The University of Illinois has decide to make public all of the Freedom of Information Act Requests they receive and the responses to them that they make on a web site:
http://www.uillinois.edu/foia/

Not a bad idea IMHO. First it creates a transparency in FOIA requests. It also kind of shines the light back on people making the requests. There are a lot of legitimate reasons to make a formal FOIA request. But the press and other private individuals might think about it differently if they know that everyone will know that they made the request. Of course, yall know I'm not a fan of anonymity in free speech. The freedom and the exposure should work both ways for it to really work.

Solider on brave space-cadets.

It was easy to miss the news that Robert McNamara died. His life is a cautionary tale of intelligence and arrogance. People who are being more polite are calling it "hubris" instead of arrogance but it means the same thing. McNamara was a highly intelligent man who in his youth strongly believed that the ends justified the means. As secretary of defense he had a record not unlike Donald Rumsfeld. He believed there was no vice in the defense of democracy and didn't care how he achieved his goals.

Unlike Rumsfeld, later in life McNamara saw his error. In the 2003 documentary about his career, "The Fog of War," he stated of American hubris:
What makes us omniscient? Have we a record of omniscience? We are the strongest nation in the world today. I do not believe we should ever apply that economic, political, or military power unilaterally. If we had followed that rule in Vietnam, we wouldn't have been there! None of our allies supported us; not Japan, not Germany, not Britain or France. If we can't persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause, we'd better reexamine our reasoning.

And of his own journey he said:
I'm not so naive or simplistic to believe we can eliminate war. We're not going to change human nature any time soon. It isn't that we aren't rational. We are rational. But reason has limits. There's a quote from T.S. Eliot that I just love: "We shall not cease from exploring, and at the end of our exploration, we will return to where we started, and know the place for the first time." Now that's in a sense where I'm beginning to be.

I'm not hopeful that many Americans learned much from the life of Robert McNamara but I wish him better than those that continue their saber rattling all the way to their graves. I hope that his eleven lessons are his legacy:

1. Empathize with your enemy


2. Rationality will not save us


3. There's something beyond one's self


4. Maximize efficiency


5. Proportionality should be a guideline in war


6. Get the data


7. Belief and seeing are often both wrong


8. Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning


9. In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil


10. Never say never


11. You can't change human nature

Solider on brave space-cadets.

The baby is two months old today and last night she slept seven hours straight for the first time! It's a July miracle! She's growing up fast.

Solider on brave space-cadets.

Native Washingtonians will find it amusing that ex-mayor Marion Barry got arrested again. Not it isn't drugs this time. It's women:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/05/AR2009070501056.html?hpid=topnews

Solider on brave space-cadets.

I suppose I should apologize for endorsing Obama as a guy who would up-hold civil liberties:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/02/AR2009070202771.html?hpid=topnews

What a fucking disappointment.

So this week we had Ed McMannon, Farrah Faucet, and the King of Pop**.... and then Billy Mays***. Gawd dammit! Didn't someone tell Billy that these things happen in threes? He makes four. Or is Sunday technically the next week and we can expect two more big ones by the end of this week? Celebrities beware!

Solider on brave space-cadets.

** Like Beetlejuice or Biggie Smalls I believe that if you say his name three times he will appear... or at least a hundred screaming sobbing fan girls will appear. I've had enough of the mourning fan girls, thank you.

*** Oddly enough when my wife told me this morning that Billy Mays was dead, I temporarily confused him with Willy Mays and my response was something more choked up. Sorry Billy but you were never a 30-30 man or made amazing defensive plays in center field including that iconic catch in the 1954 World Series.

Take a gander of this picture off the CNN website of the civil unrest in Honduras.



Of course the first thing I noticed was the golden arches over the right shoulder of the masked man. Damn! McDonalds is everywhere. I bet there is still a line at the counter even with a big fire in the front parking lot.

Solider on brave space-cadets.

Ungh! Even the announcers for Faux Sports coverage are idiot windbags. Thank gawd I only have to watch a few Cubs games a year on the channel for morons.

Solider on brave space-cadets.

Under cover of the unending Michael Jackson memorials the Obama administration is attempting to against reason and moral authority continue the indefinite detention of "enemies of the state."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/26/AR2009062603361.html?hpid=topnews

I'm loosing my patience. It was bad enough when Dubya and Dick started making these rules. To have a Democrat support them and reinforce them makes me sick. The rights we have as citizens mean nothing if we are not willing to apply them to our worst enemies. Those who would sacrifice freedom for safety deserve neither! I will fight Obama from the left with every bone in my body if he does this. It will be amusing however to see if all of a sudden Faux News is against indefinite detention because Obama is for it.

Solider on brave space-cadets.

This spring I was elected to be a faculty rep for my campus to the university-wide governance council. I found out yesterday that I'm going to get paid extra for doing it. Actually they didn't tell me at first that I'd get paid. I was told that I'd get an non-instructional assignment (NIA). My reply to that was that between my existing NIA for being observatory director and my teaching load, I was already exceeding my hours load and since no one on my campus can remember the last time they paid overtime for an instructional overload... well my reaction was pretty non-pulsed. But then I was told that because this NIA comes from central university administration that it actually pays if you take it on overload.

Slowly but surely I might cobble together a way to make as much money as someone hired three years after me is making. Is this fair? I've got to work more to get paid the same amount as someone three years my junior in seniority? They call it "salary compression" when raises don't keep up with inflation but new hires salaries do. I call it a giant suck. I've been trying to hatch a plan where I quit and they have to re-hire me so that I'm making the same inflation adjusted salary that I made my first year. There is something fundamentally wrong with a system where I have to change jobs to keep my salary from shrinking in inflation adjusted dollars every year. *le*sigh* One way to fix this would be to say that everyone makes the same salary once they get promoted to tenure. It doesn't work that way.

I'm also upset about a smidgen of information relevant to salaries that I got as part of the university governance group. We have been told explicitly that we cannot divulge it to anyone. I'm trying to figure a way to vent. A lot of my discomfort with the arrangement is that we were assured that the rest of the faculty would be told about it "soon" but the administration has not yet peeped. I'm of the strong opinion that this is the kind of thing where the level of anger expressed at the news is exponentially proportional to the amount of time it was kept confidential. People don't like surprises when it involves their paycheck unless you are giving them a bonus or a raise.

More and more I am thinking that it is a bad idea to let a state run a university. I'm all for the access to education part of it but I am fed up with the way that state legislatures choose not to fund universities and then explicitly disallow them from raising tuition to make up for it. Actually when I think about it, it is a testimony to the skill and quality of the people working at state schools who endure this unending string of fiscal abuse and unfunded mandates and yet still continue to somehow provide some of the best educational opportunities in the world. Working in this shitty system will make me a libertarian yet I fear.

Solider on brave space-cadets.

The grocery list that's been hanging on our fridge for the last few days reads:
Butter
Pabst
Jack Daniels
SureJell

I better get to the store stat since I'm not sure if I can survive the weekend without those items.

Solider on brave space-cadets.

Remember how much Michael Jackson irritated your grandparents in the 1980's? It seems by all reports he's probably now irritating them in the afterlife. I am looking forward to the wingnut conspiracy theories and Michael Jackson sightings a la Elvis. Poor Farah Faucet has had the lime light stolen from her yet again.

Solider on brave space-cadets.

Wow... just wow.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/governors/sanfords-admits-affair-first-t.html?hpid=artslot
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/24/south.carolina.governor/index.html

How stupid was that? I think this deserves a nomination for the Darwin Award because its almost terminal arrogant stupidity. Take notes: you might get away with it if you hole up in a motel off the interstate. You won't get away with it if there is an official record that you left the country unless you can come up with a better excuse than "I was hiking the Appalachian Trail."

Soldier on brave space-cadets.

This is my first day of the Mr Mom act for the summer. Since puffinesq works for the man she doesn't get the summer off. For the next two week's she's working two days a week and then for four more weeks she works for three a week before going back part time. In case you were wondering, this is NOT a generous maternity leave. If she'd been working for a law firm back in the Twin Cities she would have got 12 weeks leave with full pay, no questions asked.

Being Mr Mom suits me I guess. Baby is getting bigger and starting to fill out. I think she looks more like puffinesq's baby pictures every day. However she did get my sweaty palms and eyelashes. She'll like the long eyelashes when she is older but she's going to curse me for giving her my over moisturized skin.

She's doing some scary stuff also that six week old babies shouldn't do. puffinesq had a nightmare that she set her down in the airport and the baby got up and ran away. She's not walking but she's doing things with her neck muscles that are freakish for her age. She swivels her head with precision and lifts herself up off my back when I'm burping her. She's nearly turned all the way over a few times as well. We really didn't get this honey-moon that everyone talks about where you set the baby down and she stays there worry-free.

I'd like to also say that most baby music CDs are crap. After hearing them, I wouldn't give a Fisher Price produced CD to my worst enemy as a baby shower gift. Why do people think that they have to change the music to make it suitable for babies? I'd rather listen to fingernails dragged across a chalk-board. My daughter is gonna be raised on the real thing, not that drooling pre-digested mush.

Two Saturday's ago I got to go to my first baseball game at Wrigley field. I highly recommend this pilgrimage to all baseball fans. It's a nice classic park without a bad seat. I sat near the foul pole down the third base line and the only blockage I had was when some moron rookie food vendor walked down the row and didn't crouch to serve customers. I kind of like the lack of a big TV screen. And I also really liked not hearing rock music blaring over the loud speakers between and during innings. The organ is the only music in the park. That's the way it should be. I also loved not needing to suffer through that moron redneck song "I'm Proud To Be An American" during the seventh inning stretch. "Take me out to the ball game" is sufficient, thank you. So Wrigley lacks a lot of the "frills" of the modern ballparks, but I think it makes it better. It makes the experience about the game being played without distractions. That is really nice for a baseball fan. Now that I've been to both Wrigley and Fenway I've been to the best. I wish they started building them like that again.

Baby is going to be a Cubs fan. The Cubs always win in extra-innings when she takes a big blow-out crap when the Cubs are batting after the ninth inning. That means that I end up missing the game winning hit since I'm cleaning poo off everything she was touching, but it's worth it if the Cubs win and my daughter is entertained.

BTW, happy wedding to i_beam and humorbot! Sorry that we couldn't make it.

Soldier on brave space-cadets.

I'm disappointed in David Letterman. What the heck is he thinking? He didn't just apologize to Sarah Palin, he caved like a (insert your favorite outrageously insulting metaphor here).

Sarah Palin is a whiner and a bully. She also campaigns on the back of her family. She parades them out in the press when it suits her and she feigns outrage over jokes about them when it suits her. Its ironic that she'd say Letterman took a cheap shot, since what she's done in return is the pot calling the kettle black. According to an accounting by the Washington Post both Leno and Conan O'brien have told a combined 35 jokes in exactly the same vein about Palin's daughter's without raising this ire. Saturday Night Live made a direct insinuation of incest with Palin's daughters two weeks before she appeared on that show... she said nothing. So WTF?

No comedian should have to apologize for a joke they make in jest. Sometimes a comedian makes it personal and tries to hurt someone with their words (see Michael Richards). Admittedly its hard to define this line. But for the most part they're going for yucks because that is what they get paid to do. A comedian hurts their earning potential if people hate them. So insinuating that Letterman was being mean is just stupid. And he shouldn't apologize for it.

Solider on brave space-cadets.

I bought an "atomic blue" Honda Civic Hybrid. It's way more loaded and tricked out than I would have ever got for myself but we reasoned that we should make it a good family car for trips up to Minnesota. I didn't get anything beyond the standard features but, for example, this is my first car with power windows.

Soldier on brave space-cadets.

The unrest in Iran isn't making enough of a splash in this country. This is a cautionary tale for tyrants who seek to fix elections. IMHO the reason why Iranians (or Persians as some wish to be known) are upset is that the outcome seems too improbable not to be fixed. There are not a lot of verifiable facts but what we do know is that the opposition was close to winning this election in polls before the vote and that record turn-out (like occurred) almost universally benefits the opposition party.

It would be believable if Amadinajad won but had less than 50%, meaning that more than half the people voted for some kind of opposition. It would also be believable if Amadinajad got over 50% but only barely beat out Mousavi (his most popular opponent). But according to the Iranian interior ministry he got almost two thirds of the vote and Mousavi wasn't even close behind. That combination just raises questions. The lie is just too big to be believable.

There are ways to fix an election where the opposition just has to shrug and go home. See the 2000 presidential election in Florida. When you fix an election within a margin of error it doesn't give your opponent much of a platform to ground their allegations of fraud. But tyrants get arrogant. They get greedy. Their egos need more than a narrow win. And that's when the lies become outrageous and transparent.

It is also important for the media in this country to pay attention. The appearance of fraud can be just as damaging as real and actual fraud. It is possible that the pre-election polls in Iran were off. But then they should not have been touted by the Iranian media as reliable. When the results of an election are far outside the expressed margin of error for a pre-election poll, that also has the effect of eroding confidence in democracy. The media has a responsibility when they set expectations that an election cannot deliver. I'm talking to you Faux News.

In all likelihood not much will change in Iran in the near future as a result of this. But the west has to pay closer attention to what is going on there to help affect real change down the road. Obama and Hillary are playing their cards pretty well. Even Israel deserves some props for playing it cool. We need to find ways to encourage the Iranian (Persian) people to exercise their instinct for self-determination without giving Amadinajad the ammunition he can use to make the West and Isreal the enemy. If we criticize him too openly he will use us to distract his subjects from his own tyrannical rule. If we stay vigilant, aware, and use some discretion he won't have that foil to fend off his critics. He should be aware that tyrants don't live forever. They are toppled by patient persistence.

Solider on brave space-cadets.

Today I got first hand experience with why the US car industry is in big financial trouble. In particular GM and Ford. I went car shopping and I was appalled.

I like driving small cars. Small, fuel efficient, and inexpensive cars. My silver-blue 2003 Saturn ION-2 fit the bill. It wasn't an aluminum go-cart but it fit the bill nicely while being reasonably safe on a road shared by idiots driving ten ton SUVs.

Ford ain't an option. Because the Fuck-Us would be my only choice there and I refuse to buy a car that's going to spend half its operational lifetime in the shop. GM is even worse but I went back to my Saturn dealer to see what they had. I test drove an ASTRA and an AURA. The ASTRA is a huge disappointment. All the things I liked about my ION are missing. We cut the test drive on this one short because I got a quarter of the way through the circuit we'd been doing and I was disgusted. The AURA is a nice car but it's competing with Cadillac. It's a luxury car, not an economy car. And again it was disappointing to see most of the things I liked about the ION missing.

This is why GM is doomed to fail. They totally screwed up the most promising line they owned and killed the best model they made without replacing it with something comparable or better. I'm thinking we should liquidate GM and use the proceeds from the sale of its assets to pay the pensions and job re-training for their clerical staff and line workers. The GM executives should be put in stocks on the National Mall in DC with free rotten tomatoes provided to hurl at them.

I'm probably going to buy a Honda. They have a number of very nice economy models. I'll probably go with the Civic Hybrid because its a bit less cramped with the wife and the baby along for the ride. The fact that Honda can make three promising models when two thirds of the "big three" aren't capable of producing one just proves to me that the american auto industry is tied exclusively to demand for SUVs and Pickups and as such is doomed to fail.

Solider on brave space-cadets.

It's official. My sky-blue Saturn ION has been declared a total loss. I got the license plates and said goodbye to her this afternoon. Seems a shame to part this way when it got bent saving my life. I got a little over the blue book value from the insurance settlement. And the car was paid off so there are no messy financial work-arounds to worry about.

My understanding is that the insurance companies are conspiring to get their pound of flesh from the city and the city employees who almost got me killed while "repairing" the traffic light. It doesn't bother me so much that these utility workers screwed up. We all make mistakes and should be forgiven if its really a mistake and not a pattern of behavior. What burns me about the whole thing is that they fled the scene of the accident. Where I come from when you f*ck up you fess up and take it like a man. You don't flee the scene. Almost getting me killed could be forgiven cause we all lucked out. These guys deserve to get punished for showing a lack of character and attempting to evade responsibility.

Soldier on brave space-cadets.

The pictures of this actually don't look as bad as how it sounded. The car almost looks drivable (and it was in a sense). I'm still waiting to hear from the insurance assessor.

The Wreck of the Saturn ION The Wreck of the Saturn ION, 2009 June 3

Solider on brave space-cadets.