Penguins Take Over the World!
Robo Penguins Invade the World! here Okay, well maybe that would be a bit of hyperbole. But it's still an interesting article in Der Spiegel about how the increasingly tiny electronics are allowing scientists to put all manner of transmitters and cameras on penguins, whales, seals, dolphins and anything else they have a mind to. With this ability they forsee the day when they can manage and understand all wildlife.

Bower Birds on Nova
Now Playing: NOVA
I love Bower Birds. I especially love Bower Birds when they are presented by David Attenbourough as my wondering eyes do see right now on this episode of NOVA - "Flying Casanovas", Episode #2818. A tribute to the determination and will of tiny little guys in their herculean efforts to attract that lady they desire.

Romeo and Juliet Psychosis
You know, I really do read the New York Times but I missed this article and caught it while reading The Volokh Conspiracy here and it's about the very real psychosis of love. An excellent article dealing with the brain chemistry of love. It's nothing that we don't already know about but it's always nice to get that scientific confirmation of the reality we are aware of. Watching New Love As It Sears the Brain
"New love can look for all the world like mental illness, a blend of mania, dementia and obsession that cuts people off from friends and family and prompts out-of-character behavior - compulsive phone calling, serenades, yelling from rooftops - that could almost be mistaken for psychosis."

The French Vote No -
Topic: Politics
I was holding my breath on this one. The polls have said for weeks that the No side was winning in the vote for the European Union Constitution. Basically the french voters told President Jacques Chirac to take his European Union Constitution and shove it where the foie gras don't shine. The French people voted this way for a number of reasons not least of which was the fear of foreigners and having those foreigners take what few jobs Frenchmen still had. High unemployment, the threat of erosion to their social service system, the inability of the government to actually do anything about it all contributed to the vote going the way it went. The result is good for the United States because it keeps the French and Germans from bringing their antiamerican foreign policy desires to the whole of Europe. I've said it before and I'll say it again, a united Europe is a rival to the United States when the United States doesn't need the extra grief. The Germans and the French were only to happy to try to sell the Chinese advanced military equipment that will eventually be used against the United States and only the fact that our 'allies' weren't standing behind a single Europe entity was the United States able to pressure those sales off the table. Countries will follow their own interests and ideas and for France and Germany, those interests do not see a threat from China. This is the thinking that allows them to happily sell all manner of military equipment to the Chinese. As countries that survived and thrived under the security umbrella paid for and manned by the United States they now believe they know better than the United States. The fact that the French people and shortly the people of the Netherlands have and will reject this European Constitution is good news for peace in the world.

Pentium D and accompanying 945g chipset-To Never Buy
Topic: Law
DRM on an intel chip, the information just hit Slashdot today. The article discussing it is here. It has 'Active Management Technology which according to the article "...will allow administrators to remotely enable, disable or format or configure individual drives and reload operating systems and software from remote locations, again independent of operating systems." Yah right. When certain imaginary nether areas housing the evil and bad people to be punished freezes over will be the time I buy something like that. A shame too, I've always trusted Intel chips and now I'll not buy another one.

Nuclear Explosions
Now Playing: The Chris Pirillo Show


I have been deprived of my sport - two promised nuclear events and neither one transpired.
For half a year I've been watching the FOX television series 24 and watched as Kiefer
Sutherland's Jack Bauer chased the nuclear weapon stealing terrorists from episode to
episode with the growing tension and likelihood of the terrorists being successful and at the
same time there was the US Senates' tension and increasing likelihood of their own 'nuclear
option being carried out the filibuster and the odd Judge. Neither explosion happened, in
both cases and at the last minute lame anticlimatic answers were found. Bah. In the
television series you have to suspend your disbelief in order to enjoy the exposition. I mean
you know, it's alright that with me that every time a terrorist was surrounded he wasn't
'really' surrounded very well and somehow managed to escape. It's fine with me that the one
guy who might provide them with evidence about the nuclear weapon is only worth two
agents who race out undermanned and underprepared. No problem. I can deal with it. Just a
simple story where the guy who saves the planet is going to be given over to the Chinese for
some show trial and imprisonment as if the exploded nuclear cruise missile didn't happen. It
was good and fun. No complaints.
Now the other 'Nuclear threat' by the various members of the Senate is another matter. It's
the grand Machiavellian story with many of the lines hidden and the ones that are out to be
seen aren't as they seem. Cool stuff. It was a battle by Frist over his future ambitions, it was
a battle over the present and future power of President Bush, it was a struggle for power by Senator Reid, the leader of the Democrats. It was a battle of the list of potential Presidential

candidates and those who didn't fight in this battle are notable in their silence. A battle
Royale, like an Jedi battle in Star Wars, fought with their minds absent the cool sparkly blue
lightning effects.

Big Kamikaze winner/loser of this battle is Senator John McCain. His efforts basically
jabbed a thumb in the eye of the President and his party. Any hope that he might have had
in getting through the primaries past the active right wing active of the party died a noisy
death with this agreement. The Republicans feel that the knife was shoved hard and deep in
their backs and you know those elephants have long memories. There aren't enough open
primaries for McCain to run in to get past the virulent hatred he will now face. He's gone
unless he's picked up as a member of the Democratic ticket and that'll never happen.
McCain has basically further signaled that he doesn't give a crap any longer. Senator Hagel
has played it too cute by half by staying out of this fight and there is no way he's waltzing
into the primaries saying he was really a stand up kind of Republican through the whole fight
even though nobody saw or heard of him through the battle. Liberman, like McCain doesn't
give a flip any longer. If anything he's trying to polish up his paragraph in the history books. The rest of the group of unidentifiable senators as far as the Replicans are concerned, are seen as traitors and rightly so. That group handed the victory for the minority party and made the upcoming Supreme Court Justice fight all that more bitter and lengthy.

As for the President I think you can safely assume you will never hear him discussing the use of his fictional mandate and 'political capital' since those are long gone and last seen riding away with his Social Security plan. But still, the original blood chess game. It's all good and all interesting. Not as interesting as the possible story lines for next year's 24 but still, pretty darn good.

Happy Days
Now Playing: Tony Kornheiser - Sportstalk 980
Topic: Mysteries of Life
Some days just get better and better. Today I found Tony Kornheiser on the Internet. I remember when the foul and evil ESPN took him off the radio and replaced him with some blathering idiot which marked the last time I listened to ESPN radio in any form. The wit, the sarcasm, the world weary cynicism, the sheer crankiness of the orange dude was somehow comforting and assuring to me. First heard him while listening in the DC area. Sportstalk in it's most intelligent and interesting form. Then I was happy to see him go to the emerging ESPN radio even though they changed his time but still I could find him. It's really the small pleasures in life and he was one of those. I don't know, it faded, I thought he wouldn't do anymore radio and stopped looking. Then of course today I finally figured out how to use FeedDemon to get the TWIT broadcasts. Woo hoo. I tell you, it's always wonderful when stuff works. TWIT being the podcast by the guys from the good Tech TV which was taken off the air by the evil G4 crap monsters. (I think there is a theme here)

I said to myself, humm, Leo Laporte has a radio show podcast. Let's find that. I found that show, downloaded the show via FeedDemon and was happily listening to something smart and interesting and then thought about Tony Kornheiser. Started what I thought was a fruitless Google search to see if I could find a podcast from him. I mean, he's hip, he's happening, it could happen. Well, then I found that he was on XM Radio (which means I have to seriously think about getting XM damn it) and then a bit more googling and there he is on Sportstalk 980 here and I'm listening to his show right now. He's talking about some boring sports stuff and then there is the interesting discussion about the chimps eating some guys face. I mean really now, that's what I'm here for. The good stuff. Woo hoo.

Videos on MTV????
Now Playing: Eurovision 2004 Kiev
Topic: Music
Watching a video for NIN, The Hand That Feeds on MTV of all places. I didn't know that they ever had any videos on that channel. I'm pretty sure that the programing there consists of variations on the 'throw hot and sexy kids together and see who screws and see who fights' reality crap shows along with videos of black singers dressed as pimps or gangsters while scantily clad women do variations of pole and lap dances. Yup, about ten minutes of commercials followed the video by the Killers and the video by NIN. But hey, it's MTV so the commercials were only for 'cool' things like ring tones and anti smoking commercials. A veritable crapfest.

Anyways, the NIN video was good, minimal, blue scan lined and edgy in that artfully done raw look that takes a bit of work to arrive at. The important thing, the song, was good. A good NIN song that is a good sign for Reznor and gang. The Fragile, his last double album was a bit uneven and some of the works were admittedly unlistenable. This album is better.

The stuff I'm listening to is the European Idol stuff. Except it came first and is less of a freak show as I understand it. Eurovision Song ContestTatu came from this contest and I love Tatu. Basically it's artists from each country competing. A lot of it sounds like Abba clones. I'm thinking of Angelica Agurbash who I'm listening to now. I don't mean that in a bad way. It's a European style of music that is distinctive enough to notice. Marian van de Wal sounds melodious of voice as well. All in all the music is upbeat and fun to listen to. I give it a three out of five based on my incomplete listening of the work so far. And really, that's far more attention than most folks give when reviewing a CD.

Oh wow, MTV has actually put a Green Day video on now. And now the Gwen Stefani video, complete with lap dancing skank whore cheerleaders as well as the regular kind. That makes four videos in a half hour. It must be a new record for that Network.

Triumph Of Our Communities
Now Playing: Bernadette Peters - Live at Carnegie Hall
Topic: Art and Poetry
"Triumph of our communities" is a ASU's publication on Chicano art which is linked here and includes a profile on my own brother as a prominent artist in the Chicano art community. A wonderful artist and an active member of his community in Colorado.

Military positioning for China Conflict
Topic: Politics
Looking at the long awaited base closings list I see that there isn't much in the way of major bases being closed. That's good news for the military in many respects and it seemed to me that any list that did in fact try to close major bases in major states would have been the end of any power President Bush hoped to wield in his final years as President. The death by a thousand cuts endured by every President combined with the ill advised attempt at Social Security reform had taken any power he had over his Senators and House Republicans. It's every man for himself out there and trying to close any big base in the state of any two Republican Senators would have been complete suicide. However there is one political hit on the list, the Base in South Dakota, big old Strategic Air Command base Ellis must go. Sort of a delayed punishment for the sins of ex Democratic Senator Tom Dachele. I mean really, you folks in South Dakota elected him many times and now here is your reward. The memories of Republicans are long. Republicans aren't represented by an elephant for nothing.

The other base closing that caught my interest is the one in Connecticut. True enough it's in a Democratic State with Senator Dodd and Senator Lieberman who have no influence with the Republicans and of course will be punished for their allegiance to the Democratic Party but it's also a sign that the military threat assessments are coming in line with the emerging reality from Asia. China is the threat now and redirecting forces from the Atlantic to the Pacific is critical to the chances of threat containment. I heard that some of the assets currently at the Groton Base will likely transfer to Guam and that is good news. Peace through strength isn't just a snappy saying, it's true as can be. The better our forces are prepared and arrayed in the Pacific the less chance the Chinese will calculate that they can achieve their Pacific ambitions without consequences. And again, like many would be threats the Chinese assess their chances based upon their ability to complete their goals before the US can react thus leaving the US and her allies with a fait accompli to be dealt with. The theory goes that if the US is faced with a invasion instead of a defense that the military cost would be too high and the US would grudgingly accept the new reality. Thus were the dreams of the old Soviet Union with regards to Europe and thus are the dreams of Red China with their Taiwan dreams.

On the Run
Now Playing: TaTu - Russian Music Videos
Topic: Physical Well Being
Ah indeed. Thank you Naproxen. Naproxen and Nutrigrain bars to get me through the day. Said to hell with it and ran a mile then thirty minutes cardio on a bike. The kind of bike with the sensors in the handles so I could keep my heart rate way up there. After the run Blood Pressure as 129/84 with a 106 Pulse. After the thirty plus minutes pounding hard on the bike (over 160 heart rate the whole time and mostly about 170- I really was pounding it hard) it was 122/79 with a 123 Pulse. It was nice, I walked into the gym and a woman smiled and said "There you are, we were just talking about you and how we hadn't seen you in a while." Well goodness, didn't know I was missed and I told her I appreciated her worrying about me. Very nice indeed.

Nuking Iran - Say Hello to My Little Friend
Now Playing: Pink Floyd - Best Of
Topic: Politics
An article at World Net Daily here discusses the possibility of a pre-emptive strike against Iran coming closer to reality. It's sort of a self evident future event that some folks will chatter in alarm about after it happens. The reasoning remains the same as when Israel attacked Iraq over the same issue. Nuclear facilities coming online which will be used to help create nuclear weapons combined with a semi irrational leadership that has expressed the desire many a time that it would be very nice indeed to vaporize Israel. In this sort of a situation there is very little chance that Israel would stand by and let themselves be vaporized. So while the UN talks and the Europeans talk the state of Israel makes plans. The article goes into a bit of detail with attack strategies and possible fallout to such an attack.

"Project Daniel: Israel's Strategic Future," is a discussion by Israel over their strategy with regard to a nuclear Iran. Of note to my eyes is a strategic discussion of a 'mutual assured destruction' philosophy in the event that they cannot stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Basically this requires that they are able to retain a second strike capability in the event of a nuclear attack by Iran. What I find interesting is like the US MAD strategy it involves targeting population centers which proved effective in deterring any attack to date. The interesting part to me is that they specifically exclude 'religious sites' in any such discussion.

To me, the idea of Mutual Assured Destruction is that of total devastation. I would specifically put those holy sites on the target list, tell Iran and everybody else that we are nuked you better believe everything you love and value as holy will be gone. In fact, and this is my opinion, the United States should likewise have a policy to include Islamic Holy sites as targets in the event we are nuked by terrorists. We should state that any use of any nuclear device will be assumed to be state sponsored and we will react accordingly in a complete and devastating fashion. They already believe the United States to be the devil and so it would behoove us to build on that belief. Any other type of response or promise of a response would be a weakness that they believe they can exploit. The times that we have been attacked there has been a perception that we were either too weak to respond, unwilling to respond effectively or unable to respond at all. There was no response to the Beirut barracks bombing, no response to the attack on the Cole, no response to embassy attacks. The attacks just kept coming. After 9-11 those sort of international attacks stopped because we responded. The attacks in Iraq are attacks of opportunity and while those attacks wouldn't have happened if we were not in Iraq other attacks would happen elsewhere.

Of course, I do not think in any way Iraq was the proper place to respond and that's another issue.

California Pizza Kitchen -Comes Through
Now Playing: Pink Floyd - Best Of
Topic: Physical Well Being




Sitting on the beach, a sunny and happy day and my cell rings once again. It's the regional manager for California Pizza Kitchen with a few kind words for me. Being a busy guy I didn't quite hook up with him for a few days. An apology for the bit of bother I had from the previously mentioned tasty pizza. I maybe eat a third of one of these good servings and take the rest home for the next day so I had the bag and the pizza for the picture. And thanks to the kind fellow I don't have to file a complaint with the health people. Food occasionally might go bad a bit, which is understandable but being treated badly by a manager is never acceptable. So I did get an apology and so less bother for me. You know, it's all about refrigerating the mayo I think.

All those US Catholics upset over the New Pope -NOT
ABC/Washington Post Poll If you were to believe the news reports bemoaning the selection of conservative Pope Benedict XVI then American Catholics were up in arms and disturbed with yet another Catholic Pope. You know, the kind who believes in the Catholic Faith and all it stands for? Well that kind, not the one the liberal media/intelligentsia wanted. You know that guy -a pro abortion/pro birth control/pro divorce sort of guy. Well, the first poll I've seen has come out. And horror of horrors - the new Pope is only supported by 81% of responding Catholics. Trying to spin it in its worse possible light, they do point out that only a 'quarter' of those responding were 'very enthusiastic' - 27 % is their number which according the mathematical crowd over there is a 'quarter' This probably won't make the top of the news but at least they didn't bury it completely. Just goes to show that people can think for themselves despite the media reeducation attempts.

The call of Doom
Now Playing: Hall and Oates - Hits, Chieko Kawabe - Brilliance
Topic: Mysteries of Life
I'm fighting the desire to turn Doom III on and go looking for more shambling zombies and roaring pinkies to dispatch. The game is better than I thought it would be and more addictive. My own fault actually, whenever there is a clamoring noise extolling the virtues of this product or that person I automatically refuse to be baited or drawn in. I remember the first Doom game and how 'great' that was. Boring and headache inducing.

The television blurts out to me as I surf through the channels that there are only three Everybody Loves Raymond left before it's gone for good. Another blindingly inane mess that I've not seen one minute of. Somehow I'll find the strength to go on when it leaves network TV and lives forever in syndication.

The NBA Basketball playoffs have finally begun. I think the season began a year or two ago. Who knows. I flip over for a second or three to listen to the pregame show for Miami Heat vs New Jersey Nets. Scotty Pipen says he thinks the Heat with Shaq will easily win the first game. The next guy over who I don't recognize says the same thing, a brief knowing smirky smile pass between him and Pippen. The anchor fellow is about to fall on his sword for the network and predict that he thinks the Nets will actually win this one and surprise everyone. A attempt to hold onto a audience with a valiant effort.

Don't know if I mentioned that I had gone to see Sin City. First of all - 10 Dollars?! Holy bejesus. I almost walked away from that one. Anyways. Very bloody and very violent. Rory from Gilmore Girls is one of the prostitutes which was startling. Three stories tied together in a loose fashion. Not terrible. Prepare for severed heads, Pez dispenser heads, limbs hacked off, cannibalism, child molesting, torture and boobies of course. Great boobies then again aren't most boobies great.

And if you can't see the forest for the trees.