Can't sleep: awoke to giant bug on arm, destroyed bug in barbaric fashion, now convinced of imminent reprisal by insectoid clansmen.

Today we have "Live 8" in Philadelphia (birthplace of Liberty and so forth), which is basically an effort by European rock-stars to convince Americans to raise our taxes so a gang African warlords and despots can clear out the balance on their Visa cards. All to the tune of 30,000 children. Phrases like "Global call to action" and "end to poverty" and 30,000 children cause me to verify my route to the hills remains in passable condition. Sure but 30,000 children! Who could go grinch on something like that? (Did you know: unless someone gives me an 80 inch plasma television, 30,000 children will starve to death?) Not that I'm heartless, just suspicious, especially after that last Live 1-7 debacle. Why not reform the African governments first, fix the corruption, end the raging racism, defeat the jihads, then save the people being destroyed by them? Throwing money at problems like this has a huge, demonstrable failure rate. I'm damned if my money transits hemispheres from my wallet to Robert Mugabe's. Even Bono on Meet the Press can't convince me. And what the hell kind of name is Bono anyway?

I had to upgrade to WordPress 1.5 due to php exploits in the version I was using. The comment spammers remain relentless, most of them pushing online poker. But the new version is a bit better at containing them, so I need only log in once in a while to nuke them all from the moderation queue. Spammers, in case you didn't know, live deep in the suck ditch. Hopefully someone is hard at work on Black Ice so I can one day destroy their brains in retaliation. What freak still clicks on spam links? How is this parasite industry still worth pursuing?

I'm too lazy to update the old site layout to work with the 1.5 layout -- it was always a hack anyway -- so I'll leave it in this slightly modified default format. So what.

If there's one thing wars are good for it's testing out cool new weapons.

Defense News and Strategy Page report two modified Phalanx anti-missile systems (usually found on ships) now guard the Green Zone in Baghdad. These are 20mm gatling guns that are linked to some radar and software that can recognize incoming missiles (and now mortar shells). The Counter-Rocket Artillery Mortar system (C-RAM) essentially sprays an area with projectiles (75 per second) that shred incoming missiles (and unlucky birds), simultaneously notifies an annunciator so alarms and sirens can warn people to take cover, then -- and this is the real point of it all I think -- sends out a UAV with laser guided Viper Strike munitions in order to kill whoever launched the mortar.

My friends at Raytheon have agreed to mount one on my roof.

Which reminds me a bit of one of Dr. Pournelle's ideas for a counter-satellite weapon: launch a missile in front of the satellite's orbit; it dumps a payload of ball bearings that sit and wait for the satellite to pass through them; leaves a shredded satellite behind.

A competing technology (for both C-RAM and the anti-sat missile) is Northrop Grumman's Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL). The problem with lasers (at the moment) is that they're only really effective on clear days: smoke, mist, fog, clouds tend to weaken or break them.

Another cool new weapon is Sparrow Sentry, which emits a high energy microwave in order to ignite bombs (or blasting caps), in particular IEDs. One expects it also has anti-personnel applications -- the machine gun of the future? Similarly, a company called Ionatron has shipped its Joint IED Neutralizer (JIN) to Iraq. This one seems to use an electrical discharge to trigger a bomb's detonator, and rides on a robot in order to get close enough.

Strong statistical data, shown here on this coffee mug, indicate a direct correlation between the average global temperature and the number of pirates at large.

"The Inside" -- I watched several episodes of this series mainly because Futon Critic kept talking about it. Apparently the original concept was undercover in a high school. Then they figured out that sucked, so they switched it to FBI vs the Serial Killers. So we can safely infer that they built the show around the cast, or more exactly, around the lead actress: What's Her Name. Which is ironic because she's the worst part about this show. By a long long way the worst part. She's like a zombie girl, wooden like a tree in winter, like a stone faced Easter Island ceremonial archaeology prop. You could dump a quart of melted strawberry ice cream on her head and get less reaction than from an interview with Henry Kissinger on quaaludes. But it does have Adam Baldwin (better known as Jayne on Firefly/Serenity, and the only remaining Baldwin with any entertaining qualities). And it's got that guy, that guy from the thing. Which isn't a big deal really.

"Entourage" -- Kick ass. Season two is even better than season one.

"Six Feet Under" -- I have dim recollections of this show being great. What the hell happened? It's like a chore to watch it now.

"Rescue Me" -- Not as good as season one so far, but hell: what could be better than season one of Rescue Me? Denis Leary owns this show, but it has ties to that New York/Baltimore East Coast crowd that created "Homicide: Life on the Streets", "The Wire", and "Oz" (also "The Jury", but who's counting?).

Speaking of which, Tom Fontana, Barry Levinson, Jim Finnerty, and Julie Martin have a new television project for HBO Independent Pictures / Warner Bros called The Bedford Diaries. Seems a little dull though.

I had to come up with a personal description for Technorati; how's this: Joe Blackface: Reactionary, cartographer; prisoner in Coventry; tool of the blue globes; at Mr. Jones' disposal. And if anyone gets that set of references they must live in my head, and should get the hell out of there now.

Although I certainly wouldn't call Michael Badnarik "decidedly non-libertarian", and I would dispute the arguments regarding the importance of party membership numbers (since imo real libertarians would rather not affiliate themselves with *any* political party -- or organized group for that matter -- and tend to identify as independent or non-affiliated), they make a compelling argument for disbanding and splintering the LP in favor of trying to correct the wayward courses of the Democratic and Replublican parties.

The quote here from Randy Barnett strikes me as very astute: "the creation of the Libertarian Party has been very detrimental to the political influence of libertarians [because libertarians] have been drained from both political parties, rendering both parties less libertarian at the margin". I find it impossible to argue with the evidence for this statement; at one time Congress was well-stocked with Ron Pauls; now he's considered an anomaly, a wacko, a traitor to his party.

Anyway, a Neolibertarian ideology attempts to foster compromise from within, rather than stand on principle outside in the cold.

NASA's recent comet strike does more than spew frozen ejecta for study by astro-geologists (seems a contradictory appellation I'll admit); it demonstrates that if needed -- and it will be -- we are capable of nuking a collision-course astro-bogey. Hopefully the Greys and Lizards were watching.

It's also more evidence of the deep division in the space administration: while the JPL guys are kicking ass with their unmanned missions, the Florida and Huston guys are still applying duct-tape to their overpriced orbital truck fleet (down to two vehicles and parts), made too timid by political pressures to take risks anymore, and too constrained by similar pressures to invest much in anything new.

It's time to break NASA in half. And throw away one of them.

This site is great (although its name reminds me of a South Park joke): it's got ass-loads of country statistics culled from open data sources, and tools for comparing them. Great for shutting up loud-mouths.

Amazon seems to have removed the Google Ads from their search results. I guess my (empty) threat to take my business elsewhere made them change their minds. It's a philosophical conundrum for Amazon: if they were primarily a reference, then inclusion of the ads would have been justifiable. But they are primarily a retailer, so spamming ads between products is almost as annoying as advertisements in movie theaters.

I hate unsolicited communication -- spammers and spoogers and sporgers, telemarketers and survey-takers, junk mail piled three feet deep at my door.

I hate advertisements on movie theater screens, product embedding, special sports sponsors with digitally-added logos, television network watermarks, stadiums named after banks or office suppliers or corn chips (and I hate paying for those stadiums through taxes).

I hate politicians, every single bullshit-spouting one of them, but especially the lawyers; oh how I hate the lawyers.

I hate lobbyists and PACs, unions, guilds, and brotherhoods. I hate political parties.

I hate the guy at the deli who asks if I'm sure I don't need any cheese in addition to the ham I ordered.

I hate people who throw things at movie theater screens, especially when they leave a smudge the size of Batman's head -- not so big that the theater feels compelled to wash it off, but big enough to keep me staring at it when I'd rather be staring at what's-her-name's protuberances.

I hate commercials with "Do not attempt" warnings, "Professional driver" disclaimers, long rapid lists of drug side-effects and loan / lease fine print. I hate best ever greatest most you'll never believe won't sleep for weeks!

I hate bureaucratic policies that prevent employees from using their own judgment: airport security screeners removing the shoes from twelve year old girls and old women, super market checkout clerks asking me if I "need help out" with my can of Pringles.

And now, somehow, Beefy Lou has his own t-shirt. But that doesn't look like him, trust me.

This article talks about some new applications for RFID, focusing on a Nanny Bot the Japanese have developed (Asimov's idea). Better though was the German company working to improve the "Roomba" robot vacuum (Heinlein's idea) by embedding RFID tags in carpet. I started considering similar stuff: RFID tags around your lawn in order to guide robot lawnmowers (Simak's idea). Tags on cars that trigger proximity alerts in other cars, or on curbs or highway guardrails to enable robot cars (Zelazny's idea), or open the garage door. RFID tags in clothing offer lots of potential: an alarm clock that won't shut up until you get off the mattress (Niven's idea; program snooze settings from the console). A hospital mattress that sends an alarm to a nurse's station if a patient gets off it (I think some hospitals have this now). A kitchen cabinet or refrigerator that opens when you get close to it (Gibson's idea). A door that does the same (Verne's idea). A computer that wakes up when you sit at your desk. Scavenger hunts and role playing games. Subdermal implants for sex offenders let out of jail. Triggers for lights (got them now), advertisements (God save us), explosions....

Another muted failure. Once more demonstrating its will to conquer the infinite, NASA has delayed STS-114 due to a problem with a backup fuel sensor. (I don't know why they even need a primary for this; it's not like they can stop at a filling station if they run low on LOX.) They're pretending to hope they can fix it by tomorrow, but nobody believes that. We'll be seeing the truck -- er, orbiter -- removed from the pad instead. Let's see them get the same volume of media down to Canaveral for the next attempt....

Advancing yet further into the improbable possible, Wikipedia has launched Wikibooks, "a collection of open-content textbooks that anyone can edit." See also Wikiversity. Now if they could just give me a Wikiwhore, all would be complete.

I hate to tell Bob Geldoff and Bono I told them so, but many Africans seem to agree with me. Well, maybe they sold a Boomtown Rats CD or two. Did you know there's a "Best of Boomtown Rats" CD? Heh heh.

The special effects and set pieces are primo 5-star top-of-the-mountain good (and I mostly yawned through Star Wars E3). The rest of the movie is just ballast, and not worth mentioning.

The big problem is left over from Wells' original resolution to the story (spoilers) -- that germs kill the invaders soon after their arrival on Earth. First, it's a deus ex machina, which they teach you pretty early in creative writing class to avoid like two dollar whores in Bangkok (when *will* I learn?). But furthermore because of the implausibility of it: would these superior, advanced beings, who have been studying Earth for millions of years, been unaware of the catastrophic flaw in their colonization plans? And would creatures with a completely different biochemistry, creatures from an entirely different ecosystem, be susceptible at all to earthly germs? (Most sophisticated modern SF leans toward *no*.) Which might not be so bad if it weren't the fundamental point of the story.

But it's definitely worth seeing for the effects, the scenes of massive destruction, and the hella cool alien "tripods".

Speaking of deus ex machina, the season/series finale for Doctor Who 2005 was a big disappointment, with a weird New Age kind of a Deus. The Dalek "god" was also absurd and stupid, as was the entire concept of religious fanatic Daleks. I find it hard to understand that the season arc was always heading for this conclusion. Bizarre.

In all the anticipation over the revamped Stargate, it was easy to forget the basic cheesiness of that and its sister show, Atlantis. Neither show has changed much in their new seasons, the modified casts haven't much improved the general quality (although Mitch Pileggi seems a strong addition to Atlantis). It's the same-old again, and I'll probably return to pretending I don't watch those shows.

But going from Atlantis into Battlestar Galactica is like leaping from little league into the World Series. It's not often a television program can make you jump to the edge of your seat and shout, "Holy shit this show is great!" The first five minutes of season two were almost as good as the last five minutes of season one. There's just this feeling of authenticity and realism about it that the Stargates sorely lack.

I initially had some questions about some of the technical plot points -- why they needed to return to their previous position before plotting the FTL jump solution used by the fleet, and whether it was plausible for the Cylons to attack their ad-hoc network without any apparent communications ports exposed -- but some time spent on the message boards soon provided reasonable explanations. Look them up yourself.

Everybody's upset about this artwork on display in the CA Attorney General's offices:



They're crying that it's offensive to our country, to our military, etc. But what they should be upset about is the terrible quality of what passes for political art these days. I mean look at this thing: it's like some high school kid threw it together the night before his art-class assignment was due. The toilet is lopsided and deformed, the flag-colored geographic symbol is a woefully lazy shortcut, and the slogan is about the lamest pun I've seen outside of a Charlie Brown comic. And then -- then! -- the hackneyed thrift-store cowboy boots in front... hahaHHahhahha... he wants to... wants... ahhahHahhaHHAhaHAHah....

Is this artist mentally retarded? Is that why they hung it up there? My God, but what is this country coming to, when the best the artsy anti-war intellectual left can come up with is juvenile, artless, retard-painted crap like this? We really need to regain our self-respect a little bit. Somebody write a friggin' folk-song or something!

If you've got a multiple-monitor setup in Windows (and I honestly can't imagine living in a world with just one monitor on my desk) then you have to stop being stupid and check out Ultramon.

Wow, and I thought I had a long hate list.

As those who know me will readily assert, one of my fondest dreams -- next to gaining the ability to stop time -- is to discover a secret portal to a parallel universe in which North America was never spoiled by the arrival of the white man. Ah, imagine the pristine beauty of it, the clean air, open skies, boundless wilderness! I will finally be able to shape the land in my own image, build what I would wherever I would, name the roads and cities and mountains after myself. Sure there will be some indigenous populations to contend with at first, but the germs I bring with me will be like terrible poisons to their undeveloped immune systems. And any hearty enough to resist my mighty sneezes will surely tremble before my superior firepower: what chance do spears and arrows have against machine-guns and sniper rifles; galloping ponies against HMMWVs; sneaking scouts against acres of mine-fields? And once those populations are tamed into submission they shall mine the gold for me, drill the oil, construct the massive highways for my sports cars, and sculpt my image into the faces of the hills. And then I shall finally have the time to relax, not a voice to bother me for hundreds of miles. It will be just like stopping time.

Oh, right. The concepts in this book are thoroughly conceived, their ramifications sounded out, the whole wholly holistic. But Sterling is clearly in love with his creation and feels compelled to describe every inch of it, and the pace of the book suffers as a result. We learn the species and location of every tree, every animal, every landmass in relation to their counterparts in the real world. We learn the shape and influence and construction materials employed by every building, the make and use of every machine, the sensation of contrasting aromas, and on.... This goes on and on and on. And the story seems mainly a skeleton for this expatiation; nothing much happens most of the time. For a good fifty pages the only thing the reader has to anticipate is a *wheat harvest* (and I was kind of hoping he'd skip that -- alas). Unfortunately (or not) I'm the kind of reader who feels compelled to read every passage of a book, but even I started skimming some of the lusher descriptive passages -- after a (short) while it all started looking the same.

I sometimes try to record the primary applications I'm using so that future historians don't have to wonder.

Web Browser: Firefox 1.0.6
Email Client: Thunderbird 1.0.2
Usenet Client: Agent 2.0/32.652
IM Client: Gaim 1.4
Office Suite: OpenOffice.org 1.1.4
Text Editor: EmEditor 4.13
Image Editor: Paint Shop Pro 8.00, IrfanView 3.9.7
Audio Player: Zoom Player 4.50
Video Player: Zoom Player 4.50
Compression: WinRAR 3.30
CD / DVD Burning: Nero 6.6.0.1, Alcohol 120% 1.9.2.1705
Image Burning / Mounting: Alcohol 120% 1.9.2.1705
Java Dev: Eclipse 3.1.0
Remote PC Access: Remote Administrator 2.1
Software Firewall: Sygate Personal Firewall 5.5

Although further proof should not be required, these sounds emanating from Saturn should demonstrate definitively that outer space is, indeed, evil. I wonder what the Galaxy of Terror sounds like...? Eeeegh....

As much as I dislike the STS and despise NASA and their congressional overlords for not moving on to something better, it's still pretty friggin cool to watch it launch.

After record ratings last week, Battlestar Galactica, the only actually good show on the SciFi Channel, dropped 23% to a 2.0 share -- the show's lowest ratings ever. Presumably it didn't hold any of the new audience from all the hype and media (which shouldn't be surprising: most people who would be interested in a show like this already knew all about it). Those numbers are still actually good for a cable channel, but in the twisted methodology of television.biz, good ratings are not the point; better ratings are the point. Especially for a newer show, they want to see the program improve its audience share season to season, quarter to quarter, even week to week. This is the perilous disease that killed Farscape prematurely. It also killed Firefly before a single season had aired. Clearly no program is immune to it.

And it's the curse of Friday night science fiction shows (SG-1 somehow excluded). Farscape, Firefly, BSG -- were / are stuck in a Friday night timeslot, the night when the fewest people are home watching tv; hell, even I sometimes have something else to do on Friday nights.

So I imagine the Save Battlestar Galactica campaign begins now (just to get a head start), the furious letter writing, the deluging emails, the desperate fund-raising; all that effort that failed to save Farscape and Firefly. Fans of BSG have been nervous ever since that epiphantic moment when they realized they loved the show. They are used to television execs like Bonny Hammer and Gail Berman castrating their Friday nights without so much as an "excuse me". It's been rather interesting to observe actually. Twice bitten, thrice shy?

I just read there are plans for a movie based on the television series "24". I wonder if they'll call it "2"?

Just for some perspective, Dancing With the Stars got a 20 share last night. That's right, Dancing With the Stars. Which means 20% of the people watching television last night were watching Dancing With the Stars.

Also, while perusing television-space just now, I learned that the guy who played the scary-scary Simon Adebisi on Oz has been cast for the next season of Lost. Which probably means the guy from Lord of the Rings is in for some anal rape.

Also, some maniac sent me a screener for an upcoming ABC series called Invasion, which seems to be some kind of alien bodysnatcher plot. What an original concept! (Of course the Golden Age of bodysnatcher scenarios were inspired by the Cold War and the fear that the blue United States had been infiltrated by the reds. Which fear is sort of also going on now I suppose, with different blues, different reds.) This particular episode was filled with all kinds of weird events that apparently had nothing to do with aliens though. A little girl searching for her cat in the middle of a hurricane wanders miles from home in about five minutes. A rock hits the windshield of some guy's truck and the truck flips over. Some other guy thinks "the Military" is capable of creating a hurricane. Rip-snortin' good script-writing that.

I think I hate television.

Like a 1978 Chevy Malibu rotting on somebody's front lawn, an STS left tethered to the ISS would serve as a reminder of procrastination and idleness, of the final failure of NASA, a monument, a testament in parallel to the corpse of the Saturn V rotting away at the Johnson Space Center.