Links and Minifeatures 2008 08 14 Thursday

A new entry in my neighborhoods series is up: Neighborhoods of La Mesa: Northmont

I have also just accepted an invitation to write for a new blog sponsored by a fairly well-known corporation on consumer mortgage issues. I don't want to give any details lest I upset some applecart inadvertently, but they should come out within a couple of weeks.

Chasing the Mythical 'Obamacan' Masses

In fact, John McCain's share of the Democratic vote has typically--and surprisingly--been larger than Obama's share of the Republican vote.

China Makes Policing an Olympic Event

Uniformed guards are on major overpasses and bridges, surface-to-air missile batteries are reported to have been set up beside key Olympic facilities, and X-ray machines and metal detectors have been placed in the city's subway system. Vehicles entering the outskirts of Beijing must go through security checks--resulting in long delays. The post office has temporarily banned the sending of all liquids and some electronics.

Meanwhile

British Journalist Roughed Up & Arrested For Covering "Free Tibet" Protest In Beijing

Show of hands: Is anyone actually surprised by this? Anyone? Bueller?

Silly Senator, Ethanol is for food

Putin sticks out tongue, taunts world, says, "make me!"

Russia: 'Forget' Georgian territorial integrit

Russia's foreign minister declared Thursday that the world "can forget about" Georgia's territorial integrity, and American and Georgian officials said Russia appeared to be targeting military infrastructure - including radars and patrol boats at a Black Sea naval base and oil hub.

Russia is playing this game for keeps. Penalties and sanctions from trade organizations and all that presuppose that the merchants have some power in the political set-up. In this case, not really. Putin has spent the last eight years silencing dissent in Russia's entrepreneurial class, and making sure his foot is securely upon their neck. Net result: the people that we're counting on to help keep Putin in line have no ability to do so, and if they don't want to end up like others of their class, no willingness to try.

Another APTN camera crew saw Russian soldiers and military vehicles parked Thursday inside the Georgian government's elegant, heavily-gated residence in the western town of Zugdidi. Some of the soldiers wore blue peacekeeping helmets, others wore green camouflage helmets, all were heavily armed. The scene underlined how closely the soldiers Russia calls peacekeepers are allied with its military.

This is no surprise. If we had US Peacekeepers in a country we invaded, we'd expect them to cooperate with the rest of our military. The incredible thing is that Russian troops, with Russia's activities as they were and interests in re-acquiring Georgia, were ever named and accepted as peacekeepers in the first place.

The Russian General Prosecutor's office on Thursday said it has formally opened a genocide probe into Georgian treatment of South Ossetians. For its part, Georgia this week filed a suit against Russia in the International Court of Justice, alleging murder, rape and mass expulsions in both provinces.

Posturing for the media. For what it's worth, there's probably some merit in the Russian charges - which wil be the figleaf the rest of the world pulls down to cover the far worse Russian transgressions, as well as the provocations that led to Georgia choosing a military option in the first place. Still, it was criminally stupid of the Georgian president to attack with overwhelming force poised close by, and incredibly incompetent of our own State department not to make certain the Georgians had timely warning, as well as a frank assessment of the US power to intervene in case of military confrontation - which is to say "none."

The good news just keeps coming:
Pentagon puts hold on USAF cyber effort

The Pentagon this week delayed and may kill the Air Force's nascent Cyberspace Command, according to a memo obtained by The Associated Press. This comes as Russia used a major computer network attack to begin its assault on Georgia.

How stupid do you have to be to de-emphasize a command that is designed to prevent the enemy from telling your computers to bomb your own troops - and may be able to tell the other side to bomb their own troops?

There are about 3 million attempted penetrations of Defense Department networks every day, according to the Air Force.

3 million reasons per day that this is important, and they still did it? Someone's brain has completely fossilized.

A senior military commander told the AP, however, that the mission to defend U.S. military networks is better vested in U.S. Strategic Command, which has the military responsibility for cyberspace across all services and commands.

Yes, but it's a combined arm, which means that the cyber warriors will tend to get short shrift as opposed to their own command that concentrates on their own operations.

Airlines association sues FAA on slots auction

Sounds smart - until you have 800 or 1000 bodies on the ground, and an airport that's closed for hours, and you're trying to explain to the aggrieved relatives exactly why those planes came together. Nor is two airplanes the limit for crashes taking place on the airport tarmac. Scenario: 747 landing, bounces off MD-11 on the runway and into a line of planes taxiing out for departure - or into the terminal area.

The FAA is trying to relieve congestion of the "one thing goes wrong in a minor way and you've got two jetliners full of passengers in imminent danger of death" sort, and the airlines are so wedded to current practice that they're taking to the courts to prevent it.

Question: How many of the top executives at these airlines have taken the time to understand what controllers go through? That's a big enough problem with the FAA people. I don't believe I ever saw, or heard of, industry executives in the "C" class (CEO, CFO, COO) so much as taking a tour of an air traffic facility. Sat down and watched a controller work peak traffic? Nope. They seem to regard the FAA's air traffic division as a magic wand that's somehow to supposed to sort out everything they want to do, and miraculously, without delays. And that is what the controllers are being paid for. Nonetheless, there are limits, imposed by such thing as runway capacity, airspace limits, and the fact that airplanes have to be positively separated 100% of the time - 99.9999% is not good enough, as there would be multiple midairs per day if that were the standard.

Maybe the airlines are counting on being able to shove legal responsibility as well as public blame off onto the FAA when (not if) a controller makes a critical error that causes a couple of planes to meet going a couple hundred miles per hour. I heartily advise them to re-think this attitude. What they're doing is the rough equivalent of pulling out ten feet in front of a car going 60 mph while making sure the next lane over is full. Yeah, the FAA has problems. That's no excuse for putting them into a situation where the system is going to fail disastrously with one mistaek - and five hundred people just died because of something equivalent to a typo.

Here's a snapshot of live traffic (delayed 5 minutes)

Remains of cemetery found in Sahara

The human remains dated from two distinct populations that lived there during wet times, with a dry period in between.

The one constant about climate is change.