Things that make you less festive

Working all night into Christmas Eve morning, trying to finish an experiment kinda sucks.

Coming home and finding your cat peed in your travel bag just makes it that much worse.

Santa knows one cat on the naughty list.

Stop the MADDness

Sometimes crap like this ircs me....

Mothers Against Drunk Driving said Wednesday it was severing ties with Miss Teen USA Katie Blair [18] because it was "disappointed" by news reports that she had been spotted partying with Miss USA Tara Conner in New York clubs.

Elsewhere in our universe, other 18-yr-olds patrol Tirkit in the service of Uncle Sam.

American electorate to teenagers: No, you can't drink. You're too young and immature to shoulder the responsibility. Instead, shoulder this machine gun and go make split-second life-or-death descisions.

We have soldiers dying everyday who are well under the legal drinking age. Any mothers mad about that? (... obviously not "security moms"...) It's ok to have teens in a war in Iraq, but booze is teh DevIL. Some fucking priorities. I'm of the opinion that anyone with a military ID should be allowed to drink whatever they want. (Better do it before deployment though, 'cause Iraq's pretty dry.) It would amuse the hell out of me to see that proposed in Congress. It's too radical of course. No one would dare to go on record either for or against it. You never know though... it could even boost military recruitment. Not that I'm suggesting a new special way to prey on the teen psyche...the 40k signing bonus is predatory enough. (Yes soldiers deserve that and more. It's still a gimmick; otherwise we'd drop the bonus and increase the salary.)

Mad Mothers. Talk about a nanny state. We've got bigger things to worry about than fluzies getting loaded (and here's as good a place as any to point out that hotties in college tend to party...it's beyond the norm into near-certainty). Yeah, they were breaking the law, but A: it's a stupid law, and B: they weren't driving. So MADD can drop that second D. This isn't about drunk driving, it's just about drinking. Link credit to RTLC. Lee's forming a group, Drunks Against Mad Mothers.

Also, Trump's a sick bastard. Yes, this is to be expected of a superficial media-whore who runs organizations based on young women's sex-appeal and people's gambling adicitions. No, it doesn't excuse him, and the sooner people start treating him like the shit he is, the better.

As for Trump's new battle with Rosie, I don't think it's going to benefit either of them. I do think it would be cool though, if Rosie started a scholarship fund to rescue those poor girls from Trump...or at least to assist Miss Blair now that she's been thrown to the wolves.

Time's person of the year :It's You!

Fine, I'd have a hard time picking a person of the year too (maybe Warren Buffet?), but that's totally a punt. It's like the chance slot in Yahtzee. It's the dog-ate-my-homework of hero-worshipping. I realize they can't come forward and say there's just no one of greatness this year... but this is a cop-out.

At least it's a cop-out that sells magazines.

I'm not saying You didn't deserve it... ok, yes I am.

Iraq Study Group

It occurs to me that I haven't said anything about the Iraq Study Group. Ok. Here goes: It doesn't matter. Bush will screw things up. I know that sounds unfair to the president or pessimistic in the extreme, but it's not.

I've never believed we would be successful implementing a Weatern-style democracy through an occupation. You can't have democracy at the barrel of a gun. If King George had tried to impose a democracy on the US, we would have told him to go fuck himself and made Washington Emperor of the Americas. People don't like foreign soldiers walking around with guns. Double that sentiment when the soldiers regularly kill people (add more for torture, recreational rape/murder, and whatever this is called). There comes a time when you simply cannot tell people you are trying to help them, while concurrently shooting significant portions of their population. I'm surprised more people didn't consider that contradiction.

What I didn't anticipate, was the destabilization of Iraq into sectarian warfare. In a coldly objective sense this is kind of better for the US than a unified opposition, because at least our soldiers aren't the primary targets. The flip side is it spreads instability through the whole region, opening the possibility of a Saudi-Iranian-Turkish war. Now is the time to open bets on how many countries get burned. Why drop one country into chaos when you can bring war and anarchy to 3 or 4?

So even though my initial prognostication was very pessimistic: failure in Iraq, a long-enduring (Nam-style) guerilla war, and a global increase in Muslim hatred (eventually coupled to more terrorism)....even I wasn't pessimistic enough to predict we might trigger a regional war. Instead of hundreds of thousands killed, we could have millions. Every day that looks like a more credible possibility. People are beggining to realize that we've made some very foolish choices.

Of course there's always a chance cooler heads will prevail, which was supposed to be the point of the Baker Commission. They might not be able to put Humpty Dumpty back together, but they can at least help us discover where we are and chart a course out of this mess. That might even work if our problem were limited to a few foolish mistakes, but it's not. Our problem is actually fools. The bad decisions are institutional. They aren't caused by bad input, they're caused by people who take action without regard to input.

Our wonderful bipartisan Iraq study group assessed the state of things in Iraq, but never wrote up how we came to this pass. We got here through stupidity. The people who organized and built this war are idiots, and until that problem is corrected, none of the others will be. These are the people who sent Colin Powell to the UN with a vial of white powder as proof of Saddam's WMD program. Trust me, they don't give a shit what Baker thinks.

Thanks for trying ISG, but I predict this gets worse and worse for at least two more years. Stupid is as stupid does.

Tell the truth and shame Bill Bennett.

James Wolcott cites Bill Bennett:

"In all my time in Washington, I've never seen such smugness, arrogance, or such insufferable moral superiority. Self-congratulatory. Full of itself..."
--Bill Bennett, inflating to three times his normal size in righteous umbrage over the Iraq Study Group

Usually Wolcott goes for the throat over things like this. Since he granted Bennett a pass, it falls to me to point out that a decade agoour Republican Congree impeached the president for getting a blowjob.

Smugness? check.
Arrogance? check.
Insufferable moral superiority? oh hell yeah.

So to conservatives... it's in the national interest to impeach the president for banging an intern, but abhorent to analyze the lack of progress in a war that's spiralling out of control.

Just for fun, here's Bennett with Jon Stewart. Jon spanks Bennett so hard, he starts to feel bad for him.

Hillary Clinton, for liberals and conservatives.

I've not really liked Senator Clinton since she went after video games and co-sponsored the pointless flag-burning ammendment. She's hawkish, socially conservative, and likes to spend government money (kinda like Bush really). She's anti-libertarian, which sadly, can be called "populist" these days.

Anyway, I was amused by the hit piece Arainna Huffington ran against her in favor of Barrack Obama (read it, it's good). Senator Clinton, once beloved of the liberal community, has sunk in stature. Kos paints a picture of Senator Obama winning the Dem primary, purely based on the primary structure (Kos sounds more like a consultant every year). I love Obama, but I'm not confident of his chances. It was recently leaked that Obama's middle name is "Hussien". (If you think the American electorate is too smart to vote based on someone's name, consider our current president.) Finally, we have Michelle Malkin coming to Clinton's aid against Huffington. It's pretty rare to see a member of the conservative rage machine defend Hillary Clinton.

At this rate maybe Clinton will win over conservatives after all...

What you expect congress to work?

Stolen in it's entirety from Josh Marshall:

So many instances where it's hard to distinguish the real news from the stuff that shows up in The Onion. From the Post, new Congress to shelve old two day work week for a five day work week. No, not makin' this up.

Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) -- one of the worst from the old GOP Congress -- on why working for a living is against family values: "Keeping us up here eats away at families. Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families -- that's what this says."

Not to state the obvious, but this is pretty stupid coming from a man who sent over 100,000 Americans away from their families....halfway around the world....years on end...at a fraction of his salary. I guess it's different when it's his family. At least he still gets weekends off.

Someone should inform Kingston that this is a weekly Congressional stoploss program.

Proud to present (finally) Battlepanda!

In my custom of blogroll indoctrination, here's a few sample posts from the newest addition. The blog in question Battlepanda, an awesome blend of liberalism and libertarianism. Battlepanda is co-written by the newly pseudononymous Battlepanda, and a fellow named Brock. Here's a sample post in which it is shown that while everyone knows the Canadian health care system is socialist and government run, not many people know the US government pays more per citizen for health care than the Canadians. Insightful, no? I love it when people break down sterotypes with data. Another memorable post is her insight on the combatitive nature of blogs. She leads:

I don't think I remember the last time I called someone "a crock of shit" in real-life. Online, though, I think it was either yesterday or the day before. I can't remember. And I consider myself a relatively well-behaved member of this noplace we call the blogisphere.

(Her memory is actually better than she lets on.) Anyway, it's a great blog, and closer to my philosophical mix than most. I should point out that the Battlepanda is the first female blogger to be added to my blogroll, which is itself interesting. Why did it take so long? Is that perhaps a reflection of the blogosphere, or my personal tastes? I'm not looking for a Kevin Drum or Larry Sanders moment, so I'll resist the urge to blame women (and if you don't get that, it just means you're not a blog-nerd).

Ironically, Battlepanda and I first corresponded over the strange case of Ben Barres, in which Barres had more success in acadmics after getting a sex change from female to male. Back then BP was blogging under her actal name. Now that she's gone androgenous (or would you have guessed "Battlepanda" is masculine?), she gets more bloggy love from me. It's not like that A! I swear! The reason it's taken so long, is I haven't done anything administrative here in forever. Also you were only two clicks away through Legal Fiction, and I'm lazy. (and now you're only one, so I can be extra lazy)

Anyway, Battlepanda rocks. I traditionally include some caveat or critique of new blogs so I don't seem like a total kiss-up, but my most substantive complaint is that BP and Brock don't post often enough (yeah I don't post frequently either, but that's my honest complaint). Guess today I'm a kiss-up.

UPDATE: Hmm. I'm not sure which of my little sidebar categories is most appropriate. This is the problem when you try to pidgeonhole diverse thinkers into categories. I'll have to think on it. Meanwhile the first link in the post works fine to get to the site.

Laundry Day!

I can't imagine anything more mundane and trivial than announcing to everyone with an internet connection that today is my laundry day. The upshot is I've decided to udate, modify, and tidy the blog between loads (which possibly still no one cares about). I'm gonna try to get a header, and a new design, maybe switch to the new blogger format, add tags, and update the sidebar.

Realistically, though, I'll be happy if I manage one of those. As far as a header goes, I found this quote on a postcard and thought it might work nicely. Well, I like the philosophy anyway...we'll see if I can get through the technical issues.

Voting Machine Oversight

Within the massive federal beaurocracy, there are a few organizations that do a really good job. One that I have a lot of respect for is the National Institute of Standards and Technology. (ok, it's a geeky organization to admire, but I'm an engineer) If you make a measurement with a calibrated instrument (in the US), it's certifiable back to NIST. They ensure that a gallon is the same volume next year as it is this year, etc..etc.

When I worked in pharmaceuticals there was a huge degree of scrutiny from the FDA. That's not so much related to NIST, but it's another government organization that exists to define and enforce standards. In making drugs, everything has to be documented, and functionally it has to be on paper (the heightened requirements for a paperless system make it more expensive and harder in practice). On the other hand, there seem to be a lot of electronic voting machines, and they don't seem as controlled. Some have had distinct problems.

So I'm thrilled to see the regulation of voting machines has fallen to one the NIST, who are the treating the measurement of votes with a clinical no-nonsense responsibility. I hope the system to elect our representitives gets the same level of regulation, oversight, and validation as the process to manufacture asprin. Or, to take an example from another highly accountable electronic device, is as secure as an ATM machine. Speaking of ATMs, I'd also like to see voting machines give recipts.

If I were designing a voting machine system...

1. It would be electronic, both for the clarity of the system (no hanging chads, etc), and also for the immediacy of the tallies.
2. Voters would be issued a paper recipt with their votes on it, and a annonymous unique identifier.
3. A second paper recipt would be printed by the machine at the time of the vote and stored in a locked chamber within the machine.
4. All results would be posted online (searchable by ID number).

A little complicated maybe, but the premise here is that it's easy to program a computer to throw elections. This method ensures a full circle of accountability. First, people would be able to confirm that their vote was correct by checking their recipt vs what they typed into the machine.

Second they can confirm their vote was recorded by checking the identifier on-line. In the case of a discrepancy, they have a recipt to take to the Feds.

In the event of a recount, officials have a paper record within the machine. That can easily be recounted, (as easily as current recount methods) and it can also be compared to the online database. If the paper copy matches the online record, it can be assumed it matches people's recipts.

The final way to cheat the system would be for a programmer to issue the same tracking number to muliple voters (say a 5 party Democrats get issued the same recipt, none would know it is a duplicate, and it would check out online) and then register false votes for the last 4 of them. The obvious way around this problem is to timestamp the recipts, and list the time online as well. Unfortunately that could have voter annonyminity issues. The second way around this glitch is to have voters insert a pin number that will be included on both recipts, and included on the website. That would "customize" their vote and greatly hinder computerized voter fraud.

Again, it may be complicated, but there's a lot of power at stake in free elections. Only a fool would think that people won't try to rig the system sooner or later. So let's take the time to make it secure. NIST has a better chance than most of getting it right.

PS: In checking the NIST site I see they have a "Draft Report on Voting System Vulnerability" (warning: boring). It delineates the various groups involved and their responsibilities. NIST seems to not have direct oversight. Still, I'm glad they're involved, because they've got their stuff together more than most.

How to open a rant...

Sometimes it's fun to read some of the wilder types on the far-right.

From No End but Victory:

If you share my burning desire to see the Mainstream Media go down in flames and be relegated to the ash pile for their acts of sedition, and crimes against the general population by usurping the first amendment to justify their propagandizement of the Liberal American agenda, pay attention.

That cracks me up.

Ironically (given the overlap of haystack's and my beliefs is slim), I actually agree with the purpose and ultimate message he's conveying. (The mesage to be thankful and attentive to our troops, not the psychotic rage part.)