Nov 30, 2006

"stupid fun for smart people"

Tesla update.



All the good news about performance goals met was nice, but I dug that the author used the phrase "as shoulder-to-shoulder as striking Teamsters" when describing the tight interior of a car that could not have and will not ever come out of Detroit.

He also describes the odd, numb silence from the car in spite of its ballsy acceleration and mentions that one might want a recording of a rumbling engine - there's a business in there. Recordings of any car you could want, motorcycles too if you wanted to be weird, synchronized through your stereo to the tach or the transmission...

shooting out of the gate

Jim Webb, freshman senator from Virginia, is off to a good start. (from WaPo:)

"How's your boy?" Bush asked, referring to Webb's son, a Marine serving in Iraq.
"I'd like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President," Webb responded, echoing a campaign theme.
"That's not what I asked you," Bush said. "How's your boy?"
"That's between me and my boy, Mr. President," Webb said coldly, ending the conversation on the State Floor of the East Wing of the White House.

Balls-allicious.

Much will be said, I'm sure, as already happened this morning when a coworker tried to undercut this, about how it's only a shrewd political move to appear disdainful of political niceities and a man who's polling in the single digits, or how it's just rude not to acknowledge a polite request from The President of the United States, blah blah blah. While either may be true, it doesn't matter, because speaking truth to power takes priority, regardless of motivation, (which in this case I believe is not the above but is more attributable to putting a stake in the ground and good old-fashioned aggression). This is why Colbert's speech at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, albeit exceedingly uncomfortable and impolite, was spot-on. By not perpetuating with a wink and a nudge what they railed against once they were invited behind the curtain, people like Colbert and Webb stand up for what they say they believe in the clear light of day, and that's the only way to know whether they actually do.

Nov 21, 2006

optimal inequality

What a great phrase.

I followed a not very good Tom Paine item to a very good New York Times article about not just the disparities of pay between a company's top and bottom rung employees, but also about the fascinating crucial aspect that shapes and motivates our society: fairness, or its absence.

I only followed the link, which on Tom Paine was of the typical and increasingly boring 'bad Wal-Mart!' variety (not that I'm liking the behemoth any more, I just get tired of hearing them get bashed without holding others up to the same desired standards, and I think that lack opens up those who complain to easy skewering and blanket generalization of liberalism), because it didn't take any effort to read that one sentence and click on it. The first item of note was that the NYT, probably knowing it would get the article picked up by all sorts of bloggers and newsfeeds, seemed to have played the Wal-Mart card, because even though the first sentence talks about the CEO receiving 850 times what most floor workers receive in pay, the very next sentence dismisses that as small potatoes, pointing out an exec in another company that makes 4,000 times what his rank and file makes.

But I digress. The interesting point of the article is that economists disagree on the degree of inequality that is optimal for society: no inequality means that effort tanks and the overall economy shrinks to just about nothing, while rampant inequality means that inertia favors the richest, as they shape companies' bottom lines and purhcase politicians to ensure future success, thereby undermining competition and shrinking the economy; as economist Richard Freeman points out in the article with a golf metaphor, "If Tiger won everything, nobody would want to play."

Of course we all do want to play, meaning we need to figure out where that inequality optimality should exist (and how much that position shifts based on our own position in the wealth spectrum). Basically if we can agree that it's fair that it's not fair, we still have to agree on how much not fair is fair.

(It was interesting that the article didn't point out what I heard awhile back on NPR, that the huge disparity in salaries (currently the greatest it's been since the '20s, with the top .1% grabbing 7% of income in the country) isn't due only to a bunch of guys in a board room scratching each others' backs. It's evidently greatly exacerbated by a legislative move intended to tie executive salary to company performance, which, in this age of HUGE companies has the unintended consequence of huge paydays as well. Ooops.)

Nov 9, 2006

Lessenberry: 1, Hastert: 0

Jack Lessenberry brought up a good point about the failure of our damned liberal media to go on the offensive when the Republicans started mongering fear of a nice grandmother from California.

Why did all this 'Speaker Pelosi will sell all your stocks and give the taxed proceeds to crack whores and PETA' stuff go so unchallenged by the Dems and the media? But also, why didn't anyone point out about Pelosi's predecessor what Jack did in this Metro Times commentary?

The embarrassing Dennis Hastert is a grossly fat man who walks like he is determined to prove that man really did evolve from the ape, and that he himself isn't too sure about whether he supports the transition. Barely articulate, shuffling and dim, Hastert has been the weakest speaker in at least a century.

There is a reason for that; he was never meant to be the real speaker at all. Hastert was merely supposed to be the errand boy and front man for Tom DeLay. Once Darth Vader was indicted and had to resign, Hastert was rudderless, taking what clues he could from the Bush White House.

The man who played House speaker on TV clearly didn't have a clue what to do when he was warned one of his tribe was salivating over teenage boys. One might almost wonder if it evoked nostalgic memories of Hastert's days as a high school wrestling coach. Someday, if we are lucky, and the planet isn't destroyed first, and if there is still fresh air and water, your children may ask you what the hell was wrong with the American people in the Bush era.

a pox on both your houses!

Wow. Just heard on my commute that it's very likely that Jim Webb will take Virginia. Good news, for him and us.

I guess the Dems have proven they can indeed pick up a softball that is dropped at their feet. Now they just need to carry it.

Nov 7, 2006

Sunday Bloody Sunday


Tonight, we can be as one.

Nov 6, 2006

clouding the issues

This is one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time, though anyone who knows me knows that really isn't saying much.

It's refreshing to see presidential rhetoric in clouds rather than smokescreens. Scrolling back through the years gives a quick zeitgeist as well as insight into how language was used by each administration.

I can easily picture how a savvy speech writer could use this to evoke certain moods in the populace that would be imbued with the weight of history and an unconscious deja vu.

History will not be kind

It's a shame that history, like hell, often waits for the guilty to fade off into their undisturbed lives, rarely affecting their insane actions.

Another good post over at Balloon Juice illustrates how the blame is playing Duck-Duck-Goose around the circular firing squad in the 'Let's Go Topple A Regime' crowd.

Seriously. For all those who actually supported the invasion, what in the world were you thinking? Look at just some of those involved:

George W. Bush
Richard Perle
Paul Wolfowitz
Ahmad Chalabi
Henry Kissinger

Can anyone have known these guys' backgrounds and walked away thinking, 'oh, sure, they can be trusted to wield the mightiest military force in history and then be politically and socially savvy enough to shape a nation whose history has consisted solely of Western manipulation followed by strong dictatorships into a functioning democracy?' If you think they had a snowball's chance, add some motivated and charismatic terrorists to the mix and rethink it.

It's a shame that only history will be their judge.

UPDATE: I forgot to include Donald Rumsfeld in that list above - in spite of his historical ineptitude and arrogance, he's utterly forgettable.

Nov 1, 2006

perspective

November 7th is coming - your decisions will fundamentally decide the paths of millions of lives, for years to come! Whatever you do, don't give those bastards control of every branch of the government... *static*

Not to belittle our coming democratic opportunity, but maybe this will help us all feel a little better, or worse, about our place in things:

The universe was formed 13.7 billion years ago.
Nine billion years later, the earth was formed (4.5B years old (YO)).
Six billion years later, life emerged (3B YO).
Five billion, nine-hundred and thirty five years later, primates emerged (65M YO).
58 million years later, hominids started ambling around (7M YO).
57 million, eight-hundred-thousand years later, modern humans became something other than prey for bigger mammals (200K YO).
We relied on killing things and yanking stuff off of trees for the next 192,000 years, before developing agriculture (8K YO). Complex, and sometimes civilized, societies soon followed.
After 5,000 years of sitting around while others grew our food, we thought up democracy (3K YO).
It took another twenty-six hundred years to imagine the careful, observation-and-experiment-based scientific method (300-400 YO).
The United States, a new country based on democratic thought and empowered by science, is 230 years old. A family could have members only six generations apart that fought in both the Revolutionary War and the War on Terror.

So yes, you should always stand up for what you believe in, and your vote does count, as do the actions of our elected representatives...

Just not much.


UPDATE: My snitty little trotting out of mind-boggling stats above did overlook one item that shouldn't ever be diminished. It's well known that Rick Santorum is the personification of It That Has Waited 13.7 Billion Years To Eat Your Soul; as such, a vote against him matters on Nov. 7th. Other than that, it's eventually all a wash.