You know you're living in Alaska when...

Visitors in my front yard this evening, and just enough light to get a couple of good pictures. This is a very large cow moose and her yearling male calf. She's lived around here since we have, and always has at least one, sometimes two, calves a year.

We were a little worried about this calf, last winter he twisted his front left ankle. It was swollen and he was having a hard time in the snow. Frankly, I didn't think he'd make it. But he heeled up and it looks like he's doing just fine.


This is them on the other side of the driveway, ripping branches off the Black Currant tree.

And just for the record, I picked up every dammed leaf in the front yard yesterday. The trees, they hate me.

Don't Expect Much Today

Mostly sunny and reasonably nice today. And I've got a dozen errands to run and things to do in the yard and shop, things that I can only do when it's nice out. You know how it is, got to get ready for winter - which in Alaska is no joke.

So, I'll leave you with a little Mark Knopfler and Eric Clapton, the live version of Sultans of Swing. I love this song, most especially the instrumental that makes up the last 2/3's of this video. Knopfler is a fingerstyle player (he doesn't use a pick) which makes his sound very distinctive, I can pick his music out of any background. I once saw him do this song in London with Dire Straits, and it was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.

Some trivia regarding the man (from the Wikipedia):
* British author and humorist Douglas Adams said about Knopfler, in his book So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish: "Mark Knopfler has an extraordinary ability to make a Schecter Custom Stratocaster hoot and sing like angels on a Saturday night, exhausted from being good all week and needing a stiff beer."
* The dinosaur species Masiakasaurus knopfleri was named after Knopfler. The paleontologists were listening to Dire Straits recordings when they discovered the species.
* On Weird Al Yankovic's parody of "Money for Nothing", "Money for Nothing/Beverly Hillbillies", Knopfler played guitar in the song, recreating the memorable guitar riff from the original song. He also appeared in the music video, playing guitar and performing with Yankovic's backing band.
* Knopfler's guitar classic "Going Home" from the soundtrack to Local Hero was until 2007 used before kick-off at Newcastle United's home matches at St James' Park.
* According to director Rob Reiner, Knopfler agreed to write the music for Reiner's The Princess Bride on one condition: Reiner had to put the hat that he wore in This Is Spinal Tap in Princess Bride, "somewhere in evidence", as homage to the rock mockumentary. The hat makes its appearance in Princess Bride in the Grandson's (Fred Savage) bedroom.

I can live with that

Get Your Cyborg Name

Beware, Angry Bobcat!

Man, for some reason this just cracks me up. Sounds like something I would do.

I've always loved comics for some reason, the kind with quirky, biting humor are always my favorites. Bloom County, Farside, Calvin and Hobbles, man I miss those. But on the upside, there are a number of very good regional comics that can be found on teh internets nowadays, along with some purely web-based comics. Besides the brilliantly funny XKCD, I read:

Russell's Teapot - Be warned, crudely drawn, irreverent Atheist type humor
WAR Comic - The Secret Lives of Mobs, by Rory Phillips. Kind of a cross between gaming humor and Tolkien, terrific artwork.
Get Fuzzy - by Darby Conley, also a syndicated newspaper comic. A bemused pet owner, his bemused dog, and an psychotic cat. With the occasional weasel.
Pearls Before Swine - by Stephen Pastis. also a syndicated newspaper comic. Zeba Zeba Eata! From some reason, I find this strip hysterically funny on an almost daily basis. I know people exactly like the Crocs, and personality-wise I probably resemble Rat more than a little.
CTL-ALT-DEL - by Tim Buckley. A comic about a gaming addict.

So, what comics do you read?

Just when I think people can't get any worse...

I hate loud noise, it interrupts my thought process and I find that incredibly irritating. Loud trucks, sirens, ringing cell phones, car alarms, squealing cheerleaders, and most especially that dammed shrill penetrating beep! beep! beep! from backing heavy construction equipment (don't they ever drive those things forward?). I love the peace and stillness of the Alaskan bush, without a single sound of humanity, just the wind and water. I am usually opposed to anything that increases the ambient man-made noise level.

So it never occurred to me that there could be such a thing as too quiet, especially when it comes to cars. Turns out I'm wrong. Again.

Try to imagine my surprise.

"Because hybrids make virtually no noise at slower speeds when they run solely on electric power, blind people say they pose a hazard to those who rely on their ears to determine whether it's safe to cross the street or walk through a parking lot."

Well hell, that never occurred to me. I can see where these people are coming from (no pun intended, or at least not maliciously intended). The National Federation for the Blind and other groups are advocating that quiet technology cars such as hybrids and electrics be equipped with some type of noise generator so that that the vision impaired can hear them coming. Now, they're not talking about some kind of wailing siren or some such; a number of folks have suggested something that sounds similar to a conventional internal combustion engine. Sounds reasonable to me, in fact, I think this idea benefits everybody, vision impaired or not. Kids. People not paying attention. Cyclists. Road construction workers. Hell, even animals. Most of us have been conditioned from birth to associate the sound of an approaching internal combustion engine with "Danger! Brain to feet - get out of the way." It doesn't seem like the device should increase the cost of new hybrids by much if at all, or be at all that difficult to retro-fit onto existing ultra quiet cars. Also, it just seems like the right thing to do. And it sure doesn't seem like it's any skin off my ass to make the lives of blind people a little easier. I mean, I can be a callus jerk upon occasion, but I'm not that big of callus jerk - being blind sucks enough as it is without silent cars sneaking up on you.

So, I was more than a bit appalled to read some of the comments attached to this article. Here's a few of the more idiotic examples:

"Keep the car quiet, it’s not being marketed to the blind" Exactly, blind people drive loud cars.

"...create a law banning blind people from crossing the street..." Or we could just ban this commenter from driving again, ever.

"...make it mandatory for the blind to wear inflatable pads all over their bodies." I think this commenter should have a mandatory pad over his mouth.

"and I’m sure zebra don’t want to be eaten by a quiet tiger either, but it happens. It’s natural selection. deal with it." Ah, eugenics. Because if you're going to be an asshole, you might as well pervert Darwin to support you ideas.

"The idea of reducing noise pollution seems more important." Well, it is true that dead blind people make less noise than the live ones. Of course that applies to jerkoff commenters too, just saying.

"They should be walking on sidewalks. If they get hit here, it’s due to the reckless driver, and they likely would not be able to do anything about it anyway." Yeah, wouldn't want to give them a sporting chance or anything.

And my personal favorite: "Put baseball cards in the wheel spokes." Though to be fair, I think this last was actually meant to be funny.

There's more. A lot more.

What. A. Bunch. Of. Utter. Assholes!


Attention Assholes: Can you hear this noise? That would be the sound of my blood beginning to fizz and boil. I wouldn't wish blindness on anybody, but if there is such a thing as karma, you jerks are overdue for a good smack upside the head with the Detached Retina stick.

The Rushes

You know, some things just frustrate me.

I came across this group, The Rushes, a little band out of London. Check out that first song on the mySpace player, What You Waiting For. I really like that tune, and I'd really, really like to buy the album. But it's only available, apparently, on iTunes - which for previously stated reasons, doesn't work for me. Argh!

If anybody can figure out how I can get this album, I'd be grateful.

Over-Unity is real!

Uh oh, anybody else smell another really bad Val Kilmer movie in this astounding discovery? More here.

" It sounds too good to be true - not to mention the fact that it violates almost every known law of physics." - from the 2nd article.

Those British, they're such kidders.



Of course, if this doesn't turn out to be cold fusion all over again, I'll have to apologize, again. And I will. Hell, I'll even buy one of the dammed things.

Sunrise on the Peak

Frost! It was 29F this morning and the yard is coated in frost. But, no rain! The sky is clear and blue and the sunrise on Pioneer Peak is spectacular this morning.

Hell, it might even be dry enough to pick up all the leaves in the yard today. Whoohoo!

Also, for those of you who care, we had our local MatSu Borough elections yesterday - and it looks like we managed to toss out the old, corrupt school board and elect all new members in what amounts to a landslide, including my good friend Susan Pougher who will be filling Seat C. Congratulations, Sue!

This is major poetic justice for Sue, who was fired from her job as head of School Food Services, through some major unethical bullshit by the Administration with the backing of the outed school board. Ha! Reap the whirlwind, boys.

Strangeness afoot

I had some kind of MS Outlook meltdown this morning. Actually I think it's the spam handler integration.

So, if you've emailed me and are expecting a reply. Be patient, I'm working on it. Should have it fixed shortly.

Update: I appear to have fixed the problem. It was exchange server. Needed to be purged and rebooted. Seems to be working fine now. But, I don't know how long it was acting strangely, so if you got a bounce back email from me, try again. Thanks.

Evolution Inaction

I'm a firm believer in the theory of evolution. I also believe in the corollary that says: Once evolution produces intelligence (intelligence being a relative condition, as we will see below), evolution stops in that species, because the weak, crippled, and just plain stupid are protected and allowed to breed - thus passing their defective genes on to the next generation of booger eating morons.

Every day I see undeniable proof that evolution has achieved a state of stasis in the human species. Allow me to present a couple of observations from the first few hours of today:

I took my kid to school this morning and then, because I was already out, I decided to go the extra five miles into Palmer to the coffee shop. There's a Starbucks in the local Fred Meyer and Tamie, the barrista, knows exactly how I like my coffee without asking, so it's worth the five minute drive. Usually there's nobody in line at 7AM, which is good thing because I despise standing in line, but this morning there was one woman ahead of me. Mid-twenties maybe, reasonably attractive in that outdoorsy Alaskan way, and just irritating the crap out of me - because instead of ordering her dammed coffee she's got to ask questions. What's good this morning? Are these free samples free? Can I write a check? Blah blah and etc. Look, lady, it's a coffee shop, order coffee, then get the hell out of my way. Eventually, she moves on and I get my morning jolt of hot caramelated caffeine. Because I was already in the store, I figured I'd pick up a couple of things. I was probably in the store twenty minutes or so, including the time I spent in line behind Irritating Lady. I'm walking out of the store, who's ahead of me? That's right, her. As I'm getting into my truck I see her getting into her monster SUV directly in front of me. The SUV is running. Hmmm, says I, that's a little odd - leaving your giant gas guzzling monster running while you're in the store for 25 minutes, what with $3.10 a gallon for gas and all. But wait...what's that in the back seat? Why a small child, strapped into a child safety seat. The kid is maybe two? Crying and obviously upset at being left in the fucking car while her mother is inside the store shopping. What the hell is this women thinking? How many more tragic, sobbing distraught mothers do we need to see on the evening news, blubbering the immortal line "but, but, I only left her alone for a minute."

Not so long ago, this child would have been eaten by saber-toothed cats while her idiot cave dwelling mother was off getting her nails done at some neolithic beauty parlor. However, despite her unfortunate choice of mother, this child will probably survive to adulthood and thus stand a reasonable chance of breeding herself - and thereby saddling future generations with the Stupid-Parent gene.

While I'm still debating with myself whether or not I should say something to this idiot women, she speeds off and the question becomes moot. Driving home, I was still shaking my head and wondering how the human race managed to survive so far. Suddenly, my contemplations were interrupted by the blood-freezing roaring of hunting saber-toothed tigers! What? No, actually as it turns out, it's a kid on a two-stroke dirt bike going past me. I'm doing 45-50MPH and this kid is passing me. It's dark out, pouring rain, and he's doing at least 60MPH down the paved walking/bike path beside the road - jumping the side streets without looking or slowing down - headed towards the high school. Late for class I'm guessing, that or a meeting with his parole officer. Now being a small Alaskan town, the Palmer cops normally have nothing to do but act like swaggering assholes and harass the people who pay their salaries (if they're reading this, I mean that in the most respectful don't tazer me sort of way). Meaning that they are usually about in the morning on this particular patch of the road, so I'm looking around for one hoping he'll nab this little joker before he kills himself or somebody else. But, of course, the cops are nowhere to be found. And sure enough, about that time the kid hits a patch of mud, slides sideways for a few feet before going ass over teakettle into the weeds. Sigh. I pull over, reach into the back seat for the first aid kit and flashlight. I climb out of the truck, hoping I'm not going to find a dead mangled kid-shaped smear, and flipped open my cell phone to dial 911. As I'm sliding down the wet grass into the ditch and before I can finish dialing, the kid pops up out of the weeds. "Fuck!" he yells, "These are my good jeans!" And without so much as a glance in my direction he stands the bike up, hops on, and roars off into the dark and rain. He can't be any older than 14 at the outside.

Again, what in the hell are his parents thinking? What is this kid doing on a dirt bike at 7:30 in the morning, in the rain, in the dark, with no lights, with no safety gear other than a cheap half face helmet, doing 60MPH illegally down the walking path? Not so long ago evolution would have deleted this kid from gene pool by having a mastodon stomp him and his good jeans into the permafrost while his fur-bearing parents were off doing whatever neolithic Yuppies did at 7:30 in the morning. Is it the kid's fault? Hell no, of course not, teenagers are idiots by definition - that's why they are supposed to have parents. Since this kid's parents seem to lack even the most rudimentary concern for his welfare, I suspect that they won't much care when he knocks up some high school cheerleader and manages to pass his parent's clueless chromosomes on to the next generation of retards.

While I have no empirical proof to offer, I suspect that these idiots are outbreeding the rest of us (notice how I put myself and the readers of this blog in the "not-stupid" category? You're welcome). What we need around here, are some saber-tooth cats. Hungry saber-toothed cats. That would get evolution back on track in short order.

Caveat Emptor

There’s a scene in Inferno, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s revisit to Dante Alighieri’s classic The Divine Comedy, where the protagonist, Carpentier, is attempting to pass a guardian demon and return to an upper circle of Hell. The demon accuses the dammed-to-hell writer Carpentier of creating his own religion with his books, but Carpentier says, no, it was only a game. The demon nods thoughtfully and replies “Games” then steps forward and slashes Carpentier on his bare chest, leaving two deep parallel cuts from chin to navel. Carpentier stumbles back, bleeding profusely, aghast, staring at his ruined stomach - and then he slowly realizes what the demon intends, and so he steps forward again, saying the classic line, “Once again, Carpentier demonstrates his inability to learn.” The demon slashes two more cuts, perpendicular to the first, a crosshatch, and after a moment you understand. It’s a game, tic-tac-toe. Carpentier beats the demon at the game, by scratching the symbols into his own flesh with his fingernail. As he stumbles away, holding his bloody eviscerated belly together with his bare hands, the demon asks “Best two out of three?”

When I read about the current woes by owners of the Apple iPhone, I am vividly reminded of that scene. Once again, Apple customers demonstrate their inability to learn. Like the dammed souls in The Divine Comedy, they too wail for salvation, but they’ve made their deal with the devil and now they are suffering the consequences.

Apple bills itself as the company that “thinks different.” Apple has, right from the beginning, appeared to represent those that prize creativity, innovation, and artistry. The current “I’m a Mac and I’m a PC” advertising campaign is the epitome of this concept, poking fun at the stodgy, confined, business orientated world. iMacs are fun, easy to use, and they will free your soul from the chains of the hell that is the Personal Computer. What doesn’t appear in those ads is that Apple has never allowed anyone else to build the Macintosh hardware platform; you buy it from Apple or you don’t buy it. And it’s the same with Mac software to large extent, which is, of course, why you just can’t find much native Mac software, certainly not to the extent that you can for the PC. Many Mac users have resorted to loading the Microsoft XP operating system, so they can actually, you know, do something other than paint pretty pictures and play with photo layouts.

Then there’s the iPod. “Decisions, decisions. Who needs ’em?” says the Apple iPod webpage. Who indeed? Buy an iPod and you’ve given up your ability to choose; its iTunes software and the iTunes store or nothing. You’ll damn well listen to your music the way Apple says, or not at all.

Neither of the observations regarding the Macintosh computer or the iPod are condemnations. Steve Jobs and Apple have a corporate vision of how they want to do business, and they neither desire nor require any outside input on how that vision should go. It’s their right to do so, of course. And despite the many proclamations over the years sounding the death knell of Apple, the company has managed to hang in there and grow and succeed, so they must be doing something right. But, make no mistake, Apple is not some 1960's California hippy artist commune, they are a business, and they have just as much of a corporate vision as the rest of the stodgy tech industry that they claim to disdain. They have repeatedly and aggressively moved to protect that corporate vision. And it’s about time that their customers realized this.

It shouldn’t have been any surprise to owners of the iPhone that Apple would protect their considerable investment. Don’t get me wrong, I understand where these people are coming from. I mean, if I drop $500 on a phone then it’s mine, dammit, I’ll do with it as I please. But then again, I probably wouldn’t spend $500 dollars on a phone, even one that is supposed to do all the nifty things the iPhone is supposed to do – at least not yet. My motto, if I had a motto, would have to be: Never buy version 1 of anything. And therein lies the crux of the matter, the current iPhone, like the iMac and iPod, is all flash and dazzle. It is creative, and innovative, and it is artistry – but sometimes you just need to do business like everybody else. Sometimes you want options. The iPhone’s limitations are many: no Bluetooth capability; limited wireless broadband support; no Flash support and limited Javascript and poor frame handling capability; a 10MB limit on Web pages; only Apple Quicktime support for video and audio; no resizing or scrolling controls, the iPhone automatically resizes display images to default, no matter what the user wants; no way to cut, copy, or paste text; can’t choose or load your own ringtones; no video record capability; and the biggest limitation of all – you’re stuck on the shitty AT&T network.

It shouldn’t have been any surprise to Apple that the users they’ve been exhorting to “Think Different” all these years actually, you know, would. People have come to expect, demand actually, that their portable devices be able to do certain things. It should be no surprise that people who spent considerable sums of money on the iPhone didn’t want to be constrained by the iPhone’s limitations. Almost immediately hacks and software widgets appeared on the Web to get around those limits, making the device more usable and integral to people’s lives. Apple wasn’t having any of that, last week they pushed out an update that either slicked those unauthorized modifications, or rendered modified iPhones permanently inoperable. And iPhone owners are steamed, there’s even talk of a class action lawsuit – though at this point it’s just that, talk. And frankly I don’t think people who now own a very expensive inert iBrick have a pot to piss in. They were warned, Apple stated quite clearly in the upgrade announcement, that this was the likely result if users had modified their phones in a manner not approved by Apple itself. But iPhone users just didn't want to believe it, didn't want to believe that Apple had become "The Man," and so most of them upgraded anyway.

Once again, both Apple customers and Apple itself demonstrate their mutual inability to learn. Apple customers continue to believe, with cult-like devotion, despite all evidence to the contrary that Apple is something other than what it is: a big corporation with big corporation goals. And Apple itself continues to believe that it can shit all over its customers and get away with it. I watch with amusement as iPhone owners stagger away, holding their bleeding guts in their hands – I can almost hear Steve Jobs’ voice saying, “Best two out of three?”

It's that time of year

There were bears in the blueberry fields on Lazy Mountain yesterday. Just another sign that winter is on the way. In this part of Alaska, after salmon season, the bears move up into the berry fields trying to pack away enough calories for their winter hibernation. We have a lot of berry bushes on our property, cranberries, raspberries, and rosehips. I've seen black bear tracks in the mud on the trails behind our house, but so far we haven't had them in the yard.

This picture above is a fairly common joke around here.

The Joys of Being a Homeowner, part II

Been a little busy the last two days.

Yesterday was sunny for the first time in a month (and based on the pouring rain this morning, the only time this month), so I was out in the yard all day, working to get ready for winter. Snow is now just over halfway down the mountains behind the house and it could start snowing in the valley at any time now. My property is heavily wooded, and the cleared grassy part that is my front yard is about an acre, which means I've got a shitload of leaves to pick up every year. So that's what I was doing yesterday. Most of it I can pick up with the bagger towed behind my garden tractor. I had to trim back some of the trees and cut down all the pulpy dying rhubarb. I probably hauled ten to twelve bagger loads and a couple of garden trailer loads of yard waste back to the compost heap behind the shop. I also needed to make some repairs to the soffits and eves and replace a few cedars shakes. Recaulked the sunroom windows. All in all, I was pretty happy with what I got done yesterday.

Last night it stormed, and the yard of full of crap again. Sigh.

Help you, I will

Today's favorite spam email subject line:

"Thanks, a girl to be yours in here found!"

Yoda, the spammer, the Jedi have indeed fallen on hard times.

One of these days, Alice! To the Moon!

I watch a lot of nerd TV: the Discovery Channel, The History Channel, The Military Channel, National Geographic, The Learning Channel, The…well, you get the idea.

Something I’ve noticed - almost every show employs some fairly ill-defined units of measurement.

For example: tonight I was watching Modern Marvels – Snack Food Tech II (Hey! I like to know stuff) and the show made the following statement: “If all the Coca-Cola ever made was bottled in 8oz bottles, stacked end to end, it would reach to the moon and back 136 times.” Holy shit! That’s a lot of brown carbonated beverage, but that’s not what I’m getting at. It’s that whole “…to the moon and back…” part. This type of comparison is used a lot on these shows, I think a little clarification is in order.

This measurement is not well defined, do they mean from center to center of the two bodies? Or from surface to surface? Logically, I assume surface to surface, surface being sea level on Earth and the average surface level on the Moon. Now the Moon is in an elliptical orbit around the Earth so the distance between the two bodies doesn't remain constant, but mean distance, center to center, between the Earth and Moon is approximately 238,863 miles. The Earth is about 8,000 miles in diameter, and the moon is roughly a quarter that at 2159 miles more or less. Subtracting the radius of the moon, 1079 miles, and the radius of the Earth, 4000 miles from the mean Earth/Moon distance gives us roughly 233,784 miles surface to surface, plus or minus a certain margin of error which I’m just going to ignore. 233,784 miles, times 2 (there and back again), times 136 equals 63 million, 589 thousand, 248 miles. Like I said above, holy shit! That’s a lot of Coke.

Another common measurement on these shows is the Earth’s circumference. I.e. if all the iPods currently in existence were laid end to end, they would make a line long enough to stretch completely around the Earth. Again, just a little vague here, which iPod model? The numbers vary significantly depending on if we're talking Classic or Nano for example. For the purposes of convenience I'm just going to average all the models together. Now the circumference of the earth at the equator is 24,901.55 miles. But, if you measure the earth through the poles, the circumference is a bit shorter - 24,859.82 miles, because the earth is an oblate spheroid. In other words, it’s a little wider than it is tall, giving it a slight bulge at the equator. The difference is only 41 miles or so, but 41 miles is a lot of iPods, about 3.6 million by my calculations (based on an average of 6 inches per iPod). So, which measurement do they mean? Since most people think equatorial rather than circumpolar when they talk about Earth's circumference, I’m assuming we’re taking the 24.901.5 measurement.

And finally, another common unit of measurement on these shows is the distance between New York and Los Angeles, which is about 2445 miles. Now is this as the crow flies (assuming a crow would want to fly in a straight line between these two cities. Hey it could happen, New York ravens might get the urge to go Hollywood and find their fortunes), or are we talking highway miles here? Beats me. All I know is that if you took all the Starbucks Venti-sized paper cups and stacked them up, they’d make a line stretching from the Big Apple to the City of Angles. That’s a lot of Carmel Macciatoes, and would explain all those white paper cups I see alongside the road.

My question is this: who figures this out? Is there some kind of Office of Really Big Vague Measurements, manned by guys from the old Monty Python sketch comedy troop somewhere? As the future Ultimate Emperor of the Universe, I think it's just about time we did something a little more official about this.

ATTENTION International Standards Organization (ISO): It’s about time you got off your Swiss Chocolate yodeling asses and did your jobs. I’ve already done most of the math for you (see above), and I’ll even go the final step and suggest a couple of unit names as follows:

The Alice: the basic unit of mean distance between Earth and Moon, surface to surface, 233,784 statute miles (376,238 Kilometers). Named for Audrey Meadow’s character Alice Kramden on the hit TV show The Honeymooners. “To the Moon, Alice, to the moon!”

The Clemens: the basic unit of measurement around the Earth’s circumference at the Equator, 24,901 statute miles (40,074 kilometers). Named for Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, who in 1897 wrote the famous travelogue Following the Equator. Which was immortalized in one of my favorite Jimmy Buffet songs, which I'm listening to right now.

I’ve got no idea what to call the NY to LA measurement. You guys at the ISO need to do some work. Figure it out.

Maybe if you ask real nice, somebody here can come with an idea?

Stupid Congress Tricks

Well, at last, Democrats and Republicans have buried the hatchet and are making real bipartisan efforts to fix America's problems. At last they've put aside their bickering to work on the things real Americans are concerned about. Rep Heath Shuler, D-NC and Rep Walter Jones, R-NC are pushing the Family Friendly Flights Act. You know it's a good law, when it's got a catchy title.

"The airlines have chosen to put our children in a situation that I don't feel comfortable with," said Shuler.

They are, of course, talking about movies on airplanes. Oh God, the horror, the horror! The crux of the FFFA being that these two dipshits want the airlines to create "Kid Friendly" areas on each commercial plane.

ATTENTION NORTH CAROLINA IDIOTS: here's a better idea, let's pass an act that creates passenger friendly areas on airplanes.

Between the endless Gordian knot of asinine government regulations we already have, and the out and out incompetence and stupidity of the air carriers, air travel is one of the most irritating, aggravating, and miserable trials of modern life. Rep. Shuler isn't comfortable with the situation? I'd be willing to bet my next airline "snackbox" that he's a hell of a lot more comfortable up there in first class than I am back in the livestock section. Hey, Shuler, when was the last time you tried shoehorning your giant pro-football playing ass into one of those coach class seats? When was the last time you bought tickets a month in advance, reserving an isle seat because you've got knee and shoulder problems from defending your country and not your million dollar NFL career - only to check in and find out you've been moved into a middle seat because some fucking amateur sports team decided to change flights at the last minute and the plane is full of juiced-up teenagers and we're so sorry? I'm curious, Representative Jones, when was the last time you checked in for the redeye home with your children, only to be told by some check-in counter robot refugee from the DMV that, oopsy, we oversold the flight. But, hey, we'll put you on standby for the next flight. That next flight being 6 hours later. I'm curious, you two vote-pandering Congressional jackasses (yes, I know that's redundant), when was the last time you booked seats in advance for a family trip, checked in online, printed the adjoining tickets - and got to the airport only to find that the airline has reassigned your family to three widely separated seats (all of them middle seats) for some unknown reason? I have to wonder when these two privileged jerkoffs have had to stand for an hour with their kid in the TSA security line, so some former mall-cop Gestapo wannabe can check their shoes and make sure they don't have any of that dangerously explosive bottled water on them. These two morons should try sitting in an overloaded, poorly maintained piece of Boeing crap with over-flowing toilets and screaming kids on the tarmac at O'Hare for fours hours because the plane can't take off and the pilots aren't allowed to return to the terminal.

You want to make air travel better for children? Let's pass a law that allows passengers delayed by airline incompetence to camp out overnight at the airline CEO's house, and Mrs CEO has to fix them breakfast the next morning. I guaren-goddamm-tee you she'd make sure those people got where they were going on time. Let's pass a law that sends the airline board of directors to one of those secret CIA prisons in Bulgaria every time their reservation department "overbooks" a flight. I mean seriously, how hard is it? You've got 150 seats, you sell no more than a 150 tickets. This isn't rocket science, my 6th grader can figure this out. They can sure as hell do enough math to calculate their million dollar annual bonuses, they can do the seat math. The average American's ass gets wider by at least an inch a year, yet airline seat width is retreating faster than the Greenland ice sheet. Let's pass a law that mandates that the ergonomics of airline executives' office chairs must match those of their airline coach seats exactly, inch for inch. Make the seats better, you get a better office chair, otherwise you can suffer, bitch. Let's make a law that says every single time an airline imprisons it's paying customers in an airplane stuck on the runway for more than two hours because of "weather" or some other such bullshit, the children of every FAA employee are rounded up, put in a small room with one overflowing port-O-potty and no air conditioning until the situation is resolved.

Seriously, this is the top priority in North Carolina? Here's a real idea: let's let the free market sort it out. People who don't want their kids exposed to online movies should get together and petition the airlines. Don't take your kids on airlines that show gay snuff porn (seriously though, what the hell airlines are these people flying on? The last three flights I've been on have shown Shrek III, Night in the Museum, and The Astronaut Farmer.) Eventually major carriers will take a lesson from Alaskan Airlines, they don't show movies, they rent "Digi-players" at four bucks a pop. It's basically a portable DVD player with a variety of programming, you put on the ear phones and watch whatever the hell you want, when you want. Simple, easy, popular, no laws required - unfortunately, it's low profile so there's not enough controversy for Representatives to grandstand their way into the "Outraged Parent" voting demographic.

Listen Shuler and Jones, please, go back to doing nothing about the war and leave the rest of us alone. Oh, and somebody get me another bag of peanuts.

Hmmm, Tacos!

One of those days, AGAIN

You know, I'm getting sick and tired of seeing my own blood. Really, enough now.

So after regaling you all with tales of woe with the lathe chisel across the knuckles of my left hand yesterday, I managed to do this today:


No, this is not what I intended.

This is, was, an eggshell turning. When finished (never!), the walls of the bowl should be no thicker than 1.5mm, thin enough that light shines though. This is quite difficult. I had the upper portions of the wall turned to about 3mm thickness and was slowly thinning down the bottom portion. I reached inside the bowl while it was turning to smooth the inside wall with a piece of sandpaper, so that I could get a good caliper reading on it, and BOOM! Pieces everywhere. Razor sharp pieces. Flying shards sliced three deep parallel cuts across the first three fingers and thumb of my right hand.

If you're going to injure yourself repeatedly, keep it bilaterally symmetrical I say.

Should you ever decide to take up wood turning, remember one of the best things you can invest in is a quality full-face shield. Just saying.


Oh, and get a good First Aid kit.

Gone Fishing

Actually I'm off for a couple of hours to the sawmill. I need to pick up some more rough cut birch planks and chat with a couple friends who own the place. The owner is a Vietnam vet, and his son is an Army vet, purple heart recipient (IED in Iraq), dammed nice people even if I wasn't buying wood from them.

Back in a couple hours.

The Accidental Time Machine (corrected)

Being somewhat limited in my activities today (see previous post), I decided to spend the morning reading Joe Haldeman's new book, The Accidental Time Machine. I'm a fast reader, 2 hours last night before bed and two hours this morning, 278 pages, and I'm done. That's about average for me.

Don't worry about spoilers, I won't ruin it for you.

I've always been a fan of Joe Haldeman. The Forever War is one of my favorites, especially the author's special edition, with the central section restored to Haldeman's original. I reread the Worlds trilogy every couple years, and All My Sins Remembered. I didn't much care for the sequel to The Forever War though, Forever Free* because I just didn't like the ending. And I really didn't like Old Twentieth, for the same reason, I hated the ending. But, hey, it's Haldeman, and there are dammed few authors I really like, so when Amazon offered me a discount on a hardcover of the The Accidental Time Machine, I bought it.

And I'm glad I did.

The Accidental Time Machine is like the Haldeman of old - only more light hearted and funnier. There's a humorous undertone to the narration that is missing from his more serious books. The story is interesting, the characters are thoroughly enjoyable people, the pacing is fast, and it ends on an upbeat. There's a little of everything, danger, technology, religion, mysterious intelligences with unexplained motives, and a turtle. Haldeman doesn't explain everything, you're left with a few mysteries to flesh out for yourself. Haldeman gives you plenty of clues, but doesn't beat you over the head with the details - in other words, he assumes his readers are smart and imaginative and they don't need every little subplot explained. I consider that a compliment.

Unlike much of Haldeman's previous work, The Accidental Time Machine is not military, the protagonist is a lowly, under-achieving research assistant at MIT, who makes an accidental discovery resulting in a strange and sometimes dangerous trip into the future.

Haldeman is back on track with this one, and I'll give the book the highest compliment I can - I wish it was longer, because I would have liked to have seen just a bit more of the world he created.

* Correction: In the original post I had incorrectly said the sequel to the Forever War, was Haldeman's Forever Peace. David Kletcha pointed this out in the comments and I fixed it in the post. So David's comment no longer makes any sense, but that's OK, better he look crazy rather than me. Thanks David.

One of those days

Don't expect any long posts out of me for a day or so. I had a lathe chisel kick back at me today while turning. Not just any chisel, but the 2lb Sorby hollowing scraper. Hit me right across the knuckles of my left hand. I hit the kill switch on the lathe and turned off the shop dust collector system with my elbow before the pain and swelling started. I was pretty sure I'd broken at least one knuckle, maybe two. But, good news, they're just bruised - and swollen, and turning black and blue and yellow. And I got a pretty good cut on the index finger. No stitches, just a couple of butterflies and a bandaid.

Of course, this is the hand that I already have problems with, and hurts all the time. Of course it is. I'm typing one handed at the moment, so if my typing is even more crappy than usual, you know why. I've got my injured hand wrapped around a cold beer, that seems to be helping.

I heal fast though, and this isn't any big deal. Just the usual shop injury. I just may not feel like typing for a day or two. The management apologizes for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Reinventing the Wheel

I get a lot of magazines, most of them dealing with science or technology in one form or another. Most of them publish a “Top Ten List” of history’s greatest inventions at least once a year. Teh interweebs are full of top ten lists as well. All of these lists are pretty similar, the wheel, the clock, antibiotics, the personal computer, the telephone, etc.

Bah! I shake my little arthritic fist in derision at your lists. Bah!

Those things are okay, I guess, but great inventions? Hardly. The wheel led to the car, which led to California highways, which led to highway shootings. The clock? I’m retired, I don’t care what time it is, half of the time (heh) I don’t even know what month it is. Antibiotics are just making the germs stronger and more intelligent by killing off the weak ones, pretty soon they’ll own us. The PC? Yeah that led directly to Windows Vista, there’s a great invention, sure. The telephone gave us telemarketers and “Family Plans" and people who discuss their intestinal polyps in loud voices on public transportation. I could go on, really I could keep this up all day, but for your sake I'll stop there.

You want the best of technology? Try this:

1. Indoor plumbing: A couple of years back we went to the Maryland Renascence Festival. It was a fun day, no doubt about it. Where else can you dress up in coffee can armor and eat roast turkey legs with your bare hands, dripping grease on your sandals like some medieval barbarian? But there are people who seem to think that this is somehow an accurate representation of life in the Dark Ages. I’ve heard people talk, in complete sincerity, about how much simpler life was back then, easier, better, every day like the Renascence Festival. Are you kidding me? I could make a list, a long list, of why these people are dangerously insane and why they shouldn’t be allowed to wander around without a keeper. That list would include things like, oh, not being somebody’s property (what? You don’t know what the word ‘surf’ means? Not everybody was a knight, princess), eating on a regular basis, dentistry, and on and on. But I’ve gotta tell you, right at the top of that list would have to be not having to go outside at 3AM in 10 below weather to take a leak. If you don’t have to get up twice a night, don’t gloat, you’ll be in your forties sooner or later, and then you’ll see I'm right. Hot showers, too, also.

2. Internet: Seriously, how can you live without online Poker and free porn? Okay, I don’t gamble, online or otherwise, and pixels, no matter how they’re arranged, don’t do much for me. But seriously, before the internet how did people find out the really important things? Take this show I’m watching, I know I’ve seen this supporting actress somewhere before, something about her reminds me of Firefly but I know she was never in the series or the movie because I just watched the whole dammed thing on DVD. Before the internet I would have had to just live with the aggravation of not knowing, like an itch in my brain. Arrgh! But, with the internet, viola! It’s Moon Bloodgood from the canceled show Daybreak, also starring Adam Baldwin from the canceled show Firefly. Hah! See? See? The entire world’s information at my fingertips, all the time. God bless Al Gore for inventing the Internet.

3. Self Cleaning Cat Box: That’s right, a self cleaning litter box. See, we got cats, big ones, one grey, one white, brothers. So far as I can determine the only purpose they serve is to generate big balls of hair (seriously, I get enough hair on a daily basis to knit another cat, twice life-size) and turn perfectly good Frisky Liver Bits into cat crap. Do you know how much manure two big cats generate? I could do nothing with my day but clean the dammed litter box. Internet Friends, there’s something you should know about me – I’m squeamish when it comes to cat boxes. I don’t know why. Some people fear snakes, or spiders, or big-nosed men in turbans – me, it’s cat boxes, they just give me the willies. Why doesn’t somebody else in your family who likes cats clean the box, you ask? Yeah, why is that, I wonder. Anyway, we got one of those self-cleaning jobbers, but get this, you have to empty the little plastic tub like every day. Duh, what the hell good is that? I cut the bottom out of the waste bin, mounted the whole gizmo on top of a stand, put a large tub under it with a hinged plastic flap door, and lined the tub with one of the those industrial strength flex garbage bags. No smell, no muss, no fuss. Every couple of days toss in a scoop of litter, and empty it once every two weeks. Easy, sanitary. I’ve also got an automatic cat feeder too, that holds fifty pounds of cat food. It’s like the 21st century they always promised us on the Jetson’s, robots shovel it in, robots shovel it out.

4. Automatic Drip Coffee Maker: If I have to explain this one to you, you really wouldn’t understand the answer. There’s also something seriously wrong with you.

5. Heated Leather Car Seats: Whoever came up with this deserves a Nobel Prize. I’m in pain most of the time these days; I use the heated leather seats in my truck as a heating pad. They’re wonderful. I’ve got them turned on pretty much all of the time. In fact there are nights where I’m temped to get out of bed and go out to the garage and sleep in those seats. I will never own a vehicle without them again. After I become Emperor of the Universe, I’m making it mandatory that all vehicles incorporate heated leather seats – and that most especially includes commercial aircraft.

6. TiVo (or even better, HD DVR Cable Boxes): Being able to watch what I want, when I want is the one of the great ideas ever. Being able to pause a live show or fast forward through Cialis commercials? Genius! Throw off the chains of network programming, free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, I’m free at last!

7. Amazon: I pre-ordered Larry Niven’s Fleet of Worlds from Amazon last week, while I was on the site, Amazon (who knows what I like, how do they do that?) asked if I’d like to also order Joe Haldeman’s The Accidental Time Machine. At a significantly reduced price if I bought both books. Hell yes! No muss, no fuss, they already know my credit card number and I get free shipping (to Alaska!), I push the order button and three days latter Haldeman arrives in my mailbox. Brilliant! Other retailers need to take a lesson from Amazon, to wit: Alaska is a state. The 49th State, the biggest state (you could cut Alaska in half, and Texas would be the third largest state) with the single largest per capita pool of folks who order most of their goods via mail, with the largest USPS and FedEx hubs outside of Memphis. Half of online retailers won’t even ship to Alaska, or want to charge more for shipping than it would cost to ship the product to Zambia! Jerks.

8. Hi-Definition TV: We bought a 70” Mitsubishi Plasma TV and a Toshiba HDDVD player a while back, plugged into the living room Sony surround sound system, all I can say is Holy friggin’ crap! It’s realer than real. When we watched The Thirteenth Warrior (one of the best movies ever, screw the dammed critics) I could practically smell the blood. I can’t hardly watch regular TV any more, if you haven’t seen Raging Planet on The National Geographic HD Channel, you really, really should. More HD, more! In the future, scholars will divide history into BHD and AHD (figure it out).

9. Portable Video/Music players: Because it’s the only thing that makes 10 hours on an airplane, shoehorned into the torture device they call a seat next to some sweaty sumo wrestler, tolerable. I’ve got a Creative Arts ZEN and I can load a dozen movies and thousands of songs and I put the headphones on the minute I sit down. Never, never again will I have to listen to that irritating “safety brief” (Yeah, right, you go down in the Pacific and you’re going to live long enough to deploy the life raft, sure. How often has that happened, ever?) or the bored pilot who thinks he’s some kind of tour director constantly telling passengers to look out the window at things 30,000 feet below on the other side of the cloud deck. Shut up and drive already.

10. Duct Tape: which really doesn't require elaboration, other than to say: is there anything it can't do?

Me likey

I just finished watching the 2nd season premier of Heroes, and I just gotta say, I'm giddy, like a schoolgirl. What a truly excellent show.

Starship Troopers

One of my favorite books is Robert Anson Heinlein’s Starship Troopers.

Few books, of any genre, can stir controversy the way Starship Troopers has for the last 50 years. People hate it, people love it; few people are ambivalent about it – even those who haven’t, you know, actually read it.

In early the 70’s, when I was a young teenager, I stumbled across Heinlein the local library. Up to that point I had never read much Science Fiction. I had read H. G. Wells The Time Machine in 5th grade and it scared the crap out of me - so I stuck more to WWII submarine stories, the Hardy Boys and Westerns. But one day I passed a rack of tattered paperbacks and a copy of Heinlein’s Farmer in the Sky caught my attention. The cover art was what did it, a big spidery looking purple machine on rocky ground under the light of Jupiter, surrounded by men in spacesuits (fairly obvious in retrospect that the artist had never read the book, or actually knew what Jupiter really looked like). On a whim I read it, and I was hooked. I loved Heinlein, it was like he was writing specifically for me, which in a sense he was, since his Young Adults where intended specifically for the demographic I was part of. Over the next year I read every Heinlein I could get my hands on, including his ‘Adult’ novels. I found that I didn’t, and still don’t, care much for his adult novels (Stranger in a Strange Land does nothing for me) but I loved his Young Adult stories, and I still do. The protagonists in his books were not much older than me, as group they tended to be awkward teenagers who didn’t fit in, they tended to think differently than their peer group, they tended to be talented, they tended to be opinionated, but by and large they stuck to their opinions even if that made them unpopular. They faced adversity, but with brains and wit and quick thinking they always overcame it.

Eventually I got around to Starship Troopers. I loved it. As a kid, what I took away from the book was honor, duty, and service above self, courage in the face of adversity. I hardly noticed the political stuff that others took so seriously, in fact I didn’t really notice it at all. In those days, before Star Wars made Science Fiction generally popular, if you read SciFi, you didn’t talk about it. In an age where man had recently walked on the moon, even my own peer group had little use for “that Buck Rogers Stuff.” It wasn’t until after I joined the Military and saw Starship Troopers on the CNO’s preferred reading list that I started to hear unflattering things about the novel.

Right from the first day I started this Blog I had intended to one day write a rebuttal to the nonsense I’d been hearing both in and out of the military over the last two decades. I intended to go through the novel chapter by chapter and address each of the idiotic statements I'd heard from others over the wardroom table and elsewhere. I intended to do this not just because those statements are wrong (Heinlein was a fascist, its true!), but also because Heinlein had made such an impact on my own life.

As it turns out, somebody beat me to it. In researching this subject online I came across a piece written by Christopher Weuve. I was so impressed by his critical research and solid analysis that I emailed to compliment him on the article and ask for permission to link to it from this site. As it turns out, Chris is an Associate Research Professor at the Naval War College in Newport, RI, one of the finest institutions of higher learning in the world (though he said he wrote the article prior to his tenure there). Chris also turns out to be a dammed nice fellow and he gave me permission to post a link here.

Go, read this. I think you’ll enjoy it. I wish I had written it. Thanks, Chris.

Note: I’ve been meaning to create a link section on this page, pointing to articles and information I fine useful and interesting, Chris’ article will certainly be on that list. Specifically because not only is it an insightful and thorough analysis of a controversial subject that is near and dear to my heart, but also because it is a perfect example of doing the legwork before forming an opinion. Chris tells me he intends to migrate the document over to PMWiki in the near future. I’ll update the link as necessary.

Weekend Stat Update (updated)

Well, so far the statistics I reported last week are holding steady. More traffic in the first 4 hours of this fine Monday morning than I had all weekend.

Again, nothing Earth shaking, but I find it interesting on both a personal and professional level. One of my goals with this site was to learn more about how blogs and other general interest sites attract and maintain readership and how rapidly information propagates through the general data sphere without special effort (there may be a book on this subject in my future). As some of you may know, my professional background is in the field of Information Management and the Perception of Information, and I'm highly interested in how a single site grows and connects to the larger data sphere, how connections develop, strengthen and refresh or fade, attract new connections, decline new connections, and how information moves from one site to another. Specifically I'm interested in the information itself, independent of the site or platform, i.e. when does the information become an entity of its own, and not part of the site or database where it was created? Does this happen automatically? Does it always happen? Does it never happen? Can it be made to happen? Can it be prevented from happening? How does the information change? Etc. If this sounds like I'm talking about Information as if it is alive, I am in a way. It may help to think of how the human brain stores information, maintains it, changes and perceives it over time based on new information and experiences, and how information fades over time without refresh. Personally, though, I tend to think in terms of Object Orientated Programming, where Information and the code for manipulating it are considered to be a single object. The data object can inherit properties from parent objects, can spawn descendants, and can connect to other objects.

I use the stats from my blog as a basis for observation, but I also use a large number of other sites as data points. Both well traveled sites and those that aren't visited often. These are simple observations, not empirical data points, so take the below with a reasonable margin of error.

Couple things I've noticed:
1. To maximize data connections, a blog should post a wide range of topics.
2. To maintain data connections and provide for maximum refresh, a blog must post as often as possible - at a minimum of once per day. More than once per day is better.
3. Controversial topics may develop a momentary boost in connections, but do little to maintain or refresh long term connections. Connections developed from controversial topics tend to fade rapidly unless controversial topics are the norm. If controversial topics are the norm, connections tend to be confined to a specific interest group, and other general interest connections tend to fade rapidly.
4. Humorous content tends to propagate widely, becoming independent of source more quickly than other topics. Humorous content tends to attract, maintain, and refresh data connections more rapidly and reliably than other forms of information.
5. (Update, I had this in my outline [and yes, I do outline more serious posts], but somehow I overlooked it). Feedback. Blogs that tend to attract and hold readers are those blogs that are interactive - even if they don't interact with you in particular. In other words, blogs (and even news or topic specific sites in broadcast mode) that have active comment sections, and especially where the blogger and commenters maintain active dialog with each other, tend to attract and maintain readership. They also tend to generate spontaneous connections to other data nodes. This appears to be true even if the reader is not a commenter him/herself. It may indicate that people are more interested in conversation, instead of simple lecture formats. This is my experience in public speaking and teaching as well. When I taught military doctrine theory, I very much made my lectures interactive as well as dynamic and tied directly to the target audience. I think this is one of the major reasons I was so successful at it.

Tentative Summary: Talk about a number of different things, talk a lot, talk often, sensitive subjects attract new readers, but non-offensive humor keeps them. If you want to become immortal, be funny. Update: Engage in dialog, listen to your readers.

Question: What do you think makes a good blog. Design and layout. Topics. etc

What I did with my Sunday morning

I've been busy this morning. I've been turning these:

Into this:


What the hell are those, I hear you ask. Well, they are the fruiting body of the Prickly Wild Rose, around here usually referred to as the Sitka Rose. Called rose hips, they are extremely high in vitamin C, and are a common berry used in many traditional Alaskan dishes, jams, and candies and syrups. The Prickly Rose and Woods Rose are fairly common throughout the area were I live, mostly in bogs and clearings along the edge of the woods, my property is thick with them. The Nootka Rose is similar, but mostly grows only on Kodiak Island and the Cook Inlet area. Woods Roses produce large pink flowers and grow as far south as the central United States, but only in the Rocky Mountains.

Making jam from rose hips is a labor intensive process. First they've got to be picked. The best time to pick them is right after the first frost, which for us was about two days ago. Picking rose hips is a wet, sticky process, usually in the rain because that's the type of weather we have in the fall. Like their domestic cousins, wild roses have thorns, little tiny sharp thorns, lots of them. Once picked, the hips have to be washed in cold water and have the dried flower buds pulled off the end, this is a major pain. My son and I picked about 6lbs, and sat on the floor in the living room watching Star Wars episodes IV and V all the way through while we were preparing the berries. Once that's done, you need to boil them, 2 cups hips with 2 cups water for about 15 minutes to soften them, then they need to be run through a food mill, and the resulting pulp and liquid drained through a jelly bag. Most people give up at this point because the smell is fairly disgusting, kind of a cross between rhubarb, hot tomato juice, and boiled grass.

Once you've got the clarified juice, you turn it into jam just like any other fruit juice. In my case I use 4 cups rose hip juice, 5 1/2 cups of sugar, and one pack of pectin. What you get for your efforts is a jelly that has the color of rich port wine, tastes and smells like tupelo honey, and is high in vitamin C.

And what have you done with your day? I hope you didn't waste it.

I'm going to be rich!

Ah, nothing like finding the classic Nigerian Letter scam in your inbox in the morning, eh? I haven't seen one of these in a while - lately my spam has been a bit more sophisticated - and this almost makes me nostalgic. The Nigerian Scam or 419 Scam, usually called the Advance Fee Scam by law enforcement, is a variation of the classic Spanish Prisoner Scam, which used to be propagated via snail mail and is at least a hundred years old.

But, seriously, do people actually fall for this? You'd think that there was nobody left on the planet who hadn't heard of this. If you think that, you'd be wrong. Monetary loss estimates vary widely depending on source, but it's at least $100 Million annually in the US, and somewhere around the same in the UK. Most of you know, or have figured out, that I have a fairly low opinion of most of the human race's intelligence, but you've got to be kidding.

Let's take at look at this one, shall we?
----------------
Greetings

I am Mr. Charles Brown, a Canadian Attorney based in Manchester, United Kingdom and the personal Attorney to Late Mr. Mark Michelle. Late Mr. Mark Michelle was a private oil consultant/ contractor with the Shell Petroleum Development Company in Saudi Arabia before his death, hereinafter shall be referred to as my client.

Okay, a Canadian, living in England. An attorney. So we're talking a guy with an advanced education in an English speaking country, working in an English speaking country - who calls his client "Late Mr. Mark Michelle," not the late Mr. Mark. Sounds like a character from a Sitcom, Late Mr. Mark! His engrish and sentence structure elsewhere in the letter indicate English isn't exactly Mr. Brown's first language. Possible, no doubt, he could be a Canadian immigrant, or, you know, one of them Quebec types.

Something else interesting in this paragraph: Nigeria. What, you don't see it? Look again, Shell Petroleum Development Company. See everywhere else in the world, it's just Shell Oil, but in Nigeria it's called the Shell Petroleum Development Company LTD of Nigeria. Oops.

Personally, I kind of like that whole hereinafter bit in the last sentence, gives it a nice lawyerly sounding tone.

On the 3rd day of January 2004, my client and his wife along with their two children were among the victims of Boeing 737 Egyptian Airliner that crashed into the Red Sea. You can read more about the crash by visiting this website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3365769.stm

This is a valid BBC website containing a story about an actual airplane crash. True story. It was Flash Airlines (an Egyptian charter company) flight 604, filled with French tourists on the way home to Paris from a resort in Egypt. Because it was a private charter, I was unable to find a passenger list confirming the existence of Late Mr. Mark Michelle and his family. However, a Google search for "Mark Michelle" and "Flight 604" leads directly to this site, dealing with UK Money Laundering and 419 Scams.

Since then, I have made several enquiries from the French embassies to locate his next of kin or any of his extended relatives, but all to no avail. My client made a deposit in a bank at Manchester valued presently at US$45,000,000.00 (Fourty-five Million United States Dollars) and the bank has issued me an official notification to provide his next of kin or beneficiary by will, otherwise the account will be confiscated within the next sixty (60) working days.

Enquiries (sic), Fourty (sic)? You'd think an attorney trusted with millions would have a secretary, or at least a spell checker, wouldn't you? What was the the name of that bank again? There's a whole bunch of other stuff in this paragraph, but I'll leave that up to you to discover for yourself - seriously, tell me what you see in the comments section.

Since I have been unsuccessful to locate any of my late client's relatives for over three (3) years now, I seek your consent to permit me present you as the next of kin/ beneficiary of my late client’s estate so that the proceeds of this account would be transferred to you.

There's that engrish again. But now we're getting down to it. How would you like to help me commit major international fraud, eh?

Already, I have set out modalities for achieving my aim of appointing a next of kin as well as transfer the money out of this country, for us to share the money in the ratio of 53% for me and 35% to you, The 2% of the fund will serve as reimbursement of expenses any of us will make in the course of this transaction. While we shall collectively donate the remaining balance of 10% to Tsunami Relief Organizations.

You've really got to admire an attorney who would admit his goal (fraud in the previous paragraph) and illegal aims (this paragraph) so directly. Honesty, it's so refreshing. We need more lawyers like this. I also admire the part where Mr. Brown admits just exactly how much this is going to cost me, 2% of $45M is $900,000! But the cherry on top is that last bit, Tsunami Relief. Ho! We're going to be crooks here, but, hey, at least we'll be able to feel good about it. Brilliant touch, really.

It is my intention to achieve this transfer in a legitimate way, all I required is your honest co-operation,confidentiality and trust to enable us see this transaction through. This is a very legal business that I am very sure of its success and is absolutely risk free.

What? Wait, now I'm confused. Honest, trust, very legal? Hmmm, I thought we were defrauding a Manchester bank to the tune of $45M? Well, this must be that whole "Honor Among Thieves" thing, forgive my slowness, I'm new to this whole life of crime thing. Absolutely risk free? Well, yeah, except for that part were we get used like inflatable livestock in the prison shower if we get caught.

Kindly signify your willingness to assist by sending me an email for further procedures relating to this transaction. The email shall include the below information:
1. Your telephone and fax numbers.
2. Your complete location address.
Once I receive your positive response, I will then furnish you with more details on how we shall proceed with the claim. I look forward to receiving your prompt response. Regards, Mr. Charles Brown

Tell you what, Charlie, why don't you send me your complete location address and business card, and I'll have somebody contact you.

Update: Surfing around looking for information on 419 scams, I came across something on the subject by Cory Doctrow, and a link to 419eaters: Cory thought it was clever, and so do I.

Dustbunnies

I'm getting some odd behavior in the previous post, so if you're seeing strange things it's obviously because I need to blow some dust out of the machine. I'm trying to fix it.

Update: somehow, during upload to blogger, the previous post ended up with some spurious HTML code embedded in the text. Not sure how it happened, probably something I did. I have a bunch of pre-programmed keyboard shortcuts and I probably hit one or more without noticing. This happens to me once in a while, especially with my left hand. I think I'm pushing the shift key and I'm actually pushing the alt or control key. Sigh.

If the previous post looks like a management memo, where the pointed haired boss has been fooling with the font settings, just hit refresh and the world should be right again.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, don't worry it's fixed, move along nothing to see here.

Hey, I'm on TV!

USS Valley Forge at sea in the Arabian Gulf

I dropped my wife off at the Anchorage International Airport last night, she's off on a business trip for the next week. Argh! I don't sleep well when she's not here, but, hey, what can you do, right? For twenty years, she waited at home alone for months, while I was deployed in the field or at sea, so I shouldn't complain (not that I won't, mind you). The one advantage of her being gone is that I can watch Modern Marvels and the Military Channel at night without hearing complaints (What? Another special on WWII?).

So this morning I came downstairs and flipped on the TV like I usually do, to watch the news while the kid gets ready for school, and it was still on the Military Channel from last night. And what were they showing? Operation Iraqi Freedom (yeah, yeah, there's an operational title that will haunt us for years). The special contained about five minutes of Infra-red video from the Mina Al Bakr Oil Terminal take down (a massive Iraqi off-shore oil loading terminal). In fact, the video was labeled "VFG FLIR" (USS Valley Forge, Forward Looking Infra-Red). I took that video. I and my team designed, procured, and installed a high resolution video capture system on Valley Forge when everybody in San Diego told us that it couldn't be done, and wasn't necessary in the first place. In fact, we ended up with two systems for less than the original cost estimate for one. We ended up using the information collected from that system on a daily basis, and six years later a small bit of it is on TV. And it looks good.

How cool is that?

I had a hand in the oil terminal missions. Most of what I did I can't talk about, but as Valley Forge's Intelligence Officer, my team and I did most of the scouting missions and intelligence work for the off-shore oil platform missions in the months leading up to the war. Some of it was under pretty hairy conditions. But that intelligence was spot on the money, the SEALs took down that platform without a shot being fired or a life lost on either side. There are dammed few other missions that went as smoothly. Despite how this war is turning out now, I'm still more than a little proud of my part in that operation.

---------

The picture is my last ship, the Aegis Guided Missile Cruiser, USS Valley Forge, CG-50, in heavy seas in the Northern Arabian Gulf. I took the picture from one of the ship's RHIB's (rigid hull, inflatable boat) returning from a scouting mission, about three days before the start of the war. I loved that ship, I miss her. Valley Forge is gone now, decommissioned and sunk as a target off Hawaii, because of a bunch of short sighted fools in the Pentagon.

You can click on the picture for a much larger image.

Protect and Serve, maybe not so much

I assume you've seen this:




Or this one?

And this? or this latest one from Warren Ohio? (these last two begin with CNN adds that you have to sit through. The first one you'll have to click on "Taser Catches Suspect, Officer" and that last one you'll have to click on "Officer on Leave Over Stun Gun", I can't link directly to the video or do an embedded video, though I expect it'll end up on youtube sooner or later).

What do all of these incidents have in common? Well, for one thing in each case, the individuals tazed were acting in a fairly obnoxious manner. In the embedded video of Andrew Meyer getting tasered during John Kerry's speech at the University of Florida, Meyer obviously went there looking for a confrontation. In the second video, Victoria Goodwin was uncooperative with police, she refused to halt her conversation and clearly exaggerated the situation to her mother on her cell phone. In the third video, Hollingsworth is major caliber batshit, and in the last one the women is an obnoxious, unruly drunk.

What else do they have in common? Well, massive overuse of force for one thing, to wit: repeated and excessive use of Tasers. And police officers that obviously either do not have an understanding of, or are ignoring, the the basic rules governing the use and escalation of force in law enforcement. I get the feeling that they are enjoying the amount of pain they are inflicting as well in a "Bastard, since you won't bow to my author-a-tee (best Cardman impression here), let's see how you like this!" manner.

Before I go any further, let me say that I have been on the receiving end of "non-lethal force," both pepper-spay and electronic stun guns. No, I didn't get taken down by campus police while disrupting a politician's speech, it happened as part of my training as military security forces and as a Navy Boarding Officer. To qualify to carry such weapons, and make no mistake they are weapons, you get the privilege of having them used on you. I've been pepper sprayed three times, and tasered once. Of the two, I'd have to say I'd rather be pepper sprayed - but this is a lot like getting your choice of torments in an inner circle of hell, both suck beyond all conception. Also, a word of advice - if you do get tasered, try to make sure you empty your badder first. No, I didn't piss myself, but I know people who have. It ain't pretty.

Moving on. I understand law enforcement. I trained in military law enforcement, and I trained with New York and New Jersey cops. I know a few police officers. And it's a dammed difficult and sometimes extremely dangerous job. But, the thing to remember is that cops are not above their fellow citizens, their job, first and always, is to "protect and serve." The cops in the above videos have forgotten that, and have allowed themselves to become thugs, enjoying the power they have over others. I'd be the last one to condemn an officer without the whole story, and obviously we're not getting the whole story from those little video clips, but we're getting enough. Rules of force, i.e. the rules governing the escalation of force, stipulate first and foremost that the officer use only the minimum force necessary to resolve the situation. Period. This is the first rule in any police department, military or civilian.

There is no excuse for the repeated tazing of Andrew Meyer, there were more than enough police present to remove him from the situation without use of a weapon (this is, of course, assuming you agree he should have been removed in the first place). Meyer was unarmed, he presented no physical threat to either the officers, the crowd, or Senator Kerry. His behavior was obnoxious, true, but there is no evidence of physical threat. Tazing, let alone repeated tazing, for what amounts to nothing more than heckling is way over the line.

Unless there is off-video evidence that Victoria Goodwin presented a threat, the same applies in her case. There were two officers present in the video, certainly more than enough to arrest a women on a cell phone. Of course, we didn't see her speeding or the events leading up to her traffic stop, the officers may have legitimately believed she was dangerous. But then why did they approach the car as if it were only a routine traffic stop? Something doesn't jib here.

I can see how court officers may have considered Hollingsworth a threat. I think a case can be made that the first taze was justified, but what came after was not. Use of disabling weapons, in close quarters during a struggle where you have more friendlies than hostiles is just plain stupid and dangerous, indeed one of the officers was hit by a fellow officer's weapon. But, and here's the crux, if Hollingsworth was a such a threat that he needed to be cuffed and have his head covered in mesh (to prevent spitting), why weren't his feet shackled? Believe me, when I say that I am in no way defending this asshole, but some forethought and common sense on law enforcement's part could have prevented this whole thing.

And then there's the drunk woman. Any beat cop knows he's going to have to deal with obnoxious violent drunks sooner or later. I've dealt with many in my time as Navy Shore Patrol or as the Duty Watch - I've gotten a few black eyes and bloody noses, but I've never had to taser anybody. We don't see the part leading up to how the cop got her into the back of the cruiser, but he did. Again, why were her feet not secured? Or her hands secured via cuffs to lock-down hard points? I can see at least two in the video. If the cop couldn't do this, because it presented a risk to himself since he was alone and awaiting backup, why put her in the cruiser in the first place? Again, it may be possible to justify the first taze because it appears she tried to kick the police officer when he opened the car door, thus presenting a threat (of course this begs the question of why he didn't go around to the other side and come at her head first). Once she had been removed from the vehicle, and back-up had arrived, there were more than enough officers present to get her into ankle restraints. That's why cops carry riot cuffs (the plastic zip-tie jobbers) in the first place. Hell, the first cop could have sat on her, considering how far his belly was hanging over his belt, I don't think she could have struggled much after that.

In each of these cases, the cops reached for their tazers as a first response. And this is becoming habit across the nation. It's a matter of I don't want to deal with you, so Zssspt! Especially in the first two videos above. And in this incident at Powell University. Understand, I am not calling for the removal of this tool from law enforcement, and I have no desire to make law enforement even more difficult than it already is. But, sooner or later we're going to need some strict federal rules governing the use of these weapons by law enforcement, with absolute strict accountability. For their own sake, cops need better and repeated training in the use of non-lethal force, and we need it mandated by law. But what we really need, are cops who have it pounded into their heads over and over and over that their job is to "protect and serve."