What Happens At The Masonic Park, Stays At The Masonic Park

This weekend my wife and I went camping in a Masonic Park. We were invited along with a 3rd-Degree Mason and his girlfriend, friends of ours that we met through a gaming group. And in contrast to what the title of my post suggests, I'm actually gonna talk about it a little.

We were camped in a remote corner of the woods, yet still within jogging distance of a flush toilet, which makes it almost too easy to call it camping. Mother Nature decided to make up for that low degree of difficulty by dumping rain on our heads all day Saturday, so we could never forget that in the wild we survive only at the Earth's whims.

In all seriousness, it was a beautiful private park, and we had tons of fun despite the rain. Happily it turns out my firebuilding skills are stronger than I'd given myself credit for. Our camp was just up from a shallow river bed, so we had a constant sound of the rapids, plus the rain lightly falling on our roof-top, in the background all night. Funny the way sounds that would signify a burst pipe back home end up being awesomely beautiful out in nature.

The whole weekend was really serene and peaceful, with the exception of one little part during the open-air ceremony taking place at the far end of the camp, when a cacophony of noise rolled and echoed across the canyon. I'm not sure exactly what was going on, and since I'd promised to stay out of that area during a particular four-hour block, I couldn't go satisfy my curiosity about the noises. From the sound of it, though, it must have been a sight to behold - an epic riot on the order of the Orcs attacking Helm's Deep. Made me kinda envious of whatever Masonic secrets my friend is in-the-know about.

The place we put our tents was somewhat isolated from people (largely at my request), but those we met (all of them either Freemasons, or accompanied by Masons) were really nice. I was quite impressed with how friendly everyone was. As a long-haired freak with unusual hobbies, I often expect any strangers I meet to be distant and unwelcoming. I would have expected that those belonging to a secret brotherhood (which I am not a member of) to be even more so. Quite to the contrary, they never made me feel like an outsider at all.

As an added bonus, since it wasn't just some public park with totally random anonymous strangers, you could feel safe leaving all your stuff sitting out at night or while you were off on a nature hike. As a hardened city-dweller, I sometimes find it difficult to let down my guard when in the sorts of neighborhoods where they don't lock the doors. In retrospect I'm pretty sure I could have left my wallet sitting out on a random picnic table all weekend, and it would have been just fine.

Damn good weekend.

309,775,732 friends, 854,000 enemies

I want to take a moment to salute the reporters over at the Washington Post. As a tax-paying, freedom-loving American, I thank you for your hard work and bravery. You've ruffled a few feathers in Washington, and 9,999 other locations.

This is an era where shining a light on things that ought to be transparent in the first place is more than a little nerve-wracking. It's an era where comedian John Stewart is usually (and sadly) the only one asking the hard questions. So to see someone write a huge report on the 854,000 Americans who have Top Secret Clearance, and what they are working on, is pretty refreshing.

Such secrecy can undermine the normal chain of command when senior officials use it to cut out rivals or when subordinates are ordered to keep secrets from their commanders.
One military officer involved in one such program said he was ordered to sign a document prohibiting him from disclosing it to his four-star commander, with whom he worked closely every day, because the commander was not authorized to know about it. Another senior defense official recalls the day he tried to find out about a program in his budget, only to be rebuffed by a peer. "What do you mean you can't tell me? I pay for the program," he recalled saying in a heated exchange.

The article, and its many interactive charts and maps, are worth at least 10 minutes of everyone's time, and most of us nerdly or paranoid types could justify burning much more time pouring through the 16 page main article and the amazing web of hyperlinks in the charts. Pop over to the Washington Post and take a look at the report. It's an accounting of which agencies and companies are doing what in the name of National Security. 1,271 Government Organizations and 1,931 Private Companies work together at 10,000 locations to publish 50,000 intelligence reports a year. It's too much for anyone to hope to be on top of it all, and we keep growing it bigger and making it more redundant. Yet despite all those Republicans and Tea Partiers harping about oversized government, they never seem to want to trim a few security agencies out of the mix.

854,000 people. If all the folks with Top Secret Clearance were gathered together in an empty part of the map to found a new city all by themselves, they would be the 12th-largest city in the U.S. It would be smaller than Detroit, but bigger than San Francisco.

I'll leave off with one of the amusing observations of the article:

Every one of these buildings has at least one of these rooms, known as a SCIF, for sensitive compartmented information facility. Some are as small as a closet; others are four times the size of a football field.

SCIF size has become a measure of status in Top Secret America, or at least in the Washington region of it. "In D.C., everyone talks SCIF, SCIF, SCIF," said Bruce Paquin, who moved to Florida from the Washington region several years ago to start a SCIF construction business. "They've got the penis envy thing going. You can't be a big boy unless you're a three-letter agency and you have a big SCIF."

Bank Fnord

Headline

Cap the size of big banks

What I read

Crap, the size of big banks!

Shadow Government

Revealed: Ashcroft, Tenet, Rumsfeld warned 9/11 Commission about ‘line’ it ’should not cross’

The first thing I think when I see that headline is "Holy crap! Dr. Who is part of the Conspiracy? Now we're really fucked!" But, apparently it's spelled David Tennant. See, if I look over here on Wikipedia, I... who the hell is Matt Smith? Damnit! That's what I get for canceling my cable.

Ahem.

Back to the original article... the ACLU has managed to get their hands on a letter from the Bush Administration to the 9/11 Commission, in which the Attorney General, Defense Secretary, and Head of the CIA refused the Commission's request to interview detainees.

"There is, however, a line that the Commission should not cross... The Commission staff's proposed participation in questioning of detainees would cross that line,"

That's a little ominous, eh? Who knows what it means. Even if it was just an innocent but poor choice of phrasing, it probably had a chilling effect on the people tasked with uncovering how our government failed. I mean if Ashcroft and Rumsfeld and Dr. Who told me I was about to cross a line, I'd shut the heck up and listen to them.

Why would the Bush Administration not want the 9/11 Commissioners anywhere near detained suspects in the 9/11 plot? Perhaps to keep the truth hidden about 9/11? Or maybe just to keep the truth hidden about how much torture was being used on detainees? Either seems believable, ...and disgustingly reprehensible.

Smoking gun though it may seem to be, this letter on it's own proves nothing... but it certainly justifies looking a little deeper. I think it's time for a new investigation into the shadier policies and activities of the previous administration, one that doesn't have to obey arbitrary limitations placed on it by the very government it's investigating. Shine a little light in there, and see what goes scurrying back into the deeper shadows. (...like on that Library planet. Or to see what just stands there like those statues in that episode "Blink". They were almost as creepy as Rumsfeld.)

MLK Day Fnord!

MLKDay.gov

Volunteer with Americans across the nation on the 2010 King Day of Service and make a real in difference in your community.

Did I read that right? Yes. Yes I did.

With you 120% of the way

Did Fox News falsify numbers to support their own theories on Global Warming?

120% Somewhat Likely
59% Very likely
35% Voted for Bush twice, and continue to watch Fox, thereby demonstrating that their opinions should not be trusted anyway








Photo Source: Raw

Something Is Rotten In The State Of Afghanistan

I read these news articles, and I can't help but be suspicious. I don't know if the CIA is involved, or if the Afghani's are just fucking up their own politics, but I guarantee you there's more going on than meets the eye. My instincts are that something sinister either just went down, or is about to go down. Mind you, this is all based on a handful of news and wikipedia articles, and the conclusions it draws are just idle speculation, but here's the situation as it appears to me...

Hamid Karzai was chosen by "prominent Afghan political figures" to lead the provisional government there in 2001, a 6-month term. This was followed by a 2-year appointment to the Presidency by the Loya Jirga, the council of tribal chiefs. In 2004 he was elected President in an actual election. Then, in 2008 he got elected again... but this time the U.N. inspectors discovered that nearly a third of his votes were fraudulent, and he didn't actually have a majority.

At this point, John Kerry flies to Afghanistan, and convinces Hamid Karzai to allow a new run-off election. It would be just Karzai and the next highest vote-getter, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah. Now, that seems a reasonable thing to do if your problem is that no single candidate got the majority of votes. But that's not the problem. The problem is that Karzai, as sitting President with power over the election process, engaged in voter fraud.

A second election would have one of two results, obviously, depending on whether or not Karzai had control of the election process again.

• If he did, then he'd likely fudge the numbers again and declare himself the winner.
• If he didn't have control, or chose not to cheat, then he would lose. Because the majority of people didn't vote for him in the first place, and those people now yet have another reason to vote for his opposition - because Karzai is now, according to the U.N. inspectors, a known liar and cheater.

Either Karzai would win, and everyone would know it's because he cheated and lied again, or else he'd lose by a huge overwhelming majority. If you're a powerful foreign government that has found Karzai to be easy to work with, this could be quite the dilemma. Either your man will lose, or he'll win and you'll have to acknowledge you're working with a criminal who subverts the democratic process.

So, instead, 6 days before the run-off election, his opposition suddenly drops out of the race. Instead of transferring his slot to the next candidate down on the list, Karzai's election board decides the only way to proceed is to not proceed at all. The run-off is canceled, and Karzai is declared the winner.

Conveniently, this saves face for his international allies, who now have plausible deniability about Karzai's direct involvement in election-rigging. "Oh, that was just zealous supporters rigging things. He'd told them not to do it, that there'd be stiff punishments for subverting the will of the people. That second election was going to be legit. It's not his fault that the only opposition conceded. I mean if Gore can concede to Bush, then why can't Abdullah concede to Karzai?" Etc. And thus is a major scandal poo-poo-ed and hand-waved away.

The question that bothers me regards the secret backstory of all this. Did Abdullah concede because:

• of a bribe? This would be the happiest scenario. It's also unlikely, since Abdullah still made parting shot comments at Karzai, calling attention to his corruption and election-rigging.
• of threats or danger? Fearing for his life if he continued to resist the President who was desperate to retain power? Again, that he called out Karzai's corruption in his concession speech makes this unlikely, but doesn't completely rule it out.
• of plans to rebel? I don't know much about Abdullah. He's a medical doctor, but he was also a military adviser to one of the leaders of the revolution against the soviets, and then fought against the Taliban. He's comfortable in a western suit, and has visited the Pentagon. That paints a complicated portrait, but at least suggests he's unlikely to go help the Taliban.

A few of the wikipedia articles did point me to some interesting breadcrumbs. Abdullah had been military advisor to Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was the leader of the anti-Taliban resistance prior to 9/11. On September 9th, 2001, Massoud was assassinated. The assassins had stolen Belgian passports, claimed to have been born in Morocco, but were really citizens of Tunisia. As part of their cover as photojournalists, they carried a fancy camera that had been stolen in France. Regardless of what country actually financed, trained, and employed them, the assassins entered Afghanistan from the Pakistan border, and were helped in the getting through Northern Alliance security by one Ustad Abdul Rabi Rasul Sayyaf. Sayyaf was part of the Northern Alliance, but also has connections to Pakistan and has political views that are very Taliban-esque. He struck a deal with Karzai, so Wikipedia tells me, to get one of his pawns declared Chief Justice of the Afghani Supreme Court. The details of the appointment violated the Afghani Constitution. The Justice then reinstituted the Taliban practice of organizing squads whose job it is to discourage and punish "un-Islamic behavior" in women.

In case that's all too dense, I'll pluck out the relevant threads:

• This election-rigging is not the first time Karzai has violated the Constitution of Afghanistan, and at least one such violation has lead to human rights abuses.
  
• Karzai has political ties with a extremist who's suspected of killing Abdullah's good friend.
• Had that friend not been assassinated two days before 9/11, the post-Taliban government in Afghanistan would have been very different.
  

It ain't pretty. From where I'm sitting, it also kinda looks like our government is propping Karzai up, just like it did with the Shah of Iran. You'll recall how well that went over.

But, you know, perhaps it's no worse than what happened here in 2004.

Vote Jake.

There's a (black) hole in me pocket

Invisibility is at our fingertips. ...anybody seen my fingertips? I can't figure out where I put them.

Via Nature News (but I first learned about it at Arcana Wiki) :

Researchers create portable black hole

Physicists have created a black hole for light that can fit in your coat pocket. Their device, which measures just 22 centimetres across, can suck up microwave light and convert it into heat.

Those same physicist are now working on a device that can do the same to visible light. Light will approach it, get bent and sucked in, and never leave.

I'm honestly not sure it'll actually be invisible. It might just be ultimate black. Projected ultimate blackness. Like a cloak of darkness. I'm Batman!

Chicken-Eating Dogs of Texas

I don't know whether to be happy, sad, paranoid, or really let down.

Happy, 'cause this is starting to look like another awesome example of speciation in our time. Two finds now (this year and 2 years ago) of hairless gray dog-like creatures with abnormally large teeth and abnormally long legs, wandering the wilds of Texas and attacking chickens.

Sad, because the poor little puppies were killed both times. And the poor little chickens. The horror!

Paranoid, because 2 years ago the news promised us gene-sequencing to find out if it was a new species... ...and then never followed up! They must be hiding something! It's a conspiracy!

Or really let down because it may turn out that El Chupacabra is just a mangy dog. Man, that would really suck (goats)!

Leveling Up

WHO upgrades the Swine Flu to a Level 6 Pandemic amid reports that the UK is inaccurately reporting the number of British cases. Panicked crowds in Argentina stone a bus that was rumored to have an infected person aboard. A doctor in Texas says swine flu cases number at least ten times the official numbers. Right Wing blogs say that the Level 6 status will trigger the Force Majeure clauses of business contracts and put the final nail in the ecoffinomy.

WHO chief Dr. Margaret Chan made the announcement Thursday after the U.N. agency held an emergency meeting with flu experts. Chan said she was moving to phase 6 — the agency's highest alert level — which means a pandemic, or global epidemic, is under way.

"The world is moving into the early days of its first influenza pandemic in the 21st century," Chan told reporters. "The virus is now unstoppable."

Emphasis mine. Man, what an unfortunate sentence. Somebody's losing a job over that one. Or, we're all gonna die. I'm not sure which.

I was going to rant on conspiratorially, but plenty of other folks have already done it for me. Take a moment to read this exchange at yahoo answers, where it's all a plot to sell shares in Tamiflu or prevent us from going to the movies. They even mention zombies. Or this website alleging the Flu is being spread intentionally to justify the NWO's take-over. Other folks have already made the bizarre connections I was going to. Mexico is kinda close to Dulce Base, so I'm sure someone's suggested the Intergalactic Warfare angle already.

Reading over those links and pages, I'm left with just one angle that hasn't been proposed: "Swine Flu Eats Shoe Walrus Polka Orthagonal!" I'm relatively confident no one's said that yet. But I wouldn't bet money on it though, since I included a verb.

Man, I liked the good old days, when the alarming world-shattering thing that made the cover of every newspaper, magazine, and website was just the freakin' Octomom.

Fnord of the Day

Fnord on a large sign...

LARGER THAN CHRIST

Upon a second glance...

LARGE THIN CRUST

Open Season

In a comment, X (is back!) wrote:

I still find it amusing how we can mock people for their politics, their personal habits, the cars they drive, even the food they eat (lutefisk anyone?), but we can't someone's mock [sic] religion.

I understand that mocking a persons ethnicity, sex, age, orientation or any other innate characteristic about them which is beyond their own control is cruel, but when religious belief like politics, low-rise jeans and driving an obnoxious Hummer or a self-righteous Prius is a voluntary endeavor, I see no reason for it not to be fair game for ridicule.

I keep reflecting on this statement, and, as much as I hate to admit it, he's probably on to something.

The counter-argument is that many people don't choose their religion, it's generally foisted upon them. But the same is true about political parties - it's just that most people step out of their parent's shadow faster on politics than on religion. If you're the sort of sheep who does what you're told, you'll likely maintain your parent's politics and religion for life. If you're a self-thinker, you may step away from either or both. One's a little more likely than the other, but it's only a matter of degree, and a fairly trivial degree as well.

The particularly annoying thing for me is that if I acknowledge there's nothing wrong with mocking someone's religion, I pretty much have to admit there's nothing wrong with someone mocking me about being vegetarian.

I know that's a touchy spot for me - if I say it's okay, I'm pretty much consigning myself to never-ending arguments. Part of why I rarely watch TV (other than the fact that most network programming rots your brain) is the ceaseless parade of commercials for restaurants, grocery stores, and meat products. It pisses me off - having dead carcass waved in my face, people telling me that I'm abnormal for not eating what they do.

But I generally don't go off about it, because I generally hold myself to the standard that it's not polite or proper to assail someone about their dietary choices. A person's really got to get my goat in order for me to be provoked into responding about my vegetarianism and their carnivorosity. Lutefisk gets my goat - mostly 'cause I think the only critter that could survive on that lye-soaked fish-flavored jello is the same sort of critter that can survive on a diet of tin-cans and garbage. Dear friends insisting that broccoli screams, or that since I must kill microbes therefore I shouldn't feel guilt about killing anything, gets my goat. My mother-in-law insisting that lobster is a vegetable gets my goat. Frankly, I ain't got much goat left.

So, yeah, I'm on the verge of agreeing that there's nothing wrong with mocking anyone's religion. But religion is much further down the continuum then diet is, so if I move the line past religion, it has to hop past diet and several other issues as well.

Seth Godin recently drew parallels involving religion, technology and fashion. I think I'll take him out of context:

People will recommend something if adoption improves their lives.

Fax machines? Life is better for me if you have one.

Fashion? Life is better for me if I'm not the only one wearing this.

Religious sect? Life is better for me if I'm not the only one in the building.

Vegetarian? Life is better for me if my friends and I can eat the same meals, and blog from the same viewpoint. By that logic, I should be actively recruiting.

To be crystal clear - it's not that I'm afraid you're going to start mocking my vegetarianism. IMHO, that happens every time someone posts a picture of the bunny they killed as a child, or a video that uses hamburgers and bratwurst to explain WW2. You may not mean to insult, tease, or deride me, you may not mean to not-so-subtly imply there's something wrong with me because I don't eat meat, but it's sometimes hard for me to not interpret your actions as doing so. It gets my dander up.

I just know that if I acknowledge it's okay for you (and thus, me) to mock someone's religion, then that means it's also okay for you to mock me about vegetarianism, and thus okay for me to mock you about your meat eating. If it's okay for Dawkins' to call all Christians "Delusional" than it's okay for me to say equally insulting things about meat eaters.

I don't want to go there. I've been a vegetarian for a decade and a half. During that time, I've never told someone else they shouldn't eat meat. I've never tried to convert someone. I don't want to be a radical in-your-face vegetarian, many of the PETA crowd take it way too far.

But at the same time, most meat eaters haven't a clue that they are constantly being radical in-your-face meat eaters, unintentionally insulting and affronting myself and my wife on an almost daily basis. Many a time has someone that knew I was a vegetarian said "you sure you don't want some of this? It's really good!" On more than one occasion people have tried to trick me into eating meat "for my own good", by lying about ingredients. While I've gone off on the second group, I contemptuously tolerate the first.

I've been a smug and silent self-righteous ass, telling myself I'm better than you, because I tolerate your carnivorous boorishness. I've been wallowing in my imagined glory for being above the crass tactics of the rest of society. All that silent contempt has been "justified" by my defining the line of what sort of criticism is proper and fair far to one side, when in reality, it's quite possibly far to the opposite end of the continuum. That dickish self-righteousness has got to stop. On the theoretical level, at least, I'd generally rather be honest than polite. As mentioned a few dozen posts ago, Integrity has negative connotations I'd never understood.

If I go there, it's like I'm declaring "open season" on all the crap I've been grudgingly tolerating, and by extension declaring "open season" on all my idiosyncracies that I wish people would just quietly tolerate. If I go there, I'll be in danger of becoming a militant vegetarian, and that's not gonna be much fun. I'm bitter and cynical enough as is, last thing I need is Carte Blanche to be a vocal asshole about 2 or 3 more topics than I already am.

On the other hand, I'm constantly pissed off about "minor" things that are part of everyday life, and I don't have an outlet to vent that anger. I suspect that bottled frustration is part of what gets me into flame wars on gaming forums and has me stubbornly defending positions that I don't really support in the comment threads of LHC posts. I'm bugged about one thing, and transferring that negative energy to other topics. That's not very healthy or honest.

It's time to think outside the box. I've got an anger management issue, and it's got a few possible solutions:

1. I could just start mocking everyone for everything, and take life a lot less seriously. From time to time, I'll still get upset, but when that happens I can try to diffuse it via humor.
   
2. I could focus on insulting instead of mocking, and just be a petty and hurtful dick. Honestly, scathing cynicism comes more naturally to me than humor does, so this may be the way to go.
   
3. I could ditch the internet entirely. My anger doesn't manifest in my personal life. I could gamble that the net is causing it, instead of being how I vent it off. There's a danger that this could result in me becoming abusive in-person, though, as I used to have temper issues as an adolescent. I'm not yet willing to take that risk.
   
4. I could seek serious psychiatric help. I don't feel that I need it, but maybe I'm in denial.
5. I could self-medicate. Next round's on me.
   
6. I could give up my principles, start eating meat again, learn to drive, support a binary political party, and become a born-again something-something-mainstream, in hopes that this would result in me feeling somehow less persecuted or frustrated.
7. I could go the opposite direction. I could intentionally become an animal-rescuing, arms-stockpiling, orgy-coordinating, treason-fomenting, religion-subverting, vegetable-worshiping, faith-healing, self-imagined messianic half-alien nutjob and establish a commune on an abandoned oil derrick and start producing my own postage stamps for the Sovereign Nation of Rolfelandia.
   
8. I could just delete this post instead of hitting the "publish" button, and forget I ever brought the subject up. That's probably the safest route.
9. I could go ahead and publish, then later delete this post and deny it ever existed, gaslighting anyone who ever called me on it. Naw, that's crazy talk. I'd never do that.
   
10. I could save this post as a draft, not publish it, and know there's a chance that Jake or X will one day stumble across it anyway. If they ever do so, then I can delete it and gaslight just them. That seems much more reasonable.
    

I'm probably gonna try "solution" number 1, and see where that goes. Wish me luck and/or mock me. I may or may not pretend I don't care, and/or mock you back.

this started as a comment on Higgs Bosons

When I started writing this, I was planning it to be a comment to Jake's most recent LHC post. But, it grew longer than should be in comments. Here goes:

I gotta say, the more I read about the LHC, the more ill-advised it seems.

If I understand correctly, it's expected to make tiny blackholes a few microns in diameter. Other possibilities are that it might (instead of, or in addition to, the blackholes) create strange matter, transformative strangelets, causality loops, traversable wormholes, monopoles, dark matter, dark energy, and that slow-motion plasma (that the RHIC unexpectedly created) that no one has adequately explained (last I heard, anyway).

These are no cause for alarm. In the case of the micro-blackholes (the thing that sounds the most alarming to a layperson), as they'll exist for just a couple seconds and only obliterate things within a micron of distance from them. So we are told.

Of course, we "know" they'll only exist for a few seconds because we theorize that they'll release Hawking Radiation and fade away. We suspect this happens all the time out in the universe, but we've never been able to observe it. Hawking radiation is theoretical, and more than likely unobservable.

The closest thing to a proof we have of this is just Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. If black holes don't release particles, then we'd be able to know the location and vector of a particle - it's in that tiny little black hole over there, sitting in the center with zero kinetic vector relative to the frame of reference of the earth. That just couldn't be the case, because we all know Heisenberg was right - it's one of the lynchpins upon which our current model of the universe rests.

Yet here's Hawking saying that the Higgs Boson, the other thing the LHC is expected to generate, probably won't show up. If it doesn't, it would mean that our current model of the universe is flawed. And that's Hawking's best guess - he expects we'll be surprised and learn that we've got some major flaws in our theories.

The same theories that assure us that micro blackholes, strangelets, monopoles, and causality loops won't actually do horrendous damage to the world this October. These men of science are taking an awful lot on faith - which seems kinda counter-intuitive to me, considering how many of them are atheists.

See where I'm going with this? I'm not saying "we're all gonna die". There's only a 1 in 50,000,000 chance of that. Considering that the odds of you dying in a lightning strike is 1 in 79,746 there's really nothing to worry about.

I'm just saying that this is a risk along the lines of that which Oppenheimer, etc, took back during WW2. There was some concern that The Bomb would ignite the atmosphere and roast us all, or that the blast would exceed power calculations and split the earth. But, you see, taking that risk was deemed justified. One word why: Nazis. The Germans were working on the bomb, and things would not have been pretty if they'd gotten it first. Splitting the earth in half or burning off the ionosphere is favorable to Hitler having nukes. Sure, in retrospect, the Nazi's weren't that close, and the bomb wasn't needed. But you can certainly justify risking the destruction of the earth in the 1940's mindset, or even the 1950's and 60's anti-communist mindset.

But let's be real. There ain't no chance that The Terrorists are going to invent micro-blackholes before the western world does. There's no chance that a guy in a cave is going to build a time-machine out of a rocket launcher and a dialysis machine. There's no chance that al-Quaeda is going to ram some hijacked planes into a sub-atomic particle, generating a strange-quark reaction that will turn the planet into a neutron star. So why the fuck are we trying to do this before they do?

The only black hole you'll ever find terrorists in is Gitmo.

The LHC is no doubt going to teach our species some things about subatomic physics. But it would be very dubious to suggest that those insights will solve global warming (or bring about world peace, reveal McCain to be the Antichrist, or even get us flying cars) in our lifetime. The only way it will benefit us in the short term is if it proves our models of the universe to be patently flawed - but if that's the case, then the very assurances that it's safe to do are cast in doubt.

So, if the practical benefits are not going to be realized in our lifetime anyway, why do we need to build it on earth in our lifetime? If we put that money and energy into getting off this rock, we'd have the ability to build our grandchildren a collider in deep space. They could assemble it outside the earth orbit, and have far less to worry about. Mars could have it's atmosphere burned off 30 years from now, and it wouldn't be all that great a loss to you or me.

I know, I know, I'm probably over-reacting. It's just a one in 50-million chance of anything going dangerously wrong. Gotta say, though, that if you gave me a button that had a one in 50-million chance of killing thousands, a one in 500-million chance of blowing up the planet, and an even smaller chance of that button ever producing a tangible benefit that will affect my life personally, I wouldn't push it.

'Cause you know the second you're done pushing it, Rod Serling is going to show up and give that button to some guy you've never even met before...

Extra! Extra! Denver Nuked By Boulder!

WTF? Watch this STUPID ad encouraging America to invade Iran:


I'm sorry, but "imagine Boulder shooting missiles at Denver" just isn't a good analogy. It'd be more like if Boulder sold missiles to radicals living within the Clement's Addition Historic District, who then used them on the rest of Denver. So, there's a chance that Boulder might develop an A-bomb... given that scenario, should Denver drop it's A-bomb on Boulder? Of course not, since an A-bomb in either city means radioactive fallout on the other.

To explore the analogy further, we'd have to add in another city - a city that sold Boulder the missiles in the first place, all through the 80's, and helped Boulder develop the technology to build it's own missiles. We'll call that city (just picking a city name at random, I swear...) Washington DC. So, Washington DC sells missiles and technology to Boulder, Boulder sells missiles to some jerks in the Clement's Addition Historic District, and those bastards in Clement's launch those missiles into Cherry Creek. Later, Boulder tries to build an A-bomb. Washington DC and Denver already have A-bombs. In the name of preserving Cherry Creek, should Washington DC drop it's A-bomb on Boulder?

Sorry, that cluttered the analogy too much... After all, Washington DC is in the same country as Denver and Boulder, and we all know the government would never target its own people *cough* *cough* *9/11 was an inside job* *cough* ... so let's clear up the analogy by using a different city... everyone always tells me that they hate the French. I don't, but it's been a long time since I caved to peer pressure, so I'm about due...

(Poor French - I love you, fryguys!)

So, let's say Paris traded missiles to Boulder in the 80s in exchange for hostages in an illegal violation of whatever the French equivalent of the Logan Act is so that some guy name duReagan could get elected mayor of Paris. (You still following my subtle metaphor? Good.) Mayor duReagan traded those missiles knowing full well that some number of them would end up in the hands of Clement's Addition Historic District extremists who would use them to attack Cherry Creek. He did all this despite the fact that Denver was a sister-city of Paris. What can I say? Mayor duReagan is one of those "let them eat cake" sorta guys.

20 years later, should Paris nuke Boulder? No - Boulder hasn't done anything that Paris wasn't knowingly complicit in. Paris should nuke no one! (or maybe just nuke itself)

You can't save Denver by nuking Boulder. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a sick hypocritical fuck named duBush.

You can't save Denver by invading Boulder, either - that'll just get a bunch of Parisians killed on top of all the dead Denverites. Even if Denver does the invading, it's doomed to fail - if they can't keep the peace in Clement's, they can't expect to do any better down the road in Boulder. The only reasonable solution is for Denver to get the hell out of the Clement's Addition Historic District and let that damn neighborhood run itself.

While they're at it, Denver ought to pay for some lovely neighborhood restoration and renovation projects as they leave. Maybe the folks in Clement's will be more inclined to overlook the fact that Cherry Creek pushed them around for the last couple decades if you build them a park, a shopping center, and a football stadium.

Halliburton involved in human trafficking

For just a second, that confused me. "What's the big deal?" I wondered. Isn't everyone who drives a car involved in human trafficking? I don't even drive a car, but sometimes I use a crosswalk, and that slows down traffic. :)

Then I realized, "Halliburton involved in human trafficking" is just a friendly way of saying "Halliburton = Slavery".

Thirteen Nepali men were recruited and held against their will for thirteen months in a human trafficking scheme engineered and perpetrated by Halliburton and its Jordanian contractor, according to a lawsuit filed yesterday in California federal court.

The Nepali men, each between the ages of 18 and 27, were allegedly hired as kitchen staff by the then-Halliburton subsidiary KBR and its Jordanian subcontractor, Daoud & Partners. Once they arrived in Jordan, however, their passports were seized and they were dispatched to Iraq.
...
Only one man survived. After he was released by Iraqi rebels, he said he was assigned to work as a loader/unloader in a US military warehouse facility supervised by KBR. He asserts that he was held for 15 months against his well [sic], before the firm finally allowed him to return home to Nepal.

Wow. Talk about your clusterfucks of a traffic jam. I've gotten home from work late before (due to bad traffic), but this is taking it to a new extreme.

That sort of thing ought to be illegal! Oh, wait, it is.

Crib notes for everyone out there who might not drawing the connection:

1. Slavery = Halliburton, (established above)
   
2. Halliburton = Cheney, (34 million $ Conflict of Interest)
   
3. Cheney = Bush, (Impeach the bastards!)
   
4. Bush = McCain. (Don't vote for Bush's 3rd Term!)
   

Thus, the transitive property suggests that McCain = Slavery. No big surprise there.

Tangential reminder: Halliburton / KBR have government contracts to build, maintain, and staff detainment camps in the US for use in the event of Martial Law. Sorta takes you back to Nazi Germany, doesn't it?

Martial Law has started

It may be just a random mayor overreacting. Or it may be a test case to see how it would go over on a larger scale.

Arkansas town imposes 'martial law' style lockdown
...
Mayor James Valley on Thursday called for a lockdown of the roughly 10-block neighborhood northwest of City Hall, in what was formerly West Helena.

No loitering. No walking the streets. "No hanging out."

On Thursday night, 18-20 police officers carrying M-16 rifles, shotguns and night-vision scopes saturated the "curfew zone" for 5&1/2 hours, arresting about eight people and confiscating drugs and loaded weapons, police said.

"It's something akin to martial law in that particular area," Valley said. "It got to the point where somebody was going to get seriously hurt or killed if we didn't do something."

In other words, no one had been shot. This violation of the 1st, 4th, and 14th Amendments is happening and the event that provoked it doesn't appear (via the source I read about it in, anyway) to have resulted in a single injury or death.

The lock down will be enforced 24 hours a day, according to the order, and all pedestrian and vehicle traffic will be subject to stop and investigation.

Moreover, the city's Code Enforcement Department will be issuing nuisance-abatement evictions for people living in the lock down area in any house where at least three previous criminal violations have occurred, the order said.

Would you think that dispersing criminals into other neighborhoods will help the situation? I'd think it would just make the problem spread.

Ronald Scott, the city's assistant police chief, said police are using common sense when dealing with pedestrians in the lock down area. If they are polite and have a good reason to be out or walking, then police will let them go. If they are suspicious or have "a smart mouth," they will be told to get inside, leave the area or be arrested, Scott said.

Watch this story closely. If FEMA gets involved, we'll know that the shit is about to hit the fan nationally.

How'd I miss this: Halliburton Detention Centers in the US?

I'm frankly quite surprised that I haven't heard about this previously. It's more than 2 years old, but it's downright disturbing. You'd think it would have been more widely reported.

What I'm talking about is an announcement of a $385 million dollar contract for Haliburton to build special prisons within the US. These prisons are not hold criminals, but instead for "immigration emergencies" and for use during "national emergency, such as a natural disaster".

Certainly, if there were a natural disaster that required the relocation of Americans, you wouldn't put them in a Detention Center. If "the big one" hit California today, we wouldn't put the survivors in prison, would we? You'd build a hospital for that, not a Detention Center. More likely, you'd just house them in a sports arena till things stabilized.

I can't imagine an immigration emergency so drastic as to justify this, either Even if you had a nuclear meltdown in Mexico or Canada, and millions of refugees fled across the border, you wouldn't house them in a Detention Center.

So, maybe it's just legislative pork. It's hard to tell from the press release if Halliburton actually built anything, or if the contract is just $385 million to plan for such contingencies. Perhaps we just paid them nearly 400 million to not actually do anything.

What could you use a Detention Center for? Imprisoning dissidents after declaring martial law? Rounding up the people who throw fits after you disclose that aliens are real and you've been lying for generations? It's hard to say.

I don't know how much prisons cost per prisoner. Is 385 million dollars enough to build a prison to hold 1,000 prisoners, or enough to build a prison that could hold 500,000 prisoners? Even if it's $50,000 per detainee, that'd make a facility big enough to hold 7,700 people. But if you're just packin' 'em in, with minimal comfort, it's a lot less per person...

A chill goes down my spine, as I remember that quote from Congressman Olver who said that Impeachment wasn't being pursued by himself and his fellow Democrats out of fear that Bush would declare martial law and suspend the 2008 elections. What had once sounded like crazy talk is now looking eerily plausible. Is this Halliburton Contract evidence that Bush and Cheney are planning something big?

I'm going to include the entire text of Halliburton's Press Release, so it'll always be available to anyone who wants to read it. There's no indications that the original will go away any time soon, but just to be safe...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 24, 2006

KBR AWARDED U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY CONTINGENCY SUPPORT PROJECT FOR EMERGENCY SUPPORT SERVICES

ARLINGTON, Virginia – KBR announced today that its Government and Infrastructure division has been awarded an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract to support the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities in the event of an emergency. KBR is the engineering and construction subsidiary of Halliburton (NYSE:HAL).

With a maximum total value of $385 million over a five-year term, consisting of a one-year based period and four one-year options, the competitively awarded contract will be executed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Fort Worth District. KBR held the previous ICE contract from 2000 through 2005.

“We are especially gratified to be awarded this contract because it builds on our extremely strong track record in the arena of emergency operations support,” said Bruce Stanski, executive vice president, KBR Government and Infrastructure. “We look forward to continuing the good work we have been doing to support our customer whenever and wherever we are needed.”

The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs. The contingency support contract provides for planning and, if required, initiation of specific engineering, construction and logistics support tasks to establish, operate and maintain one or more expansion facilities.

The contract may also provide migrant detention support to other U.S. Government organizations in the event of an immigration emergency, as well as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency, such as a natural disaster. In the event of a natural disaster, the contractor could be tasked with providing housing for ICE personnel performing law enforcement functions in support of relief efforts.

ICE was established in March 2003 as the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security. ICE is comprised of four integrated divisions that form a 21st century law enforcement agency with broad responsibilities for a number of key homeland security priorities.

KBR is a global engineering, construction, technology and services company. Whether designing an LNG facility, serving as a defense industry contractor, or providing small capital construction, KBR delivers world-class service and performance. KBR employs more than 60,000 people in 43 countries around the world.

Halliburton, founded in 1919, is one of the world's largest providers of products and services to the petroleum and energy industries. The company serves its customers with a broad range of products and services through its Energy Services Group and KBR. Visit the company's World Wide Web site at www.halliburton.com.

Here's that clip on the Olver quote, as a reminder:

Died and gone to ...where is this, exactly?

• Decorated astronaut admits US is in contact with aliens.
• Navy Prosecutor says Flight 93 was shot down.
• Congress moves ahead on Bush hearings, including Kucinich, Barr, and Bugliosi testifying.
• Plans for Wushu at the Firefly fanclub / coffeehouse tonight.
• My wife calls and says "They've got Wii's at the local Target, I'll pick one up on my way home!"

I've got a huge smile, but I've also got chest pains. Why can't I stop giggling? Am I dead, dying, and/or delusional? What region of the afterlife is this?

Congressmen vs Travel-Writers

I've done some follow-up research. My main source is this site about celebrity airplane crashes. I make no guarantees to the authenticity of said site, as until yesterday I didn't know it existed. They had no bias or agenda that I could spot, but I suspect they're based out of the US so regional celebrities from other parts of the world may be under-represented (I don't know).

Also, since their data is many pages, in paragraph form, and people don't fall in to comfy categories, there's a touch of subjectivity involved in this. I also didn't include 9/11, or any event that was clearly an admitted act of terrorism, since the point was to figure out whether or not the deaths of US Congressmen was an anomaly amongst non-intentional airplane crash statistics.

So, how many US Congressmen have died in plane crashes: 21. (Update: this is up to 22 as of Aug 2010.)

The total # of prominent US government officials to have died in plane crashes outside of war: 46
This breaks out as follows:

• # of US Representatives and Senators to have died in plane crashes: 21.
• # of Colonel-rank of higher military officials to have died in plane crashes outside of war: 11 (I think I included the famous spy plane pilot in this tally, despite not knowing his Rank, and obviously he was shot down intentionally, so a more accurate number may be 10 instead.)
  
• # of US Governors to have died in plane crashes: 4.
• # of former CIA Directors to have died in plane crashes: 1
• # of miscellaneous Government officials (cabinet members, state legislators, territorial legislators before Alaska became a state, etc) to have died in plane crashes: 9

Total # of foreign government officials to have died in plane crashes: 88
# of them from Israel, Pakistan or Afghanistan: 40
(note that these figures do not include the 34 aides to the President of Mozambique, as I was unable to determine what level of importance they held. By comparison, neither did I include any of the aides to US Senators in that section, above.)


# of Kennedy's to have died in plane crashes: 8.
(Plus, Teddy Kennedy narrowly survived a plane crash that killed 2 other passengers. Overall, members of the family have been in at least 6 different airplane crashes. You can learn more about The Kennedy Curse on wikipedia. In addition, one of the US Representatives who died in a plane crash had the last name Kennedy, but doesn't appear to be a close relative of the famous Kennedy clan.)

# of famous Actors and Directors (counting both screen and stage, domestic and foreign) to have died in plane crashes: 22.

# of famous Musicians (domestic and foreign, all genres) to have died in plane crashes: 57. (Like soccer teams, Musicians tend to crash in groups, though usually just 3 or 4 at time, not 20.)

# of corporate CEOs, Presidents, and CFOs (foreign and domestic both included, since most big companies are multinational) to have died in plane crashes: 18.

# of NASA employees to have died in plane or spacecraft crashes: 24.
# of famous non-NASA scientists or inventors to have died in plane or spacecraft crashes: 60 (46 of those 60 were from a single crash over the Ukraine, so, number of non-NASA scientists and inventors outside that one crash is only 14)

# of US Athletes and Coaches to have died in plane crashes: 135 (unfortunately, I was over half way done with my analysis before it occurred to me to seperate this into pro vs college. Obviously, there's a lot more college-level athletes than professional ones, and they tend to go down in groups. For example, one crash took out 43 Marshall University Football Players and Coaches. Anecdotally, it seemed like 80% or more of US Athlete deaths from aircrashes were at the college level, but I haven't run the numbers on that.)
# of foreign athletes to have died in plane crashes: 187 (more so than any other stat, this number is really subjective. Soccer teams go down in droves. There were cases of 14, 15, 17, 18, and 25 members of soccer teams dying at once, plus three unspecified "the entire team" entries that I counted as 20 people per team since I didn't have a more solid number)
# of professional race car drivers to have died in plane crashes: 10 (No other non-team sport had more than 3)

# of travel writers to have died in plane crashes: zero.
# of other authors to have died in plane crashes: 6. (I only counted people who are primarily known for being authors, not just anyone who wrote an autobiography.)

The autobiography / author point brings up some good issues of how hard it is to categorize people for the above purposes. For example:

Law professor Wesley J. Liebeler (71) and his flight instructor were killed when their plane crashed in Lake Winnipesaukee near Gilford, New Hampshire during a training flight. Liebeler served as counsel to the Warren Commission that investigated President John F. Kennedy's assassination.

Should I categorize Wes Liebeler as a 'famous Lawyer' (if so, 7 have died in plane crashes), as a Pilot (hundreds of those guys have died in plane crashes, including at least 29 'famous aviators'), or as someone within two degrees of separation from the JFK assassination (of which about 12 have died in plane crashes by my count)?

A similar conundrum exists for G. David Schine, who was an aid to Senator McCarthy, and a low ranking military man who died in a plane crash not related to war, and also executive producer of 1971's The French Connection. That's 3 categories he doesn't quite fit into.

And what about Michelle Clarke?

Clarke was the first black female anchorwoman on any network station in the U.S. As a child, her family was the first black family to move to Cicero, Illinois, sparking days of riots by whites, necessitating the call-up of the National Guard.

She died in the same plane crash that killed US Representative George Collins and Dorothy Hunt (wife of E. Howard Hunt, CIA operative and one of Nixon's "Plumbers"). This all seems somehow relevant to the discussion at hand, but doesn't fall neatly into any category from which I can extrapolate meaningful statistics (well, except Collins' death being 1 of 21 Congressmen).


# of members of Osama Bin Laden's personal family to have died in airplane crashes not related to 9/11: 2 (His father, Mohammed Bin Laden, died in a plane crash in the late 60s. Osama's older brother, Salem Bin Laden, died in a plane crash in 1988. What do you suppose was going through the man's head when he gave the orders to attack the US by crashing planes?)

I still intend to find out how the size of the various categories compare. For example, the number of Congressmen vs the number of major CEOs vs the number of Actors / Directors that died in plane crashes are very similar. But that similarity tells us nothing if we don't know how many people (who haven't died in plane crashes) fall into each of those groups.

(Eyeballing it: there's around 535 Congressmen at any given time. All the Fortune 500 companies have at least one person at the CEO/CFO/Chairman/President levels. My "Actor" category includes not just Hollywood actors and directors, but also broadway performers, foreign stars, etc. But that's all the energy I've got for this topic, at least for today.)

And (as was pointed out in the comments), we also need to know how often these people fly by small plane... solid data for which isn't readily available. So I don't think I'll ever end up with more certain numbers.

Naval Prosecutor: If they hadn't shot down the fourth plane...

via RAW, but they got it from Reuters, so the story is everywhere:

Hamdan's lawyer said in opening statements that the Yemeni, held for nearly seven years before his trial, was just a paid employee of the fugitive al Qaeda leader, a driver in the motor pool who never joined the militant group or plotted attacks on America.

But prosecutor Timothy Stone told the six-member jury of U.S. military officers who will decide Hamdan's guilt or innocence that Hamdan had inside knowledge of the 2001 attacks on the United States because he overheard a conversation between bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

"If they hadn't shot down the fourth plane it would've hit the dome," Stone, a Navy officer, said in his opening remarks.

You catch that?

Official Government Position (prior to today, anyway) - Flight 93 crashed in the countryside because: when the passengers rebelled and fought the terrorists, the terrorists crashed it rather than letting the plane come back under American control. By every version (of which there have been several), of the events of 9/11 that the government had previously released, this plane was not shot down, but instead crashed.
Officially, the airforce jets never reached any of the planes - despite over 100 successful airliner intercepts a year (it's standard procedure the moment a plane turns off it's transponder or veers more than 2 miles off it's flight plan. One hundred times a year it takes less than 10 minutes to intercept, with a track record of 100% success for decades. On 9/11 it took over an hour to scramble the jets, and they missed 4 out of 4 intercepts that day.)

A Popular Conspiracy Theory - For years now, various folks on the web have been saying the evidence suggests a different tale. That the black box recordings seem to indicate that passengers did indeed regain control, and that the plane was shot down by a military jet about 3 minutes later. Whether or not the chain of command knew the plane was out of terrorist hands at the time is a big issue of contention between various theorists.

Today: a Naval Officer (not just any officer, but one serving as prosecutor in the trial of Bin Laden's driver) said (in front of the judges) "If they hadn't shot down the fourth plane it would've hit the dome." Think about what that means.

His Superior Officer later told the press that the statement shouldn't be interpreted to mean anything more than that the accused thinks the US shot down Flight 93. If anyone can find a link to an exact transcript, please pass it on to me.