One community organizer to another...

Except for the amount it embarrasses his bumbling administration, I can't imagine Obama really being all that upset by the antics of Julian Assange.  'Course he'll have to throw him under the bus, but it seems to me like the sort of a stunt a community organizer would admire.

From Robert Gibbs:

"It is safe to say that the president was, as an understatement, not pleased this information becoming public,"' Gibbs said. "As you saw during the presidential campaign and as during his time in the White House, open and transparent government is something that the president believes is truly important."

"But the stealing of classified information and its dissemination is a crime."

source

 Oh brother, I wonder how he managed to keep a straight face as he gas-bagged on about the transparency of the Obama administration? If nothing else, at least they seem vaguely aware that espionage is a crime.

Problem solved

While looking for material for a Thanksgiving Day post I got sidetracked when I stumbled upon the Australian Brush Turkey. An interesting thing about them is they can walk up walls, particularly when they are chicks, even if the wall is inclined at a greater than 90 degree angle. Above is a video showing them in action. 

The scientists studying them call it wing assisted incline running. That's a wonderfully goofy phrase I'll likely try to work into a conversation sometime.

They're not actually turkeys, they're some sort of mound building bird and they can be quite a bit of pest in suburban areas.  The Australian ABC News has an article Man v bird: the brush turkey battle that discusses the problem. From the article:

Professor Jones says once a pesky male brush turkey has decided his mound, his nest which he uses to attract females, is going in your backyard, it's all downhill from there.

"It's just about impossible to get rid of the guy," he said.

"He has decided that's where he's going to put his precious mound, which is the most important thing in his world, and nothing will dissuade him.

"It happens all the time. People say 'I'm sick to death of that bloody bird', so they spend back-breaking hours spreading it all back out again.

"Next morning they wake from their exhausted sleep to find it all back in place.

"It's like the turkey is saying 'look I've made a big decision about where my mound is going and look buddy this is it, I'm staying'."

I have a suggestion for Professor Jones -- declare a national holiday, chop their heads off, jam stuffing into their carcasses and stick them in a pre-heated oven for a few hours. That should thin their flocks some.

Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving all. Enjoy your family, the meal, pumpkin pie and football on TV.

Important successes will be accomplished

For those that don't know, Turkmenistan is a county rich in natural gas and lunatic leaders. The combination has led to some strange and expensive construction ventures, such as gargantuan spinning statues and the Las Vegas of Central Asia among others.

I confess to having been been remiss in keeping folks abreast of the latest news of grandiose and completely crazy engineering projects moving forward in Turkmenistan. 

For example, I never posted about the opening ceremony for the Golden Age Lake that happened last year. This is a scheme left over from the Turkmenbashi (may he rest in peace). This project involves digging hundreds of miles of canals to channel water to the Karashor Depression. 

The purpose of all this is to create a 750 square mile lake in the middle of the desert. I'm not sure, but it may have something to do with the late Turkmenbashia's rather odd notion to start cultivating rice in the deserts of Turkmenistan.

Meanwhile his successor, Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov, is apparently quite the sports enthusiast. That's him on the horse. He's come up with the idea to blow gobs of money building a gigantic sports complex in Turkmanistan.

The suspicion is that he is building it so he can bid on hosting the Olympics. This in spite of the fact that Turkmenistan has never won an Olympic medal. My favorite bit from the article:

Since coming to power, Berdymukhamedov has earnestly cast himself as a man of action, striking a stark contrast with his epicurean predecessor, President Saparmurat Niyazov (ed - a.k.a. the Turkmenbashi), who died of heart failure in late 2006 at the age of 66. 

Niyazov did sporadically attempt to instill his subjects with an understanding of the benefits of exercise. His most eye-catching practice was to lead his ministers and government workers on an annual 8-kilometer trek up the Walk of Health, a concrete staircase built into the hills overlooking the capital, Ashgabat.

But while officials trudged up the hill, rotund Niyazov reputedly took a helicopter ride to the summit, thereby undermining the entire purpose of the exercise.

A Bleg

While my contributions are nearly insignificant I do try to contribute some small amount of money to be used for the benefit of our troops and veterans. For the past few years I've done that through Wounded Warriors Project and Soldiers' Angels.

Unfortunately these charities are not highly rated by Military Money Matters Veterans Charities Ratings - both received a "D" grade. Charity Navigator rates Wounded Warriors Project at only 48.66 (presumably out of 100) - apparently because nearly 86% of their fundraising is consumed in costs. They rate Soldiers' Angels at 50.85.

Are any of our readers familiar with these charities enough to either defend or condemn them? Do you have any service member and/or veterans charities you KNOW to be top notch?

And you thought red light cameras were bad...

From the EU's Project ASSET (Advanced Safety and Driver Support for Essential Road Transport) web site:

The aim of ASSET is to contribute substantially to the improvement of safety in the field of sustainable road transportation.

ASSET will generate, process and provide important road safety information from essential system components.

Improving driver support, awareness and behaviour is a key issue.

This will be achieved through an advanced sensor/processing network providing assistance and information for drivers, traffic control agencies and infrastructure operators.

Wondering what the heck gibberish like "sustainable road transportation" is about you may delve further into the website for more information. If so, you will discover that it is "a practical holistic approach generating an overall safety theory to manage the complex interactions" which involves "a competent team of experienced and multidisciplinary experts (Kybernetikwerkstatt)" which examine "chains of interdependencies and processes will be analysed to identify critical parameters influencing road safety".

Eh, what?

The website Engadget has a post that clarifies the gobbledygook:

Each of the £50,000 (about $80,000) cameras can naturally tell just how fast you're going and, if you're speeding, take a picture of you and your license plate number. That's just the beginning. It can also look up the status of your insurance, tell if you're wearing a seatbelt, and ding you for tailgating, all while sitting alone on the side of the road, relying on a wireless data connection and an internal generator to be totally self-sufficient. 

Speeding? Seatbelts? Tailgating? So, all the happy talk at the Project ASSET website is just a smoke screen for yet another means of city hall, under the guise of "sustainable road transportation" and other such claptrap, to vacuum money out of your wallet via traffic fines. 

Wonderful. Just wonderful. 

Gunfight in Matamoros

I've recently began following a blog called Borderland Beat. It is covering the escalating violence in northern Mexico. It is depressing reading (and be forewarned if you follow the link -- it sometimes has rather graphic pictures). 


Today the Zetas (one of the criminal cartels fighting to control the drug trade) and the Mexican federal police backed by soldiers engaged in a large scale gun battle. So far 47 people have been reported killed, including Tony Tormento who was one of the cartel's leaders. The astonishing video above is gives a feel for the volume of gunfire. I don't speak Spanish so I don't know what the camera men and the people on the streets are saying to each other. Brave man, the fellow who filmed that.


Most sobering to a U.S. citizen is that Matamoros is just across the border from Brownsville Texas and the gunfight was so intense that the University of Texas at Brownsville and Southernmost Texas College had to cancel or move some events. With violence increasing in northern Mexico it seems only a matter of time before a serious and deadly border incident happens.

Sorry suckers, but the race goes to the swift

I'm in Atlanta this week. To the left is the TV news I can watch here. The local coverage is about Georgia races I know little about. It doesn't matter, I voted in Florida last week before I took my trip.

As for my vote, after observing Al Gore's life style I decided that if I aligned my self as a member of the Elite Class I could, with a clear conscience, have a huge house filled with many flat screened TVs, incandescent light bulbs, SUVs parked in the drive and what-not,  so I voted a straight Green ticket. 

'Course, there's a rather different fate in store for you. I'll now be exhorting you to live in a hovel, eat nothing but locally grown gruel, and in general keep your carbon footprint as small as possible. Sorry for tossing you all under the bus, but -- what can I say -- a weasels gotta do what a weasels gotta do.  Go Green and Hoo-rah!!!

Anyways, here's to a happy election day and bear in mind, whatever else may happen, at least we won't have to watch any of those damn campaign commercials for a while.

Oh darn, he's caught on to me.

John Kerry, speaking in the Boston Globe (emphasis mine): "We're in a period of know-nothingism in the country, where truth and science and facts don't weigh in. It's all short-order, lowest common denominator, cheap-seat politics."


All I've got to say in reply is, "lighten up pal -- the bleachers are all I can afford. Not all of us can manage to land a prickly Ketchup Heiress who will buy us box seats."

Where the Luddites are...

I've noticed there has been a huge uptick in articles about biodiversity in the last few weeks. Much of this is driven by that fact that the 10th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Biodiversity (COP10) is being held in Nagoya Japan. 


Biodiversity is a problem, particularly in the area of over fishing controversy and the difficulty in setting fishing polices between nations. Larger exotic mammals are also threatened, and of course there is the frightening problem of the resurgence of  wheat stem rust. All serious topics for conservationists.


Unfortunately, the biodiversity issue is also a powerful Luddite magnet In fact for a brief time, after the Great Hole in the Ozone Crisis and before the rise of AGW, it was the Luddite issue of choice. I suspect with Climate Change losing steam it will return to the front burner with that group.

On biodiversity we're already seeing things like the following:

Prentice argues that biodiversity protection is not just up to national governments.

"Municipalities have to share that responsibility," he said. "And, frankly, all of us as citizens have to be interested in protecting the biodiversity of the planet."

Heather Hamilton, executive co-ordinator of the Canadian Biodiversity Institute, agrees that most biodiversity issues are local issues.

She cited the plight of the Blanding's turtle in the South March Highlands of the Ottawa suburb of Kanata. The turtle is an threatened species and shares the Highlands with 18 other threatened species. That didn't stop the City of Ottawa from splitting its habitat in half with a road extension.

Back to the Biodiversity Drawing Board

and this:

The strategy says biodiversity should be ''mainstreamed'' - that all Australians must take responsibility for improving wildlife protection if threatened ecosystems are to have the best chance of surviving climate change.
It calls for a 25 per cent boost in the number of Australians and organisations taking part in biodiversity conservation.

''If we continue to live unsustainably, we risk the degeneration of the ecological systems that support our life and our nation's productivity,'' says the report, endorsed by state and federal environment ministers. The Natural Resource Management Ministerial Council strategy is likely to receive a mixed response from green groups, which have called for more ambitious targets to protect threatened species.

Biodiversity plan to lock up land 

and of course what Luddite could ignore genetic engineering in an issue like this:

The 12-day Convention on Biological Diversity summit in Nagoya is intended to head off the rapid loss of plant and animal species that is happening around the world. The belief is that a more diversified global ecosystem has a better chance of protecting life. 

To facilitate this, summit participants are looking at things like hard targets to prevent deforestation and implementing new rules and regulations that would see victims of biodiversity loss compensated. They are also examining potential rules on sharing genetic material to ensure corporations don't get a stranglehold over biodiversity.

But Canada has already been blamed for being obstructionist in several aspects of the biodiversity meetings. Chief among these is the fact that Canada objects to a reference to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in a protocol over sharing the proceeds from the sale of genetic material with sovereign populations.

For that, Canada has already won a "Dodo Award"—similar to the Fossil Awards handed out during climate change summits—by a network of NGOs following the bio-diversity summit. 

Government opposes biodiversity protocols

Let's see... turtles, check; sustainability, check; UN Declaration, check. Been there and done that, and  I'm also sure there is a shake down of money in there somewhere that I've missed.

The shame of it is that this is a serious issue. Conservation, like pollution reduction, is a worthy goal. However, already I'm seeing the usual buzzwords, wild 'goals' being demanded and tisk-tisking over humans daring to cast their shadow on the Earth.

14 Years later

The album which morphed into the Buena Vista Social Club was originally intended to be a collaboration between musicians from Cuba and Mali. Problems with passports, visa or scheduling caused the Malian musicians to miss the original recording date so the producer cobbled together the group that eventually recorded the well received album.

As Will Hodgkinson in his article AfroCubism: Buena Vista take two relates, ""The conversations I  had with the Malian musicians after Buena Vista came out consisted of two subjects. They were: 'Oh shit', and 'When can we try doing it again?'" says Gold, who has finally made his planned Afro-Cuban collaboration happen, 14 years after the event."  

Above is a clip of the musicians finally playing together. 

Such a collaboration isn't at all surprising. West African music moved across the Atlantic with the slave trade and through the Caribbean where it split north to the States and south to Brazil. Since then the Caribbean, American and Brazilian have reflected their influences back to West African.  

Below is a clip featuring Toumani Diabate, from the AfroCubism clip above, playing with Ali Farke Toure who's music I linked to in my previous post Father & Son. In that earlier clip the blues influences were obvious, in this clip one can hear the subtle Latin influences.

Throwing cameras into the air

Ceth Studio has a post about Kinetic Photography. Above, and after the fold, are some examples of pictures taken using the technique. It is something a number of people are experimenting with. There are flikr streams with more examples of it and, if you want to risk your camera tossing it into the air to try it yourself, there is information on how to at  Camera Toss (The Blog).

Madness to their method

It may be my imagination, but the Democrats' national campaign sure appears to have gone off the rails.


Colbert's appearance before a Congressional Committee was baffling. First off, why would they think that anybody would believe that he had anything to offer to the immigration debate? Secondly, could they not anticipate how unserious they would look giving a comedian their hearing as a stage?


Since then Obama has spent an inordinate amount of time on college campuses. Yea, that's part of their base and he's polling bad, but at some point don't they feel they have to defend their record instead of making jokes about Republicans drinking slurpees after they drove that car off of the road? Do they think nobody notices their darting and weaving?


And the planned MTV appearance... do they really think hiding the President in the manufactured 'coolness' of MTV is not going to look silly? They would be better off releasing pictures of him playing golf then putting him in that venue at this point of the fall campaign.

Finally, the Colbert and Stewart's "Rally to Restore Sanity" vs "March to Keep Fear Alive" stunts the weekend before the election. Ka-boing! Obama is spending his time trying to hector youth into voting and the last image they're going to get before the polls open is some sort of ironic mockery of rallies. Eh, what good is that supposed to do the Dems? 


What are they thinking?

Stratfor on terror alert and uranium in India

Below is another article from Stratfor. It concerns the current warning of possible terror operations like those that occurred in Bombay two years ago. The idea he discusses -- what is the correct level of response to such warnings -- is a difficult one to answer.

As an example, today we have news of a man arrested with 1kg (2.2lbs) or uranium in India. It is frightening to consider its intended customers and usage.

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

Terrorism, vigilance and the limits of the War on Terror
By George Friedman, October 5, 2010

The U.S. government issued a warning Oct. 3 advising Americans traveling to Europe to be "vigilant." U.S. intelligence apparently has acquired information indicating that al Qaeda is planning to carry out attacks in European cities similar to those carried out in Mumbai, India, in November 2008. In Mumbai, attackers armed with firearms, grenades and small, timed explosive devices targeted hotels frequented by Western tourists and other buildings in an attack that took three days to put down.

European security forces are far better trained and prepared than their Indian counterparts, and such an attack would be unlikely to last for hours, much less days, in a European country. Still, armed assaults conducted by suicide operatives could be expected to cause many casualties and certainly create a dramatic disruption to economic and social life.

The first question to ask about the Oct. 3 warning, which lacked specific and actionable intelligence, is how someone can be vigilant against such an attack. There are some specific steps that people can and should take to practice good situational awareness as well as some common-sense travel-security precautions. But if you find yourself sleeping in a hotel room as gunmen attack the building, rush to your floor and start entering rooms, a government warning simply to be vigilant would have very little meaning.

Dot, the world's smallest heroine

Nokia sells the N8 Smartphone which has a 12 MP camera with Karl Zeis optics. A company called Fletcher has added optics to it and created a unit called CellScope which can be used for mobile medical microscopy. This allows a microscope to be taken into the field, a photograph taken with it and then sent via the phone to be analyzed. Altogether a remarkable confluence of technologies.


To market it Nokia partnered with Sumo Science to create a number of films show casing it. Above is the world's smallest stop action heroine Dot as she flees across a miniature landscape from a fraying carpet. Below is a video that shows how they made the film. Both are well worth watching

Ouch

A Polish man living in Germany went to have a cyst removed from the back of his head. When the doctors did the operation they discovered a bullet embedded in the back of his skull instead. 


The 35 year old man remembers being extremely drunk at a New Years party five of six years ago and being clunked in the back of his head. Apparently that's when he got shot.

Police don't suspect foul play. They think it was probably a round shot in the air during the celebration.


The news report seems suspicious to me because the man is never named, but the story has been widely carried. Then again, if I was so drunk that I got shot in the head and didn't notice it for years I guess would try to keep my name out of the papers as well.

Don't worry, the UN is on the case

We can all sleep a little easier with the news that the UN has appointed Mazlan Othman, a Malaysian astrophysicist, as Earth's official Walmart Greeter Space Alien Ambassador.

Presumably, she's the one who approaches the alien craft with a broad smile and promises of peace. Of course, as a connoisseur of B Movies I know this just means she is slated to be the first Earthling to be fried by a death ray or turned into a pod person. Ah well, better her than me.

Regardless, I certainly hope the US has bumped up its contribution to the UN to cover the salary of this most important UN official.

We'll vote for the Village Idiot before we'll vote for you lot.

Christine O'Donnell won the Republican primary in Delaware and in the process she created a firestorm of horror in political circles, both on the left and the right. 

To the right is the picture the German newspaper Spiegel  used to illustrate its article about her win. The single closed eye, crazed toothy grin and triple chins of the photo are obviously meant to caste her as a lunatic. 


Not being from Delaware, I don't know much about her. Apparently she was against masturbation at one time, dabbled in witchcraft in her youth, has struggled financially with her student loans and holding a job in general, as well as having some paranoid sounding worries about people hiding in her bushes and such. How much of this is true, and how much of it inflated, I have no idea.

Regardless, while I can see the Democrats piling it on, I'm puzzled as to why the Republicans would do the same. She may be a raving loon, but she's a raving loon who non-Progressives are sharing a foxhole with at the moment. I say hope for the best and if she turns out to be a liability, cut her loose after the election. 

At the end of the day she represents Delaware and nothing more and it is not wise to assist in the Progressive's attempts to paint her as the face of the Tea Party movement. She is not that significant -- she is just one more sign that a large portion of the electorate is trying the pull the political center to the right, and for that, regardless of how she fares in the general election, her primary victory was useful and welcomed.

The blogger Borepatch (via The Gormogons) has a fine post on the matter. Here's a sample of it:

This [Castle] is the sort of candidate that the Republican Establishment wants us to support? But more significantly, why then should we think that the Republican Party is less reckless in its spending than the Democrats? There's a very clear pattern that has emerged in the GOP's support for Castle, Murkowski, et al - support the Usual Suspects, protect their power and privilege, and pay lip service (if that) to actual fiscal reform.

Like I said, phooey. 

This November will see the breaking of the Democratic Party, which is half the battle. But everything will come to naught if the Republican Old Guard is not also broken. There is quite frankly no evidence that they will change their old ways unless we break them. Christine O'Donnell may be crazy like a Cat Lady, but she serves the purpose of breaking them. She is particularly useful in this, because it sends the following message:

We'll vote for the Village Idiot before we'll vote for you lot. 

An auspicious day

Due to the importance of this date, this post needs to be reflective, engaging and thought provoking. 

Alas I'm writing it, and me being me, it will veer off into silliness instead. Sorry about that.

To the left is a photo of a person dressed up like a pinata, who has given his girl friend a baseball bat. That strikes me as being an extraordinarily bad idea, what with the natural urge to whack pinatas. Better safe than sorry, if you ever feel the urge to dress in that costume -- don't.

At any rate, why am I claiming this date is so important? On this date five years ago MeaninglessHotAir posted the very first post to this blog. The blog was a group blog started by people who commented at Roger Simon's pre-Pajamas Media blog. Since then some people have joined it and others have moved on.

So to all our post authors over the years, Roger who inspired us, our commenters, lurkers and one time visitors -- heck even to the Chinese spambots who inflate our modest traffic --  I hope you'll join me in wishing a Happy Fifth Birthday to our little corner of the internet.   

Father & Son

No comments, just videos by the two great Mali blues musicians, Ali Farka Toure and his son Vieux Farka Toure. 

Never forget

The picture above was taken by Bill Baggert. Shortly after it was taken the North Tower collapsed. Four days later his body was found in the wreckage, his cameras destroyed, but with one undisturbed compact flash card containing his final photographs. Rest in Peace Mr. Baggert.

You can read a little about him, see more of his pictures and other projects at the website Bill Braggert Photographer.