Monthly Archives: November 2005

Go burn something in effigy.

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Remember, remember the fifth of November,
Gunpowder treason and plot.
We see no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!

Guy Fawkes, guy, t’was his intent
To blow up king and parliament.
Three score barrels were laid below
To prove old England’s overthrow.

By god’s mercy he was catch’d
With a darkened lantern and burning match.
So, holler boys, holler boys, Let the bells ring.
Holler boys, holler boys, God save the king.

And what shall we do with him?
Burn him!

Sadly, not that surprising

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As it turns out, the military has been dumping dangerous weapons and waste off our coasts for years, usually without anyone in the local or state governments knowing anything about it.

The Army now admits that it secretly dumped 64 million pounds of nerve and mustard agents into the sea, along with 400,000 chemical-filled bombs, land mines and rockets and more than 500 tons of radioactive waste – either tossed overboard or packed into the holds of scuttled vessels.

Why We’d Kill the Web If It Were Invented Today

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Corante references a Financial Times piece wherein James Boyle points out how the world would greet such an open technology today. He closes with:

Why might we not create the web today? The web became hugely popular too quickly to control. The lawyers and policymakers and copyright holders were not there at the time of its conception. What would they have said, had they been? What would a web designed by the World Intellectual Property Organisation or the Disney Corporation have looked like? It would have looked more like pay-television, or Minitel, the French computer network. Beforehand, the logic of control always makes sense.”Allow anyone to connect to the network? Anyone to decide what content to put up? That is a recipe for piracy and pornography.” And of course it is. But it is also much, much more. The lawyers have learnt their lesson now. The regulation of technological development proceeds apace. When the next disruptive communications technology — the next worldwide web — is thought up, the lawyers and the logic of control will be much more evident. That is not a happy thought.

Bush goes down, down, down

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New polls show Bush is at about 60% disapproval, his poorest approval rating yet — far lower, for example, than that Evil Pervert Clinton, who actually had high approval ratings the day he was impeached by a vengeful GOP.

This brings up a question, though: how low can Bush’s ratings really go? What percentage of people will approve of him no matter what? Slacktivist has some possible answers, but the one that sticks for me comes from Kung Fu Monkey:

John: Hey, Bush is now at 37 percent approval. I feel much less like Kevin McCarthy screaming in traffic. But I wonder what his base is — Tyrone: 27 percent. John: … you said that immmediately, and with some authority. Tyrone: Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy. But 27 percent of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgement. Hell, even like 5 percent of Democrats voted for him. That’s crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27 percent Crazification Factor in any population. John: Objectively crazy or crazy vis-a-vis my own inertial reference frame for rational behavior? I mean, are you creating the Theory of Special Crazification or General Crazification? Tyrone: Hadn’t thought about it. Let’s split the difference. Half just have worldviews which lead them to disagree with what you consider rationality even though they arrive at their positions through rational means, and the other half are the core of the Crazification — either genuinely crazy; or so woefully misinformed about how the world works, the bases for their decision making is so flawed they may as well be crazy. John: You realize this leads to there being over 30 million crazy people in the US? Tyrone: Does that seem wrong? John: … a bit low, actually. cite

Fred goes on to point out that Dick Cheney’s current approval rating is a stunning NINETEEN percent, i.e., well below the political Mendoza line reference above, which means that even the raving nutbird looneys who voted for Keyes can’t stomach him.

“Ask your doctor for a reason to take it”

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The parody site Panexa.com is apparently so well done that it fooled CafePress. Don’t miss the disclaimers, particularly those about squirrels. Said section begins:

PANEXA is a prescription drug that should only be taken by patients experiencing one of the following disorders: metabolism, binocular vision, digestion (solid and liquid), circulation, menstruation, cognition, osculation, extremes of emotion. For patients with coronary heart condition (CHC) or two separate feet (2SF), the dosage of PANEXA should be doubled to ensure that twice the number of pills are being consumed. PANEXA can also be utilized to decrease the risk of death caused by not taking PANEXA, being beaten to death by oscelots, or death relating from complications arising from seeing too much of the color lavender. Epileptic patients should take care to ensure tight, careful grips on containers of PANEXA, in order to secure their contents in the event of a seizure, caused by PANEXA or otherwise.

Dept. of Today

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This is a busy day in my calendar.

  • My friends Bradley and Carolyn had their son in 2001.
  • My friend Mariana’s daughter was born, also in 2001;
  • My grandmother passed away that same day, after a long illness; and
  • It was my father’s birthday; today, he’d have been 65.

So, later, have a drink for Ben, for Eva, for Mimi, and for Carl Sr. if you feel like it. But smile when you do; the good far outweighs the bad.

What has it got in its pockets?

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Nothing.

Apparently, George Bush carries nothing in his pockets. I understand why — aides handle his phones; he never needs identification; he doesn’t need to pay for anything — but I never actually thought about it before. I’m sure Bush is no different in this regard than any prior president. It still seems sort of surreal.

I’m pretty sure if I was president, I’d still carry stuff. Maybe not money or ID or credit cards, but definitely my own pen, a pocketknife, Carmex, and maybe a small notebook or Palm. Or maybe not; maybe it’s just too liberating to go without — or too easy to make aides carry all your crap.

Weird.

(It occurs to me that this is really just another manifestation of something his father famously took heat for: being wholly unaware of the existence of supermarket bar-code scanners. Why would G. H. W. Bush have ever seen such a thing? He’d been president for a few years at the time, and his prior job was 8 years as Ronnie’s veep, which takes us right back to the 1970s. Still, how weird would it be to be that disconnected from the everyday life of everyone else?)

Could this suggest the long-forgotten Democratic spine is resurfacing?

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Harry Reid has forced the Senate into a closed session to discuss the manipulation of Iraqi war intelligence.

The GOP, of course, insists it’s a publicity stunt, and that the Democrats have “no convictions,” which is an odd choice of words considering the looming conviction of at least Scooter Libby on their side.

(Heh.)

Anyway, Pandagon has the text of the speech Reid gave as he called for said session.