[Energy] On the future of energy

With all the talk lately about moving us away from Middle East oil and the dependence on fossil fuel energy, I though I might run down a list of technologies and see just how they may pan out as viable energy sources in the future. A lot of politicians have been giving lip-service to R&D for energy, oil alternatives, biodiesel, ethanol, and on and on, but few seem to grasp some of the difficulties.

Fisrt of all, evidence has continued to mount that we are at or near peak oil, a condition when the ability to extract oil from the ground plateaus globally, and we begin the downard slope of the bell curve of oil production. Since so much of our economy is dependent on oil, this is very, very bad. This includes not only petrol car ramifications, but also diesel industrial vehicle and trucking system fuels, plastics production, home heating oil (really just diesel), and a myriad of other uses intergral to industrial society.

There is also indications that we are pretty much reaching the limits of regional natural gas production. Natural gas, unlike oil, cannot be easily shipped overseas. The large natural gas pipeline infrastructre that we have exists to pump gas over connected continental land masses. In order to get natural gas to America from the Middle East, or the Caspian, or Russia, we have to turn it into liquid state, called LNG. LNG shipping requires specially designed ships, hugely expensive and quite dangerous regassing terminals at port. It has been pointed out that a terrorist bombing of an LNG regassification terminal could theoretically create an explosion on par with a small nuclear warhead detonation. While Canada has been providing us with only a fraction of our natural gas supplies, that represents over 50% of the annual production in Canada.

So what are the solutions? The first thing I should indiciate is that if there were any easy or simple solutions to these problems, I'd write a book, file a few patents, and make billions. We would likely be using some of them already. But we aren't.

The first thing that people should understand, especially the politicians who will be creating policy and subsidizing certain potential solutions, is that entropy is a very important principle. ENERGY RETURNED ON ENERGY INVESTED (EROEI) is one of the most important concepts to understand when figuring out if any of these energy lifeboats is going to float. Many of the energy solutions that have been proposed require much more energy to create than they actually produce.

I'll start with cars, since so much of our economy has been designed with the car in mind. The costs of running petroleum in internal combustion engines are likely to rise to a level that makes the technology unviable in the near future. The global demand will simply outstrip supplies, and only with huge price increases will demand level off to any extent, as people will simply be unable to afford transportation.

Hybrid cars are an attempt at simply increasing overall efficiency of the internal combustion engine. Right now, they are for the most part, expensive 'statement' cars that are still dependent on gasoline. The price premium on the Toyota Prius is not worth it in the long run, and a small diesel car is a better value and would get better mileage (and could easily be converted to run on biodiesel). The Honda Insight is a better choice in terms of ROI, but the technologies themselves don't really fix the fundamental problem, which is the continuing need for oil supplies, even at a lower rate. I should also point out as a driving-minded thinker, that these are some of the worst handling cars on the road, although that is likely to change over time.

A new take on hybrids has been what is referred to as the 'plug-in hybrid', which is largely an electric car with a small petrol engine to provide boosts in power. While plug-in hybrids can get better mileage than even a diesel, at least potentially, that then takes the large burden of oil dependence and moves it to the electrical grid, which at times has been overextended (esecially at around 4 pm on a 90 degree summer day). One needs to be certain that the costs of electricity and the energy sources of electricity (in this state, that would be largely from coal - yes a plugin hydrid is a car that largely runs on coal) are any better or cleaner than what we currently use. Just as importantly, the large scale switchover to a plug-in hybrid or electric car approach by the bulk of the population would put enormous pressure on electrical production. I'll talk about electrical production later on in this essay. I must also point out that battery technologies require great deal of energy and fossil fuel inputs to build, and are often remarkably toxic, so disposal becomes an issue. EROEI must be calculated carefully to make sure that this will work.

What about biodiesel or ethanol? This depends entirely on where it comes from, where the feedstock comes from, and how efficiently it can be produced. My local politicians would probably like to see our local corn farmers producing ethanol for cars. The problem is that every gallon of ethanol produced from corn is a net energy loser. On average, it takes 54,000 more BTUs of (fossil fuel) energy to produce a gallon of ethanol from corn than you get from the corn (pesticide, fertilizer, collection by farm marchinery, transport, refining). You would have been better off burning the oil and natural gas in your car than trying to make ethanol to burn. Other feedstocks for ethanol may be more efficient (beets, sugar cane). Brazil has been fairly successful in getting off oil with sugar cane production for ethanol. Still, there are some significant problems with biodiesel or ethanol production. Land size is a big one: to produce corn ethanol for every car in the US would require 97% of all the farmland in the US. Feeding the country is not going to be an afterthought, I'm afraid. Using weeds and crops that don't require big fossil fuel inputs (switch grass, etc.) are perhaps a better idea. Similar geometric projections make any kind of agriculturally produced fuel source difficult in country with so many people living in it with an industrial lifestyle. It would be easy to produce fuel for 20 million cars. It becomes vastly more difficult to produce fuels for 200 million cars. Biodiesel feedstocks with high efficiency (like algae) might require the energy to pave the equivelent of a dozen or more San Fransiscos. These are massive projects that we likely will not have the capital to afford.

What about synfuel? Yes, using the Fischer-Tropsch process, you can produce what is essentially diesel from coal. This doesn't get us off fossil fuel dependence, although the US has coal supplies that will last a hundred years or more. These processes are also quite expensive, and are not likely to replace any significant portion of our motoring fuel needs anytime soon.

How about hydrogen? Let me tell you right now, hydrogen is a sick joke. To create a hydrogren fuel cell car, you need to first create hydrogen. Where are you going to get the hydrogen from? The simplest way is to split water molecules using electricity. This itself requires huge amounts of energy. The cheapest way right now is to use natural gas as the hydrogen feedstock. This is not viable since we are running out of natural gas as well, and we still end up with dependence on fossil fuels. Unless we can determine a catalytic way to produce hydrogen at a much higher efficiency, it takes more energy to produce hydrogen than we will get out of the hydrogen. Again, EROEI, or net energy, needs to be our watchword. Lets say, though, that we can get some hydrogen. How will you store it? An automobile that runs on compressed hydrogen gas will need to have a physically huge tank pressurized to thousands of pounds per square inch to get any realistic travel distance. What do you think will happen to a person in a car who gets into an accident? Crash your car with a 5000 psi hydrogen gas tank into another car? The police will mop up what is left of you with a sponge. Hydrogen also leaks out of almost every container we put it in due to the small size of the atoms. The other major method is to cool the hydrogen down to a liquid state. This has its own myriad of problems and will be quite expensive and potentially dangerous. Then how do you produce electricity from the hydrogen. Well, right now you use a fuel cell. The cheapest fuel cell car that has been produced by a major manufacturer has a current cost of about $1,000,000 per car. Even if that price can come down by a factor of 10 (which would be a lot, and the car still costs $100k), the fact is that fuel cells require platinum as a catalyst. All the platinum ever mined in the history of humanity would provide enough platinum to create a fuel cell car to replace every car on earth...once. Even with recycling, platinum supplies make fuel cells for a mass motoring technology difficult if not impossible.

I'll set aside highly unlikely scenarios, like converting cars to run on propane or natural gas. The latter especially is unlikely due to a likely peak in natural gas production and in the far greater difficulties in transport.

Moving on to electrical generation, half of all electricty produced in the United States comes from coal. While our coal supplies might be equal to the oil supplies of Saudi Arabia in their heyday, coal is dirty, and it is a fossil fuel in any case. Cleaning up coal with technologies is a good stopgap approach, but coal is not a viable long term technology, especially given the threat of global climate change with carbon dioxide emissions. It is interesting to note also that coal plants produce more radiation than nuclear power plants do, as the burning of coal releases radioactive isotopes naturally found within the coal itself. In fact, if coal plants were regulated under the same rules that nuclear plants were, every coal plant in the United States would be shut down.

Obviously, if oil and natural gas are problematic by price for cars, they will be for electrical production. About 10% of Minnesota's energy comes from these sources. The overwhelming number of energy plants built in recent years have been natural gas, and with the industry beginning to realize that natural gas supplies are going to be tight, with nothing to fuel the plant there is no profit to be made on huge capital investments.

Nuclear fission is, I think, a viable option, if only as a stopgap. I know this is not what many environmental crusaders and anti-nuclear activists want to hear, but nuclear power is reliable, clean for the most part (the process of obtaining uranium is not so much), and safe when used properly. A lifetime of energy for a family of four would consist of uranium fuel that could fit into a beer can. Is nuclear fision great? No, it has many problems. One problem is waste disposal, which is a very real problem for very long term storage and also security in transport and storage. Still, all the nuclear waste ever produced on earth could be placed into an area the size of a high school gymnasium. Future technologies may make it possible to reprocess nuclear waste into a useful form as well. There are security issues with a 9/11 style attack on a plant, but good design for reinforced structure and containment make this better than many alternatives. There is the problem of fuel - uranium is not an infinite source, and the stress internationally on U235 reactors (non-breeder) makes it a fuel source that could vanish within a hundred years or so. Breeder reactors (U238) are much better for fuel supplies, and can be used to synthesize more fuel. The unfortunate side effect of this is that breeder reactors produce Plutonium, which is what you use to make nuclear weapons. In fact, some regard breeder reactors are nuclear weapon production facilities first and electrical generators second. Close watch and a strong IAEA would be neccesary, especially in regards to nations like Iran. A potentially untapped, but hugely difficult form of nuclear fission that could stand for a significant injection of R&D money is thorium reactors. Radioactive thorium is in huge supply and could provide us with significant energy, but the difficulties are significant.

Nuclear fusion is a technology that needs R&D money right now. The US should throw money at the ITER project, JET, and any significant project working on making nuclear fusion a net-energy gain technology. Nuclear fusion would be safe, reliable, and would likely be able to produce energy indefinitely in large amounts. I've even heard rumors about mining the moon for Helium³ supplies, since HE³
would be a much better fuel for fusion.

Methane clathrates, or natural gas in crystalized forms in deep, cold ocean depths, represent a potentially significant form of fossil fuel energy that has been untapped. These deposits represent huge amounts of natural gas supplies that could be used. The great, and significant danger of trying to mine methane clathrates is that every attept to disturb their resting places has offgassed orders of magnitude more gas than one would be able to capture, and since methane is a far more effective greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide is, any attempts to mine these sources commercially could accelerate global warming out of control in very short order. Thus, for now, I would say these already problematic sources are simply too dangerous to attempt to use.

Hydroelectric energy has been largely tapped. We've dammed just about every river that can be dammed, and the effects on the ecosystem have been significant. In the end, hydroelectric is just not a growth form of energy. A form of hydroelectric, tidal power, may be. The power of the ocean tides is significant (a form of energy that comes from the moon instead of the sun), and tapping them could help provide energy to coastal regions, but of course, this too may have significant effects on the ecosystem and the life in tidal bays.

Wind power is a great potential source for growth, is in abundance, is clean, quiet, and a useful way of harnessing the sun's power. We should build wind farms anywhere they are viable. Don't like what they'll do to your view? Suck it up. That includes all the rich Mass. citizens with beach property who don't want offshore wind turnbines.

Solar electricty and solar heat are huge potential resources, and R&D should be thrown at them, but solar is also inconstant, and any project that would make solar a significant source of electricty would be one of the most awesome and expensive engineering projects in human history. All the solar panels ever built in history provide only a fraction of the energy we consume. The materials required, energy required for investment, and sheer land space required would be beyond any previous project. Energy storage (batteries, capacitors) in a large solar production environment would themselves require quite a lot of energy. Right now, renewable energy sources are only 2% of Minnesota's electricity. Increasing that to even 20% will cost enormous sums.

There are a few other off-the-wall ideas, but these represent the bulk of ideas in energy thinking right now, and each has difficulties. When one realizes that a single gallon of gasoline contains the equivelent of 500 hours of hard labor of a human being worth of energy (think about this: one gallon of gas moves my 3700 pound car 22 miles at 60 miles per hour, and that is at less than 100% efficiency), you realize how this amazing resource, now in decline, cannot easily be replaced. Our ingenuity in figuring out how to wring such energy out has been clever, but we have significant challenges ahead of us.

So what should we do?

1) Conserve energy as much as possible. The longer we have to work on this problem, the better likliood we will come up with a good and working solution.

2) Don't cut the gas tax. Gas should be expensive, lest we disincetivize the needed development of renewable energy technologies. I know it is eating into your budget, but we have long-term problems here, and giving you a fuel refund isn't going to help solve them.

3) Stop trying to secure the last vestiges of cheap, reliable oil with military force. Your lifestyle is over. Get used to it. That money is better spent fixing and developing a more dense infrastructure and creating transit technologies that will let us keep some vestige of what we have. The faster we admit that things have changed, the better off we'll be. Right now we're in the denial stage (blame the oil companies), we need to get past even bargaining and into acceptance.

4) Throw money at nuclear fusion research and R&D for renewables. Pay very close attention to net energy from start to finish. If it doesn't work with EROEI, then it won't work.

5) Move into a city or town that is more sustainable. Don't live in the burbs. Suburbs have no future. Build or live in a house that is energy efficient, with lots of natural light. Avoid high celings and single pane windows. Make sure the roof can handle passive soalr orientation for panels. Live in a condo if you can. Live near mass transit, and be able to walk or bike to work, to the grocery store, to the places you go every day. Try to live in a place where heating and air conditioning needs are limited. Insultate your house. Use compact florescent, metal halide, and LED lighting.

6) Support candidates for political office that get this kind of stuff. Throw out demagogues who think everything is fine, or that everything will just take care of itself if we let the free market dictate the rules.

7) Don't get behind any energy source if it is going to spew lots of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. We shouldn't kill off the ecosystem just to run the lights at the mall.

8) Get used to having less. Get used to travelling less, and staying where you are.

9) Most of all, get talking on these kinds of issues with people you know. Our myopia up to this point has been fine when we had cheap energy to burn, but now things are different, and we need to get serious about these problems, and fast, because our lives are going to depend on the choices we make.

[Oil] Politics of Oil

The Oil Drum makes a good case for why our national discussion on gasoline prices is missing the mark.

[Politics] MN Congressional District 5 Speed Dating

The 5th Congressional District DFL held a meet-n-greet Q&A for CD5 delegates and alternates, and being an undecided on a few things, I went down to the Hennepin County Government Center to attend. The entire setup was a 'speed dating' approach, in which delegates sat at tables, while candidates for various offices went from table to table and had 8 minutes to try and 'make a connection', and then moved on. It was rather an interesting approach, although a bit overwhelming. Eight minutes of trying to size up this candidate, goodbye, hello, eight minutes trying to size up that candidate, on and on. In the three hours there was not even enough time to speak with all the candidates (and in a few cases, their loyal supporters where the candidate themselves could not make it out).

My primary interest in going was to come to some decisions on the CD5 Congressional Seat, about to be vacated by Martin Sabo. There are a ton of people running, all with their own ideas, agendas, backgrounds and approaches. I figure picking who might be my next member of congress seems pretty important, so I paid as close attention as possible in such a frenetic format. Other office seekers included candidates for Secretary of State, State Auditor, as well as US Senatorial and Gubernatorial candidates.

I'll link candiate's websites below. I'm not endorsing any of them, except the ones that I personally plan on supporting, which I will indicate. I'm not a part of any campaigns, or working for any of these people at this time, so it is just my opinion and not some steath attempt at political campaigning by any of the candidates.

Every congressional candidate supported leaving Iraq, and soon. All but one candidate told me they would support impeachment. Virtually all talked about universal health care, most of them want single-payer. Most mentioned sustainable energy and getting off foreign oil, although the knowledge of the difficulties and challenges that entails varied. Some really seemed to know their stuff, and some sounded more like they had a few talking points and little data to back up their ideas. Most had good ideas in the areas they were interested in.

Each candidate has things to offer. Want mental health reform and mental health parity? Gail Dorfman is your candidate. Believe in strong unions? Keith Ellison is your guy. Want a veteran political pit-bull with the knowledge of how to get stuff done? Anne Knapp would appear to fit that bill. Interested in civil & human rights and immigrant issues? Jorge Saavedra is who you want. Really, really want us to get out of Iraq this minute? Then single issue peace candidate (perennial at that) Erik Thompson is your man. I also spoke with Paul Ostrow, whose positions I didn't quite get, and didn't have the opportunity to speak with either Ember Reichgott Junge or Gary Schiff due to time constraints.

The two congressional candidates that stood out for me were Mike Erlandson, who had the most mainstream approach that I could tell, a fiscally minded thinker with some good policy ideas, and Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, who is clearly the furthest to the left of all the other candidates with issues that speak to me. He gets fiscal accountability, peak oil, environmental degradation, and that we really need to get out of military adventurism. I like both candidates, and I'm not 100% sure yet, but my gut reaction at this point is that I will support Jack Neslon-Pallmeyer. Despite being a bit of a dark horse, he is the candidate whose issues most appealed to me, who spoke on a variety of issues that need addressing, and was progressive and outspoken enough to really make a difference. All things being equal, I'd like a little more of that Paul Wellstone spirit in Minnesota politics, and Jack would be the guy. If his support looks insufficient to get nominated or win the seat, I'll be more than happy to throw my support behind Mike Erlandson. He is certainly a good candidate, who has a number of ideas on a wide variety of issues, and I think he has the campaign skills to get elected. While he might not be a progressive in the firebrand style I'd like (he is fairly progressive in most ways, with a more moderate streak in economic policies, which I'm not necessarily against at this point), he would certainly make a fine legislator.

For senatorial candidates, I have actually been a bit underwhelmed. I think both Amy Klobuchar and Ford Bell leave me wishing for the days when Paul Wellstone was my guy. Both are good candidates, and with some good support, either should be able to beat that creepy twit Mark Kennedy, the Republican challenger. Ford Bell is probably a little closer to my beliefs, but Amy Klobuchar has the tenacity to go after corruption in government, and that isn't a bad thing. I just wish the senatorial race had a bit more 'wow' factor. A shame too, since the senate seat is probably the most important seat I'll vote on this year. I spoke with Mr. Bell, and a couple of spirited supporters in lieu of Mrs. Klobuchar. Still, I'm undecided.

For Governor, I plan on supporting Becky Lourey. Mike Hatch is the heavy hitter, but frankly, he's kind of offputting (read: a dick) from what I've heard from my fellow DFLers, and a lot of people will not support him. I didn't get a chance to speak with any of his supporters, and he did not make an appearance so far as I know. Also, Becky is just a really nice lady and when I think of the kind of person I want in the office, she's a great choice. I hope she can mount a spirited campaign leading up to the primary, because she'll need to to beat Mike. Steve Kelly is also running for Governor, but I did not get a chance to speak with him, although I did chat briefly with a supporter from his district.

For Secretary of State, I plan on supporting Christian Sande, who came off a lot better to my ear than Mark Ritchie, in the role I want the SoS to play. Either of them should defeat Republican candidate and incumbent Mary Kiffmeyer, who is just beyond the pale in her cronyism.

For State Auditor, my choice is easy: Rebecca Otto is running alone for the DFL ticket. She was nice enough to chat with me about the position (including explaining to me just what the State Auditor does - I really should have known more about the position than I did). Any candidate that pretty much is going to win the endorsement no matter what I do and still take time out of her schedule to come meet-n-greet deserves some props.

I kicked in $5 for a going away gift for Rep. Sabo. Enjoy, Marty! I have no idea what I got you!

I look forward to seeing the candidates next weekend at the CD5 convention, and then in June in Rochester for the State Convention.

[Security] Bruce Schneier - Movie Plot Threat Contest

Bruce Schneier in his latest Cryptogram has asked that bloggers spread the word about his 'Movie Plot Threat' contest. Here are the details:

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Movie-Plot Threat Contest



NOTE: If you have a blog, please spread the word.

For a while now, I have been writing about our penchant for "movie-plot threats": terrorist fears based on very specific attack scenarios. Terrorists with crop dusters, terrorists exploding baby carriages in subways, terrorists filling school buses with explosives -- these are all movie-plot threats. They're good for scaring people, but it's just silly to build national security policy around them.

But if we're going to worry about unlikely attacks, why can't they be exciting and innovative ones? If Americans are going to be scared, shouldn't they be scared of things that are really scary? "Blowing up the Super Bowl" is a movie plot to be sure, but it's not a very good movie. Let's kick this up a notch.

It is in this spirit I announce the (possibly First) Movie-Plot Threat Contest. Entrants are invited to submit the most unlikely, yet still plausible, terrorist attack scenarios they can come up with.

Your goal: cause terror. Make the American people notice. Inflict lasting damage on the U.S. economy. Change the political landscape, or the culture. The more grandiose the goal, the better.

Assume an attacker profile on the order of 9/11: 20 to 30 unskilled people, and about $500,000 with which to buy skills, equipment, etc.

Post your movie plots here on this blog.

Judging will be by me, swayed by popular acclaim in the blog comments section. The prize will be an autographed copy of Beyond Fear. And if I can swing it, a phone call with a real live movie producer.

Entries close at the end of the month -- April 30.

This is not an April Fool's joke, although it's in the spirit of the season. The purpose of this contest is absurd humor, but I hope it also makes a point. Terrorism is a real threat, but we're not any safer through security measures that require us to correctly guess what the terrorists are going to do next.

Good luck.

Post your entries, and read the others, here:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/04/announcing_movi.html

Movie-plot threats:
http://www.schneier.com/essay-087.html

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,175951,00.html
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/10/exploding_baby.html
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/02/school_bus_driv.html
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075765

There are hundreds of ideas here:
http://cockeyed.com/citizen/terror/plans/terrorwatch.html


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[Asinine] Bush uses first reponders to break up crowd

From salon.com, 'Abusing the first responders':

When protesters blocked the route Bush was to take to the Hoover Institution, somebody apparently thought it was a good idea to create a ruse by driving a firetruck toward the crowd and claiming that it needed to get through for an emergency.

[Oil] The slowly boiling pot

It would appear that President Bush is going to launch an investigation into rising gas prices (about a week after the Democrats demanded it). It will be a fruitless exercise. Since it would appear that we have nearly reached, or have reached peak oil, the rise in prices is likely a natural response to realistic predictions of the value of crude oil as a commodity. For the most part, gasoline's rising costs come from speculation on the world oil futures market (and in recent days, due to the switch from MTBE to Ethanol as an octane booster). With nothing but growing demand, especially from China, and no more likely supplies forthcoming, prices of this limited and extermely important energy source were bound to go up - oil company profits are just a side benefit to an otherwise normal market reaction. With many Europeans paying around $6-7 per gallon equiv., we shouldn't be complaining. One of the major differences is that our infrastructure (that would be low-density suburban housing and commercial/industrial development) was built on the promise of cheap and abundant oil forever. Well, sorry, those days would appear to be over. While major gains in efficiency could be made (cars, housing), the fact is that our infrastruture is a major liability. Even were we to create a viable replacement for the ICE automobile, say something that gets 150 miles per gallon (and we'd need the factories and energy to build millions and millions of them), there is still huge swaths of modern civilization that require huge fossil fuel inputs (methane gas for electricity and home heating, petroleum for pesticide, methane to make fertilizer for agriculture production in the green revolution style, oil for plastics, and on and on.) We are likely to see the end of things like economic growth, previous lifestyle, and virtually everything that we have come to take for granted in the US.

My own travel expenses have been racheting up along with everyone elses. While I have a job that I can do, to a certain extent, anywhere there is a high speed internet connection (which also presupposes an electrical infrastructure that never fails), most folks are not so lucky (I sense my future employment will involve setting up lots of SSH/VNC or VPN setups for white-collar workers - probably around the time gas hits $6/gal, which I fear, won't take too long...). At one of my main client's place of business, blue collar workers assemble expensive custom industrial machinery. Not only will skyrocketing prices make the goods cost a fortune, but my guess is many of the men building them make perhaps $12-15/hr. One of my coworkers indicated that his gasoline bill is now $500/month. Something's going to break, and soon, and my guess is that it will be the backs of the poor and lower-middle class in the very near future, and not long after, it will probably be the middle class. People's imagined wealth (3000 square foot homes, houses 50 miles or more from where they work) will become nearly worthless overnight, and with them any hope of economic well being. I'm personally looking to buy my first home right now. I'm dismayed at how little I can get for what I can afford, even knowing I make more than most Americans. I'd like to live right in the city [downtown-core/uptown](high density, able to walk, take the bus/light rail to work, telecommute, etc.), but frankly the sprawling suburbs of the Twin Cities give me a certain pause. The smart thing would be to live in a smaller town, not overdeveloped, but those can be hard to find (and more difficult to live in if you are an urbanite by nature), and odds are, any such places will become very hard to get into once the housing bubble burst blows this country's 'wealth' to kingdom come, as sustainable living arrangements will likely come at a price premium. With a personal savings rate of -0.5%, Americans are in no condition to weather such a mess, assuming rising medical costs don't bankrupt many of them even sooner.

As an aside, later this evening I should be chatting with the various and sundry candidates vying to take over Martin Sabo's Congressional seat (my phone has been ringing off the hook since I became a state delegate). Here's hoping a couple of the candidates 'get' this kind of stuff, and are electable to boot.

[Politics] A bit of Advice to all Democrats, Green Party, Libertarian, non-Republicans...

Get a game plan to counter Karl Rove and his spin machine. He stepped down from the White House position in order to pursue managing the Republican races for the 2006 election.

Figure out a game plan.

Here are some tips:

1. He makes lies the truth, and tells them often. Respond with truth and don't be baited.

2. If he can't find anything against your candidate, he will fabricate truths. See #1.

3. Reality is relative. Up is down. He will go dirty right away and he won't play or fight fair. When in doubt take the moral high ground and don't waffle. To him waffle = weakness and weakness is exploitable.

4. Read Machevelli's 'The Prince', he is this century's Machevelli. We already have a term for his brand of politics, 'Roveian'.

Know your enemy. Know his weaknesses. Exploit them. He found the weaknesses in your parties and exploited them. If you do not counter Rove, you will not win anything in the 2006 election.

[Boredom] Sports Car Quiz

What kind of sports car are you? A stupid little quiz to kill a minute or so.

(I'm an Audi TT, which didn't surprise me in the slightest...)

[Musings] My horoscope for this week

 VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): In early spring, some of our forebears made love in newly seeded fields, hoping to magically propitiate the growth of the crops. Right now would be an excellent time for you to perform a similar ritual on behalf of what you love. If you're game, find a secluded outdoor spot on a warm day. Bring a Spartner if one's available, or take the earth or sky as your lover. Then carry out a rite of pleasure in which you offer up the spiritual essence of your bliss to the health and success of a beloved person or creature or situation that you want to thrive in the coming months.

Hmmm...sounds nice...ties in with the 'soul polutice' of a few posts back.

This entry made me think of the song 'Suvetar' by Gjallahorn. 'Suvetar' or 'Goddess of Spring' is a song in Finnish Rune chant, a very old musical form. The video is spectacular in its paganey goodness. I first heard this song late, late one night on a music segment from 'News Night MN', which was a small, locally produced public TV news show, at the end of the program they would feature music, often live, from various artists.

I had once found the translation for the song. The basic story is that it is a praise, a prayer to the goddess of spring, wishing for the renewal of the earth and the blessing on things that grow.

I play it loud at least once every spring.

Lyrics (original / english, note I do not have translation for the last stanza):

Suvetar hyvä emäntä / Suvetar, fine matron
nouse harja katsomahan / arise to see the seeds
viitimä emännän vilja / raise the matron's corn
kun ei tuskihin tulisi / so that we may be spared pain

Manutar maan emänätä / Manutar, matron of the Earth
nostele oras okinen / lift up the shoots from the ground
kannon karvanen ylennä / new shoots from the stumps
kun ei tuskihin tulisi / so that we may be spared pain

Syöttele metisin syömin / feed us with honey-hearts
juottele metisin juomin / give us honey-drink
mesiheinin herkuttele / delicious honey-grass
vihanalla mättähällä / on a blossoming knoll

siull on helkiät hopiat / you have shining silver
siull on kullat kuulusammat / you have glistening gold

nouse jo neitonen / rise up, o maiden
mustana mullasta / black from the soil

Akka mantereen alanen / underground crone
vanhin luonnon tyttäristä / most ancient of Nature's daughters
pane turve tunkomahan / lift up a thousand seedlings
maa väkevä väantämähän / to reward my efforts

Akka mantereen alanen / underground crone
vanhin luonnon tyttäristä / most ancient of Nature's daughters
tuhansin neniä nosta
varsin vaivani näöstä

[Politics] Good Riddance

Good Riddance you fat, lying twit. Since you became press secretary, I don't think I ever once heard anything come out of your mouth that wasn't a damned lie. I know you're just the messenger, but seriously, screw the messenger.

[Video/Politics] Still Free tagged on Air Force One

Note, the video is fake (yet convincing). From http//www.stillfree.com


http://www.stillfree.com/wmv/Marc_Ecko_Tagging_AirForceOne.wmv

[Music] Yeah Yeah Yeahs! Concert

Last night.

GeistX + Nerdwife + Celesathene + First Ave + YYY = FUCKING AWESOME!

Great concert. Made even better when the Amazon Bitches in front of us left.

Sadly no olive oil was used in the act.

[Musings] Heading to a meeting soon

Scarfing down a rather poor salad (Thursday is salad day) from the food kiosk (closest source of sustenance to my office) before I go to a noon meeting. This made me think about how much of a hurry everything is in. A lot of this hurry is self-imposed. I don't have to go to this meeting, I should as it is the team meeting. But if I am late, I will still be employed.

Another example is my workload. I put pressure on myself to meet a deadline because I don't like confrontation or to see someone disappointed. But, in almost all cases, if I miss a date (which I do frequently because it is hard to balance home, work, fun, and break everything into enough time slices to accomplish everything in a week), I won't be fired. I may not get a raise (which in America = praise, employers don't truly thank you unless they give you more money, everything else is just a boss trying to show you that he personally understands what you are doing and it trying to encourage you, but employers show their thanks in the form of more $$$).

Time is a funny thing, there is never enough of it until you are dead. I think the world needs to downshift a few gears. Let a day be a day. Not work cycle, eat cycle, sleep cycle.

*EDIT* Or I could just get out of IT and move to a less stressful, possibly less paying, but more relaxing (like gardener). I have accomplished a lot at work, it just doesn't feel that way. The workload is so deep, you can't appreciate that something is done and accomplished as the next thing is already pressing. Just take a deep breath and move to the next.

[Politics] How I learned to stop worrying and learned to love the bomb...

Listening to the BBC News Radio Podcast and I just heard that the Bush Administration and British Foreign Service have 'rebuffed' allegations of using nuclear weapons in Iran.


I would feel so much better if the definition of 'rebuff' meant 'removed'.

Time to rent "Dr. Strangelove".

[War] Ira*

Iraq: Civil War almost here.

Iran: Bombing a distinct possibility. Oh, and we might use nuclear weapons.

Pharyngula has some reasoned commentary.

[Theory] Scandal and the public

Scandals and politics are very familiar bed fellows. But there are certain scandals that incite more fervor and indignation from the public than others. I contend that sex scandals are more damaging to a career than money/drugs/corruption.

My supporting evidence:
-This administration. Every scandal short of a sex scandal, but still in power...
-Clinton. A couple of BJ's brought him down hard, but 'Whitewater,' 'Travelgate,' had less of a sting
-Gary Hart. Prostitutes or something ended his career
-Marion Barry. Did some coke while in office. Ran for DC council, won.

What is it? Our puritanical heritage? Sex and sexuality being a huge taboo to really talk about or acknowledge? Or is it the media coverage? Does the most effective media - right wingers - win? If Bush were to get some ass in the Oval Office, would it be the same?

[Politics] Scooter leaks on Bush

From the Guardian:

Bush implicated in leak on Iraq intelligence

· Scooter Libby told to brief journalist on Saddam
· Court documents point to White House role

The NYTimes also is covering this.

Even Fox News.

[Politics] Hey, Tom!

Don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060404/ap_on_el_ho/delay

[Video] Yuki, "Joy"

The youtube addiction continues. I thought I needed to post something happier after "Army Dreamer". I like this video, I understand very very little of it since it is in Japanese, but the choreography is entrancing to watch.

[Music/Video/Politics] Kate Bush, "Army Dreamer"

I think this is a great anti-war video. Kate Bush is one of my favorite artists.

(from youtube)

[Politics] SD50 Convention

Well, political conventions beyond the precinct caucus level are always a pip, and this was no exception. What could have been a nice, quiet little convention was of course thrown into chaos in the CD5 side of things (in which I currently reside) due to the retirement announcement by longstanding CD5 Congressman Martin Olav Sabo. A scramble to fill the seat, and the next thing I know I have no fewer than nine candidates trying to get my support for their run for Congress. Of course, this is so recent, that I have only the vaguest notion what politics each of these people bring, much less what kind of legislator they would be. The names that had any clout, so far as I could tell, were Mike Erlandson (former DFL party chair), Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer (liberal antiwar darkhorse), and Keith Ellison (never heard of him). Ember Reichgott-Jung I also remember from my convention days, but there didn't seem to be too much buzz about her name. I'm amazed Satveer Chaudhary did not throw his name into the ring, but then he has a toddler, and being a new parent is hard enough work without a congressional level campaign. He'll get his State Senate seat back in a walk. He seems to be honing his firebrand speaking style since last I heard him.

I was amazed at the level of support Becky Lourey got for her gubernatorial run, and at this point, I plan on supporting her. Of course the 800 pound gorilla in the room Mike Hatch will probably flatten her in her attempts to get on the ballot, but I just can't support Hatch when Lourey seemed to speak more to my values. I'm also of an understanding that Hatch has alienated quite a few people.

I think Amy Klobuchar will get the nomination for U.S. Senate. I actually like Ford Bell more, and may or may not support him, but I'd guess it'll all be moot come November.

My resolution made it to the SD level and hopefully it passed. Asking for the impeachment of Bush and Dick is probably popular enough to go onto the CD5 convention level, at which I'll be attending. Oh, and I'm the first alternate from my walking subcaucus to the state convention, so I'll be doing that again. The state convention is always a blast. Here's hoping I can get up that early three days in a row. Oh, and it is going to be in "The Happiest Place on Earth" this June, so I'm sure I'll see a few of you down in Mayo country June 9-11.

[Poem] The Rain, the Cleansing Rain

Down the rain falls
swirling in the street
big drops the size of candy
bounce when they hit the ground
the rain falls
and
washes all the filth away.

[Word] wrongeousness

wrongeousness

as seen on Fark:

"This is a man, I believe, God has appointed ... to represent righteousness in government," (regarding Tom DeLay)

if that's righteousness, i'm wholeheartidly in favor of wrongeousness.

[Politics] Me: ISO strength, healing and common ground. You: ready to join a revolution

Anne Lamott recently posted this insightful editorial to Salon.com : (see the original here)

March 29, 2006 | I'm drawn to almost any piece of writing with the words "divine love" and "impeachment" in the first sentence. But I know the word "divine" makes many progressive people run screaming for their cute little lives, and so one hesitates to use it. Also, we all know that there isn't going to be an impeachment any time soon.

However, maybe there is the chance of a calm, polite revolution, and perhaps in lieu of "divine love" we could use the idea of simple "kindness." Consider, just for the sake of argument, how good people, in a democracy that has been taken over by cold, rich, scary, armed white men, might proceed.

Good people who have watched their country's leaders skid so far to the triumphal right would have to do something. I mean, wouldn't they? Am I crazy? Otherwise, those people's children will ask them someday, when we are all living in caves, "What did you do to try and save us?" And the children will be so angry, and they are so awful and unpleasant when they are mad, even in the dark.

I, for one, do not want to answer that I did nothing, or that I ranted and flailed, showing up to support my own interest groups, candidates and concerns.

Instead, I think we should lay down our differences, and have a revolution. I am wondering if July 14 works for everyone.

My father wrote a great novel about an antiwar march in 1970, called "The Bastille Day Parade," in which many protesters carried signs that read, "Turn Off the Lie Machine." In choosing July 14, I would like to pay tribute to him and to the people of his generation, who are surely turning in their graves, as if on rotisseries, with horror about life in their beloved America. They were passionate in their fight against fascism, and Joseph McCarthy, their commitment to civil rights, and to libraries, and to good manners. All of us were raised to be polite, as honest as we could manage, and to live as if the word "fair" meant something, which all sounds a little Amish at this point. A renewal of these values would be the major plank of this revolution.

In this revolution, there will not be any positions except kindness, and libraries. We will not even have a battle cry, as that can lead to chanting, and haranguing: Hey, hey, ho, ho, all that chanting's got to go! We would simply look one another in the eyes, shake our heads, and say, "This just can't be right." We will not try to figure out what it all means: Iraq, Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Terri Schiavo, abortion rights, the Downing Street Memo, domestic spying, immigration, the Kyoto Accords, the Geneva Connections, Tom DeLay -- none of it. We all know what kindness means, and I think we can all agree that libraries are sacred, and our revolution will decree that we will fight tooth and nail for these things, politely.

Mostly we will show up and say things like, "Giving India massive nuclear assistance? I don't know -- that just can't be right." "Madge, maybe I'm nuts, but John Bolton, at the U.N.? Can that be right?"

I am hoping for a large turnout even though so few people showed up to mark the third anniversary of the war in Iraq. This was dispiriting, but let's not dwell on it. That was then, almost two weeks ago. This is now. Nearly 50 million people voted for Kerry, and I'm hoping for somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 million (although I know the press will way underreport the turnout). We need precinct leaders to get the word out, although not the kind who go door-to-door while people are eating, then threaten sweetly to come back later. Bitter neighbors are the very last thing this revolution seeks.

We would all show up on Bastille Day, propelled by the ferocious, heartbroken belief we've carried since childhood, that America is a republic, of 50 states, united and humane.

It would be nice if everyone would turn off his or her cellphone that day.

Also, I thought we could all wear green -- not because we have an environmental position we are pushing, but because trees, grasses and the natural world are just so incredibly beautiful and precious. Nature = life. Some will suspect that this is inching dangerously close to a "position," what with everyone in green, hundreds of shades of green -- and if I am being honest, it's true that the tiniest point might be made that a black-and-white worldview, a Manichaean good vs. evil color scheme, is wearing out its welcome.

Additionally, it would be great if everyone could bring a bit of fruit to share, and maybe a few dollars, in case one runs into someone desperately poor.

Bananas are great, as I believe them to be the only known cure for existential dread. Also, Mother Teresa said that in India, a woman dying in the street will share her banana with anyone who needs it, whereas in America, people amass and hoard as many bananas as they can to sell for an exorbitant profit. So half of them go bad, anyway.

Maybe, come to think of it, that wasn't Mother Teresa. Maybe that was Ram Dass, or my neighbor Irmgaard, but it doesn't matter. Trust me: Fruit is a nice touch. Apples, oranges, it doesn't matter, and it would not be mandatory that you bring any fruit at all.

All we would ask is that you show up and help us foment a revolution, based on kindness and that silly old idea our parents taught us, about fairness. Maybe we'd sing "My Country, 'Tis of Thee." No offense in that, really, is there?

But we won't sing that if it is going to stir up a lot of debate and screeds and distraction. I was just thinking that both of my parents died here, on this land that they loved. They were both born abroad. A lot of our parents have died, people who made sure their children read John Steinbeck, Rachel Carson and Langston Hughes. I would show up for my parents, by proxy.

Never mind; we don't have to sing that song. Still, I cry when I hear it.

We will just all come together. Bastille Day. Ix-nay on the cellphones and the speeches. Like Woody Allen said once before I turned on him, 80 percent of life is just showing up. We will show up and foment a loving revolution, wearing green: I just looked up "foment," to make sure that this is what I meant. It comes from the Latin "fomentum," which means a warm poultice. One of the definitions is to apply a warm cloth, dipped in warm water or medication, to a body that needs healing; and that is exactly what I meant.

I'm thinking noon-ish.

[Politics] Savage Love - Straight Rights

There was an addendum to this week's Savage Love, Dan Savage makes a good point and people should take note:

Straight Rights Update: Earlier this month Republicans in South Dakota successfully banned abortion in that state. Last week the GOP-controlled state house of representatives in Missouri voted to ban state-funded family planning clinics from dispensing birth control. "If you hand out contraception to single women," one Republican state rep told the Kansas City Star, "we're saying promiscuity is okay." On the federal level, Republicans are blocking the over-the-counter sale of emergency contraception and keeping a 100 percent effective HPV vaccine—a vaccine that will save the lives of thousands of women every year—from being made available.

The GOP's message to straight Americans: If you have sex, we want it to fuck up your lives as much as possible. No birth control, no emergency contraception, no abortion services, no life-saving vaccines. If you get pregnant, tough shit. You're going to have those babies, ladies, and you're going to make those child-support payments, gentlemen. And if you get HPV and it leads to cervical cancer, well, that's too bad. Have a nice funeral, slut.

What's it going to take to get a straight-rights movement off the ground? The GOP in Kansas is seeking to criminalize hetero heavy petting, for God's sake! Wake up and smell the freaking Holy War, breeders! The religious right hates heterosexuality just as much as it hates homosexuality. Fight back!

Think about it, if you sit back and let them outlaw Gay Rights, Women's Rights are next, and then Straight Rights. Its time for a backlash, hard and sound and swift. This year vote those fuckers out (whether they be left or right, there are a few Democrats who need it as well).

[Musings] This week's horoscope

Awesome!

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): The paradoxes are coming! The paradoxes are coming! It won't be enough merely to solve a few amusing brainteasers. You'll have to find a way to feel perfectly fine as you get squeezed by industrial-strength contradictions that might make a less intelligent person feel crazy. Can you do it? Is it possible for you to remain poised and magnanimous in the face of the pressure to think impossible thoughts and feel indescribable feelings? Can you see how all three sides of every story are equally valid? The potential rewards are substantial: a crispy epiphany, a funky treasure, and the equivalent of a "Get Out of Jail Free" card.

[Politics] Civic Duty, part II - Olmsted County Caucus

Today is the County Caucus. This is something we didn't have last election. I went right from the precient to the Senate District. But here there is a county caucus between the local and SD.

Be interesting to see how it goes. I am ready for it, breakfast, coffee, read the Times, listened to MPR, reved up my anti-Bush anger. Lets politic!

[Question] Name This Play

I am wracking my brain trying to remember the name of a play, a scene of which was performed for my Theatre class (that would have been almost a decade ago). I thought it was Tennessee Williams, but I'm not finding any material that matches what I remember. The scene is God and the Devil (or a fallen angel?) debating the nature of human free will, et al. God makes some remark about humanity having the ability to see the true nature of the world (via science, etc.) and see the "X of my art", where X was either physics, or design, or nature, or something along those lines.

This ranks up there with GeistX' Hooverphonic 'Renaissance Affair' thing...

UPDATE: For the record, the play is "The Creation of the World and Other Business" by Arthur Miller.

[Rant] The ignorance of the Suburban sub-species truly boggles the mind.

"Everybody knows that the world is full of stupid people..." - Refreshments, "Banditos"

The setting: Chipotle

The target of rant: Blonde, bland, SUV driving, Suburban Soccer Mom (homo sapien suburbicus)

I am standing in line at Chipotle at 20:00 waiting to order. Ahead of me is the customer from hell. Here is a transcript:

Customer (BBSDSSM): "I would like the beef tacos."

Server: "Barbacoa or Steak?"

BBSDSSM: "I don't want steak, I want beef."

Server: "Si, which type the Barbacoa or Steak?"

BBSDSSM: "I don't want steak, just give me the beef!"

Server at this points makes the Barbacoa because she has been quite adamant about not wanting the steak.

At the cash register.

BBSDSSM: "Wait! What is this?!? I wanted the beef!"

Cashier: "Its barbacoa, it is beef."

BBSDSSM: "I don't want that! Its too spicy! Give me the beef."

Cashier: "The only other beef when have is the steak, steak is beef."

BBSDSSM: "Fine give me that."

They then proceed to throw away the Barbacoa tacos and make three steak tacos.

The truly sad thing is that she had kids.

[Musings] 9pm

Its 9pm, I am sitting in the library, good music (The Current), my fish (koi) floating behind me, my warm purring kitty beside me, life isn't so bad.

[Tech] del.icio.us update

del.icio.us, the social bookmarking service has updated their system by popular demand to now allow you to not share bookmarks. This is a nice feature because I have some links at work, for work stuff that I would like to have accessible via something like del.icio.us, but not publically visible.

I am hoping their next step is (and if the tech speaker from Yahoo I saw at LISA is any indication, this is coming since Yahoo acquired del.icio.us) to allow you to setup a community or a friends list, so only certain bookmarks will be shown to select others. So you would have 3 levels of sharing, public, friends, private. That would rock.

[TV] South Park

Scientologist episode. Enjoy, someone posted this to YouTube.




(PS I had a small ethical dilema posting this embed as technically South Park is a copyrighted work, I did not upload this, I am merely providing a link to someplace where it was uploaded by someone else, this is being used without permission of the original content creators, Trey and Matt, and was linked via YouTube)

[Movie] V for Vendetta

Overall rating: B+

Synopsis: In a not so implausible future facist England one man seeks revenge and to free society from the bonds of imprisionment. There is also a quasi-love story.

Pros: Very interesting story. The future feels based off of dark future extrapolations of our present situation. It basically outlines the 20 years following the Iraq War, where America is undergoing a 2nd Civil War and has become a 3rd World nation, England, in response to fear has become a tightly controlled facist state run by the religious zealots of the Conservative Party. Secret Police (Fingermen) enforce morality and curfew. I can see this world if I think about it a little. The underlying metaphor seemed to me to be 'irrational fear leads to enslavement, free yourself from the tyranny of fear and restore reason.'

Cons: The love story. Natile Portman actually did a good job acting, but the love story felt tacked in. A co-worker says that American audiences cannot like a film unless there is a love story in there. I think the movie would have been an A, if they had removed the love story. It didn't really provide anything but awkward dialogue.

I would recommend seeing this movie.

[Musings] Diet Update

Or rather lack thereof, been terrible about the diet. I've overcompensated to the lack of calories badly, I thought I was rolling back slowly enough (trying to reduce daily calorie intake by roughly 20%), but I think I went to fast, I started having hunger. It also has helped I've been under various stresses lately so the stress response eating has been in full effect where I want comfort foods.

Seriously contemplating going partial vegetarian like nerdwife, but I can't give up sushi.

Going to try again.

[Word] Crapulous

Word of the Day for Saturday March 11, 2006

crapulous \KRAP-yuh-lus\, adjective:
1. Suffering the effects of, or derived from, or suggestive of
gross intemperance, especially in drinking; as, a crapulous
stomach.
2. Marked by gross intemperance, especially in drinking; as, a
crapulous old [1]reprobate.

These were the dregs of their celebratory party: the
half-filled glasses, the cold beans and herring, the shouts
and smells of the crapulous strangers hemming them in on
every side, the dead rinsed-out April night and the rain
drooling down the windows.
-- T. Coraghessan Boyle, [2]Riven Rock

The crapulous life which her future successor led.
-- Lord Brougham, Historical Sketches of Statesmen in the
Time of George III

The new money was spent in so much riotous living, and from
end to end there settled on the country a mood of fretful,
crapulous irritation.
-- Stephen McKenna, Sonia
_________________________________________________________

Crapulous is from Late Latin crapulosus, from Latin crapula,
from Greek kraipale, drunkenness and its consequences, nausea,
sickness, and headache.

Nerdwife sent me this. Wow, for years who knew I was using a real word!

[Culinary] Recipe for strangest dreams ever?

For one week, get very little sleep and go to work before 6am each day. Thursday, get food poisoning. Shake well. Friday evening, consume small to moderate helping junk food; view "Annie Hall" followed by "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"; add one glass of port (ice optional) and eight chapters of "Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" (H. Murakami). Rest for 8 hours.
Yield: Who needs drugs when you have dreams like these? Holy shit. Try it and see! Share it with your friends!

[Tech] Frappr

CubeZoo now has a frappr link. If you feel like it, link yourself and show me where you are.

[Musings] Time for a change

At around 13:00 today I had to take a walk. I had to step away from work for a while, a morning of problems, missed meetings, and pointless plans. I took a walk by myself and had lunch at 'Jimmy John's' a sub shop that I like better than the other franchise sub shops. While I was sitting, lost in thought, and only marginally listening to two businessmen in the booth next to me talk about taking trips to Miami and where to find the good escorts (the converstaion ended with 'Remember to bring bail money') I was pondering many things.

1) How storage is allocated on AIX OS disks (allocated in to Physical Partitions, PPs, discrete pieces of space of a certain size, volumes are built by allocating PPs from wherever free on the disk) vs how Solaris does it (8 slices, slice 2 which is untouchable and sices 0, 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, which are defined via cylinders in to set chunks on which the file systems are built). I was evaluating the pros and cons. I like the AIX way better as it allows for more flexibility, it is a pity that I do not like the AIX OS. If only you could merge the Solaris OS with the AIX LVM.

2) AllThingsSpring is really right, the two dominant parties are just different faces of Janus. They are both racing to the 'middle' which means nothing really. There really isn't much to differeniate them, other than the Republicans have on their half of the spectrum the fanatical evangelical christians, while the left (although not for much longer) have the liberal secular eco-fanatics. But the Democrats haven't realized it yet that they have last the far left side of their party because they try to be too centrist in a vain attempt to win elections against the Republicans. Being a centrist isn't going to win elections anymore, you just end up looking wishy-washy. Democrats, if they want to regain power need to quit going to the center and start making strong stances on issues AND more importantly start challenging their opponents. This also means they have to form a concise message and stick with it, even if the polls go south. I wish I knew a way to trump the GOP's 'fear factor' that they whip out early and flog often. The left needs to understand that no amount of logic or reasoning can counter that, and countering is damn hard. I wish I had the answer to this.

3) The US Patriot Act was renewed, almost unchanged. What happened to the uproar over this? What happened to the promise of investigation and the reworking to protect civil liberties?

4) Instead of investigating the White House on allegations of illegal spying, the GOP controlled Intelligence committee and the Judiciary decided it would be better to not investigate and instead draft legislation to make it legal.

#s 3 and 4 are why we need a shake up in gov't. Unforunately there is usually very little turn over and it is impossible almost to dislodge incumbents, especially after the last round of Gerrimandering, where lines were redrawn to ensure incumbent wins.

I am so glad the mainstream media isn't reporting any of this, we are being screwed but no one knows because our sources of news are corporate owned.

I was happy to hear the independent movie making is on the rise, George Lucas after the Oscar's predicted film is dead. I say about time the old Hollywood dies.

[Politics] Civic duty fufilled, faith in democracy renewed

Just got back from my precinct caucus (Ward 2 Precinct 2, CD 30). I feel invigorated and re-enfrancised. Caucuses are grass roots. It is the people's voice. I am DFL and here is my story.

Resolutions proposed:

Encourage DFL Congressional endorsed/serving members to increase the gas tax to pay for transportation infrastructure - passed (not unopposed, good issues regarding how a gas tax is a regressive tax were raised, the person bringing forth this resolution did it because if we do not fix our transportation funding in this state, we will lose federal funding, and then suckage will begin)

Troops serving in Iraq to be withdrawn as soon as possible in whichever way is safest - unopposed adoption.

Public education to be fully funded - adopted, dissenters were silent (I support public education, but feel programs like 'No Child Left Behind' are wrong)

Oppose any legislation that would amend the MN Constitution to prevent the marriage of or civil union of or interfere with the rights and legal protections of same-sex couples - unanimously adopted. I was shocked, its not that Rochester is homophobic, but they are not as tolerated as in the Cities, I was pleased to see this.

Discontinue 'Project Columbia' and mandate oversight of funding to the Columbian military be judged based on State Department human rights guidelines such that any military or government group engaging in or colloborating with groups that utilize scare and terror tactics be stripped of funding - unanimously adopted...holy shit...this was awesome! About time we do a little human rights oversight on our funding to the Columbian military, Columbia is one of the riskiest countries to be a labor rights leader. Basically this resolution boils down to 'discontinue funding Columbian right-wing death squads'.

I was elected a delegate to the county and congressional district. We could only fill 20 of 24 seats however. My Ward is about 1600 people, and only 49 appeared at the caucus, so not a great turnout, but others have commented that is was better than years past and good for a mid-term election year.

[Politics] MN Precinct Caucuses

Tonight, 7pm, GO! It is your civic duty.

In this time of war, scandal, infringment on civil liberites, and corporate favoritism, it is time to remind the lawmakers that this is a gov't of the people, by the people, for the people. Who cares if it is a mid-term election? Local politics are equally, if not more, important that federal politics. If you only vote every 4 years and only vote for whomever will win, then shame on you, you are worse than those who never vote. Being an active member of our society means paying taxes AND being a member of the body politic, that is VOTE! In Minnesota, Caucuses are the first step in that process.

Go to your party's caucus. Get involved.

[Video Game] Master of Orion 3

Category: 4X (expand, explorer, expense?, exterminate) stratedgy
Rating: whatever
Year of Release: 2003
Suck Factor: 6/10 (1=suckiest suck that ever sucked, 10=no suckage)


Synopsis: Set in the Master of Orion franchise universe your goal is to win, either by military might, economic pwnership, or diplomatic conquest.

Pluses:
- variety of races
- macromanagement approach to empire and combat management
- high replayability
- loyal fan base that continues with mods and patches to fix the game at the game's forum

Minuses:
- game was only half-finished when it was released. See my next point.
- Infogrames tanked. They rushed this game out the door, in what I feel was an effort to attempt to get some cash-flow. They went under and Atari bought them, Atari then promptly dropped this game because it was not a money maker, because it was released too early, catch-22.
- last offical patch was v1.25, which fixed a LOT of problems, but quite a few remain. Serious ones like your bank account going from +alot to -alot suddenly. A lot of typos and weird text, which if you suspend belief adds to aliens trying to communicate in non-native tongues, until you meet someone else of your kind, they it is just sad. The fan community has released a couple of mods and patches that fix the game a lot and add to the experience.
- if you are a micromanagement freak, this is not for you, you guide the game via policies and dictates, your AI viceroys, generals and Admirals run the show, you direct them. You can override them, but they are not bad.
- the AI enemies seem to be able to out build, out colonize, and kick your ass, even on easy. Some of it just takes getting used to, which leads to my next minus
- steep learning curve, you will fail a lot at first, but give the game some time


I am a HUGE MoO fan. I bought this game the day it came out (actually had a pre-order). I played it for about 16 hours and shelved it, for 3 years, until recently when I had a need to play a good stratedgy game. I gave it a second go, patched to v1.25 and applied the fan supported 'Vanilla' patch, which fixes game play issues, but not the UI (I like the UI). It was like night and day. I really like the game now, much better, but issues do remain.

That said, I like this game better than any of the other 4X games that have come out in the last 3 years. GalCiv II was ok, but the dialogue sucks and I find some of the UI annoying. O.R.B. looked REALLY good, but the linear game play sucks, which was the same problem I had with Iron Hegemony (which was also ok, but not great, multi-player made it above average). MoO3 is open ended, you choose your path. I am not a big fan of Homeworld, it had good graphics and the UI was unique, but again, fairly linear, but the mods help with the replayability. I stay away from the Civilization franchise because I just don't find it that interesting. I played Civ I and Civ II, but I like the interstellar aspect of MoO and the fantasy aspect of Masters of Magic (MoM) which was another AWESOME 4X game.

So overall I give MoO3 (v1.25 + Vanilla patch) a A-/B+. But I am sure others will argue with me. I value things like storyline, replayability, uniqueness and freedom in games far more over flashy graphics and soundtrack (I turn the music off in almost every game I play), much like with how I like my movies and TV, characters and story over special affects. GET A FUCKING HINT Hollywood and you too games industry.

Unfortunately I see the death of PC gaming on the horizon. Best Buy's PC games department has shurnk to about a third of what it was even just last year, which the Xbox, playstation and PSP sections have tripled. Which is sad, a lot of console games are lame, poorly designed, short and severely lacking in the story department.

[Musings] How the day is going so far...and its only 8am

Got up a lot earlier than usual.

Got into work and my workstation was at the root login prompt, /var was fucked totally, 20 minutes of fsck and I finally gave up, in the process of rebuilding now.

blogger is being flaky.

This server is currently experiencing a problem. An engineer has been notified and will investigate.

Status code: 1-500-11

It is now 08:08.

Update: corporate email is down as well and has been since 9pm, the *nix team does not take care of it (exchange servers) but it is still making our life hell since every app group here use email for monitoring. It is now 09:17.

Update: workstation fixed and most of my software restored, thankfully I use my laptop as the authoritative source and have multiple copies of various things in multiple locations and keep it updated frequently. Work email still dead, but it provides a strange tranquility. It is now 14:11.

Observation: some pop-ups still get through firefox's pop-up blocker, I wonder if a site can 'buffer overflow' the pop-up blocker so to speak until one gets through.

[Music] 'Huddle Formation' by The Go! Team

So originally I thought the lyrics on the various internet sites were wrong. But when I saw this video (I think it is by a fan, not the band...) I changed my mind, this version does sound like the lyrics posted below.

This from http://www.lyricsdir.com/the-go-team-huddle-formation-lyrics.html

standing on the board
board is on the wheels
wheels are on the ground
spinning round and round

I could swear it is closer to this:

banging on the floor
so we can feel the beat
shut that off
so we can all sing

But again, I am only going off what I can discern from what I hear on the album. It is very difficult to tell because the song is a mix of various genres.

update

from the go-team message board thread titled 'Huddle formation sourced':

Go check 'Skateboard song' by Norma Tracy and the Cinderella Kids compiled on Girls in the Garage Vol. 8 for the chorus of Huddle Formation (original version).

So I did some digging, here are the lyrics to the 'Skateboard Song', Norma Tracy and the Cinderella Kids were a band in the 1960s and this song is frequently credited as the first skateboard related song. Unfortunately I was unable to un-earth original lyrics, this group was pretty obscure. I still do not think the lyrics I found are 100%, but I guess they are close.

[Fascism] USA PATRIOT Act renewed

The U.S. Senate has seen fit to offer us a second helping of turd on a plate. Eat up, America!

Here's who voted against it:

Akaka (D-HI), Nay
Bingaman (D-NM), Nay
Byrd (D-WV), Nay
Feingold (D-WI), Nay
Leahy (D-VT), Nay
Levin (D-MI), Nay
Harkin (D-IA), Nay
Jeffords (I-VT), Nay
Murray (D-WA), Nay
Wyden (D-OR), Nay

Inouye (D-HI), Not Voting


I do not see a single Republican on that list. I do not see a hell of a lot more democrats who should know better.

I need a drink.

[Newsflash] Lack of blog posts due to general suckage

Routers: The undersecretary of nerdful affairs for the U.N. today reported that lack of recent updates on the blog 'CubeZoo' was due to an increase in general suckage on various fronts. When Routers consulted a Scientiatan Dr. Grabius Phelterbottum, a brain-dude at the Rochester Education and Technology Advanced Research Diatribe he responded with 'Um'.

GeistX was not available for comment.

[Money]...or lack thereof.

The Federal Reserve has released a report (but good luck finding the exact one, I was lost in cross-link hell) that shows decline in the average American's income between 2001 to 2004. Something that contrasts sharply with Bush's rose colored glasses view put forth in the State of the Union address last month.

To quote Tim Grieve from salon.com:

Of course, income averages tell only part of the economic story. Some of the other numbers are worse, and they suggest that the rich-getting-richer, poor-getting-poorer dynamic is alive and well in America today. For the poorest 20 percent of America's families, the Fed says, median net worth dropped 11 percent, to $7,500, between 2001 and 2004. For the richest 10 percent, it rose by a respectable 4 percent, to $924,100.

[Work] Holy crap its late

Or rather early. 2 hour changed turned into all night. 22 hours since I last slept. Looking forward to bed.

[War] Some reflection...

"I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators." - Dick Cheney, March 16, 2003.

Looks like we've liberated them, alright...

Unintended consequences are a bitch. Muslim internecine civil war is probably inevitable. Maybe next time you'll consider living in the 'reality based community' instead of thinking that you can just craft reality to your own liking. Manipulation, corruption, cronyism, and military force are only earning you quagmire and blowback.

Then again, perhaps we get what we deserve when we allow the election of a puppeteer of the American Presidency who gets drunk with his mistress in Texas and shoots one of his supporters with a shotgun in the face.

[Politics] South Dakota Abortion Ban

Has passed the SD State Senate. This is the one out of all the current abortion laws being passed in various states that will be the final showdown for Roe v Wade in the SCOTUS.

[WTFcopter] Japan to ban the sale of 2nd hand goods?!?

Story here and here.

from the story:

So from April 1st 2006, ALL electronic products sold in Japan before 2001 will be prohibited from the 2nd hand market!

Consumerism out of control. This tops what the RIAA/MPAA is doing, holy shit, blows the mind.

[Picture] "I'm a War President"

Laughed so hard I almost spilled my tea.

But on a more serious note, this picture came from this blog post by Joshua Holland. I recommend reading it as I found it to be enlightening. This issue is about trade, not terrorism or security. Port operations, not port secruity. If we did hold these companies responsible in the event of a failure of security, it would be scapegoating for the Department of Homeland Security, who is ultimately responsible for port security. It is DHS' responsibility to check containers and cargo manifests.

That being said, how Bush is going about it is wrong, and ultimately does not help the average citizen, only corporations. I would like to see this open a discourse about how lots and lots of money are being spent on 'Homeland Security' but very little of what is being spent is actually benefit or making America safer (such as increasing US Custom's ability to inspect containers). Things that will make us safer are little things, like locking the doors to the cockpit, inspecting containers, educating people, not further eroding civil liberties, fighting unjust wars, unilaterialism, and scaring the populace into a facist state.

What we're reading

Recently completed and highly recommended:
Italo Calvino, Cosmicomics :Anthropomorphized astral detritis tells the story of the origin of the cosmos. Trippy and engaging.
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities: As Marco Polo describes the world to Kublai Khan, it becomes apparent that Polo has only ever been to one place.
Jose Saramago, Blindness: Vision helps to maintain our connection as a society to each other and our individual selves. What would happen if we were all blind? This book deserved the Nobel Prize it won.

In progress, perhaps more comments later:
Umberto Eco, On Literature (for the philosopher-critic in all of us)
Paul Auster, City of Glass (too new to comment)
(Many authors) Neurobiology of the Neurotrophins (NOT recommended)
John Searle, Consciousness and Language (tentatively recommended)

Currently running alarmingly low on books to read, but have luckily been swamped with coursework and experiments. Thank God I'm in graduate school.

[GIMP'd] Baby Ferret Pirates of the Green Sea

baby_ferret_pirates2
Originally uploaded by Geist.X.

Yarrr!


I gimp'd this image of baby ferret's for one of Nerdwife's neuroscience presentations. The concept comes from a study where scientists would put eye patches over the eyes of baby ferrets to test and demonstrate monocular deprivation and cortical plasticity.

Naturally, if they have eye patches, they must be pirates.

Here was the original image:

[Politics] Hamas, Israel, the US and a clown

The clown is Bush, of course (and is used just for effect).

I don't get it, well I do, but it still doesn't seem right. We pressure Palestine to have elections, they do, the people elect freely (according the UN inspectors) the gov't they want. This gov't is not what Israel wants, because the party elected into power wants the destruction of Israel. The US cries foul (because they elected a group we didn't want, terrorists as Bush says) and now will not recognize them.

WTF people. We called for free elections, they elected the gov't they want, cope. Yes Hamas has in its charter the destruction of Israel, but they have shown a willingness to come to the table and be a responsible gov't, its too early to condemn them.

In our global crusade on the 'War on Terror' we (and by we I really mean the Bush Administration) has called for the spread of freedom and democracy (which is a good thing, but needs to be done properly). Democracy is starting to spread, we can't immediately turn around and then condemn people when they hold elections and elect a gov't or leader we don't like, it is sending a conflicting and bad message. If the UN inspectors deem the election fair, then it should stand, we must re-learn how to work with other countries.

Condemning free elections (which in recent cases have been more open and cleaner than America's last two Presidential elections) is as bad as supporting vicious dictators (speaking of which I still can't get over that Saddam Hussein's defense lawyer is a former Secretary of State).

[Comics] Dilbert makes a point about oil

Sunday's Dilbert cartoon (this image linked from news.yahoo.com) has Dogbert making a valid point.

[Answer?] Cheney on CNN

Transcript of Cheney's interview on CNN.

Still evil. But at least he regrets shooting the guy. Interview feels a bit soft, but oh well.

[Question] Aboveness of lawitude

If Harry Whittington dies of another heart attack (perish the thought) related to the buckshot embedded in his cardiac tissue by Dick Cheney, will the Texas police charge the vice president with manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide? Discuss.

[Politics/Tech/Profit] Ghost of Internet Future

Great absurdist dialogue here about a battle over the Internet. Basically telco and cable providers like Verizon and Comcast want to charge both subscribers and content providers for bandwidth. Basically this to me seems like biting the hand that feeds you as content providers are the ones who create demand for broadband, which consumers buy (at a pretty expensive rate) from the telcos. When big companies fight over stuff like this, we all lose. Whoever has the best lawyers and most lobbiest win, consumers lose (but believe they win), society takes another step back.

All hail the mighty dollar, destroyer of worlds, virtual and real.

[Music] Busting my chops...aka learning the bass guitar, year 12

I've been interested in playing the bass guitar since 1993. I have had many false starts and even purchased an amp (which I later donated to a starving bassist I knew who lost his). I had a bass given to me by a friend who no longer wanted it, it needed a lot of work, so it sat in my closet for many years. Nerdwife for my 30th birthday surprised me with it, she had taken it and had it fixed. There are some things that cannot be completely fixed, but it is in playable and more importantly learnable condition.

I have taken the plunge finally and am starting to learn. It is hard, I have zero musical talent. I am learning everything from scratch. People say music is easy because its math, but I still haven't been able to wrap my mathematical mind about music. I understand the basic theory mind you, it all fractions and such. But I have always been analytical, not creative. Creation of things like stories, poetry and especially music was hard for me. I saw everything in terms of math and science. As I've aged I've started seeing things more philosophically, and artistically. I have an artist in me crying to get out, but that artist is an infant. I need to nurture him.

Learning music is hard.

[DVD] Electric Company 4-disc set

Holy crap! Gen-X flashback!

http://www.shoutfactory.com/av/electric_co/ElectricCo_trailer.mov

[Tech] Anticipation

We installed our first 10Gb ethernet card. I am anxious to see how it will perform.

[Musings] Its 1am, do I know where I am?

I am having problems getting to sleep. I was tired, but now I am awake, sort of tired, but not really. I decided to occupy myself by doing some work. I am currently attempting to load Solaris 9 9/05 into our JET (Jumpstart Enterprise Toolkit) server. I am having NFS issues, I think because of the primary network interface on the JET server. I have switched to an alternate gigE interface and the NFS time out errors seem to have gone away. I set up a static route on the JET server to my workstation that is forcing it to send packets out a faster, more reliable network.

I was also a little worried because I was getting these errors on my solaris 10 workstation (where I am sharing out my DVD-ROM to the JET server so I can load the image remotely):

Feb 9 00:55:56 workstation scsi: [ID 107833 kern.warning] WARNING: /pci@1e,600000/ide@d/sd@2,0 (sd3):
Feb 9 00:55:56 workstation Error for Command: read(10) Error Level: Retryable
Feb 9 00:55:56 workstation scsi: [ID 107833 kern.notice] Requested Block: 1176 Error Block: 1176
Feb 9 00:55:56 workstation scsi: [ID 107833 kern.notice] Vendor: TOSHIBA Serial Number: 12/15/03
Feb 9 00:55:56 workstation scsi: [ID 107833 kern.notice] Sense Key: Not Ready
Feb 9 00:55:56 workstation scsi: [ID 107833 kern.notice] ASC: 0x4 (LUN is becoming ready), ASCQ: 0x1, FRU: 0x0

(hostnames have been changed to protect me in case my boss is reading)

The errors worried me at first until I realized it was just from my DVD-ROM spinning up.

I inherited this JET environment from the previous Sys Admin regime at work and it has never been quite right. I would like to eventually burn it to the ground and rebuild from scratch. But this is not an option at this time due to the high and constant pressure to get systems built and into production (our workload is only a year behind, which is good, when I started a year ago, it was 3 years behind).

Now the damn twirler (what I call the /-\| spinner sequence) is taking a LOOOOONG time to comeback. It is stuck

Copying Solaris image....
Verifying target directory...
Calculating the required disk space for the Solaris_9 product
|

I let it run like this two hours last time and it should only take a few minutes. I wonder if the issue is because I made have a flaky DVD-ROM, or possibly issues with the DVD-R that the image is burned on to (SUN rarely ships product media anymore, you have to download it and burn it yourself), as we have had problems with certain DVD-ROMs reading media.

Its been 20 minutes...still spinning...YES! It is now showing what I have been waiting for:

Copying the CD image to disk...
-

Now I hope it finishes before backups run at 3am and destroy any network bandwidth I had.

Hot tea has not helped me get back to sleep or even get drowsy. I keep processing the mental to-do list of things I have to do for work. Things keep popping in and out of the list. I am having a mental buffer overflow, I have at least 20 major, complex projects I need to be working on. Two of which I know can drop off due to age. About six are high priority should have been done a year ago. Four are new mission-critical issues. About a million are infrastructre/interest projects that I want to implement or help to implement but customer project work keeps me from them.

Progress is being made, just slowly.

Tea is finally starting kick in as is the relief this thing is finally copying. I need to get this thing installed because we have a couple of new Sunfire E25k domains that are running the Ultra-Sparc IV+ (US-IV+) procs which require Solaris 9 9/05 (Update 8) or higher. Our previous Solaris 9 standard was Solaris 9 9/04.

Tomorrow it is time to patch my Solaris 10 workstation to our latest patch bundle level (November 2005). Hope I don't h0rk anything like I did when I first patched it using the Solaris updatemanager (it still has a few bugs that need to be ironed out). I will be applying these patches via the cluster install method, so I think I should be ok.

Final note to self...run 'add_solaris_location' in the morning to finalize the load.

[Politics] No Luv 4 Google, Feb 14th

Support Students for a Free Tibet and do not use Google on Feb 14th.

(Yes I know blogspot is owned by Google, that is why I am blogging it now and not on 2/14)

I use www.google.com is a lifeline at work, I use gmail as a primary email client, and I was PISSED to hear about what happened with http://www.google.cn, I thought Google was better than that. They didn't cave against the people who screamed when they started uploading books, but somehow China can make them change.

I know, I know, we have very little power to change a corporation when boatloads of $$$ are involved, but I would rather try and fail (like with Target) than to have not tried at all.

[Humor/Sad/True/Politics] AG Gonazeles Testimony Translated

Click here to have his testimony translated.

excerpt:

GONZALES: While the president approved this program to respond to the new threats against us, he also imposed several important safeguards to protect the privacy and the civil liberties of all Americans. . . . As the president has said, if you're talking with Al Qaida, we want to know what you're saying.

TRANSLATION: If you’ve got nothing to hide, then there should be no problem with us listening to you. If you’ve got something to hide, then . . . well . . . we should listen to you.

[Musings] Pain and Darkness

Starting a new diet today. I am fat, well technically obese. I am otherwise healthy (physically). My new diet, some of which I have already started, is based off of the fact that my most unhealthy eating is during the day at work. I work with all things *NIX. It means I sit...a lot. Since starting my new life I have become more active, and walk a lot more, but I am still eating crappy and I am not losing my weight. In January I joined the gym at work, because it is only $5/month. I have been trying (except for when I hurt my back and even walking was painful) to go at least 3 days a week and at least 1 weekend day. I have switched from sugared coca-cola to diet coke. And still the pounds have not gone off. Since I have started exercising regularly, and cut most sugar out of my life, it must be what I eat. So here is my new diet plan:

Monday - lunch: sandwich, diet cola
Tuesday - lunch: salad, no dressing, diet cola
Wednesday - lunch: sandwich or soup, diet cola
Thursday - lunch: salad, no dressing, diet cola
Friday - lunch: sandwich, diet cola
Saturday - free menu, 1/2 portions
Sunday - free menu, 1/2 portions

I want to ease into this, all my past dieting attempts have been cold turkey and that is why they failed.

There is not much else I can cut out, I have drastically (but not elminiated) meat consumption, I eat bread, and that is a weakness of mine, but I despise the Atkin's diet and think it is dangerously unhealthy. Pizza is a problem, and one I am addressing.

My goal is not so much weight based (20-40lbs would be nice), but rather that I would like to fit into pants two sizes smaller than I am wearing now.

[Politics] Typical Bush

An article here about what Bush said is not what he meant in his State of the Union address.

From the article:

One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.

[Photo] Bush State of the Union Pose

Self-righteous ass.