Throwback

Conditions: Overcast, warm.



More Than Just An Anniversary.



Six years ago this week something happened. Something very big. And while the events that happened on that day were shocking, the events that have unfolded in the years since it happened have been even bigger, if infinitely less public. You could say that while 9/11 was the initial rock into the pool, the swath of death and destruction that has swept across Europe and the Middle East since have been full-scale tidal waves. So in and amongst all the documentaries and special news reports and the commemorative services about that one attack, try to bear in mind that the tragedy that unfolded on that day has been eclipsed a hundred times over by the violent and meaningless death and destruction that has been carried out in direct and unfocused retaliation for that one day. And who mourns for the hundreds of thousands of innocent people that have been destroyed over the last six years? That's what 9/11 means to me now, simply the prod of the lion.



Patreus Delivers Like A Fox?

Well, the waiting is over, and General Patreus has delivered his much-much-anticipated report on the situation in Iraq. And, as with pretty much everything concerned with Iraq, the news was ...mixed.

The general did finally launch on his monotonal, mind-numbing, expectably boiler-plate testimony. He promised that, if all went well, American troops would be back to pre-surge levels by mid-July 2008, ten months from now, 18 months from that plan's beginning. "Progress" indeed.

The general's testimony would be dealt with in the tones of gravitas that journalists-cum-pundits and pundits-cum-pundits reserve for moments like this. Yet, given the original expectations of the Bush administration, some of the testimony Petraeus (and later Crocker) had to offer would have been little short of hilarious if the subject weren't so grim. (Good news! Four years after the invasion of Iraq, we finally have the former Baathists of al-Anbar Province, whom our President used to refer to as "dead-enders," on our side! Even better, we're arming them and all is going swimmingly!)

Buying a precious extra six-plus months for the White House, the general also suggested that it would be premature to think beyond next July, when it came to "drawdown" plans, and that we should, instead, all reconvene in mid-March 2008 for more of the same.

- Truthout.org

And the surprise I guess really has to be on people who expected something definitive from the General. How could anyone ever get anything definitive out of the sucking chest wound that is modern-day Iraq?


Reaction to Patreus, some more:

Six More Months.

Iraq: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics.



So, is Iraq really a situation that America wants to, and can get out of, like a sweater? Or is this all just a bunch of smoke and mirrors covering the dark reality of the situation - that America has loudly and roughly taken control of a major oil-rich nation for it's own long-term energy goals? Let's ask Scott Ritter, the chief United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, who has been scathing in his views of the Bush administration in Iraq. I'm sure he'll be fair.

It should come as no surprise that the Bush administration's newest military-man-of-substance-turned- political lapdog, General Petraeus, maintains that the situation in Iraq is not only salvageable, but actually improving, due to the "surge" of U.S. combat troops into Iraq over the past year. All the president and his collection of GI Joe hand-puppets ask for is more time, more money and more troops.

There is no reason to believe that the compliant war facilitators who comprise the "anti-war" Democratic majority in Congress will do anything other than give the president what he is asking for. No one seems to want to debate, in any meaningful fashion, what is really going on in Iraq.

Why would they? The Democrats, like their Republican counterparts, have invested too much political capital into fictionalizing the problem with slogans like "support the troops," "we're fighting the enemy there so we don't have to fight them here," and my all-time favorite, "leaving Iraq would hand victory to al-Qaida."

There simply is no incentive to put fact on the table and formulate policy that actually seeks a solution to a properly defined problem. Like the Republicans before them, the Democrats today seek not to govern with the best interests of the people in mind, but rather to game the system in order to consolidate political power. Political sloganeering has so trumped reality that any political backlash that is generated from the so-called "Petraeus Report" will be limited to how the Democrats could better sustain a conflict that kills American troops, since no main-stream Democratic leader has expressed a true "get out of Iraq now" policy.

Nearly 4 1/2 years following President Bush's ill-fated (and illegal) decision to invade and occupy Iraq, few people in a position to influence policy formulation and implementation in America have actually grasped the horrible truth about what has transpired, and what is transpiring, in Mesopotamia today. As the United States places the finishing touches on Fortress America, the new half-billion-dollar Embassy complex in the heart of the Green Zone in downtown Baghdad, and more troops pour into mega-bases throughout Iraq, the reality (and futility) of permanent occupation has yet to sink in. What could be going through the minds of those members of Congress who keep signing blank checks for the president? Is there no oversight of how and why this money is spent? How can someone fund permanent infrastructure one day, then speak of the need to get out of Iraq the next?

The compliant mainstream media, of course, is no help. The war in Iraq has become a major generator of advertising revenue for these corporations, so there is no incentive to actually report the truth, but rather manipulate the fiction. Iraq has become a prestige destination for every aspiring journalist or struggling anchor, determined to get "the big story." The most recent manifestation of this syndrome is CBS News anchor Katie Couric, who earlier this week travelled to Iraq because she was (in her own words), "Curious about very basic questions regarding living conditions, about how much fear there is in the street, about how the soldiers really are doing." That the situation in Iraq has been boiled down to these three big, burning issues (living conditions, fear in the streets, and how the troops are really doing), and that CBS is sending their multi-million-dollar investment to investigate, speaks volumes about the truly degenerate state of American journalism today.

- Truthout.org

You know, it seems to me that we hold America and it's leaders to a standard that simply doesn't exist anymore. Maybe it never did, maybe it was all just flowery bullshit that has finally fallen away, leaving the cold stark reality obvious and bare. But as long as intelligent people scorn the leaders of the greatest nation in the world for their blatant stupidity, greed and ignorance, then I'll feel that I can at least get some sleep.


P.s: Remember those seven U.S soldiers serving in Iraq who wrote an op-ed for the NYTimes recently? Two of them died on Wednesday.





Bin Laden Talks Sense.

What does it say when the world's most wanted man, the evil genius of the 9/11 attacks, the actual boogey man himself, is videoed recently making more sense than most politicians?

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Early analysis indicates the voice on a recently released videotape is that of Osama bin Laden, a U.S. official said Friday, as President Bush called the tape "a reminder of the dangerous world in which we live."

A transcript of the video, obtained by CNN, shows it contains no overt threats toward the United States.

Some date references, including a mention of Democrats gaining the majority in Congress, may indicate the tape is new.

In the tape, bin Laden calls the Iraq war "unjust" and blames it -- and a host of the world's other ills -- on capitalism.

"Iraq and Afghanistan and their tragedies; and the reeling of many of you under the burden of interest-related debts, insane taxes and real estate mortgages; global warming and its woes; and the abject poverty and tragic hunger in Africa; all of this is but one side of the grim face of this global system," he said.

- Cnn.com

This disturbs me no end.



Burning Water.

In the search for new energy, never overlook the obvious. Like say the ocean. Impossible, you say? Nothing is impossible! Just very improbable.

ERIE, Pa. - An Erie cancer researcher has found a way to burn salt water, a novel invention that is being touted by one chemist as the "most remarkable" water science discovery in a century.

John Kanzius happened upon the discovery accidentally when he tried to desalinate seawater with a radio-frequency generator he developed to treat cancer. He discovered that as long as the salt water was exposed to the radio frequencies, it would burn.

The discovery has scientists excited by the prospect of using salt water, the most abundant resource on earth, as a fuel.
[...]

The radio frequencies act to weaken the bonds between the elements that make up salt water, releasing the hydrogen, Roy said. Once ignited, the hydrogen will burn as long as it is exposed to the frequencies, he said.

- Yahoo.com

Now I think at the moment they're putting more energy in to the equation than what they're getting out, but radio wave energy is a very technical and variable field, so the possibility is there to make this actually work. It does make you wonder what happens to the salt, though.



School's In. Very In.

For many years, the holy grail of programmers is the idea of creating Artificial Intelligence, A.I. A living computer program, that can make decisions on it's own, and can learn things. This idea is of course impossible. You cannot program an object to 'think' for itself. It's logically un-doable. But that hasn't stopped people from trying. One of the biggest hurdles is in trying to stuff entire libraries of knowledge into a program for it to learn from. Researchers at US firm Novamente have come up with the bright idea of putting burgeoning AI software-lets into the popular online gaming worlds, in the hope that they will 'learn' from the vast rich diverse environments found within...

Initially the AIs will be embodied in pets that will get smarter by interacting with the avatars controlled by their human owners.

Novamente said it eventually aimed to create more sophisticated avatars such as talking parrots and even babies.

Virtual adoption

"The virtual world provides the body," said Dr Ben Goertzel, founder and head of Novamente.

He said the company had developed a "Cognition Engine" that acted as the thinking part of the artificial intelligences it wanted to create.

This engine had some partially scripted behaviours and goals for the avatar under its control but was also capable of reasoning to work out novel ways to achieve its aims.

Dr Goertzel said business and research reasons drew Novamente towards using virtual worlds for its AI development.

- BBC.co.uk

I'm not entirely sure that the online world is the best environment for an AI to learn from. I mean, unless it's going specialise in irrational repetitive behavior, which computers can do already, what's the bloody point?



Peeper?





Online games generally tend to be arcade based, so this free and quick game is something of a nice surprise. It's a bit spooky, and mentally challenging. Think laterally.

Gateway.



Car Update.

Surprisingly, the repairs were carried out quickly and under the estimate. Of course the car's now full of dust and the interior light has been destroyed, but at least the rust is gone.

Or, is it?...



Movie Review: Next.

Phillip K. Dick's books generally require a certain amount of generosity from the reader. The setting, the characters, or (usually) the story will become a little 'fantastical' at some point, and when that happens you either go with it, or you don't. Movie adaptations based on his works do the same thing, you either go with it (Total Recall), or you don't (Paycheck), and it's a measure of how well the director tells the story, and how well the actors convey it, that will carry the audience along or not. As far as I'm concerned, Next works due to it's casting choices.

It's a very familiar plot, based on Dick's The Golden Man. Nicolas Cage plays a man who can see his own (very) short term future. Terrorists want to blow up a city in California. So naturally the F.B.I want to find Cage in order to use him to stop the terrorists. Minor details like how the F.B.I found out about Cage, who the Terrorists are and why they're trying to blow things up, remain ignored. A girl, played by the divine Jessica Biel, gets dragged into it, and everything settles on a big exciting finale.

Or does it? Because if there's one thing you can always predict about a Phillip K. Dick story, it's that the ending will affect the film that precedes it. Lee Tamahori, the director, chooses to focus on the developing relationship between the oddly calm Cage and the lovely Biel (it's not that it's odd that he's calm, it's that Cage is able to be both odd and calm at the same time), and the actual plot is sort of shuffled off to the side, as if it's understood that the old cliche about terrorists trying to blow up a bomb is so well known the audience doesn't really need the details. That would be a problem, if it wasn't for some really nice acting between the leads.

Perhaps I'm being naive, but I enjoyed this film. Not so much for the plot or the action sequences, but for the two characters caught up in the middle. I'm not sure that's what Tamahori was going for, but there you go. Three minutes out of Five.



End transmission.