Head Noises

Have You Got a Favorite Wine?

2009-12-14T13:39:00.000-08:00

Oddly, considering I'm not exactly high-falutin', I do... Lexia, by Alice White. From Alice White. Whatever. (Also comes in red.)

Amused me to no end when I told my mom about it and she mentioned "oh, it's sweet and fruity? That's exactly the kind of wine your grandma Toots liked.... (She was diabetic for my entire life, so I didn't even know she had a favored type of wine.)

For an idea of the taste, this is to a crisp fruit juice as Kahlua is to chocolate milk. NOT something you want to offer a kid to taste.

I bring this up because of a neat video here. Well worth the watching.

Also a great argument for "GET GOV'T OUT!!!"-- with alcohol!

History of Kwanzaa

2009-12-13T14:37:00.000-08:00

Cheap and easy post:
Five Feet of Fury has a link-post here.

Short version:
Kwanzaa is a modern "Birth of the Unconquered Son" started in the '60s by a guy with about the same level of basic decency... if that's not too offensive to the ancient Romans.

How Do You Figure?

2009-12-12T02:10:00.000-08:00

Jack Dunphy at Patterico's asks the question:
how much is too much when it comes to your willingness to shell out for movies?

Me, I'm not big on movies. Lord of the Rings, Phantom of the Opera, the first Transformers... other than that, Elf is the prime mover behind our "go and see a movie" choices. (it's a running joke in our house that I had Kit so I'd have an excuse to avoid going to the movies)

Beyond the whole "I don't like counting on a bunch of strangers to be polite and let me enjoy a movie" aspect of going to the movies, I tend to weigh in on not going to movies on a more emotional level. If it had been up to me, we'd have never gone to the GI Joe movie. (not a bad movie-- but it wasn't GI Joe) International team? No Shipwreck? The whole "let's cause massive collateral damage" style of the movie? No, thanks.

I'm increasingly annoyed by the "hip" style of the Harry Potter movies-- not enough to avoid them all, but it's something.

Given that I'm a great worrier (fear the pun!) already, I can't stand movies that are even a little scary-- the *concept* of that demon movie that came out recently has made me wake up scared cruddy a few times-- and I get annoyed by movies that disrespect the dignity of the human body. (In English, that means I don't do gore and needless violence. I can't even take joy in the slow killing of the villain-- my gut says "just kill him, quick and clean." Shoot, I'm still conflicted about The Punisher, and that one had a sense of humor. Needless pain is bad.)

Hm, I seem to have lost the thread of this post...

How Not To Do Customer Service

2009-12-09T09:00:00.010-08:00

A popular, on-line comic buys a booth at your show. One of the most popular web comics for your target demo, at that-- aimed at a group that is none too pleased with you right now.

These people do tons of advertising for your show-- it's involved in advertising their own location, which they paid for ahead of time, but it's a lot of good buzz to an established fan base. People are excited, and it's a tipping point for a lot of them in paying to come to your show.

You, without warning, move their booth on them-- they find out about it when they show up to set up and there's someone else setting up in their pre-paid, advertised location.

Amazingly, it goes down hill from there.

Elf and I aren't going to be going to DragonCon unless they pull their heads out of their orifices and start flying straight.

Honoring the Fallen

2009-12-08T10:08:00.000-08:00

We happened to run into these folks, who came down for those cops.

As the two gentlemen in the elevator said: it's too bad they only get to wear these uniforms when something bad happens.

No Way Will the Movie Measure Up-

2009-12-02T09:18:00.000-08:00

to the cartoon "Avatar: The Last Airbender."

This music video-- fan-made-- shows some of the characterdevelopment of a major villain. (Fits Zuko's story pretty well, too; father issues, refusal to live a lie, attitude, and "I bring the FIRE!")

I just know they're going to use slow-mo to death, and I wouldn't be shocked if they messed up Uncle Iroh. (Sean Connery, if he's able to not take himself seriously, might be able to pull it off...)

The cast is kinda screwy; the only one of the folks I care about that I can "see" managing the role they've been cast in is Sokka, so far. Looks can be overcome if they end up with the right... oh, I don't know how to put it, aura, projection, attitude... but my faith in modern acting is rather lacking.

Oh, and Zuko is supposed to have a top-knot for a very long time-- instead, he has Twilight hair. -.-

I don't have much faith in folks who would mess up that. (It is actually important, symbolically.)

They really should have gone with some form of CGI instead.

Pepe Lobo?

2009-11-30T13:46:00.002-08:00

Name is full of win and awesome.

(Wonder what kind of a rancher he is....)

Semantics

2009-11-29T17:31:00.000-08:00

I can't stand it when folks say "you're just playing semantics" when what they mean is "I do not agree with what you're saying," or "I otherwise disagree with your statement, but am not going to actually offer an argument."

"Playing semantics" means talking about what the words actually mean.

English is wonderful for its shades of meaning-- "kill" vs "murder" vs "execute" vs "assassinate." We may not have as many words for love as ancient Greek, but we can modify the word by adding qualifiers-- "family love," "romantic love," "moral love," "to love like a friend," plus love as in "to like very, very much."
You remember that annoying thing from second grade, where every time anyone used the word "love," some moron would "wittily" say "then why don't you marry it"?

Generally, when someone complains that their opponent is playing with semantics, they themselves are busy commiting the logical fallacy of equivocation at best and are flatly wrong in their statements at worse. Sometimes they're fully aware of the weaknessess, and will be all the more vicious for that fact. (It's just human nature to be upset when your opponent is technically correct, but what they say either sounds bad to you or, while being technically correct, violates an implication you hold but can't support. For a silly example, try calling someone's prize female dog as a "bitch." For a less silly example, look at the abortion debate and watch as folks try to define a fetus as not being an organism, or not being alive, or not being human.)

This story over at American Thinker has a great quote from Confucius, when asked what he'd do if he were in charge:

It would certainly be to correct language. If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant. If what is said is not what is meant, then what ought to be done remains undone. If this remains undone, then morals and acts deteriorate. If morals and acts deteriorate, justice will go astray. If justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence, there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.

Sounds very true to me.

Rom's Case, New Musings and a Contrast

2009-11-27T08:21:00.000-08:00

Taken nearly whole-sale from my comments here.

Another reader, Kcom, drew attention to the other Big Story of this week-- the AGW fraud coming out.

Oddly enough, (8^D) I had previously wondered at the difference in my response to the two stories-- after all, they were both "scientists say something that pisses some people off, and may demand changes being morally needed." Was the difference because I wanted to believe one and not the other? Clearly, the demands of the climate guys would touch my life more than "people diagnosed as 'human vegetables' aren't always."

I think it's instructive to notice the difference between the two cases; the AGW fraud folks make their entire living off of showing that humans are killing us all, and they stand to gain power from their findings being put forth, do not act as though their claims are true (Stop using so much fossil fuels or the world will end! But I'm flying to the AGW conference. In a private jet.) and they release conclusions very quickly to the popular media while trying to control the scientific media to prevent any disagreement.

The folks involved with Rom's case make their living otherwise (although it does seem to be Dr. Laureys' pet theory that those diagnosed with PVS often aren't), stand to gain mostly personal attacks because their theories make "useless eaters" that can be easily dehumanized much harder to dehumanize, act as though they believe their results (My scans show brain activity in the normal range! Get this man to therapy!) and the story didn't show up in the popular media for three years-- after putting out a paper on the topic.

This new article (evil AP! Warning!) makes me more confident in Dr. Laureys' group, since 1) he's acting like the guy is a patient instead of a project ( "How would you like me discussing your IQ on the Internet?") and because their response to attacks on the facilitated communication is to point out that they're working on a study to validate it (this could be bad, unless they've already got all the information and are just writing it up, but I'm willing to offer the benefit of the doubt since they've shown a willingness to test themselves before) and are aware it's controversial.

Oh, and this line is epic:
He refused to discuss it in the media, saying he will follow the classical route of scientific peer reviews and publication in specialized journals before making it public to the world at large.

Of course, there's the other point that I'm biased away from making dire changes in any situation-- not sure the guy is dead? Not "as good as dead," or "has a life not worth living," or "is way more useful if we kill him to save twenty other people who will be able to pay us." Assume they are alive and treat them morally. Don't kill them for ease, emotion or spare parts.

Not sure that there's even long-term warming going on, let alone exactly what is causing it? Then don't force huge, expensive, totalitarian changes that will only work if one of many theories is right, and at best will just slow down disaster while removing our ability to adapt.

Presumption in favor of life and basic rights, basically. Probably related to my not trusting folks with more power than utterly needful. Which would be why I like republic-flavored gov'ts over democracies.... (Two wolves and a sheep, y'know?)

Twenty Three Years Ago-

2009-11-23T10:00:00.000-08:00

what were you up to?

1986.

The Wall was still up, Reagan was in office, William H. Rehnquist became Chief Justice, Challenger exploded, Chernobyl blew its top, Matlock was on TV, Aliens was in theaters, Nintendo was new and I was tiny, and adorable enough to get away with calling an uncle a jack-ass. (Well, he was.)

Also, a guy was in a car crash.

Not so odd-- a little, in that he didn't recover or die; the doctors said he was in a coma.

He knows. He heard them.

Again and again, he was diagnosed as being in a coma, or "persistent vegetative state."

Science marched on, making it easier and easier to do a more in-depth check of "human vegetables," but no-one bothered to check Rom, until three years ago, when Dr. Steven Laureys (an activist doctor-- of the "saving those who are misdiagnosed" type) did a brain scan (his big thing) and found that Rom was basically normal. The story is coming out now because Rom is able to give interviews via typing out responses. Seems less than sympathetic to the "kill the lock-ins" theory of dealing with misdiagnosed PVS.

You know, I'd say something like "maybe this will prevent murders, like Mrs. Schiavo!"-- but I doubt it.

The same people will be calling for the slow murder by dehydration of those who can't ask them to stop-- and sometimes, those who can.

This is nothing new-- people "recover" from being a "vegetable" with worrying frequency, and it hasn't changed any minds before now. Kind of like those folks who survive abortion. The lines are drawn, and no minds will change.

Oh, side note? The reason that I have quotes around the term "vegetable" above is because it's one hell of an attempt to dehumanize a person. You think calling someone the various animal-based insults is bad, at least a pig has more moral protection than a zucchini.

Global Warming, Over Population

2009-11-22T14:04:00.000-08:00

Amazing how the solutions are always the same-- "control! Get rid of them!

Coyote Blog has a neat article linked on the flaw(s) in such thought.

Fumbling Around A Global Warming Post-

2009-11-22T10:02:00.000-08:00

I'm going to probably come back and edit this, and add to it, and re-form it, etc-- I just want to get it down as a sort of collector of things I've been reading, lest I space it. (Updates at the bottom) Blame B-Daddy's bait over here-- if he'd just act as utterly irrational and childish as most AGCC (anthropogenic global climate change) believers, I'd be able to just shrug him off. Curse the man! ;^p This is going to be rather poorly formatted, I fear. On CO2 causing the green house effect:

In simple terms the bulk of Earth's greenhouse effect is due to water vapor by virtue of its abundance. Water accounts for about 90% of the Earth's greenhouse effect -- perhaps 70% is due to water vapor and about 20% due to clouds (mostly water droplets), some estimates put water as high as 95% of Earth's total tropospheric greenhouse effect (e.g., Freidenreich and Ramaswamy, “Solar Radiation Absorption by Carbon Dioxide, Overlap with Water, and a Parameterization for General Circulation Models,” Journal of Geophysical Research 98 (1993):7255-7264).

On the sun causing global temps:

NASA finally mentions the Maunder Minimum in its discussion of the current prolonged solar minimum, but it STILL does not mention that the Maunder Minimum coincided with the onset of the Little Ice Age, or that the Dalton Minimum in the early 1800’s was also cold, as was the unnamed fin-de-the-1800’s minimum.

On the oddly unscientific actions of AGCC supporters:

I was involved in climate studies seriously about 30 years ago [and]… got a very strong feeling for how uncertain the whole business is, that the five reservoirs of carbon all are in close contact — the atmosphere, the upper level of the ocean, the land vegetation, the topsoil, and the fossil fuels. They are all about equal in size. They all interact with each other strongly. So you can’t understand any of them unless you understand all of them. Essentially that was the conclusion. It’s a problem of very complicated ecology, and to isolate the atmosphere and the ocean just as a hydrodynamics problem makes no sense…

A PDF here:

A Skeptical Layman’s Guide to Anthropogenic Global Warming By Warren Meyer www.CoyoteBlog.com Coyote@CoyoteBlog.com Version 1.01, Dated 7/3/2007

Ignoring studies like this, instead of refuting them:

More than 90,000 accurate chemical analyses of CO2 in air since 1812 are summarised. The historic chemical data reveal that changes in CO2 track changes in temperature, and therefore climate in contrast to the simple, monotonically increasing CO2 trend depicted in the post-1990 literature on climate-change. Since 1812, the CO2 concentration in northern hemispheric air has fluctuated exhibiting three high level maxima around 1825, 1857 and 1942 the latter showing more than 400 ppm. Between 1857 and 1958, the Pettenkofer process was the standard analytical method for determining atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, and usually achieved an accuracy better than 3%. These determinations were made by several scientists of Nobel Prize level distinction.

And a wonder from my own head: B-Daddy accepts that, in the past, CO2 followed warming; if, today, he claims that CO2 is causing warming, and presumably had the same effect in the past, how come it didn't run away all the prior times? Why did CO2 go up, lagging the warming, and then the warming stopped? Yeash, some nuts will hook on to anything, won't they?

At what point do we jail or execute global warming deniers? What is so frustrating about these fools is that they are the politicians and greedy bastards who don't want a cut in their profits who use bogus science or the lowest scientists in the gene pool who will distort data for a few bucks. The vast majority of the scientific minds in the World agree and understand it's a very serious problem that can do an untold amount of damage to life on Earth. So when the right wing f*cktards have caused it to be too late to fix the problem, and we start seeing the devastating consequences and we start seeing end of the World type events - how will we punish those responsible. It will be too late. So shouldn't we start punishing them now?

K... I had to add this one, just to go with the one above:

Green consultant Dan Cass asks: Have you ever wondered why it is that nobody is going to jail for causing climate change? Probably because changing the climate, besides being relatively difficult to both accomplish and prove, isn’t actually a crime. Yet Cass sees a precedent: The best known precedent of international legal action are the war crimes trials held after World War Two, in Nuremberg and Tokyo.

Laura at Pursuing Holiness on the clean up of known-bad information sources, a look at why there is borderline hysteria, and a prediction for the future:

I’m not suggesting that the “quiet cleanup” is quiet due to anything more than simple embarrassment. But the result of it is that it will help pave the way for the next big global cooling scare. As the recorded temperatures drop back to normal levels, there will be media reports of the sudden sharp drop in temperature, and it will finally be widely publicized that warming stopped some time ago. The media will publish breathless reports. Demands for explanations will be made and taxpayer money for studies will be provided. This is easily predictable as it’s happened four times before just in the last century. Articles fretting about global cooling started in earnest a couple of a years ago and the pace is picking up. Newsbusters linked today to an article suggesting we may have a year without summer; an interesting flashback to when I was a kid and an adult warned me to enjoy my summer vacation, because we wouldn’t have that kind of warm weather when I grew up. The writer of Ecclesiastes did warn that there’s nothing new under the sun.

The Moral Case FOR Global Warming

As I have noted before, e.g., here and here, environmental cooling, whether on long or short timescales (and no matter what the cause), is associated with significantly increased morbidity and mortality compared with periods of higher temperatures. Add starvation to the list of mechanisms behind that inescapable fact.

Meet Ian Plimer:

He's an Australian geologist, and the man who has exposed the great climate change con trick: The hypothesis that human activity can create global warming is extraordinary because it is contrary to validated knowledge from solar physics, astronomy, history, archaeology and geology,’ says Plimer, and while his thesis is not new, you’re unlikely to have heard it expressed with quite such vigour, certitude or wide-ranging scientific authority. Where fellow sceptics like Bjorn Lomborg or Lord Lawson of Blaby are prepared cautiously to endorse the International Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) more modest predictions, Plimer will cede no ground whatsoever. Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory, he argues, is the biggest, most dangerous and ruinously expensive con trick in history. ... So go on then, Prof. What makes you sure that you’re right and all those scientists out there saying the opposite are wrong? ‘I’m a geologist. We geologists have always recognised that climate changes over time. Where we differ from a lot of people pushing AGW is in our understanding of scale. They’re only interested in the last 150 years. Our time frame is 4,567 million years. So what they’re doing is the equivalent of trying to extrapolate the plot of Casablanca from one tiny bit of the love scene. And you can’t. It doesn’t work.’ What Heaven And Earth sets out to do is restore a sense of scientific perspective to a debate which has been hijacked by ‘politicians, environmental activists and opportunists’. It points out, for example, that polar ice has been present on earth for less than 20 per cent of geological time; that extinctions of life are normal; that climate changes are cyclical and random; that the CO2 in the atmosphere — to which human activity contributes the tiniest fraction — is only 0.001 per cent of the total CO2 held in the oceans, surface rocks, air, soils and life; that CO2 is not a pollutant but a plant food; that the earth’s warmer periods — such as when the Romans grew grapes and citrus trees as far north as Hadrian’s Wall — were times of wealth and plenty. All this is scientific fact — which is more than you can say for any of the computer models turning out doomsday scenarios about inexorably rising temperatures, sinking islands and collapsing ice shelves. Plimer doesn’t trust them because they seem to have little if any basis in observed reality. ‘I’m a natural scientist. I’m out there every day, buried up to my neck in sh**, collecting raw data. And that’s why I’m so sceptical of these models, which have nothing to do with science or empiricism but are about torturing the data till it finally confesses. None of them predicted this current period we’re in of global cooling. There is no problem with global warming. It stopped in 1998. The last two years of global cooling have erased nearly 30 years of temperature increase.’ The article is a fascinating read, the story behind the publishing of the book is no less than amazing on its own. It made me sit up a little straighter, it made my fingers twitch, the activist in me was re-activated and I once again wanted to do something to stop this stupidity. And that's just from reading the article. I'd probably go nuts if I read the book.

Go read the rest, as usual. I especially like his response to folks who accuse him of ruining their childrens' future....

November:
A hacker has released e-mails showning that, at the very least, "Climate Change" advocates/scientists in GB don't think their evidence is strong enough, judging from their consperacy to cover up information (in violation of their FOIA) and having to use "Tricks" even on their hand-picked information.

Wow, Some Folks Are Proud of Being Petty

2009-11-19T11:05:00.000-08:00

and what ignorant things to be petty about!

Ms. Dowd thinks that "bass-ackwards" was coined by Mrs. Palin-- exibit # umpty-squat that the woman isn't too familiar with -- and some other guy thinks you can't live an American life in Alaska. (Based off of a quote of a guy who apparently does those "I am writing about my traveling" travel books.)

Y'know, the folks who use bass ackwards and other amusing spoonerisms-- but who, by and large, don't wonder if men are necessary, nor brag about having been loved and left-- would probably look at Mrs. Palin, note that she's got a boy in the military, see her husband is a hard-working guy, remember that she hunts and is able to look at wolves and see a large predator with all the needs that involves, rather than A Proud, Wonderful, Mystical Creature that looks really cool in a painting on your wall.

All and all, I think I'd consider Mrs. Palin a lot more qualified to decide if Mr. Dunn has lived an American life than the other way around.

This means everyone and anyone

2009-11-18T23:46:00.000-08:00

(but usually Republicans) and including bewildered, innocent bystanders without anything even remotely approaching a hint of race-hatred or misogyny can be accused of racism and sexism.
The only way to avoid the accusation is to practice tokenism, and to get the statistically correct mix of sexes and races in every workplace, circle of friends, social club, and publication. Of course, tokenism is also a form of racism, since it selects according to race, so that anyone seeking to avoid the accusation has to practice tokenism without letting it be known that he is. The stance is therefore innately and inherently false and hypocritical: it consists of paying close attention to race and sex rather than merit while maintaining the pretense that no one is paying attention to race and sex.

(A new and toxic variation of the argument has recently arisen claiming that NOT paying attention to race and sex is actually a manifestation of a subtle and psychological (and hence invisible and undetectable) desire to exclude and marginalize others based on their race, in order to maintain the current power structure of the evil world-system. By this new argument, anyone who is not a racist on the grounds that he ignores race and judges men on the content of their character is actually a racist after all.)

Go, read, please.

Elf Says

2009-11-17T21:14:00.000-08:00

"Epic. Pure epic."

NAACP & La Raza Rip Obama Over Historic Job Losses

Frankly, I can't phrase it better... only thing that would be more amazing is if you work in ACORN in an antagonistic form somewhere.

Side note: Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" is both an insane earworm, and the video reminds me of some of Michael Jackson's more odd works. 0.o

Philosophy!

2009-11-17T12:04:00.000-08:00

Really wish we'd touched on this in school... it's a neat system of thought.

It is well-known that for Aristotle, finality was a fact of nature. That is, nature worked "always or for the most part" to an end. Physicists call that "minimizing the potential function" and speak of strange attractors and attractor basins and suchlike aetherial beings. The thing to remember is that without final causes, efficient causes make no sense. Why would A->B "always or for the most part" if there was nothing in A directing it toward B? Why would A not produce C or D or M or no effect? Hume "solved" the problem raised by rejecting final causes by rejecting efficient causation with it. Everything is correlation, not causation. This was much in the way that Alexander the Great "untied" the Gordian Knot.

Oh, and the science he mentions is pretty cool, too.

Who Do You Think You Are?

2009-11-17T10:24:00.000-08:00

There's a trend emerging in American politics. I don't think it's a new one, but it's growth is disturbing to me. And it's the amazing hostility to the common people.

With the explosion of the internet, Andy Warhol's "15 minutes" theory seems to have developed a variant: under the right circumstances, anyone can become a superstar overnight, over the most trivial of reasons -- and fall just as quickly. Even in politics.

But in politics, there is a growing trend to take that nobody, that average person, and treat them just like we do hardened political professionals -- and attempt to destroy them in the process.

Is good. Go read the rest.

via CDE.

Obvious observation:
Blogs. Legacy media. Nuff said.

So...

2009-11-16T22:12:00.000-08:00

Video here.
The black pleather => DC villain; blue X suit is Marvel hero?

I think most of the outfits the White Queen has worn at one time or another.....

Treating People As Represenatives

2009-11-16T14:20:00.000-08:00

rather than individuals.

Over the last few days, working with over a half-dozen very reliable sources, the following story started to flesh itself out.

The day before their appearance, the two MIDN were notified that USNA senior leadership did not like the fact that the Color Guard was not diverse enough. As a result, they were to be removed and replaced with someone with a higher melanin content in their skin, and a female. Boom - there you go.

The good commander follows up on Monday, November 9, with even more damning evidence, including evidence as to why the media won't follow up. (Can't get the permalink to work for the second story, you have to scroll down to "The Mask Slips at Annapolis.")

The tragedy is that the Hasan case didn't have to be viewed through such PC lenses. The man stated that he didn't believe his oath of office, a simple interview asking him about his beliefs followed by a discharge for the good of the service would have sufficed to save lives.

Please go read the rest at B-Daddy's.
At risk of reaching dead horse status, I don't like it.

Little Kit

2009-11-13T19:54:00.000-08:00

With Grandma.

No posting

2009-11-10T19:35:00.001-08:00

for a while, in hospital.

Kit is a girl.

Compare and Contrast

2009-11-08T10:13:00.000-08:00

Here we have Dana Pico trying very, very hard to be fair to Obama; here we have Cassandra evicerating the won.

I happen to much more agree with Cassandra, but that's not the point: the point is the responses to Dana's piece.

On a only mildly related note:
news says that "focusing on the shooter's religion might make the backlash against Muslims worse."

Betcha there's more folks hurt or dead from honor killings than from this "anti-Muslim backlash."

W. Is Still The Man

2009-11-07T19:31:00.000-08:00

Former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura secretly visited Fort Hood last night and spent "considerable time" consoling those who were wounded in Thursday's shooting spree, Fox News has learned.

The Bushes entered and departed the sprawling military facility in secret, having told the base commander they did not want press coverage of their visit, a source told Fox News.

God bless 'em.

H/t doubleplusundead.

Ft. Hood Shooter Was Involved In Homeland Security Policy Institute Task Force

2009-11-07T13:04:00.000-08:00

Original link here at Gawker, I found out via Gateway Pundit. (at their shiny new digs; sad that one of the first big new posts there is on a pregnant soldier, just back from Iraq, being murdered)

Listed as a "Participant"-- which apparently is everyone who RSVP'ed before printing-- this may not be as creepy as it sounds; it's a pretty normal military thing to try to make sure that... well, for lack of a better way to put it, it's pretty normal to make sure that if you've got someone who would make a good token rep for an event, you send them.

K, gonna digress:
If you send five people out of, say, fifty in your department, and you've three women, it's almost 100% assured that the women will go more than the rest of the guys. If race is involved in the thing you're providing bodies for and you've got only one black guy, he'll almost always end up being sent. Why? Because if you don't, sometimes you'll end up sending five 20-something, brownish-haired guys, and you'll get chewed out for not showing enough "diversity." Really funny if those guys consist of an immigrant from Poland, a guy whose ancestors were mostly from the PI, a guy who doesn't know what countries his ancestors were from, a guy who's dad is from India and a German/American Indian guy..."diverse" is so picky about what type of look-based diversity counts, even if the look-diversity usually results in three middle-class lapsed protestants from Cali going to 90% of the events. All examples from folks I actually knew who didn't look "ethnic" enough to be token.

Back on topic:
It's not beyond reason that, if Hasan made big noises about how Islamic he was, he'd be first in someone's mind as a good token name to send in for an event like this-- there's a good chance that if he asked a question, it'd be a PC one, and he's got a good chance of asking a really good question to boot, and it gets the "Uniformed Services University School of Medicine" listed with a name that clearly says "this isn't about attacking Arabs." Sorry if this pisses folks off, but it is kind of important to consider presentation like this.

All assuming that Hasan didn't go on his own initiative, although the listing of the school under his name makes that unlikely.

There's Nothing I Can Add

2009-11-07T09:44:00.001-08:00

at this time, about Ft. Hood.

Jimmy points out the impropriety of Obama's initial reaction, while Neo tries to put her finger on what was so creepy.

The expected groups are claiming Islam had nothing to do with it, while simultaneously claiming that the bastard was harassed for being a Muslim. (Er... choosing to give a lecture on your religion, in a professional setting, and advocating murder of unbelievers will make folks have an...unpleasant reaction to you. That isn't harassment, that's you being a moron.)

Hopefully, heads will roll against whatever PC morons decided that ignoring the mounting warning signs that this guy was Trouble--not that it will manage to get the folks above them, that cause that kind of climate.
(Back on the ship, we had a shop supervisor who had been accused of racism so many times he kept a pile of responses, xeroxed, in his desk. Had nothing to do with him, had to do with his shop being the dumping ground for deck guys who thought they could get out of work by breaking things. He had a crud-ton of trouble every time we had any change in our chain of command, because each and every new guy would try to make a name for himself...)

It's infuriating that over a dozen people are dead because the common sense notion "when we are fighting nutcases who take the Koran's orders to kill non-believers seriously, we should make sure there aren't nutcases who show sympathy to killing non-believers in our fighting force" did not reflect reality.

UPDATE:
Just had a random thought; all the sympathy folks are pointing out Ft. Hood has had a lot of suicides this year.
Wonder if any of them went through the bastard's office.