Later On

I’ve played four-person chess and Go as two teams of two each, no conferring. This works reasonably well, with the weaker player on each team sort of softening the effectiveness of the better player, so both teams struggle along.

Three-person is rather different, since all three are playing and any temporary partnerships dissolve in the face of opportunity. (I’ve read that three-person teams are frequent in enforcement situations: a two-person team can quickly reach agreement to collude but a three-person team is less stable: each must fear becoming the odd man out, with the other two colluding against him, so stable cooperation is difficult.)

Here’s a three-person variant of chess. Has anyone tried it?

It would be useful to have some index of the level of daily distractions.

It seems to me that the degree to which people in the US (and probably worldwide) are being distracted has steadily increased over the past few decades. In my childhood, we had fewer distractions: radio programs in the evening, movies on Saturday, listen to records occasionally, phone calls from time to time. A weekly high school football game. College games—seen at colleges or in newsreels. (This was before television.) But large chunks of time were left for one to fill as s/he wished. There was a sense that you were in control of your time.

Now I see people as being more or less constantly distracted. The entertainment industry pumps out movies, TV shows, games, and the like as fast as it can. Major-league sports franchises constantly strive to extend their reach and their involvement in our daily lives with product and activity spin-offs. We now carry our phones with us constantly, and can watch movies, sports, TV, or the news, read the paper, and exchange text messages. Twitter and Facebook and other social media augment (and to some extent replace) face-to-face visits.

Many jobs have seeped into time once reserved for one’s private life: it’s one thing to bring home a briefcase of papers, another to have a computer the keeps you connected to (and interacting with) your work colleagues pretty much any hour of the day or night, not to mention the iPhone or Blackberry.

People now have much less time in which they are free to simply sit and contemplate—think about—their lives and the world around them. Rather they are constantly having to respond to external stimuli: distractions.

Being in a constant state of distraction has its upsides, of course. Corporations really like for consumers to be slightly distracted since that lowers their guard and allows easier psychological manipulation and triggering. Indeed, the environment so carefully conceived and created for shoppers—malls, supermarkets, department stores, auto shows, casinos, and the like—are designed to distract: to deliver exactly the right sort and level of distraction to put the consumer in a state where his or her credit cards emerge almost involuntarily and the accumulation of stuff begins.

And politicians also want us distracted. In general, they do not want an informed and active citizenry, because active, informed citizens start making demands on their elected officials. From a politician’s point of view, it’s better to have citizens that are aroused but whose informational diet is carefully restricted and monitored—nothing is more distasteful to the average politician than citizens getting useful and accurate information about what the government is doing. Better to keep citizens stirred up and angry at each other.

I got to thinking about how distracted people are because now that I am retired with a fair amount of free time, I look at things happening in plain sight in the US that somehow people are not noticing. I started thinking about this on seeing the Jon Stewart program that lays out quite clearly and simply how the Palin family decided as early as June that Ms. Palin would not run for president, but deliberately kept that decision secret so that they could continue to harvest donations from their supporters, including one last big round of donations they requested just before she would finally announce her decision—a decision she had made months before.

The Palin campaign was a scam, pure and simple, and it’s obvious from publicly available information. But no one seems to notice. No one has time to notice because of the constant din of distractions. We are drowning in distractions while important issues either go unaddressed or are addressed in ways that, were we paying attention, should horrify us.

UPDATE: Part of the efficacy of the distractions visited upon us is due to our increasing knowledge of how the human brain and mind work: neurology and psychology have now delved pretty deeply into how we function, though much remains to be learned. Still: of all the research and knowledge we now posses, I would love to know a breakdown of its use in two categories: helping people become more autonomous and free, and controlling people.

UPDATE 2: I was thinking that we need more rituals like these.

Governments do have enemies, but sometimes governments begin to see their own dissenting citizens as enemies and begin to abuse government power to pursue these enemies—imprisoning them without charges or trials, torturing them to try to get information with which to charge them, even putting them to death without trial or allowing them to confront and question their accusers.

In Argentina this paranoia, supported by the Catholic church, led to the murder of citizens in order to take away their infant children. Alexei Barrionuevo reports in the NY Times:

Victoria Montenegro recalls a childhood filled with chilling dinnertime discussions. Lt. Col. Hernán Tetzlaff, the head of the family, would recount military operations he had taken part in where “subversives” had been tortured or killed. The discussions often ended with his “slamming his gun on the table,” she said.

It took an incessant search by a human rights group, a DNA match and almost a decade of overcoming denial for Ms. Montenegro, 35, to realize that Colonel Tetzlaff was, in fact, not her father — nor the hero he portrayed himself to be.

Instead, he was the man responsible for murdering her real parents and illegally taking her as his own child, she said.

He confessed to her what he had done in 2000, Ms. Montenegro said. But it was not until she testified at a trial here last spring that she finally came to grips with her past, shedding once and for all the name that Colonel Tetzlaff and his wife had given her — María Sol — after falsifying her birth records.

The trial, in the final phase of hearing testimony, could prove for the first time that the nation’s top military leaders engaged in a systematic plan to steal babies from perceived enemies of the government.

Jorge Rafael Videla, who led the military during Argentina’s dictatorship, stands accused of leading the effort to take babies from mothers in clandestine detention centers and give them to military or security officials, or even to third parties, on the condition that the new parents hide the true identities. Mr. Videla is one of 11 officials on trial for 35 acts of illegal appropriation of minors.

The trial is also revealing the complicity of civilians, including judges and officials of the Roman Catholic Church. . .

Continue reading.

Here’s the argument “It turns out it’s perfectly legal and okay for the President to order the assassination of American citizens with no due process, charges, trial, or defense—but the reasons it’s okay are secret so we can’t tell you why. Just trust us.” Do you find that convincing? If yes, then GOOD NEWS!! I have recently come into possession of five (5) magic beans, which I am going to sell for just US$100 per bean. You are limited to five (5), since those are all I have. So far. Please PayPal me and I’ll send the beans directly. They are worth many times what I am charging. What they will do is a secret, but you’re not the sort of person bothered by things like that.

The argument legalizing assassination on the say-so of the President seems to be a will-of-the-wisp. Here’s a story by Charlie Savage in the NY Times that reports what we know so far:

The Obama administration’s secret legal memorandum that opened the door to the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born radical Muslim cleric hiding in Yemen, found that it would be lawful only if it were not feasible to take him alive, according to people who have read the document.

The memo, written last year, followed months of extensive interagency deliberations and offers a glimpse into the legal debate that led to one of the most significant decisions made by President Obama — to move ahead with the killing of an American citizen without a trial.

The secret document provided the justification for acting despite an executive order banning assassinations, a federal law against murder, protections in the Bill of Rights and various strictures of the international laws of war, according to people familiar with the analysis. The memo, however, was narrowly drawn to the specifics of Mr. Awlaki’s case and did not establish a broad new legal doctrine to permit the targeted killing of any Americans believed to pose a terrorist threat.

The Obama administration has refused to acknowledge or discuss its role in the drone strike that killed Mr. Awlaki last month and that technically remains a covert operation. The government has also resisted growing calls that it provide a detailed public explanation of why officials deemed it lawful to kill an American citizen, setting a precedent that scholars, rights activists and others say has raised concerns about the rule of law and civil liberties.

But the document that laid out the administration’s justification — a roughly 50-page memorandum by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, completed around June 2010 — was described on the condition of anonymity by people who have read it.

The legal analysis, in essence, concluded that Mr. Awlaki could be legally killed, if it was not feasible to capture him, because intelligence agencies said he was taking part in the war between the United States and Al Qaeda and posed a significant threat to Americans, as well as because Yemeni authorities were unable or unwilling to stop him.

The memorandum, which was written more than a year before Mr. Awlaki was killed, does not independently analyze the quality of the evidence against him. . .

Continue reading. Ah! “Intelligence agencies said he was taking part in the war between US and Al Qaeda…” Interesting. And how did those agencies respond under cross-examination? Are these the same agencies that told us that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program? That told us we’d find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? That missed the fall of the Berlin Wall? That backed Pinochet? The Contras? Is this the same intelligence agency that deliberately destroyed evidence of war crimes they committed, even though they were ordered to keep that evidence intact? Those intelligence agencies?

Somehow, given the record of US intelligence agencies, I have increasing concerns about the procedures they simply made up to allow them to kill Americans without legal penalties.

We already have procedures in place to deal with American malefactors: it’s call the court system. But I guess it’s so cumbersome that we’re now by-passing it—imprisoning people for years without charges. We certainly by-passed the requirement for judicial review of wiretapping and other kinds of surveillance: that requirement is totally gone now, and all our telephone and Internet communications is now scanned using various NSA programs. The Constitution is being systematically ignored.

Wonder if that’s why Awlaki didn’t want to return to the US—because he’d be imprisoned with no trial or charges and held indefinitely, tortured occasionally?

If you haven’t yet read Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit, give it a go. But of course it’s not just tomatoes: the constant drive to grow profits means an on-going effort to cut costs (with concomitant reductions in quality, generally).

Wild rice, for example, is a delicious food, traditionally harvest by poling boats among the rice, bending the heads of ripe seeds over the boat, and whacking them. Some seeds fall into the water, providing next year’s crop.

Industry, though, hates labor-intensive (expensive) methods and works to increase scale by means of machinery. The wild-rice varieties that are hand-harvest are unsuitable for large-scale machine harvesting—the heads shatter too easily, the hull is too thin, etc. So the companies went to work and managed to breed a rice that has a tough, black hull and can be machine harvested. It’s not very good, but: it makes a lot of money.

The Wife just had some of the wild rice I cooked last night. I buy hand-harvested good wild rice. (Note that 1/2 lb costs 8.50 but 1 lb is $12.50: makes no sense to buy 1/2 lb.) She loved it. Note also: like true rice, wild rice contains no gluten.

This report in the NY Times by Steven Lee Myers has sold at least one copy of the book:

PETER VAN BUREN, an American diplomat who speaks Japanese, Mandarin and “some Korean,” though no Arabic, did a very undiplomatic thing when the State Department sent him to Iraq for a year. He wrote a book.

The result is one diplomat’s darkly humorous and ultimately scathing assault on just about everything the military and the State Department have done — or tried to do — since the invasion of Iraq. The title says it all: “We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People” (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Company).

Ample ink has been expended on the war, defending it, attacking it or just trying to understand it. What makes Mr. Van Buren’s account so striking is its gleeful violation of the spirit — and perhaps the letter — of the written and unwritten code of America’s diplomatic corps.

In anything but diplomatic language, he skewers the Army’s commanders and the Iraqis, the embassy, its staff, and even its ambassador at the time, Christopher R. Hill, though not by name. He takes sarcastic aim at the ambassador’s Sisyphean effort to grow a lawn in the sprawling embassy compound beside the Tigris River.

“No matter what Iraq and nature wanted, the American Embassy spent whatever it took to have green grass in the desert,” he writes. “Later full-grown palm trees were trucked in and planted to line the grassy square. We made things in Iraq look the way we wanted them to look, water shortages through the rest of the country be damned. The grass was the perfect allegory for the whole war.”

He is certainly not the first diplomat to harbor doubts about the efficacy of American diplomacy, but in the cautious culture of the State Department, where every public statement is carefully “cleared,” often all the way back in Washington, airing them so starkly is simply not done.

“What’s in it is so important because while there are hundreds of books on the shelves today that give relatively colorful accounts of military life inside and outside the wire, there aren’t any by State employees who take on the reconstruction part of the war so vividly,” Kelley B. Vlahos wrote admiringly on antiwar.com.

The book and the publicity surrounding it — including an Op-Ed article by him in this newspaper — have infuriated Mr. Van Buren’s colleagues. To them, he has betrayed his loyalty to the well-traveled, multilingual, highly educated professional cadre that is the Foreign Service.

“If you feel that strongly about policies you feel are misguided and harmful, you do the honorable thing and resign before tearing your colleagues apart in public,” said a diplomat who served in Iraq, speaking, as is more typically the case, on the condition of anonymity. . .

Continue reading. One can’t help but note that the diplomat who served in Iraq refuses to stand by his words and speaks anonymously, whereas Mr. Van Buren has the courage of his convictions. I think the NY Times should cease these “poison pen” quotations: if people are too cowardly to give their name, let them keep silent.

Except for Jon Stewart, I have seen no comment in the mainstream media on the fact that Sarah Palin had decided in June not to run for President, but continued the money-raising operation, with donations to her own personal PAC controlled completely by her—including a last-minute specific appeal for funds in September to squeeze the last dollar from her fans before she finally admitted that she is not going to run. So for almost four months, Palin deliberately suckered money from people for her “presidential run” that she had no intention of making. But she does love the money, you can tell.

Does the mainstream media simply not care about a scam like this? Are they protecting her? What the hell? I would think this sort of deliberate fraud would be frowned on and investigated.

The CIA is now formally unrestrained by the law—something we’ve always suspected, but it’s clear now. Glenn Greenwald has an interesting column in the Guardian on the specifics:

Lee Hamilton and Tom Kean – the co-chairmen of the 9/11 Commission – are the prototypical Wise Old Men of Washington. These are the types chosen to head blue-ribbon panels whenever the US government needs a respectable, trans-partisan, serious face to show the public in the wake of a mammoth political failure. Wise Old Men of Washington are entrusted with this mission because, by definition, they are loyal, devoted members of the political establishment and will criticise political institutions and leaders only in the most respectful and restrained manner.

That is why it was so remarkable when Hamilton and Kean, on 2 January 2008, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times repeatedly accusing the CIA and the Bush White House of knowingly “obstructing” their commission’s investigation into the 9/11 attack. As many imprisoned felons can attest, the word “obstruction” packs a powerful punch as a legal term of art signifying the crime of “obstruction of justice”, and yet, here were these two mild-mannered, establishment-protecting civil servants accusing CIA and Bush officials of that crime in the most public and unambiguous manner possible.

What triggered this duo’s uncharacteristic accusatory outburst was the revelation that the CIA had purposely destroyed numerous videos of interrogation sessions it had conducted with al-Qaida operatives (destroyed were 92 videos, showing hundreds of hours of interrogations). The 9/11 Commission had repeatedly demanded, with the force of law behind it, that all such interrogation materials be provided to it. Numerous courts presiding over lawsuits relating to torture allegations against the CIA had also ordered that any such videos be produced.

But with those orders pending, the CIA destroyed the very evidence it was legally compelled to preserve. With at least the knowledge, if not direction, of White House officials, they did so almost certainly with the intent of preventing the world from seeing how they treated detainees in their custody – with torture – but the effect was to prevent the 9/11 Commission and multiple courts from learning what al-Qaida operatives said (or did not say) about 9/11 and other matters under investigation.

That is why the CIA’s actions were so clearly criminal: destroying evidence one knows is relevant to a lawful investigation or a judicial proceeding is the very essence of “obstruction of justice”. Individuals are routinely prosecuted and imprisoned in the US for such acts in far less serious cases. So egregious and deliberate was the CIA’s criminality – purposely destroying evidence relevant to the most significant terrorist attack in history on US soil – that not even Hamilton and Kean were willing to paper over it.

Despite all that, there have been no legal consequences whatsoever for the crimes of these CIA officials. Last November, the Obama justice department – following the administration’s all-too-familiar pattern ofshielding Bush-era crimes from acountability – announced it was closing its criminal investigation into the matter with no charges filed. And this week, a federal judge, whose own order to produce these videos had been violated by the CIA, decided that he would not even impose civil sanctions or issue a finding of contempt because, as he put it, new rules issued by the CIA “should lead to greater accountability within the agency and prevent another episode like the videotapes’ destruction”.

In other words, . . .

Continue reading. Now that it has been established that legal restraints do not apply, the CIA will undoubtedly extend its reach and multiply its efforts.

US citizens, thanks to the First Amendment, are guaranteed the right of free speech: you can say what you like, even to the extent of advocating the violent overthrow of the US government, as some in the Tea Party regularly do—and indeed even Rick Perry, a candidate for the US Presidency, talked favorably about the possibility that Texas might secede from the United States. That’s his right.

However, you apparently can be assassinated for speaking your mind as well, as happened to Awlaki. Despite claims that he was involved in operations, everything we’ve seen is simply that he espouses jihad against the US: free speech at work. One benefit of a trial is the public display of evidence, along with the arguments of the defense. That has, on the whole, worked well in most instances (Texas and certain Southern states excepted), and it saddens me to see us abandon that procedure. Of course, many countries do ignore this step—Argentina went through that, as did Chile and other countries.

But I wonder whether Awlaki did anything like this:

Although there’s still no evidence that Anwar Awlaki was responsible for any actual or planned Terrorist plots, a newly released WikiLeaks cable seems to provide definitive proof of what Amnesty International has long claimed: that the U.S., in late 2009, carried out an air strike in Yemen using cluster bombs that killed dozens of innocent women, children and men.  It’s so telling how much intense and unquestioning media attention was devoted to depicting Awlaki as an Evil Terrorist, and so little devoted to the dozens of innocent people actually killed by the U.S., under the direction of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner, in the very country where Awlaki lived.

Excellent shave today. I used my new Rod Neep brush and got a fine lather from the Otoko Organics shaving soap. The Shave Shack continues to be closed, but the soap is available from The Razor Shop and I do recommend it: very interesting and very kind to the skin.

I continue to marvel at the new Edwin Jagger head for their razors. The more I use it, the more I realize how very nice it is. Today I tried a Teflon-coated Russian blade Voskhod: not bad at all. In fact, quite smooth.

Three passes, the alum bar, a final rinse, and then a splash of Klar Seifen: a great way to start the day.

Obama repeatedly makes promises that he later breaks, generally with no explanation at all. Sometimes he explains, but the explanations are hollow and explain nothing. One example: His pledge, as Senator, to vote against immunity for the telecommunications companies who violated the law by providing full access to the NSA to electronic surveillance with no court order or indeed any judicial involvement whatsoever. This was quite clearly a violation of law and an offense against the public and there was absolutely no reason to give the telecommunications companies immunity for their law-breaking, and so Senator Obama pledged to vote against that immunity.

The very first chance he got, he voted in favor of it.

This established a pattern that he has consistently followed. The latest is his promise that the Federal government would not pursue medical marijuana patients and providers who are operating in accordance with state laws. In fact, that promise was put in writing by Eric Holder.

Now Obama is once more breaking his promise. John Hoeffel reports for the LA Times:

Federal prosecutors are threatening to shut down medical marijuana dispensaries throughout California, sending letters that warn landlords to stop sales of the drug within 45 days or face the possibility that their property will be seized and they will be charged with a crime.

The stepped-up enforcement escalates the Obama administration’s efforts to rein in the spread of pot stores, which accelerated after the attorney general announced in 2009 that federal prosecutors would not target people using medical marijuana in states that allow it.

“It’s coming out of left field as far as we’re concerned,” said Joe Elford, the chief counsel for Americans for Safe Access, which advocates for medical marijuana use. “I really don’t know what inspired this. It’s a complete about-face from what [Obama] said when he was campaigning.”

The initiative, spearheaded by the four U.S. attorneys in the state, will focus on dispensaries selected by the prosecutors, said a person familiar with the operation. He declined to say what criteria would be used to target dispensaries and asked not to be identified because the prosecutors are scheduled to make the official announcement at a news conference Friday morning in Sacramento.

Landlords for some dispensaries have already received letters, including the owner of the building that houses the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana inFairfax, Calif., the oldest dispensary in the country. “I assume the story you’re calling about is: Obama takes resources away from fighting terrorists and goes after old ladies with glaucoma,” said Greg Anton, a lawyer who represents the dispensary. . .

Continue reading. Obama is certainly a better president than George W. Bush, but in my opinion he is at best a mediocre president who has consistently lied to his followers and seems quite conservative in his overall outlook. He gives good rhetoric, but many of his actions are lamentable.

Very interesting post by Eric Kleefeld at TPM2012 based on an interview with George McGovern, who was there at the time:

Amidst the ongoing controversies surrounding the Republican primary calendar — with Florida moving its contest to late January, and triggering a move up by the officially sanctioned early states — some people have probably wondered if it might be possible to come up with better ways to pick a presidential nominee. But is there, really?

Already every cycle, the parties review the rules of their primary processes, and often make small or large adjustments. But can they produce major change?

New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner told TPM: “Well, would another commission be successful, when we’ve had a commission almost every four years going back for 30 years?” (For the history of the New Hampshire primary, see our post in which we interviewed Garder.)

And for his own part, Florida GOP chair Lenny Curry told TPM that the state is not trying to challenge New Hampshire’s spot as the first primary. “No way,” said Curry, explaining that “there’s a tradition there, there’s a history there. It’s important, and it matters, and it works. So by no means do we want to — that was never the intent.”

So what does Florida want?

“We would like to see Florida to remain an early state that goes by itself. We are too big, and too important,” said Curry. “And we can debate how we get there, but what is important is we get there, and we get there consistently, and we’re not having a debate every four years as to why Florida should be there early, and by itself.”

With all that in mind, it is worth remembering just how the modern primary system developed — in a process that lasted decades, before it became formalized about 40 years ago. And counter-intuitively, many of the same forces that shaped the process becoming what it is today, may also be the same ones that could prevent a truly centralized reform.

In 1969, following the many controversies that beset the 1968 Democratic convention — in which Vice President Hubert Humphrey was nominated without winning any primaries, on the basis of victories in caucuses and state party conventions, which in those days were sparsely attended and dominated by party insiders — the Dems convened a special commission to overhaul and reform primary and caucus process, and open up participation. The commission was co-chaired by Sen. George McGovern (D-SD), who went on to become the party’s nominee for president in 1972, and Rep. Donald Fraser (D-MN).

It was from that commission that Democrats formalized many rules that people take for granted today: More widespread participation in primaries, caucuses that are adequately advertised and open to the public, proportional representation of delegates, and many more. And over the years, the Republicans copied many of those same principles, fostering the competitive national primary races we see today.

“There weren’t any young people involved, they were out in the streets protesting,” McGovern said of the 1968 convention, in an interview with TPM. “There were very few women inside the convention, that was the basic problem. And under that circumstance, there were other abuses. Sometimes caucuses were held without notifying anybody, and the only people that knew about them were a few insiders.”

“I don’t blame Humphrey, either,” McGovern added. “He was operating as we had always operated, by getting the endorsements of the mayors in large cities, and the heads of the party in various states, members of Congress, governors. And that comprised the process of selecting the nominee up until ‘69. I don’t blame Humphrey for exploiting it, because that’s the way it was done.”

However, one thing that the McGovern-Fraser committee did not address, was . . .

Continue reading.

Fascinating series in the NY Times:

Part 1 begins:

David Dunning, a Cornell professor of social psychology, was perusing the 1996 World Almanac.  In a section called Offbeat News Stories he found a tantalizingly brief account of a series of bank robberies committed in Pittsburgh the previous year.  From there, it was an easy matter to track the case to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, specifically to an article by Michael A. Fuoco:

ARREST IN BANK ROBBERY,
SUSPECT’S TV PICTURE SPURS TIPS

At 5 feet 6 inches and about 270 pounds, bank robbery suspect McArthur Wheeler isn’t the type of person who fades into the woodwork.  So it was no surprise that he was recognized by informants, who tipped detectives to his whereabouts after his picture was telecast Wednesday night during the Pittsburgh Crime Stoppers Inc. segment of the 11 o’clock news.

At 12:10 a.m. yesterday, less than an hour after the broadcast, he was arrested at 202 S. Fairmont St., Lincoln-Lemington.  Wheeler, 45, of Versailles Street, McKeesport, was wanted in [connection with] bank robberies on Jan. 6 at the Fidelity Savings Bank in Brighton Heights and at the Mellon Bank in Swissvale. In both robberies, police said, Wheeler was accompanied by Clifton Earl Johnson, 43, who was arrested Jan. 12.[1]

Wheeler had walked into two Pittsburgh banks and attempted to rob them in broad daylight.  What made the case peculiar is that he made no visible attempt at disguise.  The surveillance tapes were key to his arrest.  There he is with a gun, standing in front of a teller demanding money.  Yet, when arrested, Wheeler was completely disbelieving.  “But I wore the juice,” he said.  Apparently, he was under the deeply misguided impression that rubbing one’s face with lemon juice rendered it invisible to video cameras.

In a follow-up article, Fuoco spoke to several Pittsburgh police detectives who had been involved in Wheeler’s arrest.  Commander Ronald Freeman assured Fuoco that Wheeler had not gone into “this thing” blindly but had performed a variety of tests prior to the robbery.  Sergeant Wally Long provided additional details — “although Wheeler reported the lemon juice was burning his face and his eyes, and he was having trouble (seeing) and had to squint, he had tested the theory, and it seemed to work.”   He had snapped a Polaroid picture of himself and wasn’t anywhere to be found in the image.  It was like a version of Where’s Waldo with no Waldo.  Long tried to come up with an explanation of why there was no image on the Polaroid.  He came up with three possibilities: . . .

Continue reading. And then:

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

The line is adapted from Howard Beale’s cry in Network, and today refers to Paul Krugman’s interesting column in the NY Times:

There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear, but we may, at long last, be seeing the rise of a popular movement that, unlike the Tea Party, is angry at the right people.

When the Occupy Wall Street protests began three weeks ago, most news organizations were derisive if they deigned to mention the events at all. For example, nine days into the protests, National Public Radio had provided no coverage whatsoever.

It is, therefore, a testament to the passion of those involved that the protests not only continued but grew, eventually becoming too big to ignore. With unions and a growing number of Democrats now expressing at least qualified support for the protesters, Occupy Wall Street is starting to look like an important event that might even eventually be seen as a turning point.

What can we say about the protests? First things first: The protesters’ indictment of Wall Street as a destructive force, economically and politically, is completely right.

A weary cynicism, a belief that justice will never get served, has taken over much of our political debate — and, yes, I myself have sometimes succumbed. In the process, it has been easy to forget just how outrageous the story of our economic woes really is. So, in case you’ve forgotten, it was a play in three acts.

In the first act, bankers took advantage of deregulation to run wild (and pay themselves princely sums), inflating huge bubbles through reckless lending. In the second act, the bubbles burst — but bankers were bailed out by taxpayers, with remarkably few strings attached, even as ordinary workers continued to suffer the consequences of the bankers’ sins. And, in the third act, bankers showed their gratitude by turning on the people who had saved them, throwing their support — and the wealth they still possessed thanks to the bailouts — behind politicians who promised to keep their taxes low and dismantle the mild regulations erected in the aftermath of the crisis.

Given this history, how can you not applaud the protesters for finally taking a stand? . . .

Continue reading.

The Forever War is a couple of books, one being Joe Haldeman’s fine science-fiction novel stimulated by the lengthy war in Vietnam, the other being Dexter Filkin’s study of the decade (so far) of the war on terrorism.

But in this case I’m referring to an article put up just today on the Atlantic‘s National channel, “Taking Stock of the Long Wars: A Proposal“, which begins:

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the Afghanistan War. This occasion should prompt Americans to consider a simple question: How’s it going?

“It,” of course, refers to much more than Afghanistan.

After all, the campaign launched on October 7, 2001 to destroy Al Qaeda and overthrow the Taliban soon metastasized. Beyond the unnecessary diversion into Iraq, the enterprise once known as the Global War on Terror now finds U. S. military and intelligence forces engaged in places as far afield as Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya.

Over the past decade thousands of American soldiers have been killed, and thousands grievously wounded in body and spirit. Pentagon spending has more than doubled, reaching levels not seen since World War II. Estimated costs of “the long war” now reach well into the trillions. And there is no end in sight. Senior military officers no longer bother to promise victory. Instead, in the words of General George Casey, they consign the United States to an era of “persistent conflict.”

That American warriors are brave and skillful is beyond doubt. Still, as presently configured, our armed forces achieve indifferent results while costing American taxpayers exorbitant amounts.

So again: How’s it going?

Neither political party has given this question the attention it deserves. Yet in a Washington that has discovered the need to restore some semblance of fiscal self-discipline, defense spending may soon be headed for the chopping block.

We agree that the current Pentagon budget is too large, and unsustainable. We also know that American defenses must remain strong. These two goals can be reconciled — but only if the United States extracts from the military experience of the past decade insights that can provide the basis for a more effective and affordable 21st century force.

There is no reason to think that the national security apparatus will identify those insights on its own. Too much money can be as destructive as too little; big budgets can inhibit rather than encourage introspection and original thought. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has, unfortunately, already indicated that he prefers to protect existing programs rather than to entertain unorthodox ideas. Congressional leaders, regardless of party, share this disposition. Therefore, useful answers to the question “how’s it going” will have to come from the outside.

Toward this end, President Obama, as commander-in-chief, should create an independent, nonpartisan investigatory commission to evaluate the military experience of the past decade — in all its aspects. Call it the Commission to Assess the Long Wars.

We believe the president should allow such a commission wide latitude in pursuing its mandate. In our judgment, the following lines of inquiry are likely to prove fruitful:  . . .

Continue reading.

In Leisureguy’s Guide to Gourmet Shaving, I relate in a footnote Benjamin Franklin’s account of how he gained a friendship through the use of cognitive dissonance. Here’s the anecdote told at full length with a complete exegesis.

The work that Steve Jobs did during his life has had an enormous direct impact on millions of people all over the world. I earlier linked to James Fallows’s tribute to Jobs, which includes a video of Jobs’s commencement address at Stanford University. I discovered a transcript of the address, for those who prefer reading to listening, and I want to emphasize this particular section:

. . . My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. . .

“Astonish” in the sense of a jaw-dropping, I-can’t-believe-anyone-would-do/say-that discovery. Watch the entire video clip of Jon Stewart’s comment in this Salon article. Every time I think Palin has sunk about as low as she could possibly go, she surprises me again.

I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to delve into The Shave Den products. Part of the gradual realization thing, I guess. But now I’m eagerly awaiting my new jar of The Shave Den pre-shave balm, once Joanna makes finds another shea butter source that can provide shea butter with a slightly higher melting point, and I decided to try more of the samples I got.

The Gerson is a very nice little brush that The Wife bought for me in Paris. (Unfortunately, I did not know about Martin de Candre at the time or she could have brought back a few tubs of that.) It quickly brought up a nice lather from the Lavender-Rose TSD soap: fine-grained and dense.

Three passes with the Gillette Slim Handle, carrying a Schick Plus Platinum blade. (This Slim Handle looks better than most because I had it replated in rhodium by Razor Emporium.) The Slim Handle is traditionally identified as James Bonds’s razor, but maybe not.

A splash of TSD Victorian Rose aftershave, and I’m ready for the excitement. (The excitement: Megs goes to vet for pedicure. We excite pretty easily here.)

Great find, via Bruce Schneier:

In his 1956 short story, Let’s Get Together, Isaac Asimov describes security measures proposed to counter a terrorist threat:

“Consider further that this news will leak out as more and more people become involved in our countermeasures and more and more people begin to guess what we’re doing. Then what? The panic might do us more harm than any one TC bomb.”

The Presidential Assistant said irritably, “In Heaven’s name, man, what do you suggest we do, then?”

“Nothing,” said Lynn. “Call their bluff. Live as we have lived and gamble that They won’t dare break the stalemate for the sake of a one-bomb head start.”

“Impossible!” said Jeffreys. “Completely impossible. The welfare of all of Us is very largely in my hands, and doing nothing is the one thing I cannot do. I agree with you, perhaps, that X-ray machines at sports arenas are a kind of skin-deep measure that won’t be effective, but it has to be done so that people, in the aftermath, do not come to the bitter conclusion that we tossed our country away for the sake of a subtle line of reasoning that encouraged donothingism.”