Mark Cronan's Livejournal

Obama, the 57 states, and Bad Foreign Policy Advisers

2008-05-12T22:39:20Z

You've been to how many states, Senator Obama?

Not that it's an important error. He's obviously tired.

But, I did want to point out that if this had been W. Bush saying it, he would have been called an idiot for at least a week by the media and left, and if McCain had said it he would have been called senile for at least a week by the media and left. And when Quayle misspelled a word when running for Vice President, the media and left were all over calling him an idiot for at least a month (and it's still sometimes mentioned when Quayle's name comes up). But is anyone all over Obama for claiming there are 57 states, with one left to go, that one being the Hot-Cold state of AlaskaHawaii, which his advisers wouldn't let him go to? Nope.

Leaving Obama's domestic errors aside, of more importance is the fact that Obama has had a series of important foreign policy advisers resign lately, with one today making this newsworthy.

One excuse for Obama's lack of experience, particularly concerning foreign policy, is that he will choose good experienced people for his advisers and cabinet. But two recent important resignations call that into question in my mind: Samantha Power, former foreign policy adviser, resigned for attacking Clinton as a monster; and Rob Malley, Middle East policy adviser, resigned (today) for ties to terrorist organizations and having recently met with the terrorist organization Hamas. It's no coincidence also that both of those folks had ties to billionaire George Soros, who is about as far left as they come as far as foreign policy.

Two more noteworthy folks with ties to Obama are his friend and fundraiser, domestic terrorist Weatherman Bill Ayers; and his friend and fundraiser, the indicted Tony Rezko (who also has ties to terrorists).

The next foreign policy adviser likely to go is Zbigniew Brzezinski (Obama's Chief Foreign Policy Advisor). Two weeks after Obama named him to the post, Brzezinski went to Damascus, Syria, to begin talks with the terrorists and political assassins of the Assad regime. Despite his credentials (which are good), Brzezinski's not a good adviser, and makes mistakes (like that) fairly often. I would not be surprised if he makes a doozy soon. Oh, and he also has ties to Soros, surprise surprise.

My point? Obama isn't himself experienced with foreign policy, and he doesn't choose to surround himself with the right people to make me have some faith that he will choose the right set of advisers to make up for his lack of experience if he actually did become President. And that is a big problem for me.

But for now...I guess he is working on domestic policy, with all 57 states, plus the 58th state of AlaskaHawaii, if his advisers ever let him visit that climatically challenged state.

Classes My Top-Tier Law School Should Have Offered as Warnings About the Profession

2008-05-06T21:39:23Z

I enjoyed this:

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/lists/16E.Noakes.html

Classes My Top-Tier Law School Should Have Offered as Warnings About the Profession.

Cutting and Pasting Legal Lingo

Explaining Business Associations to the People Who Are Running Them

4 A.M. Word Processing and the Law

Ethics of Conspicuous Consumption

Forwarding E-mails: Theory and Practice: Seminar

Arbitrary-Deadline Negotiation Strategies

Crying Quietly: Clinic

Jeans-Friday Advocacy Workshop

Cutting and Pasting II: Plural to Singular

Sci-Fi Shows Set to Dominate Fox's Fall Lineup

2008-04-22T22:40:01Z

http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/04/sci-fi-shows-se.html

Sci-Fi Shows Set to Dominate Fox's Fall Lineup
By Jenna Wortham, April 17, 2008 | 1:53:00 PM

If you're already starting to feel pangs of anxiety about the nearing conclusion of sci-fi soap opera Battlestar Galactica, rest assured -- this fall, you can expect your TiVo to be working overtime.

Fox is stepping up to try and fill that programming void with a series of sci-fi sagas slated to hit the airwaves.

Here's a quick run-down of the fall fantasy fare:

Virtuality: Penned by Battlestar Galactica creator Ronald D. Moore, this show revolves around the plight of a crew aboard a 10-year mission to a distant solar system. The ship is equipped with virtual-reality equipment that lets them "travel" to other destinations -- which is fine until a mysterious bug infects the system. Moore has reportedly written the two-hour pilot; production is set to begin in July.

Fringe: Lost creator J.J. Abrams was reportedly given $10 million dollars to shoot a two-hour pilot episode for Fringe, a drama about an investigative unit specializing in otherworldly mysteries. Long-time Lost scribe Jeff Pinker recently signed on to run the show, which Abrams has described as a cross between The X-Files, Altered States and The Twilight Zone.

Dollhouse: Joss Whedon's dystopian drama about killer assassins living in a futuristic lab will star Eliza Dushku (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Tru Calling). Whedon has described the show as "The Bourne Identity meets Stepford Wives meets boarding school meets Los Angeles neo-noir meets the Whedonverse." Shooting is slated to begin on the first of seven episodes at the end of April.

Boldly Going Nowhere: From the creators of the under-repped comedy team behind It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, this show follows the misadventures of a space crew -- sort of a campy take on Star Trek. Shooting for the pilot is set to begin in October.

Deadliest Catch Rocks

2008-04-18T17:34:05Z

Diet Update

2008-04-07T19:38:44Z

I forgot to mention that I achieved my goal weight at the start of April. 155 pounds, 20.5 body fat on the scale we use. I started January 1 at 190.4 pounds and 31.5 body fat on the same scale. I am now trying to maintain the weight, increase my calorie count slightly, and increase exercise a bit.

Star Wars Last Supper

2008-03-31T05:13:38Z

The Obama Cult of Personality Effect

2008-03-13T17:34:02Z

Sometimes people will bring up Obama out of the blue, out of context, when there is no natural link to the Presidential race in the conversation. I get the impression at those times that the people involved are trying to find any excuse to mention their newest obsession - Obama. I've seen that behavior before, though more often from people who try to bring up Jesus in a conversation when there doesn't seem to be any appropriate natural link to that religion in the conversation rather than politics.

I believe a certain important, material portion of Senator Obama's supporters are supporting him based on a cult of personality effect. And, as a Jew whose grandparents escaped the holocaust which was a result of another cult of personality, that part of Obama's support scares me.

__________________________

Paul Krugman, hardly a rightist, is the one that first brought the allegation to wider attention when he wrote his article in the New York Times entitled Hate Springs Eternal. He said:

"[M]ost of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody. [b]I’m not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality.[/b] We’ve already had that from the Bush administration — remember Operation Flight Suit? We really don’t want to go there again."

_____________________

If it were an isolated claim then there wouldn't be a lot to talk about. But many sources have expressed some alarm at the issue, independently of Krugman.

For example, politico wrote an article titled Messianic rhetoric infuses Obama rallies. They wrote:

"Obama's wife, Michelle, opened the rally with a description of her husband that could, at moments, have been a description of Jesus Christ.

"We need a leader who's going to touch our souls. Who's going to make us feel differently about one another. Who's going to remind us that we are one another’s keepers. That we are only as strong as the weakest among us," she said, echoing biblical passages.

Winfrey also touched on Christian themes that had not been highlighted in Iowa.

"It's amazing grace that brought me here," she began, adding that she was "stepping out of my pew" - television – to engage in politics.

It isn't enough to tell the truth, Winfrey said. "We need politicians who know how to be the truth."

Winfrey also recalled a story from "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman," a 1974 film based on Ernest Gaines' 1971 novel.

In Winfrey's telling, the protagonist – an old woman who had survived slavery and the Civil War – would ask every child, "Are you the one? Are you the one?"

"I do believe I do today we have the answer to Miss Pittman's question – it's a question that the entire nation is asking – is he the one?" Winfrey said. "South Carolina – I do believe he's the one."

According to one academic discussion of the book by Christopher Mulvey, a professor at University of Winchester in the United Kingdom, the passage continues to ask whether the child is the one who will "carry part of our cross," a "messianic figure.""

________________

ABC's Jake Trapper wrote a similar article titled And Obama Wept:

"Inspiration is nice. But some folks seem to be getting out of hand...Obama supporter Kathleen Geier writes that she's "getting increasingly weirded out by some of Obama's supporters. On listservs I'm on, some people who should know better – hard-bitten, not-so-young cynics, even – are gushing about Barack…

Describing various encounters with Obama supporters, she writes, "Excuse me, but this sounds more like a cult than a political campaign. The language used here is the language of evangelical Christianity – the Obama volunteers speak of 'coming to Obama' in the same way born-again Christians talk about 'coming to Jesus.'...So I say, we should all get a grip, stop all this unseemly mooning over Barack, see him and the political landscape he is a part of in a cooler, clearer, and more realistic light, and get to work.""

Joe Klein, writing at Time, notes "something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism" he sees in Obama's Super Tuesday speech.

"We are the ones we've been waiting for," Obama said. "This time can be different because this campaign for the presidency of the United States of America is different. It's different not because of me. It's different because of you."

Says Klein: "That is not just maddeningly vague but also disingenuous: the campaign is entirely about Obama and his ability to inspire. Rather than focusing on any specific issue or cause — other than an amorphous desire for change — the message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is. “

The always interesting James Wolcott writes that "(p)erhaps it's my atheism at work but I found myself increasingly wary of and resistant to the salvational fervor of the Obama campaign, the idealistic zeal divorced from any particular policy or cause and chariot-driven by pure euphoria. I can picture President Hillary in the White House dealing with a recalcitrant Republican faction; I can't picture President Obama in the same role because his summons to history and call to hope seems to transcend legislative maneuvers and horse-trading; his charisma is on a more ethereal plane, and I don't look to politics for transcendence and self-certification."

Then there's MSNBC's Chris Matthews who tells Felix Gillette in the New York Observer, “I’ve been following politics since I was about 5. I’ve never seen anything like this. This is bigger than Kennedy. [Obama] comes along, and he seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament.""

______________________

Rich Lowry, at National Review, writes in his article titled Obama the Messianic:

"This isn’t merely overpromising. It’s a creepy inflation of a political figure into a secular version of the Second Coming...Obama plays into this messianism because it’s what gives his candidacy its unique appeal. Otherwise, he has a collection of pedestrian Democratic positions. It’s the promise to redeem our politics, “to create a kingdom right here on earth” — as he put it at a church event in South Carolina a few weeks ago — that accentuates his status as a different kind of candidate.

The American left might be overwhelmingly secular, but it still has religious impulses, which tend to be channeled into their leaders. Democrats want to revere their candidates. This has at least been the case since John F. Kennedy, the martyred president who embodied all that would have been good and true about America if it hadn’t taken a catastrophic wrong turn with his death. Obama offers Democrats the opportunity to fall in love all over again."

_________________________

Slate’s Timothy Noah has even started to keep track of these sort of things the "Obama Messiah Watch."

And I could go on and on with reporters from both sides of the spectrum, from the field, starting to notice an Obama Cult of Personality building around his campaign.

____________________________

Actual comparison, by religious people, of Obama and Jesus seems to be going on as well.

The Rev. Earlmont Williams, (Jamaican Gleaner March 1, 2008) wrote:

The similarities between Obamian hope and biblical hope are extraordinary

Obamian hope moves beyond the past and seeks to proactively conceptualise and create the future...Biblical hope is similar. Like Obamian hope, it speaks to the matter of the future being pulled into the present in the Kingdom of God. In a real sense, the Kingdom of God respects but moves beyond the past and, in the present, it realises the future, in a preliminary sense. Biblical hope also, in a sense, propels the one in whom it is found toward the future consummation of this kingdom. Like Obamian hope, biblical hope knows that the present is just a platform on which the future is being built and experienced. This is powerful...Fundamentally, the similarities between Obamian hope and biblical hope are extraordinary, striking and intriguing. Like biblical hope, Obamian hope inspires the United States of America and the world.

____________________________

But sometimes pictures speak louder than words. There is an interesting website called ObamaMessiah. It starts with this quote:

"... a light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany ... and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Obama" - Barack Obama Lebanon, New Hampshire.
January 7, 2008.

The site is worth checking out. They have numerous videos of Obama worship. Stevie Wonder for example has drunk the cool aid, encouraging people to chant Obama's name all day as they go about their lives. Videos of little children talking about how Obama is hope. Super creepy mental programming stuff.

Here are some images from them.

There have also been several reports of people fainting at Obama rallies, and not from the heat.

And now, perhaps the scariest of them all, in one of Obama's newest cult worship videos, they are chanting his name in a hypnotic rhythm in the background:

We Are The Ones Song by will.i.am

That is creepy. And scarier even than that, I've read and heard of some more liberal folks look to that video as a hopefully uplifting thing, missing entirely that it's not about policy but worship of personality. And even creepier than that, a couple of those liberals I am referring to are former Evangelicals who left that type of religion but not that mindset, and who I think may be more susceptible to that sort of programming.

Now I am not saying this sort of cult of personality is representative of all Obama supporters. Indeed, you can find numerous posts at DemocraticUnderground.com from folks who are equally creeped out by this cult of personality gathering around Obama, even from some of Obama's supporters.

But, the part it does represent creeps me out. Don't worship people - that way lies Very Bad Things. If you find yourself thinking about Obama as the guy you support, as opposed to his policies, then it's time to reevaluate where your head is at. If you find yourself listening more to his stump speeches about change than reading his policy positions listing exactly what he means by change, it's time to reevaluate where your head is at.

Obama himself does not represent a generic ideal - that's messianic thinking. He's just a politician running for office. He has some good ideas and some bad ideas, some good parts and bad parts. If you cannot think of any bad ideas or bad parts of him, you've gone too far (everyone has bad parts, particularly all politicians), and it's time to take a hard look at why you actually support Obama.

On the other hand if you still think of him as just a politician with good and bad, who on-balance supports more positions you support than the other options for President, then you're not the kind of person I am concerned about.

David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'

2008-03-12T21:47:23Z

I was pretty surprised by this.= essay in the Village Voice.

I happen to think it's brave. The stigma attached to outing yourself as a new-found doubter of Liberalism in the world he lives in is somewhat akin to the stigma to outing yourself as homosexual in a bible-belt town. Not the same of course, but there are similarities.

And it's well written - which I suppose is to be expected of Mamet. Worth a read, despite how long it seems at first.

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0811,374064,374064,1.html/full

David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'
An election-season essay
by David Mamet
March 11th, 2008 12:00 AM

John Maynard Keynes was twitted with changing his mind. He replied, "When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?"

My favorite example of a change of mind was Norman Mailer at The Village Voice.

Norman took on the role of drama critic, weighing in on the New York premiere of Waiting for Godot.

Twentieth century's greatest play. Without bothering to go, Mailer called it a piece of garbage.

When he did get around to seeing it, he realized his mistake. He was no longer a Voice columnist, however, so he bought a page in the paper and wrote a retraction, praising the play as the masterpiece it is.

Every playwright's dream.

I once won one of Mary Ann Madden's "Competitions" in New York magazine. The task was to name or create a "10" of anything, and mine was the World's Perfect Theatrical Review. It went like this: "I never understood the theater until last night. Please forgive everything I've ever written. When you read this I'll be dead." That, of course, is the only review anybody in the theater ever wants to get.

My prize, in a stunning example of irony, was a year's subscription to New York, which rag (apart from Mary Ann's "Competition") I considered an open running sore on the body of world literacy—this due to the presence in its pages of John Simon, whose stunning amalgam of superciliousness and savagery, over the years, was appreciated by that readership searching for an endorsement of proactive mediocrity.

But I digress.

I wrote a play about politics (November, Barrymore Theater, Broadway, some seats still available). And as part of the "writing process," as I believe it's called, I started thinking about politics. This comment is not actually as jejune as it might seem. Porgy and Bess is a buncha good songs but has nothing to do with race relations, which is the flag of convenience under which it sailed.

But my play, it turned out, was actually about politics, which is to say, about the polemic between persons of two opposing views. The argument in my play is between a president who is self-interested, corrupt, suborned, and realistic, and his leftish, lesbian, utopian-socialist speechwriter.

The play, while being a laugh a minute, is, when it's at home, a disputation between reason and faith, or perhaps between the conservative (or tragic) view and the liberal (or perfectionist) view. The conservative president in the piece holds that people are each out to make a living, and the best way for government to facilitate that is to stay out of the way, as the inevitable abuses and failures of this system (free-market economics) are less than those of government intervention.

I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind.

As a child of the '60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart.

These cherished precepts had, over the years, become ingrained as increasingly impracticable prejudices. Why do I say impracticable? Because although I still held these beliefs, I no longer applied them in my life. How do I know? My wife informed me. We were riding along and listening to NPR. I felt my facial muscles tightening, and the words beginning to form in my mind: Shut the fuck up. "?" she prompted. And her terse, elegant summation, as always, awakened me to a deeper truth: I had been listening to NPR and reading various organs of national opinion for years, wonder and rage contending for pride of place. Further: I found I had been—rather charmingly, I thought—referring to myself for years as "a brain-dead liberal," and to NPR as "National Palestinian Radio."

This is, to me, the synthesis of this worldview with which I now found myself disenchanted: that everything is always wrong.

But in my life, a brief review revealed, everything was not always wrong, and neither was nor is always wrong in the community in which I live, or in my country. Further, it was not always wrong in previous communities in which I lived, and among the various and mobile classes of which I was at various times a part.

And, I wondered, how could I have spent decades thinking that I thought everything was always wrong at the same time that I thought I thought that people were basically good at heart? Which was it? I began to question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years. I think that people, in circumstances of stress, can behave like swine, and that this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but the only subject, of drama.

I'd observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances—that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired—in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it.

For the Constitution, rather than suggesting that all behave in a godlike manner, recognizes that, to the contrary, people are swine and will take any opportunity to subvert any agreement in order to pursue what they consider to be their proper interests.

To that end, the Constitution separates the power of the state into those three branches which are for most of us (I include myself) the only thing we remember from 12 years of schooling.

The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long.

Rather brilliant. For, in the abstract, we may envision an Olympian perfection of perfect beings in Washington doing the business of their employers, the people, but any of us who has ever been at a zoning meeting with our property at stake is aware of the urge to cut through all the pernicious bullshit and go straight to firearms.

I found not only that I didn't trust the current government (that, to me, was no surprise), but that an impartial review revealed that the faults of this president—whom I, a good liberal, considered a monster—were little different from those of a president whom I revered.

Bush got us into Iraq, JFK into Vietnam. Bush stole the election in Florida; Kennedy stole his in Chicago. Bush outed a CIA agent; Kennedy left hundreds of them to die in the surf at the Bay of Pigs. Bush lied about his military service; Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for a book written by Ted Sorenson. Bush was in bed with the Saudis, Kennedy with the Mafia. Oh.

And I began to question my hatred for "the Corporations"—the hatred of which, I found, was but the flip side of my hunger for those goods and services they provide and without which we could not live.

And I began to question my distrust of the "Bad, Bad Military" of my youth, which, I saw, was then and is now made up of those men and women who actually risk their lives to protect the rest of us from a very hostile world. Is the military always right? No. Neither is government, nor are the corporations—they are just different signposts for the particular amalgamation of our country into separate working groups, if you will. Are these groups infallible, free from the possibility of mismanagement, corruption, or crime? No, and neither are you or I. So, taking the tragic view, the question was not "Is everything perfect?" but "How could it be better, at what cost, and according to whose definition?" Put into which form, things appeared to me to be unfolding pretty well.

Do I speak as a member of the "privileged class"? If you will—but classes in the United States are mobile, not static, which is the Marxist view. That is: Immigrants came and continue to come here penniless and can (and do) become rich; the nerd makes a trillion dollars; the single mother, penniless and ignorant of English, sends her two sons to college (my grandmother). On the other hand, the rich and the children of the rich can go belly-up; the hegemony of the railroads is appropriated by the airlines, that of the networks by the Internet; and the individual may and probably will change status more than once within his lifetime.

What about the role of government? Well, in the abstract, coming from my time and background, I thought it was a rather good thing, but tallying up the ledger in those things which affect me and in those things I observe, I am hard-pressed to see an instance where the intervention of the government led to much beyond sorrow.

But if the government is not to intervene, how will we, mere human beings, work it all out?

I wondered and read, and it occurred to me that I knew the answer, and here it is: We just seem to. How do I know? From experience. I referred to my own—take away the director from the staged play and what do you get? Usually a diminution of strife, a shorter rehearsal period, and a better production.

The director, generally, does not cause strife, but his or her presence impels the actors to direct (and manufacture) claims designed to appeal to Authority—that is, to set aside the original goal (staging a play for the audience) and indulge in politics, the purpose of which may be to gain status and influence outside the ostensible goal of the endeavor.

Strand unacquainted bus travelers in the middle of the night, and what do you get? A lot of bad drama, and a shake-and-bake Mayflower Compact. Each, instantly, adds what he or she can to the solution. Why? Each wants, and in fact needs, to contribute—to throw into the pot what gifts each has in order to achieve the overall goal, as well as status in the new-formed community. And so they work it out.

See also that most magnificent of schools, the jury system, where, again, each brings nothing into the room save his or her own prejudices, and, through the course of deliberation, comes not to a perfect solution, but a solution acceptable to the community—a solution the community can live with.

Prior to the midterm elections, my rabbi was taking a lot of flack. The congregation is exclusively liberal, he is a self-described independent (read "conservative"), and he was driving the flock wild. Why? Because a) he never discussed politics; and b) he taught that the quality of political discourse must be addressed first—that Jewish law teaches that it is incumbent upon each person to hear the other fellow out.

And so I, like many of the liberal congregation, began, teeth grinding, to attempt to do so. And in doing so, I recognized that I held those two views of America (politics, government, corporations, the military). One was of a state where everything was magically wrong and must be immediately corrected at any cost; and the other—the world in which I actually functioned day to day—was made up of people, most of whom were reasonably trying to maximize their comfort by getting along with each other (in the workplace, the marketplace, the jury room, on the freeway, even at the school-board meeting).

And I realized that the time had come for me to avow my participation in that America in which I chose to live, and that that country was not a schoolroom teaching values, but a marketplace.

"Aha," you will say, and you are right. I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism.

At the same time, I was writing my play about a president, corrupt, venal, cunning, and vengeful (as I assume all of them are), and two turkeys. And I gave this fictional president a speechwriter who, in his view, is a "brain-dead liberal," much like my earlier self; and in the course of the play, they have to work it out. And they eventually do come to a human understanding of the political process. As I believe I am trying to do, and in which I believe I may be succeeding, and I will try to summarize it in the words of William Allen White.

White was for 40 years the editor of the Emporia Gazette in rural Kansas, and a prominent and powerful political commentator. He was a great friend of Theodore Roosevelt and wrote the best book I've ever read about the presidency. It's called Masks in a Pageant, and it profiles presidents from McKinley to Wilson, and I recommend it unreservedly.

White was a pretty clear-headed man, and he'd seen human nature as few can. (As Twain wrote, you want to understand men, run a country paper.) White knew that people need both to get ahead and to get along, and that they're always working at one or the other, and that government should most probably stay out of the way and let them get on with it. But, he added, there is such a thing as liberalism, and it may be reduced to these saddest of words: " . . . and yet . . . "

The right is mooing about faith, the left is mooing about change, and many are incensed about the fools on the other side—but, at the end of the day, they are the same folks we meet at the water cooler. Happy election season.

The Funeral of E. Gary Gygax

2008-03-10T06:13:24Z

E. Gary Gygax was buried this weekend.

Monte Cook, one of the people who took on the duties of carrying on Gary's work in it's third edition incarnation, attended. Part of what he wrote was:

"It was also moving and meaningful. Both the service and the time before and after were filled with stories of the man and his impact on our lives. The minister focused on three things, which I thought were all absolutely perfect: He spoke about how Gary (through his creations) valued human interaction, cooperation rather than conflict, and intellectual challenge. I could not have put it better myself."

All these years, people have asked me "What is an RPG". And I always answer with something about fantasy, or something about the mechanics, or drama. And it amazes me that somehow, all this time, I failed to describe what it's all really about. Just those simple concepts: a group of people getting together to cooperatively challenge their minds.

And of course there are other ways to do that, but Gary Gygax helped invent a game that uniquely achieved that goal on an very consistent basis. So effective that it spawned an entire industry.

D&D isn't a game about winning. It's not a video game where you hide behind your TV set or computer. It's not about beating your opponent, like with a board game or sports. It's not about mechanics of playing the game even, though a lot seems to be devoted to those rules on first look. Really it's just about that simple concept - folks directly meeting to cooperate in challenging their minds. In that sense, role playing games have more in common with 19th century philosophers in the coffee houses of Vienna that they do with World of Warcraft.

Thanks again Gary. Wish I could have met you in person. I wish I could have played the game you helped invent, with you. And I like to think, had I met you, that I would have told you that what you created got me out of the house as a kid (and adult), to interact with friends in person, and cooperate with them, and try to figure out devilishly intellectually challenging things like your Tomb of Horrors module. That helped me grow into the person I am now.

If You Ask, Most Companies WIll Reduce Their Price

2008-03-07T23:39:47Z

Or how to be a cheap bastard :)

When people call me at work and ask for a better price, and say they are considering my lower-priced competitor, most of the time I will give them the better price.

In my experience, most companies work this way. I've found a shocking number of companies will reduce their prices simply by asking them to.

This of course cannot be done directly through online shopping. You have to call and ask. But sometimes, it's can be a big savings.

For example, if I put together a new computer on Dell's website, it will be a decent price. If I call their salesperson, and tell the salesperson that I am comparing their prices to TigerDirect and Lenovo and wanted to know if Dell was willing to reduce their price, every single time Dell will significantly reduce their prices. You don't even have to say "TigerDirect is $200 less", Dell will automatically just adjust the price fairly low, no questions asked.

Similarly with credit card companies, if you have a good record with them, you can call about once a year and ask them to reduce your interest rate. I usually say I am getting offers in the mail for really low rates, and I want to know if they are willing to reduce their rates or if I should instead consider these other offers. Most of the time, your credit card company will reduce your interest rate. And that can add up to a huge savings over time. Even if you always pay off your card every month, getting the lower interest rate looks good on your credit report.

I've started to expand the use of this practice to even online items. Today I needed to renew our THWATE certificate (that's pronouced THOUGHT, don't ask me why). THWATE is a web server security certificate (An SSL). It's the thing that tells your online buyers that you have at least a basic level of cryptographic protocol for your purchasing communications. I noticed that, though last time I renewed the certificate in 2006 it was $109 a year, this time it was $249 a year. As the Ghost Hunters would say, "What the Fudge?". So I called them, and after hearing the sales pitch for why their new prices were justified (they have 93% market share now, that is the real reason), I told the salesperson I would find a cheaper competitor and switch to them, after many years service, if he didn't get me better prices. One sentence, that's all it took, and my price came down to $148 a year. Still $39 a year more than last time, but a heck of a lot better than the $140 a year more they were asking for. And he could even adjust the price online for me by having me mark off "pay by check", processing the order, changing the price, and then manually changing it to credit card on his side.

This sort of thing works in person as well, for some things. Now I am not saying you should negotiate your bean burrito prices. I am saying however certain things work well with this. Like when getting your car repaired at the dealership (not usually a wise thing, but sometimes necessary), I always ask what current coupons offers they have at that time. Every time, they have a coupon offer, and every time they just give me that coupon price without me having the coupon. And the coupon at a dealer repair location is usually for a decent chunk of change.

So, I encourage you to call before you buy, even for things you buy on the internet, and for some things in person. It can't hurt, will be a heck of a lot less intimidating than you think, and can save you a lot of money.

markcronan @ 2008-03-06T19:36:00

2008-03-07T03:41:26Z

This is likely going to wind up as a commercial, should Obama win the nomination of his party.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TumIz2bajus

That was incredibly stupid. And she is his foreign policy adviser? Even if it is true, you do not hand over an ad to the opposition saying essentially "Our guy cannot be trusted to respond well to a national emergency". Not when you are running against an elder statesman with lots of national security experience who is also a war vet, P.O.W., son AND grandson of Admirals, and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Combine this with Obama's inane response on Pakistan, equally lame one of unconditionally meeting with dictators (fortunately he took that one back recently), inability to name the new President of Russia, and his Jay Rockefeller gaffe on Iraq, and I am starting to think Obama has a really bad foreign policy weakness that will be exploited during the general election (if he wins the nomination).

Diet - Weight Loss Update

2008-03-05T19:47:07Z

You may recall I've been on a diet since Jan. 1. See: http://markcronan.livejournal.com/80663.html

So I have not gotten around to updating progress. As of March 1, I am down to 160#, 30 pounds lost so far in two months, and five more pounds to go.

The weight loss is slowing, as expected, but I am still just about on target. The hard part will be to make a soft landing and maintain my final weight (which I hope to be 155#).

Again, still not much exercise (though I should be doing more - and I am capable of doing more now that I am not carrying around an extra 30#). Still below 1000 calories a day on average, though I am increasing that a bit here and there. Last night we had dinner with Melody's friend Keith and his new girlfriend and their friend Joe, and that put me over my calories for the day (but no weight gain from it). So, I know I can increase it a bit and so far not gain weight (with still gradual loss over time).

Gary Gygax Passed Away Today

2008-03-04T19:46:35Z

I am deeply saddened by the news that Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, passed away last night, apparently from heart failure. See: http://www.freeyabb.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=4373&mforum=trolllordgames

D&D is a game I have enjoyed since my childhood. With some brief time off for a few years, I have played it almost continuously since Junior High School. The game brought be a great deal of joy, friendship, knowledge (both useless and useful) and honing of skills like reading, writing, imagination, and mathematics which have served me well in many other fields. If not for what I learned in D&D, I would have done worse in my SATs, and hence worse in my LSATs, and perhaps not have become an attorney. In my darkest moments in life I have been able to engage my imagination and dream of fantastical worlds which Gary helped create, and those thoughts were always a comfort to me.

I owe a debt of gratitude to this great man, who continued to chat with his fans (including me) on message boards for the past several years, up until a few days ago. He was always open to any question or comment or criticism, always friendly and helpful, and went out of his way to make sure people continued to enjoy the game he helped create. He helped many people become game creators in their own right, and worked on a collective history of role playing games that continues to be written with each new generation.

A fitting eulogy I read was originally from Knights of the Dinner Table #11. Here's to you Gary.

The Empty Chair
Eulogy for a Gamer

There is an empty chair,
at the table this day.
A hallowed place where,
a friend once played.
The roll of his dice,
my ears long to hear.
Or perhaps it would suffice,
if he should suddenly appear.
With character sheet in hand,
and a bag of Cheeze-doodles to share.
All his friends would stand,
as he sat in the empty chair.
I hear his voice a-callin’,
and it ties my heart in a knot.
For he cries, “Though a comrade has fallen,
You must play for those who cannot.”
We conquered worlds on the run,
he and I in the name of fun.
And as others may come and go,
I make both both friend and foe.
But what I long for most,
is our past now long a ghost.

Global Cooling, Coming Ice Age?

2008-02-27T05:47:53Z

http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Monitors+Report+Worldwide+Global+Cooling/article10866.htm

Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling
Michael Asher (Blog) - February 26, 2008 12:55 PM

Twelve-month long drop in world temperatures wipes out a century of warming.

Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on.

No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

A compiled list of all the sources can be seen here. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to wipe out nearly all the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year's time. For all four sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.

Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases. The dramatic cooling seen in just 12 months time seems to bear that out. While the data doesn't itself disprove that carbon dioxide is acting to warm the planet, it does demonstrate clearly that more powerful factors are now cooling it.

Let's hope those factors stop fast. Cold is more damaging than heat. The mean temperature of the planet is about 54 degrees. Humans -- and most of the crops and animals we depend on -- prefer a temperature closer to 70.

Historically, the warm periods such as the Medieval Climate Optimum were beneficial for civilization. Corresponding cooling events such as the Little Ice Age, though, were uniformly bad news.

----------------------------------------------------

http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=332289

Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age

Lorne Gunter, National Post Published: Monday, February 25, 2008

Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average."

China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.

There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has felt the pinch as home buyers have stayed home rather than venturing out looking for new houses.

In just the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, smashing the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in the pre-SUV, pre-Kyoto, pre-carbon footprint days of 1950.

And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its "lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past.

The ice is back.

Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.

OK, so one winter does not a climate make. It would be premature to claim an Ice Age is looming just because we have had one of our most brutal winters in decades.

But if environmentalists and environment reporters can run around shrieking about the manmade destruction of the natural order every time a robin shows up on Georgian Bay two weeks early, then it is at least fair game to use this winter's weather stories to wonder whether the alarmist are being a tad premature.

And it's not just anecdotal evidence that is piling up against the climate-change dogma.

According to Robert Toggweiler of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University and Joellen Russell, assistant professor of biogeochemical dynamics at the University of Arizona -- two prominent climate modellers -- the computer models that show polar ice-melt cooling the oceans, stopping the circulation of warm equatorial water to northern latitudes and triggering another Ice Age (a la the movie The Day After Tomorrow) are all wrong.

"We missed what was right in front of our eyes," says Prof. Russell. It's not ice melt but rather wind circulation that drives ocean currents northward from the tropics. Climate models until now have not properly accounted for the wind's effects on ocean circulation, so researchers have compensated by over-emphasizing the role of manmade warming on polar ice melt.

But when Profs. Toggweiler and Russell rejigged their model to include the 40-year cycle of winds away from the equator (then back towards it again), the role of ocean currents bringing warm southern waters to the north was obvious in the current Arctic warming.

Last month, Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, shrugged off manmade climate change as "a drop in the bucket." Showing that solar activity has entered an inactive phase, Prof. Sorokhtin advised people to "stock up on fur coats."

He is not alone. Kenneth Tapping of our own National Research Council, who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun, is convinced we are in for a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon.

The last time the sun was this inactive, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age that lasted about five centuries and ended in 1850. Crops failed through killer frosts and drought. Famine, plague and war were widespread. Harbours froze, so did rivers, and trade ceased.

It's way too early to claim the same is about to happen again, but then it's way too early for the hysteria of the global warmers, too.

Obama Plagiarism Scandal

2008-02-19T19:42:47Z

Barack Obama Plagiarism Scandal

When I first heard about this scandal, I dismissed it as minor.

Well, it might not be minor. In fact, I am starting to think we might have a real scandal on our hands here, and it's going to take a week or two to really blow up.

In case you missed it, here is the first issue:

1. The "Just Words" speech from Patrick.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=aBcYXfbGnhA

and

http://youtube.com/watch?v=By2WxgeaTw4

OK, so Obama admits he was borrowing words from Patrick, and that Patrick is a friend. He doesn't explain why he didn't attribute the claim at the time.

In itself, a minor scandal that will blow over. However, due to what happened with Biden in 1988, what it meant was the press started to pour over his explanation, and all of Obama's prior speeches, and see if there is a pattern and practice of him plagiarizing speeches.

And if there is, THEN it becomes a real scandal as opposed to the minor blip it is right now.

And so what I thought would end there, now isn't. The press is doing that, and here is what they found in just the last 12 hours:

2) The timeline on Obama's explanation does not track.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/02/deval-patricks.html

“In a telephone interview on Sunday, Mr. Patrick said that he and Mr. Obama first talked about the attacks from their respective rivals last summer, when Mrs. Clinton was raising questions about Mr. Obama’s experience, and that they discussed them again last week," the Times' Jeff Zeleny wrote. "Patrick said he told Mr. Obama that he should respond to the criticism, and he shared language from his campaign with Mr. Obama's speechwriters.”

But Obama was quoted using Patrick's language before the Summer of 2007.

"'We hold these truths to be self-evident, all men are created equal.’ Those are just words," Obama was quoted as saying in a March 19, 2007 New Republic story. " ‘I have a dream.’ Just words.”

So....the claim that Patrick an Obama "first" discussed this last Summer does not make sense.

3) Obama plagiarized Patrick another time, this time with the "chance on your own aspirations" line.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/02/deval-patricks.html

Patrick in June 2006, at the Massachusetts Democratic party convention: "I am not asking anybody to take a chance on me. I am asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations."

Obama one year later, as quoted in USA Today: "I am not asking anyone to take a chance on me. I am asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations."

4) Obama also may have plagiarized a line from Robin Williams in the movie "Man of the Year". The "We are not a nation of red states or of blue states; we are the United States of America." This one is a bit less of an issue for me, since it's kind of a generic line. However, when looking for a pattern and practice, it's an issue on some level.

See:

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/01/the_audacity_of_obamas_speech.html

And this is just the first 12 hours. If this thing starts rolling, and plagiarized line after plagiarized line starts coming out, Obama has a real serious scandal on his hands. And it's made all the worse by it starting with the "Just Words" speech, and Obama banking his campaign on his public speaking ability. It all has a certain irony to it that the media will love like sharks smelling blood in the water.

Thar be oil in that thar moon

2008-02-17T06:19:03Z

13 February 2008
Saturn’s orange moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to new Cassini data. The hydrocarbons rain from the sky, collecting in vast deposits that form lakes and dunes.

The new findings from the study led by Ralph Lorenz, Cassini radar team member from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, USA, are reported in the 29 January 2008 issue of the Geophysical Research Letters.

"Titan is just covered in carbon-bearing material—it’s a giant factory of organic chemicals," said Lorenz. “This vast carbon inventory is an important window into the geology and climate history of Titan.”

At a balmy minus 179º C , Titan is a far cry from Earth. Instead of water, liquid hydrocarbons in the form of methane and ethane are present on the moon's surface, and tholins probably make up its dunes. The term ‘tholins’ was coined by Carl Sagan in 1979 to describe the complex organic molecules at the heart of prebiotic chemistry.

Cassini has mapped about 20% of Titan's surface with radar. Several hundred lakes and seas have been observed, with each of several dozen estimated to contain more hydrocarbon liquid than Earth's oil and gas reserves. The dark dunes that run along the equator contain a volume of organics several hundred times larger than Earth's coal reserves.

Proven reserves of natural gas on Earth total 130 thousand million tons, enough to provide 300 times the amount of energy the entire United States uses annually for residential heating, cooling and lighting. Dozens of Titan's lakes individually have the equivalent of at least this much energy in the form of methane and ethane.

"This global estimate is based mostly on views of the lakes in the northern polar regions. We have assumed the south might be similar, but we really don’t yet know how much liquid is there," said Lorenz. Cassini's radar has observed the south polar region only once, and only two small lakes were visible. Future observations of that area are planned during Cassini’s proposed extended mission.

Scientists estimated Titan's lake depth by making some general assumptions based on lakes on Earth. They took the average area and depth of lakes on Earth, taking into account the nearby surroundings, like mountains. On Earth, the lake depth is often 10 times less than the height of nearby terrain.

"We also know that some lakes are more than 10 m or so deep because they appear literally pitch-black to the radar. If they were shallow we'd see the bottom, and we don't," said Lorenz.

Seas on Titan

The question of how much liquid is on the surface is an important one because methane is a strong greenhouse gas on Titan as well as on Earth, but there is much more of it on Titan. If all the observed liquid on Titan is methane, it would only last a few million years, because as methane escapes into Titan's atmosphere, it breaks down and escapes into space. If the methane were to run out, Titan could become much colder. Scientists believe that methane might be supplied to the atmosphere by venting from the interior in cryovolcanic eruptions. If so, the amount of methane, and the temperature on Titan, may have fluctuated dramatically in Titan’s past.

“We are carbon-based life, and understanding how far along the chain of complexity towards life that chemistry can go in an environment like Titan will be important in understanding the origins of life throughout the universe,” added Lorenz.

Cassini's next radar flyby of Titan is on 22 February 2008, when the radar instrument will observe the landing site of ESA’s Huygens probe.

It's not a prebate

2008-02-08T04:05:16Z

I keep hearing from people that they heard, second hand, that the proposed $600 (or $1200 for marriage couples) stimulus package to people is a "prebate", and that you will need to pay it back or claim it as taxes in a future year.

While it may have worked that way last time, back in 2001 (or was it 2003?), apparently that is not how it will work this time.

http://www.taxalmanac.org/index.php/Discussion:Rebate_News:_A_Run_on_the_Bank

"In other words, they create a higher -0- percent tax bracket for 2008: "In 2008, taxes would be cut from 10 percent to zero percent on the first $6,000 dollars of taxable income for individual taxpayers and the first $12,000 of taxable income for couples."

Deal to End Hollywood Writers’ Strike May Be Near

2008-02-02T22:59:29Z

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/business/media/02cnd-writers.html?ex=1202619600&en=bdf485ec2a348d98&ei=5099&partner=TOPIXNEWS

Deal to End Hollywood Writers’ Strike May Be Near

By MICHAEL CIEPLY
Published: February 2, 2008

LOS ANGELES — Informal talks between representatives of Hollywood’s writers and production companies eliminated the major roadblocks to a new contract, opening the prospect of a tentative agreement between the parties as early as next week, according to people who were briefed on the situation but requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak.

A deal would end a crippling writers strike that is now entering its fourth month.

The agreement may come without renewed formal negotiations between the parties, though both sides still need to agree on specific language of key provisions. If that process goes smoothly, an agreement may be presented to the governing boards of the striking Writers Guild of America West and Writers Guild of America East by the end of next week, the people said.

The breakthrough occurred Friday after two weeks of closed-door discussions between the sides. Even if approved by leaders of the guilds, a deal would require ratification by a majority of the more than 10,000 active guild members.

Writers walked out on Nov. 5 after failing to reach a new contract with producers in months of difficult bargaining. Talks resumed briefly in December, but quickly broke off again. The latest round of talks came in the wake of a tentative contract agreement between producers and the Directors Guild of America.

That deal confronted many of the same issues that have troubled writers — including difficult questions related to pay for digital distribution of shows and movies — and paved the way for Friday’s movement toward a deal.

A final sticking point had been compensation for television programs that are streamed over the Internet after their initial broadcast. Companies were seeking a period during which they could stream such shows without paying a residual, and wanted to peg payments for a year of streaming at the $1,200 level established in the directors’ contract. Writers were seeking 1.2 percent of the distributors’ revenue from such streams as a residual. How that issue was finally resolved in the informal talks remained unclear as of Saturday afternoon.

Spokesmen for the West Coast writers guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The sides have been operating under a news blackout.

New Years Resolution - Weight Loss

2008-01-31T20:20:11Z

So I resolved to lose some weight this year. Starting Jan 1, I have been dieting. And so far, I have lost just about 20 pounds (from 190# to 170#) for January, which is about 2 pounds lost for every 3 diet days.

170 was my first goal, so I am happy. 190# was just way too much for me, and I was starting to feel the effects with heartburn (which I had never had before) and being out of breath. 170 is my old "stable" weight, and my first goal was to get to this point.

My final goal is 155#, which I hope to reach by the end of February or mid March. I used to weigh 155# a long time ago, and which I reached once in recent memory while on Atkins. At 155#, my original pants size (32, from years ago) fits again. And according to charts, 155# is about an ideal weight for my height (5'7", or 5'8" in the morning if a stretch sometimes) and build. Then I just need to find a way to maintain that weight, which will be the real challenge.

No fancy diet. The diet has no official name. I just cut my calories down to from 600-1000 a day (averaging closer to 1000). I pay a bit of attention to fat, but not a lot. And while I have increased exercise a bit, exercise hasn't been my focus. I do drink a lot more liquids, and I have been having more hot tea lately.

I've been strict. I actually count every single thing I eat. I do not go to a restaurant and just shrug and eat something that "looks OK enough". I do not cheat, not even on vacation, and not even at a restaurant. Cheating doesn't work well for me. Once I cheat, I tend to cheat more after that. Dieting needs to be a habit with me, and I form habits best when I do it consistently at for at least three weeks strictly. I do not treat food as a reward for doing something. Food cannot be viewed as a focus for me when dieting, or else I just constantly notice if I am hungry.

In case anyone is interested (or in case I myself in interested in future years), here is an average day:

For breakfast I have a Dannon Light & Fit Yogurt (60 calories) and a cup of coffee with milk and fake sugar (5 calories).

For meals at work, I usually have a Lean Cuisine. Those products tend to average from 250-350 calories. For mid-afternoon snack I will have an apple or orange at about 100 calories.

Sometimes I will have fast food. For fast food:

Subway - 6 inch Veggies on wheat, no cheese, no mayo, no oil, no olives, add banana peppers and cucumber slices (about 210 calories, 420 if I have a footlong, which I will usually do if I am going to have a light dinner);

Pollo Loco - 1 small pinto beans, mixed with 1 small spanish rice, and salsa (300 calories);

Taco Bell - 1 Fresco Bean Burrito (330 calories).

For dinners, Melody usually cooks something yummy but low calorie. Lots of soups, some lentils, some veggies, some burritos and soft tacos, some fruit, some salad, pretty good stuff.

Arctic Ice Pack Melting

2008-01-28T19:05:25Z

You're going to start hearing a lot about the north poll and the arctic ice pack melting.

You are also going to hear people imply (or even flat out state) that it is because of global warming.

When they do, just remember that an awful lot of experts (and we are not talking about a minority of global warming dissenters, we are talking about NASA scientists and the Polar Science Centre Applied Physics Laboratory) say it's NOT global warming causing this.

See: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/15/ocean_currents_melt_planet/

"According to a team of NASA scientists, decade-long variations in ocean circulation, known as the Arctic Oscillation, have an effect on the oceans' salinity. A very salty sea is heavier and circulates differently than a less salty one, the team says. This can affect the temperature of the water in the region and thus the local climate...In the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the researchers attribute the change to a weakened Arctic Oscillation. This, they explain, reduced the saltiness of the upper ocean near the pole, making it lighter and changing its circulation...Our study confirms many changes seen in upper Arctic Ocean circulation in the 1990s were mostly decadal in nature, rather than trends caused by global warming," said James Morison, lead researcher based at the University of Washington's Polar Science Centre Applied Physics Laboratory."

Academy Award Nominations

2008-01-22T17:56:35Z

So the Academy Award nominations are in, and in general I a pleased. I've seen three of the five "Best Picture" nominations, and we already had plans to see the other two (the other two being "Atonement" and "There Will Be Blood"). I really liked Juno, and was happy to see it in there, beating out films like "American Gangster" and "Into the Wild", and "Juno" also got a best director nod as well!

I was even happier to see Persepolis get nominated for Best Animated Film (though not best foreign film, which was odd). No "Simpsons" or "Bee Movie" in that category (though I enjoyed both of those missing movies well enough).

I was happy to see Johnny Depp for "Sweeney Todd" in the best actor category, and Cate Blanchett for "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" in the best actress category, and Philip Seymour Hoffman in best supporting actor for "Charlie Wilson's War".

On the disappointing side, no Documentary nomination for "King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters". That sucks. It was a truly fine film, and deserved the recognition. "In the Shadow of the Moon" also deserved a nomination in that category and didn't get it.

I was also sad to see nothing for "Once", "Waitress", or "The Darjeeling Limited". Those are three great movies, and they got no recognition at all.

Finally, I was a bit surprised to see nothing for "300". But then, perhaps the box office was enough of recognition for that film.

Anyway, here is the complete list of 80th annual Academy Award nominations announced Tuesday:

1. Best Picture: "Atonement," "Juno," "Michael Clayton," "No Country for Old Men," "There Will Be Blood."

2. Actor: George Clooney, "Michael Clayton"; Daniel Day-Lewis, "There Will Be Blood"; Johnny Depp, "Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street"; Tommy Lee Jones, "In the Valley of Elah"; Viggo Mortensen, "Eastern Promises."

3. Actress: Cate Blanchett, "Elizabeth: The Golden Age"; Julie Christie, "Away From Her"; Marion Cotillard, "La Vie en Rose"; Laura Linney, "The Savages"; Ellen Page, "Juno."

4. Supporting Actor: Casey Affleck, "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford"; Javier Bardem, "No Country for Old Men"; Hal Holbrook, "Into the Wild"; Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Charlie Wilson's War"; Tom Wilkinson, "Michael Clayton."

5. Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett, "I'm Not There"; Ruby Dee, "American Gangster"; Saoirse Ronan, "Atonement"; Amy Ryan, "Gone Baby Gone"; Tilda Swinton, "Michael Clayton."

6. Director: Julian Schnabel, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"; Jason Reitman, "Juno"; Tony Gilroy, "Michael Clayton"; Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, "No Country for Old Men"; Paul Thomas Anderson, "There Will Be Blood."

7. Foreign Film: "Beaufort," Israel; "The Counterfeiters," Austria; "Katyn," Poland; "Mongol," Kazakhstan; "12," Russia.

8. Adapted Screenplay: Christopher Hampton, "Atonement"; Sarah Polley, "Away from Her"; Ronald Harwood, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"; Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, "No Country for Old Men"; Paul Thomas Anderson, "There Will Be Blood."

9. Original Screenplay: Diablo Cody, "Juno"; Nancy Oliver, "Lars and the Real Girl"; Tony Gilroy, "Michael Clayton"; Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava and Jim Capobianco, "Ratatouille"; Tamara Jenkins, "The Savages."

10. Animated Feature Film: "Persepolis"; "Ratatouille"; "Surf's Up."

11. Art Direction: "American Gangster," "Atonement," "The Golden Compass," "Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street," "There Will Be Blood."

12. Cinematography: "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," "Atonement," "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," "No Country for Old Men," "There Will Be Blood."

13. Sound Mixing: "The Bourne Ultimatum," "No Country for Old Men," "Ratatouille," "3:10 to Yuma," "Transformers."

14. Sound Editing: "The Bourne Ultimatum," "No Country for Old Men," "Ratatouille," "There Will Be Blood," "Transformers."

15. Original Score: "Atonement," Dario Marianelli; "The Kite Runner," Alberto Iglesias; "Michael Clayton," James Newton Howard; "Ratatouille," Michael Giacchino; "3:10 to Yuma," Marco Beltrami.

16. Original Song: "Falling Slowly" from "Once," Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova; "Happy Working Song" from "Enchanted," Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz; "Raise It Up" from "August Rush," Nominees to be determined; "So Close" from "Enchanted," Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz; "That's How You Know" from "Enchanted," Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz.

17. Costume: "Across the Universe," "Atonement," "Elizabeth: The Golden Age," "La Vie en Rose," "Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street."

18. Documentary Feature: "No End in Sight," "Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience," "Sicko," "Taxi to the Dark Side," "War/Dance."

19. Documentary (short subject): "Freeheld," "La Corona (The Crown)," "Salim Baba," "Sari's Mother."

20. Film Editing: "The Bourne Ultimatum," "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," "Into the Wild," "No Country for Old Men," "There Will Be Blood."

21. Makeup: "La Vie en Rose," "Norbit," "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End."

22. Animated Short Film: "I Met the Walrus," "Madame Tutli-Putli," "Meme Les Pigeons Vont au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go to Heaven)," "My Love (Moya Lyubov)," "Peter & the Wolf."

23. Live Action Short Film: "At Night," "Il Supplente (The Substitute)," "Le Mozart des Pickpockets (The Mozart of Pickpockets)," "Tanghi Argentini," "The Tonto Woman."

24. Visual Effects: "The Golden Compass," "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," "Transformers."

Another lame test

2008-01-15T07:03:37Z

Your Score: The Romantic Lover

63% partner focus, 61% aggressiveness, 45% adventurousness

Based on the results of this test, it is highly likely that:

You prefer your romance and love to be traditional rather than daring or out-of-the-ordinary, you would rather pursue than be pursued and, when it comes to physical love, your satisfaction comes more from providing a wonderful time to your partner than simply seeking your own.

This places you in the Lover Style of: The Romantic Lover.

The Romantic Lover is a wonderful Lover Style, and is the hallmark of young love--the Romantic Lover often loves the idea of being in love, and being a wonderful lover, and so they try to bring their prospective partners every bit of joy or happiness that they can. They are the serenaders, and the ones to rent carriages in the park or take a gondola ride down a canal. The Romantic Lover is a treasure to find, though they sometimes are prone to being hurt if their advances are ignored or harshly rebuffed.

In terms of physical love, the Romantic Lover can seem shy, but usually it is simply a by-product of wanting to be perfect for their lover, and often needs some extra encouragement and re-assurance to truly feel at ease. Given a special, intimate evening, and the right lover, the Romantic Lover can be a delight in bed.

Best Compatibility can probably be found with: The Classic Lover (most of all) or the Suave Lover, or the Exotic Lover.

Congratulations!

If you enjoyed this test, I would love the feedback! Also, you might want to check out some of my other tests if you're interested in the following:

Nerds, Geeks & Dorks

Professional Wrestling

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

America/Politics

Thanks Again! -- THE LOVER STYLE PROFILE TEST

Link: The Lover Style Profile Test written by donathos on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test
View My Profile(donathos)

Top 15 Best Movies of 2007

2007-12-31T04:36:13Z

I just watched the Ebert and Roper list of the best movies of 2007.

I still have a few more movies to go for this year (well OK some will have to come in 2008), and several I want to catch on DVD. But, of those I have seen already, these are my top 15 that come to mind right now, in no particular order:

Once
300
Waitress
Stardust
Juno
Knocked Up
3:10 to Yuma
In the Shadow of the Moon
The Darjeeling Limited
No Country for Old Men
1408
Ratatouille
Sweeny Todd
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Michael Clayton
King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

OK, so that's more than 15....

I am sure there are some I missed. Perhaps Melody will remind me :)

What D&D Character Are You?

2007-12-30T04:58:55Z

I Am A: Lawful Good Human Wizard/Cleric (3rd/3rd Level)

Ability Scores:

Strength-10

Dexterity-13

Constitution-12

Intelligence-14

Wisdom-16

Charisma-15

Alignment:
Lawful Good A lawful good character acts as a good person is expected or required to act. He combines a commitment to oppose evil with the discipline to fight relentlessly. He tells the truth, keeps his word, helps those in need, and speaks out against injustice. A lawful good character hates to see the guilty go unpunished. Lawful good is the best alignment you can be because it combines honor and compassion. However, lawful good can be a dangerous alignment because it restricts freedom and criminalizes self-interest.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Primary Class:
Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard's strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.

Secondary Class:
Clerics act as intermediaries between the earthly and the divine (or infernal) worlds. A good cleric helps those in need, while an evil cleric seeks to spread his patron's vision of evil across the world. All clerics can heal wounds and bring people back from the brink of death, and powerful clerics can even raise the dead. Likewise, all clerics have authority over undead creatures, and they can turn away or even destroy these creatures. Clerics are trained in the use of simple weapons, and can use all forms of armor and shields without penalty, since armor does not interfere with the casting of divine spells. In addition to his normal complement of spells, every cleric chooses to focus on two of his deity's domains. These domains grants the cleric special powers, and give him access to spells that he might otherwise never learn. A cleric's Wisdom score should be high, since this determines the maximum spell level that he can cast.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

My Friend will be on NPR tomorrow (Friday)

2007-12-20T23:38:01Z

I just received this email from a friend of mine. Her husband Matt (also a long time friend) wrote the new book "The Body Has A Mind Of Its Own", along with his mother (a lifelong science writer).

Matt will be interviewed on NPR tomorrow. I encourage everyone to give it a listen. The book topic is fascinating. Melody and I heard them interviewed once before, and they are good:

Friends,

We just found out that Matt is going to be on National Public Radio tomorrow afternoon, discussing his new book, The Body Has A Mind Of Its Own. (I can honestly say, despite my obvious bias, that it's pretty brilliant.) The 30-minute segment is called Science Friday, which I believe is part of the program All Things Considered. Here is a description:

Science Friday, as heard on NPR, is a weekly discussion of the latest news in science, technology, health, and the environment hosted by Ira Flatow. Ira interviews scientists, authors, and policymakers, and listeners can call in and ask questions as well.

If you don't catch it live, you can download the podcast.

Matt's interview will air at 3 p.m. EDT, [which is noon for Pacific time] Here is a link to the show:

http://www.sciencefriday.com/

Thanks for your support!