Search google for "ass" and the first result is the official website for the Democratic National Committee. It seems they host a weblog called Kicking Ass (!) -- just another way in which the Democrats are determined to shoot themselves in the foot (hey, anything to get out of the war prematurely) -- and it's filled mainly with Republicans Suck and "this administration"-ing. Their hero over there seems to be Al Franken, because he's actually able to take the hyperbole of the DNC to a higher pitch (his amp goes to 11). This entire website is brimming with blame and anger and vitriol, and it's a little unsettling. This is the party of FDR and JFK? I'll say it again: don't tell me why the other guy sucks; tell me why you're great. And try to say it like an adult for a change.

Could you imagine any of the current Democrat leaders -- politician, candidate, or pundit -- delivering Kennedy's first Inaugural Address (let alone writing it)? Since they seem to have forgotten it (and I know they all read my happy little website), I'll digitally reproduce various excellent portions:

We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans--born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage--and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty ...

In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course. Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty. The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe.

Now the trumpet summons us again--not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need--not as a call to battle, though embattled we are-- but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation"--a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.

Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort?

John F. Kennedy, 1961

Now there was a guy I could vote for.

Oh and Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston are traveling to the Middle East in order to promote peace there. That's because they're nitwits.

Next to homage, there's another theme emerging for this decade (the aughts): hyperbole. It's as if after 9-11 our brains can't be budged by any meager extreme or paltry apex, our eyes unglued to pay passing notice to only a car chase or just a fistfight (Fight Club was prescient here). We need the hyper-extreme (as in Baudrillard), the grosser than gross, the more violent than violent, the louder than loud. Or at least that's what our entertainers perceive us to need, be they politicians or novelists or movie-makers. The Matrix movies -- Matrices? -- demonstrate this case in point: perceiving what they'd done well with the first movie, the Whachawhatski brothers determined that in order to make the penultimate Matrix movie -- and lacking anything new to say -- they had to exaggerate what they'd done before. The swarm of machines that becomes a river, the fistfight in the sky that topples buildings, the world populated by duplicates of a single man. The result is dull and interminable.

It's got a chase scene done entirely in CGI so that any loose scraps of realism would vanish (and the budget would be smiling too) -- Matrix 3 is about the realer than real. It's got a city seen as lines of golden light, each burst of illumination more incandescent than the last -- Matrix 3 is about the brighter than bright. It's got every character who shoots something first pause to utter some determined and pithy oath -- Matrix 3 is about the cooler than cool. And it's got every tired pseudo-philosophical (aka stoner philosophical) framework they could glom onto it, presumably rolling the hack dice in the hope that somehow someone (probably on the internet) could arrange some sense out of it all -- because Matrix 3 is about the falser than false.

And it's got a lot of crap too! Neo-Christ?! I was fearful of this after Matrix 2, and hoped fervently they would regain their senses and steer away from this most cliché of devices, but what's worse, it supplies a Deus ex Machina for the central plot conflict (although I doubt they could have written themselves out of it in any other way). That set piece, the attack on Zion, is pretty cool for a while, but it's populated by tediously flat minor characters doing tediously heroic acrobatics while uttering tediously trite dialogue. And why wouldn't they put a little armor around the drivers of those armored Mech-Warriors? But perhaps worst of all there's a lot of sentimentality here, most pronounced in several death scenes that each made me yawn violently (for I was the boreder than bored) and wish that the movie would just get it over with.

And that fight in the rain! Dull, pointless, interminable, and exaggerated beyond any rational proportion. Truly disappointing. 4of10.

What, you thought I was done with aircraft carriers?

Here's the big idea: aircraft carriers provide what the US Navy describes as a "credible, sustainable, independent forward presence." They've got that term in bold everywhere, sometimes also italicized; and it's a heavy concept because it entails both mobile sovereign property, since 70% of the world can act as its base, and the projection of force, since a carrier is as large as its planes can fly.

There are 12 US aircraft carriers presently in service, two in reserve, and one under construction:

Name (Hull) / Commissioned / Class / Status

Independence (CV 62) / 1959 / Forrestal / inactive reserve
Kitty Hawk (CV 63) / 1961 / Kitty Hawk / active Pacific Fleet
Constellation (CV 64) / 1961 / Kitty Hawk / inactive reserve (Sept 2003)
Enterprise (CVN 65) / 1961 / unique / active Atlantic Fleet
John F. Kennedy (CV 67) / 1968 / unique / active Atlantic Fleet
Nimitz (CVN 68) / 1975 / Nimitz / active Pacific Fleet
Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) / 1977 / Nimitz / active
Carl Vinson (CVN 70) / 1982 / Nimitz / active Pacific Fleet
Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) / 1986 / Nimitz / active Atlantic Fleet
Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) / 1989 / Nimitz / active Pacific Fleet
George Washington (CVN 73) / 1992 / Nimitz / active Atlantic Fleet
John C. Stennis (CVN 74) / 1995 / Nimitz / active Pacific Fleet
Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) / 1998 / Nimitz / active Atlantic Fleet
Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) / 2003 / Nimitz / active Pacific Fleet
George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) / ---- / Nimitz / to commission 2008

Nimitz class are powered by two nuclear reactors and four shafts
Enterprise is powered by eight nuclear reactors and four shafts
John F. Kennedy is powered by eight boilers and four shafts
Kitty Hawk class are powered by eight boilers, four steam turbines, and four shafts

There are three UK aircraft carriers in service:

Invincible (R05) / 1980 / Invincible / active
Illustrious (R06) / 1982 / Invincible / active
Ark Royal (R06) / 1985 / Invincible / active

Invincible class are powered by four Olympus TM3B gas turbines and two shafts

There is one French aircraft carrier in service (don't worry, we can totally take it -- it's French):

Charles De Gaulle (R91) / 2001 / unique / active

two nuclear reactors and two shafts.

There is one Russian aircraft carrier in service:

Kuznetsov ex-Tbilisi, ex-Leonid Brezhnev, ex-Riga (--) / 1995 / Kuznetsov / active but not fully operational

steam turbines, eight boilers, four shafts

There is one Italian aircraft carrier in service, one under construction:

Giuseppe Garibaldi (C551) / 1985 / / active
Andrea Doria (C552) / ---- / / to commission 2007

four LM2500 gas turbines, two shafts

There is one Indian aircraft carrier in service, one purportedly under construction:

Viraat (R22) / 1959 by UK, 1987 by India / HMS Centaur Class / active but showing age

Steam turbines, four boilers, two shafts

There is one Spanish aircraft carrier in service:

Principe De Asturias (R11) / 1988 / / active

2 LM2500 gas turbines, 1 shaft

There is one Thai aircraft carrier (!) in service:

Chakri Nareubet (911) / 1997 / / largely inactive due to lack of crew and funds

2 LM2500 gas turbines, 2 shafts

There is one Brazillian light aircraft carrier

Sao Paulo (A12) / 1963 by the French, 2001 by Brazil / Clemenceau class / active (?)

Steam turbines, 6 boilers, 2 shafts

Reference
Reference

The apartment above the hippies finally has new tenants. A whole family of goonish looking people moved in there after the now legendary Family of Many left their wake of ruin -- urine and kool-aid stained carpets, mesolithic crayon scribblings on the walls, holes drilled into the ceiling to catch rainwater, etc. Where the previous occupants consisted of two adults and innumerable children, the family design of the new ones remains unclear: there are no obvious children among them, but several adults and several of indeterminate pre-adult age. The apparent boss is clearly up to something, he's like Tony Soprano or his brother maybe. He has hushed conversations out on his balcony with visitors who are always strange and shady looking, and he's always telling them something, explaining how things are and how they're going to be, lots of pointing fingers enumerating stuff. He tosses cigarette butts over as I pass below, and the sidewalk steams and fumes from them like I'm a vulcanologist down there just trying to get to my green SUV sometimes -- for lack of a better ashtray maybe, the world is his ashtray. Other than that, things have been quiet lately. Glad you asked.

Kasparov and Fritz are having their annual rematch starting tomorrow. You can watch it live here. Earlier this year, Kasparov drew against Deep Junior, as did Kramnik. Do chess players ever play each other any more? Anyway, as much as I like Fritz (I have version 8 installed here in the map room), I will as always root for the human.

Martin Amis is a wonderful writer in small doses, but reading him for sustained periods becomes like trudging through marshmallow. I especially do not recommend his new book.

It's been said there are two kinds of people: those who are favorably disposed toward guns and those who are not. To put it less simplistically, consider that if every gun is registered, then the government -- if it decides to do so -- will be able to track down and confiscate every gun. The two kinds of people then are those who think that's a bad thing and those who think it's a good thing.

Which reminds me, I want to start a new television network that shows nothing but raw camera footage. I thought this while watching the California fires recently; I wanted to watch just the fires and not be interrupted by dizzy reporters or slack-jawed commentators, not have Geraldo pop out from behind a charred tree limb to boast of his enormous gonads. The fires were mesmerizing and terrifying -- and the talking heads made bathos of it all. I thought the same thing during the war last spring: television news is overproduced. I want a channel without any reporters or commentary, 24 hours of raw footage, the stuff they cut and slice and overlay with colorful graphics. For filler I'll add city skyline or mountain vista footage, underwater panoramas choking with tropical fish, hardhatted construction crews growing skyscrapers in real time. It will be minimalist television, and better than yours.

It turns out this is *not* the guy who talks to dead people. He's getting more than half of his campaign money from lawyers -- *tort* lawyers in fact.

Who's Paris Hilton?

Oh and the new Civ3 expansion "Conquests" is ruining my life.

I highly recommend getting a copy of this week's Economist. Their "Survey of America: A Nation Apart" report makes for fascinating reading on what de Tocqueville called "American exceptionalism." One of the statistics cited to compare the US and the EU blew my mind a little: Which is more important for government: A) To guarantee no one is in need or B) To provide freedom to pursue goals? Americans responded about two-thirds to one-third in favor of B (and rightly so!), while Europeans were the opposite: about two-thirds to one-third in favor of A! Which I think explains a great deal about US/EU differences.

Also in that report is some interesting stuff about the state of organized religion in America. Apparently -- and I can't explain how I wasn't aware of this -- a trend has been developing towards a sort of church/mall hybrid: "If you want to experience the rock bands, theatrical shows and powerpoint sermons in a traditional church, you can: they are piped into one by video link. Or you can watch the service on huge video screens while sipping a cappuccino in an outdoor café." This seems almost Pynchonian to me -- American religiosity married to American consumerism, a one-stop for fulfilling those old American Needs. I wonder if they pipe in the NFL too?

Which isn't to suggest I'm so thrilled about voting for GWB either. There's two laudable things he's done as President -- lowering taxes and invading Afghanistan -- matched against a pile of blunders: invading and occupying Iraq, an insane $180 Billion farm bill, the Homeland Security uber-bureaucracy, protectionist barriers for the steel industry, a White House office for the promotion of *marriage*, Federal testing and supervision in schools, etc etc -- overall increasing government spending by 21%. That all sucks. But I'm seeing nothing in the way of a silver lining from the Donkey Contingent. It's all very depressing.

As unconcerned as I am about the American novel, here's a fairly interesting article about it -- from a UK paper (pretending perspective therefore). It concludes with a quote from Jonathan Franzen that may be (re)applied to our recent cinematic trend toward homage: "When the times get really, really awful, you retrench; you re-examine old content in new contexts; you try to preserve; you seem obsolete . . . ." The unnamed UK Guardian writer doesn't question the term "really, really awful" but this concept of retrenchment may prove an important one.

What's more painful than breaking in a new pair of boots? Don't answer that -- who are you talking to? I had to go do nerdy SFTV stuff today because I heard there's a Farscape miniseries to begin production soon. IGN's Filmforce is now confirming that. It's only four hours but it's better than nothing. Hopefully blah blah blah.

In conducting said research I discovered other things of similar interest:

The bad news is that Jeremiah may be dropped already, even with eight more episodes left unaired. This is hardly surprising -- Showtime has been less and less fond of the series, and its creator has recently revolted against the production company. So there was never much hope for a season three. The good news is that the Canadian network that's been airing the series (something called The Movie Network) still seems intent upon showing the remaining episodes, so they will be er... um... obtainable. If you want to try to help save the series, this site has links to email campaigns etc -- the whole standard thing. UPDATE: looks like the campaign worked or something; Showtime is now listing new episodes for 2004.

That new Jeremiah theme music has grown on me somewhat; I still find it terribly incongruous but it's a much better song than -- for instance -- the Enterprise theme. Speaking of which, did you notice they increased the tempo of that song for the new "edgier" current season? Berman and Braga, Masters of Compromises. And asses. The new song and the new season is about as edgy as an 8-ball. This guy has a good rant on that topic. It really makes you want to watch Farscape -- hey there's new Farscape soon!

According to the Gematriculator, this site is presently 43% EVIL, up a full 12% from last month. Now that's improvement!

Apparently everyone in the UK feels exactly the way one angry woman on the radio feels. I guess Bush had better leave fast!

Is it strange that I no longer hear opposing viewpoints on NPR or BBC broadcasts? Or has everything in fact become absolute? Or is one side right, and the other side Hitler?

All things being equal, and in consideration for the sun, if I were an Arab I'd wear one of the white turbans.

dBpowerAMP takes a while to get set up perfectly, and still misses in certain areas (the biggest being the interface), but that's because it's very configurable. And you pretty much *can* get it behaving exactly the way you want, unlike with WMP or winamp; you just have to work at it. Some people like that, some don't. The biggest praise is that I'm still using it.

And btw, Deckard was a replicant.

I've gotten about as far as I'm going to get with the Pale Fire notes for now. It's considerably more than I had anticipated writing but still lacks the last two commentaries and the book index. Truth is I've grown weary of Charles the Beloved and his impossible claims.

Having gone through this process I'm reminded of something an English Prof once told me: if you really love literature don't teach it for a living. Making work from something you love takes away the magic of the thing, strips it of its intrinsic worth, causes you to stop loving it and start only living with it. I believe this same thing happens to a lot of marriages.

Check out the FBI's new method for tracking internet activity.

This is a typical UK Guardian article about GWB's visit to London -- enumerating all the Secret Service requests the British turned down -- but it includes the following funny sentence: "Ministers have made clear to Washington that the firepower of the mini-gun will not be available during the state visit to Britain." The writer managed to cram his entire tongue in his cheek -- astounding! -- but who knew the president traveled around with a minigun? I'm told it's because he fears attack by the Predator.

I haven't paid much attention to winamp since the highly disappointing Version 3, but now there's a Winamp 5 (!) -- apparently built from a fork on the Version 2 codebase. So if you hated Winamp 3 but loved Winamp 2 (like me) go check it out (get the full install instead of the lite version). It may be better than dbPowerAmp -- it'll take some time to know. The interface is better anyway. The video support is also quite good -- it might even be able to replace Zoom Player....

One feature of dbPowerAMP that winamp presently lacks is the ability save the track position on stop/exit (ie: if I'm listening to a track and I shut the app down then start it again, it resumes at the point where I shut it down). This is very nice for the typically large audio-texts I often listen to. They've got it on the wishlist though, so maybe soon....

I watched this lousy television program called Jake 2.0 tonight. Some dude is infested with nanites, has super powers, works for the NSA, etc. What really annoyed me about it is the way it portrays the activities of the NSA, as if they're some black ops outfit busting terrorists and assassinating dictators in third world jungles. I have to assume it's because the NSA seems darker and more mysterious to people than the CIA, or because the current flavor of the Agency has turned bitter. Or because -- most likely I fear -- the writers are just plain ignoramuses.

The NSA, by its original charter established by Harry Truman in 1952, is responsible for the control, dissemination, and security of communications intelligence. This means signals intelligence in the form of transmitted, electronic, instrumentation, and written communications, cryptographic analysis and development, the plans, policies, and security surrounding such intelligence, and COMINT support for other organizations. The NSA does NOT engage in paramilitary operations. The NSA does NOT kill people. For more see here.

I'm sick of hack television writers inventing nonsense that either insults the audience or perpetuates absurd fallacies. It serves no purpose whatsoever to sacrifice verisimilitude for the sake of nothing! Nothing is gained by this! And the slightest, laziest bit of research could have corrected it! Damn it! If anybody wants me I'll be in the Angry Dome.

I need to clean this place up -- things would be better then. I think sometimes I should play chess again -- but that's a black obsession that takes much more than it gives. Undefinable need is the kissing cousin of free-floating anxiety.

I long ago despaired of reading everything ever printed, as Francis Bacon was said to have done by the first quarter of the 17th century. The problem wasn't gross before the Internet -- merely impossible, but opaquely so: the lists proffered by lit instructors and titles recommended by friends were ultimately limited; or before the advent of Borders n' Noble -- and even then the volume of *readable* material was far overwhelmed by paperbacks with embossed covers and magazines sold by bikini strings; so the potential seemed possible: to read everything worth reading and lots worth regretting the waste of time. But then the lists exploded as catalogs came to my fingertips: Amazon offered every book I could never finish; newspapers and magazines the articles I couldn't keep track of; and finally weblogs as the democratization of opinion became complete. And with the upward spike in quantity came the necessarily accompanying downward spike in quality as nearly everyone able cast their voice out in MsoNormal formatted strings of vulgar sentiment, in consequence elevating the uncommon find of jade talent to the rarest strike of glimmering diamond. I found myself awash in mediocrity: I was bombarded by blogging and on-demand publishing ("Of course everybody has the *right* to be published" -- even loud-mouthed pains in the ass), and sent further toward the personal death of my language, when the walls of taste once guarded by a trusted few are overrun by the barbarian hoards of digital cost-reduction. Or could it be liberation? (I'm reminded of a philosophy professor who used to quip -- only half-jokingly -- that fascism is the only government that works.)

The Great Digital Reduction has obviously plagued entertainment media companies nigh unto extinction, as their products easily convert into bytes, and those bytes from one hard disk to another. One wonders how many heads are being scratched at Time Warner, EMI, and Vivendi in a probably hopeless effort to rejuvenate the value of their product by adding non-digital, non-reproducible value to it, much as governments struggle to make their paper currency non-counterfeitable by adding watermarks and color-shifting ink (I note my own faith in my government by saving the first and only of the new $20 bills rather than hurriedly getting rid of it for fear of its non-acceptance). Recording artists meanwhile struggle to add spectacle to their fading imagery: Madonna and Brittney kiss onstage to the collective and slightly embarrassed ooh of several nations, but do nothing to rid themselves of the harsh laws of physics and economics: they are not superstars after all. The media companies attempt to prey upon the guilt of their consumers with advertisements bemoaning the impending poverty of rock-stars and movie idols, or more subtly their supporting employees: the key grips, compact disk pressers, and sound engineers of the world. Many once pitied pony express riders and telegraph manufacturers too, or that lady who once played the theater piano while Charlie Chaplin clung desperately to the hour hand of the modern world.

And somewhere within lurks a common theme, as elusive as the aroma of coffee in a crowded movie theater. It's a special kind of movie theater that serves coffee nowadays.

The Gematriculator informs me this site is down to only 35% Evil. I had such high hopes!

Flush down another $400 Billion. If I were a Republican I'd be getting pretty annoyed right about now. At some point Bush and his Legislature decided to become crypto-Democrats -- I guess it's a reelection strategy. The Democrats meanwhile are hopping mad because they're not getting the credit for it. Washington is broken.

Hmm... Frank Black and Jack Black are both fat geeky guys who somehow manage to be really cool.

Speaking of columnists, Thomas Friedman posted another of his imaginary letters in the Times Op-Ed yesterday -- this one from Saddam Hussein to GWB. Unfortunately, Saddam makes a number of good points.

Here's another website that actually makes good use of itself: lying in ponds is "an attempt to encourage vigorous, independent commentary in the American punditocracy by quantifying and analyzing partisanship." To that end they track political discourse and rank pundits wrt overt partisanship. Presently at the top of their Top 10 List is -- no surprise -- Ann Coulter, followed by -- no surprise -- Paul Krugman and Robert Scheer.

Since Hollywood has seen fit to make plunder of another Seuss fantasy, I decided dig up my own Cat in the Hat corruption. This short-short story was written a number of years ago and -- I feel obliged to note -- no longer well reflects my personal politics.

As I was orbiting the Earth in a dream last night I got confused and had to wake up. Once you transcend the atmosphere you realize that the universe is not diurnal: unless you're hiding behind some big shadow there's always a light on. But how to reconcile the strangeness that although it's complete daylight outside the sky is still as black as night? How bright is it? My sleeping imagination proved inadequate, alarms went off, and my spaceship popped from existence. I think staying there under those conditions would have risked Nocturnal Existential Nausea, something I don't believe Sartre ever got around to discussing.

This story reminds me of Grandpa Simpson typing "Dear Mr. President, There are too many states nowadays. Please eliminate three. P.S. I am not a crackpot." Soon they'll be petitioning Webster's to remove about 10% of the words from its dictionaries -- just wait. The new Zarathustra proclaims, "Haven't you heard? Language is dead!"