Martin Sheen, Sharpton Visit Anti-War Camp - Yahoo! News

I'm always confused when "bereaved" people wear such big smiles.

Internal CIA report faults ex director, others for pre 9/11 faults

Yahoo! News: "Tenet, who resigned in July 2004 after seven years at the top, was censured for failing to develop and carry out a strategic plan to take on Al-Qaeda in the years before the attacks, two people familiar with the report told The New York Times."

Why hydrogen is no route to renewables

The Ergosphere:

"Why hydrogen is no route to renewables

All the attention in the nation appears to be on hydrogen as the ideal medium for energy in a renewable economy. It has a lot going for it, in particular the fact that it can be produced from nothing more than water and energy. But this comes at a high (and hidden) price, especially for production from renewable energy; it is far from obvious that the use of hydrogen is worth the additional costs. The consequence is that we should downgrade hydrogen research, and cease deployment efforts immediately.

Hydrogen is certainly a wonderful molecule. It's the lightest element and has a very high energy/mass ratio. It's also the foundation of many chemical synthesis processes, both artificial and natural; when plants make sugar, they begin by splitting a water molecule to make hydrogen. There are even some ways to persuade plants to yield hydrogen directly. And when hydrogen is required, nothing else will do. You need hydrogen to make ammonia (for nitrogen fertilizer) or synthesize hydrocarbons.

We can learn a lot from plants (biomimicry has yielded a lot of good concepts), but there are limits to how far this can go and still be useful. It's one thing to borrow inventions and techniques from nature when they are well-suited to the task at hand, and quite another thing to cut the engineering problem to fit the Procrustean bed of a biological prototype. I intend to show that the 'hydrogen economy', and particularly the hydrogen fuel-cell car, is a poor way to accomplish this."...

Follow link for analysis.

Hold Your Tears ... Mark Steyn

Hold Your Tears ... Mark Steyn: "Whenever I’m on a radio show these days, someone calls in and demands to know whether my children are in Iraq. Well, not right now. They range in age from five to nine, and though that’s plenty old enough to sign up for the jihad and toddle into an Israeli pizza parlour wearing a suicide-bomb, in most advanced societies’ armed forces they prefer to use grown-ups.

That seems to be difficult for the Left to grasp. Ever since America’s all-adult, all-volunteer army went into Iraq, the anti-war crowd have made a sustained effort to characterise them as ‘children’. If a 13-year-old wants to have an abortion, that’s her decision and her parents shouldn’t get a look-in. If a 21-year-old wants to drop to the Oval Office shagpile and chow down on Bill Clinton, she’s a grown woman and free to do what she wants. But, if a 22- or 25- or 37-year old is serving his country overseas, he’s a wee ‘child’ who isn’t really old enough to know what he’s doing."

Illegal Immigrants Win Arizona Ranch in Court - New York Times

Illegal Immigrants Win Arizona Ranch in Court - New York Times

Pathetic.

State Dept. Says It Warned About bin Laden in 1996

State Dept. Says It Warned About bin Laden in 1996 - New York Times: "WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 - State Department analysts warned the Clinton administration in July 1996 that Osama bin Laden's move to Afghanistan would give him an even more dangerous haven as he sought to expand radical Islam 'well beyond the Middle East,' but the government chose not to deter the move, newly declassified documents show."

Intelligence Briefs: Iraq (April 2001)

Intelligence Briefs: Iraq (April 2001): "Iraqi Spies Reportedly Arrested in Germany
16 March 2001

Al-Watan al-Arabi (Paris) reports that two Iraqis were arrested in Germany, charged with spying for Baghdad. The arrests came in the wake of reports that Iraq was reorganizing the external branches of its intelligence service and that it had drawn up a plan to strike at US interests around the world through a network of alliances with extremist fundamentalist parties.

The most serious report contained information that Iraq and Osama bin Ladin were working together. German authorities were surprised by the arrest of the two Iraqi agents and the discovery of Iraqi intelligence activities in several German cities. German authorities, acting on CIA recommendations, had been focused on monitoring the activities of Islamic groups linked to bin Ladin. They discovered the two Iraqi agents by chance and uncovered what they considered to be serious indications of cooperation between Iraq and bin Ladin. The matter was considered so important that a special team of CIA and FBI agents was sent to Germany to interrogate the two Iraqi spies."

Interesting, no?

Dean works to energize state's Democratic Party - Fosters

Dean works to energize state's Democratic Party - Fosters: "'New England Republicans are different than most. They are more reasonable and thoughtful,' Dean said. 'You don't get as many right-wing wackos.'"

But of course, you do get quite a few left-wing wackos. Some of which go right to the head of the class.

NARAL Loses Nerve

My Way News: "After protests by conservatives, NARAL Pro-Choice America said Thursday night it would pull the ad that began running this week.

'We regret that many people have misconstrued our recent advertisement about Mr. Roberts' record,' NARAL President Nancy Keenan said.

'Unfortunately, the debate over that advertisement has become a distraction from the serious discussion we hoped to have with the American public,' she said in a letter Thursday to Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who earlier in the day had urged the group to withdraw the ad."

I call BS.

WSJ.com - Oil for Fraud

WSJ.com - Oil for Fraud: "What is clear is that the Secretary General intends to spin the Volcker report not as an indictment of his tenure in office, but -- and this is amazing -- as another reason to endorse his reform agenda and, therefore, his continuance in office. 'As part of its investigation of Mr. Yakovlev,' a U.N. press release states, the U.N. 'will separately make recommendations for further reforms, particularly regarding strengthened supervision and controls over individual procurement officers.' "

Oil-for-food probe expected to accuse UN director

In a story pretty much fully explored by the Wall Street Journal back in the run-up to the latest Presidential election...Wired News, via Reuters reports: "An investigation into the oil-for-food program will accuse for the first time on Monday the director of the defunct $67 billion U.N. operation of getting cash from oil deals."

LA Times Overly Concerned

The (over)exercise of power: "Am I the only person who finds this disturbing? I don't mean the fact that Bush would vet his selection for the highest court in the land in part on something utterly trivial. That's expected. What I mean is the fact that Bush has an obsession with exercise that borders on the creepy."

Well, no you are probably not the ONLY one, but more people find it disturbing that the money losing LA press doesn't have better things to be disturbed about. Were you disturbed by all those jogging pictures during the Clinton years? Were you curious that after all that supposed excercise he got fatter and fatter. Were you disturbed by the comparisons between Kerry falling off his 10-speed on a Washington street and Bush falling off a mountain bike riding up a hill composed of soft sand?

I'd be checking into the reasons behind all of your concern. We don't buy it any more.

independentsources.com also thinks it odd that Bush is critisized for something worthy of praise.

I guess I'm not the only one who is disturbed at their being disturbed. Do we have the makings of a Monty Python sketch here?

Last Farmland in DC Sold

Article here, thanks to Technocrat.com

Why do people move to big cities? Jobs.

What happens when a medium sized city gets to be a megalopolis? Ordinary people can no longer afford to live in the center. Roads in the center can't cope with individual travelers and mass transit copes poorly, forcing middle class people to move to the edge and commute AROUND, which is what the beltway was originally intended for (the overcrowded core of DC has long since passed beyond the beltway though).

If you change jobs a lot you are better off renting. If you insist on owning a home you had better get a real estate license on the side (at which point you realize you can probably make more money selling real estate than whatever else you were doing). That describes DC, LA, NYC and a number of other "hubs" right now.

All of this was pretty much inevitable for the non-farm worker in the past. But today we have no excuse for continuing this endless cycle other than "well, thats the way we've always done things".

Why do millions of stock brokers, computer programmers, customer support specialists, lawyers, sales reps, and a host of other white collar workers have to leave their home at all and clog up one means of transport or another with their sweaty bodies for 3 and 4 hours a day? And for most of these people, what do they do at work? Sit in front of a computer display and talk on the telephone. I'll skip the argument about whether 80 percent of the government workers need to be employed at all, but from my observation of them (over the course of 15 years or so, since computer networks became commonplace) there is almost nothing they need to be physically present to accomplish.

Only recently in the DC area did I work with sales reps who no longer had a permanent office. Not surprisingly it was mostly from foreign based companies that didn't see ownership of a building in the US with a logo on its side as an asset. These sales reps of course did pay me frequent visits, another waste. They could have e-mailed me the powerpoint presentation from Idaho or anywhere else and it would have been just as useful as a personal visit. "Ahhh" some will say, "that personal touch makes the sale!". But I don't think there is a lot of evidence to support that.

Hopefully in another generation or so we will finally be weaned off of notions that a TV ad reaches "millions" while an Internet ad only reach those who "click-through". My mailbox is full every day with print media desperate to count me as an eyeball to their advertisers when in fact I almost never open their publications.

In a civilization that takes the power of the Internet seriously I think big cities are going to die one last (and hopefully slow, painless) death. A well known tech pundit recently asked if Silicon Valley would ever make a full recovery from the dot-com crash. The answer is NO, and why should we want it to? That USED to be productive farmland and there is no reason it can't revive that tradition (at least it isn't QUITE as paved over as New York yet). It could be a nice place for a lot of technologists to live, but there is no need or advantage for ALL of them being there. Many of them would be surprised how many places between the east and west coasts are not only pleasant places to live, but still affordable. And just maybe having some of our technology brain power in less expensive parts of the country is a better alternative to using the brain power in other parts of the world.

The End of the Rainbow - New York Times

The End of the Rainbow - New York Times: "'We went on a borrowing, spending and taxing spree, and that nearly drove us under,' said Deputy Prime Minister Mary Harney. 'It was because we nearly went under that we got the courage to change.'"

Maybe we here in the US need to start electing Democrats again so we can nearly go under and get the courage to change.
Except I thought we tried that already. Apparently Democrats have forgotten. Or they just like being in power.

Is it Over Rover?

Is it Over Rover?
2004-04-06

Rover Daily
Update Spirit Sol 91: "Spirit woke up on sol 91, which ended at 6:38
p.m. PDT on April 5, 2004, as if it were any other martian day, but this
one was special. Finishing 90 sols of surface operations since landing
day marked completion of the last of the official success criteria for
Spirit's prime mission. The rover team at JPL had checked off the
next-to-last box for mission success two days earlier, when a drive of
50.2 meters (165 feet) took Spirit's total travel distance over the
600-meter (1,969 feet) mark."

This might hint at further cutbacks in rover coverage. From the once
daily hour long press conference to "daily" 2 minute mission controller
updates, which now seem to get regularly skipped, we are down to the
still daily written summary:

Rover Daily
Updates

I wonder how long those will last now. NASA people seem to be in a big hurry to declare the mission over so they can go home. Unfortunate really, since
in the beginning when the press was anxious to cover more territory they
were told that there was no hurry. The 90 day number was just the
MINIMUM life expectancy of the hardware. Now they are changing their
tune. The hardware is fine. Seems it is the personnel that is worn
out. Or maybe it has just exceeded the American publics attention span.
Ever shorter.

But no worry, USG will be happy to spend millions more to launch follow-on
rovers to cover the ground that these could have, but didn't.

Clinton and Computers

From Clinton Web Site:
2003-04-16

Update: 2004-01-29

I did the entry below when I had little more than a hunch that

Bill Clinton was computer illiterate ("Clinton's Gift to Internet Age - Only 2 E-Mails").
The picture, and some other hints here and there had given it away. But now that he is no longer in office
the secret is out. But why should this be covered up? I would guess that many people in politics rarely if
ever use a computer. It would be nice to think that they at least know how to, but simply don't take the time.
The reality though is that until the next generation of politicians we are lucky to be dealing with people who can
even type.

One of the handy ways to avoid discussing the issues is to compare the candidates reading habits ("My candidate
reads seven books a day. Before breakfast!"), academic records, or past jobs. The Dems get better treatment though.
We rarely learn much about them until AFTER they leave office. Clinton's book will no doubt tell us little we don't
already know, it will most likely but full of invention. Using legal pads and a ghost writer who is desperately
trying to coax the material out of him for pre-election release, we hear that the going is slow. In addition to
typing, constructing revisionist history is something Bill expects others to do for him.

"Late one afternoon, Chelsea, home for Christmas from Stanford University, brought a few friends by the Oval Office
to visit with the President. I had been
trying for weeks to get the Oval Office laptop up and running. Bewilderedly, I looked on as Chelsea and her friends
proceeded to school both the President
and me on how technology really works."

Director of Production for Presidential Events JOSHUA KING (by door) describes waiting "back stage" for the
President.

---

Apparently Chelsea's efforts were unsuccessful. (NB: The incorrect caption as it appears on the web page.)

The fact that Clinton would sit with a non-functional laptop on his desk "for weeks" would tend to confirm the
stories that he was not computer literate, and
in fact could not handle ordinary typing tasks.

Of course I doubt that most modern presidents have been computer savvy either, but then, not since Kennedy has the
presidential hype machine done so much to
create a mythology of Presidential intelligence. It's about time a lot of these myths were put to rest along with
the rest of the Clinton legacy.

PS: I hope at some point they informed Bill about the appropriate orientation for the mouse. Could this be why
Bill and Hillary's books are so far behind
schedule?

High Alert

An ongoing digest of incompetence in high places

2004-01-22

• 
  Boston Globe carries the following headline:
  Infiltration of files seen as extensive...
  Senate panel's GOP staff pried on Democrats
  After reading through the long article speculating about GOP spying on Democrats we find this:
  "A technician hired by the new judiciary chairman, Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, apparently made a mistake that allowed anyone to access newly created accounts on a Judiciary Committee server shared by both parties -- even though the accounts were supposed to restrict access only to those with the right password."
  (Link)
  

2003-10-30

• Today a Capitol building was closed for two hours due to an "alert".
  
• People were "evacuated" from the building, but many people didn't receive the
  alert.
  
• The alert was sent to building occupants via FAX!
  
• The alert included a lookout for a white man of average height carrying a gun.
  
• It turned out that 2 WOMEN on congressional staff entered the building with Halloween
  costumes
  which included a toy gun
  
• 
  A report was made public today by
  The Center for Public Integrity
  
• href="http://video.c-span.org:8080/ramgen/archive/iraq/iraq103003_integrity.rm"target="_blank">Here
  is a video from CSPAN
  
• A Brooklyn cop is being investigated for Internet postings in which he brags about beating suspects,
  writing phony tickets and ignoring calls to his precinct. (href="http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/nyc-blog1223,0,3411589,print.story?coll=ny-nynews-headlines">LINK)
  
  
• Los Alamos National Laboratory employees and managers have been placed on paid investigative leave as a
  result of security problems that surfaced at the lab earlier this month, a lab spokesman confirmed Friday. (LINK)
  

High Alert (ongoing)

High Alert (ongoing)
2003-10-30

• Today a Capitol building was closed for two hours due to an "alert".
  
  
• People were "evacuated" from the building, but many people didn't receive the
  alert.
  
  
• The alert was sent to building occupants via FAX!
  
  
• The alert included a lookout for a white man of average height carrying a gun.
  
  
• It turned out that 2 WOMEN on congressional staff entered the building with Halloween
  costumes
  which included a toy gun
  
  
• 
  A report was made public today by
  The Center for Public Integrity
  
  
• 
  href="http://video.c-span.org:8080/ramgen/archive/iraq/iraq103003_integrity.rm"target="_blank">Here
  is a video from CSPAN
  
  

Comments to follow...

2003-12-23

My two previous posts were actually continuations of this which I rather left hanging.
Since then, we have had some major election fiascos. The Department of Homeland Security has flunked
a security audit of computer systems by Congress (not that I imagine Congressional computers to be in better
shape) and we yesterday entered "Code Orange" mode, which means, well, nobody is quite sure, other than it
is worse than yellow and better than red.

But in case you think the subject here is terrorism or our responses to it, it is not. At least not
directly. What it is basically about is incompetence, at all levels.

When we changed from yellow (was it?) to orange there was the now predictable pot shots from the left.
Why they get so worked up over this system I don't know. Well, I do know. They don't have any REAL issues
to get all worked up over. The Emergency Broadcast System that we have been living with for 40 years or so
is at LEAST as silly (and certainly more expensive) than this new color code. The EBS hasn't been used once
(even on 9/11!!)
nobody pays attentions to it and no doubt in the year 2100 people will be wondering why their brain wave
receptions are interrupted by these "test" announcements complete with annoying sound effects. Nobody will
remember, but
it will still be someone within the government's job to produce them, and produce them they will.

Congressman Ed Markey of Massachusetts is annoyed about something too. Today he called a press conference to
complain
that not enough was being done to screen packages that are put on airplanes. There is in fact reason to be
concerned, but it's
not clear that Markey's press conference had anything to do with those reasons.

He complained that certain packages (below a certain size) are not being scanned or inspected in any way. In
fact we know that many air-cargo packages are not inspected since it hasn't been all that long since a fellow
"air-mailed" himself across country. We know that some of the new screeners are goofing off. Have the
deadbeats been fired yet? It's hard to fire federal workers, and Congress insisted that they be federal
workers and not contract employees. Bush was concerned about not being able to separate those who are doing
the job from those who are not, you know, the ones who take grandma's nail clippers and that new one-inch
pocket knife you gave to your significant other, but at the same time let more box cutters go right through.
Congress won that fight though. But that doesn't stop them from
complaining when some of them got "laid off". My guess is that the lay-off was indeed a filtering exercise,
for which we all ought to be thankful. If they have to "staff-up" and "lay-off" every now and then to get
the job done right, then I hope they do. It would have been so much easier to staff the jobs with verified
contractors (rather than illegal aliens that were being used before). Don't blame Bush for the fact that it
didn't work out that way.

That logic didn't keep Markey from complaining though. His other complaint was that hardware had not been
provided by the feds yet to screen cargo (facts to the contrary be damned). It was widely reported that it
would take quite some time to gear up to make the additional machines to do this for all the nations airports.
Boston's Logan airport is actually on the short list to get first crack at this stuff. Not only do they get
hardware but good old CASH, and apparently Markey's problem is that the money isn't flowing fast enough (maybe
he foresees a tough election year?). He blames it all on the Bush administration. They just aren't spending
the money fast enough. Asked by a reporter how much money is involved Markey draws a blank, but then adds,
"Not that much more than is being spent now". So, what am I missing here? Again we are back to the left's
reliance on a "conspiracy". Why would the administration block a small amount of money for Logan, when it is
fact one of the first airports to benefit from the billions being spent (by you and me) on all of this? Will
Markey next call a press conference to hand out maps of all the unguarded city water supplies in the country?
How about power lines stretched throughout the countryside? Maybe Markey could help the terrorist find those.
How much does it cost to get Markey to "Shut the F*** up" in public and do his job in Congress using less
public means? That assumes he is actually interested in doing his job, versus pumping up his political base.

Remember, Logan airport is where all of this got started. A couple of people got fired there already after
9/11, and remember how hard it is to fire government workers. Maybe some of them were Markey's political
cronies and he still has a splinter up his ass about it. Could that be it? We ARE talking about political
appointees here you know. Or could it be that "Massport's" (as they are called) administration of the
airports still reads like a script for a
Keystone Cops movie?:

"The Dept. of Homeland Security pledged an additional $87 million towards Logan's permanent
baggage-screening system's $146 million price tag July 7. The additional funds brought the total compensation
the airport had received from the federal government to $117 million. Logan was one of three airports to
receive reimbursement after Congress passed a $2.3 billion appropriation earlier in the year to reimburse
airports up to 75% of their expenses for the permanent screening systems. Coy, who pleaded to Congress for
compensation earlier in the year, said, "We accomplished in six months what many experts said was impossible to
do in two years." Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, the other
two recipients of federal funding, were only in the design phase of their systems.

Agents from the federal Dept. of Homeland Security succeeded in passing "prohibited items" through security
checkpoints at Logan Airport according to media reports Oct. 16. The security tests were part of a federal
investigation at about 15 US airports. "By testing airports across the country, the federal government can
identify potential weaknesses and improve screening methods and training," explained Massport spokesman Jose
Juves. The federal security director at Logan, George Naccara, said the tests found security at Logan "no
better or worse" than at the other airports tested. "

(read the full report, it's much worse than my excerpt)

Further questions by the press were not answered particularly well by Markey. He has been campaigning...
uh... complaining about this for the last six months or so and he still doesn't seem to have command of any
facts or figures on the subject. At one point he said he didn't know the answer to a question but that he
hoped to find out when briefed (along with other congress people) by Homeland Security later this afternoon.
So, why couldn't his press conference waited until tomorrow? Maybe he didn't want to be confused by the
facts. Are his constituents so easily fooled by this high drama?

Like I said, incompetence at all levels. At least SOME federal employees can be fired once every two years.
Hopefully Markey's bosses will start thinking along those lines.

You see? There is enough political mud to be slung from all sides. Hopefully actual issues will get debated
and problems solved in that process somehow. Governments have always and will always do things clumsily.
They need watching. Let the public remain on High Alert in that regard.

And while we are at it...

• A Brooklyn cop is being investigated for Internet postings in which he brags about beating suspects,
  writing phony tickets and ignoring calls to his precinct. (
  href="http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/nyc-blog1223,0,3411589,print.story?coll=ny-nynews-headlines">LINK)
  
  
• Los Alamos National Laboratory employees and managers have been placed on paid investigative leave as a
  result of security problems that surfaced at the lab earlier this month, a lab spokesman confirmed Friday. (
  LINK)
  

Hogwash Bummer

Hogwash Bummer
2003-08-06

Rarely have so many written so much based on so little....

How about this:

From http://www.freemikehawash.org/
"On April 28, the day before Mike would have been ordered released, the
U.S. Justice Department issued a Complaint, charging Mike with Conspiracy to
Levy War on the United States. Mike is being targeted because he is a Muslim.
The Justice Department has organized a smear campaign to portray him as a radical."

From Warblogging (a blog about making war against Republicans apparently):
"I urge you to write letters to the editors of your local newspapers.
Call your senators, call your congressmen. Call into your local radio talk shows.
Make a fuss. Tell everyone who will listen about Mike Hawash.
He deserves it, and so does the next one who will be dragged into this Kafka-esque nightmare."

From Wired: Ex-Intel VP Fights for Detainee

Oh, let's not forget the ever-accurate New York Times:
Terrorism Task Force Detains an American Without Charges

Oooops

Washington Post
(An earlier Fox News article
would have not been credible):
"Yes, your honor," Hawash said in federal court in Portland this morning,
when U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones asked if Hawash and the others in his
group of alleged conspirators had been "prepared to take up arms and die as
martyrs if necessary to defend the Taliban government in Afghanistan."

Ladies and Gentelmen... Let the backpedaling begin...

Kafka-esque indeed.

Homeland Security Opts for "breakthrough" Technology

Homeland Security Opts for "breakthrough" Technology
2003-07-16

It's not time for April fools yet is it?

*New! Improved! Microsoft Security Flaws!* (1)

*New! Improved! Microsoft Security Flaws!* (2)

Excerpts:

'At the product's launch in late April, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer declared the new version of Windows to be a "breakthrough in terms of what it means, in terms of its built-in security and reliability."

The flaw, discovered by researchers in western Poland, also affected Windows versions popular among home users.

"This is one of the worst Windows vulnerabilities ever," said Marc Maiffret, an executive at eEye Digital Security Inc. of Aliso Viejo, Calif., whose researchers discovered similarly dangerous flaws in at least three earlier versions of Windows.

Some experts said they expected hackers to begin using this new vulnerability to break into computers within months. Even without detailed blueprints from researchers, hackers typically break apart the patches Microsoft provides for clues about how to exploit a new flaw. '

Crapola software is apparently good enough for Homland Security however:

*HSD Throws Caution Out the Windows*