Republicans: Ruining One Mother-Daughter Relationship at a Time

The New York Times has a funny article on how people are unable to discuss politics in a civilized manner anymore.

Man, it must be nice to know enough like minded people that you could even consider never talking to someone again because they disagreed with you politically. I'd be down to basically one friend, and only a sliver of my family if I took that attitude.

I don't know how selective the NYT was about their (tiny) sample, but it's also amusing that the Democrats profiled were all willing to completely shut out their Republican friends/family/acquaintances, while the Republicans were quite a bit more relaxed. That being said, keeping photos of GWB on your fridge is pretty damn weird... I don't think I'd want to hang out with those people either.

Scary Halloween Drivers

I had one of those statistical outlier days in terms of driving.

The zombies were unusually aggressive today, and I somehow ended up being the closest witness to 2 rearendings.

Stranger yet, taxis were involved in both incidents. OK, that's not really that shocking. But neither of the taxis appeared to be at fault! Soon there'll be dogs sleeping with cats and all manner of madness.

Anyway, the last time I witnessed an accident I learned a very valuable lesson: My memory isn't good enough that I can convey the details to the insurance adjusters in a usable manner after more than a few days. ("Yeah, one car hit the other one... one of the cars was red, right? It either got hit or did the hitting.")

So this time I am writing down all the details today - hopefully my spotless recollection will save today's victims some trouble with ICBC.

The Value of Your Fresh, Delicious Organs

Body Worlds 3 is currently on exhibit at Science World in Vancouver. This is basically lots of well preserved corpses skinned, sliced up, and posed in entertaining/educational ways. Kind of grim sounding to me, but that's not what this is about.

A little while back they had a promotion where if you signed up to be an organ donor you got in free, roughly $10 in savings. (Talk about "synergy"!)

It strikes me as interesting that the vast majority of Canadians don't care enough to become donors out of the goodness of their hearts (we have one of the lowest donation rates among industrialized nations), but some of those consider it such a trivial thing that they would sell it for $10.

According to the link above, the low donation rate is big problem, costing the health care system lots of money to keep people alive while they wait for transplants. And presumably some of the people that die waiting would have been productive for years if they had received a transplant in a timely fashion.

Why not formalize the value of organ donation? This doesn't have to be a "selling your organs to the highest bidder" kind of thing, but what if part of the organ donation agreement stipulated that the health system would provide $X to the beneficiary of your choice in the event that your organs were successfully used? Based on the Body Worlds promotion, I suspect that even a nominal potential posthumous reward would solve the scarcity issue.

And just imagine the tie-ins with assisted suicide! <crickets> Hello? Too far?

Movies

The Last Shot
Some very funny moments, but the story just didn't grab me. I think that they went a little too far over the top - stuff was going on that was so bizarre that it was hard to stay immersed in the strange little world that the movie constructed.

The Departed
This is a really good movie, but not as good as Gangs of New York. No Oscar for Scorsese, yet again. The casting was brilliant and the mood was just right. It was, in essence, two who-done-it movies in one, except the audience (more or less) gets to know the big picture for the entire film.

Howl's Moving Castle
HMC was a pretty neat story, and fun to watch, but ultimately left me feeling like there was so much more going on the world that we had just watched some irrelevant side story. Stolen hearts and massive wars to amuse the all powerful sorcerers? A little more explanation would have been nice.

Jim Webb's Political Woes

Over at the National Review, the weigh-in on Webb's excerpted books is roughly 10% "he's a pervert and going to burn", 40% "this is kind of funny", and 50% "I'm so embarrassed to vote Republican (if only there was another choice)".

I started out in the "he's an idiot for committing those thoughts to paper" camp, but rapidly moved to the "embarrassed to vote Republican" camp after doing some basic research on the topic.

It turns out that the "pedophilia" he describes in the novel in question is not at all sexual in nature (well, certainly not sexualized by the way he wrote about it), but a simple observation of a practice in the Far East that doesn't translate well across cultural boundaries. Good luck selling that to the "rednecks" he claims to represent though...

The more I read about Webb, the more I like him. But that's probably because he is running far to the right of the Republicans on every issue. This is the Democratic Party I'd like to see more of.

Rule #1: It's Always Bush's Fault

After accusing Bush of racial motivations for "allowing" New Orleans to happen, the usual suspects are now freaking out because there is new legislation that would allow the Federal government to take control of the National Guard when the State is too incompetent to handle their own problems (search for "SEC. 1076").

Now, given that Congress can already give the President these powers on an "as needed" basis, this legislation is terrible. It basically says that the President's opinion is all that is needed to determine that the Feds can step in and do whatever they want.

However, you can't have it both ways. Either states should have the power to screw up, or the Federal government should be unrestricted.

It's also a nice touch how Bush is blamed for this legislation, and Congress is referred to as having been "bamboozled", as if they have no responsibility for knowing what they are voting on.

You Know You've Lost Touch When...

Bill Maher dresses up as post-stingray Steve Irwin even when South Park says it is too soon (you wouldn't know it from the outraged articles, but Irwin only makes an appearance in South Park so that Satan can be shocked that anyone would be callous enough to dress up as him this soon).

And what's with the torn sleeves? That's more like "Dead Steve Irwin in a Gay Bar".

Congressman Markey (D-Mass) Is a Fascist

And a stupid idiot too. Another winner from the voters of Massachusetts.

Congressman Edward Markey instigated the arrest of Christopher Soghoian, a grad student at Indiana University. Soghoian publicized an already commonly known flaw in airline boarding passes (which Homeland Security - of which Markey is a senior member of the overview committee for - has chosen to do nothing about for OVER 3 YEARS). Even Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has made press releases about this issue in the past.

Hopefully there will be sufficient outcry to get the matter dropped. But good luck getting your computer back from the assholes at the FBI, dude...

Update: Alarmed by the growing uproar, Markey has backed down. He still blames the victim though, and offers no way to undo the damage he has caused.

Richmond Tax Dollars at Work

Doubleblind sends us to a story about how $16,000 worth of underwear has been purchased to stop the institutionalized sexual harassment at Richmond Fire-Rescue.

It could be worse - they could have followed White Rock's lead and bought 1 or 2 of the 'spirit bears' ($34,000!!!).

Court Mandated Gay Marriage in Jersey

Last post of the night, I promise.

I understand that some court in New Jersey has made an ultimatum of some sort to the legislature demanding that gay unions be granted the same rights as heterosexual marriages. I don't care enough (at all in fact, barring the judicial activism which drives me nuts) to actually read about it, but that won't stop me from speculating wildly about it.

My question is this:
What does it mean if the government does not have the power to decide who can get married and receive the benefits thereof? These court challenges are not establishing that gay partnerships are legally the same as heterosexual partnerships - they are stripping the ability of the government to place any kind of limitations on marriage. Rather than moving the arbitrary line on the potentially slippery slope, they are greasing up the ground.

Will the whole concept of government endorsed marriage end up being tossed out in favor of benefits for the activities that marriage is intended to encourage (children, for example)?

The Uselessness of the House of Commons

Garth Turner has described the latest "Question Period" in the Canadian House of Commons. Rather than debating anything of substance they tried to get to the bottom of whether Peter MacKay called his ex-girlfriend and fellow MP (Belinda Stronach) a dog.

Interestingly, the only MP Turner observed as being too civilized to get involved in the mud slinging is one of the candidates for the Liberal leadership race, Michael Ignatieff.

The Making of the Foley Scandal

As I (among others) speculated earlier, the most interesting part of this story is going to be who withheld the damning evidence from the FBI and Congress in order to maximize its political potential.

A new blog titled "Stop October Surprises" has forced the Human Rights Campaign (a gay+ advocacy group with some pretty serious Democratic ties) to fire an employee that was engineering the Foley scandal using the group's resources (at the very least).

Just how high will this go?

Vancouver Jobs Search Engine

Google has released a tool for building custom search engines that only return results from the pages that you choose.

I have relatively recently done a lot of hunting for jobs, so I whipped up a search engine that looks for jobs in BC's Lower Mainland. It's launching mainly with positions at tech companies, but I'll add lots more if anyone uses it.

Jobs Around Vancouver

Garth Turner, Exile

If you don't care about the minutiae of Canadian politics, this would be a good one to skip.

Garth Turner is an Ontario MP who was elected as a Conservative. He has recently been booted out of the Conservative Party basically for not toeing the party line, and questioning his "betters". He kept his trouble-making quiet enough that I had never heard of him until a few days ago when they announced the party downsizing.

I voted for the local Conservative candidate, generally like Stephen Harper as Prime Minister, and don't agree with many of Garth Turner's views. That being said, this is a pretty good example of the problems endemic to party politics.

Because of the desire to present a strong outwards face, all internal dissent gets quashed. So rather than debates being between reasonable people you end up with the NDP or Green Party making deranged attacks (because that's what makes the news) and the Conservatives just make fun of them because the opposition parties have little power to do anything meaningful. In other words, the "debates" in Parliament are absolutely worthless.

Until every vote is a "free vote" (where MPs can vote against the party line if they wish), politics will be retarded in this country. Anyway, it appears that Turner is going to stick it out as an independent, which I heartily approve of.

(And, in case you are wondering, I am pretty sure that US Congressmen and Senators deviate from the party line FAR more than their Canadian counterparts.)

UBC Offering BA in Computer Science

The engineers are never going to let us live this down.

I'm actually pretty jealous - I would have killed for a Comp Sci degree that didn't involve 3rd year math courses. I still get very depressed at the thought of integrals (and no, not so useful in my career or everyday life).

Apocalyptic Jehovah's Witnesses

Some friendly folks in suits dropped off some entertaining reading material on Saturday morning - this is the first visit we've had from Jehovah's Witnesses since moving here a year and a half ago.

Basically, the end is coming and they are totally stoked. It's pretty clear that everybody is going to burn except them - no exceptions made for the false branches of Christianity. If these guys weren't dedicated to loving thy brother I suspect they'd be turning out as many suicide bombers as Islam.

One thing I have to give the JWs though - they sure know how to sex up a message of doom!
Just how many hot harlots and many headed demon cats do I get in the afterlife for joining this religion?

"Free" Aeroplan Miles

After being tipped off by Sacha that Aeroplan is planning a big purge of non-productive users I did my best to empty my account. For whatever reason the Esso cash cards were not available for a few days, but they're back now and that's what I went for.

While waiting for the Esso cards I tried to convert the miles into something more useful via Points.com. That was very lame. Turns out that Points.com doesn't interface with any useful rewards programs and Aeroplan doesn't allow you to trade with all the choices anyway (HBC was the only reasonable candidate for me, and that was disallowed). Points.com was also unable to connect to my Aeroplan account, and apparently only offers support if you upgrade to their "gold" account.

On the plus side, I may have (accidentally) convinced their buggy interface to give me 1250 bonus Aeroplan points for signing up instead of the 10 advertised.

The upshot of all this is that because there is nothing available for less than 5000 points, I have between 2500 and 3700 Aeroplan points that I will lose in roughly 12 months.

If anyone wants those points and is willing to pay the ridiculous transfer fee, they're yours. Just email me.

Graphical Representation of the US Budget

Death and Taxes

This is an oldie-but-goody. The interface has been revamped so that you can drag the image around to easily see program expenditures broken down by major department.

I suspect that a lot of people are horrified to find out that over half of the US budget goes to the military, but the military is one of the few expenditures that I support at the Federal level.

Update: Pieter says "Lies, all Lies!" I guess that D&T has a bit of an axe to grind...

Now, That's Just Tacky

After getting away with a double homicide, OJ Simpson is reportedly writing a book that will describe how he might have killed his wife - you know, if he had actually killed her.

Invisibility Shield

A device has been created that effectively masks an object from detection with microwaves.

Now, I haven't done any real research on this, but it strikes me as pretty cool. Especially the fact that it doesn't depend on any electronics to work.

It seems like the remainder of the work - making it work in three dimensions, improving the effectiveness, and making it work on visible light will just be a matter of solving some (really hard) math problems.

Now, what could you do with this thing? It would kill the aerodynamics of any plane, so that's out. Maybe invisible spy satellites? Or the best duck blind ever!

Book: How to Own an Identity

From the Stealing the Network series, How to Own an Identity is a collection of loosely related short stories (each by a different author).

These stories provide a fictional account of what an organized crime business based on identity theft might look like. At times the book reads like it was written by the teenagers it stars, and the technical details (although seemingly realistic) tended to be a little overwhelming. There was plenty of stuff I had to read twice to make sure I understood what was going on.

If you skim the technical stuff you'll find it to be a pretty light read, and, as I suggested above, not a terribly well written one either. However, it did make me paranoid enough about Internet security that after years of negligence I am finally getting my act together and securing my computer.

Why Was The "Queen of the North" Empty?

If this Wikipedia article is correct, when the Queen of the North sank it was only carrying around 10% of the passengers it was capable of. 101 people (including crew) out of 700 possible, and only 16 cars out of a possible 115.

10-15 years ago when I used to take that ferry relatively regularly it was NEVER empty like that. And the sinking occurred during the summer months when it should have been most busy.

Kind of begs the question as to why it was being run at all (at that frequency at least).

High Tension Power Lines

I had a strange experience the other day walking on a path that passes under some pretty serious power lines.

While under those lines, my fingertips happened to brush my wife's arm. Much to my surprise, her arm felt kind of sticky. So naturally I repeated the maneuver. That time was even weirder - it was almost like there were high friction patches on her arm.

Temporarily aborting the hike in the name of science, further tests resulted in a buzzing feeling in my fingers when I would rub her arm. Having my brother do the same to me made my arm feel hot and somewhat numb at the same time. While not searing pain, it was definitely discomforting (and highly unnerving).

Anyway, I had always thought that the fields thrown off by high tension lines were detectable (with the right equipment), but not capable of interacting with people (ignoring the low correlation with long term health concerns). Some preliminary research indicates that there are anecdotes out there about people being able to feel current in similar ways, but nothing quite as intense as this.

Hello, physics majors?

Ethanol Solves Nothing

Dennis Avery on the true costs of ethanol fuels.

Essentially:

• Massive amount of forested land will have to be cleared.
• There will be significantly less food being produced in America.
• If worthwhile ethanol production methods are developed later on, all of the government subsidized infrastructure developed for corn processing will likely be rendered useless.

And to top it all off, any decrease in gas prices and external oil dependencies will be nominal. All this while the rest of the world is embracing nuclear power.

Spam or Ham?

I just received the worst government communication I have ever seen. If I hadn't been able to find a link from a real government site to the one advertised I wouldn't be sure this was for real.

For a good laugh, check out the actual page the email links to - it's distinctly non-governmental looking. (The fact that it isn't hosted on the .gov.bc.ca domain makes me think that there is a strange relationship there.)

========================

TIME TO UPDATE YOUR COMPANY

Dear [[president of company]]:

Your company listing is online at: http://www.made-in-bc.ca

Our records indicate that your company listing has not been recently updated or verified. The BC Manufacturers’ Directory is one more tool that will help you connect with buyers, investors and everyone else in the marketplace.

THIS SERVICE IS PROVIDED TO YOU FREE-OF-CHARGE.

Unless we have your changes your company listing will appear as:

[[Accurate company info]]

To view and make changes to your company visit our web site at: www.made-in-bc.ca Choose Update or Add and then select your company from the list (the listing is under the business name that appears in the address of this letter). Click Company Information and your company will be displayed. Make any changes and Submit Form. BC STATS will then verify the information and update the database to reflect any changes you have made.

Alternately, you can return this email with any changes.

If you have any questions, please contact me at: Phone 1-888-322-3284 Fax 250-387-0329 or email to: BCMD.Mail@gov.bc.ca

Thank you for your cooperation.

Sue Pelter<o:p>

Companies Directory Officer

BC STATS

Ministry of Citizens’ Services

PO Box 9410 Stn Prov Govt

Victoria, BC V8W 9V1

Mark Foley

Most of the fallout from Foley's Clintonesque behavior is pretty standard stuff:

• The Republicans will be punished by the voters, and rightfully so given that his "problem" was well known years ago.
• The Democrats will continue to be particularly hypocritical in their persecution of the Republicans over this. When Democrats have actual real sex with underage pages they not only get to stay in the party but sometimes win many more terms.
• The mainstream media will call for mass resignations from the Republicans where they would normally have ignored the story or even defended the guilty party.

What gets interesting is that someone knew about these far more deviant messages and held onto them until they would be most damaging. If that someone turns out to be directly attached to the Democrats I would expect to see a very effective "they care more about politics that protecting children" counter-attack.

Chernobyl Mark II

Apparently the nuclear power plant that the Russians are building for Iran is not exactly of the highest quality.

According to Iran's Director of Nuclear Stuff, the Russian contractor (Atom Stroy Export):

• Was unable to understand a modern German designed plant, so opted for the much less powerful Chernobyl design.
• Declared bankruptcy after taking initial payment, forcing the Russian government to "nationalize" the company to avoid embarrassment.
• Is several years behind schedule at this point, with at a least a couple more to go.
• Is building a plant that probably is going to contaminate the Persian Gulf and may not be able to withstand major earthquakes; unfortunately Iran gets them fairly frequently.

All that being said, this might just be an excuse to stop enriching uranium without losing face. It is entirely possible that this contract is no more screwed up that the standard US/Raytheon/Lockheed defence endeavor. I can't find much detail on the history of this project.

A commenter on the Free Republic notes that Chernobyl style reactors are also interesting because they are much better suited to producing weapons grade nuclear materials than a modern reactor. Coincidence?

Richard Clarke on the Iraq-Al Qaeda Connection

A reprint of a 1999 Washington Post article in which Richard Clarke is cited arguing that there is a compelling link between Iraq and Al Qaeda:

While U.S. intelligence officials disclosed shortly after the missile attack that they had obtained a soil sample from the El Shifa site that contained a precursor of VX nerve gas, Clarke said that the U.S. government is “sure” that Iraqi nerve gas experts actually produced a powdered VX-like substance at the plant that, when mixed with bleach and water, would have become fully active VX nerve gas.

Clarke said U.S. intelligence does not know how much of the substance was produced at El Shifa or what happened to it. But he said that intelligence exists linking bin Laden to El Shifa’s current and past operators, the Iraqi nerve gas experts and the National Islamic Front in Sudan.

Just a reminder that this particular claim was not manufactured by Bush and his advisors.

Statistics Tricks in Wartime

An interesting story of how statisticians were employed to calculate the German rate of tank production during WWII.

The real moral of this story of course is to not use predictable serial numbers on your tanks...