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Thailand's friends: The European Commission

This is sick... I know that the EU's have put a lot of government subsidies into the French Airbus and they need to sell a bunch of their new A380 Jumbos but this is sick. Hat tip to Mover Mike -- a new arrival on the blog 'scene': bq. Tsunami-hit Thais told: Buy six planes or face EU tariffs

TSUNAMI-struck Thailand has been told by the European Commission that it must buy six A380 Airbus aircraft if it wants to escape the tariffs against its fishing industry.

bq. This is not a good time to get tough with Thailand. The article Mike links to is in The Scotsman - it goes on to say: bq. While aid workers from across Europe are helping to rebuild Thai livelihoods, trade officials in Brussels are concluding a jets-for-prawns deal, which they had hoped to announce next month. bq. As the world’s largest producer of prawns, Thailand has become so efficient that its wares are half the price of those caught by Norway, the main producer of prawns for the EU. bq. To ensure the Thais cannot compete, EU officials five years ago removed its shrimp industry from the EU’s generalised system of preferential tariffs - designed to share Western wealth with developing countries by trade. bq. The EU has instead slapped a tariff of 12 per cent on its fish - three times that imposed on prawns from Malaysia, its neighbour. And whatever happened to the concept of Free Trade?

Barbara Boxer - Fake but accurate

Mike King at Ramblings' Journal takes a look at what California Senator Barbara Boxer said during Condi Rice's confirmation hearings and fact checks her ass: bq. Boxer gets caught in her own lie Senator Barbara Boxer (Raving Moonbat-CA), in her zeal to try to attack Secretary of State-designee Condoleezza Rice during confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill yesterday, falsely insisted that WMD was the only thing that Congress voted on when authorizing military action in Iraq. bq. BOXER: Well, you should read what we voted on when we voted to support the war, which I did not, but most of my colleagues did. It was WMD, period. That was the reason and the causation for that, you know, particular vote. bq. Boxer has been so enamored by the notion of attacking the Administration that she obviously didn't do her homework before spouting her lies. Boxer failed to note that seven different points were included in the authorization, contrary to her insistance otherwise. bq. To coin a phrase, let's go to the videotape!

1. Iraq's harboring of Al-Queda terrorists

2. Iraq's support for International Terrorism

3. Iraq's "brutal repression" of its citizens

4. Iraq's failure to repatriate or give information on non-Iraqi citizens detained and captured during Gulf War I, including an American serviceman.

5. Failing to properly return property wrongfully seized during the Kuwait invasion

6. The attempted assassination of former President Bush in 1993

7. America's national security interests in restoring peace and stability to the Persian Gulf

bq. Mind you, this does not include the enforcement of the United Nations resolutions (that everyone from the Left to the UN itself seems to so conveniently forget in their ongoing endeavor to attack this President and this Administration). Indeed... WMDs were only a very minor aspect of the compelling reasons. And if we want to talk about WMDs, lets take a look at what people were saying: If The Bush Administration Lied About WMD, So Did These People -- Version 3.0 Two sample quotes: bq. "Iraq made commitments after the Gulf War to completely dismantle all weapons of mass destruction, and unfortunately, Iraq has not lived up to its agreement." -- Barbara Boxer, November 8, 2002 bq. "The threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but as I said, it is not new. It has been with us since the end of that war, and particularly in the last 4 years we know after Operation Desert Fox failed to force him to reaccept them, that he has continued to build those weapons. He has had a free hand for 4 years to reconstitute these weapons, allowing the world, during the interval, to lose the focus we had on weapons of mass destruction and the issue of proliferation." -- John Kerry, October 9, 2002

Mark your calendars

As Professor Bainbridge notes: bq. Something to look forward to Misery is expected to peak on Monday, as 24 January has been pinpointed as the worst day of the year. (link)

World Power Systems

Stumbled across this page while looking for something else and spent the next hour browsing around. If you are into art, old computers (drum memory and vacuum tubes), and very strange creations that seem to date from the Cold War era but don't quite seem real, check out Tom Jennings website: World Power Systems People who have been online before the Internet came into being will recognize that name as one of the chief architects of the FidoNet Computer BBS system. Fascinating stuff: Model 23 Trinitite Box

This is was first WPS product. The heart of the device is a tiny diorama, water colors on lead, with a reactor-shielding lead glass window, revealing a view, north and east, from the stolen McDonald Ranch, towards the Oscura Mountains, not quite north enough to encompass the Trinity Site; the soil and rock in the foreground is a recently-native form of man-made rock called trinitite. It is mildly radioactive (only four times average background radiation at sea level; quite safe within or without its little box). In the sky is the window of a Geiger-Mueller tube; with each disintegration of Cesium-137 within the trinitite a beta particle is emitted; those that reach the G-M tube cause a small spark within the tube, made audible with electronics inside the Model 23. Each same spark, processed by other electronics within, triggers one view of each of the frames on the film strip, projected badly on a tiny viewing screen visible in the viewing hood, after the red start switch is pressed. Some of the front-panel controls affect operation of the device.

Parse this phrase:

From CNN News Nation split on Bush as uniter or divider C'mon now -- who was the editor on that one... The article refers to a telephone poll: bq. Forty-nine percent of 1,007 adult Americans said in phone interviews they believe Bush is a "uniter," according to the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Wednesday. Another 49 percent called him a "divider," and 2 percent had no opinion. Of course, there is no mention of where the sample was taken from or who did the polling. They claim 95% accuracy but do not back this up with data. Shades of this technique.

The end of comment spam

Finally... One of the "joys" of running a blog is that people will read an article and post a comment to it. One of the down sides is that these comments can be totaly unrelated to the topic and be actual advertisements for pron or gambling sites or mail-order drugs... The people leaving this spam are not directly interested in having you read the comment, they are looking to increase their websites visibility with search engines like Google. From Slashdot: Google Cans Comment Spam bq. "Comment spam is in many ways even more annoying than regular email spam, since you generally have to do more than just hit the delete button to get rid of it. Its defining characteristic is that spammers abuse websites where the public can add content (blogs, wikis, forums, and even top referrer lists) to increase their own ranking in search engines. It seems, however, that the days of content spam are numbered: today Google announced that, in partnership with MSN Search and Yahoo!, that they have implemented a way to block content spam." COOL!!!

Christian Charity @work

Christian relief workers in India have been helping a lot. Almost. The people from Samanthapettai have this story (via Yahoo/ANI) bq. Rage and fury has gripped this tsunami-hit tiny Hindu village in India's southern Tamil Nadu after a group of Christian missionaries allegedly refused them aid for not agreeing to follow their religion. bq. Samanthapettai, near the temple town of Madurai, faced near devastation on the December 26 when massive tidal waves wiped it clean of homes and lives. bq. Most of the 200 people here are homeless or displaced , battling to rebuild lives and locating lost family members besides facing risks of epidemic,disease and trauma. bq. Jubilant at seeing the relief trucks loaded with food, clothes and the much-needed medicines the villagers, many of who have not had a square meal in days, were shocked when the nuns asked them to convert before distributing biscuits and water. bq. Heated arguments broke out as the locals forcibly tried to stop the relief trucks from leaving. The missionaries, who rushed into their cars on seeing television reporters and the cameras refusing to comment on the incident and managed to leave the village. bq. Disappointed and shocked into disbelief the hapless villagers still await aid. Fucktards... These people (this one relief relief group) are displaying ZERO CONCEPT of Christian Charity. I can only imagine where these asshats will be spending their eternity (and it is on a level far far below lawyers and politicians - Satan is licking his chops and looking up Kali's number on his PDA).

Talk about mixed messages...

This is cute -- from Varifrank we find out about lefties who wear blue bracelets to show their anti-bush sentiments. But from a different Frank (Taranto) at Best of the Web Today we learn that Blue Bracelets have a different meaning: bq. No Wonder They're Blue Yesterday we noted that some people are marketing blue bracelets so that disconsolate Democrats can make a public showing of their sadness. At least that's what we thought they were for. It turns out that blue bracelets have another meaning, according to an October story in the Ocala (Fla.) Star-Banner:

A new trend, which has some parents and school officials concerned and may very well shock others, has surfaced in Marion County. The newest twist on Truth or Dare, the game involves wearing colored rubber bracelets, which have various meanings, some sexual.

Students break the bracelets off one another and then are supposedly entitled to specific acts, some as innocent as a hug, others sexually explicit. . . . One e-mail from a teacher concerning the sixth-grade code stated that a red bracelet stands for a "lap dance" while a blue one symbolized oral sex.

bq. When you talk to Angry Left types, the thing they always say about the last Democratic president is: "Clinton lied about [an act of oral sex]!" Believe it or not, this is supposed to be an argument against the liberation of Iraq--but perhaps it actually does reveal something about the psychosexual development of the Angry Left. Hmmmmm...... The woman from Varifrank's website is wearing four of them! Aw crap, she is also wearing Patchuli... Forget it!

What a MEGA-putz...

From Yahoo/Reuters comes the latest bloviation from a Mr. Jan Egeland, the United Nations official who criticized the USA for being "stingy" in their aid to the Tsunami relief. bq. Disaster Looms for Megacities, UN Official Says Earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters could kill millions in the world's teeming megacities and time is running out to prevent such a catastrophe, the United Nations point man on emergency relief said on Tuesday. bq. Jan Egeland, the U.N. Director of Disaster Relief, said many of the world's megacities, including Tokyo, are extremely vulnerable to natural disasters and the poor were most at risk from a lack of investment and planning. bq. "Perhaps the most frightening prospect would be to have a truly megadisaster in a megacity," he said on the first day of a disaster prevention conference in the Japanese city of Kobe, where an earthquake killed nearly 6,500 people a decade ago. bq. "Then we could have not only a tsunami-style casualty rate as we have seen late last year, but we could see one hundred times that in a worst case." Hello??? Megacities are mega because they are prosperous. Prosperous cities suffer fewer deaths per capita during a catastrophe than poor cities. Look at Kobe ten years ago. Look at Bam, Iran. A nation of poor people with rich leaders, the mullahs. The mullah's severely limited any western aid from entering and about 40,000 people died. Bam's population is around 78,000 Kobe has a population of around 1,500,000 people and only suffered 6,500 fatalities. By my math that's about 20 times more people and 6 times fewer casualties overall. Looking at it another way: Kobe: 0.004 deaths per capita Bam: 0.5 deaths per capita Now tell me again who has the better survival rate? Mr. Egeland is falling into that same tired innumerate trap of looking at airplane crashes and decrying "how horrible they are" while failing to notice that per mile traveled, they are a lot safer than any other mode of transportation. You are more likely to die driving to the airport than taking your flight.

The relevance of the New York Times

A very interesting observation at Powerline: bq. The New York Times -- ignorant, biased, and irresponsible Last month, in response to a piece by Thomas Friedman, Rocket Man wrote that there is a serious national debate going on but "the New York Times just isn't part of it, because it operates at too low a level of information to be useful to knowledgeable news consumers." This piece by the Times' Sarah Boxer about the Iraq the Model bloggers confirms Rocket Man's judgment. It also demonstrates both the bias and the stunning irresponsibility of the author. bq. Let's start with the Times' "low level of information" (commonly known as ignorance). As Jeff Jarvis notes, two of the Iraq the Model bloggers were in this country last month. They met with President Bush and even made it to New York where they were interviewed on WNYC. The visit was reported by Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post and Dan Henninger in the Wall Street Journal, as well as by many major centrist and conservative blogs. Yet, Boxer treats the bloggers existence as a "mystery" that she discovered by searching the internet and selecting a blog that "promised three blogging brothers in one." bq. Next, bias. Boxer reports allegations by a minor left-wing fringe blogger that the three "Model" bloggers are working for the CIA. As Jarvis notes, she quotes this blogger at length, but fails to quote the many who questioned this unsupported allegation. Boxer then seizes upon the rather cryptic message of one of the brothers (Ali) about his departure from the blog, which suggested unhappiness with some Americans, but never mentions his follow-up statement in which he made clear that he did not quit because of problems with the U.S. or its policies. bq. Finally, irresponsibility. Boxer wonders aloud whether Ali is: "A C.I.A. operative? An American posing as an Iraqi? Someone paid by the Defense Department to support the war?" I leave this one to Jarvis:

So here is a reporter from The New York Times -- let's repeat that, The New York Times -- speculating in print on whether an Iraqi citizen, whose only apparent weirdness and sin in her eyes is (a) publishing and (b) supporting America, is a CIA or Defense Department plant or an American.

Ms. Boxer, don't you think you could be putting the life of that person at risk with that kind of speculation? In your own story, you quote Ali -- one of the three blogging brothers who started IraqTheModel -- saying that "here some people would kill you for just writing to an American." And yet you go so much farther -- blithely, glibly speculating about this same man working for the CIA or the DoD -- to sex up your lead and get your story atop the front of the Arts section (I'm in the biz, Boxer, I know how the game is played).

How dare you? Have you no sense of responsibility? Have you no shame?

bq. Ed Cone has more on the subject. The New York Times is in a bit of a sticky place here -- its work is journalism and anyone who cares can check it for the price of a newspaper or a few mouseclicks. They are proving themselves time and time again to be horribly out of touch with reality, Jayson Blair was only the tip of the iceberg. Main Stream Media indeed...

Bill Gates - teen heartthrob

From Slashdot comes this priceless story: bq. Bill Gates in 1983 Teen Beat Magazine So normally I resist the temptation to post this sort of thing because it just seems like a cheap shot, but I just can't hold back on this one, so Bill, if you're reading this (ya right ;) I'm sorry, but I just have to share this one. And I hope in 2021 I'm a billionaire and people are posting my yearbook pictures to take cheap shots at me too! Anyway, We recently found pictures of a photo spread Mr. Gates did in 1983 for Teen Beat magazine. Enjoy. Well, at least those are better than this one:

What everyone needs. Edition #4,738

Hat tip to Gizmodo for this link: "Personal Self-Destruct Button" The website is in Japanese but one look at this and you sort of get the idea:

Career Limiting Move

From Florida's Local6 website: bq. Women Lack 'Natural Ability' In Some Fields, Harvard President Says The president of Harvard University prompted criticism for suggesting that innate differences between the sexes could help explain why fewer women succeed in science and math careers. bq. Lawrence H. Summers, speaking Friday at an economic conference, also questioned how great a role discrimination plays in keeping female scientists and engineers from advancing at elite universities. And Summers career as President of Harvard? bq. Summers already faced criticism because the number of senior job offers to women has dropped each year of his three-year presidency. Better buff up that resume boy -- you might need it... Sheesh.

Martin Luther King

Rob over at Gut Rumbles has a very good remembrance of Martin Luther King: bq. MLK Revisited bq. I admire people of courage. bq. I'm not talking about the window-smashers and the graffitti-artists who giggle through the night committing acts of vandalism, or political operatives who play dirty tricks against the opposing campaign. That's not courage. That's the behavior of a feral rat. bq. Martin Luther King was a courageous man. He had a set of stones on him, because he walked into situations where he KNEW that he was going to get his ass whupped, have the police set dogs loose on him and probably still spend the night in jail. He did it anyway. He was willing. bq. He made a difference, too. I remember the freedom marches from when I was a boy, and some Southerners said, "kill 'em and be done with it." A few of those red-neck bastards did exactly that. But others watched and thought, "This ain't right." bq. In MY humble opinion, that's the biggest difference Martin Luther King made in this country. WHITE SOUTHERN PEOPLE of good conscience and good will could not watch the firehoses and the beatings without thinking, "This ain't right." bq. It wasn't right. And Martin Luther King made it impossible to look away and ignore that crap anymore. He made America see its own face in the mirror, and a lot of people didn't like the reflection. He changed this country. bq. Unfortunately, his legacy has gone to the dogs. And that's a crying shame for everybody in this country, black or white. Very true. A great man and unfortunately, his legacy has been taken over by people like A. Sharpton and J. Jackson. Not in the same league by any means -- not even remotely close...

Nice work if you can get it...

Ran into this story from an email list I'm on... From Reason Magazine: Cut-Rate Diplomas bq. How doubts about the government’s own “Dr. Laura” exposed a résumé fraud scandal Laura L. Callahan was very proud of her Ph.D. When she received it a few years ago, she promptly rewrote her official biography to highlight the academic accomplishment, referring to it not once or twice but nine times in a single-page summary of her career. And she never let her employees at the Labor Department, where she served as deputy chief information officer, forget it, even demanding that they call her “Doctor.” bq. Callahan’s management style had always been heavy-handed. Once, while working in a previous supervisory role at the Clinton White House, she reportedly warned computer workers to keep quiet about an embarrassing server glitch that led to the loss of thousands of archived e-mails covered by federal subpoena. But with her newly minted Ph.D., Callahan became intolerable, several employees say, belittling and even firing subordinates who did not understand the technical jargon she apparently picked up while studying for her doctorate in computer information systems. And the Ph.D in question? You bet - a diploma mill! bq. “When she was running around telling people to call her ‘Dr. Callahan,’ I asked where she got her degree,” says Richard Wainwright, a computer specialist who worked for Callahan at Labor for two years. “When I found out, I laughed.” bq. It turns out Callahan got her precious sheepskin from Hamilton University. Not Hamilton College, the highly competitive school in Clinton, New York, but Hamilton University, the unaccredited fee-for-degree “distance learning” center in Evanston, Wyoming, right on the Utah border. Such diploma mills frequently use names similar to those of accredited schools. bq. Unbeknown to Callahan, Wainwright had once lived near the small town of Evanston (population: 10,903) and knew it well. As a student at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where he received his bachelor’s degree years ago, he had made beer runs to Evanston, less than 60 miles away. He knew there were no universities there, or at least none worth attending. “Evanston doesn’t have much but a few motels and liquor stores,” he tells me. “I looked up Hamilton University on the Web and saw it was an old Motel 6, and I knew it was bogus.” So she was booted out? Not exactly: bq. Callahan’s fraud was exposed in May 2003. Curiously, she wasn’t forced to resign until March 26, 2004, after being placed on administrative leave—with pay—the previous June. That means she continued to draw her Department of Homeland Security salary of between $128,000 and $175,000 for nearly 10 months while under a serious ethical cloud. Misrepresenting qualifications on a résumé, an official bio, or an application—including submitting false academic credentials—is grounds for immediate dismissal, according to federal rules written by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Heh... Our government inaction. And some people think that big government is better.

Light blogging today...

Been doing some web development and basic organization of the studio space. Usual spew will return tomorrow! Thanks for your patience.

Rain blogging

The cold snap broke and it is raining warm and wet. About 1.8 inches by noon with estimates of five to ten over the next few days. Of course, the ground is still frozen so this makes for some high rivers. Fun stuff! My weather station is at the Brown Snout site: Maple Falls Weather

Huygens Images of Titan

There have been some amazing images of Saturn's moon Titan coming from the Huygens spacecraft. The really neat thing is that the best of them are not coming from the sponsors (European Space Agency -- ESA), they are coming from independent people downloading the raw image data. Glen at Instapundit has the link: "Open Source Processing of Huygens Images of Titan" bq. While ESA slowly releases images from Huygens, full collections of Huygens imagery have already been processed and refined well beyond anything ESA has done - and you can download them yourself. bq. See Amateur compositions of the Huygens images for one spectacular example. This mosaic shows the 'drainage systems' at Huygens landing site. This panorama - in simulated colors, shows the location where Huygens landed from the air. bq. If you scroll to the bottom of this page you can download all of the raw images yourself. bq. Why wait for ESA to get around to this - and have all the fun? Here is one sample: This image is a thumbnail, click to see full size

British toilet paper

For those that have not had the pleasure, using toilet paper in England can be an awakening experience (especially after a long night at the local). Thin Waxed Paper is about the best description I can come up with. Charmin ain't it by a long shot... Hat tip to Da Goddess for this link to the British Enlightenment:

Those Wacky Brits Are At It Again!

The British are a wee bit off. How else do you explain why it took eighteen years to find softer toilet paper??

Jan. 4, 2005 — Britain's civil service embarked on an 18-year quest for the perfect toilet paper after a doctor voiced concern about a diplomat's haemorrhoids, according to a government file made public Tuesday.

John Hunt, a London physician, wrote to the Treasury's medical adviser in 1963 after he examined Sir John Pilcher, who was Britain's ambassador to Austria and, later, Japan, the Daily Telegraph reported.

"A patient of mine ... thinks that the government lavatory paper is out of date and extremely bad for his complaint (haemorrhoids) and he has asked me if there is any chance of it being changed to a softer type," Hunt wrote.

Leave it to a diplomat to suddenly cause everyone concern over a crappy...er...substandard product.

It soon emerged that Her Majesty's Stationery Office, in charge of buying all government toilet paper, preferred the rough stuff because it cost the taxpayer less.

A lively correspondence followed, involving such interested parties as combative staff unions, the august School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (which thought hard, shiny paper was better) and the Treasury typing pool.

In the 1970s, "creped paper" gained favour as the price factor evaporated. Then in 1980, a team of epidemiologists weighed in with a report that argued that soft paper was more hygienic.

The following year, soft paper made its debut in government toilets, bringing relief to countless bureaucratic bottoms.

Ah, the beauty of bureaucracy! And everyone got paid while millions bled.

The hefty dossier was among 50,000 files brought to light Tuesday by the National Archives in Kew, west London under a Freedom of Information Act that came into effect on New Year's Day.

Thank God for the Freedom of Information Act. We couldn't live without knowing this.

I hope they can sleep better now. I know I won't be....I'll be haunted by visions of powder-wigged sphincters dancing around on cotton balls, waving pound notes. It wouldn't be so bad if John Cleese were in there, but I'm afraid he's horribly absent from the festivities.

I have had the pleasure of traveling over there a number of times and each time it was the same paper. The last time was about six years ago. It will be nice to know that something different awaits the next time over. Now if the Germans could do something about their toilets...

A Parable for our Times

WIth all the flap from the left over "No WMD's", Varifrank brings the reality of this into our culture and makes the case very very clear: bq. Welcome Neighbor! At the end of your block sits a house. Its state of disrepair and unkempt nature drives down the property values of your neighborhood. What’s worse? The home is occupied by a nefarious gang of outlaws to terrorize you and your neighbors. You stay inside; you don’t dare leave your home unoccupied for any length of time, as it will assuredly be robbed. bq. While the police are at the house once a week to check into some form of problem, they seem unable to get at the issue or to actually change anything. While there are individual arrests, the gang itself continues to occupy the house as a whole. Individual players come and go but the terror remains. You and your neighbors go to the city council to complain, only to be told that there’s nothing that can be done. They take a vote and decide to start a “neighborhood watch program” and to implement a “drug free zone”. Funds are drawn from the coffers for city workers to erect the signs on light posts in the neighborhoods. bq. Within weeks, each of the signs has been vandalized. It's today's Must Read. Go there and read it. I'll be here when you to get back... Added to the Blogroll by the way

Joel on Software

Joel Spolsky runs a software company and runs an excellent blog: "Joel on Software" I had written about him before pointing to one of his essays. I was browsing his website today and realized that he had collected all of his essays and was linking to them from one page: Joel on Software - Archive. If you are a small business person or a software developer, these are excellent reads into the current state of working in Geekdom. Good stuff!

A Modest Proposal...

Bryan at Truck and Barter got an email from a celebrity and talks about it: bq. Arctic Refuge I received an e-mail from Robert Redford forwarded to me this weekend. The text of the message can be read here. Mr. Redford, speaking on behalf of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), argues that oil exploration should be stopped in this country. Right or wrong, using the political process to inhibit exploration does not address the underlying issue of oil consumption. bq. I enjoy the beauty of Alaska, Montana, Utah and the rest of this great nation as much as anybody. However, these areas have only been opened to our exploration and enjoyment because of industries pouring billions of dollars into airports, roads, utilities and building a local economy. Allowing any special interest to deny economic self-sufficiency to these areas will effectively cut off access to all but the richest adventurers. In Alaska, the oil industry has single handedly built the economy and attracted thousands of workers, residents and visitors who would otherwise have never seen that great state. Bryan then talks about the results of Mr. Redford's proposal and offers this alternative: bq. If the FCC can auction off the national resource of bandwidth, why not auction off public land. Certainly Robert Redford could pitch-in to help his environmentalist organizations to buy a few hundred acres of the Arctic Refuge. bq. It is an honorable effort to preserve beautiful land and protect wildlife. However any effort which ignores the welfare of our human family is short-sighted. Put your money where your mouth is -- excellent idea! Some organizations are doing that already with private lands; what could be done with our public lands?

Medical Interns and Sleep

Jen and I were talking about this a few days ago... Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution writes about Medical Mistakes and sleepless Interns: bq. Medical mistakes More people die from medical mistakes each year than from highway accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS and yet physicians still resist and the public does not demand even simple reforms. bq. The New England Journal of Medicine, for example, has just published another study, as if we needed it, showing that interns who are kept awake for 30 hours straight are a danger to themselves and innocent bystanders as well as to patients:

Researchers found that interns more than doubled their risk of getting into a car accident after being on call, a stint that meant working for 32 consecutive hours with only two or three hours of sleep, on average. Interns were also nearly six times as likely to report nearly having an accident on their way home.

I wonder if there is ever going to be a reform...

Venezuela chooses the Zimbabwe model

Awww crap... Looks like another economic train-wreck with the citizens being the "beneficiaries". From Questions and Observations comes this story: bq. Maybe its because they both have "z's" in their name, but for whatever reason, the winner of the Moammar Gadhafi Human Rights Award, Venezuelan El Presidente Hugo Chavez, has decided that land redistribution is the way to go in that benighted country. bq. If you're not familiar with Zimbabwe's disasterous attempt at this very same thing, you might want to read through this blog to refresh your memory. Robert Mugabe did exactly what Chavez is considering, and the results have destroyed Zimbabwe's economy. bq. Of course, wrapped in the arrogance in which most socialists cocoon themselves, Chavez obviously believes that the idea is sound, it just hasn't been executed properly. To summarize what is happening in Zimbabwe -- it went from an exporter of food to an importer. The inflation rate is over 300%, unemployment is 70% and from a 2003 report: bq. At least 7.2 million out of Zimbabwe's population of 12 million is at risk of starvation, with deaths from Aids-related illnesses "peaking at about 2,500 per week", says Stephen Lewis, the UN's special envoy on HIV and Aids in the region. From this article: bq. He said the land reform exercise had also created numerous job opportunities, with more new farmers needing labour. "I cannot give you the exact number of jobs created so far but, yes, the agricultural sector has created most of them. In fact, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) has the same figures on unemployment, and that is what I am using." bq. But a CSO official, who declined to be identified, said the organisation had not released any statistics on the unemployment situation since 2001. Riiight -- things are just great but we cannot release hard numbers just yet... Also from the same article: bq. The CCZ noted an increase in the prices of basic foods as well as non-food items. A 50 kg bag of the staple maize meal now costs Zim $60,000 (US $10), while the price of a 750 ml bottle of cooking oil is now Zim $21,000 (US $3.67), up from Zim $16,000 (US $2.80), a gain of almost 24 percent. A perfect example of rampant inflation. The Zim Dollar used to be about $55Zim to 1$USD -- now it looks like $6,000Zim to $1USD. A workers paradise indeed...

United Nations Oil for Food scandal

Glenn at Instapundit links to a very detailed report of the Oil for Food scandal brewing at the United Nations. bq. Desert desperadoes How the United Nations' oil-for-food program was transformed into a piggy bank for Saddam Hussein and the biggest financial scandal in the world body's 60-year history bq. Fallen behind on your scandal news lately? Well, don't look now, but the doozy the United Nations has brewed up in its Iraqi oil-for-food program is about to come to full boil. The Treasury Department, the Department of Justice, the Manhattan district attorney's office, five legislative committees, at least three foreign governments, and, oh yes, the United Nations itself are asking who's responsible for the more than $4 billion in illegal kickbacks on Iraqi oil sales and goods from suppliers exporting food, medicine, and other materials to Baghdad. Former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker, who is heading the U.N.'s investigation of itself, is due to weigh in later this month with his findings and has already given a glimpse of the mess with a "provisional" assessment of a program plagued by sloppy, myopic management that may or may not turn out to have included criminal conduct. The Volcker report should be good reading, as the former Fed chief has had unfettered access to U.N. documents and personnel. U.S. News has learned that the Justice Department has lent him some experienced federal prosecutors, while the Manhattan district attorney's office is providing information gained through its subpoena power. A bit more about the top leadership at the United Nations: bq. The scandal, wherever it ultimately leads, has only deepened the already considerable woes of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. Some U.N. officials close to Annan--including Benon Sevan, named by Annan to run the program's day-to-day operations--have been tarred by the mess. Annan's son, Kojo, who had business dealings with a Swiss company that had a U.N. contract to inspect humanitarian goods brought into Iraq by the program, has also come under scrutiny. Both men have denied any wrongdoing. bq. ...The investigations, into what may be the largest financial scandal in U.N. history, come at a time when Annan is grappling with a host of other public-relations disasters, among them allegations that U.N. peacekeepers raped Congolese girls and a no-confidence vote on senior management by U.N. staffers... Funny thing - the U.N. knew about the kickbacks and did nothing (how unlike them...) bq. Summaries of U.N. sanctions committee meetings make it clear that member countries, including the United States, were aware that Saddam was attempting to game the system. More than once, committee members were shown evidence that kickbacks were being paid by aid suppliers, that Saddam was diverting aid to his military, and that Iraqi oil was being smuggled illegally. The question now for everyone examining the sieve like oil-for-food program is why so little was done to stop such abuses and what responsibility Washington may have. A Senate investigator who has reviewed some of the sanctions committee minutes told U.S. News that, overall, U.S. performance looks to have been pretty good. "When the U.S. or the Brits or the Dutch bring up a concern with the program," the investigator explained, "the Russians and the French and the Chinese stop the proper oversight." The Russians and the French again... Along with France and Russia, the Chinese also sold Saddam arms so they don't want the gravy train to stop either. The article is four pages so it's a bit of a long read but it is very well written and worth reading if you are following this scandal.

Hero of the world...

From Misanthropist comes the story of Stanislav Petrov: bq. Sirens blaring, warning lights flashing, computer screens showing nuclear missiles on their way, one man in charge of a red button labeled “START” - that’s start a retaliatory strike — and a roomful of people at their terminals and switchboards waiting for him to push it. Sound like a typical Hollywood Cold War cliffhanger? bq. It was indeed just like in the movies, says the man who was poised over the red button over twenty years ago, except “in the movies, Hollywood specialists and directors can stretch a little situation into half an hour. In our case, from the time I made the decision to when it was all over, it was five minutes max.” bq. Stanislav Petrov was a Soviet army officer monitoring the satellite system for signs of a U.S. attack, the year was 1983, and his instructions, if he detected missiles targeting the Soviet Union, were to push the button and launch a counter-offensive. bq. He didn’t. Minutes later, no missiles came; months later, the frightening data across his monitor was determined to have been a system glitch. Today, the Association of World Citizens is calling him “the forgotten hero of our time,” a title befitting the man whose responsibility had been to start World War III. Fascinating bit of our (and their) history. We used to be friends and we are becoming friends again. I would love to travel through Russia...

Happy Birthday Blog

No, not mine (that is in October) but MostlyCajun is a few days shy of one year. Good stuff!!!

Two interesting Electronics Links

Ran into these while researching process control and monitoring systems for our Cidery: Electronics components and development systems: Futurlec Cool 8051 projects and source code: PJRC (Jen? The business checkbook and credit card are still in their usual drawer -- don't panic -- yet...)

Mohammed al-Dura Revisited

Roger L. Simon (an excellent writer by the way -- finished some of his Moses Wine books from the Library) writes about the heart-bending story of: bq. Mohammed al-Dura Revisited Who can forget the heart-rending video of the young Palestinian boy Mohammed al-Dura dying in the arms of his father after being shot by Israeli soldiers? Made by France 2, it became a symbol of Infiada II. For some time now, however, many people have cast doubt on the authenticity of this video. And now French TV [is] Allegedly Using Threats to Avert Fraud Probe:

French state-owned television is using what some call intimidation and threatened libel lawsuits to quiet calls for an investigation of TV images that showed the alleged shooting of a Palestinian boy by Israeli soldiers in 2000. The video from the TV channel France 2 has become famous around the world as a symbol for the current Palestinian intifada (uprising) and shows a boy trying to take shelter behind a man during a gun battle in September 2000 between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers at the Netzarim junction in the Gaza Strip. Independent media analysts in France and Israel have provided what they call conclusive evidence that the video of the incident was staged and at least one member of the French Assembly has called for an official investigation of the episode, but France 2 has so far refused to undertake a comprehensive inquiry. France 2 Television did not respond to numerous requests for interviews by Cybercast News Service in Paris, choosing instead to provide copies of articles reporting it was filing a libel suit against un-named individuals for defamation.

Looks like fake but accurate all over again... Another comment from the article:

"The child we see during the shooting is not the same child that we see in the morgue in other footage, who has bullet wounds and is identified as Mohammed al-Durra by hospital staff," said Juffa. Juffa said he had no information about how the child in the morgue was killed, but doctors there said the boy arrived hours before the actual Netzarim gun battle described in the video took place.

These people are as good as Mikey Moore regarding using bits and pieces from various non-related clips to "flesh-out the story" Charles at Little Green Footballs been all over this as a search on his website for Mohammed al-Dura turns up 35 references...

Physical Security - driveway department

Found this image at Stupid Security. A perfect example of good physical security -- we must have all cars stop at the gate until it opens...

Once more into the breech

David Limbaugh points to a disturbing article from Michelle Malkin regarding a hijacking that might have almost been: bq. A MYSTERY IN THE SKIES Physician blogger Dr. Bob says one of his patients, a federal air marshal, told him about a foiled hijacking involving boxcutters hidden in overhead luggage bins:

He and his partner were assigned to a flight (the airline, airport, and destination were not disclosed) in their customary undercover security role. They boarded the airplane early in order to meet the flight attendants, at which time the cleaning crew was still on the airplane -- somewhat longer than expected. My patient and his partner sat together in seats near the middle of coach class. The passengers began to board, and he and his partner noticed a single Middle Eastern man sitting near the front of first class. After a number of passengers had boarded, two Middle Eastern men walked by this man and made eye contact, but said nothing. They sat down together in the front of coach class. Shortly thereafter, two other Middle Eastern men also walked by the man in first class and made eye contact without speaking. They sat near the back of coach class. Shortly after the flight attendants completed their post-boarding check of the overhead bins, an announcement came from the cockpit: the pilot stated that there had been a security breach, and everyone needed to deboard the plane for a second, more thorough, security screening. The Air Marshall and his partner were confused, as they had not triggered the security alert nor been notified of it prior to the announcement. After all the passengers had deplaned, the Federal Air Marshalls checked with the flight attendants for more information. During a final check of the overhead bins, a flight attendant had noticed that one of the blankets was slightly unfolded, and he repositioned it in the bin. At this time, a razor blade fell out of the blanket. Concerned, but still believing this might be a straightforward mistake, the flight attendant began to check other overhead bins. Several additional incompletely folded blankets were noted, and hidden in each one was a box cutter: a total of five. It appeared that these had been placed there by the cleaning crew prior to the boarding of the airplane. After the repeat security screening, the passengers reboarded -- all except the five Middle Eastern men, who were nowhere to be found. The flight proceeded to its destination uneventfully.

Read the comments and the updates for additional verification and links to other stories. I'm glad I don't have to fly that often...

Canada's Pizza Scandal

Bit of a scandal brewing up in Canada these days. BBC News has the scoop: bq. Canada minister in pizza scandal Canada's immigration minister Judy Sgro has resigned over allegations that she agreed to help a pizza shop owner avoid deportation in return for free food. bq. Harjit Singh says he delivered free pizza and garlic bread to Ms Sgro and up to 16 election campaign volunteers. bq. He says Ms Sgro reneged on the deal and ordered his arrest to "save her job" as another immigration scandal broke. bq. Ms Sgro says she had no alternative but to resign in order to fight "these outrageous fabrications". bq. Her resignation comes as a blow to the ruling Liberal party, which lost its parliamentary majority in June elections after a scandal over the misuse of millions of dollars of government funds. bq. Prime Minister Paul Martin said he accepted Ms Sgro's resignation with "great regret". The article goes on to talk about another scandal brewing with her and a Romanian stripper. Looks like the Liberals are having a bit of a hard time up there. There was this government funds scandal earlier in 2004 - BBC News. This was a $188m government project and as the BBC reports: bq. At least half the money was siphoned off by Quebec advertising and communication agencies with ties to the Liberal Party. bq. Mrs Fraser said that many of the transactions involved false invoices or contracts, or no contracts at all. Conservatives are looking forward to the next elections...

R.I.P. Jimmy Griffin

Not too many people will know this name immediately but he was the co-founder of the Rock and Roll band Bread. A brief obituary can be found at USA Today/AP: bq. Singer-songwriter James Arthur "Jimmy" Griffin, a founding member of the 1970s pop group Bread, has died after a battle with cancer. Griffin, 61, died Tuesday at his home in Franklin, about 25 miles south of Nashville, officials at Crawford Funeral Home in Nashville said Thursday. bq. Griffin won an Academy Award for best song for co-writing The Carpenters' hit For All We Know for the movie Lovers and Other Strangers. He also wrote country hits including Conway Twitty's Who's Gonna Know and Restless Heart's You Can Depend On Me. bq. "He had an amazing voice, and never lost a bit of quality," said longtime friend Terry Sylvester of The Hollies. bq. Griffin did not sing lead vocals on most of Bread's singles — that slot was occupied by David Gates — but his harmony vocals and guitar work were crucial elements in the band's soft rock success. Their hits included Make It With You,Baby I'm-a Want You and Everything I Own. Our connection with this band? The property that Jen and I live on was owned by the Bread keyboard player -- Larry Knechtel -- our house was designed and built by him. Larry's wife, Vicky has bad arthritis and could not take the damp of the winter and spring so they are now living in Eastern Washington. Larry used to do a lot of studio gigs - the classic Simon and Garfunkel "Bridge over Troubled Waters" keyboard part was played by Larry.

A look at Zell Miller

You may remember Senator Miller from his speech at the Republican National Convention. He also put forth a lot of his thoughts in this book: "A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat" This book was first published in October 2003 Yesterday's colum by Rich Lowry talks about Zell Miller and puts out some interesting ideas: Rich opens up talking about Zell's book and then looks at the Democratic Party of today: bq. Many of the things that Miller said in his book have now become nearly conventional wisdom among Democratic loyalists. All the Democrats who now say that the party has foolishly given up on the South, that it is unable to connect with religious voters, that it is too beholden to liberal orthodoxy on social issues, that Americans don't trust it on national defense, and that it doesn't speak the language of most Americans should take a deep breath and repeat after me: "Zell Miller was right." bq. This turnabout is extraordinary given the kind of criticisms that were lodged at Miller last year, especially after he amplified the arguments in his book in a humdinger of a speech at the Republican National Convention. An AFL-CIO official said Miller had "lost his damn mind." James Carville said Miller was being "cynically manipulated by people who are greedy to hold on to power at any cost." Well, Miller appears, in light of events, to have been the shrewdest cynically manipulated lunatic in all of human history. Heh... Very well put.

Digital Photography ten years ago

The puppy blender links to a fascinating look back into Digital Photography's history and the fun of using the new Kodak's NC2000 bq. A look back at the NC2000 One night in the summer of 1999 Tony Kurdzuk was shooting a feature story on 24-hour diners. He and a writer, both working for the Newark Star-Ledger, drove a good percentage of the length of New Jersey, starting at midnight and finishing at 5:00am, dropping in on all-night eateries, Kurdzuk firing away at every stop. bq. His camera was the "filmless" Associated Press/Kodak NC2000e, an improved version of the original NC2000, the "first electronic camera designed specifically for photojournalists" in the words of the AP. A comment on using the new camera: bq. Kurdzuk pauses for a moment, and then figures out how to sum it all up: "The NC2000, in general, was a practice in masochistic anxiety." And more: bq. But there was another side to the equation, he acknowledges. "It was a combination of excitement and anxiety. There was a lot of excitement about how cool this stuff was. You'd show up at an event, and you'd be the only guy with a digital camera, and everybody was ooohing and aaahing. That was always really cool. [But] I could never trust what the camera was doing. When you popped that card into the computer there was always that little thought in the back of your mind: what happened this time, what went wrong? But you kept doing it because it was so cool. And it was where the industry was going." bq. "It was like the Wild West and panning for gold," remembers Nick Didlick. "It was wild and woolly." Didlick, then a staff photographer at the Vancouver Sun, first shot with an NC2000 in August 1994, just six months after the camera's announcement. It was plagued with shutter problems (detailed in the full story) but there was also a design issue with the batteries: bq. And then there were the batteries. "Yeah," says Gerry Magee, "that was one of the whoops's on it." bq. Bob Deutsch, then and now a staff photographer for USA Today, puts it differently: "The first thing I said to them was, 'How do you change the battery?' And their comment was, 'What do you mean?' And I said, 'This is crazy. You can't produce a camera with a non-replaceable battery.' And they said, 'Well, it's too late.' And I said, 'Then why the hell are you showing it to me?'" The article then goes on to talk about the cottage industry that grew up around this $13,000 camera -- Photoshop plugins to correct for the color, ways to work with flash, battery life (short). There is also a wonderful gallery of images from this camera. Fun look back. I do a lot of photography with the Nikon D1X and love it. Used to shoot a lot of Kodachrome slides but for now, digital is the way to go. Still have my Nikon F-2 bodies but not using them...

Earthquake movie

Amazing short animated GIF file. From New Scientist: bq. First ever earthquake movie created A pioneering technique using data from GPS receivers has been used to make the first movie of an earthquake. The animation shows the Earth's surface deforming during a magnitude 8.3 quake in September 2003 off the coast of Hokkaido in Japan. bq. Seismometers monitor quakes by measuring accelerations in the Earth's crust. But the calculations required to turn accelerations into measurements of how the surface moved are tricky. Seismometers are sensitive to small accelerations but they cannot make accurate measurements of huge jolts. bq. GPS receivers are not as sensitive, but they are robust enough to work throughout a major quake. "They measure position directly," says Kristine Larson, an aerospace engineer at the University of Colorado in Boulder, US, who has been pioneering the use of GPS data in seismology. bq. A grid of more than 1000 GPS monitoring stations throughout Japan recorded the Hokkaido quake. Each receiver measured its position once every second to within a few millimetres. This accuracy was made possible using a modified version of normal GPS data analysis. bq. The team used the measurements to build up one of the most detailed pictures ever of seismic waves propagating during a quake. Larson says the technique complements data available from seismometers. Very cool use of technology... The GPS receivers can achieve millimeter accuracy with several clever hacks. The primary source of error is atmospheric distortion of the radio signal from the satellite. Surveyors are lucky though that this error is the same amounts over a fairly large area. You maintain a station at a fixed location which receives the GPS signal, calculates the proper offset and retransmits that to the other GPS units. Clever, cheap and fantastic accuracy...

Things to do while on hold...

If you are stuck in front of a computer for any length of time, check out The Fridge. bq. This is the fridge. It's generally reckoned a pretty good way to keep your beer cool. But it is also the perfect canvas for poetic endeavour. bq. Just click and drag the magnets around until you're happy with your poem. Then add a title, and your preferred nom de plume, and save it for posterity. (Once saved, you'll get instructions on how to find it again, and even embed it in your own web page.) bq. Not inspired by this selection of words? Choose a different set from the dropdown box, and load it up. Cute - they also have a collection of other people's works... If Blogging slows to a crawl, you have a possible reason.

A new addition to the Blogroll

Thanks to Sherry at A Western Heart I now know about Masamune What brought him to Sherry's attention was this two-part article: bq. Have you ever read a post or an article and found yourself blown away by the sheer talent you have just been exposed too? bq. For me such a writer exists in the form of Masamune who in my opinion happens to be one of the blogosphere's elite yet underexposed voices. bq. In Part 1 of Foreign Devils: An Understanding of Arab Hate, Masa speaks about feeding the beast that drives the hatred towards Israel and America.

Mr. Ajami believes that Anti-Americanism indulges France's fantasy of past greatness and splendor and gives France's unwanted Muslim children a claim on the political life of a country that knows not what to do with them. As to many in the Middle East, I tend to agree with his sentiments: "These are people who are envious. To them, life is an unbearable burden. Modernism is the only way out. But modernism is frightening. It means we have to compete. It means we can't explain everything away with conspiracy theories. In this, he quotes Bernard Shaw regarding the preface to 'St. Joan,' he said "Joan of Arc was burned not for any reason except that she was talented. Talent gives rise to jealousy in the hearts of the untalented." For those who cling to Anti-Americanism as a means of understanding this hate - I would simply ask you this, why do you use hate to understand hate? Perhaps its true - when reasoning with this ilk, I must use another scale.

bq. In Part 2, he takes a look at the doctrine of hatred being taught in many of America's Muslim schools.

The sun feels rather warm on this wintery day, with chimes of the thistle in the air, its sharp tongue haranguing the acute minds of innocence at the elite Islamic Saudi Academy just outside Washington, D.C. Where students are taught that "the Day of Judgment can't come until Jesus Christ returns to Earth, breaks the cross and converts everyone to Islam, and until Muslims start attacking Jews." While in an adjoining class, students are taught a similar tale where the young impressionable minds hear that "one sign of the Day of Judgment will be that Muslims will fight and kill Jews, who will hide behind trees that say: 'Oh Muslim, Oh servant of God, here is a Jew hiding behind me. Come here and kill him.'" Moreover, if you were to search the maps of the Middle East in the geography classes, you would be hard-pressed to find a map of Israel. Truly, because it is taught that Israel does not exist.

bq. If you are familiar with Masa's work you already know what a gift he has. But if this is your first time experiencing him I promise you will find yourself adding him to your favorites and returning quite often. Indeed - a welcome addition to the Blogroll - to be visited frequently...

New toy from Hasbro/Playskool

Hasbro/Playskool have come out with a new toy: bq. No need to freeze your copy of The Empire Strikes Back DVD searching for spuds among the asteroids -- Playskool brings the elusive Star Wars potato to you! This dark side incarnation of Mr. Potato -- Darth Tater -- comes with lightsaber, cape, helmet, shoes, eyes, nose, teeth, and more! A Sith Lord could only hope to look so good! Discover the root of all evil this Spring with what is certain to be a mashing success with collectors. Hat tip to BoingBoing

The CBS Story finally revealed:

Major caution - multiple drink alert... It was a good thing that I had swallowed and that my demijohn of Arrogant Bastard Ale was sitting comfortably on the desktop otherwise, I would be spending the next few minutes blotting the moniT*r and finDing a replacement for the keybo$2Id Farewell, My Producer Excerpts from the new Inspector Dan Rather mystery by David Burge bq. It was a quiet cold Monday at Black Rock. Too quiet, I thought, slowly polishing the lens on my trusty Sony VC6809. New York is not the kind of town that likes to keep secrets, and my tingling senses told me that somewhere in Gotham somebody was spilling some beans. And in my line of work, you get to know deep down in your gut those beans have a habit of being silent - but deadly. bq. My name is Rather. And I'm a dick.

CBS alters their published report on Rathergate

Charles at Little Green Footballs drops this bombshell:

Get a load of this.

CBS has altered the PDF file for their report on Memogate, to prevent copying and pasting.

Here’s the page at CBS News, with modified PDF file: CBS Ousts 4 For Bush Guard Story.

Rather obviously (pardon the pun), this is aimed at making it harder for blogs to criticize the report, by stopping them from copying and pasting sections to illustrate points.

Did CBS think no one would notice?

We got a PDF copy before CBS altered it; here it is.

And here is an early copy of Appendix 4, which has also been altered at the CBS site.

UPDATE at 1/13/05 4:55:27 pm:

LGF reader Angel Piper reports that whoever turned off copying/pasting in the CBS documents also forgot to set a password on the files.

This means you can “unlock” the documents yourself if you have Adobe Acrobat 5 (the full version, not just the reader).

CBS: Pathetic ... and lame!

Main Stream Media (MSM) - What a bunch of maroons...

India #1)-Gets it #2)-Shows some backbone

I wrote earlier about how Indonesia asked the Western relief effort to leave after Kofi Annan visited their country. There is no published link at this time but the stench of the United Nations lingers strong over this turn of events. The fine folks at Bloggledygook have a much more encouraging story: bq. However, if Britney Spears wants to visit, we would reconsider. India has told Kofi Annan to stay away.

NEW DELHI, JANUARY 10: Reinforcing the message that it is fully capable of dealing with the domestic consequences of the tsunami on its own, India politely turned down a request last week from the U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to visit Tamil Nadu. After attending the tsunami summit in Jakarta last Thursday, Annan has been visiting the badly affected regions in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Maldives. Annan’s office apparently expressed a desire on the part of the Secretary General to see relief work in India. The Manmohan Singh government, which has been discouraging its own ministers from travelling to the tsunami-affected areas, was in no mood to have a high-profile international visitor like Kofi Annan adding to burden of the local administration. It is also being pointed out that once the doors are opened to one foreign visitor, there will be no end to similar requests from other international personalities.

The closing comment at Bloggledygook is great: bq. Now why can't Mayor Bloomberg do this? Just tell Kofi that he's not welcome and see what happens. Heh...

Serious Drool Factor

Scott at AMCGLTD links to this story: From the article: bq. It turns out that the car was owned by the same lady from new. She parked the car in 1978 with just under 29,000 miles after a surgery that left her upper body seriously weakened. Whether it was started regularly or not is unknown, but absolutely everything worked when we started it up again 26 years later. The car in question (a 1964 Alfa Giulia 1600 spider): The car after a few hours of loving attention: As Scott said so aptly: bq. I'll shake his hand if I ever meet him, but I'll be mumbling "lucky bastard" under my breath when I do.

Venice drys out

In a strange turn of events - the city of Venice normally has major problems with flooding. It is built on marshes and is gradually sinking into the Adriatic Sea. To exacerbate this, winter storms usually cause flooding (Acqua Alta) as the prevailing winds drive the waters of the Mediterranean to the East causing sea levels to rise. This winter, due to an unusual combination of planetary alignment and dry weather is causing markedly low water levels. CNN/Reuters has the story bq. Gondolas stuck as Venice waters recede Gondolas are running aground and hotel docks hang in midair as Italy's lagoon city Venice, more commonly awash at high tide, dries out because of good weather and an unusual combination of planetary influences. bq. Only the Grand Canal, Venice's biggest and most famous waterway, can still take water traffic, and the falling canal levels have given rise to terms such as "ghost town" and "desert" in local papers. bq. "The phenomenon is due to low pressure, that is, the good weather that coincides with the syzygy, the alignment of the moon, earth and sun," said Venice's tides office. bq. The new moon this week has helped push water levels to their lowest point in more than a decade, nearly 2.5 feet (80 cm) below sea level, it said. The lowest fall on record was 4.1 feet (1.21 meters) below sea level in 1934. bq. The city assured tourists that water levels would soon start rising again, restoring the romantic look they expect. That looks about 4 feet lower than the tide line...

The Monster and the Nursery

Wonderful article at Tech Central Station: bq. Monsters, like leftists, don't reproduce naturally. Ordinary uncontraceived heterosexual relations do not create little vampires and zombies. Monsters perpetuate themselves through blasphemous acts, like assembling dead body parts into human form, or sharing ancient curses through biting. Indeed, much of the pathos inherent in horror movies and fiction springs from the parasitic manner in which monsters absorb non-monsters into their unholy fold. It's bad when George Romero's zombies rise from the dead to eat you, but when their bites transform your friends and your wife and, eventually, you into a zombie … that's scary. And Dracula is just a weirdo with a fang fetish until his nocturnal prowlings turn your fiancée into the Bloofer Lady. Deformation is creepier than plain ol' death. Douglas amplifies this a bit and then gets to the heart of the matter: bq. By now, it's a right-wing pundit cliché to point out that birth rates on the Left are plummeting rapidly. Over in flawlessly liberal Europe, the non-Arab population treats childbearing the way the Atkins diet treats carbohydrates. Here in the states, the reproduction rates among the Religious Right - and in the red states generally - greatly outpace the reproduction rates of our over-educated latte-sipping superiors. But in one-man one-vote democracies, small populations either discard their political power, or discard democracy. bq. Moreover, history teaches us that children are the most successful way to ensure that your cultural and ideological preferences survive after you depart. Eventually, the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers will die, and their preferences for big government and laissez-faire social morality will die with them. If, in 50 years, the home-schooled and Sunday-schooled outnumber the boarding schooled and Ivy Leagued, who can doubt that conservatism will own the future? bq. What's a non-reproducing leftie to do? Discarding leftism is out. Having more … ick … children … with their stinky diapers and expensive college educations and drain on the world's limited resources and whiny tantrums right in the middle of All Things Considered … is out, too. So the Left is, er, left with two options for ensuring the survival of their ideology: the Bride of Frankenstein option and the Dracula option. A bit more: bq. The Bride of Frankenstein option is immigration. By importing hordes of proto-citizens unassimilated into the prevailing culture, the Left hopes to create an overclass of ethnic leaders dependent on affirmative action and government jobs to maintain their mandarin status. bq. The problem, of course, is that the Bride of Frankenstein reviles the monster it was created to marry. The Europeans are learning to their horror that their Arab immigrants detest and revile the socially liberal ideology that their presence permits. Similarly, the American left is discovering that most blacks and Hispanics want no part of the radically heterodox morality that leftist intellectuals promulgate. Whereas the left wants to reform (or, in the extreme, abolish) bourgeois middle-class American morality, most American minorities want to embrace that morality more fully. As the '60s generation of minority leaders passes away, a new, independent-minded, and conservative-friendly generation of leaders is coming to take their place. And this new generation of leaders will not be bought off as easily as their parents were. And the other option -- what was it again... bq. The remaining option is the Dracula option: the hijacking of little red-state kids through academia and the mass media. It's the lament of conservatives since time out of mind, and it's the plot of Tom Wolfe's latest novel: every year, conservative families spend outrageous sums in order to send their smartest, most capable children to elite colleges, wherein radical leftists brainwash them into newly-minted blue-staters. And the less-capable red-state kids hear the siren call of leftist values every time they flip the "on" switch on the idiot box. Prime-time television and the network news highlight the glamour and appeal of liberal places, beliefs, and lifestyles, while conservative values are either ridiculed ("dumb old Dad"), reviled ("The priest did it? The businessman was corrupt? Who'd've guessed?"), dismissed ("We at CBS News stand by our story"), or ignored (insert any aspect of religious life here). The old song is still mostly true: How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm, after they've seen a TV show about Paree? bq. In the movies and in the book, Dracula dies when a stake is driven through his heart. Sadly, we won't be staking Harvard or CBS anytime soon. But there's another way to kill a vampire: starve him. Without fresh blood, vampires wither into irrelevance. At the beginning of Bram Stoker's Dracula, Dracula was weak and enfeebled for want of fresh blood. Keep the fresh blood away, and the vampire ceases to be a problem. I'm just cherry-picking some choice bits -- read it for the full blast.

Tsunami Wave Basin

With the current awareness of Tsunamis, I want to point out that some of the major research being done is located in the Pacific Northwest at Oregon State University's Wave Research Laboratory. This is a small image swiped from their website -- they have a lot of interesting pictures plus movies for viewing. Fascinating stuff -- big wet science!

WA State Governors debate hits Wall Street Journal

There was a nice article at the Wall Street Journal Opinions page Monday regarding the current Governors election in WA State: bq. Don't Count Rossi Out A stolen election in Washington state? Not if bloggers can help it. bq. The new media--talk radio, bloggers and independent watchdog groups--have followed up their success in exposing Dan Rather's use of phony memos by showcasing another scandal: Washington state's bizarre race for governor, which features a vote count so close and compromised it allows Florida to retire the crown for electoral incompetence. If Democrat Christine Gregoire, who leads by 129 votes and is scheduled to take the office Wednesday, eventually has to face a new election, it will have been in large part because of the new media's ability to give the story altitude before it reached the courts. bq. When the idea of a revote was first broached three weeks ago by a moderate Republican former secretary of state, Ms. Gregoire's reaction was swift: "Absolutely ludicrous." With Republican candidate Dino Rossi filing a formal court challenge last Friday alleging a massive breakdown in the vote count, she may still think the idea of a court-ordered revote is laughable, but her legal team is taking it seriously. "There's not even a 50-50 chance a court would rule with Republicans to set aside the election," says Jenny Durkan, a Gregoire confidant who is representing state Democrats. Hardly an expression of supreme confidence. bq. The feeling that a revote is possible is buoyed by polls showing the public still thinks Mr. Rossi, who won the first two vote counts before falling behind in the third, actually won. His legal team has also compiled a strong body of evidence showing irregularities, certainly one far more detailed than that which North Carolina officials used last week to order a statewide March revote of the race for agriculture commissioner after a computer ate 4,438 ballots in a GOP-leaning county. Without those votes, the GOP candidate was leading by 2,287 votes out of 3.5 million cast. The article goes on to describe some of the more egregious discrepencies and to mention other elections where the "winner" was ousted. It has been a very interesting couple of months. Gregoire was sworn in last evening. The next couple of weeks should prove interesting either way. If she stays in office, it will also be interesting to see just how well she cleans house in King County -- will she have an effective political legacy or will she be a one-term-wonder...

Non-Sequitur

The Non-Sequitur cartoon from the 12th was spot on: The image is a thumbnail -- click to see full-sized.

We see Koffi's hand

Several sources have reported that the Government of Indonesia is saying to the relief effort: "Get Out" I cannot say for sure, but I smell the hand of the United Nations in this. Do not deal with these infidels, we are your leaders" Like the United Nations is legitimate, like it has any ANY moral high-ground to stand on these days... Barf! Turtle Bay delenda est.

Small blogging today (just this entry)

Was working on a project at my Mom and Dad's house all day today so was out of town. Also talked with a new Honey vendor for our Cider and Mead venture. Tasted some awesome Raspberry honey -- took eight gallons of it home with me to make some Mead, Cyser (Honey and Apple Cider fermented together) and Melomel (Honey and Fruit (usually berries) fermented together). The flavor of this honey is so good that a couple pints of it are going to be re-directed to culinary use, not booze... The spew will resume as usual tomorrow... Dave

What a way to go

From Sir Banagor comes this link about the sermon of a preacher in Florida: bq. OVIEDO, Florida (AP) -- A Presbyterian minister collapsed and died at the pulpit after saying "And when I go to heaven...," his colleague said. bq. The Rev. Jack Arnold, 69, was nearing the end of his sermon Sunday at Covenant Presbyterian Church when he grabbed the podium before falling to the floor, said the Rev. Michael S. Beats, the church's associate pastor. bq. Several parishioners with medical backgrounds tried to revive Arnold and paramedics were called, but he appeared to die instantly, Beats said. Cause of death: bq. The cause of death was believed to be cardiac arrest. He had bypass surgery five years earlier. Quick, painless and doing something you loved. Not bad!

Justice Served...

From Slashdot comes this link: bq. ID theft mastermind gets 14 years A Briton involved in what is believed to be the largest identity theft case ever has been sentenced to 14 years in prison by a New York judge. Philip Cummings, 35, used his job as a computer helpdesk employee to steal personal information from more than 30,000 unwitting customers. He worked in a position of trust and violated that. He was nailed. Cool! bq. Cummings, who worked for Teledata Communications - a New York-based software company which helps lenders access major credit databases - had access to clients' codes and passwords. bq. He would steal people's credit reports and pass them on to an accomplice, who would sell them on and share the profits with Cummings. bq. The stolen identities, bought by intermediaries for about $60 per name, were then used to access the victims' bank accounts and use their credit cards. bq. The criminals would buy expensive goods, including computers and electronic equipment, and resell them to other members of the network. bq. By changing a customer's personal details, the thieves could even have new credit and ATM cards mailed directly to them. Hey Phil - if the soap drops in the shower, don't bend over to pick it up if you get my meaning -- 14 years is a long long time unless you are into that kind if thing...

Second case of Canadian BSE

Ouch... There was the case in Washington last year where it was found the cow came from Canada. There was another case of BSE found in Canada and now, a third one has been found. Here's the story from Canadian Press: bq. New case of mad cow confirmed, U.S. to send team to investigate Federal officials have confirmed Canada's second case of mad cow disease in 10 days - a development that could threaten U.S. plans to reopen the border to Canadian beef. bq. They say it's no threat to human health, but unlike the case confirmed last week, this infected cow was born after feed precautions were put in place in 1997 to prevent further spread of the disease. bq. That has U.S. agriculture authorities concerned; they are sending a team to Canada to evaluate the case before deciding whether to change their plan to resume the cross-border cattle trade. The feed ban has been criticized by some as to small -- from the same article: bq. "This is a complete disaster," said Shiv Chopra, one of three Health Canada scientists fired last year after denouncing the 1997 feed restrictions as inadequate. bq. "What does it take to stop feeding animals to animals?" bq. The 1997 rules banned cattle meat-bone meal from cattle feed but allowed the continued use of cattle blood, milk, and gelatin and parts from other animals such as pigs and horses. bq. "They're still feeding cows to cows and lies to the public," said Mike McBane of the Canadian Health Coalition. A hard one to call. Jen and I prefer to eat organic meat whenever possible (or meat from good restaurants, not Mickey D's). Already lost enough little grey cells, don't want to catch Creutzfeldt-Jakob. Still, the odds of this happening are very small (probably less than winning big in the lottery) and there is enough public focus on this now so biotech companies will develop a good cheap quick field test for BSE.

The Kennedys

Interesting insight into the (ab)use power of this family. From No Watermelons bq. Boys will be boys but.... ...no girl of Joe Kennedy's had better act like her male relatives. bq. Kathleen Kennedy was Joe Kennedy's oldest daughter. Legend has it that she was mentally disabled, so Daddy had her lobotomized when she was 23. She died this past week at 86. bq. Was she mentally disabled? Perhaps no more so than any of her siblings. she was able to attend school and travel Europe without a chaperone. But she was sneaking out at night and returning to her convent school disheveled and drunk, the nuns feared she was picking up men and more, and she threw temper tantrums. Heavens, Joe Kennedy couldn't let anyone disgrace the family! If that meant that Rosemary would wind up in an infantlike state, mumbling words and sitting for hours staring at walls, well....I won't accuse even Joe Kennedy of expecting that outcome, but it was an awfully heavy-handed way to respond in any case. bq. Her troubles are over now finally, and she lives on as the inspiration for the Special Olympics. Sad. And you look at people like Ted and wonder why they still consume oxygen. The family's two bright stars died early and we are left with the dregs...

New Microsoft Tools

I had written about MSFT's new SpyWare detection and removal tool here Today they released their malware detection and removal tool. This program runs online and detects and removes these particularly nasty applications: Berbew, Doomjuice, Gaobot, Msblast, Mydoom, Nachi, Sasser and Zindos with more to come as they develop the tool. Both are free and both are well worth checking out. MSFT SpyWare tool here MSFT MalWare tool here

Rock Slide

We are having unusual weather this winter. Much colder than normal up here and massive rain in California. The rain triggered a rock slide. One very big rock. Yahoo/AP has the photo:

A boulder some 25 feet high blocks both lanes of the Topanga Caynon Road, Monday, Jan. 10, 2005, as electrical contractors fix broken power and communication lines in Malibu, Calif. No injures where reported, but the road remains closed. The storm system was blamed for at least nine deaths during the weekend in Southern California, including a man killed when his vehicle plunged into the surf off Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, and a homeless man killed when the hillside where his tent was pitched gave way. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

IBM gets it

Hat tip to Slashdot for the link to this story: bq. I.B.M. to Give Free Access to 500 Patents I.B.M. plans to announce today that it is making 500 of its software patents freely available to anyone working on open-source projects, like the popular Linux operating system, on which programmers collaborate and share code. bq. The new model for I.B.M., analysts say, represents a shift away from the traditional corporate approach to protecting ownership of ideas through patents, copyrights, trademark and trade-secret laws. The conventional practice is to amass as many patents as possible and then charge anyone who wants access to them. I.B.M. has long been the champion of that formula. The company, analysts estimate, collected $1 billion or more last year from licensing its inventions. bq. The move comes after a lengthy internal review by I.B.M., the world's largest patent holder, of its strategy toward intellectual property. I.B.M. executives said the patent donation today would be the first of several such steps. The article does point out that this is a drop in the bucket: bq. I.B.M. may be redefining its intellectual property strategy, but it apparently has no intention of slowing the pace of its patent activity. I.B.M. was granted 3,248 patents in 2004, far more than any other company, according to the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The patent office is announcing today its yearly ranking of the top 10 private-sector patent recipients. Still, this is a wonderful development and a boon for the open source movement... At my previous employer, I ran the Postfix email system. This is an open source project developed by a staff member of the I.B.M. T.J. Watson Research Center. Excellent stuff!

A very big Demolition Derby

From this NASA website bq. Get Ready for the Largest Demolition Derby on the Planet Scientists say Slow-Motion Collision Near Antarctic Research Station Imminent bq. It is an event so large that the best seat in the house is in space: a massive iceberg is on a collision course with a floating glacier near the McMurdo Research Station in Antarctica. NASA satellites have witnessed the 100-mile-long B-15A iceberg moving steadily towards the Drygalski Ice Tongue. Though the iceberg's pace has slowed in recent days, NASA scientists expect a collision to occur no later than January 15, 2005. bq. "It's a clash of the titans, a radical and uncommon event," says Robert Bindshadler, a researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and if the two giant slabs of ice collide, we could see one of the best demolition derbies on the planet. "Even a 'tap' from a giant can be powerful. It will certainly be a blow far larger than anything else the ice tongue has ever experienced," says Bindshadler. bq. When the iceberg and the ice tongue collide, the impact will likely "dent their bumpers," says Bindshadler. The edges could crumple and ice could pile or drift into the Ross Sea. But if the B-15A iceberg picks up enough speed before the two collide, the results could be more spectacular. The Drygalski Ice Tongue could break off. The NASA Website will be following the story and they have pictures and an animation that shows the size of this iceberg. It is the size of New York's Long Island. This is huge.

The new MAC

Just announced today. $499 and it looks really cute: For that price, it makes it very competitive with the Wintel machines. Add a KVM switch and you have the best of both worlds...

US Navy Submarine accident update

From the NY Times: bq. Navy Says Sub Hit Mountain That Was Not on Its Charts A nuclear attack submarine that ran aground Saturday in the South Pacific, killing one sailor and injuring 23 others, appears to have smashed into an undersea mountain that was not on its charts, Navy officials said yesterday. bq. The submarine, the San Francisco, was cruising at high speed - about 30 knots - and was more than 400 feet below the surface when the accident forced it to blow air into its emergency ballast tanks to surface. bq. Some of the tanks were damaged by the impact. One officer said the effort to keep the submarine afloat was initially "very touch and go." bq. The accident occurred 350 miles south of Guam, and the vessel returned to its base there under its own power yesterday. The Navy is investigating how the crash occurred. Ouch... Had I not won the draft lottery back in 1970, I would have volunteered for the US Navy and as I am fascinated in things Oceanographic and Nuclear, I might have been on the Thresher when it went down.

Ever wake up just wanting to screw with some millionaire thief?

Heh... Thank to The Misanthropist we can do just that - five to twelve cents per mouse-click...

Ever wake up just wanting to screw with some millionaire thief? Welcome to the Internet, where to ask is to receive: He then points to this BoingBoing article:

"...Noted crooked scumbag Ken Lay, of Enron fame, is so desperate to get his "version" of the breathtaking scam he and his rich buddies pulled off into the public eye before his trial that he's paying search engines 5-12 cents/click to return a link to his bogus account of his wrongdoings when searchers enter "Ken Lay" into the search-box. Put the search words "Enron scandal" or "Ken Lay," or even this Enron reporter's name, "Mary Flood," into any of the above search engines and one of the first things you will see is www.kenlayinfo.com. If you hit on Lay's Web site from there, then Lay pays between roughly 5 cents and 12 cents. Update: Clicking this link will bring you to Ken Lay's page while costing him one click's worth of traffic. Click early, click often!..."

I clicked and it's a nice looking site -- very very corporate looking. Reminds me of Mick Jagger's "Memo from Turner" bq. Weren't you at the Coke convention back on nineteen sixty-five You're the misbred, grey executive I've seen heavily advertised. You're the great, gray man whose daughter licks policemen's buttons clean. You're the man who squats behind the man who works the soft machine. bq. Come now, gentleman, your love is all I crave. You'll still be in the circus when I'm laughing, laughing on my grave. bq. When the old men do the fighting and the young men all look on. And the young girls eat their mothers meat from tubes of plasticon. Be wary of these my gentle friends of all the skins you breed. They have a tasty habit - they eat the hands that bleed. bq. So remember who you say you are and keep your noses clean. Boys will be boys and play with toys so be strong with your beast. Oh Rosie dear, doncha think it's queer, so stop me if you please. The baby is dead, my lady said, "You gentlemen, why you all work for me?" A Perfect Executive...

A report from the Institute for Small Numbers

Department of Temperature... As many of you might know, Jennifer and I live on 30 acres in Northwest Washington State. We have been enjoying some unusual weather and tonight promises to be a doozy. Dead clear sky so radiation cooling will be at its maximum. We usually get the coolest temperatures of the night around 5:00AM to 7:00AM (sunrise is around 8:00AM now). It is close to midnight and the temperature is already down to 10 degrees F. Last night, it was down to 17 and the water line from our well suffered a partial freeze. We have one faucet running at a slight flow to keep the line open tonight. The critters are fine (two sheep and two goats -- just checked them in their own barn). To see what the weather is like near Mt. Baker, check this out...

Tsunami - science update

NASA released their report on the devastating Tsunami in Indonesia today. bq. How the Earthquake affected Earth The Dec. 26th Indonesian megathrust earthquake quickened Earth's rotation and changed our planet's shape. bq. January 10, 2005: NASA scientists studying the Indonesian earthquake of Dec. 26, 2004, have calculated that it slightly changed our planet's shape, shaved almost 3 microseconds from the length of the day, and shifted the North Pole by centimeters. bq. Dr. Benjamin Fong Chao of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and Dr. Richard Gross of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said all earthquakes have some effect on Earth's rotation. It's just that the effects are, usually, barely noticeable. bq. This one was not usual: The devastating megathrust earthquake registered nine on the new "moment" scale (modified Richter scale), making it the fourth largest 'quake in one hundred years. Although they caution: bq. None of these changes have yet been measured--only calculated. But Chao and Gross hope to detect the changes when Earth rotation data from ground based and space-borne sensors are reviewed. Our planet at work. We in the Puget Sound are somewhat overdue for a biggie and the Yellowstone Caldera is way overdue...

Porn goes mainstream

From an email list I subscribe to comes a link to this story: bq. Columbia House To Sell Pornography Columbia House, that company we have all subscribed to at least once which sent us 12 CDs or cassettes for nothing but the exorbinant cost of shipping and handling (as long as we bought six more in the next two years), has decided to expand its product base to include pornography. While the business will be handled by a subsidiary and under a different name, (Hush), it is fully owned by Columbia House and is in partnership with Playboy. The company promises that they will not offer Hush products to their current client base. Instead, Playboy will handle the marketing, sending information to their direct mailing list which numbers in the millions. Geez - next thing you know, we will be listening to The Talking Heads MUSAK while riding in the elevator. Oh... Wait...

Jacques wacky idea - part deux

Earlier today I had written about Jacques Chirac's loony idea for a global tax to aid disaster relief. The idea on its own sounds noble but I would think that the presenter of such an idea would offer an example to the world. France has. For the current disaster relief in Indonesia, France has ponied up a grand total of $177,000 US Dollars plus five helicopters and a navy frigate. Two more ships are due to arrive in a week. As a comparison, Amazon ran a find raiser and its customers chipped in $15.2 Million US Dollars. The gifts from corporate America amount to another $180 Million. (Links to sources for these figures are given in the original entry). Al from The Misanthropist wrote in with a tongue-in-cheek comment:

They _do_ have an Aircraft Carrier. Unless it's docked for repairs. why isn't it helping?

I had written about this a year ago and the source link is still online: bq. NAVAL AVIATION: French Carrier Disaster Gets Very Strange December 4, 2003: France is considering quietly retiring their new nuclear powered aircraft carrier and joining with Britain to buy a new carrier of British design. Actually, the French had planned to built a second nuclear powered carrier, but they are having so many problems with the first one that they are quite reluctant about building another one. Britain is building two 50,000 ton conventionally powered carriers, at a cost of $2.5 billion each. France would order a third of this class, and bring down the cost of all three a bit. The new French nuclear carrier “Charles de Gaulle” has suffered from a seemingly endless string of problems. The 40,000 ton ship has cost over four billion dollars so far and is slower than the diesel powered carrier it replaced. Flaws in the “de Gaulle” have led it to using the propellers from it predecessor, the “Foch,” because the ones built for “de Gaulle” never worked right. Worse, the nuclear reactor installation was done poorly, exposing the engine crew to five times the allowable annual dose of radiation. There were also problems with the design of the deck, making it impossible to operate the E-2 radar aircraft that are essential to defending the ship and controlling offensive operations. Many other key components of the ship did not work correctly, and the carrier has been under constant repair and modification. The “de Gaulle” took eleven years to build (1988-99) and was not ready for service until late 2000. It’s been downhill ever since. So the plan is to buy into the new British carrier building program and keep the “de Gaulle” in port and out of trouble as much as possible. The British have a lot more experience building carriers, and if there are any problems with the British designed ship, one can blame the British. Its fun to Google - entering this string: "aircraft carrier" "Charles De Gaulle" problems Calls up close to 4,000 entries. Heh...

DDT starting to gain public awareness

Nicholas Kristof has an excellent editorial in the NY Times:

It's Time to Spray DDT If the U.S. wants to help people in tsunami-hit countries like Sri Lanka and Indonesia - not to mention other poor countries in Africa - there's one step that would cost us nothing and would save hundreds of thousands of lives. It would be to allow DDT in malaria-ravaged countries. I'm thrilled that we're pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the relief effort, but the tsunami was only a blip in third-world mortality. Mosquitoes kill 20 times more people each year than the tsunami did, and in the long war between humans and mosquitoes it looks as if mosquitoes are winning.

Since the NY Times removes articles from public access after a short interval, I put the rest of the article as an extended entry. Click on the Continue reading: "DDT starting to gain public awareness" link below for the rest. It is worth reading... One reason is that the U.S. and other rich countries are siding with the mosquitoes against the world's poor - by opposing the use of DDT. "It's a colossal tragedy," says Donald Roberts, a professor of tropical public health at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. "And it's embroiled in environmental politics and incompetent bureaucracies." In the 1950's, 60's and early 70's, DDT was used to reduce malaria around the world, even eliminating it in places like Taiwan. But then the growing recognition of the harm DDT can cause in the environment - threatening the extinction of the bald eagle, for example - led DDT to be banned in the West and stigmatized worldwide. Ever since, malaria has been on the rise. The poor countries that were able to keep malaria in check tend to be the same few that continued to use DDT, like Ecuador. Similarly, in Mexico, malaria rose and fell with the use of DDT. South Africa brought back DDT in 2000, after a switch to other pesticides had led to a surge in malaria, and now the disease is under control again. The evidence is overwhelming: DDT saves lives. But most Western aid agencies will not pay for anti-malarial programs that use DDT, and that pretty much ensures that DDT won't be used. Instead, the U.N. and Western donors encourage use of insecticide-treated bed nets and medicine to cure malaria. Bed nets and medicines are critical tools in fighting malaria, but they're not enough. The existing anti-malaria strategy is an underfinanced failure, with malaria probably killing 2 million or 3 million people each year. DDT doesn't work everywhere. It wasn't nearly as effective in West African savannah as it was in southern Africa, and it's hard to apply in remote villages. And some countries, like Vietnam, have managed to curb malaria without DDT. But overall, one of the best ways to protect people is to spray the inside of a hut, about once a year, with DDT. This uses tiny amounts of DDT - 450,000 people can be protected with the same amount that was applied in the 1960's to a single 1,000-acre American cotton farm. Is it safe? DDT was sprayed in America in the 1950's as children played in the spray, and up to 80,000 tons a year were sprayed on American crops. There is some research suggesting that it could lead to premature births, but humans are far better off exposed to DDT than exposed to malaria. I called the World Wildlife Fund, thinking I would get a fight. But Richard Liroff, its expert on toxins, said he could accept the use of DDT when necessary in anti-malaria programs. "South Africa was right to use DDT," he said. "If the alternatives to DDT aren't working, as they weren't in South Africa, geez, you've got to use it. In South Africa it prevented tens of thousands of malaria cases and saved lots of lives." At Greenpeace, Rick Hind noted reasons to be wary of DDT, but added: "If there's nothing else and it's going to save lives, we're all for it. Nobody's dogmatic about it." So why do the U.N. and donor agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development, generally avoid financing DDT programs? The main obstacle seems to be bureaucratic caution and inertia. President Bush should cut through that and lead an effort to fight malaria using all necessary tools - including DDT. One of my most exhilarating moments with my children came when we were backpacking together and spotted a bald eagle. It was a tragedy that we nearly allowed DDT to wipe out such magnificent birds, and we should continue to ban DDT in the U.S. But it's also tragic that our squeamishness about DDT is killing more people in poor countries, year in and year out, than even a once-in-a-century tsunami.

Great photo of Tsunami Relief

Here is a photo of sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln filling water jugs for distribution to Tsunami victims: The image is a thumbnail -- click on it for the larger version. We are there distributing relief while the United Nations sits in hotel rooms and holds press conferences...

Jacques wacky idea...

French President Jacques Chirac has this idea... I'll let the article in at News.com/Australia tell the story:

French President Jacques Chirac made a new call today for an "international tax", saying such a levy would help generate funds to help poor countries and those hit by disasters such as the Asian tsunami. "These events stress the need to increase public aid towards development and to find innovative financing mechanisms such as an international taxation," Mr Chirac said in a New Year speech to the Paris diplomatic corps. He said France would press the international tax idea this year at meetings of the Group of Eight - the G7 rich countries plus Russia - and at the United Nations, but gave no details of his proposals. France has also supported Britain's proposal for an International Finance Facility to double Third World aid, but continues to push its "international tax" as an additional idea. Mr Chirac made the tax proposal at a meeting of the Group of Eight - the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Russia - last year but won little support from the other powers for the idea.

Emphasis mine - no shit sherlock... If you want to raise money for disaster relief, start by opening your own pockets. Amazon.com customer donations to Tsunami Relief: $15.2 million Corporate America donations to Tsunami relief:$180 million Amazon number from Amazon Corporate America number from KTVU French donations to Tsunami Relief: $177,000 plus five helicopters and a navy frigate. Two additional ships are scheduled to arrive in one week. Military aid story from DefenseNews Donation number from Tim Blair Jacques should get his tax and this just in -- reports of giant flying pigs over the north pole. Film at eleven...

UN Tsunami Relief - an update

Wretchard at The Belmont Club with some links that point out the United Nations fondness for VIP Suites and Limos and avoidance of actually doing anything... These two links stand out: From the Financial Times: bq. The UN is being criticised for its failure to organise dozens of aid groups in and around Banda Aceh more than a week and a half after the tsunami hit the region, forcing some of them to bypass the international body and take action into their own hands to ensure aid reaches areas with the most urgent needs. "If we wait for the UN to tell us what to do, we wouldn't do anything," said Abdul Hadi bin e Rashid, first admiral of the Malaysian navy at the country's operations tent at Banda Aceh airport. "There are people who are hungry and angry. Why wait? So we just do it." From The Daily Telegraph: bq. At the same time, US officials were briefing journalists about the lack of a UN presence at the airport in Banda Aceh, the capital of the province. "Look around and see who's present, and you will also see who's missing," said one. "I think you can read between the lines. "They [the UN] have their compound in town, their cars, but are they getting food out? Are they setting up clinics?" bq. The UN has been desperate to put experts on the ground all week, fearing that thousands of people have yet to receive food or medical treatment. Michael Elmquist, the UN co-ordinator, said he had approached the Americans for help. "The answer was, I should go through the Indonesians," he said. The Indonesian military agreed to lend three helicopters for the UN to use yesterday. But the mission to assess needs was cancelled due to a lack of paperwork. When UN officials arrived at the airport they were told they had failed to hand in flight permission forms by 8pm the previous night. "They were at the airport and I was expecting them to go out," said Mr Elmquist. "We were not informed in advance that it was necessary to fill in these forms." Time for them to just go away. The United Nations original charter was noble but they have devolved into a bureaucracy for maintaining tinpot despots and give them the moist sheen of legitimacy...

CBS News and the Memos

CBS finally released the results of their investigation into Ra^thergate. As you may recall, Dan Rather came up with a supposed memo prior to November's elections which was critical of President Bush's service int he Texas Air National Guard. Only problem was that it was a forgery and a very blatantly poor one at that. Charles Johnson typed the text of the memo into MS Word with its default settings and the two matched up perfectly. There were no true-proportional or kerning typewriters in common use at that time. Wizbang has some synopses here, here, here and here: bq. Snippets From The CBS PDF (1 Update) Wizbang will read 234 pages so you won't have to. (This will updated often) bq. This is just too funny. The whole thing started when Mapes went cruising the lefty moonbat sites and gets suckered. bq. From page 59:

On Monday, August 23, Mapes learned that Lieutenant Colonel Burkett was rumored to have important documents regarding the President?s TexANG service. Paul Lukasiak, who operates a website on which he posts disparaging analyses of President Bush?s TexANG service, told Mapes that another blogger, Linda Starr, had seen new TexANG documents regarding President Bush. Starr hosts a website that recently contained the slogan, ?Bush lied, Americans died,? and is the editor of Online Journal, an online newsletter often critical of President Bush. Mapes contacted Starr, who responded that she believed that Lieutenant Colonel Burkett had a two-page, classified document regarding President Bush?s TexANG service, and Starr speculated that it might be a disciplinary report. This disciplinary report was thought to relate to an assessment of whether Lieutenant Bush was fit to fly jets armed with nuclear weapons. Starr 60 told Mapes that Lieutenant Colonel Burkett was trying to determine the best way to disseminate the information to journalists ?without leaving any fingerprints.?

Paul also mentions the ten "serious defects" in the preparation and reporting of the story - item two is a doozey: bq. The most serious defects in the reporting and production of the September 8 Segment were:

1. The failure to obtain clear authentication of any of the Killian documents from any document examiner; 2. The false statement in the September 8 Segment that an expert had authenticated the Killian documents when all he had done was authenticate one signature from one document used in the Segment;

And who made the false statement? Dan Ra^ther, that's who. He lied on prime-time TV. Hindrocket at Power Line has a very excellent in-depth analysis as well. bq. I've now read the Thornburgh report in its entirety, and have just finished giving an interview to CBS News, some (small) portion of which is likely to be on the evening news tonight. bq. In general, the Thornburgh report is better than I expected. It criticizes 60 Minutes harshly, and is a treasure trove of factual information. However, while the report is damning, the question is whether it is damning enough. In two key respects, the report walks up to the precipice, but declines to jump. Read the rest for a very interesting account of the personalities at work in the CBS heirarchy...

United Nations Tsunami Relief

An interesting comment from The Diplomad They start off their entry listing some relief agencies that are doing good work:

We've had many readers ask us about good NGOs. We do not want to get into the endorsement business but we want to acknowledge some VERY good organizations doing exceptional work. If you want to give money to them that's your business. International Organization for Migration (IOM) CARE Catholic Relief Services Mercy Corps Save the Children

The then close with this following bit of news:

By the way, as we wrap up day sixteen, the UN still has not begun saving people in the corner of the tsunami-blasted Far Abroad. The UN has distributed ZERO on the ground -- an absolutely disgraceful performance.

This is from someone with boots ont he ground experience - if the UN is

Embalm the Vote

Today's Cox and Forkum cartoon expresses the current situation in the WA State Governors Election perfectly: Heh... For more of this story, check out Sound Politics

A blogger looses it

and writes the story... Hat tip to Instapundit for this link to Varifrank's story:

Today, I was "Unprofessional"... Over the past 6 weeks, I've been deeply enmeshed in one of those "go live at the end of the year" projects that we in the IT industry have learned to love. The kind where managers assume that since no one is working, why that would be the perfect time to go live! Of course, it means that your doing complex work at the point of maximum distraction with many many holidays and no staff. This year we had a major distraction, and I'm bothered that I described it that way. On Christmas Day, a disaster visited the human race. Hundreds of thousands of people, quietly living their lives on the edge of the sea were killed. They were killed, not by suicide bombers or suitcase nukes or crazed men hijacking planes into buildings. They were killed with simple seawater. Those that were killed werent just simple minded fools who wandered lemming like out into the unusually low tide, only to be mowed down by the sudden flood. They were people enjoying the sights from the second story of a hotel when the ocean rose up to engulf them. The horror of it all hasnt even begun to sink in to most of us. There is a tendancy in the western world to overlook the disasters of the third world. Unless it involves us "white folks", the press of the western world does not seem to care or think that we do. In this disaster, one example of disgusting western depravity could be found in the many press outlets that made big news out of a "supermodel" who was (gasp!!!) harmed in the disaster. Imagine if someone on September 12th had published a report that Zsa Zsa gabor and her poodle were put out by the lack of cabs in Manhattan. It made me sick to my stomach to see this item on the news. Today, The Secretary of State Colin Powell announced that 5,000 Americans could not be accounted for, Sweden also announced roughly the same figure for their citizens. Now we care. And shame on us all. Today, during an afternoon conference that wrapped up my project of the last 18 months, one of my Euro collegues tossed this little turd out to no one in particular: " See, this is why George Bush is so dumb, theres a disaster in the world and he sends an Aircraft Carrier..." After which he and many of my Euro collegues laughed out loud. and then they looked at me. I wasn't laughing, and neither was my Hindi friend sitting next to me, who has lost family in the disaster. I'm afraid I was "unprofessional", I let it loose - "Hmmm, let's see, what would be the ideal ship to send to a disaster, now what kind of ship would we want? Something with its own inexhuastible power supply? Something that can produce 900,000 gallons of fresh water a day from sea water? Something with its own airfield? So that after producing the fresh water, it could help distribute it? Something with 4 hospitals and lots of open space for emergency supplies? Something with a global communications facility to make the coordination of disaster relief in the region easier? Well "Franz", us peasants in America call that kind of ship an "Aircraft Carrier". We have 12 of them. How many do you have? Oh that's right, NONE. Lucky for you and the rest of the world, we are the kind of people who share. Even with people we dont like. In fact, if memory serves,once upon a time we peasants spent a ton of money and lives rescuing people who we had once tried to kill and who tried to kill us. Do you know who those people were? that's right Franz, Europeans. Theres is a French Aircraft carrier? where is it? Right where it belongs! In France of course! Oh why should the French Navy dirty their uniforms helping people on the other side of the globe. How Simplesse... The day an American has to move a European out of the way to help in some part of the world it will be a great day in the world, you sniggering little fucknob..." The room fell silent. My hindi friend then said quietly to the Euros: "Can you let your hatred of George Bush end for just one minute? There are people dying! And what are your countries doing? Amazon.com has helped more than France has. You all have a role to play in the world, why can't you see that? Thank God for the US Navy, they dont have to come and help, but they are. They helped you once and you should all thank God they did. They didnt have to, and no one but them would have done so. I'm ashamed of you all..." He left the room, shaking and in tears. The frustration of being on the other side of the globe, unable to do anything to assist and faced with people who could not set aside their asininity long enough to reach out and help was too much for him to bear. I just shook my head and left. The Euros stood speechless. Later in the breakroom, one of the laughing Euros caught me and extended his hand in an apology. I asked him where he was from, he said "a town outside of Berlin". He is a young man, in his early 20's. I asked him if he knew of a man named Gail Halvorsen. He said no. I said "that's a shame" and walked away to find my Hindi friend.

The Radar Pages

Stumbled onto this fascinating site through a link in an email... It's a history of Radar development in England starting with the R.A.F. Chain Home system from the 1930's and closing with the systems used during cold-war era through the 1970's. Lots of photos of the hardware, schematics of the transmitters and receivers. The Links page is good with lots of other Radar and Communications history web sites. One of these links: Larry's Home Page deserves special mention -- it covers the history of the Distant Early Warning Line (DEW Line). This is a fascinating bit of North American history for those interested in the Cold War. Fascinating stuff...

Trip Report

Jen and I like to hike and backpack. There is a local association of people who maintain the trails and its members will frequently write trip reports of their hikes to serve as a resource for others that may plan the same hike. Here are the first two paragraphs from one such report: bq. Mailbox Peak Hike past the gate up the road keeping to the right at a "Y" in the road. Soon the road will re-enter forest. Keep an eye on the left side of the road looking for the usually unmarked trail head. If you come to a stream passing through a culvert under the road you have gone about 100' to far. As luck would have it I visited my dentist Karen D. Sakuma D.D.S. last week and her hygienist Marsha gave me a new tooth brush (not that I don't buy them on my own, I usually buy a new one every three months or so). So anyhow I had my old tooth brush with me and that is now marking the trail head as per tradition. So look for a Crest complete tooth brush with a black and blue handle with soft bristles stuck in the ground at the trail head. If you see any other type of tooth brush it's the wrong trail. Make sure you test the bristles with your thumb to ensure they are soft bristles. Don't rely on the color alone to identify the tooth brush. bq. So now you're on the trail. The trail passes through second growth forest. Listen for the sound of enchanted wood-nymphs playing their well lubricated Sousaphones. Don't expect to see them though, they bury themselves up to their necks in the mud and place manure on their heads to disguise themselves so people won't step on them. They play old Gilbert and Sullivan show tunes -- badly. Expect to hear a few bars of "Three Little Maids from School" from the Mikado played over and over. When you reach a stream do not cross it. For God's sake whatever you do, do not cross it. The trail clearly turns to the left and heads away from the stream, so don't cross the stream. Only a very stupid person would cross that stream. If you do cross the stream, throw these instructions away, they won't help you anymore. Now that you haven't crossed the stream (I sure hope you didn't cross that stream) follow the trail, still flat for a short distance. Ignore the fresh meat hanging from trees, they're just there to attract grizzly bears. The local chapter of the Brownie Scouts has been collecting sperm samples from the grizzly bear population for a 4-H club science project. This means the male grizzlies are fairly docile, but the sows may be a bit testy (seems backwards doesn't it). The project has had a negative impact on both the population of Grizzly bears and Brownie Scouts, but the results are expected to radically change the way we use cellophane. Soon the trail starts to go up. If you're not sure which way this is, stand, then look down at your feet. Now snap your head backwards really hard so year neck swivels 180 degrees. You are now looking up. That's where the trail goes. Now would be a good time to call a chiropractor to have your neck realigned. I don't know what was in Bill's trail mix that day but I want some...

Light blogging

Jen and I both caught the creeping crud from our trip down to California this last week. (It was her family!!!) (dodging a thrown shuttle) so posting will be a bit lighter than normal for a couple days...

Two paths for Global Warming

Back40 at CrumbTrail points to an announcement from the Bush White House and draws a parallel between Climate Variability and the Tsunami Relief Effort:

Climate Nous

Dr John H Marburger, III, science adviser to President George W Bush and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, makes the case for the US approach to climate variability.

"The issue of climate change respects no border. Its effects cannot be reined in by an army or advanced by any ideology. Climate change, with its potential to impact every corner of the world, is an issue that must be addressed by the world." - President George W Bush, June 11, 2001. With these words, President Bush clearly acknowledged the seriousness of climate change and launched a responsible and practical climate policy with three primary aims: (1) to introduce new technologies for producing and using energy that can dramatically reduce the relationship between economic growth and the generation of greenhouse gases; (2) to improve scientific tools and understanding needed to respond more effectively to the problems posed by climate change; and 3) to enlist the cooperation of other nations to address the entire spectrum of climate change issues. To advance these aims, the US spent approximately $5.1 billion in financial year 2004 on climate change science research, advanced energy technologies, voluntary programmes, and related international assistance - far more than any other nation.

See the article for a brief expansion of the details of that vision. Most of what we hear is that the US does not support Kyoto and so is not taking climate variability seriously or doing useful things. Given that even full compliance with Kyoto - something that the signatories are no where near to and is exceedingly unlikely to occur - does nothing about climate variability, this is an obviously nonsensical view. The US approach is far better. It remains to be seen whether the various policy aims will be achieved and whether they are effective over time, but it is clearly a better direction than Kyoto, more likely to yield progress. There is a parallel to the current tsunami relief efforts. The UN/EU approach is to talk more than act, and restrict acts to planning conducted in plush surrounds. The US approach is the reverse, more act than talk, and doing those things that are immediately useful in parallel with planning. The more convinced you are that climate variability will be significant and that it is caused by humans the more you should support this "vision" since it has far more likelihood of having significant effects. Taking immediate actions, such as the Methane to Markets Partnership, plucks the most valuable low hanging fruit for magnified effect. Spending serious cash on a variety of research initiatives at the same time is the most likely way to achieve larger effects over time. Immediate benefits, longer term benefits. Why aren't those who claim to be concerned about climate change supporting these efforts? It seems like they don't give a fig about climate, that it is just a wedge issue to advance their otherwise inimical political objectives. Shame on them. We would do well to spend our energies pressing for more and faster progress in this direction rather than obstructing progress for petty political advantage. How did it come to be that the "environmental movement" is effectively anti-environment? Politics is so weird. It doesn't matter if we dislike Bush or disagree with many of his policies, we can still support those that are both sensible and effective. Environmentalists need to crawl out of the cesspool of party politics and do something useful for the environment for a change.

Indeed. There is historical record of periodic climate variability - 900 years ago, wine grapes were growing in Greenland. In the 1500's, people were ice skating on the great canals of Europe. We are presently leaving this cooling period and entering into a warming one. Rather than sit around in meetings, the USA is trying to do something effective. Kyoto was broken before it left the conference room. It's climate models are obsolete and the economic cost outweighs an benefit that would result. The world would be better off spending that money on Malaria, AIDS, Clean Water. Once again, we are reminded of the gulf between Old Europe and America/New Europe.

Dokaka

All right... From his About Dokaka: bq. As a five-year-old child, Dokaka hummed along with melodies on television, but one day plugged headphones into the TV, discovering that the sounds in his head matched those piping through the headphones. He quickly realized that songs consist of many parts like bass, drums, etc. Within a year, he began to record himself humming. bq. At 18, Dokaka started drumming in bands, and four years later stumbled upon his childhood recordings, reigniting his interest in humming. He was first heard humming by others when his band's bassist missed practice, so he hummed the bassline. The band's singer found the humming catchy and recommended professional recording. Dokaka financed and produced his own recordings and uploaded them to the internet, dubbing himself with the onomatopoeic name "Dokaka" from his drum-derived humming sounds! Here is a list of MP3 tunes for download Very trippy in small doses.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zizzou

We just saw this tonight and it is a wonderful wonderful movie... Recommended highly -- the interplay between characters is well done with a lot of subtle depth and the humor is elegant and dry. The movie revolves around a take-off of a Jacques Cousteau documentary style and the cast and crew nailed that perfectly... Whomever was responsible for the set dressing deserves a raise -- I majored in Physical Oceanography and Marine Biology back in the late 60's and I used some of the equipment in the movie and recognized a lot of the other stuff. The stuff you see is authentic and old, even the vintage camera (Arriflex) and sound (Nagra) equipment. I was thinking that The Team Zizzou ship (the Belafonte) looked a lot like the Cousteau Calypso. The two ships share a common origin, they are both 50-year-old ex-Navy Minesweepers. Well worth seeing... Here is a review, here are some production notes.

New tech at other website

The website for our Commercial Hard Cider business is here Brown Snout As part of growing all the apples and running a farm, I installed a weather station in 2003. Today, I was evaluating software and found a package that allows me to connect the station to the internet. Check it out here Brown Snout Weather It will be going through a cleanup and rework over the next few weeks but the core software looks really good.

The Wacky Warning Label Contest

For eight years, the Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch (M-LAW) has hosted a Whacky Warning Label contest to find the most obviously unnecessary warning label on an American-made product. Here is this years winner:

Radio Hall of Fame personality, Dick Purtan, holds a toilet brush which warns: “Do not use for personal hygiene.” The brush was selected by listeners of Purtan’s morning show on Oldies 104.3 WOMC in Detroit as the winner of M-LAW’s Eighth Annual Wacky Warning Label Contest.

Past winners this year include: * A label on a baby stroller warns: “Remove child before folding * A brass fishing lure with a three-pronged hook on the end warns: “Harmful if swallowed * A household iron warns users: “Never iron clothes while they are being worn” * A label on a hair dryer reads, “Never use hair dryer while sleeping” * A warning on an electric drill made for carpenters cautions: “This product not intended for use as a dental drill.” * The label on a bottle of drain cleaner warns: “If you do not understand, or cannot read, all directions, cautions and warnings, do not use this product.” * A smoke detector warns: “Do not use the Silence Feature in emergency situations. It will not extinguish a fire.” Sheesh!

Sigh...

...this would explain a lot of things: Hat tip to Misanthropyst for the link to this quiz...

Examining WalMart

Jen and I make it our policy not to shop at Wal-Mart or Sam's Club. The company is known for poor treatment of its workers and harms the communities where it has stores. We much prefer Costco which pays its employees well, has a fantastic benefits package and still sells good stuff for very very cheap. An interesting insight into Wal-Mart can be found at the New York Review of Books Here is one tidbit: bq. One of the most telling of all the criticisms of Wal-Mart is to be found in a February 2004 report by the Democratic Staff of the House Education and Workforce Committee. In analyzing Wal-Mart's success in holding employee compensation at low levels, the report assesses the costs to US taxpayers of employees who are so badly paid that they qualify for government assistance even under the less than generous rules of the federal welfare system. For a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store, the government is spending $108,000 a year for children's health care; $125,000 a year in tax credits and deductions for low-income families; and $42,000 a year in housing assistance. The report estimates that a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store costs federal taxpayers $420,000 a year, or about $2,103 per Wal-Mart employee. That translates into a total annual welfare bill of $2.5 billion for Wal-Mart's 1.2 million US employees. bq. Wal-Mart is also a burden on state governments. According to a study by the Institute for Labor and Employment at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2003 California taxpayers subsidized $20.5 million worth of medical care for Wal-Mart employees. In Georgia ten thousand children of Wal-Mart employees were enrolled in the state's program for needy children in 2003, with one in four Wal-Mart employees having a child in the program.[9] Go read the article for more, much much more... Hat tip to Brian Weaver at Grafyte -- his blog doesn't have permalinks but scroll down to the January 5 entry...

Tsunami Relief options

Hat tip to Dean Esmay for this link: bq. Free Shipping From Fed Ex To Help Tsunami Stricken Areas! Our friend Marc has some thoughts on principled charity vs. simply giving money. Conservatives will especially appreciate his message. bq. Speaking of which, have I mentioned that a really great way to give disaster relief is not to send money, but to take advantage of Federal Express' free shipping to tsunami-ravaged Asia? So that instead of just sending cash you can send new (please, only new) bottles of unopened water, food, clothing, medical supplies, and so on to areas hard-hit by the Tsunami? bq. Because I'm not sure you were paying attention last time I mentioned it. bq. More details right here. bq. What are you waiting for? Indeed -- Jen and I sent in a donation to a Seattle group that does excellent work and has very low administrative overhead.

Stone blames failure of 'Alexander' on 'fundamentalism'

From CBC News: bq. Often-controversial director Oliver Stone has blamed the failure of his epic film Alexander on the "raging fundamentalism" in the U.S. South. bq. The film, which stars Irish actor Colin Farrell in the story of the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great, was greeted with derisive reviews. bq. Colin Farrell plays the title role in 'Alexander.' (AP photo) It was also a failure at the box office. Budgeted at roughly $150 million U.S., it has pulled in only $34 million so far. Hey Oliver -- how about this: It was a bad movie and nobody wanted to see it. The critics panned it and it closed early in the theaters. I would think that if there was a hue and cry from raging fundamentalists, that would have driven people to see the movie to see for themselves what the controversy was. In your case though, nobody went. Yawn...

Spyware

Microsoft has released a beta version of their new anti-Spyware software. I'm partial to AdAware and use it on all of my systems but at first glance, this looks pretty good. Only nit is that it seeks to "authenticate" your copy of Windows before they let you proceed with the download. There is a way round this but I'm betting that this will go away an MSFT will be a lot more sticky about seeing if you are running a "valid" copy of Windows before they let you update anything...

Job opening at Microsoft

Heh... From TechWeb: bq. Oops: Blue Screen Of Death Interrupts Gates' CES Show Bill Gates' keynote presentation Wednesday night at the Consumer Electronics Show didn't quite go according to plan: glitches, including a dreaded "Blue Screen of Death," interrupted the show several times. Microsoft's chairman, who shared the stage with late-night talk show host Conan O'Brien, kept his cool when Microsoft Media Center crashed during the presentation, and an Xbox displayed the blue screen of death. bq. As the Xbox went down for the count, the Microsoft executive running that part of the presentation, Garrett Young, said, "This is a little bit of demo karma, sorry, I'm out of system memory apparently. Yeah, so just imagine, if you will, that I was customizing my car and doing some really cool stuff." bq. O'Brien played to the crowd during the crashes with lines like "right now nine people are being fired," and "Who's in charge of Microsoft? Oh." Ouch!

You might be a liberal...

Good list from Dog Snot Diaries: bq. As a public service, and with apologies to Jeff Foxworthy, here are the early warning signs that reveal if you, or someone you care about, just might be a liberal. * You think that protestors outside nuclear power plants are dedicated activists, but protestors outside abortion clinics are dangerous zealots interfering with a legal activity. * You believe that more federal regulations will make your life better. * You think that Rush Limbaugh’s listeners are mindless “dittoheads,” but you have never doubted anything that you heard from Michael Moore. * You believe that the network news is a better indicator of what “real” news is than talk radio, Internet news sites, and blogs. * You believe that Mikhail Gorbachev deserves more credit for losing the Cold War than Ronald Reagan deserves for winning it. * You pride yourself on your global awareness, global sensitivity and global outlook, but can’t name your state legislator or school board representative. * You are dedicated to helping the poor, the downtrodden and the less fortunate, but you have never given blood. * You believe that rich people should not be allowed to contribute so much money to candidates for office (except for George Soros). * You believe that government should make a special effort to hire members of traditionally oppressed groups, such as African-Americans (except for Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice). * You feel a deep sense of common cause with oppressed groups, such as Hispanic immigrants (except for Cuban Americans fleeing Castro). * You believe that a mother’s wishes for her child, especially a mother’s last, dying wish for her child, should outweigh the wishes of a father who had long before deserted his family (unless the child is named Elian Gonzalez). * You have no problem with Hollywood movie starts flying around in private jets to give speeches on the evils of SUVs. * You think that raising taxes will reduce the budget deficit. * You are more concerned, more often, with the rights of convicted felons than you are with the rights of small business owners. * You uphold a woman’s right to choose, unless a woman chooses adoption, chooses to be a stay-at-home mom, chooses to homeschool, or chooses to start a business. * You are more concerned with Vice President Cheney’s links to Halliburton than with Saddam Hussein’s links to international terrorism. Many more at the site. My problem is that I know some of these people...

The Environmental take on the Tsunami

Some really bad science there and Cox and Forkum nail it: Visit their website for the background and commentary. Excellent stuff...

A sad story

I had heard of this several times but Kuro5hin has a nice wrap-up with links: bq. The Loneliest Mystery of the Deep For the last 12 years, a single solitary whale whose vocalizations match no known living species has been tracked across the Northeast Pacific. Its wanderings match no known migratory patterns of any living whale species. Its vocalizations have also subtly deepened over the years, indicating that the whale is maturing and ageing. And, during the entire 12 year span that it has been tracked, it has been calling out for contact from others of its own kind. bq. It has received no answer. Nor will it ever. Click on the link above -- there are pointers to audio recordings, the tech behind the recordings, the people curious about just who this is and what it might be. A sad story in some senses but a fascinating one too... UPDATE: I was reading through the comments on the Kuro5hin site and one popped out at me: bq. Didn't anyone have the same first thought I had?: bq. ANSWER THE WHALE. bq. If it truly is the only whale on that frequency, it's not like you're going to confuse an entire whale civilization. Answer him. I'm sure the whale-sound scientists could come up with something that would be a basic set of sounds, akin to simply "yelling out loud" in whalespeak. Like DUUUH! It would be a valid test and might yield a reply. How cool would that be.

The tide turns in Indonesia

Some distressing news from A Western Heart: bq. The Religion of Peace to the Rescue? Or is Violence on the Cards? Apparently several radical Islamic groups are currently recruiting people to head over to Aceh, pronto! Absolutely no one's questioning their right to help their own people, and of course they're making all the right bury-the-hatchet type noises - or are they?

Radical groups arrive in force Radical Islamic groups best known for smashing bars and violent support of jailed cleric Abu Bakar Bashir have sent large contingents to Aceh province with funding from the Indonesian Government. At the airport, members of Bashir's group, the MMI, have been unloading trucks with supplies to be ferried to disaster-struck areas by US navy helicopters. One man was proudly wearing an Osama bin Laden T-shirt.

bq. Great. And I'll bet laughing boy just slipped that on because everything else was in the wash. The reality, however, is sounding far more sinister. Something has been brewing for several days now, with various Asian media outlets around the region reporting an increasingly disturbing movement, including the recruitment of Jihadis, to go to Aceh. With that in mind, and with the example of the clever fellow in the latest in Osama casual wear, I wouldn't be at all surprised if this lot aren't going in with the intention of seeing if they can provoke an incident. The question is, if something happens, is the Indonesian Government going to protect our people, and (God forbid) shoot its own?

The head of the FPI contingent, Hilmy Bakar Almascaty, said about 250 members of his group had come to Aceh with plane tickets from the Indonesian Government. He said another 800 were on an Indonesian warship on their way to help clean up the province. "FPI is not only an organisation that destroys bars and discos, it has a humanitarian side as well that the media is not happy to expose," he said.

bq. Maybe that's because our definitions of humanitarianism don't necessarily accord, hey Dr Almascaty?

Early yesterday morning, 50 of his troops wearing FPI shirts went through military drills before heading to the city to help collect corpses that still have not been recovered from the millions of tonnes of rubble.

bq. Wow - now that's got to be appropriate, hasn't it? Of course, you never do know when you might have to go into action to, I don't know, take out - well - anybody who needs it, I guess. I wonder who they might have in mind?

Dr Almascaty . . . was determined to ensure that foreign soldiers and aid workers did not lead to a breakdown in shariah or Islamic law. "If anyone who comes here does not respect the shariah law, traditions and constitution, we must give them a warning and then we must attack," he said.

bq. I think the word 'attack' carries some pretty important overtones, myself. More at the link above. And let us not forget that Saudi Arabia has given $150 Million to the families of suicide bombers but only $30 Million to their brethren in need. It was $10 Million but they upped it when US Private Contributions topped $350 Million.

Last US manufacturer of professional audio tape closes shop.

From the Opelika-Auburn News (Alabama) bq. Opelika plant closes When they clocked out for the Christmas holidays, Quantegy employees planned on returning to work, as scheduled, Monday. But, there's no job to go back to - for some 250 employees. bq. "No Trespassing" signs were erected Friday afternoon and security passwords were changed at the Opelika plant, 2230 Marvyn Parkway. bq. "Quantegy, Inc. has ceased operations pending restructuring. This is due to financial issues that have plagued the industry and Quantegy for some time. All employees are on lay off pending further notice," according to a brief press release issued by the company Friday. The Opelika plant, once employed some 1,800 workers, has recently filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Some back story: bq. Almost 60 years ago, the story was different. "In 1945, after capturing several German 'Magnetophon' tape recorders from Radio Luxembourg, the American Signal Corps recorded a speech by Gen. Dwight Eisenhower to be played to the people of occupied Germany... And more (talking about the American development of magnetic tape): bq. Maj. Orr located a German scientist, Dr. Karl Pfleumer, who gave him a basic formula for magnetic tape. Within two weeks, Maj. Orr had managed to manufacture his first reels of usable audio tape. After returning to his home in Opelika, Alabama, Orr set up a magnetic tape manufacturing facility and soon afterwards began marketing his own tape under the "IRISH" brand name. Orr continued his manufacturing operation and in 1959, Orradio Industries became part of the Ampex Corporation. bq. Founded by Alexander M. Poniatoff, The Ampex Corporation had been developing audio tape recorders since the end of WWII starting with its model 200. The company's first sales of the Model 200 were to Bing Crosby Enterprises and the American Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). In 1956, Ampex announced a historic breakthrough - the first practical video tape recorder. bq. Shortly after this introduction Poniatoff and Orr entered into negotiations and in 1959, Orradio Industries became the Ampex Magnetic Tape Division of Ampex Corporation. In November of 1995, the Ampex Recording Media Corporation was put up for sale, and the recording media pioneer became Quantegy Inc., according to www.quantegy.com Fast forward 2005... bq. "It's like Happy New Year - you don't have a job," said one former Quantegy employee. "Most of these employees have worked there 28 to 30 years - they don't know anything else; they are a different breed of people, dedicated to the company. The average age is 50 plus, and no matter what they say - it's not easy to start over." Ouch! Cassette tapes will be around forever and the Mini-DV and VHS video tapes too but the lifespan of pro grade Audio recording tape is nearing an end for most people... I started out with several tape recorders that used 1/4" wide tape and recorded on two tracks (stereo - left and right). You would record and then flip the tape over to get another 30 minutes (there were four tracks on the tape and you could record and play back two at a time). The top "pro-sumer" machines at that time were Revox, Crown and Magnecord. I owned a Magnecord 1024 (and wish I still did!). I then graduated to an Ampex 1/4" four-track (able to record the four tracks simultaneously but you lost the option of flipping the tape over for more capacity). My last machine was a Tascam TSR-8 1/2" eight track machine. I was in Hog Heaven. Cost me about $2,500 back in 1985 -- put several hundred hours on it and sold it at a garage sale for $500. Still an excellent machine! I now record direct from the mixing board to hard disk with much better fidelity but I really miss working with the tape. There is something nice and tangible about working with a metal splicing block, a razor blade and some tape that gets left out in a point-and-click environment... I recently upgraded my Cakewalk software to their new Sonar package and although it has a lot of neat features and I do not plan to go back, I still miss the cleanness and the sound of tape.

Change in comment policy

We have been getting hit by script kiddies leaving automated comments on this website. They are posting comments on as many Blogs as possible with the intention of raising their profile in search engines. I have made the decision to close all posts to comments after they are about one week old. Posts older than this will return an error message if you try to leave a comment. Posts newer than this will not be affected. I realize that someone might stumble on an older post and have something to offer, if this is the case, they can email me and I will unlock that post for them to comment. I am sorry for the inconvenience but this is necessary -- over the last few weeks, these lusers have been posting several hundred comments for hard-core pornography sites being hosted on Russian servers. This is not a situation where a quiet word to an ISP Security person would put a stop to this. More drastic measures are needed. If you run a blog and need something like this, leave me a comment to this post and I'll pass on the link to the software I'm using. I went through a few applications before choosing this one and it seems to work very fast and very well...

IKEA Desk names

It probably translates into something innocuous in Swedish but IKEA has some pretty strange names for their desks. I own a JERKER (use it for my sound mixing console and it works great). They have now come out with a FARTFULL... Anyone out there speak Swedish and can lend a clue?

Other websites

I run two other Blogs - the first one is for our Farm and Hard Cider business: BrownSnout There are some posts with photos of our Farm and details of our Christmas road-trip to CA and some of the stuff we picked up along the way. The other Blog is NorthWest Data Security I do consulting for computer users in the Washington State / Whatcom County / Mount Baker area. Hardware and Software tech support, virus and malware removal, spam filtering, website development. $45/hour

Tsunami Blogging

A good Blog for Tsunami Relief in India is India Uncut Start at the top and scroll down... A sample post: bq. Despatches 35: The fisherman’s mafia Nityanand Jayaraman, an independent journalist and activist, has been working on various projects in Cuddalore for the past few years. He enlightens us on what is happening in one of the worst-affected areas there, Devana Pattanam. bq. First, some background. In many of the fishing villages around, Jayaraman tells us, the locals don’t trust the local justice system, so they have their own internal mechanisms to deal with disputes and crimes – even murder. When problems cannot be sorted out in the village concerned, they go to Devana Pattinam, which is a sort of Supreme Court in this system. But the dispute resolution process in Devana Pattinam is run by a local mafia, which basically consists of thugs. bq. What has happened now is this: World Vision and the Bollywood film star, Vivek Oberoi, who was on the flight to Chennai with me when I came here from Mumbai, arrived here some days back and announced that they were going to “adopt” the village. Then they went off. And as soon as they did so, the local mafia took over. They beat up a local policeman who was trying to direct relief supplies, and took charge of all supplies themselves. Now, normally it would help a village if all supplies went to a single source and were given out, methodically, from there. But here, things are different. bq. Devana Pattinam is a hotbed of caste problems, with four different castes here that do not interact with each other. The mafia, as you’d expected, is diverting all aid to its own caste, its own people. Even the relief lists that the administration is getting, for purposes of compensation etc, are skewed because the mafia is making these lists. Jayaraman has prepared alternate lists that are comprehensive and intends to hand them over to the district administration, but even they will have a tough time navigating these waters. bq. “Tell me,” I ask Jayaraman, “haven’t the people from different castes come together at a time of crisis like this?” bq. “No,” he says, “the tsunami has, in fact, worsened relations. Earlier they were getting by just doing their own thing, and they could afford to ignore each other. But now they are competing for the same resources. It’s getting worse.” There is always hope that people will break through existing prejudices in times of crisis but I don't know... Wish someone would invent the "Universal Clue-Bat", runs on two D Cells and would administer common sense to anyone, regardless of language or culture... We need this!

DIY Electronics - Radio Receiver

M. Simon over at Power and Control is building a classical radio receiver - a regenerative. These are hard to tune (you are close to a threshold where crossing over gives you a loud squeal) but the sensitivity and the precision of tuning is excellent for what amounts to a fairly simple circuit. DIY stands for Do-It-Yourself which is unfortunately not that common these days... There is a good description of the project plus lots and lots of links to other circuits and explanations of theory. If you wanted to build a small short-wave receiver from scratch, this would be a very good place to start. I had a nephew visit last summer and he and I built one of these kits from Ramsey Electronics. It is a superheterodyne receiver - the design that followed the regenerative (more complex, softer tuning but easier to operate) and he is having a blast with it, picking up Chinese and Spanish broadcasts.

The Diplomad

A new shining star on the Blog World -- added to the Blogroll to your right. I present: The Diplomad From their own introduction: bq. A Blog by career US Foreign Service officers. They are Republican (most of the time) in an institution (State Department) in which being a Republican can be bad for your career -- even with a Republican President! Join the State Department Republican Underground. FSOs (and others) Send us your suggested posts to diplomad-at-hotmail-dot-com They are close to the Tsunami Relief and have some very trenchant observations regarding the United Nations handing of this humanitarian crisis compared with the US, Australia, Japan, etc... A sample post: bq. almost fUNnny . . . Day 9 of the tsunami crisis. bq. I know I had promised to lay off the UN for a bit . . . but I can't. As one reader commented on a previous Diplomad posting on the UN, "it's like watching a train wreck" -- you know it's horrible, but you've just got to look at it. bq. In this part of the tsunami-wrecked Far Abroad, the UN is still nowhere to be seen where it counts, i.e., feeding and helping victims. The relief effort continues to be a US-Australia effort, with Singapore now in and coordinating closely with the US and Australia. Other countries are also signing up to be part of the US-Australia effort. Nobody wants to be "coordinated" by the UN. The local UN reps are getting desperate. They're calling for yet another meeting this afternoon; they've flown in more UN big shots to lecture us all on "coordination" and the need to work together, i.e., let the UN take credit. With Kofi about to arrive for a big conference, the UNocrats are scrambling to show something, anything as a UN accomplishment. Don't be surprised if they claim that the USS Abraham Lincoln is under UN control and that President Lincoln was a strong supporter of the UN. bq. Maybe watching the UN flounder is not like watching a train wreck; perhaps it's more akin to watching an Ed Wood movie or reading Maureen Dowd or Margo Kingston -- so horrible, so pathetic, that it transforms into a thing of perverse beauty. The only problem, of course, is that real people are dying. bq. UPDATE: More on "The UNcredibles": WFP (World Food Program) has "arrived" in the capital with an "assessment and coordination team." The following is no joke; no Diplomad attempt to be funny or clever: The team has spent the day and will likely spend a few more setting up their "coordination and opcenter" at a local five-star hotel. And their number one concern, even before phones, fax and copy machines? Arranging for the hotel to provide 24hr catering service. USAID folks already are cracking jokes about "The UN Sheraton." Meanwhile, our military and civilians, working with the super Aussies, continue to keep the C-130 air bridge of supplies flowing and the choppers flying, and keep on saving lives -- and without 24hr catering services from any five-star hotel . . . . The contrast grows more stark every minute. Visit this site - it has become one of my daily must-reads...

Urban Dictionary

From Dean Esmay comes this link to the Urban Dictionary It's a WIKI but not very well moderated -- some chaff but a lot of fun digging through... Sample definition: bq. abercrombie CloneWear. How about wearing a beaten up hat, hoodie, khaki shorts, and sandals every day out of the fuckin year? As seen on every frat boy since 1999. That abercrombie kid is like a cartoon character, every day he wears the same shit. Heh...

Iraqi Medical Libraries

From Conservator comes this link regarding two U.S. Military Doctors who are starting a book drive for Iraqi Medical Libraries. From the S.F. Gate bq. Helping to restock the medical libraries of war-scarred Iraq THE DIAGNOSIS: Two U.S. doctors -- one an Army Reserve captain, the other a retired Army colonel -- realize Iraq's medical libraries are badly outdated, and decide to do something about it. bq. THE PRESCRIPTION: A book drive to get updated material into the hands of Iraqi professors and students elicits more than 100,000 items from medical schools, publishing houses and people around the globe. bq. THE PROGNOSIS: "Everyone here -- doctors and students -- feel like they are born again," said Dr. Thamer Al Hilfi, a professor at the University of Tikrit College of Medicine. The project has expanded to include nursing, dental and veterinary books. Very nice! 100,000 books is not a shabby library... And just as a reminder: Who let Iraq's Medical Libraries get outdated?

Cool Bio-Tech toys - Inteins

Derek Lowe at In The Pipeline has an article on something that I have never heard of before but sounds like a very cool new tool for biochemistry: bq. Tadpoles to the Rescue? Speaking of odd ideas that might have applications in drug discovery, there's an interesting one in the latest issue of Nature Methods (2, 31). A group at the Molecular Sciences Institute in Berkeley reports a new way to detect and quantify molecular binding targets. And if you think that this sounds like something we're interested in over here in the drug discovery business, you are correct-o-matic. bq. This idea piggybacks, as you might expect, on the mighty king of detection and quantification in molecular biology, PCR. The ability to hugely amplify small amounts of DNA is unique, the biochemical equivalent of a photomultiplier , and many people have taken advantage of it. In this case, they also make ingenious use of weird beasts called inteins, about which a great deal of background can be found here. Briefly, inteins are sort of DNA parasites. They insert into genes and are read off into an extraneous stretch of protein in the middle of the normal gene product. But then they quickly clip themselves out of the protein - they have their own built-in cut-and-splice mechanism - and leave the originally intended protein behind them, none the worse for wear. Derek goes on to tall about one of the very practical applications of this work: bq. The paper demonstrates this in several different systems, going all the way up to a real-world example with blood serum. What's impressive about the technique is that it seems to work as well as antibody methods like ELISA. Getting a good reliable antibody is no joke, but these folks can make smaller proteins with much worse intrinsic affinity perform just as well. And if you turn around and do the trick starting with an antibody, you can increase the sensitivity of the assay by orders of magnitude. And you get a real quantitative readout, with about +/- 10% accuracy. To give you the most startling example, the authors were able to detect as few as 150 single molecules of labeled bovine serum albumin in a test system. Considering the way that progress works for stuff like this, you will see a portable room-temperature tester for most diseases (Stock and Human -- imagine a quick reliable test for BSE or Avian Flu) as well as for very small amounts of specific chemicals. As Derek said, this piggybacks off PCR. The developer of PCR (Kary B. Mullis) got the Nobel for his work - interesting to see if these people get the prize as well... A wonderful book by Dr. Mullis is Dancing Naked in the Mind Field

Back home again!

After 1,030 miles of driving in two days, we arrived home tonight. Now to check up on several hundred emails (as if I need to lengthen my "stock portfolio"). Not complaining -- I'm running SpamAssasin and it nailed several thousand of the buggers, still gripes me to pay for the bandwidth... Light blogging tonight and the usual mindless stream will resume tomorrow. UPDATE: I'm tired - heading off to bed. Blogging will resume tomorrow.

Michael Crichton interview

There is a very nice interview in today's Times Online We are packing to head back up to our farm in Washington State so I don't have the time now to excerpt any good bits but it's well worth reading for insight into his writing of State of Fear and Environmental concerns in general... You can see the entire text of the interview by clicking on the "Continue reading..." link below. January 02, 2005 Interview: Jasper Gerard meets Michael Crichton Global warming? Now that really is fiction A giant wave envelops a tropical island. Victims scramble for survival. The world watches in horror. Michael Crichton has a knack for novels that are of the moment, but never has his fiction collided so savagely and swiftly with reality. Until now, with State of Fear, the Jurassic Park author’s latest blockbuster. As befits one of the world’s top-selling authors, there is a monster twist in the book. So while the real tsunami was a product of nature, Crichton’s fictional one was started secretly by obsessive environmentalists trying to frighten the world into believing that global warming is about to cause the apocalypse. For after three years of painstaking research, the father of the techno-thriller believes he has reached a shocking conclusion: global warming is hot air. We met before the 603-page tree trunk of a novel had lumbered into bookshops, but the internet was already crackling with condemnation. “I have only done one talk show (to promote State of Fear) and people are clearly quite confused. One lady (caller) wanted to know why I wasn’t showing concern for earthquakes being caused by pollution. I said, actually there is no evidence about that.” Boy, will the green types be hot under the collar. As Britain sweats over missing its carbon dioxide emission targets, Crichton sends a simple message: chill. And if your heart aches for Third World suffering, divert the “trillions of dollars wasted on Kyoto to the 850m people who don’t have clean water, 20,000 of whom die each day”. If you doubt Crichton’s research, he offers enough footnotes citing scientific journals to fill a hefty volume of their own. As a Harvard physician and at the age of 22 a visiting anthropology lecturer at Cambridge, he is in nobody’s intellectual slipstream. It is not so much that Crichton is being reactionary; rather, his view offends our almost religious veneration of green issues, a faith in mother earth which holds that driving to the bottle bank in a belching 4x4 is a profound act of worship. Crichton admits his Hollywood cronies express horror at dinner parties as he expounds his theory. In response, he has made the prize chump in State of Fear a Hollywood star who dribbles on about saving the planet. Forget limousine liberals, Crichton’s new target is “Gulfstream environmentalists”. “I am asked to discuss it — the kind of ‘Why are you a heretic?’ conversation,” he says. “Often they are in the entertainment industry and on the boards of environmental groups. It soon becomes clear they have no information, only attitudes.” Two developments persuaded Crichton to abandon his Californian liberal world view. One was in 2002 having a gun held to his head by burglars, who tied up Taylor, his daughter, then aged 13. “They told me not to move and I figured it was best not to argue,” he says. It convinced him we must be tougher on bad guys, be they cat burglars or Saddam Hussein. His second awakening was seeing that scientists had become so cowed by environmental activists and the media that they dared not proclaim what their research showed: that, so far, it appears global warming is hardly happening. “The global change in temperature that everyone is so excited about is one-third of a degree,” he asserts. “The UK is doing better than most targets. It is extremely hard. In America, where we have had two of the coldest summers in the past century, they are underwhelmed by distressing notions of it getting warmer.” This is quite unlike your usual Hollywood interview, but perhaps that is because Crichton is not your usual tinseltown personality. He started studying English at Harvard but switched to anthropology and, after graduating, enrolled at Harvard medical school. As a student he wrote thrillers under assumed names. In 1969 he hit the big time with The Andromeda Strain, written under his own name. He is, simply, a workaholic who remains a scientist more than a wordsmith. His plots always race; only his prose sometimes sags. At his London hotel the suited 6ft 7in giant is ensconced, not with a glamorous blonde but a laptop. In a mediocre year he might earn £70m — in the 1990s he created America’s top telly show, ER, bestselling novel, Disclosure, and highest-grossing film, Jurassic Park. But he has little interest in the trappings of success. The most remarkable feature of the burglary — in which he managed to untie himself and Taylor, then call the police — was that it occurred in his modest bungalow. There he lived in anonymity, only the astute burglars realising the identity and wealth of its owner. For even taking into account last year’s £20m divorce settlement to his fourth wife, Anne-Marie, he could clearly afford the swankiest palace in the Hollywood Hills. But this is a man moved by fine argument, not fine art — which might explain why Anne-Marie complained that he was so focused on work he was “remote”. Actually, this dapper, well-preserved 62- year-old comes across as jovial and drily amusing, though for a purveyor of popular fiction he is fundamentally, and surprisingly, serious. Soon he is proffering me graphs showing British temperatures stretching back to 1659. “For the first year (of his research) I thought I must be missing something to explain why everyone is so excited by global warming,” he said, “but the more I looked at the detail, the worse it got.” His contention? That an equally likely cause of the — tiny — increase in temperature is the ugly urbanisation that is scarring our planet, which seems to heat up the world more than we may have realised. “I was astounded by a BBC report that Manchester is eight degrees warmer than the countryside surrounding it,” he says. Which in his view begs the question: why is Greenpeace not campaigning vigorously against Prescott’s new towns, rather than rattling on about global warming? The fact is, average British temperatures do look much the same but recent years have seen sharp rises. Crichton turns this around. “From 1940 to 1970, carbon dioxide was going up yet temperatures went down. I don’t understand why,” he says. If there is a link between gas emissions and temperatures it is clearly a less direct one than we have come to accept. But isn’t this a cynical attempt to make us feel better about polluting, which will delight his biggest market — America — after it rejected Kyoto? He leans back sharply, perhaps offended. “The notion that telling the truth has negative consequences has always bothered me,” he says. However, he concedes we should try to use less fossil fuels. Is this because, whatever the truth about global warming, pollution does seem to cause more problems, such as asthma? “You are right, there does seem to be a steady rise in western countries for asthma.” Despite this, he still opposes the “centralised” decision-making of Kyoto, whose reduction targets, he says, are “trivial”. “When America dropped out they had to give Japan a very good deal,” he says. “It’s a principle we understand in the movie business. If you lose your principal actor you have to pay whatever you need to get a replacement.” His thesis seems cynical, even complacent, but cogently argued. “I have done a lot of reading, and the economics seem clear: you are better off waiting to see if it does become a real problem and then catching up. It may never happen. “California passed a law 20 years ago decreeing a proportion of cars would have to be electric powered. My town, the People’s Republic of Santa Monica, built these electrical facilities on the sides of the road — and there they sit, unused, just tripping people up so they can sue the city.” He pauses. “If it does turn out we need to do something, we could probably do it in 10 years, certainly less than a century. False preparation is always a disaster — in anticipation of entering he first world war the United States bought 20,000 horses, for cavalry charges. Then they had to work out what to do with all these damn horses because there was something called tanks.” It is an argument that will comfort President Bush, though Crichton insists “it is a long time since I have been enthusiastic about any president of the United States”. But isn’t it true America is guzzling too much of the world’s gas? “Yes,” he says, “but people have this image of turning up to a gas station to be told we have run out. They have been worrying about the end of oil since 1860. “If we are so concerned, we should stop using all resources right now. Talking about resources ignores human ingenuity. In 1900 nobody could have anticipated 80% of France’s electrical power would come from a source not known at that time: the atom. “If they knew there would be a massive increase in population in the 20th century, what would they have worried about? Probably about where we would get enough horses, and what will we do with all the manure.” A good crack, but his argument rests on the principle of induction: that because something has always turned up in the past, it will in the future. But this is cyclical. How can we really be sure our children will have enough resources? “No, we can’t be assured. But the other side of that coin is can we be sure that money we spend looking ahead to 2100 won’t be wasted? Every decision has a cost somewhere else. People say our grandchildren will loathe us, but they will also loathe us if we waste trillions of dollars tackling a problem that is non-existent.” He ends his book with the sweeping assertion that green groups have done almost as much harm as big polluters, but surely it is grotesque to equate Greenpeace with, say, the company that gave us the Bhopal disaster? As an example of environmental do-gooding he says stopping bush fires in America’s national parks has been misguided — it has meant that dead wood has not been cleared allowing new growth and thus wildlife to flourish. “(It’s) arguably more disastrous than clear-cutting the forest. Wrong ideas, wherever they come from, are deleterious: I don’t want to know your intentions, I want to know your outcomes. Otherwise you are like the person who runs over your child and says, ‘I really didn’t mean to do that’: f*** off.” The shock of an expletive from this most courteous of Americans reverberates around the room. “People say, ‘Oh, these statistics are from business, I have to treat that with caution, but this picture of a melting icecap from Greenpeace, I can trust that’; no you can’t, they are in the same business.” His global warming argument is certainly provocative. The danger is that less nimble minds than Crichton’s will use his thesis as justification to carry on polluting — with all its dangers for health. Disclosure, in which Michael Douglas sues Demi Moore for sexual harassment, landed Crichton in difficult, if lucrative, controversy. That, though, is petty stuff compared to this dispute. He has considered this. “When I reached my conclusion I thought, ‘I am a happy person, approaching senior citizenhood. I have a good life. I don’t need the kind of attacks this is going to draw’.” It is too late now: stand by for a literary earthquake. Copyright 2005 Times Newspapers Ltd.

Defending against a Tsunami

Interesting editorial in the Wall Street Opinion Journal: bq. A Great Natural Disaster Prosperity is the best defense against a tsunami. bq. The world's thoughts are with the victims of the tsunamis that swept across South Asia Sunday, killing at least 23,000 and leaving millions homeless. In the coming weeks and months, the priority must be to render the survivors every possible assistance. The response so far has been admirably swift. bq. One might think that a disaster of this scale would transcend normal national or political considerations. But in the world of environmental zealotry, even an event such as this is seen as an opportunity to press the agenda. Thus, the source of the South Asian tsunami is being located in global warming. bq. In an interview with the Independent newspaper in Britain, Stephen Tindale, executive director of Greenpeace UK, said: "No one can ignore the relentless increase in extreme weather events and so-called natural disasters, which in reality are no more natural than a plastic Christmas tree." Speaking to the same newspaper, Friends of the Earth Director Tony Juniper pressed the argument home: "Here again are yet more events in the real world that are consistent with climate change predictions." It is perhaps appropriate that the strongest, recent refutation to such feverish assertions may be found in Michael Crichton's new thriller--also about environmental extremists, a tsunami and the myths of global warming. Yadda yadda yadda -- but there is more, much much more: bq. People prone to hysteria often become further unhinged in the face of a great disaster, and that may explain these remarkable comments on the tsunami disaster. Still, these comments by the movement's leadership may serve as a case study of how such imaginings work their way into public discussion of the environment. That is all the more reason to come to grips with the real causes of calamities such as this. bq. Geologists say that groups of giant earthquakes hit Sumatra every 230 years or so. The last quakes there were in 1797 and 1833--and surely not even Greenpeace would blame those on greenhouse gases -- and so Sunday's latest quake was more or less on schedule. (Emphasis mine) And now the defence: bq. It is preposterous to blame the inexorable forces of nature on the development of industry and infrastructures of modern society. The more sensible response to natural disasters is to improve forecasting, put in place efficient communications and evacuation procedures and, should the worst arrive, conduct relief efforts and rebuild what nature has destroyed. Those cautionary measures, as is now clear, cost money. The national income necessary to afford them is made possible only by economic growth of the sort too many of environmentalists retard with their policy extremism. Emphasis mine again -- a few more paragraphs bq. Rich countries suffer fewer fatalities from natural disasters because their prosperity has allowed them to create better protective measures. Consider the 41,000 death toll in last December's earthquake in Iran compared with the 63 who died when a slightly stronger earthquake hit San Francisco in 1989. bq. The principal victims of the tidal waves in Sri Lanka and elsewhere Sunday were the poor people living in coastal shanty towns. The wealthier countries around the Pacific Rim have an established early-warning system against tsunamis, while none currently exists in South Asia. Developing countries that have resisted the Kyoto climate-change protocols have done so from fear that it will suppress their economic growth. These countries deserve an answer from the proponents of those standards. How are they supposed to pay for such protection amid measures that are suppressing global economic growth? bq. As we mourn the loss of life and unite to help the survivors rebuild their lives and communities, let's also bear in mind that the best long-term help is an economic environment that allows these nations to put in place better manmade defenses against future depredations from nature. Enviros are trying to stop many nations from continuing their efforts to develop while totally ignoring other nations who are committing great acts of environmental pollution (China and India). It is through global free trade and development that these poorer nations can elevate the the lifestyle of their citizens to a more comfortable one. Sometimes it seems that the left and the environmentalists believe that there is a fixed pool of currency and that the richer nations are hoarding it and in order to achieve social justice, this pool needs to be re-distributed. This is plain outright wrong. Money can be created and destroyed. The poorer nations can create their own wealth if their citizens are given the oppertunity... Let's give them this chance.