Well Done, Bushies! Make me Proud to be an American

You people make me sick.

The birth of the U.S. torture program. - By Dahlia Lithwick - Slate Magazine: "The most damning part of this damning article comes at its conclusion, when Mayer explains that, following years of brutal interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged architect of the Sept. 11 attacks, it remains entirely unclear which parts of his voluminous confessions are true and which were fabricated—either to end his abuse or to inflate his ego."

Part of the Problem Anyway

Morimoto Weekend

Back from Philly and dinner at Morimoto. More details, info, and unfortunately dark photos of food to come.

Link of the Day

Today's link of da day is a translator I found online that helps one to sound as if they are from picksburg n'at.

Here, try it, type in: "Are yinzes gowen through Squorl h'l on yinzes way to watch da stillers n'at. Could yinz stop at da Jine Igl and pick up some beer, chips, and dip?"

It's a zillion laughs, anna link of da day.

Round 3

There go the property values.

That's a long way to go just to keep a squirrel from getting a free meal. I wonder if removing a carcas from the punji sticks will be a satisfying experience. I hope it's scotch guarded or something.

Really, I Don't Know What to Say

I drive through a tunnel every day going to work. Well, thats a misstatement, on days where the people going into the tunnel haven't slowed down so much that traffic is backed up for miles I drive through a tunnel to work. Most days its backed up I think to myself "What are these people afraid of? Like the tunnel is going to collapse!" Today I wondered how many cynical people sitting in traffic in Minneapolis think to themselves "What are they afraid of? Like the bridge is going to collapse!"

I'd be funny if it weren't so not funny.

I can't say as I am surprised that what with all the effort the various governments have been making to protect us from Al Keda, that with our head turned one way the house would fall over. DO you think that was the terrorist's plan all along: distract them to the point they ignore their infrastructure and watch the whole country just fall over. Is it possible that by not maintaining our systems that we're letting the terrorists win? I swear Osama Bin Laden is thinking "Ha, what a black eye! And I didn't even have to leave the cave."

A story on NPR today said that 20% of all bridges on interstates were "structurally deficient." Apparently its not all that bad as that can mean that the shoulders are too narrow as well as mean it is listing and going to fall over. But still, thats one in every five bridges. There are people in Vegas that regularly bet those odds. Seems a little risky for the traveling public.

It'd be nice to think that someone in a position of power would see the New Orleans levies, the massive NYC power failure, a bridge or two just drop into a river and think maybe we're missing something. Maybe all that time they're spending reading our email and moving people around through extraordinary rendition could be put to better use. Perhaps the time and effort appearing before congress and saying "I don't recall" could be put to better use.

How about this: if the Bush administration agrees to spend on infrastructure in the next year an amount equal to what they spent in Iraq last month we will all, as a country, stop caring about who decided to fire those US Attorneys.

I shouldn't knock W exclusively for this though. (There's lots else to knock him for - its nice when poor sentence structure leads to fun.) Its not like the bridge actually fell over yesterday, it just finally fell over yesterday. The pattern of maintenance and inspection that lead to it falling over had been in place for quite some time.

We're more dependent that we realize on these infrastructure items. The flood and the blackout were hard to miss, catastrophic. But in reality its likely true that many things are in a position to bottleneck but for just one failure. What if the bridge to drop had been the Q in New Haven? That's three lanes each way and jammed pretty much all day every day. The alternates are two bridges , each one lane for each direction, both draw bridges to allow local river traffic, and both only accessible after driving a few miles through neighborhoods - in one case through a residential neighborhood.

The loss of the tunnel I drive through would run the entire traffic pattern right through a picturesque suburban neighborhood - that is until they make everyone get off an exit earlier so they drive through the more urban, lower income neighborhood. Want to see what that's like? They've been closing the tunnel for road work on the weekends. Without commuter traffic there are still miles of delays.

Still, it seems like the accident has already jump started a round of inspections. That seems to be the case in the aftermath of every incident. But its not the impetus we lack, its the follow through. We're coming into an election cycle. We're all too tired of hearing about foriegn policy. I don't want my heart broken over health care again. Let's make them talk about our vulnerable infrastructure.

Yard-a-saur Workshop

What is it? Part 2.

The SMS quiz show continues...


Anyone remember Kerplunk! That's all I got. Although I actually think I see some Giant Tinkertoys.

Social Networking

I had a Facebook account for like 30 minutes last night. I'd been meaning to try and then I got an invite from a student and so, OK, I'll give it a whirl. After about 15 minutes I had 9 friends and a picture. I'd looked at some other pics and pages. Then it hit me. Although I have no Xanga and I never did Friendster, I have Blogger, LiveJournal, MySpace, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, GoodTheatre, YouTube, Picasa, & Flickr. Isn't that enough social networking? Plus, as a married nearly 40 year old how much "virtual" social networking do I need? Seems more like time is running out and if I am going to socialize with people I ought to actually hang out with them.

I considered for a moment doing this Profile Linker thing I found with Stumble. It purports to manage all your web 2.0 sites as one gigantic profile. This seems like a good idea to me. But after a few seconds I decide that the server for Profile Linker is in a basement vault somewhere in Langley - it just has to be, doesn't it? So, maybe if one of you tries it first and doesn't get sent off to Guantanamo. Maybe then I can let the paranoia fade and do it myself.

So, no profile linking. That decision leads me to deactivate the Facebook account. They were really interested to see why I was shutting it down. Interestingly on their little exit interview there was not choice for "I am too connected already."

I was telling my class about this and how I had all those other accounts and they fairly unceremoniously informed me that all of my accounts were crap and that Facebook is where it is. So we know where tomorrow's college students have their accounts.

Still, I can't help think that Facebook is oh, so 2006. You have to check it. I am through with checking. It's all feeds now - you need a refresher? It seems very awkward to me that there weren't RSS feeds available for the features in Facebook. And while I am sure that with some third party apps it may be possible, syndication appears at least to me to be fairly standard for a community of this type. LJ has feeds. MySpace has feeds. Blogger now has like 3 different feeds for each page. You can have a post feed, an all comment feed, or a comment feed for a particular entry. But on Facebook if you want to see what someone has written on your "wall" you have to check? So last year.

Maybe someone will convince me, and I will light up the account again. It was interesting to see some of the people that showed up for invites when going through my address book. Some of my cousins and my brother and sister-in-law all appear to have accounts; my boss and several other faculty seem to have accounts. I wonder how many of them actually check the page though. Probably comparatively few. Still, make the right pitch, or convince me the profile linker isn't part of some Homeland Security project and maybe I will reconsider whether I am cool enough for Facebook

What is it?

Picture arrived by SMS. Do you know what it is?

Thoughts? Guesses?