Twitter Message Of The Day

Someone at the new MSNBC show All In With Chris Hayes summed up the real meaning of the word "center" in political discourse:

Twitter Message by @allinwithchris

At least in progressive discourse, this is true. It may mean something different on the conservative side, but I don't see folks over there using that term very much. For progressives, though, the "centrist" position is inevitably the one the movers and shakers in the Democratic Party want, which usually means whatever conservatives want.

I'm not going to bother with expository links for that one. There are about four years' worth of posts under the keyword "progressives" here that make that point, and a lot more under the keyword "Democrats".

The Horsehead Nebula

After 23 years on the job, the Hubble Space Telescope is still taking some amazing pictures. Here's one that was featured in yesterday's APOD:

See the link for a full size version of the image, and for the caption that explains it all. The short version is that this is a composite image of the Horsehead Nebula, with infra-red and visible light represented.

Happy Twenty-Third, Hubble.

Factoid About West, Texas Explosion

Here's a bit of information to consider as you're looking over photos of the West, Texas fertilizer plant explosion. If you look at this photo, you may notice that in the lower left corner is a railroad car that was blown over by the explosion:


Image credit: Original picture: Associated Press/Tony Gutierrez. Annotated by Cujo359.

The railroad car is a three-bay covered hopper. Here's some information from a Union Pacific site on this type of car:

Feature	Attribute
Cubic Capacity	Range from 4,600 to 5,200 cu. ft.
Gross Weight on Rail	Range from 263,000 to 286,000 lbs.
Load Limit	Range from 197,000 to 224,000 lbs.

That car must have weighed at least thirty tons empty. Based on the pile next to it, it must have been at least partly full at the time. Yet the explosion knocked it off the rails and may have actually pushed it a little ways on its side.

It was one big explosion, particularly when you consider that this plant was operating on the edge of town, close to schools, apartments, and houses.

Twitter Message Of The Day

While we're on the subject of Earth Day, here's a Twitter message that sums our priorities up pretty well:

Twitter Message from @FearDept, April 22, 2013

The reason I find this message as profound is that it mocks the sort of values we so often see reflected in our government's policies these days, particularly the abject hysteria over deficits. Money isn't a thing, at least at the national level. Economists (the ones who don't have their heads up their butts, at least) refer to money as store of value, which is a way for us to benefit from our own contributions to the economy in ways of our choosing. Instead of paying me by giving me a chicken and some bread one day, and a tank full of gasoline the next, an employer can just give me a check, which I can then use to buy what I want or need, now or in the future. That is a far more efficient way of compensating me for my work, both from my perspective and an employer's. Money isn't a thing, at least not in the sense that dollars aren't resources that can be directly used for some purpose. Money is only useful when it is converted into something, like chickens or gasoline.

You can't eat money. You can't use it as fuel, or build something with it. It just makes it easier to do all those things by providing a means to transfer value from people who want something to those who can provide it.

When we have the resources to do something that's needed, like fix our infrastructure, educate our people, or defend ourselves, and we don't do it because "we can't afford it", meaning we can't persuade the rich to cough up money to pay for it, then we're being fools. Our future prosperity doesn't depend on our society having collected a lot of money. It depends on what we choose to do with that money.

Happy Earth Day, 2013

It's Earth Day again. For some reason this year, I can't think of anything to add to what I've written over the years. So how about I let this lady do some talking:

Her name is Sandra Steingraber, and she's in jail right now protesting against a company that moved into her state, bought up land, and started putting polluting chemicals into it. The video is an interview Bill Moyers did of her a few days ago.

You don't need to do that to make a difference. Most of us can do plenty of things that can make the world a cleaner place. Why not pick one or two that you haven't done yet?

Sunday Photo(s)

Today's Sunday Photos are not of something I photographed, though I did take the screenshots. They're screenshots of today's launch of the Antares rocket, a joint public-private project aimed at making it possible to resupply the International Space Station using privately owned spacecraft.

Today's flight was a test of the rocket itself, and was successful. This is a montage of views taken from ground-based cameras before and during liftoff:

Image credit: Screenshots of NASA TV broadcast taken and processed by Cujo359

This is a montage of views from onboard cameras. The first few show the rocket engine exhaust and the Virginia coast below. The rest are of various stage separations:

As always, click on the pictures to enlarge, and have a good Sunday.

Afterword: NASA has put up a Flickr set of Antares launch photos.

Word Use: Terrorism

Despite what some U.S. Senators seem to think (see NOTE 1), the U.S. code has a very specific meaning for terrorism:

(2) the term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents; 22 USC § 2656f - Annual country reports on terrorism

I'd expand that slightly to include the same kind of violence, by the same means, for ideological reasons, such as religion. Beyond that, though, any use of the word is wrong, and has more to do with manipulating opinion than it does with trying to define or explain something.

Blowing up an abortion clinic for religious reasons, for instance could be considered terrorism. Blowing one up for the purpose of extorting money from others is extortion.

In the context of the bombing in Boston last Monday, whether or not it's terrorism depends on the motivations of the bombers, not on whether or not people were frightened by it. That is why I've avoided using the term, and will continue to until such time as the people responsible have been found and tried for what they've done, or until they admit what they've done and explain why in some other circumstance that doesn't involve duress.

Any opinions expressed using the word "terrorism" should, I think, be viewed in that context. Words mean particular things. When people use those words in other ways, then their opinions should be viewed more skeptically.

(h/t to Micah Zenko of Atlantic magazine for that USC link.)

NOTE 1: I'd advise any so-called progressives who think this is exclusively a Republican view of our rights (including the author of that link) to read Glenn Greenwald's analysis of that issue. Graham's opinions on due process for so-called "terrorists" has been the Obama Administration's since at least 2010.

UPDATE (Apr. 22): Glenn Greenwald provides another explanation for what is required to call acts such as the Boston Marathon bombings terrorism, responding to Andrew Sullivan's fatuous claim that the Tsarnaev brothers simply must have been terrorists because they're Muslims:

The only evidence he can point to shows that the older brother, Tamerlan, embraced a radical version of Islam, something I already noted. But - rather obviously - to prove that someone who commits violence is Muslim is not the same as proving that Islam was the prime motive for the violence (just as the aggressive attack by devout evangelical George Bush on Iraq was not proof of a rejuvenation of the Christian crusades, the attack by Timothy McVeigh was not proof of IRA violence, and the mass murder spree by homosexual Andrew Cunanan was not evidence that homosexuality motivated the violence). Islam or some related political ideology may have been the motive driving Tamerlan, as I acknowledge, but it also may not have. You have to produce evidence showing motive. You can't just assert it and demand that everyone accept it on faith. Specifically, to claim this is terrorism (in a way that those other incidents of mass murder were not), you have to identify the "political or social objective" the violence was intended to promote: what was that political or social objective here? Andrew doesn't have the slightest idea.

Why is Boston 'terrorism' but not Aurora, Sandy Hook, Tucson and Columbine?

This isn't even a question of law - it's a question of basic logic. No one can know what's going on in someone's mind based on a few, and possibly cherry-picked, facts about that person's life. Did the Tsarnaev brothers leave writings about why they did this? There are none that I've heard of. Has anyone who knew them been quoted as saying they'd told him that they were on a jihad? As I wrote in an unrelated incident, there are often alternative explanations when you look into a person's life.

And yes, plenty of people, as they always do, will talk about how if something quacks like a duck it simply must be a duck. These people are mindless, and, as with people who don't bother to use the word "terrorism" properly despite its obvious power, they are people who shouldn't be taken seriously in this context.

UPDATE (May 13): Changed the third paragraph to end "is extortion." It originally said "is a crime", which is actually not a distinction. Both terrorism and extortion are crimes.

Tutti A Roma

Some interesting developments are going on in Italy right now. Last night, Giorgio Napolitano was re-elected president:

Giorgio Napolitano, an 87-year-old political veteran who had been planning to embark on a well-earned retirement within weeks, has become the first Italian president to be re-elected to serve a second term, after squabbling and discredited party leaders who had failed to agree on his successor begged him to stay on "in the higher interests of the country".

In an unprecedented move which observers said raised Italy's chances of seeing the formation a broad coalition government, the widely-respected former Communist was re-elected with cross-party backing that included Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right Freedom People (PDL) party and the centre-left Democratic party (PD).

Giorgio Napolitano re-elected as Italy's president, prompting relief and protests

Napolitano was one of the Italian leaders responsible for ushering in the recent austerity measures that have threatened to make Italy the latest economic basket case in Europe. Needless to say, he is less popular with ordinary Italians than he is with the folks who run things there.

A few hours ago, Italian comedian turned politician Beppe Grillo sent out this Twitter message:

Twitter message from Beppe Grillo, Apr. 20, 2013, prior to start of march on Rome

Google translate renders the text as this in English:

I'm going to Rome. I will be before the House tonight. We must be millions:

Within hours, people were marching on Rome, as this article illustrates:

Caption: Tutti a Roma, April 20, photo via @_0Marco0_

Dear people,

It’s going down, right now, in Rome.

Seven years ago, the Berlusconi party cried wolf when Giorgio Napolitano was elected president without Berlusconi’s consent. I still remember the headline of his personal newspaper. “As from today, the hammer and the sickle are flying over the presidential palace”, in reference to Napolitano once having been a member of the Italian Communist Party.

Now, Berlusconi has been one of the architects of Napolitano’s re-election, together with Mario Monti and left wing leader Bersani. They hadn’t been able to convince their backbenchers to agree on two other candidates who would guarantee the status quo – and impunity for Berlusconi – so they settled on the 88-year old incumbent president, simply because he hasn’t made trouble for anyone during his first mandate.

The Italian gerontocrats will do everything to cling on to power, and to prevent change from happening.

Tutti a Roma!

As an update to that article, along with a video link make clear, things are just getting started there. Italians are used to dysfunctional government, but if ever there was an example of what the phrase "re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic" implies, it's this political situation.

Since I know almost nothing about Italian politics, I have no idea how this will turn out, but it's at least a hopeful sign that people there are determined to make things change, despite their alleged leaders' inability or unwillingness to have those changes come about.

Cartoon Of The Day

Well, it appears that maybe Blogger/Blogspot/Google got over the problem of earlier today. Let's test that, shall we? Here's a wonderful cartoon that captures perfectly our government's current relationship to torture, and to treaties we've signed that say we aren't going to torture people (see NOTE 1)

Image credit: Kade Crockford/(via Glenn Greenwald) (NOTE 2)

NOTE 1: In addition to that treaty, we signed the Geneva Convention of 1949, which among many other things says we won't mistreat our prisoners.

NOTE 2: I don't have an attribution link, nor am I sure what the copyright status is, so I'm trying to check both. As sometimes happens, this could disappear soon. Perhaps what I should take from Blogger's software issues with images is that they're kinda tricky.

Infrastructure Issues

Blogger and Google have finally managed to screw their interface up to such an extent that I can no longer load image files into articles here. Until either I figure out how to get around that, or they figure how to fix it, I'll be referring any articles that require graphics to an alternate site at Wordpress. We'll see how long that's necessary.

Looks like it's my turn now. Last time Blogger screwed with the editor interface, they mostly messed with the visual editor, which I don't use. A few weeks ago, though, they changed the image upload interface so that it was no longer possible to tell it how to format an image file. I just started cutting and pasting the style information from other articles, so clearly that wasn't good enough for them. Now, they make you upload everything to Google Docs, and, naturally, introduced Javascript code that NoScript interprets as a cross-site script attack.

So, at least for now, I'll be blogging mostly at the Wordpress site, but linking to the articles from here. We'll see what the next move is.