zabbo

Tom Kean, chair of the 9/11 Comission, was on NBC News’ Meet The Press this weekend. While trying to make the case for substantial reform of the US intelligence services he compared the body count of the attacks of 9/11 and the war in Iraq. An excerpt from the transcript:

… When we say we want to reform intelligence and change it fundamentally, making this restructuring of government one of the largest in history, we think that’s pretty major. We have to remember that we know we’ve got this problem with the military. But more people died on September 11, double the number that have died so far in Iraq. I mean, we are facing very serious problems on the home front here, …

Presumably he meant to compare US and coalition casualties of the Iraq war so far (roughly 1400) to the number of people killed in the attacks on 9/11 across all nationalities (roughly 3000). Ignoring what conclusions one could possibly draw from that comparison, his startlingly poor choice of words imply that Iraqi casualties don’t count. Mr. Russert should have called him on it.

While googling around for well-grounded counts of human casualties of the Iraq war, regardless of nationality, I ran across an interesting piece in The Economist on statistical methods of estimating Iraqi casualties that I missed in the print edition.

Today we learned that the Swedes have a really good thing going.

We spent the day working up an appetite walking around TriBeCa and Soho waiting for George to finish some work so we could meet up for dinner.

The Rough Guide listed Aquavit and we were immediatly interested. How could we resist traditional Scandinavian food? We would have been put off by the price of the full prix fixe course downstairs but the guide pointed us in the direction of the more accesible service upstairs. We learned what a Wallenbergare is (a delicious intersection of lamb and cream, essentially) and found way too much pleasure in gravlax, pickled herring, and lingonberry-laced meatballs. It wasn’t cheap but there is no question that we got a meal worth the money.

An old friend, who lives in Manhattan, is spending his holiday in lovely Montréal. He, being a super-star, didn’t mind us watching his apartment while he was away and this was too much to pass up. We decided to spend our Thanksgiving holiday in New York, and here we are!

We were pretty pleased to find direct flights between Portland and Newark. Shocked, one might say. That certainly eased the pain of having to get up at some ridiculous hour. The journey was largely uneventful though it was fun to hop around on the various trains from the airport to the upper west side. A nice man at Penn station asked us if we had any change and when we didn’t he asked where we were headed and pointed us in the right direction. Someone from the Department of Cranky Locals should give him a talking to.

We weren’t deeply interested in high dining after having spent the day traveling. Alice managed to find a restaurant (Arte Cafe) a few blocks away that was just right. The food wasn’t spectactular, but it was competent and inexpensive and the atmosphere was warm and lively. We had a great time. My only complaint was arguably my fault to begin with. When the waiter asked me to repeat my order of a Sidecar I should have changed to a drink that he recognized. I can just picture them scrambling around behind the bar trying to make something up. Whatever they did, it was Tequilatastic.

A while ago some of us helped Chris move his machines from his office on the 8th floor of a building in downtown Portland down into the building’s basement. I don’t think I ever put the pictures of this up anywhere. Doing so gives me an opportunity to try out this Exhibit plugin that I’ve been considering.

The machines in question were noteworthy. They were very powerful for their time but that time was, well, a decade ago. They are from the era of solid metal and large fans all rolled into a heavy chassis the size of a North American household appliance on casters. Sun sparc center 2000s and Cray 6400s to be exact.

The path from the office to the basement passed through the elevators, through the lobby and out onto the sidewalk, around the building and in a service door, and down another elevator into the gargantuan basement. You can imagine the looks five scruffy guys got while rolling these noisy machines around the corner of a building downtown on a weekend.

Also, it was raining.

John McCain was on NBC News’ Meet The Press again this weekend and continued his strong tradition of presenting himself as someone I would vote for. An excerpt from the transcript:

MR. RUSSERT: … Congress voted for a $388 billion spending bill. They passed it 65-to-30 in the Senate. You said it’s a big, fat turkey.

SEN. McCAIN: … It’s outrageous. The system is broken. We need to fix it. We’ve got to have some kind of way of challenging these earmarks. …

MR. RUSSERT: Senator, Republicans control the Senate.

SEN. McCAIN: Yes.

MR. RUSSERT: Republicans control the House.

SEN. McCAIN: Yes, sir.

MR. RUSSERT: Republicans control the White House.

SEN. McCAIN: Yes, sir.

MR. RUSSERT: It’s a Republican problem.

SEN. McCAIN: It certainly is, and we’re going to have to fix it. …

They go on to discuss the absurdity of voting for bills that spend the taxpayers’ money without reading the bills. Indeed.

Then, later that day, I happened to be catching up on some NOW which included a piece on abuse of Indian tribes by lobbyists. There was Sentor McCain, again. From his opening statement:

I want Mr. Abramoff and Mr. Scanlon to know that their failure to cooperate in the face of compulsory process will not be tolderated and their attempt to slow roll this Committee will not be brooked. Once the Chairman has ruled on their outstanding objections, I will urge the Committee to pursue contempt, if their compliance with the subpoenas is not immediately forthcoming. The time for games has ended.

Some weeks ago I also noticed him being praised in this HRC quarterly, of all things, for speaking out against the “Federal Marriage Amendment”.

All of this from an immensely popular Republican. I find this encouraging and keep it in mind when my less rational friends are — with straight faces — comparing the entirety of the Republican party to Nazis.

I finally sat down last night and spent a few hours bringing up this WordPress installation. It was refreshingly easy to get going once I remembered how to drive MySQL.

I went down this road because I’ve long been meaning to satisfy my blogging impulses. I certainly enjoy reading what my friends post and like to think that I add to the fun. The old scripts I have been using, though, were clearly past their prime — if ever they had one. WordPress was the clear leader among the candidates to replace the creaky old scripts. In the little time I’ve spent with it I’ve been consistently impressed. It’s the little things like the buttons that automagically close nested tags while editing posts and unobtrusive help text integrated with the interface.

Another desire Alice and I have had is to put up more of the photos we take. Owen Winker’s Exhibit plugin looks like it might fit the bill. It has had its distractingly awkward moments but hopefully it will prove helpful enough that I’ll stop being distracted by them.

I’ve decided to try maintaining all of the content on www.zabbo.net, such as it is, through WordPress. There are a number of plugins which doctor mod_rewrite rules to point static URI trees at WordPress posts that are otherwise hidden. I figure I’ll settle on one by the time there is any content worth putting up. I haven’t bothered to transfer the old content because, well, I have a hard time caring. Maybe I’ll see legions of failed references to the old kernel patches for the NeXT hardware and will be compelled to revive them. Somehow that doesn’t seem particularly likely.

Anyhow, we’ll see how it goes! I’ve had a fun few hours, at the very least.