Pete the Elder

Hmm. I might consider voting for this guy.

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Earlier last week the US Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s voter ID rule, which requires voters to prove their citizenship when they register and then show voter ID when the vote.

Yahoo/AP reports:

Twenty-five states require some form of ID, and the court’s 6-3 decision rejecting a challenge to Indiana’s strict voter ID law could encourage others to adopt their own measures. Oklahoma legislators said the decision should help them get a version approved.

Barack Obama, who comes from Chicago which is notorious for its decades of voting fraud by various Democrat politicians including thousands of dead people voting, opposes this law and similar ones like it that prevent voting fraud. Since the decision was handed down the election has been held and there were almost no problems. Some nuns were turned away, but they had known about the law for 3 years and had chosen not to try to get updated IDs. Also anyone who shows up can get a provisional ballot and has 10 days after that to confirm their identities to get their vote counted.

The Washinton Post reports:

But there were few other such incidents reported across the state, which has one of the strictest laws in the country, requiring voters to have a photo ID issued by the state or federal government. After the Supreme Court upheld the law by a 6-3 ruling last month, there was widespread speculation that the ruling could hurt Barack Obama in the primary, since he was counting on strong turnout among African American voters in inner-city neighborhoods in Gary and Indianapolis where many residents lack driver’s licenses. But Obama spokesman Bill Burton said this evening that the campaign had received only scattered complaints on the voter hotline it set up to deal with problems at the polls. He credited the campaign’s aggressive voter outreach effort to make sure supporters had the ID they would need. (Residents without driver’s licenses can obtain free picture IDs at DMV branches.)

Bethany Derringer, a spokeswoman for the Indiana Secretary of State’s office, said the office also had not received many complaints on a hotline it set up for today’s vote. She said that should not come as a surprise, given that the state’s voters have had to contend with the strict law since 2005. “We’ve had nothing earth-shattering,” she said. “We’ve done extensive education on this.”

The other book I recently finished was Shadow of the Giant by Orson Scott Card, which for now has concluded the Shadow series of books. This was better than the previous entry in the series, but not by a whole lot. Again the global war for dominance was not that interesting as various Battle School grads try to rule countries like India, China, and a united Muslim Caliphate. The main subplot was Bean and Petra trying to recover their lost embryos, who have now all been born and are scattered over the Earth with different surrogate parents. Meanwhile Mazor Rackham (hero of the second formic war and savior of the human race and one of the most underused characters in the series) has returned to Earth to try to convince all the Battle School graduates to give up the fight and go out to space to lead new colonies as Ender did after the third Formic war. Many of the characters first introduced in Ender’s Game have at least cameo roles in this subplot.

The ending was very well done and for the most part the character development was well done and believable. Several news ideas were introduced included insights of the origins of the character Jane, the AI program first introduced in Speaker for the Dead. There are also interesting hints as to the possible origins of the increased intelligence of the people of planet Path as introduced in the book Xenocide, since there is a research program set up to discovery a cure for Bean’s genetic condition that resulted in his extremely advanced intelligence. The acting on the audio book was once again the best of any audio book series I have listened to and I have listened to over a hundred audio books easily over the last 5 years or so. Card left some room for a sequel and he has said he has thought of writing one more book to conclude the original Ender series and the Shadow series, which I will read if he releases them. I think he would be better off either writing prequels that deal with early Battle School or the earlier formic wars or further stories of other colonies. This was not worth reading again, but I do plan on someday rereading Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, and Ender’s Shadow.

One of the most depressing books I have read in a while was One Soldier’s War by Arkadii Babchenko, which I just finished today after reading several good reviews. Babchenko spent several years in the Russian army fighting in Chechnya as a radio operator, first as a conscript and later for some reason returned as a contract soldier. There are only a few scenes about actual combat with most of the book devoted to the miseries the Russian army inflicted on its own soldiers, primarily through constant senseless beatings, but also through deprivation. I had heard that hazing was a standard practice in the Russian military, but did not realize how severe and pervasive this was. All new soldiers on the battlefield were beaten on an almost daily basis to the point where many suffered serious and permanent injuries and the beatings never stopped with even high ranking officers beating their subordinate officers. On one occasion two soldiers who had traded ammunition to Chechens in exchange for vodka were beaten for days and then left outside the camp perimeter in enemy territory, which meant they were probably either killed or sold into slavery.

I have no idea which side was in the right in the general conflict and both sides engaged in very bad behavior with Chechens committing terrorist acts against civilians in Russia and torturing and murdering prisoners, while the Russians also tortured and executed Chechen prisoners. Babchenko ignores most of the reasons behind the war, which to sum up occurred after the primarily Muslim Chechnya tries to succeed against the wishes of the Russian government. Babchenko himself became suicidal after he mistakes an old man and little girl for a sniper, which leads to them both dying after Russian troops blow up there house. Mostly this is just Babchenko telling anecdotes about how he and his fellow soldiers tried to avoid dying and scrape together enough food, water, and warmth to survive.

After reading this book I was actually surprised that Russia did not fair even worse in its recent wars than it has. Its soldiers are mostly conscripts with a large percentage of them being criminals who are serving to avoid prison. Morale was terrible with absolutely horrid food, water, clothing, supplies etc. Beatings were a constant part of life, which just does not seem like a good idea since the person you are beating senseless may one day be standing behind you with a gun during a firefight. Disturbingly this is actually a step up from the Soviet Union’s army in WWII where officers would randomly shoot soldiers to death in front of the other soldiers to inspire fear of officers. The author hints that officer shootings were not that uncommon in Chechnya. Overall this was one of the best memoirs I have read in a long time, although it is very bleak and depressing.

Probably my favorite anime show was Full Metal Alchemist, which even my wife liked and she does not care for anime that much. One of the theme songs for the show was Ready, Steady Go! by the Japanese pop band L’Arc en Ciel. Although the TV version was a little bit better than this version, it still has a whole lot of energy.

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So now orangutans can spear fish. Chimps have been seen using spears before to hunt bushbabies, but never quite like this.

Here is an internet classic back all the way from 2005:
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I also recently finished Shadow Puppets by Orson Scott Card. It follows the battle school graduates from the previous few shadow novels as they set out to dominate the world. Bean and Petra are struggling about whether or not to have children considering Bean’s genetic alternations. Achilles is still plotting his own path to world domination and is opposed by Peter Wiggin, who at first has taken Achilles into his confidence but is eventually convinced that this is a foolish idea.

Unfortunately for the most part Card has run out of ideas with these characters. The political plotting seamed forced and the characters at times made foolish decisions that mainly served to advance the rather thin plot. Both Peter Wiggin and Bean should be a lot smarter than this as they fall into obvious traps that even an average person would have likely avoided, much less two of the supposedly smartest strategic thinkers alive. It was kind of like watching a horror movie where the main character walks into obvious danger even after knowing the monster is out there. It was worth reading to learn the fates of the various battle school graduates who are seen as extremely valuable military assets, but who also have the potential to take over any government they work for. Unfortunately the plot lacked much of anything of interest and I could not bring myself to care what happened by the end. The portion involving Achilles seemed the hardest to care about since he has gone from being an interesting complex character and sympathetic villain in Ender’s Shadow to almost a cartoon like villain or a generic malevolent force whose motives are very hard to believe by this point. The writing was still good, but Card’s previous books had much more interesting plots and characters.

I recently read the cyber punk novel Software by Rudy Rucker. I have not read too much cyberpunk and doubt I will ever get too much out of it, but this was a good quick read. It is set in the not too distant future with the main change being that robots have obtained consciousness and are no longer bound by Asimov’s laws (do not harm humans, obey humans, protect itself in that order). Instead the robots (or boppers) have been allowed to evolve on their own and have set up a successful society on the moon where they must remain for the most part because they circuitry needs to remain near absolute zero to function. Every few months the robots must shut down and reboot in new bodies which forces them to evolve. They have figured out a way to upload human consciousness (software) into robotic bodies and the plot revolves around this new technique. There are also various battles between the anarchic smaller robots who are battling with robots (big boppers) who have taken on large powerful bodies.

The novel had a good fast pace at 176 pages and the robot centered moon was well described. It also had good moments of humor and delved into issues of consciousness and what it means to be human. Some of the best humor involved the state of Florida which is now a state sized holding pen for the elderly that gets regular food drops from the outside world. The characters were well developed and included the robot liberator Cobb Anderson, who is given the opportunity to become immortal, the first conscious robot Ralph Numbers and Sta Hi, the drugged out loser who gets dragged along with Anderson. There are two sequels and I have read the first few paragraphs of Wetware, which are decent so far and revolve around Sta Hi.

WElcome to a new feature on this blog. I will post a new random video each week that catches my fancy. To start off is Runes to My Memory by Amon Amarth. Because if the vikings had had heavy metal bands they probably would have looked and sounded something like this.

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The video below the fold has been out for a while, but it does a good job examining the marines who serve in one of the most hostile locations in the world.
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Bill Bryson is one of my favorite authors so I was pleased to see that he had a new biography out about Shakespeare called Shakespeare: The World as Stage. Bryson lays out the bare facts of Shakespeare’s life in a very straightforward manner pointing out what we know for sure (not very much), why we know these things (usually contemporaneous documents found after years of searching), and what is speculation. I had heard that we did not know much, but considering that no one wrote any contemporary biographies of the man and that he left virtually no personal papers it is not that surprising that we know so little. We have church documents about when he was born, married, and had children, we have some documents about his property, and we have his will. There are a few other documents like court depositions and tax forms that directly mention or quote him. And a few other contemporaries wrote about him in personal papers. Most of the rest of the information we have is based on information we have about other contemporaries at the time. For instance we have no real idea what his theater looked like, but we have information on what a competing theater of the same time looked like. We have no solid record of any personal information like personality, religious beliefs, relationships with friends and families, or how he spent major chunks of his life.

Bryson spends the last chapter debunking the theories that someone other than Shakespeare wrote the things attributed to him. This rather widespread belief is based on the idea that a relative low ranking commoner could not become as talented, successful, and knowledgeable about things like science and royal life as Shakespeare did. But all of the contemporary information, including royal court documents, says that he wrote it and there are no contemporary sources that even hint otherwise. And none of the other theories is based in any actual fact, just rank speculation much of which defies credulity.

The book is full of Bryson’s typical humor and amazement at the surrounding world. Bryson, who has written books about words before is particularly impressed with how much of the English language was either created or at least first written down by Shakespeare which some people estimate is as high as 1,700. My favorite part of the book is when he lists just a small portion of the words first used by Shakespeare and although it is only a small portion it goes on for a while (examples: gossip, puke, obscene, eyeball) . This was a good short read with the Audio version coming in at under 5 CDs and the book only 199 pages.

I recently finished the interesting biography William Marshal, Knight-Errant, Baron, and Regent of England by Sidney Painter first published in 1933. It follows the career of William Marshall, who was born as the 4th son of a low ranking English Baron in the first half of the 12th century, probably around 1144. One of the first major things to happen to William was to be used a hostage by his father in exchange for a promise not to relieve a castle. His father quickly betrayed the hostage takers because he thought the castle was more valuable than his son, but they could not bring themselves to kill a young child. Later William would go on to win great renown as a knight in France and caught the attention of both French royalty and the English King John which helped him advance his career and wealth. He was made lord of Ireland and controlled large amounts of land in Normandy and Wales. During the war against the other barons Marshall was present at the singing of the Magna Carta even though John was suspicious of him because he had shown loyalty to both the French King and to John. After John’s death and when he was in his 70’s Marshall was made regent of England because John’s son Henry III was too young to rule and Marshall was respected and trusted by just about everyone of importance. He finished putting down the revolts that had started under John and rebuilt the finances of the Kingdom which had been devastated by years of war.

The book itself is fairly dry considering many of the stories it tells are about daring raids on castles and knights having sword fights and dramatic battles. It also lacked maps and a glossary would have helped a lot when the author was writing about some obscure places, terms, and names. Some other details like a simple list of Williams’s children and when they were born would have been useful. Overall it is a well researched book and he does a good job telling the equivalent of a medieval rags to riches story as a relatively poor knight grew through battle and reputation to be the most powerful and one of the richest men in England before he died.

There is a lot to be said about Obama’s 20 year association with the racist and antisemetic conspiracy monger Jeremiah Wright. From calling Italians “garlic noses” to supporting terrorists like Hamas and Gaddafi to promoting conspiracy theories about the US government creating HIV to kill black people and the Israeli government creating an “ethnic bomb” to kill blacks and Arabs its really hard to know where to begin.

But sometimes a They Might Be Giants song can sum things up nicely.

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I have not had a chance to watch it yet, but here is a copy of the film Fitna. If you have not heard about it, it is a film a Dutch politician named Geert Wilders just released that is critical of Islam. Needless to say, there have been credible death threats sent to hosting sights like LiveLeak because they dared to host the film. LiveLeak was disappointed that they had to give in to the threats and take down the film, but they did manage to get the film out there so people all over the world like me could manage to download and keep spreading it. Meanwhile Wilder’s original site for the film was taken down by his original host Network Solutions before it had even been released and seen by the people complaining/threatening because of complaints/threats.

Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn was assassinated after criticizing Muslims. Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali had to flee the country after making the film Submission with Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh who was assassinated for making a film that was critical of Islam in a much milder way than Fitna. Wilder is both a politician and a film maker so let us hope he does not meet a similar fate as van Gogh or Fortuyn.

Just to warn you the film does contain graphic images of Jihadi violence including images that the US media has kept hidden from the public, like footage of people jumping from the World Trade Center.

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While on vacation I had the chance to read several books, the first of which is Catalina’s Riddle by Steven Saylor. It continues his earlier stories of Gordianus the Finder, but instead of being set in Rome it is set mostly on a farm that Gordianus had recently inhereted from a wealthy patron. The time is during the days of Cicero’s consulship during the second Cataline Conspiracy 64-63 BC and many of the major figures from the conspiracy make appearances including Cataina, Julius Casear, Crassus, and Cicero.

Saylor does a good job weaving the various people and accusations about the conspiracy into his plot. This is a difficult task considering that all we know about the conspiracy comes from Catalina’s enemies like Cicero and Saylor plays up this ambiguity about what drove Catalina into rebellion and how accurate the charges of rebellion and the attempted buring of Rome were. The real strong point of the novel is how Saylor describes daily life for the Romans in many different settings. Most of the focus is on the day to day life on Gordianus’ farm with reading Cato the Elder for advice, the cutting of hay for winter feed, management of slaves, and his attempt to build a mill on his stream. Other good scenes involve the taking of auspices as his youngest son Mito turns 16 and puts on his toga for the first time and the characters participation in a consul election with the Roman system of voting in blocks based on income and social rank. The actual mystery revolves around an abandoned silver mine near Gordianus’ property and the appearance of headless bodies on his farm, but the mystery is the least interesting part of the novel.

I finshed I am America (And so can you!) by Stephen Colbert a few weeks ago (winner of The Stephen Colbert Award for Literary Excellence). I saw Colbert a couple of times on the Daily Show and watched his current show once, but I had heard that this book was decent so I decided to read it. It is a series of satirical chapters about various aspects of America that started out strong, but grew tiresome after a while. The layout of the book is done very well with lots of margin notes and handy graphics, but the content got a bit repetetive and predictable after a while. Lots of individual short sections and one liners worked well, but often whole paragraphs fell flat. The funniest chapters were the ones about old people, sex & dating, and religion. The old people chapter for instance had the critical comments in small print so that old people with bad vision can not understand them with the nice comments about old people in big print. Part of the weekness is that he focuses all of his energy on satirizing conservatives, but often there is a lot more material to satirize about liberals. Good political humor like early Simpsons episodes, South Park, and In My World doesn’t hold back against either liberals or conservatives.

Well I finally got a bill from AT&T. I tried to pay it online, but that it basically impossible. You have to request a code for the website that they mail to your home address. So I requested the code to enter into the website and got a letter a few days later notifying me that I had requested a code. But it did not actually include the code.

Meanwhile AT&T’s president kind ofadmitted in a story that appeared on the drudge report today that his customer service people are pretty incompetent.

The head of the top U.S. phone company AT&T Inc (T.N) said on Wednesday it was having trouble finding enough skilled workers to fill all the 5,000 customer service jobs it promised to return to the United States from India.

“We’re having trouble finding the numbers that we need with the skills that are required to do these jobs,” AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson told a business group in San Antonio, where the company’s headquarters is located.

A few months ago I read A.J Jacobs book The Year of Living Biblically: One’s Man Humble Quest to Follow The Bible as Literally as Possible. Jacobs tried to live as biblically literal life as he legally could over the course of a year by trying to follow all the commands from the bible. He eliminated the practices that would have him end up in jail like killing magicians and stoning adulterers, although he did throw a pebble at an adulterer. He started out as an agnostic Jew and for the first nine months lived the Old Testament law and tried to follow the New Testament as well in the last three months. The New Testament part was a challenge since so many of the New Testament commands concern belief in Jesus and not just actions. There is a mix of seriousness and humor, with him realizing the frustrations of trying to follow biblical purity laws in a modern world where the sexes commingle freely and share chairs (which can be ritually impure), having days of week are named after foreign gods with the prohibition of having the names of other gods on your lips (Thursday from Thor for instance), and many modern clothes contain both wool and linen, which was also prohibited. The more humorous parts are things like wearing white, growing a full beard, giving wine to people mourning, and eating grasshoppers since they are kosher.

He ended up consulting a variety of pastors, rabbis, and various biblical scholars to see what they thought following the bible meant. He was particularly affected by the snake handlers, who he thought seemed like very nice people. Jacobs also developed a good relationship with his shatnez tester (a person who tests clothes to see if they have linen and wool) and has several interesting conversations about why people should follow biblical laws that do not make obvious sense. Not stealing or honoring the Sabbath are easy to understand, but not eating lobster is harder to understand with other commands falling somewhere in between. This was an interesting read, especially because Jacobs was already obsessive compulsive before adding these rules into his life, and while little of the biblical knowledge was new to me, it was an interesting take on the scriptures and what it truly means to follow them.

Here is one of the new McCain ads: “I owe America more than she can ever owe me”.

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