The Ministry of Disinformation

According to an article posted by the Associated Press in todays paper, the US is warning that the increase in bombings and killings in Iraq is a "desperate attempt ... to discredit the newly formed Iraqi government." Also some words about "mostly directed against innocent Iraqi civilians", and "failing attempts". According to the body count (We Don't Do Body Counts: Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, U.S. Army, 2004), the numbers show fifteen Iraqi soldiers and 5 civilians. The American army spokesman can't count, apparently. Or else he's in the grip of the governments disinformation campaign.
The campaign that makes claims like, for instance: "Democracy Is On The Move."
Claims like: The Iraqi government is a democratic institution, where in reality every job in the government is allocated based on the religious or ethnic identity of the aspirant. That kind of government used to be called a theocracy. But then, the theocracy in Washington, D.C. thinks it's a democracy.
Claims like: The Iraqis have a right to choose their own destiny." As opposed to the destiny being dictated by Halliburton, et. al.
Claims like: "It was a tough decision, but I had to take it." (Tony Blair, British PM, 2005). Where tough, in this case means Really Stupid". PM Blair proudly announces that he made the wrong decision, but it was all right, because it was very hard on his brain.
Claims like: "The Iraqi people are beginning to see the benefits of a free society." (George W. Bush, United States President, 2005). Nobody asked George what, in his opinion, those benefits were.
It's really too bad that Paul Wolfowitz found new employment at the World Bank. He could have made better use of his talents as the Minister of Disinformation. The government needs a higher class of disinformation, and Wolfowitz is full of it. So is the president, but he already has a job in the government.

What Am I Missing?

I heard this morning that President Bush, not a deep thinker, I am beginning to think, is proposing a modification to his storied Energy Plan.. In order to "reduce dependence on foreign energy sources", the addition to the old plan is as follows:

A.

Build oil refineries on empty military bases.

B.

Import more oil for the refineries to process.

With thinking like this, it is no wonder that the administration has been fighting the courts for years (courts full of unchristian activist judges, no doubt) to keep the identity of the contributors to the original "Plan" secret.

As a way to reduce dependence on foreign oil suppliers, this kind of proposal ranks right up there with Richard Nixon's "Secret Plan To End The War".

Giant Turkey: First Flight.

Yesterday was First Flight for the Airbus A-380,

also known as the Giant Turkey. Prelude to a year or more of test flights. It's big enough, but probably not ugly enough, to qualify for legendary status. As I remarked a while ago ( ), I don't think there's any airport in the world that can get 800-plus people, all wanting to go to the same place, through security in less than forty eight hours. With the turkey forced to wait at the gate for that long, profits are likely to be a lot less fat than the aircraft.


Its competition, the Boeing 787

(Boeing is almost out of X's for their 7X7 series; what will they do then?) Dreamliner, is much prettier, but is it big enough? It appears that the tag "fuel efficient" will be a pretty good thing for the plane.
I have to confess a personal preference for large planes, but with few passengers. Also, nonstop flights. The idea of flying from hub to hub to hub, because it's more convenient for the airline and who-gives-a-rat-about-the-convenience-of-the-passengers, upsets me deeply. I vote for the nonstop flight aboard a quiet uncrowded plane.
Here's hoping!

Now the Spanish have gone and done it!

Spain!
First, they opted out of George W. Bush's Iraqi war. Now, they are allowing gays to marry!
I guess they have decided to adopt the motto Make Love Not War, an American saying from the Vietnam war period. During George's drinking years. Perhaps that's why he doesn't recall it.

I think George prefers the motto Oh! What A Lovely War. Actually, it's the title of a stage play, made into a movie in 1969. Also during the president's drinking years. He probably doesn't remember it either. The title is a just the littlest bit ironic, since it shows the generals of WW I having a great time, savoring the power, the prestige, the fame, the fortune. All the while the troops are fulfilling their designation of Cannon Fodder, dying by(literally) the millions at the western front. It's difficult to follow of course, since it's a British film, but it may still have instructive value today, more's the pity.

A more recent movie with some thrilling (well, chilling) war scenes, seeming almost to be more about the Iraq war than about WW I, A Very Long Engagement is well worth viewing. It's French, naturally.

Can't seem to find an American war movie that isn't just a John Wayne movie at heart. Well, except for Saving Private Ryan, which has been banned from viewing as being too violent! Don't want to have violence on our flatscreen teevee now, do we! OhNo! Keep it confined to the countries we invade and occupy.


I see I've wandered from the initial topic a bit.
Originally I just wanted to inquire if President Bush is worried that the Spanish are going to destroy his marriage just the way he claims allowing an American citizen to marry his boyfriend (or, to marry her girlfriend) will.
Personally, I think divorce destroys more marriages than marriages do.
But then, I'm not married.

Crappy Engineering...

Your Mobile Phone - the ultimate in technology gone mad!

To begin: The physical handset is totally wrong! Look at handset A. It's upside down! Try to use this device as it is currently designed. Try to key in a number. Better yet - try keying in a text message. Remember, the cool people all key SMS (Short Message Service) text one-handed. For a rightie like me w-x-y-z-9, or worse yet, {all-the-shift-number-key-special-characters-plus-0}, create a huge risk of dropping the device. Causing portential breakage or worse yet complete and utter humiliation

Now look at handset B. The keys are much much easier to reach. Additionally, the display is now in the palm of the hand, shaded from the blinding tropical sun.

So, why has the original handset been engineered in such a crappy fashion?


Now as to the functionality:

Things you can do!

1. Audio (Sound): You can make or recieve a phone call. Yes, you can still do this, though you'll probably get a message just as you do when calling from a fixed phone. Still, this is a desirable function in a mobile phone. In addition to using the mobile phone as a phone, you can: Download and use a crappy little "polyphonic ringtone" - typically a clip from a movie theme song, to replace the sound of a ringing phone. Download and use a crappy little "ringback tone". This is a sound that someone who calls your mobile will get to hear. It's not so that a caller can rejoice in hearing your musical selection; it's so that your caller can be impressed with what a hi-tech kinda guy you must be, to know how to pay money to get your phone to make a sound you personally will never get to hear. You can download crappy little music files you can listen to on your crappy little earbuds.
All in all - your phone can now a guarantee that neither you nor any innocent bystander will ever have to endure a quiet environment again.


2. Video (Pictures): With the wonderful new capabilities of todays handset you can: Snap a crappy little picture with your crappy little camera. You can display the crappy little snapshot on your crappy little LCD screen. You can record a crappy little video clip with your CL camera. Playback the CL video clips on your CL screen. Dowload movie shorts, either from your computer, or from your crappy little internet connection. Market research seems to indicate that the most popular movie dowloads are about eight minutes long, and are soft-porn lapdances and the like. Coming soon - a teevee reciever. Now you will be able to watch Fox News, or better still, Survivor-Somewhere-Or-Another (or any of the other crappy little virtual reality shows).
Imagine being able to watch Lord of the Rings on your CL screen - you should be able to get about one Orc-Per-Pixel.

3. Data (Data): You can store phone numbers. This is also a desirable function. Additionaly, you can send or recieve crappy little text (SMS )messages. Almost as soon as you can do this, you probably will begin getting spam messages (spaSMS). You cannot block these messages! Your handset has within its bowels (several layers down in the menu system) a crappy little 4-function calculator. You also have things like MS Office, so you can create crappy little spreadsheets using your crappy little keypad. Or you can create a crappy little Word document, laboriously keying in your text. You can store your credit card information, to allow you to use your handset as a crappy little automatic purchase device. It will also broadcast your personal credit information to Bluetooth snoopers in your vicinity. It may also make the information available to Pharmers browsing your crappy little un-firewalled always-on internet connection. Which you can also use to send those CL snapshots and CL video clips to your friends from anywhere in the world. Or you can surf the net, using the crappy little browser on your crappy little LCD screen.

All In ALL, the modern 3G, or even the 2 1/2 G mobile phone represents convergence with a vengeance (convengeance?). An ill-assorted set of functions plastered together in an ill-designed box. Not to sound like a Luddite, but for the moment, I still prefer to use a camera for pictures, a videocam for videos, an iPod for music, a computer to compute.
I'll keep the phone for phoning.

Thank You

Pope JP The Great ---

Pope JP II has been interred. Something from Shakespeare comes to mind, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader. PJP II will be a tough act to follow. Perhaps the next pope won't even try - but don't bet on it.
THeres a lot of talk now about the possibility of a pope from Latin America, or perhaps from Asia, or perhaps even from Africa. But don't bet on it. Before his death, JP II hand-picked his successor, PJP III. He tipped it off by having

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone announce the banning of The DaVinci Code, the first book to gain such a distinction in many years. Like earlier books on the Vatican List, sales are bound to soar; except pretty much everybody has already read the book. For the few who haven't read it, it presents a competing myth regarding the life of Jesus. Don't want to spoil it, so I won't say any more.
I wish the Church didn't have such a tin ear, though. It seems to have been made a requirement for all the media interviewees recalling the pope's life to remark on how much he "loved the young people". The Vatican should know better: when a squeaky-voiced pop star talks like that he gets arrested. As were a huge number of the pope's former employees; in spite of his insistence that they were above secular law. The love of JP II's priests for "the young people" was so prevalent, and so scandalous, that JP II finally had to give up on the idea of priestly immunity, and allow them to face prosecution in the secular courts.
Note: I don't think JP II "loved the young people" in any inappropriate way; I just think the comments about his "love for the young people" demonstrates that the Church hierarchy is in denial as to the extent that their employment policies attract a disproportionate number of sexually deviant "lovers of the young people" to the priesthood.
Perhaps Pope JP III will revisit the issues of celibacy and ordination of women. But don't bet on it.

Conscription Time?

The military is now finding itself unable to meet its quota of new hires.

"The war-strained all-volunteer U.S. military has a growing manpower problem and a cross-section of Washington policymakers has proposed a solution -- increase the size of the regular military by 30,000, 40,000 or even 100,000 or more." (AP, April 7)

The Pentagon spinners have been instructed to say this is because of the great economy made possible by George W. Bush's tax cuts leading to too many better opportunities for - ahem - draft-age men and women. I don't buy it for a moment. I think it's more a matter of the pool of available soldiers feeling some resistance to the idea of getting their asses shot off in a foreign land.
Due to the shortage of troops available to occupy the restive provinces of the New American Century, there is renewed talk of a draft. Filling the ranks of the military with conscriptees. Ironically,

Charlie Rangel (Congressman from NYC) introduced a bill in the congress to reinstate the draft (see my post 10/8/2004), though with a few changes. His actual purpose was to start a debate about the inherent inequity of sending a preponderantly poor and minority military to defend the wealth and privilege of the rich. Thus the irony. The reinstated draft may well bear the name of "the Rangel Act".
In any case, I say No Draft! Why should more Americans have to go overseas to protect our puppet governments? We're spending plenty of money to set them up; they should have to provide their own cannon fodder! A significant part of the $200,000,000,000-and-counting we have spent on Iraq has gone to creating an internal army. I say Sign 'Em Up! Make 'em U.S. Army auxiliaries. Like the Gurkhas of the British Empire, we can instill a myth-based sense of loyalty and eliteness. Teach 'em to look down on the "locals". Send them to Afghanistan, Syria, Iran (though geez, a new Iraq-Iran war, I donno), wherever else we want to pre-empt the attempt by another country militarize the way we already have. It worked for the Roman Empire for centuries. It worked for the British Empire for quite a while. Maybe it can work for the American Empire, too.
So, Sign 'Em Up!
Let's try to get some value for the money we've spent on our military adventuring. Something better than a few presidential photo-ops.

Flying: The old and the new

102 years of flight

On December 17, 1903, in Kittyhawk N. Carolina, Orville Wright flew about 100 meters in this aircraft. No one else has ever been able to get it off the ground.

Steve Fossett flew his Global Flyer around the world single handed nonstop on March 5-6-7, 2005

Question Time

Once again, I see, We Aren't Asking Enough Questions.

These questions, appearing in no particular order, aren't the life/death kind of questions. Just inquiries.

Here goes:

Why does "Russian" always appear next to (tennis madonna) Maria Sharapova's name? Look at her. Listen to her speak. Check out her residence address. She not only doesn't live in Russia, she doesn't even live in Georgia! In fact, she lives in Florida, next door to the United States. Is she getting a promotional fee from Russia for name placement?

Which is more environmentally damaging: a golf course or a cruise ship? If you answer this one, I'd appreciate it if you'd list the criteria you use to define "environmental damage", as this is a tricky subject.

Why does the government think paying more money to people who work is bad (wage inflation), but paying more money to defense contractors for missiles that don't work (star wars) is good?

Why does the President think it's a bad idea for Russia to sell military rifles to a South American democracy (Venezuela) but it's a good idea for the United states to sell military planes to a South Asian dictatorship (Pakistan)? Especially considering that the dictatorship is arguably the world's greatest proliferator of nuclear weapons today?

After the Vatican explained extensively why Pope John Paul II wasn't kept alive by application of "heroic measures", have the parents of Terri Schiavo decided the Pope was a murder victim like their daughter?

Given the predictions of rising sea levels, how long do you think it will be before Florida consists entirely of "the Florida Keys"? How many billions in federal tax dollars will be spent building dikes around Florida to try to hold back the Atlantic Ocean? Should we contract out the job to King Chanute? How much do you think he would charge?

How many people believe Paul Wolfowitz has actually changed his thinking from believing that poor people should be invaded and occupied, exhorted to pump cheap oil for America; to believing that poor people should be assisted to improve their lives?

How inept is the United States government in its imperial ambitions if they can't even get their puppet government in Iraq to select a parliamentary leadership?

If the United States succeeded in destroying every vestige of cocaine production in the entire world: how many cocaine addicts would get clean, how many would find another drug to get stoned on? How much tax money should we spend to do this? Or to try and fail to do this?

In the United States it's an article of faith (well, among some anyway) that Ronald W. Reagan "destroyed communism". It seems there's competition though. In Europe (well, in Poland certainly) it's an article of faith that Pope John Paul II "destroyed communism". Whose mythical description in the history books of 2050 C.E. do you think will carry the description Destroyer of Communism?

Do you suppose the Chinese are feeling a little screwed? Just when they can afford a car, they can no longer afford the fuel! In the long run this will probably be a GOOD THING, as it will save them from the kind of traffic jams they enjoy in Southern California.

Everyone Wants To Go To Heaven...

But Nobody Wants To Die...

Terri Schiavo has died. I don't know if it happened yesterday, or if it happened years ago. Apparently the doctors who examined her thought she was dead long ago. Judges who looked at the evidence of the doctors agreed. Tom DeLay disagreed. But then, Rep. DeLay is a thoroughly disagreeable man, many would say. Bill Frist disagreed. He is (was) of course, a doctor. Sufficiently skilled it seems to diagnose a persons condition from a photograph. Sort of like the shamans of the Phillipine Islands who perform magical cures by passing amulets over a sick persons picture. We selected a true gem when we put Dr. Frist in the U. S. Senate! Also, George W. Bush disagreed. He believes we should always "err on the side of caution when it comes to the life of an American." Not an Iraqi life, or an Afghan life, or, indeed, any Evildoer's life. Americans, of course cannot be Evildoers. "That's not Us; That's not What We Do." Everyone NOT an American appears to be either an Evildoer in George's mind, or at least an Evildoer Suspect. Except of course for his good friends Tony Blair and Vladimir Putin. Also, the Catholic Church disagreed. More about the church later, perhaps.
In what should seem bizarre, but has rather come to be expected, some number among those who favor life-at-any-cost are threatening to kill Michael Schiavo. And his lawyer. And a judge or two as well. With Tom DeLay enabling them with what sounds a lot like a Warning From God, or from God's Enforcer, violence is likely. But then, this is Florida. Remember the to-do about the little Cuban boy, Elian Gonzalez, who was eventually returned to his father in Cuba? How awful it was to allow his father to Abduct Him And Take Him To A Communist Country! Some said at the time that it was a sign of the End Of It All. Probably the same people who are saying that the "murder of Terri Schiavo is The Beginning Of The End."

The Pope is dying. May already be dead by the time I post this.
Aside: A remarkable statement on the TeeVee read "Heart failure: a signal that the cardiac system is failing."
Despite being somewhat retro, Pope John Paul II did affirm church dogma saying that heroic measures to sustain life (see Terri Shiavo, above) are not required. To illustrate, the Pope himself elected not to return to hospital. Perhaps he feared suffering the fate of Terri Shiavo.
Rather than fearing death, though change, especially when one has not seen even a picture of the future (even supposing one has read the Divine Comedy, or any number of religious writings) is always a little fearsome, some would say death should not be feared, but embraced. Seeing it is inevitable, that's probably a reasonable attitude.
Herewith, a quote. No, not Thanatopsis. Also, perhaps not very accurate. Though, since it is from the Greek, perhaps I can just say it's my own translation. Or, it would be, if I could read Greek.
"Do you think I have less divination that the swan? For swans, when they know they are dying, sing then louder than ever, not from fear or in pain, but in joy, knowing that they go to the God (Apollo, I think) they serve." Don't think divining rod here, think Spark Of Divinity, or soul. Attributed to Socrates by Plato.
Now, along with a fear of death, or of any unknown, there is also the fear of loss. There are millions (at least) of catholics and other christians who are feeling considerable fear, or at least a deep sense of loss, at the imminent passing of their personal link to their God. The Pope is thought by some to be the representative of God On Earth. He is believed to somehow have a better connection to the Lord than you or I do. I must confess that I am completely unable to comprehend an Almighty God that exists more in some places less in others. Is more attentive to some of His creatures, less so toward others.
Of course, I Could Be Wrong. God may have long ago adopted a modern management style; delegating some fucntions of His Universe to the Pope, delegating others (killing evildoers, perhaps) to George W. Bush. Still other jobs have been outsourced, I suppose, to various Imams, or to Osama bin Laden. And, of course, much is required of whoever currently occupies Jerusalem, where God is more immediately present than elsewhere in His creation.
As I say, I am completely baffled by the idea that this Almighty God needs people to help him in his labors. Especially, if you look at the efforts of his aides, to make certain that other people do as they are told.
By God, or by those who claim to speak in His Name?
Okay, I'm finished now...