Scientist locks away so-called "Hobbit skull," preventing further investigation.

They did the same damn thing with the Ark of the Covenant. Top men?! Top men, indeed.

Posted by: Ace at 09:22 AM | Comments (4)
Post contains 36 words, total size 1 kb.

10. Countries that don't matter, such as Belgium, are booted out of the UN and instead made members of the International Model UN, and hereafter spend their time trying to cadge money for "irrigation projects" out of the seventh graders of Estes C. Kefauver Middle School

9. New Secretary-General? "Iron Mike" Ditka; immediately reorganizes world body into famously-effective "46 Defense"

8. Whenever Russian delegate speaks about anything at all, he's required to pound his shoe on the table, just because it's so damn funny

7. International disputes solved by putting delegates from feuding countries in detention all day Saturday, just like in The Breakfast Club

6. Out: Bono's annoying lobbying for debt-forgiveness
In: Lindsey Lohan lobbying for, uh, whatever the hell she likes, actually

5. In order to increase its popularity in the US, the UN launches a major television campaign with the theme The United Nations-- It's Not Just For Incompetence and Graft Anymore!

4. England and Australia are required to admit that they really don't speak in those silly fake accents at home, and that it's all just a put-on act they do for tourists

3. To finally cure France of its 200-year national inferiority complex, all French delegates issued baseball caps with self-esteem boosting slogans like "Superstar," "I Am Somebody!" and "World's Best Golfer"

2. Rules of parliamentary etiquette relaxed to allow the US to respond to countries reluctant to fight terrorism by declaring "Don't be a gaywad"

...and the Number One Proposed Reform For the United Nation...

1. To underscore the actual pecking order in the UN, all delegates required to wear Star Trek style uniforms indicating their rank and function; the US wears gold tops, our allies wear blue, and everyone else wears red to remind them they're just one fuck-up away from being the first ones sent to investigate the the "Unstable Energy Anomaly" of Rigel 7*

* Classic Trek, of course. Don't dork me out by telling me that commanders where red in the later series.

Correction: Sorry, I called it the "56 defense." I see from the comments it was the "46" defense.

Posted by: Ace at 08:25 AM | Comments (16)
Post contains 365 words, total size 2 kb.

Amazing, isn't it, how the MSM ignored the biggest financial scandal in history through the election, and even continues doing so now?

Time and time again they tell us their only "bias" is the bias for a big, juicy story. Well, we seem to have one here, boys, and it's got most of the elements you usually like:

* The rich and powerful taking money that doesn't belong to them.

* The poor being exploited by the rich and powerful.

* A cover-up and a refusal to admit wrongdoing.

* Political cronyism run amok.

But of course the story lacks that one element that really makes a story sing for our liberal press corps:

* A pretext for laying the blame at the feet of George Bush, or one of his donors, or Republicans generally.

Yes, here and there the media covers this story-- grudgingly. There's no "flood-the-zone" type coverage of the sort the New York and LA Times both employ when they wish to advance a story; there is no daily drumbeat on the editorial pages.

As usual, the MSM's "news judgment" finds that a story that can't be used to advance its biases just seems to lack that "It" factor-- pizzazz, va-va-voom, zowie, call it what you will. Personally, I call it liberal bias.

At any rate:

The son of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan used his father's worldwide connections to wheel and deal with heads of state — at U.N. gatherings — on behalf of a controversial Swiss company that won a lucrative oil-for-food program contract, The Post has learned.

The intense lobbying by Annan's 29-year old son, Kojo, was disclosed in a raft of internal company documents — including Kojo Annan's expense reports — that the company recently turned over to congressional committees under a subpoena.

The memos provide the most revealing look to date at the business conflicts that are now at center stage of history's biggest financial scandal. They also place the younger Annan and his father far closer to each other than the U.N. has previously disclosed.

Umm, why don't you all take a moment to recover from that nasty bit of cognitive disonance you just experienced.

According to records reviewed by The Post, Kojo Annan, while working for the Cotecna firm, enjoyed extraordinary access to U.N. diplomats and other international dignitaries because of his father's position.

Kofi Annan had claimed earlier this week that he did not know the full extent of his son's dealings with Cotecna.

...

Ginny Wolfe, a spokeswoman for Cotecna, confirmed last night that the younger Annan was sent to U.N. meetings in New York and South Africa to lobby African leaders on the company's behalf but said that "at no time" was he involved in any discussions about the upcoming oil-for-food contract.

Kojo Annan's activities caught the U.N. off guard last night. "We are unaware of this. This is the first we are hearing of it," a spokesman said.

The UN tends to be the last to know, doesn't it?

Posted by: Ace at 08:07 AM | Comments (5)
Post contains 514 words, total size 3 kb.

Not that it matters; it's an irrelevant institution on its way out.

But I gave this some thought a while ago. Assume a larger security council; you wouldn't want everyone to have a veto power. Too many agendas would mean the UNSC does even less than it does now, with frequent vetoes.

But why does the power of veto need to be unilateral? And why does that power have to be equal among all members?

The US, UK, Japan, and perhaps some other enlightened nations could be given veto powers of two. Meaning that they did have the right to veto, but only when seconded in that veto by any other member of the security council.

In other words, you have a veto, but not an unqualified veto-- you always need to persuade someone else to join your veto for it to actually become a veto.

Now, I know that really the US should have a unilateral veto power, but let's face it, that will never happen. They're jealous of our real-world power as it is and it is hateful to them to recognize that power in the UN. Besides, we can always get either Britain or Japan to join on one of our vetoes.

Lesser states could be given veto powers of three, meaning their vetoes would have to be seconded by two other council members to become a veto. I'm thinking Russia, China, Germany, Austraila (yeah, they deserve to be in the first tier, but no one will go for that) and (uggggh) France.

Even lesser states would have veto powers of four.

You could expand the UNSC by quite a bit-- up to twenty members -- and you wouldn't have to fear that some piddling little country could easily veto an action. And yet that country could possibly veto a resolution, so long as it could find three fellow SC members willing to second its veto.

Meanwhile, most of the power would remain where it should be -- outside the UN entirely with the more powerful countries on the UNSC.

Heck, you could even make a case that the need to persuade another country to support your veto would improve international dialogue at the UN. I mean, I'm not going to make that stupid-shit case, but you're welcome to do so if you like.

Just an idea.

Posted by: Ace at 12:30 AM | Comments (8)
Post contains 408 words, total size 2 kb.

Sounds crazy, but honestly, we know so little about how the body works in its tiny details yet.

This isn't the first time a viral interloper has been suspected of causing a disease long blamed on genetics or upbringing. Some believe a particularly nasty virus is the cause of schizophrenia as well.

Posted by: Ace at 12:15 AM | Comments (5)
Post contains 62 words, total size 1 kb.

Legacy time:

Dec. 1, 2004 — Former American fugitive Marc Rich was a middleman for several of Iraq's suspect oil deals in February 2001, just one month after his pardon from President Clinton, according to oil industry shipping records obtained by ABC News.

And a U.S. criminal investigation is looking into whether Rich, as well as several other prominent oil traders, made illegal payments to Iraq in order to obtain the lucrative oil contracts.

"Without that kind of middleman, the system would not work because the major oil companies did not want to deal with Iraq because there was a mandated kickback," said human rights investigator John Fawcett.

...

The U.N. oil-for-food corruption scandal only continues to grow in scope. Today, Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., who is leading the congressional investigation into the program, said that U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan should resign because the scandal occurred on his watch.

...

Top officials of the U.N., including Annan, are accused of looking the other way as some $21 billion meant for humanitarian aid was stolen by the Saddam Hussein regime.

Uncovered in the federal criminal investigation were previously undisclosed payments to Annan's son, Kojo, from his employer Cotecna. The Swiss company had been specifically hired to monitor the oil-for-food program.

Annan's son left the company in 1998 but received payments until this year.

Secretary-general since 1997, Annan said this week he was unaware of the payments. "Naturally I was very disappointed and surprised, yes," he said.

Also under criminal investigation is the U.N. official Annan put in charge of the program, Benon Sevan.

Very disappointed and surprised, yes.

I'm going to start using that when I get caught in billion-dollar thefts.

Can we remind ourselves, again, that this is the institution -- run by these cheapjack gangsters -- that Kerry & Co. wanted to put in charge of US foreign policy?

The NY Post's most excellent Deborah Orin hasn't forgotten:

If Dems don't watch it, they'll all land with Kerry on the wrong side of the exploding scandal over the $21.3 billion rip-off plus what U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan knew about secret payments to his son and when he knew it.

Republican pollster Jim McLaughlin puts it this way: "Kofi Annan has run the U.N. like Tony Soprano — and when voters realize it, they're going to be really angry."

He contends some news outlets, like CBS and The New York Times, have downplayed the scandal because they are reflexively pro-U.N., just like most reporters. But even they are starting to have to cover it — and congressional probers of both parties say what's out so far is only the tip of the iceberg.

Posted by: Ace at 12:08 AM | Comments (3)
Post contains 462 words, total size 3 kb.

Let me address some common questions and complaints:

The comments are still buggy. I'm sorry, I have no idea how to fix this any further. Madfish Willy did a man's job by at least getting the comments to allow you to include your name, but, alas, I don't know why some of you aren't permitted to comment, and I don't know why it won't remember anyone.

I will continue begging for help, but honestly, my please-help-me-I'm-a-moron credits are just about used up.

I like the old site design better. Yes, so did I. I changed to this look not because I like the look, but because the old design was screwed up in technical terms, and wouldn't mesh correctly with the way Moveable Type's template system works.

Among other things, I needed my ads to appear on all pages -- including individual entry pages and archive-by-month pages -- and I needed them ON THE SIDE, rather than up top, which causes some people to think they'd reached a blank page containing nothing but ads. I couldn't see how to do this with the old design, so I switched to a default look.

I intend to put in the features and fonts and colors of the old design back into this design little by little, but I'm kind of incompetent and also kind of lazy. I figure the hours it's going to take me to do that would be better spent blogging, or, at the very least, trolling for porn, so I keep putting it off.

What about the death card logo? Pretty much first on my list of additions. I miss it too. I just don't know how to put it in the banner. I can play around through trial and error, I guess.

Hey! What about your blogroll?! Pretty much first on my list. Remember what I said about the death card being first on the list? I lied. The blogroll is the first on the list.

When will I do it? Soon. Maybe tonight. I just need to gird myself for the massive annoyance which is playing with MT templates.

Posted by: Ace at 02:24 PM | Comments (30)
Post contains 368 words, total size 2 kb.

Robotic gun-buggies being prepped for deployment

The future is now:

ORLANDO, Florida -- Hunting for guerillas, handling roadside bombs, crawling across the caves and crumbling towns of Afghanistan and Iraq -- all of that was just a start. Now, the Army is prepping its squad of robotic vehicles for a new set of assignments. And this time, they'll be carrying guns.

As early as March or April, 18 units of the Talon -- a model armed with automatic weapons -- are scheduled to report for duty in Iraq. Around the same time, the first prototypes of a new, unmanned ambulance should be ready for the Army to start testing. In a warren of hangar-sized hotel ballrooms in Orlando, military engineers this week showed off their next generation of robots, as they got the machines ready for the war zone.

"Putting something like this into the field, we're about to start something that's never been done before," said Staff Sgt. Santiago Tordillos, waving to the black, 2-foot-six-inch robot rolling around the carpeted floor on twin treads, an M249 machine gun cradled in its mechanical grip.

For years, the Pentagon and defense contractors have been toying with the idea of sending armed, unmanned ground vehicles, or UGVs, into battle. Actually putting together the robots was a remarkably straightforward job, said Tordillos, who works in the Army's Armaments Engineering and Technology Center.

Ordinarily, the Talon bomb-disposal UGV comes equipped with a mechanical arm, to pick up and inspect suspicious objects. More than a hundred of the robots are being used in Iraq and Afghanistan, with an equal amount on order from the UGV's maker, Waltham, Massachusetts-based firm Foster-Miller.

For this new, lethal Talon model, Foster-Miller swapped the metal limb for a remote-controlled, camera-equipped, shock-resistant tripod, which the Marines use to fire their guns from hundreds of feet away. The only difference: The Marines' version relies on cables to connect weapons and controllers, while the Talon gets its orders to fire from radio signals instead.

"We were ready to send it a month ago," Tordillos said. Navigating the Pentagon bureaucracy and putting together the proper training manuals are what's keeping the Talon stateside, for now.

...

Four cameras and a pair of night-vision binoculars allow the robot to operate at all times of the day. It has a range of about a half-mile in urban areas, more in the open desert. And with the ability to carry four 66-mm rockets or six 40-mm grenades, as well as an M240 or M249 machine gun, the robots can take on additional duties fast, said GlobalSecurity.org director John Pike.

"It's a premonition of things to come," Pike said. "It makes sense. These things have no family to write home to. They're fearless. You can put them places you'd have a hard time putting a soldier in."

And I've been waiting for this for a while: Why keep troops schlepping all that heavy weaponry and food when you stick it on a robotic mule and increase their firepower three or four fold?:

The M-Gator is a six-wheeled, diesel mini-Jeep that soldiers use to schlep about 1,400 pounds of gear. IRobot wants to have a robotic version ready by next year, so it can show it off to the Army and try to get funding for a full line of the vehicles, which would work as mechanical pack mules. The company hopes to be in production by 2006.

Now I know what you're saying. Didn't ED-209, um, kind of go crazy and start killing people for no good reason? Don't worry; they've seen the movie too:

By then, the armed Talon will have been in operation for about a year, if all goes according to plan. And for those of you who might be worried about the robot getting loose with a "runaway gun," Tordillos orders you to relax.

"The thing is not shooting on its own. You've got to have these," he said, waving a set of small, silvery keys, which fit into a lock on the Talon's briefcase-sized controller. A single switch causes the robot to reboot and return to safe mode.

Okay, excuse me. I now I have to abuse myself with the mechanical fury of a misfiring industrial robot.

Thanks to Senator PhilABuster for the warporn tip.

Update: Dave has more on the next generation of weaponry. I liked this bit:

I've got a friend of mine who works for the Army program that's rushing robots and other innovative technologies out into the field. One of her favorite little toys she brags about working with is the "throwbot," a small robot literally small and light enough to chuck through a window or down a flight of stairs to check for bad guys.

If I Were You I'd Listen To Him Update: Fun with .wav's.

Posted by: Ace at 02:12 PM | Comments (11)
Post contains 805 words, total size 5 kb.

Well, and promoting the blog of someone nice enough to frequently link me, too.

Carnivorous Carnisaur determines that I'm one of the biggest blogs out there (stifle that laugh!) by combining not just hits but page views and average time spent reading the site.

How I would love for some advertisers to take note of this metric.

Posted by: Ace at 01:20 PM | Comments (5)
Post contains 67 words, total size 1 kb.

Yes, I know I keep returning to this issue, much like a 47-year-old potbellied insurance salesman who never stops talking about that high-school game where he scored a 40 yard touchdown on a screen pass.

But humor me, just as you'd humor that guy, maybe occasionally saying "Tell me again about the part where you juked the last safety between you and goal-line." Yeah, you've heard about that (and his "key forearm shiver") six billion times, but what the hell, he's buying you drinks, right?

Chris Weinkopf stumbles across a dead horse and decides maybe there's something to be gained from kicking it after all:

In the days when the establishment media had an iron grip on public discourse, it was almost impossible to challenge their biases. Dan Rather and company insisted they were simply objective observers, exemplary public servants untainted by political agenda or shoddy research. Now the public knows otherwise.

Are many bloggers politically motivated? Of course. But, unlike CBS, they are honest about it. And they must defend their opinions in a fiercely competitive marketplace of ideas.

That was rarely the case with the elite media, a closed and intellectually homogeneous priesthood whose members came to believe their opinions were Gospel truth.

This was not a complicated case: Within hours of CBS's airing of the story, some gifted amateurs in Middle-western suburbs had proven that the documents could not be genuine. CBS had enthusiastically embraced the flimsy claims that Bush had failed to live up to his National Guard duties simply because most everyone in the elite-media circle wanted to believe them.

Or, as the Los Angeles Times' editorial page pontificated: "CBS's real error was trying to prove a point that didn't need to be proved."

But as "The Decline and Fall of Dan Rather" showed, reporters who derive evidence from their political conclusions, instead of the other way around, won't have free rein anymore. Thanks to blogs and other "new" media, the prejudices of the old media princes will no longer go unquestioned.

It's about time.

I've made this point before, but, as I'm repeating myself anyway, what the hell. (Double rock and rye for my good and patient friend here.)

The media understands that all professions protect their own. Sure, there's the occasional whistleblower (or, more frequently, a disgruntled employee who's not quite credible), but by and large all professions protect each other from outside scrutiny.

Cops do it. Lawyers do it. Doctors do it. (It's hard to find a a very reputable doctor willing to serve as an expert against another doctor in a malpractice case, except in the most egregrious cases; a lot of times malpractice lawyers have to settle for "doctors" whose main profession is no longer medicine but serving as expert witnesses.) CEO's do it.

The media claims that it is the one institution capable of self-policing. When a blogger or other outsider dares to question their integrity, they react.... well, they react in the same angry, defensive, "How dare you!" kind of way that CEO's react when Mike Wallace starts making thinly-sourced allegations against them.

The media polices all other professions. But who polices the media? There are media critics, to be sure, but they themselves are part of the profession. They are not true outsiders; they depend, ultimately, on the goodwill of the profession as a whole to continue earning their livelihood.

And so it goes that even when Dan Rather makes a clear and unconscionable error -- and then refuses to even admit forthrightly that he was wrong -- the other media trolls rally round him, protecting him from the sort of castigation that they would surely inflict on, say, a Pentagon contractor engaging in analogous misbehavior.

Bloggers aren't part of the media caste; we're not in the Old Boy's Club. Truth be told, most of us would like to be, and yet there is, for most of us, such a small chance of that ever happening as to be too trivial to corrupt.

If the media believes that they have a vital role to play as the nation's self-appointed watch-dogs, then certainly they must admit there is useful and good for someone to be watch-dogging them, as well. After all, it is the watch-dogging that is important, not the fact that a particular caste of northeastern liberals is doing the job.

Their self-righteous blatherings about being the "fourth estate" providing an important check on the government (and everyone else, for that matter) sound awfully hypocritical when they react so passionately and nastilly to anyone who dares to provide a check on them.

Update: The report is scheduled to be released December 10th, but will probably begin leaking this week.

And Jay Leno's been having a field day with Dan Rather.

Here are a couple of good ones:

"IÂ’m sure you heard about this - the Republicans have won yet another
seat: Dan RatherÂ’s! HeÂ’s leaving CBS."

"Dan Rather said stepping down was the hardest thing he ever had to
announce in his career. Actually, the second-hardest. The hardest thing he
had to announce? Bush being re-elected."

"Dan Rather said today that his decision to retire has nothing to do
with the controversy over those fake National Guard documents. ThatÂ’s
kind of like Yasser Arafat saying his decision to step down had nothing to
do with him dying."

Posted by: Ace at 12:57 PM | Comments (4)
Post contains 894 words, total size 6 kb.