Rusted Sky

Here comes Microsoft's offer to make the life of the support tech a little more interesting...

2007 Microsoft Office system preview site

Sigh.

I think I've got one, maybe two more OS upgrades in me, three or four Office upgrades. New system, new problems, new user issues... Can't say I haven't lacked for work over the years...

J.

Down in Rusted Sky: Still trying to get things set up right -, I fumed about the white space on either side of the banner above - just couldn't seem to get rid of it.

Gecko, of LearningMoveableType.Com stopped by and dropped in this little suggestion...

what if you set the border width to 0? so instead of this:

#banner-inner
{
padding: 15px 13px;
border-width: 2px 2px 0 2px;

you should have that
#banner-inner
{
padding: 15px 13px;
border-width: 0px 0px 0 0px;

Have a good day...

PS: more information at www.learningmovabletype.com/archives/000632banner_images.php

Many thanks, Gecko!

If you've got Movable Type questions or problems, go check it out. Looks like an EXCELLENT resource. I humbly bow in his direction...

J.

Doesn't seem to make sense, right? Take a look at this article...

Townhall.com :: Preserving a vision: Part III by Thomas Sowell Jun 1, 2006

The New York Times of May 21 featured estimates of how much revenue the federal government is losing as a result of tax cuts, more than $50 billion over a five-year period. Meanwhile, a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal reported the government as receiving "a surge in unanticipated revenue coming from the rich."

There is no contradiction between these two stories. The Times reported estimates, while the Wall Street Journal reported what actually happened. Moreover, there is no real difference in outlook between the writers who wrote these two stories.

To the Wall Street Journal writer, the increased tax revenue from "the rich" was "a windfall for the U.S. Treasury."

There has long been a difference in outlook between the reporters who write up the news for the Wall Street Journal and those who write the same newspaper's editorial page. If the reporter thinks that the increased revenue to the Treasury was "unanticipated," that suggests that she has not been reading the editorial pages of her own newspaper.
For years -- indeed, decades -- the Wall Street Journal's editorial page has repeatedly been arguing that cutting tax rates increases tax revenues. Nor did this idea originate with them. There is a whole school of economists who have been saying the same thing even longer.

There is nothing "unanticipated" about the increased revenue. It was unanticipated by the Congressional Budget Office's estimates but that is why the CBO has come under fire from economists. But apparently none of this has yet registered on the Wall Street Journal's front page reporter.

Let them keep money, and they'll work harder, production rises - and revenue rises. Funny how that keeps playing out.

There's also an old biblical proverb - "Don't bind the mouths of the oxen that tread your grain." Starve the ox - and you'll end up with little. Let it feed, and everyone benefits.

Maybe someday folks will realize there's a pattern.

J.

YouTube - Conic - Juggling in a Cone (Preview)

Enjoy!

J.

If you remember to actually cut and paste...

Philadelphia Inquirer | 05/29/2006 | Greenpeace's fill-in-the-blank public relations meltdown

Before President Bush touched down in Pennsylvania Wednesday to promote his nuclear energy policy, the environmental group Greenpeace was mobilizing.

"This volatile and dangerous source of energy" is no answer to the country's energy needs, shouted a Greenpeace fact sheet decrying the "threat" posed by the Limerick reactors Bush visited.

But a factoid or two later, the Greenpeace authors were stumped while searching for the ideal menacing metaphor.

We present it here exactly as it was written, capital letters and all: "In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE]."

Don't you just hate it when that happens? (grin)

J.

Is still ugly. I don't give a damn what skin color you are.

TCLA > Equal Terms in LA > Dialogue > Marcos Aguilar Interview

MA: By learning Nahuatl, they will be able to understand their relationship with nature (because language is based on our human relationship with nature) and be able to understand themselves as part of something larger, not as an isolated individual. They will be able to understand our own ancestral culture and our customs and traditions that are so imbued in the language. The importance of Nahutal is also academic because Nahuatl is based on a Math system, which we are also practicing. We teach our children how to operate a base 20 mathematical system and how to understand the relationship between the founders and their bodies, what the effects of astronomical forces and natural forces on the human body and the human psyche, our way of thinking and our way of expressing ourselves. And so the language is much more than just being able to communicate. When we teach Nahuatl, the children are gaining a sense of identity that is so deep, it goes beyond whether or not they can learn a certain number of vocabulary words in Nahuatl. It’s really about them understanding themselves as human beings. Everything we do here is about relationships.

...

We don’t necessarily want to go to White schools. What we want to do is teach ourselves, teach our children the way we have of teaching. We don’t want to drink from a White water fountain, we have our own wells and our natural reservoirs and our way of collecting rain in our aqueducts. We don’t need a White water fountain. So the whole issue of segregation and the whole issue of the Civil Rights Movement is all within the box of White culture and White supremacy. We should not still be fighting for what they have. We are not interested in what they have because we have so much more and because the world is so much larger. And ultimately the White way, the American way, the neo liberal, capitalist way of life will eventually lead to our own destruction. And so it isn’t about an argument of joining neo liberalism, it’s about us being able, as human beings, to surpass the barrier.

But dress up the same crap with multicultural sprinkles and PC boilerplate, and you can get people falling all over themselves to support it.

I see nothing good coming of this.

J.

This has been updated and expanded.

The question in my mind is - why would they target Canada? It's not exactly like they've been overly supportive of US efforts. (They have been, but not terribly overt.) Or is it a case of finding targets of opportunity, to get the population thinking in the right direction to accept either subtle urgings towards Muslim domination in preference to random terrorism, or push them away from coalition support on the WoT?

Either way, I find this disturbing.

Canada arrests 17 on terror charges - International Terrorism - MSNBC.com

TORONTO - A group of Canadian residents arrested in coordinated raids across the Toronto area for “terrorism-related offenses” had planned to blow up targets around southern Ontario, Canadian police said on Saturday.
Mike McDonnell, assistant commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, said the group had acquired three metric tons of ammonium nitrate — or three times the amount used in the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City — as they sought to “create explosive devices.” Police said they had arrested 12 adults and five young people.

Update - Slightly old news, but still relevant...

UK police hunt for "dirty" chemical bomb: papers-|-Reuters.com

There was quite a bit of derision when Bush said "You're either with us, or against us" on the WoT. How simplistic, to think there were only two sides to this, that there couldn't be a third, neutral position. Well, it's pretty evident (at least to my addled, simplistic brain) that such an attitude is taken by the radical Islamists. THEY don't see this as a three-sided conflict. There's those who believe as they do, and those that don't. Those that don't are to be converted or killed, though if there's a use for the unbelievers then that death may be delayed a while.

But they'll still be still on the hit list.

That's why I've been rather puzzled by those on the left who seem to prefer to support people who are completely against freedom for women, against sexual freedom, against homosexuality or freedom of speech - indeed, pretty much everything the left is ostensibly FOR, they're AGAINST.

So how does it make sense to support them? Beats me. But they do. (An inculcated cultural self-hatred that doesn't extend to actively embracing suicide, perhaps, but is not adverse to the destruction of that culture from outside?) .

Damn, but I hate this. 5 years ago, I was pretty certain that the actions of Al Quaeda were those of a tiny minority. That the vast majority of Muslims were quite willing to co-exist with unbelievers, that Muslims in the West wouldn't see any particular advantage to trying to bring down Western civilization. That it wouldn't be necessary to wage war against Islam itself, that the moderate elements within Islam would regulate and control the extremists. I thought the Taliban were an abberation.

I still think Islamic radicals are a tiny minority - but it's pretty clear that there's little to no way the moderate elements can control the radicals. The actions of native-born Muslims in the UK (with the bombings) indicate that the problem isn't strictly controlled by location, and the actions of Muslims in Canada indicate there's no safe-haven from the folks who urge Islamic terror.

Well, we beat the malignant theology that Hitler espoused. It took a lot, but it was done. We 'won' against the USSR and Communism's theology - though we're still seeing a lot of folks who should know better thinking that Communism is the Best Thing Ever - but eventually that battle will be won (until the next time) because both sides agree that it's better to live (even if you don't have control of the world) than commit nuclear suicide through MAD.

But we've got a slight problem with Iran. Nuclear suicide isn't seen as a problem, and that really cuts down on possible response scenarios.

J.

Tech showed up at the stroke of 11, when the time frame was 8 to 11. Didn't have paperwork, he'd just gotten the call from his dispatcher at 10:30 (when this had been scheduled since Thursday?) and didn't know what the history was of the problem, swapped legs on the splitter (which I'd swapped back yesterday so the problem would still be there when he arrived, and it actually occured on cue) and also replaced the modem. Then he had a hell of a time activating it - couldn't get in touch with someone back at the office to change the modem info. But it got done, eventually.

We'll see how well things go. But as of now, 12:28, the following speeds are indicated from the Speakeasy speed test...

Last Result:
Download Speed: 6130 kbps (766.3 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 359 kbps (44.9 KB/sec transfer rate)

Marginally better than the old modem, too. I feel for the tech - ComCast is skimping on their support, and it shows.

Update: 45 minutes after the tech left, as the afternoon warmed... the modem lost the connection. I called tech support, next appointment is FRIDAY, and I can only hope the temp's hot enough that day that the connection will be down again.

I've kind of moved beyond angry on this - I'm more amused than anything else. It's clear that the problem is a weak signal. The techs have even said that the signal level is low. How long from the point where they figure out what the problem might be to the point where they accept what the problem is and fix it?

I know you're as eager to know as I am...

J.

.: Uranium Jeans - Tech Fashion :.

Click on Collections. It's interesting that women's clothing has stuff on the front, while the guy's jeans has it in the rear. So to speak.

Not that there's anything wrong with that...

Whoops, wait - nevermind. Women have the panels on the rear also, and the guy's stuff has it in the front too.

(grin)

J.

This shouldn't even be an issue.

Bush urges marriage amendment - Politics - MSNBC.com

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Monday he is "proud to stand with" those who support a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. Speaking to backers of the plan, Bush said the legislative step was necessary so the public could make the decision about the definition of marriage instead of “activist judges.”

Bush said he supports defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, reiterating themes he spoke of in his Satrurday radio address. The amendment has little chance of being passed in the Senate.

No, really? I'm simply AMAZED! Why, this is EASILY the MOST IMPORTANT issue facing the ENTIRE WORLD today!

Sigh. I wonder who talked him into this? Is this REALLY the best use of his political capital? Of his time?

I consider myself fairly conservative - but there's no way I'd vote for this if given the chance. Just like the idea of an amendment to ban abortion is a non-starter for me - though the idea of it (after holding the little guy when he was just a few minutes old) is rather repugnant.

IMO, government shouldn't be in the business of fine-tuning social policy. And unfortunately, that's what's happening. National defense? yep. Big social issues like slavery? Yep. Mandate equality of opportunity, and let things sort themselves out. Mandate equality of outcome? Nope - because the devil is in the details there. National educational standards? Yes, for things like history, science, reading/spelling and math. Everything else is gravy - which means it's pretty tasty when hot and fresh but pretty nasty when it's had a chance to cool and congeal.

I'm reminded of Prohibition, the only Amendment ever passed that actually limited the rights of a whole lot of folks.

It was repealed, and rightfully so. Let's not make the same mistake again.

J.

Everything looks like a nail.

When all you do is create fantasies, then all you need to do is call REWRITE! when you don't like how the plot's going. If you're producing broadcast news, you've got severe constraints on your time, so you have to pick and choose what you're going to present. And if you've got a point of view you want to get across, then your producer can edit things to fit.

Just call REWRITE! and all those annoying script problems go away...

Variety.com - Bushies need a good rewrite

Unfortunately, reality itself is nowhere near so compliant to the producer's whim. But that doesn't really stop the folks who are determined to shape the arguement to THEIR point of view. Take, for example, the reality that a well-known producer (Michael Moore) decided to creatively use an interview given by a veteran to support his anti-war movie. It's all about the editing, and how things are presented.

Or not presented, depending. Over at Gateway Pundit, there's a compilation of stories the MSM is completely ignoring in Iran. Massive protests, buildings being torched, all sorts of stuff that tend to give the impression that perhaps, just perhaps, the mullahs have taken things too far. Yet it's virtually ignored by broadcast news, and I can't find a trace of it on MSNBC.

Isn't that odd?

I got to thinking about this the other day, and was kind of amused at the parallel between "1984" and today... remember how the Media, controlled by the Government in Orwell's book manipulated the population? Two Minute hates and everything?

The Media controlled the people, and with no alternative sources of information the people had no choice but to go with what they were told. Reality was defined by the media they were forced to watch.

I was reminded by this the other day when I saw an article in the local fishwrapper bemoaning the state of the economy. Apparently last month only 77k jobs were created. This, supposedly, portends DOOM for the US economy. But if you read down in the article, after all the prognostications of economic collapse... you found that the unemployment rate dropped to 4.5%...

The desired perception is that there's trouble economically. And is it accurate? Is the economy about to collapse, or is the media trying to define reality with or without government consent...

Unfortunately, there's significant resistance from the 'nails' the media 'hammer' is trying to pound. Drudgereport, Google News, Yahoo News, a whole network of bloggers and such - it really shrinks the size of the hammer that the media is able to wield.

Reality exists, regardless of how the media deigns to report on it. The smoke coming from Iran is proof of that. The fire burns whether a reporter watches it or not.

J.

D-Day June 6, 1944: 62 years

Go. Read. And think about what had to be done, and what may have to be done in the future.

Freedom's never 'free' - someone, somewhere, someWHEN has paid or will pay the price.

J.

The Daily Bayonet has a very good round-up of news on the To17, the Canadian Jihadis who were prepping for an ANFO (ammonium nitrate\fuel oil) bombing spree. It's quite illuminating, and also a bit depressing, on how the media spin machines have gotten going.

UPDATE #6: Al-Reuters has a new story which claims that one of the arrested, Steven Chand wanted to behead Stephen Harper. Disturbing enough information, but then the Al-Reuters spin machine gets rolling and includes such gems as:

"Chand's lawyer, Gary Batasar, said his client faced several serious charges and was concerned that intense media interest in the details of the case in Canada and the United States could jeopardize Chand's chances of a fair trial..../ ...It appears to me that whether you're in Ottawa or Toronto or Crawford, Texas, or Washington D.C., what is wanting to be instilled in the public is fear, and that's why everybody's here today, and that's unfortunate," he said."

So, the main concern we should have are not that this lunatic wannabe terrorist wanted to remove our PM's noggin, but that he might not get a fair trial? Cry me a river. As for the second part of the lawyer's quote - is he serious about the people showing up to see and cover the first court appearance trying to 'instil fear'? Isn't that what his depraved client had in mind? The difference is simple, the lawyer is spinning a story to make the perp the victim yet his client is facing only words and photographs as weapons - not the 3 tonne bomb the radicalized moron and his merry men were planning. Expect nothing better from this news agency.

It's something I've expected, though - these guys are going to be painted as victims. And you know something else? The same folks who are supporting these poor, misunderstood yutes would have screamed loudly if enough dots had been connected on 9/11 to arrest the hijackers before they did what they did.

J.

you know, I just can't think in complex ways. I'm looking at what Prof. Campos is saying, and it seems to me he's weathervaning.

Radio Blogger - Colorado Law Professor Paul Campos' "rose-colored look" at history.

HH: Okay. Let's go to March 21. We're getting closer in time. It has been pointed out that it is more difficult for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, you wrote, than for a rich man to enter Heaven. And surely, few vices could be more dangerous to a Christian soul than to indulge in the decision that his nation is morally superior to other countries. Contemporary nationalism is little more than spiritual pride on a grand, political scale. Now this strikes me as truly an amazing statement. Do you believe there is no moral difference between countries?

PC: I would say that no country is inherently, morally superior to any other country.

HH: Is the United States morally superior to the theocracy of Iran?

PC: I would...I don't think that the people who make up the United States are morally superior to the people who make up Iran. Now I think the political system the United States currently enjoys is certainly superior to the political system that the Iranians are stuck with. And certainly, I wouldn't dispute that.

HH: So what you're...that's very deft, but it's surely not what you intended to convey when you write that a delusion to believe a nation is morally superior to other countries. When you say nation, you're specifically including not people, but the governmental structure. So I mean, you're refuting your statement here. Nations are morally superior to each other, aren't they?

PC: No, because the definition of a nation is not its particular political system at any particular time, but a people, that as in America as a people is different from its government. If we had a different government, we would still have the American people, even if we had a different kind of governmental system.

You really ought to read the whole thing. Apparently this prof's been putting out a whole lot of columns, replete with erroneous conclusions drawn from rather dubious 'facts'.

J.

You Are 34% Evil

A bit of evil lurks in your heart, but you hide it well. In some ways, you are the most dangerous kind of evil.

Could be worse, at least I'm not the 'Diet Coke of Evil'.

J.

I've avoided posting anything about this for two reasons - first, I'm willing to let the military investigate this and second, I'm pretty sure that the MSM won't have a clue. As Michael Yon wrote...

Michael Yon : Online Magazine - Blog Archive - Hijacking Haditha

In the absence of clear facts, most people know that a rush to judgment serves no one. What word, then, properly characterizes the recent media coverage of Haditha, when analysis stretches beyond shotgun conclusions to actually attributing motive and assigning blame? No rational process supports a statement like: “We don’t know what happened, but we know why it happened and whose fault it is.”

What’s striking about the Ishaqi report is its surface similarity to the Haditha incident. Both feature ambushes of U.S. troops, carried out from occupied homes, by a single gunman acting alone.

It’s that last element that raises questions. A single shooter amid a group of unarmed civilians – that’s a strange setup for an ambush. A one-man ambush is a contradiction in terms. A guerilla unit conducting such an operation would use all the men available, to concentrate fire and cause as much damage as possible. A single man may take a pot-shot or two and then break contact. But from a houseful of people, who will inevitably come under fire in return? There’s no reason for that. Not unless it wasn’t an ambush at all. Not unless a completely different effect was intended. (ed. note - Are the insurgents so reduced that this is what they're down to? Instead of a suicide bomber, they send out some poor, stupid bastard with an AK-47 to corral a family and provoke the Coalition to fire on them, to stage a massacre?)

The war in Iraq is a low-level insurrection slowly – all too slowly – grinding to a halt. The insurgents have attempted to take and hold ground in cities like Tal Afar and Fallujah, and have failed. They have attempted to stop the electoral process through intimidation, and have failed. They have attempted to split the country through civil war, and have failed. Few tactics remain to them, one of which is to take a page from the Vietnam playbook and work the media, hoping that upheaval in the U.S. itself will win their war for them. And that requires a My Lai.

So they’ve been trying to arrange one. To create the conditions for a massacre. Ambushing Coalition troops from houses full of helpless, unarmed civilians, hoping that the soldiers would respond with all the firepower at their command, and exposing the resulting carnage to the full glare of the international media. That was the plan at Ishaqi, and it might have worked if the shooter hadn’t survived. That was also the plan at Haditha—and somebody walked right into it. Some young men angered beyond rationality at seeing a friend blown in half by an IED, driven by impulses we will never know, stormed the nearest homes to kill not only the lone terrorist (according to the account in Time, there were two AK-47s but only one gunman), but everyone else as well—man, woman, and child.

If more proof is needed, consider the May 30 USA Today story in which Marine Captain Andrew Del Gaudio described coming under machine-gun fire this past April after an IED killed four of his men. As he was about to engage, he saw that the enemy had placed a line of children in front of the gun, with two video cameras ready to film them as they were shot down. Del Gaudio held his fire, and was injured by the next rounds. His troops flanked the machine-gun nest before attacking, and the children survived. (Further testimony along the same lines in offered in the Wall Street Journal’s June 6 “Best of the Web Today” by a unnamed officer under the heading “Letter from Iraq”.)

Hell, even in Atlanta a policeman who got shot instead of shooting kids a gunman was using as a shield would be considered heroic. But this doesn't even rate a back-page mention.

The Hadita stratagem is to get a massacre. Even if they've got to stage it, and force the issue. Dead kids, if they can get them, are just the topping on the cake they're serving to the MSM, who devour it with great gusto...

J.

Air raid kills al-Zarqawi - Conflict in Iraq - MSNBC.com

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaida's leader in Iraq who led a bloody campaign of suicide bombings and kidnappings, has been killed in an air strike, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Thursday, adding his identity was confirmed by fingerprints and a first-hand look at his face. It was a major victory in the U.S.-led war in Iraq and the broader war on terror.

J.

It Shines For All

Right now, I'm in the media room at YearlyKos, listening to liberal bloggers and activists fret about how to spin the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

And Atrios gives our military a "Good job!" rating.

Well, not really.

J.

Okay, lame joke. But it's possible to sign up to be a Beta tester for Microsoft. Yes, you too can become an unpaid employee, testing software that's likely to be buggier than a fire-ant nest, staying up all hours of the night and going to work on a couple hours sleep... you know, all the things that are FUN about Microsoft.

But you know something? Treat it as a massive game, and you've got to discover the rules and limitations. Figure out the puzzles, and workarounds, explore it as you would the world of Myst or the like.

What? Yeah, I've signed up. I am, after all, a technojunkie. (Though I'll admit that I'm not quite as hooked as I once was. I've been through CP/M, DOS from 1 to 6.22, every version of Windows (except ME) and I'm thinking I've got one, maybe two more major OS upgrades left in me.)

So - here you go. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Beta Experience – The pleasure of testing

The new generation of Microsoft Windows and Office is about to be launched. Get in on the act right from the start. Follow the new products as they go through to the finals. As a member of the Beta Experience with Windows Vista and Microsoft Office you will benefit from valuable resources, specialist knowledge and additional bonus material. And of course you will be provided with the opportunity to download or order the new betas. Your subscription will include regular issues of the Beta Experience Newsletter containing specialist knowledge all about Windows Vista and Microsoft Office.

J.

I'm not normally a vindictive sort, but I couldn't help but smile when I read the following.

Al-Zarqawi was alive after bombing - Conflict in Iraq - MSNBC.com

WASHINGTON - A mortally wounded Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, still alive after a U.S. airstrike on his hideout, mumbled briefly and attempted to “turn away off the stretcher” he had been placed on by Iraqi police, the U.S. military said Friday.

U.S. officials had said Thursday in announcing the attack that Zarqawi was dead when U.S. troops arrived on the scene.

Maj. Gen. Bill Caldwell, briefing military reporters at the Pentagon from his post in Baghdad, said he learned after getting briefings Friday that Zarqawi was alive when Iraqi police first arrived on the scene, but he died a short time later.

Shall we have a Last Words contest?

I'll start it... "No! Not 72 virgin pigs!"

Yes, I'm sincerely glad this head-hacking bastard's gone.

J.

DO YOU KNOW ALEGBRA AND GEOMETRY? GET $$$ CASH FOR DOING IT FOR ME

Don't know about you, but if I could save $800 by doing my math homework over the summer and learning what I'm supposed to be learning at the same time, I'd do it.

But there's some folks who just have money to spare...

Hey, Rawb - this might be some quick cash for you? (grin)

J.

... playing the 'victim' game while still attempting to murder as many Israelies as possible isn't getting as much sympathy and support as they used to.

Palestinian support 'crashes' in Europe | Jerusalem Post

Three years ago, he said, the conflict was perceived "in a post-colonial framework."

There was a sense "that Europe could cancel out its own colonial history by taking the 'right' side" - the Palestinian side. Yasser Arafat was viewed as "an anti-colonial, liberation leader." The US was seen as a global imperial power, added Greenberg, and the fact that it was backing Israel only added to the "instinctive" sense of the Palestinians as victims.

France, with the largest Muslim population - moreover an entirely Arab Muslim population - with the direct experience of Algeria and the most anti-US positions, was most prey to this mindset.

Today, by contrast, the Europeans "are focused on fundamentalist Islam and its impact on them," he said. The Europeans were now asking themselves "who is the moderate in this conflict, and who is the extremist? And suddenly it is the Palestinians who may be the extremists, or who are allied with extremists who threaten Europe's own society."

Greenberg told The Jerusalem Post that the shifts in attitudes reflected in the surveys were so dramatic that he "redid" some of the polls to ensure there had been no error.

He singled out France as the country where attitudes had changed most dramatically. Three years ago, 60 percent of French respondents said they took a side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and of that 60%, four out of five backed the Palestinians. Today, by contrast, 60% of French respondents did not take a side in the conflict, and support for the Palestinians had dropped by half among those who did express a preference.

Greenberg said the figures were still being finalized, and so did not go into further details. But shifts such as these, he said, represented "an incredible pace of change," with significant consequences.

Man, I wish Arafat had died about ten years sooner...

J.

And the last inverview Z-man ever gave. It's quite an eye-opener.

The protein wisdom interview: - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

J.

When last we saw the back of the ComCast technician, a new modem and power supply had been installed, and everything was just fine. Fast downlink & uplink, consistent connection - and 45 minutes later, the connection failed due to reasons unknown (but may have been related to heat)

So, ComCast was called, and another technician was promised for today at 5 PM.

The technician showed up on time, wonder of wonders, and proceeded to check the signal strength, which was marginal. He checked it out at the curb box, and it was significantly higher. So a new section of coax was run and hooked up - and signal strenght at the modem was again significantly higher. Apparently as old coax gets warm, the resistance/impedance increases and the signal strength drops to unsuitable levels.

Twenty minutes after he showed up, he was gone again. And we've had a solid connection all evening.

Right now I'm downloading Windows Vista, all 3 gb of it. I'm looking at my networking window in Task Manager, and it's showing a network utilization of 12.5%. I've got a 6 mbiit/sec download - and with a 54Mbps wireless connection that would come out to 12.5% (It'd be interesting to drag the 3 gb file over to another system, see if I can get up to the rated speed...) (Nope - started a large-file download to another system, and it maxes out at 28%)

It looks, provisionally, kind of like, maybe the thing's working right.

We'll see.

J.

Wierd that an unpopular war would see recruiting goals met in an all-volunteer force...

Army Meets Recruitng Goals

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Army said Friday it surpassed its recruiting goal for May, marking the 12th consecutive month of meeting or exceeding its target.

Before it began the streak in June 2005, the active Army had missed its target four consecutive months. And even though results improved during the summer months, it missed its full-year target for the first time since 1999. The Army National Guard and Army Reserve also fell short of their 2005 goals but are doing better now.

The regular Army signed up 5,806 new recruits last month, compared with its target of 5,400, and the Army National Guard and Army Reserve also exceeded their May goals, according to statistics released by the Pentagon.

J.

Synchronised goldfish

Alas, the last goldfish we had committed suicide by leaping out of a 1x2.5 inch hole in the cover...

If he'd only had a swimming buddy to coordinate with, he might still be alive today...

J.

I know things have been a bit sparse the last couple of days. Sorry about that, but real life's been interesting... in a GOOD way, not a bad one..

Saturday we went over to get some pics taken of the little guy, and also visit the eye clinic. (One hour to get your glasses? Sure... if everything goes right. And you don't go for anything complex. As it is, it'll be about a week. Gee, all I want are those photocromatic lenses...) Then I took the little guy and Mum-in-law out to see "Cars". Rating? Two thumbs up. It was extremely well done. But then, you expect that from Pixar/Disney.

It's good to see it when they break out of the traditional stories. Toy Story (1 and 2), Finding Nemo, The Incredibles were both fine examples of that. Admittedly, the pantheon of princes, princesses and pirates have done Disney well over the years, but as more and more kids aren't exposed to the traditional fairy tales (a la Grimm's) that particular market needs some new archtypes. And THIS does it VERY well. I really urge you to go see it.

Saturday evening we went bike riding. Now, it's been years for me, but it's true - you don't forget. Add in a couple of cheap bikes from WalMart, and a tire pump, and we hit the road. Well, the road in front of the house... it's pretty quiet, and a fairly good place for the little guy to practice his starts and stops. And oh, he hated it. He kept saying he couldn't do it, he couldn't do it - and whenever he did for a bit he'd deny that he'd done it. We finally sat him down and told him that when you tell yourself you can't do something, that almost always becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. And that we WERE NOT going to let him give up on learning to ride a bike - he was going to HAVE to learn how.

Oh, I realize that goes against a lot of child-rearing advice - let the child decide for himself when he's ready to learn, let the child proceed at his own pace, you know the drill. Thing is, he's WANTED to learn for a long time - but keeps giving up when he makes the first mistake. Bump his leg, not make a clean start, and that's it - he'll give up after two seconds. We finally decided enough was enough, and we ALL went out on bikes. We wouldn't let him quit, wouldn't let him give up.

And at the end of the evening, we gave him plenty of positive feedback. We praised what he did, making much of his successes, and gave him encouragement on changing his attitude.

Last night we did the route again - and he did a LOT better. He really enjoyed it - so much so that we did the route once, then he wanted to go again... and he would have done it a third time if we'd let him! Once he got the hang of it he really liked it.

So for the time being, each evening we're going to go bike riding.

Other family-type stuff occurred, along with a power failure Sunday morning at 1:30 AM (the attic fan went off, and the vent shutters slammed, the UPS on my system and downstairs on the cable modem and Vonage box went off - kind of hard to ignore, especially when the doorbell goes off. (Why does it? Beats me, but it'll get your attention!)) and I couldn't get to sleep until the power came back on at 2:30. No idea why it failed, but it's clear I need to get a new UPS for upstairs - I only got about two minutes power off of a supposedly 15 minutes shutdown time on a 650 watt UPS. Of course, the battery IS about five years old...

So - sorry for the lack of posting. More later...

J.

And it was about what you'd expect from that branch of the Democratic base. Bush was bashed, the WoT was bashed, Lieberman was bashed, well, just go over to DailyKos to get the full agenda from the contents of the site.

However - reading between the lines of the reporting, I come away with a marked sense of disquiet. These guys may think they're hitting on all cylinders, and REALLY getting a lot of support - but it's not at all apparent in the latest elections, and I've got to wonder if the "All hate, all the time" message that they're putting out is really one that's resonating - not to mention the minor problem that there's a rather odd disconnect from reality. Case in point - the following few paragraphs.

At blog-fest, it's not politics as usual - Tom Curry - MSNBC.com

Grass-roots activist Jed Rathband of Portland, Maine, who runs an oil-buying cooperative, noted that Richardson “didn’t call Chavez a friend, which I find interesting. My view on Chavez is: as long as he’s willing to poke the Bush administration in the eye, he’ll be my friend. Because my enemy’s enemy is my friend.” Rathband said he’s trying to figure out how to buy oil from Venezuela for his customers.

That shows, to my thinking, a marked lack of common sense. Could you imagine a mainstream (or even fringe) Democrat in the '80s rooting for the USSR in Afghanistan because it would give Reagan a black eye if they 'won'? Chavez stands to become a South American version of Hitler, if he goes a bit further round the bend, and this guy sees this as a GOOD thing? As long as it gives BUSH a poke in the eye?

Look - Bush is only going to be in office for TWO more years. Chavez looks to be a lifetime El Presidente - and we'll be stuck with him FAR longer than Bush. So, like the saying goes - "Be careful what you wish for - you might just get it."

Moulitsas acknowledged that many Americas don’t read the bloggers. The grocery-store cashier in Pueblo, Colorado may not own a laptop, much less be blogging for four hours a day.

“The Netroots will always have its limits,” he said in an interview with MSNBC.com. “It’s a ‘pull’ medium; only the people who really like that material are going to go read it. We’re a pull medium; we need more liberal ‘push’ media; we need liberal talk radio, we need a Fox News alternative in cable news…. Blogs aren’t the be-all, end-all.”

Do they scare me? Yes. Dean's candidacy imploded, and left us with Kerry. Who's going to be the next candidate that the netroots signs on to, and how competent are THEY going to be? (They're already discounting Hillary, not that she had much of a chance - and I understand in a straw poll she came in second behind John Edwards.)

I don't see any good coming of this for the DNC - and that's a bad thing for the country.

J.

To gloat over the death of another human being. But having said that, I'm of the opinion that with the first head hacked Zarqawi turned in his human ID and took on the mantle of 'perverted animal'.

As such, I can feel a sense of cold satisifaction at the news in the following...

Al-Zarqawi lived 52 mins after attack - Conflict in Iraq - MSNBC.com

Al-Zarqawi died 24 minutes after coalition forces arrived, he said.

Lungs damaged
Jones said the autopsy conducted Saturday showed that al-Zarqawi died from injuries to his lungs.

“Blast waves from the two bombs caused tearing, bruising of the lungs and bleeding,” he said. “There was no evidence of firearm injuries.”

And I give our military kudos for attempting to do what was right, to keep him alive. I'm sure the temptation must have been immense, when they saw who it was, to simply let the bastard die without doing a damn thing for him. That speaks highly for their compassion and professionalism.

Good job, guys!

J.

Great googly moogly.

Julie Banderas REALLY goes off on Shirley Phelps-Roper from that perverted Westboro Baptist Church. You want to see hate speech? You REALLY want to see hatred that's impervious to reason? All you need to do is look at Shirley Phelps-Roper in full rant - that woman's so consumed by hate that she's practically frothing.

Michelle Malkin: MUST-SEE, ANTI-PHELPS TV

Man. Extremists left OR right aren't exactly attractive, are they?

And over at Stop The ACLU’ there's a tender and consoling missive from Shirley Phelps-Roper explaining how her words were taken out of context and really they aren't about hate, but fluffy bunnies and pretty goldfish all swimming around peacefully.

Yeah. I wouldn't expect you to buy that either. Go take a look - it's... interesting.

J.

Maybe not (cough, cough) but certainly there's other priorties as far as coverage goes.

Michael Yon's Frontline Forum - an E-Mail from CSM Jeffrey J. Mellinger in Iraq..

A thought regarding your last line here. I say just send us reporters. I have heard it said that there were more embedded reporters in some battalions during OIF than there are in the whole country now. What are the stories they chase? Let’s see what’s on the top ten stories for ABC and the AP news today…..

...

At least the AP thinks the Iraqi government presenting its cabinet is worthy of a 6th place. Of course, that’s three below the ABC story of teen girls and their sex lives and two below Paul McCartney’s marital woes. Now, that’s news! You mention the growing divide between press and warrior. Want to know why there is a lack of interest in the press? Remember our first meeting in the parking lot by the mess hall? I asked if you were just another guy who would write from the hotel. No, you proved that wrong. Where are the others? I keep a seat open, but few want to ride down that low.

There is still an insurgency being fought as we build a government and work to provide unity, safety, security and jobs. Haven’t read a story yet on us spraying the date palms. Iraq was once the number one producer of dates. We are working aerial spraying to rebuild the crops. Where’s the story? Oh, sorry. It’s not got any sex or blood in it. Let’s see. How about the huge civil affairs festival in Irbil last week? Hmmm. No story in hundreds of kids singing and dancing, adults laughing and competing in sports. And surely no story in learning how to operate and program computers, operate tractors, dump trucks, or repair generators and motors. What was I thinking?

A headline the other day told us that Baghdad was “rocked” by two car bombs. Nothing rocks Baghdad (unless it is the news). And where is the outrage over drunk driving in both California and Texas taking more lives last year than three years of war in Iraq?

And IF you're a journalist (like one would take the time to read my little bit of the web) Michael Yon's got a deal for you! He'll loan you his gear (best body armor money can buy, night vision, the works) if you'll go to Iraq for 6 weeks and do the job the way it's supposed to be done. Actually get out in the field and report on what you find.

More details at Michael Yon : Online Magazine - Blog Archive - Wanted: Writers and Photographers.

J.

And another sticks up his head. Lacking the charisma and name of ol' Z-turkey, this guy will need to 'prove' himself. And by doing so, he'll earn the love and respect of all the Iraqi people he'll so carelessly slaughter.

New Al-Qaida in Iraq leader reported - Conflict in Iraq - MSNBC.com

CAIRO, Egypt - A statement posted online Monday and attributed to Al-Qaida in Iraq said that a militant named Abu Hamza al-Muhajer was the group’s new leader to replace Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed Wednesday by a U.S. airstrike on his hideout.

The name — a pseudonym, as most militants are known by — was not immediately known and did not appear to be on any U.S. lists of terrorists with rewards on their heads. The name al-Muhajer, Arabic for “immigrant,” suggested he was not Iraqi.

Nope, can't have the natives running things, old boy. They're sympathetic to their own, you know, and would likely trigger the bombs early or late, and might not even target Iraqi kids. No, it's much better to have an outsider running things. That way, there won't be the sympathy for the locals that would distract him from the mission.

J.

Jack the Cat Chases Black Bear Up Tree -- Newsday.com

Wow.

J.

Claim torture, no matter how well you're treated.

frontline: inside the terror network: al qaeda: al qaeda training manual | PBS

IF AN INDICTMENT IS ISSUED AND THE TRIAL BEGINS, THE BROTHER HAS TO PAY ATTENTION TO THE FOLLOWING:
1. At the beginning of the trial, once more the brothers must insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them by State Security [investigators] before the judge.

TheStar.com - Terror suspects 'tortured,' lawyers say

Tiny solitary cells under constant illumination, a mere 20 minutes of fresh air daily, and beatings at the hands of guards are indicative of the "torture" endured by some of the 17 people accused of plotting terrorist attacks in Canada, lawyers for the group said Monday.

The allegations of "cruel and unusual punishment" came as the court imposed a blanket publication ban on the legal proceedings, preventing the public from learning of any further evidence in a case of stunning allegations that has captured headlines around the world.

Oh, I know - what's the difference? We're all infidels, we all torture the innocent Muslims who just HAPPEN to be getting the materials for an ANFO bomb together. But let's take a look at the rest of the rules.

2. Complain [to the court] of mistreatment while in prison. (Timing is everything. Complain loudly, complain often.)

3. Make arrangements for the brother's defense with the attorney, whether he was retained by the brother 's family or court-appointed. (Guess this is for the folks outside...)

4. The brother has to do his best to know the names of the state security officers, who participated in his torture and mention their names to the judge. [These names may be obtained from brothers who had to deal with those officers in previous cases.] (Note the assumption. Have a pad and pen ready, you're gonna be tortured so take down the names.)

5. Some brothers may tell and may be lured by the state security investigators to testify against the brothers [i.e. affirmation witness], either by not keeping them together in the same prison during the trials, or by letting them talk to the media. In this case, they have to be treated gently, and should be offered good advice, good treatment, and pray that God may guide them. (Remind the dirty bastards if they squeal, their families will be the recipient of a C-4 suppository. That'll shut them up.)

6. During the trial, the court has to be notified of any mistreatment of the brothers inside the prison. (Even if you have to make it up.)

7. It is possible to resort to a hunger strike, but it is a tactic that can either succeed or fail. (No comment.)

8. Take advantage of visits to communicate with brothers outside prison and exchange information that may be helpful to them in their work outside prison [according to what occurred during the investigations]. The importance of mastering the art of hiding messages is self evident here. (Yeah, ain't it though...)

9. - When the brothers are transported from and to the prison [on their way to the court] they should shout Islamic slogans out loud from inside the prison cars to impress upon the people and their family the need to support Islam. (Make sure to do this in Arabic - you'll sound like a loon to people who don't know the language, and since only infidels don't know it, what do you care about what they think anyway?)

10. - Inside the prison, the brother should not accept any work that may belittle or demean him or his brothers, such as the cleaning of the prison bathrooms or hallways. (You're too good for that, damn it! You WON'T work for the infidel!)

11. - The brothers should create an Islamic program for themselves inside the prison, as well as recreational and educational ones, etc. (And scream about your rights being violated and your religion defamed if they don't let you.)

12. - The brother in prison should be a role model in selflessness. Brothers should also pay attention to each others needs and should help each other and unite vis a vis the prison officers. (Organize a gang, and try to take over the prision.)
13. - The brothers must take advantage of their presence in prison for obeying and worshiping [God] and memorizing the Qora'an, etc. This is in addition to all guidelines and procedures that were contained in the lesson on interrogation and investigation. Lastly, each of us has to understand that we don't achieve victory against our enemies through these actions and security procedures. Rather, victory is achieved by obeying Almighty and Glorious God and because of their many sins. Every brother has to be careful so as not to commit sins and everyone of us has to do his best in obeying Almighty God, Who said in his Holy Book: "We will, without doubt. help Our messengers and those who believe (both) in this world's life and the one Day when the Witnesses will stand forth." May God guide us.

J.

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For everyone who complains about how the Repubs are spending way too much, I'd advise you to read this little bit - you want to talk about getting set to pork out, or what?

Sun Gazette Newspapers - from Archives - Arlington?>?News

If Democrats win back control of the U.S. House of Representatives in November, U.S. Rep. Jim Moran said he would use his position in the majority to help funnel more funds to his Northern Virginia district.

Moran, D-8th, told those attending the Arlington County Democratic Committee's annual Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner on June 9 that while he in theory might oppose the fiscal irresponsibility of “earmarks” - funneling money to projects in a member of Congress's district - he understands the value they have to constituents.

“When I become chairman [of a House appropriations subcommittee], I'm going to earmark the shit out of it,” Moran buoyantly told a crowd of 450 attending the event.

J.

And it was a pretty good ending, if a trifle, um, ambiguious. A pair of time-travel episodes, changing history (at least in re the SG universe) and then changing it back. Or almost - because there was a fish where there shouldn't be one. (Long story, don't ask...)

That would have been a good wrap-up to the entire series. However, there's two FURTHER seasons to go, which haven't gotten to NetFlix yet. I look forward to Season 9, and Season 2 of Stargate Atlantis.

I've also started getting the DVDs of 'Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda'. I'm not hooked yet, but it looks like it might have potential. The set design's pretty decent, and only two episodes in I'm fairly pleased with the characters and special effects. The music's pretty decent, too - I'll see where it goes, I guess.

Also in the queue is 'Sapphire and Steel', an old British SF program. Low budget, claustrophobic shooting and rather dark and grim, I'm enjoying that also.

I'd say I'm getting my money's worth from Netflix.

J.

Much ado over nothing. Isn't it amazing how little importance is put on leaks that actually threatens national security, and this supposed leak of Valerie Plame's name (which pretty much affects nothing that I can determine, especially regarding national security OR her security, and seemed of so little importance to Wilson that he introduced her as 'My wife, the spy") was seen of paramount importance. And now that Rove doesn't seem to be in trouble... what's left?

Rove off the hook in CIA leak case - Politics - MSNBC.com

WASHINGTON - Top White House aide Karl Rove has been told by prosecutors he won’t be charged with any crimes in the investigation into leak of a CIA officer's identity, his lawyer said Tuesday.

J.

Man, wasn't once around with this bozo enough? Over at Wizbang, Lorie Byrd got an email from his campaign. And she had the temerity to put it up on-line. It's impressive, I'll say that much.

The man talks a lot, but his words are curiously devoid of meaning. Consider the following bit.

Kerry's Latest Iraq Policy -- Bush In Iraq Edition - Wizbang

Meanwhile, dissent and debate are being stifled here at home. It's time to act -- and this week, perhaps as early as tomorrow, every U.S. Senator will have that chance.

Contrary to popular belief, stifling of speech doesn't occur when someone ignores you. It happens when you're actively being silenced, when people are sueing you for what you say, when your 1st Amendment rights are being violated. It's real simple - if you aren't being led off in handcuffs, slapped with a government-instigated lawsuit or being silenced by government order, you're not being stifled. You may be an idiot, you might be offensive and people just aren't paying attention - you may just be ignored because what you're saying (sage and relevant as it may seem to YOU) simply isn't considered relevant or worthwhile by the recipient.

Being IGNORED doesn't do it.

As one comment put it - "How can we stifle you if you won't shut up?"

By the way, Hillary gave a speech the other day. In it was this sparkling little gem re Iraq...

Hit and Run

"I do not think it is a smart strategy either for the president to continue with his open-ended policy nor to set a date certain."

Damn, that woman's smart. I can't wait to vote in the Democratic primary again. (Wonder if Sharpton will be running again?)

J.

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But in the long run... well, I think they'll both do well long-term. Though I'm a trifle partial to Sirius Satellite Radio....

XM Faces 'Anemic Demand' - Forbes.com

Citing "anemic demand" in April and May for XM Satellite Radio, coupled with product delays and shortages, Bear Stearns Equity Research analyst Robert Peck reduced second-quarter 2006 net subscriber additions estimates on the satellite broadcaster.

In a report Tuesday, the analyst estimated 395,000 net subscriber additions in the quarter, down from 450,000 previously. He added that he expects advertising spending to be down significantly during the quarter as well.

J.

You've got to raise taxes to increase revenue, right? Except...

Investor's Business Daily: Bush May Meet Vow To Halve The Deficit Three Years Early

Aided by surging tax receipts, President Bush may make good on his pledge to cut the deficit in half in 2006 — three years early.

Tax revenues are running $176 billion, or 12.9%, over last year, the Treasury Department said Monday. The Congressional Budget Office said receipts have risen faster over the first eight months of fiscal '06 than in any other such period over the past 25 years — except for last year's 15.5% jump.

The 2006 deficit through May was $227 billion, down from $273 billion at this time last year. Spending is up $130 billion, or 7.9%

You know what I'd like to see? More pork reduction. However, it appears unlikely that the Dems would cooperate with that plan, especially if they get back into power. Or, straight from the Donkey's mouth...

Moran, D-8th, told those attending the Arlington County Democratic Committee's annual Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner on June 9 that while he in theory might oppose the fiscal irresponsibility of “earmarks” - funneling money to projects in a member of Congress's district - he understands the value they have to constituents.

“When I become chairman [of a House appropriations subcommittee], I'm going to earmark the shit out of it,” Moran buoyantly told a crowd of 450 attending the event.

Add in the darn near for sure tax increases, and we'll have a recession in short order.

J.

That Samsung SATA drive has seemingly bit the dust. No spin, no clicking, no nothing.

Dang.

Well, that's the last time I'm getting an OEM packaged drive out of the bin at MicroCenter... And likely the last time I'm getting a Samsung. Can't even RMA the sucker - I'm supposed to return it in the orginal packing - and there's no way it'll survive in the thin plastic OEM box.

Moral - don't buy OEM packaged stuff. I've had good luck with Samsung hard drives before, but now I'm going to be reluctant to buy them...

J.

Sheesh. I've been looking at the Democrats, and I'm getting pretty discouraged. What's going on there - a collective rectal-cranial inversion? Are they simply completely disconnected from reality, or are they actually as clueless as they make themselves out to be?

Rep. Moran's statement makes it pretty clear that porking out is seen as an entitlement, not something they're supposed to be responsible with. I'm thinking he's a lot more mainstream Dem than we'd prefer to think, and his thinking more emblematic of the entire Washington culture.

We really need two SANE parties here in the US. As it is, I think we've only got about 3/4ths of one. So maybe it's time to form an alternative?

And since I'm partly Republican in my thinking, and partly Democrat - I propose the 'Partly Party.

If I didn't have a day job, self respect, or a lack of self confidence (not to mention a slightly checkered past) - I'd almost be willing to try to start a new party with the following tenents..

1. National defense is Job #1. If the country doesn't survive, all else is of little importance. Defense budget money goes into the economy - it's not wasted. The WoT is very important - we'll work with other countries, but if they start stalling for political purposes when something needs to be done (Like France and Germany did pre-Iraq) and there's evidence showing why, they'll need to get out of the way because we're coming through. International good will's nice to have, but we won't slit our wrists if they frown at us because we did something they didn't like. And the UN? Find more folks like Bolton, and clean house. Clear out the corrupt leadership, turn the UN back into what it SHOULD have been.

2. A sound infrastructure is vital, PORK isn't. If it doesn't have to do with critical infrastructure, it's a local issue and should be taken care of locally.

3. Abortion should be discouraged. However, it should be legal as a last resort. I can't decide for someone else what's best for their life in this matter, though my support for abortion plummeted when I first held the little guy when he was five minutes old. Promote abstinince, promote birth control, promote whatever works.

4. Abolish the IRS, and adopt the FairTax.

5. Change Welfare. If you can't work, that's one thing. If you CAN work and won't, or LEARN a payable skill, you're off the dole PDQ. And WE decide if you can work. If you're Second/Third Gen Welfare, you can get life-skills classes to get your brain in gear, but your time on the dole will be severely limited. Call it 'tough love'. Time to grow up and be responsible. And we'll provide you work if need be - even if it's simply shovelling sand from one side of an empty lot to another for your monthly check. If you're too good for menial labor, then obviously you don't need a check from the government.

6. Referendum issues won't be subject to being overturned by judicial activists. If it gets on the ballot, and the people want it, they're going to get it until they decide they don't.

7. Re Immigration - NO illegal aliens can apply for citizenship. No way, no how. If you're not legal, and you're caught here, that disqualifies you permanently from ever immigrating. Set up immigration centers off-shore, like mini-Ellis Islands. Those will be the only gateways - and if you demonstrate a proficiency in English, have a clean background and med check, and have either sponsorship or 6 months available funds, then welcome. If you flunk the background or med check, too bad - no do-overs. You can learn English.

Well, that's a start. Should be something there that'll piss off everyone - but other stuff they'll agree with. The trick is to get enough bits and pieces people will agree to, and that'll cancel out the stuff they don't like...

So what do you think? The Partly Party have a chance?

J.

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But you'll need to take a look at this to see just why.

Man - what did they put IN that coffee, anyway?

J.

And it's ... interesting.

Pelosi: It’s definition time for Democrats

The time to criticize the Republicans’ “culture of corruption,” a Democratic refrain for nearly a year, is at an end, Pelosi said;

“What we have to do is define ourselves so that Republicans do not define us. This is a define-or-be-defined business that we’re in, so you can’t leave it out in the open,” Pelosi said.

She outlined three areas where Democrats would seek to differentiate themselves from Republicans: integrity, civility and accountability. If Democrats were to take control of the House in November, their first actions would focus on promoting those values, she said.

Nothing personal, but if you're trying to push forward those values, it just MIGHT be nice if you could practice them. Or try to.

Unfortuantely, the vast unwashed can actually get on line and SEE just where your party is living up to those principles, and where they aren't. And though the media may try to downplay those of your party which don't practice what you preach, and play up the Republican failings - all your grandstanding does it make it much MORE likely that your party will be watched closely.

And believe me - I don't think you don't want that.

J.

Now they've got groceries.

Of course, you've got to buy in bulk. And some things might be cheaper locally (like coffee) - but still...

J.

A candidate in 2004, who was shoved so hard to the sidelines he left a dent in the wall - maybe Joe Lieberman's had about all of the fun and respect he can stand as a Democrat.

BREITBART.COM - Lieberman Weighing Run As Independent

Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman, warily watching his primary challenger advance in the polls, must soon decide whether to start collecting signatures for a possible independent bid this November.

Lieberman's campaign contends that it's focused only on winning the Aug. 8 primary, but the Democrat has not ruled out petitioning his way onto the November ballot as part of a backup plan to secure a fourth term in the Senate.

Or he's being a smarmy political opportunist, one of the two...

J.

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If you're the leader of an insurgency, then you're at the top of a pyramid of information. And unless you've got one hell of a memory, then you're going to need to keep notes on something, whether it be a laptop, a thumb drive, or a paper-based documentation system of some sort. Of course, if you're at the top then you're going to see a lot of info, and it might be a bit bulky carrying around a file cabinet with you. So it's laptop and thumb drive, and the minimum of paper. After all, you've got to stay light and mobile...

And Z-turd was no exception. As the 'leader' of Al Quaeda in Iraq, he was at the top of the pyramid.

My Way News - Iraq Announces Info From Al-Zarqawi Raid

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraq's national security adviser said Thursday a "huge treasure" of documents and computer records was seized after the raid on terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's hideout, giving the Iraqi government the upper hand in its fight against al-Qaida in Iraq.

National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie also said he believed the security situation in the country would improve enough to allow a large number of U.S.-led forces to leave Iraq by the end of this year, and a majority to depart by the end of next year. "And maybe the last soldier will leave Iraq by mid-2008," he said.

But I do find this interesting...

Al-Rubaie said a laptop, flashdrive and other documents were found in the debris after the airstrike that killed the al-Qaida in Iraq leader last week outside Baqouba, and more information has been uncovered in raids of other insurgent hideouts since then.

He called it a "huge treasure ... a huge amount of information."

When asked how he could be sure the information was authentic, al-Rubaie said "there is nothing more authentic than finding a thumbdrive in his pocket."

The good thing about a heirarchial cell system is security - a low-down guy won't have the knowledge to blow other cells, and though he might know a few other people laterally and maybe one above him, there's a limit to how many beans he can spill.

But you get the guy at the top, and you can roll up the whole organization in short order. IF he's got the info he needs to operate with him... as Z-turd did.

"We believe that this is the beginning of the end of al-Qaida in Iraq," al-Rubaie said, adding that the documents showed al-Qaida is in "pretty bad shape," politically and in terms of training, weapons and media.

"Now we have the upper hand," he said at a news conference in Baghdad. "We feel that we know their locations, the names of their leaders, their whereabouts, their movements, through the documents we found during the last few days."

I guess we'll see.

J.

I have to admit, when I got married and for a couple of years thereafter, I wasn't at all sure if I wanted to be a daddy. Before meeting Sue, I was pretty convinced of that. My folks did the best they could, but that wasn't all that great, and as such I had some pretty serious doubts about my own abilities to do the daddy thing.

Over at Slate, there's a woman who gave some advice - good advice, I happen to think - about thinking over the choice to remain childless.

Hundreds of people have written demanding an apology and a retraction for the "disgusting," "offensive," "hurtful," "appalling," and "shocking" reply I gave in a recent Dear Prudence column. The letter I got was from a woman in her 30s who was about to marry a wonderful man, and they did not want children. What should she tell friends and family members who were asking when they were going to have kids? I gave some advice on how to fend them off—then added five sentences to this effect: Now that her life circumstances were changing, I wrote, she might want to re-examine this decision not to have kids.

I expected my answer would annoy people, but I was surprised by the fury of the response. You would think my reply was the equivalent of running around the streets with a turkey baster full of sperm, impregnating happy childless women.

But you know, as much as I wasn't all that eager to be a daddy, I'm finding it wonderful. Even the diaper changes had a certain element of humor - Sue still laughs at how I used rubber gloves when changing the little guy's first diaper - and then a few months later without thinking I caught a handfull of poop when changing a diaper and I didn't have a fresh one ready, and I didn't want to get the changing table cover dirty...

Then there's the grins, and the hugs, and the million and one things you do for fun and to teach ... and though there's times I've been angry with the little guy, and him with me - at the end of the day I always give him a big hug and tell him I love him.

That's my duty.

Oh, sure - there's times I think it would be interesting to not have the expense of the little guy, and putting him through school... but I think that him coming along was what really steadied me down as an adult. Because things have been a lot better for me job-wise since he came along...

Parenting may not be for everyone - but it's not something that should be discarded out of hand simply because you think it might be inconvenient. As you go through life, you often find the attitudes you had at 20 aren't those you have at 40. And sometimes, the best things that happen to you are those you think you might want least, while the things you think you really want end up being something you look on with regret when you get them...

J.

But better than never.

Democrats strip Jefferson of panel seat - Politics - MSNBC.com

WASHINGTON - House Democrats, determined to make an election-year point about ethics, voted to strip Rep. William Jefferson of his committee assignment Thursday night while a federal bribery investigation runs its course.

Members of the rank and file approved the move after Jefferson refused for weeks to step aside on his own, and despite claims by some members of the Congressional Black Caucus that he was being treated unfairly.

Officials said the vote was 99-58. The action must be ratified by the full House, and Jefferson left open the possibility that he might at long last relent and surrender the seat on his own. “I don’t want to speculate,” he said.

The classy thing would be for him to step down before he's forced out. We'll see if he's that classy.

Good on Pelosi, BTW, for forcing the issue. Especially after...

Vernon Jackson, 53, chief executive of iGate Inc., a Louisville, Ky.-based telecommunications company, pleaded guilty May 3 to paying more than $400,000 in bribes to Jefferson.

Additionally, the FBI claims that it videotaped the Louisiana Democrat last summer taking $100,000 in bribe money and that agents later found $90,000 of the funds stashed in a freezer in his home.

J.

Looks like even when Castro dies, Communism will persist.

granma.cu - Cuba: any U.S. aggression would be costly

Likewise, he affirmed that Cuba would never let down its revolutionary guard, because "history teaches with more than enough eloquence that those who forget this principle do not survive their error."

"And that is how it will be," Raul emphasized, "so that we can always shout in the empire’s face, ‘Viva Cuba Libre!’"

J.

had aLOT of good stuff in it. Over at StrategyPage - Iraq, it's plainly laid out just how bad Zarqawi's death and the subsequent explotaition of his address book, personnel lists and other documents were for both Al Quaeda AND other terrorist groups in Iraq.

Every military/political unit MUST have a record of the people in it, and Al Quaeda in Iraq was no different. What it looks like the folks got, and were able to exploit to GOOD advantage, was the equivalent of an Air Force unit's alpha roster - which has, among other things, the names, ages, addresses, positions and phone numbers of the people in the organization.

Losing that was a hell of a blow to Al Quaeda.

The death of al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi was not as important as the capture of his address book and other planning documents in the wake of the June 7th bombing. U.S. troops are trained to quickly search for names and addresses when they stage a raid, pass that data on to a special intelligence cell, which then quickly sorts out which of the addresses should be raided immediately, before the enemy there can be warned that their identity has been compromised. More information is obtained in those raids, and that generates more raids. So far, the June 7th strike has led to over 500 more raids. There have been so many raids, that there are not enough U.S. troops to handle it, and over 30 percent of the raids have been carried by Iraqi troops or police, with no U.S. involvement. Nearly a thousand terrorist suspects have been killed or captured. The amount of information captured has overwhelmed intelligence organizations in Iraq, and more translators and analysts are assisting, via satellite link, from the United States and other locations.

And you'll ALSO have information on how THEY think things are going.

Perhaps the most valuable finds have been al Qaeda planning documents confirming what has been suspected of terrorist strategy. Also valuable have been the al Qaeda assessment of their situation in Iraq. The terrorist strategy is one of desperation. While the effort continues, to attempt to trigger a civil war between Sunni and Shia in Iraq, this is seen as a losing proposition. The new strategy attempts to trigger a war between the United States and Iran. This would weaken the United States, and put the hurt on Iran, an arch-enemy of al Qaeda. Other documents stressed the need to manipulate Moslem and Western media. This was to be done by starting rumors of American atrocities, and feeding the media plausible supporting material. Al Qaeda's attitude was that if they could not win in reality, they could at least win imaginary battles via the media.

Zarqawi considered al Qaeda's situation in Iraq as "bleak." The most worrisome development was the growing number of trained Iraqi soldiers and police. These were able to easily spot the foreigners who made up so much of al Qaeda's strength. Moreover, more police and soldiers in an area meant some local civilians would feel safe enough to report al Qaeda activity. The result of all this is that there are far fewer foreign Arabs in Iraq fighting for al Qaeda. The terrorist organization has basically been taken over anti-government Sunni Arabs. That made the capture of Zarqawi even more valuable, as his address book contained a who's who of the anti-government Sunni Arab forces. This group has been hurt badly by last week's raids.

Because frankly, the prospects for insurgencies just don't look good at this point...

J.

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Talk amongst yourselves.

Where are we headed? Let's just say we'll go through the least-likely spot to find polar bears in North America...

J.

We stayed in the "City of the Crosses". Today we swung down through The Pass, and stopped and looked at a place I lived 40 years back...

Then it was on to the largest gypsum deposit in the world - and now we're staying overnight in the city near it.

Yes, we're having fun now!

J.

But hey, vacations aren't exempt from Murphy's Law. We had arranged to take a trip to the Grand Canyon via The Grand Canyon Railway in Williams, AZ. And we eventually wend our way there, going through Tucson, Deming, Las Cruces, El Paso, Alamogordo (and taking in White Sands National Monument along the way) then up to Carizozo, and over to Socorro, NM, then up to Albuquerque to see my folks for a couple of days. Then we boogied east on I-40 to Williams, and after a good dinner we bedded down, look forward to the next day.

A half hour after lights out, Aaron started throwing up. Apparently he'd caught some sort of stomach virus - and boy, did things get messy. Thankfully, the place we were staying had an extra rollaway - after Aaron's stomach contents soaked the first one, they kindly got us the second. This went on through the night, and the next morning we found an urgent-care center and got something to stall the vomiting. We also rescheduled the train trip for the next day, and we hoped he'd be better.

The Phenergan did the job, we watched cartoons all day and the next morning he wasn't feeling terrible. I tried to get on-line, but the wireless network at the motel wasn't accepting any new users - indeed, it wouldn't accept any users at all. So, I haven't been able to update for a few days.

Anyhow, we went on the train, and by the time we got to the Grand Canyon, he was in pretty good shape.

The Grand Canyon... wow. Words can't do it justice, neither can what pictures I could put up. It is TRUELY a wonder... truely grand, and I'd love to spend a day or two there just watching the light play across the rock formations over the course of the day. But time and train schedules wait for no man, and we headed back on our scheduled train.

The next day (today) we went to Hoover Dam. It about rivals the Grand Canyon on the 'Immensity' scale - perhaps more impressive because it's man made. It was 113 degrees in the shade, and I couldn't imagine working on that dam when the temp was up in the 120s...

We WERE going to go on to Las Vegas, and then on to Death Valley the next day, but we're running about a day behind, and something had to get cut. So we came on back to Kingman, AZ, having dinner at Yesterday's Cafe in Chloride, AZ. It was quite good, and even considering they were out in the middle of nowhere the T-Bone rivaled anything you could find in a large city. (Companies like Sysco do a great job distributing grub all over the place, don't they?) However, Chloride is SO small that when we walked in, conversations stopped as people turned around to check us out...

Will try to get more up later...

J.

About being out of internet range is the ability to ignore what's going on in this country politically. Since I've gotten back on, I've found that the NYTimes has (once again) printed classified material. Is there ANYTHING classified they won't print? Ah, crap - what do you expect? Their concept of journalistic ethics is pretty simple - whatever will hurt Bush and the war effort is perfectly acceptable to spread out as far as possible, no matter the damage it might do to the country. The LA Times is little better, apparently...

I also saw in an Arizona paper about a plot to bring down the Sears Tower. Of course, it apparently wasn't a REAL plot. So who knows what's really going on about that.

All things considered - I wish this vacation could last a few more weeks. It's good to see that nothing SERIOUS (IE major attacks and the like) has happened, but it's a pisser to see the same old-same old foolishness going on...

J.

There was time to visit one of three things around the Tucson area today - either Biosphere 2, the Pima County Air Museum, or the Titan Missile Museum.

Biosphere 2 was on our route - so that's what got picked. In retrospect, I kind of wish we'd missed it.

The entire place has the feel of an abandoned theme park, or a ghost town. The tour guide had the air of someone who had given the same tour to one too many groups, and it was somewhat beneath him in the first place. There isn't much research going on there at the present time, and apparently it's 'between sponsors' at the present time. The gift shop was pretty paltry - a small selection of t-shirts, mugs, and a few kids books about the rain forest and the biosphere. Oh, also one type of post card, and some shot glasses. Even the snack bar was closed.

I've heard about Biosphere for years, and have wanted to see it for a long time. Didn't really want to see it like this, though - almost gone and close to abandoned. Maybe in a couple of years it'll be under different sponsorship and it'll be worth visiting, but now? Nope.

You know, as far out as they are, they could change their focus to astronomy fairly easy, and become a stargazer's resort. But now? Nah. I wish we'd gone to one of the other places.

One thing that puzzled me, and I couldn't find anyone to explain - they've got a 900,000 gallon 'ocean' there - with a small fish population which was selected for what they eat - namely algae. And what puzzled me was that there was a hell of a lot of alge, and not many fish at all. It seems to me that in any environment where there is an abundance of food, and an absence of predators, the population will expand until it's balanced with the food supply. And it sure seemed like there was a lot of algae and not many fish. Maybe the folks running the Biosphere harvest them, but there wasn't any indication of that. So it's a puzzle, and I may never know...

J.

That a lot of other people don't.

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Why I Love Australia

Why? Because Australia's geographic and historical isolation has bred a wisdom about the structure of peace -- a wisdom that eludes most other countries. Australia has no illusions about the "international community'' and its feckless institutions. An island of tranquility in a roiling region, Australia understands that peace and prosperity do not come with the air we breathe, but are maintained by power -- once the power of the British Empire, now the power of the United States.

Witness Kuwait, and Saddam's land grab. He thought the cost would be low, and miscalculated greatly. Same thing with Al Quaeda - they thought that they could 'win' easily, and were wrong.

(And no, I don't count Iraq's oil as part of that for the US - we could have gotten the oil for a lot less than we've paid - all we'd have had to do was go along with Saddam and we'd be sucking down gas at 30 cents a gallon. Sometimes the cost of doing something right (deposing Saddam and trying to encourage peace/freedom in the ME) is a LOT more expensive than doing the easy/wrong thing. Of course, whether you've chosen the right course is often only apparent in retrospect - but I think the course Bush is taking is the right one in the long run.)

And Australia's been with us all along. God bless the Aussies.

J.

Waiting to board in Tucson - using their free Wi-fi to surf for a few minutes. Atlanta doesn't have free wi-fi, the cheapskates...

It's been a good vacation. Wish it could last longer, but that's the way it goes - you enjoy the vacation you've got, while you've got it. Admittedly, there's a few things I wouldn't have minded missing (projectile vomiting being at the top of the list) but it's been good, and very relaxing. Tomorrow it's back to work.

Man, I'm sure looking forward to that... not...

J.

SAT stands for, IIRC, Security Alert Team, and they were in charge of investigating any security alerts generated by the unmanned security systems on a Minuteman III site. There are (or were) several of them, including a radar system continually scanning the top of the silo.

So imagine what those guys must have thought when literally a bunch of clowns tried to break into a silo.

Defense Tech: Clowns Sabotage Nuke Missile

On Tuesday morning, a retired Catholic priest and two veterans put on clown suits, busted into a nuclear missile launch facility, and began beating the silo cover with hammers, in an attempt to take the Minuteman III missile off-line. Seriously.

Trying to break into a Minuteman silo with hammers. Something that was hardened to accept a near miss from a nuke, and they thought they'd take it off line with a sledgehammer.

(For what it's worth, I once read a tech manual about how to break into a Minuteman Silo. All you need is a jackhammer with a diamond bit, a long hydraulic jack, a large bottle of 3000 psi nitrogen, a cutting torch, a donkey dick, a hydraulic mule to pull the door off, a bosun's chair, rope, shoring, a long pressure hose, and about three days uninterrupted time to work. AND know what you're doing. These guys had about the same chance of getting into the silo as a jackrabbit. But then, it wasn't about actually getting in, was it?)

Update: The more I think about it, you could cut about an hour off the time once you manage to actually get INTO the silo if you've got someone expendable and give him a 4-D cell battery pack with a couple of dangling wires that he could use to touch off the ballistic actuator and sling the door off the top of the silo. But really, if you're looking to steal a Minuteman warhead and you've managed to get the door open somewhat without attracting the attention of the security forces, you might as well do the job neatly and close the silo afterwards, and you won't be able to do that if you sling the silo door off the rails..

J.

Or at least I think I have. Mars is apparently warming.

Mars Global Surveyor MOC2-297 Release
MOC Observes Changes in the South Polar Cap:
Evidence for Recent Climate Change on Mars

Frankly, for a star Sol is pretty boring. It's STABLE as all get out, as far as a hydrogen-helium fusion-powered furnace goes - but that doesn't mean there's not some variation in the output.

SPACE.com -- Sun's Output Increasing in Possible Trend Fueling Global Warming

In what could be the simplest explanation for one component of global warming, a new study shows the Sun's radiation has increased by .05 percent per decade since the late 1970s.

The new study shows that the TSI has increased by about 0.1 percent over 24 years. That is not enough to cause notable climate change, Willson and his colleagues say, unless the rate of change were maintained for a century or more.

On time scales as short as several days, the TSI can vary by 0.2 percent due to the number and size of sunspots crossing the face of the Sun. That shift, said to be insignificant to weather, is however equal to the total amount of energy used by humans, globally, for a year, the researchers estimate.

The study analyzed data from six satellites orbiting Earth at different times over the 24 years. Willson ferreted out errors in one of the datasets that had prevented previous studies from discovering the trend.

A separate recent study of Sun-induced magnetic activity near Earth, going back to 1868, provides compelling evidence that the Sun's current increase in output goes back more than a century, Willson said.

Perhaps one thing contributing to the problem is that the environmental folks seem to want some sort of baseline norm that they can use as a reference point to try to justify a rollback of emissions. So where's the baseline? 1950? 1900? 1850? Middle of the Little Ice Age? The Medieval Climate Optimum? Or maybe the Year Without a Summer?

Global warming - global cooling. Which direction things are going depends on where your baseline is.

J.

I'm disabling that feature until further notice. Had 1500 last night (which all got shuffled into the jonk bin, but I've still got to empty them) so it's time to turn it off.

(Not that I was getting that many legit ones in the first place...)

J.

Byron York on New York Times & National Security on National Review Online

Thomas Kean, the co-chairman of the September 11 Commission, was briefed several weeks ago about the Treasury Department’s terrorist-finance program, and after the session, Kean says, “I came away with the idea that this was a good program, one that was legal, one that was not violating anybody’s civil liberties…and something the U.S. government should be doing to make us safer.”

Kean tells National Review Online that the New York Times’s decision to expose the terrorist finance effort — Kean called Times executive editor Bill Keller in an attempt to persuade him not to publish — has done terrible damage to the program. “I think it’s over,” Kean says. “Terrorists read the newspapers. Once the program became known, then obviously the terrorists were not going to use these methods any more.”

These are the folks who wouldn't print the Mohammed cartoons for fear of causing offense.

That doesn't make one damn bit of sense. There's only two conclusions I come to that could explain their actions.

First is that they actively don't want Bush to get any credit for fighting the WoT. And I've got no real basis for thinking so, but my bet would be that if Gore or Kerry were in office, we wouldn't hear a word about any secret programs, regardless of their legality.

Second is that they're thinking that no matter what we in the West do, Islamic fundamentalism is going to predominate. And they're positioning themselves accordingly.

J.

I'm glad to see this fail.

FOXNews.com - Flag Amendment Fails by Single Vote - U.S. Senate

WASHINGTON — The narrow defeat of a proposal to ban flag desecration marks the second time in a month Senate Republicans have lost bids to amend the Constitution in ways designed to inspire social conservatives to vote in the midterm elections.

If you take a look at the Bill of Rights, and the Amendments that have been done, you'll notice that there's only ONE Amendment ever passed that limited the rights of the population. (Aside from the 13th Amendment, depriving slave owners of their property) The 19th Amendment, Prohibition, was a resounding failure and led to the 21st Amendment which repealed the 'Noble Experiment'. No other Amendment tries to limit what the people can do.

And now they're trying to limit the First Amendment with another? No. I won't support that, no way, no how.

J.

Over at Eject! Eject! Eject!. Here's a sample, where he talks about the figurative maps used to guide reactions to what happens in our lives, or by leadership when faced with current events. It's all well and good to use history as a guide in forming a map - but what happened in the past may have little to no bearing as to what happens in the future. The map is NOT the terrain it shows, and to believe the map over what's around you can lead to disaster. For example, pre 9/11 the map was that you cooperated with hijackers. The flight crews followed that on that day, and you know the result. Now, the map is somewhat different.

The problem is that we get rather fond of these maps. Some people get so fond of these maps that they do nothing but sit around in the dark depths of the chart room and compare maps. If they see something on another map that seems to agree, more or less, with what they have sketched out on their own, they feel vindicated. This is human nature. I do it, and you do it too.

People will sit in the chartroom, and argue about their maps, while the ship of history rips out her keel. But as the arguments rage hither and yon down in the chartroom, as maps and cartographers are bandied back and forth like trading cards and people come to blows over mapmakers dead a century or a millennium before, there does remain one small, unassuming little token of hope. Not much really -- just an action so simple and obvious that we overlook it time and time again.

What can we do to end this arguing about which way to sail and on what map? How can we tell where the reefs and channels really are? Dear God, is there nothing we can do to get an answer among all these authorities?

Well, there is something we can do. We can get up from the chartroom of theory, this dungeon of pointless debate and argumentation, and go upstairs and stand on the bridge. We can look at the world as it really is, and draw new maps as we go on.

When you use your common sense, your personal experience, over any of the so-called “social theories” being sold at fire sale prices, you are looking out the window and seeing whether or not the map matches the coastline. If it does not, then it doesn’t matter how credentialed or tenured or respected the cartographer is or was -– he is wrong. He says river delta; there sits a barrier reef. Wrong!

Next map!

These people, down below, arguing endlessly in the chartroom -– they have a word for themselves that they find flattering. They call themselves intellectuals. A friend of mine referred to me as an intellectual the other day, and I nearly knocked him off the bar stool. What a repellent thing to say to a man who tries on a daily basis to pre-flight his facts to make sure his theories – his map – is as accurate as it can by. Things change. Things that were once true sometimes no longer are. The map has to change or you are in deep yogurt. It is that process, not my map, that I am trying to teach to the best of my ability.

It’s sad but true: there are people who are deathly afraid to go up on deck, face the sunshine, and realize that the maps they have so lovingly and painstakingly crafted over decades are essentially worthless scraps of paper. They are so wrong, in so many places, that they are far worse than no maps at all. They draw all manner of hazards where there are none, and disastrously, they show open seas and smooth sailing in the most treacherous and deadly places. Such maps are not merely worthless; they are dangerous.

There was a time when intellectual meant someone who uses reason and intellect. Today, people who call themselves intellectuals are in a form of mental death spiral: they search for, and find, those index cards that support their world view, and clutch little red books like rosaries in the face of all external evidence. They are ruled by appeals to authority. Their self-image and sense of emotional well-being trumps any and all objective evidence to the contrary.

How many students today believe what they believe because they met someone who knew a guy whose girlfriend turned him on to an article by Noam Chomsky? Noam Chomsky predicted, in his even, intellectual, authoritative, tenured manner, that if the US went to war in Afghanistan after 9/11, the result would be 3 million Afghan casualties. How many of these students who worship St. Noam independently ask themselves why he had come up 2,999,500 bodies short? Noam is not wrong by a factor of one or two; Noam is not wrong by an order of magnitude. Noam is not wrong by a factor of a hundred to one. Noam is wrong by more than three orders of magnitude. Noam is wrong by a factor of 6,000 to one. Noam says the reef is three miles off the port bow; when in fact it is barely ten feet away. That’s six thousand to one. Noam says the ocean is a thousand feet deep when in fact the keel has been ripped out and is sitting on the sandbar back yonder: that’s a 6,000-to-one error. Extrapolating this accuracy rate, if Noam writes 6,000 pages on the evil of the United States, how many pages of truth might there by in such a twenty-volume set?

J.

The sucker pegged to the left so hard it bent the needle and blew the windings.

Gaza militants say fired chemical-tipped warhead?|?Reuters.com

GAZA (Reuters) - A spokesman for gunmen in the Gaza Strip said they had fired a rocket tipped with a chemical warhead at Israel early on Thursday.

The Israeli army had no immediate comment on the claim by the spokesman from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement.
The group had recently claimed to possess about 20 biological warheads for the makeshift rockets commonly fired from Gaza at Israeli towns. This was the first time the group had claimed firing such a rocket.

Let's look over how the Palestinians have screwed up over the years. How about a couple of highlights?

Arafat's offered damn near everything he wanted from Israel - rejects it and starts up the Second Intifada. Result - years of misery for both sides, with the Palestinians getting the worst of the deal AND sending their young men off to be indiscriminate suicide bombers. End result, Israel gets pissed and carefully targets terrorist leaders, and gets slammed for beating up on the Palestinians.

Israel gives Gaza Strip back - Palestinians do their damndest to make Israel regret that, including firing missiles and kidnapping both military and settlers. Result - Israel gets pissed, blows up power station and goes into Gaza - the implicit message is "We're responding to what your 'leadership' is coming up with - so blame them because you have no power during the summer."

So IF this report is true (and it's from Reuters, who 7 out of 10 terrorists prefer as their news agency of choice) is Israel allowed to retaliate? Or should they just suck it up and try to avoid further trouble?

Frankly, there's a point I don't believe they should have to take it any more - and that's past. I had - a long time ago, without paying much attention to the situation - a fair amount of sympathy for the Palestinians. That has eroded over the years, as I've seen more and more stupidity from their leadership, and at this point don't care much if the IDF manages to take out the entire Palestinian/Hamas/Fatah leadership. That would at least give the Palestinians who AREN'T part of the death cult that Arafat so eagerly promoted a chance.

J.

Let's see. First, Hamas/Fatah kidnaps people. Israel responds. Now Israel's arrested a lot of Hamas officials... And a Hamas official calls this 'open war'?

I don't think that word means what he thinks it means.

Hamas Deputy PM goes into hiding as Israel warns even Haniyeh not immune - Haaretz - Israel News

IDF troops launched the major arrest operation against Hamas officials overnight, detaining 64 of the ruling militant group's ministers and parliamentarians in the West Bank and 23 military operatives.

The arrests took place in Ramallah, Qalqilyah, Hebron, Jenin and East Jerusalem, according to Palestinian reports. Soldiers carried arrest warrants signed by judges that were issued following cooperative preparatory work by the state prosecution and police.

On Thursday morning, National Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer hinted that Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh is not exempt from arrest or harm.

"No one is immune... This is not a government. It is a murderous organization," Ben-Eliezer said.

A Hamas official called the arrests an "open war against the Palestinian government and people," and said that Israel must be prepared to pay their consequences.

"We have no government, we have nothing. They have all been taken," Saeb Erekat, an ally of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, said of the arrests. "This is absolutely unacceptable and we demand their release immediately."

"We have no government, we have nothing." - Saeb, you've got what you were willing to accept. You're lucky the IDF doesn't come through and clean out Gaza - and with them boasting about firing chemical weapons I'd be willing to shell out for a pizza for the IDF. You want respect? Start acting in a way that's worthy of respect.

J.

Okay, can we call this 'treason' yet, or is it simply an application of the Law of Unintended Consequences?

Over at Captain's Quarters, it's revealed that the NYTimes has caused Canadian politicians to question the financial ministry.

Of course everyone knew we tracked financial transactions in our efforts to defeat terrorism; we've talked about that from the start of the war. George Bush made that point in his September 20 speech. What the terrorists did not know -- and what the Times revealed -- were the specific tactics involved.

Now that this has been revealed, we have embarrassed our allies and put them in politically vulnerable positions. The head of the Canadian banking system had full knowledge of our program, and he knew better than to talk about it. Now that the Times has blown the program and his involvement in it, he may well get removed from his position. At the least, he will be forced to make a number of explanations about his cooperation with our efforts, and likely the Commons will want to know specifics about the kind of data released -- which will give the terrorists an even clearer picture of our covert tactics against them.

How many people will want to help us now? How many financial managers will agree to help us track terrorists through global banking systems now that we have shown ourselves so inept at keeping secrets? For that matter, this incident will reflect on our intel services across all units -- and it will act as a powerful disincentive for individuals and nations to give us any cooperation or assistance in any future program that protects our national security.

This is the damage that the New York Times has wrought on our nation. Bill Keller and his ace reporters have done much more than kneecap our ability to find terrorists through their financial transactions. They have discredited American intelligence services, aided by a handful of criminals who violated their security clearances to have our covert tactics blabbed to the world by the Times. This is what happens when unelected, benighted, arrogant fools decide that they have the right to determine what classified information should be publicized, with the motivation of profit over national interest.

Gah. Thanks a friggin' heap, NYTimes. I imagine you're quite proud of yourselves now that you've really managed to hamstring a working program, and caused repercussions in other countries.

J.

There goes a good man...

J.

Just keep scrolling down...

Michelle Malkin: HOW ABOUT A NICE BIG GLASS OF...

J.

To take a look at their website, check it out here. It's actually rather magnificent, in an egyptian pyramid sort of way. Whole lot of work done, great engineering for the time, now with extra sand dunes...

Hello! Just wanted to drop you a quick line and tell you what we thought of our visit to your facility...

I must admit that the first view of the Biosphere is pretty darn impressive. But the facilities around it... the whole thing felt a lot like a ghost town. A well-built and meticulously cleaned and maintained ghost town, but abandoned by the living.

(My first thought on seeing the student quarters was 'how great it would be to stay here for the night'. Sadly, the lack of anyplace nearby to eat would have made that a bad idea, especially seeing the snack bar seems to be closed permanently. Then I thought "What about turning this into a haven for amateur astronomy?" You're far enough out from Tucson that skyglow shouldn't be much of a problem, and you've recently installed the 24 inch telescope - I'd think the crossover would be a natural thing...)

The tour guide, a gray-haired gentlemen with a vague accent, gave the tour in the manner of someone who's given it one too many times and is very bored with all these ignorant tourists passing through.

I have followed the Biosphere 2 story with some interest since it's inception, and the movie in the visitor center was quite good. I was surprised to see that the Biosphere's open to the elements now, and that ants were doing a great job of colonization.

On departure, the gift shop was a bit odd... we'd been touring the SW for the last week and a half, and it was rather bizzare to come across someplace as historic as this that had only one postcard type available. Admittedly this is a research facility rather than a commercial operation, but it was kind of puzzling. I would have liked to have gotten several professional views, and would have been interested in buying one of the schematic prints of the Biosphere that were so displayed around the entrance, but they weren't available. I tend to pick up books about the places we visit on vacation and would have gladly gotten something about the history of the Biosphere 2 project. But such was not to be had.

In closing, I have to say that there was a very surreal air about the whole facility. It's waiting, almost sleeping, and I only hope that the next time we swing through there we find it wide awake and active again.

J.

Oh, really?

FOXNews.com - Bin Laden Wants Zarqawi Body Released - International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News

CAIRO, Egypt — Usama bin Laden called on President Bush in an audiotape released Friday to release the body of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and said Jordan should allow the slain terrorist to be buried in his homeland.

So here's the deal - if Osama wants his carcass, he can come get it. Show up in person, sign for it (with two proofs of ID, please, or a passport and a major credit card.) And we'll be GLAD to turn over the body. We'll even guarantee you safe passage in to get it.

Getting out will be a different matter, though.

J.