Excellence

Apparently, the Iraq war is over and the good guys won, or something.

Y'know, whenever I start to fancy myself a wordsmith, I need only read whatever the latest post on Fafblog or Driftglass is and that pretty much kicks the chair out from under that notion.

God hates tract-pedaling busybodies

This week I had another visit from the Jehovah's Witnesses. And they had the temerity to come to my door the morning after the big farewell party at the office. Which of course brings this story to mind and requires that I once again post this marvelous little movie.

On a personal note...

After nine years in the same job, I'm about to get the financial debriefing lecture that comes before my "early retirement" at the tender age of 43. I've been obsessively rereading the complete works of the greatest author of the 20th century all weekend and listening to a lot of Warren Zevon, who is in my not so humble or unschooled opinion, a goddamn genius.

What could a bunch of nerds on YouTube do?

Plenty!



If you're reading this, you can afford a computer. If you can afford a computer, you can afford to send a couple of bucks to Shawn, who is just some guy from Toronto who got tired of the world sucking and decided he was going to do something about it, and help make some lives better.

Higher, Faster, Stronger, Prettier

Nevermind what I think about figure skating for just a moment and go read the funniest thing I've read in a few weeks of reading silly, over-the-top, crapola about figure skating. Mind you, its not as creepy as the second half of this earlier piece by the same writer. If I were Mao Asada, I'd be looking into a restraining order.
Look, I won't deny that figure skating is very popular and major draw for the olympics. It draws a huge number of television viewers and that means moneny. I would never deny it is very athletic and requires a huge amount of skill, discipline and talent.  So does synchonized swimming. So does rythmic gymnastics. So does ballet. None of these are sports, they are artistic endevours which are for some reason forced into competition and judged on subjective criteria.
Anything in which your chances of winning can depend on the music you choose, the costume or make-up you wear and whether you smile while competing is not a sport.

My Canada does not include war criminals

In light of this, I think that it is undeniable that there must be a fully public, non-partisan inquest, preferrably by a provincial coroner or similar authority that is more than arm's length away from the federal government.

From the CBC:

Federal government documents on Afghan detainees suggest that Canadian officials intended some prisoners to be tortured in order to gather intelligence, according to a legal expert.

If the allegation is true, such actions would constitute a war crime, said University of Ottawa law professor Amir Attaran, who has been digging deep into the issue and told CBC News he has seen uncensored versions of government documents released last year.

If the allegation that Afghan prisoners were purposely sent to be tortured turns out to be true, I  want people sent to jail.
And by jail I don't mean country club Conrad Black minimum security jail, either. I want to see them walking the yard at Millhaven. And by people I mean every single person in the chain of command that approved or did not act to stop this - right up to the Cabinet level, including the Prime Minister. If it happened under the Liberals and Paul Martin knew about it, fine, jail his retired ass, too.
This is not about politics or the party currently in power. This about Canada upholding basic human rights. We may have gotten a lot of things related to human rights wrong in the past - from residential schools to head taxes to incarcerating the Japanese during World War Two - whichever party is in power, but we have never tolerated outright evil like this.
This must be investigated, fully and completely and in the full light of day, with nothing redacted or left unexamined to "protect operational security" or any other bullshit reason the people involved want to try to cite to save their asses. My Canada does not include torture.

Update: the Mound of Sound has more here, here and here

Would that be Arrrrrrshtanga Yoga?

Sure, an just you try to do a flyin' crow pose or a downward facin' dog with a pegleg and a steel hook on a pitching deck, matey.

(with a grateful doffing o' me nautical tile t' Engrishfunny.com and Ms.GreatDismal

Doors fans are born, not made

Is it warm in here or is it just me?

No, it isn't just me. It's science. The world is getting warmer and we causing it.
I can't believe I've had to point this article from last December out to no fewer than four people this week, three of them otherwise intelligent, skeptical people who are not usually taken in wingnut big lie propaganda ( the other incident was work-related and I'll say no more about that for now). The right has been screeching about "Climategate" for months now and you know how they never let the facts get in the way of a good conspiracy theory.

Science Not Faked, but Not Pretty

Climate scientist e-mails show effort to not share data, pettiness, but no fakery


BY SETH BORENSTEIN, RAPHAEL SATTER and MALCOLM RITTER Associated Press Writers


LONDON December 12, 2009 (APE-mails stolen from climate scientists show they stonewalled skeptics and discussed hiding data — but the messages don't support claims that the science of global warming was faked, according to an exhaustive review by The Associated Press.

The 1,073 e-mails examined by the AP show that scientists harbored private doubts, however slight and fleeting, even as they told the world they were certain about climate change. However, the exchanges don't undercut the vast body of evidence showing the world is warming because of man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

Can we please drop all this Climategate bullshit now? It is like arguing about the color of the trim on the truck that is about to run us over. Yes, there are scientists who dissent - there are also some scientist that don't think there is a provable link between smoking and lung cancer. The niggling details are irrelevant, the core science is very clear: The Earth is getting warmer, and that is not a good thing. And it is happening because we are pumping too much crud into the air and cutting down too many trees, and that is not a good thing. So lets stop rearranging deck chairs and start steering the goddamn ship away from the goddam iceberg. OK?

Destination Moon!

From Popular Science

Last year’s “moon bombing” proved that water ice exists beneath the lunar south pole, but new findings from a NASA instrument aboard an Indian orbiter have determined that tons of water iceis hiding on the lunar surface in permanently shadowed craters at the north pole as well. Researchers estimate 600 million metric tons of water ice could be hiding there, an amount that could potentially sustain a manned moon base.

This is very, very good news for mankind because it means we no longer have to keep all of our eggs in the single basket that is the Earth. Millions of tonnes of water on the Moon means a self-contained, self-sufficient Moon colony will be a lot easier to build someday - probably not in my lifetime unfortunately, but someday. And a base on the Moon, with water, puts us halfway to Mars already and makes exploration of the asteroid belt exponentially cheaper.
Once you have water, you have oxygen and hydrogen, putting you much closer to making breathable air and useable fuel. Once you are out of Earth's gravity well and atomosphere, a little energy can take you a long, long way.
Now if only NASA could scare up a few hundred billion dollars...hmm, I wonder where they could get that?
A couple of years ago, NASA had a plan for permanent Moon base by 2024, which most said would cost a lot less than the $104 billion it is estimated it will cost to start sending manned missions to the moon again. I don't want to get into "if onlys" but that would cost a lot less if only the U.S. government hadn't shut down the Apollo program  and had kept up with occasional manned missions.
For that matter, it would probably be possible to use the International Space Station as a staging point by sending up the equivalent of the lunar landing module in the space shuttle and launching it from the ISS - though both the shuttle and the ISS are rapidly approaching their "best before" dates. So priority one is going to have to be building a replacement for the shuttle - without something to get people back and forth to orbit, the whole thing is kind of moot. Once we have a new earth-to-orbit people mover, we can start sending up building materials on cheaper booster rockets until we have a sizable space station in orbit.
Once we have that, its simply a matter of sending up components that fit inside the cargo containers that can be assembled in orbit by the space station crew and then sent to the moon. Remember, anything sent from orbit to the moon really only needs very limited engine capability, mainly to slow it down enough to make a soft landing on the Moon. If you timed it right, an object moving the speed of a good fastball could reach the moon from the same orbit the ISS is at in a little over 100 days - that's not bad for cargo. People obviously could make the trip a whole lot faster.
Another approach would be to send robots to the Moon to find and start collecting ice, excavating building sites and even assembling components of a base. This probably isn't cost effective just yet, but a  few score refrigerator-sized robots (think Wall-E) working steadily away for a decade or two could certainly lay the groundwork for a permanent manned base.
I know, I know -- we have more pressing problems down here on earth than some scifi geek fantasy -- but when you consider the leaps in technology that occurred because of the first decade of the space program, I think it is reasonable to assume that an effort to build a sustainable moon base would lead to all kinds of technological spin offs in any number of fields from materials science to computer technology to hydroponic farming to solar  and hydrogen cell power generation. Technological breakthroughs that can help us solve some of the problems plaguing us.
Furthermore, we need to go to space precisely because of the some of the problems we have here on Earth. We need an escape plan, a lifeboat, an ark. As the global warming and environmental pollution increase, we may need a place to flee to once we've made earth completely uninhabitable. At our current rate the won't be for a few hundred years and of course, we may find technological and sociological solutions to the current problems in the meantime, but who knows what the effect of those solutions is liable to be over time. If we switch to atomic power worldwide to eliminate greenhouse gas production that may work out well for halting global warming, but it does present an unsolved problem in terms of what to do with all the spent fuel eventually.
Hell, maybe that's what we could end up using the moon for in the end, the galaxy's biggest dumpsite.
The point is, we need to keep working on getting up there and building the infrastructure that will be needed and not spending millions on bullshit like say, professional sports or fast food or weapons or shitty Michael Bay movies or brainless wars that don't need to be fought. The money spent on any of those things in a year worldwide would, I suspect, pay for a couple of moon bases and probably a space station as well.
We need to stop keeping all our eggs in just one basket, and its going to take a long time to build that second basket. The sooner we get started, the sooner we can multiply the chances of our survival as species.

Things not to do

Never eat at place called "Mom's"

Never shoot pool for money with a guy named "Fats"

Never start a land war in Asia

Never go against a Sicillian when death is on the line

Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself

And most importantly...

Never, ever bet against Canada when it comes to hockey

Further suggestions: Leave the cape alone, don't piss off Clayton Moore

Pass the thorazine

Things like this make me wonder if someone has spiked my morning coffee with LSD.

Things like this  (via The Editors at the Poorman Institute) make me wonder if it wasn't LSD but adrenechrome or possibly ibogane

Friday Uke blogging - one for the missus

This one goes out to my wife, and the kids too - lately all three have been addicted to a Korean soap opera that uses this as its theme song.

our home on native land

And now for something completely different...



It seems odd at first, but it kinda grows on you after a second listen.

time travel?

You might be forgiven for thinking you'd fallen through a wormhole into Mississippi circa 1961 reading this. We Canadians sometimes get a bit smug watching the racial problems in the U.S. and forget that we have ignorant, knuckle-dragging, racist shitbirds of our own. If you want to hear seven minutes of radio that will infuriate and inspire you, check here (the interview is in part 1 of the program). The "victim" doesn't sound like she's taking having a cross burned on her front lawn in stride exactly, but sticks up for the larger community and doesn't sound like she's running scared either. The interviewer on the other hand is pretty clearly horrified that she even has to report on something this disgusting in this country in this day and age.
With all due respect to Pete Seeger and Martin Luther King:

If I had a hammer, I'd hammer in the morning.
I'd hammer in the evening, all over this land.
I'd hammer on the skulls
of all the racist assholes
All over this land

Added ironical comedic value from the Globe and Mail story: the RCMP spokeswoman said the police are "examining all possible motives, including whether to consider it a hate crime."


Update: The local Mounties have made a couple of arrests in the case on the basis of information provided by the community.

"Paging Vice Principal B. Brother, please report to room 101"

Pennsylvania's Lower Merion School Board's efforts to give every one of its high school students a laptop computer are doubleplusgood!

A Lower Merion family has set off a furor among students, parents, and civil liberties groups by alleging that Harriton High School officials used a webcam on a school-issued laptop to spy on their 15-year-old son at home.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court, the family said the school's assistant principal had confronted their son, told him he had "engaged in improper behavior in [his] home, and cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam embedded in [his] personal laptop issued by the school district."
The suit contends the Lower Merion School District, one of the most prosperous and highest-achieving in the state, had the ability to turn on students' webcams and illegally invade their privacy.

According to Philly.com, which is all over the story, this would not only be possible, but easy for the school board to do. The feds have gotten involved and felt the accusations were credible enough that they have subpoenaed school board documents and are investigating.

Setting aside the technological issues involved here, I have to wonder why the school thinks it has the right to regulate what a student does at home. Frankly, it is none of the school's business whether the student was shooting heroin, having bondage sex with goats or reading Ayn Rand aloud to his hamster while wearing nothing but swim fins and bacon grease-- he wasn't on school property, it wasn't during a school-supervised activity and there is no accusation that he was using the school-owned computer for an inappropriate activity like hacking or say, oh I dunno...spying on school board officials or his vice-principal.

Whether they were conducting completely illegal surveillance of this kid is separate matter. It doesn't really matter whether the information about the kid's activities outside school comes from a hidden camera, a nosy teacher or another student who is ratting him out - if it doesn't happen at school and it doesn't involve child abuse or a murder plot, it is none of the school's damned business what kid is doing and they have no right to discipline him for things that are not related to school.

As for the spying, where to start? If the school is doing this, it is so obviously, clearly wrong I can't imagine the kind of authoritarian protofascist numbskulls that are in charge and would sign off on this kind of program. A whole bunch of people should not only lose their jobs, but should end up in jail. Even prison inmates aren't under hidden video surveillance.

And just as an observation on the tendency of school administration not to pay much attention to things they are trying to teach in the classroom; While Orwell's "1984" was taught as part of the English curriculum and required reading for the students, clearly the officials either hadn't read it or had a sick sense of humor. The detention room at both my old high school in Ancaster, Ontario and the one attended by several friends in Sault Ste. Marie was room No. 101.

Two of the all time greats

Two of my all time favorites and kings of their own genres: Peter Gzowski meets Hunter Thompson



While Gzowski had a "great face for radio" he wasn't actually that bad on television, and Thompson actually seems sober. At 10:30 of the video, Gzowski quotes Kurt Vonnegut's perfect summation of Thompson. And no, I won't quote it for you, you'll have to watch the video.

Meanwhile, I've just discovered the blog that Thompson's widow Anita keeps from Owl Farm that regularly quotes the Master on various topics - definitely worth a look.

The politicization of everything

Kudos to Tom Oleson of the Winnipeg Free Press for hitting the nail on the head when it come to the Conservative Party of Canada's work to politicize, well, everything.

THERE is, apparently, no tragedy too heart-rending, no political situation too fraught with danger, that you can’t find a politician eager to exploit it for political advantage.

In Haiti this week for what seemed like little more than a prolonged and expensive photo-op, Prime Minister Stephen Harper regaled the Haitian army and the Haitian people with heart-warming tales of how his Conservative government had rebuilt the Canadian Armed Forces from a rag-tag embarrassment under former Liberal regimes into a slim-trim, fighting-fit military machine.

(snip)

Meanwhile, back on the home-front, junior foreign affairs minister Peter Kent was telling a Jewish magazine that any attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada and elicit an appropriate response, calling up shades of the mutual defence provisions of the NATO treaty. Canada has no such treaty with Israel, and the threat of waging war against Iran in its defence -- while noble in intent -- hardly puts Canada in the big league of negotiators it aspires to and that Iranians might listen to.

There was nothing untrue or dishonest -- usual political exceptions being allowed for -- in what the two Conservatives said. But both comments were unnecessary, untimely and unhelpful. Kent used defence policy to play to the Jewish vote; Harper played to the domestic audience rather than the Haitian one that had come to hear a message that hit closer to home. That's political, but it's not politic.

...so apparently we are going to war in the Middle East the next time Israel decides to bomb some Palestinians or finally carries through on their threat to attack Iran to keep them from getting the bomb. Oh goody. Maybe I won't apply for Canadian citizenship for my kids after all, since we seem heading for perpetual war and thus inevitably, conscription.

and also to Canadian Cynic for this video about the CPC's efforts to keep the Olympics from being tainted by partisan stupidity. This, apparently, is part of a video that was sent out to for party fundraising purposes.

Why what words mean matters

In the neatest bit of spin since some PR hack coined the term "collateral damage" for dead and wounded civilian bystanders, NATO now appears to be trying to convince us that murdering civilians is something for which no one is responsible - and most in the press seem to lazy to call them on it.



Exhibit A from AFP (emphasis mine):

Five Afghan civilians accidentally killed in airstrike: NATO
(AFP) – 20 hours ago
KABUL — Five Afghan civilians were accidentally killed and two others injured in an airstrike in southern Afghanistan, NATO said Monday, in an incident unrelated to a major US-led anti-Taliban operation.
The deaths were accidental, NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said, adding that the victims had been mistaken for insurgents planting improvised bombs.
"An ISAF airstrike against suspected insurgents accidentally killed five and wounded two civilians in the Zhari district of Kandahar province today," ISAF said in a statement.



An accident - as in "whoops, clumsy me, sorry about that! Could have happened to anyone. Completely unintentional, I assure you."



Bollocks.



This was not an accident. The bombs and missiles used didn't just happen to fall off the jets due to a loose bolt and happen to fall on this group of people by random chance. The pilot didn't unknowingly lean on the trigger of his guns while trying to find a dropped map or something like that. These people were targeted and killed by professional military pilots under orders to attack them. It was not an accident. If it had happened to a group of civilian workers on military firing range in the United States or Canada, the pilot would be facing murder charges.

An accident is an error involving random chance that occurs without any intent to do harm to the people involved. People don't get held responsible for accidents, because they are no one's fault and malicious intent is not a factor.

I'm not saying accidents don't happen on the battlefield, they do. Twelve people were accidently killed in an airstrike the previous day when U.S. pilots fire a pair of missiles into a house full of civilians. In this case, the pilots were trying to kill some Taliban, but missed the target. Now, admittedly they missed the target by 600m, but they didn't mean to blow up the house they hit. It was an understandable, if extremely unfortunate, accident. Oopsy!


A Canadian soldier died in a training accident just the other day on the firing range. It doesn't make his death any less horrible for his family, but he wasn't targeted for death by anyone in this case.


The aforemention airstrike was not an accident, it was a mistake. Whoever identified the target and called in the airstrike made a mistake, either through negligence or incompetence or garbled communication. Someone thought the people killed were Taliban planting a IED. They were not, and the airstrike was called in on bad information.

Mistakes happen on the battlefield, just as they do everywhere. Soldiers, despite what you may see on American television and conservative blogs, are no closer to perfection than anyone else. Friendly fire incidents have cost lives in every war and people make mistakes. Depending on the size of the mistake, sometimes people have to be held responsible. When it is a matter of people losing their lives, someone needs to be called to account - not only to figure out how the mistake occurred so that it can be prevented in the future, but to show that mistakes are taken seriously and carelessness will not be tolerated.

This applies whether you are talking about typos in a newspaper, filing errors in a medical clinic or hockey player who not playing to his potential. A minor typo in the paper isn't worth firing someone over, but if they consistently get the facts wrong or libel someone out of carelessness or negligence, they are going to cost the newspaper a lot of money and damage its credibility. A lost file in a medical clinic has the potential to be a very serious problem and a clerk who regularly loses files is not going to kept on the job for long. A hockey player who is constantly caught out of position or who takes stupid penalties or fails to execute plays properly is going to be benched at best or cut from the team.

This airstrike was not an accident, it was another in a long series of deadly mistakes that are turning the population of Afghanistan against the West. It is understandable that the military would do their best to protect their own and try to remove the blame by calling this an accident. It is unforgivable for the press to do so.

Update: Lousy intelligence, errors by forward observers or just a pilot who thought his job was to stop anything moving on the roads account for another 27 to 33 civilian lives in Afghanistan, but it's okay, because Gen. McChrystal feels really bad about it and stuff, so there is no need to do anything like halt the use of airstrikes without visual confirmation of an enemy target.

I really need to start practicing more

the official theme song of the Red Zeppelin

hat tip to Blevkog, who has evil taste in music, which is why you should read him.