So here's a question. Is it coincidence that Strom Thurmond died the same day that the Supreme Court made it impossible to outlaw gay sex? Sure, Strom was bound to go any day now, but did this perhaps kick him over the edge?

I'm afraid I haven't been posting much lately. First of all, no one reads this site. That's due to the lack of a Google-searchable site. Two, I've been busy at work, and I get most of my blogging done at work. Thirdly, the Liberals are losing. We've run out of things to say, and no one is listening.

Yeah, I read that book that Alex gave me in the book exchange. Just because I don't support a war or tax cuts for the wealthy doesn't make me a communist. I want a free market system; I just think it needs to be managed so it remains free.

But while the Liberals will always be the intellectuals who want to think about the best way to handle stuff, the Conservatives will have the unified, folksy "power to the people" message that most Americans will always understand. Maybe that's why Republicans don't want to fund education -- too many smart people and the populace will get wise to their bullshit.

So posts will be sporadic. I'm still angry -- very angry -- but I do have a life to live. Before all the jobs are gone and the poor rise up to defeat the rich and Americans have to stand in line for bread, I have to enjoy life as much as I possibly can, doing my job, learning in school, and lusting over new computers.

But I will leave you today with this excellent biography of Dubya from Rotten.com. Normally, they are purveyors of conspiracy theories and corpse photos, and the bio is pretty short on sources, and most of it is nothing we haven't heard before. Too bad it's the truth.

So far, so good. Remember -- if the media is so damn liberal, why would Republicans support allowing the most powerful media corporations to extend their reach?

Posting has been light lately, like you really care. This may become a weekly column, but no one is reading this. However, I think it's due to the iframe design and the register.com frame at the bottom -- Google can't search this site. If my site could be spidered by search engines, more people may come for a visit. I'm still going the cost analysis on buying web space, but I'm just not sure how much I need or how much bandwidth to buy. I'll keep myself posted.

Until I can afford that Macintosh, I'll have to suffice with making my computer at work look like OS X.

"... hanging out with Radiohead is kind of like getting high with a bunch of librarians."

Though I had heard the MP3s of Hail to the Thief that were floating around before the album came out on Tuesday, I hadn't listened to it until last night. I'm biased, I know -- I adore Radiohead. I even think Pablo Honey is a vastly underrated pop album. ("Stop Whispering"? C'mon, people, that's a damn powerful song.) Hail to the Thief is an amazing album, on the same intense, creative, boundary-pushing level that everything else they've done is on. If you put a gun to my head and made me choose between the new album and OK Computer, I'd be dead. And you can really tell the difference between the pre-release MP3s and the album -- the mix is different, the vocals are sharper, and the stereo swims through your head. Radiohead, despite writing amazing songs, are a studio band, with Nigel Godrich acting as the band's Sir George Martin, so you shouldn't listen to anything but their band-sanctioned studio output.

I will say this about the new album over OK Computer. If you've never heard Radiohead or always hated them even though you've never really listened to them (like my girlfriend -- sorry, Jen, there are better songs than Pearl Jam's "Black" -- much better songs), I'd give you Hail to the Thief to listen to. For one thing, the conflict is much more palpable -- every song has a discernable villian. Whether the villian is personified in first person ("Sit Down. Stand Up.", "We Suck Young Blood") or third person ("A Punchup at a Wedding"), or the villian is described in abstract with oblique yet heartfelt poetry ("I Will"), there's more for an uninitiated fan to understand. It speaks to the directness with which Thom Yorke, a vocal opponent to the war in Iraq, needs to respond to the world around him.

The songs also have more hooks. OK Computer is an album about isolation and lonliness, so most of the music is necessarily distant. Hail to the Thief is angry as all get out, and it's an anger that reaches out of the speakers and grabs you. It throttles you, it fuels your own anger, and it even makes you want to cry at how hopeless being angry really is. Hail to the Thief gets your attention, even if you haven't been paying attention. (Wry smile.)

Speaking of which, the album is not overtly political -- they deny the album's title is directly related to the 2000 election -- and yet Radiohead have inadvertently written one of the greatest protest albums ever. However, the protest is not "1, 2, 3, what are we fighting for?" The protest is against you and I, as in "2 + 2 =5", "It's too late now/BECAUSE YOU HAVE NOT BEEN PAYING ATTENTION."

I command you to purchase (not download) Hail to the Thief. If you can get the special edition which comes with super-cool packaging, get that -- it has a lyrics sheet. Radiohead is still the best band producing music right now, taking the rock genre into directions no one else is doing, marrying old and new techniques seamlessly, and recording the sort of timeless albums that most record executives simply don't know how even to describe.

Science Article #10
Hydrogen Fuel Cells May Hurt Ozone

That's the ten I needed for my paper, which is due tomorrow. I have a feeling the paper is going to be on hydrogen power and what a hydrogen-based economy will do for the world.

My buddy D.J. sent me the above article. He's a strong proponent of ethanol, made from corn or wood. Basically, it's moonshine. Despite what D.J. told me on his porch Monday night, the truth is that currently manufactured cars cannot run on pure ethanol. Cars can run, however, on a blend of ethanol and gasoline. Some cars, called FFVs, even run on E85, in which the ethanol is 85% of the blend. And of course, if Ford tomorrow says here's a car that will run on 100% pure ethanol, I would applaud them. I will also look forward to seeing alcoholics going to gas stations and drinking straight from the tank until they go blind. That'll be funny.

The problem with ethanol is the increased farming needs. Yes, farmers need more crops, and the additional corn production would theoretically eat up all of the carbon dioxide released by ethanol combustion. However, with urban sprawl increasing exponentially, farm land may decrease. Where will we grow all of this additional corn? The middle east? They might have the soil to do it in the more fertile parts of Iraq (it was the Fertile Crescent back in the day) -- I don't think we invaded that country to turn it into corn fields. The only way to make ethanol a viable solution is somehow to reduce the rate at which population is increasing. With the entirely political, not-in-the-least medical partial-birth abortion ban, I doubt the US is planning to limit the number of children Americans can have (not that I'm advocating that, either).

Since hydrogen is easily produced in smaller areas than corn is, since a hydrogen-powered car can actually produce some of its own hydrogen to reuse, and since it's a new techology that will require new jobs, new training, and new science, I'm still wagering that the change to a hydrogen-based economy will be the most significant change in sociopolitical culture since the Industrial Revolution.

Science Article #9
160,000-year-old Fossilized Skulls From Ethiopia Are Oldest Modern Humans

Science Article #8
Fuel cell and hydrogen economy a real possibility

Science Article #7
Nanotechnology

Science Article #6:
The Plasma Valve

The term "partial birth abortion" is a political term, not a medical term. The truth is, every abortion can be categorized as a "partial birth". It's no wonder abortion rights advocates are scared shitless of the ‘Partial birth’ abortion ban passing the House and Senate. The bill defines "partial birth" as "the overt act, other than completion of delivery, that kills the partially delivered living fetus".

Both sides of the issue present differing statistics about how many of these dialation-and-extractions, as they are medically called, are performed. If the right-to-lifers are telling the truth, that it's performed all too often when the mother and the child are healthy, then maybe it isn't such a bad idea. Don't get me wrong, I'll argue for a woman's right to choose for my natural born days. If, however, a child can live outside of the mother's body and an abortion involves actually puncturing the child's head to kill it first, well, yuck. I find it hard to believe, however, that any self-respecting doctor would actually perform this sort of procedure unless the child is completely deformed. I'd be totally okay with a bill that makes it illegal to abort a child that is completely viable, as Reps. Hoyer and Greenwood proposed, but that was shot down handily, obviously because it's too specific and can't be expanded in the future to abort abortion protections outright.

The bill does provide an out if the life -- not the health -- of the mother is in danger. Not the health because, as right-to-lifers say, that could be ruled by a doctor as mental health, and as all Bible thumpers know, there is no such thing as mental illness -- there is sinful thought and sinful behavior and only the Lord Jesus Christ can deliver you from those... right? Actually, as a person diagnosed with clinical depression who battles with demons (double entendre intended) every day, I know first hand how debilitating mental illness can be, and to use mental health as the argument for not prohibiting these "partial birth" abortions is an insult to the entire medical profession.

The world needs abortion. If you don't want a child, you shouldn't have it. There are too many people on this planet already, draining its resources. Organizations like Planned Parenthood provide abortions but also council on using contraceptives -- the name is slightly doublespeak, sure, but parenthood should be wanted, if not planned, and if you don't want a child, don't have it because there's no way you're going to take care of it properly. So exercise your right to choose and have an abortion -- just make sure to do it before the doctor has to puncture its skull in order to do it because that's just gross. Wait to have a baby until you're good and ready -- you'll do yourself and the world a huge favor.

And if a Republican gives you shit for having an abortion, tell him that it's one less deadbeat, unwanted kid the government will have to pay for. You're doing him a favor.

The peasants don't have bread? Let them eat cake. But if the peasants have no water? Could it be said to let them drink wine? Let them drink beer? Let them drink urine?

Actually, it would be let them drink Evian. When the G8 summit can consume enough fancy-ass water to satisfy a human being for 40 years while debating the worldwide shortage of potable water for the poor, it's easy to understand why world leaders are so distrusted.

<satire>I, for one, think this article is a plot by the evil liberal media to make the world's leaders look bad.</satire>

Neal Pollack's response to the FCC deregulation ruling is very funny. To wit:

...An excess of information, if controlled by a excess of providers, inevitably leads to public confusion, followed by free thought and free elections. This can never be healthy for a country fortunate enough to be led by a man sent by God to bring peace and prosperity to all corners of the earth willing to practice abstinence before marriage.

Ah, satire. When done well, it always provides me with a turgid member.

Australian knew Iraq didn't have any WMDs (This article from Australia, a member of the Coalition of the Willing.)

The US twisted UN inspector reports to make it sound like Iraq had WMDs (This article from Britain, a member of the Coalition of the Willing)

The US misrepresented it's own intelligence in making the case against Iraq's WMDs (This article from the United States, King Shit in the Coalition of the Willing)

Am I glad Saddam and his two boys are out of power? Of course. Just as I want to see the human rights violations in North Korea, the Congo, Uzbekistan, and China come to an end, I'm glad the terror the Husseins inflicted on their own people is over. If that's why we went to war, then we deserve the accolades of the world, and perhaps, by example, the other oppressive regimes in the world will feel threatened by the Bush Administration's iron hammer of justice.

But that's not why we went to war. We went to war because Iraq had WMDs and "stockpiles" of nerve agents and blah-blah-disinformation-blah. The evidence that the administration indeed lied about Iraq's capabilities is growing.

Oh, but we went to war because Iraq supported and/or harbored terrorism. So does Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Uzbekistan, Egypt, the Phillippines, ad nauseum. Are we planning wars with them? (Probably.)

The only "preemption" in the preemptive strike was to show the world we aren't going to be screwed around. Thus, we decimated the one evil regime that (a) we could lay claim to and (b) we knew we could take. Hard to believe it's called the Department of Defense -- there was nothing defensive about it.

So to all the Ann Coulters and Joe Scarboroughs and Bill O'Reillys and Michael Savages and Sean Sinitskis of the world who now say that those of us who opposed the war are now looking for any excuse to justify ourselves for opposing something that freed a country of an evil dictator, y'all can all suck my ass.

I'm glad the Iraqi people are liberated. In fact, I'm jealous of them because they're getting universal healthcare and gun control, things that you would never stand for here. Liberation, however, is not why we went to Iraq, and the reasons that were used were lies. Apologize for Bush all you want -- he lied.

Clinton lied to Congress. Bush lied to the world. Which do you think is more impeachable?

Now that the FCC is restricting your access to opposing viewpoints and rewarding CEOs, it makes me wonder: If the media is so damn liberal as the Joe Scarboroughs and Ann Coulters of the world want us to think, then why does our Republican government want the media companies to have a larger reach, thus unifying their message?

Let's look at the big four mentioned in the above linked article.

Viacom has the most liberal slant of the bunch, I will not deny. They employ Dan Rather and Gideon Yago. (I've always applauded MTV News as the best part of that network, discussing significant issues to young people in ways that are informative, applicable, and not insulting, even if they have to spend most of their time over-hyping talentless hacks like 50 Cent and Staind.)

General Electric's NBC is pretty damned conservative. Tom Brokaw extoled The Greatest Generation, that generation being old people who fought a war. They are increasingly employing people like Joe Scarborough and Michael Savage. Hell, they hired safe, white-bread Jay Leno over innovative David Letterman (see Viacom).

Disney's ABC News often goes for the stories that criticize our government, no doubt about it. And Disney's pretty well known for having very liberal employee practices pertaining to gay rights. What I'm concerned about with Disney is their persistent smackdown on copyright laws and their litigious history.

And then there's News Corp., owner of Fox. Despite continuing with The Simpsons, a very liberal show, I don't think I have to mention Fox News.

Currently, all the news organizations have given Bush a fairly free ride, not reporting on his less-than-honorable transgressions as stubbornly as they reported on Clinton's. With a vaguely defined war to root for (eerily similar to 1984, as I've noted before), our country will continue to root for him. Loosening media consolidation restrictions ensures that the cheering will be louder and in unison.

Science Article #5:
Gecko Tape