This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon
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I haven’t posted in awhile, and on the way to grab some lunch I slipped and fell on the stairs, catching myself with my right arm, which now hurts. So, in honor of that, and not having any news I am ready to report quite yet on the house, I thought I’d just get out my bandwagon joining post wondering if anything “Interesting” will happen tomorrow… which starts in just under 3.5 hours UTC wise, but which started 6 minutes ago in Iran…
For those who have no idea what I am talking about, see articles like this. Basically August 22nd is an important date related to a final judgement of sorts on the Islamic Calendar this year, and because the Iranian president said he would give his answer to UN ultimatums by the 22nd. Because of those two things a bunch of people have been speculating that Iran will do something “big” on the 22nd. Which it now is in Iran, and will be soon in places West of Iran.
Or, it could be nothing at all other than a bunch of folks getting excited about a date.
But if it were real, what could it be? Lets speculate a bit…
#1) Iran launches a full scale invasion of Iraq
#2) Iran starts shooting missles at Isreal
#3) Iran openly tests a nuclear weapon
#4) Big terrorist attack somewhere not clearly linked to Iran, but implied
#5) This is when the blowing planes up thing was supposed to happen
#6) Big party at President Ahmadinejad’s house!
I knew (or was at least acquainted with) Declan back in college. I happened to catch him on the radio the other day. You can listen to the whole clip here (RealPlayer).
Here is the transcript of the bit where Declan talks:
Careful what you search for
(Janet Babin, Marketplace)
Declan McCullagh with Cnet News dot com got hold of the AOL search records made public on the Internet. He reviewed thousands of anonymous queries. And he believes he could figure out who some of those people are simply by their searches about themselves, their neighborhoods and their relatives. Here’s some of what he found.
DECLAN MCCULLAGH: “Things like illegal child porn, incest stories, preteen sex stories, how to get revenge on my ex-boyfriend, dirty tricks for chicks . . .”
McCullagh says few people realize just how much information can be gleaned from their computers.
MCCULLAGH: “If you’re using a cable modem or a computer at work it’s unique and tied to you for over say a multi-year period. It’s as unique as your phone number, and everything you do with that IP address, that Internet protocol address, can be traced back to you.”
Now come on… can any of you who knew Declan in college listen to that clip and not have the first thing that comes into your mind be that Declan is not describing searches he found in what AOL released, but rather just his own searches? Um, just me? OK. Never mind. :-)
I just destroyed the address book on my computer and once again had to revert to a months old backup. I am very unhappy, and wishing that the house had already sold so I could buy myself a new backup drive and be automatically backing up again, and even better wishing that Leopard was already out so I could fix this with a few clicks in Time Machine. (Cause the .Mac iSync backup of addresses is completely useless.)
In any case, to distract myself from this issue, I just want to note something I came across the other day that I think describes my recent thoughts on the whole no liquids on planes thing. It is an article from the Cato Institute from Fall of 2004. Here is the main gist:
A False Sence of Insecurity? (pdf)
(John Mueller, Cato Institute)
Throughout all this, there is a perspective on terrorism that has been very substantially ignored. It can be summarized, somewhat crudely, as follows:
- Assessed in broad but reasonable context, terrorism generally does not do much damage.
- The costs of terrorism very often are the result of hasty, ill-considered, and overwrought reactions.
A sensible policy approach to the problem might be to stress that any damage terrorists are able to accomplish likely can be absorbed, however grimly. While judicious protective and policing measures are sensible, extensive fear and anxiety over what may at base prove to be a rather limited problem are misplaced, unjustified, and counterproductive.
(via Boing Boing)
A little later on in the article:
Until 2001, far fewer Americans were killed in any grouping of years by all forms of international terrorism than were killed by lightning, and almost none of those terrorist deaths occurred within the United States itself. Even with the September 11 attacks included in the count, the number of Americans killed by international terrorism since the late 1960s (which is when the State Department began counting) is about the same as the number of Americans killed over the same period by lightning, accident-causing deer, or severe allergic reaction to peanuts.
Some of this is definitional. When terrorism becomes really extensive, we generally no longer call it terrorism, but war. But Americans seem to be concerned mainly about random terror, not sustained warfare. Moreover, even using an expansive definition of terrorism and including domestic terrorism in the mix, it is likely that far fewer people were killed by terrorists in the entire world over the last 100 years than died in any number of unnoticed civil wars during the century.
The entire article (5 printed pages) is well worth the read. It should be required reading for anybody making policy related to anti-terrorism.
The main truth that rings loud and clear is that FAR more damage is caused by non-sensical overreactions than could be caused directly even in the wildest dreams of the terrorists.
In a true “war on terror” we would be educating ourselves on why terrorism is no more a threat than the increased deer population in our suburbs and therefore refuse to submit to irrational fear. We would not be turning our lives upside down, readjusting all of our priorities, giving up all sorts of civil liberties, compromising our principles AND making air travel increasingly miserable by the day (with only a psychological increase in security, not a real one).
By doing the crazy kind of pseudo-security measures happening at airports worldwide, we end up causing far more damage (just in a different way) than if someone had indeed succeeded in blowing up a plane. The only difference is that damage is diffused over many millions of people over the course of months rather than a few hundred people over an instant. But the damage is just as real. It’s just the other kind, being more visible and more concentrated gets more attention. But it shouldn’t.
Especially since the types of things we are doing (no liquids on planes) at best only force those wishing to do damage to do it somewhere else, or using a different method. It does not actually STOP anything. Make it hard to bring explosives on a plane? They can blow up the security checkpoint, or a school, or a mall. Or just put the bomb in checked luggage (which is STILL not as completely checked as it should be).
This is not to minimize how horrible even a single death is to the people involved. But when making policy, one has to look at the bigger picture.
And in the bigger picture… with the crazy overreactions we are doing nothing but hurting ourselves in the long run. We are not helping anything.
You don’t “successfully foil” an operation and THEN raise threat levels and put on all kinds of extra security procedures.
If you think an operation is about to happen but you don’t know the details and don’t have another way to stop it THEN you raise the threat levels.
But if it is was indeed successfully foiled then those steps would be unnecessary because the threat has already been removed.
There is something else going on here today that has not yet been publicly revealed.
Perhaps it is just that they think they caught some but not all of the people involved. Or perhaps there is more. We will see I guess.
But interesting developments today in any case.
OK, only one more on this stuff, then I’ll drop back out of talking about politics and such for awhile… Just saw this commentary from Brendan Loy (known last year for his hurricane blogging). It is worth reading the whole thing, including much of the comment thread on the post as well.
Time for a divorce
(Brendan Loy, The Irish Trojan’s Blog)
Democrats in my home state of Connecticut have seen fit to give their incumbent U.S. senator, the honorable Joseph Lieberman, the old heave-ho. Get out of our party, the Democratic voters have told Joe. You aren’t one of us anymore. […] it’s a shot across the bow of moderate Democrats everywhere. […] Well, if there’s no room in the Democratic Party for Joe Lieberman, then there’s no room in it for me.
(via InstaPundit)
The Lieberman thing prompts me to also post some additional comments. Someone who did not want to post emailed me to mention that perhaps this was not about Joe and moderates, but about the war. And yes, that is true. That was the main issue. This particular race was all about that.
But that I think is one of those issues where the moderates are getting pushed out.
The one side: The war was mistake, it is evil and wrong, and we need to get the hell out ASAP (in an orderly fashion), regardless of the consequences.
The other side: The war was the right thing, we replaced Saddam and that is what is important, the critics are unfair, and war is hard and things go wrong, but overall we’re doing what we need to do.
And it seems there are very few who try to stay in the area between those positions. There are a few politicians in that middle spot, but they have trouble making the case, cause it isn’t simple and balck and white. “War Good” or “War Bad” people get, and tend to pick one. Reality is more complex.
Another complex bit… The House and Senate did *NOT* vote for the war back a couple years ago. (They probably should have, a declaration of war would have been appropriate in this situation if the overall policy of invasion and “regime change” was desired.) The congress very explicitly did NOT do that. What they did do was authorize the President to make his own decision on that topic. (Something which I personally believe is an unconstitutional shifting of war powers from congress to the president, but that is another issue…)
This is a subtle difference. But an important difference. But it is completely ignored. I hear about Senators voting “for the war” all the time. That is not what they did. That pisses me off. Cause even if it the effect it had, even if it was the effect the congress wanted, it is NOT what they did.
Anyway… that was a complete tangent… back to the topic… my own thoughts on this war…
I didn’t have this blog at the time, but prior to the start of the Iraq war I remember talking quite a bit to a variety of people about how it was a mistake and we should not do it and such… up until a few weeks before the actual invasion.. at that point I thought we were past the tipping point and it would then cause more damage to shift course than to continue, and then the only choice was to go forward and do the best that could be done with it. I was pissed at W for pushing us there when we didn’t need to be there, but at that point, I could no longer feel good recommending we do something else.
Of course then W and Rummy did just about everything wrong that they could possibly do wrong for several years and to this day. It has been a complete disaster. It did not have to be. Even after having made the mistake of pushing us to war when we didn’t need to in the first place, it COULD have been handled in a way that if not “good” would have been much better than what happened. BUt it wasn’t. It was mismanaged from top to bottom. I used the word hubris a lot back then to describe how the administration was acting. I think the results have been completely in line with that.
But that doesn’t mean I think the best way to go at this point is to get out. I actually think that would be an even worse disaster. It might even be better at this point to INCREASE our involvement rather than decrease it. But it may even be getting to the point where it is too late to fix things that way either. I’m not sure. But a rash and premature evacuation would just be a total mess and leave us with even worse problems in the future.
Any way, public opinion overall seems to be slowly shifting to “just get the hell out” and that likely will have a big effect on elections to come over the next few years.
But I still say the people who are most likely to find a “good” result… well, at least “less bad”… are neither the fervent anti-war people or the neo-con apologists. They are the folks in the middle who resist the ideological arguments and just focus on the practicalities of the situation on the ground and try to figure out how to actually work on various issues and find solutions rather than worrying about what fits the party line the most.
Lieberman is one of those folks. There are a handful in both parties. And certainly each of these in SOME areas is just as ideological as the others, and if you took a bunch of them from both parties I don’t think they could come up with a set of things they could all agree on… it is less an issue of views on specific issues as one of temperment and pragmatism.
You put a bunch of them in a room and they would probably not agree on much of anything. But they WOULD (given some time) be able to hammer out a compromise that was “OK” for all of them, even though none of them would be completely happy with it.
Contrast this to the types of folks who are taking over both parties… who are partisan and ideological to the core. Put a bunch of them in a room and they will take their respective sides and throw things across the room at each other (metaphorically at least) and they will just snipe and snipe and snipe. And if they were of equal power and number nothing would ever get done. (Which of course isn’t always a bad thing. :-) Or if one side had superiority they would just start implementing their agenda without any compromise at all, making the losing side just increasingly spiteful. (A la the Dems today.)
That is what is dangerous. Not the specific views on any one issue, but the move toward increasing polarization rather than reason and compromise.
No in depth commentary, but I just want to say it is a shame Lieberman lost in the primary. It is just another symptom of both parties moving away from the center, with the nut jobs in both camps being more and more in control.
Here’s hoping Joe does not get talked out of it and makes a successful run as an independent. There has got to be room in this country for the reasonable, pragmatic centrists. If the people in the center from both parties just got together and started a reasonable third party, I think there would be a large number of people who would go for it.
But of course, Joe will probably be talked out of it, and if he does run he will probably lose, and in all likelihood things will get more and more divided and the moderates will continue to be pushed out.
Oh well.
I’m not really awake yet as I only went to sleep about four hours ago and am about to go lie down again, but as I was up I checked on the shuttle status and saw this:
Spaceflight Now STS 121 Mission Status
1453 GMT (10:53 a.m. EDT)
The countdown is still holding at the T-minus 3 hour mark. Clocks are slated to resume ticking in 60 minutes.
The analysis and debate about the faulty heater on one of Discovery’s vernier steering thrusters continues. That heater is not working, which makes the maneuvering jet considered failed for the mission. Although there are other thrusters that can compensate for the loss of the L5L jet, managers must decide if they want to launch knowing some of the redundancy is gone.
Now given that they already are launching over the objections of a bunch of safety people (see here)…
Now, I know, I know… this kind of thing will never be “safe” and they are only estimating a 1% chance of a catastrophic failure that would lose the orbiter and the crew. And that is considered an acceptable level of risk at this point.
But if that 1% hit, or even if there was enough damage that they need to leave the astronauts on ISS then you’ll be hearing the “I told you so”s so loudly we’ll all go deaf. Oh well, at least this time around the objections were clearly heard then decided upon, whereas in previous cases they either have been so discouraged that people never made the objections even though they were worried, or they were made and were squelched by middle management and never made it to the top. This time everybody clearly knows the risks that have been warned about, and are choosing to go anyway.
The Astronauts are loading into the vehicle as I type. Also as I type some scary clouds have moved into the area which will scrub the launch for today if they don’t move soon. So we shall see.
My alarm is set to make sure I’ll be up to watch, and NASA TV has been up on my computer with the sound up for hours now, so it will wake me up if anything significant happens too.
Of course, I’m out west, so unlike home, I can’t just step out the back door of the house and look up to see the launch. Oh well.
I am actually very very tempted to spend the next few hours reading all 185 pages of the full opinion (pdf), but I am at work and that would be bad. Suffice it to say that I am happy and feel like for once the court is making the clearly correct decision. I am disappointed somewhat (although not surprised) that most of the “conservative” justices dissented. (Or in the case of the Cheif Justice were recused because they had been involved in the lower court opinion that was being appealed.) After all, the notion of strict limits on governmental (and executive) authority have long been a fundamental “Conservative” idea. Not to mention a strict reading of the constitution. No more it seems.
But, 5-3 will do, and things move in the right direction for the moment.
(Although there are dozens of other executive excesses that desperately need to get shot down… if the congress won’t do it like they should, perhaps SCOTUS will get to at least some of them over the next couple of years. Maybe.)
Listening to the radio coming into work this morning about President Bush’s surprise trip to Bagdad, and there is one thing I wanted to comment on that I didn’t hear people explicitly commenting on. (I haven’t checked the blogosphere yet for this sort of thing, just noticing the people on the radio didn’t comment on this.)
On all other VIP trips to Iraq that I can remember… Tony Blair, George W Bush, even cabinet members and such, the news has been embargoed until the VIP has LEFT and is now back out of Iraqi airspace.
This time the news embargo was lifted while the President was still on the ground and was planning to stay on the ground for several more hours.
Now, unless this turns out to be disinformation and he has actually already left, that means that they are now feeling confident enough that they can essentially give any insurgents who are interested a several hour head start saying “if you want to make a spectacular attack, now would be the time” and still feel confident they can defend against any possible attacks.
They aren’t quite ready to announce such trips BEFORE they happen. But even that they let the news get out while it is still happening is still a very significant change.
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