Found this first, which led me on a search for this. I hate it when people quote Latin phrases without translating them. Do I look like I come from Latin America?
From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:
Columbus - The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."The Aug. 14 letter from Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc. - who has become active in the re-election effort of President Bush - prompted Democrats this week to question the propriety of allowing O'Dell's company to calculate votes in the 2004 presidential election.
. . .
Ohio GOP spokesman Jason Mauk said the party approached O'Dell about hosting the event at his home, the historic Cotswold Manor, and not the other way around. Mauk said that under federal campaign finance rules, the party cannot use any money from its federal account for state- level candidates.
"To think that Diebold is somehow tainted because they have a couple folks on their board who support the president is just unfair," Mauk said.
Wow, does this ever stink to high heaven. To Mr. Mauk: the CEO is not the same as "a couple folks on their board." That's like dismissing George W. Bush as just "some guy in government." As far as I'm concerned, any private company or individual involved in any way with counting ballots needs to stay completely away from any involvement with partisan politics. Period.
From an article looking at the lack of coverage of wounded soldiers in the Iraq War:
In a summer dominated by the Bryant sex case, Arnold's debut in California's recall election and the killing of Saddam Hussein's sons, no hordes of television cameras await the planeloads of wounded soldiers being airlifted back to the states, unloaded at Andrews Air Force Base, and stuffed into wards at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other facilities. We see few photos of them undergoing painful and protracted physical rehabilitation, few visuals of worried families waiting for news of their sons or daughters. The men and women injured in Iraq and Afghanistan have become the new disappeared.. . .
The stories of these injured soldiers obviously straddle party lines and should sadden Americans from all walks. So what is it about the wounded that makes us uncomfortable? Why have they been left out of the coverage of the war by the broadcast media?
The consensus seems to be that the wounded are too depressing a topic -- and also that they might threaten Bush's popularity.
. . .
Tod Ensign directs Citizen Soldier, a GI rights advocacy organization. He thinks the failure to cover the wounded indicates an implicit loyalty to the White House, and a reluctance to address a failed Iraq policy. "The American media is by and large controlled and dominated by corporations that line up politically with the Bush administration," Ensign says. "They appear to be increasingly incapable of grappling with such a highly charged issue as the wounded."
*sigh*
NEWS FLASH: George W. Bush is a Booger Picker.
After an exhaustive search, I have uncovered incontrovertible documentary evidence that George W. Bush is a booger picker. There is no date associated with this footage, but judging by the imagery, I would estimate this evidence to date back to before he became President. What I want to know is this-- why weren't the American people told about this? I for one am appalled at the thought of the President of the United States casually picking his nose and flicking boogers at other heads of state. Worse yet, what if he smears them on the Oval Office desk? What's going to be the cost to taxpayers of chiseling off those hard crusty boogers once he leaves office? It's a scandal!
Now, there is no hard evidence that Bush has flicked boogers on either Tony Blair or Kofi Annan. That doesn't mean he hasn't done it, however. Nor am I aware of any evidence that White House furniture is now encrusted with dried nasal mucous. You can't be too careful with these things, however. It would be highly embarrassing if someone like Vladimir Putin were to discover that he had a booger stuck to his pants after leaving the White House. Remember, just because we don't know that Bush is an inveterate booger flicker doesn't mean that he's not.
If, like me, you think it's about time the White House owned up to this crime against humanity, then do something about it. Go to the actionCenter and write to your local newspaper demanding answers!
Via Agonist, "Just-returned troops ready for new mission." This is something I had been wondering about-- with stories about pressure to bring some troops home from Iraq, along with others talking about how thinly spread the armed forces are, where were new troops going to come from? Here's one answer:
About 5,000 soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division will leave within days to relieve weary units struggling to pacify Iraq -- not that the 82nd's paratroopers are fresh themselves.The deployment of the 3rd Brigade task force, North Carolina's biggest deployment to Iraq since the war began , might be the clearest example of how thinly spread the U.S. Army is: Most in the group returned from duty in Afghanistan just six months ago. Others fought in Iraq and returned in May.
The Pentagon recognized how much it was asking. The task force was the only unit in a troop rotation plan announced last month that was given a six-month assignment. The others were told to expect a year in Iraq.
Next question: how long before the troops who just came home are sent out again?
Al Franken is co-hosting "Crossfire" this week, and since I like watching C-level political commentators, I've been tuning in. I don't normally watch shoutfest shows like this, but Al is pretty funny, which makes it more tolerable to watch. Anyway, what I'm mostly fascinated by at this point is first how often Tucker Carlson cuts off the "lefty" speakers, and second, how many times the lefty guys have to deal with him twisting their words or just plain making stuff up. Yesterday he was even making snarky comments about Al getting "twitchy," which seemed particularly sophomoric.
Anyway, the whole thing is about as enlightening as the Daily Show's "Even Stephen" segment, except that I'm not left with the giggles afterward.
Checked out a couple articles about the Columbia accident, and this bit from a BBC News piece caught my attention:
This occurred against a background of massive budget cuts, with Nasa losing 13% of its purchasing power from 1993 to 2002 and over 10,000 staff.As a result, "safety and support upgrades were delayed or deferred, and shuttle infrastructure was allowed to deteriorate".
Most of the noise about the Columbia accident seems to be about management failures at NASA, which I'm sure did play a role, but it seems to me that we should look a little wider than that. In an atmosphere of constant budget cuts, any organization is going to be forced to reduce their efforts somewhere. It seems that in this country nearly all public institutions are constantly being exhorted to "do more with less" even when that becomes impossible, or even dangerous. Think about it-- what's it like down at the DMV? What do your local schools (or those in a neighboring community) look like? What condition are your local interstate highways in? How much was tuition raised this year at your state universities? Hell, what does Iraq look like? At a certain point we have to quit blaming the managers and get more money pumped into these organizations.
U.S. checking possibility of pumping oil from northern Iraq to Haifa, via Jordan
Hey guys, while you're at it why don't you paint a great big bulls-eye on it?
According to the NY Times, fasting is a fun new fad. The article claims that people (hmm...mostly women) are doing this not to lose weight, but for "spiritual cleansing." Where it gets really nuts is when they start getting into enemas, though:
For many, whatever is excreted is a litmus test of how pure one is. For this reason, colonics are often part of a faster's daily regimen, and practitioners soon become deeply interested in the results. "It's not about what you put in your body — it's about what you get out," said Joyce Spindler, a colonic therapist at Chakra 17, a Manhattan therapy center. "Fasting is a great concept, but it means nothing without elimination. The years of fried chicken and ice cream start to rattle and shake, and when that happens it doesn't feel that groovy."Maia James Muller, an advertising art director, and her fiancé fast several times a year and have even bought two Colema Boards for home enemas — one for the country house they use in upstate New York and one for their apartment in New York City. "Guests won't notice," she said, because the boards fold up.
So I thought, "Colema Board"? Sure, enough you can get them at a place called "The AWWWSOME Online Store." Raise your hand if you mentally changed their name to "The EWWWSOME Online Store."
Apparently some US troops are now using confiscated AK-47's. I wasn't going to link to the story, except that I saw someone else do so, with the implication that there simply aren't enough rifles for everyone. However, according to the article:
The soldiers based around Baqouba are from an armor battalion, which means they have tanks, Humvees and armored personnel carriers. But they are short on rifles.A four-man tank crew is issued two M4 assault rifles and four 9mm pistols, relying mostly on the tank's firepower for protection.
But now they are engaged in guerrilla warfare, patrolling narrow roads and goat trails where tanks are less effective. Troops often find themselves dismounting to patrol in smaller vehicles, making rifles essential.
Now, it seems perfectly logical to me that tank units wouldn't necessarily have rifles for everyone. After all, they're riding around in tanks, right? So while I can see where some could take this as indication of a lack of preparedness (or funding), I'm willing to cut the army a little slack on this one.
From an article in the Washington Post about the inherent insecurity of MS Windows:
Between the Blaster worm and the Sobig virus, it's been a long two weeks for Windows users. But nobody with a Mac or a Linux PC has had to lose a moment of sleep over these outbreaks -- just like in earlier "malware" epidemics.This is not a coincidence.
The usual theory has been that Windows gets all the attacks because almost everybody uses it. But millions of people do use Mac OS X and Linux, a sufficiently big market for plenty of legitimate software developers -- so why do the authors of viruses and worms rarely take aim at either system?
Even if that changed, Windows would still be an easier target. In its default setup, Windows XP on the Internet amounts to a car parked in a bad part of town, with the doors unlocked, the key in the ignition and a Post-It note on the dashboard saying, "Please don't steal this."
Got the September issue of MacAddict today. This month's issue is particularly exciting, because it includes two pieces of software I created, Variable Speed Player and Web Menu Assistant. This is the first time my software has appeared in a mass-market magazine, so it will be interesting to see what response (if any) I get.
According to this Newsweek article about the blackout:
Across the country in San Diego, President George W. Bush was on brief respite from his monthlong Crawford, Texas, vacation, lunching with troops at the Marine Air Corps Station in Miramar before heading to a fund-raising dinner.
"Respite" from his vacation? WTF? I had to look up the word to be sure I wasn't imagining things. Sure enough, the top definition over at Dictionary.com is "A usually short interval of rest or relief". He is taking a break from taking a break. And while he's on this vacation2 he's out begging for money so that he can keep this job that's apparently so stressful he needs multi-layered vacations.
Check out this article at The Register, taking Microsoft to task for bug-ridden software and the people who buy it over and over again:
Code Red, Love Bug, Slammer, Nimda, Pretty Park, BubbleBoy, Melissa, Code Red II, MSBlaster, and numerous other high-profile Microsoft-sponsored incidents... many view them as "the price of doing business in the Information Age" and cheerfully spend (or lose) increasing amounts of money with each new incident arising from poorly designed software. But rather than face reality by conducting a dollars-and-sense risk assessment of their IT operation to see how much Microsoft's vulnerabilities cost their enterprise annually, these sheeple - at all levels of government, industry, and society - prefer tolerating mediocrity to efficiency and reliability in their software assets, because they're either too lazy to investigate alternatives or don't want to propose changes to the comfortable status quo.As a long-time Mac user, most of these viruses & worms don't affect me too much, but the latest e-mail propagator has proved to be a headache. It got so bad that I had to disable my wife's email account altogether, because it was clogged with nothing but "See attached file for details" messages. Speaking from experience, there is no reason why most users couldn't switch to a Mac, or even to a Linux box if they wanted to be daring. My clients never even know I'm a Mac user unless it comes up in conversation, and I have never had my machine crippled by a virus or worm.
Funny how some projects just keep popping up again. My wife was involved in a CD-ROM project introducing students to the instruments of Motown, and seems like for years afterward she would get contacted about it. For me its the Industrial Hygiene Virtual Labs, which is a CD-ROM designed to help people learn about theory & technique in Industrial Hygiene. Tim Ryan, the instigator behind the whole project, has found a distributor for the software. Hopefully it will sell like hotcakes. (I won't actually earn anything as a result of this, but I'd still like to see it be successful.)
Dennis Kucinich (Democratic candidate for President) writes:
Even though I don't feel as though I'm getting special treatment or that I'm entitled to special treatment, it makes me wonder how much of a threat I must be since I really do intend to replace the entire government. So when people occasionally recognize me getting the magic metal detector wanding and dutifully submitting to searches of my person, extending my arms and my legs spread-eagle, I explain with a smile, "I'm running against George Bush."
Funny yes, but also maddening. Apparently he gets searched regularly because he buys one-way tickets. This seems to be about as far as the TSA is willing to go in terms of profiling potential terrorists. Does it not occur to anyone that for every Democratic Presidential candidate with a one-way ticket to Des Moines that gets searched, a terrorist with a round-trip ticket could be slipping by? This strikes me as akin to the stories of Al Gore getting searched a while back. Surely no one really thinks these guys are going to hijack and/or blow up anything, do they?
This is something that baffles and frustrates me, because I can't figure out if it's the result of laziness, stupidity, bureaucratic rigidity, or further evidence of the lack of critical thinking being taught in our schools due to over-reliance on standardized testing. How hard can it be to put together a profile that eliminates people who clearly are vested in the system, and obviously have no interest or desire to commit a terrorist act?
Allow me a brief excerpt from a Bill O'Reilly piece called "Calling Al Franken a satirist is a farce":
The accusation that Fox is a conservative network is pure propaganda. Poll after poll has demonstrated that Fox's audience is across the board, ideologically and demographically. The latest survey taken by Mediamark Research finds that more ultraconservative viewers watch CNN than Fox.But facts don't matter to the Fox haters who are, themselves, primarily ultraliberal. The dominance of Fox in the cable news world has shattered the stranglehold the left had on TV news for decades, and that has caused fear and loathing in some political circles.
Ok, so using the typical labels, left = liberal and right = conservative, yes? Well then, if Fox really "shattered the stranglehold the left had on TV news," then wouldn't it follow that Fox is then conservative?
Then there's this:
This country is a better place because Fox News has succeeded. Now there is a wider range of thought and expression available 2-4/7. But the country is worse off because of the brutal repercussions of that success. A nation that prides itself on diversity of opinion and acceptance of differing political points of view is being subjected to an orgy of media defamation and sometimes outright hatred.
Leaving aside the "2-4/7," which I'll be charitable and assume was a typo and not an indication that Fox only provides a wide range of thought and expression 2-4 days out of the week, that brings us to the "orgy of media defamation and sometimes outright hatred" bit. For that I'd like to point out an excerpt from Ann Coulter's most recent book:
Liberals have a preternatural gift for striking a position on the side of treason. You could be talking about Scrabble and they would instantly leap to the anti-American position. Everyone says liberals love America, too. No they don't. Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy. This is their essence. The left's obsession with the crimes of the West and their Rousseauian respect for Third World savages all flow from this subversive goal. If anyone has the gaucherie to point out the left's nearly unblemished record of rooting against America, liberals turn around and scream "McCarthyism!"
Now what was is Dubya said about specks & logs?
Been getting a steady stream of emails today with attachments and the directive "please see the attached file for details." *sigh* Some Windows sucka must've opened an attachment, and I have the misfortune of being in his/her address book. When will people learn? Arrgh!
Interesting piece briefly comparing the situation in Iraq to our recent blackout, then turning to the problem of the Americans running Iraq living "in the Bubble."
Their power doesn't go off; or if it does, their diesel generators kick right in and they've got the diesel to run them. Bremer's air conditioning works, as you can see by those crisp shirts he wears. So do the phones, which are provided exclusively by the bankrupt but well-connected American company MCI.In one of those bizarre daily routines to which the press is subjected (after 90 minutes being searched, scanned, and sniffed by dogs, then waiting behind cordoned rows of seats for each briefing in this "increasingly secure"? country), there's an admonition to "turn off your phones."? But the only phones that ever ring, because they're the only ones that work indoors, are those MCI phones in the pockets of the briefers themselves.
For a few days at the end of July, a couple of companies from Bahrain and Kuwait actually did set up a working cell-phone network for the public. But Bremer shut it down right away. According to the briefer sent out to meet the press, the "illegal"? Bahrain and Kuwait phone service was interfering with U.S. military communications and the MCI network. The public's phones were causing problems, in other words, for all those folks in the Bubble. Now we're told "legal"? phones won't be in operation until mid-November at the earliest.
In a NY Times piece on the grid, how we rely on it & how fragile it is:
"The grid definitely makes life safer and more reliable," but when something does go wrong, "we've seen that the dominoes can start to fall over a wider and wider area. So it's conceivable that the next time this happens that it could extend even farther."That possibility is frightening on its own terms, given the universal reliance on electrical power. From video games to A.T.M.'s to desktop computers -- most of which didn't exist in earlier blackouts -- dead devices brought normal life to a stop across the afflicted region. But the sensitivity of the grid to power failures has much wider implications, since Americans -- and the citizens of the rest of the world -- seem to like technologies that give them an illusion of independence within a giant web.
Cellphones operate on a similar principle of connectivity. So do municipal water systems. So does the Internet. The list is increasingly long. And that is why some experts believe that what is beginning to look like a worldwide push for wildly interconnected technologies will have more and more serious days of reckoning, for which last week's blackout -- like the grid itself -- is an arrow to the future humanity can expect.
How long before we see a movie called "The Grid" somehow or another based on these ideas? What would happen if the whole country went dark?
Power Outage Traced To Dim Bulb In White House
I don't fully understand everything here, but it will be interesting to see what role (if any) deregulation had in the blackout. Plus I just love this kind of snarky British headline.
Re: the Great Power Outage of '03-- when I first heard about the blackout, it seems like the first thing the NPR guy said was that it wasn't terrorism. Fine. So this morning I hear on the radio and see in various other outlets is that they don't actually know yet what caused the outage. So at the risk of sounding like Unca Donald, if we know we don't know what caused it, how can we know what didn't cause it?
Looks like the Pentagon wants to cut troop pay for those stationed overseas. Apparently they're not able to make ends meet on whatever budget it is they've got. The article makes it sound like it's strictly for the guys in Iraq, but it's actually for anyone in a "combat zone." Apparently Congress and/or the White House can override the decision, which I would guess is what will happen since it looks really bad. Of course, they'll probably just take the money from some less visible corner of the budget.
Now I'm no fan of this whole Iraq escapade, but if anyone's going to pay for the damn thing, it should not be the front-line troops or their families. How about instead we cut the salaries of the administration lackeys who dreamt the whole thing up in the first place? With as many millionaires as are in Dubya's administration, I would think they could stand to take a hit of a few hundred a month.
Thousands dead from the heat in France? The article doesn't say just how hot it is over there, but a quick check of the weather for today indicates a range of 85-92 degrees Fahrenheit. Somehow that doesn't seem hot enough to kill, but then what do I know?
Interesting Maureen Dowd editorial in the NY Times about blogging being "overrun by the establishment." She refers specifically to the various blogs of Democratic political candidates. (Disclaimer: I helped set up the "Blog Graham" weblog, but have no input on what goes in it, or the design.)
So I hear that Fox News is now suing Al Franken over the title of his new book, "Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right," because he uses the phrase "Fair and Balanced." As a result, a whole buncha bloggers have now decided that they too are "Fair and Balanced." So what the heck, I'll join in the fun, too.
From a speech given at the Veterans for Peace National Convention:
Is it part of our value system to remain on a permanent war footing since World War II, shunting money desperately needed for human services and education into a military machine whose very size and expense demands the fighting of wars to justify its existence?Is it part of our value system to lie to the American people, to lie deeply and broadly and with no shame at all, about why we fight in Iraq?
Is it part of our value system to sacrifice nearly 300 American soldiers on the altar of those lies, to sacrifice thousands and thousands and thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq on the altar of those lies?
Is it part of our value system to use the horror of 9/11 to terrify the American people into an unnecessary war, into the ruination of their civil rights, into the annihilation of the Constitution?
Is it part of our value system to use that terrible day against those American people who felt most personally the awful blow of that attack?
Is striking first part of our value system?
Is living in fear part of our value system?
It is not part of my value system. It never will be.
There's lots more-- go read it.
I see in the NY Times that they've drawn the randomized alphabet for the CA recall vote. The new alphabet is R, W, Q, O, J, M, V, A, H, B, S, G, Z, X, N, T, C, I, E, K, U, P, D, Y, F, L. Here's the weird part:
Mr. Shelley, the secretary of state, said random alphabetical drawing had been performed for statewide elections since 1975, following court rulings that determined the standard alphabetical listing of candidates was unconstitutional. Studies at the time, Mr. Shelley said, showed that the name at the top of a ballot typically enjoys an advantage.
So the alphabet is unconstitutional. Who knew?
Anyway, I hope they plan to allow lots of extra time for folks to find the candidate they want. With (I assume) multiple pages and a randomized alphabet, locating the right person is going to be a headache for everyone.
Like most things in the media, the actual threat seems hyped-up, but it's still an interesting phenomenon- a possible hydrothermal explosion in Yellowstone Lake. The article in the Denver Post starts out by making you think that it could blow at any time, but if you read a little deeper you'll learn that scientists don't actually know when this bulge first appeared, since the lake bottom has only recently been thoroughly mapped.
Saw an article in Newsweek this morning talking about today's best comic strips. While noting a handful of top strips, the writer also notes:
The first challenge for all these strips is simply carving out space. The comics are crammed today with seemingly immortal, humor-challenged fare like "Garfield"? and "Hi & Lois," many of which are now tediously passed down by their creators to other writers. Finding an audience means a new strip has to bump off those mysteriously popular vets.
I have to say that I agree wholeheartedly with this. Our local newspaper (Athens Banner-Herald) doesn't carry a single one of the strips mentioned in the article, but does carry a whole lotta crappy ones including both the two he singles out, as well as such notable wastes of newsprint as "The Phantom" and "Snuffy Smith." The Banner-Herald is also one of those papers that relegates Doonesbury to the editorial page, so there's no telling what they'd do with something like Boondocks, which can be even sharper-tongued. *sigh*
Well, it's now official-- PixPics is now available to the general public for Mac and Windows. Have fun with it, everyone. The image shown here is actually a simulation (taken in part from the PixPics Editor, which is not part of the release), but fundamentally you should be able to get the idea.
Now that the software is out I'll be spending my extra time creating new puzzles for it to keep the hordes of paying customers satisfied (heh). Special thanks to Jon, Lisa, & Chandra for finding as many weird problems with the software as they possibly could.
Reading Newsweek yesterday, and in a sidebar to piece about "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," the interviewer at one point asked:
My husband really needs a makeover. Would you take him even though he's gay?
This would have seemed odd to me under normal circumstances, but with the current brouhaha over gay marriage it struck me even harder. There's no indication who the interviewer is, but I have to assume that the reference is to a gay couple. Aside from it being an amusing exchange, I wonder if this is in some small way a shot in the "culture wars" going on over the whole thing.
Just for grins, just did an IQ test at Emode.com. I won't divulge the raw score (which is probably close to meaningless anyway), but will share that they say my intellectual type is "Visionary Philosopher." Heh. Sounds lovely, doesn't it? Of course, when I went back through it again and deliberately picked wrong and/or random answers it came back with an intellectual type of "Inventive Inquisitor" (and a raw score of 73), which sounds equally nice. I was personally hoping for something more like "Gullible Lunkhead," but I suppose no one would pony up the $14.95 for the full report with a label like that.
Spending the day working on other stuff, but before the end of the week I'll have this puppy available. Now if I could just get the guy at Games magazine to call me back.
For those of you who don't know what this is, it's the icon for PixPics, the name I've given my software implementation of a puzzle game more commonly known as "Paint by Numbers," originally invented in Japan. The idea is that you start with a blank grid with a bunch of numbers marking the columns & rows, and using logic you try to figure out what the picture is. I'll post a screenshot when it's officially released.
Quick count of casualties in Iraq since May 1 (when W. declared major combat operations over):
It's possible these numbers are low. No idea what "wounded" means here...could be anything from lost limbs to sprains, I suppose.
Here's my source.
Why do I post this? Because the source article reminded me that we're only hearing about deaths of a particular type. What's more, we're not hearing anything more beyond "injured" when others are hurt. Are we talking band-aids, or artificial limbs? Not that I necessarily think that the media should be giving us exacting details for each and every casualty. The thing that does strike me as something that should be looked into is the fact that by this count (60 to 52) we're a bigger hazard to ourselves than the Iraqis are. What's up with that?
Still in the early stages, but I'm working on a new game featuring this nifty little rover. Think of this as a teaser image for everyone (including myself!). I'll post more about game development here as I make progress.
Great photo of an exhibit at the Whitney Museum. It's an installation called "Nursing Home" by Gilles Barbier.
Saw this (Washington Post, courtesy The Agonist):
As the search for illegal weapons in Iraq continues without success, the Bush administration has moved to emphasize a different rationale for the war against Saddam Hussein: using Iraq as the "linchpin" to transform the Middle East and thereby reduce the terrorist threat to the United States.
And immediately thought of Jon Lovitz's character Tommy Flanagan the Pathological Liar. "Dubya & I, we decided to invade Iraq because of those Weapons of Mass Destr-- ah, because Saddam gassed-- because of his ties to terror-- no, to bring peace to the entire Middle East! Yeah, that's the ticket! Peace, to the entire Middle East! That's why we invaded Iraq!"