Moving GIF Image Of The Day

Don't know what a moving GIF image is? Don't worry. Go here. You're welcome.

Suggested Reading

These days, it seems to take sixty U.S. Senators to agree on legislation before it can be passed. Over at a site called Newsbound, someone has put together an explanation of why that is true. I learned a couple of things, like that cloture wasn't even added to the Senate rules until roughly 95 years ago. I've embedded it here, since there was a link at the site that tells you how to do it:

It's worth looking at, even if you think you're familiar with the issue.

For those using Javascript filtering software like NoScript, I'll just add that at a minimum you will need to enable these domains:

• newsbound.org
• typekit.net

It's also possible that you will have to approve using an encryption certificate that Firefox doesn't like. That happened to me in preview mode, but not when I just looked at the published version of this article.

In addition, I had to reduce the size of the slide show so that it would fit in this blog format. If you're having trouble seeing it here, go to the link for the slide show and watch it there. I didn't have the certificate problem there.

Quote Of The Day

Attaturk, at his FireDogLake location:

Ron Fournier of the National Journal manages to be more pathetic than Alex Jones over the Boston bombing.

Just take your soiled slacks and retire already

[links from original]

There isn't much I can add to that, really. At least Jones' fevered imagination was able to come up with a scary secret conspiracy we should all be peeing our pants over. Fournier's justification is that we weren't at work when it happened.

It's hard to be more pathetic than that, but I await our punditocracy's next attempt to surpass this. Just like the act that spawned this nonsense, there's clearly nothing we can do about this plague of idiocy. We might as well laugh about it, right?

Erroneous Assumptions

Image credit: Aaron Tang/Flickr

It's unlikely in the extreme that anyone who needs to be exposed to this information will be reading this blog, but I'll pass it on anyway. First off, that guy who was tackled by bystanders yesterday for looking Muslim didn't have anything to do with the Boston Marathon bombings:

The Saudi Arabian man whose apartment was searched by Boston Marathon bombing investigators is not a person of interest in the continuing search for the persons responsible for Monday’s terrorist attack.

“He has been checked out,’’ said a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation. “He is not involved. He is just a victim.’’

Sources: Revere man not suspected in Boston Marathon bombings

Whoever it turns out to be, let's put that one to rest, shall we? And maybe we can note the law enforcement official's phrase "He is just a victim."

While we're on the subject of Muslims in Boston, a Huffington Post article notes:

Security officials at Boston's largest mosque requested police to guard its campus in the wake of Monday's deadly explosions at the Boston Marathon, a sobering reminder that Muslims in the U.S. often face threats after alleged terrorist attacks.

...

"We're Bostonians - we mourn with the city," said Suhaib Webb, the Oklahoma-born imam who leads the congregation. "We stand in support with the city, with the victims. We're hurt, equally shocked and equally pissed off."

The relationship that a Muslim community has with the city it inhabits can often be tested in the aftermath of acts of terror. But in the immediate aftermath of the Boston Marathon attacks, the prevailing sentiment inside this mosque was of shared grief rather than instinctive distrust.

Boston's Largest Mosque: 'We're Bostonians -- We Mourn With The City'

And this Twitter message came from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) yesterday:

Twitter message from CAIR, April 15, 2013

If you visit the byline link, you'll notice that at least one bigot made sure to explain how CAIR is a front for the Muslim League of World Conquest, or whatever. Nice to know ignorant clowns are everywhere, making sure we don't slip up and assume people are innocent until proved guilty, or some equally soft-headed liberal notion.

In short, American Muslims think the bombing sucks, too. That ought to be enough to let various folks, including Sam Harris, know how stupid it is to be profiling people because of how they look, but I'm sure it won't. Prejudice is pretty powerful, and it doesn't have the power it does because the people who have it are used to examining their assumptions. After all, smart people with Ph.D.s shouldn't have to accept the idea that they might be wrong, should they?

Image credit: OverpassLightBrigade/Twitpic

Now, I'm done with this subject, at least until something useful turns up.

UPDATE (Apr. 18): FireDogLake contributor CTuttle dropped by to let me know that the "Aloha Boston" sign in that last photograph was the work of Occupy Hilo. Good, work, OH.

What Courage Means

Yesterday, as I was enjoying a rare glimpse of baseball on the MLB's site, I saw these players all sporting numbers they don't normally wear:
Caption: Cincinnati Reds relief pitcher Aroldis Chapman faces Philadelphia Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins in the top of the ninth inning in Cincinnati, April 15, 2013.

Image credit: Screenshot of Major League Baseball video by Cujo359

Yesterday was Jackie Robinson Day, when all players in Major League baseball wear Jackie Robinson's number to celebrate his leading role in desegregating baseball.

What did Robinson have to endure to do this? It doesn't take much imagination to realize that he would bear the brunt of taunts from both the fans and his fellow players. Any fan of the game would know there would be lots of physical intimidation from the latter. What most of us might not have imagined was what was probably the hardest part of Robinson's experience:

[Dodgers general manager Branch] Rickey had warned Jack – that’s what his friends and family called him – that the worst kind of race-baiting would come his way, and that he’d have to keep his cool.

Are you looking, Robinson asked Rickey, for a black man “who is afraid to fight back?”

“I need,” Rickey replied, “a player who has the guts not to fight back.”

Jackie Robinson and Remaking of Baseball

Caption: Jackie Robinson in 1954.

Image credit: Bob Sandberg/Look/Wikimedia

That was the deal Rickey and Robinson struck. For the first year, Robinson couldn't retaliate. As that quote implies, this wasn't in Robinson's nature. He was a former football player, and someone used to responding to force with some of his own. Yet in the Major Leagues of 1947, he'd have to endure bean balls, spikings, and more for an entire season, and not retaliate. Rickey knew that if Robinson did retaliate, then they would be blamed, not the bigots and racists who committed the offenses.

Why did Rickey do this? No doubt, part of the answer is that he thought it was the right thing to do, but part was that the Dodgers were always the also-rans in New York City baseball behind the more successful Yankees and Giants, and black ballplayers were an untapped resource of talent. Why did Robinson do it? Reading his Wikipedia bio, it's clear that part of the reason was that he wanted to do something for his fellow African Americans. He was in the March on Washington long after his playing days were over. He remained both an outspoken critic of baseball's racism and a proponent of its reforms. But part of the answer also had to be that he loved playing the game.

Rickey and Robinson had personal and self-serving reasons for doing what they did. That doesn't change the fact that what they both did, particularly Robinson, took a lot of courage and fortitude. We seem to have a paper cutout idea of what courage means - that it only takes courage to do good things, or to do them for someone else's benefit. Nothing could be further from the truth. Courage is knowing it's likely you'll be hurt and suffer abuse, but doing what you need to do anyway. Courage is sometimes not hurting someone else, even when every part of your being screams that you should. Even if what those two men did had only been for their own self-interest, it still made our lives better, and it still would have taken more courage than many of us have had to summon for so long. That's why we honor them.

Jackie Robinson's life had many things to teach us, but in light of recent events, I think the most important lesson it taught us is what courage is, and how powerful a force it can be.

Twitter Conversation Of The Day

Proof that I am spending too much time watching Twitter today:

Twitter Conversation by emptywheel, April 16, 2013

The crap is going to happen anyway, so you might as well laugh about it.

I took a screenshot, because blogger still doesn't have a tool to include Twitter messages inline. If you want to follow the links, go to the link in the byline.

Cowards And Monsters

It seems as though I should write something about the events in Boston yesterday. How could I not have an opinion? Yet I seem to have few strongly held ones this time.

I feel sorry for the injured, for the people who lost someone, and for the people who were nearby and will likely see that scene in their nightmares for years. I feel sad that things like this keep happening.

Beyond that, though, I don't feel much. I'm told that the folks who did this are monsters and cowards, but the people telling me that know nothing about how they did it or why, so why should I believe that? Just because people do things that are awful doesn't make them monsters. Doing things that we don't see until it's too late doesn't make them cowards. Those are complexities that most folks seem to be able to avoid considering, but I can't seem to.

But then, I also feel sorry for these folks:

The New York Times this morning deserves credit for publishing one of the most powerful Op-Eds you will ever read. I urge you to read it in its entirety: it's by Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, a Yemeni national who has been imprisoned at Guantánamo without charges of any kind for more than 11 years. He's one of the detainees participating in the escalating hunger strike to protest both horrible conditions and, particularly, the supreme injustice of being locked in a cage indefinitely without any evidence of wrongdoing presented or any opportunity to contest the accusations that have been made. The hunger strike escalated over the weekend when guards shot rubber bullets at some of the detainees and forced them into single cells.

...

I've written many times before why this claim, though grounded in some truth, is misleading in the extreme. I won't repeat all of that here; click the links and read the documentation proving its truth. In sum, Obama sought not to close Guantánamo but simply to re-locate it to Illinois, and in doing so, to preserve what makes it such a travesty of justice: its system of indefinite detention. The detainees there are not protesting in desperation because of their geographical location: we want to be in Illinois rather than a Cuban island. They are sacrificing their health and their lives in response to being locked in a cage for more than a decade without charges: a system Obama, independent of what Congress did, intended to preserve.

Obama, Guantánamo, and the enduring national shame

[links from original]

So, I ask you, what kind of cowards keep people imprisoned because they're afraid of the possible political consequences, or maybe the faint chance they'll manage to be involved in some future act of terrorism? What kind of monsters justify, or perform, the act of imprisoning these people and torturing them? Read this Twitter conversation between Glenn Greenwald and people who seem to think that this is perfectly OK, because someone somewhere in the military or the intelligence establishment decided we should do it without having to justify it to anyone. When Greenwald provides proof their objections are nonsense, they instantly grasp onto some other excuse.

What kind of monsters shoot rubber bullets at prisoners on hunger strikes, when those prisoners shouldn't be there in the first place? What sort of cowards order them to, or repeatedly vote for the people giving those orders?

When you can answer those questions intelligently and without contradicting yourself, maybe I'll consider you calling the folks who planted the bombs in Boston cowards and monsters something other than absurd.

Meanwhile, I'll tell you the other thing I'm feeling. Envy. For the dead. Not for the pain and fear they went through, because that must have been terrible. I envy them, though, because they no longer need to see what a dreadful, hopeless place their country is becoming, and don't have to hear the screaming half-wits determined never to learn anything who are making it that way.

I'm almost hoping the next one that happens, I'll be unaware that I'm sitting on top of a big stack of C-4. Yes, I'm now really sick of this.

Afterword: Bruce Schneier sums things up pretty well:

If it's hard for us to keep this in perspective, it will be even harder for our leaders. They'll be afraid that by speaking honestly about the impossibility of attaining absolute security or the inevitability of terrorism -- or that some American ideals are worth maintaining even in the face of adversity -- they will be branded as "soft on terror." And they'll be afraid that Americans might vote them out of office. Perhaps they're right, but where are the leaders who aren't afraid? What has happened to "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"?

The Boston Marathon Bombing: Keep Calm and Carry On

Those leaders are gone, I'm afraid, along with the tough-minded people who elected them. Now, we're just supposed to be afraid and angry all the time, a duty we're performing remarkably well.

UPDATE: Taylor Marsh has some wise words as well: "Boston Terrorist Attack Now Turns to Wallpaper". When you make things like this the wallpaper of your life, you are in danger of becoming what you behold.

UPDATE 2: While seeking out my favorite music video for times like this, I ran across this quote of mine:

To those who keep declaring that the world changed on 9/11 - no, it didn't. The world was like that already. Vietnam happened, so did Cambodia, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Sarajevo, Tianamen Square, Persian Gulf, and scores of other slaughters that I've simply forgotten about, and that's just since I was born. Some America had a hand in, many we didn't. There were terrorist attacks, too. It's like that because, often as not, it's run by cold-hearted selfish bastards who are perfectly willing to climb to the top of the heap by making a ramp of the bodies they've created.

If you think the world changed, it was because you finally noticed what was going on in the rest of the world, after it finally happened here.

What changed was us. We changed, because we obsessed about what happened when we should have been thinking about so many other things, and because we were afraid. We didn't change for the better. People who obsess about things never do.

Don't tell me to remember. Tell me when you're ready to move on.

Wake Me Up...

So, moving on...

Sunday Photo(s)

For various reasons, this wasn't a good year to photograph the fruit tree blooms. Some of that had to do with the weather, which was generally miserable during the two weeks or so the blooms were out. It also had to do with the fact that on the rare days when it wasn't miserable, I often had things to do.

Nevertheless, I managed to catch a few. Here they are. The first three are from last week.

Image credit: Photos taken and processed by Cujo359

I don't know what kind of trees these are. Three years ago, the blooms were white. Now they're pinkish. Here's a closeup of the blossoms:

These are from the end of March. Some mountain managed to get itself in the background of one of them:

The not-quite world famous Climate Change Cherry tree was in full bloom that day, as were its neighbors:

Click on the pictures to enlarge. Have a good Sunday.

Riverbend Reappears

There was some good news today, whatever else happens. Riverbend, the young Iraqi woman who wrote so many poignant articles about her experiences during and after the Iraq War, has made another entry in her blog after an absence of several years.

As you might imagine, she has a quite a few things to say, among them, asking the question that any American who can still use his mind ought to be asking about now:

What about George Bush, Condi, Wolfowitz, and Powell? Will they ever be held accountable for the devastation and the death they wrought in Iraq? Saddam was held accountable for 300,000 Iraqis... Surely someone should be held accountable for the million or so?

Finally, after all is said and done, we shouldn't forget what this was about - making America safer... And are you safer Americans? If you are, why is it that we hear more and more about attacks on your embassies and diplomats? Why is it that you are constantly warned to not go to this country or that one? Is it better now, ten years down the line? Do you feel safer, with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis out of the way (granted half of them were women and children, but children grow up, right?)?

Ten Years On...

We aren't safer, and there's no reason to think we will be any time soon. That alone should have made Americans hopping mad about the waste of life and money, but it hasn't. Not enough of us to matter, anyway. What we've learned here is that there are two sets of rules. Those in charge can screw up all they like, and there will always be plenty of people ready to make excuses for them. Those of us who aren't in charge don't get to make any mistakes at all, and all those people who are happy to make excuses for the rich and famous are equally glad to blame us for all our problems.

We've learned that the Land Of The Free and The Home Of The Brave is no longer either. Far too many of us lost our minds on September 11, 2001, and the rest of us were along for the ride. Our corrupt and ignorant leaders were glad to lead the crazy on a quest to do something insane.

But at least Riverbend and her family have survived. They seem to have become permanent refugees, more victims of our folly. She tells the story at her blog, and I'll link there so you can read it, too.

Saturday Entertainment: Rocket Sled Vs. Car

One of the more amusing claims I kept reading and hearing about the collapse of the World Trade Center back in 2001 was about how the "physics didn't add up", or some such phrase to indicate that what happened didn't make sense. I thought this was so much twaddle at the time, and said so. Of course, that meant I was a naive dupe of the New World Order, but I digress.

The important thing to remember here is that what we should have learned from 9/11 is that when particular things composed of particular materials come together at speeds and in ways we haven't experienced before, it's anyone's guess what will happen. What "physics" apply in a particular situation are often very different from what we assume will apply.

The show Mythbusters provides lessons in this sort of thing quite often. In it, they test some urban legend, bit of folklore, or seemingly outrageous claim to see if it makes sense. Whether the question is if a Saint Bernard bringing you a shot of cognac when you're trapped in a snowdrift is a good thing, or how plausible an anti-Gorn cannon is, they use science and mechanical abilities to see what might be true. Often, they do this by destroying something in pretty spectacular fashion.

Yes, I really like the show. It's one of the few things I miss about cable television.

This particular segment from Mythbusters features a rocket slide slamming into a car at 500 miles per hour, or thereabouts. The episode's premise was to test a claim that a snowplow had once cut a small imported car in two. The Mythbusters had already tried this out, and found that, sure enough, it wasn't possible. I think enough of us have seen auto accidents to visualize what would happen. We're used to what happens when steel vehicles collide at, say, 20 to 100 miles per hour. But, this being Mythbusters, they wondered if it was possible at any speed.

So, they hired a place with a rocket sled track to set up an experiment. Here it is:

The reason this episode reminded me of 9/11 is the speed with which the sled hit the car, and how this was outside the experience of all the testers. Both they and I made guesses about what would happen. Mine was that the engine would be either crushed or splintered, and the rest of the car more or less cut in two. Watch the video to see the Mythbusters' guesses. I'm an engineer with some experience with cars and aircraft. The people in the episode were experienced at destroying, working with, and building quite a few mechanical devices. None of us, though, is a materials scientist or an expert in the technologies and metals involved in car manufacturing. None of us was right, really. Those points are related.

So, just like we'd never seen anything like an airliner loaded with fuel hitting a skyscraper with a steel external structure at more than 350 miles per hour, this experiment had a result few laymen, if any, would have guessed correctly. As NASA demonstrated during the Columbia accident investigation, even the experts can be wrong sometimes. They didn't think the foam that covered the main tank could damage the Shuttle if it broke off in a launch, but it turns out that's exactly what happened. That's why talking about how the physics don't add up in a new situation like this is nonsense.

Enjoy the explosions.