The first day of the rest of your life

There's a saying "Every day is the first day of the rest of your life". The problem is that most days you don't really feel like it and more likely don't even remember it. For me today is one of those days when I definitely feel like today is the first day of the rest of my life.

The last time I felt like this was when I decided to leave my last job with its nice office, nice view, job security and a friendly work environment full of friends and happy memories. I left it to join a crazy dot com, with a long commute, crazy work hours and crazy bosses who dreamed the could change the world, but eventually just pissed away $34M with nothing to show for it except a brand name and a lot of unused office stationery. This all happened right after watching the movie "American Beauty" and I would say the two events were definitely causally connected.

That was almost five years ago and yesterday I retired from the remmanents of my dot com (long since assimilated into a larger all together more evil public corporation). Another way to say it was "I finished my job", or "quit my job", or "became a discouraged worker", or "become unemployed" or even "got laid off because California workers are too expensive". Yet another way to say it is "I didn't want to move to Idaho to continue doing a job I basically couldn't care less about".

Anyway, whichever way you look at my transition from the "working state" to something else, the consequence is today I'm not working and have no definite plans to go back to working any time soon. That decision is entirely in my own hands and it feels good to be back in control of one's own destiny.

Maybe three months, six months or whenever I might want to start working again for whatever reason except for money. Hopefully that reason will be to do something interesting, more productive and definitely more worthwhile than just plain making money for a psycopathic corporation.

The end of days

This is my last day of working for a faceless corporation and its legions of pointy haired bosses. As of tomorrow I am determined to make a public corporation's problems with making money a distant second to my own human problems. Naturally I'll let you know how it goes - there's always a few speed bumps on the road to freedom.

Stupid is, stupid does...

Thanks to South Knox Bubba for this great Slate article on George W Bush, The Dunce in Chief.

The article considers how Bushes "malapropisms, solecisms, gaffes, spoonerisms, and truisms" collectively known as Bushisms, make him sound like "a grade-A imbecile". I'm wondering if "Bushism" has made it into the OED yet? It also reviews his lifetime record of underachievement, and how at a late age he managed to fall onto the wagon, and ended up catching the gravy train of power.

The closing paragraph says it all:

As the president says, we misunderestimate him. He was not born stupid. He chose stupidity. Bush may look like a well-meaning dolt. On consideration, he's something far more dangerous: a dedicated fool.

Rule of law

I find it ironic that Bush is standing up, patting Rumsfeld on the back and congratulating him on his job well done in the war against terror. Sure Bush may have duped some of a gullible American public into believing invading Iraq had something to do with the war on terror with logic like "well the 9/11 hijackers came from there, so of course our country should go kick their countries ass..." But the majority of right thinking, rational human beings in this country still know that invading Iraq had nothing to do with the war on terror. It was just a diversion to take our mind of how pathetically little progress that "war" was making, just like the "war on drugs".

Meanwhile Bush is also trumpeting how the perpetrators of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse will be punished according to rule of law. That's all well and good, but who's rule? If it was common US civil law they would all be doing years of prison time, if its pre-Bush invasion Iraqi law civil law then who knows - does stoning or some other revenge against them apply? However when its US military law which apparently conveniently applies... well they may just lose some pay, get demoted, dishonorable discharge, or even just suffer an administrative discipline. I believe the worst they can get for actual unlawful killing is about a one year stretch in the brig. Is there any wonder why Bush is afraid to submit US forces to international rule of law that he is so happy to subject other "evil-doers" to?

Fortunately for us we can still rely on the stupidity of the few who feel inclined to document their own crimes, and the honorable few who feel inclined to speak out and expose them. But its a tough fight all the way to the top to get anyone to do anything about it. When Iraqis complained of abuse at Abu Ghraib and even created art to document their experience, no one listened. Its clear that for many in the US administration this whole affair is just an inconvenient irritation that never should have made it into the public eye and should be swept under the carpet as quickly as possible:

"We're functioning in a (with peacetime constraints) wartime situation, in the Information Age, where people are running around with digital cameras and taking these unbelievable photographs and then passing them off, against the law, to the media...

"Unbelievable photographs"? Who the heck made that comment? Well our own Rumsfeld of course. As the Tin Man told me:

Isn't that an amazing quote?? Rumsfeld is sorry that they got caught and that they don't have unlimited power. That's all he's sorry about. And his choice of adjectives is interesting, "unbelievable". Sounds like he'd love to court martial for the guy who slipped the disc to the media.

For those detractors like Rumsfeld who poo-poo the whole affair by saying its no worse than frat-house hazing rituals, or as Limbaugh said "fun, stress relief" (thank you again Tin Man), well wasn't that exactly the point I made in What price the American dream?. When fully integrated with our vision of how society should be, Iraqis will have to tolerate our US standards of what is acceptable levels of crime, acceptable levels of unreported abuse in our institutions (prisons, homes, police, military), acceptable "fun", and acceptable corruption (Enron, Global Crossing, ...) and whatever else is just an acceptable price you pay for the current Bush v2.0 of "The American Dream". That is: shopping, guns and cheap oil for all, except all those pesky evil-doers and dissenters who need to be sent to the Guantanamo Gulag.

Random coincidences..

People are always freaked out by coincidences. However, given the almost unlimited opportunity for coincidences to happen I'm just surprised we don't see them more often.

Anyway, today The Tin Man sent me a job ad:

Qualifications:
Between 5'10 and 6'1"
athletic build
male or female
excellent acting skills
excellent drumming skills
willingness to relocate

He tells me its the Blue Man Group recruiting in LA, sure enough here's the ad on their site. Unfortunately I can't play drums, act and I'm not going to relocate. So that one is out.

Then today I'm looking at the stats for LDTT and notice a blip from an IP that resolves as Method Studios. I check out their website and click a few links in and stop a photo of the Blue Man Group. Turns out that Method Studios did some work with BMG and Intel on the Pentium III roll out.

Well that's a little coincidental given how infrequently I get job listings for the Blue Man Group (well actually, never before) and pay that much attention to my stats on the same day. After a bit I decide to blog about coincidences and I go back to the web site and the Blue Man group image is no longer there! Eventually I discover that they have a huge portfolio of work and rotate the images from them that they show on their home page. So that's even more coincidental - they list almost 588 items in their portfolio, and show only 14 at a time on their home page. That means there's a 1 in 42 chance of seeing the Blue Man Group portfolio image the one time I go to check their web site.

But wait a minute... 1 in 42 WTF!

WTF? Yeah WTF because 42 is the answer. I mean, not just the answer, but The Answer. As in the number dreamed up by Douglas Adams in his Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy series. And you know what else Douglas Adams did? Yeah, he wrote this book, called "The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul" about a holistic detective called Dirk Gently who believed in the fundamental interconnectedness of all things.

But wait, there's more....

Those of you who know the domain used in my personal email address should go look at the home page for that domain and read the introduction.

Okay, by now you should be freaked out by this massively impossible coincidence that surely must have some deeper cosmic meaning. The kind of thing that should make me stop in my tracks, quit my job, and walk the Earth like Caine did in "Kung Fu". Well guess what movie I just saw tonight? Yes, "Kill Bill Volume 2" which was directed by Quentin Tarantino and starred David Carradine (who played Caine in "Kung Fu") as "Bill". And Tarantino also directed the movie "Pulp Fiction" (a personal favorite of mine) in which the character Jules witnesses something that he swears is a miracle but the other observer believes in a coincidence. Jules decides to quit his job and walk the Earth like Caine.

Holy moly. Guess what I just did last week? Quit my job...

Well, sorry to disappoint, but I really could just carry this train of coincidences on forever but I'm not going to. However its all true - there's not a single thing I've mentioned so far that didn't happen today. However I don't call myself Blog Gently for nothing, its because I believe in the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. So really, this kind of thing is bound to happen almost daily.

A little light music

Since JohnnyTheo.com hasn't quite made it back to the land of the living yet, I'll just have to post this here. Special mention goes to Hey Hey 16k and Realistic-Internet-Simulator. Warning, Flash required and many items are more profane or mundane - YMMV^*

^*Your Mileage May Vary

Corporate control by another name

Doesn't this quote from Colin Powell sound all too familar?

"[Some] of that sovereignty they are going to allow us to exercise on their behalf and with their permission. It is not as if we are seizing anything away from them. It is with the understanding that they need our help and for us to provide that help we have to be able to operate freely, which in some ways infringes on what some would call full sovereignty."

He could just as well be talking what happened to the (natural) people of the United State's sovereignty since corporations began their covert annex of control in 1886.

Dating for dummies...

Fresh from The Tin Man, SingleRepublican.com. Like irradiated mosquitos he suggest democrat males should lure a Republican female and neutralize the opposition. The amusing thing is what you get if you instead type SingleDemocrat.com.

Yes, both domains are registered by the same person

A Letter from Michael Moore

May 5, 2004

Friends,

I would have hoped by now that I would be able to put my work out to the public without having to experience the profound censorship obstacles I often seem to encounter.

Yesterday I was told that Disney, the studio that owns Miramax, has officially decided to prohibit our producer, Miramax, from distributing my new film, "Fahrenheit 911." The reason? According to today's (May 5) New York Times, it might "endanger" millions of dollars of tax breaks Disney receives from the state of Florida because the film will "anger" the Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush. The story is on page one of the Times and you can read it here (Disney Forbidding Distribution of Film That Criticizes Bush).

The whole story behind this (and other attempts) to kill our movie will be told in more detail as the days and weeks go on. For nearly a year, this struggle has been a lesson in just how difficult it is in this country to create a piece of art that might upset those in charge (well, OK, sorry -- it WILL upset them...big time. Did I mention it's a comedy?). All I can say is, thank God for Harvey Weinstein and Miramax who have stood by me during the entire production of this movie.

There is much more to tell, but right now I am in the lab working on the print to take to the Cannes Film Festival next week (we have been chosen as one of the 18 films in competition). I will tell you this: Some people may be afraid of this movie because of what it will show. But there's nothing they can do about it now because it's done, it's awesome, and if I have anything to say about it, you'll see it this summer -- because, after all, it is a free country.

Yours,

Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
www.michaelmoore.com

What did the salad bowl say to the tossed salad?

It used to be said that the United States is a "melting pot" of ideas, beliefs and ethnicities. The idea being that no matter who we are and what we believe before we get here, eventually we all end up as homogenous, fun loving, and shopping happy Americans. Not long after I arrived here I heard an alternative description which is a "salad bowl". That is, lots of different ingredients all together in one place but not really lossing their individual identities.

I myself buy the latter description because after ten years it is clear to me, that there is no one "American" identity that we all melt into. America is defined by diversity and always will be. As an example of this, consider the variety of responses from the public that the FCC received when Oprah decided to let a guest describe the sexual euphemism "tossed salad" on her show aired at 4pm. Hint: click on each letter to read the next.

No matter what you think of Oprah's judgement or lack thereof, I think you'll agree the range and diversity of responses from the public clearly indicates that we really are living in a salad bowl and not a melting pot.

Total ownership

If you watch the documentary The Corporation you'll see various people arguing that the reason we have pollution and depletion of natural resources is that not everything on this planet is owned private entities. The idea is if every square inch of land, sea, air is owned then market forces will have their way and environmental destruction will just be economized out of the picture due to market forces. No matter what you are doing, depleting, saying, thining - someone will have an economic interest in making sure its not hurting their interests. So when you pollute the air someone will charge you for it because they are charging someone to breath that air and they can charge more for clean air so you'd better compensate them for making it dirty in the first place...

This idea extends to all kinds of intangibles such as the radio-frequency spectrum, genes, organisms, music, patents, trademarks etc. etc. The perfect corporate world is one in which every second and every facet of your existance is an interaction with, and subject to the control by a for profit corporate entity. Only then, they tell us, will we no longer have to worry about air pollution, side effects of smoking, impacts of cars, depletion of fisheries, dangers of genetic modifications etc. etc.

Personally I find that idea frightening. It basically says that at no stage in human history will society evolve to the point where we can put money aside and just do things for the common good. It surrenders our humanity to pure economic issues of dollars and cents. As Douglas Adams said:

This planet has, or had, a problem, which was this. Most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small, green pieces of paper, which is odd, because on the whole, it wasn't the small, green pieces of paper which were unhappy.

Basically I agree with Adams and believe that even when this total ownership scenario comes to pass people will still not be happy. I think many things in life need to be kept in the public domain and owned by a government and the government needs to be elected and run by the people and for the people. We need to take money out of that loop or forever be doomed to unhappiness.

Disney can't stand the heat and drops the ball

Once again South Knox Bubba has delivered me a juicy scoop via the New York Times. Apparently Disney has told its subsidiary Miramax that it can't distribute the new movie by Michael Moore, he of "Bowling for Columbine" fame. The movie documenting Bush-Saudi family ties in relation to 9/11 is called "Fahrenheit 911".

I have to say I'm shocked that Miramax ever got involved as a potential distributor for this movie, just what were they thinking? I turns out the principals of Miramax are Bob and Harvey Weinstein who are big ticket Democrat donors. But really, no one at Miramax should be surprised that their Big Brother, Disney pulled the plug on the deal. The explanation mentioned in Bubba's source article in the New York Times is that Disney told Miramax the movie will sour its relationship with Jeb Bush and jeopardize special tax credits that it is receiving. Publicly Disney is just saying it doesn't think a family oriented company like Disney should be distributing movies that might alienate part of its fan base.

Now as a regular reader of LDTT you should know that the former argument is clearly the real one with more truth in it. True, Disney is a bland family entertainment company, however that is what it created the Miramax brand to sell all its violent non-family oriented productions without tainting its squeaky clean Mickey Mouse image. Never mind that "Fahrenheit 911" could probably make it hundreds of millions that would far exceed the value of tax credits. Its the cozy "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" relationship with the Bush family and Jeb in Florida (HQ of the Axis of Disney) that Disney doesn't want to upset.

I have to admit I always had Disney pegged as staunch GOP supporter, its exactly the squeaky clean family oriented corporation that goes hand in hand with the puritanical GOP manifesto. However it seems I couldn't have been more wrong and like many big corporations Disney plays both sides of the fence. Open Secrets shows that the Disney Political Action Committee actually gives almost exactly equally to both the GOP and the DNC. In fact in 1998 it gave more to the Democrats then Republicans (60/40 split). In 1997 it worked with both Democrats and Republicans and got passed a bill to extend copyrights, handily preventing the copyrights on Mickey, Pluto, Goofy and Donald from falling into the public domain in the next ten years which would have cost it billions in lost merchandizing revenues.

Does anyone else see how clearly corporate personhood issues are at work here?

I think perhaps Moore might be even smarter than we think. I think I can see this will drum up plenty of free publicity for his movie and a new distributor will swiftly step up to the plate, quite possible on of Disney's competitors. Regardless, I don't think this is going to do anything to hurt the success of Fahrenheit 911, and it at least removes any possibility that a distributor like Disney might want to exert some heinous editing privileges on the release.

Black hydrogen

There's a heart warming story over at Wired News that describes how Sierra Nevada brewing company is installing hydrogen fuel cells to generate up to a mega-watt of power. They wanted independence from California's notoriously flakey and expensive energy grid, and also to cut emissions caused by their brewery.

They are initially getting their hydrogen from converted natural gas thus using what has been dubbed "black hydrogen". Black hydrogen is any hydrogen generated from fossil fuels such as natural gas, coal, or oil, or even hydrogen from other sources (such as water) but using fossil fuels to obtain the power to generate the hydrogen from them. Not surprisingly black hydrogen is the form that is a particular favorite of Bush and Big Oil because it has the veneer of respectability, without any of the inconvenience of actually stopping the big oil machine. Also being a less efficient process of obtaining power it actually requires more oil to be extracted from the ground.

The heart warming bit is that Sierra Nevada is hoping to switch over to using the methane by-products of its own brewing process to generate the hydrogen and become completely energy and emissions neutral. I sure hope they can pull it off because such renewalable, no resource depleting systems are the only thing that can sustainably support our life on earth in the long run.

Mommy, what's VD?

It's an innocent question I asked my mother when I was a kid. I was watching some news on TV a little later than the watershed for kids my age and they started talking about this mysterious vee-dee. So I just asked. I might as well have been asking why the sky is blue. But I never got an answer, I don't think she wanted to get into the whole birds and bees conversation at that point. In fact I never had that conversation. And when #2 brother got married I heard that circuitously that #1 was asked to ask #2 if he knew everything he needed to know. That was about all we ever heard.

Anyway, this entry is not about venereal disease, its actually about perfectly innocent and straightforward questions people ask, but never get an answer for. The question I had in mind is "Isn't torturing prisoners a war crime?". I mean that's what I imagine people should be asking when they see the photos from Abu Ghraib. But for me its not an innocent question, its a loaded one. To me the answer is "But it is". But unfortunately America has been busy exempting itself and all its people from prosecution at the International Criminal Court specifically so it would never have to worry about being accused of war crimes.

Well of course that's because Americans would never commit such things right? Because Americans are the good and only evil people commit war crimes and any charges brought against an American are clearly trumped up charges designed to make America look bad. And yet there they are, photos and counts all the heinous deeds of torture you could want, bar actual killing of prisoners. However even as I write this I go looking for information and find yes, even that happened. Prisoners were actually killed in Abu Ghraib. That's not "died", that's "killed" or as Reuters puts it, "murdered".

You see its not America that is evil, any more than Iraq, Iran or North Korea are evil. Its just a few "bad eggs" who got some power to use and abuse in a way that they never should have. If America says "These images do not represent what America stands for nor do they represent the high standards that our military is committed to upholding," then why should anyone believe us? When we say "What occurred was wrong and it will not be tolerated." what action is there to support it? Some slapped wrists of enlisted servicemen and women. Is that it? People will try to spin-doctor that in any way they can, but when Saddam is torturing and executing prisoners, how is that really any different from Americans doing it? Its taken three months for the February report on Abu Ghraib to surface so someone was sitting on this timebomb to supress it.

So I'll make a suggestion. If America is serious about making amends it should start by apologizing, recognizing that all nations no matter who they are have some "rogue criminals" and recognize the International Criminal Court. Then it should indict the appropriate people for a war crimes investigation by the ICC. If the ICC is good enough for the rest of the world's war criminals it should be good enough for the USA.

Unfortunately for the Iraqi's there's a problem. As my friend The Tin Man points out, America believes hostilities are over and its not a war. Therefore its just a domestic issue for the Iraq government to prosecute if the see fit. But wait, America is still sovereign in Iraq since we took over and therefore, well, maybe we'll just let it slide this time and write it all off as a big mistake. Embarrassing, but a mistake. Trust us, it wont happen again...

So when your kid see hooded men with their testicles wired up and asks, "Mommy, isn't torturing prisoners a war crime?" just turn off the TV and tell them its way past their bed time. Trust me, it's really much easier that way.

My mum always said...

Courtesy of South Knox Bubba I came across this rather entertaining table of State average IQ vs. Presidential voting. I have to admit I take it with a pinch of salt, I'm not sure how much weight I put on the reliability of such a thing as average IQ but you must admit, it does seem to show a high degree of correlation.

However I must remind you that correlation does not mean there is a causal link between IQ and voting preference. Even so, I find it hard not to be reminded that I believe there is a connection between lower education standards and less critical thinking. Which means a public that is more susceptable to mass media election propoganda or brainwashing (call it what you will). Which means the party spending the least on education and most on election advertising will have a distinct advantage when it comes to maintaining dominance in power.

I think it would be interesting to see a state by state break down of percentages in the recent poll about Iraq, al Qaeda funding and 9/11 involvement misconceptions. Again belief of disinformation and propoganda is required to keep the status quo in Washington where the Bush's intellectual elite vulcans are hiding out.

And the educated intellectuals who conspire to challenge and dissent? Just send them off the to the Gulag or Tuol Sleng - it worked for the Bolsheviks and the Khmer Rouge.

Guest post: Bolsheviks!

Here is a special guest posting from an LDTT regular we'll call "The Tin Man":

This Abu Ghraib thing has finally caused me to see the light... the Bush administration is constructing a prison system that's essentially the same as the infamous Soviet Gulag. We've got an archipelago of autonomous regions outside the U.S. that are islands of lawlessness. In cancer terms, they're like tumors metastasizing all over the globe.

The Soviet gulag wasn't born overnight. It developed over decades. Lenin started it, Stalin perfected it. Solzhenitsyn describes it in a chapter of Gulag Archipelago called "The history of our sewage disposal system". Bush and his gang are installing the plumbing as fast as they can.

Control of the press, manipulation of history, a penal system that's accountable to noone, forcible exportation of ideology, opposition to a political party equated with treason... My god, Bolsheviks have taken over the White House!

-- The Tin Man

Privacy and truth

Wired featured an article today about monitoring of sex offenders. Since Megan's law was passed states are required to notify residents when a sex offender moves into their neighborhood. Meanwhile Derek Smith of ChoicePoint, a data warehousing company, is calling for increased mining of personal data to screen the good from the bad - his company performs over 8 million background checks for Fortune 500 companies every year.

California has no central system to manage its Megan's law disclosures this so cities are simply posting names and addresses of sex offenders on their web sites. Unfortunately sometimes the wrong names and addresses are published, and sometimes a person who is trying reform and live out the rest of their life with some shred of decency finds a vigilante at their door...

ChoicePoint was the company that supplied the list of names to Florida for purging of ex-felons from their 2000 electoral roll. Unfortunately they included the names of thousands of people who only had a misdemeanor conviction, thousands who were convicted outside of Florida and thousands more who simply shared a similar name to those who were ex-felons...

Well its better to be safe than sorry right? Well what about when its your door that vigilantees turn up at, or when its you that's turned away from the polling booth?

To be honest I don't know what the answer is, I don't even have a clue. I understand the rationale that leads people to want to know when a convicted paedophile is living next door - its a known factor that recidivism exists and that incarceration as a "cure" for crime is signifcantly flawed. And I understand why people want to do background checks on people to see if they are suitable for employment - people do lie on resumes. But its also a known fact that data contains errors, courts make errors, identities are forged or confused, and sometimes people do reform and change their ways. So we end up with people effectively convicted in society for life by some record of their past deeds that may or may not be accurate or relevant.

What is society to do? Do we continue to protect privacy at all costs and rely on people telling the truth? Or do we just tear down the walls of privacy and collect, sort, collate and analyse every scrap of information on our neighbors just in case...

Its hardly a question I need answer because the latter is already happening. It is, as they say, a slippery slope. With the first taste of data fresh on its lips there is little we can do to persuade the government to put the privacy genie back in the bottle. Even though constitutionally protected, it is only a matter of time before we are expected to yield more and more personal data, and allow its collection and monitoring in return for privileges such as social security benefits, medical treatment, education, employment, purchasing property, performing any kind of financial transaction, and ultimately to live in this country at all.

We will soon reach the point where data collected and stored will include every cent you spend, every web site you visit, every phone call you make, every person you meet, every product you buy and every place you travel. It does sound far fetched but the technology to do this exists right now, and ultimately you just have to trust those in charge of that they do the right thing with it and never screw up and their computers never get hacked and they never make a wrong association and decide to shut your life down and haul you in one day. Well you can protest your innocence until you're blue in the face but who is going to argue when the truth about you is all there in black and white?

Like I said, I really don't have any answers. I do understand why people are tempted to errode our right to privacy one piece at a time. Each individual step seems to make sense and seems to have some tangible benefit that makes it a worthwhile sacrifice. Then one day you wake up and its 1984 or some society like in "The Minority Report" and you wonder just how the heck you got there. The only solution I can possibly think of is that society devote some serious effort into technology like the truth machine in Halperin's novel of the same name. In fact its no coincidence that the main character of "The Truth Machine" was inspired by the death of his own brother at the hands of an ex-murderer who never should have been released. Not that I believe such a device could ever be made to be 100% infalible, as it needs to be, but read the book and I think you'll agree that the questions raised by the existance of such a device offer some interesting insights into society and how we deal with truth and privacy.

Ban them, ban them all...

Guy Kewney makes and argument in eWeek that baning mobile phones in planes is over-reacting, but personally I'll be happy to see this ban extended indefinitely. While I understand his point that the risk from interference is miniscule, its still a risk. After all, everyone assessed the risk from box-cutters as miniscule until 9/11.

If there is a known risk that has caused interference before then why bother taking that risk? Even if there was never an incident in the less than one thousand flights I'm sure Kewney has taken in his life, there are millions of flights every year and a one in a million event that could down a plane is still one or more planes a year. Even one is one too many for the convenience of using a phone on a plane. I'll leave the technical assessment of mobile phone interference to experts over pundits with gut feeling convenience arguments.

The real problem is, that although 22 countries in the EU can standardise in the GSM phone network, they couldn't standardize a protocol by which phones could be remotely disabled, or put in a harmless low power mode. As useful would be the ability to enforce a silent ringer mode. Which brings me to my real objection about using phones on a plane...

Even if using a phone on a plane could be proved to be safe, its hard enough to get to sleep on a plane as it is without some dick-wad (that's a techinicaly term) beside you yacking away at full volume over the engine noise to tell some friend of his "yeah, I'm on the plane, I'm over the ocean, and would you believe there's this cute blonde three rows up I'd like to give some mile high attention". Yes, you better believe it, you will hear that kind of stuff flight after flight as soon as mobile phones are allowed and work on planes.

When you're jammed into a plane for 12+ hours (or even less) its bad enough to have to put up with ever phyiscal nuance of your seat companions, but to have to listen to their blathering for an equal period will be shear hell. I predict that within a month of phones working people will start calling to ban them, and on-flight "air rage" will start to escalate.

If you want to communicate on a plane it should be restricted to email and text messages, or quaint gesticulations of empty drink glasses and napkin waving.

George Bush and Janet Jackson

Quickly now, what's the connection between George Bush and Janet Jackson?

Answer: They both have boobs that get edited out after the fact.

Yes, while TV land is busy censoring Jackson's star spangled boobs it appears its also got the video chopping block working full whack on Bush's boobs. Unfortunately for GWB there's still this embarrassing thing called raw footage that lingers on. As a recent article at Alternet describes, Bush not only says bizarre things that never make it onto the news, he also does them. Like cleaning his glasses on a strangers sweater without even asking.

Bush does this so often that Dave Letterman has created a segment just for them - Stupid President Tricks. One of the reasons that Letterman ends up airing such content without invoking the wrath of corporate media is that Letterman's show is owned and controlled by Letterman himself. Therefore CBS can't tell him what to do on his show without risking loosing Dave, the show and all its ratings. Smart move Dave.

Eleven questions for the Shrub

Mark Morford does it again with eleven tongue-in-cheek questions for the Shrub who thought he was President. It contains plenty of good links, including Gee-Dubs resume and even a reference to our locally made Hangar One vodka.