Second Life

While I've been recovering at home, I took up the recommendation of one of my colleagues and tried Second Life. It was an interesting experience, and answered a few questions I had always had.

Some observations:

1) It's not quite anarcho-capitalism. It's close though, at least in concept, to what the more utopian anarchocapitalists I know tell me the future could be like without government. There are no (or very, very few) sales regulations. If you can make it, you can sell it at whatever price you can get for it. The market is aggressive and active. For example, land there sells (with or without covenants) for between L$10-L$15/m^2 on average (L$ = Linden dollars, the in game currency). If, you offer land for sale less than that, it goes *immediately*, but if you go above that, it can sit for quite a while. I accidently sold a plot for L$6000 instead of the L$60,000 I meant to type and it sold in a pico-second. I was not happy, but the new owner was thrilled. Many of the benefits/responsibilities of anarchocapitalism are there, including going around armed (there is a good business in both arms sales and security systems to keep people off your property). You can manufacture anything you want to create, and sell unlimited quantities, except for land. You can buy and sell land, create or break land-use covenants and, in general, make a profit off anything you want.
Where it differs from AC is around how the few rules are enforced. Where AC would have no central government, SL has the operating system which, among other things, enforces property rights, i.e. you cannot take land by force. The system also eliminates things like roads, right of ways etc. because you can fly anywhere you want. The system can lock folks out of property (i.e. you can erect an impenetrable force field around your property). Most of the things you’d want a government for, are there as part of the OS. In my view, this is approximately the correct function of government. Oh, and there are taxes in the form of a monthly maintenance fee proportional to the maximum amount of land you owned that month. And, being no fools, you pay that fee in US$ not in L$.
2) Real Estate folks make all the money, but it’s a high volume, low margin business. When you add in the taxes for property ownership, you start to get some inflationary effects. I see how to make it work, but it’s a full-time job.
3) No one needs that many digital t-shirts
4) Absolutely no one needs that many furry foxtails.
5) It has many of the things I enjoyed about The Sims, in it. I can buy some property, construct a house, decorate and furnish it (which for some reason I love to do), and sell it at a modest profit in about a day. There is *LOTS* of interior design stuff there, and some very clever work going on. If I were a designer, that’s where I would go. If I were a teacher, that’s where I would send my students.
6) A lesson I learned: If you don’t have a security system installed, lesbians will come into your house while you are gone, fuck in your bed and, if you catch them at this, not understand why you are ordering them to get dressed and get out.
7) While there is some interesting geography there, much of it gets flattened for use. Almost no one allocates their space for a nature park.
8) Unrestrained capitalism looks pretty seedy for the most part.
9) Zoning regulations are your friends in the real world. I never appreciated that until now.
10) Most people are reasonable, but not terribly imaginative.
11) Virtual Reality, while advanced from the ‘80s, still has a long way to go. SL does not have the quality or character of any decent commercial MMORPG.
12) It is also not as addictive as a MMORPG.
13) While you can exchange US$ or L$ (and vice versa) the exchange rate is terrible and there are a LOT of fees. I don’t recommend doing this, but if you do, one massive transaction is better than many little ones.
14) People will form communities around anything. The Island of Scottish-only, diaper wearing adults taught me that much.
15) SL sims dance far better than the people behind them.
16) The Swedes have excellent taste in design.
17) If you ask a priest in game where he thinks the soul of a SL avatar goes when it dies, you’d better pack a lunch.
18) You can camp out in front of the Hare Krishna Church in SL and offer to give them flowers, but they generally wont take them.
19) “age play” is creepy and vaguely evil. It is also, seemingly very popular and makes me think humanity is not a great thing.
20) There are “fat avatars”, which people enjoy playing. Good for them I guess.
21) Land prices are fairly high, L$12,000 for 1024 m^2, but houses are really, really cheap, ~$250->$1500 (for a top of the line castle). This seems vaugely non-intuitive.
22) if you buy a big assed house boat and drop it in the water infront of your beach house, your neighbors will think you have a small dick.


I'll probably continue for a little while until I run out of money or get tired of designing things. I have a really good idea for a house I want to build, but that will invilve some time.

Neo-Con Jokes

AS has been collecting them and, why not? My favorite so far:

Q. How many neocons does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A. Neocons don't bother with light bulbs. They declare a War on Darkness and set the house on fire.

Phenegan, begin again.

When I was in the hospital earlier, I was prescribed Phenegan in fairly generous does for nausea. It became obvious to me within a few moments of the first does that the stuff has neurological properties, I started shaking uncontrollably and recognizably started to hallucinate, although very lightly. Pleasant, vivid colors and a few interesting closed-eye patterns (mostly like complex Chinese brocades). I’m not sure most people would have noticed. It absolutely made me sleepy.

Interesting though that this is the third or fourth time I’ve seen a connection between CNS impacting meds and the stomach. I’m not sure what it means, but it seems to be true. When I was in the emergency, they kept checking on me and one of the nurses mentioned that Phenegan sometimes "makes folks go a little loopy", and made the universal crazy sign with her hand. Given it's origin as an anti-psychotic, I'm not terribly surprirsed that sometimes happens. Human brains are complicated and no two are really the same, a flexibility I find quite amazing really given that we have 95% of the same cognitive functionality.

I have 5 pills left which they shipped home with me. Hopefully I can save them for "later".

Coming Home Early

This week is our big annual meeting in Florida, for which my team and I have been planning for 8 weeks.

I got extremely sick on the plane down. Extremely sick. My stomach has been bothering me for a while now, so much so that's it's not uncommon for me to throw up after dinner. I've been meaning to see a doctor about it, but there hasnt been much time (see above). I also commonly drink red wine with supper, so the dark, reddish/black fluid I had been barfing up with a coffee-grounds texture was not immediately alarming.

Except Monday when I landed, was throwing up every ten minutes, and realized it was the same substance, but I had not had any wine. The I realized, "Hey, maybe that's blood!"

It was.

I've been in the hospital in Orlando for the last 2 days, getting stablized. I'm flying home to seattle tonight via Delta (who, quite generously updated me to First Class for free when they heard why I was coming home), and then I'll get treated in Seattle.

There is a condition diabetics get where the little flap in your stomach that prevents food from going back up, breaks, causing exactly the type of problem I have. The blood was coming from my esophagus which has been damaged over the last few months by the breakdown of this part. The debate at this point is whether or not I'll need surgery to correct it, and I expect an answer when I see my doctor at home.

Not great.

BTW, I missed my speech today which involved giving away that ounce of gold I purchashed last month. One of my co-workers gave the speech (and presumably the gold) today, but I'm very dissapointed I didn't get to pull my coup d'grace myself.

ugh.

Not Even Wrong

Disingenuous doesn't even been to describe this.

Matt Yglesias comments

That doesn't even remotely resemble a best fit curve. They've drawn the line straight-through an outlier. And look how steep it is at the right hand side. They're asking us to believe that the marginal impact of increasing corporate income tax rates above the Norwegian level is not only negative, but massively negative in a way that none of the non-Norway data bears out. It's an insult to everyone's intelligence. At this point, one needs to think that letting Rupert Murdoch destroy the WSJ news pages might be better for the world than letting the WSJ news pages' credibility continue to provide a "halo effect" to the editorial page.

The Death of Homo Economicus

The final nail in the coffin of the myth of the rational economic decision maker:

In “The Neural Basis of Loss Aversion in Decision-Making under Risk,” in the January 26 Science, Poldrack, Fox and their colleagues Sabrina M. Tom and Christopher Trepel presented the results of their fMRI study, in which they offered subjects a prospect of accepting or rejecting a gamble that offered a 50–50 chance of gaining or losing money. As the potential for gains rose, they found increased activity in the mesolimbic and mesocortical dopamine systems (dopamine is a neurotransmitter substance associated with motivation and reward). As the potential for losses increased, they found decreasing activity in these same reward-sensitive areas. Interestingly, it appears that losses and gains are coded by the same brain structures—the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, associated with decision making and learning in the context of reward and punishment, and the ventral striatum, associated with learning, motivation and reward. Individual differences in loss aversion were predicted by how much more the brain was turned off by losses than it was turned on by gains.

(here)

Capitalism Meets Communism

Google is offering a rare public glimpse of China's new ballistic-missile submarine, according to a researcher at the Federation of American Scientists.
The new submarine was photographed by the commercial Quickbird satellite in late 2006, and the image is freely available on the Google Earth Web site," wrote Hans Kristensen on the Strategic Security Blog.

Kristensen identified the submarine, pictured alongside a naval pier, as a Jin-class vessel, one of five that China is expected to build.

Comparing the Google Earth image with a picture of China's existing Xia-class submarine, Kristensen was able to discern some of the features of the new submarine.

"The Jin-class appears to be approximately 35 feet longer than the Xia-class [submarine], primarily due to an extended mid-section of approximately 115 feet that houses the missile launch tubes and part of the reactor compartment," Kristensen wrote.
But the picture was not clear enough to resolve a debate over whether the Jin-class submarine has tubes for 12 or 16 nuclear-tipped missiles.

Discovery of the submarine image is likely to cause consternation within China's military, which generally keeps as low a profile as possible. If so, it wouldn't be the first time that Google Earth has caused worry inside China's government. In 2006, government officials reportedly expressed concerns over Google Earth imagery of the Zhongnanhai leadership compound in Beijing, an area normally off-limits to prying public eyes.

On the Road Again

Getting ready this week for next week's annual company meeting. Unlike most years before this we are not in full blown panic mode getting ready, with most of the presentations done, reviewed and even rehearsed. We've been working on this for 8 weeks now (yes, 8 weeks of wasted time). For my part, I've got a 75 minute presentation I'm responsible for and I believe at this point we'll be okay. I have one gimmick I am going to use which should ensure that people talk about the session for a few days afterward*.

All that said, I heard yesterday that my grand-boss (by boss' boss), has no keynote presentation. None. for the last 2 months teams of folks have been working away, meeting, talking, rehearsing and checking little boxes so that we are all in lockstep and all follow the exact same format**. Now we find our uberleader hasn't been marching with us at all, but is instead going to have people throw something together for him Sunday night***.

I can't decide if I think he's an irresponsible jerk or a hilarious non-conformist. :)

*I'll blog about this later, it's something of a "secret" at work because my boss is notorious for stealing other peoples ideas and claiming them as his own. I have been heard to say within his earshot, "I need to see the room floor plans so I know how to position the lasers without blinding anyone" and "The Orlando Fire Chief is a fascist jerk for making me get a permit to turn off the smoke detectors"

** after a lecture from my boss about how we are supposed to "win" by coming up with clever, creative, memorable gimmicks, he then launched into an hour long lecture about all the formatting rules for presentations and how we all had to look *exactly* alike prompting me to remark, "Wait. You mean we're supposed to beat the competition by doing *exactly the same thing they are doing*? Can we out-mediocre them?"

*** this looks like a brown-nose festival to me, so I have politely declined participation.

Avatars

I found this over at Andrew Sullivan's blog, it's a NYT photo piece on people and their on-line avatars.

I was a little surprised how many were from the game I play, City of Heroes.
For those of you who are curious, my avatars can be found on my SG site, in the the changing card window on the right. I run BluShield and Captain Physics (the later named for a comic book I wrote in college) and have lead the Vangaurds for about a year. It's fun and I have set a surprising number of sane adults there, although there have been the usual problems with the less-than-well-socially-adjusted.

FTR, between 15-20 hours a week, mostly weekends and late evenings.

Well Said

This is primarily for my son, who wont be able to get to it for another 28 days, but I have to say it seems reasonable.


(all of it here)


Ultimately, all of these scandals and revelations force us to confront the basic issues of why the Iraq War was launched in the first place. What do we know now or suspect to be largely true?
1. The WMD intelligence was flimsy, and there is a good deal of circumstantial evidence suggesting the inner core surrounding Bush all knew this and went to war anyway. This has as much been admitted both in the infamous Downing Street Memo and by Paul Wolfowitz.
2. Democratization and humanitarian relief only became an issue once WMDs fizzled. The president's lack of movement on Darfur also suggests 'human rights' and democracy aren't a motivating force with this administration.
3. 'Terror' - as with WMDs, there is a strong possibility this reason was knowingly overplayed by the inner core. They refused to move on Zarqawi and Iraqi Islamists, who were irregardless a minor force in Saddam's Iraq and lurking in areas of the country that Saddam could not reach them. We also know the president pulled away reinforcements from Afghanistan in order to put them in the deployment pipeline for Iraq as the now infamous as Tora Bora took place.
So, what was the reason? Consider this possibility...
The Bush/Cheney axis came to power in 2000 with an idée fixe that the primary threat to US security were traditional 'hard power' issues of national security. Thus, the pulling out of the anti-ballistic treaty and the early scuffle with China over a US reconnaissance flight in the South China Sea. (remember way back then?) There was also, importantly, a preexisting belief, especially among the neocons but really, as seen by your willingness to buy it, throughout the conservative establishment, that Iraq, but especially Iran and its offshoots were dire threats to US interests in the region.
Ultimately, those interests are two - Israel and oil. While this is not the place to discuss the influence of what some call the 'Israel lobby' in the United States, the fact remains, however, that the dominance of the religious right in the Republican party made pleasing them an important factor in any political calculation...and Israel plays an important part in the elaborate 'End Times' mythology popular among the christianist religious right.
As for oil, it is too crass to say oil profits is what motivated the invasion, but it is disingenuous to argue against the role that security of oil supplies and access to them played in the Bush/Cheney decision-making process. Indeed, access to oil and oil security has been a large part of the reason we are involved in the Middle East and stretches back to World War II when Roosevelt met with and forged a relationship with the reigning king of Saudi Arabia on an American warship off the coast of Egypt in 1945. It was the reason why we overthrew Mossadeq and backed the Shah of Iran in 1953. It’s why we intervened against Iraq in 1991. Oil and oil security have ALWAYS been at the forefront of US Middle-East policy.
This being the case, consider the geopolitics of oil supply after 9/11. We had been, first of all, been literally run out of Iran in 1979 and, after 9/11, the fact stands that the majority of the hijackers were Saudis and the man ultimately behind the operation, Bin Laden, was a rich Saudi. Saudi Arabia represents the pinnacle of Islamist autocracy and stands 100% opposed to American values – and yet we were dependent upon them for military bases to protect the Gulf’s oil assets. Couple this also with these facts:
1. World, but especially Chinese, demand for oil had been growing and continues to grow exponentially. 2. Western and western-friendly oil assets are either all in sustained decline or approaching the point of decline from peak oil production. 3. The last time world oil discovery outpaced world oil consumption was twenty years ago. 4. The remaining massive, potentially politically accessible deposits of oil left remaining available to the industrialized West were all contained in the Middle East.
Under these conditions the Iraq War makes sense geo-strategically, politically, in fact in almost every way. Regime change creates a secure client state in the middle of the world’s last remaining great oil patch at time of dwindling supplies. It protects Israel, and so satisfies the pro-Israel part of the party. Insofar as it uses the rhetoric of ‘freedom versus terrorism’ it can be spun ideologically in a way that garners support and splits the opposition – thus creating the political el dorado of Rove’s ‘permanent majority’. It provided lucrative contracts to the military-industrial complex. It gave the pro-Republican officer corps a prestige boost and something to put on their resumes. It appealed to liberal interventionists like Thomas Friedman, nauseating moralists like you, and salivating imperialists like Bill Kristol. Throw in an arrogant, ignorant president with a messianic complex and a chip on his shoulder, a subservient, politicized mass media, an incompetent opposition, and a supremely ignorant, panicked, and fearful citizenry and the question inverts itself. Under these conditions, how could we NOT go to war against Iraq in 2003?
The rest, as they say, is history.

Way too Charming...

On the possible evolutionary underpinnings of the persistence of gays in the general population.


Homosexuality survives, not because gay men, per se, are adaptive, but because the gay gene makes straight men more successfully heterosexual. McKnight hypothesises that this homosexual genetic loading endows some straight men with two crucial characteristics - enhanced sexual drive and charm

...

We have the occasional gay man (3% of the population according to McKnight) merely as an effect of too much of this libidinal and charming genetic loading in one individual. In McKnight’s terms, exclusively homosexual outcomes are a by-product of an enhanced heterosexuality.


As they say in the Orbit gum commercial, "Fabulous!"

Personally, I think #5 is the most like explaination.

(via)

Male Restroom Etiquette

true dat

Tridentine

No, it's not an ad for gum.

The Holy Roman Catholic Church throws another sign it's losing it's battle with the 21st century by... wait for it... regressing to an earlier state (when presumably it was more powerful and popular).

I'm guessing we'll soon see the Church pull out it's old yearbook photos, reminise about about it's time as quaterback and suck in it's gut in the mirror while promising to "lose that extra 20 lbs".

Best Headline this Week

The Harry Potter review from Slate. The subtitle is, Harry Potter hits Puberty.

The Great God Lardicus

How to create your own god in 10 easy steps!

My favorite:
9) You need to confuse everybody. This will make sure that nobody can be really certain WHAT they believe, because it is all so non-sensical to begin with. And when you don't spell it out exactly (or even if you do) you know how those funny humans will all magically just get along, right!


I wonder if it follows the L. Ron model or the Smith variations.

Eyeball Tattoo

The procedures themselves were effectively painless because there aren’t nerve endings in the surface of the eye, and we did additional control with lidocaine drops which numbed the lids. After pain is fairly minor, although we all have bruising and some discomfort. I have what appears to almost be blistering between the sclera and conjunctiva which is worrying me a little but so far I don’t have reason to believe this is abnormal. Aftercare, at least in my case, is antibiotic drops and a patch.

here
via

My comment: "yyyyaaarrrrrrgggggggg!!!!!!!" followed by a reflexive crotch protection move.

If it's physically possible, humans will find a way to do it.

Sunspot 963

The sunspot's two dark cores are each larger than Earth, and they are connected by an unstable magnetic field that crackles with C-class solar flares. The eruptions have been entertaining onlookers. "I watched in amazement for hours as the magnetic loops swayed back and forth," says Larry Alvarez of Flower Mound, Texas. He made a movie of the action using his SolarMax90 solar telescope.

here

You're in the Army Now

My son Geoff begins 32 days of basic training at Fort Lewis today. He's a little apprehensive about it, but I am certain he will do just fine.

Good Luck Son!

Understatement of the Day

From the WaPo

"And there seems to be an inordinate number of vampires, generally not a sign of community health."

Red States Summarized In One Image

Absinthe Minded

Absinthe, the spirit of imagination to many, and the devil incarnate to the U.S. government, is being approved on a case by case scenario by the Feds. Banned since 1910 due to unproved health dangers from the substance thujone, found in wormwood, an ingredient in absinthe, it has been the subject of controversy for centuries. Many folk tales and rites and rituals have grown around it and its supposedly hallucinogenic properties.

More here

I can't wait to try this. Should be interesting.

“let me know when you’ve got it open”,

An interesting set of comments on the thesis, "God must exist because millions of people believing for 3000 years can't be wrong"

Automan

I actually watched this once.

Once.

The description is completely accurate:

Automan was a show about a programmer who made a computer program to help him solve the many crimes that plagued his life. What made this computer program so special was that, when fed enough power, it would manifest itself in the real world. It would also be wearing a seatbelt and have immaculate blow-dried hair. Automan is chiefly remembered for being the only show in existence to make Knight Rider look plausible and well thought-out.

The Citizenship Application for TJICistan

Travis has a job available and gives some really good, well reasoned advice to would-be employees:

When I ask for two references, with contact information, this is because I want two references, with contact information. However, there is another reason: the job I just posted requires good attention to detail. 20% of you failed to include references, and this makes my job easier - I can immediately respond to you and say “I’m sorry; this position is not a match”, and then delete your email. Only 160 emails to go!

When I ask for your resume to be cut-and-pasted, instead of being included as an attachment, this is because I am stuck in the 1980s, and use a non-MIME aware email reader. Also, it’s another opportunity to filter out candidates who can’t read closely, or follow directions. We’re now down to 120 emails.

The job was listed as “customer support”. If you start your cover letter by asking about the “sales associate” position, or the “nanny job”, I know that (a) you’re applying for 100 jobs at once, and you’ve gotten confused; (b) you don’t have the attention to detail that this job requires.

...

etc.
I strongly recommend reading it, as his winnowing procedure is pretty much SOP at every company I have ever worked for.

Then we get to:

Finally, I prune the emails with spelling errors. Spell checkers are free, and they’re easy to run. You don’t care enough about this job to try, so you’re gone. 40 emails left.

Unfortunately, Travis tends to be a do-as-I-Say-not-as-I-Do kind of guy:

Logan Williams Says: July 4th, 2007 at 2:36 am
“… I turned the *add* off again 8 hours later.”
“Finally, I prune the emails with spelling errors. Spell checkers are free, and they’re easy to run. You don’t care enough about this job to try, so you’re gone. 40 emails left.”
Finally, I prune the blogs with spelling errors. Proofreading is simple, and necessary to editing. You don’t care enough about this blog to try, so you’re not going in my RSS reader. 20 Reddit submissions left.

Boed Says: July 4th, 2007 at 5:49 am
“But, come one, make things a bit easier for me, please?”
“and permission to listen to your iPod all day log.”
“Spell checkers are free, and they’re easy to run. You don’t care enough about this job to try, so you’re gone. 40 emails left.”
hmm……a bit of a contradiction wouldn’t you say?


Thus Travis would eliminate himself from *my* pool of potential jobs as I recognize the Do-As-I-Say or "Two Sets of Rules" boss as being incompatible with my personality. And I haven't even read the job description!

*snicker*

Seriously though, it's good advice.

Terror

Folks who know me well know I have two irrational fears, one which I have mastered, one which I have not.
The first, mastered fear, is of heights. (Actually it's of falling *from* heights.) (Actually, actually, it's of hitting the ground after falling from heights, but you get the idea).
The second... well, (and remember I said it was *irrational*) it looks like this:



Icthyphobia is my curse. Oddly, I even know why I have this, it involves an act of child abuse on the part of my father when I was about 4 or 5, yet it doesn't make a bit of difference. I have not completely conquered this one. Not yet anyway.

Sinful by Nature

In totalitarian societies, the law is beside the point. Laws are written in such a away that compliance is completely impossible for most or all citizens. This gives the state leverage over the population because citizens can always be counted on to be doing *something* illegal at any time, and the threat of a prison sentence can be used to get them to do things they ordinarily wouldn't do, e.g. turn in a family member or friend, cover up goverment miss-steps, kill or torture etc. If you wonder why I am so adamently opposed to "Wars on $metaphore", it's because they often bear a striking resemblence to this idea. The War on Drugs has some prime examples, but the War on Terror is not without it's charm in this area.

Governements did not invent this idea though. The stole it whole cloth from religion.

Here's a great example of the idea that we all have "orginial sin" and therefore must subect ourselves to the Church to make it right with the gods.

Elegant, And Best Served Cold

From (the usually suspect) Yahoo News:

The family of Ron Goldman has purchased the rights to O.J. Simpson's canceled book, "If I Did It," from a court-appointed bankruptcy trustee in a settlement reached Monday. The book rights will be held in the name of Ron Goldman LLC, Goldman family attorney David Cook said.

...

Ron Goldman LLC will own Simpson's name, likeness, signature and story and will hawk it to satisfy this terrible judgment. Justice has arrived in Miami," Cook said.

The Goldmans own the copyright, media rights and movie rights. They also acquired Simpson's name, likeness, life story and right of publicity in connection with the book, according to court documents.

The Goldmans want to rename the book "Confessions of a Double Murderer" and plan to shop it around, Cook said.

Libby

One interesting thing to note: if the President had pardoned Libby, Libby would have lost his 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination and could be compelled to testify before congress.

Endlessly.

It was a smart move.

Deep Weirdness about Spin States

The consequences of half-integral spin are one of those things that, I always assumed, were mathematical and not physical. i.e. you learn that the identity operator for spin in quantum mechanics is 720 rotation, not 360 rotation. It seemed odd and, now I can see that it was simply explained to me wrong by a professor who (in retrospect) didn't understand it either. Why do you have to rotate twice to get back to zero?

Feynman not only understood it, but gives a very clever way of internalizing it.

He really was the best of his generation.

A Sin Of Which (unusually) I am Not Guilty

At least with respect to biologists:
From PZ:

Authors, film producers and directors, special-effects teams go to physicists, especially astrophysicists, to check that their worlds are workable, credible; they go to astronomers to check how far from their sun a planet should be, and so on. They even go to chemists to check atmospheres, rocket fuels, pheromones (apparently they're not biology….), even the materials that future everyday clothes (not only spacesuits) will be made of. They do go to self-styled "astrobiologists", who are usually astronomers or astrophysicists who remember some Biology 1.01 (or think they could if pressed). Between them they invent reptiloid "aliens" (who are cold-blooded enough to do all those dastardly things no warm-blooded American male could do…), feline aliens (who have the psychology of the household cat writ large, especially by more mature female authors…), dinosaur "aliens"…. Or giant ants. Or were they mut-ants, I don't remember (but how many screen mutations have you seen that change the recipient, not its progeny?). Or a vast array of "alien" human actors with a bit of wax, as easy on the Special Effects Dept as the Pure Energy aliens, or the Aliens on mid-day TV shows who magic things out of the air and see through clothing (do their eyes emit or receive X-rays?), and which otherwise free the writers from having to produce a consistent plot. Or Vulcans who can produce viable offspring with humans (when even our cousins the fish can't - mermaids are even less breedable than Spock). These people know that they don't know about physics, or astronomy, or chemistry. Those disciplines are real science. So they get help. But the biology seems so 'obvious' to them … and they don't realise that it feels just the same to be sure and wrong as sure and right! Of course, those of us that agree biologists can see that all those anthropomorphs can't be alien, they're vertebrate mammals and must share our ancestry here on Earth.

I stear clear of commenting too much on biology, I simply don't understand it well enough. I'm happy to *speculate* on life bearing planets, but I'll usually admit pretty quickly that I don't know much about the science.

Astronomy YouTube of the Day

APOD ups the ante.

Harder than I Thought

Free Online Dating

The Parker Model

Astrophysics IV was, in it's way, one of the most interesting classes I ever had. Easily one of the most difficult (made all the harder by the instructors merciless taunts about our lack of intellectual talent and constant quips about what we got wrong on our quals), we spent the better part of a semester on one of my favorite subjects, magnetohydrodynamics. Specifically, how MHD applies to star formation and how the Parker Model for solar wind and accretion disk coupling works.

Now days, there is just a cool video.

That was the Longest 3 minutes and 51 seconds of my adult life

Coffee

Girl Genius does a riff on what it would be like of someone invented a machine that made coffee taste as good as it smells. You know, the Anti-Starbucks.

Heil Honey I'm Home!

I could not make this up.

Shyness Cure

Medical science is now touting a "cure" for shyness, a condition I would argue is neither medical nor involuntary. Fortunately the so-called "cure" has a list of side-effects longer than my arm, so it seems unlikely to make much headway.

The Speed of Light and Interstellar Colonization

Sci Fi author Charlie Stross has a great essay on the inplausibility of interstellar travel using current technology. The last line essentially sums up my view of manned space exploration:

Colonize the Gobi desert, colonise the North Atlantic in winter — then get back to me about the rest of the solar system!

First, there is no business case for it, with the possible exception of LEO, GSO and maybe (if there is ice at the pole caps) the Moon. Riffing off of JFK, various presidents have called for going to Mars, but really that's both impractical and a huge waste of money. If it were up to me, I'd shut down almost all manned space flight from NASA, let private industry find a business case for humans and restrict government spending to robots (for which we get *some* scientific use) and technology development.

Second, our current technology is just not up to this. Yes, we put a man on the Moon, but it was hugely expensive and kind of a one-off. The shuttle was a good idea, but it's really technology as old as I am and aging less well.

Third, if you really want to do this, invest in something like the space elevator. That combines a practical business case, humans in space and technology within our current understanding of physics.

Not to say a) I dont want to see someone go to Proxima and b) I think it isn't possible ever. A breakthrough in our understanding of any of a number fundemental physical laws could open the way to the stars. If MOND were to turn out to be true, if we understood the HIggs field, if we re-wrote the laws of interia, it could be quite possible. But given chemical rocks, sunlight and "gumption", I dont think we can get there from here.

Not yet.

The Gold Standard

I am running around with an ounce of gold in my pocket.

I bought it this morning at a wholesale gold distributer I know of in NY at a price 2.4% above the last fixed price in London. Not too shabby really.

It is, of course, just gorgeous. I got a bar with a stylized Art Deco imprint on the “face” side and the usual 999.9 fine declaration on the back. The bar is sealed in a transparent plastic container, bordered by an assay certificate from PAMP of Switzerland. Like a kid with a new toy, I have showed this to everyone I know and, so far without exception, this is the very first bar of gold they have ever seen. It’s wicked cool.

In doing some pricing research before the purchase, I came across this site, which is a very interesting gold blog. This article, had a view of gold I hadn’t really thought of before:

The value of gold has not materially changed for the past 50 years or so. You can still purchase the same material good or services with an ounce of gold as you could 50 years ago. This does not apply to the value of the dollar of course. It takes a lot more dollars to buy the same goods as you could have bought 50 years ago.The question, for investment purposes then, is what do you invest in? Dollars or gold?Investing in dollars leaves one open to the manipulative fluctuations resulting in the dramatic variations of value in the dollar and the devaluation caused by the continual printing of more dollars (we are talking US dollars here) to fund debts such as the federal government debts as well as public and private debts.Gold however, remains consistent and in fact does not increase in value in terms of purchasing power. Rather the value of the dollar decreases, in the long term, against the value of the dollar. Once upon a time 20 dollars would have bought one ounce of gold. Now it takes between 600 and 700 dollars and is quite likely to go higher.However what you could buy for 20 dollars 50 years ago will now cost around 600 to 700 dollars. Interesting! This tells one immediately where to put one's money if you want to retain the purchasing power of your assets.

Although I have know academically that gold is one of the axels around which commerce spins, I hadn’t really thought of it like that before. Kind of interesting.

As to WHY I bought the gold? It has to do with work (I expect to be reimbursed for it), and doubtless will be the source of another blog post in July. At this point though, I doubt this will be my last gold purchase.

The Tokyo Letter

Like the Nigerian Letter, but with a few twists. I am half tempted to make up some info and send it back to see what the next phase of the con looks like. I am, after all, a very "hornest" guy evidently.



Shin IchiTokyo, JapanFAx: +81-3-4496-6227Reply Email: shinichimail@sify.com

Good day HORVATH_MARK-WN-BBGI

Sir,

I am about to bring to you a lucrative business offer which will improve the lives of both of us. Do not worry that I got your email from your country's business directory. I am of the opinion and do strongly believe that business relationship between people can germinate from any source so long as there is trust , hornesty and tranparency. Be open minded and let us try a letitimate business relationship devoid of all the odds seen in the internet these days.
Before reading this letter, I would like you to exonerate your mind from all forms of negative impressions you may have been having concerning transactions that originate via the internet. I know that many people all over the world, mostly those from the third world have chosen to use the internet as a means of perpetuating negative acts. This is a letitimate business offer and I want you to give it a serious consideration.

I am writting this letter from Tokyo, my name is Shin ichi a Japanese citizen resident in Tokyo. This personal letter is being written to you to bring to your attention a rewarding business offer and a move to innitiate mutual business corperation with you and your company.I know I may have not had prior meeting with you before sending you this letter, please do not get offended by that as the business concern that I am about to bring to your notice is an urgent and rewarding one.Without wasting much of your time, I shall go ahead to explain in details the reasons why I am contacting you.

I went into partnership with Mr. Saito Akihiko, a japanese citizen also and a businessman based in the middle east. We both registered a joint company with which a supply deal was carried out with Abudhabi National Oil company. In the deal we made a net profit of $82.45Million United STates dollars. We also opened a remote account where this funds were secured offshore as we did not wish to bring it directly to our country due to the high tax imposed on funds coming from overseas. Along the course of this transaction, Mr. Akihiko passed away in Al Asad base during an ambush on the 28th of May 2005. Reference: http://icasualties.org/oif/Civ.aspx (Please you can click on the website above, scroll down on the list of casualties, he is the only Japanese casualty who was killed in that area (Saito Akihiko) . After the death, I tried my best to contact members of the family and the only one I got was Hironobu Saito who is so miserable about the kidnapp and murder of his late brother and has assured me that I can do anything within my power to get the funds back home since his late brother did not include him as beneficiary of the funds. for information concerning Mr. Hironobu Saito please refer http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-05/28/content_446587.htm (you can read about him also)The reasons why I am contacting you now is that we need a foreign partner who will act as next of kin to Mr. Akihiko Saito. It does not matter the nationality. I will endorse the process.Hence with the next of kin and I available the bank will release the funds $80.45Million United States dollars.

I shall provide you my national identity, my recent passport identity and also my passport photo for verification before you can make your decision to go along with this business. These days due to internet abuse, it is difficult to believe even when one presents a legitimate business offer. Hence, I shall grant you the liberty to verify and confirm all my identity documents before we carry on with the business.Take note also that subsequently, I shall send you information/details about the supply deal done in Abhudhabi and also information regarding the exact location of the funds at the present moment.For presenting yourself as next of kin in this transaction you shal be entitled to 5% of the total funds.Please if this transaction suites you kindly email me at: shinichimail@sify.com

In your email reply please provide me the following information:

1. Your phone number, fax number and mobile phone number (most importantly)2. Name of your company , activity of your company and how long you have been running your business.3. Your full name
Also please kindly answer the following questions in your email replya) Have you travelled overseas before?b) Have you ever managed funds more than 1million dollars?c) Do you have a valid passport to travel?d) How old are you ?e) Do you have any physical disabilities?F) Do you have any criminal records?g) Have you been arrested of any crime before?H) Are you married?I) If yes how many kids do you have ?J) Have you executed any government project before?K) Do you have an attorney ?

Please do not be hesitant to provide us all of the information requested above.(YOU EITHER SEND THE ABOVE INFORMATION BY EMAIL OR YOU CAN SEND BY FAX TO THE FAX NUMBER: +81-3-4496-6227 ) As soon as I receive your email, I shall send you my personal identification, International passport , photos and family photos also to confirm my identity and other documents concerning the said business before we proceed .
In God we trustExpecting your urgent response.

(Take note that I have contacted a consortium to send you this email through their server for confidentiality so Please if you are not interest in this project simply ignore the message.)

Shin IchiTokyo, JapanFAx: +81-3-4496-6227Reply Email: shinichimail@sify.com
KINDLY REQUEST ALL MY IDENTITIES (INTERNATIONAL PASSPORT, NATIONAL IDENTITY AND OTHERS ) FOR YOUR INDEPENDENT VERIFICATION PRIOR TO YOUR DECISION MAKING. PLEASE MAKE SURE THAT YOU REPLY STRICTLY AND ONLY TO THE EMAIL ADDRESS: shinichimail@sify.com OR SEND A FAX TO: +81-3-4496-6227.

Oops, I failed to note the following on the bottom (long with an invisible link back to the "law firm"
Equity Law Firm88 Lone Star Ranch - Chiredzi, ZIM Harare ZW
I guess it's african after all.

Monkey Knife Fight

"So many many things wrong with this on so many levels."

The Cowardice of the Democrats

I bash the GOP a great deal in my commentary, largely because I think they are wrong about almost everything and they fairweather friends to the law and to libertarian principles. It's important to remember though that the dems are not much better.

No one has summed it up better than this and I quote in the entirity because I agree completely.

I think Kos is onto something:

Many Democrats, especially its pathetic consultant class, still believe that the way Democrats show "strength" is by huffing and puffing and threatening to bomb the "f" out of Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, or whatever the latest boogeyman of the moment might be.In reality, Democrats are seen as weak because they are afraid to stand for those things they believe in. And if they won't fight for what they believe in, how can voters trust them to fight for anything that truly matters, whether it's national security or anything else?

The lesson of Reagan and to a lesser extent Thatcher - the pre-eminent conviction politicians of my lifetime - is that even those who deeply disagreed with them eventually respected their ability to stand for something unpopular and to lead. When I look at the Democrats today, I see no such conviction. That's a problem. No one is worse than Clinton, of course.

http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/2224950/19336916

The Last Horoscope You'll ever need

here

Best Comment Left in Someone Else's Blog

and the award goes to .... Andrew Sullivan for Obamagirl

Somewhere in America, Ron Paul Girl is finishing up her video, which centers around the gold standard.

Hortatory Subjunctive

An administration flunky named Lorita Doan tried to block investigations into the government's use of GOP emails, material and campaign recruiting materials to target democrats. Having failed at that, the congress changed hands and now she's on the business end of some sharp probing by the oversight committee.

Specifically she said, when refering to government employees following the law and complying with the oversight committee's requests for information:

Until extensive rehabilitation of their performance occurs, they will not be getting promoted and will not be getting bonuses or special awards or anything of that nature.

Now, on the defensive, she *testifies* that it was all a big misunderstanding about grammatical tense.

Watch here, it's priceless!

Even she shrugs at her defense, like "hey! it's the best I could do! It's not like I can cop to it, then I'd be guilty of violating the Hatch Act"

Flight Patterns

A piece of dynamic, digital art.


more here

Evanescent Waves

I had read this quicky from Nick the other day, and was impressed by the work going on with evanescent waves. This seemed an unusual research topic to me because evanescent waves were always more of a mathematical construct resulting from the equation of motion and not something physical.

Then today in the NYT, they were re-visiting invisiblity. It hadnt occured to me that the negative index of refraction was due to the amplificiation of evanescent waves. A couple of minutes with Jackson* and a look at my EM notes and BOOM! It all fits into place.

The next 10 years in material science is going to be very cool.

* J. D. Jackson has a posse

Good Blog on Security/Privacy/Law

I clicked because I thought the name was cool, 27 B Stroke 6

Brazil is one of my all time favorite movies.

Words I Thought I Would Never Write

Nor, hopefully, will ever have to write again:

The best view of Paris Hilton ever.

If anyone wants me for the next few hours, I'll be in the shower.
scrubbing.

Dangerous

Nabil Shaath says: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did, and then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …" And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it.'"

here

This is almost fractal in it's ability to stun and terrify, each clause is independently scarey, summing to a grander, higher horror when read all together.

Just read that again, think about it and ... well... worry.

Dregs

And thus I sample the bitter dregs of the cup of atheism, likely not for the last time. We buried Susan this weekend, her parents, her friends and I. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done, almost as bad a burying Papa in 1988. There are 4 other people; Geoff, Becky, Jim and my sister who would be even harder for me, but this was plenty difficult. And I had to get through it without the comfort of knowing I would ever see her again. Lots of folks, especially her parents, took comfort in the idea of being reunited in the afterlife, and I truly, deeply and sincerely hope they are right. But I couldn’t. I tried. I tried hard to think I might be wrong, that there might be something after, that somehow, some way, her mind was elsewhere, being computed by who knows what. That I would see her again, and everyone else that I ever have, or ever would lose. I wanted badly to believe I’d see her again, hear her voice, and tell her a joke.

It was no use. I just couldn’t. She’s gone, her neurons scrambled. The delicate connections, networks and processes that made her taken by chaos and entropy. She is done and lives only in the memories of her friends and family. Atheism is a tough road, harder in many ways than the comfort of the illusion of order, justice and dreams. It gives much in the way of freedom and truth, but provides few shields from tragedy, loss and sorrow. When I face death, it seems I must face it square on. With reason. With rationality. Without the comfort of self-deception.

I shall miss her greatly, but I do draw some tiny comfort from the idea that, were our positions reversed, she would likely be thinking the exact same thing.

Better to Have it and Not Need it, Than Need it and Not have It

File in the "just in case" drawer.

Presidential Apology letter #3. The Softsell

The White House
President Geofferey C.M. Horvath __ ____ ,203_

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Washington)-Office of the POTUS.

We all know my father is something of a rascal. During the campaign, his antics often proved an amusing, and occasionally welcome distraction from a tough election campaign fraught with the serious issues facing our great nation. Even my opponents in the Democratic and ReAnimist parties would occasionally get a good chuckle out of some his stunts. Who can forget the time he caused Teddy Roosevelt’s reanimated corpse to goosestep down to the Lincoln memorial where he danced a merry jig with Lenin and Ezra Pound all the while belting out show toons from “Kismet”? Or when he “debated” Pope John Paul II, Walt Disney’s head and Stephen Jay Gould about the existence of a soul on the Paris Hilton Show? We all learned a valuable lesson on the limits of reanimation that day. (and if there any Catholics left after John Paul’s II’s stunning revelations on the afterlife, again, I’m very, very sorry).

However, in an attempt to amuse, my father sometimes over reaches and, quite inadvertently, occasionally causes some grief and stress. While his intention was to amuse when he added helium to the moonbase gas mixture, even the engineers admit, they expected the gas to clear in a few hours. Technically, it’s still quite habitable and much scientific and social research still goes on there, its just not reported by anything with live audio. Also, the less said about his prank with the Zombie Muhammad, the better.

It is in this vein that I ask my fellow North Americans to have some patience with him at this moment in history. First contact with an alien species was bound to be extremely tricky in any event, and it is worth pointing out that they contacted him. While the Recticulan culture is extremely complex ,they had been studying us for quite some time, so it was, as my father said, “a fair assumption they knew it was a joke”. I love my father very much and remain supportive of him. While the fact that he is something of a scoundrel cannot be, at this point, argued, as his son it is my duty to stand behind him in this troubled time. I ask the nation now to bear with us, and be assured that we are making every effort to repair the small breach in our relations with the first members of the interstellar community. Vice President Freeman, Richard Feynman and my father are with the Recticulans now, along with a cadre of cultural and social experts, working through the situation. The Recticulans are an extremely advanced culture, used to encountering other species and rationality is a key to their psychology. We are explaining, clearly and cogently how a whoopee cushion works, it’s cultural significance and it amusement value for a species like ourselves which does not use a bladder in it’s reproductive cycle as the Recticulans do. No one could have anticipated that they have an equivalent translation for that sound, nor is it reasonable on their part to assume that my father has ever met the Ambassador’s mothers.

We look forward to a quick and satisfactory solution to this in the next few days. Peace be with us all and God(s) Bless America!


Geofferey C.M. Horvath
President of the United States of America

The Most Dangerous Job You Never Knew Existed

glumbert.com - High Power Job

Susan's Memorial Site

For those of you who are interested, her site is here. Warning: there is music!

I'm heading out for the burial in a few minutes to see her folks and her brother.

This, btw, is how I'll remember her most. We had a game where I would wait until some socially serious situation, then make a comment, for her alone, that would shock her into making "The Face". it was trival to do when she was 18 but, by the time she was 36, it was much harder. Still possible, I just had to be more clever and creative. It was one of the many ways she brought out the best in me.

I Have Seen the Future, and it has an Exoskeleton

Chair-bot!

best comment:
add a toilet, minifridge and 5.1 speakers, and ill take 3

The London Olympic Logo

From the same friend of mine who wrote my linked-in recommendation.

After hours of analysis I have come to the conclusion that the new logo
is a picture of Lisa Simpson giving someone a blow job.

he's right too!

You should see the losers along with some commentary.

The Economics of New York City

A breakdown of various businesses and their profitability in New York City.

This one is for Susan:

Stadium tickets: $117 million (4.2 million tickets at an average of $28 each); YES network TV/radio rights: $60 million; Major League TV and licensing: $30 million; concessions: $10 million; sponsorships and advertising: $30 million; premium seating: $27 million; local radio: $13 million; catering: $5 million; other: $10 million.

Being 13 games behind the Red Sox: Priceless!

Where to Buy

Excellent graph from the WSJ on the current housing inventories in 18 different cities.

It's a good time to buy, *if* you can get a loan.

The Electromagnetic Spectrum

xkcd has the goods.

Busted!

John Dvorak may have my number here, but I think he spent his summer vacation in TJICistan.

8 Rules for the Perfect Blog

Deny the Fire it's Oxygen

A brief explaination from the NYT about why the JFK plot was posted on A30 instead of A1:

Here's the basic thinking on the J.F.K. story: In the years since 9/11, there have been quite a few interrupted terrorist plots. It now seems possible to exercise some judgment about their gravity. Not all plots are the same. In this case, law enforcement officials said that J.F.K. was never in immediate danger. The plotters had yet to lay out plans. They had no financing. Nor did they have any explosives. It is with all that in mind, that the editors in charge this weekend did not put this story on the front page.

(bolds are mine)While the chattering heads of the Right will be quick to leap on the idea that it's just the liberal bias of the Times trying to minimalize the administration's heroic efforts in the GWOT(tm), I actually think this makes a lot of sense. By denying front page coverage to every group of crazies who watch "24", the times is removing some of the incentives (e.g. fame, power) for this kind of behavior. This is basic security 101. Imagine if the press had done the same with the so-called "liquid" bombers in the UK a while back. I'd no longer have to scour my bags at the airport to throw out perfectly good bottled juice, toothpaste or water simply because a group of nuts put together a plot that was never a threat.

I see this decision by the Times as a common sense reaction and a sign that the public is finally tired of over-reacting to the least little threat. Good for them.

Typo

Sen. Wayne Allard (R-CO), wanted to sponsor a bill honoring "America's First Responders"

Seems like a decent thing to do. So he sent out this press release from his office:

Read the 3rd paragraph very carefully. It says:

"First responders in Colorado have recently provided critical services in the face of blizzards and tornados," added Allard. "Since I don't think first responders have really done anything significant in comparison to their counterparts who have dealt with real natural disasters, I have no idea what else to say here..."

OOPS!

He later retracted and corrected it:

Please pardon my typo in the first version of this release. I sincerely apologize for the error. The corrected paragraph reads:
"First responders in Colorado have recently provided critical services in the face of blizzards and tornados," added Allard. "This resolution celebrates them and all first responders serving our nation."

A Recommendation

from one of my former co-workers and "friends":

Dear Mark,

I've written this recommendation of your work to share with other LinkedIn users.
Details of the Recommendation:

"Mark Horvath is a radical (evil) genius with a tendancy to simplyfy everything down to the molecular level.... He has a passion for raw meat, a passion only superceded by one for barbecueing Australian aborignies marinated in rock salt. Without him I would be a shell of a man, a man whos existence would be pitiful. I love Mark as much as I do Blue M&M's"

It should be noted that a) Kenny thinks blue M&Ms are an affront against god and b) he is a right, proper git.

B - C - B

The participation rate is the number of people currently in the workforce.

Analysis here

Memorial Ceremony

For Susan, in Webster MA, 2:00pm on Saturday, June 9th.

Email me if you need more details or want to coordinate a ride from Boston. I'll rent a mini-van and can take a few folks out on Saturday.

The Whole Hole

On Mars.

Weird

Susan Gordon, 1970-2007

Susan passed away last week, appearently while I was in Boston. I dont have all the details yet, but will update as they come in.

Susan posted here as the Strawberry Woman, and I have know her for the better part of 20 years. She was one of the 5 most influential people who have affected my life.

Right into The Danger Zone

BTAF

Motivation

TJICistan adopts my favorite work poster.

I had another at CertCo, very breifly, which had a picture of a sinking oil tanker. It read, PURPOSE: The only value of you life might be simply to serve as a warning to others"

I also have a T-Shirt I wear to the gym which says, in large letters "BOMB SQUAD" and then in smaller letters "If you see us running, try to keep up".

I wore this in a a hotel lobby after a lift once while traveling with McBride (Head of Capital Markets now for Verizon Business). I got "talked to" by the manager. McBride still reminds me of it a couple times a year.

Armed Madhouse

I needed a book to read on a flight back from Boston yesterday and (for *some* reason) I couldn't find Hitch's book God is not Great, in either the B&N or the airport bookstore (I strongly suspect it is being kept behind the counter to avoid "offending" anyone), so at the last minute I picked up Greg Palast's Armed Madhouse. I am also reading the quite excellent Guests of the Ayatollah by Mark Bowden (of Black Hawk Down fame), but unfortunately I left it in my checked bag. So I grabbed Madhouse and got on the plane.

Now, I have never been convinced of the case for war against Iraq, but it took me awhile to figure out why I was right. While suspicious of the President, that really wasn't enough, and while having some very minor intelligence and not so minor Iraqi friends who used to be in the nuclear business, that only seemed to justify my position, not really inform it as much as I liked to think. My worry was I was right for the wrong reason, a problem at least as bad as being wrong for the wrong reason. Eventually I figured out where my reluctance had come from and why; I was against the war because I recognized a marketing campaign when I see one and anything being sold that hard raised a lot of red flags. It was as simple as that. My job involves a great deal of marketing, so I have a pretty good feel for folks pushing a weak product, and this fit the bill. Weak facts, lots of conjecture, personal attacks on Hans Blix, "buy now before the price goes up" kind of urgency, etc. I'd like to think it was for more lofty, intellectual analysis, but it really wasn't, that came later after I had made up my mind.

So I picked up Armed Madhouse, read the first 30 pages or so and put it down as a far-left masturbatory exercise. Cute, but not definitely from a paranoid left kind viewpoint, I had thought. So instead I watched Alien vs. Predator (which was much, much better than I expected). My Digiplayer ran out of juice, so I picked up the book again and realized the author was from the BBC, then gave it another look. The BBC has been, over the last 5 years, much better at covering America than American journalists. Also, in flipping through it, Palast cites a memo from Grover Norquist about the libertarian economic "rules" the neo-cons wanted for post-war Iraq.

Then the penny dropped

Because, I happened to be paying a lot of attention to the Iraq economic rules (we were considering doing a microsoft based project in post-war Iraq back when we thought that Iraq would be stable in a few months), and I could not figure out a) why the laws they set up were so fucking bizarre, and b) why so many basic things failed to happen. Also, in my blog-wanderings I had seen the Norquist memo, but had never put these things together. Palast has a whole chapter where he maps the memo against the outcomes and shows how the "libertarian workers paradise" resulted in the outcome we all saw.

and it made sense.

ut-oh.

Palast has lots of documentary evidence in the book he cites, most of it I just assumed was far left nuthouse stuff. Looking up a bit of this morning, I see that it's not. And, while I doubt it's "all true", it is unnervingly logical. I recommend picking it up and reading it yourself. I remain skeptical, but I can't easily dismiss his conclusions as quickly as I had hoped.

The Goon Doctor

What happens when you post random medical maladies into a public form and ask folks to comment?

You get the Goon Doctor:

My girlfriend's vagina is all out of whack.

Holy shit, my tooth just broke

Help me learn about Opiods

A Tick on my Glans

What the hell is growing on my arm?

Tell me why I sweat so much?

and more. TMI

Glenn vs. Glenn

here

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds defends Joe Klein and "responds" to my post by (a) accusing me of rooting for the U.S. to lose and (b) re-printing an e-mail he received from Michael Yon who claims that, in Anbar, "the guns are mostly quiet now" and the Infantry Task Force with which he is embedded "hardly have fired their weapons." Yon claims that things are so peachy in Anbar that the meetings of the Task Force are "more administrative than combat oriented."

Associated Press reports today (h/d David Sirota):
Two US soldiers were killed while conducting combat operations in Iraq's volatile Anbar Province, the military announced Thursday.
The soldiers, assigned to Multi National Force-West, were killed Wednesday, the military said. The military declined to release the names of those killed pending notification of their relatives.
The deaths raised the number of members of the US military who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003 to at least 3,433, according to an Associated Press count.



And then there is this. And this. But the real fault lies with anyone who points any of this out, because they want the U.S. to lose. What is most amazing is that the same people (like Reynolds) who have been lying to the country for four straight years about all of the Glorious Progress being made in Iraq continue to expect that when they speak, anyone other than the shrinking band of hard-core war supporters will listen.
Many, many times over the last four years -- in numerous places in Iraq -- violence has ebbed temporarily. Yet Iraq, contrary to the ongoing claims from the Bush administration and its followers, has inexorably descended into total chaos and violence. Pointing to three-day lapses in violence in a single place as proof that things are improving is so transparently irrational that, particularly at this point, it merits as much response as the desperate claim that anyone who opposes the war "wants the U.S. to lose."

Do I want the US to lose? No, certainly not, and I never have. However, I have thought, since before the first bombs fell on Baghdad, that the key to non-losing was not to invade. I have been skeptical about this since before the invasion and, frankly, I dont see any reason to stop now.

GG makes a great point about anonymous sources too. What is the purpose of anonimity if the material is boilerplate administration text? Is the credibility of the president so low that he has to release information anonymously for it to get any play? And if so, why would it deserve to be called news?

PZ Meyers' Hate Mail Bag

Thousands of years ago, when I was an astronomy grad student, I was in charge of the Pre-Print Library. The PPL is sort of a way of getting your idea out into circulation before it gets published, but after it has completed the peer-review cycle. Since the lag time can be a couple of months between acceptance and publication, the "pre-print" allows you to let folks know what you've done, that it's been reviewed and to start debate. In astronomy this isn't so critical because there just aren’t that many astronomers and generally everyone who would care has already seen your work in development or as a peer-reviewer. As such, the PPL was a boring, low-maintenance job (unless it was a Karen Strom paper, that's a whole other kettle of fish).

The librarian also gets a lot of "self-published" articles. Stuff that has not been through peer review or is even generally written by a trained professional scientist. It's often weird, kooky stuff and occasionally it's extraordinarily clever. Once or twice a year I'd get something so clever I'd have to think for awhile about why it wouldn't work, (usually it's a subtle variation of dividing by zero or conservation of energy, but buried so deeply in it's hard to see). In short, it was excellent work for a grad-student as it tests one's ability to reason and spot flaws.

That said, most of it was just sheer crazy fun in a paranoid tone, but all of the crazy stuff encapsulated one flawed assumption: Science works by endorsement, in the same way as religion e.g. there were quotes by Einstein that would be made to support the argument, because Einstein was an “authority” and couldn’t be questioned. Their goal was to get some professor somewhere to endorse their idea this making it “Science”. This was wrong, of course. Einstein was wrong about lots of things, most notably quantum mechanics, as is everyone else who ever gets quoted. Science is about error correction not endorsement or doctrine.

Reading PZ Meyers hate mail bag reminded me very much of the kinds of crazy stuff we’d get once every week or two. It’s nice to know some things never change.

Department of Happy Endings

"Vice President Cheney isn’t not on the phone records of the alleged D.C. Madam, who is accused of running a high-price call-girl ring in Washington, the accused madam’s lawyer said on Tuesday."

Wonkette

A British View of Islam

mean time to Fatwa: 1 week

ISO 3103, A Standard for Brewing Tea

Also in the "they must be kidding" category Dr. Nick has found the ultimate tea-brewing standard.

ISO 3103From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search
ISO 3103 is a standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (commonly referred to as ISO). It specifies a standardized method for brewing tea, originally laid down in 1980 as BS 6008:1980[1]. It was produced by ISO Technical Committee 34 (Food products), Sub-Committee 8 (Tea).

I Honestly Thought He was Kidding

In chatting with an old friend from Certco, he mentioned he was heading to the cape this weekend for a little R&R. I mentioned how remote we are here in Russian River Valley, and he responded with a joke about having a "gas-powered blender" for making mudslides and daiquiris. I laughed

but he wasn't kidding

I know what I want for Father's Day now...

Everything Bigger than 200 Miles

This awesome image of everything in the Solar System larger than 200 miles in diameter!

Not as many, numerically, as I would have guessed.

Also, they missed my ego

Like Robinson Caruso, It's as Primative as Can Be

I am currently in the Russian River Valley, taking a sort vacation and a few wine tours. It's nice and all, and the trees are ... well, wild! Huge, skyscraper trees, hoooooom hooooooom.

Anyway, it turns out, I have gone to the first place in America I have been to since ... ... 1998, that doesn't have wireless phone service! None, nada, zip!

This is a Bad Thing, since my boss' boss (Brian) wants to talk to me about my boss(who is temporary) getting to keep his job. Not surprisingly, I have a fully thought out opinion on this subject, but may not get to deliver it because my fucking phone wont work!!!!!!

Dammit!

and, perversely, I have decent internet access. If only there was some way to get phone service over the internet (there's a business plan!).

We Lose Yet Another Atheist to Religion

and, truthfully, I could see myself making a similar, deathbed conversion.


Dear Friends and Family;
I know that all of you have been concerned about my emotional and spiritual welfare, especially since the stroke. I know I have lacked direction, conviction, and integrity. I am writing to tell you that I have admitted to the error of my ways and have reached a turning point in my life.

Many of you feel that my lack of faith is the root of my problems and you were right. But I have been saved and want to spread the word; I hope that you can share in the blissful savior I have found. I love all of you so much, I want you to benefit from my new faith.
So, please take a moment to share in my redemption and go to the website below and rejoice in the truth.
http://www.venganza.org/
Peace and noodles,
Laurie

Mortal by birth, Pastafarian by choice.

Creationist Museum Opens in Kentucky

here

PETERSBURG, Ky. — The entrance gates here are topped with metallic Stegosauruses. The grounds include a giant tyrannosaur standing amid the trees, and a stone-lined lobby sports varied sauropods. It could be like any other natural history museum, luring families with the promise of immense fossils and dinosaur adventures.

But step a little farther into the entrance hall, and you come upon a pastoral scene undreamt of by any natural history museum. Two prehistoric children play near a burbling waterfall, thoroughly at home in the natural world. Dinosaurs cavort nearby, their animatronic mechanisms turning them into alluring companions, their gaping mouths seeming not threatening, but almost welcoming, as an Apatosaurus munches on leaves a few yards away.


What is this, then? A reproduction of a childhood fantasy in which dinosaurs are friends of inquisitive youngsters?


Yes! That's exactly what it is!

This is what happens when you let folks without a Fungineering Degree design rides...

This Looks Like a Job for... The Comma Police!

From the NYT:

When the attack began, it was Dec. 7 at Pearl Harbor but Dec. 8 in Japan. The book is subtly subtitled “A Novel of December 8th” to signal its attention to the Japanese point of view. On the basis of that detail, you might expect a high level of fastidiousness from “Pearl Harbor.”

And you would be spectacularly wrong. Because you would find phrases like “to withdraw backward was impossible,” sounds like “wretching noises” to accompany vomiting, or constructions like “incredulous as it seemed, America had not reacted.” Although the book has two authors, it could have used a third assigned to cleanup patrol.

This is not a matter of isolated typographical errors. It is a serious case for the comma police, since the book’s war on punctuation is almost as heated as the air assaults it describes. “One would have to be dead, very stupid Fuchida thought,” the book says about the fighter pilot Mitsuo Fuchida, “not to realize they were sallying forth to war.” Evidence notwithstanding, the authors do not mean to insult the fighter pilot’s intelligence — or, presumably, the reader’s.

Historian Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia) is one of the authors. If you like grammar humor (and I do!), read the rest of it, it's jaw-droppingly bad.

Where Did This Man Go?

It was a shameful thing to ask men to suffer and die, to persevere through god-awful afflictions and heartache, to endure the dehumanizing experiences that are unavoidable in combat, for a cause that the country wouldn’t support over time and that our leaders so wrongly believed could be achieved at a smaller cost than our enemy was prepared to make us pay. No other national endeavor requires as much unshakable resolve as war. If the nation and the government lack that resolve, it is criminal to expect men in the field to carry it alone.

John McCain, Forward to The Best and The Brightest

As readers know, I was never convinved that the Iraq part of the war was the Right Thing to Do and opposed it (as opposed to the Afgahn part which I did and still support), largely because the evidence seemed to suggest we'd be where we are today.

I'd happily vote for the John McCain who wrote that quote. I wonder if we'll ever see him again.

I Can't Decide

Parody or Not?

At first I thought, "well done! very funny!", but looking through the rest of the blog..... I dunno... It's a lot of work to go through just to lampoon Brownback. I'm not ruling it out, but I am beginning to fear these folks are serious.

Fat people more religious than skinny people

Passed along without comment except to say that Half Sigma often claims strong conclusions from incomplete data.

Presidential Candidate Pros and Cons

From McSweeney:

HILLARY CLINTON
Pro: Known commodity; strong fundraiser.
Con: Polarizing; unlikely to woo those already opposed to her.

JOE BIDEN
Pro: Technically still running for president.
Con: Dude. Come on.

DICK CHENEYIN AN ELABORATE LATEX DISGUISETHAT TAKES FIVE HOURS TO APPLY
Pro: Trojan horse, my friend. Trojan fucking horse.
Con: Ruse would be so exciting that he would surely drop dead of a massive stroke about a month before Iowa.

WALTER MONDALE
Pro: Has spent last 22 years going over tape, reviewing mistakes, plotting, scheming, waiting, watching, preparing to pounce like a 79-year-old Minnesotan panther.
Con: None.

SAM BROWNBACK
Pro: Serves as a positive role model for ethnic brownbacks all over the country.
Con: Such an ethnicity does not technically exist; lacks the pen-gripping power of Kansas Senate predecessor Bob Dole.

NEWT GINGRICH
Pro: Well known.
Con: See above.

El Dice Mis Mentiras de la Vigine

And other movie titles from Jay Pinkerton

Dear Anonymous Atheist Complaint Box

My act of linking approvingly to this thread does not, in any way, constitute an endorsement.

In exactly the same way that Glenn Reynolds linking approvingly to pro-torture arguments and administration apologia does not.




Heh, read the whole thing...

More Hitch

He goes on Fox but refuses to really play the game.

here

"you took up all my time to answer with your rather long and unlettered question"

There Is Nothing out of Bounds

From the Wapo:


Attorneys for Cheney and the other officials said any conversations they had about Plame with each other and reporters were part of their normal job duties because they were discussing foreign policy and engaging in an appropriate "policy dispute." Cheney's attorney went farther, arguing that Cheney is legally akin to the president because of his unique government role, and has absolute immunity from any lawsuit.

"So you're arguing there is nothing -- absolutely nothing - these officials could have said to reporters that would have been beyond the scope of their employment [whether it was] true or false?," U.S. District Judge John D. Bates asked.

"That's true, your honor.

Lawyer/Posers

TJIC has a pretty good (and sadly typical) interaction with a customer and his lawyer about copywrite law. I'd happily agrue a lot with Travis on any number of topics (and do), but never one where he had a financial stake unless I was ab-so-lute-ly sure I was right and had 2 or more expert opinions to back me up.

Read here, it's very good.

The Tributes Keep Coming in...

From field Correspondent Tara, a Tribute from Betty Bowers*:

When CNN called, Jerry would drop everything except pounds for a chance to squeeze much of his face into unforgiving aspect ratio of pre-HDTV television. With his smarmy smile and affable facility for slapping a perfunctory "but I love him in Christ" at the end of even the most vicious, artless insults, he was rather effective in putting a charming, folksy face on demeaning other human beings and their children.



*She's a better Christian than you, just ask her

Why I Am a Bad Person

Because I don't disagree with any of this



I think it is impolite and uncivil to voice this in wake of the person's death, however that doesn't take away from the underlying truth of the piece.


Sorry, in this case I am failing to rise to my better nature.

McCain Wins!

well, at least he's free-er to say what he really thinks.

I'm a little afraid though that's what he's been doing all along.

Best Prank This Year!

Really, truely outstanding!

Zug.com

Our Boys in Blue

Cop Rock!

BTW, this recent spurt of blogging is largely because I am back home after 10 days on the road. I am home for 8 days, then back on the road until late July (with a few at home breaks thrown in).

The 7 Signs!

One wonders how hard they had to work to make sure it came out to exactly 7:

http://www.hanford.gov/oci/video/7signsofterrorism.wmv

This is both foolish and dangerous. Foolish because the guidance is so generic and silly as to be useless (other than the idea that you should "be afraid, all the time". Dangerous because it ties up resouces with false positives and diseminates misinformation. Even the examples are stupid, e.g. why would a terrorist steal a suit from a dry cleaner? Its that terribly risky? Wouldn't it be likely they could be caught or identified by in-store recording? Would a suit grabbed at random even fit? Better to buy one at a store (or even a Goodwill Store) and avoid the risks.

I hate pointless, useless security and when it's disseminated by the government, it's even worse. What a waste of money.

(via)

I Agree, 100%

Gabriel Sylar
Powers: Flaw Discernment, ranging from mundane machinery to anomalies of the brain. This discernment also seems to allow him the ability to sense the powers of other people who possess them, and integrate them into his own genetic makeup. Powers that have been acquired through this method include Advanced Telekinesis, Cryokinesis, Eiditic Memory, Short-range Matter Disruption, and Wide Scope Hearing.

Last Seen: Painting a portent of the future explosion. In his mother’s blood. After he stabbed her in the chest with a pair of scissors. There is no possible way those three sentences could be any cooler to write.

From the Goon's Heroes thread

Where does the Internet go at Night?

A conversation 18 years ago:
Me: We're going to go see Grandma and Grandpa Manley in California!
Geoff: Ohhhhhhh! That's far away!
Me: Very far.
Geoff: I think that's where the sun goes at night!
Me: ... to California?
Geoff: Yes!

Last week, he answered found where the internets go at night...

To the Liberace Museum

Star Trek Day!

What do you do when, after advocating a lost lost cause for years it starts to sink in that you may have been in error all this time?

Regroup, research and rethink?

Nope.

Hold a Star Trek Day!

nerds!