US Politics News

Your Government Inaction

FEMA Again?!
So it seems FEMA is coming under criticism again for the California wildfire response this time. They only had 2,500 homes lost and they still can't get the job done... though it's worth noting how much better they did in Cali than in New Orleans. Gee, I wonder if race had anything to do with the wildly varying responses.

(AP) Patty Reedy is still waiting for someone at the Federal Emergency Management Agency to send her the mobile home she was promised before Christmas.

In December, agency inspectors said she wouldn't get a government house to replace the one she lost during last year's wildfires because it would be too difficult to haul the 60-foot, three-bedroom prefabricated home up a winding road to her remote mountaintop property.

Reedy isn't alone. FEMA brought dozens of mobile homes to Southern California after the fires, only to find their own guidelines prevented them from putting them on many properties in rough terrain. San Diego County officials say dozens of applicants were denied homes because their properties were inaccessible to trucks, didn't have connections into the electrical grid or were on hillsides deemed at mudslide risk.

...

Within a week, the agency had begun disbursing grants up to $28,800, short-circuiting detailed accounting requirements that slowed relief after the 2003 fires. So far, FEMA has paid more than $13.1 million to 1,973 people, mostly in San Diego County.

In 2003, the agency sent short, adaptable "travel trailers" to house people living in the mountains, but they are being avoided now amid concerns about toxic chemicals; this week the agency said it would move hurricane victims out of more than 35,000 trailers because tests indicate some of the temporary homes contain high levels of formaldehyde.

Instead, FEMA only dispatched three-bedroom modular homes to Southern California - luxurious compared to the 15-foot travel trailers, but, at 60 feet, too long to fit on many properties or be moved up steep roads full of switchbacks. They also require too much electricity to run off generators or solar panels and have to be hooked into the power grid. They have to be on flat land, away from any hills that might be at risk for mudslides.

So as it turns out, the only real issue here is that nobody wants to live in toxic trailers. FEMA is willing to pay you 30,000 to relocate, at least temporarily; they also will provide you a modular home, provided you don't have your house in some idiot remote mountaintop location.

Compare this to New Orleans, where toxic trailers is all most people ever got. Huh. Racial injustice, in America?

It cannae be!

Source: CBS News

Satellites Falling From the Sky
The Russkies are predictably unhappy about our real-world test of a satellite killing weapon.

Russia has accused the US of using a plan to shoot down a broken spy satellite as a cover for testing an anti-satellite weapon.

The US said last week that it would use a missile to destroy the satellite, to stop it from crash landing.

Officials say the satellite contains hazardous fuel which could kill humans.

But Russia's defence ministry said the US planned to test its "anti-missile defence system's capability to destroy other countries' satellites".

The Pentagon is saying they want to detonate this satellite in orbit solely out of concern for the hydrazine fuel source, which is, you know, ridiculously flammable and explosive and therefore unlikely to survive reentry, and not actually very toxic, certainly not as lethal as, say, flaming shrapnel raining down from space...

Source: BBC News

Thug
A scandal has hit the Baltimore police department as a year-old video of a cop threatening kids with beatings and death for skateboarding hits the web.

I wonder if our culture of torture and violence and rage has anything to do with this stuff... nah.

A Baltimore police officer was suspended yesterday after a YouTube video surfaced on the Internet showing him berating and manhandling a teenage skateboarder at the Inner Harbor.

On the video, the officer, Salvatore Rivieri, puts the boy in a headlock, pushes him to the ground, questions his upbringing, threatens to "smack" him and repeatedly accuses the youngster of showing disrespect because the youth refers to the officer as "man" and "dude."

At one point, Rivieri, a 17-year veteran of the force, says:

"Obviously, your parents don't put a foot in your butt quite enough, because you don't understand the meaning of respect. First of all, you better learn how to speak. I'm not 'man.' I'm not 'dude,' I am Officer Rivieri. The sooner you learn that, the longer you are going to live in this world. Because you go around doing this kind of stuff and somebody is going to kill you.

Right, right. Kill them. And who is this 'somebody', you jackbooted asshole?

Source: The Baltimore Sun

Bush Dynasty
So the Bush dynasty, it turns out, wasn't just a viper's nest of nazi sympathy and treason during World War II -- they were also slaveholders, way back when.

The skeletal facts surfaced in April 2007, when an amateur historian named Robert Hughes published his research in the Illinois Times, a small paper out of Springfield. Hughes found census records showing that during the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, in Cecil County, Maryland, five households of the Walker family, the president's ancestors via his father's mother, Dorothy Walker Bush, had been slaveholding farmers. The evidence is simple but persuasive: genealogies of the Bush family match up with census data that counted farmers who used enslaved workers. With this, the president joins perhaps fifteen million living white Americans who trace their roots to the long-gone master class.

Is there a single monstrous act that hasn't in fact been committed by this family?

Source: The Root

Not to Worry
No need to fret about our government though. It's in very good hands.

Sorry. I forgot that sarcasm doesn't show in text for a second there.

Bush uses "the Google."

CNBC's Maria Bartiromo got an interview with the president, and she asked him:
“I’m curious, have you ever Googled anybody? Do you use Google?”

His answer:
“Occasionally. One of the things I’ve used on the Google is to pull up maps. It’s very interesting to see that. I forgot the name of the program, but you get the satellite and you can — like, I kind of like to look at the ranch on Google, reminds me of where I want to be sometimes. Yeah, I do it some.”

Darn, what's fun of being commander-in-chief, and having your own fleet of satellites, if you have to use Google Earth like the rest of us. Bush's response on whether he uses email was also interesting:
“I tend not to email or — not only tend not to email, I don’t email, because of the different record requests that can happen to a president. I don’t want to receive emails because, you know, there’s no telling what somebody’s email may — it would show up as, you know, a part of some kind of a story, and I wouldn’t be able to say, `Well, I didn’t read the email.’ `But I sent it to your address, how can you say you didn’t?’ So, in other words, I’m very cautious about emailing.”

What a maroon.

On the other hand, he didn't turn out to have much to fear about those emails being subpoenaed, what with the RNC taking rubber mallets to their RAID arrays, or whatever they did to conveniently lose their backups of all the days that anyone wants to look at.

Source: Attytood

Our Friends and Neighbors

Continuing the Proud Tradition of US Foreign Policy Blunders

Russia and Putin (Who Has a Good Soul!)
So the Russians are hopping mad at El Presidente for his harebrained scheme to build a system of useless missile interceptors to use against so-called Rogue States, like North Korea or Iran, which, in his rather wild imagination, have the potential to assemble functional ICBM systems out of string and posterboard and launch them at the United States.

Of course, the idea that countries which can barely fashion a working fission device on the ground under ideal conditions (or in Iran's case, might be able to DREAM of such success, in twenty years...) could suddenly put one on top of a missile capable of soaring around the globe and hitting a target in the continental United States is patently stupid... and the fact that we could instantly and brutally wipe anyone who did such a sub-moronic thing off the face of the earth with a searing nuclear hellstorm would seem, to me, to be a more effective deterrent against an attack by such magical pony riding super-terrorist-states than a missle interceptor system that has never worked, not once, in any real world conditions.

Sigh.

For reasons having entirely to do with national pride, I imagine, and not the 'threat' our pitiful system poses (none), the Russians are mad. Maybe it's the fact that we pulled out of the treaty banning such systems unilaterally. Maybe it's the fact that we're building the interceptors on their doorstep, in countries they formerly controlled in the Warsaw Pact.

For whatever reason, poking them with a stick is a really bad idea... so, of course, that's what Bush is doing, trying to arrange to deploy them not just on the border of the old USSR... but inside it!

However Putin warned that if Ukraine followed the lead of ex-Soviet-bloc countries in eastern Europe and hosted missile-defense facilities "to neutralize our nuclear potential" that Russia would be forced to respond.

"It is terrible even to think that in response to this ... Russia cannot theoretically exclude aiming our offensive-missile systems at Ukraine," Putin said.

Moscow sees the expansion of NATO, as well as the deployment of a US anti-missile shield in central Europe, as threats to Russian security.

Putin last year threatened to aim missiles at European cities if elements of the anti-missile shield were deployed in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Ahh, El Presidente... is there anything you can't turn into the threat of World War III?

Source: Raw Story

Saudi Arabia, Bush Loves Your Oil So
Ahh, Saudi Arabia. Rich with oil, though that's running low... even richer in depravity and corruption.

Home of Osama Bin Laden and the treasury for Al Qaeda, run in a chaotic and murderous fashion by an authoritarian oligarchy, barely clinging to power with the force of U.S. arms... a nightmarish theocracy, where it seems the Dark Ages are hip again. Who says history isn't cyclical?

A leading human rights group appealed to Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah on Thursday to stop the execution of a woman accused of witchcraft and performing supernatural acts.



The New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement that the kingdom's religious police who arrested and interrogated Fawza Falih, and the judges who tried her in the northern town of Quraiyat never gave her the opportunity to prove her innocence in the face of "absurd charges that have no basis in law."

Falih's case underscores shortcomings in Saudi Arabia's Islamic legal system in which rules of evidence are shaky, lawyers are not always present and sentences often depend on the whim of judges.

The most frequent victims are women, who already suffer severe restrictions on daily life in Saudi Arabia: They cannot drive, appear before a judge without a male representative, or travel abroad without a male guardian's permission.

This must also be ok, after all -- Bush has had King Abdullah over for long romantic walks! Complete with hand-holding!

Surely that's worth a few murdered women, right?

Source: Raw Story

England
England has decided they're tired of their image, I guess, because they're trying to be the 21st century Texas, with an official ruling that tasers are ok to use on kids -- despite research showing that tasers cause heart attacks in kids.

Yeah.

It is the decision not to ban their use against minors that is likely to raise serious concerns.

Home Office Police Minister Tony McNulty said medical assessments had confirmed the risk of death or serious injury from Tasers was "low".

But he failed to mention Government advisers had also warned of a potential risk to children.

The Defence Scientific Advisory Council medical committee told the Home Office that not enough was known about the health risks of using the weapons against children.

Honestly, Texas, you should be offended. These guys are stealing your schtick! It's not much, and it's certainly not funny, but it really is all you've got.

The committee, which is made up of independent scientists and doctors, said that limited research suggested there was a risk children could suffer "a serious cardiac event".


It recommended that officers should be "particularly vigilant" for any Taser-induced adverse response and said guidance should be amended to "identify children and adults of small stature" as being at potentially greater risk from the cardiac effects of Tasers.

The Government scientists were also asked to test whether the weapons could cause a miscarriage if used on a pregnant woman.

While not saying whether police would be allowed to Taser an expectant mother, the Home Office said the DSAC committee had "specifically asked" for computer simulations to be carried out to analyse the effect on "a pregnant female".

Amnesty International claims Tasers have been responsible for 220 deaths in America since 2001. Many cities and police forces there have banned their use against minors

Just stop it, you limey punks! Leave Texas alone!

Source: The Daily Mail

Iraq and Afghanistan
For our puppet government edition, we move to Iraq and Afghanistan, where our puppet regimes are allowing health conditions to continue to deteriorate, and massive plagues to spread unchecked.

At least 275 children in southern Iraq have been infected with a disfiguring skin disease, an outbreak some health officials are blaming on the war's devastating effect on the public health system.



According to the United Nations — citing reports from Iraq's southern province of Qadissiyah — 275 children have been struck with leishmaniasis, which is spread by sand flies. Most have a form that causes skin sores, but others have a type that strikes internal organs and can be fatal.

...

Though the disease was first identified in Iraq more than a century ago, outbreaks were rare during Saddam Hussein's regime. But since the conflict began, experts say the destroyed health system has opened the way for diseases lurking in the environment.

"The war has exacerbated the problems in Iraq that are one or two decades old," said Claire Hajaj, a spokeswoman for UNICEF's Iraq office. "Their health system has been undermined by violence, insecurity and sabotage."

...

Leishmaniasis also surged in Afghanistan after decades of civil war and the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. Though data about the historical number of cases are sketchy, experts say Afghanistan now has about 200,000 cases per year.

In Iraq, WHO officials estimate there are nearly 3,000 leishmaniasis cases per year. But in neighboring Jordan, there are only about 300 cases annually.

Man I just can't see why they didn't greet us as liberators. Don't they know that liberty means war, famine, pestilence and death?

Oh wait, that's the Apocalypse.

Source: Raw Story/AP News

More Iraq
Before the sanctions after the first Gulf War, Iraq had one of the best healthcare systems in the developing world. It was the crown jewel of Saddam Hussein's corrupt and murderous government, one of the ways in which he bought off his population. Nevertheless, it was real and it worked.

The sanctions, enthusiastically continued under Clinton, are often said to have resulted in 500,000 deaths over a decade. Oh, for the days when that seemed like a high number of deaths for Iraq...

So they've gone through a lot under our guidance. From world-class health care to cholera outbreaks, a plague of skin lesions, and now, apparently, there's not even money to get paralyzed kids wheelchairs.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Mothers cradle children in their arms. Fathers smile softly at the helpless bodies they hold. Other parents are bent over from the weight of their teenage kids whose legs fall limp, almost touching the ground. In the absence of basic medical equipment, these parents do this every day.

An Iraqi boy gives a thumbs up after receiving his wheelchair. Brad Blauser, center, created the program.

Khaled is a father of three. On this day, his young daughter, Mariam, is getting fitted for her new wheelchair. Her arms and legs are painfully thin, little more than skin and bone. She's 7 years old, but looks barely half that. She and both her siblings, a sister and brother, suffer from varying degrees of polio. None of them can walk.

Asked how he and his family cope, Khaled chokes up, fighting back tears.

"I am sick of life -- what can I say to you?" he says after a long pause.

One man, Brad Blauser, has vowed to try to make life a little easier for these families by organizing the distribution of wheelchairs, donated and paid for by his charity, Wheelchairs for Iraqi Kids. He first came to Iraq in 2004 as a civilian contractor. Struck by the abject chaos surrounding him and seeing helpless children scooting along the ground, he pledged to find a way to help.

Remind me again, what are we spending all that money on?

Enlisting the help of generous supporters and an Iraqi humanitarian group, "Wheelchairs for Iraqi Kids" was born in August of 2005. Thirty days later, its first 31 chairs were delivered. To date, more than 250 Iraqi families have received the wheelchairs.

Blauser has partnered with a nonprofit group called Reach Out and Care Wheels, which sells him the chairs at a manufacturing price of about $300.

The chairs are made by prisoners at the South Dakota State Penitentiary and ultimately delivered in Iraq by the U.S. military.

"Getting these prisoners involved, it just means the world to them," said Andrew Babcock, the executive director of Reach Out and Care Wheels. "Even the prisoners, I've been there and visited, and they're so excited. They come up with different design ideas and ways to make things better for the kids. They want to know where the chairs are going and what kids we're helping."

Blauser said it's unbelievable to be there when the chairs are delivered.

"The most affecting thing about this whole wheelchairs for children is when the parents realize the gift that is being given to their children and they reach out to hug you." he said. "The tears are running from their eyes and they say, 'We never thought that you could do this.' "

Blauser is helped on the Iraqi missions by the civil affairs division of the U.S. military, which helps organize the safe transport of the families to the distribution point and adjustment of the wheelchairs to fit each child.

He said it gives "the troops something when they go home, something good to remember where they know they have contributed, they know they have done a good thing."

Army Sgt. 1st Class Jason Jurack agrees. "It brings a smile to your face. It really gives a different image to the Army as a whole -- helping people out, putting a smile on local nationals' faces, little kids that need our help."

It's a sentiment that is echoed by Samira Al-Ali, the head of the Iraqi group that finds the children in need. On this day, she tells the soldiers she hopes that this humanitarian act will give them a different image of Iraq, not one of a gun and war, she says. Her words are simple but effective.

"I wish the world would see with their own eyes the children of Iraq and help the children of Iraq, because the children of Iraq have been deprived of everything," she said. "Even a normal child has been deprived of their childhood; a disabled child and their family is dealing with so much more."

Look, it's a good thing this guy's trying to do, there's no doubt about it. But, CNN, it might be helpful to note who's actually RESPONSIBLE for all this mess that some guy with his prison made wheelchairs is trying to clean up a few at a time.

Also, I know the article says the prisoners are happy being used as chattal labor to make wheelchairs, and I'm sure some of them are happier to do that than, say, laundry, but the fact remains, we're using convict labor at home to put a handful of wheelchairs in the hands of children abroad, whose lives we ruined and whose healthcare system we destroyed.

Wow. Go us.

Source: CNN.com

Political Update

Politicking

Olympics: No Free Speech Zone
So the problems with holding the Olympics in China continue to roll on in. This time? Free speech for athletes has to go out the window, lest they make noise about Tibet.

Or the people that China is forcing out of their homes to make room for the Olympic complex... nah, what am I saying? Athletes never complain about the damage caused by stadiums. Still, here we go:

LONDON -- British Olympic athletes must sign a new clause in their contracts prohibiting politically sensitive remarks or gestures during the Beijing Games.

"The reality is, given the level of political scrutiny of the world's media on these games and the way China will handle them, the BOA felt it was sensible and proper to flag that rule to our athletes," British Olympic Association communications director Graham Mewson said Sunday.

The International Olympic Committee already has a rule that states that "no kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas."

...


Mewson said the clause will not bar British athletes from "honestly answering" questions they are asked during interviews at the Aug. 8-24 games about "politically sensitive issues."

"An athlete who decides to lift up his team shirt to show a 'Free Tibet' one below it, that's very different," Mewson said.

Hey, Mewsom. The t-shirt thing's already banned. What is this supposed to solve?

Oh that's right. They can only speak up if they're directly questioned. And I'm sure the press corps in China will be all about irritating their government during the games... riiiight.

Source: The Washington Post

Insurgency Update
The insurgents are now targeting the gas pipelines that fuel what little power generation Iraq still has with car bombs.

Yeah. No electricity, no potable water, no sewage, cholera outbreaks.. the standard of living was probably higher under the Mongols.

Source: Reuters

The Sons of Iraq!
In other insurgency news, we needed a catchier propaganda term for the Sunni militias that we arm now to act as vigilante police (who used to shoot at us, before they remembered how much they hate their Shiite rivals).

They used to be Concerned Local Citizens... now?

They're the Sons of Iraq.

Wow. Does Bush think he's Lawrence of Arabia or something?

Source: Your New Reality

Putin's Russia: Crazier By the Minute
So the Russkies are buzzing Japanese and US military forces in the Pacific with their bombers.

Yeah, they're not getting out of hand AT ALL.

A pair of Russian TU-95 Bear bombers overflew a US aircraft carrier in the western Pacific at an altitude of 2,000 feet (660 meters) over the weekend, prompting US fighter jets to scramble, a US defense official said Monday.

Four F-18 fighters jets intercepted the Russian bombers Saturday morning, but not before they had overflown the USS Nimitz, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Japanese F-15 fighters had earlier scrambled to intercept another pair of Bear bombers, and escorted them out of the area, said a US military official who asked not to be identified.

Yeesh.

Source: Raw Story

Spies Like Us
So apparently the US has been aggressively using the Peace Corps and our embassies in South America to undermine any government to the left of Mussolini... and Bolivia is not happy about it.

Sigh. Can we get any more amatuerish, please? Make any more boneheaded foreign policy mistakes?

Source: Firedoglake

Sure We Can!
By, say, starting an arms race in space!

China and Russia challenged the United States at a disarmament debate Tuesday by formally presenting a plan to ban weapons in space — a proposal that Washington has called a diplomatic ploy by the two nations to gain a military advantage.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the 65-nation Conference on Disarmament that "weapons deployment in space by one state" — a reference to the U.S. — could cause a "new spiral in the arms race both in space and on Earth."

Lavrov's call came with an implied threat, noting that the Soviet Union caught up with the U.S. after World War II by developing its own nuclear weapons.

"Let us not forget that the nuclear arms race was started with a view to preserving a monopoly of this type of weapon," Lavrov said. "But this monopoly was to last only four years."

So now the Russkies are saying that they'll develop satellite killers if we don't stop with this posturing nonsense.

Greaaaaaaat. It's not like our economy and military heavily rely on satellites or anything.

Oh wait. Crap.

Source: Raw Story

Sci-Tech News

Because Until We Have Giant Robots, Life Just Isn't Worthwhile

Insert 'Joystick' Humor Here
So the Israeli air force has found that a commonly prescribed medication has the unintentional benefit of easing the stress on the lungs caused by high-altitude, low-oxygen flight.

The medication? Viagra.

A recent study conducted by Israeli doctors among mountain climbers in Africa found a link between erectile dysfunction drugs and improved performance in high altitudes, the mass-selling Yediot Aharonot reported on Thursday.

The active ingredient in the drugs was found to make climbers perform better in an environment with less oxygen, which causes fatigue and dizziness.

This has led army doctors to consider giving jet fighter pilots -- who can fly at altitudes of up to 50,000 feet (15,000 metres) -- the same drug, the report said.

"The Viagra family of drugs is considered effective in these conditions because when there is a long shortage in oxygen it leads to high blood pressure in the lungs, and the drugs help fight that," the report quoted military medical sources as saying.

Make up your own immature jokes. Though I do wonder if they can manage the primary intended effect of these drugs with dosing changes, or if pilots will just have to put up with the.. distraction.

Hey, astronauts have to wear diapers. Sometimes the bleeding edge of technology is personally embarassing.

Source: Raw Story

Under the Sea
So progress is being made repairing some of the rash of cables that went out mysteriously last week or so.

No word on why they got cut/slashed/whatever though.

I'm betting it's Dagon.

Source: Reuters

Polaroid Out of Instant Film Business
Headline pretty much says it all -- Polaroid is closing down their instant film business line.

Which leaves them more or less as a brand-name outfit, i.e., they sell their name to unrelated products, like tvs and digi-cams, as a marketing ploy. Much like Atari in the 90s.

Interesting fact: they apparently made commercial versions of that instant film stuff. I had no idea.

Source: The Register

Astro Blog
Apparently this is a good audio-blog for astronomy topics.. I'll have to check it out sometime.

Source: Astronomy Cast

Seven League Boots
I read up on the myth of the Seven League Boots the other day (common Euro-folktale about boots that let you take 21-mile long strides), and that got me to remembering a story I'd seen about mechanical boots some Russkie engineer had designed to let you walk really fast.

Thus, I found this article.

UFA, Russia — Being a star engineering student at the top-notch science university here wasn’t enough to exempt Viktor K. Gordeyev from his physical education class.

Mr. Gordeyev, a specialist in airplane piston engines, sweated it out with everyone else, running laps in lumbering heavy boots in this town in the foothills of the Ural Mountains.

He vowed to find an easier way. Eventually, he found one — or at least came close. Mr. Gordeyev invented a gasoline-powered boot that looks like pogo sticks that strap to your shins, and they work on the same principle as the air-cushioned basketball shoe.

But rather than being dismissed as a crackpot invention, his boots — which use tiny pistons — became classified as a Russian military secret until 1994.

Ironically, his boots have the same drawback the boots in the myth did -- they're too physically exhausting.

One result of the Russian space agency testing was a calculation that the energy in calories used to move the two-pound boot at a run would exceed the energy input from the gasoline engine. That meant, it was more tiring to run with the motorized footwear than without it, undermining the original rationale.

Only if the weight could be reduced to below 2 pounds per boot would the wearer have a net energy gain. So far they have failed at this.

Of course, the average human can't run, at all, at 21 mph for any sustained amount of time (that being the top test speed of said boots... apparently it's pretty reliable to run at 10-12 for average peoples, which is still impressive). I wonder if the soviets examined this aspect.. trading off a bit of energy for the option of having a really high speed dash.

Silly Soviets. Just because a technology is monstrously impractical, that doesn't mean it can't be fun!

Source: The Herald Tribue

Polling Science
Interesting comparison of the reliability of various pollsters in this primary season.

I need to take a look at the analysis of the method they used later though. I know some of the results are relatively accurate; Zogby has just sucked this year, because they've been badly weighing various demographics... in SoCal they vastly underestimated the Latino vote and overestimated the Black vote, for example.

Source: Firedoglake

Dragonball Tech (Capsule Corporation Gone Wild)
Sadly, these devices don't fit into magical capsules that can be stuffed into a pocket until needed. But they're still pretty cool for cheap toys. By cool I mean 'possess the potential to be incredibly irritating and fun at the same time'.

On February 8, Bandai announced Dragonball Items Neo, four gadgets with electronic lights and sounds inspired by Akira Toriyama's Dragonball fighting manga and anime. Bandai notified retailers of this series last month, but did not publicly describe the details of each item until this past Friday. The items will be released in Japan at the end of February for 525 yen (about US$4.90) each, including one lemon-soda-flavored candy.

The series includes two wristbands that will automatically "shout" attack calls in Son Goku's voice when the user makes the appropriate hand gestures. For example, the Son Goku Voice Band (Kamehameha ver.) will utter "KA—ME—HA—ME—" when the user presses his or her wrists together while forming the chi energy blast. The Son Goku Voice Band (Genki Dama ver.) will shout "Minna no genki o ora ni wakete kure!" when the user raises his or her hands up in the air to form the sphere of the worlds' life energy.

Man, imagine if you had to shout the full descriptive name of an attack before you used it in real life.

"M-16A2 5.56x45mm NATO Rifle Attack!!"

There's also a replica of the Scouters used in the show that fits over one eye and apparently displays stats on a couple of characters. This is bound to lead to a lot of kids hilariously running into doorframes.

Sources: Anime News Network
Wikipedia (M-16 NATO) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M16_rifle#NATO_standardization

Gamer Girls
So there's something of an uproar over this free mini-mag Nintendo is giving away in the UK, called Girl Gamer. The front cover hits the trifecta of girl stereotypes, involving lots of pink, cooking games and a baby simulator.

Really.

On the other hand, as noted, this was bundled with a preteen magazine... so the audience were already braindead to start with, and big words would have turned them off.

Still, food for thought, on why you'd choose to advertise there in the first place. I mean, sure, you can make a lot of money marketing offensive crap (see Ron Paul for details), and if you are selling to idiots, you might have to, in fact, sell idiotic stuff (again, Ron Paul, newsletter)... but that only flies so long as you accept the proposition of getting into bed with morons for cash (Ron Paul.. no wait, I'll refrain from that joke).

VGCats did an amusing take on this idea as well.

Source: DSFanboy.com

All Time Biggest Flop
Sure, it may have earned this title by a technicality where the producers exploit a SAG loophole to show a movie domestically so they can pay the cast less. So what? It's still an amusing record.

Budget for Zyzzyx Road? 1.2 million dollars. Box Office Gross? 30 dollars.

Hilarious.

Source: Wikipedia
(Note: I heard about this on Olbermann first)

Old Timer
So the Hubble is still doing great science. Not that we have a plan to repair it yet... there's no money for real science when Bush still wants a moon base!

NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, with a boost from a natural "zoom lens," have uncovered what may be one of the youngest and brightest galaxies ever seen in the middle of the cosmic "dark ages," just 700 million years after the beginning of our universe.

The detailed images from Hubble's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) reveal an infant galaxy, dubbed A1689-zD1, undergoing a firestorm of star birth during the dark ages, a time shortly after the Big Bang but before the first stars reheated the cold, dark universe. Images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope's Infrared Array Camera provided strong additional evidence that it was a young star- forming galaxy in the dark ages.

"We certainly were surprised to find such a bright young galaxy 12.8 billion years in the past," said astronomer Garth Illingworth of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a member of the research team. "This is the most detailed look to date at an object so far back in time."

Oh well. I shouldn't let Bush get me down EVERY day if I can help it. This is spiffy, let's just reflect on that.

Source: Hubblesite.org

Interesting Premise
If I didn't already have so much to read, I'd want to check this book out. The premise is that the reason we have such a litigious society (about which I'm not sure I agree), is that Republicans have gutted every social institution that people would normally use to resolve problems without the civil courts... so the last resort has become the first.

Wait, this is the tech news section. Hmm. Well, is the law a technology?

I dunno. I'm lazy. It stays here.

Source: Amazon.com

Entropy Advances

Sometimes There's Nothing You Can Do; Sometimes It All Just Falls Apart


Nuclear Secrets for Sale
So BradBlog and the Sunday Times in jolly old England have been pushing a fairly explosive, no pun intended, story on nuclear proliferation.

It seems that a former translator working on our intercepts from Turkey stumbled on something she wasn't supposed to know; that high ranking US government reps in the Bush administration were selling out our nuclear secrets -- to Turkey, and through them, to half the Islamic world.

The paper now reports that they are able to corroborate an apparent FBI cover-up of documents detailing an investigation of the theft and sale of nuclear secrets to agents working for Turkey and Israel, who in turn shared the secrets with Pakistan, who in turn may have shared those secrets with Iran, North Korea, Libya, and possibly even al-Qaeda.

As The BRAD BLOG reported along with the Times two weeks ago, the operation also includes allegations that high-ranking U.S. officials --- such as Marc Grossman, a former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, who served as the #3 official in the State Department under Colin Powell and Richard Armitage from 2001 to 2005 --- were involved in the sale of those secrets and may have accepted pay-offs from agents in the black market network in the bargain.

Naturally, the informant in question is under a gag order to prevent her from spilling her guts on precisely who in the Bush administration committed bald-faced treason.

We've also just spoken to Edmonds, who has been under an unprecedented 5-year-long gag order by the U.S. Department of Justice. The DoJ has threatened Edmonds with prosecution under the so-called "State Secrets Privilege." The threat of prison has kept her from speaking publicly about details related to the case, which she claims to have heard while translating wiretaps for the FBI in 2001 and 2002. She has spent many years encouraging members of Congress to hold hearings and a public investigation into the case. Despite public support from senators such as Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA), and a promise for investigations from members of Rep. Henry Waxman's (D-CA) office, who have been briefed on the details, no such investigation has been carried out to date.

It gets even better of course. It turns out that Valerie Plame was betrayed yet again by the Bush administration, and our counter-proliferation efforts shot in the back.

It claims the government official warned a Turkish member of the network that they should not deal with a company called Brewster Jennings because it was a CIA front company investigating the nuclear black market. The official’s warning came two years before Brewster Jennings was publicly outed when one of its staff, Valerie Plame, was revealed to be a CIA agent in a case that became a cause célèbre in the US.

The letter also makes reference to wiretaps of Turkish “targets” talking to [Pakistan's] ISI intelligence agents at the Pakistani embassy in Washington and recordings of “operatives” at the [American Turkish Council].

Meanwhile, the American media, unlike some blogs and the British papers, is eerily silent on this whole sordid mess.

In response to that story, the top newspapers from Turkey to Pakistan to India to Israel picked up on the report. But in the United States, incredibly enough, absolutely nothing. Not a single major American media outlet covered the explosive and disturbing allegations.

Ahh, the American press. How little we can rely upon them.

Meanwhile, Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame has published an op-ed on the subject that I need to read. Though from what I've seen it didn't get much play either.

Source: The BRAD BLOG

NATO Staff Asserts Right to Use Nukes As First-Strike
Cold War all over again. Sigh.

The five commanders argue that the west's values and way of life are under threat, but the west is struggling to summon the will to defend them. The key threats are:

· Political fanaticism and religious fundamentalism.

· The "dark side" of globalisation, meaning international terrorism, organised crime and the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

· Climate change and energy security, entailing a contest for resources and potential "environmental" migration on a mass scale.

In other words, prominent NATO officials believe that nuclear war is an acceptable tactic in response to terrorism, global warming, regional conflicts and humanitarian crises.

Just great.

Source: The Guardian

What's Good for the Goose...
Putin's Russia also recently stated its willingness to blow the living daylights out of the landscape on rather spurious justification.

Russia's military chief of staff said Saturday that Moscow could use nuclear weapons in preventive strikes to protect itself and its allies, the latest aggressive remarks from increasingly assertive Russian authorities.

Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky's comment did not mark a policy shift, military analysts said. Amid disputes with the West over security issues, it may have been meant as a warning that Russia is prepared to use its nuclear might.

"We do not intend to attack anyone, but we consider it necessary for all our partners in the world community to clearly understand ... that to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Russia and its allies, military forces will be used, including preventively, including with the use of nuclear weapons," Baluyevsky said at a military conference in a remark broadcast on state-run cable channel Vesti-24.

...

The military doctrine adopted in 2000 says Russia may use nuclear weapons to counter a nuclear attack on Russia or an ally, or a large-scale conventional attack that poses a critical risk to Russia's security.

Note that the conventional attack doesn't have to be on Russia, or Russia's allies... or anything in particular really. That's a lot of wiggle room for a nuclear holocaust, to my mind.

Source: Raw Story

Bush is the New Hoover
Only without the compassion and human decency.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A shock U.S. interest rate cut failed to halt a stock market rout on Tuesday as fears of a U.S. recession forced policymakers in Europe and Japan to issue rapid reassurances about the health of their economies.

The Federal Reserve cut its key interest rate by three-quarters of a percentage point to 3.5 percent, its biggest in more than 23 years. But markets paused only momentarily before the selling wave renewed as investors seem fixated on the idea that the U.S. will drag the world economy down.

...

Outside North America, politicians and central bankers said the market selloff looked excessive. But they had their work cut out to convince as people like billionaire investor George Soros, who said the world faced a financial crisis worse than any since World War Two.

Meanwhile, the Europeans are already looking to a future where they can't rely on the United States to exist as a viable economic entity:

The message sounded more strident in Europe than Japan but the common theme was: don't panic.

"There are no signs of a recession in Germany and that's also the case for Europe," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said.

In an interview with German TV to be broadcast later, she called Europe an "anchor of stability" in the world.

France sought to put a possible recession in the United States into perspective, saying Europe trades just as much with other parts of the world, above all with the countries of the euro zone and 27-country European Union.

"Even if the United States goes into recession ... it's not a tragedy in itself," Economy Minister Christine Lagarde said.

She and other European finance ministers meeting in Brussels said Europe's economy was fundamentally sound and should in no way be grouped with the U.S. economy, hit by a housing slump and a debt default crisis in the subprime mortgage market.

"We feel comfortable with our economic situation at the moment. The economic situation in Europe seems to be uncoupled from the situation in the U.S.," said Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who chairs meetings of euro zone finance ministers and acts as their chief spokesman.

Honestly, the fact that the perennially ossified EU, with its constant bickering and infighting, can do this to us is a sign of just how badly Bush runs the US Government. It reminds me of the famous Churchill quote on democracy; the EU can only seem like an idyllic paradise if you live in hell.

Source: Reuters

Meanwhile, In the Festering Wound That is Iraq
The other day on the Daily Show, Fareed Zakaria, strike-breaking scum that he is appearing on a show with a picket against it, said something that really summed up US foreign policy to me brilliantly, in a crystal-clear, concise phrase that could really be the substitute for a lot of classwork in poli-sci at the undergrad level:

"We like Democracy in strategically irrelevant countries." -- Fareed Zakaria

How can someone say something that bright one moment, and this dumb the next?

The Democrats are having the hardest time with the new reality. Every candidate is committed to "ending the war" and bringing our troops back home. The trouble is, the war has largely ended, and precisely because our troops are in the middle of it.

Nevermind the obvious logical problem with that statement, that a war has largely ended because we're mired inside of it; what planet is this guy on? Would he care for a vacation package to sunny downtown Baghdad, since he's so sure the war is over?

As Yglesisas notes while discussing the ever-improving tactics of the insurgency:

Obviously, though, this improvement in the tactics and doctrine of anti-American fighters in Iraq can't be a big deal since the war is largely over. If the war were still happening, this kind of thing might illustrate the illusory nature of tactical improvements in the face of a bleak strategic situation. But since the war is "largely" over already there's probably no problem here.

Yeah. It's all sunshine and lollipops over there. Yglesias' post comes on the heels of the news that the Army's latest, greatest, most bomb resistant troop transport technology, designed to put us ahead of the insurgents in the IED war, has been beaten for the first time.

What's so special about these new vehicles, called MRAPs, you ask?

The vehicles have distinctive, armored V-shaped hulls that are designed to deflect the force of the explosion from roadside bombs out and away from the vehicle, sparing the occupants in the compartment.

The underbody sits about 36 inches off the ground, higher than the Humvees that have proved susceptible to roadside bombs despite the additional armor added to many of them in combat zones.

The vehicles are much bigger than Humvees, standing 12 feet high, weighing up to 18 tons, and carrying 6 to 10 soldiers, depending on the model. There are more than 1,500 of them in Iraq now, and the military plans to purchase more than 15,000 of them at a cost of $22.4 billion.

Apparently the geniuses at the Pentagon have been unable to come up with a single design, so they're buying basically anything, from any contractor, that is thrown at them claiming to solve this problem. See this Wikipedia article on the sheer variety of vehicles they're trying out now under the MRAP banner.

The anti-armor weapon that took it out? Basically the same thing Timothy McVeigh utilized: a fertilizer bomb.

Several vehicles in the convoy had already passed over the same spot, but failed to set off what officers say they was a deeply buried, homemade bomb, which the military calls an improvised explosive device, or I.E.D., made from about 300 pounds of fertilizer and set off with a pressure device.

We are well and truly hosed, trying to fight an insurgency campaign with technology. You can't win; it's the fundamental nature of the universe that order loses out to degeneracy, entropy increases, and it all falls apart. It will always be easier to destroy than to create; you can't fight that, it's not an ethos, it's physical reality. The only way to build and protect a society is to keep it cohesive and safe from the inside out, and fight a never-ending war, one that ultimately all life is doomed to lose, against the ravages of time.

Ultimately, it will all just fall apart. It's up to us to slow the decay, to use the time we've been given, and lately, we've been miserable failures.

Sources: The New York Times
Matthew Yglesias
Wikipedia

Insert Newsy Title Here

If you've ever wandered lonely through the woods..

Three Hour Tour
So some Russkie fishermen got 'lost', more like stranded, at a Russian military base after horrid weather during a fishing trip in October off the Kamchatka. They made their way to the base and survived off of old rations until some recently ventured out and found help.

Oddly, they still face charges, as technically they were fishing in military waters. Come on, guys, I think they learned their lesson. How about '3 months time served' and be done with it?

Source: Raw Story

Writer's Strike Progress
After Letterman's production company struck a deal with the WGA, it seems the floodgates may be creaking open. Now, what's left of United Artists, after it was converted into a vanity studio for Tom Cruise, is looking to cut a deal with the WGA, which would serve as a prototype for other studios. Supposedly the Weinstein Company and Lionsgate arelooking for a similar out.

I guess we can see who's going to win this one.

Source: The LA Times

Women In Refrigerators
So Gail Simone, famous for penning the 'Women in Refrigerators' rant, is now helming Wonder Woman. I'm a bit torn on this one. On the one hand, it's good to see someone who bitches about the comics industry step and try to help solve the problems, rather than just making a buck at the expense of the medium's flaws; on the other hand, having checked out their list of grievances for female comic characters, I'm a bit... underwhelmed.

Sure, women were treated badly for much of the history of American comics. Your point? How were minority characters treated during this time? Not terribly well, I can assure you. It was a big deal that Marvel, in the 80s, started having minority heroes on big teams. Marvel. You know, the least stodgy of the comic companies.

Besides, in their long list of things that female characters have suffered, they fail to note that the longest and greatest suffering hero of all is a male: Spiderman.

Let's see what I can think of, off the top of my head, without being by any means a Spidey scholar:

Spiderman: Gained powers through negligent science experiment; long-standing survivor's guilt; alcoholic; villains routinely target and kill his friends and family; best friend went insane, tried to kill him, died; wife routinely targeted; may be sterile due to spider-DNA; bones broken (countless times), eye gouged out, turned into spider-man-monster with 6 arms; violated and DNA used to make army of lame clones; clone took over life and relationship with mary jane; lost powers and ceded title to clone; violated mentally and physically by alien symbiote, which stole his memories and powers, conferred them to professional rival; endlessly humilated in work life by boss, who is rabid spiderman hater.

etc. etc. etc.

Face it, nobody, and I mean NOBODY, has taken it like Spiderman. He's the Christ of Comics; he suffers for the sins of the other heroes.

Sources: WIR Rant
Slashdot


Magic Typewriters, But Not Like Stephen King's Story
A frontpage Slashdot article, probably a paid one, links to two new word processors for writers, claiming to be the best thing since moveable type (not the blogging software, you sad nerds). One has every whizzy design feature under the sun; the other claims to remove distractions from you and your work by essentially turning your modern computer into a terminal from the good old days.

I guess different strokes, and so forth, but I'm not sure that your word processor is going to solve a lack of attention span. The words should come from your brain, and if they don't, then not much is going to help you. On the other hand, a comfortable writing environment...

*shrug*

Just musing, no conclusion here, let alone a point.

Sources: Whizzy Scrivener
Ultra Simple Writeroom

That Word Doesn't Mean What You Think It Does
So I sort of bought this Brandi Carlile CD, "My Story", thinking she did a song that I wanted that in the end was by someone else. No problem, it's a decent cd of its own. I particularly like the way the one song, 'Turpentine', that has been all over the radio, sounds.

Here's the thing though: part of the lyrics of said song really bugs me.

These days we go to waste like wine
That's turned to turpentine

Here's the problem: turpentine isn't made from wine. It comes from tree sap that's been fermented. When wine goes bad, it turns into vinegar.

Not turpentine.

Someone should have told her before they recorded this, I think. Surely another rhyme could have been worked out.

Sources: ME
Wikipedia on Turpentine
Wikipedia on Vinegar

The Good Die First

But most of us are morally ambiguous, which explains our random dying pattern. -- MST3k, 'The Gunslinger'

Slim Chance Mars Will Get What's Coming to It
An asteroid may be hitting Mars soon, giving it a good drubbing for the continual failure to produce alien invaders to put humanity to rights. Currently the asteroid is obscured from view by our Moon, but they've calculated at 4% chance of a hit so far.

Man, I hope it goes ker-wham. That'd be neat.

Source: Raw Story

Russians Ban Ad Stating Santa Claus is Fake
Seriously. They have a law that bans people from discrediting parents, and since parents tell kids that Santa is real, they can ban the ad.

Other things parents tell children that you can no longer question in Russia:

1. Mommy loves you all the same
   
2. Daddy drinks because you were bad
3. If you drink this kool-aid you'll go gently to sleep and wake in a land of eternal happiness

Source: Raw Story

Someone's Got to Be At Fault for THIS
So a guy was hit by a car, put in a body bag while still alive, and sent to the morgue instead of the hospital. They didn't notice he was alive for some time. His family is suing, saying that his permanent disability was no doubt at least worsened by the whole lack of medical treatment thing. The coroner says that, as they're all supposed to be dead when they get to him, it's not his fault.

That might be a point, but SOMEONE put a live man in a body bag. I should think they at least have some 'splainin to do.

Source: Raw Story

Department of Pointless Remakes
Death Race 2000 is, believe it or not, being remade. Seriously.

The mind boggles.

Source: IMDB

Newsie News News

Type your summary here

Chuck Norris is a Jerk Department
So Chuck Norris, after capitalizing on his internet mythology to publicly whore himself for Huckabee's Presidential campaign, is now suing Penguin books for publishing a collection of those myths, because they infringe on his right to.. I'm not sure.

Sorry Chuckie, but the boat on that really sailed when you decided to become a public figure and join the Huckabee campaign. If it hadn't already.

Source: Reuters

Putin Corrupt After All?
Time made it sound like he was an honest dictator surrounded by Plutocrats, but the issue may not be so clear-cut.

There are allegations emerging that Putin has in fact swindled the Russian people out of forty BILLION dollars. As for being a competent dictator, it seems that he is all that is holding his government together and can't retire because two rival factions beneath him are at war with one another.

No good guys to root for there, btw. You have old KGB hardliners versus modern oligarchs.

Source: The Guardian

Maybe History Really is Cyclical
So it seems that J. Edgar Hoover had a plan to permanently detain people he disliked politically, using war as a convenient cover, and sham trials to justify their detention. Wow.

Great minds think alike, I suppose. Cheney and Hoover even look a tad alike.

I wonder if this means that Cheney has dresses in his closet in front of the skeletons...

Source: Raw Story

I Want My Obituary to Read
At least, in part: "Authorities have yet to find the head."

Source: Casey and Andy

Pleo Takes Over the World?
New robot toy is a cross between Furby and the Robosaurus. Plots our collective doom.

From cuteness.

Source: The Washington Post

I Yet Live!

So after the snowman incident I kind of came down with something and was pretty sick all week. Yeesh.

But I'm better now, so on with the links and news.

Finally, CSI Redux
This pretty much explains the whole show, along with all of its various clones and retreads.

Source: Cascade Failure

Ebay Madness
If you're evil and have disposable income there's no end to the fun you can have.

Source: Ebay (naturally)

Mars Was Already Pretty Beaten Up, It Hardly Needs a New Dent
Used planets just aren't what they once were.

Oh well.

Source: The LA Times

Slashdot Said It Best, I Think
Begun, this War on Christmas Has.

Source: Gizmodo

Bush Sez: A Bargain at Twice The Price!
Oh, and you will be paying twice the price, too.

Iraq war now tops Vietnam in cost using adjusted dollars. Twice as expensive as Korea.

Source: Yahoo News

Lakota Indians Withdraw from Meaningless Treaties
Not that it will help them, but at least it made the news.

Source: Fox News (oddly enough)

Putin of the Year
Vlad makes Person of the Year at Time.

The article has some great Russian jokes in it too.

Still, creepy, creepy man.

Oh, and FYI, Time? "A Tsar is Born" is not a clever title. Not the least bit. Plus, considering how Russkies see the Tsars, it's pretty insensitive.

Source: Time.com

Department of RICHARD IS BACK OH THANK THE LORD
Looking for Group with another Richard comic that needs to be made into a shirt.

Seriously. I'd buy like five all by myself.

Source: Looking for Group