.com
B.) Enter the year you graduated from high school in the search function and get the list of 100 most popular songs of that year
C.) Bold the songs you like, strike through the ones you hate and underline your favorite. Do nothing to the ones you don’t remember (or don’t care about).

After looking at the list, is it any wonder that Zeppelin and Sabbath were among the most popular bands to the music clan?  Is it wrong that the B52s had the least-offensive track in the entire year?  I ought to disclose that sure, I dug G ‘n R when I was 17.  But today I can’t even bear to hear a snippet of “Appetite” flipping between stations. 

My list below the fold.


Posted by GeekLethal on 08/30/05 at 03:59 PM
Music Wonkery • Permalink

Okay, let’s give Rutan that $1 billion, now

Unmitigated Gall

Malaysia has announced that they plan to be on the moon by 2020.  If a third rate nation like Malaysia is even contemplating a manned moon mission in the near term, it is high time that we get our asses moving.  Bad enough that we can imagine a Chinese-dominated space future, but a Malaysian one is beyond the pale.


Posted by Buckethead on 08/30/05 at 03:34 PM
Unmitigated Gall • Permalink

Saturday, August 27, 2005

You may choose one item from each, erm… menu.

Just So You Know

I was informed this week that Hooters has added a kid’s menu to their line of offerings. Which is funny, you know, because Hooters has always had a kid’s menu. Just mainly for infants. 


Posted by Johno on 08/27/05 at 10:31 PM
Just So You Know • Permalink

The best analogy I’ve seen for Pat Robertson’s continuing bouts of logorrhea

Unmitigated Gall
From Kathleen Parker, who later refers to the boob thusly:
Robertson, of course, is well known for his spontaneous foot tastings. This is the same Pat Robertson who has urged his flock to pray for a U.S. Supreme Court vacancy "one way or the other."
Quite so. Oh, anyhow - that analogy?
Televangelist Pat Robertson's flip-flop on his fantasy moment as an international assassin reminds me of a famous, if possibly apocryphal, story about David Niven as told by Christopher Buckley.

Niven is standing with another gentleman at the base of a staircase as two ladies in evening gowns descend.

Niven says: "That's the ugliest woman I've ever seen."

Other man replies: "That's my wife."

Niven: "I meant the other one."

Other man: "That's my daughter."

Niven: "I didn't say it."
If there were licenses required for speaking in public, Robertson's would have at least been suspended by now.

Our plentiful supply of other public morons is probably embarrassed to be seen around Reverend Pat. If not, they ought to be. Not everything you think is worthy of public exposition.

Unless, of course, you have a blog.

[Wik] Other views, of course, can be found. Witness this from Alan Abelson of Barron's:
Predictably, Mr. Robertson's suggestion prompted a paroxysm of harrumphing from lily-livered liberals and the like (if you don't like, just leave it at from lily-livered liberals). Jesse Jackson urged the FCC to launch an investigation as it did after Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction during the half-time show at the Super Bowl on the grounds that "This is even more threatening to hemispheric stability than the flash of a breast on television during a ballgame."

A close call, we'd say.

The fuss proved sufficiently discomforting for Mr. Robertson to cause him to recant. Which, frankly, we feel is a shame. Not that we believe dispatching Mr. Chavez is a particularly compelling priority. But the concept of effecting regime change on the cheap appeals to us.

Certainly, even the most cursory spectator of the global political scene can rattle off the names of at least a dozen no-good-niks who would be ideal candidates for the coup de grâce. And they don't even have to be mass murderers or ethnic cleansers; blamed nuisances would do fine. And we needn't worry too much about world opinion: We could always outsource the work. If the administration is right and everything is going to be hunky-dory in Iraq, there'll be a lot of idle assassins hanging around street corners in Baghdad who'd be only too happy to pick up a few bucks. Or, we could insource the job to the Mafia, whose business, thanks to the zeal of prosecutors and the eagerness of capos to spill the fava beans, isn't the killer it used to be.

Come to think of it, the approach is fraught with possibilities right here in the good old USA. It might be a quite useful device for our own polity as a kind of permanent term limit for especially deserving office holders. It also might prove an extremely efficacious tool for corporate governance as a means of getting rid of crooked CEOs, a quick and irrevocable way to enhance shareholder value (avoiding those costly golden handshakes, etc). And it holds particular promise for our own beloved Wall Street, where capital crimes are committed every day and the perpetrators live to crow about it.

Thank you, Mr. Robertson.
On second thought, he might not be completely serious. It's possible he has a blog on the side.


Posted by Patton on 08/27/05 at 07:58 PM
Unmitigated Gall • Permalink

Friday, August 26, 2005

Like a bird *and* a plane

That Buck Rogers Stuff

A research team has succeeded in producing a recon drone that flies like a bird.  At least in some respects.  It’s not an ornithopter - it doesn’t use the flapping of wings to generate lift.  But it can rapidly change the shape of its wings to achieve much greater flight control and maneuverability.  The flight control system is modeled after the wings of the common sea gull, and will allow the drone to complete three barrel rolls in a minute - an F16 can only do one without incapacitating the pilot.

“If you fly in the urban canyon, through alleys, around parking garages and between buildings, you need to do sharp turns, spins and dives,” said project leader Rick Lind, an aerospace engineer at the University of Florida. “That means you need to change the shape of the aircraft during flight.”

If all this tinkering pans out, the result will be a highly maneuverable drone for looking in on enemies in built up areas.  As long as they don’t add a guano-bombing module, I think its a good idea.


Posted by Buckethead on 08/26/05 at 05:17 PM
That Buck Rogers Stuff • Permalink

Friday funtime quizzery

Just So You Know

I’m not especially a religious cat, and lean toward agnosticism at my most upbeat.  But I am capable of respecting, and on a good day appreciating, the art that comes from spiritual expression. 

I’m not sure how I ended up with this cross, because some of the questions assumed dogmatic knowledge on my part that I don’t possess.  But I knew the difference between “Ben Hur” and “The Passion of the Christ” so took a stab. 

The one question that really threw me though was something about which material bests suits my personality… I thought about it, and couldn’t decide betwixt marble or clay.  I went with marble because it’s cold.

I think I like my cross: simple, devoid of pretension (the object itself, I’m focusing on here), hand made, and just slightly weird:

brigid
You are St Brigid’s Cross: St. Brigid is an Irish
saint who hand-wove a cross,out of rushes she
found by the river. She made the cross while
explaining the passion of our Lord to a pagan
man.


What Kind of Cross are You?
brought to you by Quizilla


Posted by GeekLethal on 08/26/05 at 09:20 AM
Just So You Know • Permalink

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

I’ve Got A Warm Feeling In My Gut, and This Time I’m Sure It Wasn’t The Chili

War

From Stars and Stripes:

From rubble to avenging angel: The U.S. Navy is using steel from the World Trade Center in a new ship, according to the Navy.

Ten tons of steel from the World Trade Center’s twin towers will be used in the construction of the USS New York, according to a Navy official.

The San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock is slated to be commissioned in 2008.

Being a squishy peacenik socks-n-sandals sort I generally squirm at gestures that whiff of vengeance. Unfortunately there is twelve-million-square-foot hole in my mercy that is still, four years down the road, full of black rage and sorrow. The notion that some of the steel from the WTC has made its way into a fighting vessel called the USS New York makes me feel… good.

It also nearly makes up for the failure of the designers of the new buildings to go with my preferred plan.

[Wik] h/t Blackfive.


Posted by Johno on 08/24/05 at 01:58 PM
War • Permalink

Oh, it’s an instructional beating.  That’s okay then

Unmitigated Gall

Minister Geeklethal cued me in to an interesting article from the English-language Arab News, “The Middle East’s Leading English Language Daily.” In this opinion piece, the editor holds forth on the proper mindset for beating your wife. 

The beating which is only prescribed in the case of disobedient wives is intended to serve as a remedy in an unusual situation. If the husband feels the wife is behaving in a disobedient and rebellious manner, he is required to rectify her attitude — first by kind words, then gentle persuasion and reasoning. Beating as a last resort must never be understood to entail using a stick or any other instrument that would cause pain or injury.

A rebellious woman who is not moved by kind works, persuasion and admonition is a woman of no feeling and must therefore be punished by beating. Psychiatrists tell us of people, including women, for whom a cure lies in beating.

The controversy over the beating of disloyal and rebellious women is part of the campaign against Islam. If beating disobedient wives was advocated by Western scientists, it would have been widely supported by the same people who criticize Islam and special centers would have been set up all over the world to train husbands on how to beat their wives.

Our scholars should focus on explaining to people, especially the young, the real teachings of Islam in order to avoid causing uncertainty and confusion.

It is good that the interpreters of the religion of peace realize that there are two kinds of beatings, and forbid at least one of them to husbands.  Instructional beatings at least have the saving grace of providing instruction - whereas run-of-the-mill, smack the bitch for shits and giggles beatings just leave bruises.

Back in Ohio, we would occasionally run across people who clearly “need beating.” I now understand that what we were feeling there was a divine inspiration to administer instructional beatings.  If only we had read the Koran, we would have been empowered to act on that nudging from the almighty rather than let cretins run around untutored.

It is good for my safety that I am a Christian, seeing as any attempt to deliver admonitory beatings to Mrs. Buckethead would result, not in her adopting a more humble and obedient posture, but in me getting a grade A tae kwon do ass whuppin’.


Posted by Buckethead on 08/24/05 at 12:49 PM
Unmitigated Gall • Permalink

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

It’s Like A Big Party In Here! There’s Wine and Bread… Anyone Got Some Brie?

Just So You Know

Further proof that my nonbelieving heathen ass is as contrary to the mainstream of American culture as can be. Beliefnet has an article, as is their wont, about the reasons people go to church and what they believe about people who don’t, in the form of results of a Beliefnet/Newsweak poll. There are some very surprising conclusions, such as the revelation (pun!) that 79% of churchgoing Americans and 68% of Evangelical Protestants believe that all good people have a shot at heaven whether they belong to [the church of yr choice] or not.  That’s interesting… the Antinomian heresy is clearly alive and well. Among other things, this indicates that Anne Hutchison’s exile to Rhode Island in 1637 was to absolutely no avail.

More than that it is a testament to the ability of Americans to tolerate others innately, even when they are instructed repeatedly not to on pain of hellfire & eternal whatever. I mean seriously… hell is a pretty central tenet of especially the Fundie folkways, and for all the rhetoric they sling on Sundays and at demonstrations, it seems the better angels of their natures prevail.

But the really interesting part of the survey is this:

Other results from the poll indicate that the appeal of religion is more spiritual than cultural. Thirty-nine percent said the main reason they practiced their religion is to “forge a personal relationship with God” while only 3% said it was to be part of a community. This would help explain why many people report having a regular prayer life but not attending church. Seventy-nine percent said they pray at least once a week compared to 45% who said they went to worship services during that time. In addition, 40% said they felt “most connected with God or the divine” when they were “praying alone or meditating” compared to 27% who said they had that sense when they were in a house of worship or praying with others.

The poll also showed a more basic point that may be obvious to Beliefnet readers but not others: spirituality is crucial to most Americans. 57% said spirituality was “very important” in their “daily life” and another 27% said it was somewhat important. Their behavior seems to back up this notion. 79% said they prayed at least once a week and 55% said they read a sacred text—Bible, Koran, etc—at least once a week.

Only three percent of Americans go to church primarily to feel part of a community. The li’l punchline to this is that my wife and I have kicked around the idea of joining a church for the sake of having a community for our as yet theoretical children to grow up within. If only the Unitarians weren’t so darned uptight.... Moreover, I have as yet been unable to maintain a regular relationship with my own navel during meditation, much less any putatative sky fairy whom I’ve as yet been unable to raise on the great Cosmic Philco. Being on the wrong side of a 97% and a 79% majority means you could probably fit all the other people in this great country who think like me in one Winnebago. A small one.

Rather irritatingly, the Beliefnet/Newsweak poll also includes a teaser at the bottom of the first page: “How Many Of Us Believe in Intelligent Design?” On the second page it is revealed that “We Are All Intelligent Designers,” which is explained with a data point to the effect that 80% of respondants believe God created the universe. I’m not sure those two statements are compatible, and indeed it is an annoying cop-out in an otherwise very interesting survey and poll.

Anyway, decent article. Apparently I’m a heathen freak.


Posted by Johno on 08/23/05 at 10:17 PM
Just So You Know • Permalink

New Frontiers in Darwinian Social Sorting

Darwin Award Contender

Have you, as a mature and intelligent amateur pundit or consumer of said amateur punditry, ever said to yourself, “I wonder… where all the hoochies at?”

If so, you’re in luck. Thanks to the magic of the Internets and the puckish wit of anonymous code-gnomes, we now have a mashup of new hotness Google Maps with old and busted fad hotornot.com that lets you locate all Hot or Not? submitters in and around your town. From the needy-looking coed who’s “up for anything” to the barely legal teen who loves the “hott boyzz” to the scantily clad un-MILF who has “three kids” and wants “NO CASUAL SEX,” there’s something here for pathological loners and Megan’s Law fugitives of all genders and persuasions.

Since this same territory is covered in every meaningful way by dating sites and webcam peepshows of all stripes, what is this for besides giving us an easy way to affirm our superiority? To paraphrase the immortal Dale Gribble from TV’s “King of the Hill,” Hot Or Not is already “the feces that is produced when shame eats too much stupidity!” This new mashup just makes it easier to identify the losers among us so they may be more easily excised from the margins of our social circles. Hopefully all these hott frontaz and skanky hoochies will find each other and sink together to the bottom of the gene pool.

This is Phase I. Phase II will involve radio tagging.

Is all this unnecessarily elitist of me? After all, these people are already *something* enough (lonely, vacuous, foolish, hapless) enough to end up on hotornot.com. Do I really need to add to the misery they probably (ought to) already feel by pointing an electronic finger and laughing?

You bet I do.

[wik] Link from gawker.


Posted by Johno on 08/23/05 at 04:35 PM
Darwin Award Contender • Permalink

All Your Metal Singers Are A Bunch Of Sissies

Music Wonkery

You have not lived until you have heard Motorhead’s “Orgasmotron” covered by Yat-kha, a Siberian band fronted by a Tuvan Throat Singer. I don’t know what’s best… the Russian bouzouki-stylee backing track or the fact that suddenly Lemmy seems like a limpwristed whiny little pussy next to the sinister Satan’s-lungs croak of Albert Kuvezin.

Listen here, and be sure not to miss the incredible cover of Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”

We now return you to your regular programming.


Posted by Johno on 08/23/05 at 11:27 AM
Music Wonkery • Permalink

Friday, August 19, 2005

Request for assistance

It'll Be a Cold Day in Hell
As I type this, NPR's All Things Considered has just finished delivering a story, entitled "A Dilemma Over Sheltering Sex Offenders".
All Things Considered, August 19, 2005 · Public concern over sex offenders has led Florida to open its 59 prisons as hurricane shelters and require registered sex offenders on probation to report there if they don't have anywhere else to go. Registered sex offenders can't go to a public shelter because their probation bars them from being around children. Some sex offenders on probation say the requirement is being punished twice for their crime. Judith Smelser of member station WMFE reports.
Now, I consider myself to be of at least average intelligence, and I try very hard not to read too much into the presentation of any given news story, whether from NPR, Fox, or any of the other standard media outlets. This makes it possible for me to enjoy them all, at various times.

But if any reader could be so kind to give the story a listen, via the "Listen" button at the link above, I'd appreciate an opinion on the thrust of the story. Net: Sex offenders on probation or under state supervision aren't allowed to go to hurricane shelters in Florida, and instead, if they live in an area that's been forcibly evacuated and they have no safe place to go, they have to present themselves to their neighborhood prison, where they're treated like guests rather than prisoners. They have to wear name tags, they can't smoke, and if they leave and go somewhere other than home, they're at risk of violating probation/parole, but they're provided safe refuge.

Here's the thing - I'd swear NPR was trying to make me feel sorry for the sex offenders, and I'd like to hear someone tell me I'm just imagining this.

I recognize that there is a class of registered sex offenders who don't fit into the standard mold, such as 19 year olds with 17 year old partners, rather than, say, a Boston Diocese priest in recent memory. We're talking two completely different "transgression levels", in other words, and I haven't a clue what transgression got the two fellows who spoke their minds in the NPR story onto the list of registered offenders.

However, in order to wring a tear from me after hearing this story, if applied to some disgusting pervert who just wants to be treated like he's not a disgusting pervert because, you know, he's done his time and all that, it would take a ball peen hammer to the grapes.

Posted by Patton on 08/19/05 at 07:44 PM
It'll Be a Cold Day in Hell • Permalink

Democracy in inaction

Unmitigated Gall

Most Americans are unaware of how, exactly, their government works.  At best, most of our citizenry has a hazy conception of the actual operation of Congress based in large part on vague recollections of schoolhouse rock’s “I’m just a bill.” This is a good and bad thing.

On the one hand, it is bad because liberty in a republic depends on the wise and considered participation of an informed citizenry.  Warmed over and fuzzy memories from high school civics layered with factoids from USA Today and CNN do not an informed electorate make.

On the other hand, it is good, because if the good citizens of this nation actually understood, really knew, what goes on in, say, the stygian depths of the House Rules Committee room, they’d invite the British back to finish what they started in 1814.  Leaving our fair capital a smoking wasteland would be infinitely preferable to facing the horrifying reality of dysfunction and corruption at the heart of our system.

On a related but tangential track, there’s Sam Cohen.  You’ve likely never heard of him, but he’s the dude who invented the atom bomb.  The peacemongers and hippies all painted the neutron as an even eviler version of an irredeemably evil weapon.  It was the ultimate capitalist bomb – a nefarious device that killed people while leaving their property intact.  This is in stark contrast to the actual mindset that led to Cohen to invent the bomb and to declare for decades that it was the most moral weapon ever devised. 

Cohen’s logic was that in war, people will use weapons.  Weapons are designed to kill.  So, it makes sense to design weapons that kill efficiently while doing as little else as possible.  If a neutron bomb doesn’t kill you outright, you will live on with out appreciable aftereffects.  The infrastructure that you need to survive after the war will be intact – not blasted apart or poisoned with radioactivity.  The bomb doesn’t maim, it only kills.  Cohen, from his position at RAND, lobbied for years for his concept, only to be rejected by five successive administrations and a military that wanted only bigger bombs, not more efficient ones. 

Cohen’s story has some – interesting – accounts of the wrong-headedness of those in charge of our nuclear strategy.  But they aren’t as far fetched as they might seem at first.  Remember that the depiction of cold war strategic reasoning in Dr. Strangelove is barely exaggerated from the realities of game theory informed strategy used by RAND and the military up until the fall of the Soviet Union.  (The takeover of grand strategy by the mathematicians starting with RAND in the late forties is responsible for much of the incredible weirdness of the Cold War, the counterintuitive reasoning, inflexible response postures and bloodthirsty retaliation schemes.  Also, the fascination with throw-weight, CEP, megadeaths, and finely-wrought calculations of the effects of nuclear war.) And also that those responsible for setting policy had (with the possible exception of Eisenhower) none of the special aptitude or training one might think necessary for figuring out what to do with city-destroying weaponry.

Knowledge is good, as the Faber college motto tells us.  But it doesn’t always make it easier to sleep at night.

[Wik] A couple other interesting Cohen bits here and here.


Posted by Buckethead on 08/19/05 at 06:27 PM
Unmitigated Gall • Permalink

Sometimes, the news doesn’t agitate as apparently intended

Partisan Politics
A headline in today's Washington Post informs that Roberts Resisted Women's Rights. On reading the story, these horrific facts were made evident:
Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. consistently opposed legal and legislative attempts to strengthen women's rights during his years as a legal adviser in the Reagan White House, disparaging what he called "the purported gender gap" and, at one point, questioning "whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good."

In internal memos, Roberts urged President Ronald Reagan to refrain from embracing any form of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment pending in Congress; he concluded that some state initiatives to curb workplace discrimination against women relied on legal tools that were "highly objectionable"; and he said that a controversial legal theory then in vogue -- of directing employers to pay women the same as men for jobs of "comparable worth" -- was "staggeringly pernicious" and "anti-capitalist."

...

Covering a period from 1982 to 1986 -- during his tenure as associate counsel to Reagan -- the memos, letters and other writings show that Roberts endorsed a speech attacking "four decades of misguided" Supreme Court decisions on the role of religion in public life, urged the president to hold off saying AIDS could not be transmitted through casual contact until more research was done, and argued that promotions and firings in the workplace should be based entirely on merit, not affirmative action programs.

In October 1983, Roberts said that he favored the creation of a national identity card to prove American citizenship, even though the White House counsel's office was officially opposed to the idea. He wrote that such measures were needed in response to the "real threat to our social fabric posed by uncontrolled immigration."
Now, as a side note, much of this wasn't news to me, as I'd already heard it during the breathless expose on NPR's All Things Considered, the night that 5,000 pages of records had been made available, and all the progressives ganged up looking for instances where Roberts had called someone a homo or some other such disqualifying action.

However, when put in context, like the WaPo did for me, uh, wait a minute. Even in context, the only thing I see there that's even worth a raised eyebrow is the silliness about AIDS transmission. I was around in the early 80s, but can't recall how institutionalized that sort of scientific ignorance was at the time, so I don't really take it all that seriously.

(If you don't already think me an intemperate red-neck, see the rest below the fold)


Posted by Patton on 08/19/05 at 04:08 PM
Partisan Politics • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
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