I predict today's Doonesbury will make approximately 10% of its United States readership leap out of their chairs in horror.

Zing!

"I'm not saying that a chemical attack would be a completely trivial matter, but it would almost always be preferable to being hit by the same weight of high explosives."

Good point, that.

From Ars Technica:

You had mail: OneCare chucks users' mailboxes

During a support call from a remote user, trying to get his VPN to connect:

"I don't have to be connected to the internet for the VPN to work, do I?"

WHO RUNS IRAN? Mark Kleiman is bothered, rightly, by the tendency to treat Iran as a sovereign, Western-style country whose actions "are the results of political conflicts and agreements among Iranian politicians, interest groups, and factions." In other words, when we talk about Iran, we don't take the complexities and oddities of its politics into account. Agreed. Moreover, there's a bias towards evaluating states in basically the analytical frame we use for America, and so the guy called 'the president" who spends a lot of time attending international summits and appearing on the nightly news, is assumed to be basically in control of things. Which is why, of course, Iran is now a pluralistic, open democracy, much as President Khatami wanted it.

Oh, wait. That didn't happen. Because, as it turns out, president is not a particularly powerful office in Iran. Last night, I was talking with a pollster who kept insisting that Ahmadinejad was a nearly unique threat, as not only did he possess the means to eventually construct nuclear weapons, but he had a rationale for using them. I disagree on the last clause, but there is absolutely no reason to think President Ahmadinejad has the power to launch a nuclear strike. On anyone.

In the Iranian political system, the Supreme Leader controls the armed forces, the television, the judiciary, the prisons, and basically every other lever of power. The President, conversely, is a very high-ranking civil servant. His only intersection with the military comes in the appointment of defense and intelligence ministers, who must then be approved by the Supreme Leader and then by the legislature. He is impotent when it comes to the armed forces. Iran, remember, is a revoultionary republic, and Khomeini's "innovation" was to argue that the country should be run by those schooled in Islamist thought. The president, a popularly elected politician, not only isn't the highest leader, but his subordinate position is woven into the deepest fabric of the country's political structure.

So President Khatami, who just wanted to institute some political reforms, was completely stymied by the Supreme Council. And yet we think Ahmadinejad will be allowed to launch nuclear attacks -- which will result in massive reprisal against Tehran -- all on his lonesome? It's nuts! He doesn't have the power. And no one with the power has proven particularly reckless or hungry for annihilating confrontation. And yet, the media still presents the situation, and the administration still prortrays it, as if Ahmadinejad is George W. Bush rather than Mohammed Khatami. This is not clear thinking and it will not lead to sound policy-making -- but it does help with the fear-mongering.

Dog Store Sign Angers Seattle Residents
 

SEATTLE (AP) -- A newly opened store catering to very pampered dogs, especially female dogs, is getting more than questioning looks for its name, High Maintenance Bitch.

In Wallingford no less. Freakin' beautiful.

Introducing the Motion Computing C5. Finally, a handheld computer designed specifically for the healthcare setting.

I want one for the clinic. (Hell, I want six, with docking stations.)

Of course, that's assuming they're as good as they look, that the handwriting recognition is great, and ignoring the fact thay they are underpowered for the price. ($2200 for a Core Solo? Ouch!) Still, the whole gadget looks well-designed for what medical staff does, especially in a hospital setting. The added durability and cleanability may be worth the price premium.

I predict they'll sell like hotcakes.

PS: Looks like you may be too late, Steve.

Is it just me, or does it seem a little strange that munitions of allegedly Iranian manufacture are stamped with english-language markings and gregorian dates? (See photos 6 through 9.)

I mean, sure it's possible. I can think of several reasons why the Iranians might use english-language markings. Maybe English is the official language of the international small-arms trade, or maybe they're trying to disguise the origin of the munitions. But given this administration's track record in matters of intelligence, I'm having a hard time swallowing this.

And even if I were to buy into the idea that Iran is supplying arms to Iraqi insurgents, it's hard to think that it justifies an invasion. Yes, I understand that EFP weapons are probably the biggest threat to US forces out there. But as I understand it, making them is just a matter of applying the right geometry in a machine shop, then packing in the explosives. Halting the importation of finished weapons won't make a huge dent in EFP availability if any underemployed schmuck with a cutting torch, a hammer, and access to some basic industrial materials can make 'em from plans. It's not at all clear that taking on Iran would halt the supply, or even slow it down much.

It's just not a complicated weapon. It doesn't take much of a manufacturing base to make EFPs. It's not like, say, a Stinger anti-aircraft missile that's full of microprocessors and software. (And as I recall, there were quite a few of those supplied clandestinely to a bunch of insurgents fighting an invading superpower some years back. But we didn't regard that as causus belli, did we?)

Harumph. Not impressed.

My current Sprint phone (a Sanyo 8100) is dying. My S.O. and I want to consolidate our phone plans, and she's interested enough in an iPhone that moving to GSM phones seems like a good idea.

Features I need are really simple: a 100-place phonebook and a calendar that does weekly repeating events. (I'd be thrilled if it could import an iCal-format calendar.) All else is negotiable.

Anybody have a recommendation?

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

This is the dietary advice of Michael Pollan, who has an interesting essay on the ideology of Nutritionism and its perils.

(Among other virtues, this article displays the author's gift for witty turns of phrase, such as the title of this JE.)

Compare two of today's quotes:

U.S. 'pursuing a new strategy in Iraq and I ask you to give it time to work' - Bush.

and

'Chill out, guys. I'm picking up the crayons already' - My three-year old, at about 6:30 PM PST, after several timeouts for not doing what we asked.

Apparently, the psychic reverberations of an internationally watched speech are quite powerful. We didn't even listen to it and she picked up the essential spirit of the President's message. Uncanny.

(She actually did pick up all the crayons after that, too. Maybe that's a hopeful omen.)

A number of people have tried to patch up George Lucas' leaky storyline into something coherent.

Here's an alternate backstory that - in addition to being hilarious - seems to work.

We had some snow and ice in Salem [Oregon] earlier this week, but I wasn't really paying attention to how things were in Portland. Judging by this video, things were much worse up there.

No one was hurt, BTW.

Whoops:

Consumer Reports is retracting its car seat report after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it had found flaws in its side-impact testing methods.

A quick recap: Consumer Reports tried to raise the bar on child safety seat testing by putting 12 popular car seats through 35 mph frontal and 38 mph side-impact crash tests. CR chose those speeds because they are the government standard for crash testing vehicles. Currently, federal standards require car seats be tested only in 30 mph frontal crash tests.

CR found that 10 seats failed and flew off their bases. One seat, the Evenflo Discovery, failed even at 30 mph. CR demanded NHTSA immediately recall it. Evenflo strongly disputed CR's findings.

After CR came out with its report earlier this month, NHTSA asked to review its data. Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, the agency apparently relayed its preliminary conclusions to CR, which promptly pulled the report pending further testing.

NHTSA administrator Nicole Nason said its initial review of the Consumer Reports testing procedures "showed a significant error in the manner in which it conducted and reported on its side-impact tests. The organization's data show its side-impact tests were actually conducted under conditions that would represent being struck in excess of 70 mph, twice as fast as the group claimed. When NHTSA tested the same child seats in conditions representing the 38.5 mph conditions claimed by Consumer Reports, the seats stayed in their bases as they should, instead of failing dramatically."

Consumer Reports put out a statement saying, "Our tests were intended to simulate side crashes at the NCAP speed of 38 mph. The new information raises a question about whether the tests accurately simulated that speed, however, so we are now reviewing our tests and the resulting article.

Boo on them for screwing up, good on them for admitting the error promptly.

Until they get their studies straight, remember that it's still true that small kids in car seats are much safer than small kids with just seat belts.

From a lecture given at West Point:

"[...] We were warned of this by our founders. They had put themselves in jeopardy by signing the Declaration of Independence; if they had lost, that parchment could have been their death warrant, for they were traitors to the Crown and likely to be hanged. In the fight for freedom they had put themselves on the line--not just their fortunes and sacred honor but their very persons, their lives. After the war, forming a government and understanding both the nature of war and human nature, they determined to make it hard to go to war except to defend freedom; war for reasons save preserving the lives and liberty of your citizens should be made difficult to achieve, they argued....

I want to be clear on this: Vietnam did not make me a dove. Nor has Iraq; I am no pacifist. But they have made me study the Constitution more rigorously, both as journalist and citizen. Again, James Madison:

In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the question of war and peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. Beside the objection to such a mixture to heterogeneous powers, the trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man.

Twice in 40 years we have now gone to war paying only lip service to those warnings;[*] the first war we lost, the second is a bloody debacle, and both rank among the great blunders in our history. It is impossible for soldiers to sustain in the field what cannot be justified in the Constitution; asking them to do so puts America at war with itself. So when the Vice President of the United States says it doesn't matter what the people think, he and the President intend to prosecute the war anyway, he is committing heresy against the fundamental tenets of the American political order.

[...]

I want to contend that the American military systems that evolved in the early days of this republic rested on a bargain between the civilian authorities and the armed services, and that the army has, for the most part, kept its part of the bargain and that, at this moment, the civilian authorities whom you loyally obey, are shirking theirs. And before you assume that I am calling for an insurrection against the civilian deciders of your destinies, hear me out, for that is the last thing on my mind.

You have kept your end of the bargain by fighting well when called upon, by refusing to become a praetorian guard for a reigning administration at any time, and for respecting civil control at all times. For the most part, our military leaders have made no serious efforts to meddle in politics. The two most notable cases were General George McClellan, who endorsed a pro-Southern and pro-slavery policy in the first year of the war and was openly contemptuous of Lincoln. But Lincoln fired him in 1862, and when McClellan ran for President two years later, the voting public handed him his hat. Douglas MacArthur's attempt to dictate his own China policy in 1951 ran head-on into the resolve of Harry Truman, who, surviving a firestorm of hostility, happily watched a MacArthur boomlet for the Republican nomination for the Presidency fizzle out in 1952.

On the other side of the ledger, however, I believe that the bargain has not been kept. The last time Congress declared war was in 1941. Since then presidents of the United States, including the one I served, have gotten Congress, occasionally under demonstrably false pretenses, to suspend Constitutional provisions that required them to get the consent of the people's representatives in order to conduct a war. They have been handed a blank check to send the armed forces into action at their personal discretion and on dubious Constitutional grounds. [...]"

Follow the link for a larger excerpt of the address and to discover the identity of the speaker.

The civil war in Iraq is not due to a military failing; they have done what has been asked of them, and for the most part have done it honorably and well. The debacle can hardly even be blamed on any particular President or administraton, no matter how comforting many people find it to lay blame on a scapegoat.

The crucial failure took place in Congress, which has failed to uphold its duties with regards to "war powers" for at least these last thirty years. And, ultimately, the responsibility for this failure (and for many others) rests with us. We, the people. And if we want the problems fixed, we'd better take some responsibility for them and find a way to get Congress to uphold its duties.

Government is not the problem. We are the problem.

[*: More than twice in 40 years, I'd argue, but aside from that nitpick I think it's well said.]