Monthly Archives: May 2004

Chernoybl MotoPhotoBlog Had No Moto?

According to Boing Boing, channeling Neil Gaman (!), the MotoPhotoBlog I linked to a while back is semi-fraudulent. The pictures may be real, but the story isn't:

I am sorry to report that much of Elena's story is not true. She did not travel around the zone by herself on a motorcycle. Motorcycles are banned in the zone, as is wandering around alone, without an escort from the zone administration. She made one trip there with her husband and a friend. They traveled in a Chornobyl car that picked them up in Kyiv.

Snookered me.

Posted in Science/Medicine | Comments Off on Chernoybl MotoPhotoBlog Had No Moto?

I’ve Switched to Creative Commons 2.0

I've switched the license for this blog to version 2.0 of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License, as indicated by this nice gif:

somerights20.gif

Creative Commons offers a discussion of the differences between version 1.0 and 2.0.

Posted in Discourse.net, Law: Copyright and DMCA | Comments Off on I’ve Switched to Creative Commons 2.0

Thoughts on the 2004 Presidential Election (3 Scenarios In Which Bush Wins)

Despite his low and shrinking standing in the polls, there are at least three1 scenarios in which GW Bush could still win his first Presidential election.

But first, the good news.

It's been obvious for some time that if the election is based on any of the traditional fundamentals, Bush is toast. The big question mark counterbalancing this fact was Bush's apparent financial advantage (not to mention the subsidies that always flow with incumbency), especially if it allowed him to define his opponent. The relative failure of the recent $50+ million Bush ad campaign — leaving the field open for Kerry to use the convention in the traditional way, as his introduction to the American people — suggests that Bush's (diminishing) financial advantage is primarily good for stemming the wounds, holding the base, not for making gains with the independent/undecided.

Importantly, a segment of the press (only part — the big cable networks remain solidly owned by zealots) and a much larger segment of the Establishment have decided that Bush is dangerous to the increasingly Argentinian economy, to the US's hard power (the army is hurting), and now to its soft power (whatever claim it had to moral standing in the community of nations). That is not an atmosphere that leads to the press Gore-ing Kerry, and Kerry's too disciplined and experienced to make a serious error likely.

Indeed, one thing that impresses me about Kerry is his political discipline and toughness. He stayed the course in Iowa, when the pundits and the futures market had written him off. He laid low this last six weeks, raising vast — impressively vast — amounts of money, when the chattering classes were out there pushing him to do or say silly things. He had the self-discipline to lay low, let events take their course, let Bush self-destruct, and not look like he was piling on. Most importantly, his campaign seems to have learned important lessons from the Gore campaign — and not just the dangers of letting your opponents define you: Kerry has been playing nice with reporters on his campaign plane, spending social time with them; this matters too much. Kerry's new plane has an airborne reporters' bar — this can only be good. Most importantly, the campaign is working for the long haul, and worried about peaking too soon, right after the convention. That was one of Gore's mistakes, one that people forget—in part because his decline was so visibly helped by the media echo chamber's repeat of lies and distortions such as “Al Gore said he invented the Internet”..

OK, now the bad news.

Here are three scenarios in which Bush pulls it out.

Continue reading

Posted in Politics: US: 2004 Election | 6 Comments

Why Are We Shuffling Commanders in Iraq?

The blogosphere is buzzing about the news that Gen. Sanchez is being relieved of command in Iraq, but not getting the plum reassignment and promotion that he was expecting, apparently because giving him another star would require Congressional approval. That's usually a formality, but in his case might lead to actual hearings.

But something else about the story caught my eye:

At the same time, other officials noted that Sanchez has served in Iraq for just over a year and that Army and Marine Corps division commanders all have rotated out of the country during that time.

Why are we rotating commanders? Are they incompetent? If not, is this back to the Vietnam era where everyone wants a turn as commander in order to get their ticket punched for promotion? And are the people ordering these rotations the same people who were just a few days ago explaining that Rumsfeld shouldn't resign because it's so important to have continuity in leadership during wartime?

Posted in National Security | 1 Comment

Lack of Training? Or Surplus of It?

Talkleft describes an atrocity:

TalkLeft: Teaching Prisoner Abuse A US soldier “sustained a traumatic brain injury that left him with a seizure disorder. Military records confirm that his injury “was due to soldier playing role as a detainee who was uncooperative.”

TalkLeft asks the obvious — but very serious — question:

A “training” exercise implies teaching and supervision. Who supervised the senseless beating of a soldier? And what, exactly, was being taught?

Just a few bad apples? If only.

Posted in Iraq Atrocities | Comments Off on Lack of Training? Or Surplus of It?

Best Buy Quite Probably the Worst Store in the USA

It seems I am not the only person around who thinks that Best Buy is Evil.

Posted in Shopping | 3 Comments