Obstreperous Curmudgeon

Arroz con Pollo

2009-07-22T09:41:00.000-07:00

This is a favorite from my childhood. I've been experimenting
with it for years, and have never really been satisfied with
the results. Until this version.

1 clove garlic
1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
2 black peppercorns
pinch (or a couple grinds) black pepper
1 tsp oregano
olive oil
3 lb or so chicken pieces (I use all dark meat and leave the skin on)
1 onion
1 green pepper
3 tomatoes
2 tsp tomato paste
1 qt chicken stock
pinch saffron threads (preferred), or 1/8 tsp saffron powder
12 or so large green olives
1 tsp capers
3 pimentos
1 cup frozen peas
2 cups rice

In a mortar, grind the garlic with the salt, pepper, peppercorns,
and oregano with a little oil. Add more oil (a tablespoon or so)
to make enough of this mixture to rub the chicken pieces with.
Let the chicken marinate in the oil mixture in a plastic bag for
at least 20 minutes or so.

While the chicken is marinating: chop the onion and green pepper;
blanch, shock, peel, halve, seed, and chop the tomatoes, and steep
the saffron in a bit of hot water (if using threads).

Brown the chicken on both sides in a dutch oven, and set aside.
Add additional oil if necessary and saute the onion and green
pepper just til the onion is translucent. Add the browned chicken,
tomatoes, tomato paste, saffron, saffron water, 2 cups stock, and
salt and pepper to taste. Simmer 1/2 hour.

While the chicken and etc. are simmering, slice the olives, take
the peas out of the freezer, and slice the pimentos into strips.

Lift out the chicken and set aside. Strain the liquid, reserving
the solids, and bring the volume of liquid up to a quart with
more chicken stock. Correct seasoning. Add liquid, rice, and
solids back to the pot, mix, and bring to a gentle boil.

Arrange chicken pieces on top of the rice mixture, and sprinkle
the olives, capers and pimentos on top of the chicken. Cover and
simmer gently till rice is tender and liquid has been absorbed.

If peas are still cold, cook them briefly in a bit of boiling water.

Remove chicken pieces. Mix in the peas, and turn everthing out onto
a platter. Arrange chicken pieces on top of rice for service. Serve
with hot sauce (e.g. Tabasco) on the side.

Some of the rice will probably stick to the bottom of the pot. DO
NOT THROW THIS OUT - it's the best part. The Panamanians call this
"concolon" (sp), and the favored child or guest gets it.

You can leave the peas out. I have to at my house.

Some cooks bone the chicken and slice it into strips before browning
it. This is, quite obviously, bizarre and wrong. How are you going
to suck the bones at the table?

Just gotta get this off my chest

2007-12-31T21:23:00.000-08:00

I fucking hate Bruce Springsteen. Can't stand his shit, except perhaps for a couple of cuts from his album "Nebraska" which nobody ever plays. Bleah.

That is all.

Update to my last post

2007-07-19T21:49:00.001-07:00

See "A Radical Idea" just below. I must have been fucking high.

After this shit: I will never, ever, ever vote for a fucking Dummycrat. Even to force a race over an even worse Dummycrat. There's no such thing as one Dummycrat worse than another.

God-all-fucking-mighty.

UPDATE: The link is now broken (actually, it goes to a different vote). This was the bill to protect citizens who report suspicious activity in good faith from later being hauled into civil court. It was overwhelmingly opposed by Democrats.

A Radical Idea

2007-06-29T18:22:00.000-07:00

I think that, to finally force the Democrats to act like adults where the War on Terror is concerned, it will be necessary to put one in the White House.

There, I've said it. It's painful, for someone in my position - but I think it'd be impossible for anyone further to the right than I to even consider. But I think the Republic will survive the obvious disadvantages, particularly if the Congress remains relatively evenly matched.

The only question is, who?

If the GOP nomination is sewn up by the time the Primaries are held in my state, I may vote as a Democrat and cast a ballot for Barack Hussein Obama. I wouldn't be able to keep my gorge down long enough to vote for Clinton, and Edwards is just another narcissistic peacock.

Our pals the Italians

2007-02-07T16:18:00.000-08:00

Remember the Sgrena incident?

An Italian court is going to try the US soldier who fired on her speeding car to protect his checkpoint. For murder.

Can we question their patriotism now?

2007-01-12T06:55:00.000-08:00

From a far-left USENET group I read, someone is commenting on today's rocket attack on the US embassy in Athens:

Apparently they were aiming at the US Emblem and missed, destroying a toilet instead.

And someone else responds:

"Instead?"

Nice, huh?

An open letter to the Democratic leadership

2007-01-07T13:58:00.000-08:00

The Honorable Nancy Pelosi
Speaker of the House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

The Honorable Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Madam Speaker and Senator Reid:

First, my congratulations to both of you and to the Democratic Party in having retaken both houses of Congress in the recent elections.

I come to you as one who has never voted for a Democrat, but who has -like so many others - become increasingly frustrated with the failure of the Republicans to take a leadership role in returning the operation of this country to first principles.

The Democrats have the opportunity, at this historic time, to capture a more permanent majority via appealing to the values and principles of classical liberalism. Your party already represents an attractive alternative by virtue of owing no obeisance to the religious right and to the isolationist element so prevalent in mine. On the other hand, however, there are a few areas where people such as me find the Democrats to be seriously lacking. I’m sure you have at your disposal any number of experts who can expand on that point, but I want to offer two major examples:

Stop trying to raise our taxes to the Moon. The moral questions surrounding confiscatory taxation quite aside, it has been shown time and again that limited federal taxation is much healthier both for the larger economy and for the treasury itself. I call on you to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, and to expand upon that theme by making further cuts where and when possible.

Start respecting the entire Bill of Rights. Over the past couple of decades, gun "control" measures instituted at the federal level have been rolled back or modified in favor of legitimate firearms ownership, and numerous state measures have been put in place to compel so-called "shall-issue" concealed-handgun licensure. All of these changes have had positive results, with statistically insignificant examples of the kind of violence and lawlessness breathlessly predicted by opponents of the Second Amendment. I call on you to oppose efforts within your party to reinstitute failed measures such as the ban on so-called "assault weapons," and to work to encourage or even compel state-by-state reciprocal-recognition agreements for concealed-handgun licenses.

Thank you for your consideration of these matters. I urge you to take this opportunity seriously - if you do so, you may be surprised to find many first-time Democrat voters in the next and subsequent elections.

Sincerely,
[real name deleted]

CC: internet posting

Update: nine months later, and still no response.

Cheap red pasta sauce

2006-09-22T15:49:00.000-07:00

The world has waited for this long enough. Here's my basic red tomato/meat sauce for spaghetti; what they might call "gravy" on The Sopranos:

* 1 medium onion, chopped
* 3 cloves garlic, minced
* 1 lb lean ground beef (but not TOO lean)
* 2 28oz cans tomato puree
* 1 28oz can italian plum tomatoes
* 1 tbsp ground oregano
* 1 tsp dried thyme
* 3 bay leaves
* 1 tsp dried basil
* 1 tsp salt
* 1/4 tsp sugar
* black pepper to taste
* olive oil

Saute onion and garlic in olive oil till translucent. Remove to bowl and reserve.

Brown ground beef in same pot. (This is, ideally, an enameled dutch oven or a stainless-steel pressure cooker.) Add half the oregano while the beef is browning. Drain any grease you consider to be excessive.

Add everything else. Simmer slowly several hours, or pressure-cook 1/2 hour, release pressure, check for sticking and taste, pressure-cook an additional 1/2 hour if you think it needs it and can take it.

I'm pretty sure this is the same recipe my dad made going back to when I was 4 or 5 years old.

My dog has decided that he should help out a bit

2006-09-14T15:47:00.000-07:00

.. like with the laundry.

Expectations of privacy, and granting of same

2006-07-25T17:09:00.000-07:00

I had an experience yesterday and today that gave me pause to think about what we've come to expect from society in terms of our expectations of privacy, and the lengths to which we'll go to honor those expectations.

My boss never showed up for work on Monday. This is quite out of character for him; a classic workaholic. And even if he were ill, or had gotten called out of town, he'd have left a message for one of us via email or the like.

We emailed him. We called his cellphone. We called his home phone. We checked with the department secretary. No info.

Finally, about noon, a coworker and I printed out a Google map to his house and went over there. Both of his cars were in the driveway, and all the doors were locked. No answer to our rings and knocks. I gained access to the back yard and searched it thoroughly. No sign of him. And his family left for an overseas vacation last week, so he would have been home alone.

For any random individual, you might think this was a case of him taking advantage of having the wife out of town to catch a flight to Vegas or the like. Not P___. Completely out of character. And remember how he's a workaholic? We're currently very much under the gun; trying to get a chip finished and out the door for manufacture. There's no way he'd take off at a time like this unless there were some really good reason.

Given all the above, we came very close to breaking a window. But as we were there not only as individuals, but also in some sense representatives of our employer, we felt the best course of action would be to return to the office and ask our superiors for direction.

The upshot: they called the police, who made pretty much the same search we did, and refused to go further.

Finally, after office hours, I returned to P___'s house. A couple of other senior engineers were there, along with a guy from Human Resources. We conducted a more thorough search, going so far as to search a nearby creekbed - even though going for a walk near a dirty creek in midsummer would have been even more out of character for P___ than any of the other possiblities already mentioned. One of the others was tall enough to see, once I gave him a boost, through part of a window not obscured by blinds. No sign of anybody.

The Human Resources guy, however, had a cellphone full of phone numbers available to him, and one of the people behind those numbers apparently had some pull. About nine in the evening, the police entered the house. And found P___ dead.

No details yet on how, or when.

That second factor is kind of important to me. In retrospect, the obvious thing to do, in the face of all the wrongness of the situation, would have been to enter the house. But even given all that, we did not. P___'s presumed expectation of privacy, and our respect for that expectation, held us back. I have to believe that in other cultures - say, those of totalitarian states, or those otherwise not accustomed to such niceties of civilization, entry would have been accomplished in short order, either by my companion and me or by the police.

And, if the time of death turns out to have been sometime between noon and nine- well, you can kind of see why it's important to me.

I still think I did everything correctly. But I have to say that I'll be pretty unhappy if it turns out that P___ was alive and retrievable during my first visit.

UPDATE: It turns out that he most likely died about 36 hours before our initial visit to his house. That makes me feel slightly better, but only slightly. I haven't heard any official word, and (again!) that respect for privacy has kept me from asking, but the most likely cause of death appears to have been heart attack.

Israel and Hizbollah: sometimes there's a damn good reason for disproportionality

2006-07-20T21:07:00.000-07:00

Read this. I can't say it any better.

Credit where credit is due dept.

2006-07-15T22:36:00.000-07:00

Remember back during the early stages of the active part of the terror war, when Geraldo Rivera was expelled from the theater of operations for drawing a map in the sand - on live TV - depicting the deployment of America military assets? Most people with a clue reacted to this with a round of huzzahs, of course.

Now here's a video of Fox News - of all people! - doing pretty much the same thing with regards to our allies the Israelis, and taking a bit of instant heat for it. And to add stupidity to sliminess, neither the field reporter nor the talking heads back in the studio seem to be able to understand what the hell the big deal was.

I'd also note that the nature of the fire the field reporter takes seems more harassing than anything else - a couple of warning shots, if you will. Certainly if it was the IDF firing on him, and they wanted to kill him, they would have done so.

(I owe a hat tip to another blogger for this. Since he didn't provide it on his blog, however, he may not want the tip - so I'm not giving it at this time. If he would like it, he knows how to get in touch with me.)

"Truth, Justice, and...

2006-07-01T08:40:00.000-07:00

... all that stuff."

Huh?

...in the latest film incarnation, scribes Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris sought to downplay Superman's long-standing patriot act. With one brief line uttered by actor Frank Langella, the caped superhero's mission transformed from "truth, justice and the American way" to "truth, justice and all that stuff."

Story here.

The sad thing, I guess, is that this isn't really particularly surprising.

The Waiter Dream

2006-06-18T13:12:00.000-07:00

Everyone I know who's ever carried a tray has this dream from time to time.

You arrive late for work, due to circumstances out of your control. There are a lot of people in the restaurant, and to handle them the boss has had the busboys set up a number of tables in odd places - such as the parking lot, the alley behind the building, etc. You are responsible for most of them.

The bartenders are all drunk. The cooks are all stoned. The other waiters and waitresses are all playing grab-ass with each other. The busboys are all in hiding.

Every customer asks for something weird, like putting the mayonaisse on the outside of their sandwich, which you can't quite seem to get quite right. You forget about almost every table, and then remember to go check on them about an hour later, at which time they just sort of glare at you. Oh, and of course there's three feet of that mysterious dream jelly on the ground - the invisible stuff that somehow prevents you from moving at more than a slow, deliberate walk.

Then you wake up in a cold sweat.

When you get back to sleep, you most likely fall right back into the same dream, only now you're even more behind because of your little trip back to the real world.

This is why I tend to overtip in restaurants.

A Religion Of Peace

2006-03-20T06:04:00.000-08:00

So, it appears that an Afghan man is on trial for converting from Islam to Christianity. The possible penalty? Death.

Yale must be so proud.

What's Iran really up to?

2006-01-25T13:10:00.000-08:00

It may not be the destruction of Israel; or at least not primarily. From "Spengler" at the Asia Times:

Iran needs nuclear weapons, I believe, not to attack Israel, but to support imperial expansion by conventionalmilitary means.

Iran's oil exports will shrink to zero in 20 years, just at the demographic inflection point when the costs of maintaining an aged population will crush its state finances.... Just outside Iran's present frontiers lie the oil resources of Iraq, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, and not far away are the oil concentrations of eastern Saudi Arabia. Its neighbors are quite as alarmed as Washington about the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran, and privately quite happy for Washington to wipe out this capability.

Hmmmm.

Yeah, sure, gun "control" works

2006-01-24T07:58:00.000-08:00

Our friends in gun-free Great Britain are experiencing a 50% jump in crimes involving firearms:

Figures published this week by the Home Office are expected to show that offences involving guns have soared by as much as 50 per cent in some parts of the country.

And, of course, they have a predictable solution:

There have been widespread calls for tighter gun controls in Britain....

I think it was Einstein who said that the habit of trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is a good indicator of insanity.

Clinton eligible to practice law once again

2006-01-17T21:36:00.000-08:00

This news from the New York Sun.

Money quote: "Since leaving the White House, Mr. Clinton has shown no sign of being encumbered by his lack of a law license."

First Robertson, now Nagin

2006-01-16T21:42:00.000-08:00

Looks like Ray Nagin is taking a page from Pat Robertson's book:

Mayor Ray Nagin suggested Monday that Hurricanes Katrina and
Rita and other storms were a sign that "God is mad at America"
and at black communities, too, for tearing themselves apart
with violence and political infighting.

Both of these guys are idiots. Guess which will get more press, though....

Attention parents! Have some damn consideration!

2006-01-16T13:05:00.000-08:00

What is it with people pushing strollers and those stupid oversized grocery carts with kiddie seats in them? Do they leave their brains in their minivans? Or just their courtesy and common sense?

Yesterday I'm shopping for weekly groceries at Central Market in Plano, Texas - a kind of upscale supermarket - and the place was full of them. I can't go one way because someone's blocked the aisle, so I go the other way - and that way's blocked as well. The aisles are a bit narrow, but that's not the real problem - rather, these people have parked their SUVs - uh, I mean, strollers and carts - crosswise in the aisle, and are just looking around with stunned expressions on their faces as though they're surprised that the kholrabi isn't just jumping out of the bins for them. You say "excuse me" and they might move very slightly out of the way like so many cattle, but that's pretty much all you can expect - they're definitely in a different world; one where nobody outside of them and their brood even exists....

At one point I got a bit too close to one of those enormous strollers and bumped it a little, and the guy who was supposed to be handling it glared at me as though I'd given his kid the back of my hand. What, was he going to start something with me right there next to the celery? Sheesh!

Arghghghg

Humor break!

2006-01-16T13:02:00.000-08:00

The wags at Fark are satirizing Teddy Kennedy's entry into the childrens' book market.

Why (many of) the childfree hate people with kids

2006-01-12T09:01:00.000-08:00

Entitlement attitudes. Mostly they're not this bad, though.

PHOENIX, Arizona (AP) -- Fetuses do not count as passengers when it comes to determining who may drive in the carpool lane, a judge has ruled.

Candace Dickinson was fined $367 for improper use of a carpool lane, but contended her unborn child qualified to use the lane. Motorists who use the lanes normally must carry at least one passenger during weekday rush hours.

I mean, really.

And now for something completely different

2006-01-10T15:23:00.000-08:00

Joe Bob Briggs has what he claims is a canonical list of euphemisms for the human female breast.

A sampling:

Ben and Jerry
Dagmars
Flopdoodles
Huggy Bears
Magnificent Pontoons of Love (!)
Paducahs
Sweater Puppies
Warheads

There's a joke to be made about Joe Bob having too much time on his hands, but I can't quite put it together....

The coming collapse of western civilization

2006-01-07T21:07:00.000-08:00

Mark Steyn's latest column should be required reading for every thinking human being in the West. There's a lot to find controversial about it - it's quite a bit long on religion and social conservatism than I personally care for, specifically - but his demographic information seems solid, and the likely consequences of the trends he descibes are horrifying.

Excerpt:

The refined antennae of Western liberals mean that whenever one raises the question of whether there will be any Italians living in the geographical zone marked as Italy a generation or three hence, they cry, "Racism!" To fret about what proportion of the population is "white" is grotesque and inappropriate. But it's not about race, it's about culture. If 100% of your population believes in liberal pluralist democracy, it doesn't matter whether 70% of them are "white" or only 5% are. But if one part of your population believes in liberal pluralist democracy and the other doesn't, then it becomes a matter of great importance whether the part that does is 90% of the population or only 60%, 50%, 45%.

Since the president unveiled the so-called Bush Doctrine--the plan to promote liberty throughout the Arab world--innumerable "progressives" have routinely asserted that there's no evidence Muslims want liberty and, indeed, that Islam is incompatible with democracy. If that's true, it's a problem not for the Middle East today but for Europe the day after tomorrow. According to a poll taken in 2004, over 60% of British Muslims want to live under Shariah--in the United Kingdom. If a population "at odds with the modern world" is the fastest-breeding group on the planet--if there are more Muslim nations, more fundamentalist Muslims within those nations, more and more Muslims within non-Muslim nations, and more and more Muslims represented in more and more transnational institutions--how safe a bet is the survival of the "modern world"?

Read, of course, the whole thing.

A personal note: as one who has chosen a childfree life, I can't help feeling partly responsible for this sort of thing - but, then again, do I want my descendants living in the 9th Century?

Blogworld News

2006-01-06T22:09:00.000-08:00

Looks like Ana Marie Cox is leaving Waonkette.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

2006-01-05T17:34:00.000-08:00

Guess what the latest revelation from Pat Robertson is.

Give up?

Ariel Sharon's stroke is divine retribution for Israel's withdrawal from Gaza.

Practically every day that goes by, I'm more and more convinced that we're living in Heinlein's Crazy Years.

Fascinating bit of Churchilliana

2006-01-05T12:36:00.000-08:00

The Brits have declassified some documents that reveal some of the inner workings of Churchill's war cabinet. Among some of the things Churchill proposed were the idea of executing Hitler in the electric chair, and bombing German villages in counter-reprisal for the Nazi destruction of the Czech village of Lidice.

Here's a pointer to the source documents themselves. From p. 44:

W.M.(42)74th Meeting 15th June 1942

Reprisal for German Massacre of Village

P.M. Conversation with Benes about possibility of reprisal for savage cruelties now being practiced by Germans in Czechoslovakia. Suggested wiping out German villages (3 for 1) by air attack.
View of A.D. in C. Bomber Command. 100 bombers wd. be required. Low attack 2/3rds incendiaries. Bright moonlight wd. be reqrd. Objection & reasons shd. be announced aftwds.

F.O. in favour.

If thought worthwhile, give RAF discretion to fit it in when they can.

L.P.S. Is accuracy of report beyond doubt?

P.M. Germans announced.

S/S.Air. Disliked it. Diversion of effort fr. military objective. Risking aircraft & crews. Wd we not be led on to do it more & more – if Germans knew we wd. answer thus.

S/Doms. Doubt if it is useful to enter into competition in frightfulness with Germans.

H.O. Wd. like to consider – reprisals on English villages, where no shelter, & low scale a.r.p. Public wd. say “why did you draw this down on to us?”

C.A.S. If they came in low & not far inland they wd. run v. small risk.

F.O. Even so, there might be a deterrent element in this.

M/L. German responds to brute force & nothing else.

Bruce. It might lead to even greater atrocities in Czechoslovakia.

General view that it wd. be wise to think this over.

L.P. Danger is that it costs us something & them nothing. Against it.

General feeling of Cabinet – against doing this. (i.e. L.P., M/Inf., CO., H.O.)

PM My instinct is strongly the other way.

F.O. Strongest argument against – waste of a moonlight night. Bigger diversion than I had thought.

Amery. Why a village? Why not a quiet residential town?

L.P.S. Operational argument against is v. strong.

P.M. I submit (unwillingly) to the view of Cabinet against.

This may be a consequence of Brooks's shorthand, but note the rather dry and humorous - except for the context - tone of "Doubt if it is useful to enter into competition in frightfulness with Germans."

Conservatism Today

2006-01-02T20:43:00.000-08:00

A couple of interesting links, provided without much comment, mainly because I understood pretty much none of it:

http://donklephant.com/2005/12/28/conservative-or-republican-2/

http://www.opinionjournal.com/ac/?id=110007730

I plan to seek out the entire Hart series referred to by OpinionJournal, but that may take some time because their search engine absolutely sucks. As it is, though, I understood maybe a quarter of what was expressed in the material behind the two given URLs (and thanks to reader Paul for those), so I don't know if obtaining yet more undigestable verbage is really all that great an idea....

I'll let y'all know.

Heck of a good shot

2006-01-01T23:13:00.000-08:00

The Telegraph has a story about an American sniper who's made a really incredible shot.

Excerpt:

Gazing through the telescopic sight of his M24 rifle, Staff Sgt Jim Gilliland, leader of Shadow sniper team, fixed his eye on the Iraqi insurgent who had just killed an American soldier.

His quarry stood nonchalantly in the fourth-floor bay window of a hospital in battle-torn Ramadi, still clasping a long-barrelled Kalashnikov. Instinctively allowing for wind speed and bullet drop, Shadow's commander aimed 12 feet high.

A single shot hit the Iraqi in the chest and killed him instantly. It had been fired from a range of 1,250 metres, well beyond the capacity of the powerful Leupold sight, accurate to 1,000 metres.

"I believe it is the longest confirmed kill in Iraq with a 7.62mm rifle," said Staff Sgt Gilliland, 28, who hunted squirrels in Double Springs, Alabama from the age of five before progressing to deer - and then people.

"He was visible only from the waist up. It was a one in a million shot. I could probably shoot a whole box of ammunition and never hit him again."

Later that day, Staff Sgt Gilliland found out that the dead soldier was Staff Sgt Jason Benford, 30, a good friend.

The insurgent was one of between 55 and 65 he estimates that he has shot dead in less than five months, putting him within striking distance of sniper legends such as Carlos Hathcock, who recorded 93 confirmed kills in Vietnam.

Whoof. I love shooting, particularly at long ranges. I earned a Marksman medal in high school ROTC for some of them. This, however, is two or three leagues higher than I'd ever expect to play.

Gotta love PeTA

2005-12-31T09:58:00.000-08:00

For comic relief, anyway.

A 19-year-old PeTA staffer has legally changed his name from "Chris Garnett" to "KentuckyFriedCruelty.com". Really.

Our pals the Germans

2005-12-20T07:45:00.000-08:00

Germany has set Mohammed Ali Hamadi free. This is the oxygen thief who murdered a US Navy diver and threw his body onto the tarmac during the 1989 hijacking of TWA 847.

Denials that the action was taken in response to the release of a German hostage being held by terrorists working in Iraq have been issued. I, for one, am ignoring those denials.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/12/20/germany.militant

Breaking: the sky is blue, and grass is green

2005-12-18T19:41:00.000-08:00

.. and media bias is real.

A UCLA study has confirmed what anyone with a clue has known since they first learned to read or work a TV remote: the American mainstream media has a leftward bias.

Twenty media outlets studied; 18 lean left. Only Brit Hume's show on Fox News and the Washington Times lean right.

Anyway: check it out. This appears to be a serious study, not just some blowhards giving their opinions.

UPDATE: This appears to be the work product of the study.

The NSA kerfuffle

2005-12-16T21:12:00.000-08:00

I'm a bit taken aback by the extent of liberal crowing over today's claim by the NY Times that Bush authorized secret surveillance of international communications originating from within the US after 9/11.

The NSA has monitored electronic message traffic for years, both foreign and domestic (the latter when the message had a foreign origin). The only real change here is that of surveillance of international messages originating in the US.

Additionally, the persons so monitored were those who appeared in the phone lists and email address books of terrorists captured or otherwise compromised overseas - in other words, some obviously very bad people. The program has thwarted attacks on the Brooklyn Bridge as well as British pubs and rail assets, saving possibly thousands of lives.

And yet, despite the fact that it seems impossible, the Angry Left is an order of magnitude angrier with Bush today than they were yesterday - and not only Bush, but anyone who dares contradict the notion that he be impeached, hanged from a lamppost, or worse - I've been called a pig f-cker and a piece of sh-t within the last hour.

Sure, I wish there could be some sort of middle-between-two-ends solution here - perhaps requiring that the FBI obtain a warrant and take over such surveillance after the initial involvement of the NSA, and of course the NSA itself should have to justify such acts after-the-fact. But in case nobody's noticed, there is a war on, and sometimes there just isn't time for peacetime niceties. But the Angry Left will have none of this; better that 1000 Brits should burn in their pubs than one person of indeterminate citizenship standing on US soil should have his conversation listened in upon by someone working in an alphabet agency.

I just don't get it. It's an interesting time to be alive, but I just don't get this.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes...

2005-12-16T10:37:00.000-08:00

Well, the company I was working for turned off the lights and closed the doors on Wednesday. This was not unexpected - in fact, we've known it was inevitable for a few weeks now - but it's still infuriating. If you're going to open a startup, make sure your investors know at least something about your market space,that's all I have to say.

Any of my several readers out there know of any hiring going on in the Electronic Design Automation or semiconductor design spaces?

Drop me an email at shadrasky@mailinator.com. You won't get a reply from there (take a look at http://www.mailinator.com to see why), but you will get my undying gratitude....

Democrats lose yet another election

2005-12-15T22:03:00.000-08:00

Not that you'd notice. Coverage of today's historic Iraqi elections - with Sunnis participating in droves this time - was off the CNN web page by late evening.

Ah well. I'm travelling, so blogging will be light (lighter than normal, even), and that's pretty much all I have to say about this today. We'll see what the results look like when we start seeing them in another month or so.

Gotta love Iowahawk

2005-12-11T23:15:00.000-08:00

Faithful readers of The Onion will no doubt recognize who's being parodied in this piece damn near immediately.

Others might never get it, but something tells me that the humor won't be lost on them either.

Osirik Redux

2005-12-11T22:52:00.000-08:00

True to form, it looks like the Israelis are not going to take the threat of Nuclear Iran lying down.

Note El-Baredei's warning that "the world [is] 'losing patience' with Iran."

Ooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhh.

And of course everyone will be shocked - shocked! when Israel and/or the US takes action.

Sheesh.

Forget Tookie and Mumia

2005-12-10T12:01:00.000-08:00

Here's a death-penalty fight worth getting behind.

Certain facts about the case are not in dispute. Prior to the events of December 26, 2001, Mr. Maye had no criminal record. On December 26, 2001, Cory Maye shot a police officer carrying out a search warrant. However, the warrant being served was not for Mr. Maye, nor for his residence. The execution of the warrant involved a ‘no-knock’ entry, late at night. Mr. Maye relinquished his weapon, and ceased resisting when it became obvious that the people that burst into his home were law enforcement officers.

Subsequently, Mr. Maye was charged with capital murder, for killing a police officer in the line of duty. A trial was held in Prentiss Mississippi, a jury convicted Mr. Maye, and sentenced him to death.

The above is an excerpt from a letter to Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour. Read the whole thing.

Recipe: Brussels Sprouts

2005-12-09T22:09:00.000-08:00

This is so easy that I'm just going to list the steps. And since I'm feeling extra-lazy at the moment, I'm just going to cut-and-paste from a posting I made elsewhere, along with commentary and a response from some other guy:

> >[1] Clean, trim, bisect through the radial axis, blanch, shock,
> >dry, saute in olive oil, add lots of minced garlic about halfway
> >through, and be sure to get the cut sides nice and brown.

> Sounds good. Easy, too.

Oh, it's damn good. Brussels sprouts are the Queen of Vegetables anyway; this just makes 'em even better. Just be careful not to burn the garlic.

When I was about nine, my younger brother was horrified to find a brussels sprout on his plate. In a rare moment of fraternal comity, I decided to help him through this crisis by explaining to him that it was nothing more than "a little baby cabbage." He's been a very serious vegetable eater ever since.

Now, if I could just get my SO to eat them....

> ("Shock"?)

Plunge into ice water to halt the cooking process.

Rumsfeld out?

2005-12-08T11:00:00.000-08:00

I've heard (and read) some rumors to the effect that Rumsfeld will resign early next year, perhaps to be replaced by Joe Lieberman. No cite as it's just rumors....

Frankly, I don't see the Lieberman angle, unless he's decided not to run for Senate again when his term expires.

Political cartoons

2005-12-07T14:34:00.000-08:00

Michelle Malkin points to Pat Oliphant's latest outrage and wonders whether there is any cartoonist working in the MSM who doesn't have BDS.

Well, there's Chuck Asay, of course.

Our broken military

2005-12-07T09:39:00.000-08:00

The Democrats and the popular press seem to be all over the idea that the US military is on its last legs and that morale is in the toilet.

Geoff Davis, a former Army officer and a congressman from Kentucky, sees plenty of progress. “I’ve talked with hundreds of soldiers and Marines, ranging from junior-enlisted soldiers to my West Point classmates who I’ve known for nearly 30 years and served with in the Middle East myself as a member of the 82nd Airborne Division, and they believe in the mission. They see the success. And they ask me, why is politics consuming this mission that we are clearly winning?”

That’s strange, how could America be “clearly winning” when the media tells us every day that we’re losing?

The good news includes Army re-enlistments. As of August, all of the Army’s 10 divisions had exceeded re-enlistment goals for the year to date. Those with the most experience in Iraq have the best rates. The 1st Cavalry Division is at 136 percent of its goal; the 3rd Infantry Division, at 117 percent.

“This is unprecedented in wartime,” said retired Army officer Ralph Peters. “Even in World War II, we needed the draft. Where are the headlines? ...The ugly truth is that much of the media only cares about our soldiers when they’re dead or crippled. That’s a story.”

And then, of course, there's the country we've occupied, subjugated, and left in ruins:

The Iraqi economy is humming along and, yes, even booming. Iraqis are better off financially they have been for two decades. Per capita income has doubled since the U.S. ended Saddam Hussein’s regime, note the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. There are more than 3.5 million cellular phone subscribers in Iraq, up from zero in Saddam’s day. Electricity output exceeds pre-war levels, and the September oil revenues were the highest in Iraqi history.

Largely spurred by the increase in oil prices, the Iraqi economy is anticipated to grow at an eye-popping 16.8 percent in 2006. The Brookings Institution’s Iraq index says there are five times more cars on the streets than in Saddam’s time, five times more telephone subscribers and a 32-fold jump in Internet users.

As of September, there were 40 buildings nine stories or higher under construction in the Kurdish city of Sulaymani; as of five years ago, there were none.

In one of the most important areas, security, there has been steady if uneven progress. For example, terrorists were only able to launch 19 attacks on polling places during the October referendum, a significant drop from the 108 attacks during the January election.

Another indicator is the vastly improved safety of the four-lane, six-mile stretch of highway from central Baghdad to the airport that U.S. soldiers call “Route Irish.” Once one of the most dangerous roads in the world, the highway has been transformed into one of the most secure routes in all of Iraq. While 13 people were killed and 24 injured in ambushes on the airport road during April, only one person was injured in October, said U.S. spokesman Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch.

http://www.tracypress.com/voice/2005-12-07-wampler.php

Lest we forget

2005-12-05T22:13:00.000-08:00

I can't believe I've never run into this before.

Film: Aeon Flux

2005-12-03T00:19:00.000-08:00

Much better than I'd expected. It was a bit silly in the mold of "The Matrix," with quite a lot in the way of not-very-credible stuntwork and marksmanship, but an enjoyable time nonetheless.

And while such flicks really don't require much in the way of acting, Charlize Theron did a pretty damn good job anyway.

If you like this sort of thing, it's worth a watch.

Congressional Redistricting

2005-12-02T11:29:00.000-08:00

I see that the Texas congressional redistricting of a few years ago is in the news again.

Some time ago I came up with what I believe to be the perfect way to draw congressional districts:

Choose, at random, a voting precinct anywhere in the state.
Choose, at random, any precinct contiguous to the first. Compute the total population. Choose another one contiguous to the set consisting of the first two. Recompute the total population.
Continue as above until the total population reaches or exceeds that specified for congressional districts, within some tolerance. This is District 1.
Choose, at random, an as-yet-unchosen voting precinct and repeat the process for District 2. Repeat again for District 3, etc.
After all precincts have been assigned to congressional districts, perform an annealing step: using contiguity as the primary cost function and population as a secondary cost function, trade precincts back and forth until all of the districts are contiguous and more or less the same size, population-wise.

A third-year computer-science student could write this as a class
project.

(But: who will bell the cat?)

Liberal Lies About Iraq

2005-12-01T21:54:00.000-08:00

Insight Magazine is back. And apparently raring to go. From Mona Charen:

One Marine, Sgt. Todd Bowers, who did two tours in Iraq, described the attitude of many press types. "They didn't want to talk to us." Why? I asked. "Because we were gung-ho for the mission." Sgt. Bowers, who was saved from grievous injury when a bullet lodged in the sight of his rifle (a sight his father had purchased for him), is chary about the press.

In his first tour, he noticed that members of the press were reluctant to photograph Iraqis laughing, giving the thumbs up sign, or cheering. Yet Sgt. Bowers saw plenty that would have made fine snapshots. In Baghdad, Al Kut and Al-Nasiriyah, Sgt. Bowers reported no signs of anti-American feeling at all among Iraqis.

Fallujah, of course, was different, as the city was a hotbed of terrorism, and the battle of Fallujah was one of the fiercest engagements of the war. During the battle, Sgt. Bowers found himself sharing a ride with an embedded reporter for the Associated Press. He was asked what he thought of the destruction. Sgt. Bowers responded that it was "Incredible, overwhelming. But it definitely had to be done."

He also stressed that because the enemy had fought so dirty, tough calls had to be made. Later, he saw himself quoted in newspapers around the country to the effect that the destruction was "overwhelming" as if he could not cope. He had also made some anodyne remarks about rebuilding the damaged areas of the city, and responded "Where to begin?" when asked about the plans. He was speaking of the water treatment plants, medical facilities, and schools American forces were about to help build, but his comments were offered as evidence of the futility of the situation—the very opposite of this eager Marine's intent.

There was plenty of progress to report, if the press had been interested. When the battle of Fallujah was over, the Marines set up a humanitarian relief station in an abandoned amusement park. Together with Iraqis locally hired and trained for the purpose and with an assist from the Iraqi ministry of the interior, they distributed rice, flour, medical supplies, baby formula, and other necessities to thousands of Iraqis.

For six weeks, Sgt. Bowers reports, the distribution went beautifully, "like a well-oiled machine." Not worth a story, apparently. Only when something went wrong did the press see something worth reporting. A small group of Iraqis were turned away from the food distribution point, though they had been waiting in line for hours. They were given vouchers and told they could come to the front of the line the next morning when supplies would be replenished. These few unhappy souls were then besieged by press types eager to tell their story.

At the same site, the Marines had repaired an old Ferris wheel. The motor was dead, but when two Marines pushed and pulled by hand they could get the thing turning to give rides to the children of the Iraqi employees. They did so for hours on end. A photographer from a large American media company watched impassively. "Why don't you take a picture of this?" demanded one Marine. The photographer snorted, "That's not my job."

"Not my job," indeed. What about the "peoples' right to know?"

Link to Insight through makeashorterlink - Blogger would not accept the very long Insight link.

Timetables and Deadlines

2005-12-01T21:01:00.000-08:00

Calls for timetables and set schedules for military action seem to be all the rage these days. Here's one I can get behind, as reported by the Jerusalem Post:

Israel "can't accept a situation where Iran has nuclear arms" and "is making all the necessary preparations to handle a situation like this," Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Thursday.

Iran's enemies have "the capability" to use military force to disrupt Iran's bid for nuclear arms, he said at the annual Editor's Committee gathering in Tel Aviv, adding that "before exercising it, every attempt should be made to pressure Iran into stopping its activity."

Sharon stressed that "Israel doesn't lead the struggle" to keep Iran nuclear-free, and he hoped the UN Security Council would neutralize "this great danger."

Sharon's comments raised Israel's rhetoric against Iran and came on the heels of assessments by IDF brass that, after March, diplomatic efforts to curtail Iran's nuclear program will be pointless.

"Israel is not without hope and is taking all necessary measures, as it should," he said.

Another Osirik on the horizon?

Moral and/or legal dilemma

2005-12-01T17:47:00.000-08:00

Let's say a Wall Street Journal reporter knows the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, but refuses to divulge that information in order to protect her confidential source.

Can she be jailed? Or should we just throw up our hands and say "Oh well, she's protecting a confidential source. The sanctity of the press must be maintained!"

Maybe this is a bit too close to the decision edge to call correctly. So let's say, instead, that she knows the code which will, via remote control, disable atomic bombs set to go off in 100 American cities at noon today. Can steps be taken to coerce her to divulge that code?

Believe it or not, some people I wrestle with on a closed newsgroup on a daily basis are actually holding forth with the idea that we can't - and shouldn't - do anything.

Film: Across the Pacific

2005-11-30T21:40:00.000-08:00

I was raised in the Panama Canal Zone. As such, any bit of popular culture that includes a reference to my homeland interests me.

I've seen "Across the Pacific" more than a couple of times. It's a Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor film set in just-prewar Panama. I've never noticed this, though:

During the opening credits a map of the Canal Zone is displayed. The map is turned around a bit, so that the Carribean is on the left and the Bay of Panama is on the right, with the Canal itself pretty near to the horizontal.

Well, that's okay; nobody says that North has to be at the top of the map.

But although they labelled the two bodies of water properly, they have the cities of Colon and Panama - and, more importantly, the Pacific and Atlantic (or "other") sides of the Isthmus reversed.

Bwah!

Well, I guess this kind of thing probably doesn't matter to more than a handful of people today.

The Journal Editorial Report

2005-11-30T16:37:00.000-08:00

Excellent news: the Wall Street Journal Editorial Report is moving from PBS to Fox News. This is particularly good news for those of us here in the Dallas area, since the wretches at KERA have consistently refused to carry it.

Read about it here.

Recipe: Margarita

2005-11-30T16:17:00.000-08:00

I'm kind of a precise sort of cook. Much of what I do is by instinct and feel, but when I hit upon the right combination of ingredients, process and cooking times, I tend to write it down and get pretty anal-retentive about doing it exactly the same way the next 10,000 times. And my margarita recipe is like that:

First, obtain the biggest, juiciest limes you can find. Buy one per margarita. If you can only find sad little hard limes, buy two or three per margarita.

Oh, and buy Persian limes. If you can only find Key limes, just forget it and buy some nice Belgian beer.

For each margarita:

Place a large cocktail glass in the freezer. Wait half an hour or so; two hours would be better. The kind with etched designs on the outside and which look like over-sized martini glasses are best.
Roll the lime on the counter, kind of hard, to loosen it up just a bit. Cut it in half through the "equator." Rinse your knife off, particularly if it's that nice Henkels with the fresh edge. Squeeze the lime with a hand squeezer (the kind that looks like a bowl with a central ribbed squeezy-thingy). Throw one half of the lime shell in the compost pile, and put the other half aside for the moment.
Strain the juice through a fine mesh strainer and into a cocktail shaker. (If you don't have a cocktail shaker, run out and buy one. Get a good stainless-steel one, or a professional glass-and-stainless combination with a separate strainer.) Use your (clean!) finger or a muddler (if anyone's looking) to break up any lime sacs; you want all the juice you can get.
Get out your graduated cylinder. (If you don't have a graduated cylinder, use your volumetric measure with the smallest units; preferably milliliters.) Measure the volume of the lime juice.
If measuring in ml, round off to the nearest integer divisible by three. This makes the arithmetic easier. If not measuring in ml, read on and (shudder) fake it.
Double the amount obtained in the last step, and divide by three. This is the amount of triple sec you will use.
Pour the lime juice back into the shaker, and measure out the triple sec. Add it to the lime juice in the shaker.
Using the doubled amount obtained in the lime-juice-measuring step, measure out your tequila. Pour it into the shaker. This gives you a ratio of triple sec : lime : tequila of 2:3:6, which is the definition of a margarita. Anything else is, well, something else.
Add ice cubes (or, yeah, crescents) to the shaker. Leave enough head space for a medium-sized apple. (No, don't add an apple, just leave that much space. Sheesh.)
Close up the shaker, and shake very vigorously 128 times. (To keep count easily, count four repetitions of four shakes, and repeat that four times; then do it again.) What you're after here is for the mixture to be VERY well mixed, the shaker to threaten to give you frostbite, and the ice to be broken up into pieces; some small enough to get through the strainer and into the glass. If you can obtain this last feature, you are very close to margarita nirvana indeed.
Put the shaker on the counter, and catch your breath for just a moment. Particularly if this is your third or fourth margarita. Ignore any expectant glares from your housemates or guests.
Take the glass out of the freezer. Rub the reserved lime shell around the rim. Throw it (the lime shell) onto the compost heap. Pour a bit of kosher salt into your (clean!) palm, and coat the now-wet rim of the glass with it. If you don't have kosher salt, pour the whole mess down the drain and call it a day.
Strain the margarita into the glass. You may have some left over; if the margarita is for you, just let it sit till you want it. If it's for a guest, this is your portion; add it to your own glass.
Repeat as required or requested.

Notes:

Use a middle-of-the-road triple sec and Jose Cuervo white tequila. Cuervo Gold is for undergraduates, who don't know any better. If you're making "top-shelf" margaritas, use Cointreau and Sauza Hornitos Reposado and be sure to let everyone around you know about it.

Be sure to build the margarita in the order given. The tequila helps rinse out the sugary reside of the triple sec from your graduated cylinder.

If someone asks for a margarita "on-the-rocks," it is permissable to sigh heavily and proceed as above - only instead of straining the margarita into a proper cocktail glass, just dump the whole thing, ice and all, into a (salted!) rocks glass and add more ice as necessary.

If someone asks for a frozen margarita, it is permissable to give them the back of your hand and order them off your property.

If someone asks for a frozen margarita with fruit (other than lime juice) in it, it is permissable to shoot them through the head with a small-frame, large-caliber handgun and order their friends to remove the corpse from your property.

If you are making margaritas for a house party, it is common practice to ask guests to squeeze their own limes. The reason for this become obvious after the eleventh or twelfth margarita. The host's prerogative (taking the leftover from the shaker after pouring the drink) evaporates (so to speak) under this policy, however.

Have fun - and, as always, play safe.

Bush tweaks the NY Times

2005-11-30T12:24:00.000-08:00

Just about a month ago, the blogosphere was all a-twitter over a bit of creative quoting by the NY Times. It seems that, on the occasion of the moonbat celebration of the 2000th American soldier killed in the Iraq war, they chose to quote from a letter found on a dead Marine's laptop - but did so in such a way as to completely change the meaning of the man's words and to obscure his great depth of character.

You can read all about it here.

This morning, in a major war-policy speech at the Naval Academy, President Bush read from Cpl. Starr's letter. But he left the important bits in. I can't interpret this as anything but a pointed dig at the Old Gray Lady - and if anyone deserves it, it's her.

Here's the text of the letter:

Obviously if you are reading this then I have died in Iraq. I kind of predicted this, that is why I'm writing this in November. A third time just seemed like I'm pushing my chances. I don't regret going, everybody dies but few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq, it's not to me. I'm here helping these people, so that they can live the way we live. Not have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. To do what they want with their lives. To me that is why I died. Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark.

The Times published only what's seen in boldface. The President put the rest of it back in.

I have GOT to get one of these

2005-11-29T22:23:00.000-08:00

http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/1128teenbuzz-ON.html

What's the buzz? Teens don't want to hear it

Excerpt:

The device, called the Mosquito ("It's small and annoying," Stapleton said), emits a high-frequency pulsing sound that, he says, can be heard by most people younger than 20 and almost no one older than 30. The sound is designed to so irritate young people that after several minutes, they cannot stand it and go away.

Read, as they say, the whole thing.

Who am I?

2005-11-29T22:01:00.000-08:00

First off, forget about getting my real name. There are too many horror stories out there about people who've lost their jobs or lost out on business or employment opportunities over their blogs. I'm not going down that path.

Otherwise: I'm an engineer. I worked for a major semiconductor manufacturer for over ten years, until they got tired of paying me and hired two Indians to do my job. To hell with them. I'm still an engineer, but today I work in the electronic design automation industry - we sell software to major semiconductor manufacturers, so they can keep putting chips in Xboxes and other such crap.

I live in Texas. I'm not a Texan, though - apparently you have to be born here to claim that. It's fine, except that it's bloody hot in the summertime and there are way too many biblethumpers.

I don't like children, Democrats, Eurotrash or other such whiners. I don't believe in God or the Devil, although I sure as hell believe in the active presence of Good and Evil. I'm heterosexual and am in a long-term, stable relationship, but I don't believe in marriage - so for you gays out there, go ahead and knock yourselves out; I don't care.

(Okay, well not all of that is literally true. My mom was a Democrat, and some of my best friends are Democrats, and I like them just fine. But they're still Wrong. And children are fine if they're clean and quiet and behaving themselves, which they're usually not, but still. Some of them are even cute. Sometimes.)

What do I like? I like dogs, guns, beer, wine, whisky, cooking and film. Not necessarily in that order, and certainly not all at once. I like being outdoors and out of the city, although I almost never am either. I must like arguing with people about politics, since I seem to spend most of my time at that.

And if you haven't figured it out by now: why yes, I am an obstreperous curmudgeon.