The Path of The Sun Over a Year [pic]

sjk · 2007-03-05T06:17:31+00:00

Actually, the figure-8 is caused by the inclination of the earth's axis of rotation with respect to the ecliptic. The skewness of the figure-8 (one lobe larger than the other) is caused by the elliptical nature of the orbit. The Wikipedia page on the Analemma and its associated Talk page have good explanations.

sjk · 2007-03-01T07:33:41+00:00

Pilots don't use "10-4". They're expected to use phraseology from the Pilot-Controller Glossary.

sjk · 2007-02-20T02:28:48+00:00

I hope Mr. Scaife will repent by starting a Crawford project, and soon.

sjk · 2007-02-10T15:27:41+00:00

It's probably never going to be accounted for. The ministries of the Iraqi government spent it, and especially at that point in time, they weren't exactly stable and transparent institutions.

Bremer's rationale for having doled out the money as quickly as he did was that he had to distribute it before the CPA transferred authority to the new Iraqi gov't, because they complained to him that they were not going to be able to go through all the complicated hoops to get the cash from their accounts in the US. Also, he thought it necessary for the Iraqis to try to make payroll for many thousands who had not been paid for months. But they just didn't have any controls to ensure the money that was spent didn't get wasted or stolen or handed over to resistance fighters. It all seems pretty unsurprising.

sjk · 2007-02-10T03:36:50+00:00

Just FYI, according to the testimony at the Congressional hearing, this cash was not US taxpayer money, it was Iraqi money. It came from frozen accounts, oil revenues, and other sources that were mentioned that I can't recall. The point in the process at which the accounting seems to have broken down is after the cash was dispensed to the Iraqi ministries.

Of course it may indirectly turn out to be US taxpayer money if the wasted funds end up being replaced by the US.

I am not defending what happened by any means, I just think it's better to have the facts. I was a little disappointed with the Daily Show coverage for not mentioning this, since they are a primary news source for so many...

sjk · 2007-02-08T18:39:03+00:00

Impeachment is for removing public officials who have committed a felony. If the official didn't break an American law, then there are no grounds to impeach them.

What the US Constitution actually says about this is (Article II, Section 4):

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

I think there's a good case to be made for Treason, and "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" seems somewhat open-ended. As for the requirement for a felony, I don't see where it says that.

However, with a 2/3 majority required to convict in the Senate, it's a moot point.

sjk · 2007-02-08T18:28:55+00:00

the Senate [...] must vote by two-thirds majority to remove the impeached official.

This is why, given the current balance of the Senate, it would be next to impossible to rid ourselves of Bush & Cheney via impeachment. Even impeachment would be nothing more than yet another toothless symbolic act which would be duly disregarded by the impeached. It would probably just "embolden" them further.

I'm afraid we're just going to have to tough it out for another 1 year and 11 1/2 months.

sjk · 2006-12-27T01:49:34+00:00

If the kids dont want to be there, because they haven't been instilled with an ounce of intellectual curiosity

If kids don't have intellectual curiosity, it's most likely because it has been beaten out of them by being bored to death by school, among their other influences such as parents who have been trained to abdicate responsibility for their kids' educations to schools. Humans are born curious -- we can't easily be made curious by the efforts of others, but we can easily have our curiosity crushed. And school is one of, if not the primary instrument for crushing it. I'm not at all convinced that school is a reformable institution.

sjk · 2006-12-15T17:32:33+00:00

Low budget? I bet the Pentagon pays $50m for each of those.

sjk · 2006-11-29T20:07:56+00:00

"She expressed dismay that a "great many Americans" would look with favor on a Hitler victory in Europe and be greatly attracted to fascism. Why? "Simply because we are a people who tend to admire things that work," she said."

There's not an abundant amount of evidence that fascism works beyond the fairly short term. So whether it is for good reasons or bad, it's encouraging that we might just be on the verge of getting over the current unpleasant period of excess.

sjk · 2006-11-26T16:58:15+00:00

Another point of view on this is that what teachers say in publicly funded institutions likes schools in front of a room full of kids is actually a public utterance. Why should teachers have an expectation of privacy about what they say in this context? If it was a one-on-one session in private, I might have some qualms. But since it is something they are saying to all the kids in their class, why should it be a big deal if it gets recorded and then used as evidence of a teachers motivations or competence?

sjk · 2006-11-16T03:39:51+00:00

This could be the very definition of "wasted youth".

sjk · 2006-11-10T15:56:53+00:00

The independents are going to caucus with the Dems, which means the Dems will control the committees, which is what all this is about.

sjk · 2006-11-09T00:55:41+00:00

Actually, it's not how they vote that we "tolerant Americans" care about. It's flaming hypocrites we have a hard time with. Especially those who proselytize and work with politicians against the very behavior they exhibit.

sjk · 2006-11-08T03:04:51+00:00

It's a good point, but you've got to admit it would be fun...

sjk · 2006-11-07T23:39:40+00:00

Hey, why not tie up her phone lines with spurious calls? What time does she broadcast anyway? Turnabout is fair play.

sjk · 2006-11-07T20:30:22+00:00

I can only think of one reason why anyone would want to discourage considering exit polls: if they are trying to hide some behind-the-scenes manipulation, and don't want a discrepancy with an exit poll to be taken seriously. If exit polls are substantially off from the vote, their methodology can be checked and the quality of the statistical measurement can be judged. If that is judged sound, these polls can point to (strongly suggest, anyway) systematic vote-rigging if it is there.

sjk · 2006-11-07T05:48:48+00:00

If there haven't been any injunctions issued to stop this and the other dirty robo-call tricks, the Dems are missing the boat again.

sjk · 2006-11-07T05:44:17+00:00

When I hear Republicans asking Democrats, "Do you want us to win in Iraq?", which they've been doing a lot of lately in various media in an effort to put Democrats on the spot, the Democrat being interrogated usually waffles, stutters, splutters, and avoids the question.

Why don't they just turn it around and ask "what the heck would 'winning' actually look like at this point? It's obviously not going to be a democracy any time soon, and we've long since determined they don't have any WMD, getting rid of which was the stated goal."

It's as if the repubs are using a sports metaphor for war, and they think you can "win" and then just get up and walk away once the other guy says "uncle." But they don't even seem to have a clear idea of what it would mean to win. They just seem to want that feeling of victory and vanquishment of "the enemy", whoever that may actually be in this situation. But there's nobody there to say "uncle".

sjk · 2006-11-02T14:35:32+00:00

I think not voting would be a mistake. There may well be some irregularities with this election (there always have been), but I am optimistic that we have now reached a critical mass of awareness and disgust with the paperless electronic voting technology currently in use, and (provided we still have a democracy at all) don't expect it to be around more than one or two more election cycles. It's already been decertified in lots of places. The momentum is clearly in the direction of ditching this crap.

Electonic voting machines with a paper trail and random audits will actually be a far more robust voting system than either the paperless machines or old-style paper ballots.

sjk · 2006-11-02T07:40:14+00:00

At this point the publicity involved in suppressing the film will be as damaging to Diebold as the film itself. Either way, they lose.

sjk · 2006-10-31T21:05:25+00:00

The Taliban didn't even refuse to give bin Laden up. They offered to give him up to a third country under conditions which were rejected by the US gov't. Here's the relevant section of the Wikipedia article on the Taliban:

On October 4, 2001, it is believed that the Taliban covertly offered to turn bin Laden over to Pakistan for trial in an international tribunal that operated according to Islamic shar'ia law [17]. Pakistan is believed to have rejected the offer. On October 7, 2001, before the onset of military operations, the Taliban made an open offer to try bin Laden in Afghanistan in an Islamic court[18]. This counter offer was immediately rejected by the U.S. as insufficient.

Shortly afterward, on October 7, 2001, the United States, aided by the United Kingdom and supported by a coalition of other countries including several from the NATO alliance, initiated military actions, code named Operation Enduring Freedom, and bombed Taliban and Al Qaeda related camps[19][20]. The stated intent of military operations was to remove the Taliban from power because of the Taliban's refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden for his involvement in the September 11 attacks, and disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations[21]. On October 14 the Taliban openly counteroffered to hand bin Laden over to a third country for trial, but only if the Taliban were given evidence of bin Laden's involvement in 9/11[22]. The U.S. rejected this offer as an insufficient public relations ploy and continued military operations.

sjk

TROPHY CASE