Category: observations

Dig this: Verve records, the jazz label of reknown, is combing through the vaults out-of-print material through the iTunes Music Store. What a great idea[1]. Wish I had thought of it[2].

fn1. http://www.paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php?p=1034

fn2. http://www.paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php?p=1086

Also here and here.

Now playing: Simple Minds: 30 Frames a Second from the album “Themes for Great Cities” | Buy it

Since I collected a well-used beater bike a few weeks back (viva Freecycle!), I have had to become more familiar with bike workings than I have in a while. To ease my bafflement, I was told to get Zinn and the Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance.

I found it at my local library and after skimming through it, I have to admit, it’s both complete and accessible. I think this and Zinn and the Art of Road Bike Maintenance should be part of the purchase of any bike, but I’m sure bike shops could count on losing hundreds of dollars in repair work if they did that. You gotta love any author who remains “convinced that anyone with an opposable thumb can perform any repair on a bike.”

I’ll be adding them to the bookshelf as funds allow. In the meantime, I’ll put the copy I have into practice.

A paltry $7.95 stands between you and Democracy Inaction: carpoolers and bus commuters should be prepared to shield their neighbors from coffee spray . . .

MSNBC – Altercation:

There’s no question that Osama bin Laden would prefer a Bush victory to a  Kerry victory.  The man may be evil but he’s not crazy.  Would Kerry have let him get away at Tora Bora?  Would Kerry have launched an anti-American terrorist recruitment drive in Iraq?  Would Kerry have alienated the entire world from the fight against Al Qaida and made bin Laden a more popular figure in the Arab world than the president of the United States?  (Saddam Hussein, too, by the way.)  And would Kerry have starved homeland security to fight a counterproductive war, thereby ensuring the effectiveness of the next attack?  But what I don’t understand is, why is Cheney admitting all this? 

When you look at it that way, the more convinced I am that “Osama been Forgotten” is Bush’s real running mate.

art by lolito

Now playing: Glenn Gould: Variatio 3 A 1 Clav. Canone All’unisono from the album “J. S. Bach: Goldberg Variations Bwv988” | Buy it

Bush by numbers: Four years of double standards

A roundup of statistics and datapoints to consider, now that the convention(s) are over. The list is quite long: my selection is a good sample but the entire list is instructive.

from: Saviour of Iraq
92 Percentage of Iraq’s urban areas with access to potable water in late 2002.

60 Percentage of Iraq’s urban areas with access to potable water in late 2003.

55 Percentage of the Iraqi workforce who were unemployed before the war.

80 Percentage of the Iraqi workforce who are unemployed a Year after the war.

0 Number of American combat deaths in Germany after the Nazi surrender in May 1945.

37 Death toll of US soldiers in Iraq in May 2003, the month combat operations “officially” ended.

0 Number of coffins of dead soldiers returning home that the Bush administration has permitted to be photographed.

0 Number of memorial services for the returned dead that Bush has attended since the beginning of the war.

A soldier’s best friend
40,000 Number of soldiers in Iraq seven months after start of the war still without Interceptor vests, designed to stop a round from an AK-47.

$60m Estimated cost of outfitting those 40,000 soldiers with Interceptor vests.

62 Percentage of gas masks that army investigators discovered did not work properly in autumn 2002.

90 Percentage of detectors which give early warning of a biological weapons attack found to be defective.

87 Percentage of Humvees in Iraq not equipped with armour capable of stopping AK-47 rounds and protecting against roadside bombs and landmines at the end of 2003.

This doesn’t sound like the resolute and decisive commander we hear so much about. Sounds more like someone without a plan or the decency to admit it.

Now playing: John Coltrane: Quartet: Acknowledgement (Part 1) from the album “A Love Supreme” | Buy it

So how long before someone finds a way to hang this on the wall or from an overhead?

Apple – iMac G5 – Design:

Welcome sleek simplicity into your home. Innovative engineering makes iMac G5 a beauty to behold and a beauty to use. Form truly follows function with all of the computer, including power supply and stereo speakers, enclosed within the widescreen flat-panel display.

We rarely have the luxury of being able to act on certainties; you’d be a fool if, credibly informed that unless you had an operation to repair an aneurysm you had a 99 percent chance of dying within a week, you responded that you only act when you’re certain.

Judge Richard Posner sits in for Larry Lessig this week and takes on a few lightweight issues, like global warming. It’s interesting to me how he frames the discussion in terms of what we don’t know, our (sciences’s) uncertainty, and how people reply with such certainty.

As I mentioned in a previous posting, the global climate equilibrium is fragile. In a period (known as the “Younger Dryas”) of only about a decade some 11,000 or 12,000 years ago, the earth’s temperature rose by 14 degrees Fahrenheit. The climate was very cold (it was the end of the last ice age) when the surge started, so no harm to human beings was done (rather the contrary); but imagine a similar surge today. Suppose the ice sheets that cover Greenland and Antarctica melted, raising ocean levels to the point at which most coastal regions, including many of the world’s largest cities, would be inundated. Or if the dilution of salt in the North Atlantic as a result of the melting of the north polar ice cap, the ice of which is largely salt free, diverted the Gulf Stream away from the continent of Europe. The dense salty water of the North Atlantic blocks the Atlantic currents from carrying warm water from the South Atlantic due north to the Arctic, instead deflecting the warm water east to Europe. That warm-water current is the Gulf Stream. If reduced salinity in the North Atlantic allowed the Gulf Stream to return to its natural northward path, the climate of the entire European continent would become like that of Siberia, and Europe’s agriculture would be destroyed.

Far-fetched? Perhaps. But what if it happened? What expanded market position or new product introduction is worth the destruction of a continent? Even if we differ on the certainty or even likelihood, what if the remote possibility comes to pass? This has one of my long-held arguments with nuclear power. The cancer and other health risks of coal or other fossil-fuel as poser sources might exceed that of nuclear power, if all goes well. But the worst-case scenario is far worse for nuclear power. If coal or gas-fired plant blows up, nothing prevents a new plant being built on the same spot as soon as the rubble is cleared. For an instructive example of what could happen with a nuclear plant, Chernobyl is still around and will be for thousands of years. (50,000 deaths have been attributed to this one accident: understanding that these accidents are caused by human error, either in design or failures of process and procedure, means we would see more of them, especially in privatized power plants.)

PLEASE NOTE: The picture above is the ORIGINAL cover of John Kerry’s book THE NEW SOLDIER. John Kerry’s friends, the so called Vietnam Veterans Against the War were mocking this scene photographed during the Second World War. 6,825 American boys died to plant that flag on Iwo Jima.

Some wingnut has taken this out of print book, written by John Kerry and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and made it available on-line. Never mind the violation of copyright (will they stop at nothing?), but after reading through it, I wonder how anyone could think it helps anyone but Kerry? The book is page after page of personal recollections of life in country and how people survived the experience, how they were treated there and back in the US, and what they learned from it.

Same Old, Same Old for Same-Sex Unions?:

* Heterosexual marriage rates in Denmark actually increased after adoption of same-sex marriage. They are now the highest they have been since the early 1970s. In other countries that adopted same-sex partnerships, marriage rates remained the same or increased slightly.

* Divorce rates have remained the same.

* The majority of families with children in Scandinavia and the Netherlands are still headed by married parents. In fact, in Norway, 77 percent of couples with children are married, and 75 percent of Dutch families with children include married couples. By comparison, 72 percent of U.S. families with children are headed by married couples.

So much for the notion that same-sex marriage will cause the end of heterosexual marriage, as if people will protest the idea of more people being allowed to marry. And what’s this about divorce rates staying the same? Evidently, people aren’t divorcing over it either. Could it be that rational people don’t think letting same-sex couples marry affects their own commitment? Is marriage nothing but a tax break to some people? Some kind of shackle by which they hold onto someone who might not stick around otherwise? If marriage were outlawed for everyone, would couples break up?

Anyone remember the end of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” when he realized that

Christmas doesn’t come from a store. Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.

Obviously, a Danish study won’t convince anyone: most of us don’t need convincing and those who do would reject such a message of love, conciliation, and forgiveness. To do otherwise would dishonor their faith.