Friday, June 30, 2006
I believe it
They studied 40 volunteers who used a driving simulator four times -- while undistracted, using a handheld cell phone, using a hands-free cell phone and while intoxicated to a 0.08 percent blood-alcohol level -- the average legal level of impairment in the United States -- after drinking vodka and orange juice.Three study participants rear-ended the simulated car in front of them. All were talking on cellphones and none was drunk, the researchers said.
Motorists who talked on either handheld or hands-free cell phones drove slightly more slowly, were 9 percent slower to hit the brakes, and varied their speed more than undistracted drivers.
Pwn3d!
From the new book The One Percent Doctrine
What they'd learned over nearly a decade is that bin Laden speaks only for strategic reasons — and those reasons are debated with often startling depth inside the organization's leadership. Their assessments, at day's end, are a distillate of the kind of secret, internal conversations that the American public, and by association the wider world community, were not sanctioned to hear: strategic analysis.
Today's conclusion: bin Laden's message was clearly designed to assist the President's reelection.
At the five o'clock meeting, once various reports on latest threats were delivered, John McLaughlin opened the issue with the consensus view: "Bin Laden certainly did a nice favor today for the President."
Around the table, there were nods....Jami Miscik talked about how bin Laden — being challenged by Zarqawi's rise — clearly understood how his primacy as al Qaeda's leader was supported by the continuation of his eye-to-eye struggle with Bush. "Certainly," she offered, "he would want Bush to keep doing what he's doing for a few more years."
But an ocean of hard truths before them — such as what did it say about U.S. policies that bin Laden would want Bush reelected — remained untouched....On that score, any number of NSC principals could tell you something so dizzying that not even they will touch it: that Bush's ratings [in the U.S.] track with bin Laden's rating in the Arab world.
Thursday, June 29, 2006
What is up with the dutch?
Everytime I read about the Dutch government they are dissolving.
Oh well, I never liked Balkenende so... it will be interesting to see what coalition comes next.
Bush, reporters spar over comments on Supreme Court ruling on Gitmo trials
And I love this comment on the Bush version of Habeas Corpus:
But they briefed me and said he wants to devise law in conformity with the case that would enable us to use a military tribunal to hold these people to account.
Man with 10-year erection awarded $400,000
Only $400k? Man, he got stiffed. I guess the jury was caught between a rock and a hard place. He certainly was a crotchety old man, always very testy. Nice thing about him though is that he always gave a heads-up before he came over. I guess that is what they call groining pains. Hopefully now he can move in a new direction.
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Sanity prevails
The GOPs best new idea on how to impinge on free speech: condemn the NYTs
somebody pleeeease tell these people that we have some real problems to deal with.
Cannabis is no soft drug, UN warns
The study claimed a "significant" number of cannabis users experienced panic attacks, paranoia and "psychotic symptoms" during cannabis intoxication."Despite early claims to the contrary, cannabis dependence is a reality. Many people who use cannabis find it difficult to stop, even when it interferes with other aspects of their lives, and more than a million people from all over the world enter treatment for cannabis dependence each year," the report said.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Al Qaeda Strategic Vision
or so it would seem if we believe that text... but then that could be a super judo-flip... but then, we would think that it might be so that perhaps it IS true...
meanwhile, Taliban II is playing in a asian war theatre far away from you and the cost of our adventures will hit $500 billion in 2007.
If it wasn't their original plan, I sure think they are pretty happy with the way it is going.
Monday, June 26, 2006
States vs. CO2
WASHINGTON Jun 26, 2006 (AP)— The Supreme Court agreed Monday to consider whether the Bush administration must regulate carbon dioxide to combat global warming, setting up what could be one of the court's most important decisions on the environment.any guesses on how the court will rule? I'll take 2 to 1 against.The decision means the court will address whether the administration's decision to rely on voluntary measures to combat climate change are legal under federal clean air laws.
"This is the whole ball of wax. This will determine whether the Environmental Protection Agency is to regulate greenhouse gases from cars and whether EPA can regulate carbon dioxide from power plants," said David Bookbinder, an attorney for the Sierra Club.
Bookbinder said if the court upholds the administration's argument it also could jeopardize plans by California and 10 other states, including most of the Northeast, to require reductions in carbon dioxide emissions from motor vehicles.
Coming soon - mind-reading computers
"The system we have developed allows a wide range of mental states to be identified just by pointing a video camera at someone," said Professor Peter Robinson, of the University of Cambridge in England.
What a neato keen technology. What can we do with this? Why oh why is he making it?
AAAAARGH! What a friggin genius. Is there no hope?He and his collaborators believe the mind-reading computer's applications could range from improving people's driving skills to helping companies tailor advertising to people's moods.
"Imagine a computer that could pick the right emotional moment to try to sell you something, a future where mobile phones, cars and Web sites could read our mind and react to our moods," he added.
The party is over
But if the rhetoric of the Bush revolution lives on, the revolution itself is over. The question is not whether the president and most of his team still hold to the basic tenets of the Bush doctrine -- they do -- but whether they can sustain it. They cannot. Although the administration does not like to admit it, U.S. foreign policy is already on a very different trajectory than it was in Bush's first term. The budgetary, political, and diplomatic realities that the first Bush team tried to ignore have begun to set in.Reality is a bitch.
Sunday, June 25, 2006
On moving inland
The Greenland ice sheet — two miles thick and broad enough to blanket an area the size of Mexico — shapes the world's weather, matched in influence by only Antarctica in the Southern Hemisphere.
It glows like milky mother-of-pearl. The sheen of ice blends with drifts of cloud as if snowbanks are taking flight.
In its heartland, snow that fell a quarter of a million years ago is still preserved. Temperatures dip as low as 86 degrees below zero. Ground winds can top 200 mph. Along the ice edge, meltwater rivers thread into fraying brown ropes of glacial outwash, where migrating herds of caribou and musk ox graze.
The ice is so massive that its weight presses the bedrock of Greenland below sea level, so all-concealing that not until recently did scientists discover that Greenland actually might be three islands.
Should all of the ice sheet ever thaw, the meltwater could raise sea level 21 feet and swamp the world's coastal cities, home to a billion people. It would cause higher tides, generate more powerful storm surges and, by altering ocean currents, drastically disrupt the global climate.
Climate experts have started to worry that the ice cap is disappearing in ways that computer models had not predicted.
By all accounts, the glaciers of Greenland are melting twice as fast as they were five years ago, even as the ice sheets of Antarctica — the world's largest reservoir of fresh water — also are shrinking, researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Kansas reported in February.
Saturday, June 24, 2006
Every mistake he makes
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Tuna meltdown
Its getting hot in here
Even Fox news (on the web) put up the AP story.The National Academy of Sciences, reaching that conclusion in a broad review of scientific work requested by Congress, reported Thursday that the "recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia."
A panel of top climate scientists told lawmakers that the Earth is running a fever and that "human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming." Their 155-page report said average global surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere rose about 1 degree during the 20th century.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Pointless question
originally "dance to boogie music," a late 1960s style of rock music (based on blues chords), from earlier boogie, a style of blues (1941), short for boogie-woogie (1928), a reduplication of boogie, 1917, which meant "rent party" in Amer.Eng. slang.So why fear the boogie man? Hell, I want him to come to my next rent party, right?
Losing face
You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?To protect the president's fragile ego, we torture a mentally ill man and run around like chickens with our heads cut off at every story he events while being tortured.
Great.
Is the NSA spying on U.S. Internet traffic? | Salon News
The globalization struggle
The battle between the proponents of unfettered globalization and the proponents of globalization with standards to protect labor and the environment has replaced the struggle between communism and capitalism over the best way to deliver the benefits of modern production to people around the globe. On the side of expanded globalization, many economists, international organizations, and developing country governments believe that free trade of goods and services and foreign investment promote the growth of less developed countries, and they fear that labor and environmental standards will undermine their competitiveness in global markets. The critics see global standards as a scheme to lower the comparative advantage of poor countries, and they believe that trade sanctions to enforce standards are protectionism in disguise.Embracing an alternative vision of globalization, many nongovernmental and human rights activists, as well as most trade unions, believe that unencumbered free trade increases income inequality and creates a race to the bottom for workers worldwide. Many of these groups, particularly from developed countries, want trade agreements that include global labor standards and trade sanctions to enforce them. Nongovernmental organizations and unions from developing countries are often in the middle of this debate, favoring higher standards in their own countries but opposing the linking of those standards to trade for fear that their exports, and therefore jobs, will suffer.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Monday, June 19, 2006
Hell
I cannot even begin to imagine how horrible it would be to live in an environment like this.
Sunday, June 18, 2006
Leaders Exploit Bush Weaknesses
Saturday, June 17, 2006
Clean living may make us sick
The studies give more weight to a 17-year-old theory that the sanitized Western world may be partly to blame for soaring rates of human allergy and asthma cases and some autoimmune diseases, such as Type I diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis. The theory, called the hygiene hypothesis, figures that people's immune systems aren't being challenged by disease and dirt early in life, so the body's natural defenses overreact to small irritants such as pollen.
The epistemology of Bush
A turning point came in April, when Bush sat through a 65-minute private White House screening of a PBS documentary that unveiled the beauty of — and perils facing — the archipelago's aquamarine waters and its nesting seabirds, sea turtles and sleepy-eyed monk seals, all threatened by extinction.
The film seemed to catch Bush's imagination, according to senior officials and others in attendance. The president popped up from his front-row seat after the screening; congratulated filmmaker Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of the late underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau; and urged the White House staff to get moving on protecting these waters.
UN Report reveals global slum crisis
Worst hit is Sub-Saharan Africa where 72% of urban inhabitants live in slums rising to nearly 100% in some states.
If no action is taken, the world's slum population could rise to 1.4bn by 2020.
What conservatives have won
The question in the case was what to do about it. Mr. Hudson wanted the evidence excluded at his trial. That is precisely what should have happened. Since 1914, the Supreme Court has held that, except in rare circumstances, evidence seized in violation of the Constitution cannot be used. The exclusionary rule has sometimes been criticized for allowing criminals to go free just because of police error. But as the court itself recognized in that 1914 case, if this type of evidence were admissible, the Fourth Amendment "might as well be stricken."
The court ruled yesterday that the evidence could be used against Mr. Hudson. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, argued that even if police officers did not have to fear losing a case if they disobeyed the knock-and-announce rule, the subjects of improper searches could still bring civil lawsuits to challenge them. But as the dissenters rightly pointed out, there is little chance that such suits would keep the police in line. Justice Scalia was also far too dismissive of the important privacy rights at stake, which he essentially reduced to "the right not to be intruded upon in one's nightclothes." Justice Stephen Breyer noted in dissent that even a century ago the court recognized that when the police barge into a house unannounced, it is an assault on "the sanctity of a man's home and the privacies of life."
If Justice Sandra Day O'Connor had stayed on the court, this case might well have come out the other way. For those who worry that Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito will take the court in a radically conservative direction, it is sobering how easily the majority tossed aside a principle that traces back to 13th-century Britain, and a legal doctrine that dates to 1914, to let the government invade people's homes.
Friday, June 16, 2006
Award-Winning Veggie Burger Recipes
This one looks yummie:
Spicy Mexican Bean Burger yield: 8 - 10 burgers
Mix all ingredients together. Add more flour to create a firmer mixture, or more salsa if mixture is too stiff. Form into balls and smash into patties. Bake at 450 degrees for 15 - 20 minutes, until firm, brown and done. Serve on a whole wheat bun with lettuce, tomato and salsa. Accompany with tortilla chips and a large glass of iced tea. These can be grilled or pressed in those new-fangled sandwich presses... a lot quicker and tastier than baking. [Author's note: "When I studied in England for a semester, I fell in love with Wimpy's Spicey Mexican Bean Burgers. Upon returning to the states, I struggled to recreate this burger. This is what I've come up with."]
(Note: We cut back black pepper to 1/2 tsp. Although unspecified, we used whole wheat flour. We made these a second time, adding 1/2 tsp. of salt. Many of us preferred them this way.)
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Amnesty
He has since resigned.
Atrios makes the following comment: "You know, it's actually the case that the way to deal with an insurgency is with a political, not a military, process, but I really don't know how Republicans seamlessly slip from kill'em all to hug'em all."
This is something where I actually agree with what many Republicans are saying - that it might be a good idea. But I am confused. Since when would Republicans go for such an idea? And I wonder where the pressure came from to get him to step down. Was it the WH?
Speaking of the situation in Iraq, it is a telling fact of the situation on the ground when Bush flies in to meet the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister hears about it 5 minutes before Bush arrives. 5 minutes.
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Operation Return to Sender
About half of the 2,179 people arrested in the operation had criminal records, and 367 were members or associates of violent street gangs, including the Mara Slavatrucha, or MS-13, Julie Myers, the assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security for ICE told a press conference.Who the heck thinks up these operation titles? This one, like most, is really quite lame. I hate to be disMissive, but thats all I have to say about that.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Rove might be off the hook
Monday, June 12, 2006
More Berkeley Linguistics
"Bozosity"?
'TOGETHER, America can do better." The Democrats' awkward new slogan may not say much more than "Anybody would be an improvement on the current bunch of bozos," yet many Democrats are hoping that it will be enough to bring the party back to life this fall. And they may be right, given the widespread discontent with the administration's apparently bottomless bozosity.
Kerry 'almost certainly' won Ohio in 2004
Some more ripples from the Kennedy piece in Rolling Stone Mag.
Another not so surprising tidbit:
Walter Mebane Jr., a professor of government at Cornell University, did a statistical analysis of the vote in Franklin County, which includes the city of Columbus. He told Kennedy, "The allocation of voting machines in Franklin County was clearly biased against voters in precincts with high proportions of African-Americans."
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Reasons to Worry
An interesting piece by Niall Ferguson of Harvard on what the debt means for Americas near term future.
Good news
It's seen as a very competitive election, and the Republicans are very concerned and the Democrats are optimistic," said Trevor Potter, a former Republican-appointed FEC chairman. "Some money is shifting to what is seen as a possibility of a Democratic win. By and large, people don't give to losers.If he is suggesting that money buys elections, I would imagine that it is a probably a very powerful causal mechanism (more chance to influence) but apparently on a macro level, the correlation is not so clear, which means that there are other mechanisms (ideology, current president, etc) that combined block or inhibit the influence of the money. No particular reason for saying all of this other than, it was interesting to me to look into it.
A reason to be democrat
As GOP leaders bluster about gay marriage, flag burning and the "death tax," Democrats are struggling to get a word in edgewise about the bevy of proposals they've been drafting to address more substantive national concerns -- namely soaring gas prices, dependence on oil from an increasingly volatile Middle East, and global warming. These are among the hot-button election-year issues that Republicans are trying to dodge by throwing red meat to their right-wing base.This current incarnation of republicans (well, most of them it seems, and especially the WH) are not interested in good policy, that we have known for a while, but instead is about the politics of polarization.
Saturday, June 10, 2006
Broken the law?
Doing a heck of a job
Al and global warming
I have a quesiton. What is it about republicans that make them so resistant to the idea of global warming? I understand the shills who work for oil money sponsored institutes like the Compettive Enterprise Institute, but what is it that makes the rest of resist it so greatly that they are can possibly be so incredibly moronic. Is it a general skepticism of science? And if it is, why do web sites (like the one linked to above always say something like 'the facts are on your side'?) Is it the conservative desire not to maintain the status quo so that they can not process data (or ideas) that might otherwise force change?
Why do they think that scientists say there is global warming caused by humans? What would possibly motivate a scientist to say that other than the fact that they believe it? Its not like mother earth has been making winfall profits lately and is running several por-earth institutes...
Is it simply lack of knowledge? The shills have muddied the discourse enough that people actually think it is something that is so up in the air, and so small of a risk, and then that combined with a general conservativism menas... lets keep our SUVs and gas cheap? Maintain our American way of life? I don't get it. Someone needs to figure this out then maybe we can tackle this problem.
Thursday, June 08, 2006
If at first you succeed
If there was ever a sign of a ruling party in trouble, it is a game plan that calls for trying to win by discouraging voting.
The latest sign that Republicans have an election-year strategy to shut down voter registration drives comes from Ohio. As the state gears up for a very competitive election season this fall, its secretary of state, J. Kenneth Blackwell, has put in place "emergency" regulations that could hit voter registration workers with criminal penalties for perfectly legitimate registration practices. The rules are so draconian they could shut down registration drives in Ohio.
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Video fun
The gay boogeyman's gunna git ya!
"Conversion therapy" by an unliscensed therapist, just like you and me! I like his "bio-energetics" approach, I think he has some things to work out.
UN Insult leads to potential injurry
"To have the deputy secretary-general criticize the United States in such a manner can only do grave harm to the United Nations," Bolton said.I must admit, however, the speech in some parts is highly condescending of Americans - I wonder, for your average country, how many middle-[country X here] citizens are aware of the role of the UN in the world. Then again, the US is one of the fab-5 so, I guess the comparison isn't totally appropriate. Perhaps just within this group then?
Google, now perhaps a little better at of doing no evil
Search giant Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Latest News about Google may seek to alter terms of the agreement it made in order to conduct its Web search business in China. Google co-founder Sergey Brin suggested the move after admitting the company's decision to agree to censorship conflicts with its philosophy and famous "do no evil" motto.
Brin has acknowledged in the past that Google's deal with China's communist government to censor certain search terms "wasn't what we ideally would like." However, the company has said that the opportunity to do business in China was too great to ignore, and argued that having a presence there could, over time, lead to more openness and free speech.
On Tuesday, Brin went a step further, saying the company may even reverse its earlier decision to agree to the censorship.
"We felt that perhaps we could compromise our principles but provide ultimately more information for the Chinese and be a more effective service and perhaps make more of a difference," Brin said. "Perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense."
RFK Jr: Taking the Stolen Election Seriously
reading the kennedy article brought me to the point of almost uncontrollable anger, i actually had to go take a walk about 2/3rds the way through it. its so freaking frustrating because i don't know what i can do about this fraud. certainly i'm embarassed to say i ever lived in ohio, which seems to be full of a bunch of criminals (who claim to be christians doing gods work).
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
Wealthy can buy organ priority
Taxpayers spend millions of dollars a year to subsidize an organ transplant policy that gives well-to-do recipients an advantage over the poor.Yeah, the freedom to rob a kidney from some poor bastard who has been waiting longer...
Critics say the policy violates medical ethics by skewing a system that is supposed to be equitable. It’s especially galling, they say, because publicly funded Medicare pays for 70 percent of U.S. kidney transplants, the most common transplant operation.
Others, however, say the policy provides freedom of choice to patients who, their lives at stake, deserve any opportunity they can take to find an organ.
Monday, June 05, 2006
Peru Election
Talk about a bad set of choices... Instead of going with the Chavez backed unknown and unpredictable Humala, they went with the guy who practically bankrupted the country.
GarcÃa's come-from-behind victory in the runoff caps a long road to political rehabilitation that began when he left office in 1990 with only 7 percent support after presiding over what was by all accounts one of the worst administrations in modern Peruvian history.although, this would be a good sign:During GarcÃa's first presidency, economic collapse spawned political violence at the hands of two guerrilla groups and fueled a drug-trafficking boom.
He spent most of the 1990s out of the country, living in political exile in Colombia and France after his successor, Alberto Fujimori, tried to have him arrested on corruption charges. He returned to Peru in 2001, narrowly losing the presidency then to Alejandro Toledo.
In the meantime he adopted the more moderate center-left tendency that has swept through South America in recent years. He sees himself cut from the same cloth as Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Chile's Michelle Bachelet.Here's hoping.