Monday, July 30, 2007

7-30-07 Run Like A Business

This story describes how discharged military personnel are being billed by the military for "lost equipment". The explanation from a veteran's advocate, Tod Ensign, is that this is part of the military's push to be run more like a business.

Saturday, July 28, 2007

7-28-07 Iraq Timeline

It's important to have a good memory.

In case you don't, however, over at the Think Progress website there's a clear and concise timeline of what the US military's mission in Iraq really is.

Don't think for a moment that... well, I would have to say that "Don't think for a moment" would have to be George W. Bush's most basic desire for the American people.

7-28-07 Pop Science News

It's getting so thick, lately, that I find it difficult to locate any meaningful developments in science.

The MSM forwarded various iterations of this story over the past couple of days, presenting it as "science" that who you hang around with will affect your weight. It's a tough nut to swallow. I don't see the exclusion of important variables such as economic, genetic, or the taking of prescription drugs. Habits instilled during formative years, and so many more variable factors could be at work in this large body of data that I find the conclusions to be basically ridiculous.

The current trend for the health insurance companies is to support any propaganda that makes overweight people more prone to being singled out as "costing the public more" in healthcare costs. The reality is that if the health insurance companies can charge more for insurance "by weight" then they'll make a helluva lot more money.

Then there's this one, a classic example of an agenda-driven, scientifically skewed exercise in keeping the public misinformed. If you don't buy it, then let's take a closer look.

This is the first quote I'll point out, "The researchers said they couldn't prove that marijuana use itself increases the risk of psychosis..."

Not only can't the prove the notion, the statistic they forward is even more ridiculous... "...the researchers estimate that about 800 cases of psychosis could be prevented by reducing marijuana use."

Since the report was done in the UK, that's about 800 cases out of 60 million people. If we apply the same percentage to the population of the US, we get about 4000 cases, which is about the same number of people killed by lightning since 1959. And that number would only apply if EVERYBODY used marijuana.

Next, we have this little gem, "We've reached the end of the road with these kinds of studies," said Dr. Robin Murray of King's College, who had no role in the Lancet study. "Experts are now agreed on the connection between cannabis and psychoses."

Isn't it nice to see that the experts all agree. So what? The experts all agreed that the basic theory of genetics, one gene - one function, was "pure science" until just a few weeks ago when ACTUAL science showed that this core dogma wasn't true.

Finally, we can follow the money, and read the last paragraph:
"Two of the authors of the study were invited experts on the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs Cannabis Review in 2005. Several authors reported being paid to attend drug company-sponsored meetings related to marijuana, and one received consulting fees from companies that make antipsychotic medications."

There's a LOT of money in keeping various drugs illegal, from the billions that drug dealers make each year, to the so-called "War On Drugs" where it cost the American people an average of $45 million dollars PER PERSON to put someone in jail for a "drug crime." The Lancet Study merely perpetuates the myth that criminalizing recreational drug use is the "solution" to a problem that criminalization causes, in the first place.

7-28-07 Michael Moore

Yesterday, while Michael Moore was waiting in the dressing room to go on the Jay Leno show, he was served with a subpoena. The video is here.

I was a pretty solid fan of Michael Moore until "Bowling for Columbine" when it struck me that he wasn't so much a documentarian as a propagandist. So, I watched all his movies over again with a jaundiced eye. I came to the conclusion that, yes, he's basically a propagandist. The difference, for me, is that his films present information that isn't necessarily accurate, so much as it's skewed and formulated to evoke a particular response in the viewer. How else would you define propaganda?

Oddly enough, his latest film, "Sicko," is probably the most accurate presentation of information that he's done so far. So, you could say, he's apparently honing his skills and tightening up his usage of data to align more closely with the facts.

I'm certainly in the choir that he's preaching to, and I certainly don't mind seeing his popularity grow and his films accumulating such success. But his role in the society at this time should be understood, ie- his work is propaganda. And AS propaganda, it's the most influential thing out there aimed specifically to counter the prevailing propaganda.

For the Bush administration to sic the dogs of bureacracratic and legal red tape against this man is most definitely the proof of the pudding, in my opinion. They say that turnabout is fair play... Well, if George W. Bush went out and made an anti-Michael Moore propaganda film, ostensibly a documentary, then I would call that "fair."

This frivolous use of subpoena power, and the mis-use of US government power, generally, is what the Bush administration has been all about, however. Bush and Cheney have taken the following oath of office twice:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Neither of them have, to this date, honored that oath. Going after Michael Moore is, in my opinion, just another in the thousands of little straws on the camel's back, further proof that this administration is the worst thing to have happened to this country since the Civil War.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

7-22-07 Re-Branding the War

Yesterday's article in the Washington Post concerning a Rand study commissioned by the US military suggests to me that nobody in our government has ever heard of Naomi Klein.

I feel I'm on pretty firm ground to also suggest that nobody in our government has ever heard of Emmanuel Goldstein, either, despite the Rove-Cheney-Rumsfeld propaganda machinery's behavior in paralleling the works of Orwell so closely.

America DID have a "brand identity" before 9-11, but the current administration has completely destroyed it. That anyone in the US military would authorize nearly a half million dollars for a study regarding how our "brand" image might be working in Iraq at THIS point in time leaves me shaking my head in utter disbelief.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

7-10-07 The Sputum Report

I don't have a link to the Drudge Report, and the only time I end up on that site is when someone else blogs a link. In most cases, I end up taking whatever's on there with a grain of salt.

In this case, though, it's just too funny.

Katie Couric, according to this report, was given a script for a report on tuberculosis that included the word "sputum" (the definition of which is here for those of you who need to know), and got very upset at not being told when she's given a "word like that" in the script.

Before hearing about this incident, I had never watched Katie Couric doing the news. But now that I know she's a functional illiterate, ...nothing has changed.

Friday, July 06, 2007

7-6-07 The Burqa

This story isn't particularly noteworthy, except to point out that the burqa really has only one useful purpose in today's world, ie- a convenient disguise for criminals. Claiming that it serves a religious purpose is offensive to me, as the only "religious purpose" of the burqa is to suppress women, subordinate them, and "put them in their place."

Mine isn't an anti-Islamic stance, it's an anti-misogyny stance, and it stands equally in opposition to the caste system in India, the "habits" worn by nuns in the Catholic paternalistic system, and certain South American legal systems that allows husbands to beat their "misbehaving" wives to death, ...just to mention a few. And let's not forget how many steps behind their husbands that a wife must follow in most of "traditional"Asia.

The burqa is a symbol of the oppression of women in one third of the world's population. The other two thirds have their own equally effective methods.

Thursday, July 05, 2007

7-5-07 Techno-Stress

Techno-stress is how I describe the way I feel whenever anything computer related takes more than an instant.

I still have a video that's "processing" on Google Video as I write this. It's been two days since I uploaded it, yet it's still "processing" away. Everything else uploaded and then came online within a relatively short time.

(There's an entry on Wikipedia for the word "technostress," defining it as a disease. Y'know, one of those invented maladies of psycho-babble that can, ostensibly, be treated. What a racket... So, I differentiate between the word "technostress," which has been made into a handy new psychological disease complete with specialists... and the word "techno-stress." All I'm refering to is the annoyance that comes about when computer related cycles take longer than I would expect them to take.)

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

7-4-07 Seven Doctors

A couple of days ago, I rhetorically asked, "...what sort of mind will drive a human being to go through all those years of schooling to become a doctor, buy a house, raise a family, and THEN suddenly decide that it's time to blow themselves up in a Jeep Cherokee full of gasoline?" At that point, I only knew that two of the perpetrators were doctors. I did attempt to answer that question, but today I found a more detailed answer.

Now that we've found out that all of this Beavis and Butthead style anti-British activity with burning Jeeps and unexploded car bombs in Mercedes-Benz sedans was carefully planned by not one, not two, but seven doctors (maybe they'll round up even more?), I guess that we have to look more deeply into the minds of healthcare professionals?...

Really... is it necessary to find justification for the insane acts of insane people, just because they happen to also be doctors? Let's call a spade a spade and dispense with the psychological rubbish. When children are indoctrinated into insane beliefs, soaked in the brainwashing of religious extremism, we can expect that they may very well grow up to be irrational human beings. It happens all the time. Irrational human beings are all around us. I'm irrational, you're irrational, and everybody you know is irrational... sooner or later.

But the irrationality instilled in some children by religious extremists, religious separatists, and anyone else claiming to KNOW "what God ordains" is just basically criminal. I never expected to defend "freedom of religion" as the unrestrained brainwashing of children that it has become in this world. Nor have I ever expected to defend the freedom to believe whatever you want to believe as extending into the realm of criminal or sociopathic behavior, ostensibly motivated for some "greater good."

Killing people for the "glory of God" is just as insane as invading Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein from deploying weapons of mass destruction. The mobilization of the masses to "kill the enemy" is ALWAYS based on lies, deceit, and some level of brainwashing.

The only solutions for the problems of the world reside within the hearts of six billion individuals on this planet. That's six billion individual and unique versions of how anything can be solved. Believing that all the solutions to the world's problems can be found in one book has been demonstrated to be unworkable. It's the most basic lie ever perpetrated upon mankind, this idea that there can be a simple solution to a complex problem.

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

7-3-07 The Gift That Keeps On Giving

A small "News In Brief" article buried deep inside yesterday's T&G about the leaky Thomas P. O'Neill Tunnel in Boston caught my eye with it's statistical information. According to the article's figures (and my calculator), the tunnel has been leaking an average of 43 gallons a minute, every minute, 24 hours a day, over the first three months of 2007. That's up from the average of 36-1/2 gallons per minute during the first three months of 2006.

The money spent for "leak abatement" in the tunnel last year cost about $5 million dollars. Essentially, this breaks down to each gallon of water costing $3.84.

That's about a dollar per gallon more than the current price of gasoline.

The truly incredible thing about this is that the leakage is increasing, not decreasing. This means that the more the contractors do this work, ostensibly, to STOP the leakage, the worse it gets!

It reminds me of the project in the "Sopranos" where they built the "Museum of Science and Trucking."

Of course, in real life, the pork in public works projects in Massachusetts is much more subtle. Somebody has to get killed by tons of concrete falling off a ceiling over a roadway before anybody gets outraged by this crap.

Meanwhile, $3.84 a gallon for seawater leaking into the Thomas P. O'Neill Tunnel remains a mere "factoid" in the T&G...

Monday, July 02, 2007

7-2-07 Google video frustration continues

It's beginning to look like the upload of this particular song by the Danelectros is going to have to be done with more compression, so that the file I upload is under 100 Mbytes. This second attempt is a completely re-rendered file, different filename, and slightly different length, yet it stops streaming at about the same spot... roughly 100 Mbytes in.

It's beginning to look like the upload of this particular song by the Danelectros is going to have to be done with more compression, so that the file I upload is under 100 Mbytes. This second attempt is a completely re-rendered file, different filename, and slightly different length, yet it stops streaming at about the same spot... roughly 100 Mbytes in.
---------------------------------------------------
UPDATE (7-3-07): HEY! Now it works just fine!
---------------------------------------------------



The MPEG-4 files of this, the same files I've uploaded, show no slightest glitch or problem in that area of the clip. Nothing at all to indicate why Google Video continues to choke and puke with the streaming, other than the difference in how to upload a file that's under 100 Mbytes, and how to upload a file that's over 100 Mbytes.

The MPEG-4 files of this, the same files I've uploaded, show no slightest glitch or problem in that area of either of the clips. Nothing at all to indicate why Google Video continues to choke and puke with the streaming, other than the difference in how to upload a file that's under 100 Mbytes, and how to upload a file that's over 100 Mbytes.

7-2-07 Fear This

Every time I see that little phrase, I fear that our society has gone past the point of no return.

Over on the Daily Dish, where the author argues against the instillation of fear as a method of fighting AIDS, he does, nonetheless, participate like a good Republican in helping to promote the fear of jihadists. This piece explains how two of the car bombers at the Glasgow Airport were actually doctors.

Personally, my view of those two doctors is more along the lines of "Beavis and Butthead do Jihad..." I mean, what sort of mind will drive a human being to go through all those years of schooling to become a doctor, buy a house, raise a family, and THEN suddenly decide that it's time to blow themselves up in a Jeep Cherokee full of gasoline?

I'll tell you what kind of mind that is. It's a heavily indoctrinated mind, one that has been, essentially, brainwashed by religion.

We see the dramatic effects of religious brainwashing everywhere these days.

...Even the Oval Office is currently occupied by someone who's been brainwashed by religion.

7-2-07 (Sheesh!)

...got up this morning, ...checked Google Video to see if the "processing" had finished yet, and found that finally WAS finished. Played the video and guess what? From the Google Video website stream, the video stream hangs a little over halfway through. Very frustrating...

Sunday, July 01, 2007

7-1-07 More Google Video

It's not without a "grrrrrrrrrr!" and an "aaaarrrrrgggghh1" that I describe my frustrations with both YouTube and Google Video...

There's basically just one advantage to Google Video, ie- getting a clip uploaded is pretty much problem free. With YouTube, just the re-starting from scratch over and over again is enough to send me looking for another site to host my videos. Unfortunately, the video I uploaded this morning to Google Video at 9am STILL hasn't finished "processing" as I write this at 4:45pm.

The clip I had uploaded before that one only took twenty minutes to a half hour to "process" before it went online.

My basic frustration in all of this is due to the lack of feedback info. For instance, with YouTube's upload page they've only got a thermometer style indicator to let you know if the upload is active. With a big file, that indicator doesn't update or change for two or three minutes at a time, even when the upload is running along just fine. Consequently, if it stops, you won't know it until you happen to squint at it and notice it hasn't changed for five minutes or more.

That problem is solved with a tray tool I found called "NetGraph" which I find very useful. It can be downloaded for free here.

Now, even though Google Video's uploader shows progress clearly, and my new tray tool also shows the active/inactive status of the upload in real time, this post-upload "processing" step is completely without any progress status. Is it half done? Is it a quarter done? Is it just lying dormant? Who knows? I sure don't...

You'd think it'd be done within eight hours, but the thing's still just sitting there... "processing."