Technology Through Different Eyes: Friday, December 30, 2005
Friday, December 30, 2005
Thursday, December 29, 2005
just a test
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Joke of the day
Donald Rumsfeld is giving the president his daily briefing. He concludes by saying: "Yesterday, 3 Brazilian soldiers were killed." "OH NO!" the President exclaims. "That's terrible!" His staff sits stunned at this display of emotion, nervously watching as the President sits, head in hands. Finally, the President looks up and asks, "How many is a brazillion?"
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Science vrs Myth
An important battle is being fought in court today. The battle over whether we treat Science as science or just a place to spout our opinions. Science is a proven defendable analytic way of thinking. It isn't gee I like this idea. I thought this battle had been fought and won in the US. Clearly we are regressing as a nation into some bizarre form of theocracy.
From Prof. Millers testimony
To my knowledge, every single scientific society that has taken a position on this issue has taken a position against intelligent design and in favor of evolution
I respect Karl Rove in a weird way, much like I respected the fictional character Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs. Both are brilliant, both have complete focus on their goals. They are also both amoral and scary as hell. That said Karl Rove is absolutely the wrong person to be in charge of the rebuilding effort.
Joshua Marshall of Talking Points Memo put it well Let's see.
What was the problem with Michael Brown exactly? Let's see. No expertise or experience for the job. Got the gig because he was pals with Bush's political fixer. Also a political loyalist. So to learn the lesson and get back on track, to run the recovery, President Bush picks Karl Rove. That's great. Do we really all need the paint by numbers version of this picture.
No we don't. This is the same mistake made over and over again. I don't expect the Bush camp to learn but I do expect the American people to be outraged.
White House officials viewed the speech as the culmination of a pivotal week in which Mr. Bush tried to turn around his image as a chief executive slow to respond to the greatest natural disaster in American history. The speech was meant to portray Mr. Bush as a forceful leader in control of the crisis and sympathetic to the people in the region.
This is the problem they want to create the image of leadership We need the reality of leadership Damn this pisses me off.
The Heritage Foundation's (Bush's think tank) plans for the future of the devastated area
waivers on environmental rules,
the elimination of capital gains tax
private ownership of public school buildings
elimination of estate tax for those with a net worth greater than 1.5 million
In others words they are using this disaster to further advance their political agenda.
Want to know what GW is going to say tonight? Here's the talking points already distributed to right wing pundits. Wouldn't true leadership have wanted the message sent to everyone?
We must be able to look with different eyes to truly see the problems before us. It's time to stop believing our own advertising and see the truths that exist.
Singapore
Sumiko Tan, a columnist for the Sunday edition of The Straits Times in Singapore:
We were shocked at what we saw. Death and destruction from natural disaster is par for the course. But the pictures of dead people left uncollected on the streets, armed looters ransacking shops, survivors desperate to be rescued, racial divisions - these were truly out of sync with what we'd imagined the land of the free to be, even if we had encountered homelessness and violence on visits there. ... If America becomes so unglued when bad things happen in its own backyard, how can it fulfill its role as leader of the world?
Janadas Devan, a Straits Times columnist:
Today's conservatives,differ in one crucial aspect from yesterday's conservatives: the latter believed in small government, but believed, too, that a country ought to pay for all the government that it needed.
The former believe in no government, and therefore conclude that there is no need for a country to pay for even the government that it does have. ... [But] it is not only government that doesn't show up when government is starved of resources and leached of all its meaning. Community doesn't show up either, sacrifice doesn't show up, pulling together doesn't show up, 'we're all in this together' doesn't show up
England
BBC columist Harold Evans
My judgment is that the log of Social Darwinism will disappear again under the toxic flood waters of New Orleans. The corpses floating face down in the muddy overflow from broken Mississippi levees are too shocking a sight for Americans of all classes and parties. They are too kindly a people. They will look once again for vigour and compassion in government, even at the price of higher taxes.
When GW belatedly visited the flooded region, he reminisced about his good-time days in New Orleans. His intentions were good but his off-the-cuff remark was as unfortunate as his rhapsody to the homeless about how the former Republican majority leader Trent Lott of Mississippi was going to build a "fantastic new house". Brother can you spare a dime?
And Bush, like Hoover, has found it hard to confront reality. He has said nobody expected the levees to break - thereby flying in the fact of scores of predictions in official reports, science journals and newspapers.
Germany
Michael Streck in Germany's Die Welt
Hurricane Katrina will bury itself into the American consciousness in the same way 9/11 or the fall of Saigon did. The storm did not just destroy America's image of itself, but also has the power to bring an end to the Republican era sooner than expected. America is ashamed.
Stephan Hebel in Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine
Bush's people will say that the moment of need and willingness to help should not be poisoned by political manoeuvres. Maybe this will serve them well enough in a media world where images of victims and heroes are valued more highly than complex background. But then the lie would have won - against the desire to understand things so as to avoid them
Turkey
Yildirim Turker in Turkey's Radikal
The biggest power of the world is rising over poor black corpses. We are witnessing the collapse of the American myth. In terms of the USA's relationship with itself and the world, Hurricane Katrina seems to leave its mark on our century as an extraordinary turning point.
Malaysia
Malaysia's Berita Harian editorial
What's more saddening is that there have been riots and looting in New Orleans. It turns out that in a developed country with the most powerful economy in the world, some of its citizens are not much different from the poor in Third World countries.
Venezuela
President Hugo Chavez
The rich were able to leave, the poor stayed there, and it is now that they are evacuating them, four, five days later. That is the model they want to sell us. Racial segregation - the mayor of New Orleans said it - is a question of social classes; the rich were able to leave, the poor were left, enduring the hurricane. It is capitalism, in its extreme individualist phase.
Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government, and to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility.
Defination responsible - answerable for one's behavior.
OK everyone it's up to us to HOLD him responsible as well.
This is what being resposible in this case means (thanks to Todd Gitlin)
--acknowledging that he routinely appointed crony incompetents to run FEMA and other federal agencies;
--acknowledging that this was the wrong thing to do;
--acknowledging that many terrible things happened as a result;
--acknowledging that he was otherwise occupied when the safety of America and Americans was at stake.
