The Sniper Song

Ken Lay Lives!

2006-07-27T14:51:00.000-07:00

Ken Lay had just filed for appeal of his guilty verdict.

Then he died.

I mentioned that he died to a nurse. She spat, "He's not dead. He's hiding."

Wow.

Brilliant.

Why didn't I think of that. Of course he's hiding. And we all know it. Why else was he cremated? Was the family worried people would exhume his body and drag it through the streets of Houston as it deserved?

Lay’s lawyer, Michael Ramsey, irritably dismissed all the Web talk after Lay’s
memorial service in Houston on Wednesday: “When I read the garbage that’s on the
Internet, I’m reminded of the parable of the jackass kicking the dead lion. I
think that’s enough said.”

Did Mike get his degree from the Donald Rumsfeld School of Public Speaking? Does Mike really think Ken was a lion?

I would have loved to kick Ken Lay before he went into hiding, now I'll have to wait and search. Meanwhile, the thousands of former Enron workers who lost their pensions will await justice... while they get screwed again.

Zidan

2006-07-23T11:29:00.000-07:00

We all were watching the World Cup final in a crowded pub.

The head-butt was not seen live. The focus was on the ball. At some point, the play was halted by the referee and the camera focused on Materazzira writhing on the field.

"Ugh. Another example of Italian/Portuguese-style flopping" was the moan from the audience. Then, they showed the foul.

A cheer rose up from the crowd.

A cheer.

For a blatant foul.

For a loss of control from the game's best player.

Perhaps because it was an American audience, accustomed to the violence of Football and the fouls of hockey.

Perhaps it was because everyone immediately felt that Materazzira had somehow deserved it.

How often have you suppressed the urge to smash some bully, to fill the loud-mouth, to give the flopper something to flop about?

For a serious audio commentary about the head-butt, here is an NPR commentary.

This site shows that the audience's perspective is important, and that there are some very talented individuals out there with some decent film editing equipment. Enjoy.

Where did We go Wrong?

2006-07-21T14:37:00.000-07:00

Back in the day, Toyota and Ford were duking it out in the hybrid technology race. Ford abandoned the quest, because MARKET RESEARCHERS told them there was no interest in hybrid cars.

Even though the addition of bigger trucks and sport-utilities has brought its corporate average fuel economy down from 26 mpg in 1987 to 24 mpg today, according to EPA figures released this week, Toyota is the undisputed leader in hybrid technology. Press said Toyota has "sold more U.S. hybrids so far this
year than Cadillac, Buick or Mercedes-Benz has sold cars."

I guess the MARKET RESEARCHERS were wrong.

Toyota discovered the current hybrid engine and has all the patents. Hybrid car manufacturers now pay royalties to Toyota.

Ford, hoping to make up lost ground, has decided to retool the Ford Focus as a 70mpg hybrid. They will be doing this in the UK.

Meanwhile, Toyota is working on a 100mpg hybrid.

When did MARKET RESEARCHERS become such an important force? When was "vision" replaced by breaking people into economic-demographic groups.

The ultra-popular "Razr" phone offered by Motorola? Built by engineers without any input from MARKET RESEARCHERS.

Obviously, these examples have the advantage of hindsight. It is impossible to predict the future, and where things are going with 100% accuracy. For every success, there have been one-hundred failures. For example, Motorola was the leader in cellular phone technology but failed to realize that it could be marketed to the "average consumer" and Nokia and Ericsson developed phones for mass consumption.

It is pretty clear that gasoline-powered cars will eventually be replaced, even hybrid cars will be replaced by more energy-efficient electric cars.

Vision. Open your eyes. See the future.

Ice Cream for Peace

2006-07-21T14:04:00.000-07:00

Ice Cream looses it's deliciousness when it melts. Why is this?

The war in Iraq is costing US taxpayers 8 billion dollars a month.

I feel part of this money should go towards ice cream research.

This is research that representatives from both sides of the aisle can get behind. There would be no partisan debate, only endorphine rushes as food scientists deliver maximum strength ice cream.

McDonald Douglas would develop ice cream delivery systems that unleash cool, creamy goodness to any corner of the globe within 30 minutes.

Instead of tear gas, angry crowds would be dispersed with offers of free ice cream.

Casualties would be upset stomachs from overindulgence.

Petition your Congress(wo)man now.

The Temptation to Occupy Lebanon

2006-07-19T16:41:00.000-07:00

The Vietnam War proved to guerrillas everywhere that with patience even a "Third World" home team stands a good chance of beating a visiting world power, first France, then the USA.

The USA learned from this experience and avoided entering conflicts where they would face a similar disadvantage.

After all, what country could withstand a conventional military conflict with the USA?

Not one.

Therefore, if one were preparing for an assault and occupation by a conventional military, one would make provisions for a protracted guerilla engagement after the likely defeat of the conventional military.

It would also be logical for Pentagon war games to assume this would be at least one strategy a likely opponent would apply.

The vexing behavior of the assembled armies in the First Iraq War now seem "prudent," as senior would say.

Then came Junior.

The boy who avoided Vietnam wants to make up for it by sending his children to fight in Iraq. Oh wait, no, they didn't volunteer to go. Home...

The intelligent learn from their mistakes. The wise learn from others mistakes.

Now Israel seems poised to set themselves up as fools...

The Intifada succeeded where five wars did not. Occupying Lebanon (again!) will only put Israeli soldiers in a similar position to America and British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Save the Penny!

2006-07-18T14:50:00.000-07:00

Representative Jim Kolbe wants to remove pennies from circulation. Educate yourself

Now, the logical argument presented is that it costs more to make a penny than the penny is worth. Theoretically, we could just buy rolls and rolls of pennies and melt them down in our basement smelters and sell the bars of copper and zinc.

Copper is rather expensive due to some labor disputes in Mexico. China also buys quite a bit of scrap metal, which drives up the price of copper and zinc.

Before you start building that basement smelter, let me remind you that defacing US currency is a crime.

We're going to have a new fancy penny for the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln.

As he abolished slavery, so shall the penny be abolished?

There are many arguments for and against pennies. I still stop to pick them up when I find them on the street. I still use them to give exact change. Part of that obsessive-compulsive impulse is because I know that if I horde my pennies, the Mint will have to make more, which costs us all money.

Make the penny smaller or out of a different metal? Sure.

If the penny is to be removed from circulation, I say we eliminate it passively by putting rounded, after-tax prices on goods, like in Europe. Pennies would still be accepted currency, but it would work like this. You go to by a gyros, and the price on the menu says $4.00. You then go the register to pay, and you give her $4.00, not $4.32 or whatever added sales taxes are placed on goods and services in your locality.

Eventually, there would be no pennies circulating. It would take a long time, but there's no rush.

Maybe we could force W to collect pennies to fund his war in Iraq.

Four More Years!

2006-04-09T07:47:00.000-07:00

While the administration plans a NUCLEAR WAR with Iran, no one seems to care about the fact that "Scooter" Libby has been telling judges that his higher ups told him to blow the whistle on Valery Plame.

When Vince Foster killed himself at the beginning of the Clinton era, the Republicans screamed and moaned until that fateful day when Anton Scallia decided that W should be president. (Conspiracy theories about his death still abound!)

When Clinton lied about getting a blowjob from Monica, the Republicans unleashed Kenneth Star and we learned all about the sordid details of Bubba's and Monica's affair.

So where are the Democrats? Why are they not demanding justice? Why are they not demanding to know the facts?

Are they in cahoots? Are they spineless? Do they not care?

What's up?

I'll tell you what's going to happen.

Apparently, Bush authorized the release of information, but didn't care how it was done. Tricky Dick (oh wait, that name is already taken) decided to expose a political enemy, perhaps hoping she'd get disappeared...

Obviously Mr Cheney is to blame. Bush had no idea what was happening (disturbingly believable). So the guy who shot his hunting buddy will step down, perhaps due to heath concerns, maybe he needs another coronary artery bypass? Who will step in to fill the void? I'll guess John McCain, or some other adopted son who would be caesar.

2008 will come around with war raging in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. VP John McCain will announce that he is running for the post of President and who could possibly lead us through this war of liberation better than McCaine?

McCain will get 49.99% of the vote, Hillary 50.01%, and the electoral college will make McCaine President of the United States.

Faith and Good Works

2006-03-20T11:21:00.000-08:00

Yesterday on NPR, they interviewed a young woman who was volunteering to help clean up houses in New Orleans. Apparently, you can rip our floors and walls by hand and try to salvage parts of the house, or you can just bulldoze them. The young lady being interviewed was ripping out a wall in this water-damaged house, when money started to fall from the wall.

Kind of like an episode of Scooby-Doo.

They gathered up $30,000 and gave it to the homeowner (who will now probably no longer qualify for disaster relief, oh wait that won't ever make it there!)

Wow. It was a beautiful act. The volunteer could have pocketed the money. No one would have known, but she didn't.

The interviewer (here's the web page to an audio link of the story) on All Things Considered asked if she was tempted to take the money.

"Oh no ma'am, if I had stole the money, it would have been a temporary happiness, but in the long run, my soul would have regretted it."

Which begs the question of motivation. Did she do it out of fear for her immortal soul, or because it was, quite simply, the right thing to do.

I have argued that religion is the use of fear to coerce people to do what is right, and that if people read and understood Plato and Aristotle, we wouldn't need religion, at least not for the "Punishment and Reward" aspect. (Red2 will ask what other aspect there is!)

The desire to do good for the sake of the Good is a morally higher motivation than fear of punishment, even when the result is the same.

Still, the Big JC will likely pat her on the head when she reaches Heaven and give her a Scooby Snack before turning her around and sending her to Purgatory for cleansing of her soul of the hatred of homosexuals, abortionists and war protesters.

Civil War

2006-03-20T11:10:00.000-08:00

It is only a matter of time before the unrest in Iraq is called a civil war.

I predict it will take on the label of civil war after the elections. Then, suddenly, the Republicans (who will gain seats in both houses) will rediscover their (selectively) isolationist roots and use the Prime Directive to say we should let "them" fight their own civil war. (If I'm wrong, and the Republicans lose either house, then they'll criticize the Dems for not financing the war properly or berate them for some other perceived injustice. In response the Dems will flop around spinelessly.)

In a sad bit of foresight, I asked my pre-invasion roommate at Yale, "What's the plan going to be after we kick Sadaam's ass?"

He didn't know (despite the PhD in Biochemistry.) Apparently, neither did the administration.

I asked, "What about Afghanistan? Won't we be stretching ourselves too thin to adequately rebuild that country?"

I asked, "What about North Korea? They already have nuclear weapons! Shouldn't we figure out a strategy for dealing with them first before we commit troops to Iraq?"

And then the sad attack of ESP:I asked, "How do you expect to hold Iraq together? The Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds don't exactly want to live together."

My then roommate told me I was arrogant.

I guess he would have said, "Support the Troops" but that silencer of dissent hadn't been coined yet.

United Nations Prostitution Corps

2006-03-06T15:11:00.000-08:00

NPR had a segment on prostitution today. The guest speaker was revealing the ugliness of the sex trade and how women from poor countries are lured into leaving home where they are drugged and beaten into submission. He made the claim that many of the Ukrainian prostitutes in Istanbul are originally lured there to work in hotels. They are then kept in a basement where they are forcibly given heroin until they are addicted and will do anything to get their drug.

It's a pretty wild claim. It would be a diabolical way to force the young women into submission, then keep them under control.

But whether or not there is heroin involved, no one can deny that there are several evil men running brothels filled with trafficked women who are de facto sex slaves.

So, the guest today on NPR was shocked and upset when he went to Kosovo and discovered that the UN peacekeepers there solicit the prostitutes that the pimps have abducted from their homelands or nearby villages. He was enraged and shocked by the behavior of the UN troops. He was angry that they were supposed to be maintaining the peace and protecting civilians but instead there they were exploiting the poverty of the locals.

Well, there is a simple solution to UN peacekeepers visiting civilian prostitutes: establish a UN prostitution corps. (In fact, establishing such a prostitution corps for US soldiers would also have the same benefits. There's a questionable liaison between US soldiers and Okinawan women every now and then.)

And why not? Is it a terrible idea? Soldiers, like most people, desire sex, and the chances are quite high that someone is going to make sex available to those interested soldiers. If one assumes that men and women of sound mind and body enter prostitution as a career choice, then it would be logical to have a group of these prostitutes available to UN soldiers. It would be important to recruit these women from all countries to avoid repeating the institutionalized sexual exploitation of non-Japanese women by Japanese soldiers in WWII. The UN prostitutes would have the same rights as other members of the UN mission and would travel as a group to areas of need. Forbidding sexual liaisons between soldiers and local civilians would be much better tolerated and accepted if there was a legal outlet for the troops' sexual tension.

I'm sure that while a United Nations Prostitute Corps (UNPC) (imagine the insignia!) would decrease the likelihood that the USA will ever pay it's debt of membership dues to the UNO, it would encourage US soldiers to join UN peacekeeping missions.

Our Dear Leader

2006-03-02T14:49:00.000-08:00

GWB's approval ratings in the general public are quite low... Lower than they were before 9/11.

Before 9/11 everyone thought GWB was an idiot. Then, some Saudi Arabians fly planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and all the sudden he's a leader? Then he invades Iraq on false pretenses and he's a leader? Then he gets reelected, and ignores warnings about Hurricane Katrina and gets caught with his pants down. (Metaphorically, of course. He's not Clinton after all.)

W is not a leader and I can only believe that his father is ashamed of his son's presidency.

I hope W isn't as misguided on the Switchgrass fuel concept. Makes you wonder who owns the Switchgrass industry... I'd start by looking in Cheney's portfolio...

Lent

2006-03-02T14:05:00.001-08:00

Yesterday, several coworkers were walking around with black smudges on their foreheads. "Is it Ash Wednesday already?" I asked.
"You're a bad Catholic," was the reply. She then offered to butt heads.

So, I started thinking about Lent and sacrifice and Jesus Christ, with predictable results.

Catholic theology teaches that Jesus sacrificed Himself to open the Gates of Hell so we could all go to Heaven. Self-sacrifice. Martyrdom. Dying for a higher ideal.

GWB would do well to do the same for us. I'm sure there'll be a line of volunteers to crucify him. I'll be the first in line to buy a cross bearing GWB's crucified likeness. Crown of Thorns optional.

Honestly, to believe in something so strongly that one is willing to die for it? What is GWB willing to die for? Ask yourself that. He is apparently not willing to die for the United States of America. While his peers, John Kerry, John McCain, and thousands of unnamed veterans put themselves in harms way during the Vietnam War, GWB was in the Air National Guard, safe. I would never say that flying fighter planes is without risk, but it is certainly less risky to fly those same planes over the cotton fields of Alabama than the rice patties of Vietnam.

GWB was not ready to risk death for America, but is happy to send thousands of brave American soldiers to Iraq. Instead of contemplating the Mystery of the Rosary this Lent, I shall contemplate the Mystery of the American People's Willingness to Elect a Fraud

Lost and Found

2006-02-26T19:21:00.000-08:00

Every now and then we meet people who are destined to be friends, even though we may not recognize them as such when we first meet them.

JB was a college buddy. And after college, I went off to Germany to learn German. Returning eight months later, I returned to Chicago, where I reconnected with Jeremy and we resumed our friendship.

A year later, I was back off to Germany, this time to go to medical school. He moved. I lost his parents number. I was burning bridges at the time. I was making a break with my past, trying to establish a future in Berlin. It worked.

I was a Berliner. It was my city. In a way, it still is.

JB was forgotten. Chicago was a distant memory.

One sunny summer afternoon the telephone rang in my apartment in Prenzlauer Berg.

"Guten Tag," said a vaguely familiar American voice "haben Sie ein Gehirn aus Wackelpudding?"

It was JB.

I was delighted to hear his voice, but how did he find me?

AD worked as a substitute teacher and waited tables at Tre Kroener in his "free time" (obviously not exactly free) to make ends meet.

Tre Kroener is a Swedish restaurant, and if there's one thing JB loves, it's bland Northern European food. As Fate should see fit, he decided to take his wife to breakfast one morning when AD was waiting tables. They made frequent eye contact. They knew each other, but weren't sure from where. Where was the connection? Then, the coin fell.

"Excuse me, weren't you AK's roommate?"
"Yeah, yeah, you're one of his friends from college."

Numbers were exchanged. The phone in Berlin rang.

I couldn't believe he was married. We talked for a long time. I promised to swing by his apartment and meet his wife next time I was in Chicago.

She's great. They had a child. I moved back to Chicago. Now, we play video games in his basement. Just like in college.

Is this what Nietzsche spoke of with the "Eternal Recurrence?"

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

2006-02-18T20:54:00.001-08:00

Dick Cheney shot his hunting buddy by accident, provoking an array of humorous political cartoons and commentary. This is what the Vice President had to say in his press conference:

"It was not Harry's fault," Cheney said Wednesday in the interview. "You can't blame anybody else. I'm the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend. And I say that is something I'll never forget."

Cheney described the horror of the incident in the interview.

"The image of him falling is something I'll never be able to get out of my mind," he said. "I fired, and there's Harry falling. And it was, I'd have to say, one of the worst days of my life, at that moment."

Listen to him owning up to actually pulling the trigger and shooting his friend. How honest. I guess he and his friend will just shake hands, have a good laugh, and move on. But will he? He says he'll "never be able to get [shooting Harry] out of my mind."

Traumatic episodes such as this can scar the psyche, interfering with sleep and concentration. They can also affect one's ability to enjoy life, and can drive people to suicide. "Shellshock" is what they used to call it. Now it has a more technical term, "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder." Untold veterans of our wars have come back suffering from PTSD; a lucky minority has received counseling and treatment for it.

If accidentally shooting his friend has traumatized Mr. Cheney that badly, imagine if an IED had gone off, showering Mr. Cheney with bits of his friend. This is, of course, what thousands of brave American soldiers have experienced in the current Iraq conflict.

The current administration has seen fit to place American soldiers in harm's way. Many of these courageous men and women will come back with wounds: both mental and physical. In 2005, the administration admitted to a billion dollar deficit for funding of the VA medical institutions. At a time when our veterans who defended our freedom by fighting in Europe, the Pacific, Korea and Vietnam are aging and requiring more help, a new group of fresh wounded are going to need the services of the VAMC. It seems shameful to cut funding for the VA at such a time. Of course, this administration seems to want to cut taxes and pump money into the oil industry rather than take care of veterans.

But what can you expect from an administration full of draft dodgers?

Musing on New Orleans

2006-02-14T16:58:00.000-08:00

So, I listen to NPR and there have been a couple of interesting ideas/stories concerning New Orleans and their recent natural disaster.

The first was simply to let free market forces decide what the former inhabitants of the city do. The editor proposed to simply divide the earmarked money for rebuilding New Orleans into shares and distribute them to the displaced people and let them decide what to do with it: stay and rebuild or rebuild elsewhere. I mean, why not? If they can find a better life somewhere else, but will need a bit of start up money, to buy a house or place a deposit on an apartment and buy furniture, clothes, etc, then the government could do them a great favor by giving them the means to do so. Of course, they might blow it all on lottery tickets...

The second proposal was to rebuild New Orleans as a "green" city, employing all of the current methods of generating renewable energy and investing into hurricane-resistant, energy efficient dwellings. It was a rather ambitious idea, but had the flare of seizing the future and seeing an opportunity to create beauty out of the rubble, to rise up again, stronger and better than before.

I can't wait to see what actually happens! Perhaps all the money will go towards building a new colossus of George in the bay to guide ships to New Orleans. Perhaps there will be giant telescopes in the eyes of the statue so as to keep an eye on Hugo Chaves. Perhaps patriotic music will issue forth from giant speakers in the colossus' mouth! Ah, the future will be truly exciting.