It seems that the Bush administration is trying to survive the massive violation of Constitutional rights by dripping out the story in small, step-by-step revelations. First, in mid-December, we heard that the government was only eavesdropping on a very small, limited number of phone conversations between US and foreign numbers where the foreign phones belonged to al Qaeda suspects. The Bush administration spent time defending that, getting the people used to the idea, getting them to accept it as a necessary counter-terrorism step. We’re only listening in on the bad guys, and this is necessary for national security. A whole arsenal of fraudulent reasons was claimed, and it worked–Americans accepted it.

Then we heard that it was more than just people connected to al Qaeda; that the eavesdropping was potentially on all telephone calls between the US and foreign locales. Again, time was spent defending this, getting the American people acclimated, making sure there was no major outburst. We’re just doing this on foreign phone calls, it’s all about finding al Qaeda operatives, we’re not invading you’re privacy, we’re protecting it. The calls are not all being listened to, we have software looking for keywords.

Much later, we now hear that there is a massive database of all phone calls within the US. But hey, everyone, don’t worry, we’re not actually listening in, we’re just tracking phone numbers, times, and duration–the database is anonymous, no names are being taken. The “anonymous” angle was pressed hard, with media outlets like Fox News pushing hard to get that across, hoping that most Americans are so dumb that they won’t recognize that phone numbers can be effortlessly connected to people’s identities, or that a truly “anonymous” database of such calls would be completely useless. And again, we are being assured that it’s only about finding al Qaeda cells, and it’s necessary to protect us. The press further attempted to cover for the Bush administration, widely reporting an instant poll that claimed most Americans approved of the domestic wiretapping–even though the poll was taken so quickly that most people polled could not possibly have digested the news they were being asked about. (Later polls showed that a majority disapproved, but the initial poll provided deniability, which right-wing bloggers immediately jumped on, claiming undeniable victory.)

Don’t you kind of feel like the apocryphal boiling frog, the one which jumps out if it’s thrown into boiling water, but will stay and get cooked if the heat is turned up slowly? How long before we hear that the database actually does contain more than just phone numbers and times? There exists technology to use computers to transcribe spoken words to text without human intervention–such was already revealed in the first stage, when the claim was that the government was only eavesdropping on foreign calls, and keywords were being screened for. Will we learn that all domestic calls are being transcribed? It’s not even impossible that all are being recorded–despite the massive number of calls, compression and storage technology make it possible to do so.

And even at this stage in the boiling process, the dangers of even just phone number tracking abuse are becoming clear. Now news reporters are hearing that the government is keeping track of all calls made to and from their lines. Remember, almost all phone calls are now logged by the NSA, and there’s no difficulty connecting numbers with people’s names. So if the government doesn’t like the fact that a reporter got ahold of a story they didn’t want out, they just find the numbers associated with the reporter, then find all the numbers associated with that number, and before long, they can uncover the source of the story. Instant First Amendment violation.

How much would you like to wager that what we’ve heard is just the tip of the iceberg, and that more and more levels will slowly be uncovered? So far, the frog is not jumping out of the pot, despite the fact that the water is already starting to boil. Most Americans seem to be accepting this, or at least not reacting strongly to the idea that the government is monitoring their calls.

I remember back in the 70’s and 80’s seeing films and TV shows depicting oppressive life within the Soviet Union, where if people wanted to have a private conversation, they would partially turn a rotary phone dial and stick a pencil in the dial to hold it there, so as to defeat the KGB from listening in.

That’s what America is becoming.

As the fight for Network Neutrality heats up, the Telecoms are trying to pretend that there’s a grass-roots movement by “the people” and “a nationwide coalition of Internet users” to tell the government to “keep their hands off” the Internet, while simultaneously trying to paint giant corporations (well, other giant corporations) as the villains, trying to make billions at your expense. In short, they’re lying like hell.

The following are quotes from a cutesy Flash cartoon made by the Telecoms to try to pull the wool over your eyes:

“Building the next generation of the Internet is going to take a lot of work and cost a lot of money. And some big corporations can’t wait to use it…. They’re going to make billions. But they don’t want to pay anything. Instead they want to stick consumers with the whole bill.”

This statement rather coyly suggests that content providers don’t pay anything for their use of the Internet, without exactly saying so (“they don’t want to pay anything”). The clear implication is that companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, and Amazon get a free ride on the Internet, and will not pay anything extra when higher-speed services are created. The ad says that those companies will stick you, the consumer, with the bill for creating higher-speed services.

None of that is true. The big content providers already have ultra-high-speed connections to the Internet, and they pay the Telecoms for these services; it will be consumers who upgrade, and the bill will be charged to the consumer by the Telecoms. The kindest interpretation of their message would be that the Telecoms are going to have to stick someone with the costs of creating fiber-optic networks, and they want to charge content providers more instead of being forced to charge you more. This, of course, is the same snow job that all corporations use to get whatever legislation they want passed: if you don’t give us what we want, we’ll be forced to charge you more.

Of course, the premise for that argument is bunk: Telecoms already charge for their services, and will charge you as much as the market will bear for fiber optic. It’ll all be paid for, by you, no matter what. Their current campaign is just to charge the content providers more in addition to charging you more; it’s a grab for even higher profits and more control. They’re simply trying to make other giant corporations look like the bad guys.

In fact, the Telecoms have already charged you for the fiber optic networks, to the tune of about $200 billion, and have not used that money to provide the broadband services they promised in exchange for the higher costs you already pay. So you know in advance how much you can trust the Telecoms: not at all.

“These corporations are asking Congress to create volumes of new regulations to control how content is delivered over the Internet. Should politicians and bureaucrats replace network administrators? It will be the first major government regulation of the Internet and it will fundamentally change how the Internet works. These big corporations and the SavetheInternet campaign want the government to take control of the Internet.”

Net Neutrality is the current rule, and would not create more regulation. Existing government policy is what made the Internet work so successfully; what the Telecoms want is not a stop to more regulation, they want a de-regulation–the same kind that led to wonderful results like the Savings & Loan crisis.

“The net neutrality issue is a fundamental question about who should control the Internet: The people or the government? And it’s a fight about who’s going to pay: multi-billion dollar corporations or you?”

These are both false-choice fallacies. It’s not a question of whether the people or the government will control the Internet; the government has power over regulation, it’s a question of whether the government will serve your interests (by leaving the Internet relatively uncontrolled by any one interested party) or whether they will serve the interests of the Telecoms (by deregulating and letting the Telecoms do whatever the hell they want).

The second question is not whether you or multi-billion dollar corporations pay the Telecoms; the Telecoms already charge both you and the multi-billion dollar corporations. It’s a question of how much more the Telecoms can charge content providers, costs which will be passed on to you, while at the same time your access to non-multi-billion dollar corporation web sites will be crippled. In other words, you get charged more for worse service (even if you don’t upgrade your connection) while the Telecoms rake it in. Or, the Internet stays as it is now, and you have the choice of just paying more for getting a fiber optic connection when it becomes available.

There are other implications beyond the Telecoms charging selected web sites more for faster service, and relegating every other web site to low-speed backwaters. Network Neutrality is also about what applications you can use on your Internet connection. No neutrality could allow your ISP to control which applications you use (whether Skype or your ISP’s own VoIP app will work), or even what kind of home networks you can have. Companies like Verizon have even threatened some customers with criminal prosecution just for setting up home networks–that is, hooking up more than one computer to a network connected to the Internet, or having a home WiFi network. Companies like Verizon force you to agree to let Verizon closely monitor your computers to see what network configuration is used and what applications you’re using, in the name of providing customer support–but there’s no doubt that there are other motives driving that monitoring. Your ISP could make more money if they get to demand that you pay them to set up home networks, and charge for each computer connected, even though bandwidth stays the same.

Right now, you have the freedom to decide how you use the Internet. If the Telecoms get their way, you could lose that freedom to the Telecoms, who could then dictate to you what you could and could not do on the Internet, and they could charge you extra fees to do certain things, using only software they pre-approve or sell to you themselves. Imagine the electric grid being run without neutrality: your local electric company could dictate to you which lamps you could buy, how many TVs you could use, how you could use your air conditioner, and so on.

Don’t be fooled. Keep up the fight for Network Neutrality.

Snopes.com just came out with a report on a new Internet rumor being spread:

On May 1st, as a result of the Mexican boycott, national retailers reported 4.2% lower sales for the day, with a 67.8% reduction in shoplifting.

This along with other rumors that on the day in question, violent crime, car theft, and other crimes fell by 50% to 90%. The clear message is that illegal aliens and Hispanics in general are responsible for almost all crime in the U.S.

Snopes shot it down, of course–all the possible sources for such figures reported that statistics for such crimes could not have been compiled yet and had not been released. Which, as would seem obvious, the reports are fictional, being spread by right-wingers trying to turn public opinion against that particular segment of the population.

But this is not the first time such rumors have been spread on the Internet–in fact, it seems to happen quite often. Whenever there is a Bush administration screw-up or hot issue that involves minorities in some way, rumors about crime and violence on the part of the minority group start getting spread almost immediately. Such rumors were rampant after Katrina, suggesting that minorities were on crime sprees, that they were being thieves and whores and welfare addicts of one sort or another. I blogged on one instance where it was claimed that people displaced by Katrina had moved into a Utah city and immediately brought with them an epidemic of crime, including drug use (claimed to be immediate after deplaning), rape, and the formation of violent gangs. The evacuees were depicted as lazy and ungrateful. Of course, the events being claimed were completely false.

This is disquieting for many reasons, not the least of which is the historical precedent for such rumors and the chilling effects they can bring. No less disturbing is the stark racism that is expressed by these stories, in a society Bush lauds as “color blind.” Of course, to be fair, when Bush says that, he means that where there are people of color involved, he is blind to what’s happening….

This story jumped out at me from Google News, and I clicked on it before checking to see the issuing source. Just because it was Fox News did not make me disbelieve it, though that is enough to raise flags and be cautious. But seeing that it was under Brit Hume’s byline was enough to turn my BS detectors on full-blast. And sure enough, Hume was shoveling it fast and deep.

Did USA Today Bury Key Piece of Information About the NSA?

Today’s front page USA Today story on the National Security Agency’s database of information on domestic phone calls reports that the agency “reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans.

Not until page five, however, does the paper report the following: “Phone customers’ names, addresses and other personal information are not being collected as part of this program.”

Hume makes it sound like USA Today was trying to blow the story out of proportion, that the NSA was involved in anonymous collection of telephone data, and that people’s identities–and therefore privacy–were being protected. In all fairness, Hume wasn’t the only one putting forth this knowing lie. But a lie it was.

I mean, this is something so elementary, it’s amazing to think that Hume and others are trying to sell it. Look at it: the NSA has your phone records tied to your phone number. Supposedly, without your name and address, they have no way of knowing who made what calls to whom.

Feel better?

Of course not. Because anyone with an IQ over 60 knows that names and phone numbers can easily be matched. Hell, most people could do it with a computer-based phone directory, and it’s a good bet that the NSA has a pretty good computerized phone directory.

Not to mention the fact that if the NSA really didn’t have a way to connect numbers and names, then what the hell good would this database be, anyway?

In fact, from just reading Hume’s article, it sounds like USA Today was being deceptive by even mentioning the baloney about names and addresses not being collected. But it just seems that way, because Hume intentionally cut out the very next sentence in the USA Today story:

Phone customers’ names, addresses and other personal information are not being collected as part of this program. The agency, however, has the means to assemble that sort of information, if it chooses to do so.

So Hume’s “gotcha” on USA Today is nothing more than a blatant, knowing lie, an attempt to make it seem like the NSA and the Bush administration are being harmless when he knows damned well otherwise. And this guy is supposed to be a network anchor. Edward R. Murrow is spinning in his grave.

Click on the chart above to see it in full detail. The chart is courtesy Pollkatz.

Study the chart and then note the four times Bush’s poll numbers have risen. Note when they happened. 9/11 gave Bush a huge bump, when the nation was in shock, needed a strong leader, and lacking one, created one out of whole cloth. Note how steadily the illusion faded after that.

The second bump came at the start of the Iraq War; there’s not much like a war and big news of our soldiers fighting to give a huge boost to the president’s ability to shelter himself from criticism and paint himself as a strong leader. Still, not so big a bump as 9/11 provided. And again, note how quickly the facade crumbled.

The third bump, much smaller, came when Saddam Hussein was captured. That was good for about 5 percentage points for a few months.

And then the fourth bump, in late 2004. Note the difference in quality there. This was not a flash news story, not a sudden emergency to give Bush a quick jump. This was a slow rise, like a struggle to raise a weighted corpse–in short, the infusion of hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign spending by Bush and his surrogates. It took that much to slowly give Bush just enough of an artificial rise to barely clear Bush over the 50% mark.

Such spending cannot be sustained, of course. Therefore, the most recent slump.

But that’s the pattern. Without unsustainably massive spending, or a big news story about a war or terrorist attack, Bush’s numbers always fall. Always. It’s his natural state. Had there been no 9/11 (and as a result, no Iraq War), Bush’s numbers would simply have fallen into the wastebasket much earlier.

Bush has never gained popularity through his own achievements, he has always had to leech popularity from something else, something outside of himself. And now, it is questionable as to whether anything could bring him up out of this slump. Another terror attack might, but it just as easily might hurt him, as he wouldn’t be able to blame Clinton for it, and couldn’t say that no one saw it coming or that there were excuses for being unprepared. The public might not rally around a miserable failure. As for another war, that’s even more unlikely: our military is overextended. Bush has sapped it to the point where we could not invade another country–especially not one as big as Iran–without severe tire damage.

But it gets even worse for the Bushies. Nothing enrages a Bushie like Clinton. Mention Clinton and they go into an apoplectic rage, almost like instant Tourette’s Syndrome. Everything was Clinton’s fault, Clinton was a liar, Clinton was the anti-Christ.

And yet, a new poll out by CNN shows that the American people wish nothing more than to have Clinton back in office. The poll showed that Americans believe Clinton did a better job at everything–the economy, ordinary problems, natural disasters, foreign affairs, and taxes (those five by a large margin), and even national security–which, of course, Clinton did way better on, but Bush had 9/11 and tremendous national fear to bolster his numbers. Americans even believed that Clinton was more honest, despite the right-wing’s media-assisted eight-year bashing spree on Clinton, contrasted with the media’s war-weary kid-gloves handling of Bush. And, unsurprisingly, more than twice as many Americans saw Bush as a divider, and not a uniter.

Is a Bush approval surge possible? Yes, but then, it’s also possible that gas could fall to a dollar a gallon again; you just can’t expect it to happen. The trend clearly shows otherwise. Don’t be surprised if the other polls follow Harris into the 20’s, and who knows, maybe even farther. As Tim pointed out, there’s the domestic phone spying scandal, added to Rove and Abramoff and Wilkes and Cunningham and now prostitutes, all tied in with Bush in one way or another.

Cc made the argument that if the GOP doesn’t get too badly pasted this November, then Bush’s numbers could rise–but again, that would buck the trend. Look at the tracking chart again–Bush’s ’04 election rise came before November, not after. After winning even a presidential election and holding on to both houses of Congress, did Bush get a rise then? No, he immediately started to decline, as campaign commercial spending stopped. So how could Bush be expected to jump in the polls simply by the GOP not losing too badly in ’06? Far more likely that Republican losses could trash Bush even more thoroughly.

What we’re seeing here is not just a bad week for Bush, or even a bad year. This is his natural state. This is the man behind the curtain. And that once-luxuriant curtain of war and terror is getting mighty tattered. The pathetic loser of a man standing behind it is showing more and more, even to the point where stalwart conservatives are getting sick to see him and what he’s done.

According to Harris, Bush is now at 29%. Harris does not use the flat approve/disapprove model, instead asking if the president is doing “excellent,” “pretty good,” “only fair,” and “poor.” The former and latter two are grouped together for an equivalent to “approve” and “disapprove,” and it seems fairly well calibrated in that the poll had Bush at 35% in April and 43% in January, which tracked right along with other approve/disapprove polls at the same time.

I thought Bush would break thirty only after Rove resigned after being indicted, or if the massive Republican corruption in Congress, a veritable hot fudge sundae of scandals with hookers sprinkled on top, washed over on to Bush since his CIA appointees were involved. But it looks like his poll numbers have a gravity of their own.

During the ’04 elections, Bush was doing really badly, but the repeated fake terror alerts and hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign advertising buoyed his number. But in ’05, when Bush was hitting scandal after scandal, failure after failure, his numbers lowered some, but hovered in the 40’s, seemingly no matter what. I thought he’d hit his base–the level of permanent, unconditional support at which he’d have to sodomize a boy scout on national TV to break through the bottom (of his numbers–no pun intended). But it seems that Bush had worn the less stalwart within his base somewhat tired; starting with Katrina and then Harriet Myers, then with the NSA eavesdropping scandal–issues that mattered somewhat more to his core constituents–he broke the surface tension and started to sink.

If Bush sinks four more points, he’ll be less popular than Jimmy Carter was at his lowest. Five points down from now, and he’ll be where Nixon was when he resigned. Clearly, we’ll have no such luck this time. But with a bit of good fortune, this will translate into voters going to the polls this November with the idea that having one or both houses of Congress opposed to Bush might not be a bad thing.

The first data set came in for this site from GA, and while it’s incomplete (only a half-day’s report), it does give some interesting insight.

One huge drawback is that GA can’t track RSS feeds. According to AwStats, fully 1/3 of the visits to my site are people who get a feed of the blog, and don’t visit the blog directly. But when someone reads the feed, that means they aren’t actually visiting any pages on the site. RSS feed can’t use Javascript, which is how GA tracks visitors. So that’s a rather significant blind spot. It could be significant for me because I’d like to know for certain that all the hits on the RSS feed are actual people, and not bots or spam or whatever. Other data on it would be nice too, of course.

Of course, part of this is my own fault: I’m too generous with the RSS feed. Most feeds only let you glimpse the first few lines of text of any entry/article; I opened the floodgates, letting people see everything, all the content, entire posts, including photos, in the RSS feed alone. This is relevant because if I limited the feed to a snippet, RSS visitors would have to click “read more” and visit the actual web page in order to see my whole posts. Depending on how things go, I might temporarily (or even permanently) change to snippets rather than full feed. The good side of that would be that more people would visit the actual pages, giving me a better view of who is actually reading things on my site. The down side is that people who enjoy reading in RSS might be annoyed that I’m making them click links all of a sudden. Are there any RSS readers out there who would like to give feedback on that before I decide?

On the other hand, there is a positive blind spot for GA: it doesn’t track spambot-driven accesses to comment and trackback scripts, which is mostly how the spammers attack. Simply by nature, GA ignores most spam.

Of the data that does come in, GA seems to claim some pretty amazing abilities, tracking data I had no idea was possible. For example, GA claims to be able to detect the screen resolution and color depth settings of each visitor. According to the stats, about 52% of visitors to this site over the past 12 hours had a screen resolution of 1024×768; 14% had 800×600, and 13% had 1280×1024. How can GA tell that? It also claims to be able to tell if someone is using DSL, Dial-up, or “Corporate,” whatever the last one means.

GA also does a fun trick with the IP addresses of visitors, detailing which country, region, and even city the hit apparently came from. I’m not sure how accurate this is when you get down to the city–the IP address would be from the ISP, not the user, after all. 12 visitors appeared to come from Saint Petersburg, FL, but I think that’s where my blog host is, so they might be entering into the data somehow. After that, in the past 12 hours, 12 people came from New York, 7 from Denver, 6 each from L.A., Washington D.C., and St. Louis, 5 each from Oakland and Sacramento, 4 each from Plano, Atlanta, Austin, and Wilmington, and so on. Apparently visitors are coming from locales like Schaumburg, Mililani, Panorama City, Colchester, Poughkeepsie, Buzzard’s Bay, Glen Carbon, Sedro Woolley, Cockeysville (no, I did not make that up), Halethorp, and Plymouth Meeting. A shout-out to my peeps in Plymouth Meeting!

Another cute trick GA does is give you the ability to view cross-sections, stat breakdowns on any one group. For example, I can see what screen resolutions were used to view my birdwatching in Japan page, or see which cities people came from to view my eyelid-twitching page (apparently there’s an outbreak in Schaumburg).

But as I’ve mentioned, I’m playing with a very limited amount of data–I don’t even have a full day’s stats yet. And a better view will come after a few weeks or longer, when I can start really tracking returning visitors and various trends. One thing is for certain, GA is an incredibly powerful analytical tool, limited only by which data it is unable to track at all.

I’ve been hearing say that Republicans are going to try to scare people about how horrible things will be if Democrats get control of even one house of Congress, or even (say it quietly) take back the White House in 2008. Apparently, there will be, amongst other nightmarish scenarios, tax increases and military weakness.

Let’s take a look at those, shall we? Tax increases. Like the one in 1993 when Clinton took office, I presume? Think back to that time, and the years following. Were you, or the people you know, devastated by sky-high tax rates? Were you bled dry? Or, by chance, did tax levels not affect you much differently than they do now? And considering that incomes for most Americans were better under Clinton than they have been under Bush 43, is it possible that if you were paying more in taxes, that it was simply because you were making more money when adjusted for inflation?

Democrats have promised to “raise taxes” only insofar as getting rid of the ludicrously extravagant tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. And if you want to bring the Clinton tax hikes up, consider that they too were aimed primarily at the wealthy–who, by the way, made out like bandits under the booming Clinton economy. And that the Clinton boom (stoked by the Internet industry, which in turn owed more to Al Gore than to any other politician) along with Clinton’s well-targeted tax increases, as well as his sound fiscal/budgeting policies, led to actual federal budget surpluses–as opposed to the past six years of horrendously massive, uncontrolled Republican pork-barrel spending and skyrocketing deficits and debt.

Also considering that job creation has, for the past century, been highest under Democrats and just as consistently lowest when Republicans are in office, it is most probable that whether you are rich or poor, blue-collar or white-collar, you will be doing better economically under a Democrat than you would be under a Republican.

As for military weakness: let’s see, military recruitment and retention are at historic lows. The military is stretched so thin that practically any military venture now would be impossible without Iraq immediately collapsing. And what have we gained for that, and for the loss of 2,432 American lives in Iraq? Is al Qaeda dying out? No, their recruitment is soaring, in stark contrast to our military’s. Is Osama bin Laden behind bars? Nope. Saddam is, but we know that he was never really a threat to us, he was contained and not even remotely worth the price Bush has forced on this nation.

In short, Bush has achieved nothing, even worse than nothing, and in the process has shredded our military and led to our being less prepared now to fight any new conflict than we have been in living memory.

So, under Democrats, we’ve had good jobs and budget surpluses. Who would want to return to those horrors, and give up the jobless growth, surging gas prices, massive deficit spending, and rampant corruption we now enjoy? Especially when Democrats would actually (no!) repeal all those tax cuts for Paris Hilton and Bill Gates!

Under Clinton, our military was ready and able, and was directed well enough that we stopped ethnic cleansing and atrocities in the Balkans, at minimal cost to us in lives, money, and readiness. But why do that, when there was no oil to be found, and no corporate coffers to be filled with hundreds of billions in special war spending? Why go back to those days of woe when we see how well Bush has done for the men and women in uniform? Who gives a rat’s ass about twisting intelligence and lying repeatedly to trick the public into a war that’s become a quagmire, when Democrats might force the military to accept gays into their ranks? Have you no priorities?

And if a healthy military, good jobs, and fiscal responsibility aren’t enough to scare the crap out of you, then wait till Karl Rove gets finished telling you about gay marriage and separation of church and state! You’ll go screaming into the night, I tell you!

Yes! I (finally) got my invite to Google Analytics (GA), formerly Urchin Stats. It requires you to insert a script to each web page on the site (simple to do with a blog site–just edit the templates), and according to theory, the stats should start being generated within 24 hours.

I’ve been looking forward to this as a way of finally discounting referral, trackback, and comment spam in my stats; up until now, spammers have been throwing my numbers off, and even with AwStats, nice as it is, there is no way to weed them out. I’ve had to simply guess at how many visitors actually come to my site. GA has filters that can–hopefully–clean out the unwanted spam and show me how many actual visitors are coming through.

Problem is, I’ve been looking at the GA site and the filters seem powerful but complex. Also, they mention that you can only screen incoming data–though their “exclude” filter seems like you can at least temporarily screen out existing data. It’s not 100% clear from the help files, so I’ll have to wait for data to come in before I can figure it out. So we’ll see how that goes. It’ll probably take several days as I try new things with various data sets as they arrive. Here’s hoping….

I notice that the blog comment spammers are trying a new trick: contextual comment spamming. It’s still automated, but it’s smarter. Instead of just sending a few dozen obvious spam comments, the spammers try to trick you by making their spam appear to be an actual message. The first one I got related a news story about an artistic photo shoot in Spain, and the second talked about how to deal with Hamas. Except for the placement of three or four spam links, they would appear to be valid comments. So far, the spam comes one at a time–smart, otherwise it would look suspicious.

Of course, there are problems related to automating the spam: the topic of the comments, so far, is not exactly in line with the topic of the blog posts. The photo shoot news story comment spam was posted to a blog entry about blogging (though there was a tangential reference to the press media), and the Hamas comment spam was posted to an entry about Air America Radio. Who knows, maybe they do have software to try to match topics and it’s just not doing a very good job. But I imagine that sometime soon, they’ll have enough fake comments on all kinds of topics, and smart enough spam software so that the comment and blog topic will be closely matched.

Not that it’s causing me any problems–I review comments in my email software, and links show up as blue and underlined; the spam links stand out. But if one were to moderate comments using a browser, the links might be less apparent, or the blog author might gloss over them, and the fact that it is spam could be missed. I’m also not sure how the spam filters are doing with these messages; I haven’t checked to see if my filters are blocking out more of these.

In one way, this is a good sign–it means that spam blocking is effective enough that the spammers are having to go to a lot of trouble to try to get their spam through.

God help us. If Prez Jeb were to come to pass, it would surely be the sign of the apocalypse. And a sign that the American people–or at least half of the ones who vote–were the biggest effing morons in the universe.

Bush:

Mr. Moussaoui got a fair trial; the jury convicted him to life in prison, where he’ll spend the rest of his life. In so doing, they spared his life, which is something that he evidently wasn’t willing to do for innocent American citizens.

You know that when Bush said this, he badly wished that he could have pulled the switch on the electric chair or the gallows trapdoor personally, as would many Americans. I was listening to the Penn Jillette show after the verdict, and he had a lot of bloodthirsty callers talking about the various ways that Moussaoui could be tortured in prison–some pretty vicious stuff. And when the headlines ran, they had the same wording they often do when a convicted prisoner is spared the death sentence. They read that he “gets” life. The oft-heard bitter comment from the family member of a victim, “my loved one got death, and the killer got life.”

Notwithstanding the questionable boon of spending one’s life in prison, I am somewhat dismayed by the lack of public consideration that perhaps we are not the angels of vengeance. The fact that we are so ready and willing to do such terrible things ourselves–even in rage–is not exactly a healthy sign.

Bush may have been grimly cynical when he commented that we showed Moussaoui mercy where he would not have, and without a doubt Bush, like many others, hates this outcome; but I believe that mercy is something we should aspire to. Okay, perhaps Bush is a bad measuring stick here, the man is brutal and clearly is not troubled by having the blood of so many on his hands. But shouldn’t most Americans, shouldn’t most people everywhere, be better than that–or at least aspire to be better?

After all, isn’t the whole point here that we are better than the terrorists? A moral high ground which, apparently, we are all too willing to abandon in the heat of anger. We do things we know are immoral or wrong, but we see them as justifiable if they are done in response to someone else’s doing them.

Nothing anyone else does excuses our own actions, with the sole exception of self-defense. But when self-defense is no longer in play, when we can simply walk away and do no more than is necessary to protect ourselves, what remains is unexcused, no matter what our pain and suffering may be.

This goes strongly against what we have learned all our lives, but I am convinced that vengeance, this sense that we can do immoral harm because immoral harm was done to us, is the greatest obstacle to peace, civilization–to human advancement. Give up that one flaw, and we can make ourselves better than would be possible by addressing any other single shortcoming of the human race.

This has to be one of the funniest sentences I’ve come across in a while. From an “urban legend” in the Darwin Awards web site:

“It’s hard enough to hold a living fox, let alone insert an airline up its rectum, I should imagine.”

That “I should imagine” bit is a good addition, lest we suspect what his hobby might be.

The amazing thing here is that fully 31% of Americans actually think that Bush is doing a good job. If you encounter any of them, please find out and let me know what medicinal substances they are smoking.

Word is that Rove may be indicted in the next two weeks, and as much as they’ve tried to distance him, the Bushies can’t quite get “Turd Blossom’s” stink out of the administration; could Rove’s frog-march take Bush into the 20’s? If not that, then maybe the New and Improved Cunningham/Wilkes scandal involving Republican congressmen and prostitutes. Bush is not involved, but then any GOP scandal is only going to add to the general assessment of this administration.

Via MacRumors: strange, but maybe an indication that the new iBook/MacBook is really coming out tomorrow (May 9). On Apple’s web site:

iBook Overview

May 10, 2006, from 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM Eastern …

– Overview
Hear about the most affordable iBook ever.

– What you will Learn
Specifications and features of the new iBook. …

Location:

CompUSA #551 Manhattan

Hasn’t been a “new” iBook in quite some time–it’s been nine months–hard to see how they could call a G4 iBook “new.” On the other hand, isn’t it supposed to be called a “MacBook”? Though Apple did keep the name “iMac” for the consumer desktop–maybe that’s the pattern. Though there was an apparent Apple web site “MacBook” sighting just a few days ago. Weirdness.

On the other hand, if it’s real, then the “most affordable iBook ever” is promising–it would mean the entry-level model would sell for less than $999. Which would be a really smart move on Apple’s part, even if it didn’t have the highest profit margin. Better to grab market share.

In case the page goes down, here’s a link to an image of the page.

UPDATE: …or not. Now they’re reporting that the new iBook/MacBook will not be out until next week at earliest. Such is the way of things when you rely upon rumors.

Apple won, of course.

Quite frankly, I have always thought that Apple Corps Inc.’s string of legal actions against Apple Computer was kind of ludicrous. I mean, really, aside from the fact that both use the name “Apple”–about as common a word as you can get–within their corporate names, there’s little or nothing that would make you confuse the two. Apple Corps vs. Apple Computers. The Beatles’ tax shelter corporation used a photo of a whole green apple as a logo; Apple Computer used a rainbow or solid-color apple with a bite out of it (with the meaning of the Apple–taking knowledge–being wholly different from the Beatles’ use of the fruit). As the Apple Computer attorney put it, even “a moron in a hurry” would not confuse the two.

Even after Apple made the iTunes Music Store and iPod, there could not possibly be any confusion. Did anyone ever confuse anything by Apple for anything by the Beatles? Did anyone decide not to buy an Apple Corps product because they thought Apple Computer was too uncool?

And seriously, how could anything that Apple has done ever cost Apple Corps any money at all? What, people bought fewer Beatles songs because they thought Apple Computer ran the show? It really all has the smell of the Beatles firm simply trying to milk the maker of the Mac line for cash. They already got about $27 million out of the computer maker, probably far more than any confusion could possibly have cost them (if, indeed, they did not actually profit from any chance association). Heck, having the Beatles’ music on the iTMS would probably have prompted me to buy some; this lawsuit business prompts me not to. Apple Computers, even with the iTMS, is not a record label.

This really should be the end of it–but unfortunately, probably not. Apple Corps is set to appeal the ruling.

Last week I was able to go to Kasai Rinkai for some birdwatching with a friend. I managed to get two more life birds, and spotted some old acquaintances. The two I got for the first time were the Dunlin and the Whimbrel.

There were a lot of Dunlins running around. Cute little buggers; I like the black patch on their bellies.

Click for larger view

The other new bird was the Whimbrel, similar in some ways to Curlews.

There may actually have been a third new species, but I am unsure–it’s so similar to several birds in the sandpiper family, it’s hard to tell. I’m going to have to get an outside opinion on this one:

Among those I’ve spotted before were Black-winged Stilts…

…Little Ringed Plovers–these two in the first photo almost seemed to be doing a courtship ritual…

Click for larger view

Then there were a few Terek Sandpipers…

…and a Ruddy Turnstone–in this shot presenting an interesting view, even if you can’t figure out where its head is…

There was also a Grey-tailed Tattler:

And I got an interesting shot of a Little Egret, with its cowlick looking funny (and note the purple coloring at the base of the bill):

Click for larger view

There were more that I didn’t get to photograph, including some Little Terns and Common Snipes. Then there were the more common birds, including Spot-billed Ducks, Great Egrets (though one lady claimed one was an Intermediate Egret), Grey Herons, Crows, Bulbuls, Starlings, Tree Sparrows, Cormorants, Little Grebes, Oriental Turtle Doves, Wagtails, and Barn Swallows.

So, more than 20 birds in one outing, even if more than half were commonplace. Not bad at all. Oh, and I got a special treat this morning–a Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker was on a tree right in front of my work this morning, in the middle of Shinjuku, pretty far from any parkland. Interesting.

A very informative story in the L.A. Times today, showing up the utter fallibility of abstinence-only sex education:

Virginity pledges, in which young people vow to abstain from sex until marriage, have little staying power among those who take them, a Harvard study has found.

More than half of the adolescents who make the signed public promises give up on their pledges within a year, according to the study released last week.

The findings have raised the ire of Concerned Women for America, a prominent conservative organization that advocates adolescent sexual abstinence.

“The Harvard report is wrong,” said Janice Crouse, a fellow at a Concerned Women for America think tank.

Yeah! How dare they suggest that teenagers, especially ones who promised not to have sex, actually go and have sex! I’ll bet that never really happens! Especially not my kids! Even if I had them!

I guess that this is an excellent example of “faith-based reasoning,” as opposed to “reason-based reasoning.” The idea that your kids are going to be perfect angels, that Christian kids are going to be less libido-driven than other kids, that you can actually get teenage kids to overpower their mammoth sexual drives by telling them nothing about sex except that they should promise not to have it until “marriage,” which, to a teenage kid on hormonal surge, might as well be never. Complete, utter denial.

The conservative group, however, claims to have proof for how wrong those Harvard ninnies are:

“This study is in direct contradiction with trends we have been seeing in recent years,” Crouse said. “Those who make virginity pledges have shown greater resolve to save sex for marriage.”

Ah, nothing like facts and figures to resolve an argument. Well, at least from the Harvard people, who have an absolutely killer explanation as to why these conservative researchers are in the dark, aside from the obvious reasons, of course. The Harvard researchers, dealing with a survey population of fully 14,000, had the smarts not just to interview kids when they took the pledge, and then interview them again one year later–no, they were smart enough to come back again, five years later, and re-interview the grown-up people, with all that nonsense and adult-supervised pressure long absent from the scene, so they could get some honest answers.

And guess what? They found that of the kids who said they didn’t have sex a year after they took the pledge, fully 73% fessed up to lying five years later. They did have sex, but were too embarrassed to admit it. Five years afterward, having grown up some, they were more willing to be open about their activity as teenagers.

Who’d have thought? Teenagers who promised not to have sex, actually having sex, and then lying about it! No! It can’t be!

No wonder the “Concerned Women for America” were fooled. Moms pressuring their kids into making abstinence pledges, the kids breaking the pledge, and then swearing to mom that they didn’t have sex. A completely unforeseeable course of events.

Though I am not surprised at all at this. Lucas is a shrewd businessman, in that he understands how to sell the exact same thing many times over to the same people. Take the Star Wars motion picture soundtracks, for instance. There were the original soundtracks for each of the first three movies. Then there was a reissuing of the soundtracks together. Then they reissued the soundtracks in a new artsy box with a few new tracks added to each score. Then the films were re-released with new effects, and each soundtrack was re-released individually. Then they were reissued yet again as a group, with more new material.

So now, after releasing the first three movies in a variety of forms, then re-releasing them on DVD, I’m not terribly shocked that Lucas has re-released them again, this time in their original form with each film in a 2-disc set. Then they’ll undoubtedly come out as a three-film combo set. Then as individual films with both original and special edition formats combined. Then those together as a set, with more new material. He’ll probably find another ten ways to re-release the films and soundtracks until every permutation has been covered, then maybe they’ll find even more ways. I’m optimistic like that. Heck, I don’t think that either the soundtracks or the films have been released with all six films’ material together. And we haven’t even seen anything in High-Definition format yet.

Probably Lucas will eventually sell a 200 GB Blu-Ray compilation of all six films with all possible combinations of originals and remixes in HDTV quality with all material from all soundtracks and all documentaries with all interviews and every other scrap of Star Wars footage all included… but not until it’s been sold a few dozen ways in a few dozen combinations before then. Gotta shake down those Star Wars fans for every cent they’ve got every few years.

This is a bird that I already got a little while ago, though I only found females, whose plumage is not nearly as impressive as the males’. Unfortunately, while I spotted and photographed a male, it was so late and dark that a good, clear photo wasn’t possible. I was out in the town checking out a new road constructed through the area when I spotted the pheasant flying behind an embankment bordering on some homes situated about 20 feet lower than the street level. At first glance, I thought it was a crow or some other common bird, but for the second I saw it, the long tail was evident enough to catch my interest. When I came down to where it had settled, I saw it was indeed a male Japanese Pheasant (キジ).

On the one hand, this bird didn’t scare easily. A lot of birds will fly off when they see that you’re looking at them and get within twenty or thirty meters of them. This one allowed me to get within about five meters–but it didn’t give me a good view. Apparently, the bird has good hiding instincts. As long as it was aware that I was nearby, it ducked down and huddled in the tall grass, ergo the obstructed images below. I was, at least, able to get close enough to use my camera’s flash; Photoshop brought the images the rest of the way to clarity.

Unable to get good lighting without the flash, and since the flash kept scaring the bird into hiding, I tried taking a movie of it. The light is not so great, but the bird did stop hiding and moved around some. In a way, you can see it better. The image below is linked to the MP4 movie, 1.9MB, 44 sec. Right-click the image to download the movie to watch it from your desktop.