Deck: Cyber Curmudgeon

The number of the beast

2008-05-14T23:22:54Z

"All of a sudden it isn't morning in America, it's dusk on planet Earth," Bill McKibben* says.

"Civilization is what grows up in the margins of leisure and security provided by a workable relationship with the natural world," he adds. "That margin won't exist, at least not for long, this side of 350."

That number, 350, stands for 350 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a number we have already exceeded.

NASA climatologist Jim Hansen makes it clear what is at stake:

"If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted ... CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm."

Hansen cites six irreversible tipping points that will lead to disastrous planetary warming if we don’t get back down to 350 soon; and the first of them is probably already behind us.

"People will doubtless survive on a non-350 planet," McKibben says, "but ... civilization may not."

And what are the presidential candidates talking about, what is the corporate media blathering about? Obama's preacher and his bowling score.

*Bill McKibben is co-founder of 350.org

Gray streak in the black lining

2008-05-14T01:13:40Z

It is impossible to see any good coming out of the national disaster that is the Bush/Cheney administration.

The White House and a supine Congress have given us two wars that killed a million people, made refugees of several million more, shattered one of the planet's most ancient cultures, and are threatening to start a third war that can make their first two look like a picnic in the park.

With the help of Congress, the Bush administration has destroyed our civil liberties, paving the way for a soft form of fascism. It has ruined our economy, leaving millions in desperate straits. It has refused to address the approaching catastrophe of global warming that can destroy life as we know it within just a few decades.

And they have established the fact that the President and Vice President can commit hideous crimes without any fear of punishment .

Well, maybe they have done one small good -- membership of the American Civil Liberties Union has doubled since Bush took office in 2001.

A lot more people are proud card-carrying ACLU members.

Slight edit

2008-05-12T20:10:58Z

A friend wrote that one of her personal favorite errors was this from a freshman essay:

"Children frequently immolate their parents."

I told her it just needed a slight edit:

........................WISH TO
Children frequently /\ immolate their parents.

Nightmarish candidate

2008-05-10T22:41:33Z

"What Sen. McCain is much more likely to do as president is become America's worst nightmare ... Here is a man who has publicly admitted that he knows nothing about economics and who confuses Sunnis and Shi'ites. ... Sen. McCain finished near the bottom of his class at Annapolis and launched his political career by dumping the wife who stood by him during his imprisonment and marrying big money. Excuse me if I'm not overwhelmed with his resume."
Charley Reese

Charley Reese does buy, however, the 'hero' label. I don't.

McCain was shot down while bombing and killing men, women, and children in North Vietnam in a war that was just as monstrous as our current war in Iraq. Not the actions of a hero. And he is itching to start a new war with Iran.

A nightmarish candidate, indeed.

ACLU, not the U.S. Treasury

2008-05-09T18:22:56Z

"Part of this book is about the rise and aftermath of Fascism in Nazi Germany," Belgian author Paul Verhaeghen has said. "And it's hard to miss the analogous things happening in the U.S."

Verhaeghen has won the £10,000 ($19,558) Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for his work as both author and translator of Omega Minor.

"I refused the Flemish Culture award after I realized around $5,000 of the winnings would go to the U.S. Treasury. So this time, I decided to give the money to the American Civil Liberties Union, which works for civil rights. The money won't be liable for tax."

The experts speak

2008-05-07T18:48:19Z

I don't make predictions, at least not serious ones.

I learned my lesson early on when I predicted that a certain obscure senator from Massachusetts didn't have a chance for the Democratic nomination for president. You remember John F. Kennedy? Just a few months ago I said that Obama didn't have a chance for the Democratic nomination because racism is still a potent force in America.

I was delighted when I found the book many years ago titled 'The Experts Speak,' filled with predictions and judgments that were oh so slightly wrong. Like the report that dismissed a certain actor: "Can't act; can't sing; can dance a little." But Fred Astaire did alright for himself.

I'm not alone in my inability to predict the future.

Rense.com had a bunch of these predictions in an unbylined and unsourced story the other day. Some of favorites:

"Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances. --Dr. Lee DeForest, "Father of Radio & Grandfather of Television."

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." --Popular Mechanics, 1949

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication." --Western Union internal memo, 1876.

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out," - Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

"Everything that can be invented has been invented," -- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, US Office of Patents, 1899.

Not worse, exactly...

2008-05-06T12:26:28Z

I told a friend recently that the U.S. media was never fair and unbiased, but before the massive media consolidation in the 80s engineered by the White House and Congress in concert, some news always faltered through.

Now the corporate media is worse than the Soviet press under Stalin.

Well, OK, that's not really fair.

It's not worse than the old Soviet press, only as bad.

Like bears dancing

2008-05-01T19:13:38Z

"Speech recognition is a little like bears dancing.
It's so amazing that computers can do it at all; you're almost
willing to forgive them for not being able to do it very well."

Gerry Blackwell in a review of ViaVoice 10

Taming a Dragon

2008-04-30T20:00:55Z

I blogged, in passing, about the difficulties I have using the voice recognition software, Dragon 9.1.

lenrosen has expressed some surprise that I have had so much trouble with the program, citing only a 2% error rate.

I have never come close to that. I’ve never tried to calculate it, but my error rate must be well over 20%, leading to a lot of frustration.

It’s not a matter for harbinger [[[ example: what I said was ‘it’s not a matter of poor hardware’ ]]]

Starting again: it’s not a matter of poor hardware. I have a good computer, with a fast CPU, and lots of memory. I use a good quality headset, not the one that came with Dragon.

My post-stroke speech is not perfect, but it’s clear enough.

I would love to have a 2% error rate. Maybe by the time Dragon 10 or 11 comes out...

Then, perhaps, it will be like Star Trek, where you can say:
“Computer, connect the atmasfras to the Heisenberg compensator...”
with nary an error.

Mirror, mirror in the box

2008-04-28T04:49:46Z

Five years ago a stroke paralyzed my right side. My recovery has been slow and very uneven. I can walk reasonably well, for example, but I have never recovered much use of my right arm and my right hand is a paperweight.

For more than 40 years I thought with my fingers; when I lost the ability to touch type, I felt I lost my ability to think. One-handed typing is an abomination, slow and cumbersome. Voice recognition software, I use Dragon, is utterly frustrating.

A friend of mine just sent me a video of a talk given by Neurologist Vilayanur Ramachandran in which he discusses a remarkable treatment for phantom pain, the pain that people who have lost an arm or leg often feel in the missing limb.

The patient is seated in front of a box containing a mirror in which the good limb is reflected. When the patient moves the good hand, say, he watches it and the mirrored reflection. The brain is fooled into thinking it is seeing both hands move.

This was tried on a man who had intolerable pain in a missing limb; it felt like his missing hand was clenched. While he watched his intact hand and the mirrored reflection move, his missing hand suddenly unclenched. After some practice with this technique, the pain went away permanently.

If this can be applied to an arm or leg or hand disabled by a stroke ...

I just ordered a mirror box from a company in England.

Say a prayer for me, wish me luck, or knock on wood.

Solzhenitsyn returns

2008-04-25T04:31:33Z

The only way you can tell hard truths is by turning them into fantasy.

You can slip by the corporate censors only if you disguise the truth as a fictional lie.

In the short-lived TV drama Jericho, we have a dangerous, ugly, out-of-control company with a mercenary army that bears a remarkable resemblance, purely coincidental of course, to Halliburton. Try putting that into a “realistic” TV drama.

In the TV comedy Boston Legal, we have a brash lawyer standing before the Supreme Court and telling the justices what a mockery they’re making of American justice, including making new law to decide a presidential race. Try having that happen in a “realistic” courtroom drama. Nobody takes Boston Legal seriously, so they can tell us serious truth that otherwise we don’t want to hear.

Americans have always believed that they have the best country, the best government, the freest society on earth. That was always a illusion, of course, but one with enough truth in it that we could live with it.

But after Reagan, Nixon, Bush Sr., Clinton, the junior Bush, a sycophantic corporate media, and a craven corporate-owned Congress, the illusion has become a full-blown delusion.

Now we can only get the truth in the same way that people living under other dictatorships have gotten it: from our writers telling us ‘fantastical’ stories.

Scary thought

2008-04-24T05:28:47Z

David Swanson has offered on afterdowningstreet.org 10 reasons not to indict Dick Cheney, No. 1 being:

George W. Bush could become president.

Larry's Law

2008-04-23T23:55:30Z

A friend, Larry Martines, has come up with a version of Murphy's law that helps explain why we are in the desperate state that we're in.

Larry's law states:
"If information can be ignored or misunderstood, it will be."

Hence 28% of the American people can believe that Bush is actually doing a good job.

Nature knows best

2008-04-23T00:21:27Z

I once wrote a piece about a plastic surgeon who specializes in breast jobs. While doing background research, I checked a couple of sites with before and after pictures and discovered one thing: with one exception, the women all looked better in the before.

The one exception was a woman who looked like a 10-year-old boy in the before picture, and a normally-developed woman in the after.

Saved by a good book

2008-04-22T22:39:30Z

While raking the front yard of her Beverly, Mass. home last week, Judy Powers decided to take a break, went inside and got caught up reading a book.

At that point, two cars collided on the street in front, and an SUV crashed across her yard into the front of her house.

Powers told a reporter after the accident that "she hadn't been able to reach her insurance agent and didn't know how extensive the damage was."

But she did recommend the book, Summer Light by Luanne Rice.

-------

Gleamed from Shelf Awareness.

The only story

2008-04-20T04:52:03Z

I was talking to a family member today who had an encyclopedic knowledge of the Texas polygamist story, not surprising since it is the only story that TV news seem to be covering -- excepting the pope's visit.

Ah, if only the media's attention could be focused with such laser-like intensity on the debacle in Iraq, global warming, the destruction of our economy, or the fact that the president of the United States admitted approving torture.

Printers ink

2008-04-18T14:07:06Z

I haven't done the math, but this is metaphorically if not literally true.

From an email sent me on the cost of gas:

Ever wonder why printers are so cheap?
So they have you hooked for the ink.

Someone calculated the cost of the ink at...
$5,200 a gallon.

The importance of lapel pins

2008-04-17T20:01:16Z

There is no short-term fix, for our economic crisis, Ted Rall says.

"In the long term, we must put more money into more people's pockets. That means higher wages and lower taxes for the poor and middle class.

"Some of what is needed is easy to see: a more progressive tax code, repealing laws that allow employers to harass and fire those who try to organize unions, nationalizing industries run by vampire capitalists....What madness permits [banks] to charge 30 percent on credit cards while paying one percent on passbook savings accounts?

"More--much more--is necessary to prevent the wholesale collapse of the U.S. economic system. A maximum wage should be imposed--the highest paid American should earn no more than ten times the lowest paid. I know, I know--none of this will happen. There will be nothing but Band-Aids and lazy rhetoric as we plummet into the abyss.

"It cannot be otherwise, for our politics are ossified, the media is corporatized, and we the people are dull and apathetic."

Meanwhile, the ABC 'debate' between Hillary and Obama focused on such things as the value of flag label pins.

A Timely question

2008-04-16T04:27:10Z

Even even that staunch defender of corporate fascism, Time, is finally rebelling against ethanol.

In a recent issue, an article headlined The Clean Energy Scam notes that: "Hyped as an echo-friendly fuel, ethanol increases global warming, destroys forests and inflates food prices."

And then asks the crucial question:

"So why are we subsidizing it?"

Why, indeed.

Oh, forget it. You know the answer, a few people and companies are making billions, and that's far more important than the destruction of the planet.

Another Barack blunder

2008-04-14T21:53:23Z

TheSpoof.com has revealed another Barack blunder:

"In a major campaign blunder, Senator Barack Obama stated today that the sky is blue. 'This proves his elitist insensitivity," reported correspondent Karl Rove. 'There were clouds over many parts of America today, including states the Democrats need to win in November....' "

"The vast majority of pundits determined that he had made a major error. 'If Obama keeps talking crazy like that," explained White House News Plant Tony Snow, "What will he say next? That we need to leave Iraq?' "

Accepting limits

2008-04-13T18:59:56Z

"The real names of global warming are Waste and Greed."
Wendell Berry

in an article in Harper's on the end of the delusion of limitless growth.

Tell us what you REALLY think

2008-04-13T04:35:56Z

"Yes, I know that she and Bill Clinton are corrupt to the core, and that I should have never expected anything better of her. But, please, any of you angry white women who still support this craven shill, don't mention it to me."

Jane Smiley

A tortured nation

2008-04-12T00:20:29Z

President Bush says he knew and approved of the torturing of prisoners.

An astonishing admission; a horrifying admission. The country was stunned and cries for impeachment were deafening.

The last sentence is a lie of course. Nobody cared. Outside of ABC, which carried the interview in which the admission was made, the media paid no attention.

The top stories on Google News were:
GE Plunges as Profit Misses Estimates, Clinton proposes 10,0000 new police officers, Is Windows Getting Morbidly Obese? Masters leader Immelman finds form after health scare, US, Germany Urge Chinese Transparency in Tibet, polygamists, canceled air flights, and, of course, The naked truth about Dick Cheney's sunglasses.

Yahoo! News was no better: Gates says Iran boosts support for militias, Bushes pay taxes on $923,807, Top aide to al-Sadr assassinated in Iraq, Polygamist sect encouraged fear, blah, blah, blah.

And so it goes. Our king approves torture and the country yawns.

A sick nation.

Deckish

2008-04-10T22:53:10Z

While I was active in the Usenet newsgroup misc.writing a few years back, I briefly added a word to the English language: deckish.

It meant a post that was short and to the point, sharp, and at least occasionally witty. It was coined (not by me) in response to my trademark answers in flame wars.

Therefore I suppose I ought to appreciate Cheney's answer when told two thirds of Americans do not think the Iraq war is worth fighting.

"So?"

In one word, the vice president of the United States showed his contempt for the American people and the whole idea of democracy.

You can't get more deckish than that.

I'm rather glad that the word didn't stick.

An evil quote

2008-04-09T04:59:48Z

"War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil."
George Orwell

Orwell was wrong.