Cats May Safely Sleep

Or Sheep May Safely Graze, or some such, where a good shepherd, um, Pillow Cat, keeps watch...

For the record (or CD, or MP3), Bach's Cantata 208, containing the famous "Sheep may safely graze" ("Schafe können sicher weiden"), is a secular cantata, a birthday cantata originally for Duke Christian of Sachsen-Weißenfels, in fact a hunting cantata. The whole cantata begins with a recitative (freely translated), "The only thing I really love is the lively hunt." (Well, a lively hunt would not be to my taste at all, but the Duke clearly felt otherwise.) The "good shepherd" referred to in the movement named is not, as so many seem to think, Jesus, but rather the good Duke Christian himself... not that I think Bach would have disapproved of the adaptation of the movement for use in religious services, and I think the analogy is intentional on his part (a king is to his subjects as a Christian God is to his people), but for the record (or CD, or MP3), he didn't write it for a religious purpose.

I have to say that movement has the sweetest paired-recorders obbligato in the whole world. When I first heard it, I thought, as a serious recorder player (which I was, for many years), "I'm really, really going to get tired of performing this cloying movement." I was wrong. It endured to the day I retired from performing. I never tired of hearing that movement or playing that obbligato.

And if I did grow tired, I'd just lie down and sleep like Tabitha, confident that the Pillow Cat was watching over me.

I know, I know; cat blogging is early this week. I had time over lunch, and I might not have time this evening. I promise I'll carry this one over onto the September page.

Steve
   PermaLink     

Go To Hell, Rummy -- UPDATED

UPDATE: Thanks to Mustang Bobby for pointing out in the comments this video editorial by Keith Olbermann on MSNBC. The link is to the Crooks and Liars site, so you can choose your own video format. C&L also has a transcript... but you must watch this as well as read it; Olbermann's delivery is compelling. I literally choked up when Olbermann, at the end of his own statement, read Edward R. Murrow's famous statement about dissent. It seems we do have a few people left in the media who are willing to speak truth to power from their lofty posts. Please watch this; you'll be glad you did.

(Original post follows...)

L.A. Times via Seattle Times:

SALT LAKE CITY — Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld compared critics of the Bush administration to those who sought to appease the Nazis before World War II, warning Tuesday that the United States is confronting "a new type of fascism."

Rumsfeld, speaking before the American Legion convention, delivered some of his most explicit and extended attacks yet on the administration's critics, provoking criticism from furious Democrats who accused him of "campaigning on fear."

By comparing U.S. foreign policy with World War II and the Cold War, Rumsfeld sought to portray skeptics of Bush's foreign policy as being on the wrong side of history. Rumsfeld again ridiculed U.S. officials who, before World War II, wished to negotiate with Adolf Hitler.

"I recount that history because, once again, we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism," Rumsfeld said. "But some seem not to have learned history's lessons."

He continued: "Can we truly afford to believe that, somehow or some way, vicious extremists could be appeased?"

His use of the word "appease" was particularly notable, clearly tying administration critics to the failed efforts of the pre-Churchill British government to mollify Hitler.

     ...

In this speech, Rummy goes way beyond defending the Iraq war or his own crack-brained policies, way beyond even calling his critics unpatriotic, and I'm not about to take it without a response. I suggest Mr. Rumsfeld not tell me to my face that because I am highly critical of Bush and his war (and not so incidentally of Rumsfeld himself) I am therefore a Nazi, a fascist or an appeaser. If he does, I will not be responsible for what happens next; those are classic "fighting words" in the legal sense of the term.

He's right about one thing, though: we are facing "the rising threat of a new kind of fascism." It started with the emergency passage of the PATRIOT Act, a veritable totalitarian's wish list that only a dictator could love. And Bush has made it clear from the beginning how much he'd like to be a dictator.

Rummy can fucking go to hell. Now would be a good time.

Steve
   PermaLink     

Annoyances Big And Small

On this anniverary of Katrina, when I should be mindful of those who died and those who are suffering to this day, I am preoccupied with stupid web site configuration issues... and with my email. My primary mailboxes on the new host are visible to most people, but in one of life's ironies, not to my current client. We've been communicating via an old personal email account not associated with my site, an account with a painfully silly name. It serves me right, I suppose, for changing horses in midstream. But it had to be done, and there isn't any perfect time to do such a thing.

All this is by way of explaining why blogging has been sparse today, and will probably be light tomorrow as well. Thanks for your patience.

Steve
   PermaLink     

Show This Bold Prussian

From this morning's Houston Chronicle web front:

With a 13-1 outcome, I'll wager most of that laughter was in the 'stros dressing room. I'm always happy to see the home team win big, but any devout follower of His Noodliness the Flying Spaghetti Monster has mixed feelings when bad things happen to pirates...

Oh... the post title? The full sentence is "Show this bold Prussian that praises slaughter, slaughter brings rout." Now remove the first letter from each word.

Steve
   PermaLink     

The Blog Is Moving! The Blog Is Moving!

On September 1, 2006 at the latest, the Yellow Doggerel Democrat will move to a new URL:

www.yellowdoggereldemocrat.org

Same old blog, same great bad taste. Same look (ugh!) and feel (don't go there). Same HaloScan comments (literally the same; you'll see your old comments as well). In short, you shouldn't notice any difference. Please adjust your bookmarks and blogrolls accordingly. Don't forget to drop the old RSS feed and subscribe to the new one.

You may as well do that now. The new site is already there, though I am still tinkering, and it may be broken for a few minutes at a time once in a while. I am posting the two sites in parallel for a couple of days; after that, the old site will redirect your browser to the new one for an undetermined period of time, perhaps indefinitely... I don't know, because now that I've moved the YDD, I'm about to move its former parent site as well. But that's another tale.

Why? Simple: I'm fed up with the repeated and ongoing shortcomings of my old host. Details on request.

(On the old site, this post will float permanently to the top.)

Steve
   PermaLink     

Katrina: The Suffering Is Ongoing - UPDATED

WaPo:

Katrina's Damage Lingers For Bush
Many See Storm as President's Undoing

By Jonathan Weisman and Michael Abramowitz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, August 26, 2006; Page A01

For Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.), three images define George W. Bush's presidency: Bush throwing out the first pitch of the 2001 World Series at Yankee Stadium, Bush with a megaphone atop the rubble of the World Trade Center -- and Bush staring out the window as Air Force One traversed the Gulf Coast thousands of feet above the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

The first two images epitomize strength and resolution, the image the Bush White House likes to cultivate. But in one year's time, the last one -- of the president as aloof, out of touch, even befuddled -- all but erased the memory of the others, according to pollsters, pundits and Republican politicians who say they have suffered in the wake of the president's decline.

From the demise of his Social Security overhaul to the war in Iraq, many factors have contributed to Bush's slide in popularity in the past year. But the winds of Katrina may have been the force that finally wrenched the Bush presidency off its moorings, these observers said.

     ...

Messrs. Weisman and Abramowitz have their concerns misplaced: it's not Bush but Katrina's victims who deserve our attention today. For many of those who were hit directly by Katrina, the damage is ongoing. Their lives have never been the same; their quality of life is severely degraded. And Mr. Bush & Co. are not really helping, though they are doing their best to appear to help. I'm sorry, but I do not care about the damage to Bush's political fortunes, only about damage to people's homes and persons. Bush richly deserves the criticism he is getting for his administration's response. Bush 43's variant of Bush 41's pronouncement is "Message: I don't care."

UPDATE: be sure to read Bryan's recounting of the Bush administration's failure to deploy at least a half dozen military units that were ready to go to render basic assistance immediately after Katrina hit. And Mustang Bobby examines Frank Rich's account of Bush's attempts to make political gains from Katrina, and Peter Whoriskey's description of what's left of New Orleans a year after Katrina. Go. Read!

(Between work and storm preparation, blogging here will be sparse today, and probably Sunday as well.)

Steve
   PermaLink     

Firestarter

Not by Stephen King; brought to you instead by Apple:

1.8 million lithium-ion batteries could overheat and catch fire, company warns
By RACHEL KONRAD
Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO — Ten days after Dell's record-setting notebook battery recall, Apple Computer told its customers Thursday to return 1.8 million batteries that could cause their Mac laptops to overheat and catch fire.

Both recalls involve lithium-ion batteries made by a Sony Corp. subsidiary in Japan, where the manufacturing process introduced metal particles into battery cells. Makers of battery cells strive to minimize or eliminate the presence of such particles, which can cause computers to short circuit, or, in extreme situations, catch fire.

     ...

But... but... I was told that every Mac was perfect!

I didn't get much sleep last night, but my pessimism about finding time for blogging seems to have been premature. Sometimes it's hard to predict. Today is still a workday, and probably tomorrow as well. Blogging may be infrequent. Stay tuned.

Steve
   PermaLink     

Nutcases: 'Nuke 'Em All'

Some right-wing columnists have gone full-blown batshit crazy. Glenn Greenwald has the details. A sample:

[Walter] Williams points out that we could easily "annihilate" Iran or Syria with nuclear weapons launched from submarines. He then claims that the Great Generation of World War II would have done so already, but laments the tragic fact that we are deterred from doing this by what he calls the "handwringing about the innocent lives lost, so-called collateral damage" ...

Greenwald follows with an extended quote from Williams's deranged post; go read it.

Count me among the handwringers. Preemptive, invasive conventional warfare directed against countries that never actually attacked the U.S. nor had the capacity to do so is already morally unacceptable. Annihilation of millions of civilians is simply beyond the pale. Anyone who advocates this as some sort of "final solution" is just plain nuts.

The Bush administration has reportedly advocated using bunker-buster nukes in Iran (and possibly other places; I'm not certain). It is a truism from the era of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) that any use of nukes provokes the use of all of them, and I do not see any reason to believe this is not still true today. The notion of "tactical" nukes is crack-brained: use any nuke, large or small, and you invite the destruction of the world. Use strategic nukes against a nation in the Middle East, and you invite Armageddon. Come to think of it, Bush is rather fond of the notion of Armageddon...

Steve
   PermaLink     

Friday Falling Water Blogging

Frank Lloyd Wright should have been so lucky:

Who's the perfect creature to appreciate a perfectly decorated bathroom, with a sink so clean you could drink out of it? Why, Tabitha, of course! And how does she appreciate it? Need you ask? She drinks out of the running faucet, the ready-made kitty drinking fountain!

Steve
   PermaLink     

Too Busy

I'm a bit overwhelmed with work. Please bear with me while I tap too much code in too little time. There will be cat blogging, but if there's anything else between now and the weekend, it will be a minor miracle. Please visit those fine blogs on the left. I'll be back soon.

Steve
   PermaLink     

If Thy Bush Offend Thee...

This large flowering bush is visible from my front window. Hmm... does this apartment really have a front? I've never seriously thought about it before. But I digress, and there's a tale to tell...

"As Steve was walking home one day, he met a very senior lady..." No, it's not doggerel time, either, or rather, there's no time for doggerel today. The Very Senior Lady (VSL) walks the apartment grounds ceaselessly, as the self-appointed enforcer of rules and critic of maintenance. (In fairness, she's generally very nice to me.) I happened to encounter her on the sidewalk, just as we came even with the bush in the picture. The bush extends into the sidewalk quite a bit. The conversation went something like this:

SB: Good morning!
VSL: Good morning! That bush really needs trimming.
SB: It's pretty; I don't mind walking around it.
VSL: Well, it blocks the sidewalk and brushes against you.
SB: That's true. I don't mind.
... (after a few seconds) ...
VSL: But... it gets pollen on your clothes!

By this time, I'd reached my doorstep. I smiled and nodded at VSL, choked back laughter and entered my apartment. Is she afraid the plant will pollinate her? I snapped the picture because VSL generally gets what she wants, and the bush will almost certainly be whacked soon, to conform to the edge of the sidewalk.

For what it's worth, I hereby disclaim any intentional political or sexual connotations or religious references in the title of this post. (I'm practicing to be a Republican president someday. A Republican president has to be able to lie like a rug. How am I doing?)

Steve
   PermaLink     

Of Horses And Barn Doors

... and gratuitous secrecy:

The Bush administration has begun designating as secret some information that the government long provided even to its enemy the former Soviet Union: the numbers of strategic weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal during the Cold War.

The Pentagon and the Department of Energy are treating as national security secrets the historical totals of Minuteman, Titan II and other missiles, blacking out the information on previously public documents, according to a new report by the National Security Archive. The archive is a nonprofit research library housed at George Washington University.

"It would be difficult to find more dramatic examples of unjustifiable secrecy than these decisions to classify the numbers of U.S. strategic weapons," wrote William Burr, a senior analyst at the archive who compiled the report. " . . . The Pentagon is now trying to keep secret numbers of strategic weapons that have never been classified before."

     ...

     ... Last year, in a study of FOIA requests at 22 agencies from 2000 to 2004, the nonpartisan Coalition of Journalists for Open Government found that agencies cited reasons to withhold unclassified information 22 percent more often than before Ashcroft's directive.

     ...

"It's not our call to do missile data," Wilkes said. "There's no question that current classified nuclear weapons data was out there that we had to take back," he added. "And in today's environment, where there is a great deal of concern about rogue nations or terrorist groups getting access to nuclear weapons, this makes a lot of sense."

     ...

In other news, all terrorists and all intelligence personnel in rogue states were simultaneously struck blind, deaf and dumb, and lost all their memories and documents of data previously made freely available by the U.S. ...

For reasons unknown to me, FTP transfers to my site have been running at a snail's pace yesterday and today. I don't have time to fight this battle with my host today, but my yearly renewal comes up next month, and given the ongoing troubles I've had with this host, it is likely the YDD (and my commercial site) will be hosted elsewhere soon. Expect a bump when I move. I'll give everyone a heads-up just before it happens.

Steve
   PermaLink     

Veiled Threats

Riverbend of the blog Baghdad Burning writes of the necessity of a woman's wearing a hijab (headscarf) in Baghdad whenever she is outdoors, to protect herself from attacks by extremists:

     ...

For me, June marked the first month I don’t dare leave the house without a hijab, or headscarf. I don’t wear a hijab usually, but it’s no longer possible to drive around Baghdad without one. It’s just not a good idea. (Take note that when I say ‘drive’ I actually mean ‘sit in the back seat of the car’- I haven’t driven for the longest time.) Going around bare-headed in a car or in the street also puts the family members with you in danger. You risk hearing something you don’t want to hear and then the father or the brother or cousin or uncle can’t just sit by and let it happen. I haven’t driven for the longest time. If you’re a female, you risk being attacked.

     ...

I have nothing against the hijab, of course, as long as it is being worn by choice. Many of my relatives and friends wear a headscarf. Most of them began wearing it after the war. It started out as a way to avoid trouble and undue attention, and now they just keep it on because it makes no sense to take it off. What is happening to the country?

I realized how common it had become only in mid-July when M., a childhood friend, came to say goodbye before leaving the country. She walked into the house, complaining of the heat and the roads, her brother following closely behind. It took me to the end of the visit for the peculiarity of the situation to hit me. She was getting ready to leave before the sun set, and she picked up the beige headscarf folded neatly by her side. As she told me about one of her neighbors being shot, she opened up the scarf with a flourish, set it on her head like a pro, and pinned it snuggly under her chin with the precision of a seasoned hijab-wearer. All this without a mirror- like she had done it a hundred times over… Which would be fine, except that M. is Christian.

     ...

Whew! This brings many thoughts to mind...

• First, and arguably worst, we did this to Riverbend. Or, more accurately, America, in the persons of Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney et al, pre-emptively invaded a nation that had not attacked us, deposed an undeniably ruthless but secular dictator, and in the process, unleashed several factions of religious extremists (among other extremists) who do not hesitate to threaten Iraqi women and kill their family members... for what they wear, or the fact that they drive, or simply for appearing in public unaccompanied by a male family member.

  Before George W. Bush began "bringing democracy to Iraq," Riverbend led a relatively free existence. She went out alone; she drove; within reason, she wore what she pleased. Now, not even mentioning for the moment the physical privations she suffers in war, her basic freedom is being taken away from her.

  "Why do they hate us for our freedoms?" Maybe they just want freedom for themselves. Maybe they see how destructive to their own liberties the American invasion has been.

  Bush is reportedly puzzled at why the Iraqi people are not more grateful to America for "liberating" them. He could... but will not... get a clue by reading Riverbend's blog. Or maybe he could ask Laura Bush how she would like to wear a headscarf every time she went out, avoid driving, always be accompanied by Dubya on every outing, etc. ... all the things Riverbend is de facto obliged to do that she was once free to do or not to do, as she pleased. But I suspect George doesn't listen to Laura very well, and I cannot imagine he would pay any attention to Riverbend.
  

• Second, many American Muslim women, free of all legal constraint and presumably most threats, nonetheless choose as a matter of religion or modesty (or both) to wear a hijab, covering the hair or the face. Everbody's favorite example (including mine) on the web is the most excellent blogger Al-Muhajabah. American, devout Muslim, paralegal, Democrat, passionate civil liberties advocate, and (not so incidentally) consulting expert on Movable Type, RSS feeds and other blogging technologies, she is, in the words of the title of one of her seven (!) blogs, "veiled4allah." That is her choice; more power to her. In America, it must always be her choice; it's written into the First Amendment... and I'd bet a considerable sum that she can not only quote the First Amendment from memory, but cite all the major Supreme Court cases relevant to it in the past century. Not surprisingly, I have never known Al-Muhajabah to criticize, let alone threaten, someone who makes other choices of apparel for themselves, for religious or other reasons.

  There are many motives for wide tolerance, especially of Americans by Americans; religious freedom is one of the greatest. Do Iraqis, to whom "freedomanddemocracy" are being brought at gunpoint, deserve less?
  

• Finally, there's the reasonable question of whether it could happen here. Could Americans someday find themselves confronted with street-corner radicals enforcing at least the external trappings of their religious views on those of us who do not share them? The answer is... how should I know. Opinion ranges from "yes, it's already happening" to "how silly of everyone to fear evangelical Christians" and everything in between. Rather, everything all around; this isn't a linear, one-dimensional phenomenon.

  I admit I am concerned: having seen what the Falwells and Robertsons and Dobsons of the world are willing to do and the things they publicly advocate, having encountered publications that scare me as surely as they offend me (e.g., that quasi-religious pamphlet I found a few years ago subtitled, "How the Liberal Menace can be Expunged"), I am wary of the possibility that Riverbend's tragedy... a transformation of lives from a secular public experience and a private religious experience to an aggressively "Christian" public influence wrought by a very limited subset of Christians, working not necessarily through government but by direct threat on the streets... could become our own American tragedy.

  Is this George W. Bush's fault? I don't know that he is driving the phenomenon, but neither is he doing anything to stop it; his tepid, one-line, pro forma statements of religious tolerance are infrequent and not backed by any substantive action to protect minority religions. I can't help wondering if his message includes a wink and a nod to the more radical elements of his base. After all, he's willing to allow it... or perhaps powerless to prevent it... in Iraq. Nothing nonpolitical motivates Bush at home; if it suits the more aggressive dominionists/reconstructionists among his supporters, why should he not tolerate intolerance in America?

Here ends the sermon for the day. Please turn in your hymnals to... the same page, which is what you are all supposed to be on, and please reach deep into your pockets for a contribution to... a 21^st-century Republican Party that must cause Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and even Ike to turn in their graves.

Steve
   PermaLink     

Amazing Grace

It's Sunday morning, and I haven't sung that old inspirational tune recently. But Mad Kane certainly has, in acknowledgement of what is reportedly Bush's favorite hymn. The words Mad offers are a little different from those I remembered, though...

Steve
   PermaLink     

Friday Neighbor Cat Blogging

This is Tigger:

Tigger lives a few doors down from me, mostly as an indoor cat. But Tigger does venture out once in a while.

Stella's kitties didn't much feel like being photographed while she was out of town, and since she has been back, I haven't had time to do them justice. They will probably return to the small screen next week.

Steve
   PermaLink     

Federal Court:
   Warrantless Eavesdropping Unconstitutional

This could be a big win... really big... for those who care about civil liberties:

DETROIT (AP) -- A federal judge ruled Thursday that the government's warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional and ordered an immediate halt to it.

U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit became the first judge to strike down the National Security Agency's program, which she says violates the rights to free speech and privacy as well as the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution.

"Plaintiffs have prevailed, and the public interest is clear, in this matter. It is the upholding of our Constitution," Taylor wrote in her 43-page opinion.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of journalists, scholars and lawyers who say the program has made it difficult for them to do their jobs. They believe many of their overseas contacts are likely targets of the program, which involves secretly listening to conversations between people in the U.S. and people in other countries.

     ...

I have neither the time nor the legal expertise to follow up on the decision in detail, but Glenn Greenwald has both, and is posting his analysis serially as he reads the opinion.

Full disclosure: yes, I'm a member of the ACLU, and have been for over 30 years. Aren't you? If not, why not?

Steve
   PermaLink     

Stating The Obvious

The great State of Texas sends business to Gov. Rick Perry's big campaign contributors:

AUSTIN -- A small group of super-rich political contributors, giving at least $25,000 a year, will put at least $10 million into Republican Gov. Rick Perry's re-election treasury as part of a fundraising corps the campaign calls the Century Council.

Donors pledging at least $100,000 get invitations to private luncheons with the governor, and many are beneficiaries of government business and plum state appointments, The Dallas Morning News reported today.

Three Century Council members have lucrative contracts to help build Perry's multibillion-dollar toll- road project.

The state has deposited millions in investment funds operated by three other top-tier givers. Sixteen donors are Perry appointees to coveted boards, including the Parks and Wildlife Commission and state university regent boards.

The number of super-donors dwarfs anything Perry's three most recent predecessors had, according to a computer-generated review of contribution records.

     ...

And on and on it goes. Read the article if you care about the gory details.

Nobody is surprised. This is not even particularly a partisan matter except for the astonishing amounts of money involved in Perry's case: please note that the article compares Perry to past governors both Democratic and Republican, and Perry is clearly the big apparent quid-pro-quo winner... $10 million of contributions of at least $25k a pop, compared with considerably less than a million each for other candidates and other recent governors (excepting, of course, Bush). These contributions appear to lead to appointments to powerful positions, sweet-deal contracts, etc. The message isn't complicated: be good to Gov. Goodhair, and he will be good to you... and never mind the Texas taxpayer.

Is Perry conservative? Conservative, my Democratic ass... "for sale" does not count as conservative.

As always, Texas has the best government money can buy. What would Chris Bell (or even Kinky Friedman, or even the Grandma) do in Perry's place? Would they be so visibly for sale? I don't know, but it's hard to imagine they could be worse.

Steve
   PermaLink     

What Part Of 'Unconstitutional'

... do they not understand? Houston Chronicle:

A Bible must be removed from a 50-year-old monument in front of the Harris County civil courthouse because a district judge changed it from a secular to a religious use in violation of the Constitution, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

"Its recent history would force an objective observer to conclude that it is a religious symbol of a particular faith located on public grounds," a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a 2-1 decision.

Although secular in purpose when it was erected in front of the old civil courthouse in 1956, former state District Judge John Devine and his court reporter, Karen Friend, changed the character of the monument when they refurbished it in 1995, the majority said in a 24-page opinion.

     ...

The usual suspects take the usual sides (yawn), and an appeal to the 5th Circuit en banc is possible. How did the display change in character from secular to religious?

     ...

[Judge] Jolly, writing for the majority, said that the original purpose of honoring Mosher was secular, but that purpose was changed in 1995 when Devine and Friend placed a neon light inside the monument to outline the Bible.

Devine had campaigned on a platform of putting Christianity back into government and had Christian ministers lead prayers at the rededication ceremony for the monument, the opinion said.

The monument became a rallying point for religious demonstrations after Staley filed her lawsuit in 2003. One was attended by Eckels, Devine and Stafford, who spoke and prayed with Christian ministers, Jolly said.

     ...

If the monument is not specifically Christian in character, why are only Christians protesting its removal? Besides, if I were Christian, which I'm not, I'd think long and hard about defending a neon-lighted Bible on government property so vigorously:

And the people bowed and prayed,
To the neon god they made...

-- Simon & Garfunkel

One last thing: apparently the Bible in the display is frequently stolen. I guess the thieves have to steal the Book before they can read the applicable commandment...

Steve
   PermaLink     

What NASA Has Lost

Reuters, via Houston Chronicle:

NASA can't find original moon landing tape
Reuters News Service

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government has misplaced the original recording of the first moon landing, including astronaut Neil Armstrong's famous "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," a NASA spokesman said today.

Armstrong's famous space walk, seen by millions of viewers on July 20, 1969, is among transmissions that NASA has failed to turn up in a year of searching, spokesman Grey Hautaloma said.

"We haven't seen them for quite a while. We've been looking for over a year and they haven't turned up," Hautaloma said.

     ...

Well, gosh. It seems to me that NASA has lost a few other things in the years since that glorious day 37 years ago... the ability to send people to the Moon, for instance.

There's blame enough to go around, but I personally place most of mine on Ronald Reagan, who had no interest in space travel for its own sake or for research purposes, but only in military uses of space. NASA reached its horrifying nadir when the Shuttle Challenger exploded, and was similarly in the depths a few years ago when Shuttle Columbia burned up, but there were many other embarrassing if less catastrophic moments. One such was the day in 1990 when it was discovered that the Hubble Space Telescope needed "glasses," in part because because no end-to-end test of the optics was performed before they sent it into space... Perkin-Elmer had had many cost overruns in producing the mirror, and the test was canceled as a cost-saving measure. I leave it to you whether that was a failure of technological acumen, NASA oversight or political will, but I assert we couldn't build and launch a Hubble Telescope today if our very lives depended on it.

Some argue that liberals should not even concern themselves with human space flight, because there are so many things that need to be done on Earth. I've never seen it as an exclusive choice; if we stopped spending so much money on invasive wars and ineffective antiterrorism programs, not to mention tax cuts for the very wealthy and no-bid contracts for Halliburton, we could do many things all at the same time, and enjoy greater respect among the nations of the world. But for those who still feel space flight is a waste, I remind them that John F. Kennedy, arguably the most liberal president in the post-W.W.II era, initiated the Apollo program and saw it through its early years until his untimely assassination. I'd like to think that America aspires to more than mere survival day-to-day; if that's what it has come to, it is a sad day indeed. Let us find the will and the means to return to the Moon, not because Mr. Bush wills it like some ancient monarch, but because it is, as it always has been, a thing worth doing.

And I hope they find that tape, if for no other reason than to debunk the apocryphal story of Armstrong's saying, "Good luck, Mr. [insert name here: Gorski, Klein, Smith, whatever]!"

Steve
   PermaLink     

Günter Grass

About a week ago, on my birthday, long-time friend Catherine (Lotus's human) gave me, at my request, a book of Günter Grass's writings. At the time, I did not know... no one knew... of his having joined Hitler's Waffen SS at age 17. Grass, now 78, confessed it in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, in preparation for the forthcoming publication of his memoirs. To say the admission caused a stir would be an understatement: I just searched FAZ's web site and found literally hundreds of references to Grass. Many people, including many in the American left blogosphere, proclaimed him a hypocrite, for having this in his past while proclaiming his ardent pacifist leanings after W.W. II.

I'm sorry, but that won't wash. Many of his critics would have done exactly the same at age 17, in the name of patriotism, or because everyone in his circle was doing it. Moreover, if my arithmetic is correct, this must have been in 1945, by which time I believe the Waffen SS was actually drafting young men... it is not clear to me that Grass was a volunteer, and he didn't elucidate the issue in his interview. By no means do I condone what the SS did; it's simply not clear that Grass was culpable for the worst of their actions.

Grass turned out to be one of the great German writers of his era. The works I read years ago, in the original (just barely within my grasp) and in translation, were strikingly powerful. If he is flawed for his past membership in the SS, or blameworthy for not being forthcoming about it, that does not impact his writing. Will I think about it as I read my new book of his works? of course. Will I still enjoy them, appreciate them? I think I shall.

Steve
   PermaLink     

You Snooze, You Win

I knew it; I just knew it. From Sarah Viren of the Houston Chronicle:

     ...

Sleep. It's a common subject of cell phone chatter and hallway complaints from most teenagers come August as they shift from late-sleeping summer routines to the early-rising regimen of high school.

A growing body of evidence, however, indicates these groans might be warranted. Teenagers' internal sleep clocks are out of whack with the class schedules adults set for them, researchers say.

Last spring the National Sleep Foundation released survey findings showing that teenagers are tired, sometimes chronically so. According to the survey:

• Eighty percent of adolescents get fewer than the nine hours of recommended sleep each night.
• A quarter of high school students say they fall asleep during class at least once a week, and 14 percent are tardy because they overslept.
• Ninety percent of parents mistakenly think their teenagers get enough sleep.

But few, if any, Houston-area high schools have moved to later start times. Such a change, many argue, would interfere with after-school jobs and cut into the time for activities such as football practice and band.

     ...

I've been sleepwrecked (how's that for a neologism) since at least my high school days. When I was 32, I counted up and found that I had spent all or part of 22 of those years in school, often working at the same time, accommodating my work schedule to my class schedule. In all that time, rising in the morning for the earliest class never became one bit easier. I've always thought of myself as a night person unsuited to life in a morning-fixated society, but maybe I was just sleep-starved instead.

The article contains many examples of sleep-deficient teens. If you have teens of your own, or in your household, you'll recognize the phenomenon. U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) introduces a nonbinding resolution every year, asking schools to advance their class start times voluntarily to 8:30am. It never passes. You snooze, you lose; what could be more entrenched conventional wisdom than that?

I suggest that we are wrecking our adolescents, forcing them into a pattern of sleep deprivation that may affect everything from their quality of life to their creativity and, yes, productivity, for the rest of their lives. I am a living example: I've been sleepwrecked since high school. Must we do this to our young people?

(No more blogging for me today. First it's work, then Stella's return.)

Steve
   PermaLink     

Bush Successfully Avoids Press

Peter Baker in the WaPo:

     ...

The idea that Bush could travel across the country without a full contingent of reporters, especially in the middle of a war, highlights a major cultural shift in the presidency and the news media. In the four decades since the assassination of John F. Kennedy, presidents traditionally have taken journalists with them wherever they traveled on the theory that when it comes to the most powerful leader on the planet, anything can happen at any time.

But increasingly in recent months, Bush has left town without a chartered press plane, often to receptions where he talks to donors chipping in hundreds of thousands of dollars with no cameras or tapes to record his words for the public. Barred from such events, most news organizations will not pay to travel with him. And so a White House policy inclined to secrecy has combined with escalating costs for the strapped news media to let Bush fly under the radar in a way his predecessors could not.

     ...

The most recent example, with which Baker's article opens, is the almost complete absence of the national press and media when the news broke about the British foiling the terrorist plot. Reporters were mostly back at the Crawford ranch, because Bush was flying "only" to a fundraiser, to which press were not admitted.

Across the generations of Preznit Bushes from 41 to 43, we've gone from "Message: I care" to "Message: we don't need you." Or perhaps it's "Message: dark for dark business."

Steve
   PermaLink     

Where I Live These Days

I know; I'm blogging about personal stuff a lot. But I thought some of you might like to see where I'm spending most of my hours lately:

The YDD originates most often, oddly enough, from the older desktop machine on the right... cable lengths dictate the relative placement of the two machines; I'd blog from the left if I could. The laptop, which is rather dark-looking in this pic, has all my development software for the current contract... portability is essential when you're working for a company in another city. For comfort and speed I've added an external mouse and keyboard for use in my office-at-home... the keyboard has enough extra buttons across the top to run the Starship Enterprise D if necessary; it's the nearest I could find in shape and layout to the one I'm typing on right now. The latter is two years old... obsolete, no longer available new and retail.

For the most part, I'm actually enjoying this contract, except for the low sleep and the frequent feeling of exhaustion. The software we're developing assists hospitals in managing the cleaning of beds... the company has version 1 already on the market and a good-sized installed base. Of course hospitals license it primarily for performance reporting and compliance with all the regulations on emergency preparedness, but it helps the people who actually clean the beds, too: carrying cell phones and/or pagers to communicate with the system, they don't have to make endless trips back to an old-fashioned physical "bed board," traditionally a blackboard or dry-erase board on which the scheduling of cleanings was tracked in days of yore. If I were cleaning hospital beds for a living, I'd want every bit of help I could get. And I think we all can agree, in this era of resurgent infectious diseases, that clean hospital beds are A Good Thing indeed. I'm writing the web interface to the system; it will probably run most often on a hospital's intranet.

An aside: I heard from Stella this evening. Her presentation and the following question session went wonderfully well; I expected no less, but it's good to hear it confirmed. Yes, her luggage arrived with her meds in it. One of her friends, a principal investigator on one project she's managed (they use the acronym PI, nothing to do with Magnum or with Politically Incorrect) who is also presenting tomorrow at the same conference, was not so lucky: the bags containing some of her material for distribution have not arrived yet. In any case, I have to say that it was really good to hear Stella's voice. I wish the cats could hear it too, but in the past, we've tried the speakerphone, and they just don't recognize the sound as her voice.

Steve
   PermaLink     

A Place On The Sun

On it, not in it...

It's amazing how much they love to sit at the very center of the sunburst on Stella's bedspread.

I did not expect to hear from Stella after her arrival in Canada. For one thing, it was probably an incredibly long day, given the heightened "security" at the airports, the security we gain by depriving people of prescription medicines and hair gels and perfumes and bottled water. For another, our relatively new GSM-based cell phones, less than a year old, are apparently not served in this city by our provider or any of its partners, and if they were, the rates would be about 10 times the rate one gets with a calling card. (Thank you, Cingular.) Stella presents tomorrow, so I'll probably hear from her sometime Saturday.

Stella and I are accustomed to spending a lot of time by ourselves. But I am missing her nonetheless, and so are the kitties, Tabitha especially... she wanders back and forth near Stella's usual haunts in her apartment, hoping that she will appear, and eventually giving up and crawling into my lap. After knowing me for nine years, about half her life, Tabitha is proactively affectionate to me, but she's basically a one-person cat, and she's really missing that one person.

And of course there's still all this work I have to do. Mind you, I'm not complaining; I just wish I were a bit younger in the face of these late-night efforts.

Steve
   PermaLink     

Stupid Security Tricks

I just got a call from Stella, who is at one of Houston's airports at the moment, on her way to present a paper at a conference in Canada. In light of the foiled plot in Britain and the consequently heightened U.S. security, you'll never guess what they would not allow her to take on the plane...

... her prescription meds, pills, not liquids, sorted out in one of those little plastic boxes designed for the purpose, and therefore unlabeled. I'm sure she has the prescriptions with her; she's diligent about such things.

Now all of her supplies of prescription medicine are in luggage. If they lose the bag in transit, it could be bad news. They left her with enough meds to take this morning, as long as she swallows them before she boards.

Medications constitute a threat on an airplane? Who knew! What's next, clothing? (Yeah, I know that's been made into a cartoon before.)

This has abso-fucking-lutely nothing to do with national security. This is designed to inconvenience as many traveling Americans as possible, conveying the largely political message, "be afraid; be very afraid." I don't know, perhaps we should be very afraid... but not of someone's prescription meds.

I'm still working constantly, running on very low sleep, and probably won't blog much today or tomorrow. Cat blogging? Yes. Some things are important...

Steve
   PermaLink     

Money From My Pocket

And from a lot of other people's pockets as well. And apparently a lot of money. And, to all appearances, swindled from the retirement fund of Texas employees. By whom? Need you ask? By a Republican operative, Bill Ceverha, a board member of the ERS (Employee Retirement System of the State of Texas), who also happens to be a paid lobbyist for James Leininger, sometimes called the "paymaster of the radical Republican religious right in Texas." So what offensive and possibly criminal thing did Leininger and Ceverha allegedly do this time? According to State Rep. Lon Burnham (D-Ft. Worth), Ceverha invested state employees' retirement money in Leininger's failing company, Kinetic Concepts Inc. (KCI), the stock of which lost a ton of money after it was hit by a patent infringement lawsuit... but not before Leininger himself sold out, and sold high. Why do I not think this was a coincidence? Burnham, from an email to his list:

The Honorable Greg Abbott
Texas Attorney General
300 W. 15th Street
Austin TX 78701

Dear General Abbott:

I am writing to ask that you immediately launch an investigation into the peculiar circumstances surrounding the Texas Employees Retirement System’s (ERS’) purchase of 80,000 shares of stock in Kinetic Concepts, Inc., (stock symbol KCI), a medical device company founded and owned by James Leininger. Last week, a San Antonio jury ruled against Leininger’s KCI in a high-profile patent infringement lawsuit. As a result, the stock lost over 40% of its value last Friday, August 4..

Texas employees and retirees are faced with a seven-figure loss while Mr. Leininger has lined his pockets with nearly $100 million from selling off KCI stock. Mr. Leininger cashed out at the top whileTexas employees and retirees lost millions. This is wrong. You need to immediately determine if the Texas employees and retirees were the victims of a massive pump and dump scheme, and what role (if any) ERS board member, Bill Ceverha, played in this multi-million dollar loss.

According to his own ethics filings, Ceverha is a paid lobbyist of Leininger’s Texans for Educational Excellence.

     ...

I was an employee of the State of Texas for 10 years, five with the U.T. Graduate School for Biomedical Science and five with the U.T. School of Public Health. Some of those years were interesting and rewarding; some were not. But I stuck with it for 10 years to vest in the retirement system. Just before the 10 years were up, the state reduced the vesting requirements, so that I vested early, but I stuck with the state for 10 years anyway. Unlike many former state employees, having seen how well my father was treated when he retired under "teacher retirement" (another name for the part of the state retirement system in which all state university employees, teachers and otherwise, were forced to participate), when faced with the choice, I left my money in the state system. When Ceverha and Leininger play games with ERS money, they're playing games with a goodly chunk of my retirement money. I take this personally.

Conservatives are often (perhaps pro forma) contemptuous of government employees. Personally, I did not find them on average inferior to private sector employees. There were many good people and a few bad apples... just as there are in the corporate world. There is no legitimacy to any argument that says public employees deserve to have their retirement funds swindled away from them, any more than, say, Enron employees deserved what happened to them. If these two right-wing activists did what they are alleged to have done, they should go to jail for it, and the public moneys they took... my money included... should be repaid. I have no patience with such behavior even when I am not the victim. And in this case, to paraphrase a famous Republican pseudo-president, I plan to be like a "pit bull on the pant-leg of" criminality. Do not think I will forget about this.

Steve
   PermaLink     

Oh Good Grief, Part 285714

There they go again. AP via Houston Chronicle:

Underage sex tied to raunchy music
Study suggests teens who listen to explicit lyrics seem to lose their virginity sooner

By LINDSEY TANNER
Associated Press

CHICAGO - Teenagers whose iPods are full of music with raunchy, sexual lyrics start having sex sooner than those who prefer other songs, a study found.

Whether it's pop, rock, hip-hop or rap, much of popular music aimed at teens contains sexual overtones. Its influence on their behavior appears to depend on how the sex is portrayed, researchers found.

Songs depicting men as "sex-driven studs," women as sex objects and with explicit references to sex acts are more likely to trigger early sexual behavior than those where sexual references are more veiled and relationships appear more committed, the study found.

Teens who said they listened to lots of music with degrading sexual messages were almost twice as likely to start having intercourse or other sexual activities within the following two years as were teens who listened to little or no sexually degrading music.

Exposure to lots of sexually degrading music "gives them a specific message about sex," said lead author Steven Martino, a researcher for Rand Corp. in Pittsburgh.

     ...

Yeah, I know, it's the Rand Corp., but based on this admittedly incomplete article, they appear to have made one of the classic mistakes in interpretation: demonstrating correlation, then asserting causality. Sure, I'm not surprised that teens who listen to raunchy music also have sex earlier, but where's the evidence that listening to raunchy music causes them to have sex earlier?

Look: as an adult, I do not like songs about violence, degradation of women, etc., and if I were a parent, I'd probably at least try to be aware of what my teen had on his or her iPod, not to prohibit them from listening to those songs, but to emphasize how destructive their messages are if carried out in real life.

But as a teen, I listened to Mick Jagger sing "Satisfaction." And I listened to the Fugs as they performed "Saran Wrap." And on the gentler side, I listened to Paul Simon's classic "Celia." Despite hearing songs of that sort on a fairly frequent basis, I did not go out and go wild sexually in ways that endangered the young women (or men, for that matter) around me. Neither did most of the young men around me. So it's difficult for me to believe the assertion that sexually explicit music... without other factors... causes teens to have sex earlier. Are things different today? no doubt they are, but they're different in those other factors: I'll put the sexually explicit lyrics of my generation up against those of any younger generation. Our generation's bands knew how to sing about fucking. But most of us had parents who knew how to talk to us about such matters in a very different, more constructive way.

Once again, it appears to me that an allegedly "scientific" study has an agenda. The same type of fundamentalists said all the same things in my youth: the younger generation's music is immoral; they're going to hell in a handbasket. That assertion was crap then, and it is crap now.

(Blog break's over; now it's back to standing on my head, um, I mean, back to work...)

Steve
   PermaLink     

Birthdays

Lots of 'em. NTodd's, for one. Stella's father's. Long-time oboist colleague JJ's. And mine. Fifty-eight... wow. When I was 28, I never thought I'd live to see this day.

In past years I've written in detail about the Original Child Bomb (that's the Japanese name for it), the atomic bomb dropped by the U.S. on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. This year I'll spare you my lament about that and the other atomic bomb a few days later; they were gruesome events beside which even 9/11 pales... though Bush's wars may eventually inflict a death toll comparable to that of those two bombs.

Fortunately, NTodd, Stella's dad, JJ and I were original children of a different sort. May all of us, and all of you, have birthdays that do not involve direct contact with wars, especially needless, futile ones. Happy birthday to all of you who share this day with me.

Steve
   PermaLink     

Friday Paw-In-The-Face Blogging

No, not pie-in-the-face, though that might be fun as well...

My current contract is consuming my days and nights. I have a couple of breaks built into this weekend, but I will be away from home for those, in a context in which I will be unable to blog even if I have time. Thanks for your patience. This, too, shall pass.

Steve
   PermaLink     

Morning In Houston

I'm back from Austin a day early. We got a lot done yesterday. This is what morning looks like in Houston today:

I have something deliverable by Friday, so the chances of substantive blogging this week are fairly slim. Expect Friday's cat blogging late in the day. Again, thanks for your patience.

Steve
   PermaLink     

 
Selected Links To Recent Posts

 
Click any permalink below to go to the original article on a previous page. Click a comment link below to add a comment to the original article. Your comment will be noticed, by the YDD at least: HaloScan has a page allowing me to view recent comments, no matter which post they refer to.

I Told You So

Steve
   PermaLink     

Miscellany

Steve
   PermaLink     

Typically Early Samantha Blogging

Steve
   PermaLink