Author: Matthew G. Saroff

Despicable……

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So the military commissions have secured another confession, Omar Khadr.

They shoot a 15 year old, torture and threaten confessions out if him, allow his confessions to be admitted anyway, and now they have coerced a confession out of him by throwing bogus charges at him:

This morning I sat in a U.S. military commissions courtroom in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and watched the first child soldier charged by a Western nation since World War II plead guilty to crimes he was never even accused of. If the guilty plea of Omar Khadr this morning was a face-saving effort by the U.S. government, it was a sad day for the rule of law in the United States.

Omar Khadr is the 24-year-old Canadian who’s spent a third of his life in U.S. custody without trial after being accused of helping his father’s al Qaeda associates build improvised explosive devices when he was just 15. He was taken to Afghanistan from Canada by his father at the age of nine. The lone survivor of a 2002 U.S. assault on an Afghan compound, Khadr was accused of throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier.

But as he entered his guilty plea this morning — after the government agreed he’d serve just one more year at Guantanamo Bay, and an as-yet-unspecified number of years in Canada — it was clear that prosecutors had taken the opportunity to throw the kitchen-sink-full of charges at him – including far more crimes than he’d even been charged with. Most importantly, Khadr pled guilty to the murder of two Afghan soldiers who accompanied U.S. forces in the 2002 assault on the compound. The government has never presented any evidence whatsoever that Khadr was responsible for that.

…………

This is more than morally repugnant.

This sort of treatment of a child forced into battle by adults is is a war crime, and everyone involved in the trial, up to and including the commander-in-chief, Barack Obama are guilty.

Of course, there will never be an accounting, for even the worst of them.

After all, the two greatest mass murderers of the 20th century, Stalin and Mao, died of natural causes while remaining in power.

A Welcome Change in City Planning

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In Boston, in a new development, officials are pressuring developers to reduce the number of parking spaces at the complexes that they are building:

……

When Boston development officials recently handed permits to the developers of Waterside Place, they did so despite neighborhood concerns that the developers wanted to build far more apartments than parking spots. On A Street, the Boston Redevelopment Authority is close to green-lighting a 21-story residential tower. The tower’s developer had originally planned to build one parking spot for every two residential units, an abnormally low supply; BRA officials are pushing the developer to push that ratio even lower by replacing a whole floor of parking with innovative workforce housing units.

These permitting decisions are not happening in a vacuum. Government-imposed floors on the number of parking spots required at new developments are falling across the city, and beyond. Somerville, for instance, is increasing zoning density and lowering parking requirements along the route of the planned Green Line extension, with an eye toward spurring new transit-oriented development. But the change is especially pronounced in the Seaport, where developers are working with as close to a blank canvas as you’ll find in any major American city.

City planners are in the middle of an extensive re-thinking of Boston’s zoning codes. As they work, neighborhood by neighborhood, to update the code, they’re flipping the conventional thinking about parking on its head: Instead of mandating that minimum levels of parking accompany new developments, they’re pushing to establish maximum parking caps.

……

If you want a walkable and transit friendly cities, parking spaces are the enemy, because it creates sprawl.

IIRC, there is more ground taken up by parking spaces than is taken up by people in Montgomery County, which is why it is strip mall heck. (and Louden County, where I currently reside 3-4 nights a week, is strip mall hell)

If you make enough parking for people to drive in from the ‘burbs, then you create unacceptable levels of sprawl.

Barack Obama Can “Shove It”

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So says Democratic candidate for Rhode Island governor, Frank Caprio will not get an endorsement from Barack Obama when he visits Rhode Island, because Obama appreciated the endorsement that Lincoln Chaffee, the Republican Senator turned independent candidate for governor, running against him.

What’s worse, the White House did not have the decency to tell him, and his campaign found out from a reporter who had been briefed on this:

President Obama will not endorse the Democratic candidate for governor, Frank T. Caprio, when he comes to Rhode Island to support other Democratic candidates, the White House said Sunday.

The president’s decision “is a victory for Linc Chafee,” the Republican-turned-independent who is Caprio’s opponent in the race for governor, said Chafee spokesman Mike Trainor, who said he was quoting Chafee’s own stated view. Former Republican Senator Chafee endorsed Mr. Obama for president in 2008.

Caprio was unaware that the president would not endorse him until his campaign was told by a news reporter, according to his campaign manager, Xay Khamsyvoravong. Khamsyvoravong said Caprio is not embarrassed that he did not get a courtesy call from the White House before the president’s decision was made public.

Caprio’s response, “He can take his endorsement and really shove it as far as I’m concerned.”

This is unbelievably stupid. It hurts the party and, in the long run, it hurts him, but because Lincoln is a “Friend of Barack”, party unity, and party morale, takes a back seat.

I have to invoke this when discussing the travails of anyone named “Kirk”.

I see a parallel in the Illinois Senate race, where Alexi Giannoulias is in a down-to-the-wire with Mark Kirk. …… In a state which is reliably Democratic …… Against a Congressman who has repeatedly lied about his biography …… And is the subject of ceredible allegations that he is a closeted gay …… who reliably opposed gay rights.

So, why is Alexi Giannoulias not running away with this? Well, it could be that he helped run his family bank which collapsed a few years later under the weight of its bad loans.

Of course, it has been know that the bank was in trouble since at least January of this year, when it entered into a consent decree with regulators, but Giannoulias got the nomination because he is Obama’s basketball buddy.

It is to be understood that a President will head his the party, and part of this is obviously rewarding allies, this is just politics, but there are limits, and this is little more than self-absorbed narcissism.

Needless to say, Mr. Caprio is now on my Act Blue page.

The Worst Medical Lecture Ever

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Laurence Klotz relates what might be the worst mdeical lecture of all time.

You see, before there was Viagra, there was an injectible treatment for erectile dysfunction developed by Professor G.S. Brindley, and at the lecture where he revealed these techniques, he dropped trow to reveal that he was sporting an artificially induced erection:

Professor Brindley, still in his blue track suit, was introduced as a psychiatrist with broad research interests. He began his lecture without aplomb. He had, he indicated, hypothesized that injection with vasoactive agents into the corporal bodies of the penis might induce an erection. Lacking ready access to an appropriate animal model, and cognisant of the long medical tradition of using oneself as a research subject, he began a series of experiments on self-injection of his penis with various vasoactive agents, including papaverine, phentolamine, and several others. (While this is now commonplace, at the time it was unheard of). His slide-based talk consisted of a large series of photographs of his penis in various states of tumescence after injection with a variety of doses of phentolamine and papaverine. After viewing about 30 of these slides, there was no doubt in my mind that, at least in Professor Brindley’s case, the therapy was effective. Of course, one could not exclude the possibility that erotic stimulation had played a role in acquiring these erections, and Professor Brindley acknowledged this.

The Professor wanted to make his case in the most convincing style possible. He indicated that, in his view, no normal person would find the experience of giving a lecture to a large audience to be erotically stimulating or erection-inducing. He had, he said, therefore injected himself with papaverine in his hotel room before coming to give the lecture, and deliberately wore loose clothes (hence the track-suit) to make it possible to exhibit the results. He stepped around the podium, and pulled his loose pants tight up around his genitalia in an attempt to demonstrate his erection.

At this point, I, and I believe everyone else in the room, was agog. I could scarcely believe what was occurring on stage. But Prof. Brindley was not satisfied. He looked down sceptically at his pants and shook his head with dismay. ‘Unfortunately, this doesn’t display the results clearly enough’. He then summarily dropped his trousers and shorts, revealing a long, thin, clearly erect penis. There was not a sound in the room. Everyone had stopped breathing.

But the mere public showing of his erection from the podium was not sufficient. He paused, and seemed to ponder his next move. The sense of drama in the room was palpable. He then said, with gravity, ‘I’d like to give some of the audience the opportunity to confirm the degree of tumescence’. With his pants at his knees, he waddled down the stairs, approaching (to their horror) the urologists and their partners in the front row. As he approached them, erection waggling before him, four or five of the women in the front rows threw their arms up in the air, seemingly in unison, and screamed loudly. The scientific merits of the presentation had been overwhelmed, for them, by the novel and unusual mode of demonstrating the results.

It does sound like something that you would see on an HBO comedy, doesn’t it?

I Have Had It With These Motherf%$#ing Crocks On This Motherf%$#ing Plane!

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We see yet another senseless crocodile disaster:

A stowaway crocodile on a flight escaped from its carrier bag and sparked an onboard stampede that caused the flight to crash, killing 19 passengers and crew.

The croc had been hidden in a passenger’s sports bag – allegedly with plans to sell it – but it tore loose and ran amok, sparking panic.

A stampede of terrified passengers caused the small aircraft to lose balance and tip over in mid-air during an internal flight in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The unbalanced load caused the aircraft, on a routine flight from the capital, Kinshasa, to the regional airport at Bandundu, to go into a spin and crash into a house.

A lone survivor from the Let 410 plane told the astonishing tale to investigators.

Ironically the crocodile also survived the crash but was later killed with a machete by rescuers sifting through the wreckage.

We live in a very strange world.

All Your Stonehenge Are Belong to Us

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English Heritage, an organization that manages many of the historical sites in the UK has now sent cease and desist letters to image libraries claiming that they own all rights of all photographs of Stonehenge ever taken:

English Heritage, the organization that runs and manages various historical sites in the UK, such as Stonehenge, has apparently sent letters to various photo sharing and stock photo sites claiming that any photo of Stonehenge that is being sold violates its rights, and only English Heritage can get commercial benefit from such photos. In fact, they’re asking for all money made from such photos, stating: ‘all commercial interest to sell images must be directed to English Heritage.’ As one recipient noted, this seems odd, given that English Heritage has only managed Stonehenge ‘for 27 of the monument’s 4,500 year old history.

All this IP nuttiness is getting on menhir my nerves.

As a commenter noted, the rights to the photographs belong with the aliens what built the monument anyway.

The Final Serial Comma Is Still a Necessity

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You kow what the final serial comma is, don’t you?

It’s the last comma used on a list, so you see, “Item1, Item2, Item3, Item4, Item5, and Item6.”

Some people believe that this is an anachronism that can be discarded, and that, “Item1, Item2, Item3, Item4, Item5 and Item6,” is acceptable.

Well, Patrick Nielsen Hayden believes that this shortcut is in error, and I agree:

With the final serial comma, it is clear that Merle Haggard’s ex-wives, as well as Kris Kristofferson and Robert Duvall were interviewed.

Without the final serial comma it is clear that Kris Kristofferson and Robert Duvall are Merle Haggard’s two ex wives.

To quote Emo Phillips, “Ambiguity, the Devil’s Vollyball.”

Pass the Popcorn

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A Judge in Alaska has ordered that the Fairbanks North Star Borough* personnel records of teabagger Senate candidate Joe Miller are to be released on Tuesday.

The judge set a Tuesday release date to allow an appeal to be filed on Monday:

A judge ruled Saturday that the Fairbanks North Star Borough must release personnel records of U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller.

In an unusual weekend hearing, retired Superior Court Judge Winston Burbank ruled that the public’s right to know about candidates outweighed Miller’s right to privacy.

“I hold that although Mr. Miller has a legitimate expectation of privacy in those documents, Mr. Miller’s right to privacy is indeed outweighed by the public’s significant interest in the background of a public figure who is running for the U.S. Senate,” the judge said. He noted that U.S. senator is among the highest elected offices in the nation.

Burbank ordered that nothing actually will be released until Tuesday afternoon, however, to allow for the ruling to be appealed to the Alaska Supreme Court.

Mr. Miller has been fighting this kicking and screaming, which implies that this his personnel file is packed with lots crunchy goodness.

If this is true, I would think that an appeal by Mr. Miller is likely though. All he has to do is delay the ruling by 7-8 days, and it becomes moot.

My sense is that he was not a model employee, since we have heard whispers from both the City of Fairbanks, as well as his old law firm, that they were not sad to see him go.

*A borough in Alaska is roughly equivalent to a county.

The Military Side of the UK Budget Cuts

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It’s pretty grim:

  • Scrapping the existing carriers.
  • Scrapping the Harrier fleet.
  • Replacing the 138 F-35B STOVL with somewhere around 50 of the F-35C carrier variant.
  • The two carriers will be built, but one will not be fitted with catapults or arrestor gear, and so will never carry airplanes.
  • Scrapping the nearly new Sentinel surveillance aircraft as soon as they are back from Afghanistan.
  • Reduce MoD civilian staffing by 25,000 and military staffing by 17,000.
  • Canceling the late and over budget Nimprod MRA4.
  • Delaying a new SSBN.
  • Significant cuts to the surface fleet.
  • Speeding up the return of troops based in Germany

From a pure perspective of governance, you have to give the Tories props: When they said they would cut the budget, they applied this to the Ministry of Defence as well, which is, at least consistent.

Realistically, these cuts mean that, outside of low intensity UN peacekeeping missions, the British will be incapable of engaging in an operation independently of the US, but that has been the political reality since Suez in 1957 anyway.

Another Bit of Tech that I Worked With on FCS*

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I’ll wait for reports from the field

The army is looking to deploy the XM25 25mm grenade launcher to Afghanistan.

The ‘special sauce” for this system is that the fire control system on the round can set the round to detonate at a specific distance, so you can set it to detonate past the cover an opponent is using for protection.

The example here is to put a round through a window, where it is set to detonate 2m beyond the building facade, which will certainly spoil that guy’s day.

This was intended to be used on the FCS-RMV in the full auto and remote controlled XM307 Advanced Crew Served Weapon where it would take the place of a crew served machine gun.

Truth be told, it strikes me as a little complex to function well in the confusion and grit and grime of battle, we should be hearing reports in the next few months.

*Full disclosure, I worked on the Future Recovery and Maintenance Vehicle, FRMV, “wrecker” variant of the FCS-MGV† from 2003-2006 at United Defense (later BAE Systems after the Carlyle Group sold me to buy Dunkin Donuts).
†Future Combat Systems-Manned Ground Vehicle. These are the ones that are the tanks and APCs. As opposed to the various unnmanned vehicles, networking technologies, etc. that form the full FCS along with the MGVs.‡
‡Yes, I have worked everywhere. Maybe I can’t hold down a job, but more likely this has been my role as “technical hit man”, where you are parachuted in to take care of a specific need.

Unconventional Helicopter Developments

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250 kt record breaking flight, complete with Pr0n film* music soundtrack


The EADS X3


And their EADS/Eurocopter video


X2 Raider Mockup


The X-2 Raider, blissfully music free

Graham Warwick gives a survey of new technologies that might find their way into the Joint Multi Role (JMR) rotorcraft program, along with the video of the X-2’s record breaking flight (top)

Meanwhile, EADS is flight testing its X3 (I wonder where they got that name) compound helo, which uses dual wingtip props, and it provides anti-torque by varying the pitch of the thrusters.

It’s far less ambitious than that of the X-2, but their selling point is reduced life cycle cost, which is probably more a shot at the expensive tilt-rotors out there than the X-2 advancing blade concept, which really doesn’t seem particularly different in the amount of bits that move.

One interesting twist is that the X3 will slow its rotor at higher speed, reducing drag, though I could see this added to an advancing blade helicopter as well, particularly if the aircraft has a wing.

My quick look at the demonstrator indicates that it is not a particularly useful helicopter.

With two props about a yard from where the entrance to the passenger/cargo area is, both loading and unload, as well as the use of a winch for a rescue mission, would appear to me to be highly problematic.

Of course, the X3 is a demonstrator cobbled together with bits of various existing helicopters, so an operational version would likely address these shortcomings.

Sikorsky is also pitching a replacement for the OH-58D, theS-97 X2 Raider, which is rather similar to the MI-24 Hind or the Augusta/Westland Lynx concepts for an attack helicopter which retains transport capabilities or the ability to carry its own reloads.

*Not that I’d know what pr0n movies’ sound tracks actually sound like.†
†Not that there is anything wrong with that.

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!!

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And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.

  1. First Bank of Jacksonville, Jacksonville, FL
  2. Progress Bank of Florida, Tampa, FL
  3. The Gordon Bank, Gordon, GA
  4. The First National Bank of Barnesville, Barnsville, GA
  5. First Suburban National Bank, Haywood, IL
  6. Hillcrest Bank, Overland Park, KS
  7. First Arizona Savings, A FSB, Scottsdale, AZ

So, after a lull of a few weeks, things appear to be ramping up again.

6 7 banks, there have been 10 6 weeks with 6 7 or more closures so far this year, and it’s week 42.

Not pretty

Full FDIC list

So, here is the graph pr0n with trendline (FDIC only):

I would note that are now at the point where the utility of the least squares trendline is diminishing, but I’m keeping it here for historical purposes.

The British Attempt at Slow Seppuku

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The British are engaging in truly draconian spending cuts in the face of a recession to the tune of £156 billion (roughly 20% of the current budget) and 490,000 employees.

By way of perspective, the UK Budget in 2-7-2008 was about £520 billion, and the job losses would be equivalent to the loss of over 2½ million jobs in the US, and that is just the direct losses, when one considers the follow on effects, essentially the jobs that are held by people who provide goods and services to these public employees, are likely to be even larger.

If one assumes that the total job losses will be roughly double the civil service cuts, and this is a conservative estimate, with the UK’s workforce size of roughly 30 million, we would see at least a 3% increase in unemployment.

On the bright side, unlike their fellow wingnuts on this side of the Atlantic, they are also applying the cuts to their Defen(c)se establishment as well (more in a later post).

I think that Paul Krugman has a wonderful bit of snark on this, where he calls the people who will be hurt by this British Fashion Victims:

In the spring of 2010, fiscal austerity became fashionable. I use the term advisedly: the sudden consensus among Very Serious People that everyone must balance budgets now now now wasn’t based on any kind of careful analysis. It was more like a fad, something everyone professed to believe because that was what the in-crowd was saying.

And it’s a fad that has been fading lately, as evidence has accumulated that the lessons of the past remain relevant, that trying to balance budgets in the face of high unemployment and falling inflation is still a really bad idea. Most notably, the confidence fairy has been exposed as a myth. There have been widespread claims that deficit-cutting actually reduces unemployment because it reassures consumers and businesses; but multiple studies of historical record, including one by the International Monetary Fund, have shown that this claim has no basis in reality.

No widespread fad ever passes, however, without leaving some fashion victims in its wake. In this case, the victims are the people of Britain, who have the misfortune to be ruled by a government that took office at the height of the austerity fad and won’t admit that it was wrong.

…………

It would be funny if it were not tragic.