BunkBlog

I have discovered The Source for last year’s moron posts: Jerome Corsi. Although the first sources for each of the conspiracy theory bullshit stories seemed to come from somewhere else, Corsi filters all the nonsense down to one easy-to-swallow ball of crap.

• Abiotic petroleum, which would allow us to continue to burn all the oil we want, since it’s not a finite resource? Corsi.
• Merging the United States with Mexico and Canada, in some UN/EU-flavored paranoid delusion? Corsi.
• John Kerry, decorated war veteran, is a craven coward who hates the military? Corsi.

And, now, Corsi has a new book, reaching #1 on the NYTimes bestseller listing almost entirely due to right-wing groups buying thousands of copies to share with their conspiracy-loving hordes. What might this new book cover? How evil Barack Obama is. Corsi is able to list the following “facts” about Obama:

1. Obama may be currently using drugs.
2. Obama is a practicing Muslim.
3. Obama attended a Muslim madrassa school in Indonesia.
4. Dreams of My Father is not dedicated to Obama’s grandparents.
5. Dreams of My Father ignores the existence of Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng.

And then there are actual facts that seem to not require much time to ascertain:

1. There’s no evidence whatsoever of current drug use.
2. How does he find the time, after spending so much time at the Trinity United Church of Christ?
3. The only overtly religious school young Barack attended in Indonesia was Catholic.
4. It is to my family, though — my mother, my grandparents, my siblings, stretched across oceans and continents — that I owe the deepest gratitude and to whom I dedicated this book.
5. Page 47.

The list is quite extensive beyond these low-hanging fruit. Why does anyone read this crap? A guy who believes George Bush wants to merge the country with Mexico is considered someone to listen to about anything factual?  Seriously?

Update: In case you think Corsi is a good guy just because he tends to bash Democrats, check out this article: Corsi writes for WoldNutDaily and claims that McCain’s (wife’s) fortune can be traced back to mobsters.  Nice guy, this Corsi.

In case anyone thinks the War on (some) Drugs is working or is in any way a boon to American peace and freedom, check out this story on the mayor of a DC-area town. The mayor and his mother-in-law were tied up, the family’s two dogs were just shot out-of-hand, and all this with not a single “no-knock” warrant issued. So, by the rules of the country we thought we lived in, the police should have knocked and asked the suspect to surrender so they could search the house.  Not even close to what happened.

Meanwhile, the entire thing is such an incredible cockup to begin with. The police say that it’s possible the mayor of the town was having 30 pounds of marijuana delivered to his door. Seriously. That’s not been ruled out, even though the police have arrested two other men who are implicated in a scheme to deliver marijuana to unsuspecting innocents, using the front porches of random strangers as drop points for passing drugs to other dealers. But the mayor may be a druggie. Right.

Meanwhile, Indianapolis has cops shaking down drug dealers for cash and drugs. Police in Atlanta are known to carry drugs in their patrol cars to plant on suspects, and shoot elderly women.

All of them, no doubt, acted responsibly.

I’ve been working on military bases for pretty much my entire adult life.  In that time, I’ve been continually amazed and astonished at the utter inanity of the bureaucratic ninnies who are allowed to run much of the daily workings of the government.  For instance, we have a proxy server which blocks access to web sites deemed inappropriate.  Which sites are inappropriate and why remains a guessing game, as they have misconfigured the blasted thing to show a useless error message.  There are locations in the “Access Denied” template to display exactly what category of evil you were trying to access, as well as the usual boilerplate about Big Brother watching you and he’s gonna getcha.

Today, I discovered that RealClimate is blocked. Exactly how is a climatology site objectionable? Of course, the propaganda information sites they do allow are equally interesting. There has never been a day that drug abuser Rush Limbaugh or felon G Gordon Liddy has been blocked, to my knowledge. Comedian Al Franken’s Senate campaign site – blocked. Air America was blocked, then allowed, then blocked, and now it’s allowed again I believe. For the longest time, Little Green Footballs was allowed, while DailyKos was blocked. Now, they’re both blocked.  I can get behind that – neither of those sites is official use, I’d wager. Drudge Report and WorldNutDaily – always accessible.  Slate’s Video News – blocked. Go figure.

Seriously, RealClimate? Frack.

The oil industry in the USA isn’t using most of the oil fields they have leases for, but they’re begging for more? I don’t understand.  The USA uses 21 million barrels of oil per day, and produces 8; the oil fields they have access to which they are not using could be worth 5 million barrels a day. Meanwhile, the proposals to open up more offshore drilling, combined with the proposals to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, could lead to 2 million barrels a day. So, they’re begging for the ability to get half of what they already have available which they aren’t using. I honestly don’t understand economics, but that just doesn’t sound kosher to me.

I understand the investment to exploit the open fields would be substantial, and the leases they are asking for would be cheaper to exploit. But, still – makes you wonder about the rhetoric about who is patriotic, eh?

Ever since listening to the fantastic FM & AM album during my broadcast journalism class back in 1982, I’ve been a huge fan of George Carlin.  Son of WINO was a great piece of absurdist humor (weather report tonight is dark, with scattered light toward morning), his counterculture cred got a bit of unneeded burnishing with his appearance in the Bill & Ted movies (far outshining the acting ability of the stars), and his social commentary was always biting and spot-on.

I’m amazed at his consistently funny career, his ability to come up with topical humor for fifty years, and his almost unnatural capacity to seem to be a young smartass well into his AARP years. His passing will leave a giant hole in the world of satire and humor, and he will be missed by anyone with a funnybone.

“Liberal in the good sense…”  Because the liberal media is so ineffective at propagandazing that the term liberal has become a curse word, while somehow conservative is still a respectable term.

Remember when the MSN Music Store shut down over a year ago? Remember that Microsoft said that songs you “bought” from the MSN Music Store were going to be yours to keep forever? Guess what, sucker? After August, you can’t upgrade your computer without losing your music.

Yet another in a long series of “DRM Hates Customers” stories. You’d think the computer industry ditching copy protection years ago, coupled with the complete meltdown of DRM in music over the past couple years, would make the movie industry wake up and kill their copy protection plans. You’d be wrong. Not that their DRM will hold up either… Oh, yeah – it didn’t! HAH!

The estate tax only affects estates valued at above $2 million today, and maybe down to $1 million if things are allowed to lapse in 2011 (not $675,000 no matter what your talk radio told you). How much do you expect to leave in net worth for your heirs? More than a million dollars? Not likely. Yet, a significant number of people who will never be affected by the estate tax are fighting to repeal it, on behalf of people making amounts of money most of us can’t imagine.

There are so many complicated economic issues wrapped up in estate tax debates, it would be ridiculous to try to summarize them. My curiousity is piqued by the rabid defense of the “repeal the death tax” mantra by people who will likely never have to pay it anyway. What kind of strange phenomenon causes people to spend time and effort fighting for something that helps only people most of us would classify as filthy rich?

I recently read a Princeton research paper, which showed quite clearly that the party in the Executive has historically been a good indicator of the rate of increase in income inequality. Republican presidents have been very good to the top 20% of Americans, and pretty crappy to the bottom 20%, with a relatively straight-line graph between them. Democratic presidents have been pretty good to the bottom 20%, and just about as good to the top 20%, with a straight-line graph between them as well. The difference, of course, is that the Dem graph is nearly horizontal. Income growth is about 2.5% for the top quintile under either party, but under a Dem that’s about the same level for everyone in the country (2-2.5%). Under the GOP, on the other hand, the top quintile still gets a nice growth rate of 2.5% or so, but the bottom quintile gets growth of 0.5%. The only exception to this pattern is in election years, when the Democrats seem to shoot themselves in the foot with the poor, and the Republicans somehow discover they can give money to the plebes to gain votes. Economic stimulus package, anyone?

By the way, I’ve been told by someone near and dear to me that the Princeton paper is not nearly as fascinating a read as I think it is. Something about “deathly dull” was murmured, as I recall. I am focusing on income inequality because it is so stark a statistic of economic health for most people, as well as being an indicator of widespread discontent.  Discontent breeds instability and all that, ya know. So, currently, the top 1% of people in the country have 22% of the income, which is the greatest concentration of wealth in such a small group since before the Great Depression.  We all know how well that turned out, eh? Another good indicator of economic health is personal savings. In 1982, that rate was 11%; in 2006, it was negative 1%. I’m pretty sure that’s not good.

If this income inequality issue is so blatantly obvious, the question remains: Why does anyone who isn’t already wealthy vote Republican? My theory is “the media makes people crazy.” Look at the giant storms of controversy and outrage the media talking heads have been stirring up over relatively minor issues of things like “bitter people” and cleavage and flag pins. Do any of those things really matter to the citizenry? Of course not. But, people have grown so accustomed to the din of information flowing from the magic box that shows them both parties looking stupid and venal and self-serving and hypocritical, people assume there’s no difference between them. We’ve watched the offshore outsourcing and domestic dismantling of our industrial base, through several presidents of both parties. People have become used to the idea that either party will screw the citizenry over. So, the parties end up ceding the ground of substance to “none of the above” and spend all their time fighting over trivia and “social issues.” Most of the social issues affect very few people, and based on my reading of that quaint document called The Constitution, are none of the government’s business anyway. But, you can sure rile folks up if you claim your opponent wants to take their guns or Bibles away (no matter how fictitious your claim may be).

It’s all rather disgusting. If you can stand it, watch the Pennsylvania Democratic debate – the first half is devoted to flag pins and bitterness. We’re so screwed.

You may have heard a story or two on the news recently about the peculiar group of polygamists down the road from me. After attending a school function for The Boy next door to Fort Concho, I had an encounter with a Texas State Trooper.

School function, so I took photos. The sight of me with a camera was of some interest to the DPS officer, apparently. He asked if I’d been taking photos of the Fort, which of course I hadn’t been and told him that. Then he turned friendly and wished me a good day. About 50 meters down the street, I passed a man with a massive camera taking photos of the Fort, while standing in the street. Guess he was too obvious.

Anyway, I know that there are many issues (privacy, witness tampering, yada yada) involved in this mess, and I’m not about to raise a fuss about a rather minor thing, but I’m allowed to take photos of just about anything I want to. I can’t help but wonder how the conversation would have gone if I’d actually been so bold as to have taken a photo of Officer Friendly or (gasp!) even of the State Park, while standing on a public street. I’m sure the sky would have fallen.

Sure hope this circus is over soon. Housing all those people on the Fort has already caused at least one event cancellation.  This town uses the area for many community days.

This must be the worst case of senioritis ever.

When the Larsen B shelf collapsed in 2002, melting a block of ice the size of Rhode Island, global warming denialists said that a 12,000 year-old stable feature was just due to collapse anyway.  Nothing to see here.

Now, the Wilkins shelf is about to calve a block about the size of Connecticut.  Want to bet how the denialists will react? Liberal media conspiracy, anyone? Maybe a nice ad hominem attack on Al Gore? Pick your logical fallacy, and handicap the race for yourself!

Doesn’t this fit the definition of terrorism?

From the Department of Defense definition: The calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.

Not to mention, are the producers of 24 getting a cut of this blatant ripoff?

I’m sitting at work, just trying to do my job, supporting our military intelligence professionals and all that jazz. Three of my coworkers, just on the other side of my desk, spend ten minutes discussing how absurd it is that anyone would be upset that our country is torturing bad guys to get information. One is laughing about blowing someone’s brains out to send a message to his compatriots that we’re not kidding.

Given that we’re not interrogators, we are all intelligence veterans, and we should all know by now that torture doesn’t work. I even printed out the recent 60 Minutes interview with Saddam’s interrogator, in which he described how true interrogation techniques do work. True interrogation requires lots of time, lots of controlling and ingratiating behavior, etc. – it is remarkably dissimilar to the way the world works on 24. You’d think folks with decades of experience in intelligence would know that the real world rarely resembles movies. After all, the satellites of the NSA sure don’t see through buildings and around corners like in Enemy of the State. Don’t even get me started on the black ops SWAT teams the NSA apparently has in the movies. Incredible lack of understanding of our capabilities there.

Yet, these knuckleheads are cackling about how great it is that our great country, shining light of freedom on the hilltop and all, is admittedly torturing people and keeping them completely cut off from all normal legal and ethical systems. I really wonder if I should have taken that other job after all…

Remember the chucklehead from martial arts class? I somehow couldn’t get it through to him by my reading while he was talking, that I don’t really care to hear his wacko far-right talk radio dittohead talking points. *sigh*

I’m reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s latest trilogy, which hasn’t a name yet that I’m aware of but we’ll call it the Climate Change Series, absent anything better. I’m about 30 pages into the second book, and I do rather like to read books that I have open to read. But, chucklehead decided to regale me with more of his tales from the conspiracy side. Global warming may or may not be happening, and if it is it’s nothing we can fix anyway, blah blah blah. Of course, he admits that he has never read anything on the issue, and only gets his information from talk radio. Personally, I try to read the occasional article from an actual scientist, but I’m sure Laura Schlesinger is very well-read on subtle issues of climatology.

Last time I talked with this man, he told me about the evil Law of the Sea Treaty, which was going to give our sovereignty to some group of UN bad guys (it’s not). Ever notice how the far right has some sort of paranoia about the UN? Considering how completely ineffectual the UN has been in almost everything they’ve ever attempted, how scared could anyone be of them? So, this time around, his UN conspiracy is surrounding the IPCC, which of course he doesn’t even know the name of but just calls “them scientists.” There are some people who wrote pieces of the IPCC-4 report who don’t agree with the totality of that report. Surprised? Of course not. How many people wrote that document? Look up Richard Lindzen; I’m certain that’s the most prominent person that fits his description. Chuckles says that there are a lot, well, maybe a few, at least a significant number, of IPCC signers who want their names removed from the document. Let me just say, every large group has some nuts and publicity hounds. Doesn’t mean that the entire organization is wrong. The lack of any coherent alternate hypothesis to the prevailing one does not imply that there is a conspiracy which is repressing information. There aren’t a lot of coherent alternate hypotheses to the Earth being an oblate ovoid either; doesn’t mean there’s a conspiracy against Flat Earthers.

Wandering farther off the path, chucklehead then had the insane notion that one should “follow the money” to find out who is benefiting from the climate change folks. Um, if we were to follow the largest streams of money surrounding this “debate” (not really a debate in the scientific world, no matter what politicians may think), we’d find it leads to the anthropogenic climate change deniers, as backed by the most wealthy corporations in the world, the petroleum industry. I’m no conspiracy theorist, but if you want to throw around “follow the money” tropes, maybe you should have a clue what you’re talking about first.

I tried to explain thermohaline circulation, and the fact that its disruption took less than a decade but caused the 1300 year Younger Dryas period of intense cold (5 degrees Celsius drop in the North Atlantic region), but I’m sure it was pointless. He’s also oblivious to the fact that our instruments get better each year, and so do our predictive abilities. The concept that theories are refined and perfected over time is foreign to him, of course.

Somehow, he even worked abiotic petroleum into his meanderings. Remember, this is someone who quite openly admits he has read nothing about the science behind all this, but just goes with his instincts on things. Our instincts are great for catching balls and shooting at slow-moving animals; they aren’t much good at megayear musings and thousand-mile discussions. I find it interesting that the majority of abiotic petroleum believers are in Russia, which is famous for such scientific breakthroughs as Lysenkoism (Lamarckian evolution).

Seriously, it’s not hard to learn enough to be halfway cognizant of the underlying science. Chucklehead is one of a depressingly large number of people who are willfully ignorant of things that they form strong opinions about. Just because you wish something were true doesn’t mean reality must bend to your will.

It’s amazing to me how many people will deny reality in order to defend their prejudices and pre-existing notions. And there isn’t just one area of life that is vulnerable to this sort of reality denial; it can be everything from computers to cosmogony to theology.

Linux users have, for years, said it’s not the OS that is causing usability and productivity problems – it’s the lack of drivers. Of course, the average user doesn’t care why their printer doesn’t work, and is not going to blame HP for not supporting Linux, because their printer works just fine in Windows so it must be Linux’s fault that it doesn’t print.

Although the vast majority of the technology industry has come to the conclusion that Windows Vista is more trouble than it’s worth, some people defend it to the most ridiculous lengths. The driver defense comes up, just as with the Linux geeks from years past. “Vista is great, it just needs some drivers and people need to understand how to manage it. And the User Access Control dialog boxes aren’t very intrusive after you get used to clicking them every single session once per program or operation; people just need to get used to it. Of course, you can’t expect to run Vista on a machine with only one gigabyte of memory, no matter that the big box retailers sell 1GB machines with Vista Premium installed on them.”  And so on.

No, people won’t learn the OS in order to work their applications; they just want to click a file and make it work. To assert otherwise is to deny the reality of how the vast majority of people approach computing, in favor of some ideal world where everyone takes a three-week course in Vista before they operate it, and never go to skeezy websites and always keep their virus software updated… Well, you know.

Oh, you thought I was going to talk about theology? Nah. PZ Myers can do that for me.

In case there are people who still don’t understand how screwed up the USA is, in regards to medical care, I present to you Steven K. Brust.  Mr. Brust is a successful science fiction author.  He’s published around 20 novels, been on the NYTimes bestseller list, and is considered a decent fellow.  He’s also in danger of losing his house because he got sick this year.   Commenters on his blog who are not from the United States are aghast that someone could have to declare bankruptcy due to illness.  No other developed nation allows citizens to go broke getting sick.  It seems deeply immoral and inhumane to me.

Fortunately for Brust, he has a dedicated following of fans (personally, I’ve only read Cowboy Feng – it was amusing) who are helping him out financially.  How many less well-known people are declaring bankruptcy today because of a hospital bill from last year?

As I watched Mark Klein on the news this morning, it occurred to me that none of the major internet peers care about their customers.  In a world where one of the peers was more concerned with the safety of their data and less concerned with sucking up to the government, AT&T would have been routed around via a DNS poisoning. Any organization which cannot be trusted to keep the data on the internet safe and secure should simply not be trusted with that data.

Yet, none of the peers dropped AT&T as a peer. They continued to route data through AT&T’s routers, even as it became perfectly clear that AT&T was copying all the data as it went by for analysis by the government.

The Boy and I are in Dallas for the giant robotic dinosaur show tomorrow. We got stuck on a tollroad that had a broken change machine and no attendant. If I get a ticket for dropping a dollar into the change bucket (after displaying it to the camera) for a 45 cent fare, I’m so gonna be pissed.

For years, the private terror-hunters at the SITE Institute have been infiltrating jihadist chat rooms, and spying on the extremists congregating online. Now, the group its digital cover has been blown — and Al-Qaeda online communications channels have gone dark — thanks to a ham-handed move by the Bush administration, it seems. “Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless,” SITE’s Rita Katz told the Washington Post.

More here and here. “To make the accusation that the intelligence community leaked this to the media is totally false,” intelligence office spokesman Ross Feinstein said. I’d never assume the intel community leaked anything.  That’s something politicians do.

Karl Schroeder has released Ventus as a free ebook download.  It’s very good.  If you’re interested in nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, post-apocalyptic fiction (not strictly speaking, but a reversion to more primitive life yada yada), or just good speculative fiction about the future of humanity, give it a read.

Now to add a bunch of Schroeder books to my Amazon wishlist…