Category: observations

Like something out of a pulp thriller . . . one of the gang makes a stupid mistake and the rest of them hang him out to dry.

Jason Leopold | White House ‘Discovers’ 250 Emails Related to Plame Leak:

The White House turned over last week 250 pages of emails from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office. Senior aides had sent the emails in the spring of 2003 related to the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald revealed during a federal court hearing Friday.
    The emails are said to be explosive, and may prove that Cheney played an active role in the effort to discredit Plame Wilson’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a vocal critic of the Bush administration’s prewar Iraq intelligence, sources close to the investigation said.
    Sources close to the probe said the White House “discovered” the emails two weeks ago and turned them over to Fitzgerald last week. The sources added that the emails could prove that Cheney lied to FBI investigators when he was interviewed about the leak in early 2004. Cheney said that he was unaware of any effort to discredit Wilson or unmask his wife’s undercover status to reporters.

This is one case where the “scare quotes” are all too appropriate.

So what next? Do we see the “President Rice” strategy come to pass? Cheney is removed, replaced by Rice, then Bush exits, and Rice moves into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. And the GOP claims bragging rights for the first African American and first woman as VP or President (not that she would have won enough primaries to make it to the nominating convention, if she had run as a candidate).

[tip]

Now playing: Panic by The Smiths from the album “Louder Than Bombs” | Get it

<update> feh. this was a spoof, laid out for the gullible, and I didn’t click through to catch the disclaimer.

What’s this all about? It pays to listen in on conversations at nearby tables . . . . .

Mac Geekery – Exclusive: Apple’s Tuesday Release:

So I’m there having lunch with a friend (the stewed pork burrito, if you must know) when some guys walk in talking iPods and dangling little Apple badges from their hips. Sweet. So I just sit there at my table near the door, chewing a little quieter as they guys just lay it out in their discussion what’s coming on Tuesday. I mean, they’re being quiet and all, but they still lay it out as they talk to each other. I didn’t have a way to record it while I was there, but here’s some tidbits my friend and I could remember afterwards. The words may be a little different but the ideas are the same. If we couldn’t remember, we didn’t dictate it.

Now playing: Happy Ending by Randy Newman & others from the album “Randy Newman’s Faust” | Get it

Anyone have any recommendations for hot water dispensers, those faucets that supply near-boiling water? I just had my second InSinkErator unit crap out, this one just outside the warranty period. The unit it replaced lasted 5 years or thereabouts: call me unimpressed.

The ISE H770 should be avoided. There was a recall on it a few years back, after the tank leaked and caused a short circuit, and at least one fire. This image doesn’t make it clear, but the power lead comes out the bottom of the unit: so if there is a leak, the water will naturally pool where the wiring is. In my case, it was running down the power cable.

This one of mine leaked in the same way and I don’t see the insulation that the recall was supposed to include. Again, I am underwhelmed.
So now to find a replacement unit with a better reputation: ISE makes a lot of the ones you buy under other names, so it pays to look closely.
This design makes more sense: the power cable comes out near the top, and the thermostat and wiring will be behind that nameplate/inspection cover.

This has been a public service announcement.

Funny stuff: I think I’d mash them up (Taoist Reggae is choice, but I could do without Ear Duct) and take the best of both. I like Naval Ode, since that was my starting point in my work day: the fact that it made both versions is interesting.

Letters to the World » And I procrastinated to work on this?:

And I’ve finished the anagrammed MARTA map.

GRABBINGSAND » Blog Archive » It’s Not MARTA:

So check it out. Maybe with these odd little names, you’ll actually be inspired to use our transit system for more than just the Rap Trio.

Maybe my kids will giggle at the Seattle version of this in 20 years or so <sigh>

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

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”

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.

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.

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