The New Road

Rand study bashes 'war on terror'

A new study from the ultra-conservative Rand corporation says that the best way to fight Al Qaeda is with law enforcement:

A roughly equal number of terrorist groups die when their key leaders are arrested or killed. In the vast majority of instances, this is accomplished by local law enforcement, the study notes.

"In most cases, military force isn't the best instrument," said Jones, a terrorism expert and the report's lead author.

Wow, you don't say. I've been saying this since before the Iraq war. Hell, I was saying this during Afghanistan. The best way to kill Osama and break Al Qaeda would have been to go in there with a small team and do a decapitation strike. Instead we took months to prepare a military ground offensive while Osama slipped silently away (and is still on the loose).

Of course, I was slammed by my conservative critics at the time for not approving of the big military war approach. Which was supported by Fox News and the pundits who were fed talking points from Cheney. Cheney in turn was just picking sides in a government turf war between the DOD and the CIA. He couldn't have cared less about actually fighting terrorism. He just wanted to make sure that Rumsfeld was in on the action.

Ah, well. Hopefully once Obama gets in there he can take a lightweight fast-action approach to terrorism. That was effective during the Clinton administration. It will be effective once again during the Obama administration.

I hate video

I hate working with video. It's CPU intensive. It heats up my machines. No matter how much horsepower I have it's never enough to be able to work with video quickly. The encoders always seem to fail 95% of the way through conversions. And I always end up needing to reboot my machine after working with video, even small amounts of video. Agggh!!!

McCain Off The Rails

McCain's campaign has really gone off the rails. With this recent lying about Obama in Germany. Then another ad that whines about how popular Obama is. What is that? Who is that supposed to convince. The only people that are going to agree with any of it are the Hannity dittoheads who repeat the same list of lies about Obama every time his name comes up. To quote a famous general, McCain, and his whole campaign, seem stuck on stupid.

Tennessee shootings; Savage, Hannity, O'Reilly

The man who shot up a church, killing two and wounding five, in order to attack what he called the 'liberal movement', was also a fan of Savage, Hannity and O'Reilly. Books by these three were found at the man's house. One can only assume that this was part of his 'inspiration'.

Where is the outrage about this? The man was clearly motivated by the hate spewed forth by these people on the radio, on television and with their books. I don't hear anything about this in the mainstream press. Fox News is of course completely silent on the issue. And the only things I hear about it on the right are either justifications for it, or feeble attempts to pass the blame.

Two people are dead. Two innocent people are dead. Dead because some moron radio hosts want to make a lot of money by demonizing people. Hate always sells. But this hate results in people dying.

I was talking with a good friend of mine about this stuff just last week. Saying that this hate radio is really hurting us. Lori has repeatedly been cut off and flipped off by right wingers angry at the bumper stickers on her car. My step-father's tires were slashed after he put a Dean bumper sticker on the back of his car. This is violence. It's not at the level of these killings. But anyone with eyes to see can understand how you get from demonizing people to committing acts of violence against them.

The only good part of this is that the assailant is still alive. I want to hear what he has to say. Did he view the people inside the church as human? Or are liberals 'sub-human'? I think his story about how he was driven to violence by the hate coming out of the radio is our most compelling answer yet to this sad cycle of violence.

Let's just hope we can nip it in the bud when it's just a few isolated incidents. Though I fear as the economy descends even further that we will see more of this as the hated liberal gets blamed for our woes.

Hate Radio Kills 2 Injures 5

An armed man, driven by his hatred of the dreaded liberal, stormed a Unitarian Church in Tennessee. He killed two and wounded five.

When is this going to stop? How many people have to die?

"It appears that what brought him to this horrible event was his lack of being able to obtain a job, his frustration over that and his stated hatred of the liberal movement," Owen said at a news conference.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that if people are spoon fed hatred every day, when a group of people is demonized as the root cause of all that ails us, that when things turn bad, violence will ensue.

Updated: This is a beautiful little image:

Yeah, this is all just a joke. Right?

Beck: Obama is Mussolini

Glenn Beck seems to think that Obama is going "be another Mussolini". Honestly, I think he just picked the name out of a hat that contained lots of "bad people". Plus, everyone is saying "Hitler", so why not be different?

Of course, that does bring up the question, what were Mussolini's economic policies. Let's have a look at the Wikipedia entry for the National Fascist Party and what it has to say about economics:

In power, the party attempted to form an economic policy that was a "third way" between capitalism and socialism, this was called Corporatism. In theory, trade unions and businesses would unite to form a cooperative organization to establish wages, hours of labour, and other issues. However when attempted to be put into practice, corporatism was heavily criticized by the industries who had provided financing in the past to Mussolini to protect them from socialism, and demanded that he keep the labour movement weakened to maintain their support, to which Mussolini and the party agreed, causing corporatism to favour businesses over workers who could only be in Fascist unions.

Hmmm... Doesn't really sound so socialist to me? Most conservatives seem to think Obama is a socialist. For example, McCain supporter Mario from Miami writes "Senator Obama, are you a Socialist? and if your answer is no, explain how are you not a Socialist?"

I'm confused now. Is he a fascist, a socialist, a communist, all of the above, none of the above?

I certainly don't think the word fascist applies the way Glenn thinks it does. But hey, why let facts and stuff get in the way of a good smear word. Mussolini. It sounds so... European! That can't be good.

Iron Man in one page

Ok, this recap of Iron Man is freaking awesome. I loved the movie. But this is fantastic.

Rick Loves Me

Rick loves me apparently:

Thanks Rick! Graffiti is always the fastest way to my heart.

W is Bat Man

Who knew? Bush is Batman, as well as the gay dudes from 300, Spider Man, Frodo from Lord Of The Rings, and that lion Narnia. Awesome!

There seems to me no question that the Batman film "The Dark Knight," currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

Wow. Yeah. I saw that right away.

This stuff comes out with ever superhero movie. Conservatives consider themselves the ultimate un-heralded hero. They are going to change the world from their keyboards. Right after they move out of Mom's basement.

Turns out the guy who wrote this editorial also writes thrillers. Check out this review of one of his books.

In the following chapters, Klavan wallows in demagoguery masquerading as satire, his extremely unlikable protagonist incapable of keeping an opinion to himself, most of which he addresses in an irritating spate of Capital Letters: The End of Civilization. As We Know It. ... I kept waiting for this novel to make sense, to justify finishing this book. Implausible events lead to an outrageous conclusion, followed by an anticlimactic happy ending. ...

What is it with conservatives and rants in CAPS anyway?

After watching Hellyboy II (which was great), Yvonne and I got to talking about why there are so many more comic book movies out nowadays. It used to be that you would get one a year. Now it's one or two a month. We had no answers. But maybe the answer is that the country has shifted conservative. The moral clarity (?) of comic books appeals to the conservative mindset. So we get more of that in film. Ugh.

Cowboy Up to BART

Every time I ride the BART nowadays I notice two things. First, there are a hell of a lot more people riding it. And two, I see more and more cars like this one (pictured next to my Civic) in the parking lots:

Cowboy up indeed! The best thing about this particular truck was it's huge tires and the fact that it was lifted off the ground significantly by hydraulic shocks. That's the kind of thing that you can get away with on $1/gal gas, but not so much now.

Savage

Limbaugh is a drug-addicted jerk, Hannity is a putz, Beck is self-centered pussy. But Savage. Savage takes the cake. He is the complete douchebag. I can't stand his voice. All he does is rant. And his rants are psychotic. How he is highly ranked on the radio is beyond me, honestly. I can't listen to him for more than 45 seconds before I'm physically nauseous.

It's probably because he is an exact carbon copy of my first boss. He was the cheapest guy on earth. He would yell and swear incessantly. He would eat voraciously with his mouth open, making awful sounds. And then there was that voice. That awful nasally Bronx-accent voice. It's like fingers on a chalk board.

Anyway, Savage apparently went too far by beating up on autistic kids. His denials are ridiculous. He says he is a defender of the defenseless. Riiight. And his criticism of Media Matters, which simply posts his audio as-is, is baseless.

What amazes me is that this is what nailed him. His other slurs and rants have been so over the top that I find this one just the usual pedestrian right wing loony rant. It's the usual "I don't know anyone who suffers from x, and since I have no empathy for anyone I'm going to beat up on them for a while."

I say let him go. Let him rant on and on. Let him beat up on kids who are very legitimately ill. Make him the true voice of conservatism. Put him up on the McCain website. Make him press secretary. If he speaks for you, then embrace him. Autism sufferers and everyone else be damned!

On another topic, sometimes FUG just nails it.

"Surge Succeeded" Nonsense

Liberman and McSame are running around yelling that the "Surge has succeeded". McSame likes to say it three times in a row. No, it hasn't. The 'surge' was supposed to provide 'breathing room' for the Iraqi politicians to get their act together and pull the country together. That still hasn't happened. Two-thirds of the country is still not represented in the government. And they still don't have a plan to share the oil wealth.

Plus, the 'surge' itself, was really just us paying off the insurgents so they wouldn't shoot at us. At the point that we stop doing that. Or when Al Sadr decides to call off the cease fire, then things will go back to just as they were before.

I'm so sick of these right wingers who are incapable of looking at Iraq in any objective way. What's more, I know that should Obama become President, they will flip in an instant and become anti-Iraq war. Just like Hannity did with Bosnia. He couldn't support the war even after it began because Clinton lacked "the moral character to be commander and chief".

Your Olympics Kids

China's olympics are looking great. I was a little worried that the construction was behind schedule, and then there were the protests. But it looks like these guys are ready. It's great to see when a whole country dedicates itself to a single purpose like this. This is definitely going to be their 'coming out party'.

Yep Megan, these are your games. Because over the next thirty years you will be paying back our trillion dollar war debt that we owe to the Chinese. The interest on which will pay for these games and so much more. In fact, Bush's war will likely be such a financial boon to the Chinese that it will hasten their rise to the #1 economic superpower. Supplanting ourselves along the way.

When you see the beautiful sweeping lines of the bird's nest stadium, or the radiant blue glow of the aquatic center, take pride in what we got in exchange. We got a world that hates us for starting an illegal war. We own a fragmented country ripped apart by sectarian violence, as well as a demoralized and dysfunctional military which is now completely unprepared to take on other conflicts.

The Chinese on the other hand get a world class olympics which they can take national pride in. And they have a new pet that they can drag around by a huge debt leash called America. Ever wonder why the State Department doesn't take China to task for their support of African regimes committing genocide? Because they have us by the shorties of course!

But hey, we will always have the love of the Iraqis. Those hearty souls who tear down the soccer fields we build them, selling the materials for scrap and feed their families. And of course, they love our contractor built hospitals that rain urine and feces out of the overhead lights because of shoddy plumbing. Yes, Megan, you will always have the Iraqis.

While I'm at it. Thank you Mr. Bush. Thank you so very muchly. Thank your mother. Thank your father. Thank your whole thanking family. Thank you and thank your big oil buddies. And we should thank Cheney too of course. Yes, Mr. Bush, you've really thanked our kids. And thanked the whole gosh darn country.

Yes, it's going to be a great olympics!

Electrocuting Pickles

This one from Joe; A man demonstrates how Christianity turns you into a sparking head who blows smoke from both ends:

Another man provides a four point proof of God:

1. Jesus says that Christians will be ridiculed as fools.
2. I'm a fool.
3. People tell me I'm a fool.
4. Therefor Jesus is correct and there is a God.

And finally this lovely tidbit of email to an Atheist blog:

saw on your blog that you like to talk about the religion of evolution and trick people by using big words and pretending that science actually proves evolution. I dont know any science or anything and even i know evolution isnt real. for one it isnt in the bible the bible said god made everything in 6 days, not millions of years. second, when we go to the zoo we cant talk to monkies, if we used to be monkies why cant we talk to them? three, how could a monkey become a person over billions of years when they dont live that long? AND why are there still monkies if they turned into people? five, even darwin said he was wrong. on his death bed he converted to christianity and said evolution was a hoax. If there is any science that makes it look like evolution is real then it has to be either a hoax by EVILutionists or put there by god to find out who believes in him.

I hope that after reading my questions you will see that evolution cant be true and people dont come from monkies. i will pray to god asking him to make you think like me.

At least the guy used almost all lowercase instead of the usual ALL UPPERCASE RANT. Of course, he only speaks for himself about talking to monkeys...

The most interesting thing today was that for once in my life I agreed with Falafel Boy O'Reilly.

Comedic Stylings of McCain

Here is another great moment from the comedy genius of John McCain:

... the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die? When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, "Where is that marvelous ape?"

Enjoy the veal! He'll be here all night!

Wow. What I find even more amazing than the joke itself is that the McCain campaign isn't denying it. They are just saying that it's McCain being McCain and that it's proof that he is genuine. Genuinely what? Genuinely an asshole? Correcto.

The media is giving him a huge pass on this one. You will only ready about it on the left wing sites even though it's been factually verified and, well, not denied (amazingly) by the McCain camp.

The End Of The American Dream

Right wingers who concentrate on economics policy hate FDR and The New Deal. Organizations like Heritage and the American Enterprise Institute were created to 'roll back the new deal'. It's not covert, they talk about it all the time. Glenn Beck recently said that FDR was evil and so was The New Deal.

So what the hell does any of that have to do with what's going on right now? Well, as it turns out, a lot. Since one of The New Deal cornerstones, Fannie Mae, could be going under. Though I doubt even the Bush administration is crazy enough to let that happen.

Fannie Mae was created to give low interest loans to lower income families so they could afford housing. In the 20s, low income meant, well, everybody. And low interest mean six percent for thirty years fixed. That type of thing. Before that, a regular Joe couldn't buy a house. Fannie Mae created home ownership in America. Fannie Mae created the suburbs. Fannie Mae created what we call the American dream; a house, a car, two kids and a dog.

Today Fannie Mae, and it's brother, Freddie Mac, secure $5 trillion dollars of housing loans. They are still the cornerstone of the American dream. If you bought a house recently and you didn't buy it in cash, chances are you are on a Fannie or Freddie loan, even if you didn't buy it from them.

If Fannie and Freddie go under and you don't own a house, chances are you never will. If they go under and you are still paying off your loan, well, it's tough to know what's going to happen there. If you are lucky enough to own your house, that's great, but so many of your neighbors may foreclose that you might be living in a suburban wasteland anyway.

I'm sorry if I come off as the doom and gloomer here but this is really bad. Fannie and Freddie need to be bailed out at all cost. As for the righties, hopefully coming this close to the nightmare scenario where The New Deal policies are completely eradicated should teach them how wrong they have been.

Perfect Mac/PC moment

I went into the office this morning to find my Mac rewarding me with an iTunes update. My PC rewarded my with a blue screen of death that had nasty warnings about viruses. Nice.

Dawkins/Lennox conversation

Richard Dawkins has posted the audio of a conversation between himself and John Lennox. It's an easy listen because Lennox is not your usual firebrand Christian who explodes after the third question. They are both fairly soft spoken.

Lennox dominates most of the time in the conversation, unfortunately, with long winded answers to Dawkins simple questions. All of Lennox's answers boil down to common theologic defense; I'm right because I'm right. Once a person of faith genuinely internalizes that they could be wrong, it's a very quick and slippery slope to atheism. So the last line of defense is; I'm right because I have to be right.

Clearly Lennox has done a lot of reading. Which is why his answers are longer than the usual responses. Your usual pew-trained Christian only understand concepts at a micron thin level because they have been yelled at until they can repeat the arguments rote. That's why, when you question them they can only get so far before they get defensive with they lack of knowledge and fall back on either, "You would have to ask the pastor about that" or "I'm right because I can't be wrong".

I've Been Impressed Lately

I've been impressed by a few things lately. I was very impressed with Wall-E. The scope of the movie, the story, the attention to detail. They had the audience crying for a trash robot with a vocabulary of ten words. How amazing is that?

I've been impressed by Google for a while, but recently it's begun to sink in with me about just how often they make the right decision about things. It's far more often than I would expect from such a big company. Most recently the announcement of Lively has impressed me. I was telling a friend of mine months ago that the first company that had a Flash based interface to their virtual world, which could be widgetized and put onto any web page, was going to own the virtual world. Then, bang, we have Lively. Nice job, Google!

Another thing I have been impressed by is the Obama campaign. Yes, I like the guy, and yes I'll be voting for him. But left, right or center, you have to admit the guy has run one hell of a campaign. The events are well planned. The branding and messaging is great. The visuals are beautiful. Their response time on issues is in the milliseconds. He is just on it and it's nice to see that. It's certainly a contrast to the McCain campaign which looks like it's being run by hapless amateurs.

It's nice to see things that are genuinely well done every once in a while. In my old age I'm so used to seeing crap that it's heartening to see when genuine care and effort is taken to think things out and do the right things.

Ira Glass On Persistence

The first part of this video sounds a little elitist, talking about taste and what not. But the point that Ira gets to about half way through is excellent:

The central point is about persistence. That you really have to struggle through doing something poorly for a long time before you get to the point where you are good enough at it to transcend it and do something really well. It's a problem that a lot of people run into, they want to be immediately excellent at something, only to find that they suck at it. Which is absolutely natural, you can't expect to be Tiger Woods on your first round of golf. But Tiger wasn't Tiger right away, it took him years of practicing every day to get to his level of skill.

I do find Ira's point about where he has gotten to a little sad. Perhaps he didn't mean it, but he seems to imply that he has reached a state of perfection with his show. Perfection is a myth. There is only the constant struggle to be better. I know I am a really good programmer, I can code rings around most people, but every day I try to get a little better, to learn something new, or, in the best world, to learn something that completely rips my understanding of programming apart so that I have to look at it all fresh again.

I know it sounds insane to yearn for something that would turn my world inside out, but it's because to me programming isn't about the keystrokes, or the files, or the projects, or whatever. It's about solving problems. The technology is merely a tool. So when I find something out there that enhances my ability to solve problems, I grasp onto it immediately, as I have with lots of new technologies. Unfortunately most of them wind back to the same ideas eventually. So I am constantly looking for that one new revolutionary idea that will change everything.

As for my writing, I think I am in the mastery phase. There are three phases to learning any skill; learning the forms, mastering the forms, and finally transcending the forms. When I started it was tough enough trying to put together a single article and have it hold together reasonably well. Now that I understand more about the audience and how to effectively communicate to them, I look at whole books and understand how they ebb and flow naturally to convey a complete set of ideas. I think the next step for me will be to transcend the written form and just get into any type of teaching that will most effectively impart a set of skills.

To me the reason I write is to educate my fellow engineers. To open their eyes to new technologies and skills that will change how they solve problems. So the writing itself is only a means to an end. And the next step will be whatever it takes for me to impart what I have in my head, to anyone who is interested and willing to learn something new.

Death Threats Over A Cracker

You know, sometimes I'm just dumfounded by what religion makes people do. A guy walks out of communion with a eucherist, instead of eating it, and now we have people sending him death threats. Apparently not eating a cracker is beyond hate speech. This is pretty nuts friends.

Free copy of Getting Started With Flex 3

You can order a free copy of my book Getting Started With Flex 3 right from Adobe. Sweet!

Worship and Praise Me, Or Else...

This is a true classic:

Evangelicals love this little test they can administer on street corners were they ask you if you have ever lied, or lusted, or stolen anything. Whereupon they tell you that you are going to hell. Regardless of how you answer.

How about this for a response test; So you believed in Santa Claus, but now you know he doesn't exist, right? Check. Easter Bunny, same thing, right? Check. And Tooth Fairy, no existo, right? Check. So at one point you thought all of these imaginary invisible things were real, but now you don't? And you still believe in the big imaginary invisible boogy man in the sky?

Impeachment

If a war with Iran is going to be the Bush response to an Obama election win, then we need to put impeachment back on the table.

Bush is worried about his legacy, whatever the hell that means. Impeachment would be a strong behavior modifier.