Why GNP growth doesn't make you happy

On the way home today I heard the follow - "for the fourth year running the median incomine in the USA has declined" and "over 50 percent of all Americans now earn less that they did in 2001". Why goes to show that GNP (Gross National Product) growth means zip to the average person in the street if income inequitity just keeps on getting, well, more unequal.

Which is why Bush can brag all he wants about how tax cuts have been good for the economy, but the truth is that the average person and the majority of all Americans are still worse off than they were four years ago. Unfortunately the average person still aspires to the unlikely event of making it big and joining that top 20% of all income earners who have managed to do better since 2001, or the top 1% who have been partying like its 1999 since 2001... The richer the rich get the more inspired the poor get to become like them. Yeah baby, strike me with lightening once, twice, three times.... I'm so lucky... hurt me more...

I know, I'm one supremely bitter and twisted mofo, but you did read the title of this blog right?

Why shopping doesn't make you happy

Here's a nice article on how buying stuff doesn't make you happy, but playing with it does. Unfortunately these days in the USA the more we spend the harder we work to keep spending which leaves less time for actually playing. In Europe and other countries they have it a better - although their workers have lower productivity and less disposable income than American workers, they also have more leisure time and hence play time leading to higher quality of life. Just ask any German how they would feel about cutting down from six weeks of vacation a year to just two.

Libertarianism comes to the United Kingdom

Libertarianism comes to the United Kingdom - via the car and the road. Welcome to our world Britain!

Shrubgate

A long time ago before digital cameras (okay, they did have them back then, they were just expensive and not very good) I went around work with my trusty Olympus Compact and took photos of my co-workers saying "F**k you". People seemed to like the result, it caught them in an off-guard moment they hadn't seen before, channeling their inner New Yorker perhaps. Several of those photos ended up posted on office doors.

Anyway I love this post about Bush's "F**k you" moment. Myself I'm just amazed about how much shit can pile up in the White House front yard and still not stick with the resident in chief. I mean really, if any of this had happened to Bill Clinton do you think he would have lasted more than five minutes in the White House, let alone five years? Yet Bush has run through trillions in deficit spending, hundreds of billions in occupation of Iraq for reasons that were completely bogus, totally made up and a complete waste of time, and killed almost as many troops as those pesky, but mostly Saudi Arabian terrorists killed bankers. And yet he's still there, old teflon shoulders, trying to blame unbelievers everywhere for not swallowing his Bushshit (ewwwwww!)

Come on people. We're not riding on a fake USA simulator here. This is the real deal - trillions are being blown away, thousands of people have died for no apparent reason, and worst of all IQs are dropping sharply. Wake up and smell the roses, Shrubgate is here and its time to impeach and get another terminally dull and ultimately unsatisfying Presidential witch hunt underway. Lets not forget Bush is so dumb and cock sure of invincibility he probably authorized tapping of his own phone with all the evidence needed to impeech him recorded for prosperity - if we last that long that is.

Park(ing)

Someone paid for a parking space and created a park in it. I love the idea. Why shouldn't you do anything you want with a parking space? Put a bed in it and sleep there? Put a cubicle in it and work there? Of course I'm sure someone will quickly find, or create a law that means parking spaces are exclusively for parking a car in. Don't forget, our society is designed around cars, car companies and oil companies that fuel them - humans are merely subserviant and dependent parasites in a car culture.

Big Brother - 1984 syndrome is complete

I've been going on about the Bush Regime and its similarity to Orwell's 1984 pretty much since this blog began. Not that it was a unique or original line of thinking, however it appears to be official now, Bush is Big Brother and he is watching YOU.

Gullible Brits blast off as IQs plummet

Sometimes I get homesick for the goof old British sense of humour - there's really nothing to compare to it. However this one really takes the biscuit - Space Cadets.

Space Cadets is what you get if you take a bunch-o-Brits who respond to a thrill seekers newspaper ad, hand pick nine for gullibility and throw in three actors for good measure. Then tell them they have been selected to be the first British space tourists. Pop them on a plane for an overnight flight to "Russia", take their watches away, fly them around the North Sea for four hours and then land them in the dead of night in Kent (no American kids, Kent is not in Russia). Stick them on a genuine Russian helicopter and fly them to an old military base in Ipswich done up to look like a Russian military base. Bingo... you have a recipe for laughter, disbelief and a tribute to lack of scientific knowledge in "kids these days" that's almost too painful to watch at times.

I'm only two episodes in, and I have to say I would probably have fallen for the transportation to Russia part. It was well done, with meticulous attention to convincing props - tired, disorientated and devoid of other information its easy to see how someone could fall for it. But, when instructor turned out be a real RAF type with handlebar moustache (what there aren't any English speaking Russians?) and he then tells them they would be flying at 200km for 5 days but wouldn't be experiencing zero-G..... Doh, that's where I walk out of the class and ask for my train ticket to London. Or maybe I just go along with it for fun. Strangely all nine candidates swallowed that one hook, line and sinker. After all, as the instructor explained to them - zero-g training takes 12 months and they just don't have time for it. Yeah, who needs that pesky zero-g, turn it off and just get me to space man!

I'm looking forward to seeing how they fake the launch and the view out of the window. Unlike the plane and helicopter ride to Russia this is probably one part where they wont be able to insist the window shades remain down!

Of course Space Cadets wont be showing in the USA any time soon - not until they have done their own clone of it, which could be better or worse. They could probably drag Richard Branson into the hoax and fake a flight on his Virgin Galactic plane. The question is, will too many Americans find out about the great Space Cadets hoax before they can pull off a US clone? My guess is with the rise of faith based rocket science there will be plenty of Americans gullible enough to fall for it for years to come.

Everything you wanted to know about supermarket food but were too afraid to ask

At my last job I worked with a guy who was previously a health inspector and had the dubious pleasure of inspecting a lot of restaurants. Needless to say he had a lot of interesting stories to tell that you probably didn't want to hear while you were eating your lunch. The most memorable one involved a dog stored in the restaurant freezer because the owner was waiting for spring to bury Fido when the ground thawed.

So, having wet your appetite for the gross and shocking you'll surely want to dive into Supermarket Secrets: Be Careful Where you Shop. When you've read it remember, that's Canada - do you think its going to be any better in the USA? Based on how many of my friends seem to have succumb to food-poisoning this year I somehow think we get just as much free salmonella as we do free-dumb. Thanks to Treehugger for the link.

Intelligent design is not economically viable

With stories like today's about Christians suing the University of California I have to say I was somewhat pleased to hear a story on the BBC World programme that effectively said "Intelligent design is not economically viable. Furthermore it wasn't just the "liberal media" or BBC making it up, it actually came from a Republican business man from Kansas.

You see the BBC was covering the great moral debate that is in the forefront of American minds - intelligent design vs. evolution. Yes my home country just loves to lampoon those whacky Americans with their tongues firmly in cheek - except this time I just don't think they realize how serious it is. However in focusing on Kansas, in particular the latest shenanigans of the Kansas School Board, they were able to unearth a strange new development - Republicans who are starting to realize all this intelligent design mallarchy is ultimately going to hurt their pocket book.

You see Kansas has quite a lively biotech industry and is trying to nurture its development, but unfortunately investors are starting to raise more than an eyebrow or two over Kansas' anti-science jihad. Republican business boosters are noticing this and beginning to see red flags over continued vilification of science in Kansas. Apparently last time this flame war got out of control neighboring states even started considering extra testing for Kansas science students wishing to transfer into their area.

I have to say, if people from Kansas are hell-bent (pun intended) in polluting, diluting and basically denying scientific principles that have defined pretty much every facet of human development in the last two hundred years, well then they should probably head over to Amish country and adopt a lifestyle without science, modern medicine and you bettcha, the Internet. That's a valid lifestyle to choose and you're welcome to it, I won't even both trying to convince you otherwise. But don't come running to us belivers in science (not to be confused with scientologists) asking for a vaccination, antibiotics, car, computer, fertilizer, or even a gun of the hand to go hunting with. No, its just rice and beans for you - that's the way it was designed to be right?

Still, with people starting to realize that supporting Intelligent Design might actually hurt their pocket books, maybe none of this will be a problem for much longer. Since the human spieces evolved to a point where it could defy mother nature to a great extect effects of natural selection pretty much came to a standstill. However in its place the effects of economic selection have replaced it. The upshot is that those countries and governments that are found to be economically inferior will wither and die.

Just ask yourselves what happened to the Roman Empire, French Empire, the German Empire, the Russian Empire or the British Empire... all pretty much dead as doornails because they were not economically sustainable. This is the fate that awaits a nation that decides that science has nothing to offer it while all of the rest of the world gets on an innovates it into extinction economically. Of course if we all want to run back to an agrarian culture with about 1/10th the population we have now that's fair enough - it sort of worked for Cuba right? But some how I don't think your average Monday night football and pizza loving American wants - do you?

Fahrenheit 451 meets the constitution

I couldn't resist blogging about Just a Goddamned Piece of Paper which proves Bush's public and private attitudes to the Constitution and Democracy reek with irony and contradiction. We've been told he prefers his Supreme Court Judges to support a literal interpretation of the constitution, none of that interpretive nonsense liberals are fond of. Well I suppose you can't get more literal about interpreting the constitution than "It's just a goddamned piece of paper" can you?

So if Bush is adamant the constitution is just a piece of paper than its clear Bush has just reached fahrenheit 451 and something's about to go up in flames. Question is, will American soon be facing a burning Bush or a flaming constitution?

Your intellectual property rights or your life

In these Times has an interesting post about how the only know defense against Asian Bird Flu is Tamiflu that is patentend by Swiss manufacturer Roche. This apparently is preventing the US from embarking on a massive stockpiling exericse - they simply couldn't afford to - much like many African nations simply couldn't afford American patented antiviral drugs to protect against AIDS. How about that for getting some of your own back?

As the article points out, some nations are deciding to just do it (ignore patents) - especially those outside of the WTO like Taiwan. When Americans are drowning in their own blood because they chose to defend intellectual property rights over life they'll be the ones laughing all the way to the bank.

On this matter I have to say that significant investment to develop new drugs is one of those things I believe should be adequately rewarded - in the absence of government funded research to the same effect. But also defence of IPR for corporations is a privilege granted by the governments and society as a whole, therefore no IPR holder should expect to profiteer excessively from a monopoly, especially if they prove unable to produce sufficient quantities of the good they developed, or at fair market prices. In such cases they should forfeit their rights or be forced to license production to others. After all, lets face it, in the case of protecting against a global pandemic its in a company's best interests to keep as many consumers alive. Product demand for Roche's Tamiful will drop off rapidly if 50% of the planet is dead within a few months...

Bushism is the new McCarthyism?

Good night and good luck is a good post from the Angry Bear that relates the 50's communist witch hunt era of American politics to modern day vilification of those who oppose the war, US foreign policy (or lack thereof), fight to defend for civil liberties, defend the environment, oppose big corporations, or oppose pretty anything the Republicans do.

Many of us are aware how the Republican spin machine that labels everything bad it does with name that seems to indicate its good. So legislation that will permit an increase in air pollution is called "The Clear Skies Act" and those that permit massive increases in logging of wilderness forest are dubbed "Healthy Forests Initiative". Similarly they have taken to branding everything they do as patriotic, American or in the name of "Freedom" and "Democracy" implying that if we do anything to oppose them it means we are unpatriotic, un-American, un-democratic and against freedom. As the article points out this vilification of dissent is in an of itself as un-American and vile as the country's brief experiment with McCarthyism was.

But hey, you'll have to admit, defocusing the entire nation on a witch hunt is a wonderful and huge distraction, furthermore it gives us some great movies opportunities later on. I wonder will they label this current witch hunting era Bushism, Dubyaism, Republicanism, or NeoConism?

Babies not on board

Babies Not on Board is an Alternet article for all the child free readers. It a lament by a man who desperately wants children but leaves his wife because she wont have them and then starts another relationship with a woman who doesn't want them either. Doh!

The comments on the article are pretty entertaining, especially the woman who writes "Come on out to San Francisco and have babies with me!", or another who writes "I have pretty much had to cut off one friend who used to be a vivacious, interesting woman with a worldview. Now all she talks about is her baby, baby, baby..."

Borrowed itself to death

Roger Waters (he of Pink Floyd fame) release a solo album called "Amused to death", it happens to be one of my favourites. I don't play it very often because it is a monumental downer but once in a while I'll find a spare hour, crank it up and tune out. The recurring theme is "This species has amused itself to death" and you really can't get more direct, and I believe, accurate than that. As living standards have increased the focus of humanity, at least in this country, has increasingly been on amusing ourselves and everything connected with that goal. Now I don't really have a problem with being amused - but as the be all and end all of existence? No way. It sounds far too much like plug in, tune out, f**k reality. In fact one of the definitions of amused is "diverted" which matches perfectly my perception of America's with obsession with amusement over actual living.

Anyway, that's all a long digression to eplain the title of this blog entry "Borrowed itself to death" which came to me after reading The Straight Truth about the Bush Economy". As I read it I started hearing the words "This country has borrowed itself to death". Actually the article starts off sounding like its supportive of Bush, but quickly segways to explaining pretty much all the economic good stuff is as a result of bad stuff. That is declining real wages, increasing poverty, a shrinking pool of people in the workforce, and massive increases in government borrowing and massive and historic decrease in personal saving (now at -2%).

The bottom line is the US is borrowing $3 billion dollars a day to sustain its current "recovery" and one can only wonder how long it will be before we are back on the nose dive trajectory again. If we are lucky it will be before the end of the reign of Emporer Bush II - if its after he's out of office we risk the shit hitting the fan during a democratic presidential term and then having to endure endless finger pointing from Republicans claiming it was the Democrats who screwed things up.

Separation of church and consumerism

There has been a lot of publicity about churches getting upset first with the White House keeping "Christmas" off its holiday greetings cards, but now it seems they area also upset about stores keeping Christmas out of the holiday shopping experience. Well it was news to me. Coming from the United Kingdom it took me a while not to talk about Christmas all the time and get used to receiving "Happy Holidays" cards, that simply doesn't happen in the UK and you know, no one gets upset about it. Or at least they didn't when I was last living there which admitedly was a while ago now.

But I have to say I always thought the reason America did the "Happy Holidays" thing was out of deference to the large number of non-Christians in the country. As recent surveys show more than half of the adults in the country consider themselves only somewhat religious, or less than somewhat religious, and a full third consider themselves not religious at all. If you're looking not to ram some message from a specific religious order down the throats of people not fully or not at all interested in it, let alone actually offended by it - well "Happy Holidays" seems like a reasonable compromise. However America seems to be full of people celebrating minority holidays who have no inherent interest in them (say St. Patrick's Day), and full of people celebrating holidays that could be construed as being downright offensive (I'm thinking of turkey day).

So I suppose I can see why Christmas gets a few people really upset, I mean why target that particular holiday for secularization?

But really when you look at it, Christmas is really an annomally, its a last remaining vestige of a long history of not celebrating religious holidays. Americans don't really celebrate Easter and as best I can tell never have done - that's pretty much relegated to a Hallmark holiday. There's no fasting for lent, nothing special for Whit Sunday, mother's day doesn't have any religious significance, heck you guys don't even do pancake day (Shrove Tuesday)! All these holidays are celebrated widely to varying extents in my home country with the result that I, a non-Christian can roll them off my tongue a full decade after living there.

So my point is, if you don't widely celebrate all the other ceremonies in this country, then why make a big deal over Christmas? And if you're going to celebrate Christmas then why not all the other religious holidays - from all the religions? That's exactly the point of those aiming to secularize this holiday - either celebrate them all (but even imagine we'll take a public holiday for them all) or not at all. The later is far more consistent with the constitution and, if you're not going to get a public holidy for it, then you are free, completely free, to celebrate these holidays in your homes and your churches as you feel fit.

I personally think the de-secularization of Christmas is a battle that will not be one that will not be won. The mega-corporations that are the mainstays of US consumerism serve the community as a whole and stand a lot to lose by taking the "side" of one religion or the other when marketing their seasonal sales campaigns (which lets face it, is all Christmas is to them - a sales opportunity). For them its far easier to just put "Happy Holidays" than Happy Hannukah, Happy Kwanza and Happy everything else than risk some equality class action suit from one religious (or non-religious) group or another.

Tabloid truth exposes Shots of Mass Destruction

Thanks to The Binary Circumstance for revealing how tabloids may have uncovered the truth of Bush's return to the bottle. Noting how tabloids recently got it right about Brad Pitt leaving Jennifer Aniston for Angelina Jolie, Binary Circumstanc postulates they may also be bang on with the rumours of Bush being caught knocking back "Texas sized" shots after Katrina flattened and flooded New Orleans.

I don't think this is anything that would shock most people - but if it did come out it would be the kind of salacious revelation that would sink Bush for good. Fortunately for him he's only got three more years to keep it under wraps (or two if you discount the final year of electioneering for his successor). I like to think of the existance of those "Texas sized shots" reported in the Enquirer to be like the existance of those weapons of mass distruction that supposedly existed in Iraq. They are something a good number of people would like to believe exist - something some preemptive strikes could be done based on because if they did exist the consequences could be really bad (or good depending on your point of view). But they may or may not exist and in this case we don't have any inspectors probing the White House or the Shrub-in-Chief's bloodstream to look for them.

Personally I don't give a hoot whether the President consumes a healthy amount of alcohol, just like the rest of us, so long as he's not incapacitated when it comes to making major decisions. I'm sure those Presidents that have openly consumed alcohol (which is most of them) have, at one time or the other, been in a situation where they are incapacitated and not able to make a Presidential decision. So I would hope there is a protocol to keep at least one of the President or Vice President stone cold sober.

But... if the President goes on record as saying he never drinks, and uses that has a campaigning tool, and then it turns out he was lying all along. Well, in that case I'd say it was a pretty darned serious problem. Indeed we should probably have random spot checks of the Presidents blood stream because if he was lying about booze who knows what else he's lying about.

Torture the President unless its well, you know - bad

No, I didn't say "kill the President", just torture him, just a little bit, see how he likes it. Maybe some waterboarding, maybe standing up naked for a few days, throw in some retro Japanese water torture, a fake execution or two. Afterwards maybe he'll have a bit more clarity over whether its good to torture prisioners, and who knows, he might confess a thing or two. But of course afterwards he'd probably tell us he didn't do anything he confessed to - that he would have confessed to anything under torture.

Precisely. Under torture people confess to anything. Its a well know fact, even the CIA knows it. And that's quite apart from torture being morally bankrupt and a license for all your enemies to torture your citizens. Plus you'll probably have quite a few more enemies after you're done detaining and torturing citizens from across the world. I mean America loves to pick on countries that pick on its citizens, so why shouldn't everyone else act the same way as Team USA? Just who is this country that wants to unilaterally give itself favoured nation status to do whatever the f**k it wants.

Yes I'm pissed about this. Torturing people is not ethical, not decent, not productive, not a good example, completely non-Christian, and definitely not something I want happening in any country I live in. Yes, its one of those things that makes me think, maybe I don't belong in the United States? Maybe I should take my stuff and run for the border? When I find myself thinking like that I also start thinking why should I run from the country, can't the country change? It's changed so many times before so it can do it again. Maybe this Iraq War is to America as the Civil War was to slavery (if you ignore the protestations that the Civil War wasn't about slavery at all, but corporate power).

Maybe when the US troops are out of Iraq, the various factions there are back to fighting each other in the usual fashion, various commissions are done counting the hundreds of billions wasted, the hundreds of thousands of lives lost, the historians are totalling the damage to America's credibility, safety and integrity caused by the war. Maybe then, and only then will we all be able to look back and say, South Park style - you know, we learned something in Iraq: preemptive war is bad, unilateral "peace actions" are bad, falsifying evidence is bad and yes, finally, torture is bad.

Sex-Ed

This is so dumb, the federal government is offering money for sex-ed teaching only if it teaches abstinance as the only means for birth control. To be honest I must be behind because I wasn't aware it had gotten that bad - I thought they were only doing this for funding of overseas aid. But now their policies have come home to roost its good to see at least some states have their heads screwed on. Basically if the people in this country can't agree on what to teach kids then the federal government should just teach nothing about sex-ed as opposed to teaching stuff that's clearly of no practical use.

The name "sex-ed" tells all, sex-ed is about sex stupid and regardless of what you want to believe - sex happens. Every study of countries that try to teach abstinance only show its ineffective and leads to more pregnancies. If some religious schools want to teach no-sex-ed and some religious people want to send their kids there that's fine and dandy. Its a free country. But no, the government wants to bury its head up its collective ass and deny the truth along with all the other things they now seem to want to deny and saddle the rest of us with the burden of teen pregnancies and more unwanted and unplanned children.

Not to mention the fact that we can't even seem to teach all our people how to raise the children they wanted to have, let alone the ones they didn't want in the first place. Hello, aren't there enough people on the planet as it is? Why make Americans even more a part of the problem, and no, invading countries and killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis doesn't give us free reign to go hog wild with producing unwanted babies either.

Airline Security

Bruce Schneier has written a nice article for Wired on why Airline Security [is] a Waste of Cash. In his Op Ed piece IDs and the Illusion of Security Schneier goes further, he points out that ID checks and profiling are basically un-American.

Frankly I buy his arguments hook-line and sinker. I don't fly much - I probably average a half dozen flights a year. But that's enough to witness a number of glaring security SNAFUs since 9/11. That's quite apart from all the exploitable flaws in the system I've thought about but of course did nothing about. If it helps think of each plane as a home computer, and all the airline companies as computer network companies. Like any non-trivial system, no matter how hard you try there will be security flaws, and no matter how many patches and anti-this and anti-that add ons you layer over them there will still be flaws not covered, and new flaws in the cover-ups.

Mostly I think all the security checks have probably served to do one thing - reduce the likelyhood of some idiot having a weapon on board and killing someone in a fit of air-rage due to the lack of chicken or beef. Shudder the thought they might actually get pissed off about something real - like non-functioning headphones, snoring or yacking neighbors, elbow wars, reclining seat invasions, poison gas attacks from the restrooms, and insurgent babies running amuck in the aisles.

A Schneier points out, the single most important thing they've done (they being the government) for airline security since 9/11 was reinforcing and locking the cockpit door. Arguably you could say the single dumbest thing they did was allow a gun inside the cockpit. That provides an excuse for hijackers to take hostages and kill passengers by non-firearm, pocket knife and nail-clipper based means (everyone knows special forces around the world are trained to kill with a rolled up newpaper or slight of hand), and then wait for a gung-ho Captain to charge out thinking he can save the day Rambo style (which is unfair to Rambo because he actually seemed to know what he was doing). After that its all over.

Finally Schneir points out the thing most likely to improve security was caused by the 9/11 hijackers themselves - alerting passengers to the fact that being on a hijacked plane may well turn into something more than an inconvenient detour to an different airport from where you wanted to go. But this fact seems to be the one that the government seems least interested in exploiting (for obvious financial reasons). They'll warn you about the hazards of alcohol contained within the plane as you board you US carrier's aircraft, but might fail to mention the hazards of in-flight hijacking by your flying companions. Why don't the pre-flight safety briefings include safe and effective ways to incapacitate a hijacker, where to find a blunt instrument under you seat, how to remove and use the seat tray as shield against knife attacks, and what to do with the tazer gun that will drop from the ceiling in case of hijacking?

Supreme Court crumbles but no one shouts "It's a sign!"

You know I can't help but think that if a couple of left of conservative judges had been appointed to the Supreme Court and bits of the building came falling down then there would be a huge outcry that it was a sign from above that the court and the very core of our country was falling appart. As it happens it seems like it was just an architectural event.

Not that I believe in such things, but hey, in the interests of the Democrats "getting down with religion" maybe they could start seeing signs too. After all, from my recolections of the bible the man upstairs is an equal opportunity provider of signs and visions - it doesn't matter if you're good or bad he'll drop some big hints from the sky to steer homo-dubious in the right direction whenever necessary. This time it just happened to be 170 lbs of Vermont marble....

Urban street climbing

Don't ask me how I found it, but the Urban Street Climbing website reminds me that somewhere there is a photo of me up a very tall lamp post out side my college in Oxford. Although I was somewhat drunk, I do recall it quite vividly and I really don't know how I managed it as lamp posts are tricky buggers to shin up at the best of times. Even worse I seem to recall that having climbed it my erstwhile companion decided that I should do it again and take a bottle of wine with me to swig from for his photo. Sigh, of the joys of a misspent youth.

More recent evidence (see right) shows that I still haven't lost the urge to climb...

Space aliens eh?

Well stone the crows, turns out Bush is secretly building a base on the moon to fight the aliens. Well, according to a former Canadian Minister of Defence and Deputy Prime Minister under Pierre Trudeau he is. Either that or Paul Hellyer has been watching too many re-runs of UFO in his retirement.

Not that I don't believe UFOs could exist. Just that if they did and they were not being benevolant to us then we would surely have heard about it a lot sooner and there wouldn't be a damn thing Bush or anyone could do about it with a moon base or sweet talking diplomacy. Furthermore unlike in "The War of the Worlds" or "Signs" neither E. Coli or a super soaker will help us fight them off. I rather side with the Douglas Adams theory of alien life - if its out there and peaceful then it is politely and deliberately leaving us semi-evolved simians well alone until we evolve into something more worthwhile talking too, if its out there and not then it'll turn up on our door (or in our sky) and zap us to oblivion Vogon style. In fact you could probably make a good argument that Vogon diplomacy would be a close relative of Bush diplomacy, itself a close relative of Gunboat Diplomacy and shoot first, ask questions later.

Socksmas

I'm getting a kick reading the blog of Alex Tew who started a web site called Million Dollar Homepage. It's an interesting story, this guy is British, 21, just heading off to university and has an idea of how to make some money. He starts a web site with a 1,000 by 1,000 image and sells pixel space at $1 per pixel as advertising. The image is sold off in 10x10 pixel blocks at $1 per pixel so $100 per block. Do the math, he's got to sell 10,000 blocks to sell all of the image space, but when he has that's a cool $1,000,000 he's made.

This was all back in August - he launched the site on August 26th. To date he's sold 683,400 pixels and his web site is getting 200,000 unique visitors per week. His site is listed in Alexa's top 1,000 web sites on the net and Alex has been interviewed across the world and written up by the BBC, the Guardian, The Times (UK), and now the Wall Street Journal. More to the point his advertisers actually seem very happy with their investments - they are getting lots of hits.

But if you do the math something doesn't quite ad up. If he's sold 600,000+ pixels and there's 200,000 unique vistors per week that means only 33 unique vistors per 100 pixel block per week. Sure visitors will click on more than one ad per visit (I clicked on about a half dozen out of curiosity) but that doesn't really amount to thousands of hits per week, let alone per day. So either some ads are getting much more traffic than the average (which given the variation and size and prominence may be quite try) or things are not quite as they seem.

Interestingly this is an idea where execution wasn't really that important - his site works and is simple but its not very automated and took him and his friends a lot of effort to maintain - some of its many immitators are far more automated. This idea was all about being the first and getting publicity as the first. Its also probably going to spawn many studies of how a simple idea grows and explodes on the Internet. From its early stage with word of mouth publicity to mass press coverage.

I'm sure he will eventually sell all 1,000,000 pixels. After that then what? Well Alex says the site will be alive for 5 years minimum. I'll be interested to see how his web site traffic holds up, and just what new ideas he comes up with. Personally when the site is full he should start letting people trade the pixels and take a percentage of each trade. Even if people are selling out for a lower price he'll still make money. But perhaps he wants to keep the million dollar homepage the same, as a monument to his idea and phenomenally good timing and good fortune (pun intended).

Oh, and the title of this blog entry - well if you read Alex's blog you'll see he is more than a little obsessed with socks. He keeps on talking about how many socks he'll be able to buy with all that cash. Mmmmm socks. Sounds rather like Baldrick and his turnip obsession.

For the love of amateurs

Via Napsterization I am reminded that the latin root of "amateur" is "love" and that bascially the modern interpretation of amateur is more often a denegration of work or a person compared to the supposed exalted status of "professional". The assumption is that an amateur is unpaid and hence no good at what they do, and that a profesison is paid and hence must be good at what they do. The original meaning was of course that an amateur toils away for the love of what they do, not for the money.

This reminds me of my basic problem with sports these days - "professionals". Commercialization of everything from major league to the Olympics has created a generation of sports people who are anything but professional and primarily driven by the money versus love of the sport. Do you think an amateur sports person would be inclinded to take steroids for the love of their choosen sport?

But this is not about sport, its about everything we do. For many a job is just an means to an end - money and money is survival. To be paid to do something we love is a luxury not enjoyed by the vast majority of workers, and to be paid to do something has no guarantee we are good at it - hence the modern problem with liability insurance in America. Maybe if more people were actually doing what they loved, taking pride in what they do and getting paid for it there would be less need for expensive liability insurance in the first place. So ask yourself this, in the spirit of the definition, wouldn't it be better to be an amateur who happens to get paid for doing what they love, vs. a professional who just loves the money but not what they do?

Some anti-peak oil arguments

The Alternet peak oil article by Matthew Simmons I cited in the last post got some comments that peak oil theory is basically baloney. It turns out there is an active community that believes Simmons is a fraud, a stooge for Bush, and a lackey for the oil industry helping to driving up oil prices by allowing them to keep prices high. Remember the Enron scam in California? Who doesn't (don't worry, it'll probably happen all over again once we've forgotten). All created by a huge artificial shortage.

Most of the arguments say that there are vast new discoveries of new reserves being made all the time - specifically 54 billion barrels under the Gulf of Mexico - and that there are vast largely untapped (but expensive to extract) reserves in Venzuela and Canada. As prices get higher its a sure thing that even more of those reserves will come on line. In fact I've recently seen the evidence of the oil boom in Calgary first hand - its started already.

For some counter-spin and counter-counter-spin on the peak oil theory read: Does "Peak Oil" Spell Death for the Suburbs? by Randal O'Toole (himself a member of the Cato Institute), "The Myth of Peak Oil", Free Market News Network editorial, "Oil Is NOT A Fossil Fuel - It Is Abiotic, Is 'Peak Oil' A Put On?", "Abiotic Oil: Science or Politics?"and almost anything that shows up when you Google Peak Oil Scam.

If anyone can sort it all out let me know - or just add your own comments below.

Step right up! Oil 10¢ a cup!

Wow, only 10¢ a cup! I'll have some of that - in fact gallons and gallons of it!

Yes put like that oil does seem cheap, in fact way cheaper than bottled water, or soda or pretty much anything else you buy by the cup. But oil is way more expensive than that... right? Actually no. A barrel contains 42 gallons which is 336 pints or 672 cups. So when oil at $67.2 dollars a barrel (which is actually more than it is right now) that's just 10¢ per cup! Of that about 50% is refinable to gasoline for your vehicles, but even so, you can see why in many respects oil could be condsidered cheap, real cheap at current prices. Even a US pump price of $3 a gallon of gas is still only 18.75¢ a cup which considering that 50% figure for gas per barrel means really Americans are actually getting a very reasonable deal.

So when pundits like Matthew Simmons start on about peak oil and tell you "Oil will be $200 a gallon by 2010" you should actually stop and think what that is per cup - still less than 30¢ a cup, or 59¢ per pint. Never mind that by that time your gas at the pump will most likely be $9.50 a gallon, considering the utility of gasoline you're still getting a fantastic deal.

However there's part of the story that even Simmons usually ommits - the intagible costs of our current oil habit, all those externalities that the oil companies force on us and our government. To name a few:

• the subsidy of a road infrastructure
• the direct subsidies to oil companies in the form of tax breaks
• the cost of fighting wars to defend our oil and our oil producing friends
• the cost of over 40,000 dead in car wrecks (a million per year worldwide)
• the cost of pollution and CO2 emissions caused by burning oil
• the intangible cost of irrevocable plunding of resources that once gone are gone forever (or at least until we all rot down to oil - if you believe oil is produced that way).

I haven't seen a figure for these but my guess is that even conservatively they at least double the actual price of oil. But you know its still cheap at twice the price.

Maybe there is hope after all

I have to say the news of the pro-intelligent design school board being ousted, or should I say routed, in Pennsylvania is some of the first good news I've heard in a while (that and the failure of most of Arnold's propositions)

Don't get me wrong, I actually think its valid to educate people about potential weaknesses or gaps in the evolutionary theory, or indeed any theory. Budding scientists do need to be taught that not everything we know today is based on incontrovertable evidence, and even that which appears to be such, say the Newtonian theory of everything, might suddenly be invalidated over night. Of course Newtonian theory is still an extremely good approximation for most day to day calculations where quantum effects rear their head, but it does show that reality is not always as it seems.

But if you postulate "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolutionary theory then it deserves the same scientific rigour in its critique, i.e. that there is not one iota of scientific evidence for ID. While ID might be useful to some as a day to day approximation of reality - the explanation for our existance has no bearing on day to day life for many (although it should) - it has no scientific utility and shouldn't be taught in a science class as a scientific theory.

It's the stupid people stupid

Sigh

As Ripley once said, "Did IQs just drop sharply while I was away?". Now I know the answer, yes they did. According to a recent study in my home country, the United Kingdom, one in three kids didn't know chips (fries) are made from potatoes. Bless the little crackers, some of them even thought chips (that's fries to you American's) were from eggs, flour or apples, some even some thought they were made "mosty of fat". Well I guess that last one isn't exactly far from the truth since your average grease laden chip probably isn't far off being mostly fat.

As loyal reader Charlster would point out, what hope is there for us now, if kids don't even know what fries are made from? If the human race continues at this rate in a few generations we'll all end up being out smarted by just a slightly above average IQ pigeon (if the bird flue doesn't get them all first).

Memories #1

I remember standing on our porch in the depths of winter and my father pointing out a "falling star" in the sky. I was very young and as I watched it move through the sky it really bothered me, "What happens if it falls on us?" I wondered.

All grown up I now know it wasn't a "falling" or "shooting" star which are caused by meteorites burning up (hopefully) in the upper atmosphere. It was almost certainly satellite since meteorites, even slow moving ones, don't stay up in the sky long enough for someone to call you to the outside and show it to you. In fact on reflection I wonder if I remember this event clearly - my father clearly new the difference between a satellite and a meteorite in the sky. Perhaps he told me it was a satellite and explained it wasn't a "falling star" and I later fretted about the existence of falling stars until I knew better myself.

Of course the reality is that while meteorites are not stars, sometimes they do reach the earth, and as such might fall on us. While most of the earth's surface is ocean, and most of the ground is uninhabited there have been many cases of property damage by meteorites reaching terra firma. So far I haven't heard of anyone being killed by a meteorite though I'll be willing to bet it has happened.

So in a twisted kind of way, as a bright and starry eyed kid, I was right to worry about falling stars landing on me!

People, corporations, what's the difference?

Here's a technology story that belongs on this blog. Coursey believes that prosecuting all people involved in corporate fraud, rather than just the top guys will help stamp it out. Big fines and taking out the top executives just doesn't work. While it may be a fine idea I think he has forgotten about corporate personhood and its death grip on modern society. Corporations just wont stand for it as it weakens their viability, people just wouldn't want to work for a corporation if they thought they could be liable for every single mistake they or the corporation makes in day to day business. The "I was just following orders" argument will be used. People will not and cannot be expected to know about the legality of everything they are told to do.

Even if you can single out all those individuals who were demonstrably responsible and culpable in some corporate fraud, the reality is that corporations have this funny way of making it worth people's while to do anyway. The benefit nearly always outwieghs the risk to both the corporation and the individuals. The risk of being caught, being fined, being thrown in jail are just the cost of doing business. Dodgy doings in businesses attract dodgy dealers with questionable ethics and those with squeaky clean ethics will just go elsewhere.

Predictably I belief the real solution is to abolish corporate personhood, and let government treat incorporation as a privilege, not a right. This will give the government sufficient power to investigate and punish corporations, with the ultimate threat of revoking their corporate charter. There are good many people behind the idea of a "three strikes" law for corporate fraud, the problem is almost every major US corporation would have to have its corporate charter revoked at the moment. But going forward, it might prompt some alternate thinking when the executives are next contemplating fraud. It would give shareholders the ultimate incentive to pay attention to who is running their company and vote for executives with squeaky clean ethics and a clean pasts to ensure their corporation doesn't sent to the firing squad for corporate fraud.

Hey George, here's another disaster for you to botch...

2004 Flu vaccine shortage - "it was the British who let us down"

2005 Katrina disaster - "nobody told us it would be that big or hit New Orleans!"

200? The Great Bird Flu Epidemic - "we didn't have enough warning"

The reality is there was plenty of notice in each of these cases. Of course the Bird Flu Epidemic hasn't hit the USA yet, but with global trade and travel its only a matter of time before avian flu does reach us. Then its only a matter of time before a strain appears that affects humans. If the last global flu epidemic was anything to go by it wont be pretty.

But will America be ready? Of course not, we're too busy fighting a futile war in a foreign country who's impact on American safety is and always was, infinitesimal compared to a flu epdiemic. Meanwhile our Homeland Security guys are out to lunch trying to bolt the doors against terrorists while the real great threats to human life in this country are all around us, every day - the air we breath.

Just think of the economic impact of a couple of cows with mad disease - hundreds of millions, if not billions in lost beef sales. And how about the impact of SARS on the airline industry just a few years ago? Now think of the impact when everyone is too afraid to go outside, to shop, work or play, for fear of getting bird flu from their neighbors? Better start stockpiling those 3M face masks and hand sanitizers!

If we get any response from the government when the shit hits the fan I'm betting it'll be something like Tom Ridge's "duct tape and plastic sheeting" defence against terrorists. Whatever way it goes, I guess 3M will make a fortune...

Condemnation nation

Browsing magazines in Barnes & Noble the other day I noticed there was an article on eminent domain in the October issue of Harper's Magazine. So I sat down and read it (hmmm, should have found a couch) and I have to say I was surprised over the angle it took. Apparently, so it says, it was all the liberal judges who supported the recent Supreme Court ruling on eminent domain. Furthermore despite all the ho-ha from across the board, the democrats pretty remained silent on the issue. In fact it was the Republican controlled states that all rushed to pass state specific laws limiting the extent to which eminent domain could be applied (as the ruling allowed).

I guess I hadn't been following the case well, and just assumed this would be popular with wealthy Republicans who support the mega-retailers and developers that love eminent domain like an old and wealthy relative. However Harper's (and I have to admit I haven't divined the political affiliation of Harper's yet) clearly states that its the liberals and not the libertarians who love eminent domain and the more broadly it can be applied "for the public good" the better. Dis-information? Well perhaps this is just an indication that the "liberal" democrats are actually not so liberal at all. More likely its that their definition of liberal has strained itself too far in the direction of socialist. I can't personally name a single friend, even those who might consider themselves "liberal", or merely left of Bush, who thinks the ruling was a good one, or that cities should be able to cease property purely on the basis of earning more tax dollars.

As the Harper's article points out, there are serious doubts that even well considered eminent domain land grabs are for the better. In this decade they are seldom used to convert blighted land to productive real estate, and mostly to convert diversely populated land to monoculture big box stores. Diversity of land use can endure all kinds of attrition and remain vital. Whereas we all know that monocultures are highly susceptible to being wiped out by a pox - a single bad quarter, a slash-and-burn takeover, or a single crooked CEO or CFO.

The result its an empty big box and underutilized, non-tax yielding land and property. Indeed, as my local neighborhood bears witness, empty real-estate is much coverted by some property developers as it is a very hand tax right-off. In the short term by inflating its "market value" its value as a tax right-off can actually exceed its value as leased property. Hence we spend five years surrounded by mostly empty store fronts because a big developer could care less about unutilized retail space, something highly unlikely if the same property was in the hands of small property owners.

Terrorists, insurgents, freedom fighters or plain old vandals?

In France Les dégonflés are going around deflating the tires of SUVs and smearing them with mud. Fortunately for them they are not acting in the USA where congress is considering branding such things as full on acts of terrorism, as opposed to good old-fashioned vandalism which is what they really are. In France Les dégonflés have to endure little more than hate mail, but they also get a lot of fan mail.

All Quiet on the Miers front

An interesting opinion on Miers is voiced in The Miers Nomination: Avoiding Advice and Consent. Discrediting current claims about why Miers is unsuitable, if focusing on her lack of written record of her legal opinions. It gives three possible explanations of why that might be, all of which, it says, are grounds for vetoing Miers as a Supreme Court candidate.

#1 for the Iraq Flag

I have two blogs, this and another with a similar name focused on technology (because I believe in separation of politics and technology). It turns out both a getting quite a lot of traffic every day due to images that they are hosting. The other blog has an image of a person driving a very fast car, this one has an image of the Iraq flag. Google for "Iraq flag" and then click"images" and there is Long Dark Tea-Time. I originally put the image online in reference to a different version I created - with a small cross for every Iraqi civilian death that had occured during the American occupation to that date.

Of course the figure of 15,000 Iraqi dead was an estimate, and the image just a token effort to try and show the magnitude of the crisis, but I wanted to try and make some statement no matter how feeble. At that time (September 2004) the civilian death toll was conservatively estimated at 15,000 but now it stands at almost 30,000. For a country of twenty-something million people that's a very high figure, more than one in a thousand. It probably means that one in eight people will know someone who has died since the invasion and occupation, and that everyone will know a handful of people who know someone that died. That's really not a good place to be if you're an American in occupied Iraq.

On my other blog I modified the popular fast car image to include my blog URL, its driven a lot of hits it's way. But I'm not going to do anything so crass with the Iraq flag image. I am more than happy to serve the hundreds of downloads that image gets every day.

Uneasy about Miers?

Personally I'm shocked by all the stories like Conservatives uneasy about Miers, many of which seem to eminate from the press themselves. It seems to me all this is a big fuss to make out that Miers would make a really liberal Supreme Court judge. Where are all the "Democrats uneasy about Miers" stories? Or how about cries of outrage about the nepotism - "Supreme Court Judge wanted, no experience necessary, cronies need only apply" ???

Frankly I'm dismayed that the democrats are keeping such a low profile on this one, like they've given in already. While they roasted Roberts on the abortion issue, it seems like this is just not an issue anyone will going to pester Miers with too much, because? Because she's a woman and we have to be thankful for Bush picking a woman? Do they think that only men oppose right to choose?

My first picket line experience

Once in a while something in life just goes differently and you wonder "Is reality on the blink again?". This happened to me yesterday when I called to take my aging Honda in for service. Since I purchased the car I've been taking it to one dealership in Berkeley called Jim Doten. They weren't the place I actually bought it at but I've always serviced my car there, although admittedly being 11 years old it more often goes to an oil-changer type place these days.

So I pick up the phone to ask for an appointment and instead of saying "How about two weeks from now?" they ask, "How soon would you like to come in?". "Well what's the earliest you can fit me in?", I ask. "How about tomorrow at 10am... no, make that 9:30am" they say. At this point the word "Blimey!" springs to my mind. You see Jim Doten is a very popular garage, has been around for years and before they made appointments you'd sit in a long line at 7am to get your car in there. But I wasn't going to complain, and assuming myself the beneficiary of a cancellation I took the appointment.

So I drive to Jim Doten Honda and approach it from the back so I'm on the same side of the street as the shop entrance. Doing so I completely miss seeing the front of the dealership. As I get near the entrance I see a bunch of people sitting by the entrance with some chairs and think "Oh, they must have some people working out their to take your car details" (instead of doing inside). Then I get closer and I see they are actually picketers holding signs saying "On Strike". They start waving at me and I look in the garage - its empty except for a single car. So I slow down, open the window smiling and a woman says "You're smiling like you're going to cross the picket line, please don't", and so I get the scoop.

It turns out that Jim Doten isn't Jim Doten anymore. The business, owned by the Doten family for 30 years was sold back in June to Stephen Beinke who renamed it Berkeley Honda and then proceeded to lay off all the staff and interview them all for their jobs again. For employees with an average of 15 years of seniority it was quite a slap in the face. It turns out that 50% of the 30 union staff at Jim Doten were not offered jobs, including the local IAM shop steward. Along with wage cuts, cancellation of defined benefits pension plan, changes to the health care plan, and an influx of new non-Honda certified employees the place became a very unhappy work place - the remaining union workers went on strike and picketing started. Even the Berkeley City council passed a resolution urging Berkeley residents to boycott the dealership until the new owner negotiated with the union. It even offered to mediate between the two sides but so far the new owners have not stepped up to the table.

Needless to say, although I really wanted to get my car serviced today I wasn't going to cross the picket line, and the only reason I made the schlep to Berkeley in the first place was because Jim Doten had always been such a nice and friendly place. As I left I pointed out to the picketer that she was wrong about me, I didn't cross the line. In fact I was smiling because I'd just realized why I had been able to get my car in for service the very next day and that reality wasn't on the blink. There are some people who are really perceptive about that kind of thing, and might have asked while still on the phone what the blazes was wrong - next time reality seems to be going off the rails I think I'll pause a bit longer before carrying on assuming all is well.

I'll huff and I'll puff

This article pretty much proves my point - buildings in hurricane prone areas should be built to better standards. As it turns out just building to current codes would have been a great start. I had previously heard stories that houses built by Habitat for Humanity do much better when hit by tornadoes than others. The reason was their amateur builders used far more nails that code requires, just to be on the safe side, whereas professional builders will cut costs and use at least the bare minimum of nails, if not less.

Mmmmmm mmmmmad diplomats

Well US diplomats may be getting mad about Japan banning US beef, but it's almost certainly just US cows that have a right to get mad about anything. The state department is using smoke and mirrors by claiming the tiny Japanese herd has ten times as many mad cow cases as all of the US herd. What it fails to emphasize is that Japan tests every single cow but the US only tests a tiny fraction.

If you read anything about factory farming in the US you'll find they still feed cow bits like blood to other cows, or other cow bits to pigs and chicken that are then fed to cows again. Furthermore many studies have shown that the stun guns used on cows basically liquify the brain and result in brain bits through the entire body of the cow after slaughter - including the muscle which is what most of us end up throwing on the BBQ. The only way to be safe these days is to eat beef from farms that never had BSE and never use any animal products to feed their cows.

I'm not going to bother giving links, just Google "mad cow usa" and you'll find hundreds of them. Do you think the Japanese thought about doing that? Maybe they even read the book "Mad cow USA" ???

The main reason I'm particularly indignant about this is because the United Kingdom was held up as the poster child of mad cow disease. They basically got rid of every single cow in country because of it - had to burn and bury the lot. However over in mainland Europe mad cow disease was also widely diagnosed, but no one ever did anything about it because the governments chose to keep quite about it an write-off any reports has being caused by imported cows. It appears the same is happening in the USA - they used to blame a bunch of British cows imported in the 80s that mysteriously vanished. Now its the Canadian cows that are to blame...

I'm almost certain that if the USA started mandatory testing of all cows we would soon uncover hundreds, if not thousands of cases countrywide. However the FDA isn't going to do that. I've heard that of those they do test they only test "downer" cows that go down at the slaugher house - not ones already down by the time they arrive which is very common. And ones that go down before they are even sent to slaughter? Who knows what happens to those.

Blames well with others

At last years Earth Day the City of Oakland handed out T-shirts to neighborhood clean-up volunteers with the slogan: "Cleans well with other" - I think it was a joke based on "Washes well with others". I was reminded of that slogan today when I read about ex-FEMA chief Michael Brown blaming the Louisiana Governor and New Orleans Mayor for the Katrina disaster.

I thought, "Hmmmm, Michael Brown - blames well with others". Yes, put him and all the other rat pack NeoCons together and they certainly blame well with each other. In fact they are always blaming others, and nothing ever went wrong because they made a mistake. Call it a circle of blame, the blame machine, the blame-o-sphere or whatever, but to me its seems to be an impervious shield of blaming everything to external (and usually dark or evil) forces that is always thrown up when anything goes wrong.

What is needed is a "The Blame Stops Here" campaign with a picture of the White House and/or the smerker in chief. Mr Bush, we know you're not what people would call "Well educated", but one thing you should learn, its in Latin so you can say with a grin and look really smart, its:

Mia culpa

One thing I didn't know about "mia culpa" is it is used in Christian prayer a lot. I found this statement about the use and translation of mia culpa:

It is used in prayer: often, a more complete excerpt is mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, which works out to "through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault."

So there you go George. You can use it every day and feel right at home, just like you're on your knees praying to the man upstairs. And finally, when you want to look hip and trendy to all those non-Latin speaking voters just use the modern literal translation:

My bad!

Northern Ireland - RIP?

I'm not that old, but pushing forty I'm old enough. Old enough to remember some of the long and oh so bloody history of "the troubles". That's what they've called the events in Northern Ireland since the 1960's - during my entire lifetime basically. The reality is the conflict in Northern Ireland has its root long before. Before the partition of Ireland in 1922, before the potato famine of 1846, and all the way back to the seventeenth century when much of the Irish owned land was confiscated and given to English lords.

The Troubles were the cause of me knowing the word "terrorist" from an early age. One side of the fence calls them freedom fighters, another terrorists. One side insurgents, another guerilla fighters. Its all a matter of perspective and the perspective in Northern Ireland went way back. Way, way, back.

In fact as a kid I was convinced that Northern Ireland would be forever embroiled in turmoil and forever lobbing bombs to the mainland. No Christmas would pass without explosions in the main shopping areas of London. Imagine that - an entire youth spent worrying about bombs when Christmas shopping and hearing about members of the royal family being pecked off. Its no small miracle they never managed to get the Queen herself, goodness knows they tried. It was an entire youth spent looking for somewhere to put litter when taking a train journey because everyone knows trash cans are good for hiding bombs in and they make such nice shrapnel when they go to smithereens. All this lead me to one fateful day to put "Peace in Ireland" on my top three list of things I hoped to see happen in my lifetime. It wa right up there with the end of Apartheid and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

So today, with the apparent decommissioning of the IRA weapons stockpile and perhaps the end of the other side's last excuse for continuing anti-Catholic violence, I am happy to think that maybe, just maybe, I've gone three for three with my "dreams come true" list. Maybe I wont have to hear about any more deaths in Northern Ireland - no more tit for tat, no more persecution, no more "terrorism", no more wasted lives in the name of "the troubles".

I just hope that's the case, only time will tell and hopefully my life will be long enough to say for sure. But Northern Ireland my thoughts are with you - may you rest in peace - some day soon and forever.

She's coming right for them!

Isn't it interesting how when Katrina blasts through New Orleans, the "Christian" Elite are quick to point out from their bully pulpits that it is clearly righteous retribution for the profligate lifestyle lived by those heathen NOLA-ites be it homosexuality, abortion, fornication or even America's support for the Iraeli disengement from Gaza.

But when, just a few weeks later, Rita gouges through Galveston and cavorts up towards Crawford, Texas the hurricane is suddenly no longer a manifestation of the hand of God, but more like just an act of nature. Mother Nature being a half sister of Satan herself, is naturally something to be stopped, stomped-out and sold-out at every opportunity - certainly the devil's work, and definitely nothing at all to do with the bearded white man upstairs.

If you can point me to information on just one righteous right-winger giving some hell-yeahs for Rita's rampage in Texas let me know, but somehow I doubt that's going to happen. Lets face it, only poor sinners have to worry about righteous retribution, the rest of them can just buy themselves a stairway to heaven with the profit from all their oil wells and selling Halliburton shares.

I invite you all to check out the statistics on hurricane strikes in the US by State. If God was trying to send a message to those damned godless socialist democrats living in New Orleans don't you think he'd aim a few more of this major hurricanes there way? Instead the majority over the past 100 years have gone to Florida and yes, you gessed it - Texas.

The great soap scam and other mysteries

I was tempted to call this blog entry "The great soap scum..." but wasn't sure if people would get it. I mean, how many people use soap enough these days to know about soap scum anyway? Regardless, I just wanted to rant about why it is soap manufacturers insist on selling big hunks-o-soap, especially hand soap, that get old and skanky long before they are used up. The reason is I recently broke my trusty lump-o-soap in two and now look forward to a long and skanky soap free period of lathering.

Now I hear you saying that you don't use hard soap at all, just liquid soap. Well did you know that's just part of the scam? Liquid soap, lather for lather is far more expensive than regular soap assuming that you use a full plunger's worth of it - which they assume you will. You're just going to smack that plunger all the way down, get a big dollop-o-soap and wash most of it away unused. Instead of a bar that lasts months you now have a container of soap that lasts just a month. But that's exactly what the soap guys wanted to hear. Next thing will be spray on soap that wastes even more soap...

Don't get me wrong, I understand the psychology of liquid soap - people don't want to grab a dirty soap bar in the first place. But think about it - your hands are dirty to start with, if soap doesn't have the ability to get you clean in the first place why bother using it? So a bit of dirt on the soap, or on your hands at the start of washing shouldn't matter, should it? And the dirt on the soap at the end didn't touch your hands - you rinsed all that soap away with water - just like the dirty water in the washing machine at the end of washing your clothes.

Anyway, I'm thinking that liquid soap is just another one of those inventions that seems like a good idea, but probably isn't, in the long run. Like for instance, leaf blowers. Yes folks, admit it - we all hate leaf blowers. Noisy, stinky and basically not that efficient leaf blowers. The only people to benefit from them are the ones actually using them which proportionately is a tiny fraction of those who benefit from clearing leaves. Even then you could argue that wielding a rake and brush all morning might actually be better than using a stinky noisy leaf blower for the same period. Less pollution, less noise and a bit of exercise thrown in - it certainly didn't do me any harm as a kid all those times I had to clear the leaves from our 1/2 of an acre of garden.

In fact, I'm so sure that most people really loath and detest leaf blowers that I'm willing to award them my 2005 Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul "Most loathed technology award" - until someone suggests something more loathsome that is (I have an idea already for the second place technology). Feel free to add a comment if you'd like to suggest something more worthy of first place.

The great Katrina cloud hoax

Someone recently sent Agent J a series of cloud photos that purported to be of Hurricane Katrina. Luckily since I took up paragliding I've had the advantage many hours of time pouring (and pawing) over cloud porn. This enabled me to immediately identify the photos as originating from Mike Hollingshead at his Extreme Instability web site.

These photos have been so widely circulated that there is even an article about it at a site called The Cloud Appreciation Society, there's even a Snopes entry for it too. The cloud appreciation society's manifesto includes "eliminating blue sky thinking", with wonders like the cloud below (a morning glory) available to fill the blue sky with clouds I'll give that two tea-time thumbs up.

Something interesting in the woodshed

From the originalNew York State Constitution of 1777:

XXXIX. And whereas the ministers of the gospel are, by their profession, dedicated to the service of God and the care of souls, and ought not to be diverted from the great duties of their function; therefore, no minister of the gospel, or priest of any denomination whatsoever, shall, at any time hereafter, under any presence or description whatever, be eligible to, or capable of holding, any civil or military office or place within this State.

Well you certainly don't find that in the 2001 version! It's almost like the complete opposite of banning atheists from office. However I do confess I didn't find anything in the modern day New York State constitution requiring elected representitives to be theists of any sort.

But on another note I did notice some interesting verbiage about the state militia, and how Quakers were excused from serving in the militia on payment of a fee (apparently £10 at the time). Here's the relevant article:

XL. And whereas it is of the utmost importance to the safety of every State that it should always be in a condition of defence; and it is the duty of every man who enjoys the protection of society to be prepared and willing to defend it; this convention therefore, in the name and by the authority of the good people of this State, doth ordain, determine, and declare that the militia of this State, at all times hereafter, as well in peace as in war, shall be armed and disciplined, and in readiness for service. That all such of the inhabitants of this State being of the people called Quakers as, from scruples of conscience, may be averse to the bearing of arms, be therefrom excused by the legislature; and do pay to the State such sums of money, in lieu of their personal service, as the same; may, in the judgment of the legislature, be worth. And that a proper magazine of warlike stores, proportionate to the number of inhabitants, be, forever hereafter, at the expense of this State, and by acts of the legislature, established, maintained, and continued in every county in this State.

This is a pretty good description of militia as mentioned in the US Constitution's Second Amendment. In this case the New York militia doesn't sound at all like the libertarian's version of "people" bearing arms to defend themselves against the state (or government) and much more like "the people" (ie. in the collective) bearing arms to defend the state, more like what we have in the National Guard now.

Life without God begats taxation without representation

Recently I was ranting about how seven states still ban unmarried couples from living together (at least officially). That list of states is Florida, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Virginia and West Virginia.

Today I found something even more worrying - seven states actually forbid an atheist from holding political office, that's Arkansas, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Texas (and maybe even New York, but I didn't find the relevant citation from their constitution yet). Until '97 the list also included South Carolina, and Maryland's clause is supposedly voided by the 1961 Torcaso v. Watkins case, but I have to say I'm really surprised to see Maryland and Pennsylvania on the list to this day.

Frankly I'm gobsmacked. I mean screw trying to keep creationims out of science classes, or "under God" out of the pledge, if atheists can't even get representation in 8 out of the 50 states this says something even more rotten about the country. Separation of church and state is basically a laughing stock with this gaping hole in it. This coupled with the fact there aren't any declared atheists in any major political office state should indicate why church and state separatists get really upset.

Remember that the recent Newsweek poll showed that 1 in 3 Americans consider themselves as non-religious and 1 in 10 of under forty year olds actively identify as atheists. That's a huge number of disenfranchised Americans who are prohibited for by law from standing for office in those states because of their religious beliefs, or lack thereof. Combined with the fact, that when pressed most politicians would sooner eat their hat than actively stand up and defend separation of church and state, its easy to conclude that, despite all the rhetoric, atheists have little or no representation in government.

That's not to say I want pro-atheism policies coming out of government, any more than I want pro-faith policies. If Bush can have faith based initiatives then I want no-faith based initiatives - but in reality I want neither. Just get on and govern, and keep God out of it. As it stands the fact that government has since the Nixon times become increasingly polarized towards theism its looking more and more like atheists have a great case to make for taxation without representation, especially in those eight states. I mean why aren't there atheists protesting in the streets in those states and refusing to pay their taxes until the constitution is changed? Probably the problem is that there is no one in government to support their views because they are all afraid to, even if they are closet atheists.

After some digging around I found that the TV show "The West Wing" recently touched on the subject which apparently made quite a few people happy (or angry). In it a Senator (Vinick) is being pressed to attend a church or make some affirmation of his religious beliefs, but refuses to. You can download a clip from it here or read some of the relevant quotes here. The most important statement the Senator makes is:

"I don't see how we can have a separation of church and state in this government if you have to pass a religious test to get in this government. And I want to warn everyone in the press and all the voters out there, if you demand expressions of religious faith from politicians, you are just begging to be lied to. They won't all lie to you but a lot of them will. And it will be the easiest lie they ever had to tell to get your votes. So, every day until the end of this campaign, I'll answer any question anyone has on government, But if you have a question on religion, please go to church."

I think there's a lot of truth in the statement that politicians will lie about their religion and its the easiest lie they will ever tell. I mean compared to admitting they are homosexual, have cheated on their wife/husband, or cheated on their taxes, or taken bribes or are an alcoholic... well its a piece of cake.

DreamHost downtime delivers digital dexterity

When I was a kid we played conkers, at least during the part of the year they were available. We also played marbles, various card games, collected Star Wars (Episode IV of course) bubble gum cards and any number of other weird things. In my early teens the Rubik Cube showed up and my brother bought a book on solving it, and taught me one of the simpler methods - I think my best time was about three minutes. Sometimes my hands would fly so fast the cube would fall apart mid move and all would be lost. Not many other kids had mastered the cube at my school and you couldn't just get on the Internet to learn the moves back then (yes the Internet did exist when I was a kid!). So for a brief while I enjoyed a bit of notoriety, but being the resident brainbox at my school (in America I would probably have been labeled a nerd or geek) that was deemed perfectly normal - all I really did was just read a book and learn the moves.

Later on in my early twenties I got slightly hooked on juggling having been taught the three ball cascade by an old school friend. Three balls lead to four which lead to five, the peak of most amateur juggler's achievement. I can assure you five balls is hard but given a couple of weeks of practice most people could nail it. The juggling community is rather oddball (pun intended) and overlaps with all kinds of fringe activities. I also ended up riding a unicycle, doing fire juggling, pair club juggling, ball spinning and attended a vaudeville convention. Overall juggling and unicycling was good fun, worked wonders for my hand-eye coordination, balance and was quite pivotal in getting me, a shy nerdy kid, out of my shell.

However, none of the aforementioned youthfull activities prepared me for my discovery today of something called "cup stacking", also known as "speed stacking" or "sport stacking". It involves stacking cups about the size of a pint glass in pyramids against the clock and is now apparently all the rage among kids across the USA and Europe. Although cup stacking has been around for twenty years one person Bob Fox has been promoting it in schools across the country and selling the specially modified cups and timing equipment from his web site Speed Stacks, presumably cleaning up a large stack of cash in the process. It should also come as no surprise that his two kids are also world champion cup stackers. Fox claims that stacking promotes hand eye coordination, improves left and right coordination and is good for the athletically challenged because its not physically demanding. He promotes it for teaching in gym classes to give the non-jocks something to excell at.

Although it was amazing to watch cup stacking the first time - see Emily Fox's recent world record on video - it does seem like a very limited and non-creative activity. There really aren't too many variations and it looks like a case of RSI just waiting to happen. As one TV presenter quipped to a young cup stacker, "So you do this to train for a career at McDonalds?". If nothing else I expect it may introduce kids to other non-physical activities like juggling which at least has some variety and opportunities for teamwork and self expression far beyond that of sport stacking.

The story of how I found out about sport stacking was a great example of the fundamental interconnectedness of things. As this blog entry title suggests it all started with downtime of my new hosting provider DreamHost who was off line yesterday, taking this blog's website with it. It turns out DreamHost was caught up in yesterday's Los Angeles blackout and although their building backup generators fired up just fine, someone belonging to the building management meddled with the power systems locally causing the generators to fail. This was quickly followed by failure of all their UPS systems, ultimately blacking out hundreds of servers and thousands of hosted websites - this one included.

Anyway, while looking at the DreamHost website and reading customer complaints today I found a lot of people mentioning a hosted website called Rocketboom which apparently had not come back to life earlier in the day. I checked out Rocketboom and it turns out to be a daily video blog. Watching today's entry at Rocketboom I noticed a segment on Chris Hardwick solving a Rubik's cube one handed in under 30 seconds, now that's what I call nerdy and of course it took me right back to my own Rubik cube obsession decades ago.

So while looking at Chris' page I spotted a link to "speed stacking" which I had never heard of and, well the rest is history. Then I came across the Superhandz website that has stuff on all kinds of weird hand activities (no, not what you're thinking!). Check out their video page for stuff on pen spinning, coin flipping, card manipulation, card juggling, "extreme digits" and yes folks, the elusive Cobra cut.

Telecrapper

While I'd normally post this on my tech blog I figured it was too entertaining to not share with all my favourite tea-time readers. A while ago I was running some software called The Phonebot on my home server that answered my landline and acted as my answer-machine. The Phonebot also had the option to play the "telezapper" beep whenever it picked up to stop telesales people from calling me (it sounds like an number unobtainable tone and causes their auto-dialing systems to hang up). Having run it for about a year it seems to have made a difference - but then again it could have been the advent of the dont-not-call list - I'm not completely sure.

However I just read about a product, or idea called "Telecrapper" that answers the phone and when a telesales call is detected engages in a phony (pun intended) conversation with them. Having worked at a company that developed voice based applications I find this particularly amusing - even if this is just a hoax (listen to the sample conversation and judge for yourself) I find it entirely plausible and yes, a worthwhile pursuit.

It makes me wonder, could Telecrapper one day pass the Turing test? Could indeed the length of time a system can successfully engage a telesales caller be the new benchmark of artificial intelligence? After all in a society obsessed with consumerism and phones, shouldn't the real definition of intelligence be whether an entity can pass in society as a legitimate phone wielding consumer?

Blackwater in the floodwater

Democracy Now has reported that the private security force run by Blackwater (more often described as mercenaries) is now operating in New Orleans. Despite denials from the Department of Homeland of Security the gun toting Blackwater employees do say they are "on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and the Louisiana governor's office", they also claim they are authorized to enforce the law and use lethal force. Don't forget these are the same people operating in Iraq and have recently come under scrutiny for civilian shootings there.

Three little piggies

We all know the tale of the three little piggies. The question is, why don't American houses in the path of hurricanes get built with bricks and mortar to wisthstand them? Or at the very least with concrete or reinforce steel? Okay, so it costs more to build, but it seems if you live anywhere on the Gulf coast or south east Atlantic seaboard your house is probably going to get whacked in its lifetime, no more so than ever.

You know what - insurance companies pay out for hurricane damage - why is that? They don't pay out for floods, or earthquakes. If they insisted buildings were built to withstand hurricane force winds, with storm shutters and the like, maybe they wouldn't have to pay out so much, and maybe the country could stop pissing money away on annual reconstruction projects and start using it for building proper flood protection as they have in the Netherlands (which incidentally I heard today, are built to survive the 1 in 10,000 year storm). On the Gulf coast it looks like a category 5 hurricane is at least a 1 in 100 years event, if not more now frequent, and category 3 storms are basically once a year or so now.

So why the heck was New Orleans only protected by a measly category 3 hurricane levee system? It just doesn't make any sense. Early on I heard someone say it was X billion dollars to build up the levees for protection against a category 5 hurricane storm surge, where X was less than 10. The decision, they said, was made not to build it up "based on a cost benefit analysis". Big mistake.

The problem is, as I've said before, the cost benefit analysis wouldn't have fully considered the cost of destruction of thousands of home, it would be based largely on loss of life. That's because our economy doesn't count property destruction as a negative, on the contrary its a positive because it causes economic activity rebuilding - jobs for reconstruction, raw materials to rebuild, factories to build new cars - wooohooo, bring on those hurricanes, they're good for the economy just like wars, so long as they are not in your backyard.

FSM - I fly therefore I am

Ummm flying spaghetti. For those that haven't caught on yet FSM stands for Flying Spaghetti Monster which is a parody religion created to poke fun of (some might even say ridicule) those Kansas School Board members who voted to bring back teaching of intelligent design (ID) in science classes. Note that people who oppose ID teaching do so not simply because it is being taught, but that it is being taught in a science class. Teaching something with no scientific basis - ID is a matter of faith - has no place in science classes. Granted evolutionary theory has its detractors, but basically its the only scientific theory out there.

Personally I think that evolutionary theory should be taught with a healthy dose of skepticism, with due attention to those parts which are lacking strong scientific evidence. However just like the big bang theory, or grand unified theory and many other theories, just because there are some grey areas doesn't mean it should be replaced entirely with a theory that has no scientific basis. As far as I can see teaching ID as the mainstream explanation for our existence, the fossil record that we have etc. etc. is something that should be relegated entirely to the theology or philosophy departments.

Also note that evolutionary theory does not deny the possibility of the existence of God, or any other "intelligent designer" of the universe. It merely states that the designer, if there was one, was not responsible for the evolution of life on earth beyond the setting of basic laws of physics.

I did find it amusing that Flying Spaghetti Monsterism was featured in a recent New York Times Article that has been widely syndicated. FSMism has even already picked up its own parody religion called SPAM which came out of the Yoism group I have previously blogged about. With all this media attention to FSM I'm surprised it didn't feature in the recent Newsweek article on spirituality in America. Too bad, it might have helped us understand just what the one third of Americans who consider themselves not religious do believe.

Michael Levy - a spokesman for our times

Well after days of simply appalling behavior in New Orleans finally the cavalry arrives in force. What do we hear from "the strikezone" (as the media has dubbed it):

"Hell no, I'm not glad to see them. They should have been here days ago. I ain't glad to see 'em. I'll be glad when 100 buses show up," said 46-year-old Michael Levy, whose words were echoed by those around him yelling, "Hell, yeah! Hell yeah!"

"We've been sleeping on the ... ground like rats," Levy said. "I say burn this whole f**king city down."

Yeah, way to go Michael, what and wonderful positive attitude you have, all ready to start afresh. But that's hardly the spirit of the blitz is it? However, if you really want to burn the whole place down lets be sure they start by burning your house and car first okay?

Personally I think it'll be interesting to see what happens, could New Orleans eventually wither and become a ghost town? Or will some miracle of revitalization take effect and usher in a new age of prospertity? I expect a lot will have to do with how those levees are reinforced. Without extreme improvements I expect people will be very reticent to rebuild there, insurance rates will go through the roof, property values will plummet and tourists and business people will just not want to go anywhere near the place during hurricane season. Instead of burning the place down, maybe they should just declare it a wetlands and move inland...

The Guardian on Katrina: the smoking gun

I've been getting rather tired of reading the same old Reuters story over and over with a few sentences changed here and there every time they change the title. So I went over to what the Guardian was saying in the UK and found a rather scathing commentary that's basically the smoking gun for Katrina. Here are the highlights:

In 2001, when George Bush became president, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely potential disasters - after a terrorist attack on New York City

In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands around New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush promised a "no net loss" wetland policy, which had been launched by his father's administration and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed the approach in 2003, unleashing the developers. The army corps of engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency announced they could no longer protect wetlands unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce. In response to this potential crisis, four leading environmental groups conducted a study that concluded in 2004 that without wetlands protection New Orleans could be devastated by an ordinary - much less a category four or five - hurricane. "There's no way to describe how mindless a policy that is when it comes to wetlands protection," said one of the report's authors. The chairman of the White House's council on environmental quality dismissed the study as "highly questionable", and boasted: "Everybody loves what we're doing."

On the day the levee burst in New Orleans, Bush delivered a speech comparing the Iraq war to the second world war and himself to Franklin D Roosevelt: "And he knew that the best way to bring peace and stability to the region was by bringing freedom to Japan." Bush had boarded his very own Streetcar Named Desire.