Archive - Feb 2007

I just put up a post on energista about reports that Gore's Mansion uses $30,000 worth of energy a year. This is an insane amount and his excuses that they are from renewable sources or offset is not acceptable. Efficiency is far more important than offsets. The simple fact is that mansions are never environmentally friendly.

Thanks to daddYman for passing this article along. HuffPo has an article that looks at U.S. citizens willingness to attack civilian targets as compared to rates of acceptance in Muslim countries.

If we're engaged in a "fight for the future of civilization" against Islam, can we be sure we're on the pro-civilization side? That's the question raised by a new poll from Terror Free Tomorrow, which concludes that "Americans are more approving of terrorist attacks against civilians than any major Muslim country except for Nigeria."

This result is disturbing, but not necessarily surprising when one looks at the actions of U.S. Presidents from Johnson (who escalated the war in Vietnam) to the words of GWB and Cheney who do not even seem to recognize the idea of a civilian in the war on terror. In the war on terror, you are either a good person or evil. Civilians need not apply.

Americans remained obsessed with stupid TV shows like 24 which probably inform their geopolitical choices more than rational thought or knowledge of history. To be clear: 24 is a bullshit show that endorses the use of terror in absurd situations that never occur. Significant numbers of Americans want to reserve torture for the ticking time bomb scenario - which is what 24 is essentially premised upon (I have heard anyway, I'm not going to waste my time watching violent porn when I could watch sexy porn).

Ticking time bomb scenarios DO NOT HAPPEN outside of Hollywood. Ask any anti-terror expert and they will tell you that such situations simply do not happen. The tools needed to fight terrorism effectively have nothing to do with the last hour before a strike. It has everything to do with the months to years that go into planning such attacks and responding effectively immediately after attacks.

By focusing Americans so intently on situations which do not happen, Fox weakens our security and misleads millions of Americans who appear ignorant to the fact that even though they know the show is fake, it influences their perceptions of terror and Muslims.

It is long past time that we make policies on rational choice - we now know what happens when we allow partisan zealots who are unswayed by facts to make policy. We get stuck in Iraq and aid the recruitment of our enemies. Thank you Bush, and thank you U.S. citizens who vote from the gut.

This Secretary of State is either totally ignorant or convinced everyone else is. She, like many others recently, have made claims about the Bush Administration's policies in the Middle East and how they compare to U.S. actions during World War II.

Keith Olbermann took them apart, bit by bit. This is an 8 minute video that you should watch if you want to be able to refute ignorant morons that want to compare what the U.S. is doing in Iraq to what the U.S. did in Germany after 1945.

I'm further incensed by the comparisons of Iranian President Ahmadinejad to Hitler by right wing fanatics such as Michael Savage. The Iranian President is a holocaust denier, which makes him an idiot and a bigot. Being an idiot and hating Jews does not make one Hitler.

To compare such a person to Hitler is harmful because it makes Hitler seems less destructive. Hitler's actions deliberately killed over 10 million people brutally. Iran's President is a stupid bigot. Hitler took the reins of massive war machine that nearly conquered two continents. Ahmadinejad is the President of a country sitting on the world's second largest oil reserves during years of record high oil prices and the economy over there blows.

Comparisons of the hate-filled bigot and Hitler do not make Ahmadinejad seem more evil. They only serve to tarnish the memory of the millions of people who died because of Hitler. I think it high time that we called out these people who want to compare everything to Hitler and force them to admit the folly of such statements.

Looks like James Cameron (of Titanic fame) has produced a documentary suggesting Jesus' body has been found outside Jerusalem.

"The Lost Tomb of Jesus," which the Discovery Channel will run on March 4, argues that 10 ancient ossuaries — small caskets used to store bones — discovered in a suburb of Jerusalem in 1980 may have contained the bones of Jesus and his family, according to a press release issued by the Discovery Channel.

While all this press is great for the viewership, I will be shocked if anything substantive comes about from it. This worries me:

n 1996, when the British Broadcasting Corp. aired a short documentary on the same subject, archaeologists challenged the claims. Amos Kloner, the first archaeologist to examine the site, said the idea fails to hold up by archaeological standards but makes for profitable television.

"They just want to get money for it," Kloner said.

Cameron said his critics should withhold comment until they see his film.

"I'm not a theologist. I'm not an archaeologist. I'm a documentary film maker," he said.

Frequently, but not always, experts are experts for a reason. Archaeologists spend years learning their craft and their opinions should be respected ... of course that is difficult when they disagree with each other.

Regardless, I'm more interested in what they say than what Cameron comes up with...

Accumulation - 10 inches or more maybe. Woohooo! Good medium weight snow to boot. Last week we had balmy high-40's that melted everything but mother nature corrected herself this weekend.

Had to drive in maybe 4 inches last night to shoot women gymnastics at the U. Photos of that to come. Did not have many problems because the roads were mostly deserted and I drive carefully.

We woke to heavy accumulation this morning. Jumped out and cleared the cars and driveway (we stacked 4 cars in it last night to make sure everyone was off the road) and took Harley for a walk to the bakery for bread (half mile away).

Nice drifts! Harley was enthusiastic briefly, then definitely annoyed by the snow. He would speed ahead of us on the plowed portions of sidewalk. Most of the sidewalks were not yet plowed. We were walking along Snelling Ave - a major road - and the plows had not hit any of the residential streets yet so crossing the streets perpendicular to Snelling was crazy. Super deep snow. We helped push one car out of it.

I was testing out my new Gore-Tex boots, hiking socks, and thin canvas Titanium (Columbia) pants. Good system. I stayed dry and warm after even an hour in the snow.

Harley tried not to drown. He was often dealing with snow that was 150% bigger than his own body. He hopped from boot track to boot track. We came home to an awesome breakfast prepared by Walchka.

The whites were blown out, but I grabbed a couple of photos before we came back inside for the morning...

What a yesterday. I got up earlyish to get some work done. Do some reading for school, bike to school for lab (it was just below freezing, so the roads weren't wet, which is nice), bike home (biking home from the U involves going up two huge hills), go climbing, get some more reading done, watch a movie with Kimmers, and spend another 3 hours doing my taxes. w00t.

School for Scoundrels with Billy Bob and Napoleon Dynamite was pretty entertaining. Billy wasn't as offensive as usual - which I found disappointing. But the movie put some grins on our faces.

Climbing was good as I climbed much stronger than I had on the last outing. I was climbing with a guy from one of my classes and a friend of his and they were pretty close to my ability so we generally all worked the same routes. I taught them a bit about crack climbing and they didn't laugh when my endurance flagged on the long leads.

I took a wicked fall on lead which means I fell about 10 feet down before the rope caught me. When you fall on lead, you tend to fall away from the wall. When the rope catches it takes all the downward momentum and converts it into lateral momentum, slamming you into the wall. I absorbed that with both feet. Mostly. My left ankle definitely took a pounding - it is probably the worst it felt since my surgery (1 year and 3 days ago at that point).

But today it isn't terrible so that is nice. Taking a fall like that is never really fun but it is nice because it makes you less afraid of taking little falls and reminds you of how safe you are. Besides, a 10 foot fall outside is nothing. Inside, it just seems more scary because you are on a 30-40 foot wall.

The upside of my evening was plowing through my taxes (which requires a cleaning of the desk to find all relevant receipts from the previous 4 months) and getting those mostly squared away. I came out better than I feared but I also discovered that Mac may have paid me twice for one invoice. Time to start keeping better records!

I notified Mac after a quick conscience check because it was a sizable amount of money and I sure would like that to invest in more equipment but I'd rather be honest. Besides, I could be wrong.

I also just put up a post on Energista about a small island in Denmark which has achieved energy independence. The article I reference is alright, but I particularly liked 2 quotes. One is on Energista and the I'll put the other here:

Well, hey, I point out as we sit in a pub overlooking the picturesque harbor, at least Ireland signed the Kyoto agreement. America can't even accept a cap on greenhouse-gas emissions. "True," he says, brightening. But then Anthony McCarthy, an energy consultant from County Wexford, pipes in: "If Americans get serious about alternative energy, they will fucking pass everybody." He peers deep into his Carlsberg. "That is the beauty of America."

Ed Abbey:

Spartacus, like Jesus, was also crucified by the Romans. And for equally good reasons.

The Pioneer Press has more details about potential development along the central corridor with the development of light rail between St. Paul and Minneapolis.

I have been considering the loop idea, which I have previously supported but after reading more I have changed my position.

A single set of tracks could pose problems if there is a problem or breakdown. Also, it would mess up the transit station they plan to develop and people wanting to travel the loop will have to wait for awhile at one station while the train waits to start up again - on schedule.

I like this option:

Other big changes could be in the works. The plan looks at replacing the Sears store at 425 Rice St., located on a large swath of land near the state Capitol. In its place is a densely populated village that anchors revitalization in the area of Rice Street and University Avenue. The site could accommodate 1,000 to 1,300 housing units and 500,000 square feet of commercial space, while spawning as many as 2,500 new jobs, the report notes.

Has the Bush Administration created more terrorists via the war in Iraq? My gut says yes although there have been no good metrics to quantitatively answer that question. Until now, thanks to Mother Jones.

Our study shows that the Iraq War has generated a stunning sevenfold increase in the yearly rate of fatal jihadist attacks, amounting to literally hundreds of additional terrorist attacks and thousands of civilian lives lost; even when terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan is excluded, fatal attacks in the rest of the world have increased by more than one-third.

We are not making the argument that without the Iraq War, jihadist terrorism would not exist, but our study shows that the Iraq conflict has greatly increased the spread of the Al Qaeda ideological virus, as shown by a rising number of terrorist attacks in the past three years from London to Kabul, and from Madrid to the Red Sea.

Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank have used a massive terrorism database to show terrorism has increased sevenfold since 2003 - when Bush chose to invade Iraq with the support of the U.S. Congress and most Americans.

I have not yet had a chance to look at this in depth, but hope to do so this weekend. I expect it will be high-quality journalism though because Mother Jones has been doing great work lately. This is all the more reason to support them with a donation or subscription to the magazine (or both!). Investigative journalism is crucial to maintaining a proper open society and few can hold a candle to MJ right now on that front.

In this litigious society, I stumbled across a great story. For those who are not familiar with Second Life, it is a web site that essentially simulates real life. People create avatars which live in this virtual world. Actual Fortune 500 companies are starting to employ people to run their companies in this virtual world.

It is a pretty big deal.

Big deals attract attention. So some dude created a parody site called getafirstlife.com. That is pretty funny.

However, that site lampoons a registered trademark. Companies rarely appreciate that. Getafirstlife.com actually invites "cease and desist letters." So Linden Labs, holder of the copyright, commented on his blog. This is pretty hilarious.

In part,

We do not believe that reasonable people would argue as to whether the website located at http://www.getafirstlife.com/ constitutes parody – it clearly is. Linden Lab is well known among its customers and in the general business community as a company with enlightened and well-informed views regarding intellectual property rights, including the fair use doctrine, open source licensing, and other principles that support creativity and self-expression. We know parody when we see it.

Moreover, Linden Lab objects to any implication that it would employ lawyers incapable of distinguishing such obvious parody. Indeed, any competent attorney is well aware that the outcome of sending a cease-and-desist letter regarding a parody is only to draw more attention to such parody, and to invite public scorn and ridicule of the humor-impaired legal counsel. Linden Lab is well-known for having strict hiring standards, including a requirement for having a sense of humor, from which our lawyers receive no exception.

In conclusion, your invitation to submit a cease-and-desist letter is hereby rejected.