Sufis. Frogs. Cartoons. Tha Intrawebs Just Don't Get Any Better

This came to me in a roundabout way. Someone read Tiel's blog and mentioned a loose group called Sufis Without Borders. The website led her to this. And when she saw it she figured Someone meant her to show it to me. If there were some Silat it would be perfect.

Leopard meets Crocodile: Or How I Became Really Humble About My Prowess as a Fighting Mammal

Wildlife photographer Hall Brindley captured a really unusual event at a South African game park in his shoot The Best Day Ever. A leopard dragged a crocodile out of the water, wrestled with it for a while and finally killed the croc with a bite to the back of the head. What amazes me is how good Mr. Brindley is with the airbrush. You don't see a sign of the cat's forty pound solid brass testicles.

I guess the lesson here is that speed, strength and a good favorite technique count for a lot.

The entire sequence can be found here or as a video clip:



Sometimes it's just a matter of who brings more weight to the party
(A herd of buffalo, a pride of lions and a bunch of crocodiles)



Not everything that happens between species is that serious. Sometimes it's just in fun. (And what a very wicked ape it was, to be sure)

Five Minute Chocolate Cake

I just saw a Five Minute Chocolate Cake recipe on the Dizzy-Dee blog. Mix ingredients in a mug. Microwave on high for three minutes, plop out of the mug. It's perfect dorm food or midnight munchies fodder. Don't even think about the calories or fat. The taste is fine. The texture is a little rubbery. But hey, it's a chocolate cake serving in under ten minutes.

The only real downside is the appearance. Think "Two Girls, One Cupcake" :(

I Feel Safer Already

I. For Your Health and Comfort You Will Be Collared

One is never sure how seriously to take The Washington Times. Any publication which is owned by Sun Myung Moon is at least suspect in my book. But taking this blog entry at face value we may soon be flying the friendly skies secure in the knowledge that we are safe. Or at least that we will be unsafe in new and exciting ways with security failure modes we had never dreamed of before.

Lamperd Less Lethal has kindly provided a video of their latest product the Air Traffic Security Method, System and Device. Briefly stated travelers would no longer have boarding passes. Instead, each would be fitted with a bracelet before departure which would be removed upon arrival. The bracelet would serve as a boarding pass, contain unspecified personal and confidential information and function as remotely-activated stun gun.

The video begins with obligatory 9-11 footage, just in case people had forgotten about it. Security methods like biometric recognition, bomb detection, are pooh-poohed. "Technology," they correctly say, "is only as good as the people using it, and employees working at minimum wage seldom have the necessary police training and certification to be 100% effective." Pilots and crew, opines Lamprey Limberlost's earnest voiceover, are the last line of defense against Islamic militants. "Terrorists are well-trained, religiously motivated and committed to suicide." Armed Air Marshals (they don't even consider the possibility of armed pilots) are "extremely" likely to puncture the aircraft of shoot innocents. Reinforced cockpit doors, so they say, are vulnerable to plastic explosives.

The solution, of course, is to buy Lackwit Lugnuts' patented slave collar, err, pardon me, "ID Bracelet". It will contain "all pertinent information" and include GPS capability to track passengers and ensure that there are no checked luggage "tampering or diversions". The piece de resistance is "Electro-Muscular Disruption Technology". In other words, every bracelet is also a remotely activated stun gun.

About this time the video started waxing enthusiastic about how the tracking device would be a "small inconvenience to ensure their safe arrival". "We feel that given a choice...most passengers would happily opt for the safety and security of the EMD safety bracelets."

Well, that's the rosy picture they paint. According to this and this at least one high official in the Department of Homeland Security was taking the proposal seriously at least as recently as the middle of 2006.

Let's take a closer look, shall we?

II. So What's Wrong With What We've Already Got?

"Religious motivation" doesn't mean the thin end of diddly squat whittled down to a point. That and the pictures are simply designed to make the sheep frightened of the Sinister Swarthy Oriental(tm) and more likely to run to Limprod Losers so that they can Feel Safe.

Adding lots of stupid people to a security system will not stop smart, motivated people. That's absolutely true. The correct thing is to add smaller numbers of smart well trained people. Even the TSA is starting to do this. The same techniques are available to the rest of us in books like the Terrorist Recognition Handbook. But even with "police certification" no method of prevention is 100% effective. We can do an excellent job of sniffing out explosives in carry on luggage. It won't catch all, but it will catch most.

The defensive capabilities of law enforcement and crew can not be overestimated. Airplanes are not 100% airtight and develop small leaks all the time. A decently trained Air Marshal with MagSafe, Glaser or some other brand of low-penetration ammunition doesn't represent much of a threat to innocents. The same goes for those few pilots who have run the gauntlet and can carry pistols in the cockpit. Failing that, the reinforced door and a co-pilot playing Horatio at the Bulkhead with the rescue axe presents a serious obstacle to someone with a box cutter or improvised knife.

That doesn't even begin to embrace the capacity for terrified violence of a plane full of passengers. Since September 2001 there has been a sea change in air travelers' sensibilities. Where the conventional wisdom used to be "Shut up. Sit tight. Do whatever the hijackers say" it is now "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit we're gonna die!" Standard Operating Procedure is now to swarm the bad people and beat them into submission or red goo.

III. And What About the Bright Shiny New Toy They Want to Sell Us?

Let's consider the ATSMSD.

Most people now approach air travel with barely concealed hostility. We may not be disgruntled, but we're certainly not as gruntled as we used to be. The TSA line doesn't help matters. We're starting to take buses and trains. AMTRAK can not keep up with ridership these days. All the airlines need is one more thing to make the passengers feel like cattle. If this scheme is ever adopted it will be the last day I fly. If I want to visit the Holy Land I'll book passage on a freighter. It takes longer, but it's cheap, and I can catch up on some reading and wood carving.

What sort of information will be on these bracelets. "All pertinent information" covers a huge variety of sins considering what's in store for driver's licenses under the RealID Act one can only speculate. The information doesn't do law enforcement any good. They already have the information and would detain anyone among the hundreds of thousands on the no fly lists including Air Marshals , three year olds and US Senators.

I'll tell you who will benefit. Phreakers, crackers, identity thieves and pranksters will go into orgasmic trance at the prospect. If the information is remotely accessible it's only a matter or weeks if not hours before someone makes a device that extracts it remotely. Depending on the hardware it may be possible to alter the information with all sorts of amusing results.

That's assuming that the bracelets stay on. It is easy to buy devices that remove security tokens from clothes at the boutique and CPU boxes at the electronics store. No doubt similar keys will become available for the bracelets.

The shock box capabilities are equally impressive. If they are triggered by a remote signal that signal can be jammed or counteracted. And the transmitter can be copied and used to tickle everyone except the bad guys. Or it could be a hilarious trick to while away those long flight hours. A few random shocks around the cabin could provide all sorts of amusement. I'd be sure to slip a really dense rubber or plastic insulating pad between my arm and the bracelet. No $10/hour stewardess gets to apply electric shocks to me unless she's wearing high heels and a spandex frog suit. I haven't been Tasered, but I have been on the receiving end of extra-special high voltage stun guns amped up beyond manufacturers' specifications. In one exercise getting zapped was the signal to empty my magazine at the range. I got all but one in the ten ring. In others it was the signal to drop and roll into a fighting posture. That one worked, too.

How will the remote control operate? It can't be something keyed to the passenger manifest. Imagine searching a 747's worth of names even with the possible new racial profiling guidelines. Nope. It's going to be point-and-shoot. That means innocents will get zapped. It also means it will be easier to come up with an unauthorized remote control.

Those are just my first impressions. I leave it to the real security geeks in the audience (Toby, are you listening?) to come up with other holes in the scheme. I expect the more imaginative could get ten or twenty in the first three minutes. The only things we can be sure of is that this won't be the last stupid plan that comes down the pike. And it will spill all sorts of taxpayer-subsidized black ink on certain balance sheets. Meanwhile, look forward to the Middle Passage Airline where we will be stripped naked, cavity searched, sedated and stacked like cordwood at the beginning of every flight.

Spelling Reform on the Fly and the Misuse of Text Filters

At least once a week Tiel tells me that English is wonderful for poets. But it's a hellish language for spellers. We may speak the only major language in the world where it makes sense for college-educated people to buy computer programs to correct their spelling. Mark Twain had a thought or two about spelling reform, but nobody least of all Mr. Clemens took him seriously.

Now we're seeing spelling and grammar reform on the fly. Let me tell you it's an ugly sight. We aren't quite the UK where you get points for correctly spelling "Fuck off" on a national examination. But if various online forums and the reports of high school and university teachers are any indication we are seeing the changes from the bottom up. A generation is doing much of its communication by SMS text message. I'm sure PhD theses will be written about the historical influence of l33t speak on text speak and how this decentralized democratic movement revolutionized the written (or typed) language. I'll nod sagely, comment insightfully and hang discreet black crêpe.

When you need to use Standard English it's easier to use spelling and grammar filters. But they have their dangers too. And here's where we get to the punchline of today's joke.

The American Family Association sends me email every once in a while. Who can say why? I'm not going to send them money. They think gay marriage is the downfall of America. I think of it as an effective if somewhat roundabout way of stopping gay sex. Their mailings are a little odd. Words are modified. "Gay" is always "Homosexual" or rather "H*m*se*ual". "Pornography" becomes "P*rnography". It seemed a little strange. So I asked. It turns out they automatically filter these words.

Sometimes the filtering goes a little too far. The AFA secretly owns the very Christian OneNewsNow. It seems they've applied their filtering technology to news stories. When Tyson Gay wins a race:

"Tyson Homosexual easily won his semifinal for the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials," the article read, "and seemed to save something for the final later Sunday." The headline read "Homosexual eases into 100 final at Olympic events."

"On Saturday," it went on, "Homosexual misjudged the finish in his opening heat and had to scramble to finish fourth, then in his quarterfinal a couple of hours later, ran 9.77 to break the American record that had stood since 1999."

"Asked how he felt, Homosexual said: 'A little fatigued.'"

Be careful about that automatic editing, folks.

Dog Food

Dog food isn't the most interesting subject in the world. It comes in bags. It crunches. Dogs eat it. That's about all there is to it. If you don't have a dog skip this post. There isn't anything here for you.

We had always fed our dogs kibble with the occasional table scrap. First it was the Alpo/Purina level. At our vet's advice we switched to the Iams/Eukanuba/Solid Gold tier. We had heard all the advertising copy about how dog food was "nutritionally balanced" and better for canines than human consumable food. But we were always a little skeptical. Dogs have spent the last fifty thousand years hanging around us because we provide garbage. In the wild their cousins mostly eat small rodents, carrion, some wild fruits and vegetables and the occasional larger game. Rice, corn and wheat are not exactly high on the list. And in the entire history of domestication no farmer has rushed out to shoot dogs that were eating his grain field.

Some time back our dogs were having training and discipline issues. So we called up Auntie Tracy and Aunti Sally to come and educate us. Part of the program was nutrition. They asked what we fed the dogs. We showed them the kibble and sheepishly allowed as how the pooches got our leftovers and table scraps. Nope, no chocolate, grapes or macadamia nuts. We already know those were toxic.

The table scraps were the only thing they were happy about. We got a lecture they could probably give in their sleep about the history of commercial dog food, what goes into it and what dogs should eat. The Aunties recommended Flint River. We tried it. The dogs ate it. But they'll also eat rotten mice, things they drag out of the garbage can and Kitty Roca fresh from the litter box. And it was very expensive. The trainer suggested a more natural diet. The vet wasn't thrilled. She said that she "wasn't sure" about feeding dogs anything but "scientifically designed" food.

We tried giving them ground turkey backs and necks from the yuppie grocery store down the way. At "Suffering Jesus, that's more expensive than what we eat!" a pound it wasn't going to last long.

The real revolution happened when Fubon Market opened up. Pork spleen and chicken feet aren't our cuppa. But they are cheap, and the dogs loved them. We started buying most of our own food in bulk from United Grocers/Cash & Carry and found boxes of turkey tails for about thirty cents a pound. Just thaw and toss. The dogs crunched them right up. Supplement once a week or so with vegetables that are past their peak ground up with organ meat.

Our experience has been wonderful. The dogs' coats got shinier. They had more energy. Their teeth haven't needed to be cleaned since. Sev stopped having accidents in the house and wasn't greasy anymore. The only downside is that they'll sometimes revert to subordinate dog behavior and take the meat out of sight to eat. When we took them out we discovered that they were using a lot more of the food. A lot less was left on the lawn, and most of that was bone meal. And all of this for less than a third of the price of the factory food.

I'm Voting Republican

And here's why....

Random Pieces of News

I. Support the Troops

In yet another example of how rhetoric clashes with actions, some in the VA have decided to discourage its caregivers from diagnosing PTSD. CREW and VoteVets.org obtained an email from Norma Perez, PTSD Program coordinator at the Olin Teage Veteran's Center suggesting:

The military has always had trouble believing in PTSD. It's expensive. It doesn't quite fit the image of the heroic soldier. It's difficult to deal with. It's not something you can see. But since the Rand Corporation estimates that about 300,000 could be diagnosed with the condition, along with 320,000 with Traumatic Brain Injury, it's a serious problem for the military and the Veterans Administration. What takes this week into the Idiot Zone is the Army's decision on where to house Fort Benning's PTSD patients. They are right next to the firing range. There might be a better way of ensuring flashbacks. I can't think of one.

The Secretary of Defense is doing the right thing in his attempts to destigmatize PTSD and encourage members of the Armed Forces to seek treatment. He has criticized the Army for being slow to recognize the health threat it poses. That excellent message is being undercut within the government. VA Secretary Peake and Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) who describe it and traumatic brain injury as "akin to what anyone who played football in their youth might have suffered, Peake told Guinn."

II Food For Your Inner Frog

Insects are easy to grow. Fed properly they are clean, easy to digest and excellent sources of cheap protein. Humans in 113 countries eat a recorded 1700 six legged species from wikkity grubs in Australia to Mormon crickets in Utah, cane grubs in West Africa and giant butterfly larvae in Taiwan. The Torah forbids insects other than the locust, the grasshopper, the cricket and the "black headed beetle", but considering how many forbidden things people of various religions eat voluntarily and how many unconsciously that's hardly a concern. It's really more a problem of marketing and image than anything else.

This article in the Daily Mail provides some mainstream support for serving them in the West. Works for this Amphibian-American. Compared to the way hogs and chickens are raised and processed grasshopper looks pretty good. I suppose it would be easier if people could invert their stomachs to clean out the chitin. If there's commercial potential some bright engineer somewhere will come up with a solution.

III Next Up: People Eating in Restaurants and Drinking in Bars

A three year investigation has revealed "rampant" prostitution in Seattle-area strip clubs. Next up: Fish swim. Birds fly. Rain is wet.

IV Warrior Posture for Warriors

Researchers working for the Indian Army have concluded that yoga is good for soldiers.

after three months new soldiers of the Bengal Engineering Group, who did 50 minutes of yoga a day combined with 40 minutes of traditional exercise, had steadier hands, stronger grips and leaner muscles than peers who underwent a gruelling 90-minute military work-out instead, according to a study.

...

"The yoga group showed an improvement in skilled activities requiring co-ordination and concentration, as well as muscular strength and endurance."

That shouldn't surprise anyone. Yoga has a long and well-documented connection with fighting arts. There were different yogas for different jobs including priests and scholars, peasants and soldiers. Each was designed to meet the physical and mental needs of that way of life. For a very good modern example consider Scott Sonnon's Prasara Flow Book and Video material.

V Poetic Justice, Or Maybe Tiel Can Get a Homeland Security Grant

A group of about fifty vandals broke into Robert Frost's House for a keg party. They ended up doing about $10,000 in damage - that's almost $100 Canadian these days. The two dozen who were caught have to do the usual community service and restitution. The one who bought the beer is spending a few days in jail. The judge added another piece to the sentence. They have started mandatory classes on the Frost and his work.

I don't know how much they'll get out of it. But it seems like a good idea. A few of them might learn something.

VI Raising the Titanic: The Secret History

The Intelligence community gets involved in a lot of research from social science and art to physics and cartography. Sometimes it's the results that are interesting. Better specialized semiconductor technology will come back to them like bread on the waters. Sometimes just having a hand in cutting edge developments in culture and politics keeps them up to date on the people who will shape opinion in years to come.

Sometimes the cover story is almost as interesting as the real project. According to articles in National Geographic and ABC News the 1985 discovery of the RMS Titanic was a byproduct and a blind. Robert Ballard developed the submersible technology for the exploration that led to the location of the wreckage. But he was under contract to the Navy which had funded development for a completely different purpose. They needed to find out what had happened to two lost nuclear submarines, the USS Thresher and USS Scorpion. Ballard was permitted to look for the Titanic only after he had completed his primary mission.

Update: Now that's the story of how the Titanic was found. If you want the real story you gotta go here to read and hear Jamie Brockett give you the real dope in The Legend or the USS Titanic. Yes sir, 497 and a half feet of Mexican rope

Paul Stamets - Fungus Evangelist

Paul Stamets is a very focused man. He's made a career out of fungi from books like Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World and Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms to editing scientific journals and advising medical schools. His website Fungi Perfecti is full of resources and information. Spend a little while there and you'll get the idea that there's a lot more to the kingdom than stuff growing in the back of your fridge.



This video will give you a little peek into his world. It ranges from basic biology to the really amazing. Who knew that the world's largest organism is a gigantic fungus in Eastern Oregon or that they use ionizing radiation the way that plants use light? Then he gets into half a dozen ways that fungi can be used to address very real problems. They include his revolutionary patents for carpenter ant and termite abatement to breaking down the hydrocarbons in diesel-soaked ground and DoD research on agarikon mushrooms that produce the most specific and effective agents for each individual strain of bird flu as well as cellulose-based ethanol and carbon sequestration.

Infrastructure: Disturbing article Scholars and Rogues

One of my favorite sites is Scholars and Rogues. It's incisive, cynical, well-informed and goes after the truth like a starving dog after a pork chop. Today it discusses the United States' decrepit infrastructure.

Infrastructure is one of those boring things that people don't like to talk about. Photos of Brittney Spears' naughty bits? Oh yeah! Who Wants to Survive America's Top Apprentice Idol? Bring it on! Ferreting out the phantom terrorists in our hair gel and insoles? USA! 9-11! But roads and bridges and sewers and dams and airports and railways? That's boring. There aren't any boobies or big explosions. You can't wave a flag and send in the Marines or gossip about who gets voted off the island.

When a bridge in Minnesota collapses or the century old New York sewers spring leaks in several places at once there's a three day story. Politicians bang their hands on the podium in carefully measured cadences. Blue ribbon commissions are seated. The Secretary of some cabinet department makes a speech. Bechtel, Halliburton and Fluor's accountants wake up with enormous erections at the thought of the contracts. Afterwards people go back to sleep. The problem is shelved, and everyone figures that it couldn't have been that bad. Look! The gays want to get married! Everyone panic! (You're not thinking, guys. If you want to stop gay sex, then allowing gay marriage is a good first step...)

Well it is a problem. And like brushing your teeth ignoring it won't make it go away. The problem that is. The teeth will go away if you don't brush them just like the roads, dams, bridges, sewers, electric power grid, railways, runways, aqueducts and ports. The ACSE believes it's a more than $1.5 trillion (with a "t") problem over the next five years. That's just to get things back to decent repair.

The Parties and their candidates just don't seem to understand how big this is. Obama proposes $60 billion over five years against needs of at least $400 billion for transportation. Clinton boldly proposes $10 billion in funding. McCain doesn't even mention infrastructure as an issue. I suppose The Market will automagically solve the problem with unicorn farts and pixie dust. I suppose we need magic. We've already mortgaged our grandchildrens' future to the tune of half a trillion to three trillion dollars to take the oil in Iraq. Unfortunately, the spoils of war failed to materialize.

Multiply that by clean water's shrinking funding, crumbling sewers, aging water treatment plants, and declining quality. Or consider the degradation of levees all over the country and note that the Administration is right at the forefront, repairing the levees in Louisiana with the finest materials and workmanship. They're actually stuffing them with newspaper instead of using earth or concrete, but we're still doing a heck of a job. Our bridges and roads are in bad shape and not keeping up with maintenance. Many aren't safe at anything like their rated capacity. The US railway system isn't up to Bulgarian standards let alone Western European or Japanese which is a real shame. It's more efficient per passenger mile than cars or planes. But that gets into a whole different set of issues ably handled by my friend and unindicted co-conspirator, publisher Rustin Wright.

If Teddy Roosevelt were President he'd have turned the government upside down and shaken out all the incompetents and crooks. If it were Dwight Eisenhower we'd have started rebuilding the whole thing under an audacious master plan. FDR or LBJ would have the programs in place and an army of recently unemployed workers holding shovels and pay stubs while they dug in. But we have George W. Bush whose governmental philosophy is that government can't do anything, so it's time to take a vacation and pat himself on the back for a non-job that lived up to expectations.

For the most part the press isn't there absent the squawking when something falls down. John McQuaid calls us the Can't Do Nation. Bob Herbert, one of the New York Times' few columnists with his head screwed on straight talks about our loss of will and clearly identifies the problem and some solutions. But they're pretty much alone. The Press, the boardroom and the politicians are are engaging in their usual short-term thinking. Nobody is taking care of business.