Patrick M Brennan

Cruisin' with Falafel Bill

2005-06-07T17:00:00.000-04:00

When I think of Caribbean fun, I think of Bill O'Reilly.

That's why I'm really disappointed to discover that the Caribbean cruise with Bill O'Reilly has been cancelled for lack of bookings.

I can't imagine why. I mean, really, ask yourself: Who would you really rather be on a cruise boat with, than a loudmouth obnoxious control freak, boor and serial sexual harasser? It's like being stuck in an elevator with this guy, and he's yelling, "Shut up! Shut up! Shut UP!" Or else he's whispering in your ear, "once people get into that hot weather they shed their inhibitions, you know they drink during the day, they lay there and lazy [sic], they have dinner and then they come back and fool around..." For a week. And you're seasick.

Fun, huh?

The Thin Red-Blue Line

2005-05-31T16:39:00.000-04:00

Apparently, it's called "median income".

One Million Losers

2005-05-26T22:52:00.000-04:00

I saw this in the convenience store today:

"Lottery: It may change your life." (As in: it will make you poorer.)

Above the register, it says, "Chance of a Winfall: HIGH. Don't forget to play!"

Also helpfully posted near the register: "ATTENTION LOTTERY PLAYERS: Help is available for you or someone you know who has a gambling problem."

(I think anyone who believes they stand a "HIGH" chance of winning the lottery has a gambling problem. Or else they're high.)

I took a crack at writing my own lottery slogans.

"Baffled by MATH? Play the LOTTERY!"
Or
"The LOTTERY: The only place where a one-in-a-million chance is considered high!"
Or maybe:
"The LOTTERY: it takes one million losers to make one winner."

These Are The New Rules

2005-05-22T19:19:00.000-04:00

The flood didn't stop while we were away from the house. When we returned from the hospital, my wife and I found a stuffed mailbox, and a significant proportion of that was made up of offers from credit card companies. We get offers addressed to me, we get offers addressed to her, and we get offers addressed to some person who has exactly the same first name, last name, address and credit history as my wife, but a different middle initial.

Now, I don't know about your house, but in ours, we have clearly defined gender roles, and that means I dispose of the credit card solicitations. (Here's a hint: we don't need any more credit cards. We're doing our best to get out of the debt we already have, as we're being eaten alive by interest charges.) I used to just tear the solicitation letters up and throw them away, but in our town, we have to pay for every bag of trash we put out to the curb. It doesn't seem fair to me that I should pay for the credit card companies to keep offering me something I don't want. Therefore, I have adopted the vastly more amusing tactic of cutting up the offer letter into tiny pieces, stuffing it into the postage-paid envelope, and mailing it back to them. Let them pay for postage and for someone to open it and process it; maybe someday they will take the hint! (Yes, I know, they can't very well figure out who it came from, so they can't take us off their lists by this criterion. I kind of like it that way.)

One of the offers in our latest batch, however, really caught my eye, just as I was about to put the scissors to it. This one was festooned with the United Airlines logo, and was offering a Visa card tied-in to United's frequent flyer program.

Wait a minute: Is that really United Airlines offering a credit card? United Airlines? What's going on here?

United Airlines, you may recall, was recently allowed to default on its pension fund under the terms of its bankruptcy. The pensioners will see their benefits cut by more than half, and those benefits won't even be paid by United. That will be done on the taxpayer's dime. In other words, you and I, the ordinary taxpaying public, are now assuming billions of dollars' worth of promises that United Airlines made. This will be the largest corporate-pension default in US history. (For now. Now that this smooth move has been given the green light, expect it from every mega-corporation saddled with a pension fund it would prefer to forget, starting with all the other airlines.) And yet, even though they need the court to shield them from their creditors, they have the wherewithal to plaster the country with credit card solicitations.

Isn't that great? United Airlines, filing for bankruptcy protection, gets to stiff a whole bunch of people it had promised to pay. At the same time, thanks to the noxious bankruptcy bill recently rammed through Congress, this is exactly what you and me and United's employees and retirees are now expressly forbidden to do, even when we get in over our heads and are forced to declare bankruptcy. A lot of United's retirees are going to be forced into bankruptcy themselves by this event, since many of them will no longer be able to afford their bills when their pensions are cut by 50% or more. Yet, these people will not have the option of going into any kind of meaningful bankruptcy protection. Hooray for Republican hegemony as they force-march us all into debt slavery!

As the bankruptcy bill was being pushed through a Congress bought and paid for by the banks and the credit card companies, its champions repeated the endless refrain: "people should pay their debts." Well, sure. That's just good old-fashioned common sense. We can all agree on that. People should pay their debts, and they shouldn't be able to discharge those debts except under extraordinary circumstances.

But if you aren't careful with how the Republicans use words, you might have only heard what they said, not what they meant. See, when they said, "people should pay their debts," you might have thought they meant that everyone, everywhere, in all circumstances, should honor the promises they make. And if that's what you heard, good for you: you are a very good, right-thinking American. And you're also wrong.

See, these are the new rules. When people make promises to large, well-connected corporations, those promises must be kept at all costs. On the other hand, when large, well-connected corporations make promises to ordinary people, those promises can be broken at will. If you don't think this will affect you ... just wait.

In the meantime, your friendly neighborhood Congress has some advice for you: don't get sick. Don't get laid off. Don't get divorced. Don't let anyone in your family get sick. Don't let your employer steal your pension. And on top of everything else, don't get behind on your monthly interest payments. The payments are more important than your food, your rent, your medical bills, or anything else. After all, there are a lot of K Street lobbyists who want that money. They are depending on you. And they're not about to let you let them down.

PS: Tired of the bullshit? Join the Plastic Revolution - http://www.plasticrevolution.org/

Twinkle Indeed

2005-05-19T23:26:00.000-04:00

My wife was trying to calm down our infant daughter a few nights ago, and she was walking around with the baby, singing to her. She thought I was asleep, and she was singing:

Twinkle twinkle little star
How I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high
Like a diamond in the sky
Twinkle twinkle little star
How I wonder what you are.

What a lame song, I thought, and I picked up the next verse, singing my own version of the song, surprising my wife.

We know you're a ball of gas
Held in tight by gravity,
Excited to incandescense by
Nuclear fusion in your core.

You are very far away,
And your light takes many years
To reach the people down on earth,
Where we watch you twinkling.

Which incidentally is caused
By turbulence up in our air,
Which differentially refracts
The light you're shining down on us.

Our Sun is a star like you
Which our earth is circling.
Lots of planets have been found
Orbiting stars just like you.
Twinkle twinkle little star
Now I know just what you are.

I think I'll keep cleaning this one up and adding to it in anticipation of teaching it to my daughter. In the meantime I'll settle for having made my wife laugh so hard she had to set the baby down.

Zoe

2005-05-15T22:01:00.000-04:00

This is me and my brand-new daughter.

BillG: What, Me Worry?

2005-05-09T14:45:00.000-04:00

"I played around with [Firefox] a bit, but it's just another browser, and [Microsoft's Internet Explorer] is better .... So much software gets downloaded all the time, but do people actually use it?"
-- Bill Gates, quoted on the BBC

Google Ubiquity

2005-05-09T10:35:00.000-04:00

How did this happen so fast?

I use a lot of different bits of software on a daily basis. The heavyweights in my software universe -- the companies that supply a hefty percentage of that software -- are Microsoft, Macromedia, Adobe, Palm, Mozilla, OpenOffice, and WordPerfect (Yes, WordPerfect). I run their applications every single day.

This lineup has a new member lately: Google. I have suddenly found myself in the position of using a lot of Google software, and doing so on a daily basis. Of course I've been using Google for search for a long time (who doesn't?), and I've been using Blogger for a couple of years; but it's only been in the past couple of months that I really incorporated Google into my daily routine, with a new Gmail account, Picasa and Google Desktop Search. I just never noticed until now that I'm running a lot of Google software.

Why shouldn't I run a lot of Google software? It's always high-quality, and it's usually free (although Gmail and Google Search are both laden with advertising). What has surprised me is the sudden ubiquity of Google in my life. Since I'm not a reflexive upgrader, I am usually behind the curve on these things. Based on that fact, I'm guessing that Google has achieved a similar ubiquity in a lot of other people's lives.

Another indicator that Google has grown up: Bill Gates is bothered by Google. He'd like to do to Google what Microsoft has done to countless other entities in the past. I mean, take a look at my list again (except for Microsoft): Macromedia, Adobe, Palm, Mozilla (standing in for Netscape), OpenOffice, and WordPerfect. It's a Microsoft hit list. They've all been beaten and bruised by Microsoft; some of them driven out of business by Microsoft. Most of them made technically superior products, but were routed because Microsoft could leverage its Windows monopoly against them and "cut off their oxygen". (The only reason Mozilla and OpenOffice are still around is that their products are offered for free.) Google, with its own free and web-based products, will be much harder for Microsoft to compete against. It will be interesting to see what happens as these two square off against each other.

I expect to keep using Google software for a long time to come. Whether this will be a good thing or a bad thing, I can't say just yet. In the meantime, it is great software.

I Hope We're Not Headed To War In Iraq

2005-05-06T16:32:00.000-04:00

You said we're headed to war in Iraq -- I don't know why you say that. I hope we're not headed to war in Iraq. I'm the person who gets to decide,not you.
-- George W. Bush, moral coward, Crawford, Texas, Dec. 31, 2002 (audio)

When he said these words, he'd long since decided to have a war in Iraq. More evidence of that surfaced on Sunday, when the Times of London revealed that Tony Blair had already pledged British support for the war in April 2002. For the Republicans and other math-challenged reading this, that's at least 8 months before Bush claimed that "I hope we're not headed to war in Iraq." He said that with a straight face, but I bet he was snickering on the inside, because he had been planning to invade Iraq since at least April 2002. Some people say the planning went back to January 2001.

In Britain, Tony Blair is in a little bit of trouble because the independent media over there are revealing that he was telling his public that he had no plans to attack Iraq, even though the decision had long since been made. In America, where there is no independent media to speak of, it's not even a story. So your president is a big fat liar? Yawn. That is so 2002. Nothing to see here, folks -- oh, look, runaway bride!

PS: Why is Bush a moral coward? It's not just that he's a liar. It's that he won't even tell the truth for policies he supports. Rather than stand up for the things he wants, and face the consequences, he prefers to let other people do that for him. See Josh Marshall's excellent analysis of this brand of cowardice.

Saving Throw Against Stupid Ad Copy

2005-05-05T07:54:00.000-04:00

Dice has pretty much fixed their embarassingly bad ads for tech jobs. I can't find a whole lot wrong here, because they've finally quit trying to write an ad that's supposed to read like code. See: they're writing comments in the code instead! (Clearly, Dice has received the recent memo that Comments Are More Important Than Code. In any case, comments always compile.) And find_great_jobs() is a perfectly respectable function call. But ... isn't that an unbalanced brace at the end? Or is the matching brace just somewhere up beyond the top edge of the ad? I guess we'll never know...

The Retail Alphabet

2005-05-04T17:15:00.000-04:00

The Retail Alphabet is a fun little diversion. Twenty-six letters are presented by each separate puzzle (there are four of them at the time of this writing). They are all lifted from various trademarks and logos you see every day. Your task is to identify the company or product associated with each. The letters are presented out of their familiar context, so it's a challenge.

It's all a bit of harmless fun, but while you're playing this, try to compare the number of corporate logos you can easily identify to the number of birds or leaves you can easily identify. What does that say about us?

For a related bit of fun, have a look at this bit of satire. (Satire, yes, but more true every day.)

The Iraq War in 30 Seconds

2005-05-03T21:42:00.000-04:00

The Iraq War in 30 Seconds is a cool Flash movie giving a British perspective on the Iraq War. Sums it up pretty well, and it's entertaining, too!

Is the United States Winning in Iraq?

2005-04-29T14:24:00.000-04:00

"Winning or losing is not the issue for 'we,' in my view, in the traditional conventional context of using the word winning and losing and of war."
- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Yes, he actually said that, and he said that in response to the simple question: "Is the United States winning in Iraq?"

See: they're just words. Words can mean whatever you want them to mean, you know? Whatever you define them to be.

(Has anyone sicced Cardinal Ratzinger on this guy? Cause he's sounding more and more like a relativist to me.)

Anyway, if Don Rumsfeld can play games with the meanings of words, so can I.

So if you define "the United States" to mean "the current administration in Washington";
and if you define "in Iraq" to mean "about the war in Iraq or its planning and execution";
and if you define "winning" to mean "lying";

...then YES! The United States is winning in Iraq!

Makes me proud to be an American.

How Do You Plan To Live Forever?

2005-04-27T13:13:00.000-04:00

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying. -- Woody Allen

Everyone thinks about their mortality. Probably, everyone thinks about how to transcend it. There sure are plenty of ideas out there, as there have been for thousands of years (many of them have plenty of currency today). Of course I've been thinking about this because my wife and I are about to participate in the single most popular mode of achieving immortality, that is, we're about to have a child.

I don't want to get specific in this post, though, because I want to do something a little different with this post. I want to solicit your opinion this time out. Since everyone brings their own assumptions to the question, I don't want to prejudice your answers.

So: How do you plan to live forever?

Feel free to interpret the question as you like. Consider it as a spiritual problem, a philosophical problem, a metaphysical problem, or even a biological problem. Everybody has something to say about immortality, especially their own.

Post anonymously if you like, but please post. I will follow up in a later post, though I can't promise how much later, because baby is due any day now.

Just What Was Gannon/Guckert Doing?

2005-04-26T12:07:00.000-04:00

It seems Jeff Gannon, aka James Guckert, aka Bulldog, aka "Only a top", was in and out of the White House a lot. And the Secret Service wasn't keeping very good track of his goings and comings. He seems to have been admitted to the White House on several occasions when there was no press briefing, which begs the question: just what was he doing there, and for whom?

I mean, let's not forget that the guy is a whore. Not figuratively. He is literally a prostitute who has sex with other men for money. He says that's all in his past, but you know, wouldn't anyone claim that? And given that he's been caught in an extensive net of lies, why should we believe him anyway?

So, once again, what was this "aggressive top" doing at the White House, with such sloppy record-keeping applied to him?

"On several of these visits, Guckert either entered or exited by a different entry/exit point than his usual one."

It's just sooooo easy to turn that into a cheap and gratuitous joke. Good thing I don't have to -- you thought of it yourself. You have a really filthy mind, don't you?

Anybody See A War Around Here?

2005-04-25T17:10:00.000-04:00

You might have missed it, if you weren't looking. Another couple of servicemen were killed in Iraq this weekend.

Did you read that? See it on the news?

That's in addition to the 24 dead and 58 wounded after four car bombings in Baghdad and Tikrit. In general, the level of violence in Iraq seems to be back on the increase. And in other news, George W. Bush just got Congress to pony up another $80 billion (borrowed money, of course) to finance the war and occupation. Remember when he promised this occupation would fund itself? Oh, never mind. And so, the numbers just keep climbing: 1,571 killed and 11,888 wounded, and financial costs of approximately $300 billion. (I'm expecting the Congress to rubberstamp this request, just like it always does.)

Hey, did you hear? We're Still At War! In fact, we're kinda losing it!

Was this news on the front page of any newspaper? Did it lead any newscasts? It wasn't even easy to find on the Internet.

Did you catch those great "elections" in Iraq back in January? It's been three months since then. Let me ask you a few questions about those great elections. Who ran for office? Who won? Who were you rooting for? Do you even know? Do you even care?

And now, three months after these great elections, this Glorious Victory for Democracy, where's the government? The fact is, they still haven't formed a government -- three months after elections!

(If you're still keeping score at home, 127 American service members have been killed and 1,118 wounded while we've been waiting for the Iraqis to form a government.)

Who's driving this clown car? Oh, wait: I already know.

We're now two years into the Second Bush War. It's been two years since "Mission Accomplished," and we're still bleeding over Iraq, literally as well as figuratively, blood and red ink in alarming volumes, and I'm still sitting here wondering just what the fuck was the reason to get us into this mess again?

And while I'm wondering that, it seems like the Iraq War has disappeared from the national news. Why do you suppose that is?

Have we just become numb to the steady drip-drip-drip of American and Iraqi deaths? Or has the news been squelched by the media, reduced to the minimum volume necessary so that they can still say with a straight face, "we covered it -- now move along"?

Well, on the one hand, broadcasting quagmire and failure is bad politics: it reflects badly on the liar and fool who got us into this mess, who is well-known to be nasty and vindictive to those who are seen to disagree with him or his party. We have abundant evidence that the mainstream media are either on the Republicans' side already (e.g. Fox News) or have been effectively bullied into meek submission to the Republican agenda (e.g. CNN). On the other hand, quagmire and failure is a real bummer: it just doesn't sell advertising, a lot of which is incidentally bought by Republican companies.

And so, it makes all kinds of sense that we have a steady turn-down of the news from Iraq. Slowly it is scrubbed from the news, and the air minutes and the column inches are fed a different diet. Instead of hearing about anything which actually has any bearing on our lives, the newscasts are led by Scott Peterson, then Robert Blake, then Michael Jackson, then Terri Schiavo, then John Paul II, then Charles and Camilla, then Michael Jackson again, then ~~Cardinal Ratzinger~~ Pope Benedict XVI ... Who's next? Who cares, as long as the public is sufficiently distracted?

And on and on and on it goes, while somewhere, in a far-off land, another American lies bleeding to death in the street. While you're watching Fox News tonight, his body will be secretly conveyed under cover of darkness back to the United States, safely shielded from any media attention, and he will be quietly buried and forgotten. His government, so eager to get into this war and now with no fucking clue how to win it or otherwise disengage, is keen to just forget the whole thing, and hopes that you will want to just forget it as well.

I guess it's just the Patriotic Thing to Do.

Trapped Inside ... Something ...

2005-04-23T15:48:00.000-04:00

Last week, I had a short play of mine performed in a festival in New York. The festival producers had asked me to supply a short bio for the program, and I sent them something which began like this:

Patrick M Brennan is a playwright trapped inside the body of a computer programmer...

I think that's a pretty good joke. At least it's a not-bad joke. All right, it's a joke!

Anyway, when I went to see a performance of the festival, this is what was written in the program:

Patrick M Brennan is trapped inside a computer programmer...

ummm... What?!? I'm trapped inside a computer programmer? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? They took my joke and they turned it into a confusing non-sequitur. Thank You! I'm sure that made a terrific impression on the audience!

See, I'm a writer. I think about the words I'm writing. Even when I write a bio, I'm careful about my words. Words are all I have. Screwing up an actor's bio would be bad, but not nearly as bad as screwing up a writer's bio.

Anyway, of course I know they didn't do it on purpose. Someone clearly typed my bio into the document for the program, and made an honest mistake.

Since I sent the bio to them over email, however, it kind of baffles me that Copy and Paste seems beyond their comprehension ...
(as does actual proofreading ...)

No, it's OK. I'm over it now. Really. I didn't even mention it to them. I only blogged it for the whole world to see!

No, really, it's OK. The medication will kick in any moment now ... really.

(mumbling to self:) "trapped inside a computer programmer." Oh, hey, that's a great joke. Yeah.

Adobe and Macromedia

2005-04-20T14:33:00.000-04:00

That was a bolt out of the blue! Taking a train back to Boston from New York, I picked up a newspaper and learned that my two favorite companies have decided to get married! How exciting!

The past five years of my professional life have been dominated by Adobe and Macromedia. When I was working for Adobe, I was helping to build LiveMotion, and directly competing against Macromedia's Flash. I have spent the past three years with Convoq, developing a client application in Flash, and Adobe has been less of an issue in my life. I don't know how the merger will affect the direction of our product, but I've always considered Adobe to be a very well-run company, so I'm not really worried. Besides, with a baby on the way and another release of my own company's application to get out the door, I've got bigger fish to fry.

That doesn't mean I don't wish I'd bought some Macromedia stock, as I'm sure this guy did.

Top Ten Reasons Captain Kirk is Still Better Than Captain Picard

2005-03-30T16:23:00.000-05:00

10. Kirk jostles better when the Enterprise is hit.

9. Kirk doesn't have some kind of foofy accent.

8. Kirk rips his shirt at the drop of a hat. Picard keeps pulling his shirt down, as it keeps riding up, and that really bothers him. (What is he hiding?)

7. Kirk : Screw the Prime Directive, let's kill something!

6. Picard delegates the landing parties to his first officer; Kirk insists on doing it himself.

5. Picard delegates the overacting to his first officer; Kirk insists on doing it himself.

4. Kirk drinks coffee ; Picard drinks tea. 'Nuff said.

3. Kirk makes sure to show all the alien babes the "Captain's Log".

2. Kirk: Red-blooded American. Picard: French? British? We're not really sure, but it's definitely suspicious.

1. Kirk: not afraid to wear a rug.

My Living Will

2005-03-23T13:42:00.000-05:00

Boy, if there's anything we should learn from the Terri Schiavo case, it's that we should all make living wills. Believe me, I've learned my lesson, and I decided that the best way to make sure that my living will is honored is to post it on the web. (That way, there won't be any doubt as to its authenticity.) So here goes:

LIVING WILL
I, Patrick M Brennan, being of sound mind and body, do affirm and declare that this is my LIVING WILL, and reflects my decisions regarding my care in the event of a medical condition which renders me incapable of making informed decisions for myself. I make this declaration of my own free will, without any force or coercion whatsoever.

IF, in the judgment of my physician, I am suffering from an irreversible condition so that I cannot care for myself or make decisions for myself and am expected to die without life-sustaining treatment provided in accordance with prevailing standards of care:

(a) I would very much like my breathing yet mindless body, the bag of reflexes which I have become, to be reduced to being a political football, to be kicked around the media by the likes of Tom DeLay and Randall Terry in the pursuit of a cheap political stunt which ensures them a few days' worth of headlines;

(b) I definitely do not want my spouse to be making any decisions for me whatsoever; I think that's best left to my parents. After all, once upon a time, when I was capable of exercising my own free will, I chose of that selfsame free will to spend the rest of my life with my spouse, and I have only spent years sharing my home and my bed with her. Therefore, clearly, not only do I share none of my religious, moral, and ethical values with my spouse, but she also knows nothing about my religious, moral, and ethical values. My parents, on the other hand, who visited our home on holidays and weekends, and with whom we occasionally have spoken on the phone, know all about my values, which is why they wish to impose their values on my decision regarding how I control the end of my life. Therefore, they should have the final say, not my spouse.

(c) Speaking of my spouse, if I were somehow capable of receiving and integrating outside stimuli and understanding what was going on around me, it would please me immensely to watch on live television as my spouse's name is repeatedly dragged through the mud in the House of Representatives by crass and opportunistic politicians, simply for attempting to fulfill what she perceives to be my wishes and my best interest.

(d) I'd also like someone to explain to my spouse exactly what she's doing wrong. Apparently, she didn't realize that when the Republican Party claims to be the party of getting government off the backs of the people, they weren't talking about gravely personal decisions within a family. When it's an industrial plant, owned by Republican donors, belching tons of toxic filth into the air and water, that's a private matter, and the government should get off those donors' backs. When it's my family, struggling to come to terms with my basic wishes regarding the end of my life, that's where government belongs.

(e) And I'd really love it if somebody could make sure that there are boatloads of creepy anti-abortion protesters hanging around outside my hospital room, especially if they could harass my spouse as she is coming to visit me. That's because it's not bad enough that she's dealing with my illness and impending death -- she should be hounded by crazy fundies with their own agenda who claim to be "pro-life" but who literally couldn't care whether I live or die.

(f) I'd be particularly pleased if the astronomical costs of my care placed a horrible burden of debt on my spouse, and if, thanks to the very same Republicans in the Congress, she would be utterly denied the ability to get out from under it. It would make my afterlife a real joy to know that she would lose our house, our savings, and all our property, literally everything we have worked together to build; and she would be reduced to a life of poverty, working only to pay off what she could of her debt burden, and that without our savings, our daughter would be deprived of any chance to ever receive a decent education, and therefore a way back into the middle class, which is where we were before I had my accident.

(g) Speaking of costs, I wouldn't want any of the burden of my illness to fall on the government. That's why I support the Texas law that George W. Bush signed when he was governor, allowing hospitals to overrule even the decisions of the family, and finally remove my feeding tube once there isn't any more money left to pay for my care. You see, once my spouse is finally bled dry by the costs of maintaining my breathing, bedsore-ridden carcass in a state of living death, I know that the Republican-dominated Congress, which just gutted Medicare and Medicaid, has ensured that there will be no money left; and given the choice between honoring their commitment to "life" and their commitment to tax cuts for their corporate friends, well, you know -- the TV cameras won't be running forever. Once they've been turned off, so will my life support. Finally.

(h) And of course, nothing would please me more than to have the whole sad saga of my family's suffering splayed across FOX News and talk radio as some cheap maudlin moralistic circus, as a feeding frenzy for the kind of bottom-feeding media types who need my story to sell advertising, and who will be on to the next soap opera in another couple of weeks.

Signed on the 23rd day of March, 2005, by my hand and seal:

/s/
Patrick M Brennan

Bits in Boston and New York

2005-03-21T21:51:00.000-05:00

What's the fastest, safest, cleanest, most efficient way to travel ever invented? And is it a good idea to buy one? That's the question Claude and Shannon are asking themselves, in my new ten-minute comedy Bits, which is having a performance in New York this April and a short run in Boston this May!

In New York, I'm very pleased to be returning to the American Globe Theater's 11th 15-Minute Play Festival, running April 18th-30th. (For information or ticket reservations call American Globe Theatre at 212-869-9809, or go to Theater Mania. Call early, they're always sold out!) I was at this festival two years ago, and it's one of the best venues I've ever played in. I'm pleased to note that Stacie Scaduto and Don Downie, the same actors who took Bits up in its last performance in New York, are performing at the American Globe.

In Boston, this will be my first time being part of the Devanaughn Theater's Dragonfly Festival, running May 5-22nd. (Go to Theater Mania for tickets.)

Each venue has a different cast and director, so I am particularly excited to see what different groups of people are able to find in this script. Besides that, these two festivals are absolutely worth the price of admission ($15 in both cases, I think).

The Basic Idea of Marriage Is to Raise Kids

2005-03-17T15:20:00.000-05:00

The basic idea of marriage is to raise kids. So says Fox News's John Gibson, and I agree with him wholeheartedly. He's got it exactly right. Marriage is for raising kids. That's why we don't allow anyone who is infertile to get married, birth control and single parenthood are illegal, you have to prove you're not married before getting a vasectomy or a hysterectomy, and divorce is compulsory once your children have grown up (and strictly prohibited beforehand).

Can you believe this moron got paid to write this column?

How the hell can I get a job like that?

No, No, Dice!

2005-03-17T12:18:00.002-05:00

Dice persists in posting bad code on their online ads!

Since their last ad, they've definitely improved, but good syntax doesn't mean their logic has gotten any better.

The ad still says, in plain English: "If you're salary isn't good, go to Dice.com. If your salary is good, suck it up."

What?

I thought "Suck it up" meant something like "endure pain bravely", or "be strong".

Maybe somebody knows an interpretation of "suck it up" that I'm not aware of. Maybe it means "good for you!" or "way to go!", or "guess you don't need Dice.com!"

I have a suggestion for their advertising folks:

if ((You.workFor("Dice.com") || You.haveAdClient("Dice.com"))&&(You.writeAdCopy()))
{
   You.stopTryingToWriteCode(please);
}

Why Graffiti 2 Sucks

2005-03-16T03:12:00.000-05:00

I have had a CLIE NX-80V for a few weeks now, ever since my last CLIE died on me. (It turned out it was only playing dead -- but it didn't rise from the grave until after I had the new machine in my hand.) Even though I knew that the NX-80V was an excellent machine in nearly all respects, I had resisted upgrading for a couple of years anyway, since I knew the NX-80V used Graffiti 2, and I feared that Graffiti 2 would be a disaster. My initial fears have proven sadly true. Graffiti 2 sucks. I tried really hard to adjust, to unlearn eight years of Graffiti and relearn the new system, and although it doesn't suck as badly as I thought at first, it's still bad enough that I had to finally find an alternative.

I've been using Graffiti ever since 1997, and it only took me a couple of weeks to reach a plateau of proficiency at which it was really useful. For short pieces of information, i.e. phone numbers or email addresses, it was excellent; and in settings such as classes or business meetings, I could very nearly take decent notes with the thing. (I still prefer paper and pencil for free-form notes, because it's faster and less error-prone, plus it's less confining than ASCII text -- I can draw diagrams, for example. At the same time, it's always nice not to have to type up my notes -- because they're already typed.)

That was all with the original Graffiti. I find that with Graffiti 2, I can't achieve anywhere near the speed and low error rate I had with the original. The worse failure, however, is that with Graffiti 2, I am concentrating far less on the content I am entering, and far more on how to enter it, than I was used to.

Here are three examples of how much Graffiti 2 sucks:

Using Graffiti 2, it is common for me to attempt to enter a word ending in an L, followed by a space. Usually, this case ends up with a T at the end of my word. (Turning "the full effect", for example, into "the fulteffect".) This error is extremely common, occurring 90% of the time.

Graffiti 2 almost always (75%) renders my H's as N's.

I tried to enter someone's phone number, in which a group of digits began with a 1. What did I end up with? Not "999-999-1999"; I got "999-999+999".

These failures are representative, but they are only a subset of what I was seeing. Graffiti 2 is constantly frustrating. It sucks.

The original Graffiti isn't just single-stroke, it's stateless, meaning that when I'm making a stroke, I don't have to think about what my last stroke is. Each stroke uniquely maps to a character. If Graffiti 2 was stateless, if, for example, a left-to-right stroke was only ever the horizontal line on the T, then it would be OK. But sometimes, when I draw a vertical followed by horizontal, I mean "T", and sometimes I mean "L-space", and so I have to think more carefully about what I'm doing. I have to remind myself, "I just drew an L. Now I either have to wait a second before entering my space, or I have to draw my line down on the bottom of the Graffiti entry area". But I only want to be thinking about the text I'm entering, not how to enter it. With Graffiti, I didn't have to think about it. With Graffiti 2, I do. Therefore, Graffiti 2 sucks.

Why does Graffiti 2 suck so bad? Based on its name, you might expect that Graffiti 2 is the second revision of Graffiti, with improved functionality and more features. If that's what you thought, you'd be wrong. Graffiti 2 is a direct result not of any engineering or marketing decisions, but of a court decision that the original Graffiti infringed on a patented Xerox technology called Unistrokes. I don't know a lot about the lawsuit, but apparently the court decided that Graffiti infringed Unistrokes precisely because of its one-to-one correspondence between a single stroke and a character. Therefore, Graffiti 2 is pretty much a crippled Graffiti, crippled just enough that it doesn't infringe on Unistrokes.

(To be precise, Graffiti 2 is a slightly modified version of CIC's Jot, itself created to sidestep the Unistrokes patent. The effect is the same. Jot had been trying to supplant Graffiti for years without much success. Now they have succeeded.)

Now, I know Palm didn't want to foist this garbage on me intentionally, but they did try to put lipstick on this pig by claiming that Graffiti 2 is "easier to learn", "more natural and intuitive" than Graffiti, but that's baloney. If it was really easier to learn, I'd have achieved a similar level of proficiency with it by now. Instead, I'm far behind where I was at the same point in learning Graffiti.

Graffiti 2 isn't all bad. To be fair, its design has some good points. I like Graffiti 2's "a" and "e", for example, and using the middle of the writing area for capitals is a good idea. The trouble is that its good points don't go anywhere near outweighing its deficiencies. And the deficiencies are all in the state-bound nature of the system. It's like any other aspect of product design: good design gets out of your way and lets you concentrate on what you're trying to accomplish. Bad design forces you to think about details of how the machine works, details which are irrelevant to your task.

Fortunately, there are alternatives. For example, I could always switch to using one of the way-hot Xerox PDAs, using Unistrokes.

Oh, wait. There's no such thing as a Xerox PDA, with or without Unistrokes; and there never has been. (Clearly, Xerox loves to develop technology that it never sells; and then it gets mad when somebody else successfully brings something similar to market.)

Since I do have a Sony CLIE, I can use the built-in keyboard, or one of two (two!) on-screen keyboards.

Another alternative, built into the NX-80V, is a system called Decuma, which is definitely very cool. This is a good high-resolution handwriting recognition system which isn't as fast as Graffiti, but it is more fun to use. I use it occasionally, and I can see how someone might use it as their primary means of entering text. Check it out and try it.

For a really good solution to this problem, however, what I really needed was to be able to install the original Graffiti on my new handheld. Fortunately, a little desperate digging produced a procedure for accomplishing just that, provided I had a Palm handheld with Graffiti already installed; and fortunately, I had one at hand: my CLIE NX-70V, the rumors of whose demise had been exaggerated. The procedure was easily followed, and worked exactly as advertised.

Now, I have a late-model CLIE with the original Graffiti installed, and it's great. And that's the way I'm going to keep it, until Xerox sues me.

More Car Than You Know How to Drive

2005-03-15T11:44:00.000-05:00

I've always had a problem with SUVs. They're too big, they're too expensive, and they get lousy gas mileage. Although there are lots of legitimate reasons to own a truck, most people who buy SUVs don't need them, and only buy them for their status value. "Look, I can afford this!" (Yeah, well probably you're overextended.) Plus, people don't seem to modify their driving habits when they buy SUVs, so behavior which is just dumb in a car becomes positively dangerous. People drive their SUVs too fast in all kinds of weather, they follow other cars way too closely, and they don't know how to maneuver their trucks in tight corners.

Of course, it's none of my business what anyone else drives. You know? I'm drive-and-let-drive. If you want to spend more money than you can really afford to buy more car than you know how to drive, hey, that's what you want to do. It's dumb, but it's none of my business.

But then you had to go and rear-end my pregnant wife's car with your giant gas-sucking monstrosity! I think that's when it becomes my business.

My wife was flung forward in the collision, crushing our unborn child between her and her steering wheel. She was rushed to an emergency room, where I met her, and we spent an anxious day in the hospital, getting tests done and monitoring the baby to ensure that she wasn't hurt ... though of course we won't know for sure until she's born. In the meantime, my wife began having serious contractions, and the doctors had to give her body a pharmacological reminder that baby's not ready yet. It was a difficult and stressful day for both of us. Needless to say, neither one of us made it into the office that day.

I feel very confident that right after you nearly killed my wife and my daughter, you got to your office only a little late. You probably resented the imposition of having to talk to the police.

You claimed that there was ice on the road. This was on the second clear and sunny morning after a light snowfall. I don't think there was any ice on the road; there wasn't any when I visited the site later that evening. So what does that say about you? Well, what does an SUV say about almost anyone? You just hit a pregnant woman, and what are you worried about? You're worried about whether someone's going to actually demand any accountability from you.

Look, I think you just weren't paying attention. That's not an evil thing in of itself, but for God's sake, how can you not be paying attention when you're driving a 3,000 pound Deathmobile? It's irresponsible, is what it is. You have more car than you know how to drive.

You could kill somebody with that thing! And you don't seem to care about that. Idiot!

PS: Here's a timely link about the false economics of owning an SUV. It's not (usually) a rational choice, but I'm not pretending people buy SUVs for rational reasons.

The Importance of Earnest Music

2005-03-12T21:41:00.000-05:00

My wife and I went to the first day of childbirthing class this morning, where among other things, my wife is supposed to learn some techniques to help her relax. In order to put everyone in the proper frame of mind, the instructor had set up a CD player to play relaxing music for the expecting couples. Which by itself, I don't have a problem with. I like to relax. I like it when my wife relaxes. And she's going to have to get good at it by the time she goes into labor.

But you know what? We don't get relaxed by any chimey-ass New Age music. When we came into the classroom, the CD player was playing something consisting of harp accompanied by pan flute. You know, yoga music, or upmarket massage music. Or downmarket massage music, for all I know. The kind of music that is usually accompanied by incense, and although it was very, very earnest, it was not soothing. It was, in fact, a little irritating. Plus, as this was the beginning of the day, we were wondering just what we had wandered into. As the harp finished plinking out its intro, and the pan flute whistled out its first few notes, like a sad little Zamfir, my wife turned to me. And she asked, "What do you suppose the name of this song is?"

"The name of the song is: 'Pleeeeeeease'."

Stick Some Velcro on the Back of These And I'm Good To Go

2005-03-05T13:38:00.000-05:00

This is my cell phone. It's a Handspring Treo 300 running PalmOS 3.5. It's fun and easy to use, and since it's also a PalmOS device, it's convenient in lots of other ways (I'm not worried about losing my address book if I lost the phone, for example). I use it as my main email client when I'm traveling. I've noticed lately that I tend to use the speakerphone feature on this thing a lot, and I hold the phone in front of me as I speak. Then, when I'm done, I flip the cool lid down with a nice satisfying click.

This is my PDA. It's a Sony CLIE NX-80V running PalmOS 5.0. I've found it to be enormously useful in organizing my life. I keep my address book, my calendar, my to-do list, a calculator, a sketch pad, a web browser, another email client, and a notebook for writing. A lot of my work began life as a couple of paragraphs jotted down in the Palm Memo Pad. I haven't written a whole play on this thing yet, but I could if I needed to.

The coolest thing about this PDA, though, is that it's more than just a PDA. It's also a still photo camera, a movie recorder, and a voice recorder. Imagine that: it records three things...

I don't know if anyone's planning to come out with a phaser that runs PalmOS, but I'm pretty sure it'd be a very popular device, and I'd be right in line to get one if I could. I guess once I've started down that road, it's only a matter of time before I started wearing form-fitting shirts in bright primary colors and high-heeled black leather boots, so probably it's all for the best that no such product exists.

I don't think it's an accident that these things look like Star Trek gear. Or maybe the prop guys on Star Trek were just pretty good industrial designers. Either way, I can't open that Treo without wanting to ask Scotty to beam me up, and I can't open the CLIE without wanting to scan for lifeforms. If I had the PalmOS phaser, I guess I'd be looking for Klingons or malevolent computers to shoot, so again, it's probably all for the best that no such product exists.

"Temporarily Out of Service"

2005-03-03T23:43:00.000-05:00

At what point does it become more trouble than it's worth to own a computer? Or several? This is the question I've been asking myself after a rather hellish string of failures. In the space of a single week, my main computer checked out, my Sony CLIE fizzled, and my office Thinkpad came down with a bad case of Adware. In the process of restoring from these failures, I came dangerously close to the point of fundamentally questioning whether the investment of money, time and energy I put into these machines is really paying a worthwhile dividend.

Now consider. I have been a computer enthusiast for as long as I can remember. I have programmed computers for my entire adult life and my whole professional career. Not only do I have a lot of knowledge and experience regarding how to work around computer difficulties, I have also gained a certain level of immunity from computer frustration. Plus, I am fanatical about keeping my data backed up (and so far this week, I haven't lost any data), so I don't have any anxiety and frustration around that. But even with these provisions in place, the past week has been really trying. What do ordinary people do when they're faced with these issues?

I'm starting to think they just grin and bear it, until they can't take it anymore, and then they just bail. My father was so frustrated by the internet, for example, that he permanently disconnected from it, deciding that email and the web weren't worth the hassle of spam, viruses and pop-ups. He hasn't bailed on computers entirely, but I know that he is constantly experiencing inexplicable failures and weird behavior with his applications. He asks me about them –- a lot -– but he uses obscure programs which I am not familiar with (like Serif), and I rarely get a chance to sit down with him at his computer to see the behavior, so I can't help him much.

Another couple of friends of mine, after valiantly trying to make do in the Windows world, have decided to bail into the Macintosh world. Macs seem to cost more upfront, but apparently they are happier and less frustrated now. That's not really an option for me, not yet, but who knows? A couple more weeks like this one, and I might be tempted.

I thought my friends and my father were just outliers. I'm beginning to wonder about that now.

So what was my week like?

First to fail, naturally, was my main computer, the one I do most of my work at home with. I have a real love/hate relationship with this laptop, which I bought back in August 2004. When it works, it works great. It's fast, it's powerful, and it's very pretty. The trouble is that in the six months I've owned this machine, I have brought it back to the shop to be serviced four times, and it's been in the shop for a total of about a full month. The last time I brought it in, it was because I had plugged a USB device into the computer, only to watch it turn off like a light bulb. (No blue screen, no restarts, just –- pffft! -- dead.) It took the manufacturer a month to decide it wasn't worth repairing the motherboard, so they just sent me a new machine. This time, I plugged a USB device –- not the same device! -- into the computer, and promptly lost the use of all my USB ports. Granted, that's better, and less panic-inducing, than simply checking out, so that's an improvement. But it still puts a crimp in my ability to use the computer, because now I can't print, I can't use my mouse, I can't Hotsync. I couldn't even use the built-in flash card readers, because they're USB devices internally. So now, for the fourth time, I brought this computer down to the service department (which is an hour's drive from my home), to be fixed or replaced by, oh who knows? Let's just say, at some unknown date in the future. Maybe in another couple of weeks. When I complained to the service manager about the level of reliability of this machine, this is what he actually said:

"If you were to come into the store today, I would refuse sale of this machine to you. This machine is pressing the envelope of what's really possible in a laptop. You're the sort of customer that falls in love with the specs, and you don't have a realistic expectation of how reliable these machines really are."

See? I'm just being unrealistic. It's clearly unreasonable of me to pay $2500 for a computer and expect better than 80% uptime. It's just absurd of me to expect that when I plug a USB device into my computer, the machine continues to run. Who ever heard of such a thing?

It will probably take another two, or possibly three or four weeks for this machine to be replaced. They were nice enough to remove the main drive and put it into a nice USB drive enclosure for me, so I'm able to keep working. In the meantime, I've renamed this machine to "Hangar Queen". Fortunately, it's still under warranty, so it's only costing me a boatload of my time, and I have the last laptop I bought from these people, which is still running like a champ. (Ironically, I bought the new machine because I'd had such a good experience with this last computer.)

A couple of days after this failure, I put my handheld (a CLIE NX-70V) into its cradle to Hotsync with my work computer. Now this is something I have literally done about 500 times before without any trouble at all. This time, my CLIE decided to check out. In a fashion eerily similar to the experience I had with the laptop, this machine's screen went black, and it simply stopped working. It wouldn't react to a hard reset or any other action I could think of.

Well, I can make do without my laptop, especially since we have other computers in the house, but I was really put out by losing my handheld. I've had a Palm of some type ever since 1996, and I've got practically my entire life encoded on the thing. (Ever since my car got jacked in '95, with my Day-Timer in the trunk, I knew I needed a way to keep my data safe, and the original Palm Pilot fit the bill. Since then, I was hooked.) I didn't lose my Address Book, my Calendar, or my legendary To-Do List: I've got it all backed up Nine Ways To Tuesday. But I couldn't carry it with me without the CLIE.

I don't know if it was because of my computer dying earlier in the week, or because Sony has discontinued their whole PDA line, but I kind of panicked. Since they're no longer available in stores, I got on to eBay and immediately bought a replacement CLIE. This was the NX-70's big brother, the CLIE NX-80V, but I wasn't going to have it for another few days. Like I said, I was in a bit of a panic. I went down to the local Staples and I bought a brand-new Palm Tungsten T5.

"You did what?" said my wife. "We're about to have a baby, and I've been working hard for the past six months to save money on all the baby gear we have to buy, and you go and blow almost a grand on two new PDAs? I'm OK with you getting one to replace the one that broke. I know how much you rely on that thing. But two? No. You have to return one of them – and get the money back."

Well, that's what my wife would say if we were living in TV Land.

In real life, where my wife's understanding and patience are truly astounding, she said she would really, really like it if I would return one of the two units and get the money back. I told her that I would take a few days, try them both out, and let her know. So I spent about five hours laboriously reconstructing my life on the Tungsten, restoring files and settings from my backups, reinstalling software, and ensuring that everything was safe (It's about a 20-step process. I know that because I'm thorough. But it wasn't conceptually hard, just tedious). Then I spent a couple of days living my life out of the Tungsten, to see if I liked it. And so, when the CLIE arrived, I wasn't sure I wanted to try it. Suppose it was better than the Tungsten? Then I'd have wasted my time, and I'd have to go through the exercise of migrating my data all over again.

In the end, of course, that's what I did. I found a lot to like about the Tungsten, but in the end, I had to bring it back. It's a marvelous machine, but there's not much it does better than the CLIE, and the CLIE does quite a few things better than the Tungsten. Like, it has a camera. And a voice recorder. And Wi-Fi. And it's faster, even though it's running a "slower" processor. And I had all these CLIE peripherals around already. And I could put the CLIE into a real cradle. One thing the Tungsten had over the CLIE was that the newer OS5 apps were more polished, and did a few minor things better than the CLIE's versions. In the end, this didn't outweigh the value of the CLIE.

So now I had one new live CLIE, and I had one old dead CLIE, and I had just returned the Tungsten, and I was searching on the net for any information about CLIEs dying the way mine had a week ago. And just by accident, I found an article which recommended a procedure I hadn't tried before; in fact, I had never heard of it before: an "In-Cradle Reset". Since I had nothing to lose, I tried it on my old CLIE, and what do you know? It came up just fine. After all that time and money...

Finally, this past weekend. After all my computer woes, I was looking forward to a nice quiet weekend without any major failures. That's when my wife said:

"Honey? Can I surf the web using your work laptop?"

Isn't there a joke that starts this way?

I didn't think twice about it. What could go wrong? My wife is not a novice computer user. She knows her way around a machine and around the net. She reads the news and her favorite blogs.

So why, after only a few minutes of my wife's surfing, was my work machine crawling with popups, adware, and spyware?

When she asked me about it, I was surprised. I wasn't getting any pop-ups or spyware before my wife started surfing. "What did you do?" I asked her, perhaps with a little bit too much of an accusatory tone to my voice.

"Nothing! I was just surfing."

"With what browser?"

"Internet Explorer."

That told me pretty much everything I needed to know. See, I don't use IE on my work machine, except to access a few inhouse applications. For general web surfing on my work machine, I only use Firefox, and I manage the security on Firefox pretty well. Unfortunately, because I only use IE inside a well-protected network firewall, I don't manage the security there so well, and apparently it only takes a few minutes of surfing before malicious programs take advantage of a poorly-secured instance of IE, and my machine was badly infected. The adware had burrowed deep into the guts of Windows, and IE pop-ups were appearing even when I used Firefox to browse to a site!

The infestation proved to be very hardy and difficult to remove. When I used Spybot – Search and Destroy to clean out the infections, they managed to reinstall themselves by the next reboot. They were hardy little devils. When I used msconfig to disable Startup items which might be reinstalling these applications, I noticed that they were adding themselves back to the startup list! ("Who writes these things?" my wife asked. It's a good question.) A little bit of detective work actually yielded two Spyware items which had installed themselves just like normal applications, with their own folders, their own start menu entries, even their own uninstallers. One had a text file explaining itself:

"You downloaded Preview AdService from a Website that is able to offer its content for free because it shows the Preview AdService ActiveX popup. The Preview AdService program is installed only once the user has agreed on it by clicking on 'yes'. Through the ActiveX, the user can review the license terms and privacy policy before installing the software. Each and every distributor is carefully reviewed to make sure that their distribution techniques abide by a strict code of conduct."

See, that's total bullshit.

"I never downloaded anything or clicked on any license agreement," my wife told me, and I believe her. It's my work machine -– she wouldn't download anything on it. "All I did was surf to some sites and read."

It took me a while longer to finish fixing the problems with the pop-ups. In the end, I had to manually delete files from the Windows\System32 directory, which I do not recommend for the faint of heart. I kind of think I overdid it, in fact, because now I seem to be unable to connect to my company's VPN from home. However, otherwise, my work computer seems to be fine, which is a good thing, and the pop-ups have not afflicted it since. Total cost to me: practically the whole weekend. And I still wish I understood what I was doing better.

All three of these little tales of computer woe, different as they are, have a few things in common. In each case, a very large failure occurs for poorly understood reasons, each failure is followed by a tedious restoration to the status quo, and in each case, there is no good reason to expect that it won't happen again -- without warning.

People do not get a kick out of maintaining their computers. They do not derive enjoyment and life value from backing up, troubleshooting, and restoring their computers. They derive enjoyment and value from having access to their applications and data. When a computer fails, it often marks a profound downward shift in the value it represents to the owner. When the owner is someone like me, who has the time, patience, knowledge, experience, and cash to solve the problems, that's one thing. I'm just put out by my computers. But I think computers have gotten both so complex and so fragile, in such a short period of time, that nonspecialists have no good recourse when their machines fail. They either replace the machines –- if they can afford to -– or they simply stop using the machines. In either case, they usually lose whatever data they had on their machines.

A machine which is not reliable and unobtrusive, which calls attention to itself, which requires undue amounts of bother and care just to stay stable, is not a machine which is creating value. When snarky technicians claim that I'm being unreasonable for demanding an entirely appropriate level of service, they're not helping the problem.

I'm not sure what it is about my computers I fear more: their unreliability or their opacity. If I could count on my computers more, I wouldn't care so that they're black boxes. On the other hand, if I could understand my computer better, I wouldn't fear their failures so much. But I doubt I'm going to get either wish. The way we build computers, and the software that runs them, seems only to head in the direction of increased complexity, meaning increasingly unstable and insecure systems, exposing fewer clues about their inner state to the user. I wonder whether this will reach a point where it starts to turn off ordinary users, and whether they will turn away from what they view –- correctly, in my judgement -- as a hostile technology. I wonder whether that's already occurring. It almost happened to me this past week.

AARP: Hates the Troops, Loves the Queers

2005-02-23T18:00:00.000-05:00

This ad was created by a group called USA Next, giving the Bush White House absolutely airtight deniability that they have anything to do it. The campaign is being mounted to discredit AARP for its traitorous opposition to the Dear Leader's Social Security phase-out plan, and it's very well-funded. Obviously, this is a completely independent group of civic-minded individuals... the same individuals who gave us the spectacle of the Swift Boat Liars for Bush. Which also, by pure coincidence, happened to benefit Bush politically.

Honestly, I wasn't buying USA Next's line. But then I went to the AARP's web site, to get their side of the story, and what do you know? The AARP does hate our troops! I found article after article after article detailing the AARP's treasonous and virulent hatred of the American military.

I also found ... well, I didn't find anything at all on their site about gay marriage. (Obviously, they're hiding their real agenda from us real Americans!)

Yes, it's clear, isn't it? The AARP isn't an organization "dedicated to enhancing quality of life for all as we age"; it's an organization dedicated to the destruction of the US military and the advancement of the radical homosexual agenda!!

I mean, WOW! Who knew?! And to think, my parents are members! I'd better tell them right now!

... oh, hey. Can somebody tell me what the fuck this all has to do with Social Security?

Of Budgets, Great and Small

2005-02-22T11:03:00.000-05:00

My wife and I just went through the thoroughly unpleasant exercise of figuring out our household budget. We're expecting a new member of the family in the next few months, a baby is rumored to be very expensive upfront, and the new mom will be taking some unpaid leave to get the baby off to a good start. So we needed to take a look at what was coming into the house, and what was going out, and we needed to make some decisions about how to reconcile these numbers with our desire to somehow stay solvent, save for our retirement and our baby's education, pay our immediate expenses and pay down our debt -- all at the same time!

My wife and I are very lucky people: we've been pretty frugal, we've made some good decisions, we both have good jobs, we are in good health, and we're not deeply in debt. So, fortunately, the decisions weren't hard. Even so, the process was a little rough, because there's a lot of detail involved, and it literally entails generating and then analyzing several sheets covered in numbers, and not just any numbers, at that. These are numbers which have strong emotional resonance. Who wants to do that? Imagine how much harder it would have been if we had a number phobia, or if we knew we had a real money problem and didn't want to face up to it. In the end, though, we did the responsible thing. We balanced our budget, and now we're financially prepared for the baby's arrival. We think.

At the same time that my wife and I are wrestling with our budget, our town is also facing an issue with its own. The town is currently projecting a shortfall of between $1-2 million this year, and nobody seems to have a good idea around that uncomfortable fact. Cutting the budget will entail real pain: the biggest single line item in the budget is the school system, which would necessarily have to bear the brunt of any cuts. The town has been covering its shortfall with its savings, but this has been a stopgap and is clearly not a long-term option.

The town can ask us to pass a property-tax override, enabling them to raise our property taxes over the 2.5% per year maximum increase allowed under Massachusetts Proposition 2 1/2. Predictably, when word of this possibility spread around, the signs sprouted on the larger lawns in town: "NO OVERRIDE." No decision has been reached on whether to hold a vote on an override, though, so it might not happen. My wife and I aren't sure yet how we feel about the town budget. We don't mind paying our fair share of taxes, but we certainly want to make sure we're getting our money's worth for what we spend, especially since our daughter is going to be going to school here. (...or maybe not.)

Regardless of whether we're talking about our own household budget or that of the town, however, we're talking about operating under the same set of rules. No budget, no matter how large or small, must operate according to these rules: Income must be equal to or greater than expenses. The numbers must add up correctly. Nothing must be left out of the budget. (This was the sticking point in developing our household budget. Gathering all the receipts, adding them all together, categorizing them -- does this one go under "Groceries" or "Baby Supplies"? -- and ensuring that we hadn't forgotten whole categories of spending, was probably the hardest part.) And most critically, no matter how we feel about it, the numbers are the numbers. We must make the choices that make the numbers balance. The budget must be honest. Otherwise, it's worthless.

With those simple rules in mind, it's useful to take a look at the US Federal Government budget which has just been proposed by George W. Bush. This document is one of the most breathtakingly dishonest documents to ever come out of an already amazingly dishonest government.

The claim that caught my eye in this part of the document was that this budget actually contributes to reducing the budget deficit. Supposedly, by 2010, the deficit -- the annual amount that the government borrows, not the total debt, which is still spiraling out of control -- is to be cut in half. In order to get there, however, the budget also assumes that none of the three signature George W. Bush policies -- the War, the Permanent Tax Cuts, and Social Security Privatization -- exist or are enacted, even though they are Bush's own priorities in his second term.

The federal budget makes no provision -- none whatsoever -- for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not even a guess! These wars are officially budgeted at zero! See, instead of putting them in the real budget, they ask Congress for the money in "supplemental" requests (like this one); and they claim that since they don't know how much, exactly, the wars are going to cost, they can't put even an estimate in the budget. While the real cost of these wars is already about $300 billion, the official estimate of the cost is ZERO.

The budget assumes that Bush's signature tax cuts expire, as they are currently set to. It's really impossible to balance the US Budget with these tax cuts in place, so even though Bush is committed to making them permanent, his budget magically wishes them away, so that he can claim to be cutting the deficit.

Finally, the budget assumes that there is no Social Security privatization, even though, once again, Bush is committed to enacting his cherished private accounts this term. Here's the rub: in order to set up Bush's private accounts, the government will have to borrow enormous sums of money -- somewhere between $750 billion and $2 trillion. Clearly, there is no way to reduce the deficit by half, let alone balance the budget, and enact Bush's private accounts scheme, so it's not in the budget.

How easy would my life be if we could run our household budget by W Rules?

"Honey? We're doing great! All I have to do is take the mortgage payment out of our budget, and look! We're running a big surplus! While we're at it, let's borrow a whole bunch of money and go on a spending spree. And, yes, I am buying an SUV, but since I don't know whether I'm buying a Hummer or a Bad Boy, I'm estimating the cost as ... zero. But I promise -- ", with my fingers crossed behind my back, "-- I promise that in five years, we'll borrow less than we're borrowing this year. Wheeeeee!"

Well, you know how that ends. Sooner or later, a banker (Republican, naturally) will come around and take possession of my house, my car, and anything else I have of value. We would end up in a homeless shelter, assuming those were still being funded (they're being cut back, of course).

Because government budgets contain such enormous numbers and are difficult to read, and -- frankly -- because they're being lied to, people think that governments operate under different budget rules from their households, but it's just not true. Even the federal budget, with its dizzying heights of debt and its byzantine depth of detail, operates according to the same rules as our little household budget or our town budget: the numbers must add up, and the budget must be honest. (The biggest difference is the amount of say you get. I mean, hey, at home, I get one of two votes. In the federal budget, well, since I am not on the Bush Pioneer list of big-money donors, the Republicans let me have exactly zero votes.)

When it comes to government budgets, like our town's, there are only two choices. Either taxes must be raised, or expenses must be cut. (Our town doesn't sell T-Bills, and I'm betting yours doesn't, either.) Those are the only two choices, and neither one is easy. It takes honest and brave people to face up to these problems. By borrowing madly, shifting the burden of currenly liabilities on to future generations, and by pretending that other major liabilities simply don't exist, Bush is only demonstrating his dishonesty and his moral cowardice.

It is true that the US government has a better credit rating than you or I do, but that's because the government can always squeeze people for more money to pay off its debt. And believe me, it will. Bush is busy piling on a mountain of debt right now, and -- I'm assuming you're not a billionaire Republican friend of W here -- sooner or later, the government is going to come looking for you and me to pay it back, because whatever else a government can do, it can't borrow its way out of debt.

(By the way, remember back when balanced budgets were a Conservative issue? Now I'm a hippie for pointing out that you can't borrow forever. Proof that God has a sense of humor.)

"Freedom," wrote George Orwell, "is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four." This week, as we ponder the glorious steaming fetid lie that Bush will truck up to Congress and call his Budget Plan, that phrase resonates on more than one level.

Your Social Security Scorecard

2005-02-17T19:50:00.000-05:00

Want to find out how you'll do under George Dubya's Social Security privatization scam? Pay a visit to this Social Security Calculator. It's pretty easy to use and very informative. Want to check the assumptions? You can 'View Source', which makes this page a lot more transparent than anything coming from the Republicans.

Jeff Gannon, White House Ho

2005-02-16T17:48:00.000-05:00

Did you hear the one about the right-wing media whore who got into the White House under a false name and turned out to be a real whore?

It sounds like a bad joke, but "Jeff Gannon", allegedly a "reporter" for a flyweight outfit calling itself "Talon News", was a regular presence in White House press briefings. He got called on by Bush a lot, too, so he could lob Winger-friendly softball "questions" like this:

"[Democratic leaders] say that Social Security is rock solid and there's no crisis there. How are you going to work -- you've said you are going to reach out to these people -- how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?"

(More examples here)

"Gannon's" "news stories" were usually just copied and pasted from Republican talking points and White House press releases. It's obvious that "Gannon" was no journalist, he was just another White House shill who plays one on TV.

Looking into "Gannon's" background, a group of journalists and bloggers have unearthed a trove of material about the guy.

First of all, Gannon's name isn't Gannon. His real name is James Guckert. He's been getting a White House pass for months on his false name, but they claim they knew his real name (or maybe not: the story seems to have changed. Sometimes they knew his name, sometimes they didn't). They furthermore claim that they never heard of the guy who set up the "Talon News" site, even though he's a major Republican donor. How likely do you suppose that is? Here's a nobody from a rinky-dink web site, applying for White House credentials, getting the credentials only a few days after the web site goes live, and getting called on by Bush all the time at press conferences. You really suppose they don't know who he is?

If you're still unconvinced that they know him, consider this. He's one of the guys who got the Plame leak! That's right -- when someone in the Bush White House wanted to punish Joe Wilson, the ambassador who exposed Bush's yellowcake lie in the State of the Union address, they did it by leaking the identity of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame -- who was working for the CIA -- to a select few "journalists", including Judith Miller of the New York Times, Robert Novak (the only one who published the information), and ... "Jeff Gannon". I guess they know who he is, all right.

Here's where the story starts to get bizarre. An investigation into Guckert's background reveals that he has been running an escort service on the web. But he's not just the pimp -- he's selling his own services! The web sites (you really have to see them to believe it) are military-themed, with names like "US Male Corps.com"; Guckert appears to have served in the Marine Corps, and is now applying a military theme to his "services", for guys who are turned on by that kind of thing.

How much stranger can this story get?

In situations like this, I like to apply the "Shoe on the other foot" test. Imagine for a moment that the Clinton Administration had planted a friendly shill in the White House press corps, and allowed him to get credentialed under a false name. Assume, furthermore, that this friendly shill had been given access, in strict violation of the law, to classified information exposing the identity of an undercover CIA operative. Assume, furthermore!, that this friendly shill turned out to have served in the US military as a gay man, and then used his association with the military to further a career as a gay prostitute!

Can you imagine the Right-Wing Shitstorm that would ensue? There would be such a hue and cry from the Wingnut blogosphere and the "mainstream media." It would make Monica tame by comparison! It would be everything we'd hear about every time we turn on the radio or watch television. It would be grist for endless hours of O'Reilly, Russert, and Limbaugh. Congress would demand investigations. Articles of Impeachment would be introduced.

Oh, but I forgot. "Jeff Gannon" ... is a Republican. So the "mainstream media," owned and operated by the Right Wing of the Republican Party, yawns a collective yawn. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along, no story here. And I guess I can't really blame them, after all, since, really, how unusual is a Republican who will do or say anything for money and power?

I guess it just goes to show you: A Ho is a Ho is a Ho.

A few more links, because I can't really do this story justice:
A man called Jeff
Why Gannon matters
'Jeff Gannon' Signs Off: Tells E&P He'll No Longer Talk to Press
Gonna Party Like It's 1998
"Jeff Gannon's" secret life
McClellan Tells 'E&P' He Didn't Know Guckert Used Fake Name for Nearly Two Years
Jeff Gannon owes back taxes
Jeff Gannon / James Guckert: a gay prostitute

Convoq ASAP Launches Again!

2005-02-15T16:01:00.000-05:00

It's been just about a year since ASAP 1.0 shipped, and now I'm very pleased to say that we've launched our latest versions. The company demonstrated our new product at the DEMO Conference, where we demonstrated the last version of the product last year. Convoq ASAP is a much more mature product -- we've had a very good year to sand and polish it, and it shows. We're now offering two flavors of the product: ASAP Express is free and allows anyone to have a one-on-one videoconference with anyone else -- even somebody who hasn't installed the software! ASAP Pro allows up to 15 people to participate in your meetings, for only $250/year. It's a great product, and I'm proud to be a member of the team that created it. Try it!

Related links
Start-up offers Web conferencing on the cheap
Convoq Offers Free Web Conferencing
Web Meetings for Nothing, Collaborate for Free

[disclaimer: This site is my own personal site. The opinions expressed here represent my own, and not my employer, Convoq. I just wanted to mention that here in case it wasn't blazingly obvious.]

Arthur Miller

2005-02-11T12:09:00.000-05:00

I'm not alone in being sorry to note the passing of Arthur Miller. Miller was a great playwright and a great American. His moral clarity and his willingness to question prevailing orthodoxy set an example for all of us. I have always been profoundly influenced by his writing. We need more such men today.

Now All He Needs Is A Space Ship

2005-02-10T16:37:00.000-05:00

John Pultorak is my kind of nerd. This guy has built a replica of the Apollo Guidance Computer, the computer that flew on the Command Module and Lunar Module of the Apollo manned missions to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s.

Pultorak built the replica over the course of four years of nights and weekends, with some assistance from his son and a lot of understanding patience from his wife.

Recreating a 40-year-old computer is not an easy task, even if the hardware isn't exactly cutting-edge. Pultorak didn't just simulate the AGC (although that's what he did as a first step). He didn't even just emulate the AGC (i.e. build a modern computer and program it to pretend to be the AGC). He built real hardware which works just like the original. He didn't replicate the original in all respects, because he discovered that some of the parts which were used to build the original AGC weren't available any more. (Just try to find core rope memory these days.)

The AGC was definitely cutting-edge for its time (roughly 1962). It was the first digital computer to replace discrete transistors with Integrated Circuits, which were new and risky. It also was the first digital autopilot for any kind of piloted vehicle, and its user interface (the Display and Keyboard Unit or DSKY) was far ahead of its time, even if it seems a little quaint to us, and is one of the earliest examples of a real-time interactive user interface. In the 60s, after all, most computer users interacted with the machine via punch cards and printouts.

Others have implemented simulations of the AGC/DSKY. The Virtual AGC Project is one such effort, and the NASSP Project has implemented a DSKY in their Orbiter add-on (See this image). A more accessible, but less complete, partial implementation of a DSKY can be found here. I recommend it to anyone who is curious but doesn't want to be overwhelmed. It's a nice introduction, but it only works in Internet Explorer.

All of these efforts to replicate the space flight experience inside our modern computers are commendable, but for sheer geeky bragging rights, nothing really beats being able to say, as Pultorak can, "I built the real thing myself."

The Countdown

2005-02-09T08:48:00.000-05:00

[enlarge]

More Search Strings

2005-02-08T11:49:00.000-05:00

Since I started scanning the search strings which lead people to my blog, I have found it's a little addictive. Here are the latest entries.

"gw bush orwellian slogans"

"orwellian moments/current events" : Bush and Orwell : they really do go together like Freedom Fries and W Ketchup.

"jasher 6000 end of world" : You're looking for Bible passages, and you came to my site? Whatever.

"i'm so fat that i repulse my husband" : Heartbreak is never in short supply. I wish that wasn't true.

The Journey of a Privatized Social Security Dollar

2005-02-06T14:10:00.000-05:00

This is George.

George is in charge of the biggest and most successful retirement insurance program in the world.

This is George's friend Ken. You might remember the company he used to run.

George has a terrific idea for you ...and Ken. Mostly for Ken. Here's what he'd like to do.

First, George will borrow a dollar from Ken. He'll do this by selling US Treasury Securities to Ken. Ken knows this is a pretty good investment, because they're backed by the full faith and credit of the United States, with a low rate of return but with virtually no risk.

(George has been borrowing a lot of dollars on your behalf from Ken lately, but that's another story.)

Next, George takes a dollar from you in Social Security payroll taxes. Right now, when you give that dollar to George, you're paying part of some retiree's monthly Social Security installment, and you expect that somewhere down the line, some other person will help pay yours when you retire. That's the contract that forms the basis of Social Security.

Well, George takes your dollar and gives it to the retiree just like he's always done. However, George says he's got a better idea for the second part of the deal: you know, the one where you get paid back that dollar when you retire.

Here's the deal, says George. (He almost said New Deal.) He's got that dollar that he just borrowed from Ken. He says, instead of giving it to you when you retire, he'll give it to you now, and then let you invest it in the markets. He says that he's sure that by investing it in the markets, you can earn a high rate of return. High enough, he says, that you'll end up with much more money in your retirement than you'd end up with if you just had Social Security.

Well, that sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Who wouldn't want more money when they retire, right? So you say, Sure, George. Sign me up. And you hold out your hand for that dollar.

Oh, no, you don't understand, says George. He didn't say he'd just give you your dollar back. See, what he meant was: He's going to invest this money in the markets for you. And then, when you retire, he'll give you that dollar back, plus whatever you earn on it from investing it in the market.

That's not exactly what George said at first, but what the hell. You're still going to get those great returns from investing in the market, right? So okay, you go along with it.

George takes the dollar he borrowed from Ken, and he puts it into an account with your name on it. Then, he uses that dollar, from that account, to buy a share of stock in Ken's company. Now, your account is just one of many millions of accounts that George controls this way, so when he starts buying stock in Ken's company, he's buying a lot of stock, and the price of the stock starts to rise. Pretty soon, the stock that George bought for you for one dollar is worth two dollars.

Ken has a few shares of his company's stock, too. Ken likes the fact that his stock price is going up, especially since he didn't pay anywhere near what you paid for the stock. But hey, as long as stock prices are rising, who cares? After all, it's worth a lot more than you paid for it, isn't it? So everybody's happy. Pretty soon, the stock that George bought for you for one dollar is worth three dollars.

At this point, George tells you that there's something else about your account you need to know about. Since it's a private account, he's going to charge you a quarter to administer it for you. Well, what the hell? After all, you put a dollar in, and now it's worth three dollars, which is two dollars more than you would have gotten back with old Social Security. So even minus a quarter, you're still way ahead of the game.

A few years later, Ken is found to have committed a few felonies in the conduct of his business.

It seems his company wasn't doing nearly as well as everyone thought it was doing. Ken was lying about the state of his company's finances in order to get people to keep buying his company's stock. That's called securities fraud.

Of course, Ken has known for a long time that the jig was up. (When you have friends like George, you know when the FBI is on its way.) That's why he sold all of his stock, at three dollars per share. Ken made a lot of money. But by the time word of his arrest and his company's collapse reaches you, the selling frenzy has already begun. Ken's company's stock is worth a penny a share.

Remember that dollar? All you have left of it is one cent.

There's nothing I can do about that, says George. Investment carries risk. You read the prospectus before you signed on.

That's right, says his friend Paul. "Part of the genius of capitalism is that people get to make good decisions or bad decisions. And they get to pay the consequences or to enjoy the fruits of their decisions."

Well, says George, now that it's time for you to retire, let's see how you did.

You have one penny in your account.

You owe George a quarter for managing the account. That doesn't depend on how well you did.

Oh, and remember the dollar you started the account with? George borrowed that dollar from Ken, but in thirty years, a 2.5% bond has doubled in value. Remember, George borrowed it in your name.

So now you owe Ken two dollars and George a quarter. Those are tax dollars, by the way, which makes George's IRS, in effect, Ken's collection agency.

You haven't got it? You were counting on that three dollar return? That's too bad, but George will be all too happy to help you out by liquidating your house or anything else you have of value.

Ken needs that money, after all.

See, after bankruptcy reorganization gets that company back on its feet, Ken has some penny stock to buy.

The Birth Tax

2005-02-03T21:40:00.000-05:00

Hey Bush Voters! Now I have something new to thank you for!

See, I have a daughter on the way. In just a couple of months, she's going to enter this world, and thanks to years of reckless, irresponsible Republican fiscal policies, she's going to start life already $26,000 in debt!

Thanks, Bush Voters!

You can't blame the Democrats: as you can clearly see here, the Democrats have been the party of fiscal responsibility. Under Clinton, the deficit had nearly disappeared. We were even looking at budget surpluses when Bush came into office. Once you Bush voters had your say, that changed dramatically.

(Click the image for a larger view)

The Republicans have not only dramatically widened the budget deficit (which is only the yearly increase on the total national debt), they don't even pretend to care about its consequences any more. With complete domination of all three branches of government, they'd do something about it if they cared to. But thanks to the free pass you've given them, they don't think they have to do anything about it. In fact, Bush wants to add TWO TRILLION MORE to this pile of debt, in order to fund his Social Security piratization plan.

The result? My child already owes $26,000 to the federal government, and she hasn't even been born yet.

Call it The Birth Tax.

Thanks, Bush voters!

Since interest is accumulating on that money every day -- and since the Republicans haven't stopped their borrowing binge -- you can be sure that she'll owe a whole lot more by the time she's able to start paying that money back.

Bush voters, you may be too stupid to realize this, but there is only one way that money is going to be paid back. Those loans were taken out in our names, and it is our obligation to pay them back. The money will be collected in taxes and the debt will be paid. And you morons will probably think that the inevitable pain of increased taxes will be someone else's fault, because that's what Fox News will tell you.

There's another reason $26,000 is actually an understatement of the real value of the Birth Tax. See, that number is simply the national debt (about 7.6 TRILLION dollars) divided by the total population of the United States (about 295 million). But since Republican policies of the past twenty years are systematically moving the tax burden off of corporations (few of which pay any tax at all any more) and rich people (ditto), and on to working people, by the time my daughter is old enough to work, her tax burden will probably be much larger than mine is.

$26,000 is an amount which doesn't matter to a guy like Bush. If you're already rich, after all, $26,000 isn't so much. Daddy can write a check for $26,000 without breaking a sweat. Of course, for guys like Bush, who have never in their entire lives actually paid their fair share for anything, it's probably something that can be taken care of with a phone call to the right people. Right this way, sir; no, of course your ticket has already been paid for. Yes, sir. See, actually paying for things, that's for proles. Not for Bushes.

But for my daughter, $26,000 can be the difference between getting a good college education, or a mediocre one -- or none at all. It can be the difference between owning her first home at 25, or 45 -- or never. It can be the difference between getting first-rate care in a medical crisis, or poor care -- or none at all. It might literally be the difference between a long, healthy, good life, or a short and bad life. When you're just starting out, and you're middle-class like me and my daughter, $26,000 is a LOT of money.

This is the Birth Tax, the Bush tax, the most durable legacy of Republican hegemony. Long after George W. Bush has faded from memory, people will stay be paying for his profligacy and irresponsibility.

Thanks, Bush voters! You got your $300 checks?

Good, because guess what? It's not just my daughter that has to pay that back. For something like 98% of all you dopes out there, your kids will be paying it, too. And rich Republican kids will be laughing their asses off -- at you. Just like Bush is right now.

I'm Still Wrong About Bush

2005-02-02T17:14:00.000-05:00

Damn! Who could've guessed that I'd still be wrong about George Bush!?

Here's the thing. I remember so well that night two years ago, when Bush stood up and delivered his Pre-Invasion Address 2003. I remember it like it was yesterday. He stood up resolutely and he said:

"...We will invade Iraq in order to remove a tyrant from power over his people, and then, instead of installing an American puppet regime, we will hold elections so that the Iraqi people can participate in their own government."

And so now, with the Iraqi vote behind us, does it really matter that the candidates in the election were anonymous? That whole swathes of the population were excluded from voting? That we have now spent 150 billion dollars (and counting) and 1,400 American servicemembers (and counting)? Does it matter that nobody seems to have any clue to getting out of Iraq?

NO! None of that matters! Not when it's measured against our ideals! Dammit, didn't you hear the man? He said it was about Democracy, damn it! We're spreading democracy!

But I was so wrong about Bush! See, when I heard him speaking in January 2003, I only thought I heard him say a lot about Weapons of Mass Destruction! I thought I heard him link Saddam Hussein to Al Qaida. I thought I heard him say

"Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Invading Iraq was necessary to protect ourselves against terrorists! That's what I thought I heard him say in 2003.

(Now, I thought that was a crock of shit back then, and I was also 100% wrong about that, but that's a different story. I guess I just wasn't watching the right TV station for the State of the Union address, because I didn't hear Bush say anything about delivering Democracy to the Iraqis. But I suppose I'm one of those people who think that brown people can't run their own country, so maybe I wouldn't have heard it even if I'd tried.)

But just a few days ago, I found out what my problem is.

You see, my Memory Hole was clogged up. It seems I wasn't forgetting all the stupid things I was supposed to be forgetting. But now that we figured that out, everything's better, and boy am I sorry about all the shit I was spreading about George W. Bush. Now, repeat after me:

It was about Delivering Democracy. It was always about Delivering Democracy. There are no Weapons of Mass Destruction. There never were any Weapons of Mass Destruction. Bush never said anything about Weapons of Mass Destruction.

If you thought Bush told us we needed to invade Iraq as a matter of defending ourselves against terrorists armed with Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction, please do as I have done, and report to your nearest Memory Hole Cleaning Center (there are convenient kiosks in your local mall or Wal-Mart).

What Were They Thinking?

2005-01-24T13:44:00.000-05:00

My web hosting service, like most such services, provides a facility for me to view this site's statistics, such as how many times the site is visited, which pages are the most popular, etc. (In case you're wondering, my site doesn't generate a huge amount of traffic, but there does seem to be a more-or-less regular readership. Thanks, Mom!)

In the very detailed report which my hosting service delivers to me on a daily basis, one of the more interesting headings is called "Search Strings". Did you know that when you type a search term or a set of search terms into Google, or Yahoo, or wherever, your search strings can be passed along to any page that you access by clicking on the links that the search engine displays to you? I didn't know that, either, and apparently the details of how your search terms are encoded into the referring page's URL vary with each search engine, so my hosting service can't deliver a comprehensive report of the search terms which have led people to my site. Still, the ones which do arrive provide an interesting glimpse into the minds of at least some of my visitors. (For example, that most people still haven't learned how to use quotes to group their search terms. But I digress.) Judge for yourself:

"asian religious text that predicted the tsunami tribe moves to": Looking to convert?

"dell sony bank of america boycott abortion": Ah, yes. Dell, Sony, and Bank of America. Bring them down, and you end the scourge of abortion forever!

"george bush on the issue of evolution the verdict is still out": It's hard to tell where this person stands on the issue, but at least he knows where George stands.

Current Favorite - "help me humiliate my husband": Sorry, lady, I can't help you.

Working Definition of Reality

2005-01-23T13:49:00.000-05:00

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away".
-- Philip K. Dick

Another Triumph of American Arms

2005-01-20T20:15:00.000-05:00

A car carrying a father, a mother, and their children was stopped by US gunfire yesterday as the car approached an Army foot patrol. The mother and the father were killed by machine-gun fire; several of the children were wounded. There were no weapons on or in the car.

Here's a question, especially for the Republicans out there: As the children in that car heard the bullets flying all around them, as they watched their mother die and their father absorb "so many bullets that his skull had collapsed, leaving his body grotesquely disfigured", what emotion do you suppose they felt? Might it have been ... terror?

Let Freedom Reign!

So some children saw their parents gunned down in front of their eyes, but hey, says the US military, it was their own fault. And there, in microcosm, is the whole fucking war: blow some shit up, kill a bunch of people, blame them for their own deaths, and when they resent that, push the boot down harder. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat...

"But we're not there as conquerors -- we're there as liberators," I hear you saying. Sure, we just liberated some kids from their parents, just like we've liberated thousands and thousands of Iraqis from their loved ones, their homes, their security, their health, and their lives. You think that makes them love us?

If you voted for W, you voted for this. Are you enjoying your war?

No, Dice

2005-01-13T16:13:00.000-05:00

I just saw this ad online. I assume that it was meant to impress coders, but it had the opposite effect on me. I looked at this ad and I saw seriously broken code.

This code seems to have been meant to look like one of the C-derived object-oriented languages: C++, C#, Java, or JavaScript. It's broken in a lot of ways:

Confusion between assignment and comparison. The test clause will never work the way it's intended to work. In fact, it's one the most common errors newbie coders make! Instead of
threshold == salary_sucks (comparison)
the code is written
threshold = salary_sucks (assignment)
which will set threshold to the value of salary_sucks, and evaluate to the value of salary_sucks. So unless threshold and salary_sucks are both booleans, the code will never compile (ah, the days of C are over), and even if it does, it will generate a warning, because it's usually considered bad style to perform an assignment as a side-effect of a test. (After all, when someone else examines your code later, it's often hard to tell whether that's what you intended, or if you just forgot to type the extra '='.) So, instead of comparing threshold and salary_sucks, if salary_sucks is a boolean, it will simply branch based on the value of salary_sucks.

Reserved word as a variable name. goto is a reserved word in C++, C#, Java, and JavaScript. No sane coder would use it as a variable name, even in a language where it wasn't reserved, because goto has a long and storied history of controversy.

Evaluation with no effect. Evaluating suck.it.up will probably have no effect at all, since it's just evaluating an object member and throwing away the result. If the object member is defined as a getter with some side-effect that is hidden from the caller, that's different, but that would also be really bad style.

Syntax error. There is no end keyword in C++, C#, Java, or JavaScript. That's just a syntax error.

Bad Logic. Worst of all, the logic in the ad copy is really broken. In plain English, it says, "If your salary sucks, go to Dice.com. Otherwise, suck it up." But it doesn't make any sense to say "suck it up" to someone who's making a great salary! (does it? Suck up the bucks, I guess...)

I thought about rewriting the code to express a more coherent idea, and do it with plausible code, but this is the best I came up with:

if (You.canWriteCode()) {

   You.writeCode();

   You.salary = BigBucks;

} else {

   You.writeAdCopy();

}

Tell Me Again What They Died For?

2005-01-12T19:38:00.000-05:00

A philosophical question: if a deceitful pretext for stampeding a country into war falls in the forest, and the major media don't pay any attention, does it make a sound?

With practically no media attention, the Bush administration has finally called off even the pretense of finding the Weapons of Mass Destruction which were the reason Bush told us we had to rush into war in the first place. (See the transcript of Bush's 2003 State of the Union address; scroll down about 2/3 to find the lies about Iraqi WMDs).

I don't understand why there aren't any huge, screaming front-page headlines in newspapers across America:

NO WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION IN IRAQ
It Was All Bullshit
Just In Time For Inauguration
Sorry About All The Dead People
"But It Got Me My Second Term," Bush Quips
At the exact same moment when the media are still in a full lather over the broadcast of the 60 Minutes story about Bush's missing year in the service (neatly summarized by Kos), they are completely unconcerned about the parade of lies promulgated by Bush to justify his splendid little war. You couldn't even find the story on the New York Times without digging for it. You'd think that when the administration finally gets around to telling us it was all bullshit, that'd be a big story. Apparently, if you thought that, you'd be wrong. Because, after all, nobody died and mountains of money weren't squandered because of CBS's less than careful sourcing of their story; while, in fact, thousands have died and hundreds of billions of dollars have been pissed away on the basis of Bush's lies. Is it such a big surprise? The media are controlled by the Right, and they have their agenda. They got their war and they're not going to let any inconvenient facts spoil the party. So just like they let Bush off the hook when it comes to his service in the Texas National Guard, they're going to let him off the hook for lying us into a disastrous quagmire in Iraq.

So here's my question now: If the WMDs are finally, officially bullshit, what the fuck are we doing in Iraq?

A lot of people think it was all about oil. I'm sure a lot of people stand to make a lot of money from Iraqi oil, but I don't think that was enough. After all, what's in it for George? Well, how about a second term? Bush's own biographer claims that Bush intended to invade Iraq from the very beginning of his term, with the expectation that a war would goose his popularity and get him a second term.

Looks like George got his wish. Lucky us! (Especially 1,300 lucky dead Americans and 100,000 lucky dead Iraqis!)

Will George W. Bush ever, ever, be accountable for anything he has ever done in his life?

Just Theories

2005-01-10T13:50:00.000-05:00

You may have heard of the recent flap in Georgia over biology textbooks and the insistence of the school board on placing stickers on the books, declaring that Evolution is "a theory, not a fact."

It's an indication of how deeply dishonest this line of argument is that it explicitly relies on the reader NOT to understand the difference between colloquial use of the word "theory" ("n:An assumption based on limited information or knowledge; a conjecture") and its use in science ("n:A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena."). The only people who advance a dishonest argument are people who can't win with an honest argument. So I guess it's just petulant of me to point out that Evolution is a theory AND a fact.

Instead, in the spirit of helping out school boards everywhere, I would like to propose that we should add warning stickers to a whole bunch of things we teach schoolkids. Herewith, some suggested sticker language:

Newton's Theory of Universal Gravitation. ("It has never been proven that all material objects in the Universe attract each other with a force inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Students should approach this material with an open mind and consider alternative explanations.")

The Germ Theory of Disease. ("Germs are just a theory, not a fact. Students are encouraged to consider alternative explanations for diseases, like evil spirits and God's wrath. Stay away from unclean sinners. Remember that AIDS only afflicts evil people.")

Dalton's Atomic Theory. ("Nobody has ever seen an atom. Remember, it's just a theory. If it was a fact, we'd have it on good authority from the Bible. But the Bible doesn't talk about atoms, does it? NO! So never mind what some pointy-headed professor tells you.")

Number Theory ("LIES! LIBERAL LIES! DON'T LISTEN TO THEM! YOU'RE GOING TO BURN IN HELL FOR ALL ETERNITY FOR BELIEVING IN NUMBERS!")

(Late update, 13-Jan-2005: It appears that the stickers will have to be removed. Score one for the Constitution, reason, and common sense. Savor the moment -- it won't last long.)

Thanks For Clarifying That, Fred

2005-01-08T09:57:00.000-05:00

Does God Hate Bile-Spewing Asshole Fundamentalist Preachers? I don't know. I'm just asking.

This is what Fred Phelps has to say about the South Asian Tsunami -- not only was the tsunami a punishment sent by God, but gloating is apparently encouraged:

Filthy Swedes went to Thailand - world epicenter of child sex traffic - to rape and sodomize little Thai boys and girls.... We sincerely hope and pray that all 20,000 Swedes are dead, their bodies bloated on the ground or in mass graves or floating at sea feeding sharks and fishes or in the bellies of thousands of crocodiles washed ashore by tsunamis.

Can you imagine having this prick over for dinner? Right -- neither can I. He can't be much fun, unless you're serving Lobster.

Not One Damn Dime Day

2005-01-07T14:25:00.000-05:00

Those of us who were dismayed at the upcoming $50 million coronation of Emperor Dyslexicus I (aka God's Own President) are starting to get serious about finding new ways of expressing ourselves. After all, we're all but shut out of Official Media, there is only One Party left, and it's been made clear that God hates those of us who don't belong to the GOP and to the One True Church. Meanwhile, our debt is soaring, Social Security is about to be eviscerated, (something the GOP has been wanting to do for sixty years!) and we're going to have another tax cut for the super-wealthy! Oh, and did I mention the war? The "War On Terror" is a lie and a scam, and the war in Iraq is only a part of the "War on Terror" in the sense that it is enabled by the same set of overarching lies. Yet a slim majority (or something close to that) of voting Americans bought the lies. What can we Progressives do?

I think we're going to just have to go back to Square One. We're at a stage of learning where our power lies and how to use it. Therefore, a lot of ideas will be generated, including such ideas as The Buy Blue Movement (covered in a previous post). A related idea, which just came across my email queue, is Not One Damn Dime Day, set for January 20th. I'll let the man speak for himself:

Not One Damn Dime Day - Jan 20, 2005

Since our religious leaders will not speak out against the war in Iraq, since our political leaders don't have the moral courage to oppose it, Inauguration Day, Thursday, January 20th, 2005 is "Not One Damn Dime Day" in America.

On "Not One Damn Dime Day" those who oppose what is happening in our name in Iraq can speak up with a 24-hour national boycott of all forms of consumer spending.

During "Not One Damn Dime Day" please don't spend money. Not one damn dime for gasoline. Not one damn dime for necessities or for impulse purchases. Not one damn dime for nothing for 24 hours.

On "Not One Damn Dime Day," please boycott Wal-Mart, Kmart and Target. Please don't go to the mall or the local convenience store. Please don't buy any fast food (or any groceries at all for that matter).

For 24 hours, please do what you can to shut the retail economy down.

The object is simple. Remind the people in power that the war in Iraq is immoral and illegal; that they are responsible for starting it and that it is their responsibility to stop it.

"Not One Damn Dime Day" is to remind them, too, that they work for the people of the United States of America, not for the international corporations and K Street lobbyists who represent the corporations and funnel cash into American politics. "Not One Damn Dime Day" is about supporting the troops. The politicians put the troops in harm's way.

Now 1,300 brave young Americans and (some estimate) 100,000 Iraqis have died. The politicians owe our troops a plan - a way to come home.

There's no rally to attend. No marching to do. No left or right wing agenda to rant about. On "Not One Damn Dime Day" you take action by doing nothing.

You open your mouth by keeping your wallet closed.

For 24 hours, nothing gets spent, not one damn dime, to remind our religious leaders and our politicians of their moral responsibility to end the war in Iraq and give America back to the people.

Please share this with as many people as possible.

I support Not One Damn Dime Day wholeheartedly. Money is definitely a language the Republicans understand. I doubt our Great and Dear Leader will notice, or care, even if a lot of people join in NODDD. But as we grope for new ways to have a voice, we will have to try out a lot of different things. Maybe this will work, maybe it won't. But the alternative is meek acquiescence as our country is destroyed by a pack of radical fanatics.

All Hail Robosapien!

2005-01-03T22:47:00.000-05:00

Robosapien is more than just the coolest toy of 2004. It's a huge breakthrough in product design, if not applied robotics. Although Robosapien isn't as impressive in terms of its absolute capabilities as the Sony Qrio robot, it has the distinct advantage of being on sale to the general public. You can't buy the Qrio at any price, although the Qrio would likely set you back, well, who knows how much? Maybe a hundred thousand dollars? It all depends on how many Sony could produce, and how quickly they'd like to earn back their substantial investment. You can buy an Aibo right now, but that's going to cost you anywhere from $500 up to $2,000, depending on which model you buy and whether you buy new or used. (Just search eBay for "Aibo").

The breakthrough of Robosapien is that a very impressive set of robotic functionality has been crammed into a package that sells for less than $100 on a toy-store shelf. It's not a very sophisticated robot, and it doesn't do a lot of things people might want a robot to do. But when you match real capabilities with real prices, Robosapien is a winner because it does what it does at a price point people are willing to pay.

Remember the Atari 2600? I can tell you from personal experience that it wasn't much of a computer. There are cheap pocket calculators being sold today with more horsepower than the Atari VCS. In 1977, though, it was a big deal. For most of the million or so people who bought the Atari console, it was the first computer they'd ever had in their homes. And they bought it for about $200. Sure, you could buy an Apple II for about $1,500 stripped, or more like $2,500 for a really useful configuration; and the Apple II was definitely more versatile, though both machines are puny by today's standards*. (The two machines shared the same microprocessor, the beloved and much-lamented 6502) But it was probably the Atari which blazed the trail, started the market, and showed the way. I'm sure a lot of people noticed, by the 2600's example, that it was possible to build a product with a microprocessor in it, and people would buy them in the millions.

The reason we have such great computers today is because somebody started the ball rolling with an inexpensive product, with minimal capabilities, which jump-started a market. Once it became clear that a set of technologies could be packaged and productized and sold at a profit, successive generations of products could be developed in a snowball of increasing price-performance ratios. I believe we are at or close to that point with robotics today, and that in 30 years, we may look back at Robosapien as one of the initiators of the robotics snowball.

There's one other reason I love Robosapien. I admire Mark Tilden, the engineer behind Robosapien. A professor of mine used to say, "An engineer is someone who can do for a dollar what any fool can do for ten." Mark Tilden is a real engineer. Hats off to him, and all hail Robosapien!

-----

*(By way of comparison: a typical Apple II ran at 1 MHz, had 48K of memory, and had a disk drive with a capacity of 140K. The computer I'm typing this on runs about 2000 times faster, has 10,000 times the memory, and a disk drive with a capacity about half a million times as large -- not to mention a much higher-resolution display, Internet access, and a whole host of features unavailable on the biggest of big iron in the 1970s -- all for a price point roughly equivalent to the Apple II, in 2004 dollars to boot!)

Not Descended From No Monkey

2004-12-22T16:42:00.000-05:00

When I was in high school, I once got into a conversation with my mother on the topic of evolution. I think I was reading a lot of Stephen Jay Gould at the time, and I asked my mother what she thought of evolution.

"Well," she sniffed, "all I know is, I'm not descended from no monkey."

"Okay," I responded, "why do you believe that?"

"Because I know it. I'm not descended from no monkey."

I wasn't going to point out that no scientist has ever proposed that humans are descended from monkeys. I thought that the bigger problem was the fact that my mother was sticking to an emotional judgement instead of being rational.

"Yeah, but what's your evidence?"

"I don't need any evidence. I'm not descended -- "

"-- from no monkey. We've firmly established that. But out in the real world, whatever is, is, no matter what you think. So, suppose evolution is true?"

"It's not."

"Fine, but let's just say for the sake of argument that it is."

"But it's not."

"For the sake of argument, okay? Not really, but let's say it is. Then, when you say, 'I'm not descended from monkeys,' you're just wrong, right? No matter how strongly you feel about it."

"I'm not, and that's all there is to it."

This is where we left it.

My conversation with my mother was a miniature of the so-called "debate" between creationism and evolution. It's not even a debate, because nobody can even agree on the ground rules. One on side of the conflict, you have people who believe that we can observe the world, apply reason to our observations, and deduce rules which correctly describe the way the world works. On the other side, you have people who believe that all facts, observations, knowledge, and reason must be ditched in favor of the inerrancy of a rather thin book of the mistranslated myths of an ancient nomadic desert shepherd tribe. You just can't tell these people that when your beliefs come into contact with the facts of objective reality, reality always wins. You may fervently believe that you can fly by flapping your arms and reciting the Lord's Prayer, but that doesn't make it true. Rationalism seems to win eventually, but it takes generations, like it did to persuade people that the Earth moves around the sun. Believe it or not, they used to burn people at the stake for saying that.

You can't use reason to persuade irrational people to be rational, and therefore, it seems the "debate" will continue for a very long time to come; because my mother isn't descended from no monkey.

I Knew I Shouldn't Have Bought This Mug...

2004-12-17T00:55:00.000-05:00

It was expensive, too.

Buying Blue

2004-12-16T11:24:00.000-05:00

Contemplating the recent electoral disappointment has crystallized some of my thoughts on money, politics, and effective action. I started to wonder how much of the money I spend in the marketplace goes to support bad candidates and bad causes; and I started to wonder how I could spend my money to help good candidates and good causes. It's nice to know that I wasn't alone in this thinking.

A series of web sites have gone up in the last few weeks which give us a portion of the tools we're going to need in the coming months and years. By using publicly-available records, they have compiled databases of companies' political contributions, allowing you to compare and contrast brands and companies, and make your own decisions about how to spend your money.

Project Blue Christmas
Cobb 24
Buy Blue
Choose The Blue

When you spend your money, you should be taking more into consideration than just the price. Think about the real cost of doing business with companies which are actively lobbying to destroy Social Security, worker rights, environmental protections, and an equitable tax system. Every dollar you give Wal-Mart, for example, is a dollar they are going to use as a club against you.

The buy blue movement is a reaction to the reality that the corporations have essentially taken over politics in America. They call the tune. They set the agenda. Sure, we "voters" get our say, sort of, assuming the voting machines are reliable, but we only get to vote once every other year, for slates of candidates and issues already vetted by the corporations, campaigning on corporate money. Where do these corporations get all their money? Largely from you and me, their customers. We should at least look at what sort of candidates and issues our dollars are going to support, and try to steer those dollars in a more effective direction. We can vote with our dollars, and those votes definitely get counted.

After we wait for the moral outrage of the Republicans to subside ("Wal-Mart has a perfect right to support whatever it wants!", which boils down to, "how dare you try to tell me how you should spend your money!"), the single vulnerability I see to the buy blue idea is the fact that the contribution records are all public, as required by law. If the Buy Blue Movement really does start to get traction, I fear that the corporations will respond mainly by working out ways of hiding their donations, or removing the provisions of the law which require public disclosure of donations.

Perusing the databases on the sites provided a small number of amusing surprises. Amazon, for example, is a huge Republican contributor. I will in future be steering my business towards Barnes and Noble, which contributes 100% to Democrats, or Powell's, which does not have any contributions on record.

H.J. Heinz, earlier in the year a target of a boycott by idiot Republicans for having some connection to John Kerry -- i.e., he's married to a prominent stockholder -- gives 98% of its money to Republicans.

Dunkin Donuts gives 74% of its contributions to Republicans, whereas Starbucks gives 100% of its contributions to Democrats. Unfortunately, I still despise Starbucks coffee, and I will still buy Dunkin coffee, but there are ways to cut back just the same. I have become used to picking up a couple of pounds of coffee at Dunkin, but I think I will go back to buying it from the local Whole Foods Market (100% D) instead.

We have also moved all of our banking business away from Fleet, which is now Bank of America, and to a local credit union. Bank of America split its donations, but actively supported George W. Bush and Dennis Hastert. (And here I was thinking bankers, of all people, could read a balance sheet!) We were happily surprised that the credit union gives us great service, great hours, and great rates.

I actually believe in the power of giving your business to local companies more than I believe in the power of giving your business to "democratic" companies. For example, all of the computers I have bought in the past seven years have come from a local vendor (PCs for Everyone) rather than from the likes of Dell, HP, Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. More on the virtues of spending locally later.

Annals of Unfortunate Product Names

2004-12-13T11:19:00.000-05:00

Part 49 of a series. Collect them all!

It's just so easy to miss the little "2", isn't it?

Scam Codes

2004-12-08T23:37:00.000-05:00

I don't know if the Clinton Curtis affidavit is a genuine document, or if many of its claims will withstand deeper scrutiny. Curtis claims to have developed a means for rigging electronic voting machines at the request of a Florida state representative, who is now in the US House. A number of liberal blogs, including The Blue Lemur and The Brad Blog are carrying the story, but it is starting to percolate into other venues, notably Slashdot, and get some traction with the "mainstream" corporate media.

It's pretty shocking material. Curtis claims he developed what he thought was demonstration code, intended to show how a touch-screen electronic voting machine could be rigged with a backdoor which meets three criteria: (a) It must be touchscreen-capable, (b) It must be capable of being triggered without any special equipment, and (c) It must be undetectable, even if the source code is inspected. Curtis claims that these requirements came directly from the congressman.

Curtis claims he developed a vote fraud prototype which presents itself as an ordinary touch screen voting machine, but with hidden buttons. A user with the knowledge of where the hidden buttons were could, by activating the correct sequence of such hidden buttons, change the vote totals! He writes:

"...By clicking the correct order of invisible buttons the candidate selected by the user is compared to other candidates within that same race. If the candidate they selected is leading the race, nothing happens. If the other candidate is leading the race, the vote totals are altered so that the selected candidate is now leading the race with 51% of the vote. The other candidates then share the remaining 49% in exact proportion to the totals they had previously. In the prototype supplied to Feeney, the vote totals showed on the screen. In an actual application, the user would receive no visible clues to the fraud that had just occurred..."

In order to more visibly demonstrate what Curtis is talking about here, I have created a small Flash movie which essentially replicates his prototype:

The movie includes some decoration around a pretty basic interface. Select a candidate, press "Cast Vote", and the totals are incremented accordingly. If you don't like the totals, or the candidates, or the order, just press "Setup", type in the values you like, and press "OK". (Press "Setup" again to dismiss the setup screen.) You can toggle the display of the vote totals, too, to simulate that aspect of a real voting machine. For simplicity's sake, I have assumed a three-person race, although there's no reason this wouldn't work for any number of candidates or races.

The vote fraud is possible on this simulation, as in Curtis's, by the use of hidden buttons. I have placed mine just to the left of each candidate's radio button. The sequence is important, since we only want people who know what they're doing to trigger the reallocation of votes, and we want to be able to select which candidate is favored.

In my simulation, it's a five step process. It's easier to do it than to describe it, but here goes:
1. You must click your selected candidate's hidden button 3 times, (*Just to the left of the circular radio button next to the candidate's name*)
2. Then click any other candidate's hidden button 3 times,
3. Then click your selected candidate's hidden button twice,
4. Then click any other candidate's hidden button twice,
5. Then click on your selected candidate's hidden button.

Try it!

When you do this, if you are displaying the vote totals, you will see that your candidate is now winning the race with 51% of the vote, and the total number of votes is unchanged. (This is important since precincts count voters very carefully to match up with their machine totals at closing.)

If this were an actual voting machine, how could I use it in practice? I would have to have people planted in as many voting stations as possible. They could be election officials or they could be ordinary voters, as long as they knew the correct sequence of hidden buttons to press. They could enter the fraudulent sequence at any time, although it would make a lot more difference later in the day than sooner. (If the code was entered at, say, 6:00 pm, when the polls have been open for 11 hours already, it is not likely that two hours of honest voting could overwhelm the results.) However, in order to make the scheme work, it would be imperative that the machines provide no audit trail, and that the inner workings of the machine, i.e. the source code, is never available to inspection, by the government or by the general public.

Now let's see. Which party controls a vast majority of local election officials and has virtually unfettered access to the machines? Which two companies make the machines which count 80% of the vote in America, are owned and operated by big party activists, which have successfully resisted putting any paper trail whatsoever into their machines? Which candidate wins when the source code for these machines are protected as "trade secrets", unavailable for view by anyone except company officers?

Who wins? It's as easy as Bush, Bush, Bush, Kerry, Kerry, Kerry, Bush, Bush, Kerry, Kerry, BUSH!

It doesn't matter if the Curtis affidavit is genuine. What matters is that rigging the vote in the way that Curtis describes is plausible -- indeed, as I have demonstrated above, it's easy. Curtis claims that the code to perform the vote fraud would be easy to detect if the source code was inspected (he says he couldn't meet all three criteria because of that), but I am not so sure that's the case. Experienced programmers know that it's relatively easy to obfuscate the purpose of any block of code, and although it's theoretically possible to find it by inspection, it's not hard to make that a very difficult practical task. As an example, here's the code which is responsible for most of the Flash movie above:

riggedvote.as

It's not a lot of code, just a couple of hundred lines, and I haven't taken any special care to hide the fraud, but it takes some work to find it just the same. Now imagine hiding that nugget of code inside hundreds of thousands of lines of code. If some enterprising Microsoft hackers can hide a Flight Simulator in Excel, it's not hard to hide a little bit of fraud in a voting system.

I think the only way to make electronic voting trustworthy is to make it auditable at every level. This means careful validation and certification of open public source code, and an auditable paper trail.

Until then, your vote is only as good as the intentions of the person who follows you into the voting booth.

Verified Voting
Black Box Voting
20 Amazing Facts About Voting in the USA

The Playwrights' Prime Directive

2004-11-24T15:35:00.000-05:00

I have sat through a lot of readings and performances of new, original plays. Which may just be another way of saying, man, have I sat through a lot of boring theatre. It's amazing how slowly the seconds crawl by when there's boring drivel on stage.

I have slowly and painfully come to the conclusion that there is only one absolute rule in playwriting. We could call it the Prime Directive of playwriting. You can do anything you like on stage, except bore your audience. All the other rules - about plot, structure, conflict, etc. - are only suggestions to help you avoid boring your audience. You can safely ignore them as long as you observe the first law. That's why it's easy to find good plays which "violate all the rules". They might be all wrong, but they're never boring.

(Just in case you're wondering - no, I'm not referring to anything you wrote. I found all of your writing absolutely scintillating.)

Unlike the reader of a book, or a television viewer, a member of your audience can't just get away when she's bored. She can't change the channel, or skip ahead to a more interesting part, or go do something else entirely. Not only is it considered rude to get up and shuffle past a bunch of other people to get out of the theatre, it calls attention to oneself to do so. Besides, she paid good money to see this play, typically a lot more than she would pay for a movie ticket, a video rental, or even a hardcover book. If she's bored, she's stuck there, and she will hate you for that. You think she'll come back to your next play?

You don't have to pander to your audience. You can offend them. You can frighten them. You can enrage them. You can do anything you want to do on stage, except bore them.

It's up to you to remember that your audience is paying you. Even if the performance is free, they're giving you their time and attention. The least you can do for that is to avoid making them feel that they have wasted their time and/or money.

Not being boring is the most basic problem which a new playwright must master, and in their zeal to get to their great themes and ideas and characters, many new playwrights will stumble over the boredom issue. Most new playwrights seem to be more concerned with writing beautiful plays than with writing interesting plays. I've got nothing against beautiful words, and many of the dullest plays I've heard are full of wonderful, beautiful writing. Unfortunately, they're still boring, and no audience will be interested enough to want to hear the beauty of these plays.

So what's not boring? That's a tricky question, unfortunately, and the playwright isn't in total control of the play. A bad performance can render even the greatest script into a snooze-fest. But it's usually pretty easy to distinguish a boring performance from a boring script. But not making your script boring -- well, that's part of the art of playwriting, isn't it? I don't think it's reducible to rules, though the rules are useful signposts (See The Playwriting Seminars). Ideas like plot can be very useful, because a new play is often boring when "nothing happens". That's the #1 problem I see in new plays: lots of talking, no action. But why does something have to happen in the play? Because this is a play, not a lecture. You may have the greatest idea in the history of ideas. (Not likely, but possible.) You still have to make us care about it.

Don't bore the audience. That's all I ask. Everything else is in the service of that edict, and once you have your audience's interest, they will let you take them where you will.

Fallujah in Pictures

2004-11-15T19:31:00.000-05:00

Fallujah in Pictures has a lot of photos you won't see in the mainstream American press.

As an American taxpayer, as someone who forks over tens of thousands of dollars every year to our government, I have a very great interest in seeing what's being done with my money and in my name. I also have a right to see what's being done. (In another age, this would have made me a Republican.) For some reason, my government doesn't really want me to know what's going on in Iraq. Why is that? Are they afraid I'm not getting enough war for my money?

TV Shows I'm Looking Forward To

2004-11-10T17:02:00.000-05:00

America's Funniest Cold Case Files

Meet The Cops

Clown Wrestling

Middle Aged White People Say the Darndest Things

My Big Fat Obnoxious Jihadi

Humiliate Yourself for Our Amusement

Hey Look! More Overpriced Crap to Buy

Back to Normal, Whatever That Means

2004-11-08T23:30:00.000-05:00

I admit it, I've gone way overboard blogging political stuff. My blog is definitely an oddball, not only because I don't try to maintain a narrow focus on a single topic, but because I try to give equal weight to ~~my multiple personalities~~ the wide range of my interests. So I'll be getting back to programming, playwriting, and general geekitude, just as if the world was perfectly fine.

Meanwhile, I've still got plays to submit. First stop: the Boston Theater Marathon. I've been accepted into the BTM once, which is not bad for four attempts. Getting into the Marathon is a great thrill for an aspiring local playwright. One thing which always gets to me about the Marathon is the depressing regularity with which scripts about the Red Sox and their curse are accepted. Now that the Sox have finally won the Series and -- we hope -- abolished the curse -- dare I hope that plays NOT about the Sox now have a better chance of getting in? Cause frankly, I got a lot to say, but when it comes to the Sox, I got nothin'.

Final Electoral Map

2004-11-08T13:43:00.000-05:00

Linked from The Onion.

Options in Iraq

2004-11-08T11:52:00.000-05:00

American Options in Iraq by William R. Polk, a Middle East expert who has served with the U.S. State Department’s Policy Planning Council. This article will bring you up to speed on the three basic choices facing the US government in the Iraq debacle. None of them are really good. Of the Dear Leader's choice, "staying the course", Polk writes

It has never worked anywhere.... At best, “staying the course” in Iraq can be only a temporary measure as eventually America will have to leave. But during the period it stays, say the next five years, my guess is that another 30 or 40 thousand Iraqis will die or be killed while the U.S. armed forces will lose perhaps 5,000 dead and 20,000 seriously wounded.

Saw This On The Road Today

2004-11-08T09:36:00.000-05:00

This was just before I hit the checkpoint where I was expected to hand over all my cash and civil liberties.

Today's Quote

2004-11-05T16:52:00.000-05:00

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard." -- H. L. Mencken

The One-Fingered Victory Salute

2004-11-04T14:22:00.000-05:00

What will politicians see when they analyze this past election, and for the policies which will flow from it?

They will see a huge victory for lies, for hate, for fear, for intolerance, for diviseness. 2004 was a huge victory for ignoring reality and sticking steadfastly to dogma. Most of all, 2004 was a huge victory for giving a great big Republican Fuck You to half of the country! I'm so proud to be an American!

The Republicans turned out their evangelical base in record numbers by rallying them against gay marriage and abortion, and for a President who is considered to be one of them, if not God's Own Choice to be in the office. It's true that was the main contributor to Bush's numbers, but don't forget that although they protest about the liberal slant of the media, the Republicans own most of the media in the U.S. -- in fact, pretty much all of it except for Salon.com, the Nation, and Air America Radio. Media domination by the Republicans gave respectability to the Swift Boat Liars and buried any discussion about the real progress of the failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Republicans also have a lock on electoral offices in most states, including Ohio and Florida, and did everything they could do to drive down Democratic turnout and "lose" voter registration forms and absentee ballots. The voting machines were definitely hacked, and we will hear more of this as time goes on, but probably this was only a small contributor to Bush's victory.

In the very distant future, assuming there is one, Bush's single greatest legacy will be the degree to which he perpetuated and deepened the ideological divide in America in order to gain narrow electoral advantage. (That will be his legacy, anyway, if he can somehow avoid turning the Middle East into a giant sheet of glass.)

Now the newspapers are saying that Bush says he will try to heal the divisions in our country, but if you look at the text of his statement, he is saying no such thing. What he actually says is, "I will reach out to every one who shares our goals." We've heard words like that before from this guy. In Bush-speak, "I will reach out to every one who shares our goals" translates to "Fuck You, Democrats."

Division works for Bush. As long as Fox has his back, his lies will be repeated and believed by 51% of the electorate ("The War's going great! Saddam was behind 9/11!"), and that's all he needs. The rest of us get a big steaming cup of Shut the Fuck Up and Obey.

Yeah, about the Obey part. That's the side of Bush we're really going to get to see in the next four years, as we slide into perpetual war around the world and increasing religious intolerance at home.

The next four years of Bush will see (this list is in no particular order):

- Bush will not make any effort, beyond lip service, at being conciliatory. Remember "compassionate conservatism"?

- No elections in January in Iraq. There may possibly be no elections in Iraq at all between now and 2008, but there is no way they're going to happen in January.

- Additional wars across the Middle East. Practically a reinvasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. Probably an attack on Iran or Syria. Possibly North Korea as well.

- The return of the draft.

- The passage of Constitutional amendments banning gay marriage and abortion. (Ratification of these amendments is improbable, because Bush will need forty states to ratify them.)

- Further restrictions on access to information about contraception and abortion.

- New Supreme Court justices who will roll back civil rights, voting rights, and privacy rights.

- Deeper debt as Bush and the Republican Congress slash taxes on the wealthy, lavish perks on their corporate friends and recklessly borrow to cover the difference.

- Massive, 70s-style inflation and interest rate rises as a result of reckless fiscal policies. Recession all the way.

- Further degradation of our environment as Bush pushes to remove corporate polluters from any accountability whatsoever. Gutting of any meaningful environmental regulation.

- Gutting of any meaningful oversight of corporate governance, resulting in huge windfalls for the big players, but in the long run loss of confidence in the financial markets.

- Destruction of corporate liability. Companies will be able to poison, maim or kill you with their products with impunity, as Bush has pledged to remove them from any accountability. (This is what he means by "tort reform".)

- Speaking of accountability, greater secrecy from government. You won't be able to tell what government is doing, because they won't tell you.

- The dismantlement of Social Security and Medicare under the guise of "reforming" it.

- Further destruction of the middle class as Bush's tax policies shift any burden of taxation off of capital and on to workers. Further reductions in real wages and increased loss of jobs overseas. Huge unemployment.

- More people without health care. A lot more people without health care.

- Record poverty, record foreclosures, record bankruptcies.

- Lifting of restrictions on political activity by churches. (As though these have any meaning left)

- Pushes for mandatory prayer and creationism taught as science in the public schools.

- Under the guise of freedom of religion, the federal government will pass laws which allow companies to hire and fire on the basis of religion. Furthermore, pharmacists will be able to refuse to sell medicines, doctors can refuse to administer medical care, etc., all if they deem that it contradicts their religious beliefs.(It's already perfectly legal to fire someone or to refuse to sell or lease a home on the basis of sexual orientation.)

- The return of state laws criminalizing homosexuality.

- Massive increases in state surveillance of private individuals who are not suspected of crimes. Federal agents infiltrating peaceful political groups whose only "crime" is opposition to the Ruling Party.

- Utter indifference to the growing problem of global warming, and on a related front, utter inaction on the issue of replacing oil as our primary energy source.

- Since this campaign was so successful for Bush and his allies, it will be imitated and replayed over and over again for another generation, in the midterm Congressional elections especially, and then again in the 2008 Presidential election.

- The hallmark of these campaigns, as well as the political fights and skirmishes to come, is that notwithstanding the way the Republicans utterly dominate the government in Washington, Bush will blame all failures on Democrats and on the terrorists (who are working together, anyway). They will continue to blame the economy on Clinton. They might even try to blame a bunch of stuff on Kerry, now that they don't have Tom Daschle to kick around any more. And Fox News will back Bush up, and the proles will probably believe him.

There will be more. I'll be happy to revisit this list periodically, and in 2008, I'll post a roundup of how well I predicted the future. (If we're all still here!)

The great irony of this list is that a lot of the pain of these policies will fall on the very people who voted most strenuously for Bush. See, on red-meat issues, it's true that Bush is giving the one-fingered victory salute to the Blue States, but on bread-and-butter issues, he's giving it to everybody who isn't worth at least ten million dollars, and frankly, that means you, Red America. Look: I live in Massachusetts, and like a lot of people here, I'm very well-educated, and although I'm not rich, I do make a very good living. Democrats here extended their control of state and local government to near totality, and although we have a popular and very religious Republican governor, he won't touch gay rights or abortion with a ten-foot pole. (I think Democratic voters are going to punish him in 2006 for Bush, though.) Massachusetts is a rich state with a strong economy and lots of smart people, like most of Blue America, because there is a strong correlation between prosperity and the ability to perceive objective reality. We will be able to insulate ourselves from many of the bad effects of the next four years. We'll be fine, as will New York, California, and most of the rest of the Blue States, which by the way subsidize the Red States. (MA gets only 79 cents back from the federal government for every dollar we send out in taxes, and no doubt under Republican domination, that figure will go down even more.)

Meanwhile in Red State Land, it appears that you stupid crackers believe that the joy of being able to deny healthcare and survivor benefits to queers is worth losing your jobs, your homes, your health, and possibly your lives over.

Fuck You, indeed.

Get Out Of My American Way

2004-11-03T13:05:00.000-05:00

My short play Get Out Of My American Way will be performed as part of a Night of One Acts staged by the As-Yet-To-Be Theatre Company at 8:00 pm on Saturday November 13th. They are performing at the Stuart Street Playhouse in downtown Boston. Get Out Of My American Way is the heartwarming story of a woman whose dot-com job it is to downsize people, and the arrogant, maladjusted sap being downsized. Well, maybe it's not so heartwarming, but it is funny. Please come down and support great new local theater!

Another Prediction

2004-11-03T01:26:00.000-05:00

Find the people you know that voted for Bush. Write their names down, because in ten or fifteen years, you're going to want the pleasure of reminding them of their votes. I predict that most people you know who voted for Bush will deny it.

Don't believe me? Try to find any Nixon supporters these days. Nixon swept 49 states in 1972. The only state that didn't go for Nixon? That would be Massachusetts, of course. (A common bumper sticker at the time: "Don't blame me: I'm from Massachusetts.") Only two years later, Nixon became the only President to resign in disgrace. Once the most popular politician in America, Nixon is now widely and correctly considered to be the worst and the most crooked President in history.

And so he will remain until we take stock of Bush.

(Update 10-Nov-2004: Realizing that the thought was incomplete:)
I'm not arguing here from historical analogy, i.e. as Nixon goes, so goes Bush. Instead, I believe that the agenda that Bush will pursue will be so extreme, so right-wing and divisive, that it will repulse even many of the people who voted for him. Also, it will become increasingly clear that the war in Iraq is a debacle which was enabled by Bush's lies, and Bush will be unable to blame anyone else for it. Furthermore, the scope of fiscal damage which Bush is wreaking on the country will come into sharper focus, and again, when one party rules, who else will be there to take the blame? Not that Bush won't try...

Thieves in High Places

2004-11-02T23:18:00.000-05:00

We're watching the late returns while plugged into the net, where we're getting news of vote suppression and other shenanigans in Ohio and Florida. It says a lot about the Republican party that they can't win by asking people for their votes. They need to actually prevent a lot of people from voting in order to make their numbers. (The rest they can cover with lies propagated by the wholly Republican-owned media.) I can't support any party that actually tries to take votes away. It shows a profound contempt for the very concept of democracy. It goes hand-in-hand with the Republicans' cult of personality, their fascination with a President they perceive as chosen by God, and their exultation of a "CEO President". It's not off the track to call the Republican Party Royalist, if not outright Fascist. We are on track for a very bad situation in our country, regardless of whether Bush succeeds in stealing tonight's election, but it will be worse, last longer and cost more if he does take it.

Voting

2004-11-02T10:02:00.000-05:00

It was a clear morning when I went to vote, and even though the polls had literally been open about five minutes, the place was already swamped.

Fall In New England

2004-11-01T22:01:00.000-05:00

Even with the impending election, I had to take a few moments to enjoy a really beautiful fall day in New England.

I live in a lovely old New England mill town. Unlike a lot of towns this far out in the suburbs, my little town has an actual center to it. That's because of the mill, which has endured nearly two centuries, and provides an economic and architectural nucleus to the town. There's a lot of brick in town, and there has been a conscientious effort to maintain a certain restrained quality to the buildings, even as development has continued apace. So even though there have been concessions to commercial reality, such as the hideous McDonald's which dominates the busiest intersection, my town maintains a sort of timeless quality. It feels comfortable and easy to live in, it feels like home.

Fall is really the best season for a New England town like mine, and a gorgeous day like the one we had today is the best time to experience it. The sky was cloudless, the sun was shining, the leaves were only just past their peak color on the trees, but enough of them had fallen to provide a beautiful blanket. The air was crisp but not cold. All around my town, there was a lovely parade of colors, from the trees, from the sky, from the town and its people, in the sharp bright sunshine of fall. This is what people imagine New England to look like. Fall is the best time to be here. I really love this town.

The Holy and Anointed One

2004-11-01T21:19:00.000-05:00

Every once in a while, my aunt in San Diego forwards to me some email and/or web site she's received from one of her friends. Her friends skew older and more Republican than the crowd I hang with, so I am grateful for the window she offers into the dark soul of Right-wing America. (Although, to be fair, she forwards material from all points of the political spectrum.)

A few days ago, my aunt sent me an article by a guy named Bruce Vincent. It seems Bruce got himself an audience with the current occupant of the Oval Office, and he felt moved to share his experience with us. He was there to have his photo taken with George W. Bush. But he says he came away with a lot more than just a photo and a handshake. The heart of Vincent's story is that Bush actually prayed with him.

It's been a long time since I have read such a heavy-handed, over-the-top puff piece. I don't know where this guy learned how to write, but I'll say this for Bruce Vincent: this guy sure knows how to put the jism back in journalism!

This piece is so transparently partisan, so brazen in its puffery of the Good, Honest, Noble, Humble, Pious Christian Bush, that it's hard to believe that it's actually meant to be taken seriously, but apparently there is no irony in Bushtown, nor is there any depth of obsequiousness which is too deep. Doesn't anyone reading this consider that it's plain old good PR for the president to meet and greet the peasants, and even pray with them? Yet, judging by my aunt's reaction, people do take it seriously.

At one point in the narrative, Bush is reported to say "...there are those in the nation's capital that would rather see the nation dismantled than work together to achieve a common good." You know, the Republicans dominate all three branches of the federal government. Democrats are literally locked out. Now, who would be those bad people who would rather "see nation dismantled than work together" (Those bad, bad, people!) Would those be -- maybe -- would those be Democrats? I don't know. It's a real head-scratcher.

If the President prays, then good for him. I'm glad he prays. And if you're one of those dumbasses who thinks that God has picked Bush to be President, then I suppose it makes you comfortable to know he prays. (To your God.) I find the concept that God put Bush in the White House not only repugnant and profoundly anti-democratic, but blasphemous as well. I also happen to remember from Sunday school what Jesus might have said about this article:

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites [are]: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

So fine, if the President prays, that's great. Personally, I'd rather have a President who doesn't lie.

PS: Selling the President as good and pious is a big part of his strategy this year. See Ashley's Story, where a girl who lost her mom in the World Trade Center attack (which Bush failed to prevent) gets a hug from Bush. Doesn't that just melt your heart? For a more realistic story, see Brooke's Story. Her brother died in Iraq looking for the WMDs that Bush lied about, and then Bush joked about the missing weapons. Make sure to take a look at both of these sites before you go to vote on Tuesday.

The Osama Show

2004-10-30T10:49:00.000-04:00

I just saw ~~Emmanuel Goldstein~~ Osama bin Laden on TV. According to the Bush campaign, he was there to give his endorsement to John Kerry.

Do you suppose that's the reason that piece of shit is still alive?

Osama : too convenient to kill...

("I'm Osama bin Laden, and I approved this message.")

Is this the October surprise? Because if so, it's a pretty lame October surprise.

Costs of War

2004-10-29T16:13:00.000-04:00

The war in Iraq was being prepared in 1999 in order to boost Bush's popularity should he become president. Has it been worth it? Did you get your money's worth? There are a lot of American service people and a lot more Iraqis who will never find out.

According to that liberal left-wing radical rag The Lancet, our brilliant little war has cost roughly 100,000 Iraqi civilians their lives. That's civilians. I don't know about you, but that just makes me beam with pride. (Yes, it's an order of magnitude more than are noted on the Iraq Body Count; that's because the IBC only counts deaths actually reported in the media.)

Now let's see. The cost of the Iraq war stands today at roughly 142 billion dollars. So each dead Iraqi only cost us about one and a half million dollars each! It's a real bargain when you realize that the vast majority of them weren't even terrorists! Wait, it gets better! It's all borrowed money! You might not even pay it back -- because your kids will!

Of course, it only takes about ten bucks for an insurgent to blow up a Humvee full of American soldiers. (Do we have a million times more money than they do? Better hope so.)

Seriously: collateral damage is an unfortunate fact of life in warfare, especially in an age of asymmetric warfare and terrorism. It's one of the reasons we should be reluctant to go to war. The professional US military does everything it can to reduce the number of civilian casualties, but it's still an inevitable part of military operations. That's why war should only be undertaken as a last resort, not as a component of domestic political strategy.

What Is That Thing?

2004-10-29T13:04:00.000-04:00

There is definitely something there:

So what could it be?
Drainage Tube?
A Broken Spine?
Puppet Strings?

(Full Story available at Salon.)

Lowering the Water

2004-10-29T11:24:00.000-04:00

Have you ever heard that phrase, "If you can't raise the bridge, lower the water" ...?

It seems that's just what someone is doing in Milwaukee. This flyer is being passed around in black neighborhoods there.

Now, who would benefit from depressing black voter turnout? That's a tough question...

Some Literary Pointers for the Upcoming Week

2004-10-29T01:14:00.000-04:00

This is from Anthony Burgess's book 1985, published in 1978, a critique and counterpoint to Orwell's 1984:

"...That cacotopia of Sinclair Lewis's, It Can't Happen Here, still seems to me to be the most plausible projection, though it was written in the thirties. At least it shows how a tyranny can come about through the American electoral process, with a president American as apple pie, as they say -- a kind of cracker-barrel Will Rogers type appealing to the philistine anti-intellectual core of the American electorate. Core? More than the core, the whole fruit except for the thin skin of liberalism. My old pappy used to say: Son, there ain't no good books except the Good Book. Time these long-haired interlettles got their comeuppance, and so on. And so book-burning, shooting of radical schoolmasters, censorship of progressive newspapers. Every repressive act justified out of the Old Testament and excused jokingly in good spittoon style....

"What interests me is how a species of totalitarianism could come about in the United States through uneasiness about the enemy at the gates. A communist revolution in Mexico, helped by the Chinese, might set America dithering, looking for spies, deploying her immense cybernetic and electronic resources to keep citizens under surveillance. The enhanced power of the presidency, the temporary dissolution of Congress. Censorship. Dissident voices silenced. And all int he name of security. No war is necessary, only the threat of war and, in good Orwellian style, the notion of an enemy, actual or potential, can be the device for justifying tyranny. Orwell was right there. War is the necessary background to State repression. War as a landscape or weather or wallpaper. The causes don't matter, the enemy can be anybody..."

Burgess may be best-known for having written A Clockwork Orange, but this book strikes a deeper chord in me, especially these days.

War is the necessary background to State repression. Bear that in mind.

We Are All Red Sox Now.

2004-10-27T23:40:00.000-04:00

The Great Defender - Not

2004-10-26T23:30:00.000-04:00

George W. Bush says that 9/11 proves that he is the only presidential candidate who can defend America. Well, since he failed the first time, why should anyone think he'll stop it again?

We will never know, but do you suppose that if President Al Gore saw a Presidential Daily Brief titled, BIN LADEN DETERMINED TO STRIKE IN U.S., he would have said to himself, "You know? This is a good time to take a month off." Because that's what George W. Bush did, after eight months of doggedly ignoring Osama bin Laden and al Qaida. Didn't you know? They had a war to plan -- with Iraq. ("Bin Laden? Never heard of him. Now get out of here -- we've got a war to sell.")

9/11 happened on George W. Bush's watch. It was Bush's responsibility to stop. Had Bush not been installed in office, had someone serious been in office, the plotters might have been stopped -- the attack might have been foiled -- just like the Millennium Plot was foiled.

So who knows? Maybe it's just a coincidence. Bush wanted a war in Iraq. He was ready for it. He just needed a way to sell it to the American public. And when a devastating attack came, from people he had been warned about and ignored, he capitalized on the fear it generated in order to justify a war he had already decided upon. Is that a coincidence? It's probably a coincidence, but Bush has never shown the slightest hesitation or restraint in exploiting 9/11 as a political opportunity. If another attack happens, it's clear that Bush will exploit that attack as ruthlessly as he has the first.

So, to recap: he knew the attack was coming. He did nothing to stop it. When it came, he used it to push a disastrous, expensive war he'd already decided upon. But he says 9/11 proves that he can defend America. How does that follow, exactly? He's got a hell of a lot of nerve.

Election Protection

2004-10-20T01:13:00.000-04:00

Dear Friends:

There are a lot of reasons why people think that the upcoming election will be the most important election we have ever seen. To my mind, however, even with all the important issues confronting us, nothing is as important as ensuring and maintaining the integrity of the electoral process. After the fiasco of the 2000 election, and with every indication that the 2004 election will play out in a similar fashion, it is incumbent upon us as citizens to step up and do whatever it takes to make sure that every eligible voter who shows up at the polls is able to vote, and that every vote is counted.

With the stakes so high in this election, and with the electorate so evenly divided, we are already seeing attempts to interfere with voting rights on a massive scale. We can expect many more such attempts, up to Election Day, on Election Day, and beyond. These efforts range from the destruction of voter registration forms, to the use of error-filled voter exclusion lists, to the improper use of police to intimidate voters, to the deployment of buggy and unreliable electronic voting machines. These efforts suit the short-term interests of some politicians, but in the long run do nothing but erode the essential confidence that Americans must have in their democratic institutions. This damage serves no party's interest, but that fact alone will not stop them from trying anything they think they can get away with.

Don't let them get away with it.

Election Protection (http://www.electionprotection.org/) is organizing volunteers to monitor thousands of polling sites across the country, but especially in the battleground states, where the voting rights of millions of voters are most at risk. Please go to their site and volunteer time or donate money to help them protect our Constitutional rights.

This is not a partisan effort. Election Protection exists to protect the voting rights of Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Greens, and every other American eligible to vote. All Americans have a stake in the integrity of this election.

Please go to http://www.electionprotection.org/ and help protect the very basis of our democracy.

"Funny - the Fastest Guy In Iraq"

2004-10-18T07:29:00.000-04:00

About a year and a half ago, in the first month of the invasion of Iraq, a friend of mine at work sent a video around by email. The video was entitled "Funny - the Fastest Guy in Iraq". It was about five seconds of what appeared to be nose-camera imagery from some sort of missile or bomb, the kind of footage we all became familiar with during the 1991 Gulf War. In those few seconds of noisy video imagery, you could see the vehicles that were the apparent targets of the strike, but that wasn't what made this video "funny". What was funny was the ghostly white silhouette in the shape of a man, who could be seen running away from the center of the image -- from the aim point of the weapon. Clearly, he was running in vain, because at that moment, the bomb was only a second or two away from impact. It's unlikely the guy in the video made it more than a few meters away from the blast.

As the video made its way around the office, I could hear a few of my coworkers chortling over it. But I didn't find the video funny. I found it tragic and unspeakably sad. The poor schmuck in the video was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. For all we know, he'd never done anyone any harm, and in all probability was only in the army because it was the best job he could get. Not only was he blown to bits, which is surely a rotten way to die, but his last frightened moments were then sent around the world for the amusement of the people who paid to have him killed (i.e. us).

A few videos of this sort were in email and web circulation in the wake of the odd euphoria which was in the air at the close of the invasion, when it appeared as though the US forces had triumphed in Iraq. Now the war has taken on a decidedly different cast, and videos of a different sort are circulating. The jihadis are sending out videos of them beheading their Western captives. My friend hasn't sent any of these around. I don't think he'd consider any of these to be "funny". In fact, I'm sure he'd be disgusted by them. I certainly am. I haven't looked at any of those videos, and I'm not likely to.

I'm not saying that there's a moral equivalence between American and allied forces and the jihadis in Iraq that are opposing them. I'm not talking about who's the "good guys" and who's the "bad guys". I'm just saying that a snuff film is a snuff film. The one thing that all these videos have in common is that the victim is just some poor sap who got caught up in events and has no desire to be there, especially now that it's clear that these are his last moments. Who among us wants to be the star of such a sick video? Who deserves that?

I'm not writing this because I feel morally superior to the people I work with. My friend who passed the video around is a good man. I don't think he's cruel, or that he'd stand by in the face of cruelty. Sometimes we play Unreal Tournament together, and we laugh at each other when we blow each other into virtual bloody chunks. Perhaps at some level, he appears to have confused the video game world with the real world. More likely, I think, is that he was channeling a little bit of War Fever, which makes anything "we" do automatically good, and excuses anything done to "them", since "they" deserved it anyway.

War is a tragically necessary business, which must be undertaken sometimes to defend ourselves and our country, but it is also a dirty and disgusting business. We should always honor the men and women who stand up and put their lives on the line to defend our country. However, we should never glorify the act of killing, and war is ultimately about killing. It's a terrible thing to do. It's not fun, it's not funny, and it shouldn't be taken lightly. I believe that part of the reason we're in this tragic, wasteful, stupid, useless war in Iraq is because as a nation, we thought it would be fun, because we glorify war all too easily, and there is a part of our culture that wants war, because we have obscured that it's really just organized killing. I don't think my friend really thought about what he was watching when he sent his "funny" video around, any more than the American public really thought about what we were really getting into when we invaded Iraq.

Jefferson's Words for Today

2004-10-17T17:16:00.000-04:00

"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our selection between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessities and comforts, in our labors and in our amusements, for our callings and our creeds... our people... must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live...

"We have not time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow sufferers. Our landholders, too... retaining indeed the title and stewardship of estates called theirs, but held really in trust for the treasury, must...be contented with penury, obscurity and exile... private fortunes are destroyed by public as well as by private extravagance.

"This is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of society is reduced to mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering... And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in it's train wretchedness and oppression."

Bear these words in mind this November. Will you be voting for economy and liberty, or will you vote for profusion and servitude?

Morons

2004-10-16T16:10:00.000-04:00

Seen on a highway somewhere in America:

Something To Be Proud Of

2004-10-13T10:20:00.000-04:00

A private voter-registration firm hired by the Republican Party in Nevada has been destroying the Democratic registrations it has gathered, and is turning in only Republican registrations. Apparently a lot of people who thought they were registered to vote will have a surprise waiting for them on Election Day. This is against the law, but the Republicans figure that there's no real penalty for this sort of chicanery, since the damage will be done long before anyone has to answer to a judge.

I have to wonder, though, about a party that commits fraud, and about the kind of people who belong to a party that commits fraud. I ask my Republican friends: is this the sort of behavior that makes you proud to be a Republican? Does this bring honor to your party? What does it say about your party, that you have to resort to cheating people out of their votes in order to win?

Nevada's not the only state which is seeing this sort of criminal behavior. Republicans all across the country are doing everything in their power to rob people of their rights to vote. It's the clearest sign that they are intellectually and morally bankrupt, that they can't persuade people based on the merits of their arguments. They have to resort to outright deception and fraud. Republicans, I hope you're proud of yourselves for that.

Moving to a New Address

2004-10-07T09:52:00.000-04:00

I finally decided that the time has come to move to my own domain. I'm moving my personal website, including this blog, from http://world.std.com/~pbrennan to my new domain, http://www.pbrennan.net/. The old site will remain for a while as a mirror, but I will eventually shut it down. In the meantime, please update your links and bookmarks.

Must-Read for Today

2004-10-05T09:46:00.000-04:00

The Unfeeling President by E.L. Doctorow. Eloquent and sad. Over 1,000 service people dead, but:

"He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country....He cannot mourn but is a figure of such moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves."

This Just In

2004-10-04T23:31:00.000-04:00

Don Rumsfeld has said that he doesn't believe there will be a civil war in Iraq. Considering Rumsfeld's track record so far predicting how things in Iraq would go -- he's batting a perfect .000 -- a civil war is starting to look more and more inevitable.

Rumsfeld also seems to think "what has to be done in that country is what basically was done in Samarra over the last 48 hours." In other words, drive most of the population out of it and kill everyone that's left behind?

Go SpaceShipOne!

2004-10-04T13:24:00.000-04:00

As any geek worthy of the title knows by now, SpaceShipOne has flown its second of two required flights necessary to secure the $10 million Ansari X-Prize. This is a remarkable achievement, and it's a clear step in the direction of everyday, private space flight.

There are now three directions for follow-on development. The first, as highlighted by the Virgin Galactic deal, will be the commercialization of SpaceShipOne-class vehicles as short-hop thrill rides to the edge of space for the well-heeled, starting at about $20,000 per ride. The second will be the development of more capable suborbital vehicles for commercial use. (I'll be very surprised if we don't learn in 10 years or so that the US military isn't already operating "black" suborbital vehicles of some sort, but that's another topic.) Suborbital cargo or passenger carriers could revolutionize commerce and transportation every bit as much as overnight package delivery and jumbo jets have done. But the long-range payoff will be on the third follow-on, which would be a private orbital space vehicle. The challenges for this are formidable, because getting SpaceShipOne to 100 kilometers is nowhere near as difficult as pushing it to orbital speed once it's reached that altitude. And once you're in orbit, then you have the problem of getting rid of all that speed in order to come home again. Remember, we lost one Space Shuttle in the process of pouring on the speed to get into orbit, and another one in the process of shedding speed to come back to Earth. Both parts of the problem are difficult and dangerous. Nevertheless, someone will do it at some point. And with any luck, I'll have saved enough money for a ticket by that time.

George W. Bubble Boy

2004-10-01T09:28:00.000-04:00

George W. Bush put on such a dismal performance in last night's debate, I was at a real loss for an explanation. Was he tired? Was he stressed out? Did he not bother to prepare? He was on-message ("9/11 - no mixed signals - I know how the world works"), but there wasn't much conviction to what he had to say, and he said it over and over again. He seemed visibly lost at a couple of moments in the debate, struggling to remember his lines. At other times he looked smug, smirking his famous smirk, and all in all acting as though the debate was nothing more than a waste of his valuable time. Where was George W. Bush, the straight-talkin' guy who was supposed to wipe the floor with John Kerry? Where was George W. Bush, the mighty leader who was going to deliver the knockout blow, on the topic he controls -- foreign policy -- and put Kerry away once and for all?

The answer, of course, is just that that George W. Bush doesn't exist outside the Republican media machine. And to make sure you don't know that, they keep the real George W. Bush inside an impenetrable, hermetically-sealed bubble.

For the past four years, access to Bush has been meticulously managed. Press conferences -- when they occur -- are occasions for softball questions by friendly reporters, and reporters who don't play ball are frozen out. Bush campaign events are scripted even for the participants, who must sign loyalty oaths before being permitted in, and where security toughs ensure that even then, they may be ejected for not displaying the proper level of deference. Once in, they participate in call-and-response with the president, in a grotesque parody of a leader addressing the citizens he serves. Every time he makes a speech, of course, he's not speaking his own words: he's just reading talking points off a teleprompter. So the impression that has been conjured is that of an infallible and wildly popular leader. Facts -- like the insane rush to a disastrous war in the Middle East -- almost don't matter, as long as the Republicans can control the impressions.

But last night, for the first time in four years, we saw Bush by himself, without a script, without having the questions beforehand, without being able to memorize his pat answers beforehand, without a teleprompter or a bud in his ear (as far as we know), and without a cheering audience to back him up.

And you know, maybe this morning it looks like keeping Bush isolated in a bubble wasn't such a good idea after all.

I think he's gone soft from all the cushy treatment. When you don't have to work for the applause, when you don't have to have the right answers because they'll be given to you, when you don't even have to think for yourself -- how can you not lose your edge when that happens?

It's no secret that Bush never had much use for doing real work in the first place. Once relieved of any need to perform in public, he lost the ability, and it showed last night.

George W. Bush is a Bubble Boy. Once he's outside the bubble, he can't defend himself. Maybe they should have inoculated him first -- or maybe they shouldn't have isolated him from the world in the first place.

Just Watched the First Debate

2004-09-30T22:45:00.000-04:00

It's about time somebody was allowed to ask George W. Bush questions about Iraq. It's about time.

After delivering perfunctory thanks to the hosts of the debate, what were the first words out of George W. Bush's mouth? "September 11th." Should that have been a surprise? Right there, the magic words, the words that justify any excess, any bad policy, any lie. "September 11th." See him repeat it like a mantra, about 200 billion more times (one for each dollar wasted in Iraq) between now and the election.

Bush's single talking point: you shouldn't send "mixed signals." Whatever that means. When he doesn't have his handlers surrounding him and managing him, Bush doesn't seem capable of being coherent. He can't think on his feet. Kerry, by contrast, demonstrated that he was prepared, he had a command of the facts.

Twice, Bush asserted that A.Q. Khan has been "brought to justice." Twice! Khan has exported nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea, and Libya. His network was penetrated and has at least gone underground, but a lot of damage has been done. Has A.Q. Khan been brought to justice? Not really. He was pardoned by Pervez Musharraf, the President of Pakistan. This is what Bush considers "justice"? It might have been better for Bush not to have mentioned A.Q. Khan; most Americans have no idea who A.Q. Khan is. On the other hand, most won't bother to find out, so maybe that's a wash for Bush.

It was absolutely incumbent upon Bush to explain how he's going to win in Iraq and get us out of there. Does Bush have any idea how to get us out of Iraq? Does Bush have a clue about how to get us out of Iraq?

Vidlit: Bite-Sized Literature in Flash

2004-09-24T09:43:00.000-04:00

I love Vidlits. Well, of course I do: I'm a writer and a Flash guy, so naturally I'm glad to see someone else mixing their chocolate in my peanut butter. They've pulled it off with such wit and style that it's definitely worth more than one visit.

Words to Live By

2004-09-18T01:09:00.000-04:00

GEORGE W. BUSH: "I am not gonna get involved in any quagmire that I didn't start." (1972, 2003)

It's possible -- he made a solemn vow, and he's sticking to it.

Vote: The Machinery of Democracy

2004-09-15T18:50:00.000-04:00

An online companion to the exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, this site features an interesting look at the historical background of the machines we trust with our votes. Gives some perspective to the current electronic voting machine mess, but if it's supposed to make me feel better that the machines have always been a source of worry, it's not working.

More Reassurance from Microsoft

2004-09-15T16:33:00.000-04:00

This makes me feel secure. Microsoft is reporting that a new flaw has been discovered, deep in the Windows XP code, which can be exploited to take control of your computer. The twist is that this time, the code can be embedded in a JPG image, which the typical websurfer encounters thousands of times every day. Your machine could be infected simply by viewing an image on the web!

Microsoft is issuing patches for literally dozens of different products which share the code base. It's a huge pain in the ass to patch your M$ products, I know; but it beats getting hacked. Of course, you could always go open-source; this might be just the reason to switch to from Internet Exploiter -- er, Explorer -- to Firefox.

Microsoft : your potential, our patchin'

Republican Dating Sites

2004-09-13T08:32:00.000-04:00

Are you a sensitive Republican looking for that special someone? The bar scene just doesn't cut it; how many times have you wasted a ton of money and a lot of your valuable time meeting someone new, only to have her disagree with you on some political point? If she watches anything but Fox, you've just blown the whole evening. Internet dating services are a great way to reduce the hassle, but as we all know, it's just too easy to end up on a date with a woman who still believes that everyone has a right to have their vote counted, or that her body belongs to her.

If it's all too much to bear, knowing that there are women out there who can disagree with your beliefs, and defend themselves with facts and reason, implicitly pointing out your shameful inability to do anything better than parrot the last thing you heard on talk radio, then there is help for you. Now there are dating sites for people like you, where only people who have been screened for the correct political beliefs will be allowed to register. It's just like a Bush/Cheney campaign event! And just like the President and Vice President, you won't ever have to worry about answering any inconvenient questions or be asked to back up your assertions with actual facts.

Single Republicans
Conservative Match
Republican Singles

The sites themselves are covered with ("liberally festooned with," you might say) eagles and flags and the Statue of Liberty, to remind you that you are a Real American, which is why you seek to avoid meeting people who deviate even slightly from your rigid and narrow-minded ideology.

Rush Limbaugh himself has endorsed these sites: "despite the liberal lads you've been dating, there is hope out there," says Rush, who has just been divorced by his third wife, whom he met online! How can you argue with success like that? (It wasn't his fault, of course, it's all because of contraception.)

So go on over and register right now!

(White, Christian, Registered Republicans only, please, straight or deeply closeted. Promise Keepers and women lacking self-esteem welcome. All females must be of good breeding stock, with shots and certificates up-to-date. Already married? Not a problem, as long as you are male and a major Republican donor or elected official!)

Republican dating sites. Where even Ann Coulter can get a date!

Free Market

2004-09-12T18:09:00.000-04:00

(NOTE: I wrote this in January 2001. Strangely, I think its relevance has only grown in the intervening time.)

FREE MARKET
( The Scene : THE PRESIDENT addresses the nation on television. )

THE PRESIDENT:
Good evening, America.

It is a pleasure and an honor for me to address you tonight.

First and foremost, I'd like to thank you again for expressing your confidence in me this past November, those of you who voted, that is. For me. And had your votes counted. And let me make clear that my deepest regret, perhaps my only regret, about the recent events with which we are all so familiar is that they will prevent me from having the honor, the privilege, of asking for your votes in the future.

I'd like to thank you all for having the good sense, most of you, to have quietly acquiesced to our recent change of government. Yes, we realize you were only doing what we had spent years training you to do, but it's still gratifying that all our diligence and hard work has paid off.

We deeply appreciate the acceptance, the docility and restraint, with which you have greeted this momentous change. And let me assure you that thanks to you, we've been able to keep the demonstrations, detentions, and disappearances to an absolute minimum.

Our research leads us to believe that generally, you all understand that what we did, we had to do. Ultimately, it is in your own best interests. Some of you may not believe that, but don't worry. Our people will be sure to see that your children do.

Now, tonight, I'd like to take a few minutes and talk to you about your rights. Things may have changed a bit, but I want to assure everyone watching tonight that you still have rights, fundamental rights, guaranteed by law. Let me enumerate them for you.

First and foremost, you have the right to work. As you know, I was raised in a right-to-work state, and it shaped my beliefs profoundly. So, from this moment, let me assure you that you will exercise your right to work. And for your labor, you have the right to be paid at a fair rate, which we will set.

You also have the right to buy a multitude of fine consumer products offered for sale by our corporate subsidiaries, and conveniently available at any of our beautiful, bright, shiny malls.

You have the right to passively consume a wealth of media diversions which we have manufactured and screened to be as wholesome and as inoffensive as possible. Don’t worry, there will be plenty of sports, plenty of situation comedy, plenty of romance novels, for everyone. However, from this moment forward, all depictions of sex, violence, drug use, blasphemy, libel against the government, and subversive political ideas will be strictly forbidden in all forms of media. I know that those of you who are parents will appreciate that.

You have the right to worship in whichever religion you choose, and raise your children in your tradition. In fact, to help you with this, we have pre-selected a group of seven specific religions which you will be required to choose from. Choose wisely, because this will be a binding choice.

You have the right to a government which can learn about any threat to public safety and act accordingly. Therefore, you have the right to supply any information deemed necessary to the proper police and civil authorities. This includes samples of your blood, urine, skin, or any other tissues. You also have the right to be under our electronic protection at all times.

You have the right to be deeply afraid of any vague, external threats which we will bring to your attention from time to time, and to support any and all actions which we deem necessary to protect you from any such threats.

Should you ever be arrested by the police, you have the right to be held in solitary confinement for as long as necessary while the evidence against you is gathered; and you have the right to a speedy trial. You will have the right to speak at your trial. When you are found guilty, and let's face it, most people who are arrested are guilty, you will have the right not to have any cruel and unusual punishments inflicted upon you, but we will decide what’s cruel and unusual. Most of your rights will be stripped from you as a prisoner, but not all of them. In fact, you’ll find that you still have the right to work. For us.

Well, so much for your basic rights. I think you'll agree with me that really, for you, very little has changed. But now, I'd like to talk to you about something even more basic, more fundamental, and much more exciting: our new way of doing things. Let me start with the fundamentals. What are we trying to do with America, with the American government, and where are we taking it?

You see, we're businessmen. And we believe, as many of you do, that government should be run like a business. In the whole, long history of man, many forms of social organization have been tried, and none of them have shown such spectacular success as the free market. All other forms, and history has shown this clearly, are utter failures. And as we are organizing every other facet of our lives to be governed by the market, so we must reorganize our social institutions. And that means, we’re not a government, we’re a business.

And when you look at the business of governing like a business, as we did, you realize certain things. We realized that there were enormous inefficiencies in the way different entities such as the government, the media, and the marketplace were running our affairs. It was as though these entities were all serving different purposes, or different people, or different ends, when in fact they were all really being run by the same people, with the same ends in mind. All this separation of powers nonsense, for example. Who needs it? So, when you look at it like that, you see that what we did was no more radical than what any good group of free marketeers would do in this situation. We decided on a merger!

We determined that there would be enormous synergies, as they say, by combining all of our various holdings into a single, superior conglomerate. We will realize incredible savings by eliminating redundancies. And we intend to pass the savings back to you, the consumers!

However, in the course of the inevitable restructuring we are planning, we will incur enormous costs. Moreover, we will have to retire some debts as we consolidate. In order to do this right, therefore, we need investment on a massive scale. And now, my fellow Americans, you will see how you fit in.

You see, I’ve waited until now to tell you about your new right, your most important right and your most exciting privilege, in this new American age. From now on, you will have the right to buy shares of America. That’s right. Tomorrow morning, we will announce an Initial Public Offering of certified US government stock. And I urge you to call your representative, or your broker, and buy as much as you can. From now on, your rights will be determined by your ownership of US government stock. Buy, and you will be a full citizen with all rights and privileges of a stockholder, with as many votes as you have shares. Don’t buy, and well, you know.

The free market, as we’ve said, is a superior system for the allocation of resources. And good government is really just another resource. And that means that the primitive and anachronistic notion of one man, one vote is hopelessly outdated. It's more rational, it’s more logical, to adopt the system of one dollar, one vote. For one thing, they're a whole lot easier to count. What do you think accountants are for? There's never any doubt, between any two people, who's got the most dollars. I’m confident that once you get used to this new system, you will appreciate it as much as we do, as you trade in the tired old label of “citizen” for the proud titles of “customer,” “employee,” and “stockholder!”

Remember, my fellow Americans, past performance is no guarantee of future results, so read the prospectus carefully before you invest. Trust God, follow the dollar, and bless America! Thank you!

BLACKOUT

There Shall Be No Peace Until Kirk Lives!

2004-08-24T22:14:00.000-04:00

So vows the official Bring Back Kirk website, which maintains that the stupid and senseless death of James T. Kirk in Star Trek: Generations needs to be redressed.

You know, sometimes we lose track of what's really important in this life. Thankfully, there are some people who are out there to remind us.

Our Privacy Policy

2004-08-21T23:55:00.000-04:00

An actual sign I saw in a check-cashing store in Somerville today:

"OUR PRIVACY POLICY: We do not disclose any non-public personal information to anyone, except as permitted by law."

In other words, "We will sell any of your data to anyone at any time we like, and if you don't like it ... well, who cares if you don't like it? You're standing in line at a damn check-cashing store."

In these troubled times, though, isn't it nice to know that a company has an explicit policy of only doing what is permitted by law?

The Boston Retinal Implant Project

2004-08-19T14:09:00.000-04:00

The Boston Retinal Implant Project is an attempt to create a microelectronic retinal implant. Their goal is to restore vision to patients with age-related macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa. They are currently testing their first device, which stimulates the neurons underneath the retina based on visual information acquired by a tiny camera and relayed to the implant using radio waves. The electrode array which interfaces with the neurons is not capable of transmitting much information yet -- there are only 15 electrodes. They clearly have a lot of work ahead of them. But it's a very exciting start.

My question is, how long until I can have one of these things? If someone's going to insert one of these in my eye, I want more than fifteen pixels, that's for sure. My own back-of-the-envelope guess is that prostheses like these will be as good as my own eye in anywhere from 20 to 30 years. Something to look forward to.

Food Force

2004-08-17T11:47:00.000-04:00

I really love shooters, but a game doesn't need shooting in it for me to be interested. I think I'll be interested in checking out Food Force from that hotbed of game development the World Food Program. It's definitely a different idea: the player is a Food Aid worker trying to accomplish missions in hostile territory. Although the game appears to be targeted at a younger demo than me, I like the general idea. If it's done well, this could be one of those quirky, non-mainstream sim games that I do, in fact, love (like Orbiter).

W Ketchup

2004-08-16T23:05:00.000-04:00

The Republicans' favorite vegetable is back. Just the thing to put on your Freedom Fries! From the website:

"You don’t support Democrats. Why should your ketchup? W Ketchup is made in America, from ingredients grown in the USA. W Ketchup is America’s Ketchup™. Because Democrats aren't Americans."

OK, I made up that last sentence, but you know? That's pretty much the gist of the site. Of course, there's nothing new about exploiting patriotism, or party affiliation, to make a buck. God bless America. As for me, well, I love America and I don't like ketchup anyway.

Camper Strike and Red Orchestra

2004-08-13T16:06:00.000-04:00

Camper Strike is a nifty Flash app which gives you a few minutes of the First Person Shooter experience, assuming your MO is being a camper.

On the other hand, if you're bored with Unreal Tournament 2004 already, maybe Red Orchestra can help jazz things up. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks really cool.

Nader's Difference

2004-08-13T10:35:00.000-04:00

This cool Flash app allows you to interactively assess the potential impact of Ralph Nader's run on the 2004 Presidential race, making it much more concrete and palpable. Obviously a lot of people in 2000 bought Ralph's line that there was no difference between Gore and Bush. This year, there's really no excuse for that sort of willful ignorance. Yet Ralph persists in that line, for reasons I cannot fathom.