The Quick and the Dead

From The Australian :

US troops have admitted shooting dead an award-winning Reuters cameraman while he was filming near a US-run prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.

Witnesses said US soldiers on a tank shot Mazen Dana, 43, as he filmed outside Abu Ghraib prison in western Baghdad yesterday. The prison had earlier come under a mortar attack.

Moments before being shot, Dana told a colleague that working close to the US military was not a problem "as long as they don't shoot me".

His last pictures show a US tank driving towards him outside the prison walls. Several shots ring out from the tank, and Dana's camera falls to the ground. The US military acknowledged its troops had "engaged" the Reuters cameraman, saying they thought his camera was a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

"Army soldiers engaged an individual they thought was aiming an RPG at them. It turned out to be a Reuters cameraman," a spokesman for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in Washington yesterday.

OK, look at the picture to the left. Which ones are Anti-Tank Missile Launchers and which ones are Cameras? Remember, the pass mark is 100%.
(Animation courtesy of Spartacus - reload to restart)

Books and DVDs from Amazin.com

As seen on that excellent Blog, Silent Running, may I present this hilarious selection.

Idi Amin - The Last Word

From an article in the Sydney Morning Herald :

Allan Hogan recalls interviewing the murderous former dictator of Uganda, who was buried in Saudi Arabia on Saturday.

I met Idi Amin in 1975 when I travelled to Uganda with cameraman David Brill on assignment for ABC's Four Corners. By then Amin had appointed himself "president for life", and his murderous regime had been responsible for the deaths of up to 300,000 people.

Our arrival followed on the heels of a French documentary team who had made Amin the laughing stock of Europe.

One hilarious scene in the French film showed him talking to the animals, like Dr Doolittle, as he cruised the shores of Lake Victoria in the presidential barge. Another scene showed him presiding over a cabinet meeting in which one minister appeared to question a presidential decision. The minister's body was found floating in the river the next day.

A short, portly Englishman sporting a New Zealand rugby tie met us on arrival at Entebbe airport. He was Bob Astles, described by one of Amin's biographers as the tyrant's "professional lapdog".

We were the first Western journalists to visit Uganda since the French crew (Amin had expelled the rest), and Astles warned us that a death sentence had been handed down against them, in absentia.

After our first night in Kampala we were met by Astles to begin our guided tour. When I reported I had not been able to call Sydney from my hotel room he said that he was aware of my problem.

"We executed the telephonist this morning. We don't like that kind of incompetence."

Weird Wide Web

From The Australian :

A Cambodian teenager suffocated when a fish he caught jumped out of his hands and lodged in his throat, newspapers reported today.

Lim Vanthan, 17, and his family were planting rice at the weekend near their home on the outskirts of the impoverished South-East Asian nation's capital, when they decided to go for a swim.

During his dip, Lim Vanthan caught a prized 20 cm fish, called kantrob in Cambodian, with his hands.

But the high school student's excitement was short-lived when his catch squirmed out of his hands and jumped into his mouth, where it became stuck because of barbs running down its back.

More Fun with your Central Nervous System

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.* ( .wav file)

First, I want you to stretch your right arm in front of you. No need to overdo it, just put it up as if about to execute a dive.

Now rotate it clockwise, as if drawing a big letter 'O' in the air.

Then, stretch your left foot in front of you, and rotate it anti-clockwise.

This should be quite easy. With me so far? OK, put your left foot down, and stop rotating your right arm.

Now, put out your right foot, and rotate it anti-clockwise, just like you did with your left foot.

Finally, put out your right arm (if you'd put it down) and rotate it clockwise, just like you did before.

Watch what happens to your right foot.

For an explanation of this interesting effect, see The Volokh Conspiracy. (BTW it doesn't always work with me, as I've had CNS damage due to encephalo-meningitis, and my circuitry's abnormal as the result. )

* - From "Listen With Mother", a UK radio show you have to be antedeluvian (like me) to remember.

Courage, Plasma, and Lasers

Today I was honoured to meet and shake hands with probably the Bravest person I've ever met. Mrs Peggy Marguerite Chang Diaz. Memorable quote :

I have all the worry, He has all the fun

Oh yes, I also got to meet her husband, Dr Franklin Chiang Diaz (veteran of 7 Shuttle missions) too. (BTW he looks about 30, and wears braces.. Not many people know that)

Dr Chiang Diaz is currently visiting the Australian National University, pursuing what seems to be a favourite topic of his : Plasma Rocketry. He described the specific impulse of such engines as being in "the thousands", compared with the 200-300 of current rockets.

Also there at the presentation was Dr Ben Greene, CEO of "the most interesting company in Queanbeyan", Electro Optic Systems, otherwise known around here as "Lasers R Us". Apart from doing a lot of highly classified Defence work, they've got a laser tracker that can get the position of any piece of space junk to an accuracy of a millimetre. Their more powerful lasers can also be used to zap a few microns of surface off of a spent satellite (or whatever) in LEO and push it into a decaying orbit. He reckons the problem of "space junk" will be licked, starting in about a decade.

From the ABC Radio National Science Week Site :

Monday 18, 6pm'Space Business' - Richard Aedy from The Buzz on Radio National hosts a discussion with NASA Astronaut Dr Franklin Chang-Diaz. Royal Theatre at the National Convention centre, Canberra.
Broadcast on Radio National on Monday August 25 at 1.05pm (AEST)

That's Sunday at about 6-9pm in the US, and Monday 3am in the UK. A transcript and streaming audio will be available on the web.

Weird Wide Web

Dial-The-Truth Ministries reveals the dreadful truth about.... Santa Claus. Saint Nick or Old Nick?

The Blenderphone. Every home should have at least one.

And a true treasure. Most people know of the Easter Eggs inside some software. (And if you don't, just go to any of the Easter Egg archives).

But I only recently found that Hardware engineers have often buried secret little artworks, etched in miniature on chips. Examples include "a Pac-Man gobbling the initials GAAS (gallium arsenide) on a TEMIC Semiconductors silicon-germanium radio frequency integrated circuit.". A collection of these delightful images, often the size of a pin-head, is in the Silicon Zoo.

(This one for Computer Geeks and Bloggers only). Microsoft's next extension to HTML? The Mind Reading Markup Language. note Because it's not case-sensitive, it doesn't conform to the XML guidelines.

Canberra : Baghdad's Sister City?

From the ABC :

The ACT Government has announced it is exploring a possible sister city relationship between Canberra and Baghdad.

The local Iraqi community has written to the Government asking it to consider the relationship.

ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope has directed the Office of Multicultural Affairs to examine the prospect and a forum is being organised to discuss the links between the two cities.

Hell, why not. We're both at about 35 degrees latitude, similar climates. Canberra's a bit smaller than Baghdad, with only 300,000 people. But at the beginning of the year, we too faced a Disaster (scroll down to the Bushfires article), and we've got a water shortage too. Things are slowly getting better though.

Throwing the Book at them

From the Sydney Morning Herald :

German police detained 71 neo-Nazis during a march in memory of Adolf Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess in the Bavarian town where he was buried after his 1987 suicide.

Police said they deployed 1,000 officers to prevent trouble at the march, which drew 2,600 neo-Nazis to Wunsiedel.

Demonstrators were detained for displaying outlawed Nazi symbols like the swastika, or for carrying weapons such as knives, tear gas spray and a baseball bat, police spokesman Klaus Bernhardt said.

All 71 were released without charges by this evening,

That'll teach 'em.

About 400 people had rallied against the marchers in the north-eastern Bavarian town.

Thereby proving that, just as there are racist morons everywhere, there are some people with the courage to stand up to them.

New Blog on the Block

Evil Pundit of Doom. An brand-new OzBlog that does the same type of thing I do with my "Weird Wide Web" series, just a whole lot better.

No I'm not going to give up, I'm taking it as a challenge.

What are you reading this far for? Just pay him a visit.

"Highly Recommended"

Another Brain Short-Circuiter

This one, like the previous one, is to be found on Anton Feestra's "Confuse Your Brain" site. This time, it illustrates some processing glitches inherent in the design of the human Visual Cortex. Which should tell people who hold to the "argument by design" tenet of Creation "Science" something about either the sense of humour, or the fallibility of the Almighty. Personally, I'm an Agnostic who leans towards Theism, but consider the "Theory" of Evolution to be as well proven (and as ill-understood in the finer details) as the "Theory" of Gravity.

The lines are straight, but they're also parallel. Measure them and see. I did.

Death of a Monster

His Excellency President for Life Field Marshal Al Hadji Dr. Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular, has snuffed it.

From the Sydney Morning Herald

US President Jimmy Carter said events in Uganda during Amin's rule "disgusted the entire civilised world."

Ugandans initially welcomed Amin's rise to power, and his frequent taunting of Britain, former colonial ruler of much of Africa, often played well on the continent.

But his penchant for the cruel and extravagant became evident in 1972, when he expelled tens of thousands of Asians who had controlled the country's economy.

Suddenly deprived of its business class, the East African nation plummeted into economic chaos.

Amin declared himself president-for-life of his landlocked country of 24 million, awarded himself an array of medals and ran the country with an iron fist, killing real and imagined enemies.

Human rights groups say from 100,000 to 500,000 people were killed during his 8-year rule.

Bodies were dumped into the Nile River because graves couldn't be dug fast enough.

Hmmm.. what's the population of Zimbabwe? 12.5 million according to that invaluable resource, the CIA Factbook. Well Mugabe may have (has) gotten rid of the wealthy elite, and wrecked the economy. But his killings are in the dozens, hundreds at most. There are no TV pictures of rafts of corpses floating down the Zambesi, as there were from the Nile when Idi was in power. Robert Mugabe's cronies and relatives have "swallowed up" lots of the confiscated lands, but haven't actually eaten the erstwhile owners. At least, not yet.

So maybe the world is getting better. Actually, with the death of this man in the manner pretty much exactly as I wished for, it's definitely better.

More on the ICCC

That is, the International Circus Clown Conspiracy.

"The UFO sitings over Iraq are actually mass hallucinations engineered by the Conspiracy of Circus Clowns to make Michael Moore and other enemies of the Cabal of Neo-Cons think they are not alone. In the ensuing paranoia, the Conspiracy of Circus Clowns and the Cabal of Neo-Cons plan to control the world. If you see UFOs, close your eyes - it's all a trick. Meanwhile, a special task force led by Indimedia is being set up to tackle the problem. "

This Customised Conspiracy was generated by the C.O.N.S.P.I.R.E Discovery site. and is a lot more plausible than much emanating from the BBC's Andrew "there are no Americans near the Airport" Gilligan recently.

More evidence of the International Conspiracy of Circus Clowns, (see the Protocols of the Elders of Barnum ), is in the deeply disturbing picture opposite. It was the controversial cover of the "Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction" for June, 1996 to illustrate the story "The Auschwitz Circus" by Matthew Wells. Art by Kent Bash.

Victims of the International Circus Clown conspiracy include :

Frank Loy, Under Secretary for Global Affairs at the State Department;

Keith Campbell, co-creator of Dolly the sheep,;

UK Labour politician Clare Short, Secretary of International Development

Ralph Nader, Green Party Icon;

And many others.

The attacks have taken place throughout the world, and claimed such illustrious victims as Microsoft's Bill Gates, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, former European Commission President Jacques Delors and Dutch Finance Minister Gerrit Zalm, who was last year felled by an organic banana pie at the opening of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange.

Yet still the Joey-controlled mass media won't report the pattern. Oh the Humanity!

Even More Useless Fact

Polar Bears are Left-Handed.

Not many people know that.

Factoid of the Week

Admiral Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Ernle-Drax was the person entrusted by Chamberlain to forestall the signing of the Ribbentrop-Molotov non-aggression pact. Due partly to the fact that he took the SS Athenia to Leningrad, rather than one of those new-fangled aircraft, he arrived too late.

Later, Admiral Drax published an article entitled "World War III : Some Pros and Cons" .

Not many people know that.

An excellent source of such useless knowledge (though with a paranormal tinge) is Did You Know? Useless information for your brain!.

Unnacountably it doesn't include the above information.

Talking about Paranormality, the Global Consciousness Project is worth a visit.

It appears that consciousness may sometimes produce something that resembles, at least metaphorically, a nonlocal field of meaningful information.

What does it all mean? Essentially, the project attempts to investigate "Large Disturbances in the Force", and may well have found significant evidence for their existence. It's "fringe science", but unlike most such, Science nonetheless.

Index of Archives

I've been getting a lot of first-time visitors recently, so here's some of the goodies to be found in the archives.

The Protocols of the Elders of Barnum - The Secret Plans of the Circus Clowns revealed.

Brain short-circuit Demonstration which shows how your speech centre can get confused by conflicting signals.

Australian Political Ecology which explains why John Howard is a Liberal, but not a Democrat, while Senator Lees is both a Democrat and a Republican.

Plus the song "YMCA" in Klingon, a Plush Cthulhu in a Santa suit, and a Banana Factory.

And that was just last week.

Also articles on Space, Cyborgs, Fisking the BBC, and Why you can't tickle yourself.

Greetings

..to everyone who's come to this site via The Command Post.

Latest news from Australia : Scientists have found a compound that might explain why Australians (with their high level of meat consumption) are not just world-beaters at Sport, but are highly intelligent.**

The dietary supplement creatine - known to improve athletic performance - can also boost memory and intelligence, researchers claim.

It might also explain some other Australian habits. Like taking showers multiple times a day.

The supplement is also notorious for creating an unpleasant odour in the vicinity of the taker.

TANSTAAFL I guess.

** - not to mention modest.

Four Views of Canberra

The good folks of ACTEW-AGL have put up a webcam showing 4 views of Canberra, the place that I live in. Of course, you've got to remember the time zone shift, so if it's daylight where you are, it's probably night here. But you can see any picture in the last 24 hours.

If you're interested in the joint - it's Australia's equivalent of Washington DC, go take a look at the Canberra Tourism site. Some of the Desktop images are truly breathtaking - though not as good as the real thing.

Another view of course is that Canberra is "A good sheep station, spoilt".

The most complete review of the place is the one at LonelyPlanet. There are only a few things that it doesn't mention, that only a native knows.

1) At Dawn and Dusk you can watch the Roos and Wallabies cross the road and carpark near the Campbell Park Defence complex. In 20 years, we've only had Roos jumping around our front lawn twice.

2) There are Platypi (as in "Duck-Billed") in Cotter Dam.

3) A mate of mine who's of Ngunawal ancestry tells me that the translation of "Kumburra" as "Meeting Place" isn't quite right. "Arena" or "Battleground" is closer; it's where the local tribes met when they had to "settle their differences" , by engaging in open warfare.

IT Outsourcing redux

An Infinite Number of Monkeys.

Weird Wide Web

An aerial photo of the house I was born in.

Programming and the Law

No, this isn't about the latest silliness of the RIAA, or other people trying deperately to defend an obsolete business model in the courts. In fact, it's nothing to do with Courts as such - it's to do with legislation.

In my Brilliant <word_definition value = "to go downhill without control">Career</word_definition>, I've seen and done a lot of things. I've worked on systems for Printers, Small Businesses, in Veterans' Healthcare, Better Ways to Kill People, Spaceflight Avionics and Legal publishing. As a Systems Analyst, I've had to absorb the basics of all these "Problem Domains". I'm not a Doctor - but know about Ankylosing Spondylitis and Rickettsia Rickettsii from perusing data on Veterans Health. I'm not a Lawyer - but unlike most Lawyers, I've had to read every single reported case in every Supreme Court in every State of Australia from 1996 to 2000. And a lot of the legislation enacted over that period too.

Which leads me to a post from Samizdata.net.

Don't just sit there waiting for disaster to strike, says the lawyer. Think about it beforehand. Take precautions beforehand, with the magic of paper, that can clarify, now, what needs to be done, now, thereby preventing catastrophe in the future. So what if most people don't read it? The people directly instructed to behave themselves better, in such a way that catastrophe is averted, they'll read it. That's sufficient.
As you can see, this involves going beyond merely foreseeing disaster, to actually preventing it.
But isn't that what you would do if you spent your whole life imagining future catastrophes and trying to fix it so that if catastrophe did strike your clients would at least keep their skins in one piece? Wouldn't you, if you got a job where you were now expected to look at the bigger picture, then ask: well, can't we contrive more and better paper that would actually prevent these disasters?
So the laws and the regulations pile up, and the people agitating for them and writing them and voting for them all truly believe that they are doing us all a favour. That's what makes it all so dangerous. Bad people are relatively easy to stop. It's the good people you have to really look out for, if only because they are so much more numerous, and so much more persuasive.

...and much more besides. Go read the whole thing.

But what's really interesting is some of the comments;

I wonder are lawyers any good at programming?
Because thats exactly what "us" programmers do (predict mistakes and error paths).

<sarcasm>Of course computer code has got shorter over the years and less complex, so you can see we have been much more successful.</sarcasm>

Posted by: Rob Read on August 11, 2003 05:51 PM

(I inserted the "sarcasm" tags, as someone took him literally). Anyway, he's absolutely right. That's what "us programmers" do, to a great extent. And when you're dealing with Safety-Critical systems - things like avionics, where people's lives depend on the system - then it's 99% of your job. But the similarities don't stop there.

The code metaphor for law seems to work pretty well for me. From my experience (and that of others), as a body of code evolves over time, it becomes inflexible and spaghetti. Often, this is the result of fixing a specific problem in a specific case. Every so often, one or more pieces (often in tandem) needs to be ripped up and re-coded. Legal codes are huge bodies of code on which very little garbage collection has been performed.

Posted by: Dishman on August 11, 2003 11:21 PM

Exactly. What is a Law but a program?
IF you do this THEN you get thus-and-such a penalty. END IF

In fact, I was constantly struck by the extreme similarities between computer programming and the legislation my program was helping to publish. In programming, you have problems of "configuration management", that is, what's the latest-and-greatest code that works as opposed to what's still "under construction". And when do you publish rev 3.45, and what problems does it fix, and what problems are planned to be fixed in rev 3.46.

Legislation has exactly the same structure. Most legislation merely amends previous legislation, and comes into effect on a certain date. Before that date, the law says one thing, then magically, it says another. What was legal becomes illegal; what was illegal becomes legal. It's worse than that when you have the possibility of retrospective Legislation - that is, the question "Is this action legal" depends upon not just the date the action happened, but also when the question was asked. And sometimes the new law is defined to come into effect "2 weeks before the XYZ act comes into effect", so until that happens, you can't know what the law is. Or was. But I digress.

Australian Taxation legislation is so horrendously complex that I doubt that anyone understands it fully, and it must by its very nature be full of contradictions and inconsistencies. It's constantly being amended and fiddled with, so in order to know what taxes you should have paid 3 years ago, you sometimes have to wade through literally dozens of amendments.

Now Computer Programmers have managed, by making use of a formal set of symbols called a "Computer Language", with its own grammar, syntax and semantics, to ease their task. There are lots of languages, some highly Cryptic ( APL), some that are almost as bad to the uninitiated (C), yet others that flow like English ( Ada).

Warning!Don't follow the links in this paragraph if you're not a Computer Maven.
Some of these languages - such as the SPARK subset of Ada-83 and the RAVENSCAR subset of Ada-95 are "formally provable". You can always determine how the code will behave. In fact, with developments in xtUML you can actually "execute" the design model of the system.

But there is no "LawLan", no special, formally provable language for writing legislation. There's no way of writing a "Law Program" that you can execute under a variety of circumstances ("system tests") and see what it does. So we get unintended consequences, the Courts make rulings giving results that Parliament never intended. But sometimes they have to, because the Law is Inhuman - it's a Juggernaut that can crush the powerless and innocent unless tempered by some common Humanity and uncommon sense.

The Lawyer-cum-Information-Technologist who invents such a provable, verifiable law-language system - (and the person who manages to cajole the writers of Legislation into using it, and the Voting public to accept it) will be a candidate for sainthood, and will in all probability be martyred. But it's something we're going to need sooner or later.

Public Obnoxiousness

There are some people, often deranged, sometimes just Mean, who take delight in causing problems for others. And the Internet is a perfect vehicle for them.

Case in point : (I can't vouch for the accuracy of this address information, it may be forged in order to cause trouble)

Bill White
Attorney retired
P.O. Box 811335
Macy's Plaza
Los Angeles, California
USA
90081
Email: bill747white@ureach.com
Fax 509-277-8825
Voice Mail 509-277-8825

Mr White appears to have some moderately serious mental illness, rather than being an evil little twerp. I hope he gets some treatment for this, for his sake and for that of other people.

He's not short of money. He spends a large amount buying Internet domains in other people's names, then posting usually sexually explicit and always completely baseless malicious falsehoods about them. Fortunately, they're so blatant, they're easily disproved. Subtlety is not his forte. Whether he believes them himself is open to question - he may indeed merely be the sad victim of a rather spectacular case of Paranoia. That doesn't help those who have ever met him though, they're victims of his condition too.

His activities have been so obnoxious, he's even caught the attention of the LA Times. But according to Pacific Media Watch, stopping him is going to be hard, and he's already done untold damage.

Over the next few years, White obtained several personal computers, which he keeps in his apartment in downtown Los Angeles. He said he spent "lots of time" on his sites. Many of those sites include information about people that White apparently found while combing the Internet. "This is what is so nice about the Internet," he wrote. "You can do most of it without leaving your desk."
...
"I had no idea what he meant," said Smith-Christopher, a professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. "Then two days later, another e-mail came. It said, 'Your Web page is up Daniel.' "

On the page -- the first of several to appear -- White alleged that Smith-Christopher had AIDS. Another page urged readers to send a contribution to a memorial fund for Smith-Christopher at Loyola Marymount.

Smith-Christopher said he doesn't have AIDS. He tried to have the sites removed, but finally gave up, he said, after discovering that one Web host company was in Pakistan.

Around the same time, Sir Peter Barter, a government minister in Papua New Guinea, heard of White's Internet campaign against Divine Word. Barter sent White e-mails telling him to stop.

White constructed several sites about Barter, including one that incorporated the logo of Barter's travel firm and urged prospective customers to boycott the business, which specializes in taking foreigners to Papua New Guinea.
Barter said he believes the sites cost him millions of dollars in lost business. In 2001, Barter traveled to Los Angeles in hopes of stopping White's Internet activity. Barter asked officials from the Los Angeles Archdiocese to sue White in civil court over the Web sites. The archdiocese declined, deciding that a suit would be "an exercise in futility," said a spokesman, Tod Tamberg.

And today, when Sir Peter Barter enters his name in a Google search, the first 10 sites found are usually Web sites created by Bill White.

There appears to be no quick end in sight. Anyone who's ever seen, met, been seen by,or otherwise come to the attention of Bill White is likely to be a victim, sooner or later.

White -- wearing a Cincinnati Bengals jacket and a button-down shirt -- refused to speak on the record about his activities. But in subsequent e-mails, he repeatedly expressed astonishment that The Times was focusing on him instead of on the alleged scandal he said he is trying to expose.

Then, five days after the meeting, White posted a web site about the reporter, followed soon by sites about two Times editors.

"I think I would give up eating to maintain my sites," White wrote when asked about his endgame. "Well, almost. Well, maybe I would eat less."

Poor Bill White is a victim of mental illness. Others don't have this excuse.

Catalina Hosting, based in Avalon on Catalina Island, now hosts the bulk of White's sites. A company employee said in an e-mail responding to an inquiry from The Times that the company has received complaints about White's sites but has chosen not to remove them.
"We are glad he has the time [to] spend his money with us," the employee said in the e-mail.

Interesting, given their Conditions of Service

The following are list of contents, behaviors, and links that are considered UNACCEPTABLE to Company and are subject to prosecution to the fullest extent of the law:
Sites that contain, promote, or are linked to topics such as nudity, pornography, adult content, sex, or foul language.
...
Sites that have been promoted through spamming or mail fraud schemes, or pages promoting the sending of unsolicited email.
...
Any infringement of copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret or other intellectual property rights.
Contents promoting to racism, or otherwise extremely offensive to others, including those which aggravates, harasses, threatens, or abuses others.

Right.

Oh yes, why am I making myself a target for him? Two reasons: I refuse to be terrorised, and besides which, from all accounts I'm one of the few Australians he hasn't targetted. Yet. That risk isn't noticeably increased by this article. If I'm not afraid of posting some rather anti-Islamofascist articles on The Command Post, I'll be damned if I'll fear some pathetic (as in, he deserves pity, not spite ) individual who just goes around telling fibs.

Satellite Tracking Spectacular

Ever wondered how many satellites there are orbitting Earth? Wonder what the pattern looks like? Well, go visit J-Track 3D at NASA. It only shows 500, not all of them, but the 3-D display is zoomable and rotatable. The "ring" at Geostationary orbit is quite pronounced, then within that there's the Cats-Cradle of GPS satellites, then finally the hundreds of satellites in LEO (Low Earth Orbit).

Project Pluto

It's said that Alfred Nobel, the Inventor of Dynamite, believed that it was so destructive that it might put and end to War.

History has shown that no weapon has been deemed "too destructive" for this. At least, no weapon that was actually built. There was one that was conceived though, and shown to be probably quite workable, before, in a fit of Sanity, it was closed down.

It was called Project Pluto.

Pluto's namesake was Roman mythology's ruler of the underworld -- seemingly an apt inspiration for a locomotive-size missile that would travel at near-treetop level at three times the speed of sound, tossing out hydrogen bombs as it roared overhead. Pluto's designers calculated that its shock wave alone might kill people on the ground. Then there was the problem of fallout. In addition to gamma and neutron radiation from the unshielded reactor, Pluto's nuclear ramjet would spew fission fragments out in its exhaust as it flew by. (One enterprising weaponeer had a plan to turn an obvious peace-time liability into a wartime asset: he suggested flying the radioactive rocket back and forth over the Soviet Union after it had dropped its bombs.)

I emphasise, by all accounts this thing would have worked as designed.

Which leads me to another Horror Story. This one fictional. I'm no great fan of the Horror genre, but this one chilled me to the bone. It's called "A Colder War by Charles Stross. Project Pluto gets a mention, yes, the one I described above, but that's in order to stop Something far, far worse. I consider it one of the best fictional works available on the web. Please go read it - but not if you're subject to Nightmares.

Scheduled Maintenance

Permalinks should work now - at least for the last 50 posts. Cross Fingers.

And a big "Hello" to all the readers from Biased BBC, The Command Post and Normblog. Hopefully now you can zoom directly to the article you wanted. If not - bung em a line and I'll see what I can do.

Ion Drive

"Voyage to Arcturus" has an interesting article on the European SMART-1 satellite that's taking the "Scenic Route" to the Moon. It's hitchhiking with some Geosynchronous Comsats into Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO), then getting off and making its way to the Moon using an Ion Drive.

The article is particularly interesting because the author (Jay Manifold) does some back-of-the-envelope calculations about the thrust required - and shows that there's plenty and to spare. The Maths is fairly simple, there's lots of links showing where he got the data from, what the equations are etc. All-in-all a very nice piece of work, that even the Mathematically-challenged can understand.

It takes a real Rocket Scientist to explain Rocket Science so that it isn't - er - Rocket Science.

Oh yes, one more thing :

All in all, it makes for a nice demonstration of a technology that will not only permit comsats to carry many more transponders, etc -- much of their mass today is taken up by conventional propellants for stationkeeping -- but also permit much larger payloads to be sent on interplanetary missions.

So the author sees the implications too. Damn, you get to read some good stuff on the Web.

The Protocols of the Elders of Barnum

Something is rotten in the People's Republic of Berkeley. I used to have a lot of respect for the University therein - it was a hotbed of off-the-wall ideas, some quite dotty, some incredibly imaginative, some right, most gloriously wrong. I've actually collaborated in a small way with some of their researchers in the past - it's often been cutting-edge, or even beyond. But just like someone who OD's on "consciousness-expanding" chemicals and ends up murderously Psychotic, they're on the road that leads to irrational mysticism, denial of reality, the Year Zero and Auschwitz.

Exhibit A : From Ken Lane's Weird Files :

The wacky politicians of Berkeley, Calif. -- infamous for telling citizens what they can or cannot eat, drink and think -- have endorsed the bizarre Space Preservation Act. The maniacal legislation, introduced in the House of Representatives by crackpot Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), would forbid "mood management, or mind control of such persons or populations." Also on the no-no list are "exotic weapons systems" such as "chemtrails," the water-vapor exhaust of jet aircraft that conspiracy theorists believe to be an evil plot of some kind.

But that's just the Politicians pandering to the ignorant, isn't it? I mean, no-one actually believes that the "WASTE" on rubbish bins means "We Await Silent Tristero's Empire" do they? Well, maybe...

Exhibit B, : An academic paper, based upon some work that was totally debunked ages ago. From a Berkeley Law Student's blog about it :

The researchers conceded cases of left-wing ideologues, such as Stalin, Khrushchev or Castro, who, once in power, steadfastly resisted change, allegedly in the name of egalitarianism.

Yet, they noted that some of these figures might be considered politically conservative in the context of the systems that they defended. The researchers noted that Stalin, for example, was concerned about defending and preserving the existing Soviet system.
...
In many cases, including mass politics, 'liberal' traits may be liabilities, and being intolerant of ambiguity, high on the need for closure, or low in cognitive complexity might be associated with such generally valued characteristics as personal commitment and unwavering loyalty," the researchers wrote.
...
This intolerance of ambiguity can lead people to cling to the familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic cliches and stereotypes, the researchers advised.

As opposed to such Progressive slogans as "It's all about Oil", "Bush stole the election", "Cowboy Texans", "Zionazis" etc.
<sarcasm>Nope, no simplifications, premature conclusions or stereotypes there.</sarcasm>. Think the post is distorted? No, the University of Berkeley openly boasts about this <sarcasm>fine Academic achievement.</sarcasm> Reagan = Hitler, Stalin and Castro, all conservatives.

Exhibit C1 : From the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal :

Berkeley students this week even demanded that the school chancellor stop investing university resources in companies like General Electric that do business with Israel a la the 1986 apartheid divestment.

Nothing wrong with that, that's just the expression of a particular political opinion, not irrational Anti-Semetism, isn't it? Well....

Exhibit C2 : From Little Green Footballs :

Dean of Letters and Sciences
University of California at Berkeley
Campus
Dear Sir,
I am writing to call your attention to an incident that occurred August 6, 2003 during the Iraqi Arabic (Arabic15) class, in which I am currently enrolled. The instructer, Abbas Kadhim, announced before the entire class during a discussion on Zionism that he believes that the infamous text "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is not an anti-Semitic forgery but was in fact written by Jews.
"The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" was a forged text supposedly written by Jews. In it, the Jews describe a plan of achieving world domination. All reputable historians consider the document to be a forgery perpetrated by the Tsar's secret police.
I asked Mr. Kadhim if he was being serious about his claim. He assured me that he was one hundred percent certain in his belief that Jews were behind the "Protocols." By making such a statement, Mr. Kadhim spreads potentially dangerous anti-Semitic propaganda.
I say "propaganda" because for over a century the forgery was used to justify and encourage anti-Semitism to the point of killing Jews: The "Protocols" led to violent pogroms in Tsarist Russia, and Hitler incorporated much of the "Protocols" in his Mein Kampf to prepare the German public psychologically for the Final Solution.
I am disgusted that UC Berkeley is giving a forum to an ignorant, anti-Semitic, and prejudiced individual such as Mr. Khadhim to voice his views. I request that the University of California investigate the matter forthwith and dismiss Mr. Kadhim from its staff.
Sincerely,
Susanna Klein

This is not a case where a Law Professor expresses an opinion in support of "Creation Science", nor a History Professor professing that the World is Flat. It's more similar to a Chemistry Professor teaching about Phlogiston, or a Professor of Neuroanatomy teaching about "Virtuous Humours" and against the Germ "Theory" of Disease.

With that in mind, don your Tinfoil helmets as I present selections from "The Protocols of the Elders of Barnum", possibly the next Political Science textbook at Berkeley, detailing the Proven facts about the Circus Clowns' Evil Domination of World Affairs.

PROTOCOL No. 1

1. ....Putting aside fine phrases we shall speak of the significance of each thought: by comparisons and deductions we shall throw light upon surrounding facts.
2. What I am about to set forth, then, is our system from the two points of view, that of ourselves and that of the GILLYS [i.e., non- Joeys].
...
8. Whether a State exhausts itself in its own convulsions, whether its internal discord brings it under the power of external foes - in any case it can be accounted irretrievable lost: IT IS IN OUR POWER. The despotism of the CIRCUS, which is entirely in our hands, reaches out to it a straw that the State, willy-nilly, must take hold of: if not - it goes to the bottom.
...
WE SHALL END LIBERTY

25. Far back in ancient times we were the first to cry among the masses of the people the words "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," words many times repeated since these days by stupid poll- parrots who, from all sides around, flew down upon these baits and with them carried away the well-being of the world, true freedom of the individual, formerly so well guarded against the pressure of the mob. The would-be wise men of the GILLYS, the intellectuals, could not make anything out of the uttered words in their abstractedness; did not see that in nature there is no equality, cannot be freedom: that Nature herself has established inequality of minds, of characters, and capacities, just as immutably as she has established subordination to her laws: never stopped to think that the mob is a blind thing, that upstarts elected from among it to bear rule are, in regard to the political, the same blind men as the mob itself, that the adept, though he be a fool, can yet rule, whereas the non-adept, even if he were a genius, understands nothing in the political - to all those things the GILLYS paid no regard; yet all the time it was based upon these things that dynastic rule rested: the father passed on to the son a knowledge of the course of political affairs in such wise that none should know it but members of the dynasty and none could betray it to the governed. As time went on, the meaning of the dynastic transference of the true position of affairs in the political was lost, and this aided the success of our cause.
...
PROTOCOL 2
...
DESTRUCTIVE EDUCATION

3. Do not suppose for a moment that these statements are empty words: think carefully of the successes we arranged for Darwinism, Marxism, Nietzsche-ism. To us Joeys, at any rate, it should be plain to see what a disintegrating importance these directives have had upon the minds of the GILLYS.

I'll end it there - <humour>I fear that one night there will be a knock at my door, and suddenly a custard-pie will come out of the night, as has frequently happened to those who exposed the secrets of the Circus Clowns.</humour>.

The "Protocols of the Elders of Barnum" have exactly the same degree of credibility as the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion". If this is what's being taught by people who the students have every right to expect know something about what they're saying, then Berkeley, as an Academic (as opposed to Psychiatric) Institution is dead. And that would be a tragedy, as it was the free-play of rational discourse that made it so valuable in the past.

Acknowledgements

Circus Lingo courtesy of TooClowns . Original Idea inspired by an old, sad joke.

Brain Short-Circuit Demonstration

Each of our brains is wired differently. I've recently found an intriguing demonstration of how there's interference between different parts of the brain. I'm slightly dyslexic, and I find the task almost impossible to perform correctly, and totally impossible to perform at anything like a normal speed.

The demonstration is quite simple. Look at the words below. Now read aloud the COLOUR of each word, not the word itself. So for the first word, you should say "Green". Try it - it's harder than it looks.

Afton Hema

"The Evil that Men do lives after them; the Good is oft interred with their bones." - William Shakespeare

Let me take a break from punditocracy on the Deep and Meaningful events of the week.

I want to talk about a very ordinary - and a very extraordinary man. A good bloke who I will always remember having a dirty great big cheesy grin on his face. A Software Engineer who worked on Defence projects. A Rugby player. A Family man. A man who just dropped dead in the middle of a conversation at work on 31st July.

He'll never make the front pages of International Newspapers, unlike Uday and Osay.

Unlike Uday and Osay, he was a decent Human Being, neither a Saint nor Monster. Oh, but a Character. I'll never forget him being able to scrounge up a Rugby Training Machine one day on very short notice for the King of Tonga. A man of great integrity, friendly and possessed of a wry sense of humour.

I worked alongside him at Hollandse Signaalapparaten in Hengelo, the Netherlands for nearly a year, and for some time thereafter at HMAS Watson, the Royal Australian Naval base at Sydney's South Head. I'd lost touch with him, and was meaning to look him up. And now it's too late.

He lived, he did well by his family, and suddenly, before his friends had time to say goodbye, he's gone. And the world carries on, uncaring and without noticing.

... a very humble but highly principled man who simply did what was right and what he believed was his duty...

Yes, that describes him.

Unlike Uday and Osay, his legacy is a fine family, his son Tristan and daughter Crystal, who have requested donations to St. Vincent's Hospital in lieu of flowers. His legacy is also in the design of systems that have helped save people's lives, and have measureably increased the safety of Australians and others at home and overseas.

Unlike Uday and Osay, his death makes the world a poorer place in every sense.

Afton won't get a Headline in the world's press. But he will get this small memorial from a friend and colleague, and he'll always be remembered with affection by those who knew him. The Good he did lives after him, the Evil of Uday and Orsay is ended, finis.

So for once old Bill Shakespeare got it exactly wrong.

( In Memoriam : Afton Te'a Hema 5th March 1949 - 31st July 2003 )

The Australian Political Ecology

I've had numerous e-mails from people in the USA inquiring about the political system in Australia. While there are some good sites explaining the system on the web, here is an unshamedly biassed roundup of Australian political parties, past and present. I'm only counting parties that have had Federal members elected.

Australia Party : A party for Chardonay-swilling chattering-class liberals in the US sense. Extinct since the 70's, and missed by none. Their ecological niche has been filled by the Australian Democrats and Greens (see below).

Australian Democrats : Originally had the same "third force" role as the Liberal Party did in England. "We'll Keep the Bastards Honest" was their motto. Quite similar to certain branches of the US Democrats in phliosophy. Originally founded when a rather leftist member of the LIberal Party (see below) broke away (SPLITTERS!). Has lost a lot of its more radical members to the Greens, and has never been the same since the leader of the party resigned to join the ALP (Australian Labor Party - see below).

Australian Greens : They're Green. They're Australian. If they'd just discard their Superstitious and Luddite elements, they'd make enough sense for me to vote for them in preference to any other party. But then they'd no longer be Greens, would they? Often preys on the young of the National Party ( see below ). Main activity : hugging trees.

Australian Labor Party : "I belong to no organized party : I'm a Democrat" - so said Will Rogers, but he could equally be talking about the Australian Labor Party. (Interesting spelling, "Labour" is the way the word's usually spelt here. But it's been "Labor" since 1912). From Wikipedia :

The Labor party is infamous for its relativley visible and clearly institutionalised system of factions. These sub-groupings within the party only encompass a small fraction of the membership, but, through strong norms of loyalty, wield almost all of the power. The nature of the factions is constantly changing, and there are separate groupings within each State. Currently, the two largest factions are the Labor Right and the Socialist Left.

. Which is a bit out-of-date. Currently, there's the NSW Centre-Left, the Victorian Socialist Left, and God only knows what else. From the official ALP site :

Today factions are often based on common interest, personalities or regional interests. Not only do factions have names "Centre Left", "Socialist Left", "Labor Unity" etc they often have structures, regular meetings and even their own newsletters. They may even have membership fees. Factions may elect office holders and people to be negotiators with other groups. However frequently key faction operators hold positions of influence because of the standing they have in the broader Party.
Factions are not monolithic blocs of votes. Often within factions there are sub groupings. Indeed although there are three large national factions there are many sub groups. At the 1994 National Conference of the Labor Party there were 15 sub groups!

10 out of 10 for honesty, and about 45 RPM for spin. They've never met a Big Business they didn't like, nor a small business they did. Not dominated by the Unions (who have a block vote by the party's constitution), they deny that categorically. Basically Centrist Euro-Socialists.

Democratic Labor Party : Irish Catholic Fanatically Anti-Communist offshoots (SPLITTERS!) of the ALP, popular in the 50's and 60's. Extinct since the late 70's, the population never having recovered from having their leader "nobbled" by the ALP appointing him ambassador to Ireland in 1974.

National Party (Formerly National Country Party, and before that just plain, honest, Country Party) : The closest thing Australia has to Agrarian Conservatives. For Free Trade, Capitalism, Free Trade, Family Values, Free Trade, Christian Virtues, and did I mention Free Trade? The Natural Enemy of the Greens. "If it moves, shoot it, if it doen't, chop it down and strip-mine the soil it's growing in." seems to be their motto. Has been in Coalition with the Liberals since Adam was a boy, and is often seen as being the Right-Wing of the Liberal Party. Though in Queensland, it's the Liberals who are the Left Wing of the National Party. Rather more Ecologically sound than their motto would suggest. Vety similar to European "Christian Democrats".

Liberal Party : Liberals with a small "l", moderate in all things, especially moderation. Sometimes too far to the Right for my liking, and just as often betrays the principle of "Less Government is Good Government". More similar to US left-wing Republicans than US right-wing Democrats, but only just. The party currently in Government, which has seen inflation go down to miniscule levels, a deficit become a surplus, unemployment to halve, and growth remain steady at 3.5% at a time when the SE Asian economies have imploded. Until they lose the plot - which all parties eventually do - they're likely to remain in power. The party of Small Business, believers in a mixed economy rather than fanatical free-marketeers, at least, as long as a mixed-economy works. Tend to go a bit Thatcherite in a crisis.

Republicans : Not a party as such - they have members in every political party, especially Labor, but also the Liberals. Want to replace a system that is obsolete and irrational (but works) with one that's new, rational, but may not. They're not too sure about the details, which is why we're still a Monarchy - in name, anyway. In practice, we have a ceremonial President like Germany etc (called the Governor-General), and an executive Premier (called the Prime Minister) who actually does the governing. Hey, it works.

So although Australia has Democrats and Republicans, they're quite different beasts from the US species, and occupy different ecological niches. Australian Liberals are neither Leftist Euro-Socialists like the Canadian variety (who are more like the ALP), nor "liberals" in the US sense.

Then again. Australia is the place where the trees don't shed their leaves, they shed their bark, and some mammals lay eggs. So what else do you expect?

Weird Wide Web

For some reason, there appears to be a, um, Rash of entries in this category in the last few weeks. So for your edification and enjoyment, may I present : Giant Germs. Plush ones.

While we're on the subject of stuffed toys, there's the Monty Python line, including a Live Parrot and Exploding Penguin on top of the TV. The same people make the Plush Cthulhu - including a version in a Santa suit.

"YMCA" in Klingon

Also veD SuD Das (blue suede shoes) from the Album "Qo'noS chargh elvIS" (Elvis takes Kronos). Here.

M.C.Escher's "Ascending and Descending" in Lego.

The Cthulhu Cultist Teddy Bear.

RocketCams and Ratbags

The Web is an amazing place. I'm constantly surprised at some of the treasures that can be found. Like this archive of Rocket Cam movies.

Or the SODAconstructor - suitable even for people with 56k modems.

Then again, there are other things that make you feel as if you've just turned over a rock. Like those who take the classic fraud "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" seriously.

Rather more sane than the ravings of these rabidly racist ratbags, and certainly less harmful, are the instructions on how to make thought screen helmets - to stop Aliens from abducting you. I can completely believe that no-one who regularly wears one of these has ever been abducted by an Alien.

Thereby proving that there are some who are as Queer as a Clockwork Orange. Others who are just plain Bananas.

I repeat, the Web is an amazing place.

Two Countries

...Separated by a single language. That was how George Bernard Shaw described America and England. With that in mind, I present, without comment, today's Brain Link : "Mr Brain's Pork Faggots".

It's no wonder 100 million faggots are eaten in the UK every year!

I wouldn't be surprised.

A "Faggot" in UK parlance, is what in Germany would be called a "Frikadelle", and in Australia, a "Rissole". In America, I think "Meatball" is a reasonable translation.

Never mind. Many American visitors to Australia freak out when they see a certain brand of cheese in our supermarkets.

Links

As promised in an earlier post, some more interesting URLs. This time, it's

space

Space Daily is a great place to learn about the latest in things extraterrestrial. And also, high-tech developments and Science in general, from nanobots to nematodes.
The Encyclopaedia Astronautica is by far the most comprehensive site on space history that's on the Web. Want to know about Russian Air-breathing boosters? It's there. The names of the Chinese Astronauts (Taikonauts)? They're there. Every space mission ever flown, plus all those that were planned but never got off the ground.
The Co-Operative Research Centre for Satellite Systems, known by its jaw-breaking acronym (CRCSS), pronounced "Kirks" as in Captain, in the nearest thing Australia has to NASA. As the name says, it's a co-operative research centre, a fairly loose grouping, with parts from industry and academe. If you want to see how space can be done "on a shoestring", visit the site.
The Space Review is a relatively recent site, which unlike Space Daily (which reports daily), has articles "in depth" on various space topics. Updated weekly.
Rick Fleeter's site is authored by a guy who's been involved in the development of literally dozens of satellites, and heavily involved in about 20. His book, "Logic of Microspace" is the Bible for developers of small satellites. He's also possessed of a dry wit.

space (alt)

These are links to The Space Age that never really was. When I was a young boy, I read a "look and Learn" book called "You will Go To The Moon". And I believed it. The Radio was playing The Beatles new song "She Loves You", but I preferred the Tornados' Telstar (3.1 MB mp3). Just listen to it - the optimism, the exuberance of the time bursts from every chord. We'd had the invention of Fire, the Wheel, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the Age of Steam, and the Age of Electricity. We were now entering the Space Age, and the sky was no longer the limit. "Live" Television from the USA no longer had the 8-hour delay while the tapes were being flown across the Atlantic. I didn't care that the real Telstar actually sounded more like this (434 KB wav). In 1968, I saw Kubrick's "2001 : A Space Odyssey", which was an attempt by one of the 20th Century's greatest directors, and one of the 20th Century's greatest "Hard" Science Fiction writers, to predict what might come about at the turn of the century.

Ah me. I'll blog about how and why the wheels fell off later. Suffice to say, they did.

But there are two sites that show both a dark and a light side to alternate realities where they didn't. First "Man Conquers Space". Yes, the sexist title is deliberate, because it's about what might have happened if the All-American Can-Do attitude of the 50s had persisted, grown and flourished into the 60s and 70s, out in Space. Just as reality was worse than the most pessimistic of pundits predicted after 1968, this is the obverse - if the most optimistic predictions of the 50's had come true. All-American crewcut straightarrows leave their All-American ex-bobbysoxer wives-and-mothers back home, and Boldy Go where no Man has gone before. (Which if anyone remembers, was the original wording used in "Star Trek" - the Old Generation.) Then there's the more grittily realistic "Deep Cold", which describes the 60's Cold War missions (of both sides) that never were, but could easily have been. In one clip, the "Manned Orbitting Laboratory" conducts a deeply classified spysat mission over the Soviet Union to the tune of "Bad Moon Rising". It's the 60's Cold War to a Tee. So much as I deplore the demise of the Space Age, I'd have to say that Society (at least) in many ways has gotten vastly better. In 1960, the USA still had the "Jim Crow" laws in many places, and as for Australia, we had the blatantly racist "White Australia" policy, supported in great part by the Left.

More on Space later.

Amy Reiter plays it straight

Courtesy of Professor Bunyip, I came across one of the best interviews I've seen in a long while. It's of a Hollywood actor (yawn) called James Woods, blathering on about some film or other, Northfork I believe. The whole subject leaves me agog with disinterest, worthy though the film may be. I would never have read the interview in the normal course of events, and that would have been my loss.

The interesting thing is that the interviewer plays it absolutely straight:

AR : I'm gonna let you go, but it's been a pleasure.

JW : I'm sure you're just saying that.

AR : You're starting to sound a little paranoid.

JW : You probably don't gamble much, do you.

AR : No, not much.

JW : Well, sheltered life. But I would give you 7 to 1 odds that this is going to be a slash piece, but that's OK. I'm willing to take the heat.

He'd lose his bet. The interview appears to be exactly as he said it, no Dowdification or malicious editting. And the interviewer isn't afraid of being made to look like a pratt. Examples:

AR : Let's talk about the wildly diverging opinions. I know you're interested in politics and you have a reputation for being an outspoken conservative. How would you categorize yourself politically?

JW : That's a good question because the thing that most aggravates me about people's political stance in this country these days is that they're being polarized, and I just don't think it's necessary. People always have the wrong impression of me. I just have very specific and, I hope, common-sense responses to each individual scenario.

...

JW : A lot of my friends in Hollywood have actually said things like "Let's melt their hearts with hugs and love." It honestly doesn't work. So I respect people's sweetness for believing that you can melt the heart of Osama bin Laden with a hug, but you can't. The only solution to Osama bin Laden is a fucking 88-millimeter shell through his forehead.

...

JW : I tell you why these conversations sadden me. I don't ever like to do press anymore and that's only because there's never any advantage for me to do it. The only thing the press is ever interested in is controversy and creating it even if it's not there. They can't pick on my personal life because I live an exemplary, decent person's life, so they pick on my politics. Do you think I want to be the one lone voice against the Hollywood liberal establishment? It's not going to do me any good. So I prefer never to have these conversations because, quite frankly, nobody on either side is going to be convinced by anybody on the other side. It's just too polemical and it's too polarized, so I'm not interested in having them.

...

AR : You're clearly interested in politics, and this is an opportunity to get your opinion out there.

JW : I'm neither inclined nor really in any way interested in disabusing people of their political positions, however ridiculous they may be or however sound they may be. They can think whatever they want. I've never talked to an extreme liberal or conservative who could be disabused of his or her notions about their positions. They are intractable in their thinking, they are unreasoning and unreasonable and it's just a waste of breath to talk to them. I always say to them, "Look, just go sit at the card table with the rest of the kids and let the adults run the country." No matter what position you may take about the Bush presidency, if George Bush parted the Red Sea, found every single terrorist, found every weapon of mass destruction, fed the poor, opened the shores of America, gave every starving kid a college education, do you think Salon.com would write about it? No, you wouldn't.

Let me ask you a question, OK?

AR: Sure.

JW: In Afghanistan in 1992 through the year 2000, under the Clinton administration, how many women went to school in Afghanistan? You know the answer.

AR : None.

JW : Zero. How many women are in the equivalent of high school, junior high school and in college in Afghanistan today under George Bush?

AR : Um ... a lot.

JW : How many?

AR : I don't know.

JW : You don't? You're a journalist. And you're interested in politics. And you're a woman.

AR : I write about entertainment.

JW : I'm asking you because I like you and I think I'm going to like you for a while and I'm going to talk to you a lot in the future because I like you, but you seem like an intelligent woman and probably a feminist and good for you. Many aspects of feminism have equaled a lot of wrongs and many of them have been just a disaster, but they've done a fundamentally good thing.

So I would think that you as a political writer for a very important Web site that is read by many, if you really want to be -- and I'm going to make a joke here -- fair and balanced, then you might want to actually report that under George Bush's tutelage of our country and to a certain extent of our entire world there are women in Afghanistan who are now enjoying the fruits of education and there were zero under Bill Clinton. You might want to write an article about that. "This fucking moron" is actually educating women in Afghanistan with your tax dollars. Don't you feel good about that? I do. He can raise my taxes on that one anytime he wants.

So there you have it : a denizen of Hollywood with both intelligence and an open mind, and a reporter, an Entertainment reporter yet, with intelligence and integrity. My world-view is shattered.

Oh yes, Ms Reiter, if ever you should read this, may I please request that you move into political reporting? We need more people like you.

Confessions of a Homophobe

There's been a lot in the media about "Gay Marriage" recently. Though not much in the Australian Media, just reactions to the Pope's "ex cathedra" encyclical.

Now I'm a Homophobe. I'm against Homosexuality.

I think it should be discouraged - though not eradicated. Some, maybe most, have no choice, it's the way they are, the way their Brain is wired up. If they're Gay by choice, well, it's their life, not mine. To Eradicate Homosexuality would be to engage in Genocide - a bit like curing a freckle on the cheek (which some find attractive, others not) by decapitation.

But.... discouraging Homosexuality is decidedly Not a Problem. Society does discourage Homosexuality, in a thousand and more ways. Even in Australia, which (from what I've read) is vastly more tolerant of Gays than the US. Note I use the word "tolerant" rather than "accepting" or "approving". It's an abnormal lifestyle, but abnormal most emphatically is not "wrong". I'm abnormal by Australian standards inasmuch as I have exactly zero interest in "Footie" of any description, and find Sports in general to be far less interesting than, say, the lifecycles of Clams, or the difference in suspensions between a UK Class 42 and Class 43 Diesel-Hydraulic locomotive. Most Australians tolerate my peculiarity, while not approving of my deviant behaviour. I'm abnormal, and proud of it. "It takes all kinds" as they say. I have no wish to be psychologically "cured" of my abnormality, even though that would have certain social advantages. And it's nowhere near as important to me as their Sexual orientation is to most people, Gays or Straights.

I think Homosexuality should be discouraged. But Society doesn't just discourage Homosexuality, it persecutes it. That's wrong. It's not just wrong, it's very, very wrong indeed.

Yes, things are far better than they were even 10 years ago, and vastly better than 20 years ago. But we've got a long way to go.

As Robert Louis Stevenson said,

If we take matrimony at it's lowest, we regard it as a sort of friendship recognised by the police.

And therein lies the rub. Marriage is a state recognised by the Law. If your partner is sick or incapacitated, being Married to them gives you certain rights - such as to see them in Intensive Care, and even to make decisions as to whether "Heroic Measures" should be continued if they're on life support and unlikely to recover. It gives rights of inheritance. It gives property rights in case the partnership is dissolved in divorce.

To deny the right of a Man to see his dying Husband, to deny a Woman the right to inherit her Wife's possessions after 30 years together, that's just inhuman.

I can't say that I'd like my 2-year-old Son to come to me in twelve or twenty years time and say "Dad, here's my Boyfriend." But I'd want to meet his partner anyway, and far rather have him in a gay relationship that makes him happy than a straight one which is a misery. If my wife and I turn up our toes in an untimely way, I'd far rather he be adopted by a caring and responsible Gay couple than even a slightly less caring straight one.

The trouble is, that Gays are at the mercy of people like me. We vote, and we vote for people who say they'll do things the way we want them to. I keep on trying to imagine if Homosexuality was the norm, and Straights like myself were at the legislative mercy of the Gay majority, and the thought fills me with dread. How must it feel for them, here and now? Especially when some seemingly-sane person like myself reveals his ugly little prejudice?

There's overwhelming evidence for greater, more equal rights for Gays. Some remarkable injustices have been committed within living memory. Consider the one man most responsible for the defeat of Nazism, Alan Turing. Despite his accomplishments, he was persecuted after the war, tried and convicted in Courts for the abominable crime of Buggery. He was sentenced to a course of hormonal treatments. He committed suicide soon after.

Enough. More than Enough. Let's show some common decency and humanity and make the law non-discriminatory when it comes to marriage. There's plenty more discrimination in other areas, far too much of it in fact. As for Churches - let them follow their own dogma, or conscience, or both. This isn't a religious question, it's a matter of law, justice, and common humanity.

As for my homophobia? Well, my Gay friends tolerate it. Which is rather decent of them, and rather more than I have a right to ask.

Kallisti!

(To The Fairest!). Steven Den Beste lets the proverbial feline out of the container regarding Discordianism. What he doesn't mention is that Eris is in fact the consort of Murphy. All Computer Scientists honour and worship the pair, whether they know it or not, by constantly trying to outwit them, and failing. Wiley E Coyote is a pessimist compared to most programmers, who always think that "this time, it will work." And thereby creating more and more Chaos.

Cyborg Liberation Front

Well, that's the spin the Village Voice puts on the story.

But don't be put off by the sensationalist title ( memo : shoot the editor ). It's a good article, and there are real issues that must be faced in the coming years, decades or centuries. (My bet's on at most a couple of decades).

The story's about a conference of the "World Transhumanist Association" :

International academics and activists, they met to lay the groundwork for a society that would admit as citizens and companions intelligent robots, cyborgs made from a free mixing of human and machine parts, and fully organic, genetically engineered people who aren't necessarily human at all. A good many of these 160 thinkers aspire to immortality and omniscience through uploading human consciousness into ever evolving machines.

OK, a lot of them are as premature in their expectations as Cyrano de Bergerac was in predicting lunar voyages. Less kindly, they're harmless nuts who want to believe.

But amongst them are people like myself who know a little (no-one knows a lot at the moment) about AI ( Artificial Intelligence ), and/or Biotechnology.

And much of their debate is not about whether we can become artificially intellectually enhanced or not - it's taken as a given by even the most sceptical that eventually we'll be able to rather more than at the moment - but what we should be doing. Or not doing.

Should a fully realized form of artificial intelligence become in some manner enslaved, Hughes adds, "that would call for liberation acts - not breaking into labs, but whatever we can do."

I'm agin slavery (except possibly as a temporary punishment) as much as because of its morally corroding effect on the slaver as the effect on the slave. But how do we define "slavery"? And if your personal definition differs from that of the majority, do you have the right and/or responsibility to do something about it? Personally, I've always thought John Brown was a detestable Terrorist who besmirched a good cause. Gandhi's more my style, yea, and Dr Martin Luther King.

"All one has to do is read the science journals to know these issues are on the table today," says Australian High Court Justice Michael Kirby, who serves as a bioethics adviser to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and has, along with other dignitaries, discussed the posthuman prospect with French president Jacques Chirac.

I'd settle for an injection of human or even subhuman ethics into J.Chirac myself, but I digress.

"One thing I can say with certainty from my experience is that the wheels of law, of the legislative process, grind very slowly within nations and slower still internationally. The progress of science, on the other hand, is ever accelerating. If anything, we've been surprised at how quickly technology has progressed. It's worth taking on these issues intellectually now, rather than in crisis later."

Onya Justice Mike. It's worth taking on these issues intellectually now, rather than in crisis later.

Inventor and author Ray Kurzweil argues ... "By the time machines make a case for themselves in a convincing way and have all the subtle cues indicative of emotional reaction, there won't be a clear distinction between machine and human."

And I for one happen to agree with him strongly. We don't know how to make a true Artificial Intelligence, we are at a really early stage of knowledge. But we have been able to make neural prostheses for existing NIs (Natural Intelligences) that are surprisingly simple.

Natasha Vita-More, a founder of the trans-humanist movement, says there's cause for vigilance now. "To relinquish the rights of a future being merely because he, she, or it has a higher percentage of machine parts than biological cell structure would be racist toward all humans who have prosthetic parts,"

I wouldn't say "racist", but I would say "discriminatory". I find Ms Vita-More a little, er, over-enthusiastic. Maybe even as much as Tsiolkovsky was.

But progress toward these new beings is often overestimated by the transhumanist crowd, applied scientists caution. "Some of these transhumanists are pretty far out of touch with what's going on in the labs. When I tell them that, I feel like I'm smashing their dreams," says Steve Potter, the Georgia Tech neuroscientist behind the hybrot.

Yes, it'll be a couple of decades before we have these problems, not years. And much longer before we have a "Plastic Pal who's Fun to be with." But also not centuries.

UPDATE: Just had a look at Instapundit. Good Lord. This is getting ridiculous. FWIW this post was inspired by one at Slashdot which I have to monitor at work for professional reasons.

Synchronicity

Or, "Great Minds Think Alike". As near as I can work out, there being a 14 to 17 hour time difference between Canberra and the USA, at the same time Glenn Reynolds was posting this, I was posting this. Gadzooks!

Mapping the Brain

From the BBC, via Marshall Brain's Newsblog :

The mysteries of how the brain controls everything from language to movement could be explained by a "map" created by scientists. The international team behind the atlas used thousands of images of the brains of people of all ages, and with a range of conditions.

They hope to create the most comprehensive picture yet of the brain's structures and functions.

Dr John Mazziotta, an expert on the imagery of the human brain from the University of California, Los Angeles, (UCLA) said: "No two brains are the same. Their shape. Their size. The way they are organised.

"You can't just point at an area and say, 'Here's the seat of language'.

Voices from the Left

Let's start with Norman Geras, someone a bit to my left. ( I can't imagine myself ever giving an address to the "Workers' Liberty summer school" ). But I'd gladly call myself a fellow-traveller of his, as he doesn't let any particular dogma interfere with his basic integrity. That's all too rare, on the left, right or centre.

For some, because what the US government and its allies do, whatever they do, has to be opposed - and opposed however thuggish and benighted the forces which this threatens to put your anti-war critic into close company with. For some, because of an uncontrollable animus towards George Bush and his administration. For some, because of a one-eyed perspective on international legality and its relation to issues of international justice and morality. Whatever the case or the combination, it has produced a calamitous compromise of the core values of socialism, or liberalism or both, on the part of thousands of people who claim attachment to them. You have to go back to the apologias for, and fellow- travelling with, the crimes of Stalinism to find as shameful a moral failure of liberal and left opinion as in the wrong-headed - and too often, in the circumstances, sickeningly smug - opposition to the freeing of the Iraqi people from one of the foulest regimes on the planet.

After getting to his site via Andrew Sullivan's blog, and reading the article ( long, but worth every word), I was going to put a link to his site immediately. Then I noted he already has a link to my blog. I'm honoured.

Now from a (former) member of "Voices in the Wilderness", the Idiotarian Radical Catholic Pacifist movement in Middle East Quarterly :

Voices' unwillingness or inability to criticize the regime effectively turned us into its unwitting apologists. It was tragically ironic: Voices and the regime did not share a single value. Voices was an attempt by Catholic radicals and their disciples to promote their vision of world peace; Saddam Hussein's only apparent desire was to maintain his iron grip over Iraq. Voices and the regime agreed only that the sanctions crisis was rooted in U.S. policy. Yet that single point of agreement became the fulcrum of Voices' venture in Iraq. This was yet another case of politics making for the strangest possible bedfellows.
...
To be perfectly frank, we were less concerned with the suffering of the Iraqi people than we were in maintaining our moral challenge to U.S. foreign policy. We did not agitate for an end to sanctions for purely humanitarian reasons; it was more important to us to maintain our moral challenge to "violent" U.S. foreign policy, regardless of what happened in Iraq. For example, had we been truly interested in alleviating the suffering in Iraq, we might have considered pushing for an expanded Oil-for-Food program. Nothing could have interested us less. Indeed, we even regarded the paltry amounts of aid that we did bring to Iraq as a logistical hassle.
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I can remember the exact instant when I decided to leave the utopian fantasy world of Voices. I was on a train from Bellingham, Washington, where I lived at the time, to Portland, Oregon, to visit a friend. It was the spring of 2000, and I was reading a new article on sanctions by Amatzia Baram. Baram proceeded to shatter the myth that 1.5 million Iraqis had died of sanctions-related disease. He did it by checking Iraqi claims against recent Iraqi census data. Since 1991, Iraq's population, even by Iraqi figures, had grown way too fast for there to be anything near the number of sanctions-related deaths claimed by Iraq. Baram's conclusions contradicted everything I had heard in Iraq and from Voices:

How many people would do the research, look at the numbers, and let the facts get in the way of long-held beliefs? The man may have belonged to an Idiotarian organisation, but he's both intellectually honest and well-intentioned. To continue :

But my split with Voices was not simply the outcome of reading Baram's article. From the outset, I had expected that Voices would cultivate knowledge on all things Iraqi as we set about our task of ending sanctions. I expected the better academic works on Iraq—the landmark studies by Baram, Batatu, and Marion and Peter Sluglett—to be on the office bookshelf. Instead all I found were uninformed tracts by Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and Edward Said.
...
So I left Voices, and I am no longer affiliated with it in any way. Perhaps it is poetic justice that I am now training to become a historian of Baathist Iraq. I now spend hours pouring over the documents of the defunct regime; perhaps this time I'll get it right.

With such plain human goodwill, the diamond-hard honesty to look for the flaws in one's own beliefs, and the courage to do something about it, there's no limit to what can be achieved.

Acknowledgement

: The article was found via Bargaz, thence from Damian Penny. Both blogs worth reading.

More on Cyborgs

One of my first posts was Cyborgs and Hybrots and Borg, Oh My!". Here's the latest from the BBC :

Meet the latest spaced out modern artist - a picture-drawing robot arm in Australia whose brain sits in a petri dish in the US.

Working from their university labs in two different corners of the world, American and Australian researchers have created what they call a new class of creative beings: "the semi-living artist".

Gripping three coloured markers positioned above a white canvas, a robotic arm churns out drawings akin to that of a three- year-old. Its guidance comes from around 50,000 rat neurons in a petri dish 19,000 kilometres away.

The "brain" lives at Dr Steve Potter's lab at Georgia's Institute of Technology, Atlanta, while the "body" is located at Guy Ben-Ary's lab at the University of Western Australia, Perth.

The two ends communicate with each other in real-time through the internet.

The project represents the team's effort to create a semi-living entity that learns like the living brains in people and animals do, adapting and expressing itself through art.
...
The latest initiative is a development of the SymbioticA Fish And Chips project, in which the artist-scientists grew fish neurons over silicon chips to control a robotic arm that produced drawings and music.

I for one would like to see some strict ethical oversight in this area. The possible pay-offs are huge, almost infinite. But the risks of causing untold suffering are equally large.

Fortunately, we're not quite at that stage yet. Also from the story :

"I would not classify [the cells] as 'an intelligence', though we hope to find ways to allow them to learn and become at least a little intelligent." said Dr Potter.

But enough about the Democrats.

UPDATE : For an example of the benefits - and ethical risks - see an earlier BBC article :

At first, the monkeys used a joystick to move the dots around. But after a while the joystick was disconnected, and the animals - who had not realised this - continued moving the dots around by thought alone.

The scientists said this was possible because an electrode - about the size of a small pea - had been implanted into the monkeys' brains.

This recorded signals from their motor cortex - an area of the brain that controls movement - as they moved the joystick.

The scientists then analysed the signals with a mathematical formula, "translated" them and fed the signals directly into the computer, where they were reconstructed into directions.
...
Mijail Serruya, who led the Brown University scientists, said: "Our goal is to make sense of how brain [signals] move a hand through space and to use that information as a control signal for someone who is paralysed.

"We want to provide some freedom to these individuals."

Thanks for the Memories

Today, after a spectacular innings, Bob Hope retired to the pavillion after scoring an unrivalled century.

And that was just at the first hole.


(Best I could do Bob - none of the rest of us have your talent. Happy Trails on the Road you're on now, and say Hi to Bing and Dorothy.)

What is best in Life

"To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women!"

Er, No.

To have a post quoted approvingly by Glen Reynolds ( again ), to have intelligent people commenting on your Blog, and to have a full Tip Jar.

My thanks to all who have contributed comments and/or cash. Two US Dollars will get you Three Aussie ones, so even a little goes a long way - and a lot goes even further.

A La Provencale

For those who think the Brits are sometimes a trifle - er - Insular, they don't hold a candle to the Corsicans. From the New York Times on a story about a certain Corsican Politician :

The sun-baked city of Ajaccio is the birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte. It is also the place from where his great-great-grandnephew, Charles Napoleon, has decided to begin his political career.
...
"The Bonapartist movement represents the identity of Ajaccio, but Mr. Napoleon has lived abroad, I mean, on the Continent, and he may not be able to understand this."

Cargo Cult Science

Nobel Prize-winner Richard Feynmann wrote an excellent piece on Scientific Ethics, called "Cargo Cult Science". Although my career has been entirely in Systems- and Software- Engineering, my qualifications are in Science, and I try to apply some of the ethical principles embodied in this essay. Some quotes :

Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can--if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong- -to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.

In summary, the idea is to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgement in one particular direction or another.

The easiest way to explain this idea is to contrast it, for example, with advertising. Last night I heard that Wesson oil doesn't soak through food. Well, that's true. It's not dishonest; but the thing I'm talking about is not just a matter of not being dishonest; it's a matter of scientific integrity, which is another level. The fact that should be added to that advertising statement is that no oils soak through food, if operated at a certain temperature. If operated at another temperature, they all will--including Wesson oil. So it's the implication which has been conveyed, not the fact, which is true, and the difference is what we have to deal with.
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But this long history of learning how to not fool ourselves--of having utter scientific integrity--is, I'm sorry to say, something that we haven't specifically included in any particular course that I know of. We just hope you've caught on by osmosis

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.

I would like to add something that's not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you're talking as a scientist. I am not trying to tell you what to do about cheating on your wife, or fooling your girlfriend, or something like that, when you're not trying to be a scientist, but just trying to be an ordinary human being. We'll leave those problems up to you and your rabbi. I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you're maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.
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One example of the principle is this: If you've made up your mind to test a theory, or you want to explain some idea, you should always decide to publish it whichever way it comes out. If we only publish results of a certain kind, we can make the argument look good. We must publish BOTH kinds of results.

I say that's also important in giving certain types of government advice. Supposing a senator asked you for advice about whether drilling a hole should be done in his state; and you decide it would be better in some other state. If you don't publish such a result, it seems to me you're not giving scientific advice. You're being used. If your answer happens to come out in the direction the government or the politicians like, they can use it as an argument in their favor; if it comes out the other way, they don't publish at all. That's not giving scientific advice.

Applicability to journalism, history and politics is left as an exercise for the reader.