Category: family fun

Some places have gotten warmer, a few cooler. What should worry people — farmers and the customers, you know, people who eat — is the change in hardiness zones, ie, where you can grow stuff.

What if you can’t grow your cash crop because it needs chill hours it’s no longer getting (peaches, apples, cherries, etc.)? It’s not like you can move a region to follow it’s climate: if the weather we rely on to grow wheat and corn moves north, what happens then? Half of Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina used to be in Zone 7: now perhaps a third of it or less. Is it any wonder hurricanes are retaining their sub-tropical power to far north, if the sub-tropical conditions are preceding them?

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Last in has to get out on his own

Originally uploaded by eszter.

Leave the captions at Flickr.

War and Piece:

My God. This is turning into a twisted, 1984 version of the back story to the leak investigation on the now sadly defunct West Wing. Check out Russell Tice’s letter (.pdf), and the very strong hint that the matter to be disclosed involves military satellites being used to spy on Americans. It’s staggering if true. The specter of this whole architecture of futuristic warfare, being used to experimentally target the communications of the American citizenry, is profoundly disturbing.

Excerpt from the letter:

Under the provisions of the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act
(ICWPA) and in the absence of an official response from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), I intend to report to the Armed Services Committee probable unlawful and unconstitutional acts conducted while I was an intelligence officer with the National Security Agency (NSA) and with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). These acts involve the Director of the National Security Agency, the U.S. Air Force Deputies Chief of Staff for Air and Space Operations, and the U.S. Secretary of Defense.

These probable unlawful and unconstitutional acts were conducted via very highly
sensitive intelligence programs and operations known as Special Access Programs (SAP)s. I was a technical intelligence specialist dealing almost exclusively with SAP programs and operations at both NSA and DIA. U.S. Code, Title 10, Subtitle A, Part 1, Chapter 2, Subsection 119 (Special Access Program: Congressional Oversight), dated 12 July 2005 states that the Senate Armed Services Committee is responsible for reviewing “waved” [sic] SAP programs.

Sing it with me:

We got computers, we’re tapping phone lines
I know that ain’t allowed

The warbloggers persist in claiming that their efforts as members of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders or 82nd Chairborne are valued contributions, meaningful sacrifices in the Global War Against Whatever it is This Week.

This nugget nailed it for me:

Crooked Timber » » STFU Syndrome:

I’m going to quote something I mailed to Jim Henley yesterday, that occurred to me in the course of some family reminiscing:

Talking with Mom and Dad about their personal histories led me to this association: what the war party bloggers have done is recreate the experience of being a child in World War II. They write patriotic essays and make patriotic collages, and get pats on the head and congratulations from the authorities. They watch diligently for the mutant, I mean, for the subversive among us, and help maintain the proper atmosphere of combined courage and vigilance. They are not expected to manage the family books, nor invited into discussion of the nitty-gritty, and it seldom occurs to them that there’s even a possibility there – that’s for the grown-ups, and rightly so.

It’s beyond irony for one of the leaders of the 101st to label himself captain, as a reminder of his obsessive Star Trek fandom or for another quote Lt Sulu — and use the character’s first name.

Do they really wonder why they’re assumed to be failed adults, living in their Mom’s basements?

He claimed America was the loser when he received his life sentence: but look at it another way. Does anyone else see the administration resembling the Taliban or Saddam’s terror state rather than Republic of the Founding Fathers? Pervasive surveillance, extra-legal jails, torture, reclassification of previously de-classified documents, and above all secrecy: are these American values or the sort of thing that WWII and the Cold War were supposed to have defeated?

How far are we willing to go in the name of “security?” And how do we get back, if we can?

First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, Then as Big-Budget Disaster Movie?

One of Philip K. Dick‘s favorite tropes (one that he recycled repetitively, sometimes effectively, often tediously) involved the premise that the losing side in a war actually wins by provoking the winning side to adopt the losing side’s values and ideology.

I keep thinking about that as the secret history of the Bush administration unreels. This morning an NPR reporter described the recent developments in the NSA phone data-mining operation, saying, “The furor is causing more problems for Michael Hayden” — But I heard, “The Führer is causing more problems. . . .” No, George Bush is not a new Hitler — but we can’t afford to refuse to acknowledge and name certain characteristics that the Bush regime shares with governments against which the U.S.A. has waged war in the name of freedom and human rights. We do not win a “War Against Terror” by sacrificing the ideals to which the U.S.A. aspires on the altar of an illusory, idolatrous “Security.”

In the weeks between now and the Fourth of July, I will re-read the Declaration of Independence once or twice, checking the description of the grievances that the founders charged against King George. “King George. . . .”

Fractal Brassica?

I might have see if I can get seeds of these.
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Improve In-Ear Headphones (Ear-Buds):

Those ear-buds never fit in my ears. But there’s a simple solution to that.

That, or I need to get out more: I had no idea you could get these things.

Now playing: World Leader Pretend by R.E.M. from the album “Green”