Last year, the Washington Supreme Court, by a 5-4 decision, upheld a ban on gay marriage. The decision specifically cited the production of children to be a core reason for the decision to limit the definition of marriage to include only same-sex partners:

…encouraging procreation between opposite-sex individuals within the framework of marriage is a legitimate government interest furthered by limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples.

Angered by this decision, some gay rights activists are trying to expose the flawed logic behind this ruling by taking it to the logical extreme: if the legally defined purpose of marriage is to procreate, then all people who cannot or do not procreate must be barred from the institution of marriage.

Thus Initiative 957, called the “Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance,” was born. It is a referendum proposed for the state ballot that would require procreation for a marriage to be legitimate. Any married couple unable to produce children within three years would have their marriage annulled until such time as they could produce children. Otherwise, they would have to make do with a legally unrecognized “social union.”

Now, it is fair: if you’re going to exclude gays on the basis of inability to procreate, you should not discriminate–the principle should be applied universally. If the true purpose of marriage is to procreate, then it should be legitimate to ban all non-procreators, not just the same-sex ones.

Of course, this very act of fairness shows up the idiocy of the principle. Marriage is not just about procreation. Which, of course, is the whole point. The idea of I-957 is not to have the measure passed, it is to call attention to the flaw in the stated reasoning of the so-called “defense of marriage” campaign sweeping the country. The “logic” and legitimacy of using the yardstick of procreation to define marriage falls to pieces when you realize that it must also exclude childless straight couples, else be discriminatory by nature.

If these “defense of marriage” yahoos want to discriminate against gays, they should simply come out and say so. And of course, they’d probably love to. But then, if they did, they’d never get any anti-gay laws passed, because these days you can’t get bigoted laws passed unless you dress them up real pretty.

This is The Line Formerly Known As Line 13, as it were. The new subway line opening between Ikebukuro and Shibuya is now officially the 副都心線, or Fukutoshin Line–literally, the “secondary redevelopment effects on a city center as a result of suburban development” … er, “line,” as defined by EDICT. Though that translation may be a tad stodgy. The three characters are “secondary” (or “vice-“), “metropolitan,” and “heart.” I guess “Secondary City Central Line” might be a better way to put it.

However, the line will not be opening as soon as I had thought. Many sources placed the opening in 2007, but the same article that reveals the name claims the line will open in June 2008.

The line is of particular interest to me because it includes a station less than a block from my work, and would do away with a 10-minute walk now required in my commute. I was hoping it would open in June this year–a nice birthday present for me–but instead I’ll have to wait another year.

I tried to get this blog listed in Google News, after seeing a good number of other political blogs and plain-simple web sites included. Google wrote back:

Thank you for your note. We’ve reviewed http://www.blogd.com but are unable to include it in Google News at this time. We don’t include sites that are written and maintained by one individual. We appreciate your taking the time to contact us and will log your site for consideration should our requirements change.

Until late last year, this was the trailer playing in just about every Japanese movie theater to discourage piracy. (For irony, see the pirate-video-cam version of the trailer on YouTube.) This trailer has been around for a few years, and tells the audience: “Our enjoyment (of movies) is being stolen. Important things will be destroyed. I won’t watch, I won’t buy (pirated movies).” The following text appears during the trailer: I want to protect movies, I want to protect our enjoyment (of movies). … Don’t watch or buy illegal downloads and pirated DVDs. The campaign is called “Save Our Movies.” As if, of course, they are greatly imperiled by movie pirates.

There are several things wrong with the ad. First of all, it is shown pretty much exclusively to people who just plunked down $15 a head to see a movie in the theater, so it’s hard to say what the effect will be of either boring non-downloading patrons with such an ad, or insulting them with the accusation that they do so. Secondly, the ad is pretty strange. Artistic, perhaps, but my own reaction to it was to roll my eyes at the over-dramatization. Maybe some are impressionable enough to be affected by this message, but I have the feeling that most people scoff at it.

But they’ve gotten even worse in their latest trailer which I’ve seen several times now. Instead of the girl crying pirate-black tears, they now have a set of bizarre cartoon frames. I wish I could show them to you, but I cannot find them anywhere on the web. One frame, for example, shows a movie pirate in the back of a theater with a camera up on a tripod, wearing an evil grin, while other patrons stand and shout in anger. One male patron is caught in a ridiculous mid-shout while his girlfriend is crying miserably (while also shouting). Cut to another frame showing the pirate at home insidiously working his home computer with the movie, his hands caught in a villainous rigor.

Now, of course, you would expect this to be ironic, perhaps even self-effacing, intended as comic relief to make light of a situation while still sending the message. The thing is, that’s not the tone of the trailer at all. It comes across as serious, even somber–not like they’re trying to make fun of it at all. It could be tongue-in-cheek, I suppose, but nobody is laughing at it at the screenings I’ve seen. And it is all too similar to similar cartoons shown on Japanese subways to discourage impolite behavior, like talking on your cell phone or spreading your legs out while seated–cartoons with a caricatured offender with bystanders showing ridiculously exaggerated expressions of annoyance or distress.

Maybe I’m just not getting it. Maybe it’s low-key, nobody-laughs comedy like Bunraku. But I have the feeling that it’s not.

There is no doubt left that this administration, in fact, seriously desires a conflict with Iran, and is doing everything it can to prepare for and provoke a war. This from Newsweek:

Some view the spiraling attacks as a strand in a worrisome pattern. At least one former White House official contends that some Bush advisers secretly want an excuse to attack Iran. “They intend to be as provocative as possible and make the Iranians do something [America] would be forced to retaliate for,” says Hillary Mann, the administration’s former National Security Council director for Iran and Persian Gulf Affairs. U.S. officials insist they have no intention of provoking or otherwise starting a war with Iran, and they were also quick to deny any link to Sharafi’s kidnapping. But the fact remains that the longstanding war of words between Washington and Tehran is edging toward something more dangerous. A second Navy carrier group is steaming toward the Persian Gulf, and NEWSWEEK has learned that a third carrier will likely follow. Iran shot off a few missiles in those same tense waters last week, in a highly publicized test. With Americans and Iranians jousting on the chaotic battleground of Iraq, the chances of a small incident’s spiraling into a crisis are higher than they’ve been in years.

Add to that this even more stark revelation from the Washington Post:

Some senior administration officials still relish the notion of a direct confrontation. One ambassador in Washington said he was taken aback when John Hannah, Vice President Cheney’s national security adviser, said during a recent meeting that the administration considers 2007 “the year of Iran” and indicated that a U.S. attack was a real possibility.

From one perspective, you can see it easily: Iran is seen as a major threat to stability in the region, and before some peacenik gets elected to the White House, those presently in power wish for a conflict to begin so that even if it cannot be ended within the current administration’s timeline, it will at least be waged in the next one. There are without doubt many within the Bush administration who see a war with Iran as a sheer necessity. There are other advantages as well: after Iraq, Bush and the Republicans got a substantial boost in popularity, second only to 9/11; a war in Iran might also boost their fortunes and entrap the Democrats just as a critically important election looms on the horizon. A conflict with Iran could be what Republicans need to win back control of Congress and retake the White House to boot. The internal and external politics couldn’t be better for a new war in the Gulf.

From that perspective (from within the White House), a war with Iran makes perfect sense. But from a different perspective, it is outright insanity. Afghanistan should always have been our focus; that’s where the terrorists really were, that’s where the attack on our country originated from, that’s where Democracy could have been born in the Middle East had we concentrated our willpower, firepower, and economic resources at it. Moving into Iraq was disastrous: it sapped our manpower and economic resources so that Afghanistan became less manageable and slipped out of our control, not to mention that it has broken both our budget and our military strength to their breaking points. Despite administration bluster that the world now trembles at even the hint of American might being pointed their way, the fact remains that the American military is now stretched so thin that it is weaker than it has been for decades, perhaps weaker than it has been in modern times. We are in no shape whatsoever to begin a new conflict, much less one with far a country with more strength than Iraq had.

The pro-war element has been spiraling to a self-perpetuated escalation, however; each new step makes the next one even more inevitable. Had we stayed and focused in Afghanistan, instability could have been contained; for all his evil, Hussein held Iraq, a lynchpin in the Middle East, in more stable control than anyone else could have. And by invading Iraq and thundering about the “Axis of Evil,” this administration has only inflamed Iran. We invaded the countries to its western and eastern borders and went ballistic in rhetoric about how Iran is pure evil, leaving them little doubt about our intentions–and accordingly, they have responded in kind. It is more than arguable that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is seen as unstable and potentially dangerous, was elected precisely because America was making itself far more a threat to Iran than it needed to. Ahmadinejad was, in a very real sense, created by the Bush administration to be the threat he now is. Had we stayed in Afghanistan only and stemmed the “evil” rhetoric, relations with Iran would be far different now.

A war with Iran is more frightening than one might imagine. Some seem to believe that we could simply bomb the country and therefore neutralize it, and that Iran would not respond beyond shaking in anger. But Iran is not Iraq, and short of overwhelming it with a massive invasion force, it cannot be easily quelled; Saddam Hussein discovered this. But the real disaster scenario would come when Iran figures out that America’s military might is stretched to the breaking point, and that if Iran’s military were to be fully applied toward an invasion of Iraq, no amount of American willpower could create enough new troops to handle the bloody chaos that would ensue. And with both Ahmadinejad’s political tilt and his economic woes, we should not think that such a war would not be exactly what he wants as well. It is far from unimaginable that he believes he could potentially win such a conflict.

There is very little doubt also that America could not, at present, handle a full-on assault by Iran. Already we cannot handle the Iraq insurgency alone. Iran could potentially throw half a million soldiers at the conflict, far more than any number we could conceivably muster–and the likelihood of other nations coming to our aid now is virtually nil, after Bush has so carefully alienated just about everybody who could potentially be of meaningful help to us. (Would you want to pour your forces into that kind of a conflict?)

Bush would be faced with a stark option: concede defeat or go nuclear. And while some in his administration might believe that the threat of going nuclear would be enough to contain the situation, or that nuclear weapons could be used without America being irreparably damaged in its relations with the world, I believe the truth is far different.

Perhaps I am being too pessimistic, as I was four years ago when I feared that Iraq would strike Israel in response to a U.S. invasion, and that Israel would respond with nuclear weapons. In fact, I hope that I am as mistaken as that. But as wrong as I was about that point, I was prescient in so many other fears about a conflict with Iraq, and I am not all that happy that my present fears may be just as well founded. America is weaker now because of the Bush administration, and the stakes in starting a war with Iran are far higher than they were with Iraq. Iran is larger, more populous, and more powerful than Iraq ever was, and we have driven them to a point where a conflict may be inevitable–and we may have convinced ourselves that Iran will be as much a pushover as we thought Iraq would be. And that would be a grave error.

That is, if by “Liberal” you mean “Conservative.” I opened up Google News and was greeted by two headlines showing potential front-runners formally announcing their candidacies in the upcoming presidential race:

The obstacles that could devour Obama
Senator must clear Clinton and funding hurdles

Giuliani greeted warmly by GOP
The former N.Y. mayor tells state Republicans he hopes they’ll back him for president.

Now, that could be random chance–Google might just have put a positive Giuliani and negative Obama story up front by coincidence. However, when I went to the Google Page which listed all the stories under the general category for each candidate, almost all for Obama were non-committal: Obama throws his hat in the ring, Obama to run for presidency, It’s official: Obama is running for president, or Black candidate launches White House bid–the only positive ones were ones that quoted Obama directly, as in Obama Launches Bid To ‘Transform’ Us. He also got headlines like Donner Party Began Here Too, and Black voters still unsure about Obama, for example.

Giuliani, on the other hand, got a few negative headlines, a fair number of noncommittal lot of favorable-sounding headlines:Giuliani rouses the GOP faithful in California, Giuliani leads GOP supply-siders out of the gate, Giuliani fares well for GOP social moderate, and Rudy’s California Gold Rush.

The thing is, you have to really look through the headlines to notice these things, otherwise it just seems like you just saw a news story that’s reasonable and fair. You notice two or three which have different slants, you might think that everything’s being represented equally. But a look at the broader picture reveals a bias. After all, Obama has fewer skeletons in his closet (that we know about) than Giuliani. Giuliani cheated on his wife and had a messy divorce; Obama has a fantastic wife who as seen as a great asset–though neither of these are covered in the mainstream media nowadays. Giuliani is known to be hot-tempered; Obama has widespread appeal.

Almost the only positive Giuliani has is that he was mayor of New York City when 9/11 hit, and like Bush, he got catapulted to high popularity not because he did anything worthy of note, but because he was there and got on camera. This article debunks the Giuliani-as-hero myth, and this article covers his darker side in general–especially making the astute point that had Giuliani been the mayor of New Orleans, he wouldn’t have been so lionized. His “heroic” leadership only looked heroic because of the context, not because of anything he actually accomplished.

And will the media pay attention to the rather unsavory parts of Giuliani’s past? He would likely lose support from the minority communities once people start remembering people like Amadou Diallo, Abner Louima, Robert Reynoso, and Juval Green, and how Giuliani encouraged police brutality, standing by the police even when they sodomized a Hatian immigrant with a baton or shot an unarmed black man 41 times. If, that is, the media ever gets tired of reporting on fake scandals about Obama ginned up by the Washington Times, and starts focusing on real scandals in Rudy’s past.

So why is it that the media has so much more positive exposure of Giuliani and so little of Obama? Why focus so much on Giuliani’s positives and on Obama’s obstacles?

Gee whiz, you don’t think there’s a conservative element at work in the media, do you? Nah, couldn’t be.

Bill Gates said of the Mac OS in a Newsweek interview:

Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine.

What Gates was referring to was the MOAB, or “Month of Apple Bugs,” an attack on Mac security taken by people who are obviously irritated and annoyed by claims of superior Mac security.

Of course, that claim is not nearly as bad as Gates makes it out to be. First of all, it was kept up for one month only–not every day of every year. They clearly planned for a month because they found 31 bugs, not 365 in a year. Second, not all the bugs were Apple’s–only 22 or 23 of the 31 presented dealt with software created by Apple, the rest were 3rd-party bugs. And finally, Gates wildly exaggerated their seriousness when he claimed that each of these “daily” bugs could “totally” take over the machine. In fact, most were not nearly as caustic, causing instead local shutdowns of specific apps like Safari. And let’s remember that we still have never seen any of these exploits do much damage if any at all in the wild–whereas Windows exploits have commonly produced massive damage. A friend of mine had to wipe her hard drive and re-install everything–twice–due to viral infections. That has never happened on a Mac.

But what about Gate’s challenge for his own OS? “I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine.” Well, it’s already happened. With Vista, no less, which has only been widely released for a week or two now, and was heralded by Gates as being the most secure OS ever. First, we saw that really embarrassing vulnerability where a sound file could start hacking into the system. And now there are reports of far more serious hacks, including a work-around of one of Vista’s most-ballyhooed security improvements, one that limits administrative access:

Russian hackers posted instructions to an underground forum describing how to implement “privilege escalation,” which could bypass some Vista security measures. This hack could escalate the “privileges” of a normal Vista user into that of a “superuser,” allowing him to change anything he desired on the system. This would be particularly dangerous in a corporate environment where normal computer users have limited privileges, in that they cannot install programs, visit certain Web sites, etc. This threat is considered so serious that Microsoft has scrambled its “Security Response Center,” which is ostensibly still trying to figure out what to do.

So, it looks like we have at least two exploits that are at least the equivalent of the MOAB in just one week–and there’s no organization which has had time to stockpile Vista bugs and is now trying to publicize one-a-day Vista exploits. However, there are reports that many more exist.

Case in point: just because your copy of Vista hasn’t been hit yet, don’t feel all warm and fuzzy:

Reports are that, in order to steal as much money as possible, computer criminals are biding their time and building their arsenals, waiting for Vista to be installed on more computers around the world before unleashing their most powerful Vista-busting weapons.

The article reports “ongoing eBay-style black hat hacker auctions where attack programs that can be used to compromise Vista computers are being bought and sold for as much as $50,000.” Certainly, it will be interesting to see if Leopard can be hacked this much this soon after its official release.

The Norman Transcript Report ends with a quote from “very irritated and frustrated Vista early adopter”: “I should have bought a Mac.”

Ever since they started taking records in 1876, there has always been snow in Tokyo by February 10–the latest recorded snowfall being February 10, 1960.

Not this year. It’s February 11, no snowfall in Tokyo so far, and today’s low was 7 degrees Celsius (45º Fahrenheit), with a high of 14º C (57º F). The forecast for the next week at least shows little change, and no chance of snow foreseen. We might go without snow at all this season, and I’ve heard that the skiing industry up north ain’t having too much of a fun time.

Over the past several years, the first snow has come in December or January. On December 9, 2002, it came just as I was leaving for the U.S., and trains were shut down in much of Tokyo–including the Narita Express–almost preventing me from getting to Narita for my departure.

So, what’s the cause? Everyone is thinking global climate change, and it might just be so. But the better test for that would be in snow not falling in Tokyo for several years. Still, it’s strange not getting at least one snowfall.

Via Pharyngula, there is an editorial from a newspaper that has a “Faith & Values” section. The editorial does not focus on this bit, but it caught my eye anyway. Apparently the newspaper sometimes prints stuff about other religions in addition to Christianity. The reaction:

Recent articles about Buddhism and Islam in the Faith & Values section have brought accusations from a few readers that The Dispatch has begun promoting these faiths while downplaying Christianity, the dominant religion in central Ohio.

A couple of critics wanted to know why we were wasting ink on these “false” beliefs when Christ is the only path to salvation. Another caller said he was tired of having “that Islam religion … shoved in my face.”

This despite the fact that 80% of the articles in the section covered Christianity, and only 4.1% were about Islam.

I am pretty certain that these are the exact same people who would stare at you blankly, or even be offended or outraged, if you were to suggest that their pushing Christianity on you was objectionable in some way. These are almost certainly the same people who want the Ten Commandments plastered everywhere, and who want to force your kids to pray in the classroom. The same people who think that there’s an O’Reillian “War on Christmas” despite Christmas being overwhelmingly dominant among year-end celebrations. In short, the angry white male Christian who gets the best of everything but feels like he’s a persecuted victim suffering at the hands of the minority.

The conclusion of the editorial, however, is surprising and hopeful: the writer realizes that while about 12% of the population is “nonreligious,” the newspaper prints little or nothing that covers their beliefs. So:

Although Faith & Values isn’t ignoring Christians, my tally does suggest that we are giving nonreligious people less attention than they deserve. We’re already taking steps to correct that.

Wow. Considering that Atheists are despised in America more than gays and Muslims, that’s a very progressive attitude. Kudos for this guy.

They couldn’t get him on the “Madrassa” smear. They couldn’t make him out to be a closet Muslim (and you know what that means!). So now they’re trying another tack: Obama is a dirty, low-down smoker. That’s right! He even bums cigarettes off of other lawmakers! And once in a while, he even has a drink! Where other people can see him! Incredible! The question is quick to the talking heads’ hot, quivering lips: could America ever elect someone who smokes cigarettes? Unimaginable!

On the one hand (as with the “madrassa” smear), if the worst kind of thing that Obama’s detractor’s can come up with is that he’s trying to quit smoking, then he’s in good shape. On the other hand, it’s pretty disgusting to see people taking this kind of thing seriously. I don’t have a recording or transcript yet, so the recall is not perfect, but on Paula Zahn’s show this morning, the smoking issue was presented as if it could seriously hobble Obama–with one expert suggesting that this kind of addiction suggested a weak personality, someone who could never be president. And I immediately thought of George W. Bush, whose alcohol addiction was well-known, and whose cocaine addiction was covered up but pretty much just as certain. I certainly don’t recall the mass media calling Bush’s alcoholism into this kind of question.

Besides which, Americans have recently been exposed to a very popular president who was a “stealth smoker,” as some are putting it. A president who had a habit he was trying to quit but sometimes indulged in, and who even bummed smokes off of journalists on Air Force One. It was, of course, a fictional president–Jeb Bartlet, from The West Wing–but it was something that Americans saw and accepted. True, the fictional president tried to hide it from the press and it did cause the occasional embarrassment, but it was, if anything, a more humanizing element of the character. And when it comes down to it, who the hell really cares?

Hell, I hate smoking myself. It literally makes me ill. And yet, if Rudy Giuliani or John McCain were smokers, it wouldn’t even occur to me to bring this up as a point against them. And this has been brought up in the media: that while smoking itself is unpopular nowadays, smokers are not seen as bad or weak people.

The only good news in this is that while some “journalists” are seriously presenting this as a serious issue, many seem almost embarrassed to bring it up. As well they should be.

The House Sergeant at Arms, appointed by Republicans, has made this statement about the Pelosi jet flap:

As the Sergeant at Arms, I have the responsibility to ensure the security of the members of the House of Representatives, to include the Speaker of the House.  The Speaker requires additional precautions due to her responsibilities as the leader of the House and her Constitutional position as second in the line of succession to the presidency.

In a post 9/11 threat environment, it is reasonable and prudent to provide military aircraft to the Speaker for official travel between Washington and her district.  The practice began with Speaker Hastert and I have recommended that it continue with Speaker Pelosi.  The fact that Speaker Pelosi lives in California compelled me to request an aircraft that is capable of making non-stop flights for security purposes, unless such an aircraft is unavailable.  This will ensure communications capabilities and also enhance security.  I made the recommendation to use military aircraft based upon the need to provide necessary levels of security for ranking national leaders, such as the Speaker.  I regret that an issue that is exclusively considered and decided in a security context has evolved into a political issue.

How much more conclusive can you get? Bill Livingood, a thirty-one year veteran of the Secret Service, was appointed by the Republican House after they took over in 1994. He comes out and states flatly that it was his idea, he made the request, and it was based upon security and nothing else.

Pelosi then appeared on Fox News (which has been milking this story itself) and made clear that she had not made any such request, and had even stated a preference for flying commercial. Livingood had told her that a plane was necessary for national security. The only insistence Pelosi made was that the plane could go the distance: “I have never asked for any larger plane. I have said that I am happy to ride commercial if the plane they have doesn’t go coast to coast.” This is completely understandable: if faced with the probability, twice a week, of having your flight grounded and being stuck on the ground somewhere for hours, would you not rather just take a commercial non-stop flight in Business class?

The final nail in the coffin came when even the White House, apparently sensing how stupid and futile the whole smear campaign was, took Pelosi’s side: “This is a silly story and I think it’s been unfair to the speaker,” Tony Snow said.

Or at least you would think it was the final nail in the coffin. Even after the story was clarified beyond all doubt, even after the unimpeachable House Sergeant at Arms made his statement, even after the White House said it was “silly,” the RNC persisted in trying to make a scandal of it. After all the aforementioned, the RNC released a statement titled “Pelosi’s power trip: Non-stop Nancy seeks flight of fancy.” [The release was apparently yanked from the GOP servers, but it is reproduced in this GOP blog.] The press release repeats just about every since-debunked lie and then some.

Tony Snow responded by making the following comment:

… as Speaker of the House, she is entitled to military transport, and that the arrangements, the proper arrangements are being made between the Sergeant of Arms office in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Department of Defense. We think it’s appropriate, and so, again, I think this is much ado about not a whole lot. It is important for the Speaker to have this kind of protection and travel. It was certainly appropriate for Speaker Hastert.

The members of the press tried to get Snow to comment further on the RNC press release, but he declined–obviously, any statement made would have to point out what idiots they are.

So, how much longer will the GOP try to egg this smear campaign on? Stay Tuned.

Conservatives have their panties all in a bunch over arrangements being made for Speaker Pelosi’s air travel accommodations. Since 9/11, the Speaker of the House, being next in line after the Vice President to take over the leadership of the nation, was given access to an Air Force jet, as the president and vice president are. The reason is security; in a time of emergency, the Speaker must be kept safe.

When this policy was implemented when Hastert was Speaker, neither conservatives nor liberals had a problem with it. When Hastert was given private use of a C-20D, the Air Force version of a Gulfstream III executive jet, it was seen as a security measure. It fit the bill, and the range allowed for non-stop travel to Illinois, where Hastert’s district is. No one objected, even when Hastert used it for more than just his back-and-forth travel.

Now Pelosi has to have a jet arranged–and Republicans and conservatives are whining because she is asking for security to be maintained. Pelosi’s district is on the California coast–and the C-20D Hastert used can only go coast-to-coast in perfect wind conditions, meaning that the plane will usually have to stop along the way to refuel. As far as security is concerned, that’s a clearly stupid condition. If there is a crisis in progress, you don’t want to pin your leaders to the ground; it would defeat the whole purpose of using a jet for security.

Not to mention the day-to-day logistical nightmare of contingency planning for an unplanned emergency landing should prevailing winds not allow the jet to make it all the way. What if the weather doesn’t allow for the plane to land short? What if traffic is backed up at the layover? (Republicans would love it if Pelosi was given clearance ahead of passenger jets–it’d be Bill Clinton getting a tarmac haircut all over again!) The whole idea of a C-20D for a San Francisco shuttle doesn’t make any sense–especially from a security standpoint, which is supposed to be what this is all about in the first place. So the request was made for a plane that could fly non-stop.

Naturally, Republicans smelled blood. Any chance nowadays to smear a Democrat is a call for a feeding frenzy on the right wing. Got a random picture of Kerry sitting at a table with a few empty seats? The soldiers hate Kerry! A right-wing rag prints a suggestive article about how Obama went to a “madrassa”? Obama’s a radical muslim terrorist, and Hillary’s the one smearing him! Who cares if they’re blatant lies? The right wing certainly doesn’t, and when the lies are shown up and debunked, that doesn’t even stop them from continuing to spread the story.

So when Pelosi made a very reasonable request based upon security concerns, the right wing jumped on it as an unreasonable extravagance based upon arrogance and corruption. They instantly fabricated all kinds of bullshit, like that Pelosi demanded a huge Boeing 757-200, with “sleeping quarters” which would become a “Lincoln Bedroom” on “Air Force III.” Stories have been coming hot and heavy with suggestions of corruption: “Some Republicans have argued that Pelosi could offer trips to top political donors,” the AP juicily dishes up. Yeah, that’s right. She wants the plane just so she can do favors for lobbyists. Because lobbyists wouldn’t be caught dead in this ragged old C-20D that Hastert used:

In fact, Hastert didn’t just use it for himself–he let his political bedfellows use it independently at his whim, shuttling conservatives around in luxury simply because they could.

“Nonstop service is not guaranteed, meaning she’s getting Hastert’s plane and nothing bigger,” a conservative congressional source petulantly concluded.

Right-wingers are saying Pelosi is demanding a C-32, a version of a Boeing 757-200. However, no such request was made. Pelosi simply requested any available Air Force jet that can fly non-stop, and left it up to the Air Force to decide on the craft. Which means that the Air Force will likely just upgrade Pelosi to the C-20H, or a Gulfstream IV, which can make the flight non-stop. Pelosi has already stated flatly that the plane will not be used for political travel. Everything else beyond that is nothing more or less than right-wing fantasizing and fiction; the whole Boeing 757-200 thing is completely made up.

And now the mainstream media is picking up the smear. Lou Dobbs has trumpeted the corruption and greed fantasy for six straight days, repeating the right-wing lies. Reports are going out in the mainstream press all over the place. And yet right-wing rags are whining that the media is “skipping over the story.”

These people know no shame; there is no depth they won’t sink to in the hopes that the slime they dredge up from those depths may stick to a Democrat or two.

This is one of the reasons I like Steve Jobs. He wrote (or at least published under his name) an article about DRM (Digital Rights Management software) on the Apple web site. DRM is what restricts your use of music or video from playing and copying freely. I have highlighted (boldface mine) the key parts of the following paragraphs:

The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. That’s right! No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player.

One has to wonder what the Big Four think of this letter. On the one hand, it must piss them off to be called stupid, albeit in such a subtle way. On the other hand, what Jobs says is so blindingly obvious, they should be perfectly willing to be called stupid. They should read this and say, we’re just not doing this right, we overreacted and have required this completely unnecessary system that does not stop piracy one bit and just hamstrings paying customers, and yet we stick with it either through continued panic or just because it’s there.

Of course, I then remind myself that we’re talking about the music labels here, the genius folk which constitute the RIAA. “Stupid” is their business. And the video content producers are not much different.

What Steve Jobs is saying here is, naturally, not a new revelation. Almost a year ago on this blog, I myself wrote about DRM-laden video:

The copy-protect and limitations on which OS, browser, and media players can be used are stupid as hell. We’re talking about movies that have already been ripped and are available for full-quality download over the Internet. So what is the copy-protect protecting? Not a damned thing. People downloading it for free from the Internet can do anything they want with the movie, watch it on any player, in any format. But paying customers hit all these restrictions. Stupid!

So what does DRM accomplish then, as Jobs asks? Here’s another take, again from one of my past blog posts on DRM:

Copy protection is never perfect; somebody always finds a way around it. The only people it really hobbles are the people who buy the product and want to use it legally.

And that has always been at the heart of the whole “digital rights” problem–the makers of the media try to control their product long after they sell it or give it away, for fear that after it is sold, it will be taken and redistributed or resold at a later time. That attempt at control causes problems because it tries to reach criminals by running over legitimate users. …

And that brings up the question of how much right the seller of a product has to follow a product after a sale. Not only for protection against illegal copying, but for control over what happens to a product and how it is used once it is privately owned. Because recent developments have companies using “digital rights management” to do far more than just protect against copying. …

They want to ride the illegal-download horse all the way into your living room, and assert permanent control over the media on the supposed grounds that it might at some point leave your home and go to someone else’s. But you soon find out that it is less about hindering criminals than it is about hindering you, limiting your abilities so you’ll pay them again to do what you should have been able to do in the first place. They don’t just want to control the distribution of the media; they want to control every aspect of how you use the media in the privacy of your home, which is far in excess of their actual rights.

And that, essentially, is what DRM is all about: an attempt to control and limit use so they can sell you the same thing again and again, and/or sell to different people at different prices so they can charge all the market can bear in each separate situation. For them, that DRM-free content is on CDs and elsewhere is not an argument to make everything DRM-free, it is a reason to make all the DRM-free content covered by DRM somehow. The content producers want the opposite of what Jobs is calling for. They have tried again and again to apply DRM to CDs and other media. They are frustrated that it has failed, but they will still try again and again.

Now, you can hedge Job’s remarks any way you like. You can point out that Jobs profits from the iPods and not the music, so the DRM is not as important to him. You can speculate that he’s saying this as a tactic in dealing with European demands that Apple’s FairPlay DRM be scrapped. You might even say that he doesn’t really mean any of this.

None of that, however, will make what he wrote not true. And at least on the face of things, one cannot blame Jobs for the DRM that chains the music sold by Apple to the iPod. Jobs is now on the record as saying that he wants those chains gone. It won’t change the minds of all the critics, but at the very least it’s pretty impressive that someone like Jobs said the kind of thing that he said.

You can’t get anything past the Japanese boys in blue:

A man stole a police car from outside a post office in Maebashi on Monday because he was too tired to walk home….

The policemen who drove the patrol car left it idling in the parking lot. I know Japan is a relatively safe country, but this is still pretty stupid. The man apparently did not even drive the patrol car all the way home. Instead, he stopped 5 km later and told a woman that he was a police officer and needed her car.

Nothing you can tell me will shake my conviction that beer was involved in this somewhere.

On Jan. 27 Japan’s Health Minister Hakuo Yanagisawa gave a speech on the country’s shrinking population in which he referred to Japanese women of childbearing age as “baby-making machines.” He went onto explain that arresting population decline was difficult “because the number of baby-making machines and devices is fixed [in the population]; all we can do is ask them to do their best per head.” The 71-year-old Yanagisawa did add, however, “that it may not be so appropriate to call them machines.”

Ya think?

A former assistant professor of Meiji University’s School of Information and Communication plagiarized 96 percent of a report on copyright submitted to the Institute of Intellectual Property, sources said Monday.

Plagiarizing a report on copyrights. Well, you gotta give the guy an A+ for sheer brass balls.

Have you ever been assaulted by adware? Have you ever had at least one window open up on your PC without your bidding, and show you an ad for something? Maybe you’ve gotten that fake dialog-box security-warning attack? The one where it looks like a real warning which says that your computer has porn, or your web surfing history can be compromised, or that your computer is open to attack–and if you click anywhere on the “dialog box,” it takes you to a commercial web page selling software of some sort. This fake dialog box may have even popped up when you weren’t web surfing, so it looks even more like a real warning from your OS.

If you’ve been exposed to such a low-key adware trick, then you have only a small taste of what a full-fledged adware attack feels like. A real attack is when your screen fills with browser windows bristling with graphic porn ads, and any attempt to close one window will bring an onslaught of even more ad-riddled windows, in hydra-like fashion. The program must be force-quit to silence the ads, using the task manager (Ctrl+Alt+Delete) to end the process–and then the machine must be cleaned of adware.

It’s bad enough to be attacked by spammers in this way. But then imagine being sent to prison for 40 years because you were the victim of such a spam attack.

No, I’m not kidding. If you have been following the case of Julie Amero, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Amero is a substitute teacher in Connecticut whose computer suffered a malicious adware attack in her seventh-grade classroom. It almost certainly was not her fault in any way, but she’s been prosecuted–and now convicted–for causing “injury or risk of injury to, or impairing morals of, children,” and could be sentenced to up to 40 years in prison. No joke.

Here’s what happened. Long before Amero even saw the computer, it was infected with adware. A month before the offending incident happened, there was spyware/adware installed on the machine that started tracking the computer’s activities. Before Amero’s visit, some other teacher or student used to classroom computer to visit a singles dating service, well-known for its porn adware. Several other pieces of adware had already infected the computer before Amero arrived on the scene. Furthermore, the school itself had allowed the computer’s parental filter software to lapse, and the machine was no longer protected against such material. The antivirus software was outdated and the firewall was not set up. In short, the school itself was negligent, and other teachers had caused the problems that eventually surfaced. Amero was simply the one present when the eventual attack came about.

On October 19, 2004, the day Amero was teaching, students were allowed access to the computer. The regular teacher logged Amero on to the system, told her that students could have access to it, and even warned her not to shut down the machine, else she and the students would lose access to it. One student visited a hairstyling site, and then 20 minutes later, the Crayola crayon site got visited. The hair style site was still active, however, and redirected to a different hairstyle site–one with porn advertising. The process that then led to the adware attack is laid out in detail here.

The screen filled up with porn windows, and the computer got locked in one of those endless porn loops. It’s not clear from the stories I read whether kids were at the computer when the windows came up or not, but it seems that they were not. Still, six kids reported seeing the porn, and even though Amero kept the kids from the computer, and even pushed one student’s face away from the screen, she still got into trouble–to put it mildly. The students told their parents, the parents complained loudly to the school–and the school not only fired the teacher, but had her arrested. The prosecutor pushed hard on the case, the police didn’t see fit to even check for adware, and the judge denied the defense the full ability to present the case on adware–apparently because the defense was late in bringing that particular defense up for some reason.

The prosecution put on an “expert witness” who claimed that the only way to get those windows would be to intentionally visit a porn site–which supports what my father has always told me about purported “experts”: that all too often, they’re full of crap. In fact, the software this “expert” claimed proved the teacher went to porn sites could not distinguish between someone typing in a URL and the browser automatically redirecting to one due to adware or a .htaccess exploit.

On the weight of the prosecution’s case, however, the jury convicted Amero. Of course, they got a very different view, like the one presented in this article, which claims it was intentional because Amero supposedly changed her claim from “students did it” to “adware attack,” and that Amero did not get rid of the attack. However, if Amero was no computer-savvy and students triggered the adware or were at the computer when it came on, then it would indeed look like they started it–just like the judge and jury assumed of Amero, and they were wrong as well. Amero may not have become aware of the adware angle until later; changing a defense strategy in this manner is not evidence of guilt, and it is asinine to suggest otherwise. That Amero did not turn off the computer may have been simply her not knowing how to deal with it, and not thinking of turning the computer off, while thinking the screen was hidden enough not to be a problem.

This is scary. Hell, I’ve experienced this kind of thing in my own classroom. I teach an introductory computer class, and I give my chapter tests on web pages. A few years back, a female student opened up Explorer to take the test, and her screen filled with porn ads. She called for help, and I went to help, but got the same problem: every window I closed brought up at least three more new ones. I sent the young woman to a free computer, force-quit Explorer, and shut down the machine, not allowing it to be used again until the IT guys could clear it of malware.

If I used a Windows PC (Macs don’t get adware, not that I’ve heard of at least), I might even have had such an attack when giving a demo. As it is, I use a virtual version of XP on which I put nothing but the basic software and use for nothing but teaching, so I’m clean and safe.

But I can fully sympathize with Amero. Unless you know the Ctrl+Alt+Delete trick, shutting down Explorer is near-impossible in that state. Sure, you could shut the whole machine down, but you could just as easily be attacked on startup again. And Amero may not have been computer-savvy enough to handle the situation, especially if it happened as she was teaching a class and could not sit down and troubleshoot a porn attack at the moment. Hell, I know a few teachers at my own school who would be at that much of a loss, at least. Most people would not even know what was hitting them, and so would not know how to handle it at all. Add to that the fact that in today’s world, virtually all 12-year-olds, especially boys, have visited porn sites on the Internet themselves.

So of course, we should send this teacher who got caught by an adware attack to prison for 40 years. Since the verdict was handed down, it hit the newswires, and virtually the entire technical world is shouting down the decision, decrying it for the outright miscarriage of justice it so clearly is. Sentencing has not yet taken place, and in light of the whole furor now taking place (Norwich police admit to being “thrashed” by complaints and criticism), the judge will hopefully not sentence Amero to any jail time at all, and Amero can hopefully then work as a free woman to have the conviction thrown out and erased from her record.

However, since the prosecution is insisting that Amero intentionally visited porn sites, she may be marked forever as some sort of unfit teacher, and not hired by schools again because they would not want to take the risk that the accusations, however questionable, might be true. And so a teacher may have her career trashed and her life derailed because of spam, paranoid and overprotective parents, overzealous prosecutors, and lay people who just don’t know enough about computers, who listen to legal “experts” who know almost as little themselves.

Remember back when Republicans considered the filibuster to be pure evil? Whenever Democratic politicians used it, say, to block the umpteenth attempt to nominate the same extremist hardcore right-wing nutballs into high court positions, the Republicans, furious that they could only get 95% of their nominees forced through the Senate, screamed bloody murder and threatened to outlaw the filibuster altogether with what they called the “nuclear option” (sorry, the “constitutional option”)?

Yeah, Republicans despise the filibuster. Not just because it was used to deny them total and absolute dominance, of course–they loathed the filibuster in principle, and made a big thing of it. After all, the filibuster denied a straight up-or-down vote! What were those sneaky, underhanded Democrats up to, if they were so chicken as to not want a simple, apple-pie American procedure like a straight up-or-down vote! Those weasels!

I mean, if Republicans ever lost their majority in the Senate, they would never resort to such a nasty, underhanded, un-American, pinko commie… uh… err….

Okay, sarcasm off.

You of course by now have used your incredible psychic powers of clairvoyance to determine that–yes, you guessed it–Republicans in the Senate wasted no time at all in resorting to using the filibuster, and from their speed in adopting the tactic, are likely to start using it far more often than Democrats used to. Which is fine: that’s how things are supposed to work. Better the government be hog-tied than to allow one party to run wild. Democrats didn’t use it enough when they were in the minority; now you can expect Republicans, despite their former hatred of the procedure on principles, to go nuts with it.

Democrats don’t like it and will complain, but they’re not going to go “nuclear” over it; it’s the Republicans who are the hypocrites here.

Already Senate Republicans are using the filibuster to block a straight up-or-down vote on a resolution to oppose Bush’s “Surge™” in Iraq.

Note, however, that the media, at least at this time, is scared gutless of using the “F” word to describe what Republicans are doing. Read the USA Today article I linked to just above, you’ll see that they “blocked” and “sidetracked” the vote, which “was 49-47, or 11 short of the 60 needed to go ahead with debate.” They didn’t even use the word “cloture,” for Christ’s sake. The only mainstream story I could find that used the word “filibuster” to describe the Iraq War resolution vote was US News & World Report. Everybody else I could find used words like “block” or “stop“–and neither representative article mentions the “F” word anywhere.

Meanwhile, Republicans in the Senate used a version of the filibuster in committee to stop a bill designed to make it easier to form unions (how horrible! America has never been about forming unions! That’s commie talk!), and while the press did use the “F” word then, it was only in forms like “rare filibuster” and “mini filibuster.”

So, Republicans are being rank hypocrites and the media is too weak-kneed to even come close to calling them on it. Looks like business as usual.

One thing that has been on my mind for a while: should we really be so critical of Democrats who voted for the resolution that allowed Bush to go to war in Iraq? This is one of those questions that is not quite so black-and-white.

On the one hand, the resolution was not simply one that said, “Okay, start a war.” It was a resolution that gave the president the authority to go to war if he deemed it necessary. The context of the moment was that Bush needed the authority so as to pressure Iraq to allow inspections and disarm; if Congress denied him this, then his hand against Iraq would be weak, practically impotent, and Hussein could have simply thumbed his nose at us. Additionally, there were guarantees made by the administration that I blogged on more than a year ago, that the authority would only be used as a last resort:

“Later this week, the United States Congress will vote on this matter. I have asked Congress to authorize the use of America’s military, if it proves necessary, to enforce U.N. Security Council demands. Approving this resolution does not mean that military action is imminent or unavoidable.”

Additionally, Bush promised Senators that the force authorized by the resolution would be used only as a last resort.

On the other hand, one could easily say that Bush’s words were insincere, and that the senators should have been able to see through that. While Bush was saying that he would only go in as a last resort, he was also saying everything possible to make Hussein look more evil than Adolf Hitler, and potentially more dangerous. It did not take much to see that handing over the authority would virtually guarantee a war; using the “last resort” promise could seem like little more than political ass-covering.

However, there were several mitigating circumstances. First, Bush had already built up U.S. forces around Iraq–cocked the pistol, so to speak–thus painting the U.S. into a corner: had we backed down and not taken military action even though Hussein had not given in, it would be a body blow to U.S. influence. Second, Bush’s request, though transparently insincere, was on the face of things quite necessary: we could indeed not put respectable pressure on Iraq unless it could be backed up; a bluff would not work.

And third, the political pressure was tremendous; any senator voting “no” would potentially be setting him/herself up for political annihilation in the following election, especially given the massive fear and paranoia the country was still feeling so soon after 9/11. Credit can be given to those who voted against the resolution, but I don’t necessarily feel that equal blame can be assessed to those who voted for it because the pressure was so great. Furthermore, those who voted against the resolution may have had an easier choice: because they knew the resolution would pass and their ‘nay’ votes would amount to little more than a protest vote, they did not have to deal with the real obstacles mentioned in the previous paragraph. Had each of these senators been faced with a tie-breaking vote and still voted against, that would have been a true test of political and moral resolution.

One cannot completely avoid assigning a certain amount of blame and shame upon the senators who voted for the resolution, and these senators are now paying the price by having it on their records, while those who voted against it can claim the high ground. But I would not completely dismiss anyone who made that choice.

Let’s face it–in the end, this is George Bush’s war. It was his idea, he put the pieces into place, he used 9/11 to create massive public fear and pressure to invade, he placed America’s reputation on the line, he cherry-picked and exaggerated and lied to make it an imperative. There’s no way around that. Even if the Democrats had controlled a majority of the Senate and could have decided the vote, by that time Bush had engineered so massive a wave of political thrust that to deny him the authority would have taken a political will and a political risk greater than just about any we’ve seen for a very long time. In hindsight, we can comfortably call the Democratic politicians who voted ‘aye’ enablers and worse, but it could not be called so easy a choice to make even if it were to be meaningful in practical respect.

Cormorants are pretty common birds in this area. You see them all over the rivers and bay areas. You may even have seen them on TV, in some documentary about Japan: they are the birds used by fisherman to collect fish in the rivers at special times of the year. The fishermen tie a rope around the neck of the bird so it can’t swallow the fish, and collect the catch when the bird comes back up.

Ironically, this particular cormorant I saw today could have used that kind of help.

It was just past 11:30 am when I saw other bird watchers snapping images excitedly: a cormorant had caught a fish.

I took a few pictures, like the one above, and then figured that the excitement was over; the bird would swallow the fish, and that would be that. However, a few minutes later, I caught these images:

Apparently this cormorant had bitten off more than he could chew. Most of the fish was in his gullet, but the tail was still sticking out his bill. The poor bird was having trouble swallowing the fish, and to make matters worse, the other cormorants were ganging up on their beleaguered acquaintance and were fighting to get the fish for themselves.

Five minutes after the bird first caught the fish, it was still struggling:

The cormorant was still trying to get the fish down, and now it was ducking its head underwater more often than it stayed up, either in an attempt to maneuver the fish into a better position to swallow, or to keep it away from the other birds, or possibly both.

The bird was getting more and more tired. It would struggle, and then come up and try to swallow again, fighting off its competitors. The image just below was taken eight minutes after the initial catch, and it almost seems like the fish is going to come out:

Just after this shot, the cormorant was coming up less and less frequently. One complication may have been that cormorants’ feathers aren’t waterproof; this guy was probably getting soaked and heavy just as he was also likely struggling for air. By this time, he would stay with his head underwater for a fair amount of time, and every so often would muster strength in his wings and come back up for a moment… but each time he came up, he stayed up for less time and seemed to have less energy than the time before.

The other cormorants stayed by him, sometimes going underwater in what seemed like another attempt to steal the fish. In the image below, it’s almost as if the remaining fellow cormorant was trying to figure out what was with his cousin.

Eventually, however, the poor cormorant stopped moving. A little more than ten minutes after the whole drama started, it was over. I can’t tell you the fate of the fish, but the fate of the cormorant was pretty clear. The other birds just left, and the still body just drifted with the tide waters until it went out of sight.

A sad little drama of life and death in nature. It might or might not be so unusual, but it was certainly not something that you see every day as a birdwatcher.

I went birding today at the Tokyo Minato Wild Bird Park and at Kasai Rinkai. I intended to do more birding in the December-to-Febriuary period, but have been too busy on the weekends to get around to it. However, seeing as how there were hardly any birds around except huge flocks of ducks–all of which are standard varieties–I wonder if I’ve really been missing out on much.

I did, however, get a new species today: a Bullfinch.

Pretty little guy. I wish I could have gotten more images–there were actually four of them in a tree, posing quite nicely, when a bicyclist raced by, scaring them all off.

Not a new bird by any means, this White Wagtail was nevertheless very close and posed quite nicely as well:

Those two images have 1000-pixel versions available if you click on them, by the way.

Finally, there was something strange in the park: what appeared to be a homeless man who strayed into the closed-off bird sanctuary and started to settle down for a nice afternoon. I’d never seen that before…

There were a few other feathered variety of creatures I got images of, but nothing much else worthy of printing. Except, of course, for a sequence of photos of an otherwise normal bird playing out a rather startling drama.

… In the next blog post.

Yes, yet another weird new word describing something to do with those danged Internet tubes. This is one that I actually reported on six and a half months ago–though at the time, I did not know the name for it. I called them “Spam Blogs,” and have since found that the abbreviated name “Splog” has been applied. An ugly word for an ugly practice, fitting enough.

A Splog is a fake, auto-generated blog that acts as a platform for spam links, or for AdSense or Amazon Associates links that will generate money for the spammer. The idea is to horn in on the keywords generated by blog posts to get listed in search engines, which will lead to people linking in and using the outbound links, thus generating cash for the spammer.

If that weren’t bad enough, these splogs don’t generate their own content. You do it for them, if you have a blog. The splog first finds your blog, then it grabs the text you wrote and automatically slaps all or selected parts of your entry into the splog. One way to discover if your site is being mined by splogs is to search for unique content on your site in Google’s Blog search engine, and then see if more than just your entry comes up. I did a post on “Maeuri-ken,” or advance ticket sales in Japan, just a few days ago… and within two days a splog had swiped my text and used it to try to generate themselves some cash. Here are the results from the Google Blog search (results will disappear after a few weeks of this post).

Here’s the original post, in part (image):

And here’s what comes out on the splog:

The splog page has links to dog breeding and pet care sites, as well as cross-links to other splogs and spam stuff. As splogs go, it is relatively inoffensive. It actually links back to the blog post it stole from, does not go overboard on spammy stuff like some splogs do, and does not inject spam links into the stolen text directly, as has been reported to happen. Also, note that in this case, the splog does not reprint the full text of my post, or even a coherent paragraph. It is more like the result of a search engine query looking for the keywords “small,” “dog,” and “sale,” all of which appear in that post.

That doesn’t mean that it is inoffensive, it just means that it is slightly less offensive than the many other splogs I’ve found mining my writing for their sleazy profit.