General comments about Life, the Universe, and my car.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Anniversary, baby.
Conditions: Sunny!
ANNIVERSARY!!
Twelve long months ago the MusingJones site was created. A dream of contemplation begun amongst the electronic ocean of the net. Or just a place to make with the chit chat. And what were those first few posts? Stuff about Mars, Iraq and my car. So we've stuck loyally to our credo in the intervening year. I'd like to thank the fine people/bots at blogspot.com for making all this possible. And those crazy cats out in the big wide world, without whom I'd have not much to think over. And of course you, the reader, for all that ...reading. Keep on being wonderful!
Fishing In Iraq.
When you think of soldiers operating in Iraq you think of them driving around in trucks, dodging I.E.Ds, and kicking in doors of suspected insurgent hideouts. But it might surprise you to now that they also fish. Not in rivers though, don't be ridiculous. They fish in the streets.
WASHINGTON - Army snipers hunting insurgents in Iraq were under orders to "bait" their targets with suspicious materials, such as detonation cords, and then kill whoever picked up the items, according to the defense attorney for a soldier accused of planting evidence on an Iraqi he killed. Gary Myers, an attorney for Sgt. Evan Vela, said his client had acted "pursuant to orders." [...]
sworn statements and testimony in the cases of two other accused Ranger snipers indicate that the Army has a classified program that encourages snipers to "bait" potential targets and then kill whoever takes the bait.
The Army on Monday declined to confirm such a program exists. [...]
"Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy," Didier said in the statement. "Basically, we would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against U.S. forces."
So for five points, can you guess why this is pretty awful? That's right, if you're trying to live in an occupied country, with people shooting at each other all day long, and you happen to see a weapon of some kind lying on the pavement, you might pick it up in order to get rid of it, or keep it for your own protection, only to get shot by a sniper who set it there as bait. This is what war really is, people. A breakdown of fundamental human decency, and a sustained miscommunication between different people.
Not Fitting In.
The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has just about now wrapped up his week long visit to New York for a United Nations general assembly meeting. And while in the country, he has been universally attacked and ridiculed by everyone, including the president of the Columbian University, who invited him to speak to students, and then introduced him on stage with a flurry of petty insults. He was also prevented from laying a wreath at the W.T.C site, ostensibly for security concerns, but several politicians said he would have been "violating sacred ground." What does that even mean? Do these people even know that Iran held mass candle-light vigils for America directly after the 9/11 attacks? Would they even care if they did?
I find this greatly amusing. While Ahmadinejad has said publicly many things many don't agree with (and a lot of it could be termed as playing to the crowd, like Bush at a Republican fund raiser), he's still the president of his country, and the host nation should at least act with some tact. By constantly harassing him and demonising him, the media is effectively, and once again, doing the Bush administration's job for them, pumping up an Arab leader into an inflated cartoonish threat to national security. Making it easier to justify taking a hard line in order to force a military strike the neocon hawks want in their quest for victory in the Middle East, but which in fact could almost lead anywhere.
It's not often you get to witness society change, but this week I think marks just such a point. HALO 3 has opened in America, generating 170 million damn dollars, way out performing SpiderMan 3, but the catch is HALO 3 is a video game. The video industry is winning the war. The times, they are a changin'.
With more than $170-million (U.S.) in sales in its first day in U.S. stores, Microsoft Corp.'s Halo 3 video game for the Xbox 360 became the biggest entertainment release in history, eclipsing the $151-million debut of Spider-Man 3 for top spot on the list, the company said in an e-mailed statement.
The most anticipated video-game release of the year, Microsoft received more than 1.7 million advance orders for Halo 3. Gamers across North America lined up at midnight on Monday to be among the first to score a copy of the game. Halo 3 has already attracted 1.39 million online players in the past 24 hours, according to the website of Microsoft's Bungie Studios, the game's creator.
So, this marks the beginning of the end of traditional passive movie-based entertainments, and the start of a much more active and inter-active way of spending our down time. One wonders whether contemplation of plot and ideas characterized by watching a film is better for the mind that merely reacting to stimuli that game play so usually is comprised of. But the world, she is a liquid thing. Always running through ones fingers. Like blood. Or something less icky.
Mass Hysteria ...From Above.
Remember that story about a meteor causing people to get sick in Peru? Well it turns out it may have just been hysteria. From Space. Space Hysteria.
Media reports of the number of locals afflicted by a "mysterious disease"--with symptoms such as nausea, headaches and sore throats--after visiting the crater figured in every news article about the Aug. 15 event, with some reporting that as many as 600 people had fallen ill.
But doctors who visited the site told the Associated Press they found no evidence that the crater had actually sickened such a large number of people.
If noxious fumes did emanate from the crater, they were most likely the result of a hydrothermal explosion that could have actually formed the crater, or were released from the ground when the meteorite struck, if in fact one did, according to many geologists.
Arsenic is found in the subsoil in that area of Peru and often contaminates the drinking water there, according to Peruvian geologists quoted on Sept. 21 by National Geographic News. Arsenic fumes released from the crater could have sickened locals who went to look, said one geologist who examined the site.
Okay. So maybe there was a rational explanation after.... wait a minute! I've seen an episode or two of the X Files. I remember how this goes. First there's the 'meteor' impact. Then the weird sickness affecting the locals. Then the official cover story. And everything goes back to normal... And that's when they strike! It's happening all over again! Start stockpiling beef jerky and shotgun shells, people, the end times have come!
In the media coverage for the Iraq war, what you constantly hear about is the plight of the poor American soldiers, fighting and dying Over There. What you rarely hear about is the plight of the ordinary Iraqis, who are the biggest victims in all of this. So the NYTimes printing an editorial on their struggle is something of a rarity.
The Iraq Ministry of Health reported that 102 doctors and 164 nurses were killed from April 2003 to May 2006. It is believed that nearly half of Iraq's doctors have fled. The exodus of health care professionals in a country hemorrhaging from the worst kinds of violence pretty much qualifies as nightmarish.
While more than two million Iraqis have fled to other countries, another two million have been displaced internally. According to the Global Policy Forum, a group that monitors international developments:
"Most of these internally displaced persons, or I.D.P.'s, have sought refuge with relatives, or in mosques, empty public buildings, or tent camps.... I.D.P.'s live in very poor conditions. Public buildings are particularly unsanitary, often overcrowded, without access to clean water, proper sanitation and basic services, in conditions especially conducive to infectious diseases."
Iraqis are enduring most of their suffering out of the sight of the rest of the world. International relief organizations and most of the news media are largely kept at a distance by the insane levels of violence.
It's tough to find security in Iraq these days. The country is such a mess anyone official has to spend most of their time thinking about how to dodge attacks. Which is why private security firms have become so prevalent and successful in the country. Blackwater, the largest of these firms, got itself in deep ...water this week when it's personnel shot a bunch of civilians during an attack.
Details of Sunday's incident were unclear.
Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul-Karim Khalaf said eight civilians were killed and 13 were wounded when contractors believed to be working for Blackwater USA opened fire on civilians in the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Mansour in western Baghdad.
"We have canceled the license of Blackwater and prevented them from working all over Iraqi territory. We will also refer those involved to Iraqi judicial authorities," Khalaf said.
He said witness reports pointed to Blackwater involvement but added that the shooting was still under investigation. One witness, Hussein Abdul-Abbas, said the explosion was followed by about 20 minutes of heavy gunfire and "everybody in the street started to flee immediately."
Now I can understand these guys being nervous, but 8 civilians dead in one action calls for some serious investigations. And this isn't the first time Blackwater personnel has been involved in some serious shit.
On Dec. 24, 2006, a drunken Blackwater employee shot and killed a bodyguard for Iraq's Shiite vice president, Adel Abdul-Mahdi, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials.
The contractor had gotten lost on the way back to his barracks in the Green Zone and fired at least seven times when he was confronted by 30-year-old Raheem Khalaf Saadoun, an official in the vice president's office said on condition of anonymity because the case is still under investigation. [...]
In May, Blackwater guards under contract to the State Department were involved in two other shootings in Iraq.
In one, a Blackwater guard shot to death an Iraqi deemed to be driving too close to a security detail near the Interior Ministry in Baghdad, enraging Iraqis. At the time, Tyrrell said the guard acted lawfully and appropriately, given the incident reports and witness accounts.
A day earlier, Blackwater guards and Interior Ministry forces exchanged gunfire on the streets of the capital. A passing U.S. military convoy intervened and stopped the fighting.
You know something is seriously wrong with a country when the security people are acting more like a militia, and the army are the ones calming things down.
Crest Of The Wave.
Remember back in the heady days of 2003 when President Bush and his various cronies would go and on about how dangerous Iraq was, and how they defy the entire world and have WMD's and are weeks away from killing everyone on the planet? And everyone (else) believed this because, well surely politicians wouldn't lie to us? And Saddam seemed so ...vicious, and undignified, and evil, and arabic. Well here we are, four years later, and the same old song is being sung by the same band, just in a slightly different key.
The drumbeat for a military assault on Iran is getting louder at some conservative think tanks, in the offices of hawks on the Bush and Cheney staffs, and among ground forces in Iraq dealing with weapons and explosives constructed in Iran.
Administration calls for aggressive action to destroy Iran's nuclear program, and to cut off its funneling of arms and training to terrorist organizations throughout the Middle East, have featured increasingly tough rhetoric.
In his September 13 televised speech, President Bush pointedly warned of the threat from Iran:
"If we were to be driven out of Iraq,...Iran would benefit from the chaos and would be encouraged in its efforts to gain nuclear weapons and dominate the region. Extremists could control a key part of the global energy supply."
There is unanimous agreement on both sides of the ideological aisle that talk of a strike against Tehran and other sites in Iran has escalated sharply in recent weeks.
Much of the public discussion of military action is designed to serve as a trial balloon to test reaction to such proposals among Congressional leaders and other key players.
Yes, despite the blood and the mess and the pain and the decades of damage done due to last few years of war, the Men of Power are interested in starting another fight. Some might be wondering why, but it's really quite obvious. These people firmly believe in securing a legacy for themselves, their families and their countrymen in the uncertain future. If that means stomping on a bunch of "foreign" countries far far away, who don't even share the same religion, then that's fine. As long as the extremists are all busy scratching around amongst the rubble of various destroyed middle eastern cities, then they'll be staying away from what these men hold dear. And that really is what the war on terror boils down to for these people, so far above it all they can barely make out the details: a compost heap in the back yard that keeps the flies away from the front lawn. It's realpolitik at it's most exposed level, and it's sickening.
Unstoppable.
So, who can stop it this time? Is it even stoppable? Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the IAEA (of all people) is trying to stop this drift toward war with Iran. Not that the Men of Power will listen to him, but he's still talking sense.
The UN's chief nuclear weapons inspector yesterday warned against the use of force against Iran, in what UN officials said was an attempt to halt an "out of control" drift to war.
His outspoken remarks, which drew a parallel between Iran and Iraq, appeared to take aim at the US and Britain. They followed comments on Sunday night by the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, who said: "We have to prepare for the worst," adding "the worst is war".
"I would not talk about any use of force," Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters at the International Atomic Energy Agency headquarters in Vienna. "There are rules on how to use force, and I would hope that everybody would have gotten the lesson after the Iraq situation, where 700,000 innocent civilians have lost their lives on the suspicion that a country has nuclear weapons."
There has been a string of reports out of Washington that the Bush administration is running out of patience with diplomacy and is intensifying its plans for air strikes as a means of halting Iran's disputed nuclear programme.
UN officials said Mr ElBaradei, an Egyptian diplomat who was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2005, was attempting to slow down what seemed to be an accelerating march to war.
"There's a strategic reason for doing these things," one official said. "He really is alarmed. He sees this thing going out of control. The feeling around here is that this looks like the run-up to the Iraq war."
See, the Bush administration already dealt with this by fundamentally undermining the U.N in the run up to the Iraq war. They essentially de-fanged the U.N by simply declaring war on Iraq, forcing the U.N to scramble out of the way. If the U.N couldn't stop that, then how can they stop anything America wants to do? And for that matter, who else can actually stop America, should she decide to start a war with Iran? Anyone get the feeling that that whole 'One single world superpower' thing is turning into a bad idea?
Osama The Grouch?
Recently, a video from Bin Laden was distributed across the internbet where he made various references to current events, and warnings agains the west. After careful scrutiny of this video, some interesting questions have been raised.
The video freezes at about 1 minute and 36 58 seconds, and motion only resumes again at 12:30. The video then freezes again at 14:02 remains frozen until the end. All references to current events, such as the 62nd anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan, and Sarkozy and Brown being the leaders of France and the UK, respectively, occur when the video is frozen!
This could be simply a case of Al Queda stitching an old video to a new audio recording (and the CIA seemed to think it was his voice), but it does raise the possibility that Bin Laden himself is merely being used by someone else. So the big question becomes: if Bin Laden has been turned into a puppet, who's pulling the strings?
Image O' The Week.
Catching a Meteorite.
Generally, apart from their velocity, things from space are harmless. Rocks, garnished with some ice, crash into the planet every now and then, make some noise, and a hole, and that's it. But something happened in Southern Peru this week. Something ...disturbing.
Around midday Saturday, villagers were startled by an explosion and a fireball that many were convinced was an airplane crashing near their remote village, located in the high Andes department of Puno in the Desaguadero region, near the border with Bolivia.
Residents complained of headaches and vomiting brought on by a "strange odor," local health department official Jorge Lopez told Peruvian radio RPP.
Seven policemen who went to check on the reports also became ill and had to be given oxygen before being hospitalized, Lopez said.
Rescue teams and experts were dispatched to the scene, where the meteorite left a 100-foot-wide (30-meter-wide) and 20-foot-deep (six-meter-deep) crater, said local official Marco Limache.
"Boiling water started coming out of the crater and particles of rock and cinders were found nearby. Residents are very concerned," he said.
Unless this is some kind of publicity stunt for a movie, this seems quite alarming. It's one thing to avoid airports, cities, and various celebrities for the sake of ones health, but when rocks from space start infecting people, things can get out of hand. And one thing that you may not have considered? What if this is some kind of intergalactic chemical weapon, shot off by those jealous Pluto-ians?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Like it or not, this planet faces a looming energy crisis. The oil upon which our whole modern society works is gradually running out. And given the nature of man, I think it's safe to predict that as it becomes more scarce, nations will fall into conflict over what's left, ensuring that only the biggest and best-armed will run on the last of the oil. So in terms of finding alternate energy sources, we can't really start soon enough. President Bush is currently attending an APEC meeting in Sydney this week, and said something I actually agreed with. I hate it when that happens.
U.S. President George W. Bush says nuclear power is a key to tackling climate change, along with new energy technologies [...]
"If you truly care about greenhouse gases, then you'll support nuclear power," Bush told a news conference with Howard on Wednesday. "After all, nuclear power enables you to generate electricity without any greenhouse gases."
The man has a point. Nuclear power stations, modern ones, not the old model but the new, inherently safe model, are the future of power generation on the level that our civilization will need. Not oil, not coal, and certainly not wind farms or solar energy, which simply can't produce enough power for our needs. This is the ultimate choice, and resisting it just because it's scary or because it's traditional to do so is just being unreasonably stubborn. Also,
During a bilateral meeting on Wednesday, Howard and Bush agreed to a "joint nuclear energy action plan" involving cooperation on civil nuclear energy, including research and development, and technical training.
Howard also said Australia would join the U.S.-sponsored Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, under which member countries agree to supply fuel for nuclear power plants.
Australia has 40 percent of the world's known reserves of uranium and exports uranium to 36 countries.
In a move that's sure to make everyone wince, a B-52 bomber was accidentally loaded with six nuclear armed missiles before flying from one side of the country to the other last week.
The US Air Force has relieved the munition squadron commander at Minot Air Base in North Dakota of his duties, and launched an intensive investigation into the August 30 incident, a Pentagon spokesman said.
"At no time was there a threat to public safety," said Lieutenant Colonel Ed Thomas.
"It is important to note that munitions were safe, secure and under military control at all times."
The Pentagon would not provide specifics, citing secrecy rules, but an expert said the incident was unprecedented, and pointed to a disturbing lapse in the air force's command and control system.
"It seems so fantastic that so many points, checks can dysfunction," he said Hans Kristensen, an expert on US nuclear forces. [...]
The nuclear weapons expert said the air force keeps a computerized command and control system that traces any movement of a nuclear weapon so that they have a complete picture of where they are at any given time.
He said there would be checks and detailed procedures at various points from the time they are moved out of bunkers until they are loaded onto planes, and flown away.
"That's perhaps what is most worrisome about this particular incident -- that apparently an individual who had command authority about moving these weapons around decided to do so," he said.
"It's a command and control issue and it's one that calls into question the system, because if one individual can do that who knows what can happen," he said.
And with that I return to my hobby, digging a bunker in the back yard.
Iraq War Again. Some More.
I know it's all old now, but it bears remembering. Sidney Blumenthal, a respected journalist, has done yet more digging into how the CIA and the White House got America into a war based on a series of complete lies. So if you feel like getting your bile up again, read on.
On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam's inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again. [...]
On April 23, 2006, CBS's "60 Minutes" interviewed Tyler Drumheller, the former CIA chief of clandestine operations for Europe, who disclosed that the agency had received documentary intelligence from Naji Sabri, Saddam's foreign minister, that Saddam did not have WMD. "We continued to validate him the whole way through," said Drumheller. "The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming, and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy."
Now two former senior CIA officers have confirmed Drumheller's account to me and provided the background to the story of how the information that might have stopped the invasion of Iraq was twisted in order to justify it. They described what Tenet said to Bush about the lack of WMD, and how Bush responded, and noted that Tenet never shared Sabri's intelligence with then Secretary of State Colin Powell
Instead, said the former officials, the information was distorted in a report written to fit the preconception that Saddam did have WMD programs. That false and restructured report was passed to Richard Dearlove, chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), who briefed Prime Minister Tony Blair on it as validation of the cause for war.
Fred Thompson, a well-recognized character actor, has now stepped into the race for the 08 Presidency. And he's probably one of the front runners irregardless of his policies, simply by being a charismatic man. In fact, this seems to be the main tell that shows the differences between Republicans and Democrats: what type of leader each puts forth. It's telling that the Republicans have supported actors a lot more often than Democrats have. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a staunch republican, was voted governor of California, and Reagan of course became a fondly-remembered two term president.
It seems to me that Democrats put forward leaders, people who are charismatic, who are better than they are and have strong ideas for the country and ways to implement them. Republicans don't think that way. Republicans, all Republicans, are the ones with the ideas, each one knows what should be done, and are happy to do it themselves. So Republicans put forward candidates who are good mouthpieces for policies that they themselves think up. To a Republican, the government is an annoyance that interferes with things that capitalism and industry, in time, will take care of. To a Republican, a government should just be directing the armed forces and taking care of the roads. Anything else is for capitalistic industry, representatives of which reside in the white house, 'advising' the president every day. Instead, Democrats want someone to handle everything, someone who'll know everything that's going on, and how to fix the bad stuff, so that they can stay dumb and happy, safe in the knowledge that it's someone else's problem. That's why Democrats nominate leaders, and Republicans nominate mouthpieces. And actors make great mouthpieces.
Yeah But Can It Display Subtitles?
For generations, television has been restricted to two dimensions. And so it's been up to our measly imaginations, and A.D.D-addled directors, to try and involve us into a movie to the point where the 2D barrier is breached. Well, we can all finally relax, because researchers at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies (Go... er, Pythags?!) have used a 360-degree spinning mirror, mounted on an angle inside a clear box, to generate very realistic free-floating 3 dimensional holograms. Mmmm, Technical.
I must say, this looks very exciting. EnGadget.com has more details.
What Killed The Dinosaurs? Billiards.
Ever since people started digging enormous skeletons out of the ground, they have wondered what happened that caused these creatures to die off. After all, dinosaurs ruled this planet for 165 million years (current human rein: 150,000 or so, depending on religion), so in any official universal guide book that might exist, the dominant life form listed for our little rock is probably still 'Monster'. Actually, that's still accurate. Anyway, the latest theory for the demise has been revised yet again.
A collision 160 million years ago of two asteroids orbiting between Mars and Jupiter sent many big rock chunks hurtling toward Earth, including the one that zapped the dinosaurs, scientists said on Wednesday.
Their research offered an explanation for the cause of one of the most momentous events in the history of life on Earth -- 10-km-wide meteorite striking Mexico's Yucatan peninsula 65 million years ago.
That catastrophe eliminated the dinosaurs, which had flourished for about 165 million years, and many other life forms, and paved the way for mammals to dominate the Earth and the eventual rise of humankind, many scientists believe.
And how do they know?
U.S. and Czech researchers used computer simulations to calculate that there was a 90 percent probability that the collision of two asteroids -- one about 170 km wide and one about 60 km wide -- was the event that precipitated the Earthly disaster.
The collision occurred in the asteroid belt, a collection of big and small rocks orbiting the sun about 180 million km from Earth, the researchers report in this week's issue of the journal Nature.
So as a human, I have to thank simple random chance for knocking off the dominant form of life so that I might have a chance to sit in a chair and eat a Kit-Kat. Ha-ha.
What We're Listening To.
I think it's for a movie or something, but Eddie Vedder's version of Hard Sun hit's all the right notes...
Car Update.
Rust! The bane of every owner of a classic car, has struck again at my ride. It's not too serious, just a few sections in the floor, and I have an appointment Monday morning to get it taken out by a very cool restoration garage over the road. Cards and thoughts will be appreciated. No flowers, please.
Film Review: Ratatouille.
The amazing thing is that Pixar never fails to disappoint. You go into the theater *expecting* a Pixar movie to deliver, expecting it to be something special, and it still punches you right in the heart. After doing this so many times, via so many films, it cannot be down to luck anymore. This must be the result of so much careful, detailed work by so many brilliantly talented people, all focussed on telling a great story.
Ratatouille is about creativity from unusual places. Talent that is restricted and impeded, but should and will burst forth anyway, for everyone to see. The details involve cooking, but the metaphor is an obvious one for film making. And while they may stray a little to close to the line by having an embittered "food" critic grow a new heart, in the end it's so gently cathartic one really doesn't mind at all.
The classic Disney formula is still well in place, hero loses family, hero follows dream, hero suffers setback, regains family and wins the battle. The difference is simply in how well every single part of the film works. Every part of every frame, every movement, every gesture, every voice is obviously sweated over, and the result is a brilliantly cohesive whole. The characters are great, the story is fun, and the ending is very satisfying. Another triumph. Four Michelin stars out of Five.
