A psychic octopus???

Now I've heard everything! The BBC reports:

An octopus in a German aquarium who is said to be psychic has predicted the country's football team will knock England out of the World Cup.

When consulted, Paul the octopus chose a mussel from a jar with the German flag on it ahead of one in a similar jar bearing the cross of St George.

The two-year-old cephalopod has a record of predicting past German results in this manner, his owners say.

Paul has so far correctly predicted all of Germany's results in South Africa.

His keepers say he correctly predicted 80% of Germany's results during the 2008 European Championship.

. . .

The octopus, who was born in the UK and was moved to the German aquarium, has become a national celebrity after correctly predicting Germany would beat Australia in their opening match, then lose to Serbia, and then beat Ghana.

His latest prediction was flashed all over the German media.

The container that Paul opens first is said to be his pick for who will win the impending match, keepers say.

There's more at the link.

Here's a video report from Sky News, showing the octopus at work. It may be a bit slow to load, but your patience will be rewarded.

A psychic octopus? Perhaps it's time to update the historical tradition of psychic and occult symbols, and replace the pentacle with a tentacle!



Peter

Doofus Of The Day #365

Today's award goes to the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Having watched the oil gushing in the Gulf of Mexico, dairy farmer Frank Konkel has a hard time seeing how spilled milk can be labeled the same kind of environmental hazard.

But the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is classifying milk as oil because it contains a percentage of animal fat, which is a non-petroleum oil.

The Hesperia farmer and others would be required to develop and implement spill prevention plans for milk storage tanks. The rules are set to take effect in November, though that date might be pushed back.

. . .

Sen. Wayne Kuipers, R-Holland, [called] for the EPA to rescind its ruling.

"The federal Clean Water Act requirements were meant to protect the environment from petroleum-based oils, not milk," he said. "I think it is an example of federal government gone amuck."

But Gayle Miller, legislative director of Sierra Club Michigan Chapter, said agricultural pollution probably is the nation's most severe chronic problem when it comes to water pollution.

"Milk is wholesome in a child's body. It is devastating in a waterway," Miller said. "The fact that it's biodegradable is irrelevant if people die as a result of cryptosporidium, beaches close for E. coli and fish are killed."

. . .

In May, U.S. Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mount Clemens, introduced legislation, co-sponsored by Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Holland, that prohibits enforcement of the EPA's regulations on dairy and dairy product producers, processors, handlers and distributors.

"This is an example of where we have overreach by the department that defies common sense," said Matt Smego, legislative counsel for Michigan Farm Bureau.

Smego said its an unnecessary regulatory burden that creates additional costs. He said it could cost $2,500 for a certified engineer to safeguard milk, plus more to construct secondary containment structures.

. . .

This month the International Dairy Foods Association said it has learned the EPA will exempt the industry from the rule.

But [Michigan] state lawmakers say they won't let up until that is official.

There's more at the link. Bold print is my emphasis.

Ye Gods and little fishes! Milk classified as the equivalent of petroleum??? What's next? Will eggs be classified as biological weapons? (Well, old, rotten eggs may fit the definition, I guess . . . )





Peter

Blithering idiots, redux . . .

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the most recent pearl of wisdom to drop from the ass lips of a politician, following agreement between the House and Senate on a revised financial reform bill.

"It's a great moment. I'm proud to have been here," said a teary-eyed Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), who as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee led the effort in the Senate. "No one will know until this is actually in place how it works. But we believe we've done something that has been needed for a long time."

Verily, the mind doth boggle.

"No one will know until this is actually in place how it works."

Does this blithering idiot have any idea what he's saying? If you don't know how it works, Senator, why the hell are you voting for it??? Is it possible for a politician to be so unbelievably, colossally STUPID that he thinks this statement actually sounds like it came from a national leader, instead of a verbally incontinent imbecile?

It ranks with an earlier pronouncement by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi about health care reform legislation:

“You’ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other. ... But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy."

Where, oh, where do we get such leaders? Which demon inflicted them upon us? What did we do to deserve such punishment? I ask you with tears in my eyes . . .

I'm not picking on the Democratic Party, either, despite the fact that both of the politicians I've quoted are Democrats. The Republican Party has members just as obnoxious and incompetent. No, my despair is at the (lack of) quality of leadership in Washington in general. Senator Dodd and Speaker Pelosi are merely the most public examples of our failure to elect leaders, men and women of real quality, to the highest offices of public service.

Unless we can throw all the rascals out this November, irrespective of their political affiliation, and elect more competent servants of the people - preferably those with at least half a brain! - we're doomed.

Peter

It's positively gull-ing!

I'm amazed the cat let the bird get away with this . . . although considering their comparative sizes, it might have been an epic battle had the cat objected!

That bird's a cheeky one all right! Must have been gull and wormwood to the cat . . .





Peter

Craftsmanship on show

The 19th annual Woodenboat Show is to be held next weekend in Mystic Seaport, Connecticut. I hope any readers of this blog who live nearby will attend, and let us know how they found it in a comment to this post.




According to the Web site of the Mystic Seaport Museum:

Wooden boats of every type - large and small, old and new, power, sail, oar and paddle - will be on display including cruising yachts, launches, runabouts, fishing boats, performance powerboats, daysailers, dinghies, rowboats, canoes, performance shells, multihulls and racing boats.




In addition to beautiful boats in the water, visitors can enjoy browsing through tents and extensive land exhibits which include boatbuilders, sail makers, marine adhesive and coatings companies, boat schools and associations, maritime art and antiques, tools, wooden boat hardware, nautical gear, books and innovative items.

There's more at the link.

I wish I could be there! I've sailed many small craft in South Africa. Despite the strength, low cost, and durability of modern materials, there's a timeless beauty and grace to wooden boats. They're a lot more trouble to build to high standards, and require a lot more maintenance, but the reward for their owners is a watercraft of classical grace and beauty.




(Of course, one has to be well-heeled to enjoy them . . . a boat has been defined as 'a hole in the water into which one throws money', and even the word 'boat' is said to be an acronym for 'Bring Out Another Thousand'!)

Peter

A very lucky injury!

A British soldier, shot in the lower abdomen in combat in Afghanistan, owes his life to the injury he sustained. The Daily Mail reports:

Soldier Karl Mowatt will be forever grateful to the Taliban gunman who shot and almost killed him during a firefight in Afghanistan.

For the bullet lodged in his kidney, and when surgeons operated to save his life they discovered a potentially deadly cancerous tumour in the same place.

Had the tumour remained unnoticed and the cancer developed in his body Mr Mowatt, a battle-hardened Paratrooper, would almost certainly have died.

Now thanks to his brush with death he has fully recovered physically from his war wounds and is in remission from his cancer treatment too.

The father-of-two from Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, was seriously injured in 2006 when serving with the Parachute Regiment in Helmand Province.

He lost four pints of blood after the bullet hit him in the groin and entered his kidney.

As medics battled to save the soldier his heart stopped beating briefly. 'I flatlined, so technically I died,' said Mr Mowatt, who has now left the army.

Mr Mowatt was patched up and flown home in a military medical plane. He went straight into the operating theatre at Birmingham's Selly Oak Hospital where surgeons spotted the tumour while repairing his war wounds.

He said:'I feel so lucky, if I hadn't been shot they never would have spotted it. There is no doubt I would have been dead in my 30s - they said it was very aggressive.

'Not only was I shot but I was shot in the same place that I had the tumour. It's incredible that such a freak thing like that happened.'

But doctors had to wait nine months for his bullet-related injuries to heal before they could tackle the cancer, which was closely monitored.

He then lost part of his kidney, but the operation and radiotherapy treatment was successful.

. . .

As if to prove his recovery is complete he has become a martial arts instructor and is taking up competitive kickboxing.

There's more at the link.

Having suffered a couple of gunshot wounds myself, I can tell you from experience that they're no fun at all . . . but in Mr. Mowatt's case, the clouds definitely had a silver lining!

Peter

What's the wurst that could happen?

It seems that German white sausage, or Weisswurst, comes with its very own culturally prescribed rituals. The Austrian Times reports:

A gourmet guide showing how to eat traditional German sausages has become a worldwide hit after being translated into English and Japanese. Academic Dr Werner Siegert wrote the "Essential Weisswurst Etiquette Guide" to make sure the noble art of correctly eating the sausage did not die out. But the stuffy guide - dubbed the Sausage Noshers' Handbook by fans - has become a cult hit after selling out its print run in Germany. It shows fans how to prepare, cook and eat the rare white sausage and other gourmet bangers. Dr Siegert explained: "It's been such a success that it is now being translated into several languages."

Intrigued, I did a bit of searching for more information. Portuguese agency Photonews had this to say:

Dr. Werner Siegert, author of the "Essential Weisswurst Etiquette Guide" that treats everything around Bavaria’s specialty, the white sausage (Weisswurst), said: "The guide has been translated to English and Japanese. Actually, in Japan there is a butcher who was born in Ulm, Germany who every year at the time of the Oktoberfest sells white sausages there. In Neumarkt, Germany there is a white sausage academy, set up by butcher Witmann. There the guide is being used for teaching." He added: "Since the guide is advertised too little and Munich’s tavern keepers don’t want to sell it, sales are ok but not good."




The white sausage academy was established in 2006. You can get your own white sausage diploma there. The seminar lasts two to three hours, encompasses subjects [such] as "beer knowledge" and "mustard knowledge" and costs 50 GBP [about US $75] per person. In the seminar you get to know facts about the production of the white sausage but also about how to consume it in the right way because according to Siegert, quarrels about how to eat them in the right way are bound to arise as soon as two Bavarians are eating white sausages together.

There's more at the link.

Back in 2003, the Telegraph carried an article on the original German edition of the Weisswurst guide, which gives more detail about the controversial (?) subject.

Mr Siegert [pictured left], a business consultant, admits that the proper sucking technique requires practice if it is not to "disgust" those who are watching. However, he says, the customs and ritual surrounding weisswurst are an essential part of Germany's heritage and need to be preserved.

"The weisswurst is something special," he says, "and eating it is a unique experience that binds us together. A lot of Germans have lost track of the etiquette involved."

The success of Mr Siegert's 180-page book is testimony to the importance of the sausage in German life. Every self-respecting town and region has a sausage named in its honour, and there are regular legal clashes between sausage-makers as they attempt to copyright their recipes and stop rivals producing doppel-bangers.

No sausage is more steeped in tradition and respect than the weisswurst, produced since the 14th century in the Bavarian heartland of sausage-making, and originally made by peasant farmers with just enough land to keep a single milking cow. The meat from unwanted calves was ground up with salt and water, then packed into a bowel lining. The white colour of the veal gave the sausage its name.

Since then, pork fat and herbs have been added to the weisswurst to enhance its flavour, and it is now served with pride at state receptions and official functions.

It has become the most popular of Germany's hundreds of sausage varieties and a rich tradition has grown up around it - governing the time of day it should be eaten, which of 300 different types of bread it should be served with, and how it should be chewed and swallowed to extract the maximum flavour.

In Munich's White Stag restaurant last week, lunchers engaged in a heated debate on the way to eat the sausage. Karl-Heinz Mueller, a pensioner, argued that the sucking technique known as "zuzeln" was the only correct procedure, smacking his lips to make his point.

Across the table, however, Walter Koenig, a businessman, was using his cutlery first to slice, then to peel his Weisswurst. "This is the only way to do it," he insisted, reaching for a second helping.

Another technique involves slitting the Weisswurst open along one side before removing the skin in a single piece and either eating the sausage whole, with fingers, or cut into slices, with cutlery.

Mr Siegert, 72, who says his book is the culmination of 30 years' study of the weisswurst, has other stipulations for the perfect sausage experience. "It is essential to have three weisswurst in each serving, not two or four, and they should not be eaten after midday. This dates from when people didn't have a fridge and the sausages had to be consumed quickly before they went bad.

"Another issue is what to eat with your weisswurst: a strong mustard is as essential as a good red wine is to pasta. There also has to be pretzels and white beer."

He added: "Germans believe that how you eat your sausage reveals something about your personality. Many a friendship has come to an abrupt end after a carefully prepared weisswurst meal was ruined because of an ill-informed request for ketchup, sauerkraut or a glass of lemonade."

Again, there's more at the link.

There you are; more than you ever wanted to know about Weisswurst! Of course, its contents and the preparation process may be a little off-putting to some. As Bismarck is widely (though mistakenly) believed to have said, "To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making." Irrespective of attribution, whoever said it first was a wise man . . .

To misquote once more: "I'll be here all week. Try the veal sausage!"



Peter

So much for live reporting!

This reporter found out the hard way that demonstrating a technique to your audience can be . . . er . . . embarrassing (particularly when the editor saves the out-takes!).

On the other hand, he gets a gold star for persistence!



Peter

General McChrystal is gone, but the dilemma remains

I've written before about the dilemma facing the USA and its allies in Afghanistan (there are five separate links there). It's basically a conflict that cannot be won militarily. Countless invaders over the past several thousand years have tried to impose their will, and their culture, on the tribes of Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier. All have failed.

Max Hastings, a British war correspondent (one of the most experienced in the world), had this to say about today's dismissal by President Obama of General McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, following comments he made about the administration.

It is hard to overstate the seriousness of [General] McChrystal’s fall for Nato in Afghanistan, even though his successor General David Petraeus is an outstanding officer.

A leading British policy-maker told me yesterday: ‘This is a tragedy, a major setback for the West.’

McChrystal was the architect of the new, post-U.S. troop surge strategy for the country. He commanded immense respect, and was the only senior American to enjoy a good working relationship with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

What he has been trying to do represents the West’s last, best shot at stabilising the country.

The general’s outburst thrusts to front stage all the tensions, jealousies and rancour that poison allied command relationships.

In explaining the mess, we had better start with President Obama. He inherited the war from George Bush.

He has always been sceptical about whether it is winnable, and anguished for three months last year — to McChrystal’s now acknowledged fury — about whether to authorise reinforcements.

In the end, he agreed to send more men, because he feared the wrath of the American Right if he was seen to be the U.S. leader who ‘lost Afghanistan’.

But he imposed a tight timeframe, saying that U. S. troops would start to pull out in July 2011.

According to the soldiers, this was a huge mistake. It never looked likely that McChrystal’s forces could grip the country so quickly.

The consequence of the cut-off date is that everyone in Afghanistan, from President Hamid Karzai downwards, is looking past the Westerners’ shoulders to their own future after next year.

They see the American public increasingly war-weary and dismayed by the loss of more than a thousand of their own dead. Afghans may not like the Taliban, but they back winners.

They are reluctant to bet the ranch — or rather their own lives — on offering support to Western forces, when a couple of years from now the Taliban may be calling the shots in their valleys.

A British officer told me recently that when the history of the war is written, he thought that almost everything we did in Helmand between 2006 and last winter ‘will be described in the same breath as the Charge of The Light Brigade’.

He went on to suggest we are getting policy right and making some progress.

But even if this is true, the patience of the Western nations with Afghanistan is running out more quickly than an acceptable outcome is approaching.

. . .

Things get worse when we mention Pakistan. The chief reason for the Nato troop commitment next door is not to stop Al Qaeda attacks in the West — Osama Bin Laden has no significant presence there.

It is because Pakistan stands on the brink of implosion.

There are fears that if Afghanistan lapses into anarchy, Pakistan will tip over the edge.

But the tortured politics of Pakistan causes its leaders and soldiers to play a double game.

The powerful ISI intelligence branch of the army backs the Taliban.

The country’s leader, Asif Zardari, one of the most notoriously corrupt figures in the region, professes a willingness to work with the West to fight terrorism.

But U.S. intelligence sources say Zardari recently met some Taliban representatives and assured them of his goodwill.

The dominant Pakistani public mood is strongly anti-Western. Truly, helping Pakistan is tough for the West.

British and American soldiers in Afghanistan are doing their jobs as courageously and professionally as ever.

The two British generals there, Nick Parker and Nick Carter, are probably the best the Army has ever deployed. But many policy-makers are despondent.

An American military friend of mine emailed me this week: ‘If President Karzai would work even as hard as a single 2nd lieutenant, then I’d say we have a chance. But he won’t.

‘To build responsible governance would mean creating rivals for power, and he won’t allow that. It’s 1967 all over again, though the names have changed.’

. . .

The choice of Petraeus to succeed McChrystal means that the U.S. is dispatching the finest American soldier of his generation, until now McChrystal’s boss at Central Command in Florida, to restore shattered confidence in Kabul.

. . .

Petraeus is undoubtedly a cleverer man than McChrystal.

But it would be rash to assume that even he can overcome the huge problems in Afghanistan.

The damage to Western prestige from McChrystal’s fall remains immense.

All the policy-makers whom I respect say the only way forward in Afghanistan is to seek a political settlement that must include the Taliban.

Military victory is wholly unattainable.

There's more at the link. Highly recommended reading. Mr. Hastings knows whereof he speaks.

Let me repeat Mr. Hastings' last words in the extract above.

Military victory is wholly unattainable.

That's the plain and simple truth in Afghanistan. There is literally no way in which the USA can bring about military victory, forcing the enemy to lay down his arms. No previous invader or occupier of Afghanistan has ever been able to do so. Those that thought they had, found insurrection and rebellion breaking out afresh as soon as their backs were turned. We won't be able to do any better. It's just not going to happen.

That being the case . . . what's Plan B? If there isn't one, why not?

I hope and pray General Petraeus (for whom I have enormous respect, given his accomplishments in Iraq) and his staff can learn from history, and find a way through the labyrinth that confronts them (and us) in that tortured country. One thing's for sure - it won't be a purely military way. There isn't one. All of the history of Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier teaches us that. I wouldn't bet a brass farthing that the US can succeed where everyone from Alexander the Great, to the British Raj, to the might of the Soviet Union at its height, failed so miserably.

Peter

Doofus Of The Day #364

Today's award is shared between the National Pork Board and their legal representatives, Messrs. Faegre & Benson LLP. ThinkGeek gleefully informs us that those parties have sent them what they term 'Officially Our Best-Ever Cease And Desist'.

Recently we got the best-ever cease and desist letter. We're no stranger to the genre, so what could possibly make this one stand out from the rest?

First, it's 12 pages long and very well-researched (except on one point); it even includes screengrabs of the offending item from our site. And we know they're not messing around because they invested in the best and brightest legal minds.

But what makes this cease and desist so very, very special is that it's for a fake product we launched for April Fool's day.

. . .

... it was the Canned Unicorn Meat.




The very special but also very real letter is from the National Pork Board, who claims we're infringing on the slogan "The Other White Meat," a slogan they're apparently thinking about phasing out anyways.

Luckily, the Sisters at Radiant Farms, where the unicorns are nursed through old age before being slaughtered, canned, and brought to market at ThinkGeek, have nothing to worry about--this kind of use is protected as a parody. (We're hoping the NPB doesn't tell the Sisters that unicorns don't actually exist; it'd break their little sparkly hearts.)

. . .

We'd like to publicly apologize to the NPB for the confusion over unicorn and pork--and for their awkward extended pause on the phone after we had explained our unicorn meat doesn't actually exist. From our press release:

"It was never our intention to cause a national crisis and misguide American citizens regarding the differences between the pig and the unicorn," said Scott Kauffman, President and CEO of Geeknet. "In fact, ThinkGeek's canned unicorn meat is sparkly, a bit red, and not approved by any government entity."

. . .

Finally, thanks, National Pork Board, for giving us yet another reason to keep the April Fool's Day tradition alive. We'll always wonder if our Canned Unicorn Meat played some small, magical part in your rethinking of your brand.

There's more at the link, including a scanned page from the 'cease and desist' letter. Toooo funny!

I would dearly love to know who it was, whether at the National Pork Board or at Faegre & Benson, who read the ThinkGeek article and actually thought that unicorn meat really was being commercially marketed. Whoever he or she may be, I think there's going to be serious competition between Disney and Dreamworks to recruit him or her to write the script for their next fantasy movie!



Peter

Statist pigeons come home to roost

Time magazine's cover story for its issue of June 28, 2010, is headlined "The Broken States Of America". It's a very long article, which I highly recommend reading in full - in fact, it's too important not to read in full. Here are some (but not all) of the highlights.

From Hartford to Honolulu, once sturdy state governments are approaching the brink of fiscal calamity, as the crash of 2008 and its persistent aftermath have led to the reckoning of 2010. Squeezed by the end of federal stimulus money on one hand and desperate local governments on the other, states are facing the third straight year of staggering budget deficits, and the necessary cuts will cost jobs, limit services and touch the lives of millions of Americans. Government workers have been laid off in half the states plus Puerto Rico. Twenty-two states have instituted unpaid furloughs. At least 28 states have ordered across-the-board budget cuts, with many of them adding deeper cuts in targeted agencies. And massive shortfalls in public pension plans loom as well.

Almost no one — and no place — is exempt. Nearly everywhere, tax revenue plummeted as property values tanked, incomes dwindled and consumers stopped shopping. Falling prices for stocks and real estate have made mincemeat of often underfunded public pension plans. Unemployed workers have swelled the demand for welfare and Medicaid services. Governments that were frugal in the past are just squeaking by. Governments that were lavish in the good times, building their budgets on optimism and best-case scenarios, now risk being wrecked like a shantytown in an earthquake.

. . .

Many taxpayers might say that it's about time spending dropped. But then they start hearing the specifics. Government budgets contain a lot of fixed costs and herds of sacred cows. K-12 education absorbs nearly a third of all spending from state general funds. Add medical expenses, primarily Medicaid, and it's over half. Prisons must be maintained, colleges and universities kept open, interest on bonds and other loans paid. Real cuts provoke loud howls, and you can hear them rising in every corner of the country.

. . .

On the grand scale, this fiscal fiasco is playing out in California and New York. Both states boast economies far larger than that of Greece, which so disturbed the world economy this spring. And both are paralyzed by structural deficits far larger than their politicians seem able to grasp. The impasse in California between Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Democrats controlling the legislature appears set in concrete. Last year, the Golden State was reduced to issuing IOUs; this year's budget, some $19 billion in the hole, is once again a shambles. In New York, Democrats control all the levers, but they can't find a cost-cutting deal acceptable to the public-employee unions that helped elect them. The deficit in Albany is $9.2 billion.

. . .

... this unfolding economic disaster story is in fact a series of variations on a single theme. When times were good and the future seemed bulletproof, all sorts of grand ventures were floated on waves of debt. No one cared, because everyone planned to be richer when the bills came due. The arbitrageurs of leveraged derivatives, the cash-strapped subprime home buyers, the government grandees issuing bonds and boosting pensions — all were versions of the same doom-shadowed figure. Only if the bubble burst would the bills become unpayable. How did so many people forget all at once that the bubble always bursts?

. . .

Now larger issues and harder choices are being laid bare, beginning with the sprawling mess that is Medicaid. Created by Congress, administered by the states and paid for by a patchwork of federal, state and local governments, the health care system for America's poor is a jumble in the best of times. With enrollments growing rapidly, that jumble is becoming a train wreck.

. . .

What's going to give? Prepare for a free-for-all. The states are pressing Washington to maintain the emergency Medicaid supplement that was part of the stimulus package. So far, congressional moderates are blanching at the price tag. If the Beltway budget hawks win that battle, states plan to squeeze the patients, who are currently protected by strings attached to the stimulus money. No federal supplement means no more strings. Already various states are contemplating tighter eligibility rules, lower benefits, higher co-pays and other restrictions. And then there's the ongoing fight between the states and the medical system. Governments are wringing money from doctors and hospitals coming and going: first they are cutting payments for Medicaid services, and then they are raising fees on Medicaid providers.

Just as ugly is the issue of public-employee pay and benefits. The mess in New Jersey is just an extreme example of a widespread problem: many state and local governments have made the mistake of courting the votes of public employees by fattening salaries and benefits, all the time imagining that pension-fund investments could only go up. Tales of lavish retirements for relatively youthful public servants have been making a lot of headlines lately. The New York Times reported that some 3,700 retired New York State public employees earn more than $100,000 a year in pension payments, including a former policeman in Yonkers at the ripe old age of 47. California's pension poster boy is a Bay Area fire chief who, at 51, was collecting more than $241,000 a year in retirement pay. The Pew Center on the States, a nonpartisan research group, estimates that states are at least $1 trillion short of what it will take to keep their retirement promises to public workers. Two Chicago-area professors recently calculated the shortfall at $3 trillion. According to Pew, half the states ran fully funded pension plans in 2000, but by 2008 that number had dwindled to four.

It's tough to cut the benefits of police officers, firefighters and schoolteachers. But the long recession has cast a glaring light on the fact that public and private workers increasingly live in separate economies. Private-sector employees face frequent job turnover, relentless downsizing, stagnant wages and rising health-insurance premiums. They fund their own retirement through 401(k)s and similar plans, which rise and fall with the tides of the economy. Many public-sector workers, by contrast, enjoy relative job security, and the number of government jobs rose even as the overall unemployment rate shot just past 10%.

. . .

In sun-drenched San Diego ... a grand jury probing that city's troubled finances found a recurring practice of skipping required payments to the city's pension fund while simultaneously awarding ever more generous pensions to public employees. Legal? Apparently. Prudent? Nope. A once solvent system is now billions of dollars in the red. The grand jury raised a scarier question: Is San Diego still a "viable" financial entity?

Indeed, the B word has crept into so many conversations in communities around the country that a number of investors are worried that municipal bonds have become the latest debt-fueled bubble ready to burst. California's public-employee unions are lobbying for a bill to ban government bankruptcies entirely, so worried are they about the possibility of widespread defaults to escape pension obligations. Perhaps more worrisome, though, is the risk that all this calamity will ultimately produce little in the way of lessons learned.

There's much more at the link. Essential reading, IMHO.

What Time magazine doesn't say, but what is only too evident from the article, is that this entire mess is the result of a single policy, or trend, or political vision: statism. There are many definitions of this ideology, but they all boil down to the belief that the state is greater than the sum of its parts (i.e. the people); that the people exist to serve the interests (and pay the bills) of the state; and that the people can (and should) rely on the state to look after them, to safeguard their interests, as a quid pro quo for their support.

Unfortunately, that vision has degenerated into a cesspit of political corruption. State benefits and handouts have become nothing more or less than a bribe, a tool wielded by corrupt politicians to favor particular interest and pressure groups, paying for their votes with the taxes of others. The interests of political parties have been elevated to a higher position, a greater perceived value, than the interests of the state and/or the citizen, until incumbent politicians so confuse them as to render them indistinguishable. They'll do anything, use the resources of the state and/or exploit the people in any way possible, to advance their political agenda, whether or not it's in the interest of the state or the people to do so. After all, they reason, what's good for our party / our incumbents / me personally (pick any or all that apply) is what's good for the state and the people! They've come to believe that lie so completely that they're sometimes genuinely astonished that not everyone agrees with them.

The real losers in all of this are the sober, reliable, solid citizens of the state. They pay their taxes (often at exorbitant rates); they obey the laws; they try to 'do unto others as they would be done by'; and their elected politicians, more often than not, laugh at their naïvety as they screw them again and again and again, politically speaking (and sometimes physically too).

Statism is a mug's game. To rely on any human institution to act in loco parentis to us is foolish in the extreme. The only answer that has worked throughout all of human history has been for citizens to take responsibility for their own actions, and demand that their leaders do the same, and if necessary to rise up and throw out the leaders who've been trying to avoid doing so. As long as we permit our government - local, state or national - to get away with fiscally suicidal policies, particularly taking more and more money from contributors to society and disbursing it to leeches, those who are nothing more than drains on society, we are basically abdicating our responsibility.

It's long gone time that we demanded our governments exercise fiscal responsibility: spend no more than they take in; restrict taxation to what's necessary to fund essential government functions; cut bloated expenditure (particularly in areas where years of spending has failed to produce any measurable improvement, such as many education programs); and eliminate service conditions and privileges for state employees that are not available to or enjoyed by those in the private sector (who are, let's remember, the productive citizens paying the salaries of state employees in the first place!). If they'd done so for the past few years, there would be no, repeat, no budget crisis whatsoever in our states. We - and they - would be solvent.

Fundamentally, the mess in which our state governments find themselves is our fault, for failing to do our duty as responsible citizens and abdicating that responsibility to statist politicians. We've let them get away with the fiscal equivalent of murder for far too long . . . and boy, are we paying for it right now!

Peter

It's all HIS fault!

Courtesy of member jfreak at the TradeMe forums, I came across this wonderful song by Helene Austin about childbirth, and who's to blame for it.

LANGUAGE ALERT: There are some rather rude words here and there. Not safe for work at high volume - and perhaps not safe for sensitive male egos, either!

Further down in the same thread, member countrycollie added a link to Ms. Austin's take on PMS, set to Mozart's 'Eine Kleine Nachtmusik'.

Great stuff!





Peter

Doofus Of The Day #363

Today's winner comes from Washington DC. A tip o' the hat to reader P. M. H. who e-mailed me with a link to the story.

A Southeast Washington man who accidentally shot himself during a rape attempt has been sentenced to 12 years in prison, U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. said Monday in a statement.

Prosecutors said Jonathan Newman, 23, snuck up behind a woman who was talking on a mobile phone outside her Shaw neighborhood apartment building on a late night in June, 2009. He pointed a revolver to her temple and forced her inside, authorities said.

As Newton struggled to restrain the woman, he shot himself in the arm and fled, prosecutors said.

Newton was convicted on rape, robbery and gun charges.

A wannabe rapist who shoots himself? Let's hear it for Mr. Newton - and may many others follow his example!



Peter

Horsewhip her!

I'm really angry - no, I'm furious! - to read of a British author's plans to 'sex up' the story of Anne Frank. The Telegraph reports:

A British novelist has angered the family of Anne Frank with a “sexed-up” imagining of her time in hiding from the Nazis.

The teenager documented her experiences during the German occupation of the Netherlands during the Second World War before her death in Bergen Belsen concentration camp aged 15.

Now Sharon Dogar, who specialises in novels for teenagers, has written a book of fictional diaries of Peter van Pels, Anne's close friend who lived in the same building while she was hiding in Amsterdam.

The diaries, which are to be published in the autumn, include graphic accounts of Peter’s desire for Anne and intimate scenes between the two, according to The Sunday Times.

The book has been criticised by Buddy Elias, Anne’s first cousin, who chairs a charity devoted to her memory. The 84-year-old, who lives in Switzerland, used to play with his cousin when they were youngsters.

He said he learnt a lot about her and Peter from Anne’s father Otto, who survived the war and had the diaries published in 1947. Otto died in 1980.

Elias has read an advance copy of Annexed, named after the annexe of the office building where the Frank and van Pels families lived in hiding.

“Anne was not the child she is in this book,” he said. “I also do not think that their terrible destiny should be used to invent some fictitious story.”

“From what Otto told me about Peter, he was very shy but in this book he is given a character he did not possess,” he said.

Anne, who wrote her diary from the summer of 1942, when she had just turned 13, until August 1944, died in Belsen of typhus in March 1945 after being transferred there from Auschwitz.

There's more at the link.

I think this is absolutely sickening! Anne Frank is not just another historical figure. She's become an icon of the Holocaust, and rightly so. To treat her as someone to be exploited for the sake of making money off teenagers who want everything 'sexed up' . . . well, I'd call it sacrilege, except that Anne Frank herself would have been the first to laugh at the thought she was divine!

Patrick, blogging at Popehat, has his own twist on this news.

I’ve always thought that the one thing The Diary of Anne Frank lacks is a handsome romantic lead. Ideally, in Dogar’s reimagining, Peter Van Pels will turn out to be a vampire, a Jewish vampire, born at the time of Christ. In fact, Peter, before his claiming for the children of darkness, will have had had a smoldering love affair with Judas Iscariot 2000 years ago. Long passages in the new diary will tell of Peter’s rapturous love with the doomed Judas, who is misunderstood. In fact, Judas, a handsome, brooding presence looming over all of The Diary of Anne Frank, due to his forbidden love with Mary Magdalene, attempted to buy off Christ’s executioners with thirty pieces of silver. And so, before claiming Anne himself for a life of tragic but ever blossoming immortality, Peter explains to Anne that the entire Holocaust is founded on a lie. The Jews, of whom Peter’s mortal lover Judas was the chief, attempted to save Christ from the wicked Pontius Pilate, and have been persecuted ever since. Especially dark, magnetic, tender yet murderous Jews like Peter Van Pels and his new bride of darkness, Anne Frank, who leave Amsterdam reborn, for Berlin. There, the two lovers brush aside the SS and the Wehrmacht, to seize the mad Adolf Hitler. Before draining every drop of Hitler’s life essence, in the sight of his sultry mistress Eva Braun, the vampires Frank and Van Pels inform him of their immortal lives and loves, and that his entire career has been a mistake. Hitler, drained of the precious blood but denied the vampire’s gift of an immortal unlife of eternal desire, dies in an ecstasy of the blood haze, crying, “Forgive me!” Then the two damned lovers, Van Pels and Frank, escape to a ship bound for Buenos Aires, and then to New York, where they haunt the nightclubs and the dinner parties of the high and the beautiful in an eternal unlife of longing and lust.

That’s exactly what Anne Frank needs.

But I’m not the man to write it. Nor for that matter is Sharon Dogar the woman to write it. Anne Frank has had enough. She was forced into hiding, murdered before her time, and transformed from a human being into a symbol. Now she’s been transformed into a piece of postmodern teen masturbation fantasy.

Again, there's more at the link.

In the old days, notorious offenders against morality might be horsewhipped down the lanes of England in a public display of scorn and contempt. Frankly (you should pardon the pun), I think we should bring back that custom, with Ms. Dogar as the guest of honor!





Peter

What if a 'vegetative state' isn't?

The Economist reports that doctors are finding ways to communicate with those thought to be in an irreversible coma or 'vegetative state'.

Over the past four years, teams led by Adrian Owen at the Medical Research Council’s Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, and Steven Laureys of the Coma Science Group at the University of Liège, have scanned 23 vegetative patients between them. Four were able to respond to yes-no questions correctly and consistently by following instructions to imagine playing tennis when they wanted to give one response, or walking round the house when they wanted to give the other.

. . .

If they are responsive, they are capable of communicating. So the problem is how to facilitate this, given that it is not practical to put them in a scanner every time someone wants to ask them a question. Damian Cruse of the Cambridge group thinks he may have found a solution in electroencephalography (EEG), a cheaper and more portable way of measuring brain activity via electrodes pasted to the patient’s scalp.

Dr Cruse and his colleagues first asked six healthy volunteers to imagine either squeezing their right hand or wiggling the toes of both feet when they were presented with an audible tone. They found that their volunteers’ brains’ responses to the two commands were clearly different. The imagined hand-squeezing produced a response on the left-hand side of the brain, while the toe-wiggling produced one over the centre of the head.

They then applied the same procedure to a patient with “locked-in” syndrome—conscious but almost entirely paralysed—who retains some control of his eye movements. His brain responses were the same as those in the healthy controls. Finally, they gave the instructions to a patient who had been diagnosed as being vegetative two years earlier. They found that, from the EEG signals alone, they could deduce which movement this patient had been instructed to imagine with 100% accuracy.

This result, though preliminary, suggests it might be possible to establish some sort of dialogue with people who had previously been considered all but brain-dead. That would be extraordinary. Given that solitary confinement is one of the harshest punishments known, and that such people are condemned to the worst sort of solitary imaginable, it would also be wonderful.

There's more at the link.

As a pastor, more than once I had to help families with loved ones in such a condition. It's heartbreaking for all concerned, particularly if decisions have to be made as to whether or not to continue life support. Hopefully this new approach can help in at least some such cases.

Peter

The funniest protest sign in Russia?

I'm highly amused to read of a protest mounted by a group of artists in St. Petersburg, Russia.

In a piece of cutting political commentary, a group of artists have protested about heightened security in the Russian city of St. Petersburg by drawing a giant 220ft-long penis on the Liteiny Bridge.

The massive penis was created by the radical art collective Voina, or War, who painted the organ on the bridge to highlight the security measures that will be put in place when St. Petersburg hosts the International Economic Forum from June 17.

Measuring 65 metres (220 ft) long and 27 metres across, the big penis rises and glistens in the light whenever the bridge is raised to let ships pass beneath, framed against a backdrop of the imposing architecture of the former capital city of the Russian Empire.

'We have painted a giant phallus to show what the FSB and Interior Ministry are doing in terms of security for the forum,' Voina said in a statement. The FSB is Russia's main internal security agency, the successor to the KGB - and when the bridge is raised, the now-erect penis stands right beside its local headquarters.

There's more at the link. I can't very well post a picture of the bridge, as it's not exactly safe for work: but if you want to see it, click here.

I have to hand it to the artists. Not content with giving the police the finger, they're pricking their conscience as well!



Peter

Bigger eyes for Big Brother?

Back in June 2008 I wrote about imaging radar, and asked whether it was about to 'come of age' as a serious tool for all sorts of applications. Two years on, the answer seems to be a resounding 'Yes!'. It was announced today that developers have handed over the first Multi-Platform Radar Technology Insertion Program (MP-RTIP) radar sensor for integration on the Northrop-Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk Block 40 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). This sensor will be used by NATO for its Alliance Ground Surveillance program.

The remarkable thing about this sensor is not only the level of detail it provides, but the fact that it does so with no optical input whatsoever. In the images you'll see below, there were no cameras or lenses used. The only source for the image data was radar pulses and returns. These can operate through night, fog, cloud, rain . . . you name it, you can see through it. This promises to give forces equipped with this technology a whole new level of ability to monitor and control the battlefield and areas all around it.

As an example, here's the small town of Johannesburg, California, as captured by the MP-RTIP radar sensor aboard the Proteus test aircraft from an altitude of over 40,000 feet. (Click this and other images for a larger view.)




It's worth remembering that this is a relatively small sensor, measuring only 1.5' x 4'. The radar is designed to be scalable, adaptable to sensor sizes as large as 2' x 24' for use aboard aircraft such as an upgraded version of the E-8 Joint STARS or an electronic command and control version of the P-8 Poseidon (or, for that matter, aircraft yet to be developed). Naturally, the larger the sensor, the more power can be used and the greater the detail that can be captured.

The MP-RTIP sensor aboard the Proteus testbed aircraft

Northrop-Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk Block 40 prototype.
(Note housing for MP-RTIP radar sensor below fuselage.)

The level of detail that can be obtained using even the small MP-RTIP sensor is classified information, but what's been 'leaked' so far seems to indicate a spectacular level of performance. For example, in the photograph below, it's claimed that USAF interpreters can see the stop signs at the crossroads. I can't, not in the image as provided, even when I click on it to enlarge it; which suggests to me that the image was deliberately degraded in quality before it was released, so as not to give away too much information.




I spoke to a friend who's been involved with NASA's experiments in synthetic aperture radar mapping. (He was one of those working with the shuttle mission that radar-mapped the entire Earth's surface back in the late 1990's, to an average accuracy of 1.5 meters horizontally and vertically.) He told me frankly that the level of technology they'd used back then was already so outdated that it would probably never fly again. Modern antennae and digital signal processing had progressed by 'several generations' since that time.

As an example, he provided these two images of the Okmok volcano in Alaska, taken in November 2001 by NASA's AIRSAR project. This involved synthetic aperture radar aboard a Douglas DC-8 aircraft, flying at an altitude of 8 kilometers over terrain, at a speed of 215 meters per second. (That sort of precision was needed back then, to calibrate the radar returns.)






The images above were taken with mid-1990's synthetic aperture radar technology. Compare them to this 2007 image of an extinct volcano in Southern California, taken by the (much smaller) MP-RTIP sensor aboard the Proteus aircraft. (Again, bear in mind that this image has probably been deliberately degraded so as not to give away the maximum precision capability of the instrument.) Click on the image to enlarge it, and get a better idea of the level of detail it provides.




Of course, these images only show the terrain mapping abilities of the sensor. It also has moving target indication capability, where it can monitor targets large and small as they move across the terrain. I asked my friend what would be the approximate performance of such a sensor under battlefield conditions. He smiled, and said, "Think about detecting and monitoring in real time a file of troops walking along a mountainside . . . from fifty miles away and 60,000 feet up!"

That's pretty remarkable by anyone's standards. The MP-RTIP sensor is about to go operational, but it's only the latest in a growing flood of new sensors and computers to assess and evaluate their signals. Just as those 2001 NASA images of Oktok volcano look dated already, so by 2020 we may look back at these MP-RTIP images and smile at how primitive they were! The technology is also being adapted to maritime surveillance. Not only will it track normal shipping; it should be able to detect small targets (such as a Somali pirate crew aboard a fishing dhow, or even a submarine's periscope) from hundreds of miles away.

Of even greater interest are the aircraft that will carry these sensors. For example, the US Army has just awarded Northrop Grumman a contract to build three prototype Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) airships. The LEMV will use hybrid airship technology, incorporating both an aerodynamic body to provide some lift and lighter-than-air gases.

Artist's impression of Northrop Grumman LEMV hybrid airship

According to Aviation Week's ARES blog:

Operating unmanned, the LEMV is intended to stay on station at 20,000ft for 21 days and providing 16kW of power to a 2,500lb payload of video, radar and sigint sensors.

Such an aircraft, equipped with a larger version of the MP-RTIP sensor and downlinks to intelligence analysts on the ground, might give a whole new meaning to 'battlefield surveillance' in countries like Afghanistan, where enemies have no anti-aircraft weaponry that can threaten it. The first LEMV prototype is to be developed and tested within 18 months, after which it's to be 'dispatched to the Middle East for testing'. You know, by late 2011 it might become a lot more uncomfortable to be a Taliban foot-soldier . . .

Peter

Liquid Mountaineering???

The makers of Hi-Tec sports shoes decided to create an advertising campaign around a non-existent sport, which they proceeded to invent. The advertisement aroused so much amusement and comment that they were forced to produce a 'making of' video, showing how they'd done it. Here's the advertisement, followed by the 'making of' feature.

It's certainly different! Well done to the creative minds who thought it up.

Peter

Sort-of-flying machines?

I note with glee that the Ukraine hosted the latest round of the Red Bull Flugtag competition last weekend. The aim of the event is for teams to build a flying machine (or, at least, something bearing a vague resemblance to one), and to compete by jumping off a ramp into a river or harbor, to see which creation 'flies' the furthest. Here's the advertisement provided by Red Bull to publicize the event.

There were some weird and wonderful creations this year. Here's a small selection from the photographs provided by Starcasm.net .










There are many more pictures at the link. Looks like a lot of fun was had by all.

Peter

Comparative religion, outhouse style

I was amused to find this list on the New Zealand TradeMe forum. I thought you might enjoy it too.

Taoism: Sh*t happens, go with the flow.
Hare Krishna: Sh*t happens Rama Rama Ding Ding.
Hinduism: This sh*t has happened before.
Islam: Sh*t happening is the will of Allah.
Zen: What is the sound of sh*t happening?
Existentialism: Sh*t doesn't happen; sh*t is.
Buddhism: When sh*t happens, is it really sh*t?
Confucianism: Confucius says, "Sh*t happens".
7th day Adventist: Sh*t happens on Saturdays.
Protestantism: Sh*t won't happen if you work harder.
Catholicism: If sh*t happens, you deserved it.
Jehovah's Witnesses: No sh*t happens until Armageddon, and it won't happen to us.
Unitarian: What is this sh*t?
Mormon: Sh*t happens again & again & again.
Judaism: Why does this sh*t always happen to us?
Pentecostalism: Praise the Lord! There is no sh*t!
New Age: Sh*t happens and it happens to smell good if you open your heart to it.
Rastafarianism: Let's smoke this sh*t.

Well, back in my seminary days I studied fundamental theology, Biblical theology, systematic theology, dogmatic theology, and a bunch of other theological branches. I guess this could be referred to as toilet theology . . . or is it a branch of liberation theology? And if one gets uptight about it, is one theologically constipated?





Peter