Checking In With The "War Nerd"

Well, here's an interesting fellow! (He lives not far away, in Fresno.)

So, things been busy lately?:

This is the war of my dreams—both sides using air forces! How often do you see that these days?—so I’ll skip the history. ... The Georgians have always been fierce people, good fighters, not the forgiving type. In fact, I can’t resist a little bit of history here: remember when the Mongols wiped out Baghdad in 1258, the biggest slaughter in any of their conquests? Nobody knows how many people were killed, but it was at least 200,000—a pretty big number in the days before antibiotics made life cheap. The smell was so bad the Mongols had to move their camp upwind. Well, the most enthusiastic choppers and burners in the whole massacre were the Georgian Christian troops in Hulagu Khan’s army. Wore out their hacking arms on those Baghdadi civilians.

... The Georgians bided their time, then went on the offensive, Caucasian style, by pretending to make peace and all the time planning a sneak attack on South Ossetia. They just signed a treaty granting autonomy to South Ossetia this week, and then they attacked, Corleone style. Georgian MLRS units barraged Tskhinvali, the capital city of South Ossetia; Georgian troops swarmed over Ossetian roadblocks; and all in all, it was a great, whiz-bang start, but like Petraeus asked about Iraq way back in 2003, what’s the ending to this story? As in: how do you invade territory that the Russians have staked out for protection without thinking about how they’ll react?

Saakashvili just didn’t think it through. One reason he overplayed his hand is that he got lucky the last time he had to deal with a breakaway region: Ajara, a tiny little strip of Black Sea coast in southern Georgia. This is a place smaller than some incorporated Central Valley towns, but it declared itself an “autonomous” republic, preserving its sacred basket-weaving traditions or whatever. You just have to accept that people in the Caucasus are insane that way; they’d die to keep from saying hello to the people over the next hill, and they’re never going to change. The Ajarans aren’t even ethnically different from Georgians; they’re Georgian too. But they’re Muslims, which means they have to have their own Lego parliament and Tonka-Toy army and all the rest of that Victorian crap, and their leader, a wack job named Abashidze (Goddamn Georgian names!) volunteered them to fight to the death for their worthless independence. Except he was such a nut, and so corrupt, and the Ajarans were so similar to the Georgians, and their little “country” was so tiny and ridiculous, that for once sanity prevailed and the Ajarans refused to fight, let themselves get reabsorbed by that Colussus to the North, mighty Georgia.

Well, like I’ve said before, there’s nothing as dangerous as victory. Makes people crazy. Saakashvili started thinking he could gobble up any secessionist region—like, say, South Ossetia. But there are big differences he was forgetting—like the fact that South Ossetia isn’t Georgian, has a border with Russia, and is linked up with North Ossetia just across that border. The road from Russia to South Ossetia is pretty fragile as a line of supply; it goes through the Roki Tunnel, a mountain tunnel at an altitude of 10,000 feet. I have to wonder why the Georgian air force—and it’s a good one by all accounts—didn’t have as its first mission in the war the total zapping of the South Ossetian exit of that tunnel. Or if you don’t trust the flyboys, send in your special forces with a few backpacks full of HE. There are a lot of ways to cripple a tunnel. Hell, do it low-tech: drive a fuel truck in there, with a car following, jackknife the truck halfway through with a remote control or timing fuse—truck driver gets out and strolls to the car, one fast U-turn and you’re out and back in Georgia, just in time to see a ball of flame erupt from the tunnel exit. And rebuilding a tunnel way up in the mountains is not an easy or a fast job. Sure, the Russians could resupply by air, but that’s a much, much tougher job and would at least slow down the inevitable. Weird, then, that as far as I know the Georgians didn’t even try to blast that tunnel....

Most likely the Georgians just thought the Russians wouldn’t react. They were doing something they learned from Bush and Cheney: sticking to best-case scenarios, positive thinking. The Georgian plan was classic shock’n’awe with no hard, grown-up thinking about the long term. Their shiny new army would go in, zap the South Ossetians while they were on a peace hangover (the worst kind), and then…uh, they’d be welcomed as liberators? Sure, just like we were in Iraq. Man, you pay a price for believing in Bush. The Georgians did. They thought he’d help. And I just saw the little creep on TV, sitting in the stands watching the US-China basketball game. (Weird game—the Chinese were taller, muscled the boards inside but couldn’t shoot from outside. Not what you expect from foreign b-ball teams at all.) I didn’t even recognize Bush at first, just wondered why they kept doing close-ups of this guy who looked like Hank Hill’s legless dad up in the stands. Then they said it was the Prez. They talk about people “growing in office”; well, he shrunk.

And the more he shrinks, the more you pay for believing in him. The Georgians were naïve because they were so happy to get out from the Soviets, the Russians’ old enemy, the US, must be paradise. So they did their apple-polishing best to be the perfect obedient little ally. Then we’d let them into NATO and carpet-bomb them with SUVs and ipods.

Their part of the deal was simple: they sent troops to Iraq. First a contingent of 850, then a surprisingly huge 2000 men. When you consider the population of Georgia is less than five million, that’s a lot of troops. In fact, Georgia is the third-biggest contributor to the “Coalition of the Willing,” after the US and Britain.

...We’ve already done plenty, not because we love Georgians but to counterbalance the Russian influence down where the new oil pipeline’s staked out. The biggest American aid project was the GTEP, “Georgia Train and Equip” project ($64 million). It featured 200 Special Forces instructors teaching fine Georgia boys all the lessons the US Army’s learned recently. Now here’s the joke—and military history is just one long series of mean jokes. We were stressing counterinsurgency skills: small-unit cohesion, marksmanship, intelligence. The idea was to keep Georgia safe from Chechens or other Muslim loonies infiltrating through the Pankisi Gorge in NE Georgia. And we did a good job. The Georgian Army pacified the Pankisi in classic Green-Beret style. The punch line is, the Georgians got so cocky from that success, and from their lovefest with the Bushies in DC, that they thought they could take on anybody. What they’re in the process of finding out is that a light-infantry CI force like the one we gave them isn’t much use when a gigantic Russian armored force has just rolled across your border.

...The quickest way to see who’s winning in any war is to see who asks first for a ceasefire. And this time it was the Georgians. Once it was clear the Russians were going to back the South Ossetians, the war was over. Even Georgians were saying, “To fight Russia by ourselves is insane.” Which means they thought Russia wouldn’t back its allies. Not a bad bet; Russia has a long, unpredictable history of screwing its allies—but not all the time. The Georgians should know better than anybody that once in a while, the Russians actually come through, because it was Russian troops who saved Georgia from a Persian invasion in 1805, at the battle of Zagam. Of course the Russians had let the Persians sack Tbilisi just ten years earlier without helping. That’s the thing: the bastards are unpredictable. You can’t even count on them to betray their friends (though it’s the safer bet, most of the time, sort of like 6:5 odds).

This time, the Russians came through. For lots of reasons, starting with the fact that Bush is weak and they know it; that the US is all tied up in that crap Iraq war and can’t do shit; and most of all, because Kosovo just declared independence from Serbia, an old Russian ally. It’s tit for tat time, with Kosovo as the tit and South Ossetia as the tat. The way Putin sees it, if we can mess with his allies and let little ethnic enclaves like Kosovo declare independence, then the Russians can do the same with our allies, especially naïve idiotic allies like Georgia.

Luckily, South Ossetia doesn’t matter that much. I’m just being honest here. In a year nobody will care much who runs that little glob of territory. What’s more serious is that another, bigger and more strategic chunk of Georgia called Abkhazia, on the Black Sea, is taking the opportunity to boot out the last Georgian troops on its territory. Georgia may lose almost all its coastline, but then the Georgians were always an inland people anyway, living along river valleys, not great sailors.

What’s happening to Georgia here is like the teeny-tiny version of Germany in the twentieth century: overplay your hand and you lose everything. So if you’re a Georgian nationalist, this war is a tragedy; if you’re a Russian or Ossetian nationalist, it’s a triumph, a victory for justice, whatever. To the rest of us, it’s just kind of fun to watch. And damn, this one has been a LOT of fun! The videos that came out of it! You know, DVD is the best thing to happen to war in a long time. All the fun, none of the screaming agony—it’s war as Diet Coke.

See, this is the war that I used to see in the paintings commissioned by Defense contractors in Aviation Week and AFJ: a war between two conventional armies, both using air forces and armored columns, in pine-forested terrain. That was what those pictures showed every time, with a highlighted closeup of the weapon they were selling homing in on a Warsaw Pact convoy coming through a German pine forest. Of course, a real NATO/Warsaw Pact war would never, ever have happened that way. It would have gone nuclear in an hour or less, which both sides knew, which is why it never happened. So all that beautiful weaponry was kind of a farce, if it was only going to be used in the Fulda Gap. But damn, God is good, because here it all is, in the same kind of terrain, all your favorite old images: Russian-made tanks burning, a Soviet-model fighter-bomber falling from the sky in pieces, troops in Russian camo fighting other troops, also in Russian camo, in a skirmish by some dilapidated country shack.

No racial overtones to get bummed out by—everybody on both sides is white! And white from places you don’t know or care about!

The fretting and fussing and sky-is-falling crap about this war is going to die down fast, and the bottom line will be simple: the Georgians overplayed their hand and got slapped, and we caught a little of the follow-through, which is what happens when you waste your best troops—and Georgia’s, for that matter—on a dumb war in the wrong place. We detached Kosovo from a Russian ally; they detached South Ossetia from an American ally. It’s a pawn exchange, if that. If it signals anything bigger, it’s the fact that the US is weaker than it was ten years ago and Russia is much, much stronger than it was in Yeltsin’s time. But anybody with sense knew all that already.

What will last is those beautiful videos, like some NATO-era dream, like God giving me one last chance to see the weapons I spent my twenties dreaming about in action. Even the wounded-civilian videos are interesting because a lot of the wounded are fat and old, which you didn’t see much in classic Korean or Normandy or Nam footage.

We’re the new normal, but damn, we sure are ugly casualties. Skinny people just look better sitting in rubble with bloody faces, I can’t lie.

As the war fades out—and it will; countries don’t fight to the death these days—there’ll be time to see how the various weapons systems played. I’m especially interested to see how well the Georgian air defense missiles, some very good recent Russian models, worked. But there’s plenty of time to debrief later. For now, just go to LiveLeak or YouTube (LiveLeak has better stuff right now) and enjoy yourself. This is when us war nerds get all the free porn we can handle. Call in sick, take your comp time, whatever—just don’t miss those videos.

Headbanging Parrot



Parrots rule!

Lightning, Slow-Motion



You can see the stepped-leaders pop on down, and travel in all directions through the air, until just one actually hits ground and becomes the lightning "bolt".

Effect Of An Early Edwards Scandal

These annoying Hillary people get so overwrought. If John Edwards had had his scandal before the Iowa primary, Obama would have benefitted, not Clinton:

Wolfson, in yet another sign that some Clinton acolytes are having difficulty letting go of the past, caused a stir by telling ABC News that his boss would have captured the Democratic nod had Edwards been forced to the sidelines before the Iowa caucuses in early January.

"I believe we would have won Iowa, and Clinton today would therefore have been the nominee," the often pugnacious Wolfson said.

Au contraire, argues David Redlawsk -- head of the University of Iowa's Hawkeye Poll and, in the walk-up to the caucuses, himself an Edwards backer.

An e-mail sent today by the school's news service says that polling on caucus night supervised by Redlawsk indicated "that the absence of Edwards would have helped (Barack) Obama."

The survey, which quizzed a randomly selected caucus participant in every Iowa precinct, asked the voters about their second-choice preferences. Among the 82% of Edwards supporters willing to back someone else, 51% named Obama as their next choice, 32% picked Clinton.

Wolfson's claim "that two-thirds of Edwards supporters would have supported Clinton is just not supported in data collected directly from those who actually participated in the caucuses," Redlawsk says in the e-mail. "Had Edwards not been running, and if nothing else had changed, my data suggest that Obama would have ended up even further ahead of Clinton than he was."

Accident Or Coincidence?

The giant kangaroo died out on Tasmania just after people arrived there:

The chance discovery of the remains of a prehistoric giant kangaroo has cast doubts on the long-held view that climate change drove it and other mega-fauna to extinction, a new study reveals.

The research, published this week in the US-based journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, argues that man likely hunted to death the giant kangaroo and other very large animals on the southern island of Tasmania.

The debate centres on the skull of a giant kangaroo found in a cave in the thick rainforest of the rugged northwest of Tasmania in 2000.

Scientists dated the find at 41,000 years old, some 2,000 years after humans first began to live in the area.

"Up until now, people thought that the Tasmanian mega-fauna had actually gone extinct before people arrived on the island," a member of the British and Australian study, Professor Richard Roberts, told AFP Tuesday.

He said that it was likely that hunting killed off Tasmania's mega-fauna -- including the long-muzzled, 120 kilogram (264 pound) giant kangaroo, a rhinoceros-sized wombat and marsupial 'lions' which resembled leopards.

...Roberts said because the large animals were slow breeders, it would not have required an aggressive campaign to see them quickly die out.

"A lot of people still have in their minds an axe-wielding, spear-wielding people, bloodthirsty, out there slaughtering all over the place -- it wasn't like that at all," he said.

"It was basically just one joey (baby kangaroo) in the pot for Christmas. And that's all you've got to go to do to drive slow-breeding species to extinction."

...The finding of the latest study has already been contested, with Judith Field of the University of Sydney saying the idea that humans killed the giant creatures was "in the realms of speculative fantasy".

"Humans cannot even be placed at the scene," she told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Senator Pat Wiggins Wigs Out



Ah, civility, the last, golden frontier in the Golden State:

In this clip, CA State Senator Pat Wiggins (D-Santa Rosa) can be heard (but not seen) cussing out a Sacramento-area Methodist Pastor during a special August 6, 2008, committee hearing on global warming. Senator Christine Kehoe (D-San Diego) quickly chimes in after.

Georgian War Beginning To Wind Down

Russia wins, and prepares to slap the Georgians around in peace talks. Kevin Drum comments:

This is an unsurprising end to the conflict. Russia doesn't want to annex Georgia, which would be a festering sore forever, and certainly their conventional forces don't have the wherewithal to "reassemble the Russian empire," as some of the more breathless commentators on the right have suggested. Rather, this was a demonstration war. In the same way that Thomas Friedman suggested that the real reason for the Iraq war was to send a message ("Suck. On. This."), that was pretty much the reason for this war too. Russia may not want to occupy Georgia or Ukraine or any of the rest of its Near Abroad, but Georgia is going to pay a heavy price for messing with Vladimir Putin — thousands dead, two provinces gone, their military smashed, all capped off by a humiliating peace agreement — and that's mission accomplished as far as he's concerned.

Complex Indeed

An ill wind blows:

A GIANT inflatable dog turd by American artist Paul McCarthy blew away from an exhibition in the garden of a Swiss museum, bringing down a power line and breaking a window before it landed again.

The art work, titled Complex Shit, is the size of a house.

The wind carried it 200m from the Paul Klee Centre in Berne before it fell back to Earth in the grounds of a children's home, said museum director Juri Steiner.

The World's Oldest Celebrity

Just A Geopolitical Reminder

If Georgia had become a member of NATO, as so many in the Bush Administration still want, then we would be at war with Russia today.

Oh yes, Russia does possess nuclear weapons, in case you have forgotten.

Trying to make NATO an elastic fit-all alliance for every purpose in Eastern Europe, including a vehicle for aggressive intentions towards Russia along its southern boundary, may make it difficult for NATO to fulfill its primary mission, the defense of Western Europe. It's time to remember why NATO was created, and what it can, and can't, do:

Georgia began an offensive to regain control over South Ossetia late Thursday with heavy shelling and air strikes that ravaged South Ossetia's provincial capital of Tskhinvali.

The Russia response was swift and overpowering—thousands of troops that shelled the Georgians until they fled Tskhinvali on Sunday, and four days of bombing raids across Georgia.

Yet Georgia's pledge of a cease-fire rang hollow Monday. An AP reporter saw a small group of Georgian fighters open fire on a column of Russian and Ossetian military vehicles outside Tskhinvali, triggering a 30-minute battle. The Russians later said all the Georgians were killed.

Another AP reporter was in the village of Tkviavi, 7 1/2 miles south of Tskhinvali inside Georgia, when a bomb from a Russian Sukhoi warplane struck a house. The walls of neighboring buildings fell as screaming residents ran for cover. Eighteen people were wounded.

Georgian artillery fire was heard coming from fields about 200 yards away from the village, perhaps the bomber's target.

Hundreds of Georgian troops headed north Monday along the road toward Tskhinvali, pocked with tank regiments creeping up the highway into South Ossetia. Hundreds of other soldiers traveled via trucks in the opposite direction, towing light artillery weapons.

President Bush and other Western leaders have sharply criticized Russia's military response as disproportionate and say Russia appears to want the Georgian government overthrown. They have also complained that Russian warplanes—buzzing over Georgia since Friday—have bombed Georgian oil sites and factories far from the conflict zone.

The world's seven largest economic powers urged Russia to accept an immediate cease-fire Monday and agree to international mediation. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her colleagues from the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations spoke by telephone and pledged their support for a negotiated solution to the conflict.

"I've expressed my grave concern about the disproportionate response of Russia and that we strongly condemn the bombing outside of South Ossetia," Bush told NBC Sports.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin criticized the United States for viewing Georgia as the victim, instead of the aggressor, and for airlifting Georgian troops back home from Iraq on Sunday.

"Of course, Saddam Hussein ought to have been hanged for destroying several Shiite villages," Putin said in Moscow. "And the incumbent Georgian leaders who razed ten Ossetian villages at once, who ran elderly people and children with tanks, who burned civilian alive in their sheds—these leaders must be taken under protection."

The U.S. military was flying Georgian troops back home from Iraq and informed the Russians about the flights ahead of time to avoid mishaps, said one military official said Monday on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the subject on the record.

Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said Monday morning that U.S. officials expect to have all Georgian troops out of Iraq by the end of the day.

Pentagon officials said Monday that U.S. military was assessing the fighting every day to determine whether U.S. trainers should be pulled out of the country.

The approximately 130 trainers, including a few dozen civilians, had been scattered at a number of sites to work with local units, but officials were working over the weekend to consolidate them in one reasonably safe location, two officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to talk about the subject on the record. Pentagon officials said Monday that all of members of the American groups had been accounted for.

Saakashvili signed a cease-fire pledge Monday proposed by the French and Finnish foreign ministers. The EU envoys headed to Moscow to try to persuade Russia to accept it.

Saakashvili, however, voiced concern that Russia's true goal was to undermine his pro-Western government. "It's all about the independence and democracy of Georgia," he said.

Saakashvili said Russia has sent 20,000 troops and 500 tanks into Georgia. He said Russian warplanes were bombing roads and bridges, destroying radar systems and targeting Tbilisi's civilian airport. One Russian bombing raid struck the Tbilisi airport area only a half-hour before the EU envoys arrived, he said.

Another hit near key Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, which carries Caspian crude to the West. No supply interruptions have been reported.

"Let's Go!" - Garbeau's Dinner Theatre

Left: Keith Turk.

I was very impressed the way Keith did a flip. He said he hadn't planned on doing one, but his original Plan A had to be abandoned because of a difficulty with his shoe, and so the flip was Plan B. I'm very impressed with anyone who can fall back on flips as a stop-gap!





Wonderful hand-clapping, foot-stomping hi-NRG show over at Garbeau's!

Many of the best dancers in the Sacramento area are in this music revue. Excellent singers as well.

Joe Parente (who is also in my Step Aerobics class) composed several new songs (arranged by Jim Jordan, the Musical Director). Several people contributed to choreography, including Ana Maria Shexnayder (who is hotter than Venus - Wait! She IS Venus!)

Today in Step Aerobics class, Pepper Von intimated that the show is getting a bigger buzz than he expected. According to him, several agents from LA, Las Vegas, (and did I understand Miami?) have either come to see the show, or heard about it, with a thought to picking it up. (I was going to tell Pepper that the show would look completely different with Celine Dion in it, however.)

To rev up excitement, the audience was encouraged to cheer on either the dancing or the singing teams, but in this show, it was a friendly competition, with no losers, and many crossing over the line between teams. (Nevertheless, the team concept reminded me of Riverdance, with its good Irish step-dancers, and the opposing dark step-dancing compatriots, ultimately resolved by Michael Flatley's blistering hot feet.)

Several people excelled:

• Misty Barker - Marvelous, with her hip-hop moves;
• Cory Betts - Excellent dancer, of recent RCTC vintage, but going places;
• Kingi Brown - Young singer from Bret Harte Elementary (a Curtis Park school, which must mean he lives near my house);
• Hannah Collins - What a fierce dancer! She is a familiar face at Step One, and in companies like Pulse;
• Carla Fleming - She was recently in one of my step classes. What a voice!;
• Laura Lothian - Recently she was "Val" in Magic Circle's "A Chorus Line";
• Gabrielle Perez - Pepper was so proud - "She's my daughter!" And she commands attention on stage!;
• Elaine Lenae Douglas -Wonderful gospel voice!
• Tyler Drewitz - Good dancer!

Left: Shantá Robinson. Shantá has been cast in Garbeau's upcoming "Little Shop of Horrors". Shantá was so small that Keith could lift her with seeming ease, making them both one power dance couple.

Left: Rashad ("Q") Grisby, with yours truly. Rashad was brimming with strength and confidence in today's show.

Left: Cory Betts. Cory is currently enrolled in Sacramento Ballet's Educational Program, and, at age 17, is already a great dancer.

Left: Crystal Barrett, Pepper Von, and Mark Ferreira. Crystal was a featured singer in many of the segments of this musical revue, particularly in the Country Medley. Pepper Von created and directed the show. Mark Ferreira is Garbeau's CEO.

Mark wants to encourage Sacramento's live theater community with a civility campaign. Mark is concerned whenever people inadvertently (or otherwise) trash other theater companies. He points out that all live theaters benefit when any one theater benefits from presenting live shows.

I replied that, as an example, that people sometimes assume companies like DMTC and RSP are engaged in a competition for talent and attention, when, in fact, both companies work closely together towards the mutual goal of expanding audiences and giving deserving performers opportunities to take the stage that they might otherwise not get. No one can trash DMTC without also trashing RSP, and vice-versa.

I think we can all get behind and support Mark's kind-words campaign!

Elly Nominations Out

Runaway Stage gets several for best overall production, but, interestingly, so does DMTC's "La Cage Aux Folles"....

Time to break out the lipstick....

For musicals, three productions by Runaway Stage received nominations for best overall show – "All Shook Up," "Cabaret" and "Thoroughly Modern Millie" – with Bob Baxter receiving best director nominations for all three and Joshua James nabbing best actor nominations for "All Shook Up" and "Cabaret." The other nominations for best overall production were for Davis Musical Theatre Company's "La Cage Aux Folles" and Solano College Theatre's "A Year With Frog and Toad."

The complete nomination list is located here.

Florida Warning

Something for my Florida friends:

The “Broad Area” mentioned below may head towards Florida. It’s still a number of days away from landfall, and I’d guess it would affect Florida’s east coast, not its west. But with several storms already the season, it’s inevitable that one would eventually head towards Florida. The early forecasts suggest a tropical storm, not a hurricane, but these forecasts are too distant in time to be reliable. So keep an eye open!
---------------------------------------------------
ABNT20 KNHC 110548
TWOAT
TROPICAL WEATHER OUTLOOK
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL
200 AM EDT MON AUG 11 2008

FOR THE NORTH ATLANTIC...CARIBBEAN SEA AND THE GULF OF MEXICO...

A BROAD AREA OF LOW PRESSURE ASSOCIATED WITH A TROPICAL WAVE IS LOCATED OVER THE CENTRAL ATLANTIC OCEAN ABOUT 900 MILES EAST OF THE WINDWARD ISLANDS. ALTHOUGH ASSOCIATED SHOWER AND THUNDERSTORM ACTIVITY REMAINS DISORGANIZED...ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS APPEAR FAVORABLE FOR GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT...AND THIS SYSTEM HAS THE POTENTIAL TO BECOME A TROPICAL DEPRESSION DURING THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS AS IT MOVES WESTWARD AT 15 TO 20 MPH.

A LARGE AREA OF DISORGANIZED SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS IS LOCATED OVER THE EASTERN ATLANTIC A COUPLE HUNDRED MILES SOUTHWEST OF THE CAPE VERDE ISLANDS. SLOW DEVELOPMENT OF THIS SYSTEM IS POSSIBLE DURING THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS AS IT MOVES WESTWARD AT ABOUT 15 MPH.

ELSEWHERE.. TROPICAL CYCLONE FORMATION IS NOT EXPECTED DURING THE NEXT 48 HOURS.

$$
FORECASTER RHOME

Exhibit A: Google=Stoopid?

As previously noted, Google doesn't make us stoopid, but stoopid does make us Google.....

The Gravitas Gap

Vladimir Putin orders armed forces into action while The Decider decides no grab ass today.

Farewell Party At DMTC

Left: Jonathan Cagle-Mulberg, Joshua Smith, and Caitlin Kiley.

Three of DMTC's stalwart actors this season are heading off to college, so about 30 of us had a party for them at DMTC Saturday night, featuring video outtakes from their performances over the last three seasons.

Jonathan Cagle-Mulberg is heading to Johns Hopkins University in the D.C. area, for graduate-level studies in Government. Joshua Smith is headed to AMDA in the Hollywood area to study voice & theater. Caitlin Kiley is headed to the University of Arizona in Tucson (Go Wildcats!) to study musical theatre.

The best to them all!

After the party several of us sat around and idly speculated who, if anyone, at DMTC might get Elly nominations this coming Sunday night. Then we speculated who at other theaters might get Elly nominations. It was a fun game. I'd tell you what we thought, but then I'd have to kill you.....

Left: The celebrants hurriedly put icing squiggles on the ice-cream cake before eagerly devouring the slab of dessert fun.

Rocketrek Starts!

John writes from Oklahoma City:

Hey Marc,

The first Native American astronaut, John Herrington, will begin his transcontinental bicycle tour this coming week. His plans changed from earlier this year when he had thought he would begin in Sacramento. Now he will be starting at the west end of the Olympic Peninsula and following a roughly diagonal route across the lower 48 to Cape Canaveral. Along the way he will be speaking at to school groups, many on reservations throughout the western states.

We're pretty excited about this. We, along with the Chickasaw Nation, Trek Bicycles and GearUp South Dakota (a program to encourage high school students on reservations to go on to college and take science and math courses--so far it has had a 100% success rate in getting the kids to go to college!) are sponsors of the ride. You can get more information about the trip at rocketrek.com. He will be posting daily updates during the ~3 month tour. Also, you can read a summary of the trip plans at city-sentinel.com. Peter, my son, wrote the article for that weekly Oklahoma City paper.

More Treachery?

McCain is accusing Obama of being the Kremlin's tool for exposing McCain's lobbying connections to Georgia. The shooting war between the two antagonists certainly amps up the attention these connections will get. If McCain hadn't already been bought and paid for, his accusations might have bite.

A Canadian Opinion

Of the housing mess:

IT WAS the extreme greediness of privileged Americans that caused hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens to lose their homes, undermined the economies of not only the U.S., but of nations around the world, and sabotaged the stock-market investments of heaven only knows how many million grey-haired pensioners like me.

...In the case for the prosecution, let us present, as Exhibit A, two government-chartered, U.S. companies: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

They own or guarantee nearly half of America’s $12 trillion worth of home mortgages, and fears that the devastation in the mortgage industry had rendered them unstable and undercapitalized recently sent their stock market prices into a dive that horrified their shareholders.

Moreover, the bad news sharply eroded the value of bank shares, including the Canadian ones in my modest retirement fund. Since not only American banks but the central banks of many nations held billions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities that Fannie or Freddie had issued or guaranteed, a collapse in the value of these securities may yet have disastrous consequences for the entire world economy.

It’s now clear that federal politicians in the U.S. have long been insanely permissive about the way Fannie and Freddie went about their business.

Why? The politicians joined the club of greed.

"In Washington," the New York Times reports, "Fannie and Freddie’s sprawling lobbying machine hired family and friends of politicians in their efforts to quickly sideline any regulations that might slow their growth or invite greater oversight of their business practices."

The lobby made sure that Fannie and Freddie would not have to meet the same financial standards or endure the same tax burdens as their competitors, and that government guarantees would stick the taxpayers for any losses they incurred. The companies did not offer home loans. Instead, they bought mortgages from banks, and accepted the risk of defaults. This allowed the banks to issue more and more mortgages.

With the assistance of campaign contributions and muscular lobbying, Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac got together with lawmakers in Washington, brokerages and investment banks on Wall Street, and real estate agents all over the U.S. to build what the New York Times called "an unusual and mutually beneficial co-dependency."

...Jonathan Kopell of the Yale School of Management explained that the two mortgage titans gave money to nonprofit activist groups, and thereby made it hard for such groups to criticize them.

"Likewise, there was another set of entities, essentially a huge industry, that profits from every additional loan that Fannie or Freddie can buy," he continued. "The more loans they purchase, the more business there is for them, and so they’re willing to work with the enterprises."

As a tsunami of foreclosures swept across America, home prices declined, and so did the mortgage assets of Fannie and Freddie.

A lot of Americans, however, had grown rich while busily involving themselves in the racket of issuing mortgages to a whole lot of other Americans who could not afford them.

..."It seems to me we’ve seen enough evidence over the years that the capitalist system is not going to be destroyed by an outside challenger like communism," the late Molly Ivins wrote on the AlterNet website. "It will be destroyed by its own internal greed. Greed is the greatest danger as we develop an increasingly winner-take-all system."

"It’s dispiriting indeed to watch the U.S. financial system, supposedly the envy of the world, being taken to its knees," Gretchen Morgenson recently wrote in the International Herald Tribune.

"But that’s the show we’re watching, brought to you by somnambulant regulators, greedy bank executives and incompetent corporate directors. This wasn’t the way the ‘ownership society’ was supposed to work."

When greed’s in charge, no society works.

Wow!

The Olympic Opening Ceremony was just amazing!

Strange Work Ritual

T.C. turns 50.

National Enquirer Shoots; It Scores

Lots of disappointment today in the left blogosphere with John Edwards. Elizabeth Edwards is just as popular as he is, if not more so, and people are angry on her behalf.

I still like the guy, though. I hope he ends up in the next Administration somewhere.

Hippies

So whassup with Steve Pearce's congressional campaign in New Mexico? He's worried about hippies:

With Phish gone, Jerry Garcia dead and Woodstock nearing its 40th anniversary, I think we can all admit that hippies are no longer here (though their... particular love of a certain plant is well in place, as one can see from Seth Rogen and James Franco's newest movie).

Well, except for in the deluded minds that are behind the advertisements at the Steve Pearce campaign. If you saw the Albuquerque Journal the other day (hell, for all I know, today as well), then you saw an ad where hippies holding signs showing "radical" positions.

Hmmm.... Hippies.

Ahh, Bernalillo, New Mexico, during the hot summer of 1978 - 30 years ago! I remember sitting in my grandmother's mobile home on a stifling hot summer's day and listening to my dad and Gramita (my grandmother) discussing hippies:

Dad: I think I saw some hippies at the store.
Gramita: I saw some hippies last week.
Dad: Ooooh, hippies!

I thought the conversation strange, because I had hardly seen any hippies for years - since, say, 1972? They weren't very common by 1978 - almost vanishingly rare, like whooping cranes.

Thirty years later, it's safe to say, hippies are essentially gone. Yet Steve Pearce bases his campaign on a fear of hippies.

Tick, tick, tick: Time moves on.... It had moved on by 1978. How much more so today?

Hell Hath No Fury

Like a White House aide scorned:

Bradley Blakeman, a former aide to President George W. Bush, claims in a lawsuit filed Thursday that the comedy flick starring Kevin Costner and Kelsey Grammer rips off his own version of the story, titled "Go November."

Blakeman is seeking unspecified "monetary and other appropriate relief" from the Hollywood stars and the backers of "Swing Vote," including the Walt Disney Company.

The complaint, filed in Long Island, New York, alleges that Blakeman in 2006 gave Grammer a copyrighted script of his idea which bears a "striking resemblance" to the movie released this August by Disney's Touchstone Pictures.

..."Go November," the law suit says, has an "extraordinarily similar" plot, with several identical characters, and also foreseeing Grammer playing the same role of incumbent president.

SN&R Flips Over "bare"

Kel Munger gives a glowing review here:

Artistic Differences has assembled a cast made up of the best and brightest of the area’s young musical actors. That makes this production reminiscent of last summer’s Hair in all the finest ways: dynamic voices, a lot of humor, a heart that won’t ignore injustice. As the star-crossed leads, Lucas Blair (Peter) and Ian Cullity (Jason) are in impeccable voice. Blair has the good-hearted, earnest-kid vibe down; and Cullity makes Jason’s emotional wavering both frustrating and true. Kelly Daniells, the company’s managing director, turns in a heart-rending performance as Ivy, a true victim of love. Maggie Hollinbeck does a great deal with a small role, mingling grace with pain as Peter’s disappointed but loving mother—and Hollenbeck’s duet with Blair in “See Me” will break the heart of anyone who’s had to come out to a beloved parent as well as any parent who’s had to listen.

But the scene stealers are Jason’s misfit sister, Nadia (Joelle Wirth), with a “good girl wrapped in a bad girl” attitude that puts Stockard Channing’s old Rizzo role in Grease to shame, and Sister Chantelle (Natasha Greer), who manages to channel Diana Ross, Oprah and Madea—sometimes in the same scene. Joshua James (Lucas) does what he does best—stir things up with a rousing dance number, as he did so well in Cabaret earlier this year at Runaway Stage—in “Wonderland,” a paean to the joys of the rave that precedes a dance scene set in one of the underground parties (and is very reminiscent, in a 21st-century way, of Hair’s acid trip).

Once again, Artistic Differences will have people lining up next to the light-rail tracks for the show of the summer.

Behind The Eight Ball

Today is 08/08/08!

Is that lucky?

Meet The Boss

Making bad choices in Vegas:

Casino mogul Steve Wynn was slapped in the face at his hotel during a recent run-in with two sisters with a history of prostitution, Las Vegas police said.

The incident unfolded about 9:30 p.m. July 25 at the V.I.P. valet parking area of Wynn Las Vegas, according to a police report.

As Wynn headed for the doors, Sarah Cournede stepped out from a small crowd and propositioned him, the report said. Wynn put his arm around the woman and continued toward the doors, where he told a door man to summon security, the report said.

Wynn held onto Cournede as she struggled to escape, and her sister, Maria Cournede, eventually joined the fray and tried to pull her sister away, the report said. During the struggle, Maria Cournede slapped Wynn in the face, the report said.

Australian Weather Forecast

For the next week at least, drier than a mummy's medicine cabinet.

Gentle Little People

This is why I moved from N.M. - they're hiding behind furniture everywhere in the Rio Grande Valley:

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- For more than a year, speculation, rumors and mystery have surrounded the former leader of the Gallup Catholic Diocese, in Albuquerque, N.M.

Last July, Bishop Donald Pelotte sustained multiple injuries in his home. He said he fell down a flight of stairs, but a mysterious 911 call from Pelotte is casting doubt on his claim -- so are his injuries.

...And adding more mystery to his injuries was a bizarre call to 911.

A dispatch log from September details Gallup police were called to the bishop's home after he told operators "gentle little people about 3 to 4 feet tall wearing Halloween masks" were in his home.

"Can you tell me what happened?" the dispatcher asked.

"They're just moving. They've been quiet. They've been going upstairs in the bedrooms and hiding behind the artifacts. But they don't talk," said Pelotte, adding that they were wearing masks.

"What kind of masks do they have?" asked the dispatcher.

"Ma'am, I don't have the time to tell you. You'll see it for yourself. Please send somebody over here," said Pelotte.

He then told the dispatcher that the little people were gentle, but that he was going to hide in his bedroom.

In April, Pope Benedict XVI accepted the bishop's resignation. The bishop has been living in Florida.

Just Too Ambitious For One CD

Former White House speechwriter Mark W. Davis finds the Republicans to be tone deaf in trying to link the vigorous appeal of Teddy Roosevelt (John McCain's hero), and the world of early-20th Century Republicanism, to today's world. Referring to today's youth:

So how are Republicans reaching out to them?

I have on my desk a CD sent out this spring from the Republican House Policy Committee. Fat, 1970s lettering bears the title, "Freedom Songs." The cover image of the CD package is a sepia-tone photo of Teddy Roosevelt.

Open it up and you are treated to photos of Warren G. Harding staring into the horn of a crank phonograph, Herbert Hoover listening to a wireless, and a glum-looking Calvin Coolidge simply glowering at a camera. In an accompanying letter, Rep. Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan writes that the CD includes "riffs by Dr. Russell Kirk," as well as "the pounding rhythm section of the Austrian School of Economics."

So while the Obama Democrats transform America's youth into a Facebook army, the Republican Party is offering this disc, Mr. McCotter writes, "as an alternative to an eighty story high stack of dry white policy papers."

Did I forget to mention it can also be podcast?

To The Last Second, Shoveling Them Out The Door

Just like we puzzle over the Dutch tulip bubble, people in the future will marvel at the subprime crisis:

Mortgages issued in the first part of 2007 are going bad at a pace that far outstrips the 2006 vintage, suggesting that the blow to the financial system from U.S. housing woes will be deeper than many people earlier estimated.

...Evidence that lax lending standards were leading to higher mortgage delinquencies first emerged in late 2006. The first major casualty of the subprime credit crisis, New Century Financial Corp., imploded in early 2007. Yet the data from the FDIC and others suggest that lenders didn't substantially tighten standards until at least July or August 2007, when credit jitters hit Wall Street and financial stocks began to swoon.

...Last month, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. said it expects losses on prime mortgages that weren't securitized and remain on its books to triple from current levels. The increase in bad loans is driven mostly by jumbo mortgages originated in the second half of 2007, a company spokesman said.

Until these bad loans are fully digested, "foreclosures will remain at record highs, the financial system will be under severe stress and the broader economy will sputter," said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Economy.com.

...Questionable business practices may have played a role, too. Some of the 2007 loans "were knowingly originated as really bad loans," says Chris Mayer, a professor of real estate at Columbia University's business school. Mortgage originators who profited handsomely from the housing boom "realized the game was completely over" and pushed mortgages out the door, says Mr. Mayer.

Mystery Man

Walking Sparky last night, I stopped to read SN&R under a street lamp. Things were quiet, calm.

I focused over the newsprint and suddenly noticed a pair of tennis shoes catching the light in the jet black darkness. Odd. Then I realized they were attached to legs. Suddenly I realized there was a dark-skinned man in dark clothing standing quietly just a few feet away. He was fishing out a cigarette with one hand and he held a beer bottle with the other. He didn't say a thing, but nodded and quietly started walking away.

Ever-confused, Sparky decided to follow him. The man leaned down and petted Sparky until Sparky was satisfied. Then without a word, the man stood upright and quietly vanished into the night.

The Left Blogosphere Is All A'Twitter

Happy with Paris today. Some of their comments just slay me:

* Gandalf
To pile on Matt's post below, it appears McCain made a major miscalculation with his celebrity attack ad. Hilton's response is now the top story on Google News, and apparently the McCain campaign is receiving so many media requests about it, that they had to post a from response on their website. They have gotten into a spat with Paris Hilton, which there is basically no way to win. Hilton has nothing to lose, and the back and forth just highlights the frivolic idiocy of McCain's recent attacks.

It feels really weird to say it, but Paris Hilton kind of feels like Gandalf returning to Middle Earth, "at the turn of the tide." Her age-based attacks on McCain are even in line with Obama's new ad that opens with a line that could be interpreted as a shot at McCain's age. McCain is going to be on the defensive now, even though he started the attack in the first place. Obama's "proud to be ignorant" line is getting a lot of play, too.

Paris Hilton is playing a not insignificant role in the presidential election. Who'd have thunk it? Man, politics is weird.


* As much as I tend to hate her and her ilk...
....you just don't fuck with Paris Hilton.

What did he think, she would be too busy to respond? Did he think she would just pass up a chance to be in the spotlight? Did he think her family, with its famous name, would just stand by while McCain trashed them?

"Don't hate the media, become the media" -Jello Biafra


* It's more than a little funny that Paris Hilton's response ad could just be the definitive turning point in the campaign. It is just so bad for McCain on so many levels.
"He's the oldest celebrity in the world"? That line alone was enough.

First her mom calls McCain's ad "completely frivolous", and then Paris does this.

Well, poetic justice is about the only kind we've got left these days, but this alone seems to say we've got enough to get by.


* Every time the gray-hairs tangle with pop culture, they lose, because pop culture just doesn't quit.
This is definitive proof that McCain learned nothing from the fall of Communism. He no doubt still thinks it was all Reagan's doing, and had nothing to do with jazz, Levis and rock 'n roll.


* As someone over at dKos put it:
Say what you want about Paris Hilton, she gets paid to go to parties. Try arranging that for yourself sometime.


* Oldest Celebrity in the World
Adding to the poetic justice, this puts his age at the forefront without any way to claim Obama's campaign is somewhat responsible for playing the age card. Paris said everything the campaign couldn't, and leaves McCain in a box, for he can't pin responsibility on Obama (and thus find a way to be portrayed the victim of this series of event) nor can he escalate the debate with Paris (who relishes the media spotlight and has nothing to lose in this debate).

Even sweeter poetic justice still, now it is McCain who is associated with Paris Hilton, giving Sen. Obama the ability to frame the contrast as he did today - "Instead of running ads about Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, they should be talking to energy experts and make a difference" - thus making the choice between more GOP nonsense or common sense.

And now that McCain has responded to the Hilton ad saying Paris agrees with McCain's energy policy, could it not be called the McCain/Paris energy plan? Can Paris now be labeled McCain's energy advisor?

There is enough snark to last for days, and you can bet that John McCain's outrage that his clever ad bite back so hard will compel him to compound the error before it's all said and done.


* Amen to all the above.
The only thing McCain has to be thankful for is that takes some attention away from his pimping out his wife at the Buffalo Chip beauty contest.

Or, come to think of it, does it just encourage whoever won that contest to seek her own 15 minutes of fame?

Once again, Paris Hilton could only win from that development, and McCain could only lose.


* its interesting as hell.
All day long I was thinking that the Obama advertising campaign wasn't interesting enough, and how we needed to bring back the 527's.

Well, this ad is interesting and it didn't come from the Obama campaign.

The one thing no political candidate can survive is ridicule. And McCain has just been roasted.

This may very well be a significant event in the campaign.

1.2 million views as of this writing. And wait until people hear about it on the radio tomorrow morning, and get to the office and check it out....

This is going to be the definition of viral.


* the world of celebrities
has become so important and powerful in our culture, that it's now butting up against the presumably far more powerful world of politics.
Absolutely surreal. The only thing that could possibly top this is if McCain showed up on an episode of American Gladiators to face off with Wolf in the Joust.

I really do want to see a McCain vs. Hilton debate. She would cream him.

(As an aside: why hasn't anyone pointed out that Paris Hilton can't run for president? She's under 35).


* As an aside...
It appears that Obama's response on the tire gauge is having an effect too, as McCain has had to concede that he AGREES with Obama.

Yeah, think they're still going to be passing around those tire gauges with such glee?

How about an ad highlighting all the positions McCain has had to switch to Obama's viewpoint? Ie, Iraq, tire gauge, and now soon (because of Paris Hilton), Obama's energy policy compromise.

The theme? "Obama leads while McCain follows."



* Yeah, I saw that climbdown as well
Total, 100% capitulation. Remarkably stupid stuff from McCain to have started a food fight over that specific point. Now he looks dumb, for having brought it up in the first place, AND leaves a lot of frustrated supporters behind by totally hanging them out to dry.


* Wow great video
Paris delivered that policy section perfectly. She sounds lucid and smart, and seems to have an amazing sense of humor by prefacing it by pretending to be her stereotypical bimbo character. I think she not only just p0wned McCain, but her critics too.

I bet McCain enjoyed being called older than dirt to his face. Awesome. I hope Obama sends her a thank you card, she earned one.


* My Dad Likes To Say
That Paris is stupid like a fox, and while we laugh at her she's laughing all the way to the bank. Looks like he was right; I'll have to tell him about this.


* Not all blondes are stupid...
I've seen Paris Hilton on the late-night talk shows and she's clearly not a dumb blond. That's just male sexism. Although there are exceptions, women don't get to be A-list celebrities without having at least average intelligence.


Though You Probably Still Could Drown Her
By throwing a mirror into the swimming pool.

MoDo, And The Mockery Campaign

The unseemly evolution of the 2008 Presidential campaign has led right into Maureen Dowd's bailiwick - snarkville. And she's up to the challenge. A selection:

Now John McCain is pea-green with envy. That’s the only explanation for why a man who prides himself on honor, a man who vowed not to take the low road in the campaign, having been mugged by W. and Rove in South Carolina in 2000, is engaging in a festival of juvenilia.

The Arizona senator who built his reputation on being a brave proponent of big solutions is running a schoolyard campaign about tire gauges and Paris Hilton, childishly accusing his opponent of being too serious, too popular and not patriotic enough.

Even his own mother, the magical 96-year-old Roberta McCain, let slip that she thought the Paris Hilton-Britney Spears ad was “kinda stupid.”

McCain’s 2000 strategist, John Weaver, was equally blunt with Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter: “It’s hard to imagine America responding to ‘small ball’ when we have all these problems.”

Some of McCain’s old pals in the Senate are cringing at what they see as his soulless transformation into what he once scorned.

“John’s eaten up with envy,” said one. “His image of himself was always the handsome, celebrity flyboy.

“Now somebody else is the celebrity,” the colleague continued, while John looks in the mirror and sees his face marred by skin cancer and looks at the TV and sees his dashing self-image replaced by visions of William Frawley, with Letterman jokes about his membership in the ham radio club and adventures with wagon trains.

For McCain, being cool meant being a rogue, not a policy wonk; but Obama manages to be a cool College Bowl type, which must irk McCain, who liked to play up his bad-boy cool. Now the guy in the back of the class is shooting spitballs at the class pet and is coming off as more juvenile than daring.

Around the McCain campaign, they grouse that Obama “hasn’t bled.” He hasn’t bled literally, in military service, just like W., the last holder of an E-ZPass who sped past McCain. And he hasn’t paid his dues in the Senate, since he basically just stopped by for directions to the Oval Office.

As a new senator, Obama was not only precocious enough to pounce on turf that McCain had invested years in, such as campaign finance lobbying, ethics reform and earmarks. When Obama did reach across the aisle for a mentor, it was to the staid Richard Lugar of Indiana, not to the salty Republican of choice for Democrats, McCain.

When the Illinois freshman took back a private promise to join McCain’s campaign finance reform effort, McCain told his aide Mark Salter to “brush him back.” Salter sent an over-the-top vituperative letter to Obama. “I guess I beaned him instead,” Salter told Newsweek’s Howard Fineman.

McCain could dismiss W. as a lightweight, but he knows Obama’s smart. Obama wrote his own books, while McCain’s were written by Salter. McCain knows he’s the affirmative action scion of admirals who might not have gotten through Annapolis without being a legacy. Obama didn’t even tell Harvard Law School that he was black on his application.

Redneck Stonehenge

A man's home is his castle:

HOOPER, Utah — A farmer has erected a fence in his backyard made of three old cars sticking up in the air to send a message to new neighbors that he can do whatever he wants on his farm.

"This is just a fun way for me to say, 'Hey boys, I'm still here,'" said Rhett Davis. "This is my redneck Stonehenge."

Meet Our Cats

Hands-on, as they say:

Three tigers attacked a 16-year-old employee at Branson Interactive Zoo and Aquarium, formerly known as Predator World, early Monday afternoon.

"Slavery Gets Shit Done"

Facebook page of Justin Schaffer, son of the Colorado Senatorial candidate, gets him into trouble.

Tim Pawlenty Comments

Paris' comments are "good for democracy".

Trying To Make Lemons From Lemonade

The McCain campaign scrambles to put the best possible face on Paris' comments:

UPDATE: McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds emails: “It sounds like Paris Hilton supports John McCain’s ‘all of the above’ approach to America’s energy crisis - including both alternatives and drilling. Paris Hilton might not be as big a celebrity as Barack Obama, but she obviously has a better energy plan.”

UPDATE: Shorter McCain, via Drudge (and the headline of Bounds' press release): 'Paris Supports Drilling'...

Nevertheless, two things struck me as being far more important than her position on drilling:

• she noted that she had been used; and,
• she emphasized how old John McCain is.

Whatever else one might think, those weren't compliments. They're even nastier than Paris' comments regarding Kim Kardashian's butt. She might not be an Obama supporter, but she won't be McCain's tool.

In this high-school-like election season, much has been made of mockery as a tool to define one's opponent. No one anytime, anywhere wields a sharper stiletto than Paris Hilton. Don't cross the Class of 2008's premier Queen Bee or you will pay.....

We Can Do It!...

...But only if we work together as a team. Some self-sacrifice will be required. Whatever you might think or really want, you will have to buckle down and eat the apple pie a la mode:

If the trends of the past three decades continue, it's possible that every American adult could be overweight 40 years from now, a government-funded study projects.

The figure might sound alarming, or impossible, but researchers say that even if the actual rate never reaches the 100-percent mark, any upward movement is worrying; two-thirds of the population is already overweight.

"Genetically and physiologically, it should be impossible" for all U.S. adults to become overweight, said Dr. Lan Liang of the federal government's Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, one of the researchers on the study.

However, she told Reuters Health, the data suggest that if the trends of the past 30 years persist, "that is the direction we're going."

Yeah, But Why Target The National Enquirer?

The FBI's beginning to release selective information regarding Bruce Ivins' motives, but it doesn't really add up - at least, not yet:

One of the most notable aspects of that document is the motive attributed to Ivins, which is several-fold (much of which is grounded in its attribution to Ivins of a right-wing political agenda):

• Ivins harbored animosity towards Catholic politicians who were pro-choice, particularly Sen. Daschle and Sen. Leahy, two of the targets of the most virulent anthrax strain that was sent;
• particularly in the wake of 9/11, he was angry towards those who embraced the ACLU position that civil liberties must be safeguarded, and Sens. Daschle and Leahy, at the time, were widely perceived to have been holding up passage of the Patriot Act, and he also was furious at those who wanted to "coddle" or "excuse" terrorists;
• he was angry at NBC News because one of its journalists, Gary Matsumoto (who subsequently was the producer of the ABC bentonite stories) was investigating the safety of the anthrax vaccine; and one of the anthrax letters was sent to Tom Brokaw at NBC; and,
• he was afraid that Government support for the anthrax vaccine he helped develop, and funding for future research, would dissipate, and an anthrax attack would revitalize that support.

Paris Fires Back

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Science Study Chaff



Jerry took note of this (note fun video above).

Global warming is such a hot topic that people apparently spoof studies for their own purposes. The story linked here describes the tale of one such spoof:

On Nov. 7, news flashed around conservative and climate-skeptic e-mail chains, some Web sites and a couple of talk-radio programs that an important new scientific paper proved that undersea bacteria, not people, were responsible for most of the recent buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The trigger was an e-mail chain maintained by Benny J. Peiser, a British social scientist who sends out daily summaries of research questioning dangerous human-caused global warming and international climate treaties, along with other subjects.
This message merited designation as an “Extra,” and had the title “Carbon dioxide production by benthic bacteria: the death of manmade global warming theory?” It cited a new paper in the Journal of Geoclimatic Studies.

It provided a link (no longer active) to a long, equation-laden treatise in that Japanese journal, written by researchers at the University of Arizona and University of Gothenburg, in Sweden.

...But some climate experts almost instantly smelled something fishy, with Roger A. Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado quickly posting, “Call me a skeptic skeptic - I smell a hoax.”

Just 70 minutes after the first e-mail message from Mr. Peiser, he sent out another one with the headline “hoax alert,” saying, “There is no Department of Climatology at the University of Arizona, nor is there a Daniel Klein or Mandeep Gupta in the U. of A. directory. Neither is there an Institute of Geoclimatic Studies. The whole thing looks like a nice hoax.”

In this case, discovery was quick - there is no Department of Climatology at the University of Arizona - but it takes time to shoot these things down. Really well-designed hoaxes might prove particularly vexing. And the apparent purpose of this spoof?:

Its purpose was to expose the credulity and scientific illiteracy of many of the people who call themselves climate sceptics. While dismissive of the work of the great majority of climate scientists, they will believe almost anything if it lends support to their position. Their approach to climate science is the opposite of scepticism.

Too much trouble for everyone. Studies that are not in earnest are all spam in the cerebral cortex: the equivalent of viruses and worms!

But The Other Half Want More, More, More!

Do you feel the magic yet, Gabe?

(I must admit, however, that our two-year-long election season is just ridiculously overextended):

With Election Day still three months away, 48 percent said they're hearing too much about the Democratic candidate, according to a poll released Wednesday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. Just 26 percent said the same about his Republican rival, John McCain.

Classy Guy, That McCain



Offering up his wife as a contestant to the topless (and occasionally bottomless) Buffalo Chip Bikini "Beauty Pageant".

The Customer Is Always Right

So there!:

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) - Jacksonville police say Reginald Peterson needs to learn that 911 is not the appropriate place to complain that Subway left the sauce off a spicy Italian sandwich.

Police said the 42-year-old man dialed 911 twice last week so he could have his sub made correctly. The second call was to complain that officers weren't arriving fast enough.

Women Impressionist Exhibition At The Legion Of Honor

Left: Julie Rêveuse
1894; "Julie Daydreaming"; Private collection. The model is her daughter Julie.


A wonderful time viewing the exhibit: "Women Impressionists: Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Eva Gonzalès, Marie Bracquemond". (Here's a nice article on the exhibition in the San Francisco Sentinel.)

Since I rarely go to museums, this exhibit struck me quite forecfully. One thing that images can't quite convey is the luminosity of a lot of Impressionistic painting - you have to see the painting in person to get the full effect. It's amazing to note that the Impressionistic glow is a painstakingly-planned effect - it doesn't just happen by accident.

Because Mary Cassatt is apparently the most famous of the bunch, they arranged the tour so her paintings are viewed last. But then that just means the biggest emotional impact goes to those paintings viewed first - namely, those of Berthe Morisot.

We obtained little headsets, into which we could punch numerical codes every fifth or sixth painting and hear a synopsis of the painting's history and salient features. These little summaries were pretty terse, however (no doubt to help accelerate visitors through the gallery), and I yearned for something else: namely an art expert, who could rapidly and intelligently reveal the universes of experience and emotion behind each painting.

Lo! And behold! An art expert with a gaggle of acolytes caught up to us in the Marie Bracquemond gallery, and I thought "This is great!" Then she started speaking:

Some people complain that, with the Women Impressionists, it's all about autobiography. Other art critics take offense, however, and note that it's not about autobiography at all. Truth is, with the Women Impressionists, it's a little about autobiography.

My eyes rolled back in my head - this level of art sophistication was clearly well above my class and education. I started fiddling again with headset trying to find another frequency.

Wonderful, wonderful exhibit! My only complaint was that 2.5 hours was too brief a time with these paintings. Here is a quick summary:

Each section of Women Impressionists serves as an individual retrospective for one of the four artists. Gonzalès, who died prematurely in childbirth, and Bracquemond, who stopped painting due to the discouragement of her husband, each have a smaller body of work in the exhibition; for many visitors, this will be an introduction to these artists.

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895): Women Impressionists presents over 60 examples of Morisot’s works, including oil paintings, drawings, and pastels. Morisot was the only woman to exhibit in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, and she became one of the most prolific members of the Impressionist circle.

Mary Cassatt (1844–1926): Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Cassatt was the only American member of the Impressionist circle. Women Impressionists features over 35 works by Cassatt, including examples of her oil paintings, pastels, and prints.

Eva Gonzalès (1849–1883): The only formal pupil of Edouard Manet, Gonzalès became known for her characteristic style of portraiture and her use of subtle emotion and richness of detail in her works. This exhibition presents approximately 15 works by Gonzalès, including the finest examples of her oil paintings and pastels.

Marie Bracquemond (1840–1916): Women Impressionists marks the most comprehensive exhibition of Marie Bracquemond’s work since a 1919 retrospective organized by her son Pierre at a Paris gallery. The exhibition features approximately 20 works by Bracquemond, including watercolors, drawings, and oil paintings.

Left: Mary Cassatt, American (1844–1926) Visitor in Hat and Coat Holding a Maltese dog, ca. 1879 Oil on canvas. Private Collection

Left: Eva Gonzalès, French (1849–1883) A Loge in the Théâtre des Italiens, 1874 Oil on canvas. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, Gift of Jean Guérard, the artist’s son, 1927.

Below: A Marie Bracquemond painting where the glow just leaps out at you!

"Legion Of Honor" - San Francisco (draft)

Sally and I went to see the "Women Impressionists" exhibit at the California Palace Of The Legion of Honor art museum (which did not permit photos), but there was just a little time to hastily see some of the other items in this marvellous place....
Left: An ancient Greek wreath (4th-3rd Century B.C.) made from gold leaf.
Left and below: There was a wide variety of Hellenistic Greco-Roman bric-a-brac, like these kraters.


Left: Amazing statues in the Spreckels Gallery!
Left: A wonderful 17th Century French cabinet.
Left: Medici bust.
Left: Renaissance triptych painting.

Below: A Chihuly glass sculpture.


Left: Cast of Auguste Rodin's "The Thinker".
Left: Holocaust Memorial.

Frantic Waving, Stage Left

What's going on over there? Oh, I might have guessed:

Gov. Bill Richardson has won a major endorsement as a potential running mate for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. The Denver Post called Richardson the best candidate for the job in an editorial Sunday.

Neutral

Ahh, this is too bad. I was hoping Paris Hilton would recognize the opportunity and come out swinging like Scarlett O'Hara and tell a tale of the besmirched dignity of Southern womanhood at the hands of that rapscallion, John McCain:

NONPARTISAN Paris Hilton - as neutral as Switzerland - refuses to be dragged into presidential politics.

On Saturday night, at a Bridgehampton mansion rented by MySpace founder Chris De Wolfe, the haughty hotel heiress told Page Six she wasn't distraught over being featured last week in a John McCain campaign ad which mockingly compared Barack Obama to Paris and Britney Spears.

But acting was never Paris' strong suit, and maybe she just never saw the opportunity. (The code of the Old South allowed rough behavior between male antagonists, but using, or hiding behind, female skirts was the lowest form of low behavior, and to be utterly condemned.) Indeed, in contrast, Paris' code may be that attention from any source, even hostile attention, is far better than to be ignored.

Nevertheless, Paris is coy enough to keep the Obama fans happy:

Though her parents, Rick and Kathy Hilton, are backing McCain and donated $4,600 to the Republican's campaign, Paris said she isn't a member of any party and isn't endorsing any candidate. But, echoing the theme of the Obama campaign, Paris said, "I think we need a change."

Perchlorate?

Doesn't sound all that inviting for life on Mars - perchlorates are used in fireworks and related purposes (which may be why they are also worried about inadvertent contamination, maybe from rockets):

Within the last month, two samples have been analyzed by the Wet Chemistry Lab of the spacecraft's Microscopy, Electrochemistry, and Conductivity Analyzer, or MECA, suggesting one of the soil constituents may be perchlorate, a highly oxidizing substance. The Phoenix team has been waiting for complementary results from the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA, which also is capable of detecting perchlorate. TEGA is a series of ovens and analyzers that "sniff" vapors released from substances in a sample.

The Lure Of Presentism - Mining The Past To Guide The Future

I just LOVE this type of history! It's a bad, junk-food kind of thinking, of course, but just like junk food, I can't get enough. The past never repeats itself, exactly, so it's kind of an art to abstract the right lessons from the past. And who better to conjure art than the lunkheads at the Pentagon? But the lure is irresistible: war-gamers to the rescue!

America's great strength in world politics has been superior logistics. Superior military forces (the Nazis, for example) have crumpled in the face of an endless wave of American weaponry. Superior logistics, and a sense of justice and fair play, form America's bulwark.

In the Middle East, however, the Americans have been crippled by poor intelligence. As a rule, Americans don't even speak Arabic, and they are poorly-suited to dominate the region as a result. As the years go by, there are more and more Americans gaining the necessary training, of course, but they still aren't fully in charge. Plus, justice and fair play are waylaid by the byzantine ways of the region. So, the American Empire there likely won't endure.

That's my bad extrapolation of historical analogies for today:

In the summer of 2002, the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment (ONA) published an 85-page monograph called "Military Advantage in History". Unusual for an office that is headed by Andrew Marshall, the Pentagon's "futurist in chief," the study looks back to the past—way back. It examines four empires, or "pivotal hegemonic powers in history," to draw lessons about how the United States "should think about maintaining military advantage in the 21st century."

...The study looks a little like a high school text book, devoting chapters to Alexander the Great, Imperial Rome, Genghis Khan, and Napoleonic France ... There is no one secret to world domination, however. The Mongols' military advantage was rooted in their "tactical and operational superiority"; the Macedonians' in the "exceptional leadership" of and "cult of personality" surrounding Alexander the Great; Napoleon's in "innovative operational concepts" and "information superiority"; and the Romans' in "robust tactical doctrine" and "strong domestic institutions" which were "designed to incorporate conquered peoples as the empire grew." In an extraordinary passage, the study cites the Roman experience—from over a millennium ago—as a precedent for America's long-term dominance: "The Roman model suggests that it is possible for the United States to maintain its military advantage for centuries if it remains capable of transforming its forces before an opponent can develop counter-capabilities. Transformation coupled with strong strategic institutions is a powerful combination for an adversary to overcome."

The report's language is jargon laden and opaque—a lance used by Macedonian horsemen is referred to as a "primary weapon system." That may be due to the methodology of "net assessment," a fancy term for the ONA's approach to analyzing complicated real-world situations that is rooted in systems analysis and game theory. Military author James Dunnigan compares it to engineering. "You take apart historical events, reassemble them as a simulation, and then tinker with the simulation until you can recreate the historical event accurately," he explains. "What that allows you to do is play out 'what if?' situations: What if Napoleon did this? What if Ghengis Khan did that?"

While the study was produced under the auspices of the ONA, its five authors work for government intelligence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, and they wrote the study as part of a contract for the Defense Department's Information Assurance Technology Analysis Center. Booz Allen won a 10-year, $200 million cost-plus contract to establish and "host" that center in 1998. (In May, the Carlyle Group announced it will be taking over Booz Allen's government services arm.)

...Most striking is how the study conceives of the United States in imperial terms. "You'll see some neoconservatives at the beginning of the Bush administration crowing that 'we do have an empire, let's just come out of the closet and say we do,'" said Ivan Eland, the author of a book on America's "informal empire" and the director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at the Independent Institute, on hearing a description of the study. "But the administration never did that because empire doesn't sell well with the public."

...Even coming from an office vaunted for its intellectual seriousness, "Military Advantage in History" often reads like it was meant as window dressing for the Revolution in Military Affairs agenda—sometimes at the expense of historical fact. ... After reviewing a section that identifies five discrete "transformations" of the Roman military over a period of 1,000 years, Lee Brice of Western Illinois University, president of the Society of Ancient Military Historians, described it as "so completely incorrect as to be useless." In general, Brice noted, "it is inappropriate to apply modern concepts of systems theory, doctrine, and strategy to ancient armies. That required a level of planning and centralization that simply did not exist."

Eland speculates that a study like this would "get warped by the military-industrial-congressional complex into more money for weapons." Furthermore, he says, it ignores the economic implications of military expansion. "The Office of Net Assessment is doing this to show, 'Well, gee, these other empires transformed themselves, they were successful, we need to do the same thing,'"

...The idea that contemporary society can or should try to find direct guidance in the past has been assailed by some historians. The American historian Bernard Bailyn wrote of "an obvious kind of presentism, which at its worst becomes indoctrination by historical example." But the ONA study charges ahead, plumbing the past for contemporary lessons.

...Several historians who reviewed the study differed on its quality and meaning. Walter Scheidel, a Stanford professor of classics and the coauthor of a forthcoming survey of ancient empires, called it "a successful distillation of relevant information and scholarship complemented by very interesting systematic analysis." Others found the scholarship to be shoddy and superficial. Pamela Crossley, a Dartmouth historian who teaches on the Mongols, described the chapter on Genghis Khan as mostly "an accumulation of popularly transmitted misconceptions." She also noted the study's "amazingly strange spelling 'Chengis.'" Brice, the ancient military historian, said the text suffered from "an intense, myopic habit of wanting to make the ancient world fit into modern stereotypes." He compares it with "much lower-undergraduate-level work."