Ripples of Reagan

A day after former President Reagan's death, news of his departure and the subsequent reactions from those who knew him, those who worked with him, those who lived through his two terms, and those who build him up to mythic proportions dominate the airwaves. It's the only thing I can find on the news today. Regardless of what you thought of Reagan, you can't deny the reaction his death has evoked.

On my own bloglist alone the reaction has ranged the gamut. For some, he is a hero who defeated evil and rebuilt the Republican party, while for others, he is an all-but contemptible man with "blood on his hands" in a very personal way. For yet others, Reagan's death seems to be a touchy subject—if you can't find something good to day, your work might be boycotted. Some take this opportunity to obliquely criticize George W. Bush, who many in the media are lovingly comparing to Reagan, while others like the Highest Himself are simply happy to have a break from having Bush under the microscope.

However, most, like myself, are left without much emotion, save perhaps a bit of sympathy. I was pretty young during Reagan's two terms and much of what I remember is a kaleidescope of cultural images.

However you feel about ol' Ronnie, his death has caused great waves around the blogosphere and mainstream media.

Artists subpoenaed under PATRIOT act

Lots of posts today, as I'm sitting around here in San Diego... This one from the American Street caught my eye.

WASHINGTON - June 3 - Three artists have been served subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury that will consider bioterrorism charges against a university professor whose art involves the use of simple biology equipment.

Source

This is a good example of the misuse of the PATRIOT act and how it isn't helping us be more secure, just less free. (Via the American Street.)

Ray Bradbury a hypocritical ass-hat?

WorldNetDaily reports that Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451 is pissed off about Michael Moore's newest movie title, Fahrenheit 9/11. The WorldNetDaily's translation of the Swedish article from Dagens Nyheter reports Bradbury calling Moore a "a screwed asshole" and "a horrible human being — horrible human!" Of course, I don't yet know if this is a fair translation or if the source article is authentic.

If this article is true, considering that Bradbury has similarly borrowed titles from authors such as Walt Whitman and William Shakespeare, I guess that makes him a hypocritical ass-hat.

Via BoingBoing.

Reagan dies today at 93

Former president Ronald Reagan died today, at a ripe old age of 93. As everyone knows, Reagan battled Alzheimer's disease for years. Scary stuff to suffer through, especially to me, with a history of Alzheimer's in my family. Reagan was a dreamer, a purveyor of dubious theories, an articulate and moving speaker, a B movie actor, and a controversial president (also known as the Teflon President). As a "hero" of the conservative movement, his presidency has left us with a plethora of interesting phrases, like Reaganomics, "Just Say No!", "Star Wars", Iran-Contra, Reagan-Democrats, "ketchup really is a vegetable", "Winners Don't Use Drugs", "trees cause more pollution than automobiles do", and voodoo-economics.

Palm-sized or not, double-click patent will hurt everyone

Better be careful, software writers, what you allow to be done with a mouse. Les reports that Micro$oft has just patented the double-click. Les does point out that the patent seems to focus on palm-sized devices, but I believe that will provide little to no protection against misuse of this (IMHO) illegal patent. With computing devices becoming smaller and smaller every day, more and more technology will come under the focus of this patent. Once again a company steps outside of the free market to use the government in an effort to extort money out of honest businesses. Repeat after me, kids, "the patent office is hideously broken and needs to be reformed."

Berg Theory: two cameras, two timezones, perhaps US Pacific time and Baghdad time?

The more I've thought about the gaps in timestamps in the Nick Berg movie, the more I think two cameras must have been involved. The timestamps from the video are as follows.

• 2:18:35 - 2:18:43 : Nick in the chair speaking
• 2:40:33 - 2:44:11 : Captors read statement, followed by beginning of beheading
• 13:26:24 - 13:26:27 : More of Nick in the chair, speaking
• 13:45:47 - 13:48:49 : Captors remove the head

Why the 11 hour difference? Some, seemingly discounting the shot of Nick in the chair at 13:26:24, believe Nick was already dead when the majority of beheading was shown, which falls in the 13:45-and-on range. They suggest the terrorists started cutting at 2:44 and picked up taping again at 13:45, trying to make it look as if Nick was still alive.

There is at least some small reason to think this might be the case, as I imagine it can't be easy to cut off someone's head. It must take time to get through the spine and remove the whole head.

What caught my eye, however, was the similar length of gaps between the two 2am scenes and the two 1pm scenes. Nick starts in the chair at 2:18 and the beheading begins at 2:44, 26 minutes later. Nick also starts in the chair at 13:26, and the beheading is in progress at 13:45, 19 minutes later. If people are wrong in the hypothesis that Nick was already almost 11 hours dead when the 13:45 scene started, then a new explanation might be possible—perhaps two cameras were involved, with times set in different timezones.

If the difference in real time is small between when the beheading seems to start at 2:44 and when the beheading picks up at 13:45, and the difference in timestamp is due to two cameras set in different timezones, then we may hypothesize that Nick was truly beheaded on tape and quickly. This helps explain the fact that Nick began in the chair at 2:18, the beheading begins once at 2:44, then Nick is back in the chair at 13:26, and the beheading then continues at 13:45? (Obviously, there could be other explanations, such as having multiple victims, etc.)

Furthermore, if the difference in real time between 2:44 and 13:45 is very small, say on the order of 1 or 2 minutes, that puts the two cameras at almost exactly 11 hours difference. Strangely enough, this is the difference in time between the timezone of Baghdad and Pacific US time, according to a quick calculation from times at timeanddate.com. Perhaps one camera was set in Pacific time and the other was set in the Baghdad time zone. That just strikes me as strange.

Thoughts anyone?

Good K5 writeup of Nick Berg video discrepancies

K5 has a good writeup of supposed discrepancies in the Nick Berg video and circumstances. Here are some that caught my eye for further research.

27) Scream dubbed in: Screaming starts while Berg is not moving and before he is touched Whatever the mismatch in the speaker and video (next point), videotape cognoscenti have said the scream was amateurishly dubbed into the tape. The writer of this K5 article reviewed this issue closely: The screaming starts (at 4:31 - on the copy I viewed, not the time stamp) about 5 to 6 seconds before Berg is touched (at 4:36) and he is moved to his side. He is just sitting there like a lump.

28) Handling of papers on video "Terrorist" reader flips through pages of 'statement' at one point. He keeps ending up on the same page for awhile. As noted below, this would very likely produce a gap in speech, which is out of sync with the smooth timing of the spoken statement.

29) Audio is dubbed: Tape of speaker and video are out of sync Audio experts note the tape is clearly dubbed. The speaker recording is different from executioner video recording, due to lag between audio and video.

Source

Personally, I'm still wondering why the events, when ordered by the timestamp on the video, seem to progress like the following.

• 2:18:35 - 2:18:43 : Nick in the chair speaking
• 2:40:33 - 2:44:11 : Captors read statement, followed by beginning of beheading
• 13:26:24 - 13:26:27 : More of Nick in the chair, speaking
• 13:45:47 - 13:48:49 : Captors remove the head

Strange stuff.

Update: Sat May 22 21:55:04 CDT 2004

Corrected last timestap. Sorry for the typo.

I'll show you beef. Where's my hot iron poker?

Wow. I saw this one over at Stupid Evil Bastard—a foster parent was caught abusing her two adopted children by a man who installed a wireless surveillance camera in his house. What a way to be caught.

The guy bought the camera for the security of his own home but mistakenly picked up a feed from a neighbor. He saw two children, standing for more than an hour, arms outstretched.

He decided to tape the event and later witnessed a woman enter periodically to beat the children with fist and stick.

God damn. What in the fuck is wrong with people?

To my surprise, neither Les nor Dave talked much about what kind of abuse this was. It looks like some sort of sick "punishment", forcing the children under penalty of beating to stand for hours with their arms outstretched, not allowed to move. And with the wonderful power of affordable, wireless security cameras, the evil bitch could constantly monitor the children. Anytime one of them lets their arms drop or otherwise change positions, whamo, they get battered.

With this technology, in almost no time you have dominated the children mentally, convincing them you monitoring them 100% of the time. That is, they think they are being watched even if you pop off a bit from watching the camera feed to do other stuff. This shit is mental and physical torture, not just abuse. The cruelty this woman demonstrates is inhuman. What can someone get out of torturing children like this?

If I wasn't against the death penalty, I'd like to go find a hot iron poker and have a bit of fun showing her what her intestines look like up close. And I'm not the kind of guy who always asks "but what about the children?"

"Twin Cobra Fist!"

Do you want to dispense Asswhoopery like the US government? Learn the 1000 Styles of Rumsfeld and your skills will be almost unmatched! But can you beat his Appease a Corrupt Dictator on Camera technique?

Via Dave.

Final proof that Califoria is stupid.

California suggests your buildings should channel positive energy. As if we needed more proof that California is stupid.

I will die fighting

Just found out via Suburban Blight that Fidel Castro says he will "fight to the death" if invaded by the US.

Honestly...who said anything about invading Cuba?? Puh-leaze, Fidel. All the arm waving...all the drama..."fight to the death!"...when in reality he has no one to fight, and is content to starve his people instead.

Source

Yeah, but you never know...

So I'm joining the club. I vow that I will fight to the death if I am invaded by the United States. I will die "with a gun in my hand" if they come to overthrow me. Um, yeah.

Spirit may recover fully.

Looks like the Spirit is back on track to full operation.

As for the ailing Spirit rover, NASA deleted 1,700 files from its flash memory Friday and then rebooted the rover.

"I am pleased to report it appears to be working just fine," said Glenn Reeves, chief engineer for the rover's flight software. He said NASA should be able to declare Spirit "fully recovered" by Sunday.

Source: AP

Fantastic news. If you are interested, it sounds like the problem was software related—the OS may have run out RAM just trying to manage the files on the flash file system. Read on to find out more about what makes Spirit tick inside.

Exploding Whale Gut Fun

Exploding whale entrails stop traffic in Tainan. This one stands for itself. Via jwz.

Residents of Tainan learned a lesson in whale biology after the decomposing remains of a 60-ton sperm whale exploded on a busy street, showering nearby cars and shops with blood and organs and stopping traffic for hours. The 56-foot-long whale had been on a truck headed for a necropsy by researchers, when gases from internal decay caused its entrails to explode in the southern city of Tainan.

The whale drew the attention of locals because of its large penis, measured at some five feet, the Taipei Times reported. "More than 100 Tainan city residents, mostly men, have reportedly gone to see the corpse to 'experience' the size of its penis," the newspaper reported.

Source

Go check out the pictures for more exploding whale gut fun.

Sad, Sad Day

Last night, I spent several hours pulling soaking notebooks and folders of old classwork out of the milk crates they were stored in. My recent apartment flood destroyed a lot of it. Many years of effort and work went down the proverbial drain during this flood. Everything from Intro to Anthropology to Neural Computing was soaked.

So I set all of the material out to dry around my place. We'll see how much I can salvage after they dry up. *sigh*

I Bring the Element H With the 2

Broken hoses on toilet tanks suck. A lot. Especially when it happens just after you leave town and it floods your entire apartment. That is exactly what happened to me this past Friday.

I have to give it to the guy who manages this apartment complex; he caught it, cleaned up, moved all of my stuff out of that area into my living room, and cleaned all of the carpets. I spent all last night putting everything away. The result isn't perfect (my place now smells a bit) but it is better than the damage that could have happened.

I've got a lot more cleaning to do but all in all, I can't complain too much.

Picture of an Old Highschool Classmate in Hairspay

The AP carried a photo of an old classmate of mine, Rashad, playing in Hairspray. You can see him as rightmost figure on the side, in the yellowish-green jacket. Contrats, Rashad.

Moved Those Pictures

I moved those pictures of my girlfriend and I to this directory, under galleries. I wouldn't link directly to any of the pictures yet because they will probably be renamed.

Update: Oct 11, 2003

Updated some links in this entry.