Republicans Make US Government Look Bad

Reference: this article

Summary of article: Republicans, some high ranking officials, have e-mail addresses with the Republican National Committee and the contents of those accounts have been deleted.

On this surface this isn't a big deal. Technically speaking, the RNC is a private organization. The members of our government are also private individuals.

The problem arises that is it possible to be a servant of the government at high levels and continue to have private communications that are completely separate from their private lives especially in regard to political party communications. Communications of public officials need to be saved and recorded and available for review in the case that they use private communications for official communications.


The deletion of these e-mails and e-mail accounts raises the possibility of unethical, illegal or problematic communications having occurred in this medium. As an official, they should have known that such activity would raise concerns - and once again on an international stage questions are raised about just how 'good' our government is.

So, the web site and Chinese news outlet Xinhua writes an article that really just has the implication that our government is infiltrated with corruption. Certainly, there isn't any question of the appearance of impropriety. The question is, was there illegal activity?

A question that might be extremely difficult to answer given the deletion of the e-mail accounts and e-mails.

But then again, as a member of the programming population of the world, I understand that few things are completely deleted.

Implications of Scientists Discussing Religion

A recent article related a discussion in the upper echelons of scientists about the decision to allign themselves with mainstream religion in the fight against anti-science.

As you can well imagine Professor Dawkins was one of the scientists on this panel. Two other scientists were on the panel: The Astronomer Royale, Martin Rees and Steve Jones.

If you read the article carefully you can come up with some implications of the discussion.

1) The Astronomer Royal, Richard Dawkins and Steve Jones are all atheists.
2) The assumption in their conversation is that their intended audience (scientists) are also all atheists.

The three were sharply divided on the topic of aligning themselves with mainstream religion. The Astronomer Royal wants the alignment, Dawkins and Jones did not. It is, of course, amazing that someone in public should actually agree with anything Dawkins says on the topic of religion. Most commentary about Dawkins is so derogatory, inflamed and wild claims that he is a 'fanatic' or bringing about fundamentalist atheism are shouted when he calmly talks about the problems inherent in religion.

The major problem with making mainstream religion an ally of science as described by Dawkins is that it legitimizes the idea that non-rational discourse - or faith - is the key to knowledge in the material world. Any implication of that nature should be avoided I suspect he thinks, because he doesn't want religion to take a role in science.

Yes, of course, he is right. However, religion already has a level of legitimacy. That probably isn't going away. No, we aren't going to run around in an alliance with religion and tell them they can make any scientific statements. Not going to happen.

Politics, by its nature, is about compromise. Right now, there are millions, perhaps even a billion secularists, atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, deists in the world. However, even with this large number of people who are proponents of rational thought we are in a weak position.

The nature of the people in these groups is not toward homogeneous cooperative groups. Fractured in many idealogical realms even united we need allies in the fight against unreason.

Without allies, unreason will once again take over the world. The problem is that at present we are so dependent on reason and the by-products of reason, science and technology, that the loss of reason as a commanding force and moving forward for humanity will most likely result in the loss of human life - and I'm not just talking about a few people.

Anything we can do to avoid that error condition should be considered (even if sometimes outright rejected). An alliance with mainstream religion, on the topic of science and technology and the furtherance of the improvement of the human condition - is acceptable compared to total loss to the propaganda of the fundamentalist religionists which wish to deny science fact, limit the increase of science unreasonably and with all their fighting risk the destruction of humanity.

Please not that I'm not saying that science should not be limited. Genetic modification of any species for the improvement of those species is exciting, but unless we have the restraint to test such changes (even changes to humanity) and understand if they present any dangers - we could be playing roulette with humanity's existence.

Focus, control and discipline are necessary in order to ensure the continued future of humanity.

Republicans, in general disbelieve evolution

This was a great blog entry. Although I have to say that the results do not really surprise me.

As the author indicates in a comment of his own - it is odd that most people agree with the science they need on a daily basis and accept it such as physics, computing and biology, but when it conflicts with their political or religious agenda, they find all the reason in the world to disbelieve it.

Many people have litmus tests for their vote. Well in no uncertain terms, I will never vote for a person so ignorant as to dispute evolution, unless that person both rejects medical care (the result of biological research) and physics such as the size of the universe, its age and the speed of light - and also does not use computers (which relies heavily on physical science, the speed of light and other physics principles.

Foolishness. We live in an era in which science is central to our existence. Being anti-science, in most ways that it is expressed - is being anti the future of humanity. It is being anti the present of humanity, because there are few people in the world that get by even a single day without using science, the products of science, or don't depend on sciences capabilities to provide the basics of life.

All in all, I'm not surprised about 68% of Republicans not believing in evolution. I'm surprised it wasn't a higher percentage.

Some interesting science articles today

Some interesting articles in science that have come out today:
DNA/Genetics - figuring out junk DNA - http://tinyurl.com/yt8pns

More evidence for a Mars shoreline? - http://tinyurl.com/2rpwuu

ISS Computers on the Fritz - http://tinyurl.com/3y5knu
I think this is a bit more alarming than they make it out. In my opinion, if they had to abandon station, its orbit would degrade and make it nearly impossible for a new docking. There might also be problems in that since the computer shut down - that it might be hard to re-start remotely.

Baby Monitor Picks up space shuttle video - http://tinyurl.com/2koxv5

I'm not sure what this has to do with Dental plans - but at Dentalplans.com - commentary on activities of two of Saturn's moons - http://tinyurl.com/34dp9s

Now that's really weird, the website just seems to be a collective shop for dental coverage site...

Hope you find the articles of interest.

Honor Killing - a Lifestyle Choice

Honor killings are back in the news with the recent death of Banaz Mahmod Aga in England. Honor killings are a perversion of justice in that they pitch the ones that should protect you as the perpetrators of your destruction. This case, like the case publicized with video in Iraq, involves family members, this time father and uncle - instigating the death of the daughter/niece.

I have visited England on two occasions and have family located in the country. When I was there I found to my consternation at the time that it was far more a liberal place to live than the United States of America. Now, I understand more about the USA I see that many places in Europe are much more liberal on many levels than people in the USA. It seems to me that anyone growing up in England would get a course in understanding about romantic love and the idea that your live is what you make of it - not the choices made for you by other people.

It is an effort by the past to control the future. In typical fashion this is the efforts of the men to control and subjugate women and keep it that way.

Again, the event center around Kurds. It seems they teach as a founding lesson that killing a person is much better than living with them as the person they have grown to be. In this specific case it seems that the father arranged a marriage for the daughter to a man, it turns out was very violent and apparently felt wife-beating is a virtue.

So, she left him, and fell in love with another man. Daddy and uncle felt he was a bad choice (even though this man was also a Kurd of some sort as well) and decided that as a child might destroy a toy that accidently hurt their hand, they would lash out at the daughter/niece and kill her horribly.

The fact that they were able to find five young men who apparently felt this was OK and killing her by choking her to death with shoe strings and then damaging her body and throwing it in to a suitcase which they then buried in someone else's garden - is despicable as well.

What exactly happened?

"Oh, by the way, my daughter is seeing a man that I don't like, can you please kill her horribly as a lesson to all women that they should not defy the men?"

"Duh-huh, yeah boss, that sounds like a great thing to do. I think I'll even get some of my buddies to help, since I'm not man enough to be able to take a woman out by myself."

"OK, good job, the priests will remember you well for your purification efforts."

Here are apparently a list of other women, killed for who they love, killed for doing their jobs, killed for having jobs. What exactly are humans? It is to be hoped that I am not the same species as these people.

So, as we rapidly approach father's day - we should all ponder that not all father's should be rewarded for the things they are willing to do to their daughters.

Apple The Software Company Introduces Safari Browser

Now, now, just from the tiel, perhaps I will get razzed by Apple fans. Not to worry, this is intentional. Long before the iMac and the recent resurgence of Apple IT people have recognized that Apple is a software company.

You might state that there isn't a single Apple OS running on non-Apple hardware and you would only be partially correct.

Other companies make the hardware. Apple certainly helps with standards and requirements; however, it isn't Apple that makes these things.

Apple is known for - its operating system. Apple is known for - iTunes. Apple is known for - the user interface for the iPOD. They worked hard, no doubt on the design of the iPOD, but they don't build them.

So, the conclusion of Apple as a software company is almost complete with the release of the internet browser Safari.

Now, let me back up and say a few things:
1) I encouraged and bought my wife's MacBook when she was pregnant with our second child. So far she loves everything about it except the absence of quality games.

2) When my father-in-law was at the end of his latest porrly engineered PC, with our experiences with Apple computers, we got him the Mac Mini. It suits his purposes and even though he is older (78 years old or so) he found the transition not such a big deal.

3) I encourages and my wife bought an iPOD recently, even though she already had a competing MP3 player. Mostly so we can get the connector and control the iPOD directly from my wife's new minivan.

As soon as I heard about it, I downloaded and run sometimes the Safari browser on my Windows XP PC.

There are many great things about Apple as a software company. They are the only ones who have a chance at bringing a varient of Linux/Unix in as a popular operating system. They do good work that appears to not require as much patching as competing Microsoft products. This might in part be due to their control of the hardware side of the equation. The proliferation of even different motherboards can be cause for problems with Microsoft Windows operating systems.

However, ultimately, Apple fails as a software company in the one place where Microsoft shines as a software company - in the Development Environment. I'm an application developer and I've been writing programs for about 10 years. The Microsoft IDE, Visual Studio 2005, is a polished interface that makes writing a multitude of different programs easy and allows a proliferation of third-party software on the Windows PC.

My experience with the Apple development environment, was that it is at least 5 years (or more) behind the Visual Studio IDE. If Apple wants to sell more Apple operating system computers, they need to generate more third party software. A poor development environment just isn't going to do it.

The other major stumbling block to Apple OS computers and Apple's software failure, is the lack of VPN software. I'd love to change over to a Mac of some sort, but it simply isn't possible when the best Developer IDE exists on Windows OS and there simply isn't a way to do my work on an Apple machine.

If they want to boost their sales, Apple would invite Cisco over to create VPN software that works on the Apple OS.

Politics of the Presidential Candidacy: Democrats

I'll start this blog entry with a brief disclaimer. I am technically not a democrat; although when I first registered as a voter ages ago I may have put down democrat. Really, I have no idea how they think when you register to vote at age 18 that you have any idea if you are going to be a Republican or a Democrat. Even if you do have a good idea, how do you know that is what you'll be for the rest of your life?

I tend to vote democrat for only one good reason. The Republicans are closely bound to religion and the Democrats are not. This isn't to say that this years presidential candidate run hasn't been filled with Democrats blabbing about how god changed their lives, does their dishes or otherwise is a great guy. No, what it simply means is that I, as an atheist, my wife as an agnostic (she's an atheist, but I think she avoids the term for the derogatory associations people apply to it) and my children are to be raised at the very least with an open mind about the topic and certainly explicitly told of the horrible things that religion is capable of doing as well as the things that are immoral and presented as god's doing in the bible - are not directly threatened with illegality by the Democratic party.

Republican presidents are littered with comments that appeal to the religious majority and in reality are very threatening to those of us that are not 'godly' or 'religious' - whatever those terms really mean.

I'd wrap up the disclaimer that I think that there have been two evangelical presidents that have server the USA: President Carter and the current President Bush. Of the two, I don't remember President Carter as being the worst possible president that the USA has possibly earned. The other point is that stem cell research has a direct impact on the future of my self and my children. I want to live as long as possible in as healthy a state as possible, and I hope for the same for my children and any grandchildren or onward that I might actually survive to see or live beyond my life. It is pretty clear that it isn't just Bush that is against stem cell research. There are limits to the power one man has, and I'm pretty sure Bush, in his present state cannot do anything on his own.

So, finally, to the subject.

It appears based on recent articles that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are the front runners for the Democrats. If either of them win the candidacy I will vote for them. Why? After 200+ years aren't you tired of the actual and de facto racism that declares that only old, white, protestant, men are qualified to be president of the USA? We have one exception, where JFK was in fact moderately young and Catholic, but I have my doubts in the political atmosphere of the present that a Catholic could run and win at this point in time.

That is what the major problem is with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. In essence the American voters cannot be legislated to do what we do in the arena of regular employment - to be equal opportunity electors.

In the end, you might consider ideas that there should be as many congressmen in the house and senate to match or closely match the percentage of the black people in the US. I'm not talking about quotas, I'm just talking that if people vote with the color of their skin even part of the time, then there should be more black people involved in politics.

The same condition is true for women. Women, in general, instead of capitalizing on the capacity to vote, appear to faithfully vote the way their husbands vote. So, instead of a congress of a relatively healthy mix of males and females, we have a congress that is dominated by men. There are a few women, of course, but a few women isn't close to a healthy representation of women by percentage of population.

Barack Obama fields even more difficult problems. He is perceived as too 'white' for black people to want to vote for and the conservative members of our society would probably never vote for someone who is even a little black.

I think it is important, just as a general measure that finally, we catch up to those British folks that we like to look down our noses. Margaret Thatcher is now a part of their history and lead their country for many years. Meanwhile, we the 'better' people than them - are decades behind them. E-mails flutter across the web about how horrible Hillary Clinton is - and the sexism in them is either ignored by the people nodding their heads or just acknowledged.

There are many liberal minded people out there, that I suspect want to have a government of the people, by the people, but there are also many conservative elements in our population that are controlled by that same ideal - just not those people - black or female, by the people means to them - the same old WASPs that have been running the show for two centuries. The same ones that allowed slavery and condoned the idea that women were second class citizens.

I wouldn't vote for just any woman as there are certainly self-hating women out there that paradoxically pursue political office in order to ensure that women in general don't have power but women in specific (meaning themselves) do have power.

The 2008 election will be a defining moment for the US if either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama are on the democratic ticket.

Hell, maybe if they can get elected, an atheist might have hope of being elected as president.

Not likely, though. Not likely at all. I might have great hopes for my children, but if they grow up like me, their mother, their grandfather or grandmother on my side of the family (both agnostics at best - although oddly very conservative folks) - they won't be electable as president of the USA.

How the Nintendo Wii Will Win in the Long Term

There have been a multitude of articles (such that I won't link them here) about how the Nintendo Wii will not win in the long run. That, it has yesterday's technology today and three years from now it won't be able to compete with "future-proofed" hardware such as the XBox 360 and Sony Playstation 3.

This kind of argument is ridiculous at best. It presents an idea - that Nintendo, having created the Wii, will do nothing with technology for the next three years (or whatever years on in to the future) and that Nintendo will cower asking for mercy from Sony and Microsoft.

Nintendo has already shown the possible path for the Wii in the way it has worked with the Nintendo DS (yet another system supposedly to be extinguished by a Sony product).

There was the original version which I didn't really take much notice of myself. Then there was the DS lite, which didn't really take my interest until I saw commercials for Big Brain Academy. Then, it completely had my interest.

So, I purchased one - the white one. I played the crap out of it. The New Super Mario Brothers - a game that I'd only seen other people play when I was a kid - I finally had for myself. Big Brain Academy - I beat the crap out of it. Eventually, we got one for my son and my wife and we have a bunch of games - the good, the bad and the ugly. Some, like EBA (Elite Beat Agents) were so surprisingly good that it was an incredible experience to play the game.

So, you find that the Nintendo DS, can play Nintendo Gameboy Advance games. Oohhh, look an upgrade path - that works (Sony could learn from this, apparently).

What is next for the Nintendo DS? Who knows? But I can say this, most likely it will have a touch screen, be compatible with all Nintendo DS games and be better (maybe larger screen) and faster than the current models. Maybe, it would be a Nintendo DS Advance model?

But you can see the progression, correct? You can see how, in a few months, perhaps there will be different colored Nintendo Wii's out there. It probably won't encourage any existing customers to buy a second one, but it would delivery some more sales to the system. Then, maybe two years from now as the system does genuinely age - you'll see Wii v2. It would be able to play all the games that the Nintendo Wii can play - and would have newer graphics and its own games. This would encourage new sales from existing customers as well as new sales from people who may not have purchased the original Nintendo Wii - perhaps they were saving for the XBox 360 or the PS3.

You can easily envision a portable Wii model, no? Take thw Wii, two years of computational increases and put it in an even smaller box with an integrated screen that you can carry with you. You could almost do it now with the current Nintendo Wii. Make it battery powerable and presto - people can take and play Wii games together with networked Wiis.

The very idea that Nintendo, as experienced as they are - will sit on the Wii as it is and leave it that way for 3 or 5 years is silly. They have a base system now, one that can be duplicated and emulated in future systems that will add more capabilities. I can foresee a time, two years from now or three years from now - where there is a Nintendo Wii that has similar graphical capabilities as the PS3 or XBox 360 - costs $250 and of course, has the Wii control architecture.

The biggest problem I see out there - is that Microsoft and Sony will wake up and get their own motion sensing architecture, be able to reverse engineer it in to their current architecture and come out with compelling games - for everyone, not just the gamer population.

Targeting Demographics in Comics and Games - Fruits Basket

As indicated in this article some types of entertainment are now beginning to target women effectively as opposed to targeting hardcore gamers (mostly men or boys) or hardcore comic book readers (again mostly men or boys).

It is interesting that a society like Japan, where from articles about rapes, treatment of women and equality issues - you see the source of not one but two major pushes toward empowering women. Perhaps Japan isn't as bad as the press would have you believe, or Japan is getting better in this regard (one can only hope for all countries to get better in this regard) or Japan's businesses are getting over targeting the young male because frankly, they want to make more money.

Hey, I'm all for making more money if hand in hand comes the increasing of the equality and perception of peoples.

A good case in point is the anime and manga series Fruits Basket. Perhaps this isn't the normal kind of manga/anime that people concentrate on. There is little fighting that isn't verbal and no spouting necks with their dearly and recently departed heads.

No, it isn't one of those. It also isn't what I would call a traditional female oriented manga (a shojo manga). The reason I say this is because if you watch the events in the show and step back a bit and review it you can see that the show is about horror of a more classic kind. It isn't about the shock horror - 'boo' ah haha made you jump kind of horror. You watch the show and you see that Tohru Honda appears to be just any other girl, but her past is all about loss (and one might reflect that all our lives are about loss at least in part). She lost her father when she was very young. Her mother died fairly recently when she was in high school and other than her grandfather - there is no one for her to turn. In fact, even her grandfather, while a nice character has his limitations. He has other responsibilities with his other grandchildren.

In her, you find the main character - a person that could be devastated and find no real reason to live - and turns out to be a flowering source of strength for everyone around her. People who on the surface appear to be very strong end up exposing their weaknesses to her and it is shown that in turn - she is stronger than them and lends her strength to them to make them stronger.

This is no female formed character playing the role as a male hero with buff body and mostly male characteristics. While this does show a certain strength that it would be nice for women to take up, it appears to be devoid of female or feminine qualities. So, paradoxically, Tohru (which is typically a male name in Japan) contains many characteristics that are typical subservient female - she rises in strength (at least at the point in the manga that I'm reading) to where you can envision her standing up to the head of her friends family and saying that what is happening is wrong, but she likes doing dishes, cleaning and cooking.

I can't say I'm entirely happy with her character. I'd love if she was more outward in other ways - a leader in school, perhaps a promising career as well as being mentally strong. But I'll take pieces of what are really good - and the fact that it is written by a woman as good signs. I hope the writer - Natsuki Takaya enjoys a lot of success and continues to write many manga and that they get promoted to anime as well.

Perhaps, someday she'll write a very strong female character. One to make Tohru proud and yet still be feminine without being subservient.

One final word on Fruits Basket - our example of an industry appealing to the female instead of just the young males - it is with utter disappointment that the anime series ended so abruptly. There is a long road ahead for the series which has not even been completed in manga - that it would have been a joy to see translated in to the anime. Sadly, the way they ended the Fruits Basket anime, it is unlikely to ever become a reality.

My Experience at Charlotte-Douglas Airport

My first impression of the airport (although I'm pretty sure this isn't the first time I've been there, it is the first time I remember well) is incredibly long lines. As I arrived from Newark I had to fight the lines for security in order to get to the car rental area.

On my return trip I had another impression. My return flight was at 10:00PM, so I didn't have to deal so much with long lines at security (fortunately). No, I had to deal with avoiding being hit by electric carts.

They seemed to be everywhere. Sure enough, there were people in various levels of distress riding on them. Mostly, they were rather large people. I'm technically obese, I think, at 192 pounds and 5' 9". The people riding the carts put me to shame. There were old people as well, probably more old people than obese people riding the carts.

The airport appears to be relatively updated, but there was no provision for the alrge number of electric carts (which are almost car sized) driving around all over the place.

There also seems to be no checklist for the functionality of the carts, as several of them lacked running lights or working beep signals that they were running. I was almost hit by one, partially my fault because I walk around with half of my head thinking about other things. After that, I paid more attention to the carts and my discover that they were everywhere.

After I finished eating my dinner, I found that there were a huge number of the carts parked or taking on passengers in the concourse. Really, I had to say there were probably about 9 of them in the area at one time.

Charlotte-Douglas airport needs a serious update. Either a floor above or below the regular walking area where the people who can't get around well on their own can get around the airport. I saw other people almost get hit by these crazed cab-driver-like cart drivers. There are no rules or lines for these carts to follow and for some reason, I don't know why, but there are more of them in use at Charlotte-Douglas airport than I've seen at any other airport.

The implications, as our US population increases and the number of disabled people through age or obesity increase on building structures for everyone should be immediately obvious. We need either separate access for the disabled or controlled access for everyone. The last thing I think anyone wants to see is someone become disabled because they were hit by a cart to move the disabled people to an airport gate.

A Teacher Railroaded in to Prison by Lack of Technical Knolwedge

A recent article spoke about a teacher that was released from prison for exposing 7th graders to porn.

Apparently, the scenario was this:
Substitute Teacher is giving class with a computer.
Porn Shows up on the Screen.
Substitute teacher convicted with wrong evidence presented by prosecution to sever decades of prison time.

Now, the first point I want to address is basic law. Means, Opportunity and Motive. Did the teacher have the means to put porn on the computer to show the children, sure and so did just about anybody in the school. Did the teacher have the opportunity, sure and so did just about anybody in the school. Did the teacher have the motive to show porn to the 7th graders? Well, unless the prosecution proved that she was some sick in the head woman that intended to show porn to the children in some beginning overture to having sex with them, I find this pretty unlikely.

So, I find that whatever jury convicted the woman of these criminal actions, they must not have been told that all three factors needed to be proven, or glossed over it completely.

It seems that it would be unlikely that they should convict based on the information in the article.

Now, on to my second point. What exactly is so horrible about sex? What exactly makes it a "felony risk or injury to a minor"? Where these children endangered by the images? Is there some direct link to seeing a few images of porn and growing up to be criminal sexual deviants?

So, it is questionable if there was in fact a crime. If you are going to put someone in prison for "felony risk or injury to a minor" you have to prove that there was damage. Pornography, in and of itself does not pose a direct risk of anything to a minor. It certainly does not perform any damage.

The third and final point is that the courts, judges, lawyers seem to have little knowledge about computers of their own. They depended on an 'expert' to tell them that the woman had done it on purpose. Relying on one expert is a little problematic. But how is it, that no one as a person had not run in to something like this in a personal capacity? Had none of them ever had computers and used them and run in to problems with pop-ups, trojans or viruses?

So, the computer is examined after her conviction and discovered to be 1) Windows 98 and 2) had software on it that would have caused the pornagraphic images to be shown to the class.

#2, is in inference given the articles content and the contradiction of the state's witness saying that she had to have done it on purpose. The state's witness was a police officer with which we are given no information as to his training or how he made the determination that the woman showed the pornography to the children on purpose.

So, who is really guilty, if in fact damage was done to minors? Well, look, you can't be running windows 98 SE as your OS, here in 2007. The software is far out of date and as mentioned in the article, weak on security. Perhaps the IT person at the school should be charged with negligence? Or perhaps the people who pay the taxes for the school should be charged, for not paying enough taxes to buy computers on a regular schedule and protect them from things liket his? Or maybe the school board for not making the decision to have up-to-date and protected computers?

Or maybe they should attempt to find the person who wrote the malware affecting the computer and go after that person? Or perhaps they should go after the websites whose contents were shown?

Maybe they should go after the internet itself??? Who knows where it could stop?

So, they aren't going to re-try this woman for what happened - which was pretty clearly at this point an accident. What would have happened to this woman if the computer had been wiped or the hard drive in its aging case crashed since her conviction?

They were going to put her away for 40 years for this? This batch of stupidity and accident?

I think a few people need a reality check. The basic premise of the case needs to be re-assessed. Prove needs to be given that subjecting 7th graders to pornography once will damage them in some way for life.

The rise of Islam

I don't typically go to Al-Jazeera's website. I don't speak or read Arabic, but they do produce English articles and some are good, like this one.

The heart of this article blames the decline of socialism and secular governments on their being defeated by Israel in a particularly humiliating manner - that manner was quick and assertive.

So, then apparently, men in these countries became disillusioned with socialism and turned to Islam to restore their honor.

Even the article notes with particular daring that after 40 years of turning to Islam, they are still getting their asses handed to them.

Clearly, the style of government or its religiosity has little to do with being a 'power' and showing military might.

More disturbing about this article is really three points. 1) They blame Israel for the rise of Islam and 2) They think as long as Israel holds lands it seized there will be no peace and 3) their ego is what is important, more important than peace.

There are certainly conflicting ideas in this article. It seems almost nostalgic for the socialist secular governments that are under attack by the religionists. Then it turns and goes after Israel for being what it is - a country. Those countries that attacked Israel, Jordan, Syria and Egypt, did they really attack (or defend) that land because of secular reasons - for the good of those countries as secular entities? No, of course not. They participated because with their three countries to Israel's one - they were going to make those Jews pay for taking land. Because, you know, land is more important than people.

What, did they have some logic that Israel was going to keep taking land until they conquered Egypt? Clearly, after getting their asses handed to them, if Israel really desired to take them over - they could have disabled those governments, so prevention of being ruled by religious people other than your own religion isn't the justification.

So, what, is Islam threatened by the Jews? Are they, with their 2% of the world's population (or less) going to kill or subjugate over 1 billion Islamic people? No. They just live in an area of holy land.

Going back to the article - it seemed that the context would mean - that all because they have bruised male egos - they needed to turn to Islam and try and kill people - and continue to do so because of this babyish idea that they need to save face. Screw it. The land, isn't so important. Children, family and the future are important. What land they live on - isn't particularly important.

Well, if god wants to protect his holy land, he better show his power and do it his damned self. Those people, the Palestinians - that were pushed off their lands - look, it sucks. It wasn't a really nice thing for the Israelis to do. Yes, perhaps a little reparations would be due. But for now, I think we can all believe one thing sincerely. Go find someplace else to live and thrive. Come back when you have made yourselves financially powerful enough to give monetary inducements to the Israeli government to give up its lands.

Just staying there to be subjugated is dumb. Just staying there to raise young children to become men and suicide bombers does nothing for your future, but end it. There is so much Earth and even with 6.5 billion people, there are still plenty of places to live.

To stay there in Israel or near Israel, to stay in the refugee camps in the neighboring countries has no future. You cannot get an education in these places. You cannot plan a future in these places. You cannot earn millions of dollars in business under the conditions your people are under at present.

The best thing to do, is to find a new home or homes. To raise new generations out of the shadow of war. To earn money and cherish life over land. Then, if those later generations think its all so important to go back to Israel and get back your native lands - you go for it. With cash in hand, peaceful plans on sharing the land and cooperation.

US as Police of the World

Over time the USA has come to represent itself as the police of the world. We were there to police Vietnam and prevent the spread of communism in a domino effect to our doorstep. We have done many things including encourage dictators who torture and kill people just to keep allies in power.

In the end though, what do you expect of the police and when are you most disappointed in the police?

We expect the police to obey the law. We are most disappointed in the police when they break the law.

The USA cannot even have the appearance of breaking the law if it wants to be an effective fighter for justice. In this article it is discussed that a subdivision of a major company in the US is being brought up on charges for aiding in the transport of prisoners to places where there aren't any defenses to these prisoners rights.

I was a member of the US military for 10 years. I have to say that the idea of torturing military members for gain is not only unethical, but is illegal by treaties and laws which bind the US. The Geneva Convention covers military ethics and torture.

So, how is it that civilians are being kidnapped and whisked away to areas where who knows what is being done to them? Who knows? There is a significant problem with this setup in that it does not allow for oversight.

In the TV series 24 unethical actions are performed in cases of severe threat to a large population. Since it is a TV series, these things are well-defined. Nuclear weapon going off in the US territory and things like that.

But who determines what is a severe threat to a large population? What in fact consists of such a threat? Is there a commission that determines that the information x, y and z equals nuclear threat and unethical action should be taken to determine who is doing it, when it is going to happen and stop it from happening? Or is it some men in a closed room, talking to each other, afraid that another 9/11 might happen and going after everyone with the possibility of causing such an event?

Our society in the USA and our technological achievements are indicative of the openness of our society, not the decisions that are handled behind closed doors. McCarthyism is what happens when we enter closed sessions to discuss and jail people. It is the primary direction we are headed in at present.

But if we can't be a moral example to everyone - especially those groups that we go over to police, we simply don't have any authority or respect and no reason these people should follow us.

Public Official Sentenced to Death for Taking Bribes

Barbaric as it may sound China is sentencing one of its political servants for taking bribes.

China has in the past executed high level officials for this kind of behavior in the year 2000. The whole story is in this article.

We can do a little thought experiment. An administrator at the highest level of a branch of government takes bribes. Due to his actions several people die. Is the administrator responsible for those deaths? Most probably. Should he be prosecuted? Yes. Should he get the death sentence? Maybe. It depends on the circumstances. I think that death - even manslaughter changes in character if it is in the commission of a crime. However, I think death might be reserved for violent activities that result in death.

The current case against this former administrator is less clear. So far, nothing he did directly attributed to the deaths in question (at least according to the article). It appears that he is being punished as an example.

Yet.... Here in the US bribery seems to be rampant. Large swaths of politicians were implicated in a recent misadventure. It would see that the threat of death would be handy to smack our politicians in line. Execute one for taking bribes that result in the death of a citizen they are supposed to be protecting and you might see a lot less of this kind of activity.

Imagine for a moment that President Bush and Vice President Cheney were brought under charges because they brought the US in to the war in Iraq under false information. It really doesn't matter if they believed the data or not. They are ultimately responsible for our being in a war in Iraq at this moment. Going to war should be like executing a criminal for crimes. You can't do it unless every t is crossed and every i is dotted and complete conviction of the problem is outlined.

Clearly, they did not do their due diligence before banging the war drums and taking us off to war. There are many others in our government guilty of this at the time of the start of the Iraq war.

If the threat and knowledge that if they screwed up they could be potentially be put to death by their own government existed in Bush and Cheney when they pushed us off to war - do you think they would have actively pushed so much for war?

I'm not in favor of capital punishment or war except in very specific circumstances; however, Bush and Cheney's responsibility for many deaths and hardships deserves this kind of scrutiny.

They won't get it as there isn't anything in US law indicating that this kind of behavior is even criminal. Still, it is a nice path for a alternate-history science fiction book.

PS3 Woes and Console Marketing

A recent article discussed the problems with PS3 sales and the idea that a $100 price cut would do little to boost sales against the Nintendo Wii or even just sales in general.

This article indicated that a $50 price drop would be insignificant and that a $100 drop in price for the PS3 would have minimal impact. At the end of the article it is noted that a $200 priced drop could have a significant impact, but that such a drop in price is not expected.

There are concepts; however, that are not discussed in the article.

The model for sales of the Microsoft XBox 360 and the Sony Playstation 3 is to sell the consoles at a loss and then after x number of video game sales per unit they would be flush and after y number of games sold per unit they would make money.

Employing this kind of logic to its end you find that in reality the price of the console could effectively be zero *if* you had the purchaser open a contract that they had to buy a certain amount of games over a specified period of time.

People could take it on and not buy any games and pay a higher than current price (nonsensical).
People could pay the same price with a contract indicating they will by at least 4 games over the next year. This is what Sony and Microsoft hope for anyway, so if they encode it like that it isn't a big deal and the higher price for the base model becomes justifiable - instead of a price increase (which technically it isn't).

For every rung on the price ladder - let's say $100 in price reduction, you have a contract level indicating that the user will buy x number of games over the next 2 years. You could take this all the way down to a price level of $0 for the console and the person signs a contract that they will buy 15 or 20 games over the next 3 years or something.

Listen, the reason people buy these units is to play the games. They want to buy the games. If you make them pay a hefty price for the console, they don't have much money to buy games. Buying a console makes little sense if you don't buy at least 1 game at the time of purchase. You might swing a few people to buy the Sony Playstation 3 while Blu-Ray players are still horrendously expensive, but this is a short-term win that doesn't really appear to be working anyway. The Nintendo Wii comes with a game, but in turn this just makes it easier for Nintendo owners to buy a game when they get the console and have 2 games to play.

The manufacturers want people to buy the games. The people want to buy the games, the only real limitation is the price of the consoles.

So, end console pricing immediately (if you need that kind of help, Nintedo is pretty secure at the moment in regard to pricing their consoles). Contract people to buy games for the unit to a good point where console cost would be absorbed completely. Hell, start up your own Game Club like the Science Fiction Book Club that I love to buy books from, overcharge for shipping, and offer specials on things that don't sell well and don't count them towards people's contracts to own their system!

These guys need to be inventive if they expect to keep this portion of their businesses alive.

Nintendo Wii Stalking XBox 360

From this article statistics showing sales of the Nintendo Wii (on Sale for approximately 6 months now) are creeping up to the total sales of the XBox 360 which has been on sale since November of 2005.

There have been - worldwide sales of the XBox 360 of 10.86 million units. At present reporting there have been 7.29 million Nintendo Wii units sold.

The fundamental problem lies at two points.

1) Price.
2) Interactivity.

At the low price, consumers can take the risk of the Nintendo Wii being a piece of crap (it isn't). Although the baseline XBox 360 is only $50 US more, it lacks something that the Nintendo does have - which is the perception that it is fun for everyone.

Facing the fact, though, I do have a certain lack of understanding. As a program developer myself I understand that it really wouldn't take much to design your own controls that utilize concepts like the Nintendo Wii's controls. The software would take little longer to develop, granted.

It has been 6 months now, and except for some lame controller by Sony, neither Sony nor Microsoft have announced their own motion controller based initiatives.

Clearly, Sony and Microsoft beat Nintendo in graphics. It is not as clear that this dominance amounts to sales in units. In fact, the opposite might be true all things being equal except for the price of these advanced graphics.

No, the difference is the motion capturing controllers. Another difference are the type of games offered by the machines. Nintendo is definitely geared for fun and while depth and graphics quality might suffer - it is clear that people love things that put a smile on their face.

The dedicated gamers - seem like they are going to work when they play their games and the demands they place on their systems...

Names and US Culture

In my previous post I admit to discovering that I was spelling Du'a Aswad's name incorrectly, which is very disappointing because the events around her death are very poignant to me.

Then I decided to do a little research. I remember specifically looking her up before I started writing articles about her.

I think her name is Du'a Asswad (two s's), but it seems that people have been cleaning it up to Du'a Aswad. Asswad is a mildly mocking thing to call people, but not what I'd consider a horrible profanity.

So, it seems this mildly insulting term has collided with reality and - a nice clean society that doesn't say things like 'asswad' has conquered reality and probably history as well.

It doesn't matter to me, it is just that I felt a little odd to have spelled her name wrong. It is probably all a result of translations of her name which is most probably in Arabic to phonetics that sound like it in English.

The Honor Killing Will Be Televised!

Often the conservative Christians of the United States of America go after the media as creating violence. They claim that violence on TV equates to violence in reality; therefore, violence should be eliminated or reduced on TV.

It is easy to explain that this is in fact fascism and attempting to dictate to others what is morally correct and does not have anything to do with violence in reality, the prevention of violence or the creation of a better, safer world.

The honor killing of Du'a Aswad has had a profound impact upon me. Unlike the magazine articles about India and people aborting female fetuses and running a huge gap in the ratio of males to females and similar activities in China - Du'a Aswad's death was visceral.

However, the culture she came from and the entire region despises western movies and television. The video games that people claim encourage violence would be rarely occurring in their society just as computers themselves would be more valued and in fact more expensive.

The question is simple. What is the source of violence in the death of Du'a Aswad? It is clearly not television or movies. The source of her honor killing is both cultural and religious. Cultural in that Arabic culture had this element far before the current religions in the region had reign. Religious in that the religion is now hardly discernible from the culture and that the religious leaders in the region have not in the past, do not in the present and most likely will not in the future stand with a united front and say 'Honor killings are wrong and should not be allowed.'

On the other side of the spectrum you have a country like Japan. Their television and movies can typically far surpass the levels of violence in television in the United States of America. Despite this, their culture has lower incidence of violence in a much more cramped area. The theory that violence on TV and movies causes violence in the real world is nonsensical at best.

The cause of violence might simply be the combination of two factors: 1) The hormones in humans drives them toward violence in the face of helpless circumstances and 2) the lack of people being taught self-control and to override for the betterment of humanity their emotional needs that seem to require violence.

Here is a link to the current wikipedia article on Du'a Aswad (and my discovery that I am apparently spelling her last name wrong).

The de facto win of Cheney's daughter

I congratulate Vice President Cheney on the birth of a grandchild. It is something I only hope to live long enough to witness myself with my two sons or a third child if we actually choose to have a third child (we're thinking about it).

In this article, Cheney's daughter claims

"This is a baby. This is a blessing from God," she said. "It is not a political statement. It is not a prop to be used in a debate by people on either side of an issue. It is my child."

Ok, so she doesn't want this to be political. Unfortunately, for her, you can choose your friends but you can't choose your family. She is a lesbian. She and her partner now have a child. I mark these both as good things; however, they are events that have repercussions.

For example, perhaps her family and herself are rich enough that matters of health insurance don't have a major impact on her life. For most of us, and I would think most gay and lesbian couples, this does have a major impact.

Right from the beginning - at birth, one wonders what she was able to enter in for father. Was she able to put in her domestic partner or was that not permitted? This has an impact on a whole slew of family issues such as divorce, permission to take the kid out of school when they get sick, etc. I'm pretty sure in documentation she looks like a single mother. That means she (and only she) can perform activities of a parent.

She may be able to file a guardianship with her domestic partner, but I'm not sure how legal this is when there is a current parent in charge of the child's life. Leave it for a minimum that there would be costs associated with setting up such a guardianship so that if there is a call and the little one needs help in school - that she isn't the only person in the world that can pick up the child.

Health insurance, I mention earlier, is also an issue for many of us. Without her partner listed on the birth certificate as in some way a parent, health insurance for the child can only flow from Ms Cheney. But throughout life we all have variations in employment. Most of us run a risk of being negatively impacted through the by-products of unemployment, specifically that unemployment pays some bills, but never really offers enough to pay the bills and for health insurance.

So, in Ms Cheney's case, it would seem this would matter little.

These things need to be thought about. They need legality to be set in precedent. She had a child and I'm sure she views her partner as a parent. Legally, this is most probably not true. This has an impact on her life which is probably minimized by wealth. This isn't true for most of us.

She may claim that her child isn't politics, but it is. It represents a de facto win for the gay and lesbian couples out there in having the right to have children. It also represents children of the future who will need care, in the case of a parent (biological) dieing and who takes over custody? Well, in a regular marriage that is clear. In a domestic partnership which many gay and lesbian couples are forced in to, this is not clear. It is not clear who has the rights of parenthood (and responsibilities, of course).

It really isn't fair that a person should be able to take on the responsibilities of parenthood and be a de facto parent; however, not get any of the rights of a parent.

Proportionality and Honor Killing of Du'a Aswad

In the USA we have some laws regarding the punishment of crimes. Specifically, cruel and unusual punishment is restricted. This laws have come in to conflict with certain death penalty cases in the US regarding lethal injection.

In the US and most countries we have laws that prescribe sentences for specific crimes. The duration of sentence is set to be proportional to the crime committed. Multiple crimes of the same nature are compounded with sentences often a few years each served sequentially.

This is not to say that there aren't problems with legal systems, punishment and rehabilitation of prisoners convicted of crimes. The system is flawed, but it is an honest attempt to be ethical when dealing with those who have been unethical or downright morally wrong.

So, perhaps a person gets 5 years penalty for stealing a car or life in prison without the possibility of parole if they kill a few people. Arguable, that these serve as punishments and will not likely play a role in the rehabilitation of these individuals.

What crime did Du'a Aswad commit? This is not totally clear as there was no trial of Du'a Aswad. Rumors that filtered to the media probably from her family indicated that she ran away from home to marry someone of a different religion. Later the news outlets recanted this statement. Apparently, she either just liked or was seen with a Muslim male.

So, we will make a couple of assumptions for a hypothetical case.
1) Marrying outside your faith is illegal.
2) As a female, being seen with a male of another religion is illegal.


In the court case, I think it is clear that Du'a would not be convicted of this crime. However, for the purposes of going through the case, even if she was guilty of the crime, what would be an appropriate punishment?

I think capture, annulment of the marriage and perhaps a house arrest plus some education on why this is wrong, perhaps visits from communal leaders saying that they are a small population and that if the women leave their society that their society may cease to exist.

I don't particularly agree with the logic of what would need to be taught, but that is what I would think of as proportional punishment for the crime (if it were an actual crime).

Please note that the punishment of killing Du'a or any other woman in a similar position will negatively impact the population of the small society just as much as if she had left that society. It really doesn't matter that she would be contributing to the numbers of Islamic people around these particular Kurds. They are already surrounded and outnumbered thousands to millions to 1.

Now, she wouldn't have been convicted of #1, but perhaps she could have been convicted of #2 - associating with a male of another religion.

Again, the proportional punishment, even if they went on a date - would be house arrest, education and some kind of probation. In reality, I don't see how such a law would be enforceable as women in a society will need to interact with males of other religions. The question would be what is allowed interaction and what isn't allowed.

By killing her as punishment, the actual perform an action that is against their own best needs.

It is ironic even, that in punishing her they do their own society damage on many levels.

It is odd, that the women of their society due the vast majority of the work and are what is required for their to be future generations of their society, and yet it is the women who live in the restrictive fear-based society. Wondering if any action they do might result in their deaths and afraid to associate with others because to associate with others is to court death.

In the end, the punishment leveled at Du'a is based on increasing the fear in all the women in their society that such actions to keep them in line. The problem with this is that it increases the dissatisfaction of women in their society. This in turn will eventually result in women defecting from that society through things like underground railroads and leaving to any society that might have the smallest trace of treating them better.

Guardians of Du'a Aswad

What is it about Du'a Aswad's death and its circumstances that make it such a horrible thing for western people such as myself?

First let's look at a definition of a term:
Guardian:

1.	a person who guards, protects, or preserves.

2.	Law. a person who is entrusted by law with the care of the person or property, or both, of another, as a minor or someone legally incapable of managing his or her own affairs.

3.	the superior of a Franciscan convent.

The first two definitions are pertinent in the case of Du'a Aswad.


Often in the USA society, forms indicate parent or guardian when needing permission for minors or children to perform actions. Guardians are a subset of parents. The difference between parents and guardians is that parents are the actual father or mother of a child and guardians are protectors assigned by the government when parents are not available.

So Du'a Aswad's parents are her guardians - charged with the protection of their child. Protection of a child, in my definition, is encouraging that child to live and have a good future, hopefully a better future than your own (as a parent of guardian).

Ending the life of your charge or child is the exact opposite of protecting them as any parent or guardian is charged with doing.

Why would someone destroy their charge? Well, it is simple. They must have believed that it would serve a higher cause. In this case the higher cause was their honor - their access keys to getting to Heaven. In addition, they had a real-world concern that if she defected to Islam, she would have children which would then become the opponents of her birth-family.

Both of these reasons are based on selfishness and are actually lower on the scale than protecting your charge or child.

What good is heaven if your child dies horribly? What good is heaven or afterlife if those you love won't be there? Any parent should choose death for themselves if there is no other choice than death for their child. The child, inherently, has a higher chance of a longer future than the parent. The child, is the result of a marriage not the by-product of marriage. Long after my bones are dust I hope my children live on. I certainly don't care if I live eternity in Hell, as long as my children get a fair chance at a future.

So, in killing one's children or charges you have accomplished the opposite of your goal.

Then the secondary material-world reason for her death is that she would bear children that would eventually be the enemies of her birth-family.

This again, is just selfishness. If she has children and they don't happen to be the religion of her parents, does it matter? What matters is that humanity has a stable society and a stable future. Honor killing your daughter does nothing to advance stability of humanity. It only furthers small ambitions of being a stronger religion because you have more people on your side. Killing her is a way to prevent Islam from having more people on its side.

The survival of humanity depends on a great many things. Variety in the thoughts of humans that are not self-destructive in nature requires that there be different religions and people who do not believe in religions. A stable society depends on laws that are not oppressive to one group over another and that the members of that society obey those laws.

The premeditated killing of a woman in the town streets contributes to the destabilizing of humanity. The idea that justice and punishment is equally valid dished out by any citizen as it is from the government. If that were the case anything could be considered a crime, and anything could be summarily punished without due process at any time.

It seems that the 15 minutes of Du'a Aswad's posthumous fame are already over. CNN has moved on; however, hopefully this will be remembered and the point continued by others that such honor killings serve no-one except for the selfish needs of those performing those actions.

In the end, Du'a Aswad's family are now failures having failed to raise their daughter to maturity, but killing her mercilessly like some bug being tortured by a child.

Respect for Persons : Du'a Aswad

A long time ago I took a course called "Contemporary Ethical Issues". This was a philosophy course, but it didn't have the dryness that I conceive of when I think about philosophy courses.

One of the ideas we covered years ago was "Respect for Persons". The central idea is "Do onto others as you would have them do to you."

How does this relate to Du'a Aswad and her being killed in an honor killing?

Well, in respect for persons it sets up moral values in terms that if you wouldn't want it done to you - you shouldn't do it to someone else. I don't think there is much question that all the men in the audience and the performance of her killing would not be comfortable with such a horrid death being performed against them. Indeed, it is unlikely these men believe such an act would ever be performed against them.

Respect for persons is only a partial philosophical answer as to why Du'a Aswad's death was immoral. After all people are so very different around the world. In India women have performed suttee, when the husbands die, ritualistically killing themselves in a burning mound. This practice has been abolished, but the question remains.

These women thought that it was perfectly ok for them (or others) to toss them in to a fire in the case of their husband dieing. It is clear; however, that the reciprocal is not true. If a wife dies, the husband does not sacrifice himself.

Clearly, if someone attempted to kill you or demanded that you kill yourself if your spouse dies, you would have a problem with it (unless you were temporarily suicidal at losing someone who had been close to you for a large part of your life).

Clearly, many people have different tolerances to what can be done to them. This results in a morality that would be so variable, so relativistic to be completely unclear as to the morality or immorality of any specific action.

So, all the people that I have read out there claiming that 'Do onto others as you would have them do to you' as being the greatest symbol of morality, you folks have problems. In order for this idea to work, everyone would need to have the same idea of what is acceptable or moral to be done to themselves and this is clearly not true.

A final NOTE: the very idea that Du'a Aswad's death was done to respect women is doublethink (as many middle eastern traditions involving women are doublethink). It is the exact opposite of what actually happened. Claims that middle eastern customs protect and respect the women all pretty much end and are exposed for the control factors they are when public distribution of knowledge that honor killings occur, and that honor killings are not uncommon.

One can only imagine the fear that women in the middle east live with every day that something they might do might accidentally result in their death.

Anime

Anime has struck a significant chord with me. It started recently with Fullmetal Alchemist. While I had always watched a bit of anime, it wasn't with the avid behavior that I watch it now.

***please note most of the anime I watch is not for children. Some of it is, but this is a general anime entry on the things I like.

I related so closely with the character Alfonse Elric in the show that it was with great horror that I watch as his friend was killed inside his hollow shell. I liked the idea (which may not be true) that the writers were honoring Michael Moorcock by naming the boys last name Elric, which reminds me of Elric of Melniboné from his eternal champion series.

Years ago I saw the movie Ghost in the Shell. It was very impressive, but somehow, I was never the guy to find the specialized shop with the tapes(!) of things most people didn't see here often.

Eureka, I found to be such a great romance story (as well as a great many other things, including some horror elements) and on the whole a message of tolerance an unity between seemingly different beings.

Netflix has been the key to me getting in to anime on a whole new level. Inside Netflix I have explored many series, some good, some bad and many excellent. Some series like Gantz, show exactly what is acceptable in Japanese culture and what isn't in the USA. Gantz is very atheist/agnostic oriented in particular these ideas come out in the second series.

I wouldn't recommend Gantz for anyone under the age of 16. Most people would say older, but I understand and remember where I was mentally at age 16 and that the sex, religion, violence presented in Gantz is something that any 16 year old that hasn't been completely sheltered should be able to watch and ask questions about. Gantz is especially poignant with the trial and prosecution of a 10 year old in the USA along with another child in the beating death of a vagrant (figures in throughout the series).

Too bad, the TV series for Gantz seems to fall far short of the Manga. I have gotten in to reading the Manga for some series and find that the differences are compelling. Just like with books translated to movies there are elements that I wish the Anime appropriately addressed in the Manga. Unfortunately, Gantz is not available in English and the best key to understanding the series is a lengthy Wikipedia entry on the series.

Anyway, this has been a rather generalized view of what I would call my love for both Anime and Manga. It has inspired in me a desire to learn Japanese and about Japanese culture. Hopefully, I'll be able to work on that sometimes. A lot of the time, even though the Japanese pick on the US, I think that the ultimate partnership would be the Japanese and the US. Sometimes, I feel that I would get along better living in Japan, but I understand that just as I don't seem to fit here in the US, I probably wouldn't fit in Japan either, just for different reasons.

I'll write more and more in depth about Anime and Manga on this blog. They are subjects that I would love to share with a great many people, and in writing about the ideas and my own thoughts about these series, perhaps if my sons ever get the chance to read these entries they will understand what I get from these series.

Errors in jounralism - spelling 101

Recently there have been calls for MySpace to reveal what it knows about child offenders that have been using their site. MySpace refused, indicating that they were prohibited by law to do that. MySpace did take down the suspected child offenders profiles.

Then there was a cry that MySpace is protecting pedophiles and blah blah blah... So, the attorney generals got their act together provided MySpace with the appropriate documentation and MySpace is to release the information to the authorities. This is not MySpace backing down as had been described in some articles.

This is a blog. I make mistakes. I make spelling mistakes, and I make mistakes where the statement sometimes written means exactly the opposite of what I was trying to say. It isn't a big deal, I'm no professional.

However, in this article, which was reasonably well written drops the ball at the end.

"Also an issue is the growing prevalence of spam in MySpace Groups, much of which redirects users to scatological porn sites so shocking and vial they aren't fit for adult viewing let alone viewing by children."

Vial? Did this article actually get vetted by an editor? This might pass a spell checked, but did the writer re-read the article before posting it? The word that is supposed to be there, you guessed it - was vile.

It seems that around the point of the spelling error in the article, the author began writing about morality and what people think is right instead of the facts in the case.

Yes, scatology is disgusting. Not fit for adult viewing? Well, there is certainly a portion of the population that does watch it, so clearly that is a value statement and a false one at that.

I'm not in to scatology or scheisse video (I know the word only because it was mentioned in a South Park episode and I had to look it up). But if someone else wants to have sex with feces all around them - they can go for it.

The Register normally puts out pretty good articles if I recall correctly, so maybe this one fell through the cracks.

Humor - Metallica and The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy

After that last blog entry I needed to do something humorous - or at least I think it would be humorous.

Do you watch the TV show on Cartoon Network - The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy?

Have you listened to music by Metallica, specifically "Stone Cold Crazy".*

Well, if you fit that - I want you to picture something.

Irwin, from The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, singing "Stone Cold Crazy" By Metallica.

*OK, so you don't know the show, don't know Metallica or don't know that specific song. Here is what/why it would be funny. Irwin, tries to be hip on the TV show and says Yo after a lot of his sentences. Except, instead of being cool, it almost always sounds like he's saying Yo like it is a question. The song "Stone Cold Crazy" has a line in the chorus which goes "Stone Cold Crazy Yo" - and I can just picture Irwin singing this song.... Such a hard core song with such a contrast of singer...Would be hilarious... It would need to go with a video of it as well, though to really be dyno-mite!

Ahh if only I had an ounce of talent to pull this off myself, I would!

An odd Juxtaposition

On CNN there is an article in the Tech section: Camera phone evolution has only just begun.

CNN typically doesn't change the science and technology articles over the weekend, so it has been there since at least Friday.

In this time the camera phone recording of the death of Du’a Khalil Aswad was released to the public.

The death of this young woman has been entered in to the public domain with many confusing pieces of information. At present it appears she was killed for being a 17 year old girl who liked a male who was not a member of her religious sect.

I am linking to the video here. Please do not watch it unless you have a very strong stomach. I will record in writing the contents of the video for those who cannot stomach watching. Even the written account may be hard to stomach.

Please note that it is a poor day to be a human to understand that this kind of behavior still happens.

Video at this link . Please note that this site has nudity but is one of the few places that had high quality footage of the events that are so disturbing.

It should be noted that this does not appear to be the entire video. I'm not even sure about the web site that is hosting it. There are a few camera phones on the scene (as shown on the camera phone itself) recording the process.

The video starts out with fast movement (and low quality) in a crowd that could be anywhere. You can hear some men talking loudly in a foreign language. You can hear a woman screaming something. There is some tugging in the crowd. The attack (and other videos confirm this) has already been in progress for some time.

You can see another person with a camera phone holding it up high and moving people out of the way to try and get a picture or video of what is going on.

You can see a person in a black shirt move quickly downward with their elbow in what looks like a wrestling move to hit an opponent. Then you see the girl on the ground in her underwear on her lower body, curled up in a fetal-like position.

She is moving, as the movements of a person deep in show, he hand touching her face. The face is not recognizable, but you can tell there is blood on it.

You can see the man in the black shirt again (or another person in a black shirt, kicking her and bracing himself against another person in the crowd.

There is a lot of movement and you lose sight of the woman.

A man walks by her and casually kicks her in the back of the head. You cannot see anything of the man's face, only his lower body.

You can see another camera phone capturing the incident. She isn't moving now, but she is in fetal position. I believe she is still alive at this moment. A man in tan either steps on her or kicks her and then picks her up partially by her red outer garment. She is moving to try and protect herself slightly to no effect. A number of people appear to kick her at this time. The movement may not have been conscious, she doesn't appear to be moving or defending herself anymore.

A man covers her lower body with a jacket. At the same time someone picks up her head and slams her head down on a large rock (approximately 1 ft across) on the ground. She doesn't react and immediately afterward follows a flurry of kicks from various men.

Several heel kicks are administered to her by a male in a black sweat suit with two white stripes running down its side vertically.

It sounds like a sports event. There is a 'ehhhh' by the crowd and an oh. But you cannot see past the person in front of the camera phone holder to understand what was done to the girl at this time.

She might be dead, but evidence from later in the video indicates that at this point in time she is not dead, thankfully, she appears to be unconscious.

When she comes back in to view you see a large cement block leaning on her head. There is no blood around her head on the ground at this point. Again, the individual with the sweat suit and the white stripes picks up the cement block and delivers what I believe to be the killing blow, directly to her head.

It is at this point that you can see the trail of blood leading from her head under her body emerge from under her body on the ground below her.

The individual with the black sweat pants appears to be hopping around and is wearing a red shirt. The trail of blood leading from her body continues to grow. She may not be completely dead and the body, the heart is still pumping and extending the size of the blood staining the road. The blood trail from her head extends in three trails, some which appear to be at least 3 or 4 feet long. This is life leaking away from the body.

There is yelling and what sounds like cheering at a sporting even throughout the sequence.

Concerned for decency, an individual adjusts the jacket that now covers her behind and partially her legs.


There is a lot of commotion, men carefully avoiding her blood trails as the leap around the scene. People taking pictures with their camera phones. One of the picture takes puts the camera within two feet of her head and clicks off a picture.

Someone picks up the block and throws it back down on to her - on the back this time instead of the head. The tell-tale ya yayayyayaayayayoi sound that middle eastern people make often when in celebration is made by one person and then taken up by many. The jacket is once again adjusted to cover her almost nudity.

A casual kick hits her in the back as an irregularly shaped stone (large) is thrown at her. The large cement block is once again thrown on to her dead back.

People are whisling (like at a baseball game) and even yayyyying like a person has thrown a strikeout ending the game in victory.

I am glad that I cannot understand the words coming from the voices recorded on the video.

A person in denim jeans casually walks by, avoiding the blood staining the ground and turns around opposite of the camera phone wielding person.

Being careful not to get blood on his shoes, one individual is standing on top of the irregularly shaped stone - balancing slightly most probably looking down at the dead girl. This person, I think gets down.

Another individual climbs up on one of the cement blocks and uses that same irregularly shaped stone to balance and kicks the dead girl twice, mostly with the heel.

He stumbles a bit and probably gets some blood on his sneakers. Someone knocks one of the cement blocks off her body.

After a lot of talking - a brief shot of the faces (not clear) of the people on the other side of the circle of men surrounding the dead girl.

There is a lot of jostling movement, in which it is hard to determine what is happening.

There is someone speaking loudly, with a beige shirt on , and pointing at the dead girl's body with the fingers of his hand. It appears that he has a teenage boy in the clasp of his hand and he forces the boys head in to camera view and back again. As if to say "See , this is what we do."

I'm not sure what this individual is doing, he appears to be attempting to pick her up or re-arrange her body. Blood drips from the side of her head that was on the road.

After some time passes , a man in a orange/red shirt crosses over her body, possibly kicking her in the process, he face is clearly visible (and why we cannot see exactly what his feet are doing).

A shot of many faces watching in close quarters. An enormous crows is revealed as the camera is raised to show everyone is there. It is not clear that all the people are there for this girls killing, but later on it will be apparent that they are.

There is a lot of confusion, people standing and talking. A man straddles the head of her body standing, apparently needing a better position to talk.

He and a few others begin moving the body. One man adjusts the jacket covering her underwear covered behind. Mustn't see the females uncovered behind. No, just kill her brutally. That's much better.

There is a lot of confusion and talking for some time. A man in a black jacket grabs her dead arms to pick her up.

Other men are helping him pick her up and they carry her almost like a dear on a post being carried between hunters.

Her body is being partially dragged and the jacket almost comes off her lower body. The men stop and adjust the jacket.

They begin to carry her again and pass a pile of large cement blocks like the two or three that were used on their victim.

The camera angle moves upward and the visibility of her body goes away. Now you see that along with the three or four people carrying her unceremoniously, that there are a number of men walking along as her body is being moved.

The camera angle changes again - to an overview of the crowd. The entire crowd moving in the same direction (with) the movement of her body.

That is the end of the video. We cannot tell exactly where the large group are taking her body.

There are a number of comments that I would make on this video and the culture behind it. It is clear that the primary participants in this film were her family and not Muslims.

However, the honor killing of this young girl is a cultural - pre-Islam Arab practice, which is indeed practiced by many Muslims in the region. Of course all Kurds, and all Muslims are not the kind of people who can do this.

My family knows Muslims who live in Trinidad and they are nothing like this.

It is, however, the enabling male-oriented religions that allow and endorse this kind of behavior. But it has taken me some time over the period of two days to even compile this description of the activity on the video. Tomorrow, it will be time to write about not only how wrong this is, but why it is wrong.

I'd offer my condolences to the family, but it appears that they are the cause of the death and deserve only condemnation.

Stem Cell Research

This article describes a break-through in stem cell research. It isn't the life-saving kind of break-through; however, it is a break-through in making sure men can have their hair when they get older.

I'm not totally against this kind of research. I believe stem cell research is important. What I don't believe is the order of precedence that we are engaging in with the research. Curing illnesses that threaten lives is far more important to pursue than curing baldness.

Scientists should find that it is ethically more important to cure diseases that are real ailments rather than a minor progression hair degeneration that occurs in many men and some women.

Then again, at age 35, with long, full white hair - I don't have anything to complain about.

My only hope is that some of the funds gained in curing baldness will trickle to important discoveries with stem cell research like stopping the degeneration of the brain under the balding head while we get older. There will come a time when I don't care about what my hair looks like, but surely there won't be a time when I don't care that I'm losing my mind.

Sony PS3 sales vs Wii

Sony has pitched a claim that their sales are brisk and that it is hard for them to keep PS3's on the shelves.

But this is totally untrue. Many people have been writing comments on articles indicating that the PS3 is easy to find in stores where people have difficulty still in finding the Nintendo Wii.

Sony released information today that came out in articles like this one - which indicates that they have overproduced Sony PS3s compared to what has actually sold.


The article states pretty clearly that Sony has produced 5.5 million Playstation 3s and sold 3.6 million. So, nearly 1.9 million Sony PS3s sit on shelves or worse, distribution centers that have not sold.

They have indicated already that they don't make money on selling the console so the money invested by Sony in these devices is more than the $600 price tag. So, at a minimum Sony has $1,140,000,000 in PS3s that have not sold. Check that folks, 1 billion 140 million dollars with of PS3 gathering dust in warehouses and store shelves somewhere.

This isn't the kind of thing you hear from Nintendo, who apparently missed their mark for sales because they couldn't produce enough of their game console. This is bad too, but not like Sony.

A lot of the articles out there say this was a bad year for Sony, but that things are looking up. We'll see. One of the main problems with manufacturing is cost of storage if you produce too much when demand is down. Currently, I'm sure Sony is being optimistic and continuing to produce more PS3s. But they are already 1.9 million units in the hole, and the number of units on hand will only increase unless sales really goes up.

The problem with supply and demand in this case is that Sony's supply is really high, but demand doesn't really appear strong. Typically this would mean that Sony's prices would have to come down (significantly) to encourage sales; however, since they already don't make money on the consoles, they really can't lower the price any more without cutting significantly in to features or digging a deeper hole for each console sold.

H1B Visa - my experience

This blog entry was inspired by reading this current article on CNN.

There are many anecdotal stories about how someone they know lost work, compensation or benefits due to H-1B Visas.

I have my own story - and this story didn't happen to someone else - it happened to me. This is a first person account. I will leave the names of the company out of it. Although the diligent reader can scour my blog for my name, my name is so common that I could be anyone throughout the country.

There is a company that I have done work for as a consultant in the SAP scope. It is a large company of about 12000 people. I wrote a specialized system in .NET to handle their warehousing needs. They have two primary facilities and one central warehouse. The goods need to get to the primary facilities, regardless of if SAP is up or down. The programs need to run on small form factor devices such as Microsoft Windows Mobile devices.

So, my system, connects and posts data to SAP, connects and retrieves master data from SAP, contains its own custom database and a series of services that run periodically to get the data and perform postings when SAP is down. It is a fairly complex system written in .NET, where I also wrote the custom function modules in SAP to perform postings and there is custom data inside of SAP including custom tables to record errors and transactional data. There are other subsystems for specific activities such as inventory counts to overcome some of the problems inherent in the SAP system. (Inventory Counts in IM can only have up to 300 items and the client has thousands of items in each storage location)

The client is composed of two major segments. There is the primary company and there is an external entity which controls all the IT aspects. I interact a lot with both segments. Some time ago I was offered a job by the IT segment.

This seemed like a really good thing. I would be able to get really in to the system and do things that people can do in the long-term instead of just short 2-month contracts.

A few months later I find that the IT company has hired an H-1B Visa person on, and the opening for me was mysteriously consumed by "We have some internal problems with budgeting." So, I was pot luck out of a job, no big deal at this point.

Then, on my last contract with the client, guess who I had to train? The H-1B Visa employee they just hired. I spent a considerable amount of my last contract training him, because it appears that they hired him - he had the wrong skill set. He had no experience with .NET and he had no experience with SQL Server and he had no experience with SQL Server Agent jobs (the facility I use for writing services) and I had to teach him, not only the business end of the transactions, not only the infrastructure of the system, but I had to teach him the basics of .NET programming, SQL Server architecture, SQL Server interaction with .NET programming (how to interact with the database, call stored procedures, parameterized queries, regular queries), the SAP .NET Connector, how it works, basic database funcitonality, SQL Agent operation, the use of the classes I used for file transfer protocol, and how the web pages look and work on the handheld devices, everything I knew about how the handheld devices operated, etc...

And there is a lot of etc, and there is a lot of me having to go over things multiple times and there is a lot of explaining basic architecture over and over again before we even get to explaining the business side of the transactions.

He took very few notes. Since then, I haven't had any more contracts with the client. It is possible that the primary client may hire me, but may also be prevented from doing so because of non-solicitation and non-compete clauses.

So, now I don't have that opportunity for work, the possibility of me getting a job to support my family vanished (and this need is greater now since with two young children I want to work for an employer instead of with an consulting company). There are actually lots of reasons why I'd like to work for an actual employer.

But, this is how H-1B Visas affect people in the real world. The H1-B visa holder is young, single, not from this country, doesn't own a house, and has relatively low expenses and relatively low experience.

The point of the H1-B visa is that companies, when they cannot find people with the knowledge they need in the US, go to H1-B visa to get people from other countries that do have that knowledge.

Clearly, the intent of the program was completely violated. I am the ideal candidate for their job as the person that wrote the system, but still they went with a H-1B Visa holder and transferred it over - and they are probably paying him tens of thousands of dollars less than I would demand. I'd probably demand 120K. They are probably paying him 80K.

Something wrong with 'Mom saves Daugter' video on CNN

I watch the news videos on CNN, some are very good and it beats watching TV and commercials.

So, naturally as a parent I am attracted to a story about a Mom saving her daughter - who is 4 years old just as my son is 4 years old.

The story is here . Apparently, a mother loads her little girl in to her minivan and forgot something in the house. She goes in to the house to get it leaving her little girl in the car with the engine running.

The little girl went to change something on the CD player and put the car in gear and launched the vehicle in to reverse where it landed in a lake. The car sunk quickly, but the mother actually saw the car sinking and rescued her daughter.

I am very happy for her and her daughter for surviving.

So, you say, what is wrong with this story?

I'll tell you my surprise to see the make and model of the van that the story is attached to, a Honda Odyssey, and it appears to be the same year as my Honda Odyssey - 2007.

Now, Honda, for more than a decade, locks out the gear selector when the car is in park - unless - you depress the brake. This is not a Chrysler, who claims to be very family oriented, but still doesn't do this on my wife's grandmother's new Chrysler 300.

So, I did a test, I walked out to my car and I turned it on, and without depressing the brake, I attempted to move the gear selector. With all my strength (5' 9", 195 pounds, male, moderate strength) I could not move the selector. I'm pressing the button down and everything. The only way to move it would be to break it, and I'm not sure even I have the strength to do that.

So, someone is lying. Either a) the mother left the car in reverse when she went to get the stuff or b) the little girl pressed the brake when she moved the girl selector or finally the locking mechanism for the gear shifter didn't work (very unlikely).

All I have to say is these people better not besmirch Honda or attempt to sue Honda on this, unless they can prove their claims that the gear shifter locking mechanism didn't work.

Information Insecurity

100,000 people had their security breached because an institution did not practice adequate security. This kind of breach is terrible even if it doesn't lead to actual issues with the individuals whose information has been compromised.

The risk, of something happening to any individual security office has gone up. How many of them would need to be compromised for there to be a serious security breach?

Not to mention that the TSA officers that have weapons information were listed on the hard drive as well. It really isn't that hard to find employee types and determine which ones could be holding guns, despite some articles stating that the TSA indicates it would be difficult to determine.

It doesn't matter how difficult to determine it is, whoever has the drive has it indefinitely.

Basic questions the TSA has been asked about this drive that they don't know. They don't know if it was encrypted. How can they not have anyone who knows if that drive was encrypted or not?

It isn't like only a few people have been affected by security breaches. I am a veteran and was notified during the last major breach that my information was lost. Fortunately, it was recovered by luck.

But where is the liability on the part of these institutions? Unencrypted personal data. Unsecured laptops outside of secure facilities. Portable hard drives with 100,000 records of private information?

The government needs to make new rules in regard to information security. It won't be the grunt terrorist that gets us in the future, it'll be an information leak that affects thousands of people and then they all go to capitol hill to complain.

Reference Article: Air Marshall info among 100,000 records lost on TSA Hard Drive

IE 7 - slow to open up tabs, slow to start

I do have an appreciation for IE 7. It is a nice web browser. However; sometimes it really makes me wonder.

When I start up IE 7, it is almost always slower to get its UI up on the screen. Then it ponders for a minute to open up the initial web page. This got so annoying to me that I set my home page to blank.

Then, when you open up tabs it has an annoying habit of telling me how great tabbed browsing is and that I just opened a new tab. How wonderful - for a complete novice. And did you notice? It took a long time for IE 7 to connect to the text file on your own PC to bring up this little informative note on tabbed browsing.

So, I quickly set that to blank as well. Oddly enough, my machines are not slouches and it still takes a bit of time to get the blank page up with IE 7. Once you get going everything seems to run smoothly. The browser seems to work well in most cases.

Firefox in task manager takes up 21,068 k of memory, opened to a blank page in a single tab.
IE 7 takes up 37,588K opened up and with a single blank page on a single tab.

And this is part of the major difference between the browsers. If it takes up less memory during operation then it takes less time to load that application in to memory. Microsoft has a horde of programmers and most of them are very good. They need to apply themselves to various issues inside of Internet Explorer. Reducing the memory footprint of the application, increasing start-up speed, increasing new tab creation speed.

All these things add up to a browser that is good, without being great. That is disappointing given Microsoft's advantage in size and availability of manpower. Honestly, they should be able to squash Firefox into nonexistence by releasing a better performing, more capable browser.

It is nice that they compete with so many software providers on so many fronts; however, the bast majority of people who purchase new PCs will be sitting there going on the web and using their web browser. To get name brand recognition and be out in front of people with a good face all the time, IE 7 needs to not only be better than Firefox, it needs to triumph over Firefox.

This is the same position many domestic auto manufacturers find themselves. After years of mediocre performance - they need to produce cars that are far in excess of the Japanese high sellers to gain market reputation that leads to them triumphing over the Japanese and not just a competitor.