Who Are You? What Do You Want? Where Are You Going? Whom Do You Serve – And Whom Do You Trust?!
The United States’ Evil War on Drugs has turned Bolivia into another failed Latin American state. This fact is confirmed today, by the resignation of Bolivian President Carlos Mesa.
Of course, who cares about the suffering and death of our brown-skinned southern neighbors? The prohibitionists are doing “G_d’s work.”
Hat Tip: InstaPundit (suggest you check additional material there)
This from Editor & Publisher:
The blogger, Garrett M. Graff, who writes about the news media in Washington for mediabistro.com, had to make multiple attempts over several days last week before finally securing the promise of a day pass for today.
[…]
Graff has said that the Guckert/Gannon controversy inspired him to try for the day pass, but he was stymied until mainstream outlets like USA Today, and Ron Hutcheson, president of the White House Correspondents Association, made a few calls.
It seems that at least a few in old media are getting the message.
…A spokesperson for Axl Rose claim completion of Chinese Democracy is in the offing. Avid Guns n’ Roses fans will say “how many times have we heard this before?”
Mr. Rose is reportedly working on the album even now in a San Fernando Valley studio. “The ‘Chinese Democracy’ album is very close to being completed,” Merck Mercuriadis, the chief executive officer of Sanctuary Group, which manages Mr. Rose, wrote in a recent statement. He added that other artists including Peter Gabriel and Stevie Wonder “have throughout their careers consistently taken similar periods of time without undeserved scrutiny as the world respects that this is what it can sometimes take to make great art.” There’s certainly more than enough material; as Mr. Zutaut says, even years ago “people felt like the record had been made four or five times already.” But of course, rumors of the album’s imminent release have circulated since almost the very beginning of the tale, more than a decade ago.
And at the center of that tale, now as then, is the confounding figure of Axl Rose himself. A magnetic talent, a moody unpredictable artist, a man of enormous ideas and confused follow-through, he has proven himself to be an uncontrollable variable in any business plan.
Update: I think the quintessential example of long time between albums artists is Donald Fagen – 11 years from The Nightfly to Kamakiriad. Another seven to Two Against Nature. Gabriel and Wonder both have long stretches between releases. But they were still quite active in collaborative efforts, production, etc..
…In Iraq, is called Terrorism in the Grip of Justice (free subscription req’d):
BAGHDAD — A distraught mother, dressed in black, stares into a TV camera and declares, “I smashed the terrorist” with a shoe. “He killed my son.”
The camera then focuses on the alleged murderer, Mohammed Adnan, who is facing both the grieving woman and her sobbing grandson.
The teenage boy says that Adnan, whose left eye appears swollen, was dressed as a police officer when he came to their home last fall and took away his father, who was never seen again.
The professional-looking videotape, which began airing recently on the government-owned Al Iraqiya television network, is among the more dramatic in an ongoing series of insurgent “confession” videos that have galvanized Baghdad.
The one-hour tapes constitute a sort of reality TV whose aim is to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. Aired twice a day, they serve as a counterpoint to the now-familiar images shot by insurgents of cowering hostages and beheadings. They are also a centerpiece of an intense government campaign designed to convince an edgy population that the fledgling government and its hard-hit security forces are making Iraq safer.
“Terrorism in the Grip of Justice” is the title of the series, which began airing shortly before Iraq’s national election Jan. 30. While it’s not clear just how truthful the videos are, the provocative images seem to bolster skeptical Iraqis’ confidence in a government often assailed as ineffective against lawlessness and violence.
[…]
The program’s popularity has not been lost on the insurgents, who have launched a public relations counteroffensive denouncing the tapes as a hoax and threatening in pamphlets to impose “God’s justice” on employees of the government-funded network.
For my whole adult life, I have made my living largely upon my talent for knowing where to get things, and keep anything running. On the low level, every GI knows this guy: he’s the one with the connections to keep your equipment running when official channels break down.
This has been particularly usefully in my marine maintenance business, where people frequently need some really weird shit.
And, thirty-twenty years ago, living on the outskirts of Los Angeles was really nice. Because everything under the sun was available, if only for a trip “downtown”.
But now, there seems to have been a total paradigm shift. I need some New Balance CT520 sneakers in size 13EE. And, while I can find numerous web suppliers, I can find noone, noone, here locally who carries them. Further, my gardener was here today clearing out the back yard. I assured him that his 4-stroke Honda weed trimmer wasn’t running right. He told me that he can find noone locally familiar with small 4-stroke Hondas. A telephone check verified this.
WTF is the world coming to? I think we are getting ever-closer to the “everything’s disposable” economy.
Now that the Airbus A380 is flying, will France’s Jacque Chirac order one for his state aircraft – just so he can claim he’s got a bigger one than George Bush? 🙂
Forget low-fat or low-carb. The latest big thing in dieting in Volumetrics:
Welcome to Pennsylvania State University’s Laboratory for the Study of Human Ingestive Behavior, one of the world’s most sophisticated centers for the study of what and how humans eat. The queen of this quirky culinary empire is Barbara Rolls, professor and Guthrie chair in nutrition at the university. For nearly three decades, Rolls, 60, has researched food choices, portion sizes, the caloric or energy density of foods, and myriad other factors that influence the human appetite and what satisfies it.
Most recently, the lab has been studying the impact of energy or calorie density–that is, the number of calories in a given weight of food–on satiety and weight control. Rolls calls this research “Volumetrics,” and her new book, The Volumetrics Eating Plan, arrives in bookstores this week. Part weight-control program, part cookbook, it is an effort to put into practical form a lifetime of study on why people eat what they do and how to satisfy the human biological drive for abundant food while achieving a healthy weight.
[…]
Paradigm. If the majority of the public, outside of a few weight-control programs, has been oblivious to the role energy density could play in cleaning up the American diet, so have many nutritional scientists. “This is a paradigm shift,” agrees Gary Foster, clinical director of the Weight and Eating Disorders Program at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Volumetrics is “an overarching concept, less based on macronutrients, though clearly, high-fat foods have higher energy density. It’s a more unifying approach to diet, and there are data to support it.” The downside, Foster says, is that energy density is not listed on food labels. Rolls hopes that will change: “If we had an energy-density number on food labels, it would give people an immediate way to compare foods and the calories in a portion.”
“My sense is people are becoming disenchanted with a low-carbohydrate diet, which is a high-energy-dense diet,” says Columbia University’s Xavier Pi-Sunyer, a member of the dietary guidelines advisory committee and director of the Obesity Research Center at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center. “So this would be a return to a lower-energy-density diet. And that is in line with the new guidelines.”
As I have never heard this song before, it is likely a bespoke jingle. But I can’t help but wonder: The song from the Toyota Avalon commercial, with the Yield sign kite, origami rabbit, and dancing shoes :
It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.
Sun’s shinin’ bright,
and I’m feelin’ good.
Turn your head and
take a look around…
Is this an actual popular song, or just something ginned-up for the Toyota commercial?
…Who else sees the similarities between tonight’s episode of BSG, and Silence of the Lambs/Dead Man Walking?
Yesterday’s successful missile intercept is making the headlines today. But deeper investigation reveals that this is really no big deal.
The Aegis SMD system is basically just a ship-borne version of the well-developed Patriot PAC-3 system, and has been effective is about a half-dozen tests before this one. It’s nice to know that our fleet defense capabilities will soon be ratcheted-up a notch. But the success of the Ground-Based Interceptor (GBI), the system which will defend the homeland, has been hit-or-miss (pun most certainly intended). Much of the technology is the same between SMD, PAC-3 and GBI. But the GBI program appears to me to have some engineering management issues.
This from AP:
“What’s your job?” he was asked by someone off-camera. “I am a lieutenant in intelligence.”
Then a second question. “Which intelligence?” The reply: “Syrian intelligence.”
And so began a detailed 15-minute confession broadcast by al-Iraqiya TV on Wednesday, in which the man, identified as 30-year-old Lt. Anas Ahmed al-Essa, said his group was recruited to “cause chaos in Iraq … to bar America from reaching Syria.”
“We received all the instructions from Syrian intelligence,” said the man, who appeared in the propaganda video along with 10 Iraqis who said they had also been recruited by Syrian intelligence officers.
Later, al-Iraqiya aired another round of interviews with men it said were Sudanese and Egyptians who also trained in Syria to carry out attacks in Iraq.
Syrian officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the claims, which were not possible to authenticate independently.
An Iraqi special forces commander, Brig. Gen. Abu Al-Walid, said his forces arrested the men in Mosul on Jan.
It occurs to me that, while a full-scale invasion of Syria may not be practical at this time, turning Lebanon into their own little Vietnam should be quite doable.
On tonight’s episode of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy – Michael S. Thom brought out what I might think is the perfect Zen relaxation tool: a motorcycle wheel on a truing stand. I have, since the age of twelve, trued my own motorcycle wheels, and built my own bicycle wheels. And I can think of no more calming redirection of focus, than truing a spoked wheel.
…And you wanted the ultimate American Gran Turismo car, to counter the 550 Hp twin-turbo, W-12, Bentley (VW) Continental GT?
But, that said, the Jay Leno ’66 Toro’ is one cool ride.
Michael Tucker’s Iraq documentary, Gunner Palace, which I blogged on here, was just covered on FNC’s Hannity & Colmes, along with a few clips. It seems to portray our servicepeople quite favorably.
I’ve just read the infamous Popgurls interview with Vanessa Riley, as well as this interview with Austin Scarlett. My opinion is now stronger than ever that this woman has her head shoved quite far up her ass.
In the story, she professes her revulsion at working with “kids”. But Alexandria Vidal, who, along with herself and Kevin Johnn, see feels are the 3 best designers of the show, was only 22. She claims no additional opportunities as a result of Project Runway, yet wonders if she should now “go big”.
She takes several digs at Houston, Texas, where she lives, claiming there’s no opportunity for a haute couture designer to flourish there. But, while Houston may not be New York or Los Angeles, or even Dallas, it’s still a huge metropolis, with a large professional class – exactly what she identifies as her target market.
Even on the matter of Heidi Klum, she finds her totally aloof and vacuous. She also laments that Heidi made no effort to “be friends” or “mentor” the contestants. First, as a judge, would it have been at all appropriate for Heidi to do anything like that during the show.? As well, in reading Austin’s interview, it seems he and Heidi have maintained a relationship since. He designed her Halloween costume (he did not, however, get a chance to design Nancy O’Dell’s Oscar gown).
t seems that Austin and Vanessa have remained good friends since the show was taped. Austin should be a good friend, and set her straight on a few things – particularly her own inflated self-image.
Sander Sassen writes in Hardware Analysis about something I’ve suspected for a long time:
There’s a reason for opting for an Intel chipset, and that’s the simple fact that it is a rare occurrence to see issues with Intel processors on Intel chipset motherboards. Basically you plug it all in, install the operating system and Intel drivers and it is up and running. With chipsets manufactured by these 3rd part chipset manufacturers it is often relying on drivers written by an overworked, underpaid, Taiwanese software engineer that have not undergone stringent quality testing whatsoever. Obviously this is a scenario that often leads to issues with 3rd part chipsets and that’s what we all want to prevent right? Classic example is VIA, which used to offer drivers for their chipsets that broke more features than they fixed. Fortunately they cleaned up their act over the past few years, but you get what I’m hinting at, although VIA was a particularly bad example.
With AMD it is another story, as of late they’ve basically only manufactured processors and left it up to 3rd party chipsets manufacturers to come up with a chipset to run it on. NVIDIA is a prime example of how a company can go from good to bad overnight. Their Nforce family of chipsets can best be described as a mixed bag, there’s excellent chipsets, such as the Nforce3-250, but also particularly bad ones such as the first Nforce2. And now that PCIe is here, and all chipset manufacturers launched their chipsets supporting it, we see the same problems all over again. For example; Nforce 4 looks good on paper, the NVIDIA reference motherboard works like a charm, but all Nforce 4 SLI motherboards currently out have issues.
So am I a nitpicking Intel fanboy that bares a grudge towards AMD? No, I don’t have a preference per se, and we obviously get as many AMD processors and motherboards in the lab as we get Intel’s. The problem is that with new chipset releases such as with PCIe Intel is always spot on, no issues, it just runs out of the box. Whereas with AMD there’s always issues plaguing these new chipsets which make the system unstable, cause for features to not work and a plethora of other problems, NVIDIA’s Nforce 4 SLI chipset being a prime example. These issues take many months and multiple BIOS/drivers revisions to get fixed, after which the next chipset is usually around the corner, so the whole thing starts over again.
It seems CNN has violated federal law, in doing a story on the horrors of private ownership of .50 caliber rifles.
Hat Tip: InstaPundit
Posting on DragonLady’s post has reminded me of what is perhaps my favorite contemporary popular song of all time: Donald Fagen’s New Frontier from the album The Nightfly (1982). My regular readers will understand why this song has such impact on me. Please forgive me any errors, as I’m going at these lyrics from memory:
Yes we’re gonna have a wingding
A summer smoker underground.
It’s just a dugout that my dad built
In case the reds decide to push the button down.We’ve got provisions and lots of beer
The key word is survival on the new frontier.Introduce me to that big blonde
She’s got a touch of Tuesday Weld.
She’s wearing Ambush and a French twist
She’s got us wild and she can tell.She loves to limbo, that much is clear –
She’s got the right dynamic for the new frontierWell I can’t wait ’til I move to the city
‘Til I finally make up my mind
To learn design,
And study overseasDo you have a steady boyfriend?
Cause honey I’ve been watching you.
I hear you’re mad about Brubeck.
I like your eyes, I like him too.He’s an artist, a pioneer –
We’ve got to have some music on the new frontierWell I can’t wait
’til I move to the city
‘Til I finally make up my mind
To learn design and study overseas.Let’s pretend that it’s the real thing
And stay together all night long
And when I really get to know you
We’ll open up the doors and climb into the dawn.Confess your passions, your secret fears –
Prepare to meet the challenge of the new frontier
I have just watched the episode of Austin City Limits, originally aired 10/23/04, featuring Michael McDonald, and 17 year-old Brit phenom Joss Stone. McDonald’s set was just his tired old stock fare (although his cover of Marvin Gaye’s What’s Goin’ On still brought tears to my eyes). But Joss Stone has me absolutely spun! I had her pegged, from about her third stanza, as a young ‘Retha. And it appears I am not alone in that opinion:
The 17 year-old from Devon, whose voice has been called a mix between “a white” Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin, found herself stepping up on stage to receive an award that could have easily gone to last year’s debutante Natasha Bedingfield, R ‘n’ B singer Jamelia, London’s feisty singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse or the alternative rock singer PJ Harvey.
The American pop machine is a fickle thing. What can you say about something that turns marginal talents like Jessica Simpson and Britney Spears into superstars? But, if there is any justice in the world, “Joss Stone” will be a household word within two years.
I used to watch this show regularly, up to a bit over a year ago, when it became one week after another of everyone against Tony Blankley, on the question of, why is the Iraqi campaign morally wrong, and why is the United Stated States doomed to failure? But I had grown weary of the show long beforehand, for disgust at John’s ceaseless egocentric bombast.
But I thought I’d check back there, thinking that recent successes in Iraq might have quelled the rhetoric, But I can’t find it on the schedule for my local PBS station – nor at NBC. And, when I enter my ZIP Code (92683) at their website, I get a 404 error.
Has The McLaughlin Group lost the LA audience?
I went to Costco today, and bought a $20 pack of the cheapest steaks they had ($2.99/lb.).
But I tell you – USDA Choice Sirloin Tips are better than Select Rib Eyes any day of the week.
(Oh, BTW – what is commonly sold as a Rib Eye Steak these days is actually a Rib Steak.)
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the International RXT:
The International RXT represents a whole new game for truck owners who demand, well, everything. Sleek and refined looks. Powerful performance. A remarkably spacious interior. A smooth, comfortable ride. Excellent hauling capability. The RXT is a complete player. And like a superstar athlete, this truck is sure to attract a crowd wherever it goes.
- GVW Range: 25,000 lbs
- Payload Capacity: 6-8 tons
- Towing: Suitable for a variety of hauling configurations. (9-12 tons)
- Drivetrain: Up to 300 horsepower
- Exterior Features: 4×2 Crew Cab; 8-foot pickup bed; aero front bumper and rear bumper; aero front bumper valance and side skirts
- Interior features: Center console; premium sound system, Black leather seats; full carpet
I can’t wait to see one of these babies slammed.
Update: I have actually seen a few (custom) rigs like this before. They were owned by high-bucks 5th wheel RV’ers. And, rather than the pickup bed, they had a low-boy tow-truck bed, with a 5th wheel hitch, instead of a hoist. The common story I got from the owners was, “those pick-up truck dualies just can’t take the abuse.”
That was the question just put to the analyists at Forbes on Fox. And the opinion was split. But they were all wrong. Both of these industries are going to feel the pinch on providing “pipelines” into America’s homes, as more and more municipalities offer free city wide wi-fi service.
Of course, I’d like to have access to a service like this myself. The $50 a month I pay to Earthlink, a large portion of which they pay to Verizon, is money I’d rather spend elsewhere. But the libertarian side of me is rather agast.
PMBR technology promises to do for nuclear power what the Model T did for automobiles. And the Chinese are taking the lead:
The difference between incumbent nuke designs and PBMR is like night and day. Western reactors reflect the “bigger is better” mentality that prevailed when plants were first built. Industry mismanagement in the 1970’s and 1980’s added layers of safety systems to already complex designs. U.S. nuclear plants are run much better today than a decade ago, but next generation designs still feature tons of safety-oriented concrete and mazes of redundant valves, controls, and piping. PBMRs, by contrast, epitomize Internet Age principles of miniaturization and modularity. Each PBMR is about one-fifth the size of a conventional reactor. They are designed without many backup cooling systems in existing plants, relying instead on a reactor core that theoretically cools itself if nuclear fuel gets too hot. PBMR’s smaller footprint and simplified design, it’s hoped, will allow multiple reactors to be built on one site faster and cheaper.
But the challenge to incumbent nuclear companies does not end there. Most of today’s nuclear industry profits come from making and replacing fuel in operating plants not building new ones. Western companies have a large stake in preserving how nuclear fuel is now made, a tightly controlled system run by quasi-government entities and nuclear service companies. The status quo works for everyone, consumers included, so long as existing reactor designs are the only viable options. PBMR commercialization would upset this arrangement. PBMR uses a totally different fuel design to current reactors. PBMRs should refuel while running whereas Western designs require refueling shutdowns every two years. So PBMRs do not need either Western-style fuel or Western companies’ refueling services. Faced with this challenge, nuclear vendors — with future plant sales and lucrative fuel and services businesses at stake — have attacked PBMR as an idea whose time will never come.
Until recently, the incumbents were winning. Then China, facing a monumental power shortage, put its top scientific brains to work to commercialize PBMRs. China needs electricity, a lot of it and fast. Coal and oil-fired power plants can meet some of this gap but the only long-term option that can provide China with the amount of power it needs at stable costs and without worsening air pollution is nuclear. China will buy some Western-style nuclear plants but it will not go “all-Western” for important strategic and practical reasons.
I don’t know if this will be of interest to anyone. But I’ve been looking for the lyrics to Th’ Legendary Shack*Shakers C.B. Song for some time. If you are unfamiliar, it’s the tune used on the GEICO commercial with the guy and the gecko wearing sunglasses as they drive through the tunnel. So, here it is:
I said a-little honey bunny tell me what’s your 20?
I got my rabbit ears on and I wanna get chummy chummy
Yeah you’re a speed-freakin’ demon, blow my back doors off, Lorrrrd!
But if you ain’t gettin on then I ain’t gettin off
Well I’m 10-4, 10-8 & I got the 10-36
I’d like to stick around and get my miniskirt kicks, Hooah!Now C’mon C’mon cut yer radidio on
I’m in the hammer down lane steppin’ all alone
You pass your steady-rollin’ buddy from the Guitar Town
Raise hell on wheels & knock the slack riggghhht out
Well C’mon perty baby, why don’tcha cut em on
Yer diesel-drivin’ daddy’s gonna get real gone, hey heyWell my CB squeeze just put her big ears on
Her Rattletrap papa’s who her handle’s on
She knew I wasn’t no Smokey with an X-ray gun
Now she’s in my bottle-popper all ready to run
She’s my lil lot-lizard but she don’t shed her skin
She just skins the cat when my big rigger rolls in.Hey!
For those of you that haven’t been following Bravo’s Project Runway as closely as I have. Olympus Fashion Week has already happened. The winner of the PR final three hasn’t been announced. But popular opinion among those at the show has it between Kara Saun and Jay McConnell. As always, my money is on Kara.
That said, I can say this about Wendy Pepper: Whatever the absolute measure of her talents, she has had the right designs at the right time. She won the Banana Republic Challenge, and the Nancy O’Dell Grammy Challenge (perhaps the two most momentous of the series). Further, while the judges raked her design over the coals (as they did, to one extent or another, for everyone, save Kara) in the USPS Challenge; to me – she had absolutely the right idea – evolutionary rather than revolutionary. And so it goes with most of what she does – she is in touch with Middle American sensibilities more than most haute couture designers.
Further, I have to add that I have some experience in the world of design (albeit industrial, rather than couture). But it is the same paradigm: Today we do lunch. Tomorrow, I eat your lunch. Next week – who knows? Isn’t it the same in most industries? To think otherwise is infantile.
But enough – on to tonight’s episode: They brought back the eliminated designers (and some of the models) for a final, candid, interview. Only two notes here: First, it established not Wendy, but eliminated designer Vanessa Riley, as the real dragon lady (no relation to our own DragonLady) of this series. But, as I predicted earlier, all the designers pointed to 17 year-old model Melissa Haro as the consummate professional among the group (Morgan wouldn’t even come on the show). As I said, Melissa is America’s next big supermodel.
Amazon has the trailer for Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy up.
Hat Tip: InstaPundit