Category Archives: Politics

Yes They Can

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There’s a women’s rights movement going on in South Africa.

One thing I think is interesting is that people tend to view this as backwards–they’re just now having a women’s rights movement? But I view it differently. They became a Republic in 1961. It took us centuries from being founded on supposedly-democratic principles before we truly recognized that every person was equal. Forty-five years and they’re already doing it.

And just the other day, Kenyans agreed to a power-sharing deal putting an end to a brutal conflict that had developed there.

It’s Tuesday

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Texas and Ohio vote today. Polls show Hillary leading in both, but not by much. Vermont and Rhode Island also vote, but I guess they’re being neglected in most media since they only hold a handful of votes. Obama’s winning in a landslide in Vermont polls, while Rhode Island is another “close, but favoring Hillary” poll.

Someone mentioned a good point, though: imagine if Hillary had won 11 straight states. People would have written Obama off as a lost cause. And if he won Ohio today, people would think, “Woo-hoo, one state on top of 11 straight losses. He’s still done for.” For some reason, Hillary’s not getting that.

Kyle sent me the following image…

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The image, as hilarious as it is, is even funnier when you realize that it’s taken verbatim from a Neil Gaiman comic, which was not about Obama. How well it adapts!

I’ll close with a quote: “Always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.” Texans and Ohioans (?), get out and vote for a better future!

Opium

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Afghanistan has a flourishing opium trade. They apparently produce most of the world’s opium. Ironically, it’s kind of our fault–the Taliban had pretty much eradicated all poppy cultivation, but with them gone, it’s come back. A recent news story suggests that the Afghani leaders in charge of fighting opium quit after their pay was slashed due to overseas funding drying up. (This one was poorly thought through…)

I want this job. Here’s my plan: encourage opium cultivation.

India has a flourishing, but regulated, opium trade. The product is sold to pharmaceutical companies, who refine it into morphine. Farmers are apparently limited to how many poppies they can grow. The government periodically does inspections of farmers to make sure they’re complying, and to make sure that their product isn’t being diverted into illegal usage.

This is what Afghanistan needs. You deal a crippling blow (again…) to the illegal drug trade, while also bolstering their economy with pharmaceutical sales.

Where do I submit my resume?

Cold War

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Anyone who’s learned about the Cold War will be familiar with the chilling fact (no pun intended…) that we came very close to a nuclear war.

But after reading things like this article, mixed with other anecdotes, I’m left wondering how on Earth we didn’t go to war… Accidentally. Both the U.S. and the Soviets, on multiple occasions, “detected” launches of nuclear weapons by the other, and came within seconds of retaliation before someone noticed something out of the ordinary.

Fortunately, the U.S. was very thorough the first time around, and quickly proved that the first “attack” they witnessed was caused by some guy inserting the wrong tape… In the case of the Soviets, the only reason they didn’t launch a counter-attack after their own false alert, it seems, was because the guy who was supposed to press the button disobeyed orders and went with his gut. (And boy are we glad!)

And there’s a further set of coincidences, really. After a flood of nonsensical data, officials discovered some problems. Apparently, one detection system was alternating between reporting some 2,000 incoming missiles and 0 incoming missiles. Because of the conflicting data, they turned to alternate systems, which also reported 0 incoming missiles, and it was traced to a hardware malfunction, with the 2,000 number just happening to match, by sheer luck (or lack thereof), internal checksums.

So they wrote some code to compare results from multiple systems. And not more than a few months later, the problem with the training tape occurred, when one of the systems began reporting more believable numbers of incoming missiles. (Apparently, a steadily increasing number.) The data “made sense,” but, because of the newly-implemented code to compare with other systems, they realized that it was just one system, and quickly isolated it to a case of someone sending “training data” as if it were live data. It’s almost a case of two wrongs making a right–had the first error not occurred, the safeguards wouldn’t have been implemented to catch the second error.

Oh, and there exists a slightly-creepy website dedicated to the Russian who decided to trust his gut over the myriad indications that we were attacking

World News

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Several things of note have happened in the past 24 hours:

  • In Pakistan, the PPP and the PML-N, the former being Benazir Bhutto’s party and the latter being on with apparent similarities, won by a landslide in elections, which were a remarkably peaceful event. There is already talk (albeit just rumors) about the possibility of the impeachment of dictator Musharraf. It’s far too early to know the full effects, but some are suggesting that this is a very good sign for democracy.
  • Fidel Castro has stepped down. The article is quick to note that this doesn’t mean that democracy is around the corner–a new leader will be appointed by Cuban parliament, only because Castro said he didn’t want to be named as the next leader. Possible replacements are reported to be Castro’s brother, with some discussing the possibility of a surprise appointment of a “generational gap” leader, Castro’s current VP (who is 56).
  • Kosovo has declared its independence from Serbia.

Internet Radio

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I still remain a fan of SomaFM, a network of awesome streaming music.

Two interesting things I’ve come across, though:

The first is AACPlus. The webpage makes it look like a minor little project. But it’s being used by a number of streaming stations, and it’s supported by VLC and WinAmp, among others. What makes it notable is that I’m listening to a 48 kbps stream of one of Soma’s stations right now… And it sounds better than a 128 kbps stream. You can apparently drop it to 32 kbps and drop to just slightly less than CD quality, and at 24 kbps it’s still on par with MP3 streams. It works out great: it delivers high-quality audio to me, and instantly doubles (at least) the number of listeners they can handle, since bandwidth is almost always the “limiting reactant” with streaming audio.

In other news, the RIAA is apparently having luck getting Congress to raise webcasting rates enormously again… In some instances they’ll apparently go up by more than 1,000%. If you check out the Soma site, they’re coming up short on funding every month, pleading for donations to stay online. This is the case with a lot of streaming radio sites, too. They’re barely staying online as it is. Raising their rates by a factor of ten is going to kill Internet radio.

Things are Changing

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It’s no secret that Obama’s been winning even more elections lately than the polls had predicted. I won’t get into theories for why, and instead point out another development in Obama’s string of successes.

Hillary had considerable backing by superdelegates, the almost 800 “free” DNC delegates and high-ranking elected Democratic politicians. But one of Hillary’s superdelegates has just announced that he’s backing Obama.

I’m starting to feel good about this race.

Pollution

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I don’t consider myself a ‘hardcore environmentalist,’ but I’m not sure there’s anyone on the planet who wouldn’t agree that this is absurd.

It could be easily fixed, too, if someone (Indonesian government? UN? Environmental groups?) were willing to pay a bit. Hand out nets, and offer a nominal amount of money for each pound of garbage pulled out of the river. 5 cents a pound? Figure that they can get at least 100 pounds of garbage in a big net, in probably twenty minutes of work. You just need to drag it behind you until it’s full.

I’m sure that pulling all the garbage out of the river won’t instantly cure it of its problems. (Currently, even fish can’t live in it.) But I’m also pretty confident that pulling all of the garbage out of the river would be an improvement over leaving it in…