I just discovered a really funny, and kinda disturbing, website, done up to look like a news site. It's a little like The Onion, except narrower, geekier, and perhaps a little creepier. Good art. Very professional, and well worth reading for myriad laughs.
CORUSCANT — Obi-Wan Kenobi, the mastermind of some of the most devastating attacks on the Galactic Empire and the most hunted man in the galaxy, was killed in a firefight with Imperial forces near Alderaan, Darth Vader announced on Sunday.
In a late-night appearance in the East Room of the Imperial Palace, Lord Vader declared that “justice has been done” as he disclosed that agents of the Imperial Army and stormtroopers of the 501st Legion had finally cornered Kenobi, one of the leaders of the Jedi rebellion, who had eluded the Empire for nearly two decades. Imperial officials said Kenobi resisted and was cut down by Lord Vader's own lightsaber. He was later dumped out of an airlock.
...
Lord Vader has denied requests to present photographs of the body, describing them as "too gruesome" for the general public.
As you can see, it puts an interesting reflection on the recent death of Bin Laden. It's a little eerie just how easy it is to picture the Empire spinning Kenobi's death till it looks just like the recent news in our own world. And the site goes on from there making further parallels, going so far as to host several pages of fake/in-character comments from the public about Imperial politics, Vader's birth certificate, the lack of body, the various Star Wars tragedies being an inside job, etc. Really funny.
Analysis finds holes in US Iran story: US may have pretended to know about facility
WASHINGTON (IPS) – The story line that dominated media coverage of the second Iranian uranium enrichment facility last week was the official assertion that U.S. intelligence had caught Iran trying to conceal a “secret” nuclear facility.
But an analysis of the transcript of that briefing by senior administration officials that was the sole basis for the news stories and other evidence reveals damaging admissions, conflicts with the facts and unanswered questions that undermine its credibility.
The article goes on to explain that while Obama and the rest of the U.S. Government claimed to have caught Iran secretly setting up a nuke factory, the truth is they didn't know what the building was until after Iran contacted the International Atomic Energy Agency and officially announced to the world what the facility was. So, it's not that we caught them sneaking around. They snook around, yes, but then they came clean about it, before our intelligence services knew what it was. But we'll still claim we caught them with their hands in the atomic cookie jar, and start building up towards war. A claim that all the major papers and networks trumpeted.
Noam Chomsky is right. The major media lies through it's teeth to support the status quo and extend our power abroad.
*Sigh*
I so desperately want to like President Obama. He said all the right things prior to the election... but now he's acting more and more like Bush. I thought he was going to change things, so I voted for him. Instead, we get more saber-rattling, plus caving on public healthcare, and maintaining unconstitutional rendition policies. A year ago he was saying he'd talk unconditionally with Iran, now he's yelling "gotcha" at them instead. WTF Obama!? You have the power to fix our country - please don't squander that by repeating the mistakes of the 8-years of tyranny that went before you.
So very sad.
The fact of the matter is, we can no longer control who has nukes. It's been dubious ever since the fall of the USSR. The technology is on the net. Enriching uranium is difficult and dangerous, but not so difficult that we can keep it from happening all over the world, not with 100% accuracy. All it takes is screwing up once, and millions die. So, attempting to stomp on every nation who tries to build nukes isn't a winning strategy. It's a doomed strategy, that will eventually lose in a big way. The only winning strategy is to reduce peoples desire to nuke us. The only way to do that is to restructure the power in the U.S. and the World. It's time for the rich to start giving it away to the poor, and for the U.S. to start making restitutions to all the places we've bombed, invaded and robbed, and to the places our allies did the same to while we looked the other way.
A friend of mine recently sent me an email that included this statement:
Just remember, conspiracy theories are easy because no one wants to believe that any part of life is random. Sometimes, it really isn't a conspiracy. I usually apply the theory that humans suck at keeping secrets, so if it would require a lot of people to keep the secret, it's probably not true.
I figure the response I send him is a strong enough point to be worth my sharing it with everyone... In short, the theory that "if it would require a lot of people to keep the secret, it's probably not true" is extremely dubious.
One of my favorite examples is the Stealth Aircraft Program. The stealth program was revealed to the world in 1988, at a press conference with fuzzy photos. However, the F117 Nighthawk had been flying missions for 7 years at that point, and construction of the first stealth plane started in 1976. The secret facility that manufactured the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber had 13,000 employees for many years prior to it's disclosure. Estimates of the cost per plane run between 737 million to 2.1 BILLION dollars. Per plane. Around twenty B-2s (and some number of F117s) were made in the 80s, so that's a pretty big chunk of the US military budget being kept completely mum.
A minimum of 13,000 people kept that particular secret for 7-10 years. They would have kept it longer if the pentagon hadn't decided that telling the world "we can bomb you and you'll never see it coming" was a potent strategy for deterring the Soviets. That establishes a precedent. Large numbers of people can keep a secret, as long as the stakes are high enough and the advantage to playing along outweighs the advantage of leaking info. Yes, people can get rich by leaking the plot of an upcoming movie - but leaking high-level military secrets gets you killed or arrested.
Remember, that happened during the 80s, when we feared the Commies about half as much as we fear the terrorists today. What kind of secrets are thousands of Americans keeping quiet about today "for the good of the nation"?
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.
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.
Russia may start regular flights by long-range bombers to Cuba in response to US plans to build missile defence sites in Eastern Europe, the newspaper Izvestia reported Monday, quoting an official. [and brought to my attention by RAW]
"Such discussions exist," the unidentified senior Russian air force official was quoted as saying, adding that the measure would be a response to the United States "deploying missile defence systems in Poland and the Czech Republic."
Since he'd already gone back and reopened one of his daddies unfinished wars, Dubya just figures starting a new Cold War would be a humdinger of a closing number.
But why stop there? We could revisit the Cuban Missile Crisis, maybe even WWII. He likes dubyas, after all.
Last week, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned Moscow would take countermeasures against US plans to build an anti-missile radar facility in the Czech Republic and site interceptor missiles in Poland.
Russia argues that the installations threaten its national security despite US assurances that they are directed against "rogue states" like Iran.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a sweeping ban on handguns in the nation's capital violated the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
...
At issue in District of Columbia v. Heller was whether Washington's ban violated the right to "keep and bear arms" by preventing individuals -- as opposed to state militias -- from having guns in their homes.
"Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security and where gun violence is a serious problem," Scalia wrote. "That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct."
Had this same article come out 8 or 12 years ago, I'd have been vocal about my feelings that the court was making our streets more dangerous. I always considered the 2nd Amendment the least important part of the bill of rights - that it was a big deal in the age of Muskets and King George, but in the 80's and 90's it only served to make our streets less safe.
Had it come out a year ago, I'd have been a bit uncertain what to think of it, and not vocalized anything to anyone about it.
Today, my view is 180 degrees what it used to be. With a President who jokes about how he wants to be dictator, while holding people in indefinite detainment - and with a Congress that gives him and his chronies at the telecoms retroactive immunity from prosecution, and fails to pass the Impeachment Articles up to Senate - I'm looking at the 2nd Amendment in a new light.
Violence is never the answer, but perhaps an armed citizenry isn't such a bad thing in these queer days where a US congressman has stated his fear that the administration may declare martial law and cancel the election. Myself, I would only engage in civil disobedience and peaceful protest. Just the same, I find myself feeling greater empathy than ever before for those who believe we are all safer with the right to bear arms.
I'm still not sure having a pistol in your home honestly makes you any safer from tyrants or burglars, but I'm glad the Supreme Court took a stand to uphold the Constitution.
The real meaning of "wanted for questioning" has been exposed:
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A U.S. missile strike in southern Somalia on Monday targeted a man wanted by the FBI, according to a senior U.S. official.
...
It is unclear whether Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan was killed when a U.S. submarine fired a tomahawk missile at the target, the official said Tuesday.
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The FBI wants Nabhan, 28, for questioning in the 2002 suicide bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel and the unsuccessful attack on an Israeli charter jet in Mombasa, Kenya.
So, a foreign national, while in Kenya, attacks Kenyans and Israelis, and it's deemed a proper response for the US to launch missiles into Somalia? A person from another country attacks citizens of a third country while in a fourth country, so we shoot missiles at a 5th country to solve this situation? Talk about stacking your wrongs until they equal a right.
What's more, a Tomahawk missile is rated as being accurate to within 10 meters. Which means the smallest warhead they'd consider putting on it has to have a kill zone of at least 10 meters in radius - so at a minimum it's potentially lethal to someone 60 feet away from the target, even if using the weakest possible hypothetical warhead, and not any of the tac-nuke or carpet-bombing submunitions that a Tomahawk can carry. Standard armament is 1,000 lbs of explosives. And you launch the damn thing from a ship miles away. I ask you to name all the terrorists in this case - I'm pretty sure there's American soldiers and politicians on that list.
WTF happened to this nation? Launching missiles into a country we're not at war with should require congressional approval.
Here's something amusing a friend in the medical field sent me once:
So a few days ago we were talking about "E codes" (codes describing how a person has died). Here's what I found
E845 Accidents involving spacecraft
E928.0 Prolonged stay in weightless environment
These two are are bonus codes I found these interesting because on is specifically for "acts of war".
E926.0 Death by Laser
E997.0 Death by Laser during Wartime.
I too find it interesting that the World Health Organization decided the ICD-9-CM needed a code for "Death by Laser during Wartime". The pentagon would have us think this doesn't come up too often. Perhaps they were just planning ahead? I wonder if they have a e-code for "Death by overly-aggressive Aliens administering Anal Probes repeatedly during Wartime." That'd be a statistic you'd wanna track, and find out whether or not the public was at risk.
Anyhow, my wife just started a blog to document and relate her experiences as a medical coder. She invited me to post there as well, though I doubt I'll really have a lot to share that's on-topic. I posted the above "e-codes" quote there, 'cause it was something I could actually "help" with, so-to-speak. Since I don't know yet how professional she intends the blog to be, I left off the bit about anal probes.
I know that a variety of geeks and medical professionals frequent repeated expletives, so I told her I'd link over there from here. She doesn't have a whole lot of content on the site just yet, but she's a very clever lady and will no doubt have many amusing anecdotes in the coming weeks.
TV Nation segment relevant to our co-mingled talks of "anarchy vs governing bodies in the Hobbsian Jungle" and "northern european cultures that are secretly more sexualized than generally acknowledged". The message is: Caning made Britain great.
Despite the insistence of two close friends and something claiming to be a "news" site, I don't think this is true. Or, if it is true, that's not an actual picture of the item. Note the purple glares on the hand-grips - that looks to be the telltale signs of a levels alteration in photoshop.
I mean, if you really were custom-producing purple "hello kitty" assault rifles, you wouldn't doctor a photo of a normal AK47 (AKM? AK74? AK108? I can't tell them apart even when they aren't purple) to advertise - you'd use an actual photo of your finished product. ...Still, it's kinda cute.
Do people who buy assault rifles typically seek cute? Do people who want Helly Kitty merchandise also buy a lot of guns? Seems like a niche-product that undermines the strength of your brand. I wonder what Seth Godin would say about this thing?
So, she did in fact bring me a present from California, but it was a good deal. For far less than the amount she'd considered spending on a Samurai Sword, she got me two different swords (one I didn't have), two lances, a battle axe, two shields and a pretty cool-looking flail! It also had two horses, one of which was a necromanticly-enchanted skeletal horse. Talking about it that way, I'm amazed it all fit in her luggage. Now, I do have one tiny question about Lego Castle set # 7009: The Final Joust. What is lego trying to communicate via this set? I've looked over their website, and I get the distinct opinion that the knights and undead are separate factions, apparently engaged in war with one another. Yet the little railing between the jousters implies this is a festive tournament, not a battle. Is this intended to represent the last social joust before the war started? Has lego assumed kids can't tell contests from battle, renn-fests from warfare? Perhaps their war involves very stratified codes of honor and allows for personal duels between generals to settle entire campaigns with a minimum of collateral damage? I wouldn't expect of of this from undead, but that may just be my own bigoted assumptions about skeletons and necromancers.
Whatever the answer is, I think this little set is pretty cool gift. Far better than Donald Duck's Katana.
