...on The Speech

Apparently the Shrub gave a speech tonight.

I felt the need to acknowledge it. But I have no comment. Unless a long string of expletives followed by foaming at the mouth and collapsing into an insane rage at the horrific damage that has been done to my country counts as a comment.

...on Things That Are Awesome

If you have a computer with the horsepower you could do a lot worse with your time than download Google's latest toy. The Google Earth application.

I played with this today. I can't remember the last time I was this astounded. I think it was the early '90s when I saw a CD-ROM that contained the entire road atlas of the United States.

I love maps. This is the ultimate map. It rocks on toast.

..on The Power of Operating Thetans

I don't pay much attention to celebrity news, but that is about to change. I had no idea how interesting it is.

...on Barblogging

Sorry for the lack of posts. I filled up six pages of a notebook tonight but don't have the energy to retype it. By the way, bring a notebook to a bar and scribble in it? Total chick magnet.

I should pay somebody to type this crap in. I've got hundreds of pages.

...on Operation Dolchstoss II

"I don't know about you, but moderation and restraint is not what I felt as I watched the twin towers crumble to the earth, a side of the Pentagon destroyed and almost 3,000 of our fellow citizens perish in flames and rubble," Karl Rove said, according to the text. "Moderation and restraint is not what I felt -- and moderation and restraint is not what was called for. It was a moment to summon our national will -- and to brandish steel. MoveOn.org, Michael Moore and Howard Dean may not have agreed with this, but the American people did."

- Washington Post, June 24, 2005

Members of MoveOn.org aren't REAL Americans according to Bush's Brain. I dropped some money their way during the last election. I guess that means I'm not a REAL American either.

No, I'm obviously a traitor. I'm scum. I'm the kind of guy who would stab my country in the back for the sheer joy of it. I can't love America, not the way REAL Americans can. Karl Rove said so.

The question is why did Karl say it? And why, as the clever diarists at Daily Kos noticed, were his words echoed by the coordinated Republican Noise Machine?

Why? Because Shrub has fucked the Presidency up so badly there is no future for this country except hard times and disaster. And a scapegoat is needed.

Back in the 1920's the Germans wondered why they had it so bad. Their armies were defeated, their nation occupied (parts of it anyway) and their economy was in the toilet. It had to be somebody's fault, didn't it?

Of course it was. Inbred incompetents hadn't lead the people into a war they couldn't hope to win. No, Germany had been betrayed at home, stabbed in the back (Dolchstoss) by traitors.

The traitors looked like Germans, they sounded like Germans, but they weren't Germans. Not REAL Germans. They had funny ideas, and maybe funny accents, and they certainly didn't support the government.

Communists. Socialists. Jews.

The Shrub is going down in flames and he is taking the country with it. Eventually even the media has to turn on him in order to keep their audience. When that happens he's going to hit Nixonian levels of approval, and not the good kind Nixon had before Watergate broke.

If all the lies and theft and incompetence were revealed the Republican party would be destroyed for generations. They can't blame Iraq, the mortgaging of our economy, the failure to catch Osama, our deteriorating position in the world and an utter failure to address domestic issues on "a few bad apples." The whole GOP brought into the plan and backed Shrub to the hilt. The whole GOP is going to take the fall.

So, you need a distraction. An enemy. A scapegoat. Somebody to blame when it all goes South (a very apt metaphor) and the torch-wielding mob shows up at your doorstep looking for blood.

I am that enemy. Plus the other 49% of voters who tried to turn the country away from disaster during the last election.

Not the best population to make a scapegoat of. Your best bet is a small minority that is culturally or ethnically distinct with wealth you can loot. That way they don't have much political power, they are easy to demonize and you can take their stuff.

Going after half the voters in the U.S. is more than even Rove can handle. Down the road they will try to peel off the "bad liberals" from the rest of the pack and make them the target. I'd say it's going to get nasty, but it's already disgusting.

Rove's got the Presidency, both houses of Congress, a lot of judges and a completely brought-off corporate media with which to pull his latest magic trick. The only thing our side has is three little words. They used to mean something, and I believe they still do.

"United we stand."

...on Good News, Bad News

First the good news.

Lions Rescue, Guard Beaten Ethiopian Girl

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - A 12-year-old girl who was abducted and beaten by men trying to force her into a marriage was found being guarded by three lions who apparently had chased off her captors, a policeman said Tuesday.

Awesome. Not the first time a wild animal has come to a human's aid, but there is something poetic about this particular story. The ironic contrast between the men acting like beasts and the lions being the good guys is particularly delicious. I like to think that the girl will team-up with the lions to fight crime. She will hunt the streets of Addis Ababa, making sure evildoers are punished...and eaten.

Now, the bad news. That old chestnut, a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning passed the House today. Fortunately it looks like it's going down in the Senate.

This kind of jingoistic pandering pisses me off to an incredible extent. It's the basest kind of manipulation. "Let's get people whipped up over a non-existent problem and maybe they will ignore all the real problems out there! Never mind the fact that curtailing speech like this goes against everything this country is supposed to stand for! If anybody complains we'll accuse them of hating America!"

Unfortunately, it works.

...on Followups, Necessity Of

It appears that the solar-sail satellite did not blow up and made it safely into orbit but is not responding to ground commands. Time will tell, but dead space probes have a bad record of springing to life.

Also, Steve Gilliard reports from the New York Post, that the fragging incident might be a purely criminal matter, unrelated to morale failure. Still pretty bad, but not as bad as I originally thought.

...on Sundreams and Pipedreams

In the midst of the horror show that has opened up the 21st Century, I need to remind myself that good things still happen.

Assuming the rocket doesn't blow up, the Planetary Society will be launching a solar-sail spacecraft into orbit tomorrow. This makes me smile.

It's not a scientific breakthrough. It won't lead to huge advances in technology. Any data it gathers will lead to small advances in the esoteric field of interplanetary propulsion. Essentially, it's useless and benefits nobody.

But it still makes me smile. The whole project just sings of hope and whimsy and optimism.

Tomorrow car bombs will go off in Iraq, the Earth's environment will continue warming to dangerous levels and the rich will steal from the poor and count themselves holy by doing so. But if all goes well, above it all, a bright and shining beacon will represent a different vision. A world filled with things that are bold, amazing and fundamentally COOL.

...on Why I Drink Too Much

Bush says US is in Iraq because of attacks on US
- Agence Française de Presse

Mansell: That wasn't strictly true, was it sir?
Commander Clement: No, Mansell, it was what we in the British Navy call... a lie.
- Yellowbeard

Shrub is lying, and lying badly at that. There is no connection between 9/11 and Iraq. None. There is a connection with Afghanistan, but that's not the war that has his approval ratings in the toilet. Not that such semantic quibbling matters. The intent is to deceive. He wants people to think this imperial adventure had some purpose behind it. Some reason besides his daddy issues, the rabid ideology of the PNAC and free money for his oil and defense buddies.

In a sane world he'd be impeached, arrested and on trial for fraud and warcrimes within the week for his gross misconduct.

But he won't. There are still people who believe this nonsense. Mostly because the corporate media in this country won't lead tomorrow's papers with "BUSH LIES TO AMERICAN PEOPLE AGAIN" headlines. Even if they did it wouldn't matter. The truth has been out there a long time, but people don't want to look at it.

We've got over 1,700 Americans and maybe as much as 100,000 Iraqis dead, nearly $200 billion spent so far with more to come, and American credibility and military power ruined for decades to come. All that blood, all that sacrifice...for nothing.

Apparently it will take more than that before we try to fix things in this country. Or maybe we won't. This monstrous cretin was re-elected after all. Sometimes I think my countrymen made a suicide pact and forget to tell me about it.

...on The Bourne Supremacy

I borrowed The Bourne Supremacy from JG a while back and finally watched it. Why? Because director John Greengrass was tapped to do the big-screen version of Alan Moore's Watchmen.

Bourne Supremacy didn't surprise me. But then I've read Ludlum and watched thrillers before, so I don't think Hollywood can surprise me. Even still, there were a few moments of tension, along the lines of "No way can they dream up a way he escapes from this."

But I'd rather talk about what I liked, since it was a good movie. First of all, they didn't explain everything. The deleted scenes on the DVD are a perfect example of why I find so many movies not just dull, but insulting. Take for example the meet-up in Berlin. How did Jason know that there would be a demonstration going through the plaza at that time? He saw the yellow posters earlier. Thanks Greengrass for not cutting to the HQ and having somebody say "He must have read about it somewhere!"

Fight scenes didn't have that cool fast-motion, slow-motion, fast-motion style of The Bourne Identity but the action still worked. I could buy that these people were constantly scanning their environment for an edge. Even the car chase scene in Moscow I accepted. These weren't just agents, they were Solar Exalted agents.

Watchmen by Greengrass is not to be. Could he have pulled it off?

No. Nobody can. Moore's text is too dense for any film to capture. Film is a powerful, but limited medium. Watchmen is too big to capture.

But I definitely would have dropped $8 to see Greengrass's take on it.

...on Fragging

INTEL DUMP reports from the AP that the possible fragging incident in Iraq last week is now being prosecuted as a murder case. Phil correctly points out that all the facts are not out, but clearly recognizes how bad this is.

Anyone remember the "combat refusal" (apparently the new word for mutiny) last October when a South Carolina Reserve unit disobeyed orders? That took place under unique circumstances and I'm sure this one did as well. But the fact that it happened at all shows the kind of stress our troops are under.

Our military is breaking down. They are undermanned, underequipped and overstretched. The recruiting shortfalls are only going to make things worse. Right now the prediction is for a major crisis in 2006. I hope it can be delayed that long.

...on The War Nerd

Good news everyone!

The War Nerd is back. I was a big fan of his column on eXile, but thought he got dropped at the end of 2004. It turns out he's just turned down the output.

Check out his work. He's a history geek with a vicious pen and no tolerance for mythology.

...on The Perils of Self-Examination

Drinks with K last night which is always a delight. It was also educational. We tend to push each other when we argue and her relentless logic can not be thwarted.

The latest revelation is pretty depressing. Those who know me call me as a cynic. Those who know me well call me a romantic. I'm not sure you can do the cynic thing without a romantic heart. If the failures of the world didn't wound there'd be no point in snark. You'd just accept it and move on.

One of my articles of faith was that humanity had a bright future ahead of it. For our entire history we've been stalked by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Famine, Plague, War and Death. For most of the population things are still horrific, but a small but expanding minority gets to live in THE FUTURE.

Most First Worlders have never known hunger for more than a day or two. Polio, smallpox and the Black Death aren't terrors, they are dim history. War hasn't threatened our homes or family since World War II. Developments in biotechnology might even give Death a run for his money before the century is out.

It was going to be hard, and it wasn't going to be perfect. But with the Power of Science! at our disposal we would eventually make things better for everyone. Hell, there are diseases killing millions in Africa that could be elminated with sensible governments and a few billion dollars today. The future was so bright, I had to wear shades.

Then 9/11 happened and everybody went nuts. Not that 9/11 changed anything, this country always had a dark, paranoid undercurrent. But it gave people an excuse to embrace their fear and hatred. Unfortunately the Shrub was there to capitalize on and ride that tidal wave of gibbering insanity all the way into a second term. Our economy, environment, laws, freedom, military and moral strength also got swept away by that same tidal wave, but when you are surfing that righteous fear wave you've got to ride until it breaks.

So America got written off. I love this country, but we turned our back on the future. When religious nutjobs have even a remote shot at taking evolution out of the schools you know you are in trouble. We may get back on the horse, but it will take decades to undo the damage that's been done.

But the ideal is still out there. America may have dropped the torch of Liberty, but we aren't the only ones in this race. The Japanese and the Europeans are still down with rationality. That means the first cruiseship touring Saturn's rings will probably be the Queen Beatrix instead of the Benjamin Franklin but those are the breaks.

K disagrees. The same technology that will let us cure cancer and build discos on the moon can be used to make weapons capable of destroying cities. How can long can the Enlightenment last when any tech-college graduate with a grievance can build a fusion device or superplague in his basement? Even a 1984-style surveliance state will have failures and it all ends in a hail of nuclear fire and societal chaos. Good run while it lasted, but our system depends on keeping insane people in check and that's obviously failed.

"Look, I understand your point," I said. "There are going to be a lot of dangers out there, but I can't believe that a culture that developed contract law, vaccinations and cheap air travel is going to collapse because of screwheads with a grudge. If I was a betting man...."

Mistake. Big mistake. K pounced on it immediately and demanded to know the odds I would take.

Long. Which was embarassing to admit. Rationally I wouldn't put money on my vision of the future unless the odds were ridiculously in my favor. That means deep down inside I'm as pessimistic as K. I don't believe in humanity, I'm just rooting for the home team.

... on The Power Of Science!

A hilarious PowerPoint presentation with attached audio-track can be found here. It takes about a half-hour to sit through and is definitely worth your time. Make sure you note the changing corporate motto on each slide.

I love mixtures of careful research and wild brainstorming like this. The best science fiction has this combination of discipline and creativity in it. Historical fiction (especially George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman series) can also get the mix exactly right.

But there is one genre that almost always does it for me...conspiracy theories.

No other genre requires careful, painstaking research combined with the pattern-recognition powers of the human brain cranked up to 11. Holy Blood, Holy Grail may have been a crock, but there's no denying that some heavy research went into crafting it. Not Rise And Fall Of The Roman Empire levels, but more than you'll see in most books.

Take for example Rigorous Intuition. The author of this site has some odd theories to put it mildly, but he knows his deep politics. Does a Satanic pedophile conspiracy control our government? Probably not, and he admits the idea is out there. But the work he puts into it compels you to give him a fair hearing.

Sadly in this day and age conspiracy theories have become a lost art. You can't just scream about Freemasons, Satanists and saucers. You've got to do the research and back things up with citations. Without footnotes you're just nuts. With the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers by your side you rise to the level of crank...or genius.

Of course the finest work in the conspiracy theory genre remains the one I just re-read. Foucalt's Pendulum by Umberto Eco is THE conspiracy theory. It is also the greatest critique of conspiracy theories I've read. If you stare too long into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.

...on Limits Being Reached

Military action won't end insurgency, growing number of U.S. officers believe

"'I think the more accurate way to approach this right now is to concede that ... this insurgency is not going to be settled, the terrorists and the terrorism in Iraq is not going to be settled, through military options or military operations,' Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said last week, in a comment that echoes what other senior officers say. 'It's going to be settled in the political process.'"

This is a sign of how rapidly the wheels are coming off in Iraq. American officers are now speaking directly to the press and contradicting the White House's Fantasyland narrative. This is something the military doesn't normally do.

Heck, under Commander Cuckoo Pants the men quoted in this article could not only be endangering their career, but exposing themselves to prosecution under Article 88 and 89 of the UCMJ.

Absurd? Possibly. But we live in a world where meth manufacture was prosecuted as WMD terrorism under the PATRIOT Act. Remember what they did to Valerie Plame. Fortunately an increasing number of articles like the one from Iraq show that people are getting fed up with them.

...on Left Behind, The Book

Out of curiosity I borrowed a copy of "Left Behind," a novelization of the End Times based on some pretty selective interpretations of Revelations.

The writing is atrociously bad. Dialogue, characterization, description and plot are essentially non-existent. The only thing I can say in its defense is that it was free of spelling errors. "Left Behind" does however do an excellent job of recreating my encounters with Christian fundamentalism; an atmosphere of megalomaniacal sociopathy mixed with misogyny, xenophobia and anti-intellectualism.

Pardon me if this comes across as bitter. I read it last night and still can't get the taste out of my mind.

We start out over the Atlantic where heroic Captain Rayford Steele is heroically flying his manly 747 across the Atlantic while heroic journalist Buck Williams heroically types on his manly laptop in First Class. Then, without warning, in an instant, millions of people around the world vanish.

Being a science fiction geek I'm always up for an idea story. The Rapture is theologically shaky but it is an interesting concept. Could society recover with a large percentage of the population missing? How would we reorganize if we took the casualties of a nuclear war but without any of the physical damage? Knowing that it is possible for people to vanish into thin air, what steps would we take to minimize the damage if it happens again?

Well I'll tell you what happens in a Rapture. Our heroes are inconvenienced by traffic jams and busy phones.

YES! Buck and Steele spend ENTIRE chapters looking for taxis and dial tones. Somewhere between 20 and 50 percent (I inferred the percentage from a badly researched throwaway line) of the Western world, including all children have vanished. Gone. No indication of what happened to them. No idea if they are alive or dead or if it will happen again. This is horror on an unprecedented scale, but our heroes treat it like an unpleasant business trip. Not once in the entire book do any of them act like the Rapture is more than an inconvenience. They certainly can't find the time to reach out and help their fellow human beings or even act humanely towards them. You know, the Christian thing to do?

(And if anyone who read the book wants to complain that our heroes convert after the Rapture, let me point out that this only added self-righteousness to their already horrendous behavior.)

Not that I can really blame our odious and vacant heroes. They are representative of the Left Behind universe. Human interaction is pretty limited over there. Nobody has conversations, instead you have two modes of communication a) manly, where you lecture and tell other people to shut up and listen and b) unmanly, where you whine, complain, question authority and/or act all clingy and girly. I doubt I'd want to help people like that either.

Anyway, within a week of the Rapture, the big news is that People Magazine has a new Sexiest Man of The Year.

No, I am not kidding you, the authors mention this point at least five times. This is less than six days after the mysterious disappearance of between 50 and 150 million people in America alone, plus secondary deaths from auto wrecks, plane crashes, industrial accidents, suicides, etc. Nobody has any idea what happened or if it will happen again (I guess there are no AM radio preachers in the Left Behind universe) or how the vanishing will impact things like inheritance laws, life insurance or the global balance of power.

But thank goodness People is able to go to press. Otherwise what would their readers talk about?

Our new Sexiest Man of The Year is Nicolae Carpathia. He's foreign, supports the U.N., believes in disarmament and human brotherhood, speaks nine languages and looks like a young Robert Redford (mentioned at least twice). He is quite obviously the Antichrist and represents everything that is Evil. In an even slightly better written book I'd be rooting for him to torture and kill everyone in this flat and vapid world but he is unfortunately as dull and lifeless as the rest of those Left Behind. The author's idea of a rousing speech is for Carpathia to alphabetically list the member states of the U.N. The horror, the horror.

The sole entertainment value is from the many WTF? moments. The characters make the teenagers in a horror movie look like Rhodes Scholars. "Top reporter guy! Get back to New York! In the midst of this horrific crisis I need you to write about a convention of Orthodox Rabbis! It will make a great cover story for next week's issue!" At least the screen teens have an excuse for acting retarded, they are obsessed with sex. The only thing that occupies our heroes is how wonderful it is to be a manly man whose every selfish act is endorsed by God. Women can't be heroes, but can choose to be supportive and quiet or annoying and foolish. I'm not sure what the large packs of feral dogs created by missing owners think. Like the rest of the obvious Rapture side-effects they never show up and aren't mentioned.

Along the way there were a number of murders (inconveniencing our heroes, one of them has to change his flight), the entire Russian air force exploded, the Case of The Exploding Russian Air Force was never investigated and People Magazine's Sexiest Man of The Year was given ultimate power for no adequately explained reason.

One day I'll have to post the opening for the alternate version that I constructed in my mind while wading through this sorry book.

...on Blogging

Wow. I remember doing this five years ago...when it was called having a website. Of course back then it was geeky and strange, whereas blogging (according to the news) is hip and cutting edge.

That means blogging is at least three years away from the cutting edge. That's good though. I can dabble and not worry about hipster juice getting all over me.

The real reason I'm setting this up is to exercise my writing skills. I've noticed a terrible atrophying of those talents lately. This should be a place I can dump any thoughts that would otherwise remain untyped because I don't want to frighten people.