Political Commentary

Venezuela Vote

Let’s hope there are a lot of traitors there:

Brandishing a little red book listing his desired 69 revisions to Venezuela’s charter, Chavez exhorted his backers to redouble their efforts toward a victorious “yes” vote in the Dec. 2 ballot.

“He who says he supports Chavez but votes ‘no’ is a traitor, a true traitor,” the president told an arena packed with red-clad supporters. “He’s against me, against the revolution and against the people.”

People here who support this budding despot, like Jimmy Carter, should be ashamed of themselves. But I think they have no shame.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here are some of the potential traitors standing in food lines, waiting for milk.

[Another update a couple minutes later]

I wonder if the leche lines are why he’s lost his lead?

…the survey was the latest blow to Chavez. He has suffered a series of defections over his plan, including an ex-defense minister who had restored him to power after a brief 2002 putsch but who called Chavez’s reforms a new “coup.”

“The debate over voting ‘yes’ or ‘no’ has burst into the very heart of Chavez’s support base,” Leon said in an interview. “We can see moderate Chavez backers ready to vote ‘no’ even though they like him.”

The question is, what will he do if he loses? Have the “traitors” shot?

Popular Culture

I Hadn’t Been Paying Much Attention To LSU

…but if Michigan doesn’t end up with Les Miles as its new coach, maybe it will be lucky:

Given the job description of a college football head coach, Les Miles qualifies as a good example for his colleagues across the country. The way Miles handled this past week of questions from an aroused media corps was exemplary. The personal integrity of the man who led LSU through the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is considerable. Miles is a stand-up individual who does a great job of handling a lot of the duties of a head coach. From this big-picture perspective, the man is a good coach.

However, when championships are there to be won and statements are to be made, Arkansas ambush made one thing perfectly and overwhelmingly clear: Les Miles can’t strategize his way out of a paper bag.

He’s a fine human being, which should count for more in the long run than one’s performance when wearing a headset on the sideline. But for the record, this loss to Houston Nutt’s Hogs proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Les Miles is certifiably loony as a play caller, clock manager and timeout juggler. In those three aspects of coaching (not the job description as a whole), Miles is a flunkie. Period.

Lloyd Carr made a lot of questionable play calls over the years as well. The Wolverines ought to be looking to improve in that department, not get worse.

Popular Culture

I Hadn’t Been Paying Much Attention To LSU

…but if Michigan doesn’t end up with Les Miles as its new coach, maybe it will be lucky:

Given the job description of a college football head coach, Les Miles qualifies as a good example for his colleagues across the country. The way Miles handled this past week of questions from an aroused media corps was exemplary. The personal integrity of the man who led LSU through the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is considerable. Miles is a stand-up individual who does a great job of handling a lot of the duties of a head coach. From this big-picture perspective, the man is a good coach.

However, when championships are there to be won and statements are to be made, Arkansas ambush made one thing perfectly and overwhelmingly clear: Les Miles can’t strategize his way out of a paper bag.

He’s a fine human being, which should count for more in the long run than one’s performance when wearing a headset on the sideline. But for the record, this loss to Houston Nutt’s Hogs proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Les Miles is certifiably loony as a play caller, clock manager and timeout juggler. In those three aspects of coaching (not the job description as a whole), Miles is a flunkie. Period.

Lloyd Carr made a lot of questionable play calls over the years as well. The Wolverines ought to be looking to improve in that department, not get worse.

Popular Culture

I Hadn’t Been Paying Much Attention To LSU

…but if Michigan doesn’t end up with Les Miles as its new coach, maybe it will be lucky:

Given the job description of a college football head coach, Les Miles qualifies as a good example for his colleagues across the country. The way Miles handled this past week of questions from an aroused media corps was exemplary. The personal integrity of the man who led LSU through the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is considerable. Miles is a stand-up individual who does a great job of handling a lot of the duties of a head coach. From this big-picture perspective, the man is a good coach.

However, when championships are there to be won and statements are to be made, Arkansas ambush made one thing perfectly and overwhelmingly clear: Les Miles can’t strategize his way out of a paper bag.

He’s a fine human being, which should count for more in the long run than one’s performance when wearing a headset on the sideline. But for the record, this loss to Houston Nutt’s Hogs proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Les Miles is certifiably loony as a play caller, clock manager and timeout juggler. In those three aspects of coaching (not the job description as a whole), Miles is a flunkie. Period.

Lloyd Carr made a lot of questionable play calls over the years as well. The Wolverines ought to be looking to improve in that department, not get worse.

Popular Culture

Forget The Leftover Turkey

That’s what Jill Hunter Pellettieri says:

Every November, magazine editors and food writers, cooking gurus and TV personalities, foist turkey leftover recipes upon us. Unless we put our tired, picked-over turkey carcass to good use, they tell us, we’re wasting some precious opportunity. But don’t be fooled. Do not be tempted by that recipe for turkey and leek risotto. Those stringy last bits of gristle and meat that cling to your bird are better suited to the raccoons who rummage through your garbage. Do you really want to morph the centerpiece of your most ceremonial meal of the year into turkey bundles (stuffed with turkey, cream cheese, dill weed, and water chestnuts, among other things)?

…many try to compensate for turkey’s shortcomings by getting creative in the kitchen: We’ll deep-fry, grill, brine, even spatchcock in an effort to zest up this bird. But I challenge you to count on more than one hand all the times you’ve made a turkey entr

Technology and Society

Glad To Hear That

Apparently the iPhone isn’t that great for blogging (if I’m allowed an understatement).

Well, neither is the Treo, with the Palm OS. I did a blog post once, just to see if I could do it, but I can’t imagine doing it routinely. It would help if they would come up with a better browser than Blazer. Or maybe they have, and I’m just not aware.

On the other hand, as Stephen Green points out, perhaps it’s just as well.

Philosophy

The New Shakers

They don’t abjure sex, but the effect is the same:

At the age of 27 this young woman at the height of her reproductive years was sterilised to “protect the planet”.

Incredibly, instead of mourning the loss of a family that never was, her boyfriend (now husband) presented her with a congratulations card.

While some might think it strange to celebrate the reversal of nature and denial of motherhood, Toni relishes her decision with an almost religious zeal.

“Having children is selfish. It’s all about maintaining your genetic line at the expense of the planet,” says Toni, 35.

It’s hard for me to feel regret that this moron wants to end her line.

But here are some people that I’d hope would be even more proactive than the Shakers, and really get on with the job:

We endorse a more “healthy” hatred of humanity

Technology and Society

Finding The Cure

This is a pretty cool distributed computing project

Proteins are biology’s workhorses — its “nanomachines.” Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or “fold.” The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, in many ways remains a mystery.

Moreover, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. “misfold”), there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes.

You can help by simply running a piece of software.

Folding@home is a distributed computing project — people from throughout the world download and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Every computer takes the project closer to our goals. Folding@home uses novel computational methods coupled to distributed computing, to simulate problems millions of times more challenging than previously achieved.

I thought that SETI@home was an interesting application, but this seems a lot more useful to me. I may set it up to run on my file server, which has a 64-bit AMD CPU that’s idle much of the time. It will help justify the electricity costs to run it.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!