my very first troll!

I feel like I have finally arrived as a blogger. Everybody else has at least one, and sometimes more! Take a look at the little feller. He's shy, but I'm sure he'll be loads of fun.

Evidently you don't know the other definition of chickenhawk. A chickenhawk is also someone who hangs around bus and train stations looking for kids who've run away to the big city, so they can hook them into prostituting for them. In other words, a pimp; or in your case a "war pimp" who doesn't mind talking up a bullshit war on their website in the hopes of "hooking" someone into enlisting in your stead.You guys are idiots if you didn't know this, and we are going to make you regret this little tactic, war pimp. So go ahead and wear your urine-stained t-shirts, so we can point at you and laugh!
--Posted by Anonymous to Snark Patrol at 5/01/2006 02:36:33 PM

See, this is what happens when trolls are cruelly left to fend for themselves in the big bad world. They think everybody lives like they do, knowing ... how shall I put this? ... That everyone knows the procedures for procuring child prostitutes. Not something I ever found a need for, but I'm sure Anonymous -- ah, that name!-- travels in different social circles.

Note, too, how bravely the troll upbraids me! Setting an example, even, by posting his real name! Anonymous, that should be easy to track down. So unusual.

I would like to point out that I have attracted a troll of excellent quality. Correct spelling and grammar, highly unusual in the common or garden variety troll. This one is a keeper.

Eagerly awaiting his next trick ("we are going to make you regret this little tactic..."),

Snarkatron

She-who-eats-chicken

In the grand tradition of taking an intended insult and turning it into a badge of pride (e.g. "Yankee Doodle", "geek", and even the pink triangle), we now have ...

The 101st Fighting Keyboardists!

Now this is something I can enlist in. There aren't many combat posts for someone with flat feet, a bad knee, and an argumentative personality that would be sand in the gears of a hierarchical command structure. Moreover, it makes me suspicious that the only people eager to complain about my failure to join up also seem to think the war in Iraq, the Armed Forces in general, and American Armed Forces in particular are Bad. (so, they want me to help them fail? Not clear on this.) More importantly, the real live soldiers what actually are out there getting shot at don't agree -- they aren't asking folks to enlist, but to, you know, support them and their mission. I can do that!

Courtesy of Captain's Quarters, one of the instigators of this grassroots-snark-rebellion, here are some fun facts about Chickenhawks.
- The largest of its family: Yes, well, I'm working on that.
- Vigorously defends its territory, even more agressively when conditions are harsh: Absolutely. I mean, I'm a conservative living in the Seattle-metro area. Those conditions are pretty harsh! Unfortunately for the moonbats, all their shrieking did was drive me to join Protest Warriors. And I'm not usually, see above, a joiner.
- Adapts to all climates: With some complaining, yes. I just don't see the point of solid water; never have.
- Feeds on chicken: (see first item) LOTS of chicken.

I know the real point of the Chickenhawk slur is to accuse people like me, who support the war but are not in the military, with cowardice. Not just the physical cowardice of avoiding pain and death, but the moral cowardice of sending others to a danger I would not, allegedly, face myself. I know for myself what my courage is. I doubt I could ever prove to those accusers that they are wrong. I've faced pain and imminent, life-threatening situations; I've stood alone and voiced my opinion against a crowd and held it. They cannot tell me who I am.

"Inigo?"
"Yes, Fezzik?"
"I hope we win."


UPDATE: for those wishing to lead the exciting life of danger that is the everyday experience of the Fighting KeeBees, the signup procedure appears to simply be appending a comment to the centered post linked above, at Captain's Quarters. No word yet on the pension plan or PX priviledges.

Oh, for the love of little green apples ....

(under the influence of a gravitational field that is proportional to the mass of the apple ma, the mass of the Earth me, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their respective centers of mass.)

We need an army of cluebatters to hunt down whoever thought up this little gem. Quotas for Math and Science. That is one of the most logically bankrupt ideas I have ever heard of. It ranks with trying to legislate the value of pi to equal 3.0 because "it's easier." It may be easier, but it is also completely WRONG.

They are from the Department of Education, and they are here to help. Quick, bolt the lab doors and hide the computers! They have deduced, much in the manner of Inspector Clouseau, that women in math and science courses are subtly made to "feel unwelcome" and that is why there aren't very many of them. And it sounds like they are going to keep looking and poking and asking questions until someone confesses to subtlety.

Now, I don't have government credentials (I'm not even a journalist!) but I do have a science degree. A PhD in Physics, to be precise, which means I spent approximately TEN YEARS working in math and science, and I was female all the time. Sometimes I even taught those courses. You know what "feels" good? Standing at a blackboard and showing a bunch of my colleagues, using math and rigorous logic, that I'm right and they are wrong. Does wonders for your self-esteem. No quotas needed. All quotas get you are different statistics and increased resentment -- they don't solve the underlying problem.

I think there is a problem, but searching for bad vibes in the grad student lounge sounds remarkably like searching for your car keys where the light is better instead of where you actually lost them. In science, you are supposed to collect your facts before you come up with a theory. Therefore, I would like to hear the official "Feelings" explanation for why, if that's the only thing holding women back from sweeping the Nobel Prizes, I saw at least twice as many women in chemistry than physics at my university. Was the Unwelcome-O-Meter set to a different level in that department? (I've been to their seminars and the coffee and cookies are just as bad as ours, so it can't be that.)

The disparity in numbers made me curious, and I asked some of the women chemistry students -- who were often doing research on concepts at least as complicated as I was -- why they picked chemistry instead of physics. They all said "the math requirements." Note that these women were just as intelligent, driven, and capable as I was. And they weren't saying "math is hard" like some plastic toys and deans have been known to do. It was the prerequisites. The background. I, on the other hand, was taking calculus in high school. The way our public education system is structured it is very easy to opt out of higher math classes -- and by the time you realize you need to live and breathe differential equations to succeed in your chosen field, it can be too late to catch up. There's no point in shoving someone into a calculus class if they don't understand algebra yet, and it is manifestly unfair to deny boys math and science education just to make the numbers look good. We need to start making math much more prevalent earlier in the K-12 curriculum, and encourage girls there to take more math courses.

Oh look. Something the Department of Education could do that would actually be useful. Think they'll figure it out?

Good Lines

Commenter Kerri gave me an idea, for in the comment left was the interesting line of movie dialog:
Gunga Din, 'You disturb me greatly and I ignore the both of you'

I delight in this (I saw the movie, many eons ago and did not remember that line) and want more. So, I encourage, extort, and evoke my other readers (I think I'm up to five or six now!) to come up with other cherished lines of movie dialog. NOTE: the entirety of Princess Bride is encorporated by reference. No cheating. Besides, we want to uncover hidden treasure.

My contribution comes from The African Queen.
"I now pronounce you man and wife. Proceed with the execution!"

Why I love the Blogosphere

Because beautiful storylines, all polished and rammed down the reader's throat by the MSM, can run into ugly little blogs with facts and other interesting tidbits that throw sand in the gears.

So now we are hearing all about a group of retired generals that think it is time for Rumsfeld to spend more time with his family. Speaking only for my flawed self, any news article that repeats something I have read on a moonbat protest sign gets an automatic -10 points. I don't think the Secretary of Defense can walk on water or is incapable of making a mistake, but I would like to hear the whole story before charging over the Cliff of Conclusions. For example:

A former spook's take. The argument that Rumsfeld must go would be much more convincing if a retired general could be found that had this level of discontent and did NOT already have a grudge against the guy.
From inside the gearbox Jason van Steenwyk has a nicely dispassionate take on How Things Get Done Now.

This is the kind of information I like. Why can't the MSM include this in their analyses, hmm? Aren't reporters supposed to go find out information only known to insiders and explain it to ordinary folk like me? Exactly what are they getting paid for again?

When you make a decision, take one fork in the decision tree, you don't get the opportunity to go back and try the other one to see if that works better. At least, not in the real world. Maybe the Iraq war would have gone more smoothly if there had been more troops available. We don't know for sure, despite the general's stated opinions, because we didn't do that. However, those generals also don't know that the situation would not have been much, much worse if we had followed their suggestions. Naturally, they don't think so. But they don't have proof.

Happy Birthday, Iraq!

Three years, and wishing many more. The difficulty being, as with three-year-old humans, you've almost got the walking without assistance thing hammered out, you have no difficulty expressing your desires and feelings, and you can see things could be better and want it right now. Absolutely understandable. Sitting safe in my own house, with nobody shooting at me, I don't have any right to criticise their impatience. Impatience is a good thing, it motivates change. All I can say to the complaints is, this, or Saddam. Those were the choices. And put those goalposts back where you found them, thank you.

I can be patient even with the messiness that exists in Iraq today because I remember the passion and delight in the Iraqi blogs when it was finally made clear that they were free. One I still remember is from Iraq the Model. Proving to his neighbor Saddam was gone by cursing him in a public street, which would have been a death sentence before. (Note to moonbats: That is how a true fascist dictator behaves. How many times have you cursed, libeled, and made anatomically implausible suggestions about the current President? Have you been killed for any of them? Didn't think so.)

And now Zeyad of Healing Iraq is coming to the US, to study journalism! He needs to raise funds to do it, though, so please go to his site and click the donation button. We desperately need some counterbalance to Yale's Taliban Man, I'm thinking. Zeyad can do it. I know for a fact he approves of pretty girls in public view, so that's a huge improvement right there. Plus he's funny and intelligent and will politely stick up for the truth, even when it makes people uncomfortable.

Ports in the news: MY port

Um, whatever port security we have, we evidently don't have enough. Twenty-one people in a shipping container and the first time anybody notices anything wrong is after they get to Seattle, break out of the shipping container, and try to scale the fence around the dock. THEN a security guard sees them and stops them. From the sounds of things these were just some mainland Chinese trying to find work (they should have gone to Mexico and crossed the border there.) But what if they hadn't been humans? What if they had been something that went tick-tick-tickBOOOOM? Are there ANY adults in charge?

This is a job for .... EVIL OVERLORD!!!

The Judgement of Paris

Which, strangely enough, has nothing to do with the French. The Paris in question was some poor Greek slob minding his own business when three goddesses told him he had to chose which one was the most beautiful. (A subject often painted by the classical artists because you had an excuse to paint three nekkid ladies instead of just one.) As I recall, he didn't even make an attempt to judge on the merits. Oh no, it was all about what each goddess promised him if he picked her. Venus promised Helen, and we all know what happened then.

And this is connected to the recent release of the journalist Jill Carroll. I'm not going to get into her actual motives/intent/political alignment or whatever. (I would suggest that anyone going into a known dangerous situation have, in addition to a current will, a pre-arranged set of signals or codewords that will indicate coercion is being applied. Can't let the military have all the good ideas, right?) Anyway -- the first video comes out, and it is all mujahadeen-positive and so on, and there are some pretty strong reactions. Right-leaning opinion tends towards "oh bleep, another setup", goodwill having been severely strained by the idjits who couldn't even be bothered to thank the coalition forces that rescued them. However, there are some who point out being held captive for three months by verified killers might lead a prisoner to adapt a conciliatory tone. Some Left-leaning folks jumped on this and denounced the very idea that she wasn't freely expressing her true opinions.

So now it seems she *was* coerced, that she was very much aware she was in danger, she *was* threatened and in fear for her life (and since they had killed her interpreter, reasonably so).

What I want to know, as the truth unfolds, is exactly how the Left makes its judgements in these situations. Because their outrage, their sensibilities, their delicate feelings, seem to be entirely swayed by what they get out of it. Excuses are always found for unpleasant behavior by anyone opposing or disliking the US, while we are held to impossible standards. Even by her original, forced account Ms. Carroll was treated worse than prisoners in Gitmo -- so why weren't there any protests about her?

Thoughts on Drugs

In the abstract I can sympathize with those (coughInstapunditcough) who think the government should dump the whole War on Drugs and legalize. A good rule of thumb is less government is better.

In reality, however, one of the primary duties of a government is to protect the lives and property of its citizens. Ergo, I think the gummint is going to be in the drug interdiction business for a long time. Funny, but your friendly neighborhood dope peddler does not give the stuff away for free and if you are doing the chemical equivalent of roto-rootering your brain, holding down a paying job becomes, shall we say, difficult.

Which is why I, and everyone else in the Seattle-metro area, can't leave letters in our mailboxes for pickup any more. Hell, they had to come up with special reinforced and bolted-down USPS mailboxes because the crackheads were running them over with cars to steal the mail. Then they would go through and find any checks, wash them, and use them to finance their drug habits. More enterprising addicts would sell check-washing kits for just this purpose.

So no, I don't think the legalization of drugs would do any good. At least from my perspective. You can also ask the Dutch what they think of their liberal drug laws, and if they ever go out with the family for a walk in the park -- or if the comatose bodies and syringes spoil the atmosphere. I would also like to note Oxycontin is legal, and pharmacies have to take huge precautions or not stock it at all because people want to steal it.

Look at all the damage alcohol has done, and THAT's legal. We tried banning it once, but it had become so intertwined in our society it didn't work. It's worth the effort to prevent anything else from joining alcohol in the pantheon of socially-acceptable brain rotters.

Dedication

Who can say when the dream arose? All we know is that it took years. Many lifetimes.

Fundamental work on the properties of silicon. Ultra-high vacuum technology (spun off from the space race, which they *may* have been involved with. Evidence is inconclusive, but note that a dog was launched at one point.)

The invention of semiconductors. Pushing back the frontiers of battery technology.

There were setbacks, of course. The first lasers were too large, too power-hungry, too easily broken. Grocery checkout scanners. Gun sights. Holographic security stickers. But their steely determination saw them through. They knew what they wanted, and eventually they got it.

Cheap, battery-powered laser pointers.

All hail the cats!

Comics to get through the week with

With the advent of web comics, the only thing a regular dead-tree newspaper is good for is cleaning windows. Here's a selection to try, featuring one that I can claim partial credit for (since I bribed Sgt. B for a Snarkatron drawing, little knowing he'd, er, take it and run. ALWAYS know where your weapon is pointing and what the backstop is. Wisdom that is not restricted to guns, I say.)

Sgt. Remington : I have been assured by the author that the epynomous character will be making an appearance soon. Meanwhile, the Castle and Denizens are being brought to demented life.

Schlock Mercenary : Continuing the military theme, the adventures of a silicon-based amorph and a crew of space mercenaries.

Day by Day: Of course.

Girl Genius: Airships! Giant Robots! Huge Devices with Blinkenlights! Mad Science! (if the current story is too confusing, start with GG 101 instead.)

Radioactive Panda: Because the only thing better than Mad Science is MORE Mad Science!

Spring! Baby Eagles!

Some very clever folks have set up a webcam overlooking a bald eagle nest, where an egg is being firmly sat on. Take a look! I wonder when the little fuzzball will show up ...

Update: fixed the URL. Now I need to bribe the eaglet to harry a flock of pigeons (nervous, recently fed) over a certain hellaflopper pilot's newly washed car ....

Anybody seen the fatwa forms?

Now I'm mad. Not content with ignoring genocide, skimming money from the Oil-For-Food program (whilst blaming the US for starving Iraqi moppets, nice touch), or putting slavering dictatorships in charge of the Human Rights Commission, the UN has finally gone too far.

They have insulted the Holy Legos. Don't they know how SACRED they are to us technogeeks? Don't they have any respect for our long-held cultural traditions? They must apologize! Abjectly!

And give their Legos to me. I don't have nearly enough, and their actions prove they are unworthy of them. Besides, it's offensive to me to even THINK of their slimy hands touching the Holy Legos.

Unbelievers.

Nothing Good or Bad, but Thinking Makes It So

Drugs, cults, and suicide. Always been with us, it seems, so they must answer some need, some problem. The common thread is thinking. Our hominid ancestors never realized the price for being able to figure out things like sharp-ended sticks, using fire, and complex verbal communication would lead to ski chalets, talk shows, and nearly exterminating the carnivores that used to eat them for lunch. Or that their descendents would sometimes want to turn their brains OFF. Ever tried looking at text and not reading it? I can't do it. Same way with thinking. The little voice in your head never stops. Always wondering, am I happy? Did I do the right thing? Is there something I should be doing instead of this? Will it ever get better?

Even Conan Doyle had his character Sherlock Holmes seek refuge from boredom in drugs. How many animals get bored? Or commit suicide? I've never heard of any. (Cats with catnip and/or laser pointers fall into the drug category, I think.) Cults -- someone else does your thinking for you. Everything you do, say, wear, is prescribed. No thinking. Ah, but you do have to pick your cult first! But once that is over you can coast, as long as you avoid worrying about whether you picked the right one.

This need to channel thinking cycles could also explain the popularity of TV shows, crossword puzzles, and sudoku. Which I would definitely advocate (yes, even the TV shows) as a healthy, socially acceptable alternative to scrambling your brain mentally, physically, or chemically.

The ports kerfuffle

I haven't had much to say about the whole ports contract mess, primarily due to a strong sense of ignorance on the whole subject. I've never managed a port myself, or even known someone who has. (Living in a port city I know that ports are important and a source of sailors on shore leave. If they are Russian sailors, they do not understand the concept of "you are too drunk, we won't serve you any more booze". Hilarity does not ensue.)

Now I see the blogosphere suffering from a bad case of twisted knickers (in both directions -- a neat trick), Congress displaying to the world a grand episode of nincompoopicity, and here is Snarkatron asking plaintively, "Do we have ANY facts to examine?"

This is how it looks to me. One camp mentions (correctly) that we have plenty of furriners running port contracts already (including the ChiComs) for years without disaster, that the UAE seems to be one of the good guys in the Mideast, that running the ports is not the same as OWNING the ports, and anyway the Coast Guard runs security. Further, any objection to UAE taking over the contract is based in isolationism, racism, and a blind disregard for the feelings of a trusted ally.

The other side points out that whoever is running the port will have access to an awful lot of information that could be put to Bad Use by Bad People, that for such a good ally UAE seems to be a nexus of a significant amount of dubious activity by Bad People, they refuse to do business with Israel, and they fund Hamas, among other disturbing extracurricular activities.

Me, I think the UAE seem very adept at telling people what they want to hear -- a useful survival skill when you are a little country with no power to speak of surrounded by highly irritable neighbors. Letting our Navy use their ports would fit in with that general behavior without necessarily telling us much about their true loyalties. Maybe both sides of the debate are right. Maybe there isn't a good, clear-cut option. But it sure would be nice to have, you know, actual verifiable facts instead of heated assertions to evaluate.

Idle Snarkage

1) The nicest thing the UN could do to commemorate Women's Day is to not rape any of them. I know, a lot to ask. How about not videotaping raping them?
2) During the current obesity crisis, clothing designers are requested to immediately cease and desist from perpetrating bare-midriff fashions. Thank you for your consideration.
3) The laws of Physics are enforced 24/7, punishment exacted immediately on the occasion of the infraction, and no consideration is given to color, gender, sexual orientation, political party, "feelings", fairness, stare decisis, bribery, species, or whether or not you were informed it would be on the quiz. I love science .....
4) Anybody who tells me I am a selfish, hedonistic person for not having children gets put last on the list of those I will do emergency babysitting for. Considering my evil nature, I am being considerate of society at large by failing to contribute to the gene pool.
5) Can I find a courageous politician willing to sponsor a bill that would allow recipients of unwanted telemarketing calls to send an invoice for time spent? My hourly rate is ... not cheap. And I have a chocolate habit to keep up.
6) Science and math should be required for graduation for all students not because we are sadistic, or because we want more science geeks, but because we live in a highly technology-dependent society and the little blighters need to be able to understand enough science to vote intelligently when the subject comes up. Enough math to be able to balance a checkbook would be nice too, even if it disqualifies them for running for Congress.

Number One Gun

My very first firearm. Isn't it cute? It's a Taurus PT-111 9mm.

Octavia Butler: Escape Velocity

I don't usually read the front page of the newspaper and read about the unexpected death of someone I know. Today I did. Octavia Butler was an amazing woman in so many ways, and I feel privileged to have known her in some small degree beyond her deserved fame and popularity. She was shy and private, yet confident. Gentle like a mountain. It isn't right that she is gone.

Good riddance to Larry Summers

Now calm down and let me present my point. It's all about free speech and being able to voice unpopular opinions .... riiiight?

To establish the foundation, let me swear and affirm that
- He had an absolute right to speak his opinion, even if it was unpopular
- Any woman who is too terrified to speak her mind to the guy who upset her but can unburden herself at length (even though feeling nauseous, mind) to the nearest mediahound she can find needs to get a grip, grow up, and get out of the way of the rest of us who have no problem speaking their minds at any time. Like me.
- To solve persistent, troublesome problems we should be able to have open and respectful debate where all rational suggestions are heard and discussed.

Now. Justice Clarence Thomas has spoken quite movingly and with obvious feeling on how a burning cross on a family's lawn isn't just a minor fire hazard. Not when the family is black and the burning cross has been used as a threat symbol by racists for far too many years. And note that Larry Summers didn't suggest that the reason blacks are under-represented in science are that black people may not have an aptitude for it.

Why not? Why would he then say it about women? There are FAR fewer black physicists than female, even when you take relative proportions into account. And "women don't have the aptitude" has been OUR burning cross. It is more than just two sticks on fire. It has been used to keep women from even finding out for ourselves if we had the aptitude. That's why his comment provoked such a strong reaction. It was used as a threat before. We will not permit it to be a threat again. Are there stupid women? Absolutely. Are there men who break out in a cold sweat when they remember their 9th grade algebra class? Definitely. So can we move on to rational discussions? Open-minded discussion does not mean scooping your brains out to show solidarity with the opposition. Otherwise we have to cover all the moon-landing-was-a-hoax stuff too and I have better things to do with my time.
(Parts came in for the Death Ray!)

Addendum: A few more points for clarity. I agree that Harvard is suffering from a severe PC infection. It is ALSO true that Summers is a blithering idiot. Presidents of prestigious institutions of higher learning earn the big bucks for management and diplomacy, and I see little evidence of either. By all means, let's discuss why women are so rare in the upper levels of research -- but wield Occam's razor in slashing strokes to give priority to explanations that take the real world into account. Otherwise why not blame flying saucers carrying off the prime candidates because Mars Needs Women?

The issue has been discussed for many years in science, and Summers should have known that and what the arguments are. For one thing, you can't hire women that aren't there. The pipeline problem starts way, way before Harvard can do anything about it. So throwing money and giving precedence is just going to increase the chance of sub-par candidates being hired ... and increasing the belief that women don't have the ability to succeed in science.

A Meme with No Name

Clearly, Barb does not have enough to do. (I worked this weekend. My *real* job. Software release death marches are no fun. And I had to play with Windows 98 ... in Chinese. I expect sympathy.)

Fine. [Miracle Max] Give me a papercut and pour lemon juice on it, why don't you! [/Miracle Max]



1: Black and White or Color; how do you prefer your movies?

Any old how, as long as it is a good movie.

2: What is the one single subject that bores you to near-death?

Social gossip. I don't care about celebrity social lives.

3: MP3s, CDs, Tapes or Records: what is your favorite medium for prerecorded music?

MP3s, because I can make my computer into a ginourmous jukebox!

4: You are handed one first class trip plane ticket to anywhere in the world and ten million dollars cash. All of this is yours provided that you leave and not tell anyone where you are going ... ever. This includes family, friends, everyone. Would you take the money and ticket and run?

Yessss! Erm, I *am* assuming I can run back after I run out of money.

5: Seriously, what do you consider the world's most pressing issue now?

Too many people in decision-making capacities who think good intentions produce desirable results, and everything can be resolved through diplomacy and dialogue. Sometimes bad people need to be smacked, hard.

6: How would you rectify the world's most pressing issue?

Become Evil Overlord and REALLY give them something to complain about. Try your diplomacy against my death ray, you pathetic, snivelling creatures!

7: You are given the chance to go back and change one thing in your life; what would that be?

Find some way to get a decent research position before I left Physics.

8: You are given the chance to go back and change one event in world history, what would that be?

The burning of the Library of Alexandria

9: A night at the opera, or a night at the Grand Ole' Opry --Which do you choose?

Opera, especially Puccini

10: What is the one great unsolved crime of all time you'd like to solve?

Jack the Ripper

11: One famous author can come to dinner with you. Who would that be, and what would you serve for the meal?

Jane Austen, and High Tea: crumpets, lemon tarts, little sammiches -- the works!

12: You discover that John Lennon was right, that there is no hell below us, and above us there is only sky -- what's the first immoral thing you might do to celebrate this fact?

Er, I think this all the time so get a police scanner and find our for yourselves ;-) And strangely enough, I DON'T do immoral acts to celebrate it. Heaven and Hell are imaginary constructs to me but people are real and can be hurt by what I do. So most of my immorality centers around eating too much chocolate ...