Hampton Roads Publishing Company Blog

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page is pathetic, but its reporting is superb. This from http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115988852620681211-xnn44DDJPi_diEvt2EQ9IO9mRrk_20061102.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top It’s probably time for another “terror alert.”

Hastert Faces Intense Pressure
As Foley Mess Roils Republicans

By DAVID ROGERS and JOHN HARWOOD
October 4, 2006; Page A1

With Republicans’ woes deepening, House Speaker Dennis Hastert is holding fast against calls for him to resign over the congressional-page scandal. But there appears to be a real chance that the Illinois Republican could step down after next month’s election even if his party retains power.

A new poll shows voter support for the party slipping, and Mr. Hastert and his divided leadership face immense pressure to respond more emphatically to the stream of revelations about former Rep. Mark Foley’s sexually explicit cyber-communications with teenage former pages.

“We have to do something different, more dramatic,” said Rep. Ray LaHood (R., Ill.). “This is a political mess and what we’ve done so far is not working. Somebody has to take responsibility for this. It is on our watch.”

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I hardly know what to think of this one. which comes from a newspaper in India. Do we really want stolen cellphones shrieking in public? But on the other hand anything that could slow down the upward spiral in cell-phone theft seems a good thing. Well, you decide. I hate the things, myself, but then I am finding this century even more annoying than the 20th, so I may not be the best judge.

Cell phones that scream “thief!”

(Reuters) London: A UK firm is hoping a cell phones security system it has developed which sets off a high pitch scream, permanently locks the handset and wipes all data if stolen, will halt the spiralling rise in phone theft.

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Capitol Hill Blue is a political website — as you will see from this retrospective by founder Doug Thompson

It’s our 12th birthday and we’re having a party
October 1, 2006 6:56 AM | Rant | 27 Comments .

By DOUG THOMPSON

Saturday morning, October 1, 1994: With a cup of coffee in hand I sat down at my computer in the den of our condo in Arlington, Virginia, and logged on to the Internet to check my email.

A message from my Internet Services Provider, Heller Information Services, caught my eye: An offer of 5mb of free space for a web site.

I checked it out. With a few keystrokes, I created a basic, no-frills web page with the URL: www.his.com/~dougthompson and, viola, had a web site. I wrote about 500 words of commentary about the upcoming midterm Congressional elections, called it “Capitol Hill Blue,” and sent out emails to some 50 people asking them to take a look.

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One of the laws of ecology says, everything is connected to everything else. A demonstration:

Alaskan Storm Cracks Giant Iceberg to Pieces in Faraway Antarctica;

Study Tracks Surprising Connection Between Distant Events

CHICAGO, Oct. 2 (AScribe Newswire) — A severe storm that occurred in the Gulf of Alaska in October 2005 generated an ocean swell that six days later broke apart a giant iceberg floating near the coast of Antarctica, more than 8,300 miles away. A team of scientists led by Professors Douglas MacAyeal at the University of Chicago and Emile Okal at Northwestern University present evidence connecting the two events in the October issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

“We are reporting on a unique kind of seismological signal picked up by seismometers we deployed on the iceberg, which is generated by sea swell when it rocks the iceberg,” said Okal, professor in geological sciences at Northwestern.

Oceanographers have known since the early 1960s that ocean swells can travel half way around the world. But the new study, funded by the National Science Foundation, raises the possibility that an increase in storms driven by climate change could affect far-flung parts of the globe.

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This is John Whitehead’s latest email column from The Rutherford Institute. I find his columns consistently interesting.

Neutralizing a Beatle: The U.S. vs. John Lennon
By John W. Whitehead
September 25, 2006

In December 1971 at a concert in Ann Arbor, Mich., John Lennon took to the stage and in his usual confrontational style belted out “John Sinclair,” a song he had written about a man sentenced to 10 years in prison for possessing two marijuana cigarettes. Within days of Lennon’s call for action, the Michigan Supreme Court ordered Sinclair released.

However, as Adam Cohen observes in the New York Times (Sept. 21, 2006), “What Lennon did not know at the time was that there were F.B.I. informants in the audience taking notes on everything from the attendance (15,000) to the artistic merits of his new song…The government spied on Lennon for the next 12 months, and tried to have him deported to England.”

The government’s surveillance campaign against Lennon is the subject of a new documentary, The U.S. vs. John Lennon. It could not have debuted at a better time—especially in light of recent revelations about the government’s efforts to spy on American citizens through phone calls and e-mails. Indeed, Lennon’s battle with the U.S. government is not only a chilling tale of paranoia and abuse of power—it is a lesson for our times. As Cohen recognizes: “It is the story not only of one man being harassed, but of a democracy being undermined.”

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This is Ellen Emerson’s long letter to her brother Edward (these were two of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s children) which I copied from the book The Letters of Ellen Tucker Emerson, scanned, and more or less cleaned up mainly by extensive paragraphing. Ellen Emerson was 23 in mid-1862, writing to her brother on his 18th birthday. This is long, but it interested me and seems to me it should interest you. Here is a first-hand account, from a 23-year-old genteely-raised New England girl, of an epoch in her life: Conversations with sick and wounded men — boys, many of them, really — veterans or army life, sickness, battle and (often) injury. It seems to me an invaluable window into another time.

Newport. July 10th 1862

This being your birthday my dear I must at any rate write you a letter. First I will tell you of to-day’s events, too good to lose, and if I afterward have time I will go back to other scenes and pastures old. This morning at 7 o’clock we started for the Portsmouth Grove….

After some embarrassed waiting, and after some much constrained and terrified visiting of tents to bestow oranges, we returned to Miss Clarke who was making tea on the piazza and distributing it to nurses (soldiers of course) who carried it to their men. Presently came a major who drove away the men who clustered round, and told us to go to the immense shed at back of headquarters with our apparatus and he would send there the men just landed from the transport and who had had no breakfast.

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Despite the patronizing and dismissive caption (below) I was pleased to have a friend send me the website featuring this picture of the face on Mars. Don’t know about you, but to me it looks like artificial sculpting of a natural feature.

Mars Express Close-Up of the Face on Mars

Credit: G. Neukum (FU Berlin) et al., Mars Express, DLR; Malin Space Science Systems, MOC

Explanation: Wouldn’t it be fun if clouds were turtles? Wouldn’t it be fun if the laundry on the bedroom chair was a friendly monster? Wouldn’t it be fun if rock mesas on Mars were faces or interplanetary monuments? Clouds, though, are small water droplets, floating on air. Laundry is cotton, wool, or plastic, woven into garments. Famous Martian rock mesas known by names like the Face on Mars appear quite natural when seen more clearly, as the above recently-released digital-perspective image shows. Is reality boring?

Nobody knows how clouds make lightning. Nobody knows the geological history of Mars. Nobody knows why the laundry on the bedroom chair smells like root beer. Understanding reality brings more questions. Mystery and adventure are never far behind. Perhaps fun and discovery are just beginning.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

“When one sees another, helpful and kindly in common relations, sincere and brave in speech, and ever trying to keep the conversation above gossip and triviality; easily earning a simple living by work, humble, but done as if for God’s inspection, yet saving a share of each day for the life to which his instinct and genius led him, yet, on occasion, leaving it readily to please and help others; able to rise above bitter bereavement; using disappointment in early love to purify life; fearless and in good heart in life and in death,-one may well ask, Is Folly behind all this?”

An interesting speculation from Wired magazine via The Daily Reckoning, a free email newsletter.

Mighty Morphing Power Buildings
by Jonathan Kolber

They call these buildings “responsive structures.” The idea is that the
building will optimize its shape in response to external conditions. It
could shift external surfaces to capture or avoid sunlight, depending on
the tradeoffs between internal temperature, energy consumption and solar
panel efficiency. It could present a smaller, tighter surface in response
to severe storms, for example by assuming an emergency configuration for
greater resistance to high winds.

Even snow buildup could be addressed by shifting roof structures so the
snow falls off as it accumulates. Internally, such a building could open
up internal areas to accommodate a crowd or better circulate the air.

According to John Folan, assistant professor of architecture at the
University of Arizona, “This is the wave of the future.” The school’s
Office for Robotic Architectural Media & the Bureau for Responsive
Architecture is testing “building envelopes” using a system of rods and
wires. These are controlled by pneumatic “muscles.” The muscles constitute
the framework of all the building’s walls.

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If you still don’t see any similarities between our undeclared war in Iraq and our undeclated war in Vietnam, there is no hope for you. History doesn’t repeat itself in a one-to-one correspondence, of course, but we seem to be in 1968 again, with the establishment divided against itself.

Last time that happened, they had to kill Martin Luther King and Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy to re-establish their control and kill what hope was left for meaningful reform “within the system.” This time? Stay tuned. (My bold itals added.)

Intelligence findings present political obstacle for Republicans

By Ron Hutcheson

McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)

WASHINGTON - A newly disclosed intelligence assessment that contradicts President Bush’s claim that the war in Iraq has made America safer also casts doubt on the Republican campaign strategy for the November elections.

Democrats seized on the intelligence findings Sunday to challenge Republican assertions that Bush and his congressional allies offer the best protection against terrorists. The assessment, the consensus opinion of the entire federal intelligence network, concluded that the Iraq war has fueled Islamic extremism and contributed to the spread of terror cells.

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