Yearly Archives: 2010

Backup Update

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At first I thought it was unreasonable that the proximity of completion was exciting to me, and then I remembered it’s been running for a month and a half.

crashplan-update.png

So, how’s YOUR backup plan coming?

“Aspen 20, I show you at 1,982 knots on the ground.”

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Gizmodo has an appreciation of the ultimate gadget: The sadly grounded SR-71 Blackbird.

One moonless night, while flying a routine training mission over the Pacific, I wondered what the sky would look like from 84,000 feet if the cockpit lighting were dark. While heading home on a straight course, I slowly turned down all of the lighting, reducing the glare and revealing the night sky. Within seconds, I turned the lights back up, fearful that the jet would know and somehow punish me. But my desire to see the sky overruled my caution, I dimmed the lighting again. To my amazement, I saw a bright light outside my window. As my eyes adjusted to the view, I realized that the brilliance was the broad expanse of the Milky Way, now a gleaming stripe across the sky. Where dark spaces in the sky had usually existed, there were now dense clusters of sparkling stars Shooting stars flashed across the canvas every few seconds. It was like a fireworks display with no sound. I knew I had to get my eyes back on the instruments, and reluctantly I brought my attention back inside. To my surprise, with the cockpit lighting still off, I could see every gauge, lit by starlight.

The excerpt also includes an account of a flight over Libya during which the author and his recon officer were fired upon. Apparently, when you’re in an SR-71, a perfectly acceptable defensive maneuver is to simply accelerate, which they did. To Mach 3.5+, over three and a half times the speed of sound.

Whoa.

Sadly, the author’s book is out of print, and the only copies available are limited edition, signed pressings at $400+ a pop. Oh well.

Obituary of the Year

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How call must you be to have your obit headlined “Cantankerous Hellfighter”? Coots Matthews was that cool, which comes as no surprise since he was one of Red Adair‘s folks before going out on his own.

Also, the obit starts with this joke:

A joke has it that St. Peter was showing a Texan around heaven, with the Texan claiming that everything he saw was better in Texas. St. Peter tired of the routine and pointed to the fire of hell. “Do you have anything like that in Texas?” he asked. The Texan said no, then added, “But there are a couple good old boys in Houston who can put it out for you.”

In which we notice things a few days late

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For several days, I’ve had this Mefi link open in a tab, and I didn’t get around to clicking through until now. It’s Robert Kennedy at a rally on 4 April 1968, announcing that Dr King had been killed. (Yeah, kids: back then, you didn’t learn every news story immediately. Crazy, I know.)

He spoke off the cuff, with no notes. It’s probably not a waste of time to wonder, just for a minute, what might have happened had a second President Kennedy been elected that fall, and not Richard Nixon; instead, of course, RFK himself was assassinated two months later.

A transcript follows; how awesome was he that he could get away with quoting Aeschylus?

I’m only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening, because I have some — some very sad news for all of you — Could you lower those signs, please? — I have some very sad news for all of you, and, I think, sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world; and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it’s perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black — considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible — you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge.

We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization — black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand, and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion, and love.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to fill with — be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.

But we have to make an effort in the United States. We have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond, or go beyond these rather difficult times. My favorite poem, my — my favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote:

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King — yeah, it’s true — but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love — a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We’ve had difficult times in the past, but we — and we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it’s not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.

And let’s dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people. Thank you very much.

Color me shocked

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Whoa:

Hold on to your hats. At a town hall meeting in Oklahoma City last week, staunch conservative Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) defended House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, disparaged Fox News and told a constituent her fears about the health care law were unfounded.

When a woman in the audience asked Coburn if it was illegal for the government to jail citizens for not complying with the new health care law, Coburn responded by blaming TV news, and Fox News in particular, for that false rumor:

“The intention is not to put anybody in jail,” Coburn said. “That makes for good TV news on Fox, but that isn’t the intention.”

Later, when his audience started to boo at the mention of Pelosi, Coburn stopped them.

“Come on now… how many of you all have met her? She’s a nice person,” Coburn said. “Just because somebody disagrees with you, doesn’t mean they’re not a good person.”

“Don’t catch yourself being biased by Fox News that somebody’s no good,” Coburn added.

Coburn urged audience members to widen their points of view by reading and watching different media outlets, not just the ones they agree with.

He will, of course, now be targeted by the Tea Partiers as a RINO, and sacked.

Suck it, publishers

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The NYT’s Ethicist says “Buying a book or a piece of music should be regarded as a license to enjoy it on any platform.” in response to a question about the ethics of downloading an illegal digital copy of a book previously purchased in hardback.

Cohen gets it. Publishers don’t, at least not yet. Here’s the whole bit:

I bought an e-reader for travel and was eager to begin “Under the Dome,” the new Stephen King novel. Unfortunately, the electronic version was not yet available. The publisher apparently withheld it to encourage people to buy the more expensive hardcover. So I did, all 1,074 pages, more than three and a half pounds. Then I found a pirated version online, downloaded it to my e-reader and took it on my trip. I generally disapprove of illegal downloads, but wasn’t this O.K.? C.D., BRIGHTWATERS, N.Y.

An illegal download is — to use an ugly word — illegal. But in this case, it is not unethical. Author and publisher are entitled to be paid for their work, and by purchasing the hardcover, you did so. Your subsequent downloading is akin to buying a CD, then copying it to your iPod.

Buying a book or a piece of music should be regarded as a license to enjoy it on any platform. Sadly, the anachronistic conventions of bookselling and copyright law lag the technology. Thus you’ve violated the publishing company’s legal right to control the distribution of its intellectual property, but you’ve done no harm or so little as to meet my threshold of acceptability.

Unsurprisingly, many in the book business take a harder line. My friend Jamie Raab, the publisher of Grand Central Publishing and an executive vice president of the Hachette Book Group, says: “Anyone who downloads a pirated e-book has, in effect, stolen the intellectual property of an author and publisher. To condone this is to condone theft.”

Yet it is a curious sort of theft that involves actually paying for a book. Publishers do delay the release of e-books to encourage hardcover sales — a process called “windowing” — so it is difficult to see you as piratical for actually buying the book ($35 list price, $20 from Amazon) rather than waiting for the $9.99 Kindle edition.

(There’s more; click through.)

The Northern Virginia Police Hate You

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Radley Balko explains just how hostile the NoVa departments are to routine citizen oversight, transparency, and even existing sunshine laws. The quotes in this story are absolutely staggering, and appear utterly at odds with the stone cold fact that power, unsupervised, leads to corruption and abuse every single time.

How can you tell the TSA is full of shit?

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They’re talking. Check out “Full-body scanners improve security, TSA says” at CNN; it’s chock full of bullshit.

  1. “Full-body imaging machines that see through clothes have significantly improved security in airports where they are deployed, and have revealed more than 60 “artfully concealed” illegal or prohibited items in the past year, the Transportation Security Administration says.” This is dishonesty via implication; certainly people take things on planes TSA has prohibited. They do it because the TSA’s regulations are bullshit, and they do it with no plans for anything more nefarious than trimming their nails or cutting open boxes while they’re traveling. This supposed catch of 60 items doesn’t translate into 60 thwarted plots. It translates to zero thwarted plots. Improved compliance will bullshit rules just gets us more bullshit.

  2. “As evidence of the machines’ capabilities, the security agency released five photos of drugs or suspected drugs that airport screeners found after scans revealed anomalies on the ghost-like images of people’s bodies. The agency said metal detectors would not have revealed the items.” This is completely irrelevant. The TSA’s job isn’t to search for contraband. The TSA’s job is (supposedly) to check for safety. They have no mandate to pat us down for drugs, and no business doing so.

At least the article points out an opposing view, from John Perry Barlow:

But some passengers say the machine’s capabilities are presenting new Fourth Amendment questions about the government’s searches, saying the machines — in detecting very small objects — are subjecting passengers to scrutiny beyond what is needed to safeguard the plane.

“I can’t imaging an explosive that is powerful enough in that [tea-bag size] quantity to endanger an aircraft,” said John Perry Barlow, a former Grateful Dead lyricist who once took the TSA to court after a search of his checked luggage revealed a small amount of drugs.

“Every time technology makes another leap forward, we have to reclaim the Fourth Amendment, and often we have to reclaim the entire Bill of Rights, because technology gives us powers that were not envisioned by the Founding Fathers,” Barlow said.

I recently encountered some of these no doubt very expensive machines in Kansas City. They’re a complete waste of time and money, and materially increase the amount of time and hassle required to get on an airplane. Somebody needs to put the kibosh on these things quick, but that won’t happen — I’m sure palms have been greased, explicitly or implicitly. The TSA gets to point at these machines and say “look what we’re doing!”, and most people will believe them. And the scanner makers laugh all the way to the goddamn bank while those of us just trying to travel pay the price.

It’s almost ten years later, and we’re still freaking out so much I can’t help but imagine Osama chuckling in his cave over all this. Jesus.

Game over, man! Game over!

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It should come as no surprise to any of you that the background music for the Bill Paxton Pinball Machine is, at least part of the time, How Can The Laboring Man Find Time For Self Culture.

It should go without saying that any such machine — featuring as it does “Big Love” multi-ball mode — must obviously be the best example of pinball ever created. A shame there’s only one of them. There’s video, by the way.

(Obvious choice for alternate post title: “You’re stewed, dickwad.”)

Oh, Fox. Stay classy.

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Fox has got Sarah Palin tied to some interview show, but they’re using interviews conducted quite some time ago by people other than Palin as filler. Douchey, right? It gets better: it turns out some of those interviewees aren’t too keen on being associated with Palin. One of the folks they picked was LL Cool J, who took exception to his association with the rightwingnut on Twitter:

Fox lifted an old interview I gave in 2008 to someone else & are misrepresenting to the public in order to promote Sarah Palins Show. WOW

Fox responded with predictable maturity:

Real American Stories features uplifting tales about overcoming adversity and we believe Mr. Smith’s interview fit that criteria. However, as it appears that Mr. Smith does not want to be associated with a program that could serve as an inspiration to others, we are cutting his interview from the special and wish him the best with his fledgling acting career.

Note their absolute insistence on missing the point (LL doesn’t want to be associated with Palin, or with an enterprise that makes money for Palin); they instead suggest he’s somehow anti-hero. But the best part is their persistent usage of “Mr. Smith” (LL’s actual name is Jason Todd Smith), and their junior-high mean-girls-bitchy crack about his “fledgling” acting career. News flash, Fox: LL started acting before you existed; his first credit is from 1986. But we know how hard it is for Fox News to do something as basic as check facts, so knock yourself out.

Now it appears that Toby Keith is also not happy about his inclusion. DeLIGHTful.

Remember David Frum?

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He’s the principled conservative who, after watching the GOP decide to oppose HCR at all costs, posted a pretty accurate “I told you so” on his site a few days ago.

Frum was, at that time, a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. He’s since been dismissed. Cause and effect is left as an exercise to the reader.

This is wrong.

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Apparently, Ann Coulter has been basically threatened with arrest unless she tones down her act for an appearance in Canada.

Our Republic has a tendency towards noisey, content-free discourse nowadays, but (as Chomsky points out in the linked story) the US remains essentially unique in our nearly absolutist approach to free expression. This is a big deal, and it may be the most important freedom we have. I loathe Coulter and just about everything she stands for, but her views are protected speech, and she should be able to spew her vile invective without fear of arrest.

Of course, I’d prefer it if there were no market for her idiocy, but I’m not about to support censorship because I don’t like her politics.

Scalzi on Health Care

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His thoughts are pretty spot on, I think. A bit:

Basically, I find what passes for Democratic legislative strategy absolutely appalling. Decades from now, when they make the ponderous Oscar-bait movie about the struggle for health care (with Jaden Smith as Obama and two-time Academy Award winner Snooki as Speaker Pelosi), it will make for exciting twists and turns in the plot, but out here in the real world, you shouldn’t have to let your organization get the crap beat out of it in order to motivate those in it to do the thing everybody knows it wants to get done. What the Democrats have managed to do with health care isn’t a Pyrrhic victory — I’ll get to that in a moment — but it surely was taking the long way around: over the river, through the woods, down into the landfill, into the abattoir, across a field of rabid, angry badgers. Next time, guys, make it easier on yourselves.

That said, the Democrats were magnificently fortunate that, as incompetent as they are, they are ever-so-slightly less incompetent than the GOP, which by any realistic standard has been handed one of the largest legislative defeats in decades. The GOP was not simply opposed to health care, it was opposed to it in shrill, angry, apocalyptic terms, and saw it not as legislation, or in terms of whether or not health care reform was needed or desirable for Americans, but purely as political strategy, in terms of whether or not it could kneecap Obama and bring itself back into the majority. As such there was no real political or moral philosophy to the GOP’s action, it was all short-term tactics, i.e., take an idea a majority of people like (health care reform), lie about its particulars long enough and in a dramatic enough fashion to lower the popularity of the idea, and then bellow in angry tones about how the president and the Democrats are ignoring the will of the people. Then publicly align the party with the loudest and most ignorant segment of your supporters, who are in part loud because you’ve encouraged them to scream, and ignorant because you and your allies in the media have been feeding them bad information. Whip it all up until health care becomes the single most important issue for both political parties — an all-in, must win, absolutely cannot lose issue.

If you visit, you can see the empty place on the wall where the Vermeer used to hang

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On March 19, 1990, a rather daring and amazing art theft happened at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The take, now estimated at half a billion, has never been recovered, nor have the perpetrators ever been caught.

The rather curious conditions of Gardner’s will, however, insist that the museum be left in the precise configuration she chose; there were to be no new acquisitions, and no rotation of the art. Consequently, not only have the missing pieces not been replaced with other art; said pieces were also not even insured because, well, the trustees wouldn’t have been able to hang them.

This is awesome

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Widely blogged, I got it at Merlin’s place. It’s from an interview with Choire Sicha and Paul Ford, on the occasion of the latter leaving Harper’s this week, originally published here:

Choire: What is your favorite Alex Chilton video, song or tale?

Paul: My favorite tale is from Our Band Could Be Your Life, when he shut down Gibby Haynes’s rampage through the Netherlands:

Moments later a man entered the dressing room and asked if he could borrow a guitar. “BORROW A GUITAR??!!! WELL, WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU???!!! [Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers] screamed, eyes flashing in delirious anticpation of forthcoming violence. But the man was totally unfazed.

“I’m Alex Chilton,” the man answered calmly.

Haynes was flabbergasted. After a long pause, he methodically opened the remaining guitar cases one by one and gestured at them as if to say, “Take anything you want.”

Alex Chilton, 1950 – 2010

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Icon Alex Chilton — how cool do you have to be to get the Replacements to name a song after you? — died today in New Orleans, they say of a heart attack. He was 59.

I need some time to digest this, but Chilton’s music with Big Star and others defines the Heathen college experience as much as any artist other than U2 or the Velvet Underground. Mark Linkous I’ll miss. Barry Hannah, too. But Chilton, man. Damn.

“Won’t you tell me what you’re thinking of / Would you be an outlaw for my love?”

(It occurs to me that many may not know that Chilton also was a Box Top, and sang The Letter, a song that every single one of you know.)

Somehow, I missed this

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On 19 January, Brit band The Heavy was on Letterman. They blew the roof off; normally staid Letterman was so excited that he told them to “go again! go again!”, and so they did.

How You Like Me Now?

Don’t miss this. For SRS. It’s James Brown meets hip-hop meets R&B meets, I dunno, the growl and smash of Zeppelin. TOP NOTCH, as a friend of mine used to say.

(Via MeFi, which also links the official video. MeFi also points out why you know this song already. Them kids is goin’ places.)