inkbluesky

It is one of those nonsensical arguments that seems to crop up from time to time: Organized religion of all types has a bloody history, but atheism is no better because Stalin and Mao were atheists. As this blogger and an astute commenter points out that is like saying that since both drunk and sober drivers cause accidents we might well all drink and drive.

electrical storm 2

Does the Future Need a Legal Guardian? 

There’s a broader movement afoot, outside the realm of government and law, to build support for protection of the global commons for all to enjoy, across time. A new Web site, guardiansofthefuture.org, explains the roots of the idea and summarizes it this way: “People who live today have the sacred right and obligation to protect the commonwealth of the Earth and the common health of people and all our relations for many generations to come.”

These are not particularly new thoughts on the future. Some native American tribes have passed on the philosophy or wisdom if you like, that each generation is simply the temporary guardians for the next. While we might need new legislation and fine tuning of the old, guardians or legislation doesn’t mean much without the political will to enforce it.  The current Decider-in-chief is supposed to be a guardian yet has for example has interpreted Environmental Protection Agency rules in a way that benefits special interests that have helped him politically. The guardian concept sounds nice, but it still keeps us in the arena of the rule of men having precedent over the rule of law. We’re supposed to be a nation that adheres to th rule of law, not a cult of personalities that interprets, twists, bends or just plain ignores according to their whim.

Is the Hydrogen Age Just Around the Corner?

Myth No. 1: A hydrogen industry needs to be built from scratch The production of hydrogen is already a large, mature industry, and the global hydrogen industry annually produces 50 million metric tons (50 billion kilograms) of hydrogen, worth about $150 billion. To put that into perspective, the current global output of pure hydrogen has the energy equivalence of 1.2 billion barrels of oil, or about a quarter of U.S. petroleum imports. The hydrogen industry is growing at 6 percent a year, thus doubling every 12 years. All this is happening without the incentives that would be provided by a growing fleet of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles in need of fuel. If the hydrogen industry can expand so quickly “below the radar,” it will have no problem expanding quickly enough to fuel the needs of hydrogen fuel-cell cars in the future.

One shouldn’t get hung up on the incentives aspect of moving toward using more hydrogen. Everyday we drive on a nationwide taxpayer provided incentive for the car and oil industry. Its called a road.

life or something like it 

What’s a new year without a top of something or other list, The Bush administration’s dumbest legal arguments of the year - By Dahlia Lithwick

10. The NSA’s eavesdropping was limited in scope.

Not at all. Recent revelations suggest the program was launched earlier than we’d been led to believe, scooped up more information than we were led to believe, and was not at all narrowly tailored, as we’d been led to believe. Surprised? Me neither.

9. Scooter Libby’s sentence was commuted because it was excessive.

Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, was found guilty of perjury and obstructing justice in connection with the outing of Valerie Plame. In July, before Libby had served out a day of his prison sentence, President Bush commuted his sentence, insisting the 30-month prison sentence was “excessive.” In fact, under the federal sentencing guidelines, Libby’s sentence was perfectly appropriate and consistent with positions advocated by Bush’s own Justice Department earlier this year.

If you’re not a fan of the Bill of Rights and there seems to be quite a few of my fellow citizens who could care less; the other eight examples of the Bushies using the Constitution as a substitute for toilet paper will no doubt bring a robust Stalin-like chuckle. To the rest of us not so much.

bench in winter 

Ulrich Straus has an interesting background. He’s retired Army and Foreign Service officer. Born in Germany and later moved to Japan where he became fluent in Japanese. Japanese-American Wartime Interactions - A model not followed in Iraq.

Since most of the Japanese had been wounded, the excellent medical care they had received as POWs contrasted sharply with the treatment they routinely suffered at the hands of their own countrymen. Even more important to the Japanese was their impression from the proffer of a cigarette by a GI that Americans did not despise them for having surrendered.

Navy Commander Huggins even followed these precepts to the point of dressing up a trusted POW in civvies and taking him to a local pub in Honolulu in order to share a few beers while pursuing their discussions about the capability of the guns aboard the Japanese battleship Mutsu in more convivial surroundings.

Difficult to choose what to clip from the article. Its not difficult to assert that Pearl Harbor was a far more devastating attack then 9-11 and that a heavily armed nationalistic Japan was a much much larger threat to America, yet to we managed to have a little perspective sixty years ago that we or those in charge can’t seem to have today. Note that WWII was won by a liberal president in less time then we’ve occupied Iraq.

old russian advert santa and tobacco. i had an old american magazine ad with a nurse smoking a Kool that would have been a good companion to this one, but i can’t find it.

winter ranch 

This is whatever lurks out there that is beyond satire by a magazine whose collective nose has been firmly embedded in the butt crack of George Bush for eight years , American Conservative Mag Depicts Rudy In Fascist Garb

Stephen Metcalf’s and I are in general agreement, though not in the particulars that Blade Runner is a  flawed movie, Blade Runner: The Complete Ultimate Visionary Final Cut Collector’s Edition Is Here! 

But for all of its supposed transmutations along the way to this, “The Final Cut,” it is still vulnerable to the same criticisms originally applied to it. The movie is a transfixing multisensory turn-on from beginning to end. But because its story is underplotted and its characters almost totally opaque, the weight of the film falls to its sumptuous visual palette—its abiding strength—and to its quasi-Nietzschean theology—its abiding weakness. A movie that is about what it’s like to be mortal should not include the line “What is it like to be mortal?”

…Pontifical dialogue aside, Blade Runner remains what is always was, an extraordinary and enduring work of Pop Art, one that calls forth the language of greatness in that poignant way many beautiful but flawed works do.

It’s one of those movies that defies any logic of esthetics. It it reels along between the beautiful and gritty not more then a few minutes go by that it doesn’t shove your face into some of the most moronic dialogue ever put on screen. Yet it pulls me in. I hate the replicates, I feel sorry for the replicates and Decker. Despite the thick coat of interstellar soap opera you find yourself investing in the outcome. It many ways it succeeds as Pop Art screen comic in ways that some of the recent comic book adaptations have failed.

vista wallpaper december