evanmorris.com

Lawmakers Describe 'Being Slimed in the Green Zone' - washingtonpost.com

... Brief, choreographed and carefully controlled, the codels (short for congressional delegations) often have showed only what the Pentagon and the Bush administration have wanted the lawmakers to see. At one point, as Moran, Tauscher and Rep. Jon Porter (R-Nev.) were heading to lunch in the fortified Green Zone, an American urgently tried to get their attention, apparently to voice concerns about the war effort, the participants said. Security whisked the man away before he could make his point.

Tauscher called it "the Green Zone fog."

"Spin City," Moran grumbled. "The Iraqis and the Americans were all singing from the same song sheet, and it was deliberately manipulated."

But even such tight control could not always filter out the bizarre world inside the barricades. At one point, the three were trying to discuss the state of Iraqi security forces with Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, but the large, flat-panel television set facing the official proved to be a distraction. Rubaie was watching children's cartoons.

When Moran asked him to turn it off, Rubaie protested with a laugh and said, "But this is my favorite television show," Moran recalled.

Porter confirmed the incident, although he tried to paint the scene in the best light, noting that at least they had electricity.

Posted by evan at 1:25 PM | Permalink

The Great Iraq Swindle: Rolling Stone

There isn't a brazen, two-bit, purse-snatching money caper you can think of that didn't happen at least 10,000 times with your tax dollars in Iraq. At the very outset of the occupation, when L. Paul Bremer was installed as head of the CPA, one of his first brilliant ideas for managing the country was to have $12 billion in cash flown into Baghdad on huge wooden pallets and stored in palaces and government buildings. To pay contractors, he'd have agents go to the various stashes -- a pile of $200 million in one of Saddam's former palaces was watched by a single soldier, who left the key to the vault in a backpack on his desk when he went out to lunch -- withdraw the money, then crisscross the country to pay the bills. When desperate auditors later tried to trace the paths of the money, one agent could account for only $6,306,836 of some $23 million he'd withdrawn. Bremer's office "acknowledged not having any supporting documentation" for $25 million given to a different agent. A ministry that claimed to have paid 8,206 guards was able to document payouts to only 602. An agent who was told by auditors that he still owed $1,878,870 magically produced exactly that amount, which, as the auditors dryly noted, "suggests that the agent had a reserve of cash."

In short, some $8.8 billion of the $12 billion proved impossible to find. "Who in their right mind would send 360 tons of cash into a war zone?" asked Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight Committee. "But that's exactly what our government did."

The war in Iraq currently costs 12 billion dollars a month. That's $7,000 per second.

The average price of an individual health insurance policy for an adult American, incidentally, is $7,000 per year.

Posted by evan at 12:58 AM | Permalink

Personal History: Parallel Play: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

In the years since the phrase became a cliche, I have received any number of compliments for my supposed ability to “think outside the box.” Actually, it has been a struggle for me to perceive just what these “boxes” were—why they were there, why other people regarded them as important, where their borderlines might be, how to live safely within and without them. My efforts have been only partly successful: after fifty-two years, I am left with the melancholy sensation that my life has been spent in a perpetual state of parallel play, alongside, but distinctly apart from, the rest of humanity.

From early childhood, my memory was so acute and my wit so bleak that I was described as a genius—by my parents, by our neighbors, and even, on occasion, by the same teachers who gave me failing marks. I wrapped myself in this mantle, of course, as a poetic justification for behavior that might otherwise have been judged unhinged, and I did my best to believe in it. But the explanation made no sense. A genius at what? Were other “geniuses” so oblivious that they couldn’t easily tell right from left and idly wet their pants into adolescence? What accounted for my rages and frustrations, for the imperious contempt I showed to people who were in a position to do me harm? Although I delighted in younger children, whom I could instruct and gently dominate, and I was thrilled when I ran across an adult willing to discuss my pet subjects, I could establish no connection with most of my classmates. My pervasive childhood memory is an excruciating awareness of my own strangeness.

[more at link]

A remarkable essay by Tim Page, music critic of the Washington Post, about living with Asperger's Syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism.

Posted by evan at 12:21 AM | Permalink

'Nightmare' tarantula rescued in N.Y.

SMITHTOWN, N.Y. (AP) – An orange tarantula with venomous fangs was rescued Friday after its owner said he could no longer care for it.

''This is the kind of spider that nightmares are made of,'' said Roy Gross, chief of the Suffolk County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

He said the spider is aggressive and can jump 3 feet and bite with its large fangs. The bites are dangerous to humans.

The spider, known as an ornate golden baboon, has a fat body 5 inches long that is covered in orange hair. Male baboon spiders can have a leg span of about 8 inches, and the female is even larger.

Gross said he was glad the owner, whose name was not released, called the SPCA instead of dumping the spider.

''This spider is so aggressive, it will bite you just to bite you,'' he said. ''It's not a pet you want to cuddle up with at night.''

Baboon spiders have a life span of up to 25 years, are native to southern Africa and spend most of their time near their nests, which are usually holes in the ground.

The SPCA took the spider to a sanctuary for reptiles and other animals.

Posted by evan at 12:47 PM | Permalink

An excellent article in Esquire from Charles Pierce:

The Beauty Contest

... On May 15, Mike Huckabee, a greasy Rotarian gasbag from Arkansas, made a funny. Speaking at a debate with the other Republican presidential contenders, Huckabee said of the Congress that it had "spent money like John Edwards at a beauty shop." This nasty little bit solicited gales of laughter from the studio audience and almost unalloyed approval from the traveling political press, and nobody enjoyed it more than the lads at The Politico, a brand-new political fanzine that combines the biting wit of a high school slam book with the nuanced policy analysis of Tiger Beat.

...

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the political culture seems to be determined to fag-bait John Edwards out of the race this time around. Channeling the conservative id from the swamps of its birth, as always, Ann Coulter flatly called him a "faggot" at a conference of conservative activists, and Rush Limbaugh regularly chaffs him as "the Breck Girl." From there, apparently, the affair of the haircuts has mainstreamed Coulter's position into more polite precincts. In April, Maureen Dowd wrote a column in The New York Times that speculated that the country was not ready for a "metrosexual in chief," comparing Edwards unfavorably with her dear departed Irish-cop daddy, who used to get his hair cut at the Senate barbershop for fifty cents. You could almost hear the gentle ringing of sputum in the spittoons. Thus are the issues. Thus are the watchdogs. Thus are the politics while people are dying.

The important thing to remember is that toughness is a semiotic dumb show now. In that same debate in which Mike Huckabee flexed for the camera, John McCain pointed out that in his experience, which is considerable, torture doesn't work. On this, he was disputed by a former mayor of New York, who once was tortured by the thought that his second wife would not vacate the mayoral digs in favor of his second mistress, and the former governor of Massachusetts, who once was tortured by the fact that gay people were getting married. Toughness was now a performance skill in a cowardly country taught to fear the best things about itself.

[much more at link]

Posted by evan at 8:08 PM | Permalink

Posted by evan at 4:03 PM | Permalink

mandolux

Click on "Archive" and go wild. Then donate.

Posted by evan at 10:28 PM | Permalink

Temperature Index 106.3 F plus crappy little window air-conditioners that keep blowing the breakers equals FUN!

National MS Society : Sourcebook: Heat/Temperature Sensitivity

Heat/Temperature Sensitivity

From The MS Information Sourcebook, produced by the National MS Society.

Many people with MS experience a temporary worsening of their symptoms when the weather is very hot or humid or they run a fever, sunbathe, get overheated from exercise, or take very hot showers or baths. For example, some people notice that their vision becomes blurred when they get overheated-a phenomenon known as Uhthoff's sign. These temporary changes can result from even a very slight elevation in core body temperature (one-quarter to one-half of a degree) because an elevated temperature further impairs the ability of a demyelinated nerve to conduct electrical impulses. Myelin is the protective sheath that surrounds and protects nerve fibers. The destruction of myelin causes the formation of plaques-abnormal areas-on the nerves that slow nerve impulses and produce the symptoms of MS.

The 'Hot Bath' Test Used for Years to Diagnose MS
For many years, the "Hot Bath" test was used to diagnose MS. A person suspected of having MS was immersed in a hot tub of water, and the appearance of neurologic symptoms or their worsening was taken as evidence that the person had MS.

...

Cold Can Also Be a Problem
Some people with MS notice that symptoms, particularly spasticity, become worse in cold weather. It is generally recommended that people with MS who are sensitive to temperature try to avoid extremes of either hot or cold, and that people who are considering a move to a better climate try to visit first to see if the climate change is, indeed, beneficial.

Posted by evan at 4:13 PM | Permalink

Just two of my favorite scenes, which must be watched in order:

Posted by evan at 10:00 PM | Permalink

Romney Speaks Up for Sons' Decisions

BETTENDORF, Iowa (AP) -- Despite his call for the nation to show a ''surge of support'' for U.S. forces in Iraq, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney on Wednesday defended his five sons' decision not to enlist.

The former Massachusetts governor said his sons were showing their support for the country by ''helping get me elected.''

Posted by evan at 11:55 AM | Permalink

Rare film of Tom Lehrer performing songs on a math theme from 1997.

Internet Archive: Tom Lehrer

Posted by evan at 7:48 PM | Permalink

More California E-Voting Reports Released; More Bad News

... Some of these are problems that the vendors claimed to have fixed years ago. For example, Diebold claimed (p. 11) in 2003 that its use of hard-coded passwords was “resolved in subsequent versions of the software.” Yet the current version still uses at least two hard-coded passwords — one is “diebold” (report, p. 46) and another is the eight-byte sequence 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 (report, p. 45).

Posted by evan at 3:41 PM | Permalink

I figured out not only how to get c-span to run in VLC on my desktop, but how to get all three c-spans to run at once. I love VLC.

Click on pic for larger version.

Posted by evan at 2:10 AM | Permalink