Month: February 2006

Friday Random Ten

  1. Backdrifts (Honeymoon Is Over) / Radiohead / Hail To The Thief
  2. Is That All? / U2 / October
  3. Five Years / David Bowie / Ziggy Stardust
  4. Love’s Melody (Melodie au Crepuscule) / Django Reinhardt & Stéphane Grappelli / Verve Jazz Masters 38: Django Reinhardt
  5. It Never Rains / Dire Straits / Love Over Gold
  6. Night Ride and Sunrise / Simon Rattle/City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Symphonies Nos. 5 & 7 Rattle CBSO
  7. Wake Up / XTC / The Big Express
  8. Holly Up On Poppy / XTC / Nonsuch
  9. Polythene Pam / The Beatles / Abbey Road
  10. Turn You Inside-Out / R.E.M./ Green

Now playing: Cry Baby Cry by The Beatles from the album “The Beatles [White Album] (Disc 2)” | Get it

co-evolution

Ben coins a phrase . . . . validation porn.

Standards, APIs, and the eye of the reader:

We went through the early stages of the web building our toolkits and learning technique, and now it’s time to stop talking about how we’d build stuff, and go on and actually do it. Validation porn has had its day. Enough about the brushes already: give me some beauty.

Continue reading “co-evolution”

Selling America by the pound

Seeing the Forest: Gulf State Golden Handshake?:

I don’t think that the possibility can be ruled out that Bush expects something from the Gulf States when he steps down as President in 2009. Reagan got two million for a one-day trip to Japan, and correcting for inflation I’d expect Bush to get ten million or more. Dubya’s little-known brothers Neil and Marvin are already cashing in over there, as I recall. (The Bushes are not really rich by contemporary standards, and they always need help from their friends.)

When I saw the phrase “Gulf States” I thought of Louisiana and Mississippi. Then I realized to whom this president’s allegiances run. Family first.

books every kid should read?

Read Alert » Blog Archive » The full lists:

Earlier in the week, I posted three lists of ten books that children should read before they finish school. I have since discovered that there are in fact, seven lists. Here they are.

Judge of my amazement that Lemony Snicket isn’t on the list. Not that there’s anything wrong with them, but there is so much other stuff that might — just might — make the newer books that much more interesting.

I like Pullman’s list though I thought His Dark Materials was terrible, all the worse for how widely-praised it was.

And at what age does one drop Ulysses on their kid’s nightstand?

Definitely a list of lists to keep on hand.

if I step back any further, I’ll fall over the edge

I have been following lots of information on the “let’s sell control of our busiest ports in major metropolitan areas to a hereditary oligarchy” arrangement. Stepping back to get some perspective on this, I keep seeing more and more and liking it less and less.

Recalling that John Snow, head of the board that made this unanimous decision, is the former head of CSX and still holds some (for certain large values of “some”) CSX stock.

By the way………………..:

According to Mr. Snow’s most recent financial disclosure form (available here) Mr. Snow “received CSX-related income of $72.2 million last year, with $33.2 million of that in a special retirement pension.”

Now, the UAE is an ally, we’re told. But not just ours:

UAE royals, bin Laden’s saviours:

The Central Intelligence Agency did not target Al Qaeda chief Osama bin laden once as he had the royal family of the United Arab Emirates with him in Afghanistan, the agency’s director, George Tenet, told the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States on Thursday.

Had the CIA targeted bin Laden, half the royal family would have been wiped out as well, he said.

And then we have this:
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | The ex-presidents’ club:

Carlyle has become the thread which indirectly links American military policy in Afghanistan to the personal financial fortunes of its celebrity employees, not least the current president’s father. And, until earlier this month, Carlyle provided another curious link to the Afghan crisis: among the firm’s multi-million-dollar investors were members of the family of Osama bin Laden.

and I can’t find a link to the bit about Condi Rice’s speech on the morning of 9/11 where she was going to go on about missile defense — she who said the the use of airliners as missiles was “unanticipated” — to an audience that includes members of the bin Laden family. But I remember reading it and realizing we were at the mercy of fools.

The bin Ladens keep Osama at arms length even more strongly than the Bushes keep Neil. Not that I think we should embrace them but a bit more transparency — some reminders that the very people who claim to have our interests at heart are a lot closer to these sheiks than they want us to know — would help.

So:

  • The UAE — not a business based there, but the government of the UAE — will control ports up and down the East Coast and some major transport installations related to the “war”
  • This arrangement personally enriches a member of the board who approved the decision
  • The SecDef claims to have has no knowledge of this, other than what he heard in the news (what, he has the same briefers as Chertoff?) even though he voted to approve it (how else to interpret a unanimous vote?)
  • The UAE was a part of the 9/11 conspiracy, with some of the hijackers being based there and some of the financial operations being run there
  • Osama bin Forgotten used the royal family of the UAE as human shields: if they are allies, why couldn’t they be made aware of that and given a broad hint to choose their friends more wisely, perhaps even to go home ASAP?

I dunno. It seems kinda hinky to me. What do you think?

Just think what a real journalist could do with a little more time and resources?

what’ll they think of next?

Oliver Willis » The Dirty Bomb Scenario:

(APReuters) — At first people thought the smell was a simple gas leak of some sort, but mere moments after the odor overwhelmed the lunchtime crowd in downtown Baltimore, it became clear that this was something much worse. Almost simultaneously thousands of gallons of irradiated materials were exploded in “dirty bombs” in major American cities – including Baltimore, New York, Miami, and Philadelphia. Hundreds died in the initial blast, with the death toll expected to number in the thousands as the numerous radiation-infested clouds sweep across America.

“We never saw it coming”, said President Bush in a press release issued from what sources close to the administration describe as a “secure” location, “I have appointed Vice President Cheney to head up an elite task force to investigate who exactly was asleep at the wheel during this tragedy.”

The information was preliminary, but experts have already mapped the sites of all the dirty bombs to be in close proximity to ports recently put under the control of the United Arab Emirates, a middle east nation with some ties to Al Qaeda terrorism. “It’s pretty easy to connect the dots,” said Philip Granger, a chemical weapons expert who consults with the Department of Homeland Security, “once they took over the ports, it was child’s play to get these bombs inside the border. Positioning them was a bit tougher, but once they were on American shores they became ticking time bombs.”

Glad no West Coast ports are part of this, but I wonder if anything else has been overlooked:

A major part of the story, however, has been mostly overlooked. The company, Dubai Ports World, would also control the movement of military equipment on behalf of the U.S. Army through two other ports. From today’s edition of the British paper Lloyd’s List:

[P&O] has just renewed a contract with the United States Surface Deployment and Distribution Command to provide stevedoring [loading and unloading] of military equipment at the Texan ports of Beaumont and Corpus Christi through 2010.

According to the journal Army Logistician “Almost 40 percent of the Army cargo deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom flows through these two ports.”

And then of course we have the SecDef claiming he knew nothing about this, even though he was part of a unanimous vote to approve the transfer.

there’s a word for this

The Big Picture: Teens Save Classic Rock:

Old rock has become fashionable, too. The years-old couture and thrift-shop vogue for vintage rock T-shirts recently trickled down to mall retailers catering to teens, with Doors and Rolling Stones shirts selling fast at stores such as Hot Topic.

“It’s almost a cyclical thing — as music ages, it can become cool again,” says Rilo Kiley frontwoman Jenny Lewis, who covers the Traveling Wilburys’ “Handle With Care” on her new solo album, Rabbit Fur Coat. But Lewis also sees a simpler reason for the trend: “It’s called classic rock for a reason — it’s classic. It’s just really great music.”

I don’t know what that word is but loosely defined, it has to do with the notion that the originators of a medium — representational painting, the symphony, the novel, rock and roll — are often considered the greatest artists of that medium, no matter how much comes afterward. It’s not that no one has ever played more wildly or creatively than Jimi Hendrix, but that no one could be Jimi Hendrix, a original artist at a certain point in time. Likewise the other music acts mentioned.

There is something to be explored in terms of what core values or ideals make one work a classic and another uninspired filler.

Now playing: All I Have Are Memories (Instrumental) by The Byrds from the album “Sweetheart Of The Rodeo” | Get it

if it’s not torture, how about you take a turn?

Barbarian Nation: The Torturers Win:

We’re in a new world now and the all-powerful U.S. government apparently has free rein to ruin innocent lives without even a nod in the direction of due process or fair play. Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen who, according to all evidence, has led an exemplary life, was seized and shackled by U.S.authorities at Kennedy Airport in 2002, and then shipped off to Syria, his native country, where he was held in a dungeon for the better part of a year. He was tormented physically and psychologically, and at times tortured.

The underground cell was tiny, about the size of a grave. …

Mr. Arar’s captors beat him savagely with an electrical cable. He was allowed to bathe in cold water once a week. He lost 40 pounds while in captivity.

art of torture. In terms of vile behavior, rendition stands shoulder to shoulder with contract killing.

If the United States is going to torture people, we might as well do it ourselves. Outsourcing torture does not make it any more acceptable.[*]

I forget where I saw this idea, so I won’t claim it as my own. But when I hear about things — acts that, to be judged as torture, “must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death” — done in the name of the Global War On Whatever Loud Noise Frightened Someone This Week, I think, “sure, you can order that to be done, but if the end result is nothing, if you exert every possible effort and it yields nothing, then someone does it to you.” So when we take some guy and make him live in what may well be his own grave for 10 months, with the cold water baths and the whippings, and he says nothing — not out of stubbornness but because he has nothing to say — whoever ordered it gets the same treatment.

There is no punishment on the books — beside capital punishment — that is considered inhumane or unconstitutional, nothing that leaves lasting physical or mental damage. So anyone who commits a crime and winds up as a guest of the state can expect to leave prison with the same body parts he went in with, with the loss of nothing but time. Mr Arar lost more than time served: 40 pounds of lost weight doesn’t begin to sum it up.

What has the US lost? What has this done to the country’s standing in the world, in it’s ability to lead? Rhetorical questions, perhaps, but I’m not sure I know the answers. I’m not sure I want to know. Perhaps after 2008 we can begin to wipe the mud and blood off our escutcheon.

*http://select.nytimes.com/2006/02/20/opinion/20herbert.html

Now playing: Symphony 4 – Beethoven by BBC Philharmonic conducted by Gianandrea Noseda from the album “The Beethoven Experience – Downloads” | Get it

maybe we should put grown-up conservatives on milk cartons

I’m not sure else where to try finding them.

Conservatism abandons Bush | TPMCafe:

It is obvious that the intellectual discipline of conservatism has gotten as much use out of George W. Bush as it can and that it cannot afford to indulge him any longer. Fukuyama’s foreign policy critique is of a piece with Bruce Bartlett’s dissection of Bush’s failed economic tactics. Serious conservatives are apoplectic over the destruction this president has wrought in their name. They want their movement back.

This leaves counterfeit populists such as Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly to defend Bush. These are people for whom conservatism has never been anything more than a meal ticket. They have watched Bush shatter America’s standing in the world with his blundering foreign policy and wreck the economy with his promiscuous devotion to tax cuts and spending increases and their only response has been to cheer louder. He betrays Christian values and they reinterpret Christianity in his defense. He lies and they redefine the truth. He breaks the law and they indict the law.

Sadly for conservatism, it is probably too late for its deepest thinkers to correct the damage done under Bush. Conservative intellectuals have reason on their side, but even the sharpest argument is too blunt an instrument to use against visceral conservatives who will, literally, stick their fingers in their ears to avoid hearing what they do not wish to hear.

Fukuyama is a brilliant writer, but to whom does he write? The voting base of the Republican Party don’t read the New York Times. They read Ann Coulter, who advocates blowing up the New York Times. If Coulter tells them that killing “ragheads” is the purest expression of American foreign policy, they take her word for it. If Rush Limbaugh tells them they can eliminate taxation without losing the government services those taxes pay for, they say “bring ’em on!” They don’t care to examine the intellectual inconsistency of a small-government president who has expanded the size and scope of government to the degree that Bush has. They don’t even perceive the inconsistency. What can conservative intellectuals say to persuade such people?

No, what Mr. Fukuyama sees is not merely the end of neoconservatism. It is conservatism itself that lies discredited and discarded at the feet of George W. Bush. He was anointed the standard-bearer for a philosophy he did not even understand. Conservative thinkers looked the other way while Bush set their house on fire. All they can do now is clear away the charred ruins and begin, painstakingly, to rebuild. However, they are fooling themselves if they think the new structure will resemble the old.

I would ask how they could have failed to realize their serial failure president was going to let them down, but choosing power over policy, politics over government, is an old story. Some victory . . .