5/31/2003
If you’ve read my quick summation of NASA and the latest bugaboo by Mr. Walker, you’ll be interested this op-ed piece at SpaceDaily by Philip K. Chapman (if you still don’t think NASA is a failure, read it).
A few prescient statements he makes:
- Despite cutbacks, NASA has spent a total of $450 billion since Apollo 11 (adjusted for inflation to 2003 dollars). That very large sum was more than enough to fund the developments that Wernher von Braun predicted for the end of the 20th Century, but we have not even started on any of them. [snip]
- In 1969, we landed on the Moon, but now we cannot leave low Earth orbit (LEO). NASA claimed that the shuttle would be fifteen times cheaper to fly (per pound of payload) than the Saturn vehicles used in Apollo, but it is actually three times more expensive.
The average cost of each flight is a staggering $760 million. After a mission, the time required to prepare a shuttle for the next flight was supposed to be less than two weeks, but in practice tens of thousands of technicians spend three to six months rebuilding each “reusable” shuttle after every flight. Worst of all, the shuttle is a needlessly complex, fragile and dangerous vehicle, which has killed fourteen astronauts so far. [snip]
- The life-cycle cost of the ISS, including development expenses and shuttle flights, amounts to at least $8 billion per year (2003 dollars). This is 60% more than the entire budget of the National Science Foundation, which supports thousands of earthbound scientists. [snip]
- Based on experience to date (two shuttles lost in 113 missions), the accident probability is a little less than 2% on each flight. Astronauts may accept this risk because there is no other way to fly in space, but they would of course prefer a safer system. As a matter of public policy, however, only a compelling national interest can justify so hazardous a venture. The ISS presents no such necessity.
With these odds, the probability of losing at least one more shuttle during the life of the ISS (i.e., in 65 flights) is nearly 70%. In other words, NASA is gambling its future, and the lives of astronauts, on a program that has less than one chance in three of avoiding disaster. This is like playing Russian roulette with a revolver in which four out of the six chambers are loaded. Only a suicidal lunatic would accept such a proposition. [snip]
- The worst mistake made by NASA managers was that they allowed disputes over who would be in charge to influence the direction of the program. Their preoccupation with intercenter turf wars obscured the writing on the wall. [snip]
- In the late ‘Nineties, several small companies, financed by investors, demonstrated substantial progress in developing cheap launch vehicles for human spaceflight. NASA responded by funding a comparable but much more expensive project at Lockheed Martin, called the X-33. Since investors were unwilling to compete with NASA, funding for the small companies evaporated overnight. In 2001, after wasting $912 million, NASA canceled the project. By that time, some of the small ventures were bankrupt. Whether motivated by malice or by stupidity, the net effect of the X-33 was to crush private enterprise.
For those unfamiliar with the X-Prize, it is a $10 million award for any individual or privately funded company that can create a vehicle that can take a pilot and two paying customers up into orbit (62.5 miles) and then repeat the endeavor within 2 weeks. There are about a dozen serious players in it (and another dozen not so serious) who have until the end of 2004 to do so.
I should also point out the X-15 from the 1960’s. It was a joint project from the Air Force and NASA that managed to reach a 67 mile altitude and could achieve Mach 6.7 — all of this prior to Apollo landing on the moon and with a much smaller budget. The way it worked, was that it was “dropped” like a bomb from a B-52 (from the wing) and then the single pilot within the small vehicle would activate it’s hypersonic engines and fly up into the horizons of space. Then after fighting the extraterrestrials in space and uploading a virus into their mothership would glide down to the smiling faces of Tom, Dick and Harry.
The Russian Cosmopolis is an X-Prize class vehicle that is supposed to do what the X-15 did, only at a fraction of the cost. Space Adventures has already signed up with the Cosmopolis team to offer the service to paying tourists. You might remember Space Adventures as the company that helped Dennis Tito and Mark Shuttleworth become the first 2 paying space tourists (Lance Bass was supposed to be the 3rd, but that fell through).
I think I’ll wait until someone builds the Millenium Falcon, outfitted with a Wookie and a hyperdrive that can outrun the Martian TIE Fighters.
Alright, 73% of the populace knows that 26% of all statistics are created out of thin air. But did you know that 39% of males between the ages of 18-40 like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? And 2 out of 3 doctors recommend eating at least one sandwich per day?
Okay, now for some more statistics. I bumped into a column by Paul Krugman (uhh, yea you can guess we usually don’t see eye to eye economically speaking), he pointed out a survey I found quite interesting, stating:
For the time being, the public doesn’t seem to care — or even want to know. A new poll by the Program on International Policy Attitudes finds that 41 percent of Americans either believe that W.M.D.’s have been found, or aren’t sure. The program’s director suggests that “some Americans may be avoiding having an experience of cognitive dissonance.” And three-quarters of the public thinks that President Bush showed strong leadership on Iraq.
If you’ve seen Jay Leno’s Jay Walking then you can understand the lack of cognitive skills in some corners of the Los Angeles area. You can find the survey here, it is the pdf under the heading: Americans’ Review of Iraq War from May 28, 2003. It doesn’t appear that the survey was restricted to the LA area though, so the inability to use reason and accountability is apparently wide spread. I hope it’s not contagious, because then shrewd social engineers could implement all sorts of outlandish policies and enact all sorts of legislation…
5/30/2003
For those of you that aren’t aware of it, the Chinese State has been building and developing an infrastructure for a full-fledged Space program (the whole schbang, including Mars).
This morning a post from Slashdot mentioned a column penned by former congressman and House Science chairman Robert S. Walker. In it he states two things I wanted to point out, the first is this:
Many Japanese space observers are convinced that China has a moon program and that, ultimately, Japan may be drawn into the competition. India already has created its own moon mission, in large part because they are monitoring Chinese space efforts.
Hehe, how does one get “drawn into the competition” - I mean, Collectrix hasn’t been drawn into the Moon competition, nor has TypePad or Apple or Dell or a slew of other companies. Is there some sort of weird kissing disease other than mono that somehow inhibits the ability to think logically: just because someone else is spending $X billion does not mean I have to either.
Now all I need to do is convince Mr. Greenspan to lend me a few million to build a X-Prize class vehicle… because John Carmack is and if he is, then I most certainly have to too.
Then Mr. Walker states,
Our response to the challenge should be aimed not at another moon program of our own, but the development of technologies that would give us the option of several different missions within a decade. Building new propulsion systems, such as nuclear plasma engines, would provide us with the ability to go back to the moon, but also to go to Mars in a mission taking weeks rather than months.
The Chinese moon program appears to be a go whether we get back in the game or not. Space dominance is a 21st-century challenge we dare not refuse. The aerospace commission concluded that stretching our technological reach with new power and propulsion options and developing the capacity to get to low Earth orbit regularly and less expensively would help us hold our space leadership position well into the future.
Does anyone have any idea just how much wealth/capital it took to finance and fund the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo programs? Billions — in 1960s money (~5x the value it is worth today).
And what great productive, wealth growing, capital saving discoveries were made by landing a man on the moon (six times)? Not a damn thing. Sure they picked up a bunch of rocks and brought them back and analyzed and crushed into little pieces and sometimes even sold. However, no kryptonite, no supernatural pixie dust and no magical Genie lamp was ever discovered within those rocks. All the billions of dollars in capital that was diverted from other productive parts of the economy were ever seen from again, nor did the “investments” in other technologies pan out well enough to justify the costs of the program (if the original capital had been “saved” or invested long-term, that is still a more efficient allocation of resources than blasting 3 men into orbit — it’s the same argument against building bombers or tanks, what wealth producing activities can they actually do, spray pesticides on a farm and till a crop?).
In honor of following George Santayana’s law: “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” I’ve dug up a fun little stab at ‘intrepid’ individuals such as the Chinese, American and Japanese politicians. This scene from The Simpsons comes to mind:
Narrator: “The moon. For several years, she has fascinated many. But will man ever walk on her fertile surface? Democratic hopeful Adlai Stevenson says so.”
[cut to a shot of Adlai Stevenson at some sort of press conference]
Stevenson: “I have no objection to man walking on the moon.”
Narrator: “The moon belongs to America, and anxiously awaits the arrival of our astro-men. Will you be among them?”
Things keep looking up for me, thank the BBC:
Handsome men may have better semen, a study suggests.
Researchers in Spain have found that men who are regarded as attractive by women are also more fertile.
Their sperm move faster and are generally healthier.
The study is the latest to suggest that good looks can be a pointer to good health.
In April, researchers in Australia found that men with chiselled jaws and classic masculine features are in better physical health than their less manly peers.
These and similar findings have led scientists to conclude that women who seek attractive male partners are, in fact, searching for the healthiest men, most able to father and provide for their children.
That’s not the entire story, I snipped only the first half, be sure to read it all, especially the “symmetrical face” part (whatever that is). I wanted to point out the wording in the first part. Raise your hand if you did not laugh at all when they said “less manly peers.” Heh, I got a kick out of that, I’ll use that sometime, to boost my ego and self-esteem.
And I always thought that “good looks” were in the eye of the beholder. First I was wrong about inflation, then about taxation now I’m wrong about sexation. Damn my outdated Almanac, where is Dr. Emmett Brown around when you need him?
I wanted to see who this Funky Kenzo that keeps appearing in referreral log is. I was pleasantly surprised to find that MT 2.64 was released. The best part of all, I uploaded it all by myself without any major scre49wjfbrs.
Let me know if you notice anything mes7pn2vle.
OK?
5/29/2003
I’m trying to break a record for the most non-gratuitous, substance-filled posts in a 24-hour period. If you’re into software, or rather, you know just how bad alot of software is (commercial or “open source“), then you’ll get a kick out of PerversionTracker. With a motto like theirs, what more can you ask for:
The highly trained PerversionTracker staff locates the very worst of Mac software. We search the web for 15 minutes a day — so you don’t have to
How about a Windows port of PerversionTracker (that just sounds weird)?
For a quick taste of their biting geekoidness, read the iCount 0.1.1 review — and don’t forget your number line. Yes, it’s like Somethingawful, only useful.
From the Independent:
“For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on,” Mr Wolfowitz tells the magazine.
The comments suggest that, even for the US administration, the logic that was presented for going to war may have been an empty shell. They come to light, moreover, just two days after Mr Wolfowitz’s immediate boss, Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, conceded for the first time that the arms might never be found.
There are some rough looking Latinos down the street that might be thinking about possibly doing something that could be construed as un-friendly. After all, they don’t look like me, talk like me or wear the same clothes.
But then again, I’m looking through a Periscope of FUD. They are gaining popularity with several think tanks; you should get one of those, especially if you don’t like another group of individuals or you need some sort of excuse to bust your load.
Two weeks ago, spurred on by a report from Dr. Jenkins, I discussed the online world of plagiarism. Today, a friend sent me a news release discussing a wraith-like report that if factually correct, is quite damning.
Thanks to news.google.com I was able to reference several other news outlets that have reported along the same theme: the White House shelved a damaging $44 trillion budget deficit report. I found four different headlines; each of these stories has their own unique twist that adds a wrinkle to the overall story:
Two news outlets report the same story, The Arab Times Online and SunSpot Online, both quoting Agence France Presse (AFP): “Washington shelved report of 44-trillion-dollar deficit.”
The Hindustan Times ran: “US fiscal deficit is 44 trillion dollars: Study.” They supposedly quote from AFP, but after reviewing their copy and comparing it with the Arab Times and SunSpot version, it appears modified in several places.
The Reuters version was reprinted at AT&T Online, and states: “White House Denies Shelving Budget Deficit Warning.” This has some additional remarks that do not appear in any of the reports.
The Financial Times - US ‘faces future of chronic deficits’ - their version of the story had several details that were not reported in any of the previous editions, primarily because it is the paper that released the report that both AFP and Reuters quote from.
After analyzing each of the reports, the old philosophical question crept up:
How do you know when a politician is lying? Read on for that answer.
The Reuters report shows an example of this:
The White House on Thursday denied suppressing a report that projects the U.S. government faces a long-term budget deficit of more than $44 trillion.
White House Budget Director Mitch Daniels said the allegation was “probably the most absurd thing that I can imagine.”
And then:
Treasury spokesman Rob Nichols denied that, though. “This paper was not prepared at Treasury, by Treasury, or at the request of anyone at Treasury,” he said.
However, in testimony before a House of Representatives subcommittee in March, Smetters, with the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, said: “These estimates were made with a detailed model developed by Jagadeesh Gokhale and myself during our time in the Bush administration.”
The Hindustan Times AFP version starts off with:
The United States government’s true deficit — counting long-term pension and health care liabilities — is a whopping 44 trillion dollars, according to a study commissioned by the US Treasury but not publicly released.
The study by economists Jagadeesh Gokhale of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and Kent Smetters of the University of Pennsylvania, found that the fiscal imbalance includes seven trillion dollars for Social Security retirement costs and 38 trillion dollars for the Medicare health program for the elderly.
And continues,
According to the Financial Times, the two economists believed the report was for inclusion in official budget documents.
“When we were conducting the study, my impression was that it was slated to appear (in the budget). At some point, the momentum builds and you think everything is a go, and then the decision came down that we weren’t part of the prospective budget,” Gokhale was quoted a saying in the front-page article.
The AFP story as carried by The Arab Times and SunSpot stated:
President George W. Bush’s administration chose to keep the findings — commissioned by then-Treasury secretary Paul O’Neill — out of the 2004 annual budget report, published in February, London’s Financial Times reported.
And then continues,
Kent Smetters, then-Treasury deputy assistant secretary for economic policy, and Jagdessh Gokhale, then a consultant to the Treasury, were in charge of the analysis, the newspaper said.
“When we were conducting the study, my impression was that it was slated to appear (in the budget). At some point, the momentum builds and you think everything is a go, and then the decision came down that we weren’t part of the prospective budget,” Gokhale was quoted a saying in the front-page article.
The Financial Times adds:
Mr Gokhale, now an economist for the Cleveland Federal Reserve, said: “When we were conducting the study, my impression was that it was slated to appear [in the Budget]. At some point, the momentum builds and you think everything is a go, and then the decision came down that we weren’t part of the prospective budget.”
Mr O’Neill, who was fired last December, refused to comment.
Okay, so one story is this: in 2002 then-Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O’Neill commissioned a report that economists Kent Smetters and Jagdessh Gokhale prepared. They found that there were ‘slight’ errors in previous calculations of both Social Security and Medicare financing that added up to $38 trillion (remember, the “official” debt is about $6.4 trillion as I have reported on twice now). That brought the total to about $44 trillion, an amount that seemed as if it was politically indefensible in February, when the report was reportedly shelved (you be the judge of that).
Back to the Reuters report, both White House Budget Director Mitch Daniels and Treasury spokesman Rob Nichols deny the validity of this story, despite the various additions other reports add that validate the information and analysis the deficit report contains.
How do you know when a politician is lying?
His lips are moving.
These guys are pimps, with a capital P. Oh thank heaven, for Landover Baptist:
The very terms “martial arts” and “self-defense” should tip off the Christian that something is wrong. Nowhere in the Bible are Christians told to resort to violence in defense of themselves.
When Christians take up the martial arts for self-defense, they are saying to God, “I don’t trust You to protect me.” Christians are to depend on God for protection.
The above statements reminded me of a rough draft I wrote moments ago: In the Book of Tim, chapter 2 verse 47: Thou shall payeth me, mucheth wealthith and loveth. Additionally-ith, defending oneself is left to me-ith. If I wishith that you live-ith, I will make sure-ith of it… ith. And they all sayeth: Amen.
I can get used to writing, I mean, divinating [sic] passages like that. I guess the only question remains, who wants me to be their god? I know I already have some worshipping me (or dreaming, dwelling, drooling, etc.), I just need a quick hand count of those that are willing to die to propagate the message of Tim and his everlasting wisdom, fables and all around good looks. By reading this statement you are hereby anointed to be my/his faithful and obedient servant.
First rule of Tim Club, do talk about Tim Club.
Not quite as good as the Briton stories of yore, but definitely chuckleacious:
Six Russian men suffered alcoholic poisoning after going on a week-long vodka binge to ward off Sars.
The men, from Blagoveschensk, thought the vodka would protect them from Chinese workers on a nearby building site.
Doctors who examined the men after they were admitted to hospital with alcohol poisoning said it would take a week for them to recover.
Russian scientists recently claimed that vodka could ward off the Sars virus.
In another incident, a woman who was drinking vodka to protect herself from Sars thought she had contracted the virus after getting drunk.
The 20-year-old, from the Russian city of Perm, went to doctors after what she claimed was “close contact with a Chinese man” at a local Chinese market, the Novy Region newspaper reported.
She complained of a pain in her throat after every shot of vodka, and that she was sweating and had a high temperature.
Doctors examined the woman and sent her home after discovering she was merely drunk.
On another note, have you ever watched drunk college kids try to play Halo on the Xbox?
Hot on the heals of my discussion regarding last weeks “tax cuts” comes even less friendlier news - at least in terms of capital growth.
For this discussion, let’s start all over.
If I don’t have money and I want to buy something I can do a number of things. I can point a gun to my neighbor and ask him to pay for my capricious lifestyle, I can borrow from a banker (with or without a gun, depending on what interest rate they’ll give me) or I can simply build a printing press and “create” more money (not wealth) and hope that someone will take it.
Central and South American countries are the butt of many economics jokes in terms of fiscal policy. Some of these banana republics understand that the more money individuals under their thumb have, the more wealth can be generated and eventually “taxed” for additional revenues (feel free to substitute citizen with comrad or patriot or serf or whatever the new whiz-bang marketing word is for this year).
What Paco the Conquistador does not usually grasp however is this: spending requires payment (and you must have something to pay with). Costa Rica is a good example of this naïve ignorance (I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt). On one hand the State has a low-tax burden (relative to many “industrialized” countries), but then it out does whatever positive economic gains (like long-term growth) by spending what it does not have. Just like the Kia ads, the Costa Rican State hogtied their accountant, threw him in a closet and forgot that they needed to worry about that other side of the T-balance sheet.
To finance such spending the Costa Rican State has to obtain money somehow. So to make up for a lack of revenue through taxation (or whatever euphemism you’d like to give it), they either “borrow” money from banks or just have their own bank print more ducats. By printing more money than you are replacing you are inflating the amount of money to higher levels, making it worth less (and eventually worthless).
Note: do not confuse money with wealth. Wealth is physical possessions and productive resources (not to be confused with unproductive resources like tanks, aircraft carriers, bombs, etc.). Money can be many different things, for thousands of years it came in the form of a rare or unique item (like gold, silver, gems, etc.) or a piece of paper that represented a rare or unique item. Today, what individuals unwittingly call “money” is in fact, worthless paper - its own valuable so as long as other currencies are in the crapper. The Euro or the Pound and other State-backed currencies have “better” exchange rates than the dollar, ceteris paribus (all things staying the same) the dollar will most likely end up in the same situation as the Mexican Peso in 1994 relative to other currencies.
Costa Rica’s inflation could increase up to 6% by the end of the year, meaning that the Costa Rican colon will be worth less even more than it is currently ( ~394 colones is the equivalent to one Federal Reserve Note) - the rate used to be smaller, more like 2%, but Bob Turgot was thrown out of their office as well.
Now replace the words Costa Rica with Federal Reserve or Treasury Department and you have a similar situation on the landmass known as America. Just ignore the talking heads that ramble on and on about “tax cuts.” Without spending cuts there is no “tax cuts.” That spending must be paid through some mechanism and in true political fashion, other people get to pay it (that “other people” designation falls upon John and Jane Q. Serf).
Fiscal conservativism, a new oxymoron for a New Economy, or as James Ostrowski states:
The Bush administration inherited a federal budget of $1.86 trillion, and now proposes to spend $2.3 trillion in 2004, for a whopping 23.6 percent increase in federal spending in this short period. The Bush presidency has far outspent Clinton’s in every category. As Cato’s Chris Edwards says, “[B]ased on his first three budgets, President Bush is the biggest spending president in decades.” To close the gap between spending and revenue, said a report commissioned by the US Treasury, would require an “immediate and permanent 66 percent across-the-board income tax increase.”
Also, despite talk of deflation, your dollar has lost about four percent of its value under Bush. That means, for example, that if you had $50,000 in the bank when he was elected, the feds managed to burn $2,000 of it. Cancel that vacation. Just keep working like a jackass, the fate of those who allow their freedom to slip away without a peep of protest.
And yet despite all of this knowledge, understanding and empirical data (you don’t even need empirical for an a priori field), you would hope that People Would Get A Clue™. Nope. Ex: While discussing wireless access in Wales with that in America, Philip Greenspun states: “Per capita, American citizens pay some of the highest taxes on the planet.”
And the cow mooed:
I’d like to see from what data he derived the conclusion that “Per capita, American citizens pay some of the highest taxes on the planet.”
Per capita the “average American” is worth about $36,000. The 2002 tax brackets put the $36,000 figure for a single return at a 27% tax burden. That is just the Income tax and not the other 10%+ for Social Security and Medicare. Then you can factor in whatever sales and income taxes for each State (8.25% here in Dallas for just sales taxes). Since the average savings rate for the average American is currently around 1% (though spending more than receiving, which requires borrowing) we can assume that you spend all of your money at some point without any significant savings. So if I complied with all of what the various agencies and States demanded from me and I did not save any money (I’d really be a Homo boobus) my tax burden would be at least 45% and probably more like 50%.
$18,000 per capita in taxes is most certainly one of the highest tax rates in the world, QED.
Note: Per capita, the “average American” also has a share of the debt equal to around $22,000 (that is really misleading because Social Security and other Ponzi schemes are not factored in).
Oh, and I’m sure I’ll be accused of fear mongering, though it is most certainly your decision and choice as to what you would like to believe. What is funny is that you supposedly have representation and are taxed much higher than your Bostonian counterparts of yesteryear, so when will you have your Tea Party?
I mentioned the SCO lawsuit last week and really didn’t think SCO could do much more to discredit itself as a member of planet earth. News.com (like always), is running a series of stories that discuss various happenings in this ever-growing lawsuit.
What has happened since last I spoke of our friend (that is not located in Santa Cruz, California but in Lindon, Utah — wherever that is)?
- A German company called LinuxTag is suing SCO for anti-competitive practices with regards to the development of Linux. What is funny is that the German court system requires the defendant to show its cards to an accusation like this. Not that I’m a fan of courts, but the word ‘poetic justice’ comes to mind (irony) — being bit by the same creature you are using against an opponent.
- Novell, the real ‘owners’ of System V Unix came out this morning and essentially told SCO to talk to the hand. The CEO of Novell penned a rather biting letter to the CEO of SCO, you’ll have to read it to believe it (I enjoyed it as a geek, you might not in your inferior non-geek status).
- Then in the afternoon, SCO issued a quick reply and made a rather bellicose statement:
SCO has the contractual right to prevent improper donations of UNIX code, methods or concepts into Linux® by any UNIX vendor.
Mike Magee thinks they want to put on some condoms, for that extra sense of security. I’m not quite sure, but if prophylactics are going to be involved, I’ll simply remind everyone that every sperm is a sacred sperm.
- They couldn’t stop the bacchanal there either, right after the market closed, Darl McBride, the CEO of SCO stated:
“…that unless more companies start licensing SCO’s property, he may also sue Linus Torvalds, who is credited with inventing the Linux operating system, for patent infringement.”
That’s right, and unless more companies start licensing blogging software from Collectrix, I might have to sue Dave Winer, who is credited with inventing modern blogs, for offering a competing service.
Like usual my compadre, Jason Ditz, had a neat solution to this whole debacle:
So then I got to thinking, here’s a plan that would put Novell forever in the hearts of Linux users… and would send SCO crashing back to the penny stock it was a few months ago. GPL the whole damned thing. Hell, if Novell owns System V, and all its related patents and copyrights, a fact that even SCO doesn’t dispute… what’s to stop them? For the cost of some code to software they don’t even sell anymore, they could get a ton of free publicity. Hell, have a big “GPLing” ceremony, where Novell’s CEO hands a printed copy of the entire System V source code to Linus, you know the press would eat that up.
5/28/2003
I bumped into this quiz over at Some Fool With A blog. You’ll never guess what I was!
You are Agent Smith, from “The Matrix.”
No one would ever want to run into you in a
dark alley. Cold as steel, tough as a rock,
things are your way or the highway.
Hehe, damn. It is a little late in the game to find this out. Who will bare my legitimate children now?
Below is a discussion involving “copyrights,” “intellectual property” and economics.
(more…)
…buried in a field near Maryland, oops:
The good news for the Pentagon yesterday was that its investigators had finally unearthed evidence of weapons of mass destruction, including 100 vials of anthrax and other dangerous bacteria.
The bad news was that the stash was found, not in Iraq, but fewer than 50 miles from Washington, near Fort Detrick in the Maryland countryside.
The anthrax was a non-virulent strain, and the discoveries are apparently remnants of an abandoned germ warfare programme. They merited only a local news item in the Washington Post.
But suspicious finds in Iraq have made front-page news (before later being cleared), given the failure of US military inspection teams to find evidence of the weapons that were the justification for the March invasion.
Even more embarrassing for the Pentagon, there was no documentation about the various biological agents disposed of at the US bio-defence centre at Fort Detrick. Iraq’s failure to come up with paperwork proving the destruction of its biological arsenal was portrayed by the US as evidence of deception in the run-up to the war.
In an effort to explain why no chemical or biological weapons had been found in Iraq, the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said yesterday the regime may have destroyed them before the war.
Speaking to the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations thinktank, he said the speed of U.S. advance may have caught Iraq by surprise, but added: “It is also possible that they decided that they would destroy them prior to a conflict.”
The US germ warfare programme at Fort Detrick was officially wound up in 1969, but the base has maintained a stock of nasty bugs to help maintain America’s defences against biological attack.
The leading theory about the unsolved anthrax letter attacks in 2001 is that they were carried out by a disgruntled former Fort Detrick employee; equipment found dumped in a pond eight miles from the base has been linked to the crimes.
The Fort Detrick clean-up has unearthed over 2,000 tonnes of hazardous waste.
The sanitation crews were shocked to find vials containing live bacteria. As well as the vaccine form of anthrax, the discarded biological agents included Brucella melitensis, which causes the virulent flu-like disease brucellosis, and klebsiella, a cause of pneumonia.
I didn’t even have to try to discredit the Pentagon this time, my caloric intake can continue unabated (I didn’t bat an eye).
Oh, and I highly recommend a great parody of military incompetence called ‘Pentagon Wars,’ starring Cary Elwes and Kelsey Grammar (among others). It most certainly gets my two thumbs and a pinky toe up.
5/27/2003
Just to show you that guys will be guys no matter what the profession, Nvidia employees are underfire from its shareholders for behavior unbecoming of a United States Marine… err, a highly elite team of educated and mature engineers. What started as an “innocent” downing of a few long-necks ended in blistfulness, tom-foolery and big smile for many ageek.
Below is evidence that The Inquirer (the British information technology ezine) reported earlier today regarding the appearance of a “pornographic actress” at a recent E3 Expo party:
Catalina
No cleavage was harmed in the making of this blog (yea, this is a family-friendly blog so I had to censor some particular details).
From BBC:
A 400,000-year-old stone object unearthed in Morocco could be the world’s oldest attempt at sculpture.
Ahh, and what does this masterpiece look like?
I think my satire amigo put it best:
oh come on, i’ve seen potato chips that look more like humans than that
well, maybe not that old, but ones that have been under the couch for a long time
Of course, I really can’t say much. My artistic capabilities were shelved with my violin back in high school. At least, that’s what I tell the chicks and you know what they dig.
Damn:
The Committee believes that the exclusion under IRC Sec. 911 may result in an unfair advantage for individuals who have moved to lower-tax foreign countries, in that such individuals are taxed at a lower global effective rate than similarly situated individuals living and working in the United States. The Committee believes that U.S. citizens living and working abroad still receive the benefits of U.S. citizenship and thus should pay U.S. tax on their foreign income, subject to normally applicable foreign tax credit rules. Sec. 350 of the Bill.
I’d like to see that long list of “benefits” the Committee is speaking of. Oh, and to the gallows with all those that want to keep their monies, scoundrels and evil doers, the whole lot of ‘em!
