Year: 2009

So, We Have Another Paleocon* Moron Wishing for Another 911

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We have Gregory Rodriguez penning a paean to the unity following 911, and suggesting very strongly what we need is to be very frightened about al Qaeda when he asks, “Where is Osama bin Laden when we need him?”

You see, he thinks that we need some of that good old post-911 unity, you know that wonderful stuff that Republicans used to :

  • Pass the PATRIOT Act.
  • Invade Iraq.
  • Illegally wiretap ordinary Americans.
  • Become torturer to the world.
  • To use the post 911 unity almost exclusively for Republican partisan political advantage.

His conclusion:

In the meantime, we all but ignored Bin Laden’s most recent tape, and attention to the arrest and indictment of Afghan Denverite Najibullah Zazi on WMD conspiracy charges has been surprisingly low-key. Such blase responses to our true enemies set us up for self-destruction, until we once again find out the hard way that we’re all Americans.

The reason that this is low key is because it should be low key, because Bush and His Evil Minions™ are no longer juicing every half baked tyro with half a terrorism plan and multicolored terror alerts.

The reason that this is low key is because it is Barack Obama, for all the complaints about him, is not Karl Rove, and does not see terrorizing the American public into supporting him as a legitimate goal of anti-terror policy.

It’s no wonder that quotes Samuel P. Huntington glowingly when suggesting that there is a need for an external enemy in order to create unity in society.

This is the same Samuel Huntington, whose entire career, and perhaps his entire life, to finding people to hate, whether it was the Arab Muslim (Clash of Civilizations), the brown mestizo Mexican (Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity), a suggesting that civilian (small d) democratic government is undesirable when maintaining a standing military (The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations), that democratic change is generally a bad thing(Political Order in Changing Societies), and advocated the near-genocidal “hamletization” policy in Vietnam.

Seriously, can this man is a moral pygmy.

*I read some of his other articles, and it appears that his guiding principles are stupidity, not Neoconservatism.

Some Meta

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There were delays in the page loading, and it appeared that the source was that Haloscan was loading too slowly, because after their takeover by JS-Kit, they have pretty much left the increasingly overburdened system running on auto-pilot.

I migrated to JS-Kit, which means that old comments are hosed, at least for a while, they claim that they will migrate them “real soon now”.

Whatever.

Comments should still show up in the “recent comments” box on the left, as soon as the new ones start filling the queue.

Unfortunate Headline

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OK, I get it Ken Lewis is gone in a few months, and the race is on to replace him, but the use of this phrase also implies an unsavory, and illegal practice, front-running.

I would not be surprised if, “Chief Risk Officer Greg Curl and Head of Retail Operations Brian Moynihan,” or for that matter if another widely reported contestant for the position, Sallie Krawcheck, head of BoA’s global wealth and investment management division, had engaged in, or are engaging in, such behavior, but the headline is…How to put it…Odd.

It’s Shagadelic, Baby!

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Click image for full size

The “Gogo” boots REALLY bring the ensemble together,

Though the Mini-Skirts, and the

White gloves and the Chinese model 79 sub-machine gun finish it all nicely.

Seriously, the Militiawomen uniforms at the People’s Republic 60th anniversary celebrations look like something out of Austin Powers’ wet dreams.

See also my earlier post Crouching Tiger, Hidden Segway, for more Chinese photo weirdness.

I understand the red, because after all, it is the color of Communism, but the miniskirts and Go-Go boots add a very silly aspect to all of this.

Where is My Damn Schwag?!?!?!

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So, the FCC has decided that bloggers must reveal any free stuff that they get when they do a product review under threat of a $10,000.00 fine:

The F.T.C. said that beginning on Dec. 1, bloggers who review products must disclose any connection with advertisers, including, in most cases, the receipt of free products and whether or not they were paid in any way by advertisers, as occurs frequently. The new rules also take aim at celebrities, who will now need to disclose any ties to companies, should they promote products on a talk show or on Twitter. A second major change, which was not aimed specifically at bloggers or social media, was to eliminate the ability of advertisers to gush about results that differ from what is typical — for instance, from a weight loss supplement.

I actually think that this is a reasonable requirement, but that it should be applied to all forms of media, such as magazines and newspapers too.

In any case, I now have a disclaimer in place, down the right column, which reads:

Commercial Disclosures
Please, send me free stuff, and I will consider doing a review.

I am a complete whore, so assume that any review is the result of free stuff, and/or under the table payments.

About the only such schwag that I have gotten is a copy of My Liary (blogged about here), which I revealed that I received for free.

If I get a freebie, I will disclose, and beg for more.

How Do I Stop Aflac™?

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OK, so I posted my resume on CareerBuilder.com™, and it seems like every 3-4 days, I gett a call from some drone at Aflac™, I got three calls yesterday, trying to get me to sell insurance.

Let’s be clear: I don’t want to sell Insurance, Amway, or Girl Scout Cookies, I want work as a mechanical engineer.

Of course, they are all different franchises, so some new drone keeps calling, and my telling that drone not to call doesn’t stop the other folks.

Unfortunately, CareerBuilder.com™ does not have the capability of blocking specific employers, probably because jerks generate too much revenue, so my options are to make my resume private, which means that no one sees my resume, or for me to start filing FCC complaints.

When the revolution comes, it’s going to be telemarketers up against the wall.

This Won’t Criminalize Anyone

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The recent moves to curb secrecy in private banking does not make any a criminal, it simply makes catching the crooks easier:

European leaders should give up the attack on Swiss banking secrecy and accept a withholding tax on foreigners to avoid criminalizing wealthy taxpayers, said Konrad Hummler, managing partner of Switzerland’s oldest private bank.

“If there is really a desire to criminalize part of the elite in European countries, then it would be a bigger problem for these countries than for Switzerland,” Konrad Hummler said in an interview at the offices of Wegelin & Co. in Zurich. The “majority of European clients were not criminals but just diversifying away from their home country

There is nothing illegal about using a private banker, but people are using private bankers to conceal income from tax authorities and to conceal income, and assets from spouses in divorce cases, and these are explicitly criminal acts, tax evasion and fraud.

Under the current world banking regime, people can put money in almost any institution that they want in almost any country, including Switzerland.

What is a crime, and has always been a crime, is putting money some where to hide it from tax authorities and opposing counsel.

Maybe we should go Chinese, and have a roving execution van, and put bullets in the heads of tax evaders, and their co-conspirator bankers, like Konrad Hummler.

Mr. Hummler, if you didn’t want to go to jail, you shouldn’t have been a criminal

OK, This is Just Weird

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Because I prefer Sinchronicity II to Sinchronicity

I’m talking with Sharon* last night, and we are talking about something, I don’t remember what, and I turn to her and deliver her the Samuel Jackson line from the movie The Incredibles, “Honey, where is my super suit?”

Today, I’m watching TV, and flipping, and there it is, and only about 5 minutes from the “super suit” line.

Stuff like this, where I’m humming a song that I’ve not heard in years in the morning, and hear it on the radio that evening, seems to happen to me about 2-3 times a month.

This is weird. Not only do I think that ESP is crap, but if it did exist, I would be a psychic black hole, I’m just not that sensitive.

I’ve got this weird Jung synchronicity crap going down.

*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

Republican Jesus Lives

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Just when you thought that the politicization of religion could not get any more despicable, we find that right wingers have decided to rewrite the bible in order to excise all those liberal bits:

  1. Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias

  2. Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, “gender inclusive” language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity

  3. Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level

  4. Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop; defective translations use the word “comrade” three times as often as “volunteer”; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as “word”, “peace”, and “miracle”.

  5. Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as “gamble” rather than “cast lots”; using modern political terms, such as “register” rather than “enroll” for the census

  6. Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.

  7. Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning

  8. Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story

  9. Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels

  10. Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word “Lord” rather than “Jehovah” or “Yahweh” or “Lord God.”

No, this is not a joke, it’s right from the Conservapedia page (no link, it only feeds the delusions)

It is not April Fools Day, nor is it Adar,* and it is not The Onion. This is real.

You know, I believe that it would appropriate at this time for some people to be struck by lightning, or at least to get some damn psychotropic medications, the really strong stuff, because this is nuts, in addition to being laughable, and, of course blasphemous.

I support the right to blaspheme, but I really think it’s a bad idea to call him a c%$#sucker, which is what this is.

I really can’t add anything to the General’s Republican Jesus, so just go to his site, and buy his stuff, but don’t read his site when you are drinking anything, or you will need a screen cleaner.

*The month of Adar in the Hebrew calendar. It is associated with Purim, and is the preferred time for practical jokes.

Ummmmm…Not So Fast

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It appears that the Telegraph in the UK has reported that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s family converted from Judaism to Islam and changed their name when he was 4 years old, largely on the basis of the change in family name from Sabourjian.

The problem is that this is simply untrue, according to the Guardian.

First, the Telegraph says:

  • That “Sabour” is the word for Talit used by Iranian Jews.
    • Not true: it means “thread painter”, and refers to those who work coloring fibers for Persian carpets.
      • Note that thread painting is not a traditionally Jewish profession in Iran.
    • The word used by Iranian Jews for the Tallit is “Tallit” (my experience with Iranian coreligionists) or Titzit (19th Century Iranian Judaism Scholar David Yeroshalm), both Hebrew words from scripture.
    • According to scholars, there is no word Sabour at all among Jewish dialects in Iran.
  • That “Jian” is a suffix that almost exclusively refers to practicing Jews.
    • Simply untrue. It’s a fairly common suffix.

What is true, however, is that surnames have come fairly recently to Iran, and that the “hicks in the sticks”, typically had surnames associated with the family profession, like “thread painter”:

The reason that Ahmadinejad’s father changed his surname has more to do with the class struggle in Iran. When it became mandatory to adopt surnames, many people from rural areas chose names that represented their professions or that of their ancestors. This made them easily identifiable as townfolk. In many cases they changed their surnames upon moving to Tehran, in order to avoid snobbery and discrimination from residents of the capital.

The Sabourjians were one of many such families. Their surname was related to carpet-making, an industry that conjures up images of sweatshops. They changed it to Ahmadinejad in order to help them fit in. The new name was also chosen because it means from the race of Ahmad, one of the names given to Muhammad.

But wait, there’s more:

Moreover, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s mother is a Seyyede. This is a title given to women whose family are believed to be direct bloodline descendants of Prophet Muhammad. Male members are given the title of Seyyed, and include prominent figures such as Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei. In Judaism, this is equivalent to the Cohens, who are direct descendants of Aaron, the brother of Moses. One has to be born into a Seyyed family: the title is never given to Muslims by birth, let alone converts. This makes it impossible for Ahmadinejad’s mother to have been a Jew. In fact, she was so proud of her lineage that everyone in her native village of Aradan referred to her by her Islamic title, Seyyede.

So, even if his father, or his father’s family were Jewish, he would not be, because Judaism is matrilineal, and if your mother is not Jewish, you are not Jewish, except by formal conversion.

Of course, I am competing with two links from two papers, the Telegraph, and the The Grauniad*, so why am I taking the side of the latter?

It’s pretty simple really: First, I have had Iranian Jewish friends, and the phrase “Sabour” never came up, and we did talk about Tallit in shul, and second, because the source was a newspaper formerly owned by Conrad Black, before he was sent off to a very well deserved stint in jail, and every story from a news outlet formerly owned by Conrad Black should be viewed with a jaundiced eye.

Additionally, you will note that that the Telegraph provides no on the record sources for its analysis, while the Grauniad* does, and goes into some detail as to the background of these sources.

*According to the Wiki, The Guardian, formerly the Manchester Guardian in the UK. It’s nicknamed the Grauniad because of its penchant for typographical errors, “The nickname The Grauniad for the paper originated with the satirical magazine Private Eye. It came about because of its reputation for frequent and sometimes unintentionally amusing typographical errors, hence the popular myth that the paper once misspelled its own name on the page one masthead as The Gaurdian, though many recall the more inventive The Grauniad.”

Lamest Product Launch Ever

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The Windows 7® House Parties, and their launch video.

As noted by Slashdot, “If Microsoft had been put in charge of marketing sex, the human race would have ended long ago, because no one would be caught dead doing something that uncool.”

It’s not as bad as that Tommy Seebach video, in that I think that the probability of rectal bleeding being induced is much less than his disco cover of Apache, but great googly moogly, this is lame.


On the other hand, Randall Munroe is amusing, as always”

Why Conservatives are Dancing Like the Palestinians Did on 911*

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You know, I’m not a big fan of the Olympics. I know of no event which has drifted further from its original purpose, which was that athletes set aside national differences, and compete for the “joy of the sport.”

The Olympics these days is all about nationalism, commercialism, and pumping up national differences.

When this is juxtaposed with the enormous costs, which always seem to overrun their budget and require a taxpayer bailout, I know that if I lived in Chicago, I would be strongly opposed to the Olympics being in the Windy City.

So, there are many valid reasons not to want the Olympics in your city, or your country.

That being said, the behavior of the right wing was all about, as Nuisance Industry at Daily Kos notes, celebrating the defeat of the United States of America:

That’s not what this is about. Today, great joy and celebration greeted America losing the Olympics. This joy was not in the streets of Rio (where celebrations certainly are underway), but in the offices and studios of people who facetiously claim to be patriotic Americans.

It’s happening in the offices of the Weekly Standard:

Standard blogger John McCormack published a celebratory post on the magazine’s blog, titled “Chicago Loses! Chicago Loses!.” McCormack wrote that “Cheers erupt at WEEKLY STANDARD world headquarters

It’s happening in Glenn Beck’s studios, where Herr Beck declared the news is “so sweet.” In Herr Limabugh’s studio, the bloated junkie happily declared this “the worst day of Obama’s presidency.”

Newsmax, the fascist organization that earlier this week fantasized about a military coup against the president, happily tweeted “ChicagP//n3D!”

We get it. You hate not just our president, but our country. You hate us for our freedoms. You’d rather have our people die that provide them health care that doesn’t bankrupt them. You’d rather risk catastrophic damage to the environment rather than doing something about greenhouse gases. You actively fantasize about killing the president and hamstringing government from doing the work of government. (I would have guessed that this Norquistian fantasy would have subsided after you so successfully drowned New Orleans, but that just whetted your appetite for more American blood.) The United States loses the opportunity to host the Olympics, and you’re thrilled, simply because you can’t stand that the president is a Democrat?

Let me close with Nuisance Industry’s last sentence, “So I conclude with all due compassion: Get the f$#@ out of my country.” ($#@ mine)

*I know, you’re about to say it was all 10 year old video of the invasion of Iraq. The problem is that it was actually video of September 11, 2001, and the “10 year old video” bit was dreamed up by a Brazilian student. The claim of fraud is the actual fraud, and it’s not just Snopes (link above) that confirms this.

Not only is there documentation of the celebration across the Arab world, there is ample documentation of the cover-up by the PA, which confiscated footage from reporters.†
†The real question to be asked about Arabs celebrating 911 is not whether they did so, but why they did so.

People’s Republic of China 60th Anniversary Parade Pix

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Click image for full size


The first question is, “What is with those white sidewall tires?”


These cruise missiles launchers look similar in size and configuration to the Ground Launched Tomahawks


Drones

Something in the Flanker class

Air refueling demo


Shore based anti-ship missiles


These look like S300s (SA-10 Grumble)


Chinese version of the EFV/AAAV, the ZBD2000. It has that whole, “separated at birth” thing going with the EFV

There are dozens of photographs at Xinhuanet.com, but these are the ones that caught my eyes.

I don’t see any major revelations in Chinese weapons, but I’m not an analyst.

Could someone explain to me though, how that neon blue camoflage works?

Aero Diesel Video Pr0n

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Avweb produced two videos on the operation and description on Diamond’s Austro AE300 engines.

The nickel tour is that they are heavier than Thielert’s engines, but are promised to be much more durable.

A typical design decision is that the Austro has a heavier cast iron block, but this allows for the engine to be rebuilt.

I’m wondering why they didn’t sleeve an aluminum block. That would appear to me to give the best of both worlds, though my experience with sleeved engines is locomotive engines, which are sleeved iron blocks, I might be missing something.

They are promising a 1000 hour TBO, and hope to extend that significantly as Diamond gets information from the field on the first engines..

Engine Analysis

Flight Evaluation