On Bombs

I've been trying all morning to figure out why I'm uncomfortable with the idea of the Google Bomb. While I applaud all efforts to alert people to the remarkable rash of scandal and ne'er-do-well-ness that has gripped the GOP for the last six years, this feels too much like gaming the system. A lot of people make a living on the internets because it's an open, democratic system that shows no inherent bias, which makes it one of the last places a person can go if they're seeking honest information (although this can be a lot harder than it sounds sometimes). We all use search engines, and to a degree we trust that the results we get from them have some merit, that they're ranked by frequency of use, as with Google, or by actual humans who have analyzed the source material, like LookSmart.

This "bombing campaign" seeks to skew the results if anyone should seek information on a particular set of Republican candidates and direct the searcher to one particular article alleging corruption on the part of the candidate. It certainly doesn't prevent you from reading other articles, nor does it necessarily make it more difficult to find other sources of information. What it does is manipulate a system that is ostensibly based on merit in order to steer people towards a set of articles that have been selected by a group of liberal bloggers as being more important than others. It removes one of the reasons that people use and trust Google, that it's results are based on the number of people that have individually linked to an article based on their own conclusions, rather than what one group of people has decided to focus on.

I am not opposed to individual bloggers linking to these articles. That certainly happens enough on it's own, and usually with a good reason. But any campaign to force a result that you want to arise from a system that is normally a meritocracy feels too much like playing with the Dark Side. Replace the word "system" in the preceeding sentence with "election" and you'll get what I mean.

Plus, I'm just not down with the whole bombing metaphor. If we weren't as a nation responsible for the continued mass bombing of civilians in Iraq it might be more fun. As it stands, I just don't feel that Democrats should adopt martial imagery in order to sell an idea or a platform. We are ostensibly the anti-aggressive war party, after all.

If you're unfamiliar

with Pittsburgh, well, it rains here. Sometimes a lot. Sometimes as late as October 17th, which would be today. A number of people on my buddy list have away messages bemoaning this rain, but I keep trying to tell myself that I should be grateful to live in a place where it still does rain. Apparently, drought is going to start killing people in places other than Africa.

Being upbeat about anything has been difficult lately, mostly because it's becoming clearer every day that the world has actually passed the maximum limit of oil production (85 million barrels every day. Visualise that in your mind, then try to understand that we used every drop of it.) I'm almost finished with The Fourth Turning, which was written in 1997 and has made some worryingly accurate predictions about where we are in 2006. Their thesis can be summarised thusly: history repeats itself. That's a bit oversimplified, but based on my own adventures as a history major it's true that certain patterns emerge if you're willing to see them. The authors explore history through the lense of a repeating four-part cycle which lasts between 80-100 years, or a long human life. Each part of this cycle they call a turning, and each one has been repeated in the same order throughout western history with the sole exception of the Civil War, which condensed two turnings into one incredibly violent period.

I find this compelling for two reasons. One, I've always believed that people are more a product of their circumstances than their gifts. And two, we are most definitely reaching the apex of a crisis. These November elections might crystalize the mood of the American public, most particularly if there are widespread allegations of vote tampering and fraud (which is almost a given at this point). Add to the political troubles the above fact (FACT, kids, not theory) that we have passed "peak oil" and are well on our way to cooking half the species right off the planet, and you've got a brew that will test the moxie of the generation just beginning to take power - we 13's, Gen X, the New Lost.

Oh, throw in an increasingly crazy Fundamentalist minority grabbing for power. And North Korea's apparent nuclear test. Hmmm, am I missing anything?

Well, here's a little good news. Casey has a 10-point lead over Santorum, and Rendell leads Swann by over 17. That cheers me a bit.

Those Pig

Fuckers at Target. They want digital downloads to cost as much as a physical copy of a movie, except that -

A. The logistical distribution line for DVDs, from the factory that produces and packages them to the warehouses where they're stored to the stores they're sold at, and all the trucking/hauling in between, adds a lot of overhead to the cost of distribution. This is why bulk wholesalers are cheaper than small corner stores.

B. The logistical distribution line for digital downloads consists of wire and server space, which uses considerably less energy and is far far far faster than a fleet of diesel trucks.

C. They're threatening to remove shelf space from DVDs and give it to... what? More bathmats and tacky table lamps? Who cares?

D. If legal digital downloads replace DVDs on a 1:1 basis, the savings in distribution overhead will more than make up for the loss in physical sales numbers.

E. What they're really afraid of is people downloading movies for free, which will happen no matter what they do with the physical or digital versions. If retailers stop selling DVDs then that will merely push the studios to embrace another avenue of distribution, like say, digital downloads.

Just had to get that bit of anger out today. School is frustrating me and there's clearly some rantage building up that needs a release.

Sticky Crisis 2040

Having a hard time sending the last disc of Bubblegum Crisis 2040 back to Netflix. Watching the last four episodes makes me want to turn off all the internets and televisions and radios and just sit and stare and think, which might be why I want to keep it around.

See, I knew just starting to write about it would help work this out. There are plenty of scifi stories out there about the line between man and machine and what happens when people cross it IN THE FUTURE. I think this one stands out because you care about what happens to the characters in the end, thanks to good development throughout the series. There were many times when I thought, "well, that's it. they're hosed now." And it kinda made me sad to think that The Good Guys might not actually win this time.

But of course they do. And the conclusion to the series is about as perfect an end as I've ever seen. It's touching. It's well paced and lit with the proper musical background. It leaves you feeling like the job was done, but with enough questions left unanswered that you continue to ponder after the credits roll. Just what is the nature of man's relationship with it's machines? What are the qualities that define humanity? And could God be eternal and still know what it means to die?

It did leave me wishing I could redo the entire soundtrack. I found the main character's singing gigs more annoying than anything, if only because they lacked the polish of say, BECK or Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu ep. 12 (which might be expecting a bit much, since this single episode reset the bar for animation quality in a televised anime). And hearing all the same voices on the english dub that were in Nadesico, particularly having the same seiyuu for both Maki and Akito, was somewhat jarring, although Linna and Nene's were very well done.

Nigel's was just awful.

Oh well. Now I've clarified all that for myself. Time to rip!

One of those dreams

I had this morning between my alarm going off and me getting up was extraordinarily detailed. It was my family's upcoming trip to Ireland, and it's only the second time I've been able to recall distinct physical sensations that accompanied events in the dream. The airplane accelerating and decelerating, in particular, and at one point I leapt for a white metal walkway perched above a blue harbour, my hand slipped, and I felt myself fall into the water and then rise to float on top of it.

But reading my daily dose of peak oil news reminded me of another dream I'd had before that one, where the population of the world was crashing and it led to anarchy and massive death all around. It was scary stuff. Too much is building at this point in history to allow us to keep living the way we do. I fear we will induce a self-genocide through ignorance, greed, fear, corruption, and stupidity. But mostly, I fear that it is coming much sooner than anticipated.

Every time

I hear the song "The Sea" by Morcheeba, I can't help but feel that's where I should be right now. It never fails to evoke still-oddly-clear memories of the Baltimore dockside, Charleston S.C. and the Yorktown memorial, San Diego and the Midway, driving over the bay in New Orleans. At times like these I mourn my lost life. Then, when one of my former classmates puts up an away message that says they're being sent to Panama at the end of the summer, and I think about Panama for a few minutes, I don't feel so bad.

Actually, I do. That was a lie. Despite everything I've learned about our great military machine and our rotting country and our unrepentant succling of oil from corrupt muslim kingdoms, I still miss the Navy and the people I would have served with. I'm playing EVE Online, which feels okay, I get to say things like "target is twenty cilcks out" and "i'm taking fire! shields down fourty percent!" There's comraderie, I get to accomplish missions with friends and break the ships and bases of bad guys.

But I don't get to live on the ocean.

What Other Cultures

have I encountered in America? I've not been to another country, except a brief jaunt across the border into Mexico, although vacationing in southern California (which I stubbornly refer to as Cali, to the annoyance of my family) felt like a weird hybrid. The hispanic culture is so pervasive that entire neighborhoods are bedecked in spanish-language billboards and street signs, my cousin lives with a hispanic woman, and with the palm trees and pervasive smog it certainly feels like a foreign land.

It was a change moving from the slopes of Colorado to the hills of Pittsburgh, but not nearly so drastic. Mainly, Pittsburgh is dirtier.

The Ghost of Lumberg

I was a little worried about myself this evening, because after being made a supervisor at my place of Werk I have had two Bill Lumberg moments. In case you haven't seen Office Space, he's the typical Hellhole Office Mealymouth Boss Guy, the type who'll approach you about doing extra work with that "sorry, buddy, but 'ya know we're kinda gonna have to ask you to do this thing, here, yeah, super sport, thanks a ton" attitude, non-commital and falsely apologetic.

I totally used that voice, without even realising it, when I had to ask someone to go do an extra job. He called me on it, which is good, and I was sufficiently embarassed.

The second time was when I was announcing a new office policy. Basically, the more you screw up, the more crap work you get. An unwritten rule since time immemorial, we were to put it in writing, and I had approved this with all the other managers that are higher up than I. I thought it would be kinda cool to make it like a Contest! that no one wants to win. In that spirit I prepared a wall-sized poster that said "Announcing a Fun New Office Contest / Policy!!!" The rules and current leaderboard were placed right below it. Publicly visible, it would have the effect of reminding people to do their jobs, and what little embarassment they suffered would serve to ensure that they did not repeat their mistakes.

The first person who's name was on the leaderboard saw it as I put it up and became extremely irate. It wasn't cool, he said, to just impliment a new policy without giving the victims fair notice. I replied that if he had been doing his job, this wouldn't be an issue. We argued a bit more, and I decided to take the poster down in favour of placing notes in the mailboxes of the offenders. I worried about the decision for a short time afterwards, questioning my motivation for the poster. Did I really just suffer from some sick need to embarass people? Was it based on how much I'd been teased in public as a schoolkid?

No, I decided, I was not trying to avenge my nerdy past. The answer is actually much simpler, and it's the same reason I had the most fun of my life in Navy ROTC indoc. I enjoy, for lack of a better phrase, getting my ass kicked. It has always spurred me on to improve myself, and I am always grateful for it. Other people, however, would react very differently to the same stimuli, and this I must remember.

A grand idea

formed itself in my head one day. I wrote a letter to the governor of PA once, offering some encouragement on a recent speech outlining new energy strategies for the state. It was heartening, somewhat, to hear such a powerful politician acknowledging the severe crisis that awaits us all in the quite-near future.

To follow up on it, and ensure some kind of action or at least dialogue, I would approach all the professors in relevent fields here at Pitt and get them to sign a memorandum calling for more serious study of alternatives, power-down strategies, and possible implimentation of necessary technological, legal and societal changes. A real dialogue would be opened up and we would begin to raise community awareness of the coming changes and how we could meet them. The Guvner, having taken the first steps already, would use our plan to begin moving Pennsylvania towards a sustainable post-carbon civilisation, and our example would be a seed, a resource, and a beacon to other states and nations as the reality of declining oil supplies began to take it's toll.

Then I watched the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica. In it, the main character Adama tells one of his pilots, who he had previously ordered to assassinate a superior officer, "It's not enough to survive. One has to be worthy of surviving." And I wondered, are we really worthy of surviving? As a nation? As a species? I know some great people, and we've done some great things, but I have a hard time answering that question in the affirmitive. Maybe we aren't.

It took a Japanese cartoon

to make me love music again. For anyone who has ever shown the slightest interest in anime, BECK (no relation to the musician) is a must see. I point to an English fansite because it might be more useful for folk who don't speak Japanese. Also, I got the fansubs through Anime-Empire, who appear to do an excellent job.

What I like about BECK: first of all, I know everyone in it. The gifted guitar hero. The shy geek with hidden talent. The goofy friends, the aggressive hot girl, meathead bullies, all of them. Hell, there are even shades of my dad in the insane guitar/swimming teacher Saitou-san. The characters are so real, for the most part, that you can't help but connect with them almost immediately.

Second, it's a story about rock and roll, written by and for people who obviously love the music. They love it in a way that we no longer do. Exploring this soundtrack and a number of other rock bands from Japan, I'm pretty convinced that the best rock no longer comes from America. In fact, we've probably been behind the UK for some time since the mid-90's saw the demise of Kurt Cobain. (Did he ever wonder how often his name would be written when he was gone? Probably not.) But bands like the pillows are better than just about anything on the radio these days, at least, those radio networks that play new music. Apparently, now many of them are robotic as well, which further eliminates the possibility of good NEW rock being played to radio listeners.

Third, it's a beautifully told story about life, one boy's in particular, but also the lives of everyone around him. There are no space battles, no giant robots, no killer cyber-brains, and none of the fake raunchy Capital D Drama that we pass off as storytelling in most of our television shows. For twenty-six twenty minute slices of time, I lived another life.

That is storytelling. Plus, I totally fell in love with the lead female character. Well, not really, but I wanted to.

Holy Hell

I've discovered the AZN. The Asian Something Network on our digital cable package. There was just a commercial for the Circus Circus in Las Vegas, and it's the kind of thing that could only work in countries that are not this one. Or at least, on people that have not read H. S. Thompson, and who do not know the true story of that hideous pig hideaway.

This network is something else, though. It's like someone took all the surface duds of American pop culture, changed the names and the basic facial bone structures, and spun it back out in a subdued MTV format. There's a short film on called That Mischevious Ravi. The family store is called 7-Food. All the commercials on the network are American except for the all Asian cast. Even the fracking car commercials. Ford is releasing cars in other markets that they're not releasing here! Jeebus!

What's it been, like a month? And this is what inspires me to write?

We are watching

the airline industry collapse. There are some factors, such as poor business planning, that are entirely within the ability of airlines to correct. There are others, such as fuel prices, the cost of jet fuel, and the expense of fueling their jets, that are beyond anyones ability to change in the foreseeable future.

That's why I'm going home again this winter. I'll fly to Colorado, then drive to California with me Pops, and I will soak in every last detail of my journey because it may well be the last one I ever take.

Call me pessimistic. Ticket prices are already more expensive this year than they have been, and we're still months away from the peak travel season. Perhaps the airlines will make one last major push to drop prices in order to convince people to jet across the country for the holidays, but it seriously may be the last. All the romance of airline terminals and pressurized cabins and baggage claims will be gone within our lifetimes, and in the shorter term they will become unavailable to most Americans (especially as the rich-poor wage gap continues to widen due to high energy costs).

Speaking of high energy costs, I picked up a small space heater for this winter, and it's already proven it's worth. My room is easily the poorest-insulated in the house, yet it is many degrees warmer than any other. I'll be adding plastic insulation, replacing bulbs with CFLs, and buying a "Draft Dodger" or two (cute little draft socks that sit below the door). What bothers me now, that I just realised, is that the attitude most people are taking is that Yes, this winter will be Diffficult, but things will Get Better. There is little sense that our NG crisis is permanent, or that we are on the cusp of the post-carbon-energy era. For myself, I can't shake the feeling that a door is closing, rapidly, and that by the next springtime our reality will have been severely altered.

A Powerful Funk

Settled on my brow this evening. It was one of those infamous Grey Days in Pittsburgh, when no rain fell, no sun shone, and the wind was just cold enough to remind you that summer has ended. My professor for history writing has serious doubts about my ability to pull enough research for my term paper, and I know that he is justified. As a part of my reasearch on cold war era SAM silos I watched the documentary "Fog of War" about Rob MacNamera, and it was useless for my topic but tragically fascinating for my inner Historian. He sat in front of the camera and with almost reptilian calm discussed the war that we never fought, the one in which 58,000 Americans died because of a lack of understanding, and it made me depressed and fearful because we are so obviously repeating the same mistakes all over again.

I told my friend Wonko that the neat thing about history is that you can tell who's learned from it. The unfortunate corollary is that you can tell pretty damned easy who has not learned from it, and this would include just about everyone in politics today. We're living through a massive tragedy that never had to happen.

The walk home always gets me down too. There are too many people, for one, and almost no human beings. Cigarette smoke gets puffed at you, sluts yell insult-greetings across the crowded streets, crazy people mumble at ghosts and ask you for change. You have to detour around half-dried vomit-splatters.

I took a route through a hospital parking lot, following a pair of flighty dancers chatting about who did this and who said that. We all pass a mother and two children sobbing on a sidewalk corner, yelling No! and Oh my God... I felt the same tears in my eyes, and suddenly all the desires I had for relaxing the rest of the night seem selfish in the face of whatever loss they'd suffered. I didn't know them, but I loved them.

Then I walked through a gang of thuggish teenagers on a street corner just outside my house and it made me want to tear and rend the world. Don't they know people are suffering?

As I walked up to my door I saw that my Netflix DVDs had arrived, three red bundles of fantasy. So I could spend the rest of the night escaping.

Proof #397

that Macs are easier to use than Windows PCs:

I got a Razr when I re-upped with my cell service. This is slightly ironic since I'm the kind of guy who guards my phone number with almost the same zeal as I guard my SSN. Point being, I'm not the type to be using it very much, but it was free and every gadget geek is obligated to acquire the most awesome hardware he can.

I was under the impression from the reviews on the Internets that it would be possible to use MP3 ringtones and customise the display with my own pictures and so forth, by downloading them from my computer. The Razr has both a standard USB port and Bluetooth, and since Ruri is an older iBook and didn't come with Bluetooth, I thought it might be possible to use the cable to transfer da goods.

Silly human. iSync will work with calendars and address books, but not simple file transfers. So I went on a search for some software that would let me do it with a Windows laptop, since we have a bunch of those at work and I could possess one temporarily. After ONE HOUR of downloading software that said it would work then didn't, searching Motorola's help site and dozens of other cell phone sites and trying to find the drivers, all I could get was a form for buying, at $29.99, the sync package from Moto that would enable the basic communications features I was seeking.

So I gave up. I Grabbed a 17" PowerBook, turned the Bluetooth on, paired the device, and sent my files over. It took three minutes with built-in software to accomplish on a Mac what it would have taken thirty bucks and two Install Wizards to do on a PC. That is proof #397.

This struck me

as odd, and sad. I think they've missed the point:



Let me zoom in on the top of the container, in case you missed it.



Yes, friends, this coffee is superior because it is Patriotic.

I have no idea why. Why? Why? Why?

There are few

words, phrases, or expressions that suit my mood at approx. 7:15 AM this day. This is when I saw Charlie Gibson sail a courteous greeting at Bill O'Rielly, welcoming him to Good Morning America.

Here's the phrase:
What the FUCK?

Ow. Oowoww. Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow.
This happened just after they introduced Robin Roberts live from some disaster zone, wearing a t-shirt that said "GMA - Getting It Done." When a news organisation has to try out new action-oriented slogans while covering a token rebuilding effort in the middle of the worst natural devistation in a hundred years, you know you're in trouble.

Or you're in the Twilight Zone! Doo dee doo doo, doo dee doo doo! That's how What the FUCK?-ed up it was.

I just told

Lindsay B. to follow the dream that I abandoned. She seems to have something I don't, a belief in the basic goodness of Humans, which should make her far better equipped to write in a way that people will pay attention to.

It follows that I do not have a belief in the basic goodness of Humans. This has been said before, and is the primary source of my tendency to be an asshole, which I have just realised creates a very serious feedback loop of Negative Vibes. It is easy to feel superior or inferior to people when you believe that a person can be either. It is hard, in the course of a day, not to believe it honestly. I watch people throw trash out their car window and I think, "I have a superior understanding of the consequences of littering. They are ignorant." I hear people talk about how awesome their drug and alcohol use makes them feel, and I think, "I have a superior understanding of the effects these have on the human body and spirit. They are self-destructive."

I watch parents shopping with their fat children, buying them candy and junk food and yelling at them to quit running around, and I think, "These people have no idea the damage they wreak upon their heirs. They will cripple the civilisation that sustains them. But I know better."

All of which is despicably self-congratulatory, and yet, feels right. I suppose that's just as scary as listening to some crazy Revelationist describe the lake of fire that we'll all be cast in to, for they are no less certain of themselves. This is my weakness.

Could it be true?

Am I really watching a fat woman outside this cafe hand out pamphlets by Jews for Jesus? What kind of spiritual/racial/personal clusterfuck is going on there?

At least we're heading for the End Times. Not in the silly teleport-the-nice-ones-to-Heaven kind, but the social upheaval that will likely result from the extraordinary cost of natural gas heating this winter. Combined with a real gas / refinery shortage and the orgy of debt spending that will surely come with the Shopping Season, these factors will start causing real problems for an awful lot of folks in the near future. I had a long talk with mum the other day about what I really believe will happen, and why I'm not doing more about it - educating people, writing, working for environmental groups and so forth.

It comes down to the fact that there's damn-all we can do at this point. The disease - growth-dependent capitalism and mass consumerism - has spread too far. The cancer is now in virtually every system. The body feeds its growth. To kill it is to kill the host.

Us.

So yeah, researching old ABM missile systems for history class isn't exactly the foremost thing on my mind right now.

Ah well.

I assured me mum that when the Navy finally arrives at New Orleans in force, some serious relief can get underway. The small boat capacity alone, together with all that helo space parked right next to the worst of the flooded areas, would make a huge difference. That is, if FEMA were interested in utilising them. Or if they felt like allowing people to leave the city. Is any of this real? How fucked up in the head do you have to be?

Something tells me that Bush could have waited a week before nominating a ghost like Roberts for Chief Justice of the Supreme Fucking Court, which raises the question of Why Now. Abysmal poll numbers and clearly videotaped incompetence during the nation's largest modern disaster relief effort, together with the blatant efforts at spinning massive death and utter destruction point to a lame effort to divert some smidgen of attention from his failings. I shouldn't even be able to consider this about anyone, it's wholly inhuman, but with these jokers...

Yes. The Devistation

is indeed nearly complete. It now appears certain that a number of "actionable items" were in the works to repair critical weaknesses in the levies and pumps that kept the water out of the New Orleans bowl. Funded in large part by government monies, these plans were cast aside as the more critical War On Terr'r sucked funds away from all sources. The Treasury, which once boasted of a tremendous budget surplus, has been wiped out, so that all our national savings, the product of past productivity, are gone. There is no room in the current budget - indeed, there could be said to be negative room, as the deficit en masse continues to grow. And all future plans, especially planned programs like Medicaid and Social Security, are endangered by this Terr'r. Is it scary, or merely strange, that we are siphoning funds from the entire American space-time continuum, past, present, and future? It no longer seems real.

I, like a not-insignificant portion of My Fellow Americans, have been to The City That Was. My time was spent wandering the old street fronts during Mardi Gras, the peak time for partying and chicanery of all sorts. I have fond memories, what memories remain intact, and of course the human loss should be enough to sadden even those who have never ventured outside their home counties. In the end, that's all there is in the state of LA. Loss.