Dr. Strangelove, "On Thermonuclear War," the CIA, and Nostalgia

Fred Kaplan wrote an article in the October 10th NY Times (Truth Stranger than 'Strangelove') that emphasized how closely Stanley Kubrick's 1964 movie "Dr. Strangelove" adhered to government thinking, convention, and personalities in the early 60's. According to the article, Daniel Ellsberg (a foremer RAND analyst) recently recalled that he turned to a colleague after seeing the dark comedy and said, "That was a documentary!"

The character of Dr. Strangelove supposedly represented the RAND Corporation's Dr. Herman Kahn, who wrote the disturbing insider classic "On Thermonuclear War," a huge book which I read carefully when I was 13-years-old, specifically because it was so vociferously denounced by liberals of all sorts at the time.

Kahn's sin was to discuss nuclear war in prosaic terms, to imagine how it could be survived, and how victory could be achieved even after millions die: dangerous thoughts with such potent weapons!

When I interviewed for a position with the CIA in 1987, I was unprepared for my emotional reaction. I wondered whether I would be mad, in a proper liberal way, at the secretive power of the company, or bedazzled by the cutting-edge technology, but none of that happened. Instead, I was overwhelmed with wave after wave of nostalgia. All the things that would make my teenage self swoon with delight were at last nearly within reach. Details of the Soviet war machine, and ours. Rockets and bombs. Telecommunications and satellites. Code speak and indecipherable runes. And yet that was all my old, teenage self.

I remember listening in the darkness to a lone frog croaking in a tiny, drought-stricken rivulet that flowed past a car dealership in Tyson's Corners, Virginia, as I struggled after the interview with the decision whether or not to join the company. I decided that Gorbachev's recent overtures to the U.S. probably spoke poorly for the CIA's immediate future. The CIA would become less, not more, influential with time, as detente waxed and as we all learned to get along.

I didn't know the half of it! The unanticipated collapse of the Soviet Union (unanticipated by most, that is, except by a few imaginative Soviet dissidents) practically derailed the agency. The current vicious policy struggles with the Pentagon threaten to make the CIA irrelevant: the Pentagon is bigger and badder than ever today. Cheney and Wolfowitz and Perle and Rumsfeld and Cambone encroach on the agency's power, and the CIA is forced into drastic black-bag jobs to expose Pentagon-supported traitors like Ahmed Chalabi. In a way, I'm glad I didn't join after all. Nostalgia doesn't extend all the way back to Roman Empire-like backstabbing and degeneration ('Sutsugua' indeed!)

Still, I can remember my first reaction as a ten-year-old to "Dr. Strangelove." As I recall, it was the Saturday Night Movie on NBC television in 1966, and I tuned in late. I gathered that it was a drama, in the manner of the tragic nuclear-war movie "Fail Safe," which had aired a few weeks prior, but I slowly noticed an unwanted, disturbing satirical edge. I remember protesting, "Wait! This isn't funny! What do they think they are doing? 'There won't be any fighting in the War Room': don't they realize some people will laugh at that?"

And yet it got funnier and funnier, and even I started chuckling after a while (and is that Peter Sellers? I thought the other guy was Peter Sellers?)

This is not, I repeat NOT, funny! Nostalgic, maybe. But NOT funny!

Prayer

What a waste of federal scientific funding!

Electoral Forecasts - the Blogosphere Speaks

(from Fafblog)

Earlier I was talkin with swing statologist Dr. Brian Brainologist about the swing state of Iowa. You can tell he's an expert on accounta his real plush chair in his real leathery library!"

Whoever wins Iowa will win this election, period," says Brian Brainologist. "Without a doubt." But surely Dr. Brainologist is exaggeratin because there is also Florida an Pennsylvania an Michigan an Colorado an - "No, Fafnir, those states won't matter," says Dr. Brainologist. "It will all come down to Iowa. All of it. All of it, Iowa." Well, that is an important point I suppose an Dr. Brainologist does have a very large brain so - "NOTHING MATTERS BUT IOWA. ALL IOWA. ALL. IOWA. ALLLLLLL."

Electoral Forecasts, Cheap

John:
OK, here are the numbers you have been waiting for. My call on the presidential race is, for the first time, moving to the right of the decimal point. The final popular vote will be:

Kerry 49.8%
Bush 49.2%

This will be valid whether or not Bush attempts a pre-election surprise. In all likelihood bin Laden has been dead for some time and al Zarqawi will not be taken alive (besides, he doesn't have the same level of significance of bin Laden). The surrender of insurgents in Fallujah could happen but again without effect. I fully expect al Qaida or offshoot groups to attempt a major terrorist attack in the days before the election but it is highly unlikely to be on American soil. A bombing of an embassy in a third world country or an anti-aircraft missile attack on a civilian airliner, again in a third world country, would be the most probable scenario. But an airliner with a few Americans or Israelis going down in, say, Egypt would not be a big event for most Americans (how much attention have people paid to the terrorist attacks last week on Israeli tourists in Egypt?).

So there is my prediction. Have the champagne ready on election night, though with the closeness of the race it may not be decided immediately (Bush is mobilizing forces to make sure republicans will use any trick necessary to win in close states). But in spite of that effort I remain confident of a Kerry victory.

Marc:
Good shot! I tend to be a bit more optimistic. I say Kerry 50%; Bush 48%; Nader, Badnarik and others 2%. Kerry gets 325 electoral votes (winning NM, NV, MO, OH, FL, WI, MN, ME and WV), and Bush gets 213 electoral votes (winning IA, VA, NC and all of CO). Very similar to your prediction: a very close race, but Kerry gets the turnout edge.

Myself, I don't think Al Qaeda is interested in particular in a pre-election surprise. They don't need any excuse to continue to do the things they do. Their eyes are on the bigger prize: a clash of civilizations! I doubt they have the same sensation of Gotterdamerung we have, with this particular election. They are looking for Crusaders, man!

Actually, I've noticed a pre-election calm settling in. Very little newsworthy is happening. That is probably a bad sign of things to come. Karl Rove must be busy.

Is This What Gets Me To Finally Visit Europe?

Sure looks tempting. Tickets look awfully cheap too, but there is the air fare and hotel to worry about.....

Kylie will play her biggest ever tour next year to follow the release of her first comprehensive greatest hits package “Ultimate Kylie”, which is released this year on Nov 22. The European leg of the tour, entitled "Kylie Showgirl; the Greatest Hits tour" will open in Scotland in March, will then move to continental Europe, and return to the UK in April, ending in London at Earls Court in May.

TICKETS WILL GO ON SALE ON MONDAY OCT 18TH.

Tickets are £37.50 for all dates. £32.50 tickets will also be available for the Earls Court show. They are limited to 6 per person.

STAY TUNED FOR NEWS OF IRISH DATES
Kylie will play the following UK dates:

MARCH 19 GLASGOW SECC (0870 040 4000)

APRIL 19 BIRMINGHAM NEC (0870 909 4133)

APRIL 23 MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS ARENA (0870 190 8000)

MAY 2 LONDON, EARLS COURT (0870 160 8989)

24 HOUR TICKET HOTLINE 0870 735 5000

www.bookingsdirect.com(agency and credit card bookings are subject to booking fee) Stay tuned to Kylie.com for the all the latest tour news!

'Twas the night before Frances

Florida humor, courtesy of Dwight in Tampa:

'Twas the night before Frances
When all through the state
Not a gas pump was pumping
Not a store open late

All the plywood was hung
On the windows with care
Knowing that a hurricane
Soon would be there

The children were ready
With flashlights in hand
While bands from the hurricane
Covered over the land

And mamma with her Mag-Lite
And I in my cap
Had just filled the bath tub
For flushing our crap

When out on the lawn
There arose such a clatter
I sprang from the closet
To see what was the matter

The trees on the fence
And the neighbor's roof torn
Gave the fear of us dying
In this terrible storm

With a little wind gust
So lively and quick
I remembered quite clearly
Our walls weren't brick

More rapid than eagles
Her courses they came
And she whistled, and wafted
And surged all the same

Off shingles! Off sidings!
Off rooftops! Off power!
Down trees! Down fences!
Down trailers! Down towers!

In the center of Florida
She continued to maul
Screaming Blow Away!
Blow Away! Blow Away All!

As wind ripped and tossed
The debris through the sky
I peeked out the shutters
At cars floating by

So go to the safe-room
My family did do
With a portable radio
And batteries too

And then, in a twinkling
I heard on the set
The end was not coming
For a few hours yet!

As I calmed down the kids
And was turning around
Through the window it came
With a huge crashing sound

A tree branch it was
All covered in soot
The wind blew it smack-dab
On top of my foot

A bundle of twigs
Now lay in a stack
And my living room looks
Like it was under attack

The wind - how it howled!
The storm - very scary!
Myself and the family
Were all too unwary

The dangers of hurricanes
Are serious, you know
They are taken for granted
As Frances did show

With the winds dying down
And the danger beneath
I noticed my tool shed
Was missing its sheath

So I grabbed my last tarp
And nailed it on down
Then I got in my car
And I headed to town

The traffic was awful
And stores had no ice
My five gallon cooler
Would have to suffice

Generators were scarce
Not one left in town
There were trees on the roads
And power lines down

FEMA was ready
With people to work
Electrical companies
Came in from New York

And in the midst of
This peculiar routine
Another storm emerged
Named Hurricane Jeanne

I sprang to the car
And gave my family a whistle
Then away we all went
Like a Tomahawk missile

You could hear us exclaim
As we drove out of sight
"The hell with this place,
Vermont seems just right!"

(author unknown)

Cave Art

It's nice to see the canvas of history, even before it is filled. Backstage at the Eagle Theater in Old Sacramento, and in the back stairwell, like Cro Magnon shamans in a Holocene cavern, musical theater afficionados have scrawled their signatures and graffiti everywhere over the years. The signatures are fun to read, and many of them were made by acquaintances and friends (e.g. Dena Lozano, Kathleen Reilley, Kris David, Kathy Davi, etc.) The signatures seem to date from 1992 forwards, with many from 1999-2000: Runaway Stage's last season there. I like the pair: "Dignity, Always Dignity," (director John Lee) and "Dance Belts, Always Dance Belts," (Pedro the Sparrow).

DMTC will have its Kid's Wall, Lobby Waterfall, and Name-A-Seats, but I wonder if there will also be a less-formal commemorative wall somewhere, for a new generation of musical theater shamans?

Oblivious

This afternoon, I deposited DMTC's weekend take at Bank of America, and crossed the street to eat lunch at the Alhambra & K St. 'Del Taco.' There was no line at the counter, so I was able to quickly order and then take a seat at a small table in the dining area. Even before I could unfold and start reading today's Wall Street Journal, however, the order was ready. So fast! Apparently the fast food crew had been idle: the rainy afternoon must have scared off the normal, fairly scruffy 'Del Taco' clientele.

I picked up my order, sat down, started reading and eating, and fell into my usual, bovine lunchtime oblivion, caught up in the latest Wall St. insurance scandal, John Kerry's understanding of terrorism, and half a dozen other pertinent issues of the day. Two young African-Americans, a man and a woman, stood near my table. The man suddenly announced: "Paramedics are here!"

I looked up, and EMTs were swarming into the restaurant. A fire truck and an ambulance had materialized in the parking lot, where seconds before there had been none. The woman asked the man, "Did you call 911?" The man nodded yes, and she put her hand up over her mouth, as if to suppress laughter - maybe absurd laughter about the size of the official response??? Meanwhile, I'm sitting there with a stupid smile on my face, suddenly distracted from the pressing issue of inadequate help for the developmentally-disabled in poor counties in Ohio, and thinking: "What the HELL is going on?"

I looked left, and clearly visible just fifteen feet from my table, a man, perhaps homeless, lay on the floor. He had apparently been there the entire time, in some kind of acute distress, but in my food and information frenzy, I had somehow utterly failed to notice him.

The paramedics propped up the man, quizzed him, and ultimately decided to take him to the hospital. I guess it wasn't just the weather that had spooked the clientele, but I had been grateful for the short line at the counter, and never considered other possibilities.

I'm still startled about how little attention I had paid to my immediate surroundings. How many other things happen all the time, right under my nose, that I somehow completely miss? I feel like a grazing dinosaur in a tropical Cretaceous world, not noticing the approaching asteroid, even as it obscures the sun and scatters the birds....

Strange News Items

Bobby Fischer both boasts, and worries, about his manhood.
Beware of giving your money to polka band leaders.
The way Bush and Company mislead and lie.

Ola Na Iwi

Tiny houses so far, but we are having fun (2nd Friday).

Latest Weird Dream

My dream was I was back in NM and I was anxious. I had to walk 150 miles around a mountain range by sunset, it was already 5 p.m., and I was hoping for a lift.

A female co-worker drove up in some sort of outlandish Humvee, along with 2 Chippendale dancer-types in Mad Max gear, to give me a lift. She said she was going to give up air pollution to study well-logging with her new petroleum engineer 'friends.' I said, "You Go Girl!"

Stranger than fiction? Better than truth? A vision for the future?

Times, They Be So Strange

The problem isn't that John Kerry talked about Mary Cheney's lesbianism, it's that Lynne Cheney, Mary's mother, feels lesbianism is somehow bad. And Mary Cheney is staying silent (to my mind, a silence that says it all - she could demand and receive a Kerry apology if she insisted, but that would be a homophobe victory she can't tolerate, so she stays silent.)

By bringing lesbianism up in the debate, John Kerry took a risk, but he knew it would really irritate his opponents, and demonstrate their hypocrisy for all the world to see. Republicans love to dish it out but scream like girlie men when porked by the opposition. Because of Kerry's cojones, he deserves to be President.

Too bad there isn't an endangered species act for American computer programmers.

What has the world come to when you can get arrested for just semi-naked protests where the President can see?

A Reprise of 1988

George W. Bush's 2004 community college sunny cluelessness reminds me of Michael Dukakis' 1988 bloodless cluelessness when asked how he'd respond if his wife was raped. In both cases a sympathetic figure was presented (an unemployed worker; a violated woman) and both times the candidates didn't get it. Hooray for Bob Schieffer: like Bernard Shaw in 1988, Bob got one right for once! Time to give Bush the Dukakis treatment.

Worst Bush Gaffe of the Night

Sunny and clueless remarks that will haunt Bush the way Gerald Ford was haunted by saying the Soviets didn't dominate Poland in the 1976 presidential debate with Carter.

Outsourcing hits particularly hard young-to-middle-aged technical workers who completed their educations not that long ago. These are the folks that just got out of community college! They lose their jobs because eager foreigners are available to do the work for a fraction of the wages. Getting reeducated won't help if new jobs are unavailable, because long-term job investments featuring R&D have been neglected. Recommending education as a panacea borders on insult, and segueing to elementary education doesn't address the question.

Bush will pay for his blithe contempt for the modern American worker.
-------------------------------------------

SCHIEFFER: Let's go to a new question, Mr. President. Two minutes. And let's continue on jobs.

You know, there are all kind of statistics out there, but I want to bring it down to an individual. Mr. President, what do you say to someone in this country who has lost his job to someone overseas who's being paid a fraction of what that job paid here in the United States?

BUSH: I'd say, Bob, I've got policies to continue to grow our economy and create the jobs of the 21st century. And here's some help for you to go get an education. Here's some help for you to go to a community college.

We've expanded trade adjustment assistance. We want to help pay for you to gain the skills necessary to fill the jobs of the 21st century.

You know, there's a lot of talk about how to keep the economy growing. We talk about fiscal matters. But perhaps the best way to keep jobs here in America and to keep this economy growing is to make sure our education system works.

I went to Washington to solve problems. And I saw a problem in the public education system in America. They were just shuffling too many kids through the system, year after year, grade after grade, without learning the basics.

And so we said: Let's raise the standards. We're spending more money, but let's raise the standards and measure early and solve problems now, before it's too late.

No, education is how to help the person who's lost a job. Education is how to make sure we've got a workforce that's productive and competitive.

Got four more years, I've got more to do to continue to raise standards, to continue to reward teachers and school districts that are working, to emphasize math and science in the classrooms, to continue to expand Pell Grants to make sure that people have an opportunity to start their career with a college diploma.

And so the person you talked to, I say, here's some help, here's some trade adjustment assistance money for you to go a community college in your neighborhood, a community college which is providing the skills necessary to fill the jobs of the 21st century. And that's what I would say to that person.

SCHIEFFER: Senator Kerry?

KERRY: I want you to notice how the president switched away from jobs and started talking about education principally.

Let me come back in one moment to that, but I want to speak for a second, if I can, to what the president said about fiscal responsibility.

Being lectured by the president on fiscal responsibility is a little bit like Tony Soprano talking to me about law and order in this country.

(LAUGHTER)

This president has taken a $5.6 trillion surplus and turned it into deficits as far as the eye can see. Health-care costs for the average American have gone up 64 percent; tuitions have gone up 35 percent; gasoline prices up 30 percent; Medicare premiums went up 17 percent a few days ago; prescription drugs are up 12 percent a year.

But guess what, America? The wages of Americans have gone down. The jobs that are being created in Arizona right now are paying about $13,700 less than the jobs that we're losing.
And the president just walks on by this problem. The fact is that he's cut job-training money. $1 billion was cut. They only added a little bit back this year because it's an election year.

They've cut the Pell Grants and the Perkins loans to help kids be able to go to college.

They've cut the training money. They've wound up not even extending unemployment benefits and not even extending health care to those people who are unemployed.

I'm going to do those things, because that's what's right in America: Help workers to transition in every respect.

Debate 3

First impression: Kerry won in a walk.

Second impression: I think Bush inadvertently made a terrible error. In regards to what to do about people who have lost their job due to outsourcing, Bush emphasized the importance of education in retraining for the jobs of the future. The trouble is, unemployment from outsourcing principally strikes young to middle-aged technical workers who completed their education just a few years ago. Do you realize how insulting and angering it is to be told to return to school? These unemployed folks have to pay back their current burden of student loans, and they are supposed to sign up for some more? These folks already trained for the jobs of the future, but the future has been snatched from them by short-term thinking, in-it-for-stock-value people who just happened to be their superiors.

Education was the stock answer of America's industrial challenge of the 1980's, and it is heartening to see that Bush is only 20 years out-of-date. Nevertheless, with his blithe cluelessness, Bush demonstrated that he doesn't understand the world of this decade, and like his father with the automated supermarket checkout, is really fit only for retirement.

Third Impression: Bush's hopeful sentiments for a bright, happy future are charming, but there are so many broken covenants regarding Iraq and OBL that he has little credibility left. I suspect people will smile at his vision and vote instead for their real future, for Kerry.

Leah Miller, CDF Firefighter

Last night, driving to Woodland from Sacramento for the first night's Nutcracker practice with this year's 'Clara', Megan Jackson from Robbins, it was hard to miss the glowering smoke plume and impressive sunset over the Capay Hills. I picked up a copy of the 'Daily Democrat' in the hope of finding a mention of Leah Miller, ballerina and firefighter, who lives in Madison, just a few miles below the fire. It seemed logical she might be up there in the hills, but you never know with CDF firefighters, since they get sent hither and yon to fight fires all over the West: she could well have been hundreds or thousands of miles away, in Oregon or Nevada.

Little did I know that Leah Miller was set to make a bigger media splash. Today she made the front page of the Metro section in the Sacramento Bee, in her trendy yellow jacket, as she wrestles the Capay fire to the ground. Leah is the most gung-ho, robust, personable, and above all, lovely girl I've had the pleasure to work with over the last decade in Woodland. Go Leah!

Meanwhile, the heedless gamblers at Cache Creek Casino are completely unfazed by the nearby fire. There are probably taking odds, even now, on the casino ignition temperature.



CDF firefighter Leah Miller of the CDF Brooks Station uses a drip torch Tuesday, Oct. 12, while "fireing out" an area to hold a road (an effort to contain the oncoming blaze by starving it of fuel), as the Rumsey Fire continues to burn nearly 30,000 acres in Yolo and Napa counties. Photo by Lezlie Sterling.

Weather Gods Finally Locate and Pummel Bothersome Geophysicists

A horrific hailstorm struck Socorro, New Mexico on Tuesday afternoon October 5, 2004, striking particularly hard in the vicinity of the campus of New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (aka NM Tech: I attended my freshman and sophomore years there in the mid-70's). Courtesy of ex-Techie John Wright in Oklahoma comes an E-Mail from Socorro 6th-grade teacher Candy Lindquist detailing some of the damage:

The worst damage was in the Tech area. Friends who live on "faculty hill" have many serious roof problems, among lots of other problems. Although our students weren't hurt, thank God, a lot of windows were broken in one building of my school (not mine, through some miracle), and many cars are a mess. (My school is near Tech.) And this is true for many, many cars all over Socorro! There was flooding in the streets, no power in the main part of town, etc. It was incredible!

At the time of the storm, I was with my 6th graders. They screamed like banshees, scared and excited. At points they hid under the table--v. good. We are in portables, and this stuff pounding on the roof and slamming against the doors and windows was beyond anything. I actually had to pull one kid away from the door several times--he was determined to go outside &, presumably, get his brains knocked out! (After the worst of it was over, the kids loved seeing the layers of the hailstones--what an opportunity!)

This sort of event is very unusual, maybe unprecedented, in New Mexico, and probably indicates extreme displeasure at some level in the supernatural realm. Here is a photo displaying the wide diversity of the tennis and baseball-sized hailstones that hit the ground:



Photo courtesy Prof. Richard Sonnenfeld, NM Tech. (More images, plus some AMAZING video are available at Dr. Sonnenfeld's Tech web-site).

Luau Extravaganza

Went to the big luau at the Red Lion Inn yesterday (a fundraiser for Interact Theater, KVIE TV, and also a birthday party for Genevieve Shiroma, SMUD Board member and local activist).

As Ola Na Iwi cast members, we were thrust into the important task of selling raffle tickets. It was OK: I made myself helpful by ripping apart raffle ticket stubs.

The food was great, but peripatetic Whyt appeared to skip the yummy pork, focusing on the rice and assorted vegetables. After two glasses of wine, I stopped worrying about the breezy day, occasional flying napkins, and the pork stain on my shirt. Maria and I talked about bruises: after tech week and opening weekend, she has some on her knees from the "Kawehi Go Boom" scene (Act 2, Scene 15). Ben was in the unaccustomed position of watching his former band play on the stage, and Eva chased her grandaughter around.

Heddy was everywhere, but Dennis preferred to stick close to George Takei (Star Trek's Mr. Sulu). Mr. Takei gave a rambling, praiseworthy speech, but like any Hollywood notable transplanted incongruously into the Central Valley, seemed slightly out of the local loop. Never mind. It was fun seeing him. I introduced myself to Genevieve Shiroma and was surprised she already seemed to know who I was (from last year's gubernatorial run - as a local politico, she appears to pay very close attention to the comings and goings of even obscure locals).

The live auction was interesting: some reluctance to bid on the fancy dinner, more interest in the trip for two to Maui, but no interest at all in the estate planning offer (like myself, everyone in attendance must have felt they would be immortal, and thus had no need for the service). Then the Ola Na Iwi cast sang "Hawaii Aloha," the first time ever to live musical accompaniment, and then it was off to Davis, for the latest theater kerfuffle there.

Debate 2

The most interesting thing about Debate 2 was Bush speaking in code to the anti-abortion movement, with his Dred Scott remark, about his eagerness to appoint anti-Roe-vs.-Wade Supreme Court Justices. Bush's campaign has been remarkable in its effort to turn out his base, even at the risk of alienating everybody else.

Vanity Fair Election Special

I just read the gripping article in the current issue of Vanity Fair, summarized here:

The 2000 Supreme Court decision that put George W. Bush in the White House capped the most disturbing and confusing fiasco in recent U.S. political history. Through the eyes of the shocked clerks of some of the justices, Florida election workers, and an outraged African-American community, David Margolick, Evgenia Peretz, and Michael Shnayerson get a clear look at how voters were disenfranchised—and investigate the chance of similar chaos next month.

A very disturbing article, particularly regarding how the Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has been carefully cosseted by right-wing clerks in order to be guided to predictable right-wing opinions. Chaos after this election may be nearly inevitable, given the horrible precedent of Bush v. Gore in 2000.