Atomized junior

Human-Computer Interface problems

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 03:45:18 GMT

Well I think the problems is sorted out now. A very big heartfelt thanks to Jake Savin, a former Userland employee now at Microsoft who took the time to keep an eye on the Userland message boards as the service closed down. No one else was. What I wanted was to have this software use a folder on my hard drive as the "upstream" target in Radio Userland parlance. Jake responded that there was a little used module in Radio that would do just that. all I needed to do was rewrite a seven line xml document #upstream.xml to make that happen. This is the fix I should have sought out and put in place back in 2007 when the need to sFTP new material up to my U.Md server space first surfaced. At first I thought it hadn't worked. On numerous attempts over two nights it didn't seem to build a new rendered web log folder in the assigned place and I set the whole thing aside until I had time to figure out what I had done wrong. Today after restarting the Radio software for different reasons I noticed that the new folder was there and things were back in operation. I carry on Atomized Jr. now as if this whole unpleasant interlude largely never happened. Although I did like overhauling the old static page into Atomized Mkii.
Addendum: turns out the problem is not completely sorted out. Making a folder on my hard drive the target also impels the softer to point all URL's ; interior links and all img urls back to the folder on the hard drive rather than terpconnect.umd.edu. Pictures that I put in post I could edit the urls of easily enough -- the problem is all the incidental images that belong to the template.

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29 January 2010. As a consequence of Radio Userland.com, the weblog software and hosting company Atomized jr has been using, closing down their servers and going ghost I have been unable to update this web log. This goes back to a problem I hacked around three years ago. I am not able to run Radio Userland into a secure server like U.Md's. Until I figure out another hack and either get this weblog running again or switch to WordPress or something I will be carrying on with a simple weblog-like page at Atomized Mkii. the full URL for that is: http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~pbushmil/atomized_mkii/ .
Thank you.

Nature's Way

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 04:59:43 GMT

Every time there is a great natural disaster in the world 2010 Haiti earthquake - Wikipedia many people succumb to a tendency to see agency in it somehow. To find someone or something praiseworthy or blameworthy in it all. This is human nature and quite understandable, I shouldn't quibble.

Not God nor ideology are mechanics of Earthquakes. I am of the school of thought that places God at a higher level of abstraction in existence, not a thunderbolt hurler as pantheists imagined Zeus. Haiti was not attacked by God or nature or some combination thereof. Nature doesn't "attack". Pat Robertson isn't God. We UCC Congregationalists are fond of saying "God is still speaking," but I imagine we believe that God speaks to humankind's hearts through a numaniscent awareness and the words of the gospel, a spirit that comes before and follows after - not by dropping buildings on them and crushing their bodies.

The location of nature in the natural world may be less obvious than thought. An earthquake is a natural process. No less a natural process than the volcanism and continental shifts that made this world habitable for life in the first place. Everything that we see and touch, that obeys the regular rules of time and space - the Newtonian and for good measure Einstienian world - is nature. Even as we draw distinctions between the living forces and the non biological forces. The real difference is between us and everything else. Our oasis world of reason and man-made environment, is equally against the crawling chaos of organic nature and obdurate resistance of material nature. The order of everyday is Man vs. Nature.

It is hard not to see how events like earthquakes and floods reveal much about the governance a polity has. Either strong and responsive (not always both) or broken and parasitical. Able to do little for the people without out side assistance. It was revealing that President Prevel didn't address the nation or let the people so much as catch sight of him for a week. Too busy trying to extract certain documents from his office and get his personal ducks in line Haiti's Icon of Power, Now Palace for Ghosts - NYTimes.com. State workers, particularly the police forces disappeared until international forces arrived and made things orderly enough to return. I read that in one instance citizens of Cite Soliel lynched escaped convicts trying to return to territories of their former rackets. Because law enforcement was not in evidence. At the same time it is true the quake was severe enough that places of work, supervisors and most telecommunication equipment were damaged or destroyed. The critical social and material mechanisms of Haiti were knocked off their foundation. Civilization, local constituted, was set back Destruction of schools in Haiti quake crushes hopes of a better future for many - washingtonpost.com.

There are those stray across this observational line into the realm of ideology. I saw a piece in the Foreign Policy magazine blog Haiti: Don't ignore the politics | FP Passport on the David Brooks oped (which I hadn't read earlier because I don't read Brooks anymore) which skirted the Lib-rall-ism caused the disaster line. What Brooks is actually saying is that old school macro economic development didn't seem to work, and the last ten years of micro-develpment has had little effect so he thinks there is a problem with international foreign aid. Somehow in all this China's economy becomes a paragon of laissez faire So I'm not completely convinced. Elliot Abrams had a opinion piece in the Washington Post that argued against conventional wisdom for a large movement of Haitians to first world economies who would then send remittances back to Haiti Elliott Abrams - What Haiti needs: A Haitian diaspora - washingtonpost.com. Still both these articles were more balanced and thoughtful than Seamus Milnes anti-American screed in the Guardian

What happened in Haiti was the effect of overwhelmed poverty. The consequences of an earthquake on a national capital. Especially on a nation where the capital is the largest city and dominates the next largest by population multiples. The sheer number and density of people affected. Now homeless and hungry in a place where the civil infrastructure has been utterly broken. Port au Prince has several locations where one or two hundred thousand people who must now be feed and sheltered and sanitation provided for, exist within a square mile or so. The crush of Urban Density even in ordinary times was enough overwhelm any application of standards. Building codes to request rebar in the concrete. Let alone establish nominal living standards in the ubiquitous shanty towns that surround most third world cities.

Milnes made a clumsy nod in the direction of history. In History of Haiti. Marines come and go. The Haitians famously under Paul Robeson threw out the French and declared freedom and independence. The French later came back and made them pay a reparation for their revolution. A century of poverty and creole elites favored by outside forces followed. The US Marine corp moved during the first quarter of the twentieth century. During this period Haiti's constitution was rewritten to favor foreign ownership and investment. Some stability and prosperity followed. Dominican military ruler Truilljo initiated a brutal genocidal massacre over borderlands issues in 1937. A culmination of differing cultures language and values between revolutionary francophonic isolated and agricultural Haiti, and the Latin conservative and export-focused Dominican Republic. As the coming war in Europe refocused peoples attention The Marines came out and FDR turned US away from close involvement in Haiti. The Post War period was the era of Papa Doc, Baby Doc Duvalier and the Ton Ton Macute. Of populist and parasitical policies, development strategies that stagnate. A period of crytpo Industrial development, Sector transition stalled over ill-conceived projects that leave a still agricultural society urbanized and concentrated where their labor cannot produce a critical level of value. It was though the US that arrange for Baby Doc to go into exile when this all ended with near civil war. Despite living through the next period as a newspaper reading adult, it is still very hazy.

The priest Aristide comes to the fore. His demagogic populism frightens and threatens Haiti's elite they depose him. The US and international community impose sanctions until those who deposed Aristide relent and allow him to return to power. Aristide's increasing demagogic populism frightens and threatens US interests. With considerable unrest and turmoil he is removed from power by the US (military) and sent into exile (currently in South Africa). An associate of Arrested (but lacking his charisma quotient), Rene Prevail, becomes president presumably with the blessing of the military and business elites who would have formed a junta if he had not been available. Haiti resumes its key national enterprise: building the highest Gini index in the western hemisphere. The history of Haiti is an exercise in the other Powell Doctrine: You Break it, you bought it Rich Nations Call for Haiti Debt Relief - NYTimes.com.

How do you organize and move in resources With the Military in Haiti: Breaking the Supply Logjam - Yahoo! News ? How do you treat the injured, feed and house the people Aid Groups Focus on Haiti's Homeless - NYTimes.com? How do you prevent a second wave of death, how do you rebuild? How do you return their ability to labor for their own well being? These exist as question for me, because I don't know the answers and it makes it seem that much worse. I read them as reassurance that there are things that can be done. effort and progress that will proceed from donations BBC News - US troops fan out as Haiti aid efforts gain momentum.

There is also an ancient element in me - the element that the Navy trained as an Aerial photo interpreter so many years ago - that is fascinated by the role Aerial photography and Mapping Data have in these situations. Mostly the use of available and open source aerial photography to allow various organization to do damage assessment. The imagery in Google earth is in its higher quality variety capability of doing building by building assessments - of visible damage at least, It can also be used to identify ad-hoc concentrations of internal refugees. Google, of course, had to purchase and make available satellite imagery from after the earthquake and integrate it quickly into its Google Earth/Map Product. This was foreseen in the abstract. The intended purpose of GIS Keyhole software as it was developed, which became Google Earth .

Taking the concept a step further is layering partly self-organizing realtime information on this what is called Crisis Mapping Crisis mapping brings online tool to Haitian disaster relief effort - washingtonpost.com. Other applications of uniquely internet abilities is people locating (such as People-Finder) database utilities which form a self assembling roll call and access point New tech tools help Haiti quake relief - washingtonpost.com. Data concerning ground conditions obstructed roads, bridges, working /non working hospitals, fed to e-maps and GPS devices of rescue workers and governments AFP: Technology comes to the aid of Hait. A Creole-English dictionary app was quickly put together for the apparently ubiquitous iPhone.

This process is a partnership between like Google and all the crisis-map application and utility builders. As well with other larger enties like Cisco, Intel and the telecoms who are spreading an emergency internet network over Haiti ahead of the permanent one being rebuilt. Much this is in the name of unifying loosely connected bits, which could be said to be the internets trade. Also underscoring that earthquakes bring a lot of entropy to the table.

How do you organize and move in resources ? How do you treat the injured, feed and house the people Aid Groups Focus on Haiti's Homeless - NYTimes.com? How do you prevent a second wave of death, how do you rebuild? How do you return their ability to labor for their own well being? These exist as question for me, because I don't know the answers and it makes it seem that much worse. I read them as reassurance that there are things that can be done. effort and progress that will proceed from donations BBC News - US troops fan out as Haiti aid efforts gain momentum.

Off the List

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 02:31:05 GMT

Rock and Roll at aughts end

I realize the clock has run out on the old year, the season for lists over. A short season it is at that, and once it's over people have the reasonable expectation that it stays over until next year. But having drawn up notes on a list of favorites off the rock and roll radio, I seek a small indulgence to present it. In general what gets me reaching for pencil and paper is noisy and off the left wall stuff. And its true that the older I get the more at peace, harmony really, I am with the lo-fi-esque. It just seems more in tune with rock, blues (and most derived musics) essential nature. That whole Jay Reatard - Dinosaur Jr. approach.

In new stuff or what I thought was new Ty Segall: "cents" from the cents 7", also "Can't Talk" off of Lemons. Ty occasionally is one third of the Sic Alps and is on their Slumberland "L Mansion/Superlungs" 7" slumberland records home. I guess the rest of his stuff through 2009 is a solo man act. There was another release from Slumberland I liked; a band called Brilliant colors. The song I noted down was "Short Sleeves". From Tyvek: "Frustration Rock", and "Duck Blinds" off 2009's Tyvek lp or the Duck Blinds 7". Dan Melchoir und das Menace -- the campaign name of his current line-up -- two songs: "Willamsburg Brooklyn", and "Ghost of a flea pt.2" both singles from 2009 I believe. I think Melchoir is originally from England, Shepperton it says on this Wikipedia page Dan Melchior - Wikipedia. The Wiki page claims, he has worked with Billy Childish, that doesn't surprise me. It also lists a 7" with a song titled "Madame Nhu" -- I don't think I've heard that one. Upsilon Acrux are from San Diego or Los Angeles: the song "Keeping Rice Evil" is more art noisy than punk noisy but its hard keeping those two approaches apart on all occasions. I certainly believe that rice should be kept evil. From 2009's Radian Futura. There was Little Claw: "Frozen in the Future" from 2009's Human Taste. Don't really know much about them. They started out in Detroit. Purling Hiss: I only heard this towards the end of the year: I put a little asterisk by the song "Almost washed my hair" This usually indicates "extra chaos", which I regard as a good thing. Purling Hiss is apparently just one Mike Pollize, ordinarily from a band called Birds of Maya.

Shading toward the more tuneful side of things. The Obits with "Widow of my Dreams" off 2009's I blame you. Sally Crewe & the Sudden Moves with "Black cars" from the 2009 Lp Your nearest exit might be behind you Sally Crewe herself seems to be from England, but Tommy Keene who started out in the Washington DC band Nightman is either in the band or plays with them on bass Sally Crewe & The Sudden Moves. I once saw Tommy Keene open for the Jam.

Another category in the list; new records by older acts. I loved the cover that Shonen Knife did of Wing's "Jet." Odd because I never cared all that much for the original. That and the song "Deer Biscuits" are on the 2009 lp Super Group. Only one original member of Shonen Knife, Naoko Yamano, still seems to be with the band Shonen Knife - Wikipedia. Also Art Brut ( Art Brut - Wikipedia ) from Art Brut vs Satan two songs: "Mysterious Bruises", and "the Replacements" ("How is it I've only just now heard of the Replacements - some of them are as old as my parents...") Probably associated with the release of a box set this year I wrote down the song "Thirteen" by Big Star certainly one of the most sublime songs you will ever hear.

In this same vein: not new perhaps, but new to me. Half Man Half Biscuit. They've been around since the mid '80s, but I only became aware of them with the song "Took problem chimp to model homes show" off 2009's CSI Ambleside. Hearing this inspired me to finally get around to reading Will Self's "Great Apes." Time well spent. Another singer I want to flag is Jeremy Wallace particularly for the song "Stephanie's Kitchen" which came out in 2004 I think. I can't really say what things his stuff reminds me of; Catfish Hodge merged with Levon Helm, Maybe? At any rate good stuff.

2009 saw two minor music mysteries vanquished. A snippet of melody rattling around in my head for years now that I could never place... Turned out to be the Cynics and their song "I saw Abba (late last night)." Also I found that the guy who does "Tie me Kangaroo down, sport" is the same guy who does "Sun Arise", Australian singer Rolf Harris. Made sense once I thought about it.

Emphasizing the random nature of any list I keep, I wrote down at one point that the radio had just played "Shangri La" by the Kinks Shangri La on You Tube. In the same manner that after a really great song I will sometimes turn off the radio for a while. With Shangri La, I close out this posting.

Security Lapis, or Obama Blue

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 00:44:40 GMT

The incident on Christmas aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 is a milestone in the global wars on terror, a milestone - a route marker - in the sense that we are still on that road after so many years. The shooting at Ft. Hood notwithstanding. At first it was hard to know what to make of it. Initial press reports the day of the incident were vague and sketchy for several hours with repeated references to fireworks or firecrackers. The real second guessing U.S. spy chief in spotlight after botched plane attack - Yahoo! News started a few days later, or about the time Janet Nepolitano made an ill-advised gambit to reassure people Is Janet Napolitano to blame for Flight 253 security failure? / The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com. What I first heard on the news made it seem within in the realm of questionable bad passenger behavior - that some one had set off a Christmas Kracker on the plane. Beyond misdemeanor, but less than a national security threat. Later reports made more specific reference to Fireworks or a sparkler like device. Criminal behavior and demonstrative of a security breach. Only after about twenty-four hours did reports establish it was an explosive device: indicative of murderous intent. A security breach and threat. Even then it was nearly forty-eight hours before I saw a news story that named the explosive and indicated that there was enough of it to blow a hole in the plane. Its still unclear whether the aircraft was at compressed or decompressed-air altitude when the incident occurred. Each of these indicates a different level of problem Obama Reviewing Initial Reports on Christmas Day Air Incident - Yahoo! News. While I recognize that my initial desire to see this be less than it seemed was wishful thinking. I also see, in those leaping to the worst conclusions, wish fulfillment thinking Democrats' worst nightmare: Terrorism on their watch - Ben Smith and Carol E. Lee - POLITICO.com:.

In the days that followed Ruth Marcus' Op-Ed. in the Washington Post struck me as representative of problematic thinking on the incident Ruth Marcus - Eight years after 9/11, another cascade of security failures - washingtonpost.com. While writing that - "Hindsight needs no Lasik" - her piece trades as much on the false clarity yesterday holds today. She mocks what she sees as the Administration's initial "Every-things fine reaction" stating that with terrorist attack it's not if but when. That we live now with a new layer of risk... a new reality. Terrorism is not new, it is more that what used to appear to happen elsewhere or to other people, may now happen here. A stateless Islamic nationalism is geographically indistinct. She questions why the recommendations of the 9-11 commission have not answered for this problem. Why information was not shared not pooled across divides of foreign and domestic agencies, why problematic people on various lists: watch lists, did not automatically sort out to no-fly lists. Why was there not more effective on-the-spot screening with the latest technologies. Given that they laid it all out, she questions why quotes (like hers) from the 9-11 report are not being used in media analysis of "the Christmas Attack"?.

She offers a couple of incredulous how-can-it-be's: that his multi-entry visa was not revoked after his father went to British and US authorities. His British visa was revoked, but apparently for requesting it to attend a nonexistent college. How can it be, she asks that an individual passenger traveling from Nigeria with its "known security lapses", not checking luggage, and purchasing a ticket with cash not raise flags. She responds with sour sarcasm suggesting he should have added at this point: "you might want to check my underwear." These points seem and may be damming, particularly the last, but it is difficult to say without knowing how prevalent, how possibly common such travel arrangements are, particularly among the very wealthy Key dates surrounding the Christmas Day attack - Yahoo! News.

How can it be in the face of all this that the administration's strategy was to (re-)assure us that they were looking into things another move to sarcasm she seems to believe Neapolitan was looking upon us as children and telling us to "settle down". What were they going to do advise people to panic and abandon air travel during the holiday travel season? The government has a duty here, but that is not it. Some of the sense of obviousness in what to do is likely lessened by Air line corporations reminding the TSA daily that they are trying to run businesses, ordinary passengers directing hourly ire at TSA employees for inconveniences, the even more caustic effects of trying to apply security protocols to the rich and entitled. You tell one former prime minister, or A-list VIP they can't board a flight and you might as well have Monster.com up on your monitor already. Full body scanners where not deployed widely, because the public did not want them and few political official were willing to make a fight out of it Editorial - Why Didn't They See It? - NYTimes.com.

She and most others (OK, just about everyone) feel President Obama "got it right" on Tuesday [29Dec09] with his acknowledgment of systemic failure Obama Faults 'Systemic Failure' in U.S. Security - The Caucus Blog - NYTimes.com. She does point out, correctly I think that determined terrorists eventually may succeed in an attack, but we should not accept in this present case an amateur actor and no especial effort made to reduce warning flags or obscure his activities might have brought a plane down. Further that this incidents fortunate outcome was dependent entirely on reactions of the passengers, not the formal system.

Given that a terrorist act nearly succeeded. Did someone not follow Standard Operating Procedures as laid out? Did the Standard Operating Procedure not contain a countermeasure to this contingency, this method of attack? Did the intelligence/information that was the sufficient condition for action, not exist within the security system Spy Agencies Failed to Collate Clues on Terror - NYTimes.com, or any adjunct information system?

A corollary to operating procedures and systems design; was the system processing information fast enough? In terms of having enough man or computing power to examine the data, the ability and capacity to move, share, transfer information to other inter (intra) agency or international analysis or action points. The overall structure of US intelligence organization is unwieldy. I imagine you insulate yourself from the fact that you can't control the structure of foreign agencies or even the structure of domestic agencies by building multiple level literalism into the endeavor. This goes against human nature to a degree, Macys never told Gimbals, Nyt doesn't tell Wapo, Barton doesn't tell Gellman. Any information passed from one point to another whether a particle or a database will generate a moment of examination, a reflexive twitch of concern, that alone will critically slow a system down. All the same I believe a system a continually evolving system can be developed that reduces chance of a massive terror attack to a significantly low percentage, with people just doing an earnest professional job. This because there are still a fair amount of moving parts to a large scale terror attack outside of native Islamic lands, and that makes Al Qaeda's work difficult too.

If we regard this as war as many suggest: "How long a Long War" are we prepared to fight is a question that must be answered. As long as it takes, it should be understood is the same as no answer at all. And contains no truth.

An unbounded state of war against non-nationals actors, is not reducible to any model of a war against a nation. It does answer for a psychological desire for opposition. We need to weigh the costs of continuing an indefinite "state of war" against criminalization of transnational terrorism. Recognizing the roots of terror as violent murder perpetrated by individuals existing as civilians as they plan and move to commit these acts, and the ability of police processes to identify, isolate and arrest criminal behavior. From that point a hybrid of jurisprudence and prisoner of war incarceration needs to be developed. There will be some who will take their metaphoric uniform off, and repatriate after they have answered for any breach of peace. There will be those who won't, but only some degree of evidence, some degree of due process can tell us which.

A last point, security versus commerce as a nations core, or guiding principle. There is a notion of America I've known all my life - as the beacon of the free market, of sellers and manufacturers to the world, or at least bankers and traders. The New York Times dropped this article in over the holidays, part of a larger series on China, concerning the Chinese purchase stake in an Afghani copper mine Uneasy Engagement - China, Willing to Spend, Wins a Trove of Afghan Copper - Series - NYTimes.com. Even as our fortune as a nation is being spent down absorbed unilaterally in international security matters we insist on internalizing. The great commerce demi-urge of the new century emerges elsewhere.

Supernumerary caribou

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 04:55:41 GMT

Once again at this time of year I like to indulge in my improvisational ritual of putting up a small, very small, bitmap image constructed in Mac-Paint, the AppleWorks version of Mac-Paint at least, on some Christmas / Santa Claus related theme.

This year reflecting on how rushed everyone seems at this season I decided on a pastoral image. Something away from the bustle and also acknowledging that the Washington DC area had a white Christmas this year. In fact we had about two feet of snow fall down out the sky on the nineteenth of December which is still here five days later.

In this picture you see one of Santa's back-up caribou. Placidly he munches on a bit of grass that sticks up through a field of snow here and there. In the background is a Norwegian arboreal forest. Santa, his pack of toys and his train of on-call reindeer exit stage left. On the right we see the Russian Navy in the midst of another Test : Fail! of a RSM-56 Bulava SLBM Bizarre Lights over Norway | MetaFilter. The missile its corkscrewing path above the artic circle atmosphere reveled by its main blue jet flume, as half burnt fuel streams at a spiraling right angle to the spinning missile through a hole eaten in the exhaust funnel. An industrial dream-quest for northern lights. Some of the forrest creatures look up and wonder whether the Zarkons have returned, opening up an interstellar jump portal to send their space fleet through. Others have seen this before, and preferred the Alley Cats anyway.

Un Chartered territory

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 02:50:59 GMT

Liu Xiaobo, 53 leading proponent of the Charter '08 manifesto went on trial in this week China Leading China dissident to be tried Wednesday: family - Yahoo! News. This scarcely a month after a trial of an activist, Huang Qi, who was advocating for families trying to get answers for why their children's schools collapsed after last years earthquake in Sichuan Provence BBC News - China activist Huang Qi sentenced to three years. And only a week after the formal arrest of another advocate for ordinary people, Zhao Lianhai, who had been advising parents whose children were sickened in the recent tainted milk scandal. All while Zhang Zuhua the other primary drafter of the Charter '08 manifesto remains under close house-arrest-like observation.

Liu Xiaobo was charged with undermining the authority and natural respect of the state China opens trial of leading dissident Liu Xiaobo - Yahoo! News. "Inciting subversion of state power" in their particular formulation. These trials are for simply believing in a Chinese democracy. Embedded within this is the idea that state power is the highest good, and may exist for its own sake if it chooses. In reality there is no state, no disinterested harmony-willing entity or spirit. There are only elites and their institutions of control. Withdrawal of power from the individual is inescapably the withdrawal of dignity from the individual. The authority of the state is dependent on the quality of the power the people can give. If the people's power is robbed of dignity, the state's power will have none either. The steady accumulation of grievance is something that can be suppressed, but not smothered.

At the same time there is a very similar trial for an activist, Le Cong Dinh, 41 in Vietnam In Crackdown, Vietnam Charges Le Cong Dinh With Capital Crime - NYTimes.com. Subversion again and in Vietnam this is a capital crime. And jail an a trail for an activist in Burma Nyi Nyi Aung, 41 who is an American citizen Little word from U.S. on Nyi Nyi Aung, jailed in Burma - washingtonpost.com. This raises the question of whether there is any coordination in scheduling this cascade of trials all occurring the the fortnight before Christmas, to overwhelm western media coverage and diplomatic response, at least to apparent circumstance.

What is needed is a clear and unabashed doctrine that the harmony of a people - for whom the state is never more than vehicle or caretaker - is never advanced by trying to steer a separate direction from the principle of self determination that lies at the heart of democracy. Every one of these trials should be cause for increased adaption of the precise language of Charter 08. By western government officials preferably. At least by opinion leaders in the media and else where where too often these events are merely relayed and not remarked upon emptily and perfunctorily. An International standard of response. That would at least attempt to meet the chilling propaganda of these trials on equal terms.

In further contra-demos news the plane full of small arms from North Korea intercepted in Thailand seems to have been headed for Iran through Sri Lanka. At least AP Weapons-carrying cargo plane headed for Sri Lanka - Boston.com and UPI New North Korean links to Iranian arms? - UPI.com think so, the Times Destination of Arms Seized by Thais Is a Mystery - NYTimes.com is not as willing to commit. Rifles for Ahmadinijhad, a sign that the Iranian revolutionary state has determined their own people cannot be trusted to their opinions and the club wielding thugs of last summer need to be armed with Kalishnikovs and machine guns to properly adjust and fine tune the will of the people BBC News - Clashes at Montazeri ceremony, Iran opposition says.

I was taken by surprise by the brevity of Liu Xiaobo meeting with justice. It was over before I could finish writing this China dissident jailed for 11 years for subversion - Yahoo! News. A three hour trial on Wednesday, Christmas eve, and the a sentence of Eleven (11) years in jail delivered on Christmas day Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo sentenced to 11 years on 'subversion' charges - washingtonpost.com. A Trial as short as the legitimacy behind it. With no member of the foreign diplomatic corp or the press allowed to see it Leading Chinese Dissident Receives 11-Year Sentence - NYTimes.com. Hallmark of a closed society and an entrenched leadership. One that believes itself unassailable to the rule of law.

Health care heroes and villians

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 04:48:12 GMT

Rep. Cao demonstrated a certain chutzpah last month reestablishing that a representative ought to actually reflect the desires of the people of a district. Having survived a vituperative recall attempt by the locked-out Jefferson faction within the first month of his election. As well as a tsunami of hate from the neu-republican tea-styled party after being the sole republican to vote for the the House version of the health care bill back in November 'No Regrets' for Cao - Prescriptions Blog - NYTimes.com. All while being hailed from some quarters as the future of the republican party Where lies the GOP future? | MetaFilter. Which he may yet be. For all the heft the party is able to throw behind their current tactics of obstruction and obfuscation. This republican party is not a party with real leadership, or a future.

Both when he got elected and with this vote Joseph Cao has struck people as an enigma Who Is Joseph Cao? | TPMDC. Which he isn't. He actually seems close to the appiritian that comes to mind when I invoke the talisemic phrase compassionate conservative. This comes from his background of Catholic charity work early in his career when he was a Jesuit seminarian and as a community service lawyer more recently. As a refugee from Vietnam before any of that.

My friend Trân is also a Vietnamese immigrant. Having lived under the Stalinist-Maoist post war regime (now tuned to the Beijing consensus future world-regime) that she didn't get out from under until her family emigrated when she was 23 or so. Trying to be a good practicing catholic in such conditions steeled her in her convictions as much I suspect as Rep. Cao's Jesuit training. She has some very definite ideas about what she finds acceptable in a political figure, a shorter Stations of the Cross. A politician she will vote for must of necessity be anti-communist, against gay marriage, against abortion. Nominally she is content to let simply being Republican answer for all these: without any further concern for whatever xenophophia, pudding-head, know-nothingisms republicans carry around, as though it was all the cross itself. However recognizing this is politics defined negatively she is willing to entertain whatever bleeding heart liberalism, wha' hae ye, that doesn't in any way interfere with the initial set of precepts. Rep. Cao and Huyen-Trân Nguyen would see mutual political reference points in each other I'm sre. It would be nice If Rep. Cao could come up to the Univ. Maryland for some speaker series or other before the 2010 elections, I'd go to that.

Possibly as a result of being a democrat I find soft-breezed vesper joys in subtle ironies, such as the U S Navy sending a destroyer, the USS Lawson, on a port call to Da Nang with a Vietnamese-American Skipper Commander Hung Ba Le For U.S. Navy Commander In Vietnam, A Return Home : NPR.

In the health care debate the republican caucus is left without a lot to say. Due to the unanimity and extremity of their opposition. Cut off from the cameras.... having made it too clear they have no news to make on this issue. They are stuck with only a negative message, and just so many poses of indignation to perform. Unable to dispel the sense pulled in along side their strident opposition that they are in no small way afraid of this health care bill Tea party protesters' last-ditch effort to derail health care reform. - By Christopher Beam - Slate Magazine. Afraid that it may be welcome, timely, successful, and well received. Their rhetoric additionally must be crafted to shroud the fact that they have no plan of their own. Not currently, not in any point of the last 16 years when they controlled either congress, the presidency or both. They are left denying there is a problem. Sanctioning with campaign fund rewards, the absolute sense of entitlement possessed by the private insurance industry to own it all.

The democratic caucus (those on board keeping their heads down) is reduced to a public face of fatuous showboats and prima donnas, Nelson and Lieberman come to mind. All jockeying for the prime position of centrally positioned and oh-so-televised deal maker or deal breaker to history. I understand the attraction of distraction; sports and movies, television. Following congress and politics is like a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

No Bull

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 04:45:30 GMT

The Iraqi government fired the security chief of Baghdad after a day of multiple bombings left more than 150 dead BBC News - Baghdad security chief fired after bombings. That was probably an overdue firing. Leaving aside the grim prospect of a wave of destabilizing violence sweeping across Iraq, sweeping aside the fragile order and normalicy which was to be the legacy of our six year involvement Election Date Set in Iraq as Bombs Kill Scores - NYTimes.com. These bombings may be the inevitable result of one aspect of Iraqi forces replacing American policing. A pervasive unscientific sentiment in operations.

One particular bizarre part of this of this is the widespread reliance by Iraqi security forces on a certain bomb detection device. The use of this device was covered in a number of articles about a month ago Iraq Swears by Bomb Detector U.S. Sees as Useless - NYTimes.com. They are small handheld boxes, that purport to be electronic, about the size of a hand gun made of black plastic. With a telescoping metal wand sticking out of one end very much like a transistor radio antenna. They don't take batteries (they are "charged" by their operator walking slowly in a straight line with them) to have batteries might invite too much speculation about what the electricity might be doing inside them, along what circuitous paths. The claims made for them are astounding. They can find bombs - any type of munitions in fact - in things, under things, and from a hundred paces. They can only perform these feats; however, in the hands of a properly experienced controller. What they really are is clear enough: they are witching wands, divining rods, forked sticks updated.

They are also 16,500 to 60,000 dollars a piece. The Iraqi security forces have bought hundreds of them. It's hard to see that that wouldn't involve U S money at some level. When I first read about these devices I considered the possibility that the people in charge of buying and deploying these devices know they are well within the category of magical thinking, but that they wanted to deploy an earnest fiction. Faced with an impossible security task, trying to maintain traffic checkpoints in many dozens of locations throughout a city of five or six million people, they went with a plan that gave the appearance of control and efficiency, and allowed traffic to move. A managed irrationality. To the extent they were fooling themselves a pseudo-rationality. I reflected at the time this was a gambit which would to work well for a time, then fail horrifically if not catastrophically.

The person who was fired was the Baghdad security chief Lt Gen. Abboud Qanbar. The article on his firing made no reference to these devices. A man who ought to be fired as well, is the general from the NY Times article: Maj. Gen. Jehad al-Jabiri a higher ranking officer identified as the head of the Ministry of the Interior[base ']s General Directorate for Combating Explosives. He came across sounding more pompous and condescending than a man in his position needs to be. His pull quote from the article: "I know more about this issue than the Americans do. In fact, I know more about bombs than anyone in the world" offers a taste. Even if a placebo effect was what was sought, why would you pay such exorbitant sums for an empty plastic box? The possible idea that they would have to cost enough to justify a belief in what they could do doesn't cut it. Everybody knows there is nothing a good twig of hickory doesn't know. It would work just as well and a thousand colonial New England wells stand dug in testimony. A towering malfeasance of some kind lies at the bottom of this. Another man who should be dealt with; the man whose address in London ought to be handed out to every relative of every man women and child killed in these latest bomb blasts is Jim McCormick a head of the soulless British (based) company ATSC (UK) Ltd. that sells these swindle sticks.

The U S military people the NY Times spoke to were uniform in denouncing the abominable absurdity of this device. I'm sure at some point they got a hold of one and took it apart. So the question is why is this company still in business? Perhaps questioning the defense/security industry is simply outside the parameters of the game. The IED is still the unmet threat of these small wars Gates to lead 6-month push against roadside bombs - Yahoo! News. The roadside bomb, market-bomb and car or truck bomb still defeats our attempts to ameliorate its effect. Its low tech nature belaying the effectiveness that high tech and omnipresent consumer electronics used as triggering mechanism give industrial chemicals and mass manufactured military explosives. The disruptive nature of these weapons places pressure on the political advancements in Iraq, and in Afghanistan they work toward making the Long War ever longer. With the eye on making it too long.

The whole story of the ADE 651 device, which is not the way forward here, is emblematic of the incongruous mix of cultures and strained alignment of Iraqi sensibilities to western technological bureaucracy.

Afghanistan Issues

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 04:55:24 GMT

I wrote a fairly long piece about the Afghanistan war a few months ago. But now that the President has committed 30,000 troops for an additional two year period, it's worth a quick review.

It can be called the responsible decision. Were we to leave now, you couldn't expect people in the region to respect it even if it gave them a freer hand Afghanistan and Pakistan Rattled by Plan for Drawdown - NYTimes.com. Or that we should expect that nothing about leaving things as they are will ever come back to bite us. The U S spent nearly a decade talking up various commitments and objectives, took responsibility for entire nations on itself. It is unintelligible to say it was about nothing now. Even if the unfolding of action and consequence offers little clue now to what it might have been about then.

President Obama took his prerogative to set parameters and then follow the subsequent policy of wisely heeding professional advice. There appeared to be several plans with different approaches from 10 through 50,000 additional troops. 30,000 being the middle bracket Goldilocks choice. The primary danger here is of believing in automatic efficacy of escalation. call it surge reductionism, magic surging Afghanistan - Obama's surge: Has the president been misled by the Iraq analogy? - Salon.com. The Iraq surge was special case of escalation, particularly tailored to events in Baghdad city, aided providentially by events happening in parallel elsewhere: The Sunni awakening, now being followed by a Sunni door closing as the Shia'a government now disarms those same Sunni militia's. As well the Madi stand-down, a Shi'ite force not integrated into Maliki's government, without whose tacit acceptance there would be no Iraqi government. Behind all this, the severe balkanization of Iraq into separate ethic and tribal enclaves. However; Iraq owns its own civil wars now.

Escalation in Afghanistan opens a window of opportunity narrowly. Initially it gives us situational momentum. it takes operational freedom of the Taliban away. It gives the provisional Afghan government the ability to insulate populations and routines of business and governance from violence. After a certain period; though, it becomes a grievance driver and a force multiplier for insurgency. The longer the war continues the more removed the U.S population becomes, even one disposed towards a war against al Qeada. With long-war strategies, conduct of the war depends heavily on the public will. Always the critical question is "what are we trying to accomplish here?" To extricate ourselves from a war leaving less chaos than when we started and with a less-than critical mass of individuals believing we have stolen unprovidentially their self-determination, some indistinct destiny of theirs. What we want are 30,000 round trip tickets. The best part of a good faith effort, is convincing others of the legitimacy of your own interests.

Afghanistan is not critical national security. Maintaining that it is is part of the criticism from the right. Critical to the extent it was part of their fantasy to remake the middle east into a different world with a couple of grande strokes. This was the imperial madness of the last administration. The neo-conservatives claimed they had conquered Afghanistan three weeks into their war. Something they trumpeted that neither the British Empire nor Alexander the Great had done - but that they had. This tells you what you need to know about this lot - ridiculous little men and their preposterous cant. They saw themselves slipping easily into the seat of empire. It wasn't real. We haven't and aren't going to do what the Afghani's have never done for themselves; unify under a single cohesive government. Nor is it necessary for our purposes. Degrading militant Islamist groups capabilities is our purpose. With the Taliban leverage of proximity comes into play. Pakistan and other regional powers can affect these matters with fewer resources than we can. Our best use of resources becomes convincing them we want the same outcomes. Even if that means taking our stamp of ownership off these struggles. Again with some that means giving up winning their wars, a triumphal procession postponed. A less-than-national security consideration.

A Senator interviewed on NPR the other day, being pressed on the costs of the Afghan war responded with "what price freedom" the most blithe most trite thing he could say offhand. A trillion dollars and nuclear Pakistan's stability could be the price of Afghan obsession. One of the hidden dangers of little wars is their absorbent quality U.S. Envoy Urges Caution on Forces for Afghanistan - NYTimes.com. Much of the criticism from the right seems a little artificial. What advantage was there to trying to rush the process or discussion Mullen: Obama has time to make decision on Afghanistan troops | csmonitor.com? Pushing a false immediacy betrayed more the tactics of political harassment of the President and his party than concern for the Afghanis House Dems' Afghan anxieties - John Bresnahan - POLITICO.com.

Criticism from the left is equally dubious. What ever the initial rational for the war, seeing a foreign intervention through to some sort of conclusion is critical to understanding the true costs of a war and keeping them in sight. Leaving when it gets tiresome or costly runs a danger of validating the cut-n-run gamblers who start these wars, who would like nothing more than the concept of endeavors they can walk away from if they don't pay off. The left doesn't like the idea of vaguely denoted exit strategies any more than the right Obama speech: kicking the can down the road in Afghanistan | csmonitor.com. Though, it is the vagueness with the former and the denotation with the latter. Obama's War Speech Wins Over Some Skeptics - NYTimes.com The way this appears to work is that resources go in now Obama to let Pentagon deploy even more troops, but numbers remain murky - washingtonpost.com. Eighteen months from now is not a deadline, but that is when the resources begin to come back out.

I don't regard the Obama administration as paragons of the progressive, but I regard them as a capable and centrist administration, which was their real charge. More than a little change is realized by simply easing the straining at the leash -- towards the security state national corporatism that exists in conservative dreams. A president who wants to succeed and lead, knows what an election result in the percentage points lying alongside the median means, and what it doesn't. From the left and right there are always those who believe they see in every election victory a landslide, in every landslide a revolution, and in every new administration a disparate sweet despotism of executive fiat.

People like Dick Cheney wear their absurdity proudly, casting foreign policy in terms of childlike 'toughness' as he has in recent speeches, but posturing tough means nothing to people who can count. They know how many soldiers and sailors we have. How many ships and tanks, how many jets and transports. How much capacity for construction and reconstruction. How much wealth to spare. Through the middle east they have a good idea what we can accomplish with all these. We want them to know (to a degree) so they don't guess wrong. But they also know when tenacity turns into bullshit.

A Pew Trust poll came out recently showing that isolationist opinion is at a forty year high among Americans - the poll was comparing the opinion of the general population to those of Council on Foreign Relations members. Conditions are returning to normal a Multi polar world with a brief false uni-polar moment over U.S. Seen as Less Important, China as More Powerful: Overview - Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Our economic and military primacy challenged, our moral authority and leadership deeply questioned, a generation of Americans turns away. Globalism remains.

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with a light vinaigrette

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:24:49 GMT

Two signs the recession is still with us. WFMU, the left-most button on my car radio of the mind, held a second annual fund-raiser the other day, A 24 hr marathon jr. Generally they try to get by with just one per year, but the marathon in March fell short at the time, and come November the coal bucket only had a couple lumps left, not enough to keep it firmly on the ground. The other sign was an email from our new Dean at the library where I work. Regarding the recession she indicated that state university budgets being supported by tax revenue lag behind the times. She stated that the worst is yet to come, directed our attention to an email by another state official announcing we were being asked to return another 25 million to the state. Overall she did what she could to dissuade us from using the words "my" and "job" together too often in our thoughts.

Then again, because at the moment my TV is dying I was browsing through the newspaper advertising supplements for a new one. Many retailers were willing to sell me flat screens, measured apparently only by the yard, and at quite astounding price points. No one seemed willing to sell me anything that simply replaced my old 14" cathode-ray tv. Someone must have have money I thought, or someone must think we have money. Perhaps it's just that they think we will pay for what we value and believe they know all about what that is.

For WFMU's fall schedule a new show was introduced. A broadcasted podcast (a baudcast?) by someone named Nardwuar who lives in Vancouver. Normally this show airs at a time when I am on a bicycle and don't have access to the Internet. When it came up that the Nardwuar hour was going to air an interview with Ian MacKaye (Teen Idles, Minor Threat, Fugazi, Evens) I took the time to listen to the archived show later in the evening October 21, 2009: Nardwuar vs. Ian MacKaye and Henry Rollins. A good interview overall. Ian seemed bemused at times by Nardwuar's ability to compress a quarter century into a series of events that lay only in some apparent recent past. "'94 is recent to you?" counter-queried Mr. MacKaye at one point. This was one of the moments during the interview where I thought to myself: Nardwuar, does he know the Minor Threat song 'Salad Days'? I liked Ian's mention of his times in the Wilson High school theater group. My niece Nicole, a senior at Woodrow Wilson, is with the Wilson Players currently.

One of the other stories he related I know something about independently. Ian talked about the time that Fugazi's Joe Lally was arrested in a bizarre raid on a house in College Park by the P.G. County police. A housemate of mine at the time - the late 1980's, also named Paul, was detained in that same incident, because he used to hang out at that house. He was shook up and a little bitter about it all, but took it in stride. The PG police descended on the house in full-force swat mode and kept everyone they rounded up in jail overnight, before attempting to sort things out. The reason was because the dark 'n arty kids of that house had been gathering cat carcasses from a dumpster behind a biology lab and hanging them from a tree in the back yard to "weather" for the purpose of glueing the skeletons to a canvas. A little Spahn-Ranch of them I suppose, but those were the times. From those people I remember a goth girl, who was an art major, and a guy and his dog. I never saw him without the dog, a big dog, whether at the food co-op or doing fill-ins at WMUC, the Univ. of Maryland's 10 watt radio station. My housemate, Paul RW Clark, had his own band, Asbestos Rockpyle, the name was in part an entirely un-ironic nod to the Nick Lowe, Dave Edmonds, Billy Bremmer band "Rockpile. I still have their 7" single.

Around the same time as Nardwuars broadcast a few weeks ago now, I went to an book talk and author signing event at Politics & Prose bookstore in DC. It was for a new edition of Mark Anderson and Mark Jenkins' book on the DC punk rock scene Dance of days : two decades of punk in the nation's capital. This book is a separate creation from Sharon Cheslow's Banned in DC book or Aye Jay's The punk rock fun time activity book.

The author talk settled into a discussion, soon put into a sharp and past-tense relief by a question from a lady whose son had been in the band Soulside: "what did punk do?" A valid enough question to put to those flogging a 4th ed. of a book published nine years ago on events that took place a decade before that.

Mark Anderson admitted a certain coming to terms was needed, with the fact that the Wilson High class of 79 from which Dischord records sprang graduated 30 years ago. Few if any who were part of the initial DC punk scene, in any genuine fashion, are younger than 35. Although oddly half the people there that day were younger than that. Anderson was forced to question whether the rebellious attitude of youth has any application to their adult lives. Whether any set of youthful idealism can mean much to an adult life. And whether his book catures that dimension. As the Jam sang (letting Woking Englands Paul Weller answer for DC) in their song Burning Sky: "...ideals are fine when you are young and I must admit we had a laugh, but that's all it ever was and ever could be..."

Perhaps a better question might have been: What what was it about? I had a friend in those days, Steve Kiviat, who had a quote he would use - attributed to Skip Groff I think: "No Future (a Sex Pistols song I should add) for some yob in England meant exactly that: no job, no career, no upward mobility, no future. For some punk kid in Bethesda 'no future' was about not having a date on Friday night." For DC's scene to mean much it had to get away from empty borrowed sloganeering and develop an identity and awareness of its own. So then was it just about the scene? And at that should we consider the scene as this scene, or the general idea of an independent music scene. Was it just about the DC scene's success in establishing no smoking venues, all ages shows and generally making the world safe for straight edge teenage bands. Was it about the DIY ethos (Do it Yourself). The don't wait for validation from established institutions, don't wait for someone else to give you a space or an audience. Gather a peer group and give a show. About an independent music scene separate and self-formed, away from the consumer product music that would inform most peoples lives and form their memories of the times.

Already, before the MP3, the stifling hold on popular music culture by the major label recording industry was being pried open. In part because of the alternative music culture like the record labels Dischord, Slumberland, Teenbeat, or Fountain of Youth, in DC alone, that insisted on remaining apart from it. This sees further expression today as yesterday in organizations like Jenny Toomey's Future of Music Coalition.

Beyond music culture narrowly; Positive Punk, Positive Force, the activist advocacy bent in the DC Punk Scene is widely recogonized. DC bands were a refreshing anodyne to the casual nihilism of much 1980's alternative music. The DIY philosophy proved a valid approach across a wide range of endeavors. There was healthy skepticism towards institutions formal or informal. Particularly towards ones that feel they no longer have to justify their claims on authority. Expressed in the simple slogan Question Authority , or the irregular and ironic command to "obey giant." skepticism leveled equally between a blowhard on a microphone soapbox, and or all others struck by a doubled sense of entitlement. One of the things that seemed to needle Mark Anderson the most are the attempts by marketers to create and co-opt a punk iconography, and attempts by counter-culture establishment figures to elevate it, and put it safely behind glass. Always one of my favorite lines in a rock song, Fugazi from Blueprint: "Never mind what they're selling, it's what your buying." If nothing else the punk rock kids always a sort of lost-tribe coalition came out of other end of those years with a good enough bullshit detector.

Shuffle off to Cefalu

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 04:48:10 GMT

I have here a picture of Navy RA5C flying over an antique town circa 1975 or 1976. I have paired it with a picture of the same area, approximateing the same angle, in current (Internet era) times pulled from Google Earth. Google Earth easily one of my favorite www programs. Google please don't sue me for using this picture.

Navy RA5C over Cefalu Sicily Aug 1975

Cefalu in Google

Call it recreation of an aerial photo. What else is someone who briefly trained as a photo interpreter in the Navy but never had an opportunity to use it afterwards going to do. I had this idea for a while but was stymied by not knowing what town was in this picture. The picture was from before my time in the Navy. One of my unit RVAH-7's earlier deployments. On the USS Forestall to the Mediterranean in the mid 1970's. I recalled another version of the picture that had a frisket on it*. A frisket in our parlance was a small acetate overlay template on which we would use a Leroy lettering set to mark certain data: the date, flifgt crew, location, altitude, focal length of camera used etc. Eventually I was able to remember the frisket indicated this picture was taken over Cefalu Italy. Which proves to be a town on the north coast of Sicily Cefalu Sicily - Google Maps.

RVAH-7's 1979 USS Ranger cruise to the western Pacific, the one I participated in, didn't give up any post-card ready snaps like this. I can't think of any overwhelming reasons why not. Why a decent shot of the Intermuros or Baguio or Alaminos City with an RA5C in the foreground couldn't have been obtained? The latter two both lovely towns with colonial era architecture. A coworker of mine in McKeldin library, Nina, owns part of a sea salt bed with her husband's family in Alaminos city.

There were a number of ordinary reasons why that last deployment didn't net a lot of trade and gift shots (we had a word for that which I can't remember right know). RVAH-7's embarkation on the USS Ranger was the last deployment of the RA5C's. The squadron, planes and program all decommissioned as soon as we returned to NAS Key West. We emptied our filing and storage cabinets into the dumpster behind the fleet hanger only dividing the nicer prints it seemed a shame to throw out among ourselves. The Navy was not spending money on the system and in truth our three planes were not flying much that last year. The squadron was off the ship and based at NAS Cubi Point through much of the mid summer so there may be be pictures of the Philippines I never saw. Since that was the interval of the port call to Hong Kong, which I stayed with ship's company for, there were no pictures of RA5C's against Victoria Peak produced. Pity. The phrase ADIZ line floats through my upper consciousness now in any regard. What; though, of the port call to Phattya beach? Surely one of RVAH-7's planes must have struggled off the flight deck at some point in the fortnight we were in those waters and done a low level fly-by of the beach. I would rather think that it is simply that I don't have those pictures, rather than that they don't exist.

When I look at the pictures I do have. One thing jumps out. The pictures are either from earlier deployments, before I was in the squadron, or they are from the work-ups to this deployment, and are of southern Florida, or the southern California op-area. Once the cruise began, almost nothing from the RA5C Vigilante's assortment of large format sophisticated precision aerial photo cameras. What there is, is from the Navy's other photo reconnaissance system (see illustration at bottom here from one Marco Antonetto's web site Topcon Info ). Many of these give the appearance of being taken by the RAN of an F-4 while flying upside down at 600 mph. This is because well, they probably were. I'll have to scan some of those sometime. Oh mighty, and largely indestructible, Topcon; the last laugh here seems to be yours.

*Addedum 26 Nov 09 I found the frisketed version containing what I now call the picture's metadata. . Date was 04 Aug 1975, 2, 000 ft over Cefalu Italy. Sensor was the right oblique with a 6" focal legnth. Produced by Odegaard / Osbourne: Reconatkron Seven. Flying off the USS Forestall.

Fort Hood

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:47:34 GMT

Normally I don't pick up on a topic I think is being adequately covered in the media, being dealt with by professionals who are getting paid and able to spend all day sorting the details. I get paid to copy catalog. The library gets the attentive hours of my day, the landlord gets the money. When I feel an issue is being under-covered, a dimension is being missed. When an unhelpful reticence or over-focus has crept into an issue. I try to write something. With the tragic mass shootings at Fort Hood by Army Major Nidal Hasan Army Doctor Held as Fort Hood Rampage Kills 12 - NYTimes.com, it is critical to try to separate what it was from what it wasn't. It is an issue with deep implications for those of Middle Eastern heritage serving in the U S armed services, and potentially many others as well. It is not the first time issues like this have come to the fore either. In virtually all conflicts, situations involving national religious or ethnic loyalties are involved. Beyond these issues there are considerations for the manpower levels and of the deployment schedule pressures the armed services are trying to maintain.

It was in many ways a classic Lone Gunman shooting. Similar to many other lone gun man style mass shootings. To the Virginia Tech Shootings. To the New York state shootings; where Jiverly Voong a 42 year old Vietnamese immigrant shot 13 people to death in an Binghamton NY immigration Center in April of this year, attracting relatively little attention at the time In Binghamton, Failure and Paranoia Preceded a Massacre - NYTimes.com. It shares traits with a multiple shooting in Iraq during an in-country stress counseling session, last year or the year before Nidal Malik Hasan case: Are Army psychiatrists overwhelmed? | csmonitor.com. It is similar to Columbine before that. The small arms massacre form seems to be a particular violence pathology. It is notable that issues of ethnicity, minority identity and existence run through many of these incidents.

It almost certainly involve pathology and psychosis, Mental illness. Even if that seems too easy a dismissal of what was involved. It is similar enough that so we can see missed signs. Recognize the disinclination to intercede, question or judge the slipping and confrontational behavior of another Fort Hood Gunman Gave Signals Before His Rampage - NYTimes.com. We can see this was premeditated. Acting out un-contained murderous rage on long-standing perceived and nurtured grievances. Born from a brooding personality Fort Hood shooting suspect: a man of contradictions | csmonitor.com. His personal doubts; whether his sense of who he was, his persona was strong enough to withstand the pressures and contradictions inherent in being a Muslim soldier in the U S Army. In potential overseas deployment; being an American soldier in a Muslim country. He seemed to believe that alone might destroy him. He may have been aware of mental illness existing in himself by this point. It had nothing to do with any warrior ethos, he became no soldier of Allah. Unless you admit war is essentially organized violence against the helpless. It was an act of deliberate cowardliness striking at the unarmed in a zone of safety.

If the question arises is Hasan a traitor? The answer is certainly Yes. He was A U S soldier and had sworn an oath and took a uniform. He was in that uniform at the time he killed his comrades. A doctor as well and sworn to a transcendent Hippocratic oath to do no harm. His options were to sue for release from his commission and pay whatver financial penalty was required for his medical training, refuse to serve overseas and accept courts martial, or to go even to simply go AWOL and accept whatever punishments might result from that.

What it wasn't was some case of immediate "snapping". Rapid onset mental illness dissipating responsibility. It was not likely Post or pre Traumatic Stress Disorder. Since he had only anecdotal if clinical information of the conduct of the wars in the middle east, not direct experience. As one soldier noted dryly PTSD does not generally lead one to become more organized and carry out complex tasks.

It also does not seem to be actual terrorism. Evil Islamic terrorism or otherwise. No reason to go there unless you want already to go there. Unless you want to brand Islam as only a theology of violence and evil. Unless you desire to transition Arabs and Muslims to a second class citizenship throughout the west Lieberman Suggests Army Shooter Was 'Home-Grown Terrorist'. Terrorism is by definition a political act. To affect the thoughts and emotions of a populace through fear and achieve some deliberate end. In this it is often crippled by the fact that it is applied against an /other, who the instigators of terror often do no understand well. Ironically making it an essentially pointless act in the end. Maj. Hasan's murders were nearly (but not purely) reactive; a desperate and irrational act to destroy or alleviate suffering. Violence performed as anodyne. Nidal Hasan seems to have attempted to reposition his fears as a counter-crusade. A selfless act of self destruction such as the Japanese Kamikaze pilots. Engaging in a removed radicalization to create a rationalization of heroism in his own mind. Showing only the ugliness of his convictions Hasan on Islam - washingtonpost.com The strains his pathology had taken went beyond beyond anything obtainable through direct reason.

Hasim's other rationalization; injunctions against Muslim taking arms against other Muslims is red herring. Agit Prop by those in extremist communities seeking to distance radicalize. Requiring them to overlook widespread wars and internecine violence of the last twenty years as Islamic society struggles primarily with itself. As some seek power and seperation, others to find points of reconciliation with the larger world, West or East.

The Hasan murders are also not a marker of reasonable due diligence by the Army or US intelligence agencies. Paralleling the disinclination by his acquaintances and coworkers to deal directly with potential signs of mental instability, is the disinclination of the military authorities to confront the signs that a soldier was turning openly against his mission, becoming increasingly radicalized not merely losing his ability to carry out his duty, but becoming a active threat to his comrades Blame game erupts over probe of Fort Hood suspect - Yahoo! News. For the US to try to maintain the same level of military involvement in conflicts in the Middle East in the coming decade as we committed ourselves to in the previous decade, without a substantial reduction in the level of violence is a peril that runs as a dark undercurrent throughout this sad story.

Acts of Commission

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 04:42:26 GMT

The FCC has been generating a fair amount of press lately. Much of what the FCC involves itself with, the internet and radio, surround me and touch me daily. But this is technical and legal public policy. It's not clear how well these issues can be followed by laymen. This is something that I am reminded of often by my sister Ann who is a lawyer in the FCC General Councils office. So I'll follow it the way I follow all other things the media and newspapers tell me about that I do not think I will experience directly until they have already changed the world I live in.

What is the FCC up to with Julius Genachowski as the new chairman? A rhetorical question, I lay out tea leaves regardless. There is the legacy of previous administration's schizophrenic approach to libertarianism and enforcing the social conservative's nanny state. Mergers and nothing that offends the sensibilities of the new right was the way forward then. Guarding sensitivities; however, is a pantheistic religion, There will be no turning that ship around anytime soon. As well arguments against market and media consolidation will have to be built again entirely anew, as they were utterly vanquished by Powell and Martin.

Numerous as these issues are there are some broad outlines to the FCC's intent. The first of these is to shore up a barely-there commitment to the public on net neutrality Hurdles remain as FCC ponders Internet data rules. This is a question of constituency - the FCCs attention caught more by Google on one hand and ATT or Verizon on the other, than with consumer advocacy groups like Free Press | Media reform through education, organizing and advocacy or even an academic concern like the Center for Democracy and Technology.

The FCC now has a new rule set to guide them and even if it seems somewhat of an under-reach (GOP to FCC: analysis first, then net neutrality rules - maybe - Ars Technica) for Net Neutrality as a public rights issue, Chairman Genachowski at least got a unanimous vote from the whole commission on it Post Tech - FCC moves forward on net neutrality rule-making in unanimous vote. There are six rules as Ars Technica lays it out FCC proposes network neutrality rules (and big exemptions) - Ars Technica The FCC is already committed, for a few years now to a group of rules for the internet. Ones that in theory they have been committed to for the entire telephony era. With the world wide web the public has the ability to view any matter and use any software application to set up or view matter as long as it crosses with no existing law. Add to that, software, consumer communication and computing devices and the expectation that there will be competition to supply these things in an open and fully disclosed manner to the consumer. Things do what they say they do and do nothing they don't say they do. That last point is where the caveats begin. The FCC's rule set ends by including the potential right to control all things unlawful or unreasonable to a telecomm company. The exceptions seemed designed to include all content that cannot prove itself to be rightfully in motion, and as adjunct to that, the Telecomm companies reserve the right to perform examinations of all content so that they may know this. There is among the large corporations AT&T and astroturf: is "following the money" enough? - Ars Technica and national security organizations that run the the information superhighway, a certain fear of an unexamined net life.

In the current tangle of platforms and suppliers the FCC ought to be careful to ensure that the same rules apply to any business offering similar services. If Google is going to quack like a duck, then it is a duck regardless Is AT&T targeting Google Voice to stop "traffic pumping"? - Ars Technica. Any organization that sets itself up to carry traffic (obtains a public charter to do so) should/ought/must carry all traffic that presents itself Common carrier - Wikipedia. Unless there will be 6 to a dozen lines in and out of every household with ability to switch between them at will moment to moment carriers ought to be neutral as to content over the line as were telephones. The Cape May ferry doesn't ask why you want to be in New Jersey or what you might be doing in Delaware, though they may charge against car truck or pedestrian.

The other and perhaps greater concern of the FCC is Broadband Rollout. Its been no secret that this has been slow that the US was late moving off dial-up, and much US broadband is only medium internet. What is true broad band? DSL, cable, fiber-optic etc. what mip, what level of ubiquity?. Where does it lie? In the first, middle, or last mile.

To answer these question the FCC commission a report from Harvard's Berkman Center: Berkman Center broadband study for FCC available for public comment. It specifically tries to identify what incentives and policy structures will move us forward. One critical consideration lurking in the background is that mobile and 3g and 4g networks by their very nature pull more bandwidth that the relative passivity of the stationary http protocol. Supporting these will consume very large amounts of radio spectrum. The Berkman report starts with some comparisons with other countries. In terms of raw speed, availability to the public, and pricing of true broadband a dozen or more nations rank ahead of the US. The prime considerations that can be identified for this are the decisions of most other nations to keep open access regulations in place, and to make a genuine and rigorous attempts to find the correct level and place for public infrastructure investment. As the report tries to emphasis this is not just entertainment time, diversion. This is the US's the ability to possess information in a timely and effective fashion. This is the way of commerce, invitation to the club of the future. If we fail this benchmark test we move toward the center of of this century as second tier nation.

Federal Truncheon Commision

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 04:36:27 GMT

The FTC have had a bit of a rule overreach with their recent guide for endorsements and testimonials FTC Publishes Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials . This is the blog specific rule set released earlier this month. It is a rather detailed document too running eighty plus pages! The main and obvious weakness is that these rules don't apply to existing print and broadcast media: Magazines, Newspapers TV Ad group: FTC blog rules unfairly muzzle online media - Ars Technica. There would be no business to be in if they did. Perhaps the FTC figures bloggers more publicly collegial, more peer normed than the media. And more trusted therefore. I don't suppose it ever fooled anyone when Woofer Review monthly would glowing review a speaker or turntable opposite a full page ad from the same. The FTC seems inclined to place web-loggers in a category not unlike celebrity endorsements. And of course if Mikey likes it that's good enough for me. The denizens of the world wide web are aghast. The Wild Westerners especially: this is that particular breed inclined to think of the internet as some wide open libertarian rule-less frontier. The Wild West is nearly a synonym for the very desire to behave badly - to extend your boundary over someone else on the myth that it is a boundless plain. Spam Kings and Trolls.

The great concern is that ordinary people may be representing to other ordinary people not out of dispassionate estimate alone. I never tell people about anything I don't believe is isn't worth their consideration not simply mine Communicating with other people is something fraught with peril and pitfalls to be sure. Lets look at how this works, I'm sure I can invent a small example to illustrate this

I have in the past praised the noisy and fuzzy but clever and inventive San Francisco band the Sic Alps. I was quite pleased when their most recent single "L. Mansion" turned up on Slumberland records. This is a good and harmonious thing I thought - and I've now written it here. Yet within in me doubts rose and I went to the bookcase where I keep various 7" records and discovered I have a copy of Slumberland no.1 "What Kind of heaven do you want?" I didn't buy that record either - It was given to me; by someone named Mike or Dan or Archie, or maybe Pam. The exact details escape me. Suddenly in a cold sweat I realized the true origins of my mention, my endorsement of the Sic Alps. Naked consideration for a Velocity Girl/Black Tambourine/PowderBurns 7" compilation ep given to me twenty years ago. After I spent an afternoon helping Dan and Mike cut-out images photocopied from a Winsor Mackay book.

The real story here is modern Marketing outreach rather Marketing co-option. There is a very large body of literature on how the Internet and Social Media tools can help you sell your product ( Internet Marketing ). The idea here is that if you can identify the opinion leaders the high traffic sites and turn them, no more efficient marketing strategy could be imagined. Frankly with some inherent skepticism I think if the FTC gets the idea that what is going on here is more in the nature of Astroturfing and gorilla marketing by established corporate bodies, with lobbyists on retainer, and that web loggers are merely docile bodies in their hands, lacking agency. They may then decide then, that it all just the free market at play, and no great concern after all. Well, we'll always have caveat emptor.