A good idea: using the convenience of Amazon’s one-click system to collect for the Red Cross. Bloggers without borders looks neat too (via warrenellis.com nee DPH).
jrh
Jan 012005
Everybody who’s anybody in the mobile phone business has announced plans to build a new high-speed transmission technology, dubbed Super 3G.
This is a lot of bandwidth, by today’s terms:
Super 3G can boost mobile transmission speeds to a range of 30 to 100 megabits per second to match existing land line fiber optic telecom technology, allowing movies, games or home videos to be played on handsets with a much higher resolution, it said.
(If “30 to 100 megabits” isn’t meaningful to you, think of this as somewhere between 15 and 400 times as fast as residential DSL or cable modem access in the states today.)
At least on this hemisphere, we really don’t seem close to hitting bandwidth limits of the not-yet-really-deployed 3G standards. Regardless, this degree of bandwidth delivered wirelessly to individuals has a potential cool-ness that is really difficult to comprehend.
Along with the $500 Mac rumors, makes for a good start to the tech new year.
Dec 082004
Found via William Rivers Pitt’s Conyers Hearing blog, a “technical advisor and programmer” named Clint Curtis claims that, while working for Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI) in late 2000, he was present at a meeting in which Tom Feeney, a politician / lobbyist with close ties to the Bushes, requested “a prototype of a voting program that could alter the vote tabulation in an election and be undetectable”.
Not only has Mr. Curtis made this claim, he’s put it in an affidavit that is really worth a read. Seriously, it makes the plot of a Grisham story look somewhat dull.
General caveat: I’ve not had more than 10 minutes to spend on this, and I don’t have any idea how much or by whom any of this has been vetted.
BradBlog broke this first, and seems to have a lot of followup.
My tin-foil hat is buzzing.
Found via Feedster:
LEMUR is a Brooklyn-based group of artists and technologists developing robotic musical instruments. Founded in 2000 by musician and engineer Eric Singer, LEMUR’s philosophy is to build robotic instruments that “play themselves.” In LEMUR designs, the robots are the instruments.
Dec 032004
Despite a narrowing Bush lead and an increasing series of legitimacy questions, the Ohio vote recount is expected to happen after the Ohio electors meet. Excuse me?
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Supreme Court has taken the radical position that, umm, widespread evidence of fraud and other voting irregularities casts doubt on the outcome of a very close presidential race.
Dec 032004
The United Church of Christ has been
rejected by NBC and CBS in its attempt to run a 30 second ad welcoming people to its churches.
Apparently NBC and CBS thought the ad “too controversial”, because it shows a pair of bouncers in front of a church turning away (among others) a pair of men we are to presume are a gay couple while a voice-over says “The United Church of Christ. No matter who you are, or where you are in life’s journey, you’re welcome here”. Apparently, in these times, this is over the line:
In a written statement to the church, CBS, a unit of Viacom, said the fact that the Bush administration had proposed a constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman made the advertisement “unacceptable for broadcast.”
NBC said the ad violated a long-standing policy of the network not to allow commercials that dealt with issues of public controversy. NBC is part of NBC Universal, which is 80 percent owned by General Electric Co., with the rest owned by Vivendi Universal.
Reading these quotes leaves one assuming that, in some bout of historic PR idocy, the UCoC had shown Mr. Garrison and Mr. Slave in flagrante delicto in a confessional. Hardly — watch the video! Watch it. Really. Just do it. It’s only barely on the offensive side of fuzzy kittens frolicing in a pile of fresh daisies.
This “controversial” ad implies that the church would welcome a pair of men, it’s true. It also implies that they would welcome people of color, the elderly, and someone in a wheelchair. It doesn’t say a thing about marraige, not that that would make the refusal any more palatable. It’s unbelieveable that one would argue that because the administration is attempting to enforce gender requirements on marraige, showing a gay couple on TV is “controversial”.
What’s the next controversy? Video footage of someone with health care? Talking about a balanced budget? Sorry – my rhetoric needle is pegged.
I’m nauseous.
Nov 242004
As the Ukraine teeters on the brink of widespread “civil” conflict over disputed election results, the U.S. is urging the government to hold off certification of results until fraud and voting irregularity allegations have been investigated:
The White House said in a statement: “We strongly support efforts to review the conduct of the election and urge Ukrainian authorities not to certify results until investigations of organised fraud are resolved.”
At the same time, a federal judge has ruled that Ohio’s recount can wait until after result certification, at which point only 9 days will remain before electors meet.
Looking at the picture of flowers in riot shields, and hearing of 200,000 people in the streets of Kiev, I am reminded of relativepath’s recent introspection about identifying the “good guys” in Fallujah [my paraphrase]. There is little direct relation in terms of subject matter, but for the question:
What is your breaking point? Are we past it? What will it look like when it comes?
Ukraine. Ohio. Who is the beacon of democracy and freedom?
Paul Krugman was interviewed by Reuters yesterday, and provided a pretty gloomy assessment:
A deeper plunge in the already battered U.S. dollar is another possible route to crisis, the professor said.
The absence of any mention of currencies in a communique from the Group of 20 rich and emerging market countries this past weekend only reinforced investors’ perception that the United States, while saying it promotes a strong dollar, is willing to let its currency slide further.
“The break can come either from the Reserve Bank of China deciding it has enough dollars, thank you, or from private investors saying ‘I’m going to take a speculative bet on a dollar plunge,’ which then ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Krugman opined. “Both scenarios are pretty unnerving.”
In the longer-term, Bush’s version of social security reform, which Krugman says would relegate pensions for the elderly to the whims of volatile financial markets, could have wide-ranging implications for future generations.
But at least there’s an upside:
“I do believe at some point there is going to be a popular tidal wave against what has happened,” concluded Krugman. “In the meantime, you keep banging on the drum, you keep telling the truth.
“And then eventually we have the great demonstrations, which I think are important to let the government know that many Americans are not happy with what is happening,” he said.
This, the same week that the administration’s ideas for its second-term tax plan come out. The highlights: eliminate investment income taxes by removing the deduction for state and local taxes, and “scrapping the business tax deduction for employer-provided health insurance”. Unbelievable.
As MaxSpeak points out, the former amounts — coincidentally, I’m sure — to a tax on the blue states:
The income tax deduction chiefly benefits blue states. Texas and Florida, just to take two wildly random examples, have no state income tax. In the most recent tax legislation, a new tax cut was added for state sales taxes, ostensibly to put states with no income tax on the same footing as the others. Now that they are equalized in this way, the stage is set to remove both deductions simultaneously. What could be more fair?
The health insurance one leaves me somewhat speechless. Where was that during the domestic policy part of the debates? Salon [truthout has full text for non-subscribers] opines persuasively on the likely impact (hint: in 2008 Kerry or whomever will have an even bigger number of recently uninsured for the stump).
It’s been a busy few days for CIA news. First, Michael Scheuer (the author, as “Anonymous”, of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror) resigned on Thursday.
On Friday, deputy director John McLaughlin resigned with a warning that “widespread resignations” were possible, inspired by agency management since the new CIA Director Porter Goss and team have started:
Several other senior clandestine service officers are threatening to leave, current and former agency officials said.
The disruption comes as the CIA is trying to stay abreast of a worldwide terrorist threat from al Qaeda, a growing insurgency in Iraq, the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan and congressional proposals to reorganize the intelligence agencies. The agency also has been criticized for not preventing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and not accurately assessing Saddam Hussein’s ability to produce weapons of mass destruction.
“It’s the worst roiling I’ve ever heard of,” said one former senior official with knowledge of the events. “There’s confusion throughout the ranks and an extraordinary loss of morale and incentive.”
Current and retired senior managers have criticized Goss, former chairman of the House intelligence committee, for not interacting with senior managers and for giving Murray too much authority over day-to-day operations. Murray was Goss’s chief of staff on the intelligence committee.
At the same time, the Deputy Director of Operations Stephen Kappes delivered his resignation, though was convinced by Goss and the White House to hold a final decision off until Monday morning.
Newsday (via DailyKos) connects the dots today: this is an intentional move ordered by the White House to purge the CIA of voices who have been critical of administration policies:
“The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House,” said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. “Goss was given instructions … to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president’s agenda.”
Politicizing intelligence in this manner can only enhance the echo chamber effect — that non-critical positive feedback loop that amounts to an institutional yes-man — which basically means it’s no longer adding value. That is not good — disturbing as the threats we face may be, we need now as much as (or more than) ever to perceive reality as clearly and accurately as possible, not to structurally guarantee that we only see pre-approved realities.
Nov 142004
recent comments