The New Road

Fresh outrage

Not only was Bush tapping American's phones without a warrant. Now we find out his FBI made secret warrantless document requests on over 9,000 Americans in just one year. And now he his administration is saying that he doesn't need to follow up to 750 different laws. Will this ever end? What happens when a Democrat gets elected in the next election? Oh, yeah, and Bush is claiming state secrets to shut down investigations into his phone tapping. If only Al Qaida was tapped, should we be able to get the records on that?

Rush arrested

Rush Limbaugh was juts arrested because of his Oxy abuse. Yes, the 50-pill a day habit... my friends.

That made him deaf:

 

 

Yes, my friends, he popped hillbilly heroin all the way to deafness. Which is just one of the side effects. Brain damage is another... Of course, it's not clear to me that Rush ever had the capacity to listen. Racist, homophobic, elitist, arrogant, nazi freak.

Were he not such an good old boy crony he would have been sent up the river long before now. Looks like this was just a little play acting before the charges are dropped down the road. 

The freaks over at Free Republic are all in a tizzy about how their God is being treated. One in particular was very funny. The commerter said that Rush shouldn't have to pay the $30,000 to cover the prosecution since according to Rush he was innocent the whole time. The state should be paying Rush! Riiiigght!

When I go into work in the city I walk past the same homeless guy every morning. He's mumbling to himself and digging through the trash, and listening to... Rush Limbaugh. He is the only person I know that listens to the pill popper.

Lestat really sucks

The musical Lestat has hit broadway... the reviews are in... and it really sucks. No kidding. You think? I could have told them that. Oh, wait I did. Will people never learn? What irks me about this is that I wasn't the only one. The Lestat web board, whose very purpose was to get feedback, was completely ignored. What a joke.

There is a certain point in every creative activity where if it sucks you have to say so and start again from scratch. You can't un-suck something as deeply flawed as Lestat. You have to blow it up and build it again from the beginning.

Entertaining stuff

On the light side of the news. This morning I got some span that told me a hoodia product (a spam favorite) could take a full six meters off my waste line. Fantastic! But perhaps if I needed to gauge my waste in meters I would need more than some herbal supplements.

Then there is the Robin Williams' movie R.V. which is getting at 27% Rotten Tomatoes score. I knew it was going to be bad because as he was doing the PR circuit he talked a lot more about politics or comedy, or whatever it was, and very little about the movie. Oh well. Has he been in any genuinely good movies since Insomnia? And the answer being no. BTW, Mrs. Doubtfire 2 is on the way. Joy.

I'd talk about the politcal stuff, but it's much less funny than sad. Man we are getting one right royal roggering. And now the Republicans want to bribe us with $100 to open up the ANWAR. What a joke. 

It is not 62.

Recently I've been having some disagreements with my computers. Today one of them is telling me that it's 62 degrees outside. It is not 62 degrees here. It's more like 70. A bright beautiful clear blue sky 70. Which is a little hot, but nice.

So it looks as if the golf trip is on, sort of. I'll be going to South Carolina to play with my Mom. And whether she will be able to play is still up in the air. But, hey, it will be great to see her. I'll take lots of pictures when I'm there. Then leave them on the memory card like I have with some photos Lori took a couple of weeks ago. I guess I should get on that.

Speaking of disagreeing with my computers, I have been doing that a lot lately. Which is strange I guess since I have been on a keyboard pretty much every day of the past 23 years. Anyway, the little pesky buggers have been uppity. My PC laptop drive doesn't want to work. My new machine was just a beeping mess until I performed heart massage on it. The Mac is ok, as always. Which is nice. Good Mac. And now one of them is lying to me about the weather... Grrr.... 

New box

I just got my new Gateway machine. It's the machine that I'll be switching to for Windows development in the office. It's got amazing specs. But I have to say that I have had a lot better "out of the box" experiences. With this machine it would start up, beep three times, and then stop. No display. No nothing. Except the beeps.

So I called Gateway and they had me reseat all of the bits; RAM, drives, cards, battery, etc. And that did the trick. But, damn, not such a great feeling of confidence right out of the gate. 

After doing a couple of small projects with XAML I have a few impressions to pass along.

• This is very similar to development with Flash. It's slow and painstaking.
• This is definitely not HTML on steroids. Traditional HTML developers will likely not make the jump to this.
• C# for scripting the interface is pretty hardcore.
• Developing XAML disconnected is impossible. You have to have access to the MSDN.
• Many articles and books reference older versions of the toolkit and the XAML syntax. So you end up developing a nose for what looks like old XAML and what looks like new XAML.
• The compiler is very, very finicky about the XML and the construction of the XAML. Which is probably a good thing.
• The style syntax is good, but not a friendly as CSS. Which is both a good and bad thing.
• The tools are far better than with Flash.
• The underlying framework is very good.
• Sometimes finding the right documentation is tough because of the blend of Windows Forms, XAML and Windows Mobile documentation. For example, try finding the information on Button. It will come up with all three and it's often tough to discern which is which.
  
• The lack of code for really serious examples, like the North Face kiosk code, is a problem. There is too much hidden in the sauce here, and that will turn people off. The fact of the matter is to put up a 3D spinning interface is a crap load of work that you will only do in your 10th project. And the hype coming from MS is that it's easy.
• It's definitely 'salt water fish tank construction' style development. The results are pretty. But to do it yourself takes at least ten times to get right. So keep it simple and small and do it a lot and you will come out ok.
  

Overall I would say my impression is positive. And it would have been a lot better were it not for the "HTML on steroids" line I heard at MIX06. It's definitely not "HTML on steroids" and never will be. But it's a damn good framework for putting together smoking hot 2D and 3D interactive interfaces. Which is good in it's own right.

Walk The Line

We watched Walk The Line last night. I found it boring and predictable, though well acted. How many movies about singers/artists do we need to see that follow this pattern. Abusive childhood. Gifted in their art. Initial success. Spoils success through drugs/alcohol/womanizing/etc. Gets whipped into shape by their soul mate. Lives happily ever after. It's not that I have a problem with Cash. I love the man in black. He is one of the few country singers I do like. But I just find this formula boring.

Ajax article Slashdotted

My first article for the XML editor on Developerworks that demonstrated an animated slideshow using Ajax technologies got Slashdotted. I read the responses and they are a combination of great and nasty, as usual with Slashdot. I need to remember never to read the comments.

I have two more on Ajax coming out with that editor. The first is a overview of the three different Ajax transport technologies with examples on formats on both the client and the server. The second is an Ajax based RSS reader using both XML over XMLHttp and JSON over Script tags.

Clearly the Slashdotter have some points. Specific to the article, yes the XML transport side of the equation in this article is light. But this article concentrates on the front end and the creation of portable animations at the level usually reserved for Flash. But if you don't want to do the Flash you can do a reasonably close approximation with DHTML. Anyway, the other comments were about Ajax in the large. Apparently there are a lot of disgruntled folks who think the Web 2.0 thing is a fad and what not. Who cares? It's fun, it's interesting, and it pays the bills. You have to like that. 

GM, no wonder

No wonder General Motors is crashing. Here we are paying $4-$5 a gallon for gas. I get a flyer in the mail from them with their latest lineup. And it's all SUVs. Only once in the entire booklet is MPG mentioned and that's for a Saturn two-seater. These companies need to wise up and realize that if things keep going this way people will want cars that have the gas efficiency of push bikes.

Silent Hill

Somehow I got a whiff that Silent Hill was actually going to be good. Turns out... Not so much. Apparently it's another one of those "not screened for the critics" beauties. And the folks on Aint It Cool are slamming it all over the place.

In the meantime it looks like I'll be going to The Wild with Megan. Lori saw it yesterday and said it wasn't half bad. In fact that it was better than Madagascar. I guess the overly realistic fur and environments didn't hurt the experience.

What I take some solace in is that these CG movies are finally getting panned when they are bad. For a while there CG meant good, when some of them really weren't that good. It's nice to see critics finally getting back to being critical regardless of how the movie is made.

Had enough yet?

When I was eating my breakfast this morning I caught a bit of the morning news. They had a story on pawn shop owners who say their business is up 30% because of the high gas prices. They even had a dude on who was pawning his fathers watch for gas money.

Had enough yet?

Chris Matthews, right wing flip-flopping stooge, had on Larry Lindsey who had originally said that the Iraq war would significantly reduce the price at the pump. He called him on it and Larry, in classic apologist fashion, denied ever having said such a thing. Too bad we have video evidence. Whoops! I wonder if Larry will come back and say that nuking Iran will lower gas prices.

Had enough yet? 

Here comes the sun

The last two days here have been absolutely magnificent weather wise. We went from weeks of rain to spotless beautiful sunny and hot days. It makes me think of that old Beatles song, "Here comes the sun", or the Sheryl Crow song, "Soak up the sun." There is nothing like endless rain to make one yearn for the sun.

I remember in middle school they showed us a movie about kids in a school in a place where it rained for years on end, but where one day in a long while they would get a couple hours of sun, but nobody knew when it would happen. The kids would play and play in the classroom while it was raining and one got locked in a closet. Then the sun came and everyone went out to play and forgot about the kid in the closet. Then when they came in they remembered and either they felt sad, or they killed and ate him, I can't remember which. Anyway, I have no earthly clue what that movie was about, but I'm always reminded of it when there is a lot of rain. 

Doing the heavy lifting

Ok, first things first, Star Trek 2.0 on G4 rocks. I love it. Second, anyone who saw Sulu shirtless with a sabre in the closing Trek credits knew he was gay. Done deal.

Anyway, on to the heavy lifting thing. My Mom asked my why the iPod was and is so succesful. My answer was that they created an entire lifecycle around the device from having a giant repository of tunes, to buying it, downloading it, syncing it to the device, all in one tidy software and hardware package. Plus it does the podcasting stuff, and the community stuff so that poeple can trade their mix information on line, and review the albums and tunes. Basically you buy the thing, install some stuff, and as long as you play by their rules, which most people are very happy to do, you are the king. You say, "I want this", your credit card gets charged and the tunes are on the device. Other MP3 players only went part of the way, and good products go all the way, even when doing that is really daunting.

Take another example, TiVo. Forgetting for a moment that they have never made money. Let's just think about the product. They could have just done a digital VCR, and that would have been amazing. But they did the tough job of getting the schedule information. In the very first release, no less! And with that information I can say, "Get me Battlestar Galactica" and the next thing I know it will do all the work for me and get me all the Battlestar I want, no matter how complex that is. The product makes me feel like a king. I give it orders and it executes them faithfully and serves my needs. It does the heavy lifting and that's why it's a success.

That heavy lifting is the hallmark of all great products. Face it, we are lazy. So when something takes an ounce of effort on our parts and turns that into a pound of result, that's going to do well. 

Had enough yet?

Gas is now $4.50 a gallon in New York. The President of Exxon was just given a golden parachute amounting to $144 thousand dollars for every day he worked because of their astronomical profits. Had enough yet? Republicans think that's just dandy. The extremes of capitalism they say.

Microsoft fun stack

One of the things that I saw at Microsoft that I thought was very cool was an interactive display where you could use your hands to navigate a map of the United States. It was very remiscent of Minority Report. I got some low quality video of it.

Megan funny for the day

Megan has picked up a new habit. When I ask her if she wants to do something that she doesn't want to do she will say, "Not today. Maybe Tuesday." or "Maybe tomorrow." Tonight I was talking to Lori after dinner and I said "Would you mind if I go see an M.O.V.I.E?" I spelled it out because Megan loves movies and I was sure she would want to go. Before Lori could even respond Megan said, "Not tonight. Maybe tomorrow." And Lori and I gave each other this look, and then I looked again at Megan and she kind of smiled and I could see in her eyes that she knew she had just let the cat out of the bag. We played with her saying, "Would you like to see an M.O.V.I.E. before bed time?" She danced around it and then said she wanted to see "Ice Age." It was very cute. She is really, really, bright.

Oh, yeah, the movie I ended up seeing was Lucky Number Slevin on Lori's recommendation. It was a good movie, well put together, though a little violent. Not like Sin City violent, but more than Pulp Fiction. Lori clued me in beforehand that all was not as it seems and I was able to see through some of the plot action. Though the stuff at the very end caught me a little off guard. Definitely recommended, if not in the theatre certainly on DVD when it rolls around.

Speaking of DVD. Is it just me or has the announcement and release of HD DVD and Blu-Ray drawn one collective thud. It seems to be of interest to nobody. And I don't know of anyone who is even talking about it or thinking about getting a player. Speaking for just myself I haven't bought any DVDs for me since Christmas and my DVD buying overall has dropped to almost nothing outside of kids movies. 

More gratuitous uses of Megan shots

This new article on DeveloperWorks has some more gratuitous use of Megan photos in my explanation of technology topics.

Jack 2.0

Thanks to Mike I now have an image to go along with the pride fighter guy with the fangs.

So now the question is how to get from here to there. Let me see, skin transplant to get enough melanin to tan, testosterone to get the whole hair thing going on, lift weights for 10 years... Oh, yeah, and get some prostetic teeth! No problemo! See you in ten years. 

Shareflo and the Postgres meeting

Thanks to shareflo for the pizza tonight. And thanks to the Postgres guys for being so understanding that I didn't have Postgres installed on my machine.

Best thing evah!

I'm done. Clearly this the best invention ever. I can die now. I have seen it all. Pimpstar, you are the best!

 

 

The marketing driven theme rap is fantastic.

D&D

My experience with Dungeons and Dragons was nowhere near as exciting as this. I just remember sitting around, eating cheaps, and basically shooting the shit for several hours. While once in a while going and watching some TV or playing video games when other players were off on their own with the Dungeon Master. Pretty much a bunch of losers doing loser stuff.

Andre Arlovski and Pride fighting

Lori got tweaked this weekend when we saw an ad for pride fighting where some dude with fangs was on the screen. I think she is worried that I'm going to turn into an ultimate fighter because I'm doing Tae Bo and I talked with her a couple weeks ago about getting a heavy bag for the garage. As it turns out...

Anywho... when we bought the house one of the kids who lived in it was some type of octagonal ring fighter. Not to worry though. There are no steel cages in my future. I just like the workout the punch/kicks routines. And I think martial arts or gymnastics are good for kids and adults. Keeps you flexible and what not.

Hey, if anyone can find a picture of Andre Arlovski with the fangs let me know. He looks like a freak!

XBOX 360

Exactly who is the XBOX 360 for? The thing is around $700 in a value pack with two games. Now combine that with the fact that the thing only really shines on a 40 inch high-def plasma and you get to wondering, what percentage of the American population can actually afford this?

Strizzi's

Lori and I went out with Pam and Yvonne to a new Italian restaurant that opened up last month. I had the polenta and I found it pretty bland. Everyone around the table agreed that the food was either very subtle or just straight up bland. The service was pretty intense, we were asked about five times how the food was. One of the last people to ask was obviously the manager so I asked her how I could get something a bit more spicy the next time I ate there. She said that I should request either more garlic or red chilis. But it wasn't just the spice it was the taste. And you can do more to add pizazz to the taste than just boosting the heat.

As I talked with her everyone else joined in and called the food subtle. She said that she agreed and lamented that this is what people expected, motioning around the room. Really? People like food that bland? I don't think so. Hell, Pizza Hut has more flavor than her stuff. Food shouldn't be that bland. Especially when the tab is $30 a head before drinks.

MTS 06 - Episode two

So all in all I think going to the Microsoft Technology Summit was a good idea. I learned a little bit. Certainly LINQ is interesting. And it's nice to see that WPF has a lot of support internally. Actually it does worry me that Microsoft thought for a while that WPF would take over HTML. That won't happen. And I think just the opposite will happen. WPF is like a fencing sword, it's nimble, complex and to use it properly requires an artful approach. My guess is that WPF, for the time being, will be something requiring graphic artists, and over the long haul will require lots of seminars, courses, direct instruction and customer service. Perhaps that's why Microsoft is gearing up their developer envangelism. But my guess is that they will need artists and interaction designers to work almost as consultants to their higher profile customers.

I'll have to go through the agenda to try and bring back the other stuff that I learned. But in the mean time I have some new contacts and should be able to get on the beta for the new stuf. I did order myself a monster machine that will run Vista so that I can do real WPF development. 

Don't nuke Iran

MoveOn has a system to send a clear message that urges the Administration not to nuke Iran. Obviously Bush is hell bent on making history as being the second President to use the bomb, but this at least made me feel like I was doing something to create a speed bump on the way to World War III.

Kind of a crazy trip so far

This has been a kind of crazy trip so far and not for the usual reasons; too many flights, missing luggage, sickness. Yeah, there was my cold and I'm thankful that my head did not explode on the flight. But that wasn't it. First there is why I am here, which I'm not still really sure. I'm learning a lot of cool stuff, but I probably would have found it out anyway, and the two way conversation isn't panning out as well as I thought it would. But it's a big company and I kind of expected it. Anyway, still waiting on the WPF stuff.

Then I just feel more disconnected than usual. Sure Lori and I are mailing and stuff, but I feel alone up here and I really miss them. Particularly because I just found out from my Mom that she won't be coming to the west coast for our long-planned golf trip. No that the trip matters as much as the health reasons for her not coming. I'm concerned. I'm worried. We have all been through this before, and for some reason my family, and Lori's family, have been through it more than enough times for people our age.

I've been back on a health kick lately and this time it's been primarily focused on this golf game that I was to have with my Mom. Now it's gone beyond that but I still find myself both struggling with it and feeling empowered by it. I do need to find another motivation to keep going. But I also found that last night I was going through my little Tae Bo routine and punching the air and I found that I was able to look through the news and get to the next better stage where I was able to internalize and move on to what to do next.

Definitely better than going to the bar in the hotel and drinking myself into a stupor. What was that old Indigo Girls line?

I stopped by the bar at 3 a.m.
To seek solace in a bottle or possibly a friend
I woke up with a headache like my head against a board
Twice as cloudy as I'd been the night before
I went in seeking clarity.

Pretty accurate I think. Not that working out is the answer for everything, but it gives your mind some place to go, or to be lost into. And sometimes getting lost is just what it takes to be found.

I can't wait to get home.

MTS06 - Update One

I'm just getting to the last session of the day at MTS. It's been a mixed bag. In the morning there were two presentations, one by the guy behind IronPython. I learned a little more on that one than I thought I would. Then there was a section on the guts of the CLR and that bored me to death. At lunch there was a session on GotDotNet which turned out to be fairly interesting.

The afternoon presentations have been pretty interesting so far. The guy from the interop lab gave a good talk that degenerated quickly into a ranting session with the audience on licensing. He was great, but the audience was pretty aggressive about open source. Then the guy from Microsoft Research came in, started slow, but ended really well. He showed off some incredible imaging stuff and interactivity research. It's impressive that Microsoft actually has a research group, well more than a group, actually like 700 people who do just basic research.

Now Don Box is here and he is taking notes from the audience in LISP. Interesting. I actually have no idea what Indigo is and now 10 minutes into this I still don't. But hey, more stuff to learn.

I'm still not quite sure why I'm here. But the meat for me is tomorrow with WPF. 

Nuclear bunker buster animation

This animation, which demonstrates the use and the consequences, of a nuclear bunker buster attack, will chill you to the bone. The dry antiseptic delivery somehow adds gravitas to the tough detailsl. These are not weapons that we ever want to use.

Associated news: Murtha says that the Bush administration has already come to Congress looking for approval to use these weapons. 

Newt flips on the war

Newt Gingrich has flipped on the Iraq war:

"Newt Gingrich, the former Republican Speaker of the House, told students and faculty at the University of South Dakota Monday that the United States should pull out of Iraq and leave a small force there, just as it did post-war in Korea and Germany.  "It was an enormous mistake for us to try to occupy that country after June of 2003," Gingrich said during a question-and-answer session at the school. "We have to pull back, and we have to recognize it."

This is huge for several resaons. First, behind the scenes Newt was pivotal in the decision to attack Iraq, the decisions to limit the number of troops, and just completely engaged in this war in general. Second, though disgraced among liberals Newty is a hero among conservatives. He is their golden child. He appears on Hannity weekly, and often more. He is a regular on Fauxe News. So this will swing a lot of people over into the Murtha/Dean camp. Of course, Hannity will find some way to spin this as something other than "cut and run". But what the hell do I care what meathead thinks. As long as we get out.

More Bush insanity

No wonder Bush has talks in front of canned audiences, he can't answer a simple real world question. In this case the questioner asks him what laws govern the thousands of paramilitary contractors in Iraq. He can't even answer that! Unbelievable. His incompetence is leaves me speechless.

Speaking of speechless, I say on Sunday that Bush is planning to nuke Iran, and the response... zippo. I get more response from a technical rant. Hello? Doesn't it matter to anyone that Bush is planning to nuke Iran? Doesn't anyone care about what the hell happens to our country anymore? Fuck! Tell me I'm wrong. Get mad. Tell me the Iranians deserve it or some insanity like that. Or tell me I'm right and that you are going to join me marching in the streets. Do something. Don't let this country go down the toilet just through sheer apathy.

Hey! Jacqueline, you used to pray to have Bush re-elected in 2004. Your prayers were supposedly answered. But now you hardly comment at all in defense of his policies. Have you lost faith? Do you want him to nuke Iran? Would you support that?

Off to Seattle

Well, I'm off to Seattle for the Microsoft Technology Summit. I was invited to the event by an evangelist who saw me speak at a local PHP user's group meeting. From what I saw at MIX06 and from what I'm hearing now it looks like Microsoft is really trying to embrace (and extend) open source standards and technologies. At one point a guy even apologized for MS not having upgraded IE in several years. Thank you!

That being said I am both excited and disturbed by what I am seeing in WPF and XAML. The phrasing at MIX06 was 'HTML on steroids', but it's not that at all. You can't write XAML in Notepad, browse to it, and see the result the way you can with HTML. And you can't right click on the output and select View Source and see the XAML code. Both of these things, while they seem trivial, are the reasons that HTML really took off. HTML is easy to write, requires no development tools, and is easy to inspect and reuse. So people can learn from each other. Not to mention that the XAML apps won't be Google searchable. 

These are issues that I need some answers to. I certainly don't understand everything about XAML but from what I can see it looks like Flex and suffers from a bunch of issues that Flex does. In particular it seems to me like the pitch MS is giving is that the whole app needs to move to XAML instead of HTML. Which is what I saw from Macromedia/Adobe about Flex. And that's just not realistic. HTML is here to stay. And in particular with Ajax it looks like DHTML will be here for a while. So companies like Microsoft need to be realistic about just what they can expect in terms of technology adoption from their customers. Flex or XAML widgets? Yes. Flex and XAML applications? No. 

War with Iran

The New Yorker just published this fascinating, though chilling, article on the administration's war planning for Iran. Apparently we will bomb continuously, and likely use tactical nuclear weapons.

The administration is unwilling to learn from it's mistakes in Iraq, or even to acknowledge that there have been mistakes in the Iraq war. And now they are going for round 2 with Iran, using almost exactly the same game plan for selling the war, but this time upping the stakes with nuclear weapons use. 

Forensic Vagina Specialist

Here is a chilling account of abortion policies in El Salvador. There abortion is absolutely illegal and punishable by 30 years in jail. And it doesn't just stop there, if during any procedure your vagina is inspected and signs of abortion are found you can be charged with murder and found guilty. Which opens up a whole new specialty; forensic vagina specialist. More on this story in this weekend's New York Times pullout section.

Mo' Curling

Folks round these parts got all into the curling during the olympics. Now that the rain is back perhaps some virtual curling is in order. Oh, wait, curling is an indoor sport. Well, anyway, here is a web site where you can get your curling jones on.

Presidential scrambling

I was just watching my local morning news show. They actually covered Bush's leak of the name of Valerie Plame. If that wasn't surprising enough the brought on some thug from the Heritage foundation to spin like a dervish. And spin he did. Apparently Bush was not leaking, but de-classifying this information for our benefit. Just like those tree hugging demon-rats do with their FOIA stuff. We really needed to know that Valerie Plame was a CIA operative. And what about that Joe Wilson guy? Why aren't we investigating him because after all, he had the gall to oppose Bush's brilliant policy of invading Iraq based on... weapons of mass... nuclear threa... human rights abuses.

What Bush gets away with is simply amazing. He is tapping our phones, domestically, without a warrant. He can leak the name of a CIA operative. All without so much as a blip on the accountability screen. 

Megan's first place setting

Megan has been setting the table for a while. But tonight is the first time that she made a bouquet to go along with it.

 

 

She was very proud.

 

 

Nasty Sinusitis

I'm still dealing with my cold/sinusitis. I went to the doctor yesterday because I was worried that it might last so long that it would leave me miserable on my plane flight to Seattle.

This was definitely the perfect storm of several factors; the smoke in Vegas, a cold, the mildew, the pressure changes from the storms, and the pollen that comes out when we actually have a dry moment. Everything is in bloom when it's not raining. 

I hope this antibiotics finally kill this sucker. Last night I thought my head was in a vice with all of the pressure. Ugh... miserable. 

Bush outed Plame

Libby testified that Bush ordered him to out Valerie Plame as a CIA agent, ostensibly to silence her husband who was getting in the way of the drive to war. As this house of cards starts to come together it all just makes sense. Bush was damned and determined to have his war with Iraq. Even if they complied he was going to paint a U2 with UN colors and have it shot down so that he could start it. He was that determined to go to war. And if outing a CIA agent working on real nuclear proliferation issues could silence his opposition, then make it so!

Of course, he lied about it later:

 "...if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of... I want to know the truth..."

It's a painful combination of unthinking and inept behind the scenes, and gutless and weak in support of his own actions in front of the cameras.

What a disaster. We deserve a government that actually works. 

The list

I'm reading a book called American Theocracy that has a very interesting list:

1. Saudi Arabia
2. Iraq
3. United States
4. Iran
5. Venezuela
6. United Kingdom

Interesting list, right? But what is it? These are the home countries of the largest oil companies, in order. Iraq is in italics because it would be in the list if it were producing. Why? Because it's sitting on the 2nd largest oil reserve in the world.

What's interesting to me about this list is that it aligns almost exactly with the Bush administrations hit list. First Iraq. Then Iran. Then, probably, Venezuela. Pat Robertson is warming up the base on that last one, constantly saying that Chavez should be killed. And Chavez is taking it very seriously, creating a militia of 2 million to ward of any attack by America.

I used to think that when people said Iraq was about oil that it was just nonsense, or it was at an abstract level that didn't actually relate to events on the ground. But now I think it aligns perfectly. Especially when the half-way point on oil is 2025 and after that oil prices will continue to escalate until oil is to expensive to supply cost effectively. And if two more dollars per gallon at the pump puts the American economy on the edge, what would four to six more dollars do to the economy?

Honestly, I think it is in our best interests to secure our oil supplies while finding alternative resources. But war is not the best method to do that. Certainly our experience in Iraq has been proof of that. 

60 minutes about the 24hr job

It's interesting to me how work culture appears to be moving in two polar opposite directions. On the one hand you have the never-ending 24hr type jobs where you can be called any time and the line is completely blurred betweeen work and home. 60 minutes did a story on that type of job. And the people in it seem somewhat happy. Sort of. I played that type of game before and I know it's a life-breaker. On the other extreme some people are dropping out and working half time or less, whatever that means in this new world.

I find the whole state of affairs sad. It appears to me that workers have given in to management. And the workers that become the management end up feeding back into the cycle. Life needs to be a balance between work and home, and there need to be lines between the two. It's impossible to really be engaged at home when you are thinking about work, and vice versa. If that balance goes out of whack and there is too much work, or work intrudes too much, it can be maintained for a little while, but after that the home portion starts to break down, and then that breaks back into the work portions, and like an out of control top it all comes crashing to a stop. And the people that suffer are always the workers because modern management in small companies have no room to compensate for a worker that can't work predictably at 110%. 

Onion Presidential Briefings

The Onion has been running a series of Presidential briefings which are hysterical. They have all been good, but the port security breifing is the funniest thing I have heard in a long time.

Inside Man

Lori and I went to see Inside Man and I really enjoyed it. Though, I don't think Lori enjoyed it as much. I've been a Spike Lee fan since Do The Right Thing, though I started to jump off the train around the time of Jungle Fever. Ok, I guess I wasn't on the train all that long.

Anywho... Loved Inside Man though. Well crafted. It had a different pacing and style from other hiest movies and I appreciate that. The acting was fantastic by the entire cast. And Spike left the door open for a lot of thought about the piece at the end, which is classic Spike. What was Jodie Foster's character all about? Very complex. Tough to get through. Was Denzel's character really in it just to make the grade? He certainly had an awful lot going on. And what was the motivation of the bank robber in this? All of these are complex questions not easily answered and I enjoyed the film all the more for making me ask those questions.

More rain news

Devil's slide, the short patch of twisty mountain roadway between Half Moon Bay and Pacifica along the coast here, has succumb to the rain. It is now closed indefinitely.

Rain, rain go away

It's been raining non-stop for weeks here and it's really starting to grate on my nerves. Isn't this supposed to be Spring? Apparently this month is breaking the rain records all on it's own.

This morning was particularly bad. Rain was coming down in sheets. And not the wispy drops we usually get, but the really heavy super drops that significantly cut down on visibility. I think there will be a lot of flooding and probably some mudslides around the Bay Area today.

Panicking politicos

Condoleeza and one of her British counterparts were in Iraq to talk to the government officials about how they should actually... you know... form a government. I heard some audio bits on NPR of their trip and at one point the British representative gives this desperate sounding 'please'; "Please! The Americans have lost over two thousad people, we have lost over a hundred. A... A... A hundred and fourty thousand troops here... helping to keep the peace..." You can listen to it yourself.

Somebody should let this guy know that the secret to being a good negotiator is not to sound like your nuts are in a vice, even if they are. The Brit is showing that the situation is clearly worse than the Bush administration is letting on. There is no reason for the Iraqi politicians to hurry up. They have been at this for thousands of years, so what difference is a few more days going to make? And we have no leverage there. We can't invade again. We can't disband the government. We have already withheld reconstruction funds. And the only real leverage we have, which is leaving, is not on the table because Bush keeps chanting every day that we will stay.

All roads lead back to Rome on this. The problem with the insurgency is that we aren't sending in enough troops to do suppression. Why? Because sending them in now means admitting mistakes which is something this administration is unwilling to do. So they live in an unreality bubble where we are always on the 'virge of victory!' That same perspective is killing us on the political side with Bush not effectively using the only leverage we have, our presence there, as a tool, because he doesn't want to admit that we may have to leave before we achieve 'victory'. Whatever that means.

Oh, yeah, and if that's not bad enough. Afghanistan is going to start heating up again. All signs point to the Taliban starting a Spring offensive. While it's unlikely that we would lose Kandahar we could possibly lose the rest of the country and that would obviously destroy all of the work that we have done there. 

Vegetarian diet actually good for you

You might think that living in San Francisco I don't get hasseled about being a vegetarian... for twelve years. But, sadly no, I get a lot of shit for it. Even from my ex-vegetarian friends. For whatever reason people think it's really clever to point out how much they are enjoying their meat and then emploring me to, at that moment convert. As if... after twelve years... that Mc'D's sixteenth-of-pound diseased horse burger is going to have me ordering up a carnivorous storm... Right... Anyway, once again, justified in my belief that veggie is good. Suck on that, meaties.

New Pet Peeve

Ok, here is a new pet peeve, or maybe it's an old pet peeve, but it doesn't matter. Think about the penny. It's worthless, right? We can all agree on that. Clearly the penny should be scrapped, but then should the nickel, because it to is effectively worthless. Only the dime starts edging into real currency, but not by much. The quarter is where it starts to get interesting. But at the end of the day, only a dollar will start to buy something, and even then, not much.

So, why does this matter? Because people shouldn't be able to quibble with anything under $1 for any extended period of time while people are waiting. I was at the sandwhich shop with Megan yesterday when these three ladies, reasonably affluent looking women, haggled over the price of a bagel with cream cheese. A single freaking bagel in what must have been a $30 total order. Over a forty cent discrepency. All the while four of us waited in line while they berated the single cashier for what must have been ten minutes!

Grrr!!! There ought to be a law! Especially around lunch time in a business district. You request your food, you pay your money, you get your food, and you go eat it. Boom, boom, boom. Haggling over money so insignificant that it wouldn't pay for a portion of a crouton and holding everyone else up in the process... Mmmm... Why I oughta!

Tired of evangelicals

I'm really tired of evangelical pundits and leaders. I'm tired of their telling me how to live my life, and believing that they have every right to do so. I'm tired of hearing about the end times. I'm tired of their using bumper sticker politics to drive their divisive politics down our throats. Take abortion for example, I don't know anyone who is pro-abortion. In fact, if there is a either or split on that issue, it's that one group believes that all life no matter how tiny should be protected without thought of anyone except God in the equation, and the other group believes something other than that.

I'm especially tired of what I heard on the radio today. And that's an evangelical spokesman talking about how evangelicals are now starting to drift from this war because of the recent Afghanistan crisis around the converted Muslim. So that's what it takes? That's what it takes to lose support for these wars? One guy? It wasn't the millions protesting in the streets? It wasn't the thousands dead? It wasn't the lies of the administration? It wasn't their incompetence? It wasn't an evaluation of our current disastrous security situation versus where it was five years ago?

When will evangelical pundits and leaders realize that with the power of the hordes comes the responsibility of not acting like 16 year olds with too many guns and too much testoterone. 

B-Ball

Wow. Did those final four games suck or what? George Mason just rolled over. I'm thinking that they were getting calls from Disney producers before that game and afterwords, zippo. It was a good Cinderella story while it lasted.

Mr. And Mrs. Smith 2

I have an idea for "Mr. and Mrs. Smith 2". Jennifer Anniston and Vince Vaugn move in next door to Pitt and Jolie. Both couples are paid to make hits on the other and much love triangulation and hijinks ensue. Plus, hey, you got the whole Team Jolie or Team Anniston thing going on. BTW, I'm seriously Team Jolie. I can't even imaging being Team Anniston!

Final Four

I'm takin' George Mason and LSU in the games this weekend. Then LSU to win it all in the final.