Posts from — January 2005

The Beeb is reporting that funding for a mission to the Hubble space telescope has been cut from the NASA budget.

Without another mission to replace failing gyroscopes and other equipment, the telescope will eventually fall back to earth.

This is logical under the rules of the Bush administration: they only spend money on people and projects that fail. If you fail you will be promoted, if you do your job you will be pushed out. This is why the missile defense system is still moving ahead, but the Hubble is being allowed to come down.

Think about it. We were about to capture Osama bin Laden and stabilize Afghanistan, but resources were withdrawn so we could launch the Iraqi disaster.

Apparently Ntodd is getting into the role of college professor as he posted a “compare and contrast” assignment for the second inaugural addresses of the first versus the latest Republican President.

The similarities are really shallow: second inaugural, time of military conflict, political party named Republican. Not much there.

The Bush speech was filled with jarring inconsistencies like: “After the shipwreck of communism came years of relative quiet, years of repose, years of sabbatical – and then there came a day of fire.”

Having lived through that period, 1989 to 2001, I sort of remember a major war with Iraq after the invasion of Kuwait, the Rwandan genocide, the Yugoslavian civil wars, Tiananmen Square, etc. and I believe that China, Cuba, Vietnam, and North Korea are definitely communist governments. Frankly the world was relatively quieter during the Cold War after Vietnam until the dissolution of the Soviet Union, than since.

Whoever wrote this seems to have forgotten that the majority of foreign terrorists were tied up with the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the US was pretty much left alone except when we ventured into their territory.

Of course, they don’t have to worry, it’s not as if anyone checks their claims against the facts.

Noted poodle aficionado, James Wolcott, is having way too much fun worrying his favorite sockpuppet, SpongeDob Stickypants¹. Mr. Wolcott reviews the recommendations that constitute “what real Americans should be watching”, like GoodLife TV, and finds a disturbing trend.

Who knew? I mean, I always thought cowboys needed flexible wrists to throw lariats and make fast draws. I didn’t really notice that most of them displayed more interest in their horses than women until Mr. Wolcott pointed it out.

Mustang² Bobby helps out by pointing to a New York Times editorial wondering about Dr. Stickypants obsession.

1 – If Dr. Dobson should drop by my humble corner: one picture of you on your page would more than suffice and massage therapy could help with your neck. Oh, there’s this wonderful part of speech called the pronoun. It would relieve you of retyping your complete name and title so many times. Oh, yes, why don’t you try getting a life. You could start by watching more age-appropriate television. Frankly, your obsession with small children and discipline might be misinterpreted.

2 – The car, not the critter.

Doubleday wants to print The Al Qaeda Reader, a compendium of the thoughts of Ayman al-Zawahri and Osama bin Laden. The publisher thinks people need to know what the founders of al Qaeda are thinking, and feels that there is a market for the book. Doubleday says it will donate any profits to charity.

The book is opposed by some families of victims of the September 11 ^th attack, who feel publishing the book will spread the al Qaeda message to the wrong sort of people.

That’s enough controversy for most books, but then the intellectual property laws enter the picture. Under US law, Doubleday is required to pay a royalty to the owners of these thoughts: al-Zawahri and bin Laden. Doubleday says it won’t do that, but the law is quite clear.

Personally I would have set up accounts for both men and sent royalties to those accounts. That money would then be available to pay claims against them made in US and foreign courts. If Doubleday refuses to do that they are in open violation of the copyright laws, and would probably get away with it. What jury would be willing to find for two of the most hated men in the country? What are the chances of either man filing a claim against Doubleday in a US court?

What troubles me is the blatant intent of a publisher to violate copyright law. This could have been done within the letter, if not the spirit of the law, but corporations have privilege, private law. Corporations think it is reasonable for them to sue a 12-year-old for 3 minutes of “bubblegum” music downloaded from the Internet, but perfectly reasonable for them to profit from another’s work.

If they go through with this, bin Laden wins; he has another example of the criminal behavior of the West.

In 1950 Eric Arthur Blair died in a hospital in London from tuberculosis.

Born on the 25^th of June, 1903 in Motihari, India where his father was in the British civil service, he would be educated at Eton, and then fight in the Spanish Civil War. He probably contracted the disease that eventually killed while fighting in Spain.

He was a member of the BBC World Service, on the India desk. During the war he developed a deep dislike for the censorship caused by the war, and used that experience as the background for his last novel.

If you have listened to much of the output from the Bush administration you may have invoked Mr. Blair’s novel. Of course, you probably know him by his pen name: George Orwell.

Friday Cat Blogging^TM [Kevin Drum]

It’s tough living down having been a really cute kitten.

Go over to the Beeb and read this story. If you understand why this happened, you might be ready to become an investor. If you think that the story is absurd, then you will understand why you might want to avoid the stock market.

Vaara has a link to an ad that is upsetting some people. Don’t go if you are easily offended or don’t like to wait for .mov files, but if you remember National Lampoon‘s VW ad about Ted Kennedy you should just go.

Maru wonders if Bush remembers that this is his second inauguration. [My browser put me at the bottom of the post, so you may have to scroll up to see it].

I’ll jump on the linkfest to the Social Security crisis debunking site There is No Crisis.

In the spirit of it’s never too early: Mad Kane presents the Boxer for President blog.

Scaramouche pointed me to the Reporters Sans Frontières announcement of the Freedom Blog Award nomination process.

If you are feeling down because of today’s travesty drop by and read the latest from Steve Bates: Bush’s Inaugural Balls.

And don’t fail to look at Dubya’s latest uniform.

Let it be known that it has been decreed that the annoying wingnut, Dr. James Dobson, will henceforth hight SpongeDob Stickypants in recognition of his advanced stage of confusion.

Disclaimer: no one has paid me for any of this, and some may resent my noticing them.

[Edit] aided and abetted a Google bomb

From All Thing Considered we learn “CBS President Les Moonves says he’s thinking outside the box on how to replace outgoing anchor Dan Rather. . .”

Apparently one of the “boxes” involved is the cash box, as in the salary of the replacement. The anchors have a history of making millions annually for reading the 6 o’clock news, and Mr. Moonves is hoping to reduce that amount by featuring several people as news readers, so no one person is able to claim to represent the network’s new effort. It is quite likely that he intends to use three, or more people with a combined salary of less than one million dollars.

Silly rabbit, you thought screwing the workers was only for MalWart.

Both All Thing Considered and the Albuquerque Tribune have stories about Governor Bill Richardson proposing increasing the benefits for New Mexico’s Guard units and other New Mexicans serving in the military.

The big item is financing $250,000 insurance policies for the troops. There are also plans for halving the state income tax on military retirements and offering a check off on state tax returns for people to donate a portion of their refunds to a fund designed to help the families of those deployed.

Several other states are considering similar programs as it has become increasingly obvious that the Federal government has no plans for assisting those who serve.

As a veteran in a line of veterans that stretches back to the 18^th century in the US, I would tell those people who think flying the flag and slapping a yellow ribbon magnet on their vehicles is supporting the troops what they can do with their flag poles and ribbons, but I might get sued by a proctologist for practicing without guild membership. Remember, under Bush it’s okay for doctors and corporations to sue people, but bad for people to sue doctors or corporations.

Dr. Rice is under the impression that her “life story” is absolute protection against anyone noticing that she lies and wasn’t up to the job of National Security Advisor. She seems to believe that her climb from a middle-class childhood in the South to being a member of one of the most incompetent administrations in the nation’s history excuses her failures before and after September 11^th.

Oh, you say, you didn’t know her family was middle-class, you assumed she was born poor, perhaps in a sharecropper’s shack, well, that’s what you are supposed to believe. It’s not much of a story if you know about her liberal parents, both college professors. Her father, Dr. John Wesley Rice, was Vice Chancellor at the University of Denver when she received her bachelor’s degree from the institution.

She is intellectually gifted, so her lies are not the result of stupidity, but, more probably, of cupidity.

The people who create this crap should be sent directly to the lowest level of hell until the end of the universe, no, until Windows is debugged, the end of the universe is too soon.

I have spent parts of two days doing pro bono consulting so an employee of a client will not get “downsized” for acquiring a spyware parasite.

The problem was multi-layered. Normally I just tell people to go back to an earlier restore point, but if that doesn’t work to wipe their hard drives and restore from their backup files, which is often met with “about the weekly backups, umm, well they haven’t exactly been weekly.”

The last backup was before Halloween, Service Pack 2 had been installed, the only restore point was after the machine became infected. Service Pack 2 was installed to make up for not installing a number of earlier security updates, and it didn’t get better.

I finally talked him through enough of a fix to be able to grab the essential data files before wiping the hard disk and reinstalling everything from the original CDs. I also shipped him Firefox and Eudora, made him swear a blood oath to backup, and promised not to say anything unless I was asked by my normal contact at the company, but he better tell his boss or he’d be fired for covering it up.

Please, people, if you are running a Windows machine have a good restore point before you install anything new, use anti-virus software, if nothing else use the Window’s firewall, get a couple of anti-spyware programs and use them on a regular basis, and back up your data. The backups are critical because you are the only source for the information you have created. If nothing else, print out your e-mail addresses, bookmarks, and documents. If you have a CD/DVD writer, use it.

Note: I use Pegasus, and Thunderbird is another nice e-mail program that replaces that standard target of virus writers: MS Outlook.

The Blight attempts to cover the Armstrong Williams problem by claimed equivalency with the Dean campaign hiring Markos and Jerome for web site consulting continues.

People are also annoyed by the Harvard symposium on Blogging, Journalism & Ethics.

Both Duncan and NTodd are noticeably annoyed by the claim that people have no responsibility for what they link to if they post a disclaimer.

This concept came from journalism, and it is basic to the decline of journalism over the past several decades. That journalists can simply report frauds, lies, and rumors with no attempt to verify what they are reporting is not ethical, even if they report both sides of the story.

There is nothing ethical about repeating a story that John Jones is a pedophile and then reporting that John Jones denies it. If there aren’t some facts associated with the claim, this simply spreads gossip, rumors, and innuendo without informing anyone. I don’t care how “informed” the “sources” may be, if they refuse to take credit for their words, the words shouldn’t be reported without confirmation.

People have lost their jobs and had their lives destroyed by this conduct. The 1981 movie Absence of Malice puts Richard Jewel, Wen Ho Lee, and Stephan Hatfill into context. It doesn’t make any difference if you are later cleared, your life has been destroyed and you cannot be “made whole”.

It’s pretty insulting to assume that even Drudge lacks the ethics of journalists. The problem is the number of bloggers whose ethics are no better than the corporate media.

Extra credit: compare and contrast the effects of the writings of Matt Drudge and Judith Miller. Include body counts and effects on the National Debt.

[Update: Link and typo fixed]

Archæologists are reporting the destruction of Babylonian sites by the presence of American and Polish military encampments on the ancient capitol of Western civilization.

In the entire expanse of Iraq the military was unable to find any other place to park tracked vehicles and couldn’t possibly have found any other source of dirt to fill sand bags that the artifact-filled land of an ancient city?

If anyone cares any more, this is probably classed as a war crime.