Rusted Sky

That didn't, for once, get swept under the table.

Captain's Quarters

Faced with a clear example of vote fraud, the House has agreed to investigate .. itself. The day after Democratic leadership in the House attempted to nullify a completed floor vote, the Majority Leader had to issue an apology and agree to an extraordinary bipartisan panel to probe the actions of House leadership

And THESE are the folks who want control of the White House in 2008? (To be fair, so do the Republicans... and anyone else running for President.) But just how screwed up do the Democrats have to be before they knock themselves out of the political system altogether?

One commenter posted...

So where are all of the "there's no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans on immigration" clowns now?

Good job sitting out the last election in order to "send a message". Well, the worthless, corrupt, incompetent, vile Democrats you allowed into office, just rigged a vote in order to shovel even more money at illegal immigrants.

Happy now? You really showed the Republicans.

So what's the plan for the next election, sit on the sidelines again, in order to let the Democrats steal additional votes?

Remember, brave Americans died in order for you to sit home on election day, so that you can "send a message" and allow leftwing idiots to vote unadulterated scum like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi into public office.

It'd almost be laughable... but remember, these are the folks who want to inflict universal health care on the US. Why does anyone think they'll be able to get THAT passed in an effective and efficient manner?

J.

That didn't, for once, get swept under the table.

Captain's Quarters

Faced with a clear example of vote fraud, the House has agreed to investigate .. itself. The day after Democratic leadership in the House attempted to nullify a completed floor vote, the Majority Leader had to issue an apology and agree to an extraordinary bipartisan panel to probe the actions of House leadership

And THESE are the folks who want control of the White House in 2008? (To be fair, so do the Republicans... and anyone else running for President.) But just how screwed up do the Democrats have to be before they knock themselves out of the political system altogether?

One commenter posted...

So where are all of the "there's no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans on immigration" clowns now?

Good job sitting out the last election in order to "send a message". Well, the worthless, corrupt, incompetent, vile Democrats you allowed into office, just rigged a vote in order to shovel even more money at illegal immigrants.

Happy now? You really showed the Republicans.

So what's the plan for the next election, sit on the sidelines again, in order to let the Democrats steal additional votes?

Remember, brave Americans died in order for you to sit home on election day, so that you can "send a message" and allow leftwing idiots to vote unadulterated scum like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi into public office.

It'd almost be laughable... but remember, these are the folks who want to inflict universal health care on the US. Why does anyone think they'll be able to get THAT passed in an effective and efficient manner?

J.

You've got to give some Democrats credit. They're determined to see the Iraq effort go down in flames. So dedicated are some of them that they'll walk out on news that maybe things aren't so bad.

Townhall.com::The Good News is Bad News::By Cliff May

It’s tough being a member of Congress. Even if you’re in the majority, as is Rep. Nancy Boyda of Kansas, you never know when your ears may be assaulted by outrageous and offensive ideas.
Like what? At a recent hearing of the Armed Services Committee, retired Gen. Jack Keane said “progress is being made” by U.S. military forces in Iraq; “We are on the offensive and we have the momentum,” he added. The freshman congresswoman was so distressed by these remarks that she got up and she walked out.

There was “only so much” she could take, she explained, so she “had to leave the room … after so much of the frustration of having to listen to what we listened to.” She said she was worried, too, that General Keane’s remarks “will in fact show up in the media and further divide this country.” Hey, that could happen!

As House Majority Whip James Clyburn suggested this week, success in Iraq also would be awkward for those who have bet their political chips on American failure.

To be precise, Clyburn said that it would be “a real big problem for us” should General Petraeus return to Washington next month and present a positive report on progress in Iraq. Moderate Democrats might listen and decide that for America to be defeated in Iraq by al-Qaeda and Iranian-backed militias is neither inevitable nor in the national interest. These same moderate Democrats also might decide that, for them, the national interest trumps the partisan interest.

J.

You've got to give some Democrats credit. They're determined to see the Iraq effort go down in flames. So dedicated are some of them that they'll walk out on news that maybe things aren't so bad.

Townhall.com::The Good News is Bad News::By Cliff May

It’s tough being a member of Congress. Even if you’re in the majority, as is Rep. Nancy Boyda of Kansas, you never know when your ears may be assaulted by outrageous and offensive ideas.
Like what? At a recent hearing of the Armed Services Committee, retired Gen. Jack Keane said “progress is being made” by U.S. military forces in Iraq; “We are on the offensive and we have the momentum,” he added. The freshman congresswoman was so distressed by these remarks that she got up and she walked out.

There was “only so much” she could take, she explained, so she “had to leave the room … after so much of the frustration of having to listen to what we listened to.” She said she was worried, too, that General Keane’s remarks “will in fact show up in the media and further divide this country.” Hey, that could happen!

As House Majority Whip James Clyburn suggested this week, success in Iraq also would be awkward for those who have bet their political chips on American failure.

To be precise, Clyburn said that it would be “a real big problem for us” should General Petraeus return to Washington next month and present a positive report on progress in Iraq. Moderate Democrats might listen and decide that for America to be defeated in Iraq by al-Qaeda and Iranian-backed militias is neither inevitable nor in the national interest. These same moderate Democrats also might decide that, for them, the national interest trumps the partisan interest.

J.

FOXNews.com - Study: Flush Toilets May Need to Be Disposed Of - Science News | Current Articles

"Most people can hardly imagine that other ways of handling human waste have ever existed," said study author Maj-Britt Quitzau, an environmental sociologist with the National Environmental Research Institute of Denmark. "But actually, systems did exist prior to the flushing toilet where human waste was collected within the cities and re-used in farming areas."

And another alternative, the 'earth closet' was mentioned. You or I might know it as an 'outhouse'. And having taken care of the sanitation needs of my family this last week, I'm rather comfortable with the cassette toilet concept, where materials are 'kept' for later emptying.

I see the flush toilet as a REAL good thing. Some, however, do not.

While drinking-water shortages plague millions in such places as India and in some African nations, Westerners continue to oppose alternatives to the flushing toilet.

Building flush-free toilets to satisfy the masses will not be simple and, unlike the composting toilet, may require mimicking toilets that flush and must be user-friendly, Quitzau said.

"This is not something which can be suddenly changed," she said. "Houses are built with respect to flushing toilets, not with respect to composting toilets requiring a collection chamber in the basement. Urban planners are taught about sewage systems and not sustainable toilet systems, where human urine and feces are collected and transported to farming areas."

So - banning flush toilets? Somehow, I think that'll be rejected by the majority of Americans.

(By the way, they tried an experiment out at the plant with a waterless urinal. The idea's a good one - but for some reason they didn't get a sufficient supply of the stuff that made it possible to BE waterless, so after the inital amount was gone, the urinals became quite fragrant. I'll go for a waterless urinal, but the feces needs to be flushed.)

J.

FOXNews.com - Study: Flush Toilets May Need to Be Disposed Of - Science News | Current Articles

"Most people can hardly imagine that other ways of handling human waste have ever existed," said study author Maj-Britt Quitzau, an environmental sociologist with the National Environmental Research Institute of Denmark. "But actually, systems did exist prior to the flushing toilet where human waste was collected within the cities and re-used in farming areas."

And another alternative, the 'earth closet' was mentioned. You or I might know it as an 'outhouse'. And having taken care of the sanitation needs of my family this last week, I'm rather comfortable with the cassette toilet concept, where materials are 'kept' for later emptying.

I see the flush toilet as a REAL good thing. Some, however, do not.

While drinking-water shortages plague millions in such places as India and in some African nations, Westerners continue to oppose alternatives to the flushing toilet.

Building flush-free toilets to satisfy the masses will not be simple and, unlike the composting toilet, may require mimicking toilets that flush and must be user-friendly, Quitzau said.

"This is not something which can be suddenly changed," she said. "Houses are built with respect to flushing toilets, not with respect to composting toilets requiring a collection chamber in the basement. Urban planners are taught about sewage systems and not sustainable toilet systems, where human urine and feces are collected and transported to farming areas."

So - banning flush toilets? Somehow, I think that'll be rejected by the majority of Americans.

(By the way, they tried an experiment out at the plant with a waterless urinal. The idea's a good one - but for some reason they didn't get a sufficient supply of the stuff that made it possible to BE waterless, so after the inital amount was gone, the urinals became quite fragrant. I'll go for a waterless urinal, but the feces needs to be flushed.)

J.

Long day back at work - I'm kind of tired tonight and intend to hit the sack early.

So, a few funny things...

Ridiculing the Jihad. With pink Burquas yet!

A Morocco Tourism Video? Nice beat. And boy, didn't they spray those jeans on her!

The Museum of Unworkable Devices and the
Basement Mechanic's Guide to Testing Perpetual Motion Machines...

And to close things off - Michael Yon's got some new stuff up. Hit his tip jar if you're so inclined - coverage like his isn't free.

And this pic - could that come from an SF movie or what?

Enjoy!

J.

Long day back at work - I'm kind of tired tonight and intend to hit the sack early.

So, a few funny things...

Ridiculing the Jihad. With pink Burquas yet!

A Morocco Tourism Video? Nice beat. And boy, didn't they spray those jeans on her!

The Museum of Unworkable Devices and the
Basement Mechanic's Guide to Testing Perpetual Motion Machines...

And to close things off - Michael Yon's got some new stuff up. Hit his tip jar if you're so inclined - coverage like his isn't free.

And this pic - could that come from an SF movie or what?

Enjoy!

J.

FOXNews.com - Most Americans: Ban Text Messaging While Driving - Technology News | News On Technology

NEW YORK — Close to 100 percent of Americans agree that text messaging while driving should be banned, according to a study released Tuesday, Reuters reports.

Driving's difficult enough when you've got your full attention on the road. Splitting it to text - well, why not just toss down a couple of beers, also? There's already been accidents because someone was texting instead of paying attention to their driving.

Hate to sound like an old fart here - but I don't especially care to be clobbered because someone decided they had to send a text message while driving.

J.

FOXNews.com - Most Americans: Ban Text Messaging While Driving - Technology News | News On Technology

NEW YORK — Close to 100 percent of Americans agree that text messaging while driving should be banned, according to a study released Tuesday, Reuters reports.

Driving's difficult enough when you've got your full attention on the road. Splitting it to text - well, why not just toss down a couple of beers, also? There's already been accidents because someone was texting instead of paying attention to their driving.

Hate to sound like an old fart here - but I don't especially care to be clobbered because someone decided they had to send a text message while driving.

J.

Maybe even a tipping point? It's hard to tell - but read the whole thing.

Michael Yon : Online Magazine � Blog Archive � Bread and a Circus, Part II of II

Other “Information Operations” were underway to not only show the people that food distribution had restarted but also that the Shia in fact had released the food for Baqubah. The distribution may have begun in fits and starts, but the information battle seemed to be a decisive win.

And so we started with 16 trucks, but before it was all over, they had sent 94 trucks of food to Baqubah. There was enough food, according to our Army, to feed 200,000 people for 30 days.

I recalled one of the bureaucrat’s comments, upon hearing that al Qaeda had scattered like rabbits out of Baqubah. He seemed at first not to believe that news, but once he got confirmation, he made a point to tell us what that news actually meant: if al Qaeda was done in Baqubah, al Qaeda was done in Iraq.

I've often wondered at the religious fevor that seems so prevalent among the Islamists. Are they murderous because of that fevor, or is the murderous impulse there already and they embrace jihad because it justifies it and gives them a chance to slaughter without responsibility or remorse? If you were given the chance to do something hidden in the darkest desires of your heart, without any bad coming to you for it... indeed, to even have people cheering you on while you do it... wouldn't it be a very powerful incentive to open up your darkest desires to the light of day?

I've also wondered if that might not be a factor behind the apparent desires of the Democrats to lose the war. They'll see it as a win - even if it results in massive casualties in Iraq. And who doesn't like feeling like they've 'won' something?

Sadly - in order for them to 'win', a whole lot of people are going to have to lose, and lose badly.

But - what if the Democrats, who've staked damn near everything on transforming Iraq into a loss for our country, were instead the ones to lose? In their frustration and anger, what would happen? What could they justify doing? Would their fevor match those of the Islamists who kill themselves wholesale for the chance to kill an American?

Am I questioning their patriotism? Well, yes. I've no doubt they see the world as they want to see it, and want to mod and mold it into something that'll make THEM feel good. But... what about everyone else? Will the first Iranian nuke test set off an orgasmic shiver in the hardcore left, at the idea that FINALLY the evil US will get what's coming to it? Or will it wake them up and make them realize that - while they might not be able to stand the center/right in this country, they've got a hell of a lot more in common with the center/right than with the hardcore Islamic community who would gleefully kill them in a heartbeat. (Unless, of course, their unsanity takes a rather suicidal bent, in which case all bets are off.)

In September we're going to see what progress the Surge has made. By what I'm seeing, the surge has already produced some very significant, very good effects. And I expect in September we're going to be faced with watching a lot of the anti-war Dems who are very, very beholden to Kos and that crowd either turn away from the 'We're losing, and there's not a damn thing we should do to prevent it - instead we're going to try to hasten the defeat" meme, or embrace it more feverently and gain the approval of the anti-war groups while losing the support of the moderates in the party.

Truly, we live in interesting times.

J.

Maybe even a tipping point? It's hard to tell - but read the whole thing.

Michael Yon : Online Magazine � Blog Archive � Bread and a Circus, Part II of II

Other “Information Operations” were underway to not only show the people that food distribution had restarted but also that the Shia in fact had released the food for Baqubah. The distribution may have begun in fits and starts, but the information battle seemed to be a decisive win.

And so we started with 16 trucks, but before it was all over, they had sent 94 trucks of food to Baqubah. There was enough food, according to our Army, to feed 200,000 people for 30 days.

I recalled one of the bureaucrat’s comments, upon hearing that al Qaeda had scattered like rabbits out of Baqubah. He seemed at first not to believe that news, but once he got confirmation, he made a point to tell us what that news actually meant: if al Qaeda was done in Baqubah, al Qaeda was done in Iraq.

I've often wondered at the religious fevor that seems so prevalent among the Islamists. Are they murderous because of that fevor, or is the murderous impulse there already and they embrace jihad because it justifies it and gives them a chance to slaughter without responsibility or remorse? If you were given the chance to do something hidden in the darkest desires of your heart, without any bad coming to you for it... indeed, to even have people cheering you on while you do it... wouldn't it be a very powerful incentive to open up your darkest desires to the light of day?

I've also wondered if that might not be a factor behind the apparent desires of the Democrats to lose the war. They'll see it as a win - even if it results in massive casualties in Iraq. And who doesn't like feeling like they've 'won' something?

Sadly - in order for them to 'win', a whole lot of people are going to have to lose, and lose badly.

But - what if the Democrats, who've staked damn near everything on transforming Iraq into a loss for our country, were instead the ones to lose? In their frustration and anger, what would happen? What could they justify doing? Would their fevor match those of the Islamists who kill themselves wholesale for the chance to kill an American?

Am I questioning their patriotism? Well, yes. I've no doubt they see the world as they want to see it, and want to mod and mold it into something that'll make THEM feel good. But... what about everyone else? Will the first Iranian nuke test set off an orgasmic shiver in the hardcore left, at the idea that FINALLY the evil US will get what's coming to it? Or will it wake them up and make them realize that - while they might not be able to stand the center/right in this country, they've got a hell of a lot more in common with the center/right than with the hardcore Islamic community who would gleefully kill them in a heartbeat. (Unless, of course, their unsanity takes a rather suicidal bent, in which case all bets are off.)

In September we're going to see what progress the Surge has made. By what I'm seeing, the surge has already produced some very significant, very good effects. And I expect in September we're going to be faced with watching a lot of the anti-war Dems who are very, very beholden to Kos and that crowd either turn away from the 'We're losing, and there's not a damn thing we should do to prevent it - instead we're going to try to hasten the defeat" meme, or embrace it more feverently and gain the approval of the anti-war groups while losing the support of the moderates in the party.

Truly, we live in interesting times.

J.

Daily Express: The World's Greatest Newspaper :: News / Showbiz :: 4,000 people a week trying to leave UK

The country’s biggest foreign visa consultancy firm has revealed that applications have soared in the last seven months by 80 per cent to almost 4,000 a week. Ten years ago the figure was just 300 a week.

Most people are relocating within the Commonwealth – in Australia, Canada and South Africa. They are almost all young professionals and skilled workers aged 20-40.

And many cite their reason for wanting to quit as immigration to these shores – and the burden it is placing on their communities and local authorities. The dearth of good schools, spiralling house prices, rising crime and tax increases are also driving people away.

The British government needs to figure out something, quick. I'd hate to see the UK go third-world... But when the brains drain, something's gotta give.

J.

Daily Express: The World's Greatest Newspaper :: News / Showbiz :: 4,000 people a week trying to leave UK

The country’s biggest foreign visa consultancy firm has revealed that applications have soared in the last seven months by 80 per cent to almost 4,000 a week. Ten years ago the figure was just 300 a week.

Most people are relocating within the Commonwealth – in Australia, Canada and South Africa. They are almost all young professionals and skilled workers aged 20-40.

And many cite their reason for wanting to quit as immigration to these shores – and the burden it is placing on their communities and local authorities. The dearth of good schools, spiralling house prices, rising crime and tax increases are also driving people away.

The British government needs to figure out something, quick. I'd hate to see the UK go third-world... But when the brains drain, something's gotta give.

J.

You know, the two Muslim 'engineering students' supposedly going to college in South Florida who were caught speeding in the middle of the night on a (supposedly) long, straight road that leads directly to a Naval base...

With explosives in the back of their car.

Well, there's a lot of folks covering it, and it's starting to get kind of interesting. The FBI is really pushing on this, it would seem, and have already started calling the misunderstood 'yutes' terrorists. And an interview of a neighbor is rather interesting...

Riehl World View: Neighbor Drops The "T" Word On SC Suspects

I dunno - something just smells pretty damn fishy here.

J.

You know, the two Muslim 'engineering students' supposedly going to college in South Florida who were caught speeding in the middle of the night on a (supposedly) long, straight road that leads directly to a Naval base...

With explosives in the back of their car.

Well, there's a lot of folks covering it, and it's starting to get kind of interesting. The FBI is really pushing on this, it would seem, and have already started calling the misunderstood 'yutes' terrorists. And an interview of a neighbor is rather interesting...

Riehl World View: Neighbor Drops The "T" Word On SC Suspects

I dunno - something just smells pretty damn fishy here.

J.

And I think I agree with Gingrich...

Modern road to White House 'verges on insane,' says Gingrich - CNN.com

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Potential presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich on Tuesday blasted the modern-day road to the White House as too long, too expensive and verging on "insane."

I odn't know - if I were looking to make an electoral cycle as uninteresting as possible, I don't think I could find a better way than to drag it out for two years... except for making it run for 4.

I'm hoping soon that I'll be hearing something POSITIVE from the Democratic side. They need to understand Bush isn't going to run again, and presenting themselves as the Anti-Bush (especially with the Surge seeming to produce results) isn't going to automatically get votes. There's a lot more to being President than just being automatically against your predecessor's policies.

J.

And I think I agree with Gingrich...

Modern road to White House 'verges on insane,' says Gingrich - CNN.com

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Potential presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich on Tuesday blasted the modern-day road to the White House as too long, too expensive and verging on "insane."

I odn't know - if I were looking to make an electoral cycle as uninteresting as possible, I don't think I could find a better way than to drag it out for two years... except for making it run for 4.

I'm hoping soon that I'll be hearing something POSITIVE from the Democratic side. They need to understand Bush isn't going to run again, and presenting themselves as the Anti-Bush (especially with the Surge seeming to produce results) isn't going to automatically get votes. There's a lot more to being President than just being automatically against your predecessor's policies.

J.

Giant rubber band! � Comically Large Things

Of course, there's a lot of air resistance. Maybe if there'd been something like, oh, a five or ten lb. weight...

Well - take a look. How far do you think it should have gone?

J.

Giant rubber band! � Comically Large Things

Of course, there's a lot of air resistance. Maybe if there'd been something like, oh, a five or ten lb. weight...

Well - take a look. How far do you think it should have gone?

J.

Get a bit extra on your burger, and sue McD's...

Charleston Daily Mail

"We're interested in seeing McDonald's take responsibility and change a systemic quality control problem that endangers the lives of up to 12 million Americans with allergies," said Timothy Houston, the Morgantown lawyer representing the plaintiffs.

Houston said his clients were in Morgantown in October 2005 and stopped at the Star City McDonald's on the way home to Clarksburg. Jeromy Jackson was living with his mother at the time.

Jeromy did his part to make it known he didn't want cheese on the hamburgers because he is allergic, Houston said.

He told a worker through the ordering speaker and then two workers face-to-face at the pay and pick-up windows that he couldn't eat cheese, Houston said.

"By my count, he took at least five independent steps to make sure that thing had no cheese on it," Houston said. "And it did and almost cost him his life."

After getting the food, the three drove to Clarksburg and started to eat the food in a darkened room where they were going to watch a movie, Houston said.

Well, I feel for the guy... But it seems to me if he's known he's got this allergy for a long time, yet made a practice of buying from McDonald's before, to the point where he completely trusts the crew to correctly serve him something that could potentially kill him and chow down on it without looking to see if the deadly item was added, he's playing Russian Roulette with the cheese factor.

And really, a visual inspection would have taken what, three seconds? It's not like the cheese isn't noticeable, after all!

J.

Get a bit extra on your burger, and sue McD's...

Charleston Daily Mail

"We're interested in seeing McDonald's take responsibility and change a systemic quality control problem that endangers the lives of up to 12 million Americans with allergies," said Timothy Houston, the Morgantown lawyer representing the plaintiffs.

Houston said his clients were in Morgantown in October 2005 and stopped at the Star City McDonald's on the way home to Clarksburg. Jeromy Jackson was living with his mother at the time.

Jeromy did his part to make it known he didn't want cheese on the hamburgers because he is allergic, Houston said.

He told a worker through the ordering speaker and then two workers face-to-face at the pay and pick-up windows that he couldn't eat cheese, Houston said.

"By my count, he took at least five independent steps to make sure that thing had no cheese on it," Houston said. "And it did and almost cost him his life."

After getting the food, the three drove to Clarksburg and started to eat the food in a darkened room where they were going to watch a movie, Houston said.

Well, I feel for the guy... But it seems to me if he's known he's got this allergy for a long time, yet made a practice of buying from McDonald's before, to the point where he completely trusts the crew to correctly serve him something that could potentially kill him and chow down on it without looking to see if the deadly item was added, he's playing Russian Roulette with the cheese factor.

And really, a visual inspection would have taken what, three seconds? It's not like the cheese isn't noticeable, after all!

J.

WizbangTech - Minesweeper - The Movie

And it's just about what you'd expect!

Enjoy!

J.

WizbangTech - Minesweeper - The Movie

And it's just about what you'd expect!

Enjoy!

J.

Some are designed to keep people out. Some are designed to keep people in.

FOXNews.com - East German Border Guards Had 'Shoot-to-Kill' Orders to Stop Defections to West - International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News

BERLIN — Researchers have discovered a Cold War “shoot-to-kill” order in what amounts to the clearest evidence yet that East German troops were given a licence to fire on people fleeing to the West, the Times of London reported.

The written order, issued to Stasi secret service agents, states: “Don’t hesitate to use your weapon even when border breaches happen with women and children, which traitors have often exploited in the past.”

It was found by a researcher in a regional archive of Stasi documents in the city of Magdeburg. The existence of a shoot-to-kill policy has long been assumed, given that more than 1,100 people were killed trying to flee East Germany. Most were shot trying to cross the Berlin Wall and the border between East and West Germany between 1961, when the frontier was sealed with the construction of the Wall, and November 1989, when it fell.

You ever wonder why, if things were so wonderful there, it was necessary to have a wall keeping people IN? Cuba's got a wall too - only not a visible, tangible one.

If you ever wonder whether a country is repressive - see which way the people are going. For all the faults the US has, people try like hell to get here - legally or illegally. For all the supposed 'virtues' that NK or Cuba has, you don't see many people attempting to immigrate there.

Just a thought - but one that seems to be lost on a whole lot of folks who still seem very much in love with totalitarian regimes.

J.

Some are designed to keep people out. Some are designed to keep people in.

FOXNews.com - East German Border Guards Had 'Shoot-to-Kill' Orders to Stop Defections to West - International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News

BERLIN — Researchers have discovered a Cold War “shoot-to-kill” order in what amounts to the clearest evidence yet that East German troops were given a licence to fire on people fleeing to the West, the Times of London reported.

The written order, issued to Stasi secret service agents, states: “Don’t hesitate to use your weapon even when border breaches happen with women and children, which traitors have often exploited in the past.”

It was found by a researcher in a regional archive of Stasi documents in the city of Magdeburg. The existence of a shoot-to-kill policy has long been assumed, given that more than 1,100 people were killed trying to flee East Germany. Most were shot trying to cross the Berlin Wall and the border between East and West Germany between 1961, when the frontier was sealed with the construction of the Wall, and November 1989, when it fell.

You ever wonder why, if things were so wonderful there, it was necessary to have a wall keeping people IN? Cuba's got a wall too - only not a visible, tangible one.

If you ever wonder whether a country is repressive - see which way the people are going. For all the faults the US has, people try like hell to get here - legally or illegally. For all the supposed 'virtues' that NK or Cuba has, you don't see many people attempting to immigrate there.

Just a thought - but one that seems to be lost on a whole lot of folks who still seem very much in love with totalitarian regimes.

J.

Alan Rickman

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) (voice) .... Marvin

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) .... Severus Snape

The man's got talent, I'd say.

Saw Order of the Phoenix the other night. Nice condensation of a huge book into a fairly long film. Wouldn't have minded it being a bit longer, but that's as may be. I'm looking forward to the next two...

And for those who haven't yet figured it out ... well, let's just say Cho and Harry don't remain an item, okay? And it looks like Luna may be a slightly central character... as does Ginny Weasley...

Lucky Harry...! (Grin)

Makes me wonder, though - are the kids in the HP series going to be perpetually typecast?

Guess we'll see.

J.

Alan Rickman

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) (voice) .... Marvin

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) .... Severus Snape

The man's got talent, I'd say.

Saw Order of the Phoenix the other night. Nice condensation of a huge book into a fairly long film. Wouldn't have minded it being a bit longer, but that's as may be. I'm looking forward to the next two...

And for those who haven't yet figured it out ... well, let's just say Cho and Harry don't remain an item, okay? And it looks like Luna may be a slightly central character... as does Ginny Weasley...

Lucky Harry...! (Grin)

Makes me wonder, though - are the kids in the HP series going to be perpetually typecast?

Guess we'll see.

J.

Jamming systems play secret role in Iraq - CNN.com

CNN) -- A silent, invisible battle is being fought against roadside bombs in Iraq. Though the military doesn't like to advertise their use, electronic jamming systems are playing a key role in neutralizing the threat.

In WW2, the Norden bombsight was top secret. I suppose it could be argued the Germans knew about it - but we didn't go blather about the Norden's capabilities in the press and constantly remind the Germans and Japanese we had it.

Yeah, the bad guys know we use jammers. Isn't it great we've got a free media that can keep REMINDING them of that little tidbit?

J.

Jamming systems play secret role in Iraq - CNN.com

CNN) -- A silent, invisible battle is being fought against roadside bombs in Iraq. Though the military doesn't like to advertise their use, electronic jamming systems are playing a key role in neutralizing the threat.

In WW2, the Norden bombsight was top secret. I suppose it could be argued the Germans knew about it - but we didn't go blather about the Norden's capabilities in the press and constantly remind the Germans and Japanese we had it.

Yeah, the bad guys know we use jammers. Isn't it great we've got a free media that can keep REMINDING them of that little tidbit?

J.

The little guy is now in 4th grade. The summer passed a lot faster than I expected... but then, the years are going by faster too. It's time to be thinking about Halloween... don't know if we'll do much of anything scary or ambitious this year.

But overall - it's been a good year so far. 4th grade - school is still 'fun'. The kids are still friendly to each other, and the stresses of middle and high school are still quite a ways off. We'll see what happens... I'd like to keep him in this sort of environment until he graduates high school, but I don't know whether it's going to be possible or practical.

On the work front... we had a meeting today. Our site lead... in my observation he's stretched himself too thin. We have a trouble call queue that needs to be managed, and we've got one guy who does a great job at doing that and handling other things around the shop - but he's been put to work elsewhere. (It ain't me, by the way.) Instead, our site lead's trying to multitask - handle all the fires and concerns our shop has to deal with on a daily basis, AND try to handle the call queue, which takes a lot of concentration and attention to do it right. With a hundred and one things to handle and pulling him every which way, he's trying to juggle too much and stuff is dropping. When it does, he gets yelled at by the overall boss... and you know what flows downhill. Minor stuff becomes very large problems - and anything you do is likely to be wrong.

Delegation isn't his strong point. Don't know if I'm trusted enough to suggest he get Richard back in to handle the call queue - or make him see that he's chosen to overwork himself. He needs to shed some of his load, or we'll all suffer for it.

I've been thinking it may be time to move on. Don't really want to - I LIKE the folks out at the plant I have to take care of, and I can't hardly beat the schedule, but the atmosphere in the shop is not good... not good at all.

J.

The little guy is now in 4th grade. The summer passed a lot faster than I expected... but then, the years are going by faster too. It's time to be thinking about Halloween... don't know if we'll do much of anything scary or ambitious this year.

But overall - it's been a good year so far. 4th grade - school is still 'fun'. The kids are still friendly to each other, and the stresses of middle and high school are still quite a ways off. We'll see what happens... I'd like to keep him in this sort of environment until he graduates high school, but I don't know whether it's going to be possible or practical.

On the work front... we had a meeting today. Our site lead... in my observation he's stretched himself too thin. We have a trouble call queue that needs to be managed, and we've got one guy who does a great job at doing that and handling other things around the shop - but he's been put to work elsewhere. (It ain't me, by the way.) Instead, our site lead's trying to multitask - handle all the fires and concerns our shop has to deal with on a daily basis, AND try to handle the call queue, which takes a lot of concentration and attention to do it right. With a hundred and one things to handle and pulling him every which way, he's trying to juggle too much and stuff is dropping. When it does, he gets yelled at by the overall boss... and you know what flows downhill. Minor stuff becomes very large problems - and anything you do is likely to be wrong.

Delegation isn't his strong point. Don't know if I'm trusted enough to suggest he get Richard back in to handle the call queue - or make him see that he's chosen to overwork himself. He needs to shed some of his load, or we'll all suffer for it.

I've been thinking it may be time to move on. Don't really want to - I LIKE the folks out at the plant I have to take care of, and I can't hardly beat the schedule, but the atmosphere in the shop is not good... not good at all.

J.

2007 July 15 � strange maps

What if the land-water ratio were upside down?

Interesting cartographical finds at this site...

Enjoy!

J.

2007 July 15 � strange maps

What if the land-water ratio were upside down?

Interesting cartographical finds at this site...

Enjoy!

J.

WorldNetDaily: Bishop urges Christians to call God 'Allah'

Catholic churches in the Netherlands should use the name Allah for God to ease tensions between Muslims and Christians, says a Dutch bishop.

Tiny Muskens, the bishop of Breda, told the Dutch TV program "Network" Monday night he believes God doesn't mind what he is called, Radio Netherlands Worldwide reported.

The Almighty is above such "discussion and bickering," he insisted.
Muskens points to Indonesia, where he served 30 years ago, as an example for Dutch churches. Christians in the Middle East also use the term Allah for God.

"Someone like me has prayed to Allah yang maha kuasa (Almighty God) for eight years in Indonesia and other priests for 20 or 30 years," Muskens said. "In the heart of the Eucharist, God is called Allah over there, so why can't we start doing that together?"

Damn. 6 years back, I was pretty certain that Islamic funadmentalism wouldn't gain any real footholds in the West. I didn't think that there would be folks who, in the name of accomodation and 'just trying to get along', would give in to it without even attempting to fight.

Mark Steyn has it right. "At what point do you stop?" If enough Islamic organizations raise a significant stink, would there be people advocating Dutch girls be forced into burquas?

Or should we simply dismantle our culture (with all it's faults, foibles and fantasies) and go wholly into a 7th-Century social order?

Islam's going to have to learn to coexist. And if that means calling 'God' 'God' instead of 'Allah' - if they believe it's the same deity then let them translate it in their own minds.

And coexistance doesn't mean giving in to every demand.

The Corner on National Review Online

"Hospital staff in the Lothians have been told not to eat at their desks to avoid offending Muslim colleagues during Ramadan. NHS Lothian has advised doctors and other health workers not to have working lunches during the 30-day fast, which begins next month. The health service's Equality and Diversity Officer sent an e-mail to all senior managers, giving guidance on religious tolerance."

There's really nothing more to say about this story at this point, so I'll just let it stand there as a symbol, both absurd and ominous, of the mess in which Britain now finds itself.

One bite at a time. Of course, it really helps if the elephant cuts off little bits of itself.

J.

WorldNetDaily: Bishop urges Christians to call God 'Allah'

Catholic churches in the Netherlands should use the name Allah for God to ease tensions between Muslims and Christians, says a Dutch bishop.

Tiny Muskens, the bishop of Breda, told the Dutch TV program "Network" Monday night he believes God doesn't mind what he is called, Radio Netherlands Worldwide reported.

The Almighty is above such "discussion and bickering," he insisted.
Muskens points to Indonesia, where he served 30 years ago, as an example for Dutch churches. Christians in the Middle East also use the term Allah for God.

"Someone like me has prayed to Allah yang maha kuasa (Almighty God) for eight years in Indonesia and other priests for 20 or 30 years," Muskens said. "In the heart of the Eucharist, God is called Allah over there, so why can't we start doing that together?"

Damn. 6 years back, I was pretty certain that Islamic funadmentalism wouldn't gain any real footholds in the West. I didn't think that there would be folks who, in the name of accomodation and 'just trying to get along', would give in to it without even attempting to fight.

Mark Steyn has it right. "At what point do you stop?" If enough Islamic organizations raise a significant stink, would there be people advocating Dutch girls be forced into burquas?

Or should we simply dismantle our culture (with all it's faults, foibles and fantasies) and go wholly into a 7th-Century social order?

Islam's going to have to learn to coexist. And if that means calling 'God' 'God' instead of 'Allah' - if they believe it's the same deity then let them translate it in their own minds.

And coexistance doesn't mean giving in to every demand.

The Corner on National Review Online

"Hospital staff in the Lothians have been told not to eat at their desks to avoid offending Muslim colleagues during Ramadan. NHS Lothian has advised doctors and other health workers not to have working lunches during the 30-day fast, which begins next month. The health service's Equality and Diversity Officer sent an e-mail to all senior managers, giving guidance on religious tolerance."

There's really nothing more to say about this story at this point, so I'll just let it stand there as a symbol, both absurd and ominous, of the mess in which Britain now finds itself.

One bite at a time. Of course, it really helps if the elephant cuts off little bits of itself.

J.

Internet Archive: Details: What To Do In A Zombie Attack

AKA "There goes the Neigborhood".

Kind of snide and snarky, but fun in an odd way.

Enjoy!

J.

Internet Archive: Details: What To Do In A Zombie Attack

AKA "There goes the Neigborhood".

Kind of snide and snarky, but fun in an odd way.

Enjoy!

J.

Could be. You gotta wonder... well, no. I guess you don't. I'm just tossing this up because I thought it was curious. Nevada's never been seen as a 'must-win' state in the primaries, as far as I can remember - not like the NE states and Iowa.

Edwards Moving Staff Out of Nevada

WASHINGTON (AP) - Presidential hopeful John Edwards is moving staff out of Nevada to focus on other early voting states as he deals with limited resources and uncertainty about the Western state's prominence in deciding the Democratic nomination.

The Edwards campaign said Wednesday that the Nevada staffers were being relocated to New Hampshire, South Carolina and in particular Iowa, where he is hoping a victory will propel him to the nomination. The campaign would not disclose how many staffers were being moved and neither would Edwards in a telephone interview.

Any more, the elections are an endurance test - on the part of the audience as much as the candidate.

J.

Could be. You gotta wonder... well, no. I guess you don't. I'm just tossing this up because I thought it was curious. Nevada's never been seen as a 'must-win' state in the primaries, as far as I can remember - not like the NE states and Iowa.

Edwards Moving Staff Out of Nevada

WASHINGTON (AP) - Presidential hopeful John Edwards is moving staff out of Nevada to focus on other early voting states as he deals with limited resources and uncertainty about the Western state's prominence in deciding the Democratic nomination.

The Edwards campaign said Wednesday that the Nevada staffers were being relocated to New Hampshire, South Carolina and in particular Iowa, where he is hoping a victory will propel him to the nomination. The campaign would not disclose how many staffers were being moved and neither would Edwards in a telephone interview.

Any more, the elections are an endurance test - on the part of the audience as much as the candidate.

J.

YouTube - BadAss Marine

She called...

She called...

Blacks, Whites...wait
African Americans and Caucasians, Asians, excuse me.
Vietnamese, Philipenes, Koreans and Jamaicans or
Haitans, waitin' Hispanics y'all.

Please be paitent
Mexican, Puerto Ricans, Venezualean, Cuban, Dominican, Panamanian Democrats
I beg your pardon, you partied with the late, great Reagan?
Republican, Independent, Christian, Catholic,
Methodist, Baptist, 7th Day Adventist, 5 Percenters,
Hindu, Sunii Muslim, Brothers and Sisters who never seen the New York city
skyline when the twin towers still existed.
But still She called.

J.

YouTube - BadAss Marine

She called...

She called...

Blacks, Whites...wait
African Americans and Caucasians, Asians, excuse me.
Vietnamese, Philipenes, Koreans and Jamaicans or
Haitans, waitin' Hispanics y'all.

Please be paitent
Mexican, Puerto Ricans, Venezualean, Cuban, Dominican, Panamanian Democrats
I beg your pardon, you partied with the late, great Reagan?
Republican, Independent, Christian, Catholic,
Methodist, Baptist, 7th Day Adventist, 5 Percenters,
Hindu, Sunii Muslim, Brothers and Sisters who never seen the New York city
skyline when the twin towers still existed.
But still She called.

J.

Over at a friend's house last night, we got to talking about some rather odd stuff. The talk turned to power generation - and I remarked that if I were to win the lottery (currently up to $171 million) I'd see about putting some of it to bankrolling Robert Bussard's Electrostatic Fusion concept. It's a blue-sky idea that showed some real promise, and it'd be interesting to see what would happen if the project were fed with a firehose instead of a garden hose. ($30 millon or so guaranteed over 5 years, instead of $2 million on an iffy basis.)

I do think we need to get off oil ASAP - but our current political systems are such that waiting for goverment to do it all (or even partially) is foolish. Just look at how long it's taken to get drilling started in ANWR - or building either new refineries or additional capacity in existing ones, despite the fact that for many years we've been faced with limitations in our distilling and refining chains and an increased dependence on imported oil.

Yeah, it's fine to gripe and pontificate about it in Congress, but have you noticed that there's never any movement on the issue? Apparently the problems aren't important enough to actually SOLVE, as long as some political use can be made of them. (And our politicians preferences must be taken into account, as the cancelled wind farm off Kennebunkport proves. NIMBY isn't just a theoretical concept - it's a very real problem...)

One thing OTPU (who was there) mentioned was that at the present time it's just about economically feasible to take coal and oil shale and convert it into heavy crude. The process is, unfortunately, energy intensive to a point where breakeven is quite difficult. So - why not use a pebble bed reactor/generator system to provide the electricity? There's companies ready to build them - but the current political situation again is iffy.

Part of the problem is that just as the internet enables the generation of self-assembling expert systems, the same occurs with self-assembling 'idiot' systems. You see a lot of it on the political side of things, where it doesn't matter what FACTS are, FEELINGS are much more important, and immediate reaction to and alleviation of those feelings is much more important than whether the action is proper, well-considered, and appropriate for both the short and long term.

One term that was bandied about was 'radioactivity'. To you or I (or anyone knowledgeable about the subject) it's pretty clear there are degrees of radioactivity. We're familiar enough with the subject to understand the concept of the half-life, that there's radioactive elements in darn near everything (including a granite countertop) and that it's the dose that does the damage.

But not everyone does. Radiation isn't a binary sort of thing, in that if there's any sort of radioactivity around you're gonna die a horrible death. You have to factor in the half-life of the material, and something with a half-life of four or five hours is a heck of a lot worse to have around than something with a half-life of 4.5x10⁹ years.

However, it seems to some that half-life doesn't matter, and the longer the half-life the more proof there is that the stuff's deadly. There's degrees of radiation exposure, and what's considered safe in one circumstance would be considered dangerous in another.

Radiation and Nuclear Energy Interestingly, due to the substantial amounts of granite in their construction, many public buildings including Australia's Parliament House and New York Grand Central Station, would have some difficulty in getting a licence to operate if they were nuclear power stations.

One thing that just struck me... drop the price the Saudis get per barrel to a half or a third of what they get now - and what happens in the ME? The ramifications are interesting indeed...

Another idea that was bandied about were MHD generators. They weren't ready for prime time in the '60's, but with their ability to burn even the dirtiest coal, perhaps they should be looked at again. One thing that OTPU mentioned last night was that apparently scrubber residues and byproducts from current power plants are of significant value. And I found this...

Clean Coal Technology Byproducts as Treatment Chemicals for Hazardous Wastes

In the fall of 1994 the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) embarked upon a two-phase program for the evaluation of the use of by-products from three advanced clean coal technologies, which have been installed recently at U.S. coal-fired utility and cogeneration plants, as treatment chemicals for metal-laden hazardous wastes. Treaters of metal-laden hazardous wastes generally use inexpensive chemical by-products, such as the calcium oxide manufactured in the production of acetylene from calcium carbide, to provide alkalinity for stabilizing metal ions which are mobile under the more acidic conditions present in the untreated wastes. They may also include a cementitious material, such as portland cement, to encapsulate small particles of concentrated hazardous species. By-products from advanced clean coal technologies, which are now being installed throughout the electric power sector, contain high levels of both alkalinity and pozzolanicity.

Another possiblility was mentioned, a technology that converts pretty much anything organic (or semi-organic, such as rubber and plastics) to light crude oil and minerals. That company (I couldn't remember the name of it at the time) is Changing World Technologies and again is one that'd get a few million for R&D if I were to win the lottery. At what point does it become economically feasible to mine landfills? (I remember going to school in St. Louis watching an old, rather large quarry fill up to the rim with dumped trash. What could be mined out of that?)

And we talked about Webkinz. Like I said - we got into some odd stuff!

Would like to win the lottery - that's for sure. It'd be interesting to see just what might happen if some blue-sky stuff on my radar got adequately bankrolled. (And first thing I'd do, after making sure the house was paid off and enough was in savings so even if the rest disappeared we'd be okay, would be to hire James Y. and OTPU to do a lot of research for me... (grin))

J.

Over at a friend's house last night, we got to talking about some rather odd stuff. The talk turned to power generation - and I remarked that if I were to win the lottery (currently up to $171 million) I'd see about putting some of it to bankrolling Robert Bussard's Electrostatic Fusion concept. It's a blue-sky idea that showed some real promise, and it'd be interesting to see what would happen if the project were fed with a firehose instead of a garden hose. ($30 millon or so guaranteed over 5 years, instead of $2 million on an iffy basis.)

I do think we need to get off oil ASAP - but our current political systems are such that waiting for goverment to do it all (or even partially) is foolish. Just look at how long it's taken to get drilling started in ANWR - or building either new refineries or additional capacity in existing ones, despite the fact that for many years we've been faced with limitations in our distilling and refining chains and an increased dependence on imported oil.

Yeah, it's fine to gripe and pontificate about it in Congress, but have you noticed that there's never any movement on the issue? Apparently the problems aren't important enough to actually SOLVE, as long as some political use can be made of them. (And our politicians preferences must be taken into account, as the cancelled wind farm off Kennebunkport proves. NIMBY isn't just a theoretical concept - it's a very real problem...)

One thing OTPU (who was there) mentioned was that at the present time it's just about economically feasible to take coal and oil shale and convert it into heavy crude. The process is, unfortunately, energy intensive to a point where breakeven is quite difficult. So - why not use a pebble bed reactor/generator system to provide the electricity? There's companies ready to build them - but the current political situation again is iffy.

Part of the problem is that just as the internet enables the generation of self-assembling expert systems, the same occurs with self-assembling 'idiot' systems. You see a lot of it on the political side of things, where it doesn't matter what FACTS are, FEELINGS are much more important, and immediate reaction to and alleviation of those feelings is much more important than whether the action is proper, well-considered, and appropriate for both the short and long term.

One term that was bandied about was 'radioactivity'. To you or I (or anyone knowledgeable about the subject) it's pretty clear there are degrees of radioactivity. We're familiar enough with the subject to understand the concept of the half-life, that there's radioactive elements in darn near everything (including a granite countertop) and that it's the dose that does the damage.

But not everyone does. Radiation isn't a binary sort of thing, in that if there's any sort of radioactivity around you're gonna die a horrible death. You have to factor in the half-life of the material, and something with a half-life of four or five hours is a heck of a lot worse to have around than something with a half-life of 4.5x10⁹ years.

However, it seems to some that half-life doesn't matter, and the longer the half-life the more proof there is that the stuff's deadly. There's degrees of radiation exposure, and what's considered safe in one circumstance would be considered dangerous in another.

Radiation and Nuclear Energy Interestingly, due to the substantial amounts of granite in their construction, many public buildings including Australia's Parliament House and New York Grand Central Station, would have some difficulty in getting a licence to operate if they were nuclear power stations.

One thing that just struck me... drop the price the Saudis get per barrel to a half or a third of what they get now - and what happens in the ME? The ramifications are interesting indeed...

Another idea that was bandied about were MHD generators. They weren't ready for prime time in the '60's, but with their ability to burn even the dirtiest coal, perhaps they should be looked at again. One thing that OTPU mentioned last night was that apparently scrubber residues and byproducts from current power plants are of significant value. And I found this...

Clean Coal Technology Byproducts as Treatment Chemicals for Hazardous Wastes

In the fall of 1994 the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) embarked upon a two-phase program for the evaluation of the use of by-products from three advanced clean coal technologies, which have been installed recently at U.S. coal-fired utility and cogeneration plants, as treatment chemicals for metal-laden hazardous wastes. Treaters of metal-laden hazardous wastes generally use inexpensive chemical by-products, such as the calcium oxide manufactured in the production of acetylene from calcium carbide, to provide alkalinity for stabilizing metal ions which are mobile under the more acidic conditions present in the untreated wastes. They may also include a cementitious material, such as portland cement, to encapsulate small particles of concentrated hazardous species. By-products from advanced clean coal technologies, which are now being installed throughout the electric power sector, contain high levels of both alkalinity and pozzolanicity.

Another possiblility was mentioned, a technology that converts pretty much anything organic (or semi-organic, such as rubber and plastics) to light crude oil and minerals. That company (I couldn't remember the name of it at the time) is Changing World Technologies and again is one that'd get a few million for R&D if I were to win the lottery. At what point does it become economically feasible to mine landfills? (I remember going to school in St. Louis watching an old, rather large quarry fill up to the rim with dumped trash. What could be mined out of that?)

And we talked about Webkinz. Like I said - we got into some odd stuff!

Would like to win the lottery - that's for sure. It'd be interesting to see just what might happen if some blue-sky stuff on my radar got adequately bankrolled. (And first thing I'd do, after making sure the house was paid off and enough was in savings so even if the rest disappeared we'd be okay, would be to hire James Y. and OTPU to do a lot of research for me... (grin))

J.

The day reality hit home | Review | The Observer

The writer Andrew Anthony was a committed member of the liberal left - until the attacks of 11 September, 2001. A veteran of CND and Nicaraguan solidarity campaigns, he was astonished at the liberal left's anti-American reaction. And so he began to question other basic assumptions about race, crime and terror - a political journey he charts here, in these exclusive extracts from his compelling new book.

I'm... well, I know that things are different in England. I realize that there's a lot more restrictions on what they can say or do - and that a lot of the things we take for granted, they cannot. (Free TV, for one thing.)

But - I'm rather puzzled at a number of the assumptions that he lives under. I find them almost unbelieveable.

For some time in the post-Soviet era, as America established its position as the sole superpower, a West-based movement had been growing that rejected the spread of free-market capitalism and the Western values that underpinned the global market. Known as anti-globalisation, it drew attention to the poverty and deprivation that was such a common feature of life in the Third World. But it also posed some stark existential questions about the Western way of life. 'What was the point?' the anti-globalisers seemed to be asking, all we do is buy stuff, turn everywhere into a market, and force McDonald's and Starbucks down other people's throats. Our culture is nothing but consumption. As the anti-globalist writer Naomi Klein argued a few weeks after 11 September: 'Part of the disorientation many Americans now face has to do with the inflated and oversimplified place consumerism plays in the American narrative. To buy is to be. To buy is to love. To buy is to vote.'

In the end I reached the conclusion that 11 September had already brutally confirmed: there were other forces, far more malign than America, that lay in wait in the world. But having faced up to the basic issue of comparative international threats, could I stop the political reassessment there? If I had been wrong about the relative danger of America, could I be wrong about all the other things I previously held to be true? I tried hard to suppress this thought, to ring-fence the global situation, grant it exceptional status and keep it in a separate part of my mind. I had too much vested in my image of myself as a 'liberal'. I had bought into the idea, for instance, that all social ills stemmed from inequality and racism. I knew that crime was solely a function of poverty. That to be British was cause for shame, never pride. And to be white was to bear an unshakable burden of guilt. I held the view, or at least was unprepared to challenge it, that it was wrong to single out any culture for censure, except, of course, Western culture, which should be admonished at every opportunity. I was confident, too, that Israel was the source of most of the troubles in the Middle East. These were non-negotiables for any right-thinking decent person. I couldn't question these received wisdoms without questioning my own identity. And I had grown too comfortable with seeing myself as one of the good guys, the well-meaning people, to want to do anything that upset that image. I viewed myself as understanding, and to maintain that self-perception it was imperative that I didn't try to understand myself.

Seems to me his 'non-negotiables' need to be re-examined. I think some of them are badly out of date and poisonously moldy.

And in my case, as with many people from the liberal-left side of the political spectrum, that job was made more difficult by the fact that the United States was the victim. From where I came from, the United States was always the culprit. There was Vietnam, Chile and the dreadful support for repressive and often debauched regimes right across Latin America, Africa and Asia. I was a veteran of CND anti-cruise missile marches in the 1980s. I had gone to Nicaragua to defend the Sandinista cause against American imperialism. America was the bad guy, right? America was always the bad guy.

Clearly some basic moral calculations needed to be performed. Which vision of the world represented more closely my own liberal outlook? The cosmopolitan city of New York, a multi-racial city of opportunity, a town where anyone on earth could arrive and thrive, exuberant, cultured, diverse, a place I had visited and loved for its liberty and energy and excitement? Or the people who attacked it, those arid minds who wanted to remove women from sight, kill homosexuals, banish music, destroy art, the demolishers of the Bamiyan Buddhas who aimed to terrorise everyone they could into submission to the will of their vengeful God? It was, as they say, a no-brainer, or should have been.

But was there not also an obligation to ask if this heinous crime was more complex than it first appeared?

He then goes into a rather odd examination of crime in England. The idea of self-defense, or defense of others, has pretty much fallen by the wayside. Instead, you're supposed to wait for the police.

After the third burglary, I bought a baseball bat for protection, and on a visit to a friend's house I noticed that he had the same make of bat in his bedroom. I guessed he hadn't suddenly developed a taste for American sports. He too had suffered one too many burglaries. The previous summer a burglar had gained access to his house through his two-year-old daughter's bedroom window. He climbed over the little girl's bed as she lay asleep. Because it was such a balmy night my friend had left his daughter's window slightly open. When I heard this, my first thought was, 'How could he have been so slack?' So adjusted had I become to the need to turn one's home into a fortress that I found it unnatural to allow air into a stuffy room. That an intruder would climb in I took, by contrast, as utterly normal. The burglar managed to steal a few items before my friend heard a noise and woke up. In his rushed exit, the burglar dropped the eight-inch kitchen knife he was carrying. My friend is an old-fashioned lefty, someone who sincerely believes that it's social injustice that causes crime, and he was a little red-faced when I brought attention to the baseball bat. But he admitted that he hadn't been sleeping too well in the months following the break-in. It wasn't the worry about losing a VCR that was causing his insomnia. Like any father, he was troubled by the thought that an armed stranger had been in his daughter's bedroom.

There's at least a vague agreement among progressive people that if you live in reasonable accommodation you are asking for trouble. To occupy a decent house, after all, is to provoke the less fortunate. In reality this is a double insult to the less fortunate. First, it assumes that their means of addressing inequality is criminality. And second, it overlooks the fact that it is the less fortunate who are more often burgled.

The standard liberal view of the police is a complex and sometimes mystifying affair. By convention they are perceived as the enforcers of a conservative status quo, Little Englanders in blue, restrictive, authoritarian, abusers of the poor and minorities, defenders of 'them' rather than 'us'. That image has changed a little in the post-Macpherson era but a good liberal still errs in favour of not trusting the police. We want them to back off, we don't want them to stop and search, we don't want them to carry arms, and most of all we want them to be there instantly to deal with any situation that threatens physical danger.

It's looking more and more like Anthony Burgess was only slightly ahead of his time for England...

Seriously, read the whole thing. The poor guy's been mugged by reality, and finds that a lot of the things he thought he knew and attitudes he'd been embracing which were supposed to make the world a better place are actually making the cultural situation in the UK a whole lot worse. I hope this makes it over here to the US. It's not published yet - but if it does get published here Stateside, I've got a few folks I want to give it to.

J.

The day reality hit home | Review | The Observer

The writer Andrew Anthony was a committed member of the liberal left - until the attacks of 11 September, 2001. A veteran of CND and Nicaraguan solidarity campaigns, he was astonished at the liberal left's anti-American reaction. And so he began to question other basic assumptions about race, crime and terror - a political journey he charts here, in these exclusive extracts from his compelling new book.

I'm... well, I know that things are different in England. I realize that there's a lot more restrictions on what they can say or do - and that a lot of the things we take for granted, they cannot. (Free TV, for one thing.)

But - I'm rather puzzled at a number of the assumptions that he lives under. I find them almost unbelieveable.

For some time in the post-Soviet era, as America established its position as the sole superpower, a West-based movement had been growing that rejected the spread of free-market capitalism and the Western values that underpinned the global market. Known as anti-globalisation, it drew attention to the poverty and deprivation that was such a common feature of life in the Third World. But it also posed some stark existential questions about the Western way of life. 'What was the point?' the anti-globalisers seemed to be asking, all we do is buy stuff, turn everywhere into a market, and force McDonald's and Starbucks down other people's throats. Our culture is nothing but consumption. As the anti-globalist writer Naomi Klein argued a few weeks after 11 September: 'Part of the disorientation many Americans now face has to do with the inflated and oversimplified place consumerism plays in the American narrative. To buy is to be. To buy is to love. To buy is to vote.'

In the end I reached the conclusion that 11 September had already brutally confirmed: there were other forces, far more malign than America, that lay in wait in the world. But having faced up to the basic issue of comparative international threats, could I stop the political reassessment there? If I had been wrong about the relative danger of America, could I be wrong about all the other things I previously held to be true? I tried hard to suppress this thought, to ring-fence the global situation, grant it exceptional status and keep it in a separate part of my mind. I had too much vested in my image of myself as a 'liberal'. I had bought into the idea, for instance, that all social ills stemmed from inequality and racism. I knew that crime was solely a function of poverty. That to be British was cause for shame, never pride. And to be white was to bear an unshakable burden of guilt. I held the view, or at least was unprepared to challenge it, that it was wrong to single out any culture for censure, except, of course, Western culture, which should be admonished at every opportunity. I was confident, too, that Israel was the source of most of the troubles in the Middle East. These were non-negotiables for any right-thinking decent person. I couldn't question these received wisdoms without questioning my own identity. And I had grown too comfortable with seeing myself as one of the good guys, the well-meaning people, to want to do anything that upset that image. I viewed myself as understanding, and to maintain that self-perception it was imperative that I didn't try to understand myself.

Seems to me his 'non-negotiables' need to be re-examined. I think some of them are badly out of date and poisonously moldy.

And in my case, as with many people from the liberal-left side of the political spectrum, that job was made more difficult by the fact that the United States was the victim. From where I came from, the United States was always the culprit. There was Vietnam, Chile and the dreadful support for repressive and often debauched regimes right across Latin America, Africa and Asia. I was a veteran of CND anti-cruise missile marches in the 1980s. I had gone to Nicaragua to defend the Sandinista cause against American imperialism. America was the bad guy, right? America was always the bad guy.

Clearly some basic moral calculations needed to be performed. Which vision of the world represented more closely my own liberal outlook? The cosmopolitan city of New York, a multi-racial city of opportunity, a town where anyone on earth could arrive and thrive, exuberant, cultured, diverse, a place I had visited and loved for its liberty and energy and excitement? Or the people who attacked it, those arid minds who wanted to remove women from sight, kill homosexuals, banish music, destroy art, the demolishers of the Bamiyan Buddhas who aimed to terrorise everyone they could into submission to the will of their vengeful God? It was, as they say, a no-brainer, or should have been.

But was there not also an obligation to ask if this heinous crime was more complex than it first appeared?

He then goes into a rather odd examination of crime in England. The idea of self-defense, or defense of others, has pretty much fallen by the wayside. Instead, you're supposed to wait for the police.

After the third burglary, I bought a baseball bat for protection, and on a visit to a friend's house I noticed that he had the same make of bat in his bedroom. I guessed he hadn't suddenly developed a taste for American sports. He too had suffered one too many burglaries. The previous summer a burglar had gained access to his house through his two-year-old daughter's bedroom window. He climbed over the little girl's bed as she lay asleep. Because it was such a balmy night my friend had left his daughter's window slightly open. When I heard this, my first thought was, 'How could he have been so slack?' So adjusted had I become to the need to turn one's home into a fortress that I found it unnatural to allow air into a stuffy room. That an intruder would climb in I took, by contrast, as utterly normal. The burglar managed to steal a few items before my friend heard a noise and woke up. In his rushed exit, the burglar dropped the eight-inch kitchen knife he was carrying. My friend is an old-fashioned lefty, someone who sincerely believes that it's social injustice that causes crime, and he was a little red-faced when I brought attention to the baseball bat. But he admitted that he hadn't been sleeping too well in the months following the break-in. It wasn't the worry about losing a VCR that was causing his insomnia. Like any father, he was troubled by the thought that an armed stranger had been in his daughter's bedroom.

There's at least a vague agreement among progressive people that if you live in reasonable accommodation you are asking for trouble. To occupy a decent house, after all, is to provoke the less fortunate. In reality this is a double insult to the less fortunate. First, it assumes that their means of addressing inequality is criminality. And second, it overlooks the fact that it is the less fortunate who are more often burgled.

The standard liberal view of the police is a complex and sometimes mystifying affair. By convention they are perceived as the enforcers of a conservative status quo, Little Englanders in blue, restrictive, authoritarian, abusers of the poor and minorities, defenders of 'them' rather than 'us'. That image has changed a little in the post-Macpherson era but a good liberal still errs in favour of not trusting the police. We want them to back off, we don't want them to stop and search, we don't want them to carry arms, and most of all we want them to be there instantly to deal with any situation that threatens physical danger.

It's looking more and more like Anthony Burgess was only slightly ahead of his time for England...

Seriously, read the whole thing. The poor guy's been mugged by reality, and finds that a lot of the things he thought he knew and attitudes he'd been embracing which were supposed to make the world a better place are actually making the cultural situation in the UK a whole lot worse. I hope this makes it over here to the US. It's not published yet - but if it does get published here Stateside, I've got a few folks I want to give it to.

J.

Clinton, McCain split on Iraq pullout - Yahoo! News

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - New military tactics in Iraq are working but the best way to honor U.S. soldiers is "by beginning to bring them home," Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton told war veterans Monday.
ADVERTISEMENT

Clinton, seeking the Democratic nomination for president, praised the work that soldiers have done in Iraq but described the government there as "on vacation," leaving American troops in the middle of a sectarian war.

J.

Clinton, McCain split on Iraq pullout - Yahoo! News

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - New military tactics in Iraq are working but the best way to honor U.S. soldiers is "by beginning to bring them home," Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton told war veterans Monday.
ADVERTISEMENT

Clinton, seeking the Democratic nomination for president, praised the work that soldiers have done in Iraq but described the government there as "on vacation," leaving American troops in the middle of a sectarian war.

J.

FOXNews.com - Texas Entrepreneur Set to Start Building DeLorean Cars - Business And Money | Business News | Financial News

HUMBLE, Texas — In a nondescript warehouse in east Texas, mechanic and entrepreneur Stephen Wynne is bringing a rare sports car back to life. If he succeeds, he almost certainly has Michael J. Fox to thank.
A quarter century after DeLorean Motor Co. began making its glitzy, $25,000 two-seater — an operation that collapsed after two years — Wynne's small automotive outfit plans to bring the vehicle back into limited production at a 40,000-square-foot factory in this Houston suburb.

Of course, it IS an English car, so with the electricals by Lucas, you'd better get home by dark.

J.

Wow.

Yeah, it's time to change systems...

Well, they made it home, that's the important thing... for now. And with three years remaining on the system, there may not be as much of a push to find a good solution as there should otherwise be.

It'll be interesting to see what comes of this, if anything.

J.

Google Earth opens new ‘Sky’ for stargazers - Space News - MSNBC.com

Google Earth has launched a new feature called Sky, a “virtual telescope” that the company hopes will turn millions of Internet users into stargazers.

Get It Here.

Enjoy!

J.

Thanks to the magic of the internet, a high-speed connection, and Amazon UnBox, I've watched the first episode of "Heroes". It's interesting - watching how the characters realize what's going on and start adjusting to that knowledge.

I'll try another episode or two, see if it maintains the quality. I've just finished the last available episodes of Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis - so I'll have to find something new to watch late at night... this might be it.

Or does anyone have any suggestions?

J,

Well, kind of. Which man? Specifically, Andrew Anthony - who

Comment is free: Wake up to reality - and sense

It's impossible to quantify how much dogma has been swallowed by guilty liberals down the years but I know I've silently consumed a hefty chunk myself. Better not question this or that received wisdom, it might seem right-wing. Thus some key liberal principles have slowly been subverted. Free speech, it turns out, comes at a cost than many liberals are unprepared to pay: witness the lame response to The Satanic Verses, Behzti and the Danish cartoons. Female equality, once a defining principle of liberalism, is now routinely discussed in terms of a cultural luxury. The issue of race appears to have become mired in anti-racist rhetoric and practice that often emphasises and maintains racial division. And gay rights are in danger of being filed under the heading of western decadence.

Naturally, if one ever attempts to draw attention to this phenomenon, one is accused of building straw men. In a way, Cif has put flesh on the straw, bringing these censorial voices out into the open, albeit under the protective cloak of anonymity. And I think this has been a healthy and demystifying development for liberal debate. When you're first called a Nazi for, say, objecting to the preaching of racial hatred by religious leaders, it's actually quite unsettling. You think: No, I'm opposed to the very concept of racial determination; No, I believe firmly in freedom of expression (in which people are free also to criticise what's expressed); No, I don't recall calling for concentration camps and gas chambers.

In other words, you take the insult seriously. But then you quickly learn to dismiss it for what it is: nonsense. My book, which takes the form of a polemical memoir, is essentially an invitation to the reader and liberals in general to dismiss nonsense and assert sense. It's a call to reconsider liberal values and to appreciate the extraordinary achievements and benefits of liberal democracy. And no, it's not an argument that liberal democracy should be imposed on authoritarian regimes by western military intervention. But it is an argument against inviting authoritarian ideology in through the back door in the west out of some misplaced sympathy for Third World extremists.

J.

Not too shabby. It's nicely woven, but not so paced that I don't feel I can't look away for a moment. It's definitely a trifle gruesome, and adult - but that's accceptable. I'm not going to be watching this with the little guy around, that's for sure.

It does make you think a bit about heroism - what separates the villian from the hero? Simple PR? Cultural biases? (I think that's part of it - a suicide bomber is seen as a hero by his culture, and a villian outside of it.) And what is it inside the man that preps them to be a hero when the occasion requires? Indoctrination? A sense of higher calling? Or a thought like "Damn, I've got to do something..."?

Heroism... In our sports figures... well, they used to be heroes. Any more - you've got some rather interesting characters and a lot of disfunctional behavior that I'd have a hard time trying to put in a heroic context. And we won't talk about the celebrity 'heroes' - although that's a lot more about notoriety than heroic action...

It's interesting that in our culture, we've slipped a bit away from the concept of heroism as being something involved in saving lives (ordinary heroism, like the military, firemen and police) and instead seem to concentrate the idea of heroism on those who haven't earned it through works and deeds, but have purchased it through celebrity and publicity. The activist is the 'hero', as is the politician.

Yes, decidedly - heroism is subjective.

J.

Only person in the shop, no calls as of yet (they dumped six or seven on us yesterday around 3:30... well, pacing has never been the help desk's forte'.) so time to just ramble a bit...

You may notice I've changed the tag line above. The little guy's taking Latin, and I thought it was about time to swap things out.

The MegaMillions lottery is up to $201 mil. I know the odds of winning that are ridiculously long, but it's a slow day here in the salt mine, so I'll just fantasize a bit, okay?

I'd probably want to get it in a lump sum. This'll take that $200 mil and whittle it down to about $150. The IRS will want their ton of flesh, so if I end up with $85 mil I'll be doing good.

And then - what's next?

$35 mil into a high-yield account. ING Direct has an interest rate of 4.5% - that'll give an income of about $1.5 mil a year. I can live with that. (Evil Grin...) That's set-aside cash, not to be touched.

Around the house... we'd pay it off, of course. Finish out the basement, redo the driveway. Get a landscaping crew in to resod the front yard and see what can be done about those miserable little bloodsucking mosquitos that make our backyard nearly unusable. Redo the air conditioning, finish replacing the single-pane windows with double-pane. We've talked about remodeling the upstairs bathrooms, don't see why that couldn't be done. The house is comfortable, we like the area, I don't see any reason to pull up stakes and move elsewhere.

We'd take care of the relatives, of course. Who and how much to be determined. Mother and Father wouldn't have to worry about money ever again (not that they worry much about it now...) and my brother would be the recipient of a trust fund.

The church we used to go to, Hollydale Methodist, would get a significant bequest. I doubt their financial state's any better than it was before we moved, and a little extra money would go a long way there... We'd give some to the little guy's school, and the church we go to now. There's a number of third-world microcap loan funds that would receive operating capital, as well as charities such as UMCOR.

Figure about $2, 3 mil for that. I'd put another $7 mil away at 4% to serve as annual charitable giving.

That would leave $40 mil. You can do a lot of damage with that amount of dough!

It seems to me that a lot of people think the government should be in charge of funding things like art, culture, and scientific investigation. Well, in the case of art and culture I think the record is decidedly mixed. In the case of science... I'm really rather conflicted there. I grew up during the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo flights, and thought it was clear that government funding of the space program was the way it should go. My views over the last three decades have changed significantly on that - and with the recent explosion (um, no pun intended on that) of commerical space startups it's looking more and more like government's been the problem, not the solution. Government has no real incentive to make access to space cheap, as long as they're the sole providers of that access. Neither is there an incentive to innovate - innovation involves risk, and the government space programs are seemingly very risk-adverse. (And that's kind of odd when you think of it - sending people up into orbit on a controlled explosion is seen as 'acceptably safe', but developing a new launch vehicle has been seen as too risky to contemplate - unless it's a test bed setup like Lockheed's VentureStar.)

So what I'd attempt to do is create a foundation or think-tank. Identify emerging technologies that could benefit from a modest infusion of cash - certainly not government-scale - and see about kickstarting the future. Blue-sky ideas, alternate energy, odd shoestring operations with significant potential, that sort of thing. Things like the Moller Skycar MIGHT get a second look, but it's hard to tell. Looks more like they need a LARGE chunk'o'cash, and their technological developement's coming along fairly well. The FreedomShip is something else I'd take a look at - but there's been so little activity on that for so long that I think it's dead.

One immediate thing I'd look at is Bussard's Polywell reactor. I understand SpaceDev is currently storing his equipment - think $3 to 5 mil would be enough to get it out of hock and get the 1.5 meter prototype under construction? This is the closest thing I see to a potential "Mr. Fusion" on the horizon. There's also OTPU's idea about the pebble-bed reactor providing power to crack oil out of coal and oil shale, and a number of biowaste to oil projects. That'd take a significant chunk of money, though, just for the reactor. But it could be used to bootstrap a project...

And perhaps even venture into diamonds... after all, this is blue-sky stuff.

Naturally, I'd need an office, and a staff of folks as nuts as I am. Let's see - I'd need an accountant, an office manager, a lawyer, and three or four people who'd be willing to find new ideas, then travel and scope them out with both a credulous and critical eye, and be able to write a decent report on what they saw.

But first, there's winning the lottery. THAT'S the hard part! (grin)

J.

Lockheed Martin MULE - Climbing Military Vehicle - Video - Popular Mechanics

It’s a chilling milestone, even for a military robot: Lockheed Martin’s MULE (Multifunction Utility/Logistics and Equipment) has autonomously clambered over a 5-ft.-high obstacle. The Humvee-size vehicle uses six independently powered wheels and an articulated suspension to navigate rubble-strewn terrain or, as in a recent promo video (see below), to climb buglike over a car hood. Three types of MULEs are planned, all intended to dutifully follow dismounted infantry units. A heavily armed 2.5-ton version could be deployed by the Army by 2013.

I'd say we've got a candidate for a Mark 1 Bolo, with a bit more armnament.

J.

My Way News - Help Wanted Ads Go Unanswered in West

HELENA, Mont. (AP) - The owner of a fast food joint in Montana's booming oil patch found himself outsourcing the drive-thru window to a Texas telemarketing firm, not because it's cheaper but because he can't find workers.

Record low unemployment across parts of the West has created tough working conditions for business owners, who in places are being forced to boost wages or be creative to fill their jobs.

John Francis, who owns the McDonald's in Sidney, Mont., said he tried advertising in the local newspaper and even offered up to $10 an hour to compete with higher-paying oil field jobs. Yet the only calls were from other business owners upset they would have to raise wages, too. Of course, Francis' current employees also wanted a pay hike.

"I don't know what the answer is," Francis said. "There's just nobody around that wants to work."

It's interesting to consider, however - if there's sufficient well-paying jobs around that pay significantly better than the starter jobs, why would a teen start out at the bottom of the ladder instead of a step up? There's nothing magical about low-wage jobs, after all, and no guarantee that you'll always have a labor pool in the sub-$10 pay range.

That there isn't one says a lot about the area's job prospects.

J.

No, let me change that. "Sheer, malignant, hateful idiocy." That's a bit better.

Martin Lewis: General Pace, You Can Save the US - by Arresting Bush for "Conduct Unbecoming" - Politics on The Huffington Post

So they'd rather toss out our current system of checks and balances, and make sure that at any time the military could come in and arrest the President if someone disagrees loudly enough. Yeah, that'd be really great for the country.

Never mind the fact that the actions called for by Mr. Lewis would be a defacto military coup - amd there's very little possibility that such a thing would even be considered by the military, and for damn sure it wouldn't be considered legit. He doesn't see the checks and balances, not to mention traditions, that make such a thing pretty much impossible. As with so many on the left, what they WANT is more important than what IS.

Please notice which side wants to suspend the rules, and do anything, ANYTHING to hurt Bush and get him out of office. Less than a year and a half, and they're talking a military coup to get Bush out of office NOW. Welcome to the Third World. Have you hugged a banana today?

A military coup. And though the author hasn't apparently thought out the end state here - he's saying the President should be arrested by the military, but NOT removed from his position as President. But you don't get one without the other. He's calling for a military coup, no matter the pretty phrasing and verbal twisting he's trying to cover it up with.

To which I have only two words....

"President Cheney".

Careful what you wish for, Sparky. You might just get it.

J.

Fragmentation... or fratricide.

DNC strips Fla. of delegates -- primary wouldn't count

The Democratic Party has taken a swipe at the nation's fourth biggest state, stripping Florida of all of its '08 delegates as punishment for jumping the gun with its Jan. 29 primary. Florida's early date could force other states to move up and up to stay at the front of the pack.

Under a nearly unanimous vote taken moments ago by a powerful committee of the Democratic National Committee, if things don’t change, Florida’s primary will be a "beauty contest" — the delegates won’t count toward the party’s presidential nomination.

I keep getting this vision of the Democratic Party as a hollow shell, with the folks inside it trying hard to shore up crumbling walls as they try desperately to keep people from seeing just how empty it is despite all the rhetoric.

J.

But it brought tears to my eyes, I was laughing so hard.

YouTube - All-Bran Construction Worker

The dump truck, especially! Man, that All-Bran'll do the job, won't it?

And from the Land Down Under...

Okay, I'm seeing a trend here. That'll do for now.

J.

Badgers Forward: New Glass

We descend off the bridge and that's when you notice the change. When we arrived here the main broad boulevard that traverse the east-west route through the city, with the broad sidewalks had been narrowed down to two and sometimes one lane by concrete barriers, concertina, and debris.

Today the boulevard is wide open and people are walking the streets. Women in abayah's, men in dishdasha, soccer attire, and a few in suits talking on their cell phones. Some people ignore our small convoy, some look suspiciously, and some wave.

There at the first corner, I see it. New glass. Someone has put new glass in a shop. Someone only installs new glass when they think it won't get broken. New glass is confidence.

Better not let Obama and Hillary know about this, much less Reid and Pelosi. They'd probably go and break it out just to keep the "We're losing" meme alive.

J.

I think it safe to say that the readers of my blog have something resembling normal eyesight. And also that they're able to get around with a minimal amount of assistance. And that they can walk, navigate from room to room and through using their eyesight avoid obstacles in their path.

It's something we take pretty much for granted - to ability to look ahead, while walking or driving, and avoid obstacles. That's how progress is made in pretty much any instance, in any science - we move foreward, avoid mistakes, change course as need be.

The funny thing I see, however, in the self-described 'progressive' community, is an incredible obsession with the past. If there's something that has been done, anything that's consided bad or reprehensible in recorded history, that thing is still alive and current as if it were happening in real time. Slavery is still alive in the United States - because it was once the cutsom. Segregation? Still alive. My Lai massacre? Still going on. Watergate? Every mistake made in prosecuting the WoT? It's happening now. Everything bad, everything considered wrong, every slip and mistake - it's all current and alive.

The past is all that's important. The future doesn't matter and no amount of insistance that we have to look ahead and plan to avoid obstacles in our path will get the attention of those looking to the past.

We see some of this in Congress these days. There's what, over 300 investigations launched by the current congress, and 600 oversight hearings? It's probably a good thing - they're so busy with investigations they can't do much damage through legislation.

But they sure as hell aren't making much in the way of progress on getting anything done. When you're focused on where you've been, you ignore completely what's in front of you. Oh, you may be thinking about the dangers ahead, but you're too busy studying that last pothole you hit to realize you're about to have your front axle torn off or you're about to drive into a wall.

Think about walking down a forest trail, one you haven't been on before. You're looking around, looking ahead, looking down so you don't trip over something and hurt yourself.

Now - think about that same unknown trail, and try walking it backwards. Under no circumstances can you allow yourself to look ahead - at the very most you can examine the trail to your side. You can see where you've been, and if you look carefully at how the trail angles at your side you can somewhat predict where the trail's going. But you won't be able to see any obstacles on the trail, you won't be able to change your path to avoid them, and it's simply a matter of time until you whack hard into something you don't like.

Now let's try another scenario. Get in your car. Black out your windshield, and the front half of the side windows. Leave the rear view mirrors workable. In fact, make them as big as you want.

Start your engine - and try driving forward. On a road you don't know.

How far until you wreck?

The Democratic Party at this time seem obsessed with what's behind, and oblivious to what's before them. Belatedly, it seems they're finally figuring out that they need to actually have a plan for the '08 elections, and that running against Bush isn't going to cut it. Now there's plenty of internal sniping among the 'leadership', and the overall cooperation between the various factions isn't exactly smooth. It'll be interesting to see what they come up with in '08 - and indicative of what they're actually thinking. (And if Pelosi/Reid are what the future holds - we're in trouble.)

You cannot get somewhere by concentrating on where you've been. You cannot plan for the future by focusing only on the past. You can, you MUST use the past as a guide - learn from it, not obsess over it - but you can't use it as your map for going forward. The course is constantly changing, and the obstacles aren't what they were.

Will the left, will the Democrats focus on the past to the exclusion of everything else, or look toward the future? Time will tell - but focusing on the past isn't likely to get them much support. They need a vision for the future - and so far I haven't seen much of it.

J.

Chicago scraps plans for citywide Wi-Fi - Wireless World - MSNBC.com

CHICAGO - An ambitious plan to blanket the city with wireless broadband Internet will be shelved because it is too costly and too few residents would use it, Chicago officials said Tuesday.
"We realized — after much consideration — that we needed to reevaluate our approach to provide universal and affordable access to high speed Internet as part of the city's broader digital inclusion efforts," Chicago's chief information officer, Hardik Bhatt, said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Chicago will be among the first three cities nationwide to have access to a new high-speed wireless network that's part of an emerging technology called WiMax.

J.

Power and Control: Bussard Reactor Funded?

I just received an e-mail claiming that the Navy has funded Dr. Bussard to complete his WB-7 fusion reactor experiment. In addition the e-mail claims the Navy is on board for the full up power demo if the WB-7 results are positive.

If I get further confirmation on this and permission to post it, I will. ASAP!

New Energy and Fuel has a bit more to say on the subject. I can confirm (second and third hand) all the points he makes. It is very likely that we have the same sources.

J.

The Steampunk Workshop

And his LCD Flat Panel mod... it's art. Seriously.

J.

It's... difficult for the Iraqis to understand our political system and the games played within it. (Hell, I've got problems with it myself.) But the overt, noisy political stands that are being taken by a lot of those inside the Beltway are not establishing a whole lot of trust in the people of Iraq.

Pajamas Media: Looking Iraqis in the Eye

Who can say that the morale of ordinary Iraqis and American soldiers was not damaged when one of the most powerful men in America, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, stood in front of the world and declared, “I believe… that this war is lost.” Who can expect them to ignore the defeatist postures of men and women like John Kerry, Richard Durbin, Edward Kennedy, John Murtha, Jack Reed, John Conyers and Nancy Pelosi? Who can forget the media deification of people like Cindy Sheehan and groups like International A.N.S.W.E.R and Code Pink, who are far more concerned with pushing a radical social and political agenda than they are with bringing peace and stability to Iraq?

Iraqis watch us, and they listen to us. What they hear from some of our politicians, political activists and cultural elites has made many of them reluctant to work with the Americans in bringing security to their country. Many Iraqis are afraid of what they are hearing from the Democratic Party leadership and their media shills – that America will abandon them. And as long as they are afraid, they will be reluctant to seize the initiative in their towns and villages and chase out those who are murdering their families.

That reluctance makes sense, since if the Americans leave now, as the Democrats are urging, the murderers will rule them. And the murderers will hunt down and kill anyone who ever worked with or cooperated with Americans.

It worked in Viet Nam.

However - the communications out of that country weren't quite so 'open' as they are now with Iraq. There's a lot of people doing independent reporting, and getting attention. It's not like 1973, where the Big Three had a whole hour of evening news... and that was it. The internet will no longer allow that sort of clamp-down on what's being reported, and the perceived reliability of the major media isn't exactly high at this point. Heck, even Walter Cronkheit would have a tough time being trusted.

IF we pull out, you can expect there to be a lot of coverage of the mess. In full, graphic, real-time color. And there's no way the Democrats could hide behind a 'We didn't know that would happen!' facade this time around.

During my last three weeks in Iraq I worked in Anbar Province, which the U.S. media once proclaimed had been lost to al-Qaeda. I walked among hundreds of Iraqi workers and saw no violence, no chaos, and no death – only steady progress on a construction project vital to Anbar’s economic resurrection. I met with a mayor - a tribal sheikh whose town was freed from Islamist thugs last year by US Marines. He was pleased with his people’s improving lot and was extremely optimistic about his town’s economic future. Sick of the killing that had gone on at the hands of terrorist invaders, he had learned to trust Americans enough to work with the U.S. Marines in driving the terrorists out. Now his town is safe and headed towards normalcy.

That dynamic, driven by trust, has been repeated throughout Anbar Province, and beyond. It shows what can be accomplished in Iraq if America does not lose its nerve there, if trust between America and Iraq is nurtured, given time to develop, not subverted by cynical politicians and fellow-traveling ideologues amplified by a hateful press.

It shows what is possible when America keeps its word.

A brief recap - We promised support to the government of Viet Nam when we pulled out in '73. They were holding their own pretty well until we cut that support in '75. The Democrats cut it - not the Republicans. The government of South Viet Nam fell, hundreds of thousands died, hundreds of thousands left the country. We won't talk about Cambodia, and the dead there.

Now we can see a setting up of the same situation. Who says history doesn't repeat itself? I fear we're about to set up the same scenario in Iraq - and it's pretty plain that the results are going to repeat themselves.

Yes, we'll give you lifetime support... as long as your lifetime doesn't extend past the next switch from one party to the other.

J.

You ever wonder if the video "Thriller" change the genre of pop music to the point where dancing ability was much more important than vocal talent?

That might explain why there don't seem to be many new groups in the national spotlight. And also might explain the dearth of individual singers. as opposed to what seems (in retrospect) like an explosion of music in '80s. After all - it takes a fair bit of talent and no little physical conditioning to both sing AND do calisthenics.

Personally? I wish the two genres (music and dance) were separated considerably more than they are at the present time....

J.