Year: 2012

This is Called a Brushback Pitch

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The US has drastically scaled back its joint exercise with Israel, likely to prevent Netanyahu from launching an ill advised attack on Iran:

Seven months ago, Israel and the U.S. postponed a massive joint military exercise that was originally set to go forward just as concerns were brimming that Israel would launch a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The exercise was rescheduled for late October and appears likely to go forward on the cusp of the U.S. presidential election. But it won’t be nearly the same exercise. Well-placed sources in both countries have told TIME that Washington has greatly reduced the scale of U.S. participation, slashing by more than two-thirds the number of American troops going to Israel and reducing both the number and potency of missile-interception systems at the core of the joint exercise.

“Basically what the Americans are saying is, ‘We don’t trust you,’” a senior Israeli military official says.

The reductions are striking. Instead of the approximately 5,000 U.S. troops originally trumpeted for Austere Challenge 12, as the annual exercise is called, the Pentagon will send only 1,500 service members and perhaps as few as 1,200. Patriot antimissile systems will arrive in Israel as planned, but the crews to operate them will not. Instead of two Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense warships being dispatched to Israeli waters, the new plan is to send one, though even the remaining vessel is listed as a “maybe,” according to officials in both militaries.

The claim is that there are “budget” issues, but it’s a brushback pitch directed at Benyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, who both seek to derive personal political gain from an attack.

I approve, particularly in the case of Netanyahu, who, if reports are accurate, is still driven by the need for approval from his nonagenarian revisionist father, and that’s a level of crazy that ill serves both the security needs of Israel and the United States.

Amoral and crazy is a toxic mix, and Netanyahu has it in spades.

This Does Not Promote the Progress of Science and Useful Arts

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This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.

Or how the capture of our IP regulatory process by rent seekers has f%$#ed us all:

Last night, robots shut down the live broadcast of one of science fiction’s most prestigious award ceremonies. No, you’re not reading a science fiction story. In the middle of the annual Hugo Awards event at Worldcon, which thousands of people tuned into via video streaming service Ustream, the feed cut off — just as Neil Gaiman was giving an acceptance speech for his Doctor Who script, “The Doctor’s Wife.” Where Gaiman’s face had been were the words, “Worldcon banned due to copyright infringement.” What the hell?

Jumping onto Twitter, people who had been watching the livestream began asking what was going on. How could an award ceremony have anything to do with copyright infringement?

………

And then it began to dawn on people what happened. Gaiman had just gotten an award for his Doctor Who script. Before he took the stage, the Hugo Awards showed clips from his winning episode, along with clips from some other Doctor Who episodes that had been nominated, as well as a Community episode.

………

This was, of course, absurd. First of all, the clips had been provided by the studios to be shown during the award ceremony. The Hugo Awards had explicit permission to broadcast them. But even if they hadn’t, it is absolutely fair use to broadcast clips of copyrighted material during an award ceremony. Unfortunately, the digital restriction management (DRM) robots on Ustream had not been programmed with these basic contours of copyright law.

I would also note that the use of clips in an award show used to be clearly fair use, but they had the rights anyway, but the zero tolerance of the RIAA, the MPAA, and the BBC (who do you think produces Dr. Who).

Rent seeking is always a source of inefficiency in the economy, and it should be allowed, as in the case of patent and copyright, only to the degree to which we as a society see a benefit.

The current IP regime is an impediment, not an aid to innovation and other productive work.

Where I Was Yesterday

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I was kind of out of it after Saturday’s Trial by Fire, which I put down to rushing, the high humidity, and the fact that I did not eat until 6pm.

It turned out to be a bit more than that.

Yesterday evening, my forearms and calves began to hurt, and I was feeling too crappy to post.

When juxtaposed with the sore throat and cough that I’ve had for the past 2 weeks, had me worried about something like meningitis.

Even though I have a doctor’s appointment later this week, I went to the local clinic at my wife’s insistence.

The doctor saw me, and prescribed antibiotics for my sore throat, a short series of corticosteroids, and a cough medicine.

He also told me to lay off both the statin and the niacin that I am taking, as muscle pain of this sort is a not uncommon side effect for both drugs.

After picking the prescription, and taking all the pills, I sacked out for 4 hours.

When I woke up, I felt a lot better.  I still have a bit of pain, but I feel normal, and my sore throat is gone (indicating that it was bacterial).

I need to take a fasting blood test tomorrow to check muscle enzyme levels.  (CPK)

So, I appear to be all better, so there will be further bloggy goodness, though with Charlie’s Bar Mitzvah on Saturday, it will be light posting.

Best Trial By Fire Performance Ever

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On Saturday, I competed in Trial By Fire, which is a cooking competition, where you compete to cook authentic medieval dishes (650-1650 CE in this case)in 4 categories (Meat, Grain, Vegetable, Dessert) in 4 hours in camping conditions (no electricity, but bottled gas/coleman is OK).

I competed with two dishes, Toad in the Hole (Yorkshire Pudding with sausage in it), and Fried Kubba Kari (rice dumplings stuffed with the same), and I also made a thoroughly not-in-the-historical-period sausage gravy, because I had just cooked 2 lbs of lamb sausage, and because I had always wanted to make some.

Both the Toad in the Hole and the sausage gravy turned out well, though the dumplings did not.  They were made with broken rice, which was thoroughly cooked, but we could not get it to stick together, so it ended up fried rice with sausage.

Note on Recipes:
The following recipes are airy free.  I will replaced milk with almond milk, and butter with rendered chicken fat (schmaltz) so that they were kosher (fleishig) dishes.

Additionally, because of poor planning on my part, I picked up flour in the last minute, and could not find white flour without malted barley flour (Sharon* is allergic to malt and barley), so I used “white wheat” flour, which is not as suitable.

Recipes:

Toad in the Hole:

  • Roll Sausage in olive small balls, and brown in a skillet.
  • Mix with Yorkshire Pudding batter (see below).
  • Place cast iron dutch oven in a fire pit with the lid off. (I used the bottom of my charcoal smoker)
  • Place Dutch oven lid in fire as well.
  • Add ¼ cup of fat. (Drippings from a roast is traditional, you can also use olive oil, I used Schmaltz)
  • When the oil is just screaming hot (shimmering) pour the batter and sausage mixture in the dutch oven, and place the lid on, and pile coals on the lid. (See pic) This serves to create an oven effect on top of a fire.
  • Cook 20-30 minutes until puffy and brown on top.

Yorkshire Pudding Batter

Ingredients:

  • 6 large eggs
  • 1¼ Cup of Milk (I am using Almond Milk)
  • 1¼ Cup of flour
  • Pinch of salt
  • 3 tbsp of sweet butter (I am using Schmaltz)

Preparation:

  • Beat eggs and milk and melted schmaltz together until foamy.
  • Place the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl and make a well in and add the wet ingredients.
  • Beat until completely smooth (it should have the consistency of heavy cream).
  • Let the batter rest for 30-60 minutes before putting in pan for cooking.

Sausage Gravy

Ingredients:

  • 3 tablespoons butter (I am using chicken fat, not butter)
  • ¼ cup all-purpose flour
  • 3 cups whole milk (will be using almond milk)
  • salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:

  • Place sausage in a large, deep skillet.
  • Cook over medium-high heat until evenly brown.
  • Remove sausage with a slotted spoon, leaving the drippings in the pan.
  • Add butter, and stir until melted.
  • Add flour, turn heat to medium and stir until smooth and slightly brown.
  • Add milk slowly, stirring constantly.
  • Add back the crumbled sausage remaining after stuffing the Kubba Kari continuing to stir.
  • When the mixture has thickened, salt and pepper to taste.
  • If gravy becomes too thick, stir in a little more milk.

The sausage recipe I posted on the blog in 2007.

I did not win anything, but this is the first time that I’ve had a recipe actually go from the page to the table as intended at Trial by Fire. 

I have had things which became successful additions to my culinary repertoire, like my Indian spice rub, but this is the first time that my recipe turned out as initially intended.

There were no fire management issues, the batter came together well.

Considering the fact that I came up with the recipes about a week ahead of time, I got to cooking an hour late, that I didn’t do a trial run, and that this was my first time working with a roux (the sausage gravy), I am pleased with my results.

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

Too Pooped to Post

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Today, I participated in the annual local SCA group’s cooking competition.

We got there late, and I had nothing to eat until about 5 pm as a result of us rushing to get there.

Then I spent 4 hours cooking historical recipes under camping conditions in 90° heat and high humidity.

I feel like a hard of elephants stampeded over me, so I’m turning in now.

Posted via mobile.

Good News Out of Florida

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Federal Judge Robert Hinkle has announced that if the Appeals court remands or dismisses the state of Florida’s appeal, he will issue a permanent injunction against their voter suppression law:

A federal judge said Wednesday he would permanently remove harsh restrictions on third-party voter registration groups that have handicapped registration efforts in Florida this year. U.S. District Judge Robert L. Hinkle said he would grant a motion to permanently remove the restrictions once he receives confirmation that a federal appeals court has dismissed the case (the state of Florida has agreed to dismiss their appeal).

Hopefully, this will happen in the rest of the states that are trying to people from voting while black.

My Life is Complete

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I hav found a website that has translated “My Hovercraft is Full of Eels” into the following languages:  Afrikaans, Albanian, Arabic, (Modern Standard), Armenian, (Eastern), Armenian, (Western), Aromanian, Azeri, Basque, Belarusian, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Breton, Bulgarian, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chinese, (Cantonese), Chinese, (Mandarin), Chinese, (Taiwanese), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, Frisian (Northern), Frisian (Western), Galician, Georgian, German, Greek (Ancient), Greek (Modern), Greenlandic, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Inuktitut, Irish (Gaelic), Italian, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Low German, Luxembourgish, Macedonian, Manx, Māori, Malay, Malayalam, Maltese, Marathi, Mongolian, Norwegian, Occitan, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Proto-Indo-European, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Samoan, Sardinian, (Logudorese), Scots, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian, Shona, Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Spanish, Sumerian, Swahili, Swedish, Swiss German, Tagalog, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Tok Pisin, Tongan, Tsotsil, Turkish, Tuvan, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Venetian, Vietnamese, Võro, Welsh, Yiddish, Yorùbá, Zulu, Klingon, Avallaen, Esperanto, Interlingua, Ithkuil, Lojban, Toki Pona, Volapük.

There are languages on this list that I’ve never heard of.

For those of you who don’t understand, it’s a Monty Python thing:

The Story Behind the Story

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OK, one of the inevitable cliches of modern Presidential campaign coverage is the veepstakes, followed by the post mortem of this decisions.

Well, this article has a deeply interesting back-story:

Gov. Chris Christie wasn’t willing to give up the New Jersey statehouse to be Mitt Romney’s running mate because he doubted they’d win, The Post has learned.

Romney’s top aides had demanded Christie step down as the state’s chief executive because if he didn’t, strict pay-to-play laws would have restricted the nation’s largest banks from donating to the campaign — since those banks do business with New Jersey.

But Christie adamantly refused to sacrifice his post, believing that being Romney’s running mate wasn’t worth the gamble.

“[Christie] felt, at one point, that [President] Obama could lose this. And, look, there still is that chance. But he knows, right now, you have to say it’s unlikely,” one source said.

The tough-talking governor believed Romney severely damaged his campaign by releasing only limited tax returns and committing several gaffes during his international tour in July.

Certain Romney was doomed, Christie stuck to his guns — even as some of his own aides pushed him to run, another source said.

OK, why is this story different from all the other useless veepstake gossip?

It isn’t the pay to play rules, which are straightforward: If a governor is running, the big banks pretty would have to choose between contributing to Mitt, or doing pension business with New Jersey.

The big story is that this article was published in the The New York Post.

That’s right, it was published in Rupert Murdoch’s house organ (there is the Wall Street Journal, but they have to preserve the illusion of credibility in non-business news).

I’ve racked my brain, and I can come up with only two reasons for Murdoch allowing a story like this to be published:

  • He is convinced that Romney is going to lose.
  • He has Barack Obama’s genitals in his back pocket.

It could be both.

Basically, when you look at Murdoch’s media empire, much of it depends on regulatory arbitrage, allowing him to form defacto monopolies, and skirt media cross ownership rules.

It’s why his continued ownership of dead tree newspapers make sense:  To a much greater degree than the broadcast medium, they can engage in long form journalism that sets the tone for a campaign, and so politicians curry favor with him.

The papers may not generate profits, but they allow him to curry favor with politicians and regulators, which in turn make the size and scope of his broadcast and satellite operations possible.

H/t Cthulhu at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

F%$# the NRA, Without Lube

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We had another shooting, this one local:

Charged as an adult in the Perry Hall High School shooting, 15-year-old Robert Wayne Gladden Jr., was held without bond Tuesday as a portrait of a withdrawn and occasionally bullied student with a troubled home life emerged through interviews with classmates and court documents.

The suspect, who underwent a mental health evaluation Tuesday, remains at the Baltimore County Detention Center. He was charged with attempted murder and assault in the cafeteria shooting on Monday, the first day of classes. Gladden’s lawyer, George Psoras Jr., cautioned against a rush to judgment, saying the bullying his client endured pushed him to a breaking point.

(Emphasis mine)

One of Natalie’s BFFs, Abbey, goes to Perry Hall high, and was in the cafeteria when the shooting went down.  (She was uninjured)

What a Surprist

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A federal appeals court has determined that Texas’ redistricting plan had a deliberately discriminatory intent and effect:

Hispanic and black voters in Texas were vindicated on Tuesday when a federal three-judge panel rejected the state’s new redistricting plans for Congressional and state legislative seats. A panel of the United States District Court in the District of Columbia properly found that the maps, based on the 2010 census, had a discriminatory purpose and effect in reducing the ability of minority voters to elect candidates they favor.
The evidence of the discrimination was stark. Almost 90 percent of the 4.3 million growth in the state’s population in the last decade came from minority residents. That growth qualified Texas for four additional Congressional seats, and it required the state to create new voting districts. Yet instead of adding districts in which minority voters could elect candidates of their choice, the Republican-controlled Legislature drew the districts in a way that reduced the number represented by members of minority groups. About some districts, the panel said, the plans maintained “the semblance of Hispanic voting power,” but the mapmakers actually diluted it.
Texas is covered under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act for its history of voting discrimination. It was in court because it had to get prior approval for any changes to its voting procedures from a federal court or the Justice Department — and it could receive permission only if it could prove that the changes would not have a discriminatory effect. The judges, sensibly, said no.

As the court’s majority opinion noted, no major surgery was performed by the lawmakers on the Congressional districts of white incumbents. But there was “unchallenged evidence” that in four minority districts, the Legislature performed surgery to cut out “economic engines” and harm the districts. In a couple of cases, the Republicans cut out the district offices of the members of Congress.

You mean that Texas Republicans are racist ratf%$#s?

Hoodoodanode?

You Just Knew That He Had His Piggy Little Fingers in All This

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I’m (very) late to this story, but I’d just like to note that televangelist Pat Robertson is up to his hips in blood diamonds and crimes against humanity:

On February 4, 2010, Charles Taylor testified before the Special Court for Sierra Leone in The Hague, that Robertson was his primary political ally in the US. Taylor stated during his war crimes trial that Robertson had agreed to promote Liberia to the US administration in exchange for additional benefits for Freedom Gold, Ltd.

I really wish that we had signed onto the International Criminal Court.

No Blogging for You!

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No Soup For You!

I was unrooting my phone so that I could update, and I forgot to uncheck the “repartition” check box on ODIN, so I wiped my phone.

Thankfully, I regularly backup my contacts, and my web browser, and so it was just a matter of reinstalling the apps, which I had recorded in screen shots for just such an emergency.

Still have to fix the ringtones though.

BTW, I cannot recommend my contacts synching utility MyPhoneExplorer, highly enough. It allows one to sync, contacts, calendar, and notes via USB, Bluetooth, or WiFi. It can work with both its own PIM, or with Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.

Russia to Order AN-70 Transports

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The Russian Air Force is planning to order 60 of the transports:

Ukrainian company Antonov together with Russian United Aircraft Corporation will participate in manufacturing Antonov An-70 transport airplanes. Russian defense ministry already placed an order for 60 such machines, USD 67 million apiece. Developed since 1978, An-70 can carry heavier cargo than existing transport planes and land on ill-equipped runways.

An-70 can carry 300 troopers, or 200 injured persons, or 47 tons of freight. Comparably, the closest alternative to An-70 – the Airbus A400M Atlas – can carry 37 tons of cargo. Market price of the Spanish A400M is EUR 145 million, whereas the Ukrainian An-70 costs less than USD 70 million.

Planes An-70 will be produced at JSC Gorbunov Kazan Aviation Production Association in Kazan, Russia. The plane can fly at a speed of 780 kilometers per hour at distances of up to 7,800 kilometers. An-70 is capable of landing on 600-800 meter runways with earth surfaces. Onboard navigation equipment allows the plane to land and takeoff at airports lacking special earth-based equipment.

This is interesting, and not just because it represents a rapprochement between Russian and Ukrainian defense industry.

By almost every metric (except for noise where, the contra rotating props create a racket), it equals the A400M, and if this order is sufficient to make the production line viable, it could be a major headache for EADS.