Posts from — April 2007

The Associated Press reports: Lynch Rescue Added To Tillman Probe

A U.S. House committee announced Tuesday it would hold hearings on misleading military statements that followed the friendly fire death of Pat Tillman in Afghanistan and the rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch in Iraq.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said an April 24 hearing would be part of its investigation into whether there was a strategy to mislead the public.

The first victim of war is the truth. I have always felt bad about what Jessica Lynch had to go through, trying to deal with all of the lies that were told about her injuries and “rescue” while trying to recover from the accident and death of friends. She was trying to get the truth out while her government was lying.

Bad things happen to good people, in and out of uniform, but they don’t get any better when you lie about them.

The Shrubbery didn’t invent this problem. The Tuskegee Airmen were only, really recognized for their World War II service recently.

CNN was on at my Mother’s tonight and the burning issue that the bearded guy named for a reindeer felt all of the Presidential candidates should respond to: “what about I-Maus?”

With two wars and major executive departments in melt down, the Puppy wants people trying to become the President of the United States to comment on a burn-out with a microphone who insults women and minorities.

Exactly how does the stupidity of someone on talk radio become the most important political question of the day?

As long as I’m on the media, will someone tell them that Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are not the only two black people in the United States.

Lambert at Corrente writes about a news report that Corporate pet food is killing your cats.

A researcher found a 30% increase in kidney failure in cats during the three month period that the contaminated food was sold. The research was based on information from one of the largest US veterinary hospital chains which had an extra 248 cases of renal failure in cats during the period.

Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars saw a Los Angeles Times about hearings Senator Dick Durbin is holding to question FDA about food safety.

The contaminated component in the pet food was “food grade,” and could have been used in products for people. We have been told that it wasn’t, but how do we know? The FDA didn’t test the wheat gluten when it came into the country. Apparently the testing started after the fact. People are much larger than pets, and would require more of the product, and possibly more time for renal failure. Since the Shrubbery has gutted most consumer protections, will we even know if there is a sudden spike in kidney failure?

Update: Melissa McEwan of Shakesville who has direct experience of the problem posts at The Guardian blog site: Trolls don’t build bridges.

In BlondeSense Liz’s post, Calling for Manners in the Blog World?, she quotes from a New York Times article:

Mr. O’Reilly and Mr. Wales talk about creating several sets of guidelines for conduct and seals of approval represented by logos. For example, anonymous writing might be acceptable in one set; in another, it would be discouraged. Under a third set of guidelines, bloggers would pledge to get a second source for any gossip or breaking news they write about.

I highlighted that third set of guidelines because this is a higher standard than is currently used by the MSM. Oh, they have policies that say they are getting multiple sources, but a phone call and a fax from Karl Rove do not constitute two sources.

I haven’t linked to either NTodd’s first post or second post because he isn’t being very civil about civility. Actually, he’s being militantly uncivil, but mainly because he’s way behind on Sam blogging.

At the end of last month I wrote a post, Enough!, about a female technology blogger who received death threats in her comments over a post.

A couple of days ago Steve Bates felt compelled to restate his commenting policy as a result of some Trolling.

Today Watertiger covers another “blogger ethics panel call” in From the “How Wonderfully Redundant” files.

Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media and Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia should read what they publish on blogs and blog comments. We don’t need another version of PICS for blogs. I’m still trying to get the rating for my current gravatar changed from X to G, which is why it shows up almost nowhere.

There are plenty of existing rules and laws to deal with the situation, and for technical people to even consider adding something new, reinventing the wheel, without even trying the existing system is disheartening.

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From All Hat and No Cattle – On the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declared: Fission Accomplished.

[If I had any PhotoShop skills, I would have created a graphic.]

BadTux risks flipper and craw in the frozen pizza bake-off of his bachelor cooking series.

Leeds University takes another tack with: N = C + {fb (cm) · fb (tc)} + fb (Ts) + fc · ta

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Terry at Nitpicker has been plumbing the depths and dredged up: John Hinderaker: Media Analyst.

The premise of the Hinderaker piece is that Dr. William Gray doesn’t believe in the global climate change, and since Hinderaker considers Dr. Gray “the world’s leading expert in the science of forecasting hurricanes,” everything Al Gore says is wrong.

I’m well aware of Dr. Gray and his work. For years he provided some of the best predictions for tropical weather that were available. He built an excellent model based on the information he had, and made his name on that model. The problem is that the model doesn’t seem to work anymore. The assumptions on which the model is based are now untrustworthy.

In his April, 2005 typhoon forecast, Dr. Gray’s model predicted:

• 13 named storms
• 7 hurricanes
• 3 intense hurricanes
• 41% probability of a major hurricane landfall on the Gulf Coast from the Florida Panhandle westward to Brownsville, Texas.

The actual 2005 hurricane season produced:

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Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

Up front it needs to be understood that Britain and Iran are not at war. The British military personnel were not captured as prisoners of war; they were arrested for violating Iranian territorial waters. Their confinement was not governed by the Geneva Conventions, but by Iranian criminal procedure and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.

For some reason the British government does not look kindly on junior officers who start wars without permission. This was a diplomatic problem from the start, not a military problem. Dying for Queen and country is all well and good, but you should ask first if the Queen and country want you to die.

People who have spent entirely too much time with books like The Arab Mind, are saying that Iran won and has a propaganda coup. I would suggest that the people who are saying this are the only ones who believe it. Elements in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard came too damn close to starting a war that the ruling circles of the country did not want. The officer who was awarded a medal for his actions should enjoy it in his “retirement.”

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Via Peter of Lone Tree at BlondeSense, a very interesting story in the Manawatu Standard [New Zealand]: Solar power breakthrough at Massey

The breakthrough is a development of the university’s Nanomaterials Research Centre and has attracted world-wide interest already – particularly from Australia and Japan.

Researchers at the centre have developed a range of synthetic dyes from simple organic compounds closely related to those found in nature, where light-harvesting pigments are used by plants for photosynthesis.

If this pans out, solar power will be available for less than fossil fuel power. Instead of the fuel hungry process that is required to produce silicon-based solar cells, these dyes could be applied as a roof coating, or fabric. Very interesting work.

I’m hoping for some journal articles to figure out what they are really doing. Newspapers rarely provide the details necessary to understand what the science community is actually saying.

There have been numerous complaints received regarding the services provided under the current regime and we would like to take the time to respond to these complaints and to help those of you in the outlying areas understand the true situation.

It has been noted that several individuals purporting to be the “Easter Bunny” do not seem to be authentic. Of course they’re not authentic. We don’t do personal appearances or take requests. As the anthropomorphic personification of a blended holiday we are entirely too involved in attempting to fulfill the unreasoned expectations of various groups. Besides which, we noticed that many of the requests came from people with French surnames, and I don’t think it is necessary to remind people what happens to rabbits in France: in Britain bunnies are found in children books; in France in cookbooks. [See also North Korea.]

We had what we thought was an excellent solution, but then discovered that due to his existence as a pookah, Harvey was not visible to major segments of the population and, to be honest, he had a problem staying away from the tipple for any major block of time.

As for the quality of the costumes, we are certainly not going to recommend anyone “donate” their pelt so these obvious frauds can have “genuine rabbit fur” costumes.

There have been other complaints following the change from solid to hollow chocolate statuary. The Chocolate Cartel has been jacking up prices for years, and while we agree that problems like the disruptions in the Ivory Coast have had a negative impact on the pricing of the raw materials, we suspect the price increases have more to do with avarice than insurrections or an active hurricane season.

We had to choose between offering smaller, solid figures, or larger, hollow figures. Research showed us that the target audience, small children, only actually ate the ears and nibbled a bit from the toes. The majority of the figures were consumed by parents claiming: “to prevent the kids from getting sick from all that candy.” Our thinking was the kids would be impressed with the initial size of the figures, and the parents needed to lose weight anyway.

Hollowing the figures took more time and you have to keep in mind that the staff is already in pretty weird from the massive doses of sugar, gelatin, and dyes they have to ingest to produce jelly beans. Nonetheless, the illusion is preserved.

Regarding the “grass” and “baskets”: hey, wake up and smell the polypropyl vinyl! The days of people having a basket out back and grass around the house are gone. We ask for baskets and find the concept apparently doesn’t translate well as the suppliers move further to the East. But the grass? Grass is grass all over the world. It’s green, it is almost always the definition of green in every language. So we ask for grass and we get shredded plastic in almost every color except green. We know it’s wrong. We complain every year and every year we are told that this is “the new green”.

So, suck it up and get out there and deliver.

Monica Goodling, Senior Counsel to the Attorney General, has resigned and is still trying to avoid testifying before Congress.

Insiders wonder if she is looking at a position in CorCraft.

Matteo “Matt” Fontana, an Education Department administrator, was put on paid leave, while conflict of interest/corruption charges in the student loan program are under investigation.

He really should have recognized the name of that corporation before he bought the stock.

In the upper Midwest, Rook’s Rant notices the four top administrators in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota have resigned their administrative positions.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune says that Minnesota’s U.S. Attorney, Rachel Paulose, took the job in March 2006, at age 33, after serving briefly under Deputy U.S. Attorney General Paul McNulty.

“Paulose is a native of Minnesota who served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the district from 1999 to 2002. She also worked in private practice for the Dorsey & Whitney law firm from 2002 to 2006. Paulose began her legal career in Minneapolis as a law clerk to James Loken, chief judge of the Eighth U.S. Court of Appeals, from 1997 to 1998.”

Not exactly an overpowering resumé.

In the spirit of ScarfGate, Needlenose has a post featuring a picture of Nancy Pelosi in Saudi Arabia. It’s interesting that of the male Saudis are wearing “dresses” with “scarves” on their heads, while Speaker Pelosi is wearing a suit, and has her scarf around her neck.