Seriously Deep

A section of the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route: Japan

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas. As someone who grew up in the snowbelt, I got a chuckle out of the mess some of our southern cities were in when they got some snow. Upon reflection, I think I was more ammused by the historonics of the weather commentators. Anything to stir up some drama. City governments have come under fire? For what. Not maintaining a fleet of very expensive equipment for something that happens every hundred years and will melt off by morning. Better get the news team to 'vestigatin this dilemma. More on this breaking story when we write it up .. or it rains.

I'm going to start the link-dump with an essay on Americanism, then punch on through pretty quickly. The sun is out for the first time in days and the remainder of my to-do list can be set aside for a few hours.

• What is American: After two hundred years, our democracy appears beleaguered and in need of revitalization. It is expressly the magnitude of our problems that make it possible for some to long for apparently better systems that haven’t a prayer in America. However, revitalization, if it is to occur, must take advantage of resources native to our tradition and, what is just as important, to do so in a native idiom.
• Was Washington a Christian: These founders were most emphatically not modern secularists, and Washington was not an exponent of modern democracy. Our first president was a man of the eighteenth century, who believed in the benefits of property relations and gender-specific education, and, perhaps above all, as he tells us in his Farewell Address as president, in the public need for religious beliefs. In these respects he was little different from the English monarch his countrymen broke from during the Revolution.
• The Evil Empire: What the Obama administration has delivered, of course, is not only the continuation of the policies of the previous three administrations but a profound exaggeration of them. If anything, we suffer more violations of our privacy and civil liberties now than at any time during the Bush administration, all in the name of a national-security state that keeps the populace in its place while perpetuating war abroad.
• Judicial Activism: ones that touch on the broad competing visions of the proper role of government. Striking down a law passed by a democratically-elected legislature is not necessarily “activism.” Nor is upholding a law necessarily “restrained.” It depends on whether or not the law violates the Constitution (and the primary failing I note in left-wing resort to the phrase “judicial activism” is that they ignore this rather significant distinction).
• Iron Dome: The defense establishment is still weighing the balance between the number of radars for the systems to the number of intercept missiles necessary. Different estimates suggest that each intercept missile will cost $40,000.
• What was the Saudi Arms Deal About:A look at the remainder of the Saudi deal indicates that Riyadh has other concerns in mind. The Saudis are also acquiring 190 helicopters. These include 70 Apache Longbows, an upgraded version of the U.S. Army's highly successful attack helicopter which carries, among other weapons, a powerful 30 MM gun and anti-tank missiles. Riyadh is also purchasing 36 AH-6i "Little Bird" light helicopters, which are often used by Special Forces. Finally, the Saudis are buying 72 UH-60 Blackhawks, which are ideal for moving troops into and around combat zones.
• Revolver: The libertarian/conservative rejoinder is that less regulation equals less opportunities for politically-connected firms to hijack the system. As a safeguard against future financial meltdowns, I find this unsatisfying for a number of reasons: First, attempts to describe the roots of the financial crisis solely through the lens of government intervention sound pretty silly. And second, if the regulatory and administrative superstructure of government is fatally compromised by insiders and corporate lobbyists, are we sure we can successfully deconstruct that system from within.
• Start Treaty: A link to the Naval Institute and a subsequent link-through to the text itself. Why bother having some goofy-goober tell you what it means, when you can see for yourself?
• Dirty Underwear: I find it interesting that, despite the furor over the Wikileaks disclosures relating to the military's activity in Iraq, the U.S. government did not come down on him full bore, nor did they assign a team of government lawyers to scour the statute books looking for a way to criminally charge Assange, until it was the State Department and, by extension, the political leadership of the nation that was being embarrassed.
• Two States - No Solutions: At the same time, Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Gen. David Petraeus have stated publicly that the ongoing failure of the peace process constitutes a threat to American national security. The despair the Palestinians now feel, and the anger among broader Arab publics, is very dangerous for the United States. Not only al Qaeda, but Hamas and Hezbollah feed on the anger in the Islamic world over the plight of the Palestinians.

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Added Mon 27, 3:00 PM: I flipped on the news to eat my lunch with, and was treated to a BREAKING NEWS STORY. (yes, the onscreen graphix were all capped) It seems that the wind was blowing snow onto roads that had already been plowed. Great googly-moogly, that must be why they called it a snow storm. Better images are promised for the 5:00 show. I can't wait.

That Swag Attitude

NY Daily News

Inventor Andrew Lewis, 43, of Hamilton Heights sez:

"Sagging is a huge issue in my community," he said. "I spent a lot of time observing and I noticed that even for saggers, there is a point which even they're not comfortable with how their jeans were falling."

So he did something about it, at $36 a pop. Why loose that jailhouse look when, for a few extra bucks, you can get a special guy in a jailhouse accessoire. The odd thing is you can get the same thing cheaper from a tool catalog. Linemen, and others I'm sure, use something similar to keep their tool belt stable when they're off the ground. You don't want your tools around your ankles while leaning out of a scissors lift. Sort of a blue-collar fashion statement.

Via: BoingBoing

Born for Trouble

Blind drunk driver falls flat on face in front of judge:

A reported legally blind man arrested on Sunday night for driving while intoxicated, has been re-arrested for public intoxication after allegedly coming to court drunk. Mark Alan Watson, 41, of Bartlesville, was about to be arraigned on Monday on charges of driving under the influence of alcohol, leaving the scene of an accident, driving under suspension and assault on a police officer when he fell on his face in front of Associate District Judge Russell Vaclaw.

The remainder of the story is at Nothing to do with Abroath. Some folks just don't have a plan.

Before they had Les Pauls

Nathaniel Sichel, 1843-1907. German artist.

It comes out here

Sunday I worked on the set-up for a salesforce.com convention. The product was, I guess, a cloud based sales something or another. You set up a FB style interface and all your orders, derived from a social networking thing-a ma-bob, flow through a totally secure cloud application, then it zooms around here, does an interactive jiggery-do, and comes out there. To keep everyone's mind on the pitch, Stevie Wonder has a set, Will I Am hosts the party, and the hall was equipped with more Barcos, moving lights, and general whoop-de then I've seen outside a Pink Floyd show. Wi-fi antennas were flown throughout the hall. In addition to their customary use, they streamed a reflection of what was on the stage overlaid with sales graphix and talking points. If some lady with a big hat obscures the projection in front, you can glance down at your laptop to get the juice. I guess I'm showing my age, but I can remember when we had factories and farms and we built things. Now, in the future, we make money by taking in each other's laundry, and big money by providing a cloud app for keeping track of it. The bug in the code, of course, is having to depend on others for the detergent, the washing machine, and the clothes.

The two stories I'm following as I write this are 1) Julian Assange arrested. It seems that about twenty minutes after Forbes announced that WikiLeaks had some dirt on a large American Bank, the muttering about State Security turned into a full-throated roar calling for a non-judicial execution. Of course the timing is only circumstantial and it's really about the Italian Prime Minister's embarrassment over the wording of a single cable. 2) Uncle BomBom has reached another comprimise. The other side wasn't even in the hall, yet he blinked anyway. I guess he needs to stockpile his powder for something, you know, down the road. Then he'll show 'em what for, you bet-cha. Or not. Maybe it's different in the rarified atmosphere of an elite policy maker, but here in prole-world you can only promise, explain, and do damage control for so long, then you need to do the job or loose it. Now for this week's link dump.

On the power to lead;

• Mental Prisoner of the Congress: ....he could say “I’m against cutting Medicare reimbursement rates, but only if it’s paid for.” Repeat that enough times and suddenly it becomes congress’ problem. Congress wants an AMT patch? Fine, then congress needs to pay for it. There are lots of things the President can’t do in the legislative process, but refusing to sign deficit-increasing bills is something he definitely can do.
• Will the GOP Raise the Debt Ceiling: It’s one thing to win an election with a lot of incendiary rhetoric. It’s another thing to actually get things done. And it appears that the new members of the GOP are determined to make obstructionism their bread and butter.

On the power of the people:

• Porno Scanners and Perpetual War: It’s finally coming into focus, and it’s not even a difficult equation to grasp. It goes like this: take a country in the grips of an expanding national security state and sooner or later your “safety” will mean your humiliation, your degradation. And by the way, it will mean the degradation of your country, too.
• State's Rights: At present, the only way for states to contest a federal law or regulation is to bring a constitutional challenge in federal court or seek an amendment to the Constitution,” the pair wrote. “A state repeal power provides a targeted way to reverse particular congressional acts and administrative regulations without relying on federal judges or permanently amending the text of the Constitution to correct a specific abuse.

On certain segments of the people and a sudden shrinking of ... numbers during the recent cold snap:

• Overexposed: The exact genesis of this movement is hazy, but most agree it had something to do with the city opening a high-visibility plaza at Castro and Market last year. Among the lunchers, retirees, and shoppers, naked men showed up, too: A construction supervisor named Barry appeared in his fedora and flip-flops — and nothing else. (kinda safe for work)

The kind of thinking that gets you branded as a crazy until it turns out you were right:

• WikiLeaks as Psyop: .. Zbigniew Brzezinski’s speculation that the latest WikiLeaks dump might have been selected to further a foreign agenda. I haven’t seen any evidence that would lead me to think that, but it’s a possibility that has to be considered. The possibility that a domestic interest or intelligence agency could engineer a leak should also be entertained. Manufacturing paper trails is one of the things that “community” does best, after all.

Some writting that caught my eye:

• The Teleology of Vodka: I would not willingly offend the whole Alexander Nevsky choir or five fifths of its audience, but it needs saying that the true end of vodka is not a glass. Vodka, properly speaking, is not really a drink. So used it is more like an excuse—or a carrying device, much as a cigarette is a carrying device for nicotine. For although vodka may please the brain and the bloodstream, it can never fully satisfy the nose or the tongue—and will quite often offend the one and make offensive the other.

A bit of biology news that's getting shunted aside in the Christmas rush:

• NASA finds arsenic based life form: When cooking up the stuff of life, you can’t just substitute margarine for butter. Or so scientists thought. But now researchers have coaxed a microbe to build itself with arsenic in the place of phosphorus, an unprecedented substitution of one of the six essential ingredients of life. The bacterium appears to have incorporated a form of arsenic into its cellular machinery, and even its DNA, scientists report online Dec. 2 in Science.

A bit of history:

• Merchant Capital: If we now look back on European history from the sixteenth century to the twentieth century, this assessment seems badly wrong as an historical observation. Merchants and their companies played key roles in the establishment of a world trading system; they actively facilitated the race for colonies by the European powers; and often they played a quasi-military role in suppressing resistance by locals in distant parts of the world.

Which leads to:

• Brookings Institute (pdf): The upshot: The past two decades have seen lower-income metro areas in the global East and South “close the gap” with higher-income metros in Europe and the United States, and the worldwide economic upheaval has only accelerated the shift in growth toward metros in those rising regions of the world. Note: Austin, the highest American city on the list, is # 40, San Francisco is # 133.

Fun with the Legal Industry

A doctor in Miami is suing a restaurant for not explaining to him the proper method of eating an artichoke. He ate the entire thing, and developed bowel obstruction from the indigestible leaves. The restaurant asks "Are we going to have to post warnings on our menu they shouldn't eat the bones in our barbecue ribs?"

Both image and link from Tywkiwdbi

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Added later:A Texas Roadhouse and its TP dispenser

Having Been There Myself

Swedish photographer Håkan Dahlström made this shot of one of San Francisco's steeper hills, turning his camera so that the road (and not the houses) were at level.

Via: BoingBoing

Gastroporn Redux

For breakfast, I usually have a cappuccino—espresso made in an Alessi pot and mixed with organic milk, which has been gently heated and hand-fluffed by my husband. I eat two slices of imported cheese—Dutch Parrano, the label says, “the hippest cheese in New York” (no joke)—on homemade bread with butter. I am what you might call a food snob. My nutritionist neighbor drinks a protein shake while her 5-year-old son eats quinoa porridge sweetened with applesauce and laced with kale flakes. She is what you might call a health nut. On a recent morning, my neighbor’s friend Alexandra Ferguson sipped politically correct Nicaraguan coffee in her comfy kitchen while her two young boys chose from among an assortment of organic cereals.

A cover article in this week's Newsweek purports to be about the class divide vis-à-vis food consumption, but in a sad way is really about the relationship of marketers and muddled thinking. The self adulation of some of the respondents, who's immoderation is redefined as respect for the planet and desire to nurture something or another, is one of the reasons that a certain class of twit isn't taken seriously by anyone outside of salespeople. (or in our case, the Mayor's office) The attitudinal baggage and cultural blindspot that accompanies a proposal to tax soda or any casse-croûte du jour, for the "health of our community", is just typical. (we know what‘s best for you)

Even the locavore hero Pollan agrees. “Essentially,” he says, “we have a system where wealthy farmers feed the poor crap and poor farmers feed the wealthy high-quality food.”

This being said, the new Congress is going to start work on the next farm bill. Between the traditional hot air (family farms, golden waves of grain, the real America) and the ceremonial larding of the pork, not to mention the sausage making in the back room, I suspect we'll be singing new boss, same as the old boss. Last time around, I remember a story about a well known newsreader / commentator who received big bucks for the Angora wool produced by the sheep on his hobby farm. (national security - military helmet liners) Monsanto, some folks on the Upper East side, and Archer Daniels Midland should be up for a chunk too. Personally I think the biggest food problem concerns whatever hallucinogen they're adulterating the water with in Washington.

• Quick cooking note for the above nutritionist neighbor: Put the kale flakes in the soup, not your kid’s cereal.

Somebody is Cranky

(ó) a dheaide! None of that circumlocution round here.

Close Enough for Government Work

As it turns out, we had $70,000,000.00 just sitting around, so we gave it to Pakistan to help the country defend themselves from the Taliban Air Force. Maybe it's a codeword for a black-op, maybe it's a nuanced diplomatic deal, probably it's a powder my nose arrangement. Working for a living was obviously the wrong career choice.

Porpoises rescue Dick Van Dyke

No rib, link to story Here

I got your Dak Bulgogi right here

I spent Thanksgiving with some friends, including the two above. For a number of years I had cooked for a group of professionals at a TV station. The idea of re-booting the dinner to reflect a busy upscale lifestyle was in the air. Thanksgiving was shortened to turkey day, then t-day. I'm all in favor of fine dining and stretching the envelope, but Thanksgiving is a day to give thanks. T-day and Black Friday precurser sales don't quite transmit that idea properly. As for the two kids, where the heck do they get all that energy? I discovered that being a human jungle gym has its attractions. (the sudden calm during their nap was pretty good too)

On to the link-dump. First is an article about the party system. Others are weighing in and I've seen some advertising regarding a centrist party. We'll see. I, like most people, think Government has shed its governing function and is acting like a business, i.e. we work for it. If fear sells, sell it. If infantile posturing gets you air time ... and so forth.

• Hyper-Polarized Party System: Still, the unending high-decibel partisan warfare of the past decade has led many Americans to look back with nostalgia on the more consensual, if muddled, party system that persisted until the 1970s.

Followed by two links that call into question the congress critters disconnect from daily life.

• A Message from the Voters: (pdf): A 53% majority of registered voters also think that those who came into power
  campaigning on Obamacare repeal should decline their federal health plan, and only a third think they should accept it. Many Democrats have been pushing Republicans to deny their benefits, but among all voters, the pressure is actually by far stronger with Republicans and independents than with Democrats.
• Where's Mine: Harris, who defeated Rep. Frank Kratovil (D) earlier this month, drew unwelcome attention last week when Politico reported that he complained at an orientation session for new lawmakers upon finding out that his government-provided health care coverage would not take effect until February, a month after he takes office.

The next two are about banks. I'm tempted to mutter something about the power behind the throne, but writing the obvious takes too much time.

• The Best Congress Money Can Buy: ...the financial sector has paid little for bringing the world to near-collapse or for receiving the taxpayers’ bailout that was denied to most small-enough-to-fail Americans. The sector still rakes in more than a fourth of American business profits, up from a seventh 25 years ago.
• What Good is Wall Street?: A few months ago, I came across an announcement that Citigroup, the parent company of Citibank, was to be honored, along with its chief executive, Vikram Pandit, for “Advancing the Field of Asset Building in America.” This seemed akin to, say, saluting BP for services to the environment or praising Facebook for its commitment to privacy.

Oh Lordy. Korea. We're gonna win this one by golly. Mess with us and we'll borrow some money and fix your kim chee. Yeah boy, you be gettin' a stern rebuke when we done with you.

• The Tyranny of Metaphor: In the midst of the Korean War, Brogan was not only commenting on Americans' frustration with their inability to prevail decisively against supposedly inferior Chinese and North Korean forces, but also cautioning against other misadventures in which the United States falsely assumed its superpower status assured a military victory in any conflict it chose to fight. Brogan could just as easily have titled his essay The Omnipotence of American Illusion in an echo of Friedrich Nietzsche's critique of true believers. Convictions, the great German philosopher wrote, are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
• Why Are We Still In Korea?: We will stand by our Korean allies, says President Obama. And with our security treaty and 28,000 U.S. troops in South Korea, many on the DMZ, we can do no other. But why, 60 years after the first Korean War, should Americans be the first to die in a second Korean War? Unlike 1950, South Korea is not an impoverished ex-colony of Japan. She is the largest of all the "Asian tigers," a nation with twice the population and 40 times the economy of the North.
• Lunacy His Principal Export: These events may also ultimately be seen as wins for Kim on two other levels. First, the nuclear facility almost certainly required international collaboration. If it turns out that support came in part from, say, Pakistan, already suspected of helping the Koreans develop a nuclear ballistic missile capability, it would be deeply embarrassing and awkward for the United States.
• Stuxnet and N. Korea: While U.S. officials are trying to figure out how to respond to North Korea’s unveiling of a new uranium enrichment plant, there are clues that a piece of malware believed to have hit Iran’s nuclear efforts could also target the centrifuges Pyongyang’s preparing to spin.

And meanwhile we're clearly and decisively taking care of our other loose ends.

• How to Schedule a War: Going, going, gone! You can almost hear the announcer’s voice throbbing with excitement, only we’re not talking about home runs here, but about the disappearing date on which, for the United States and its military, the Afghan War will officially end.

Diplomatic Frolics

Another WikiLeak dump. The president is on damage control again. The fear industry is howling. Between the somebody is trying to ban Christmas stories and the war with Korea / Iran bonanza, they can pretty much coast the rest of the week. The leaks do raise some questions, however. By this I mean the cables themselves, not the fragmented excerpts getting play. You'll need an extra big cup of coffee and a scroll wheel to deal with the current batch.

• Traitors - Incalculable Damage- Full Might of the Law: one might be tempted to comment, "If you're doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear." But that would sound as sad as when the government tells it to you. Instead I'll call on my current hobbyhorse and note that the powers that be don't seem to be too pleased by their public pat-down and x-ray. (why yes, I can still spell schadenfreude with the help of my Webster's)
• Secret Stuff: It doesn’t matter how robust your encryption is if you leave plaintext copies around for every Junior Officer, Congressional hopeful, and janitor with some spare time to read. And don’t store them in one place with sequential call numbers. WikiLeaks isn’t some super duper spy org, it’s just a vacuum cleaner that sucks up information that was pretty much in plain sight. The real spy organizations: Israel, England, Russia, China, Liechtenstein, probably had a copy a minute after the cable was sent. No foreign country was really shocked or taken by surprise. The secrecy rubric really refers to the taxpayers.
• Embarrassing Revelations: If you read some of these cables, you would suspect they were written by frat boys on Facebook. Pedigreed ivy league frat boys mind you, but... Some things don’t belong in a diplomatic cable. An awful lot of embarrassment could be avoided if an adult explained to the wonderkinder that they’re on the job, not at a swell party texting their buddy.
• Other countries will question if we can keep a secret: Uh ....yeah! Well, can we? So instead of whining about one guy from Belgium or Private somebody or another, we might want to consider putting the house in order. If following security protocol or setting aside those little side deals discommodes some of the more entitled members of the foreign service, tough.
• The other Arab countries want us to invade Iran: For a definition of getting played refer to our Talaban Commander that turned into a shopkeeper several million dollars later. But they agree with Israel. Sure, as long as we pony up the money and shed the blood, what the heck.

The sad part was contained in a British Minister's comment. He said the lone superpower came off like someone wandering the world and wondering why no one would do as bidden. Coming up next, WikiLeaks on banks.

Thanks Ever So

While I know pointing out other's faux pas is a two way street, it's generally not a good idea to wear slogans on your butt.

Via: Miss Cellania

Happy Thanksgiving

For Your Safety

Picture Link

I'm just going to mumble something about the TSA and let you fill in the blank any way you wish.

Thanksgiving Week

What a week. TSA feeling up 5 year olds at the airport, while very important congress-critters and their posse slip in the side gate. A shopkeeper in Afghanistan managed to run off with a chunk of American taxpayer's money. With his proven ability to extract profitability, I'll bet that Wall Street head-hunters are looking for his number. April is when the debt ceiling has to be raised or maintained. Some of our new critters have announced an eminent Government shutdown. I feel very safe in predicting that neither their paycheck nor the IRS will be effected. First things first, after all. President Obama took a trip to Asia and the G-20 meeting. One country went so far as to suggest that they would put the needs of their own people before America's Strategic Interests. Great googly moogly!! A world where people tended to their own business - unacceptable. We might be forced to grow our own food and sew our own clothes or make something for trade. (beside debt tranches) I seem to remember something the Greeks were muttering about hubris, or was it Gods, punishment and TV, or maybe cynicism being way too easy. The dumping of links begins.

• Musharraf attempts a comeback: There are certainly countries that promote men like Musharraf, and it's possible he could mount a political comeback - but so few are able to apply authoritarianism correctly, if there is such a thing. If Musharraf has no plans to push back against these internal forces, his usefulness to America seems minor at best.
• Congress Erodes National Security: Congress has also experienced a declining pool of expertise in important foreign policy areas such as arms control, and it remains ill-equipped to prepare the country for coping with the many overlapping foreign policy challenges wrought by globalization, King says. She urges leaders of the new Congress to return to rules of order and emulate some of the ways the executive branch is taking on the cross-jurisdictional challenges, especially the State Department and Defense Department.
• Rising East, Setting West: Add to this the peculiar obsessions of the Washington power elite, with regard to Iran for instance, and you have an unpalatable mix. These all-American fixations are viewed as an inconvenience or worse in Asia, where powerful regional hegemons are increasingly determined to chart their own courses, even if in public they continue to humor a somewhat addled and infirm Uncle Sam.
• Congress Should Defend My Junk: If, on the other hand, Issa were to launch an investigation of TSA, he'd instantly win the media stardom he longs for and would probably win over a good many independents and Democrats (and Atlantic staffers). Think about it: he could call as witnesses some poor 5-year-old kid who got felt up and the kid's furious mom.

The next three are about reducing the Pentagon budget. I'm not sure why I include them, no-one has any real intention of actually doing it. We can't be soft on **place current boogie here**.

• Defense on a Diet: Such agreement is easy enough to find among think-tank academics, especially those employed by institutions that specifically advocate limited government or scrutinize the military-industrial complex. But there’s far less appetite for it on Capitol Hill, especially among the Republican congressmen currently beating their chests about excessive government spending—though Democrats are seldom much better.
• Defending Europe: Europe is not under threat from any nation state that its own armed forces could not dispatch. What's more, it's not clear why Brzezinski is so dismissive about the costs of these garrisons. The U.S. Army was already in the process of consolidating its European bases and drawing down brigades - a process that the Obama administration has halted, at a cost of billions of dollars to the taxpayer.
• Defense Cuts: The idea that we need a defense budget almost 60 percent larger as a share of GDP than a decade ago is ludicrous. While it is true that the wars initiated by George W. Bush and a Republican Congress will impose a financial burden on American taxpayers for many years to come, that isn’t enough to justify spending more than half of the world’s military expenditures. Almost all our NATO allies get by spending well less than half what we spend as a share of GDP.

The last three are a bit of history. The Glen Beck one isn't so much about the gloryhound himself, that's low hanging cherries, but more about how simple sending up a smokescreen to go with those gilt mirrors really is.

• Glen Beck's Myths: Certainly there are features of Progressivism that anyone concerned about centralized power has every right to criticize. But there are problems with how Beck frames his critique. There were different types of Progressives who stressed diverse themes, not all of which can be subsumed under the rubric of “big government.” The connection between Progressivism and modern liberalism is weak.
• Eurasian Time: His current work broadens the canvas by looking at broad temporal patterns of consolidation and turmoil across the full expanse of Eurasia, including Russia, France, Japan, China, and Southeast Asia.
• Ghandi's Invisible Hands: Ever since reading Unto This Last, John Ruskin’s 1877 paean to the dignity of manual labor, in South Africa, Gandhi had had a credo to match his Victorian attitude of industriousness. Accordingly, he transformed his ashram into a workshop where each member engaged in substantial amounts of communal service, from working in the community’s kitchen to teaching in the ashram school to cleaning the shared latrines.

And Why Not?

I received this e-mail yesterday from a friend. I've heard about this movement to amend the Constitution from individuals, the media hasn't seen fit to comment yet. It's still a bit too obscure to bother manufacturing polls and experts. If the idea does gain traction can we look forward to the full smoke and mirrors treatment? (our precious freedoms, the terrorists will win, and a spokes-model from the Grassroots™ Committee to Save Apple Pie and her triple-D expertise ) Below is the letter sans personal greeting. If you agree, you're more than welcome to copy and paste in order to send it on.

Governors of 35 states have already filed suit against the Federal Government for imposing unlawful burdens upon them. It only takes 38 (of the 50) States to convene a Constitutional Convention.

This will take less than thirty seconds to read. If you agree, please pass it on.

For too long we have been too complacent about the workings of Congress. Many citizens had no idea that members of Congress could retire with the same pay after only one term, that they specifically exempted themselves from many of the laws they have passed (such as being exempt from any fear of prosecution for sexual harassment) while ordinary citizens must live under those laws. The latest was to exempt themselves from the Healthcare Reform ... in all of its forms. Somehow, that doesn't seem logical. We do not have an elite that is above the law. I truly don't care if they are Democrat, Republican, Independent or whatever. The self-serving must stop.

A Constitutional Convention - this is a good way to do that. It is an idea whose time has come. And, with the advent of modern communication, the process can be moved along with incredible speed. There is talk out there that the "government" doesn't care what the people think. That is irrelevant. It is incumbent on the population to address elected officials to the wrongs afflicted against the populace...you and me. Think about this... The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in 1971...before computers, before e-mail, before cell phones, etc. Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the land...all because of public pressure.

I'm asking each addressee to forward this Email to a minimum of twenty people on their Address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise.

In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one proposal that really should be passed around.

Proposed 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution:
"Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and/or Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and/or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States ."

A Somewhat Twisty Trail

The Xi3 Modular Computer is powered by AMD’s Athlon 64 X2 processors, either 2000+ 1GHz or 3400e 1.8GHz or 4200+ 2.2GHz, up to 4GB of DDR2 memory and integrated graphics engine with DirectX 10 support. It has two eSATA ports and six USB 2.0 ports, and offers DVI-D dual link and DisplayPort.

Measures 4" per side @ $829.00. Link

The holy grail among governments and their attendant bureaucrats seems to be a hierarchal and centralized command structure. That way the boss can piddle, diddle, and golf without any of that nasty feedback from the lower orders. The Stuxnet virus specifically targets this. The obvious work around is to disconnect and run a process by hand or on its own loop. One wonders if our system can relearn to tolerate autonomous behavior in its ranks because, sure as sin, now that one well-resourced nation-state has set the bar, others will follow. As you can see from the above, processors and the net aren't going away, but that doesn't mean you need them for every application. (I'll pass on the net-enabled candle lighter, thank-you)

North Beach, S.F.

Business is Business, Bubbleh

For those of you in the biz, Billboard Magazine has opened its archives to the web. Issues, going back to the '40s, can be read in their original layout. Relive those thrilling stories of yesteryear, when pirates roamed the bins and... You'd be suprised how little has changed. New faces, new formats, same backroom deals.

God Hates Flats

Shortly after finishing their protest at the funeral of Army Sgt. Jason James McCluskey of McAlester, a half-dozen protesters from Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., headed to their minivan, only to discover that its front and rear passenger-side tires had been slashed. To make matters worse, as their minivan slowly hobbled away on two flat tires, with a McAlester police car following behind, the protesters were unable to find anyone in town who would repair their vehicle, according to police.

Via: Tulsa World

No doubt the Church is planing to file a scrimination suit. That does seem to be their main source of income, and they're no shlumps when it comes to gaming the system.

But, they have the keys

It's time for another link dump. The Demikins have lost the House to the Republicrats. Both make major mouth noises about change, but I'll bet that the only difference will be in the nomenclature. Freshmen from the recent election already have the plump and self-satisfied, all that remains is a back room with attached office. In other news; Colorado District Attorney Mark Hurlbert has dropped hit and run charges against a Morgan Stanley "wealth manager" who nearly killed a biker in a hit-and-run accident over the summer, citing concern a conviction could hurt the former's earning potential. While the legal industry has always been a pay to play game, I can't remember any participant actually admitting it on paper and personally signing off. In a related story, the TSA has decided the only way to protect our freedoms is with a full body scan or a cavity search. A perusal of the order's language reveals the gropers have legal immunity and the gropees are assumed terrorists until they submit. The loophole, and there's always a loophole, involves government officials, judges, and people that can purchase an expedited boarding arrangement. If you have to check your bank balance before writing a check with more than six zeros, you'll be in the slow line. Forcing the pilots to go through the same procedure seems a bit daft. (unless it's punishment for asking too many questions) A pilot doesn't have to smuggle a bomb aboard, he or she has the keys. As security ritual, pilot searches going beyond biometric I.D. confirmation, have a few logical flaws: as a power ritual... all loyalty to the big Kahuna, he will protect us from *insert current talking point here*. Dang it, I had really hoped that the future would feature jetpacks or transporters, not a distopian scramble for crumbs. I guess I should have read between the lines in history class.

On to the round-up. The first is a bit referring to another search at will plan. The next link might be profitably be compared to Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent from the supposed opposite side of the ideological spectrum. Number three is Larison’s take on the winners of the election.

• War on Commuters: So the probability of an attack just went down, and we can all rest a little easier, right? Wrong! The fact that the FBI was able to bamboozle this fellow into participating in a non-existent scheme has led Metro transit cops to seriously consider riffling through commuters' stuff.
• The Infinitesmial Fraction: Patrick’s recognition of the limits of voting, however, is a spot-on observation that deserves real attention. He describes what Eric Voegelin pithily called the “swindle of consent” and what one of my agrarian heroes, Ralph Borsodi scoffed at as an “infinitesimal fraction.” Patrick’s call for the “common good” puts me in mind of my dream of restoring something resembling a Country Party.
• Leadership They Deserve: The midterm results didn’t represent a dramatic shift in the overall public’s views, but they did confirm that rank-and-file Republicans and movement conservatives are quite happy to enable a party that badly disappoints them every time it is given an opportunity to govern. Four years ago, movement conservatives were looking for the exits and claiming that they as conservatives had nothing to do with those unpopular Republicans. Today, Republican triumph is taken as conservative vindication, and the deeply dysfunctional, unhealthy identification of conservatism with the cause of the GOP has become stronger than ever.

The next set of links fall into the economic pile.

• Control Fraud: Control fraud theory was developed in the savings and loan debacle. It explained that the person controlling the S&L (typically the CEO) posed a unique risk because he could use it as a weapon. ..Link to Black's Paper - .pdf
• How the Founding Fathers Taxed ..: Here’s the shorter: in 1775, the Continental Congress authorized the first issue of Continental dollars. This was to be a true fiat currency, backed only by the faith and credit of the embryonic state. Franklin actually opposed this – arguing instead that the notes should either pay interest or be borrowed back in loans that promised some return. But he was overruled, and then, as he predicted, each run of the printing presses pushed the currency lower.
• The Fall of Meritocracy: That would be fine if Ms Applebaum's portrait of the meritocracy, with universities welcoming high IQ types and allocating them to productive jobs in a thriving society, were accurate. But in fact this triumphalism is oddly timed, to put it mildly. The past few years have seen the best and brightest, obsessed by clever academic models, wreaking havoc in one area after another.

The following are about who the coercion engineers are working for. (jeez, if that doesn’t sound like some sophomore rhetoric, I don’t know what does. This city must be rubbing off on me)

• Shareholder Action?: House and Senate candidates had raised a combined $1.7 billion, and spent $1.4 billion. Fundraising by parties and spending by outside groups brought the total dollar amount raised to $3.2 billion in a time when our nation suffers from an unemployment rate of 9.2% and where the impacts of the near-devastating economic downturn are still being felt.
• Conflict of Interest This study analyzes the conflict of interest that exists when academic financial economists, acting in their roles as presumed objective experts in the media and academia on topics, such as financial regulation, fail to report their private financial affiliations. To conduct the study, we analyze the linkages between academia, private financial institutions and public institutions of nineteen academic financial economists who are members of two groups who have put forth proposals on financial reform. (.pdf)
• Comment on Above: Better to leave the Lights Off

And last, two hacks. One food related and one a RFID trick you might be able to use.

• It has to be illegal: Before the law, refined coumarin was commonly added to commercial foods like cream soda, and used in synthetic vanillin. Extreme concentrations caused liver problems in rats (how unappetizing), and a rather overreaching ban on even natural sources of the compound was put in place. Coumarin has since been found to occur naturally in cinnamon, lavender, licorice, and a host of other commonly eaten plants—all of which would seem to be illegal under the regulation. Coumarin also accounts for the particular smell of fresh-cut grass and of fresh-dried hay.
• RFID Transplantation: As a general note, transplanting RFID chips is a much cleaner solution from both the legal and technical perspective versus cracking the security and programming your own RFID to be compatible with the existing payment system. While many of the security systems used in RFID are already broken or have serious known vulnerabilities, I can’t think of any country where the authorities would take kindly to you doing it.

I always thought so

Via: Tywkiwdbi

The Future of Kool-Aid

Yeah, I read the New York Times. More precisely, I cherry pick the web site for articles with interesting tags and read the paper edition when a neighbor in the building leaves it out in a common library by the lobby desk. (thanks Mme.) David Brooks, a twice weekly political columnist, has written an article, The Crossroads Nation, that distills my unease with showbiz media while ostensibly addressing something completely different. Brooks bashing has become something of a de rigueur amusement, but the look on his face when someone disagrees with his “eminently reasonable” chattering class shtick is priceless. In order to have my fun, I’m going to quote short bits, but you can read the whole at the link above.

...They are vague because nobody is clear about what sort of country America is going to be in 2030 or 2050. Nobody has quite defined America’s coming economic identity.

• Vague; this from a journalist that can sum up three thousand years of human history as stuff leading to David's world. (along with some not-too-subtle name dropping) We're in the midst of a logarithmic increase of technical knowledge, coupled with the rise of a very old fashioned oligarchy, officials on both sides of the aisle raiding the cookie jar while prattling about exceptionalism, and the Times' columnist is selling a fluff piece about the future while shaking his well manicured finger at the people doing the work. Jeez, the view from his leather couch must be swell.

Years ago, it was industrial production. Now, of course, we’re living in an information age.

• Information age; this is the roi des rats of the current sales pitch. To touch on one aspect, our current monetary crisis has a great deal to do with the misapplication of information age conceits. At its root, money is a game marker for trade. I tend and grow a bushel of carrots. You build toys for kids. We trade said carrots for a stuffed doll. Got it. Money works because now I can trade more carrots to someone else, take the marker and buy a dress to go with the doll. (assuming everyone agrees to regard the marker as legit) Got it. Now, in our brave new age, we have theorized the game markers into information about game markers. All sorts of interesting possibilities open up. American industry has metamorphosed into financial sporting houses where you get to purchase the chance to roll virtual house dice on the destination of an information flow, no carrots or stuffed dolls required. E-mail a bit of information to the friendly banker, and they’ll commoditize your debt, tranche it and ship you a chance to roll on your virtual dinner in the bargain. Works fine as long as everyone agrees that information about the markers is as good as a bushel of carrots. If not, no dinner for you. Mr. Brooks and his class expend a great deal of energy on this particular house of cards because, well, it doesn’t appear he‘d make a very good farmer.

...The main point in this composite story is that creativity is not a solitary process. It happens within networks.

• Networks seem like such a comfortable thing. We can get the gang together and put on a show. In fact, creativity is a solitary process. It happens individually in a concrete place and time. What happens in networks, is the original ideation has its common denominator polished, its uniqueness hidden, a percentage pulled by the network’s owner, the proper advertisements attached, and anything that might upset the powers that be is dealt with tout de suite. Pace: David’s writing

...this new situation: “In a networked world, the issue is no longer relative power, but centrality in an increasingly dense global web.”

• Dave, buddy, let’s do this together. Network - no center. That’s what the word means. Your imported leather couch, winning smile, and latest software constitute a node. Try thinking a bit before hitting the cliché key.

..If you are passionate about fashion, maybe you will go to Paris. If it’s engineering, maybe it’ll be Germany.

• Here lies the crux of my dissatisfaction with Mr. Brooks style of moonbeam sales. I’m talking about people, he’s talking about interchangeable consumption units. He can fly his bubble from interchangeable place to another same place, avoiding any flavors or smells or those nasty rough edges. In Mr. Brooks world, camera operators appear, record his ruminations, and like good hookers, go away. Food appears on his plate without the mediation of fields, manure, or some guy in a truck. Big picture writing without those bothersome details, that’s why he’s on the opinion page. Class, position, and influence are his currency, not being centered in a place and time is what he used to buy in.

A Tough Little Stinker

Actually, there were pressures to switch from carrots. “The Utah Celery Company of Salt Lake City offered to keep all the studio’s staffers well supplied with their product if Bugs would only switch from carrots to celery,” Adamson reports. “[And] later, the Broccoli Institute of America strongly urged Bugs Bunny to sample their product once in a while… Mel Blanc would have been happy to switch… but carrots were Bugs’s trademark.”

A Brief History of Bugs Bunny

The Pulps

A site I stumbled across. Caleb is posting covers and content from older science fiction pulps. Pulp Archive.com It appears that he's just begining the project, so parameters haven't been set in stone. (some legal entity, somewhere, is probably hunting for billable hours) Wish him well and enjoy what's up so far.

Proto-Leatherman

The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, UK, holds a Roman multitool that dates back to the 3rd Century C.E. When unfolded, it has a fork, spatula, pick, spike, and knife blade.

Via: Neatorama

Those Darn Coercion Engineers

Halloween came and went this year without too much fuss. Normally it's a sort of national holiday around here (S.F.), but this year was pretty subdued. I still get a kick out of watching the Chinese kids in the neighborhood. The recent arrivals try to copy the old vets and when they get a handful of candy for their efforts... From the hour before sunset until an hour after, even Broadway gets turned over to the kids. The ladies from the strip joints set up on the sidewalk with a witches' hat and a big bag of candy and even a chair or two for Mom to rest a second.

The first three links are about science in its various forms. Number one is a humorous montage fron the NYT. Number two is the chemistry of coffee, something we all know about. Number three is about China's new supercomputer. I'm sure the powers that be will afix blame on the janitors' union or some such. On the other hand, we might be on better ground with less deal makers, lawyers, and media pundits,and a few more working engineers. I don't know how it is in your neighborhood, but here, the Bay Bridge still hasn't been fully repaired from the damage done in the '89 earthquake. We have plenty of studies, court cases, artistic visions, political action committees with their attendant back room deals, and of course the taxes to support each one, but the city always seems to be a few dollars short when it comes time to send a welder out to do some actual work. While politicians' refusal to break the flow of easy money in order to fix something may seem unrelated to China's computer, the systemic rewards for blowing smoke instead of accomplishing something aren't.

• Unpopular Science. Whether we like it or not, human life is subject to the universal laws of physics.
• What's inside a cup of coffee: ...3,5 Dicaffeoylquinic acid
  When scientists pretreat neurons with this acid in the lab, the cells are significantly (though not completely) protected from free-radical damage. Yup: Coffee is a good source of antioxidants.
• Supercomputer unveiled in China: The record-breaking performance was measured by the LINPACK benchmark, a system designed in the early 70s to test how fast a computer can solve a dense system of equations. And the score? 2.5 petaflops -- "flops", being a measure of floating point operations per second, and "peta" meaning a thousand trillion.

Next are some links to economic matters. Again we have references to the two tiered nature of the law. Bank error: sorry, here's the bill. Your error .. can you spell tuchis, cuz we own yours.

• Inertia You Can Believe In: The U.S. is facing another predictable financial crisis -- two actually, one having to do with a trillion dollars in underfunded public pension liabilities, and the other having to do with the current or looming insolvency of a large number of cities, counties and states -- with the same inaction as before.
• The Paperless Society: And now it turns out that banks' aggressive entry into the paperless world is merely just another example of their abandonment of due diligence generally. Sufficient capital? - bah, just some quaint concept from the 30's. Borrower's credit worthiness? - out-dated, narrow-minded notion from our racial dark-ages.
• Banks Put Economy Underwater: Banks are claiming that these are just accidents. But suppose that while absent-mindedly paying a bill, you wrote a check from a bank account that you had already closed. No one would have much sympathy with excuses that you were in a hurry and didn’t mean to do it, and it really was just a technicality.

Now we have a bit about why the current administration seems to be in for such a drubbing tomorrow. I realize it's not directly related, but in a way it is. If you ignore your base because you know better, if your policies benefit the very institutions you were elected to trim back, and if you have majorities in both houses and still can't do better than wimper, you're toast. This isn't to give any kudos to Bush, quite the opposite. We seem to have Bush redux on most of the matters that count, along with the same arrogance.

• And only where it's due: Further, it's the height of arrogance to suggest that parents are not positioned to question, let alone have a say in, how their schools are run. We're supposed to simultaneously praise parents for being concerned about their children, wanting better schools, involving themselves with their children's schools, etc., but they are to be dismissed as know-nothings the second they question the goals of the system's top bureaucrat?

After linking the above, I thought about the Tea Party. Are they really bottom-up orgs? Some of their members might think so, and more power to them. Are they just another instance of the coercion engineers selling a Trojan horse to the rubes? Stay tuned, we'll know soon enough. Since we're on the subject of coercion engineers, the last three links are on the media.

• The Internet Diet: The same anxieties that we have about the Internet, the ancient Greeks had about the new technology of writing. In The Republic, Plato has Socrates famously declare that poetry has no place in the perfect state. As Carr explains, this attack may seem a little out-of-nowhere unless you understand that poetry was Plato's stand-in for the oral tradition of Greek thought.
• A Little Horse Would be my Paradise: It is fitting that Bruno should encompass also the shifty question of what constitutes exploitation. A reality television celebrity chooses to be exploited, often to extremes; society hasn't yet an answer for these--people whose individual actions become our collective embarrassments.
• Politicians Are Fighting Mad, at the News Media From New York to Alaska, the 2010 campaign season has been rife with hostile and downright bizarre encounters between candidates and the news media.

In A Rut

A Little Press Humor

World Clock

Click Here for active site. (needs Flash)

via: Nag in the Lake

Air Show Disaster

Via: Pete

Tentacle Pot Pie

Link to recipe

Not practical, but what the heck

Now That's Nifty

This custom built wooden car rides on a 1986 Toyota truck frame and gets power from a Chrysler 318 engine. It is driven by an automatic transmission and has just 1,800 miles on its odometer. The whole body is made of cedar and its interior is just as cool as the exterior.

You just know that some inspector, somewhere, is filling out the forms necessary to put a stop to this public menace. The nanny state has its ways.

Back to the Noosphere

Media ecology, feeding frenzy, and the inevitable self-serving self-examination. Why yesss... we did slip up a little on that one cuz... and protecting our freedoms ( the advertiser ) and our way of life. A tweet from the corner drunk becomes a major breaking news story in a matter of hours.( and you can find more opinions on the reporter's Facebook page with explosive up-to-the-minute suppositions) Be right back after this message. (cue the John Williams break theme and bring up the chattering daisy wheel printer sample a bit) Not to denigrate a show business supplied noosphere, but I felt better informed when I was cut off from the blather and froth during fleet week. I'd like to vote for the freedom from mendacity. On to my slightly neglected link-dump.

The first bit is about the press, as you may have guessed. First a story that caught fire, with more and more revelations (My God, we coulda been blowed up) When a cooler head says wait, this doesn't make a lick of sense, the story magically transmogrifies. A report on a report of allegations, made by a book that you can buy for $27.95.DEFEND YOUR RIGHT TO KNOW, BUY IT FROM OUR SPONSER. The second link could profitably be interpereted as a knee-jerk turf defense. The third is political, NYT is tring to position itself as a bit more blue colar without loosing its base on the Upper East. It's hard to effect change with the same people, the same policies, and the same ownership, behind the same closed doors.

• Shelton Story Bogus: The device is a critical link in our system of command and control, is handled by a military aide, and if it were missing, I am certain it would have been noticed -- immediately, not months later. So, what was actually lost? Shelton may have a story to tell here, but so far, it does not hold together.
• Head Start on Smear: The US major papers of record have yet to fill their opinion pages with supposition, slander and rumor concerning Wikileaks and its most visible representative, Julian Assange. That’s for the week to come. But the New York Times has already gotten a head start in its news pages.
• Change we used to believe in: Well, yes! Obama couldn’t have said it more eloquently himself. But with all due respect to Secretary Donovan’s blogging finesse, he wasn’t promising action. He was just stroking the liberal base while the administration once again punted. In our new banking scandal, as in those before it, attorneys general in the states, where many pension funds were decimated by Wall Street Ponzi schemes, are pursuing the crimes Washington has not.

Yes kids, I'm old enough to remember when Rocky and Bullwinkle was a new show, with new episodes. Yikes! Here is the creator's obit.

• R.I.P. Alexander Anderson: ...but few were more obscure, or more important, than Alexander Anderson, who died Friday at 90 in Carmel, Cal. Anderson created the characters Rocky the Flying Squirrel, Bullwinkle Moose and Dudley Do-Right, and the vaudeville-style format, for the 1959 animated program Rocky and His Friends and its 1961 spinoff The Bullwinkle Show, known collectively as Rocky and Bullwinkle.

The next is a bit of security related computer tomfoolery. This one raises a more basic question. A program is a series of yes or no voltage pulses sent to the tick of a controlling clock. Once it's on your machine, it can be decompiled. When a program is in widespread use killing people, the people in question will find a way to get a copy. If you think a remote controlled weapon can't eventually be turned on its user, I've got a great bridge to sell you. The second story is about making-do effectively with the things at hand.

• Predator Drones sued: Intelligent Integration Systems (IISi), a small Boston-based software development firm, alleges that their Geospatial Toolkit and Extended SQL Toolkit were pirated by Massachusetts-based Netezza for use by a government client. Subsequent evidence and court proceedings revealed that the "government client" seeking assistance with Predator drones was none other than the Central Intelligence Agency.
• Wheelbarrow Launchers: It shouldn’t be so surprising, considering that lots of Iraqi insurgents came out of Iraq’s huge Saddam-era military, or that some had help from elite Iranian agents. But here’s an overview of some of the more ingenious, lesser-known innovations in asymmetric warfare that insurgents developed during the Iraq war to neutralize the U.S.’s conventional advantages.

Here are some of the more questionable policy shenanigans the folks in the back room have been up to. The third one comes under the - what the heck did you expect - rubric.

• Saudi Arms Sales: And look, it's preferable to starting a war with Iran, but the trajectory of America's relationships with the countries that had the most direct role in incubating and fomenting the terrorism that slaughtered thousands of Americans and continues to threaten the West is an enduring curiosity. To put it mildly.
• Insider Trading inside the Beltway: What’s wrong with this picture? Nothing, according to the law. Nor would it be illegal for him to tip someone else, say, his largest campaign contributor.
• That's Our Job: The U.S. said Iran shouldn’t interfere with Afghanistan’s internal affairs following a report that an Iranian official gave an aide of President Hamid Karzai a bag filled with packets of euro bills.

Yes, It can happen here.

• A Rationalization of Evil: A doctor quoted in the article notes the irony that this occurred at the same time that the United States was prosecuting Nazi medical experimenters for crimes against humanity at Nuremberg.

Pumpkin Pie

Dichromatism on Your Plate

In some regions of Central Europe, salad dressing is made preferably with pumpkin seed oil, which has a strong characteristic nutty flavor and striking color properties. Indeed, in a bottle it appears red, but it looks green in a salad dressing or mixed with yoghurt.

As you can see from the picture, pumpkin oil can give your dressing a good look in the cruet and it changes its color when poured or in a thin layer on greens. It's a bit hard to find, and pricy, but no more than good olive oil. If your menu has been wandering around the Mediterranean olive groves a mite too long, this is a healthy break. The usual caveats for specialty oils apply; buy fresh, store dark and cool, and go with a real purveyor.

Good Night, Moon

Good Night, Moon

On Tor Books: Written by Rudy Rucker and Bruce Sterling, Illustration by Tim Bower