62 Years Ago Today….

Ken AshfordHistoryLeave a Comment

….this historic photograph was taken:

Vj_day_kiss

This is easily the most famous photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt.  It shows an American sailor kissing a young woman during V–J Day impromptu celebrations in Times Square in 1945.

Because the faces of the kisser and kissee are partially obscured, many have laid claim to be either the man or the woman in this photo.  Some forensic experts believe this North Carolina man (now living in Texas) can rightfully claim to be the kisser.  His account:

He said he was changing trains in New York when he was told that Japan had surrendered and World War II was over.

"I was so happy. I ran out in the street," said McDuffie, then 18 and on his way to visit his girlfriend in Brooklyn.

"And then I saw that nurse," he said. "She saw me hollering and with a big smile on my face … I just went right to her and kissed her."

McDuffie said the kiss was prompted by the realization that his older brother, W.D., would soon be coming home from a Japanese prison camp.

"We never spoke a word," he said. "Afterward, I just went on the subway across the street and went to Brooklyn."

In 2005, the Naval War College accepted George Mendonça (of Newport, Rhode Island)’s claim that he was the sailor, based on a study of tattoos and scars.

As for the kissee, a woman named Edith Shain has laid claim to that title for years.  And she accepts the claim of former New York City police detective Carl Muscarello that he is the kisser.

Whatever.  It’s a good photograph.

Fighting The Heat In Japan

Ken AshfordYoutubeLeave a Comment

It’s hot this week in Tokyo too, and apparently there aren’t enough pools.

Here’s a clip from Tokyo Summerland’s Wave Pool, which is packed to the gills with "swimmers" (although they really are just floaters).

Caution: For those of you who experience motion sickness, I advise not to watch:

The Surge Report Card

Ken AshfordIraqLeave a Comment

President Bush — July 12, 2007:

This September, as Congress has required, General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker will return to Washington to provide a more comprehensive assessment. By that time, we hope to see further improvement in the positive areas, the beginning of improvement in the negative areas. We’ll also have a clearer picture of how the new strategy is unfolding, and be in a better position to judge where we need to make any adjustments.

I will rely on General Petraeus to give me his recommendations for the appropriate troop levels in Iraq. I will discuss the recommendation with the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I will continue consultations with members of the United States Congress from both sides of the aisle, and then I’ll make a decision.

And so it goes.  Everyone is looking to the September report from General Patraeus.  Even conservative Republicans think that is going to be the deadline on which our future in Iraq hinges:

"Many of my Republican colleagues have been promised they will get a straight story on the surge by September," said Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.). "I won’t be the only Republican, or one of two Republicans, demanding a change in our disposition of troops in Iraq at that point. That is very clear to me."

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), who has taken a hard line in Bush’s favor, said Sunday, "By the time we get to September, October, members are going to want to know how well this is working, and if it isn’t, what’s Plan B."

So …for weeks, the White House has responded to every question about Iraq the same way: let’s wait until September and see what Petraeus and Crocker have to say.

Funny thing about Petraeus’s report, though.  Look what’s buried deep in the L.A. Times article today:

Despite Bush’s repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.

Anyone wanna guess how the White House will grade its own "surge" policy?  My guess:

1) The surge is working.

2) It needs more time.

3) In 6 months, we will know more.

Then there’s this:

During internal White House discussion of a July interim report, some officials urged the administration to claim progress in policy areas such as legislation to divvy up Iraq’s oil revenue, even though no final agreement had been reached. Others argued that such assertions would be disingenuous.

"There were some in the drafting of the report that said, ‘Well, we can claim progress,’" the administration official said. "There were others who said: ‘Wait a second. Sure we can claim progress, but it’s not credible to . . . just neglect the fact that it’s had no effect on the ground.’"

I guess it’s good news to know that there are at least a few people left in the White House willing to point out that claims of progress are a bad idea if there hasn’t, in fact, been any progress.

UPDATE:  The author of this L.A. Times piece was interviewed on NPR, and I caught a bit of his interview.  While he confirms that the White House will write the report, the actual recommendations for "what to do in Iraq" will indeed be made by Patraeus and Crocker.  That means that the report has to jibe with the recommendations.

Just Call Them Terrorists…

Ken AshfordIran3 Comments

This can’t be good:

Iranian Unit to Be Labeled  ‘Terrorist’

U.S. Moving Against  Revolutionary Guard

By Robin Wright

Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, August 15, 2007; A01

The United States has decided to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country’s 125,000-strong elite military branch, as a "specially designated global terrorist," according to U.S. officials, a move that allows Washington to target the group’s business operations and finances.

Calling the military branch of another government a "terrorist" organization also allows Bush to skirt other nasty legal obstacles.  For example, Congress won’t have to declare war on them because now they would fall under the AUMF that was passed in the wake of 9/11.

And assuming we do go to war with Iran, we won’t have to treat the soldiers of the opposing army under the Geneva Conventions. 

So basically, by slapping the label "terrorist" on any person, or group, the Bush Administration can do anything it wants (i.e., attack them) and avoid complying with the U.S. Constitution and international treaties and human rights and stuff like that.

Yglesias adds his profound thought:

It’s taken a few years, but we’ve managed to move now from a situation in the winter 2001-2002 where the US and Iran were cooperating against our mutual deadly foe — al-Qaeda — to one where Iran is officially one of the enemies in an open-ended struggle against God knows whom.

Yikes.

Political Humor

Ken AshfordRight Wing and Inept MediaLeave a Comment

What a surprise.  Fox New’s The Half Hour Comedy Hour, which was intended to be the rightwing answer to The Daily Show, has been "shelved":

In a memo to senior producers this afternoon, FNC’s SVP of programming, Bill Shine announced the network "will not continue the Half Hour News Hour beyond its current 15 episode run." Shine did leave the door open, however: "we are considering ways to retool the show for future scheduling needs."

The TV news satire show which airs Sunday nights, stars faux anchors Kurt McNally, played by Kurt Long, and Jennifer Lange, played by Jennifer Robertson.

I watched the premiere episode back in January. Take a look at this clip:

Get it?  Rush Limbaugh as President and Ann Coulter as his Vice President.  But other than the joy of knowing that they agreed to do this segment, is anything about this actually funny?  Hardly.  In fact, it is so incredibly lame that they couldn’t even get a cigar in the oval office joke right.

Now, I understand that the "targets" of this show are going to be lefties and Democrats.  And that’s fine.  South Park often has the same targets.  But The Half Hour News Hour was unlike South Park in one key respect:  it simply was not funny. In fact, it was abyssmal.  It had canned laughter, and the "audience" laughed WILDLY at things that really weren’t even remotely funny.

By contrast, part of the success of The Daily Show is that Jon Stewart and his writers often rely on the truth.  A typical TDS moment would involve a film clip of Bush saying something, and the a cut back to Jon Stewart saying nothing.  He wouldn’t have to say anything, because the humor comes from the reality of what Bush is saying.

Stewart also took plenty of potshots as weak-kneed Democrats, and the media.  From what I understand, The Half Hour News Hour targeted only the left, and it was, even according to rightosphere bloggers, "over the top".

Good political humor is always based on the truth.  The Half Hour Comedy Hour, like the rest of what appears on Fox News, as an alarming amount of, well, fiction (or at least wishful thinking).  The whole thing really is faux, from the premise of the humor to the names of the "anchors" to the canned laugh track.

I can’t imagine why it failed.

I Need A Catch Phrase…

Ken AshfordIn Passing1 Comment

…so that when I die, it can be in the obit headline, as in Holy Cow: Phil Rizzuto dead at 89. 

Really, that’s kind of tacky.  What happens when Downtown Julie Brown dies?  Is the headline going to read "Wubba-wubba-wubba: Julie Brown dead at 89"?  Will we someday see the headline "AAAAaaaaaay!: Henry Winkler dead at 89"?

Still, I better prepare, just so that I have a good obit catch phrase.

Suggestions:

  • Wubba-wubba-wubba: Ken Ashford dead at 89
  • There Goes The Ballgame: Ken Ashford dead at 89
  • Sorry, My Bad: Ken Ashford dead at 89
  • What Are You Looking At?: Ken Ashford dead at 89
  • 23 Skidoo!: Ken Ashford dead at 89
  • Where’s My Aspirator?: Ken Ashford dead at 89
  • Tippecanoe and Tyler Too: Ken Ashford dead at 89
  • Show Us Your Tits: Ken Ashford dead at 89
  • You Crack Me Up: Ken Ashford dead at 89
  • Wotchoo Talkin’ ‘Bout Willis: Ken Ashford dead at 89
  • I’m Not Laughing With You, I’m Laughing AT You: Ken Ashford dead at 89
  • Seriously, Zac Efron Is A Girl: Ken Ashford dead at 89

Your input is welcome….

The Great Northeast Blackout of 2003

Ken AshfordHistoryLeave a Comment

It happened four years ago today: the largest blackout in North American history.  To be honest, I don’t remember it, probably because it didn’t effect this region.  But it effected 80 million people in eight states of the Northeast (including all of New York City), as well as 10 million in Ontario.

Wikipedia has a great entry on the event, including the post-partum of how it happened.

The official report blamed an Ohio electrical company’s failure to trim trees as the primary cause — specifically, a tree in Walton Hills, Ohio.  But these things tend to have multiple contributing causes, and it ends up being a cascade of failures.  Check out this timeline, again from Wikipedia — Even though it’s a few hours in the making, the shit hits the fan at 4:10 p.m. As each line fails, other lines are asked to do more work.  Then those fail, and soon you have a cascading effect that plunges the Eastern seaboard into darkness. 

Blackout sequence of events, 14 August 2003, times in EDT:

  • 12:15 p.m. Inaccurate data input renders a system monitoring tool in Ohio ineffective.
  • 1:31 p.m. The Eastlake, Ohio generating plant shuts down. The plant is owned by FirstEnergy, a company that had experienced extensive recent maintenance problems, including a major nuclear-plant incident in 1985.
  • 2:02 p.m. First 345-kV line in Ohio fails due to contact with a tree in Walton Hills, Ohio
  • 2:14 p.m. An alarm system fails at FirstEnergy’s control room and is not repaired.
  • 2:27 p.m. A second 345-kV line fails due to a tree.
  • 3:05 p.m. A 345-kV transmission line fails in Parma, south of Cleveland, due to a tree.
  • 3:17 p.m. Voltage dips temporarily on the Ohio portion of the grid. Controllers take no action, but power shifted by the first failure onto another 345-kV power line causes it to sag into a tree at 3:32 p.m., bringing it offline as well. While Mid West ISO and FirstEnergy controllers try to understand the failures, they fail to inform system controllers in nearby states.
  • 3:39 p.m. A FirstEnergy 138-kV line fails.
  • 3:41 and 3:46 p.m. Two breakers connecting FirstEnergy’s grid with American Electric Power are tripped as a 345-kV power line and 15 138-kV lines fail in northern Ohio. Later analysis suggests that this could have been the last possible chance to save the grid if controllers had cut off power to Cleveland at this time.
  • 4:06 p.m. A sustained power surge on some Ohio lines begins an uncontrollable cascade after another 345-kV line fails.
  • 4:09:02 p.m. Voltage sags deeply as Ohio draws 2 Gigawatts of power from Michigan.
  • 4:10:34 p.m. Many transmission lines trip out, first in Michigan and then in Ohio, blocking the eastward flow of power. Generators go down, creating a huge power deficit. In seconds, power surges out of the east, tripping east coast generators to protect them, and the blackout is on.
  • 4:10:37 p.m. The eastern Michigan grid disconnects from the western part of the state.
  • 4:10:38 p.m. Cleveland separates from the Pennsylvania grid.
  • 4:10:39 p.m. 3.7 GW power flows from the east through Ontario to southern Michigan and northern Ohio, more than ten times larger than the condition 30 seconds earlier, causing a voltage drop across the system.
  • 4:10:40 p.m. Flow flips to 2 GW eastward from Michigan through Ontario, then flips westward again in a half second.
  • 4:10:43 p.m. International connections begin failing.
  • 4:10:45 p.m. Western Ontario separates from the east when the Wawa-Marathon 230kV line north of Lake Superior disconnects. The first Ontario plants go offline in response to the unstable system.
  • 4:10:46 p.m. New York separates from the New England grid.
  • 4:10:50 p.m. Ontario separates from the western New York grid.
  • 4:11:57 p.m. The Keith-Waterman, Bunce Creek-Scott 230kV lines and the St. Clair-Lambton #1 and #2 345kV lines between Michigan and Ontario fail.
  • 4:12:03 p.m. Windsor, Ontario and surrounding areas drop off the grid.
  • 4:13 p.m. End of cascade. 256 power plants are off-line. 85% went offline after the grid separations occurred, most of them on automatic controls.

Satellite image of Northeast the day before the blackout:

2003_north_american_blackout_before

Satellite image of Northeast during the blackout:

800px2003_north_american_blackout_a

With the heatwave hitting the states right now, and the high energy consumption that goes with it, it’s kind of surprising that we haven’t experienced blackouts and brownouts like in years past.  Maybe we learned something from four years ago….

Something Else To Keep Me Awake At Night

Ken AshfordScience & TechnologyLeave a Comment

New York Times science section:

In fact, if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. Bostrom’s, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation.

This simulation would be similar to the one in “The Matrix,” in which most humans don’t realize that their lives and their world are just illusions created in their brains while their bodies are suspended in vats of liquid. But in Dr. Bostrom’s notion of reality, you wouldn’t even have a body made of flesh. Your brain would exist only as a network of computer circuits.

I don’t quite understand the math, but basically, some think that by 2050, computers will have processing capabilities so powerful that they will rival that seen in The Matrix.  Computers, through their programmers, will be capable of creating virtual humans, possessing virtual nervous systems, living in virtual worlds, with a virtual "past" and ancestry.  Kind of like The Sims on superhyper steroids.  Endowed with artificial sentience, these "posthumans" won’t have bodies, but only the microchipped sense of having bodies.  The virtual humans will have a sense of their own selves and the world around them, just as we do.  They won’t know they are merely a flow of 1’s and 0’s.

Of course, once you comprehend that (and really, it’s not hard to do), then it’s a small step to ask: "How do we know that we’re not all ‘virtual humans’ now?"

The author of the NYT piece then wonders what happens once the virtual humans realize that they (we?) are, indeed, not real:

If simulations stop once the simulated inhabitants understand what’s going on, then I really shouldn’t be spreading Dr. Bostrom’s ideas. But if you’re still around to read this, I guess the Prime Designer is reasonably tolerant, or maybe curious to see how we react once we start figuring out the situation.

Yeah, I hope the Prime Designer is tolerant.  Let’s hope he doesn’t pull the plug.  I’m too young to be deprogrammed.

Matrix01

Religious People Are The Best People

Ken AshfordGodstuffLeave a Comment

Another day in the culture wars yields this ugliness:

Church Cancels Memorial for Gay Navy Vet

ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — A megachurch canceled a memorial service for a Navy veteran 24 hours before it was to start because the deceased was gay.

Officials at the nondenominational High Point Church knew that Cecil Howard Sinclair was gay when they offered to host his service, said his sister, Kathleen Wright. But after his obituary listed his life partner as one of his survivors, she said, it was called off.

"It’s a slap in the face. It’s like, ‘Oh, we’re sorry he died, but he’s gay so we can’t help you,’" she said Friday.

Wright said High Point offered to hold the service for Sinclair because their brother is a janitor there. Sinclair, who served in the first Gulf War, died Monday at age 46 from an infection after surgery to prepare him for a heart transplant.

The church’s pastor, the Rev. Gary Simons, said no one knew Sinclair, who was not a church member, was gay until the day before the Thursday service, when staff members putting together his video tribute saw pictures of men "engaging in clear affection, kissing and embracing."

Simons said the church believes homosexuality is a sin, and it would have appeared to endorse that lifestyle if the service had been held there.

"We did decline to host the service – not based on hatred, not based on discrimination, but based on principle," Simons told The Associated Press. "Had we known it on the day they first spoke about it – yes, we would have declined then. It’s not that we didn’t love the family."

Simons said the decision had nothing to do with the obituary. He said the church offered to pay for another site for the service, made the video and provided food for more than 100 relatives and friends.

"Even though we could not condone that lifestyle, we went above and beyond for the family through many acts of love and kindness," Simons said.

Wright called the church’s claim about the pictures "a bold-faced lie." She said she provided numerous family pictures of Sinclair, including some with his partner, but said none showed men kissing or hugging.

Would the church have refused to bury people who are liars, blasphemers, and/or adulterers?  Would they have even asked?!?  I seriously doubt it.   Because the whole point of holding a service isn’t to judge their life (or their lifestyles) or to place a stamp of endorsement or condemnation on their choices.  After all, aren’t we all sinners? 

The partner of the deceased writes his views here.

To me personally, I have no problem with the church turning us away. My problem is with the method in which they did it. I happen to know several other members of that church who are also gay, and they had no idea that their church held that opinion on this topic either. If they had told us right away, or even on Tuesday that they were not comfortable with the service, we would have been more than willing to try and come to some sort of compromise, or we could have changed venues. We were never given that option. Someone in a position of power made the decision to cut us off, and didn’t even have the moral courage to tell us the truth to our faces.

I fully understand the church’s right to deny us the use of their facilities. I also served in the military, (US Army, 1987-2002), and I have fought to defend their freedom of religion and freedom of choice.

He’s a better man that I, Gunga Din.  I would be livid.

Quote Of The Day

Ken AshfordElection 2008Leave a Comment

The John Edwards campaign has issued a statement on the departure of Karl Rove from the White House.  Here it is, in full:

“Goodbye, good riddance.”

Guess Who Is Liberal? WE Are!

Ken AshfordSex/Morality/Family ValuesLeave a Comment

The Pew Research people have been tracking social trends for a couple of decades, and the latest installment suggests that social conservatism ("family values", prayer in schools, and all that stuff) is on the decline, while liberal attitudes (helping poor, etc.) are making a resurgence.

4341

Not surprisingly, more and more people nationwide consider themselves Democrat, or Dem-leaning:

4342

You should click through and read the whole thing.  It’s very encouraging.

Some other findings:

  • 4344 Americans are worried more that businesses rather than government are snooping into their lives. About three-in-four (74%) say they are concerned that business corporations are collecting too much personal information while 58% express the same concern about the government.
  • The public is losing confidence in itself. A dwindling majority (57%) say they have a good deal of confidence in the wisdom of the American people when it comes to making political decisions. Similarly, the proportion who agrees that Americans "can always find a way to solve our problems" has dropped 16 points in the past five years.
  • Americans feel increasingly estranged from their government. Barely a third (34%) agree with the statement, "most elected officials care what people like me think," nearly matching the 20-year low of 33% recorded in 1994 and a 10-point drop since 2002.
  • Young people continue to hold a more favorable view of government than do other Americans. At the same time, young adults express the least interest in voting and other forms of political participation.
  • Interpersonal racial attitudes continue to moderate. More than eight-in-ten (83%) agree that "it’s all right for blacks and whites to date," up six percentage points since 2003 and 13 points from a Pew survey conducted 10 years ago.
  • Republicans are increasingly divided over the cultural impact of immigrants. Nearly seven-in-ten (68%) conservative Republicans say immigrants threaten American customs, compared with 43% of GOP moderates and liberals. Democrats have long been divided along ideological lines, but the GOP previously had not been.

    • Math And Sex

    Ken AshfordSex/Morality/Family ValuesLeave a Comment

    Setting aside gay relationships, who has sex more?  Men or woman?

    Most polls and studies show what you probably already believe: men have more sex partners than woman.

    One survey, recently reported by the federal government, concluded that men had a median of seven female sex partners. Women had a median of four male sex partners. Another study, by British researchers, stated that men had 12.7 heterosexual partners in their lifetimes and women had 6.5.

    But, wait a second…

    How can this be? asks the very smart people:

    But there is just one problem, mathematicians say. It is logically impossible for heterosexual men to have more partners on average than heterosexual women. Those survey results cannot be correct.

    ***

    “Surveys and studies to the contrary notwithstanding, the conclusion that men have substantially more sex partners than women is not and cannot be true for purely logical reasons,” Dr. Gale said.

    He even provided a proof, writing in an e-mail message:

    “By way of dramatization, we change the context slightly and will prove what will be called the High School Prom Theorem. We suppose that on the day after the prom, each girl is asked to give the number of boys she danced with. These numbers are then added up giving a number G. The same information is then obtained from the boys, giving a number B.

    Theorem: G=B

    Proof: Both G and B are equal to C, the number of couples who danced together at the prom. Q.E.D.”

    Sex survey researchers say they know that Dr. Gale is correct. Men and women in a population must have roughly equal numbers of partners. So, when men report many more than women, what is going on and what is to be believed?

    “I have heard this question before,” said Cheryl D. Fryar, a health statistician at the National Center for Health Statistics and a lead author of the new federal report, “Drug Use and Sexual Behaviors Reported by Adults: United States, 1999-2002,” which found that men had a median of seven partners and women four.

    But when it comes to an explanation, she added, “I have no idea.”

    Oh, dear.  Too bad these smart people don’t know the difference between a median and an average.

    An average is also known as a mean.  The mean is determined by totalling the numbers of your set, and then dividing by the number of samples.

    For example, let’s say that John had sex with 6 women, Barry had sex with 2 women, Gordon had sex with 12 women, and both Carl and Lenny have never had sex with a woman. 

    The AVERAGE?  (6 + 7 + 12 + 0 +0) divided by 5, which is equal to five.

    The median, however, is something else.  It is the number in the middle of your sample.  In the case, about, the median is seven (there are two numbers higher and two numbers lower).

    Now, we would expect that the AVERAGE number of men sleeping with women to be the same as the AVERAGE number of women sleeping with me.  But the studies mentioned in the article talk about medians.  And there is no reason to believe that the distribution curve of men is the same as that of women.

    It’s a shame that none of these "mathematicians" or "statisticians" picked up on this important difference.  (Or perhaps, the New York Times author of this article simply screwed up).

    The real facts are probably this:  YES, on AVERAGE, men have just as many sex partners as women.  But the distribution of those two genders — men and women — are different, which is why they have different medians.

    (Another reason: men might be more inclined to exaggerate their numbers, while women might be more inclined to play down those numbers).

    Mystery solved.

    UPDATE:  Eugene Volokh gets into this too, with a better explanation.