Archives for April 2013

James Demopoulos passed away Saturday night on his 75th birthday. That statement means almost nothing to anyone. Please allow me to rephrase; Jimmy Damon passed away Saturday night on his 75th birthday. That statement will ring loudly to anyone who knew the Chicago lounge scene in the 70’s and 80’s. It will ring even louder to anyone who’s been to Navy Pier and noticed the street sign stating that all the buses are driving on the Jimmy Damon Way. There will be a lot written in the regular media about his career, which was enviable, and about his talent, which was legendary, and about how Bill Murray managed to lionize and satirize him at the same time. Most of that will be 100% correct and written by copy editors who never met the man. That’s not a slam on them, that’s their job. But Jimmy Damon was my friend. He has been for almost 30 years. The fact that I was playing in punk bands while he was prepping for Sinatra tribute shows never bothered either of us. We liked each other and that was all we needed to know.

I have built his web sites, his promotional DVDs, his press kits and much more. Some I was paid for, some I did when he needed a favor. The truth is I enjoyed doing stuff for him so much I probably would have done all of it for free if I could. He would never have allowed that, of course, he had pride as well as talent.

In 2010 Jimmy did a lengthy interview with WKNO in Memphis. In it he recounted many of the stories he’d shared with me and a few he hadn’t. I didn’t feel slighted in the least. I knew stories about his family and his early years that were never going to be in an interview like that.

Not because they were salacious. They weren’t. Simply because they were quiet and personal and those kind of stories make boring press.

“My kids liked George Burns” is not that interesting of a story. Not to outsiders, anyway. Which, to me, is fine. We all need to be able to keep some part of our lives to ourselves.

Jimmy and his family have always been good and kind to me. So while I, Marilyn, Dana, Bartolomeo, Antonio, Alexa and Juan will mourn the loss of someone we deeply loved, we will also celebrate the life of a man who truly enjoyed all the gifts God had given him.

Hopefully, when all is said and done, each of us can say the same.

I leave you not with some woeful missive, or tearful treacle, but with a video of a laugh that Jimmy loved sharing.

Thank you for allowing me to let him share it one last time.

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Yesterday I got bought lunch by some people who wanted me to do some web work for them. As any independent contractor knows that is never a good sign. Usually they only buy you lunch to get out of paying you. And that was exactly the case yesterday. Still, I got a free lunch and that is the important part here today. As you may remember I recently almost killed my boss. He had been watching me use hot sauce after hot sauce on my food and decided he would give it the old school try. It was the same as if he had mastered a tricycle and then decided to street race a Ferrari. There were steps in between he was missing. Still, he survived. Yesterday’s lunch took place in a Chinese restaurant. I ordered the spicy squid with Szechuan pepper sauce on the side. The waitress asked me three times if I was sure. Three times I said yes. About a minute later a young man walked out and asked me the same question. He could have been the waitress’ grandson, a nephew or some random Occidental who happened to be near by. I had no way of knowing but assured him I had ordered correctly. Then, just before our meal was delivered the chef came out to ask me as well. I was beginning to worry. Was their Szechuan sauce somehow different? Toxic? But it wasn’t. It was spicy, which is what I wanted, but not dangerously so. Anyway, after the meal the waitress came up to me and asked the oddest question I have ever heard. “You sure you American?” I assured I was an American of Irish descent. She looked at me and laughed. “Oh, Irish,” she exclaimed, “that okay then, Irish crazy!”

So there you have it. I am genetically predisposed to insanity. But I still wasn’t crazy enough to take that job.

As it turns out, the evolutionary path that led to me may not be unique. The Keplar telescope is finding more and more, supposedly, habitable planets every day. Which means that molecules there might be doing what molecules here do and grouping up to form beings like you and me. Seth Shostack is so stoked about the latest discoveries he’s trying to figure out what to get a a Klingon for a first date.

The latest planets turned up by NASA’s Kepler telescope are — like the kids in Lake Wobegone — gratifyingly above average.

These new worlds offer both promise and insights, because they’ve got traits that are both appealing and mildly disconcerting.

In the four years since its launch, Kepler has chalked up 122 new and confirmed planets. It’s also caught the scent of nearly three thousand additional objects, of which probably 80 percent or more will turn out to be other-worldly orbs. Compare this track record to the approximately 700 planets painstakingly rooted out by ground-based telescopes in the last 18 years, and you can appreciate why some astronomers refer to the space-based instrument as a planet factory — churning out new worlds faster than a Hong Kong tailor turns out suits.

But here’s the thing: Kepler can find small planets (even smaller than Mercury). And diminutive worlds are more likely to be rocky, and lapped by oceans and atmospheres. In the vernacular of “Star Trek,” these would be M-class planets: life-friendly oases where biology could begin and bumpy-faced Klingons might exist.

Three of the new Kepler worlds have both the right size and the right orbital distances to boast temperatures at which water would remain liquid, a circumstance often assumed to be life’s sine qua non. One of these planets orbits the star Kepler 69 — which is comparable in brightness and size to our Sun. This possibly habitable planet is ingeniously named Kepler 69c.

The other two worlds are the spawn of a dimmer star called Kepler 62. Its brood includes at least five planets, but the habitable ones are labeled Kepler 62e and Kepler 62f.

All three of these potentially habitable worlds are “Super Earths.” The term isn’t intended to suggest planets with azure skies, unpolluted oceans, and sympathetic inhabitants. Rather, it’s a reference to size. Super Earths have super girths, between 1 and roughly 2-1/2 times that of our own planet. Habitable, in principle — just a bit bulked up.

According to SETI Institute scientist Jon Jenkins, Super Earths are turning up more and more often. They dominate the new worlds now being found by Kepler. Now that’s a bit of a head scratcher, because in our own solar system the number of Super Earths is zero. There’s nothing between the size of Terra Firma and Neptune, which is 4 times larger than Earth.

So is our solar system just unlucky, like a family with eight kids but no girls? Or is there some deeper explanation for the absence of a Super Earth nearby? We don’t know. And this is an unexpected puzzle for those who wish to know what constitutes an “average” solar system.

The discovery of these three planets has also encouraged scientists who look for life in deep space. The number of potentially habitable worlds discovered beyond our solar system is currently 9, out of a total of 872 confirmed exoplanets. The math is dead simple: it seems that the frequency of planets able to support life is roughly one percent. In other words, a billion or more such worlds exist in our galaxy alone. That’s a lot of acreage, and it takes industrial-strength credulity to believe it’s all bleakly barren.

So will SETI experimenters fix their antennas on these new planets? Well, the answer’s as obvious as a lounge lizard: of course they will. But give consideration to the fact that alien astronomers could have scrutinized Earth for more than 4 billion years without detecting any radio signals, despite the fact that our world is the poster child for habitability. Lots of planetary systems will require examination before we can reasonably hope to find an alien transmission. Still, at least we know that suitable planets are not dauntingly rare.

And there’s something else that encourages me in the search for signals from these newly found members of the planetary bestiary. Kepler 62e has an orbital period of 122 days; Kepler 62f’s period is 267 days. Consequently, every 89 years these two seductive orbs line up with Earth. They’re connected to us in a straight line. If some sophisticated society has colonized both planets, then their back-and-forth communication signals — if any — will be aimed our way during this special moment.

So in this case, the new discoveries clue us not only where we should hunt for signals, but when. And that might nicely improve the odds of finding Klingons.

vam ‘oH Dun!!!

Look it up.

While Seth is curious about Klingon poon, and aren’t we all down inside, I am more interested in knowing if a Super Earth will produce a Super Hot sauce.

Also, speaking of super, it was barely 6 months ago that Neil deGrasse Tyson actually discovered Krypton. So if a fictional world can be made flesh, as it were, imagine the amazing discoveries the real ones hold.

Biters “Hallucination Generation” UNCENSORED NSFW official music video HD from Video Rahim

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The history of mankind is littered with cautionary tales. The epics of Gilgamesh, the mythos of the Gollum, the legend of Frankenstein all pop readily to mind. Today we are going to look at another cautionary tale of woe. We are going to look at the tale of Ragnarök a/k/a Twilight of the Gods. Ragnarök is essentially the tale of how the Norse god Odin gave up his eye for the gift of all knowledge and foresight. Part of that knowledge was the time of his death and the death of almost all the gods. That final battle was called Ragnarök. There is a really bad movie called Krull that tried to explore that same theme. If you can imagine a toddler explaining Chaucer you get the idea of how well it was handled. Nevertheless, knowing the inevitable Odin soldiered on. Who knows, maybe he even looked forward to that final battle with the frost giants.

The question that begs is would you want to know the exact moment of your demise? It’s not a comfortable question. Does knowing that you’re checking out on June 3, 2027 due to natural causes exacerbated by years of drug and alcohol abuse have any benefit to you?

Ker Than, reporting for National Geographic, says that an Iranian scientist claims to have built a machine that can see into the future.

It’s not quite Back to the Future, but a young Iranian inventor claims to have built a time machine that can predict a person’s future with startling accuracy.

Ali Razeqi, who is 27 and the “managing director of Iran’s Center for Strategic Inventions,” claims his device will print out a report detailing an individual’s future after using complex algorithms to predict his or her fate.

According to the Daily Telegraph, Razeqi told Iran’s state-run Fars news agency that his device “easily fits into the size of a personal computer case and can predict details of the next 5-8 years of the life of its users. It will not take you into the future, it will bring the future to you.”

Razeqi says Iran has decided to keep his prophetic time machine under wraps for now out of fear that “the Chinese will steal the idea and produce it in millions overnight.”

Iran’s Deputy Minister of Science, Research, and Technology dismissed Razeqi’s claims on Friday in an interview with Fars—a sign of just how much attention the story has received.

We talked to Thomas Roman, a theoretical physicist at Central Connecticut State University and a co-author of the book Time Travel and Warp Drives, to ask about the possibilities for a Razeqi-like time machine and to debunk popular misconceptions about time travel. Here’s an edited version of our interview:

What do you think of Razeqi’s claim that he’s built a time machine that can predict a person’s future?

It’s completely nuts.

Does his alleged time machine break any laws of physics?

It’s hard to know because it’s so wacky.

What are some popular misconceptions about time travel?

One popular misconception is that you could go back to any time in the past. And that’s not true. You can only go back as far as the time when the time machine was invented. So if I invent my time machine today and I wait 30 years and go back to the past, the farthest back in the past I can go to is today when I turned my time machine on.

Another major misconception—and you see this a lot in time travel movies—is the idea that you can go back in time and change the timeline. In these stories, the time traveler goes backward in time and does something that mucks up the future and subsequently has to do something to “restore the timeline.” However, that can’t be the case, since we can’t have the same event both happen and not happen in the same universe. You can’t change the past.

For example, suppose I go back in time and try to kill my grandfather. If I succeed, then of course I’m never born and I could never have made the trip back using the time machine.

Once again, we can’t have the same event—the killing of my grandfather—both happen and not happen in the same universe.

Is there any way of getting around this “grandfather paradox”?

There are two possibilities. One is what’s sometimes called the self-consistency scenario, in which all events along the time loop that I make are adjusted to be self-consistent.

So for example, if I go backward in time and try to shoot my grandfather, something will always prevent me from doing so. The recoil on my shoulder makes me miss, or my grandfather ducks, or I change my mind. It’s like the universe and the laws of physics are conspiring to make things consistent.

The other possibility is that when I shoot my grandfather the universe splits and there’s one universe in which I shoot my grandfather and there’s another universe in which I did not shoot my grandfather.

Didn’t split timelines play a role in the latest Star Trek reboot by J. J. Abrams?

Yeah, there was something along those lines. In the movie, the Romulan bad guy Nero goes back to the past to get revenge against Spock, who he claims is responsible for the destruction of his home planet Romulus. So he’s going to get even by going back into the past to destroy [the planet] Vulcan.

But since Vulcan wasn’t destroyed in the original timeline—the one Nero came from—then upon going back into the past, he causes the universe to branch.

So the Vulcan he destroys is not the one in his original timeline, but the one in the new branch. So he’s not really getting revenge on the original Vulcan from his timeline. But I suppose revenge is revenge.

That aside, I thought that [using the concept of a split timeline] was a clever way of rebooting the franchise because then you have the same characters but you don’t have to slavishly follow the past history of the episodes since you’re in a new timeline where everything can be different.

Okay, so you might not be able to travel to the past. But is future time travel possible?

There’s no problem with that. In fact, we know how to do it in principle. If you travel very close to the speed of light, time slows down for the space traveler compared to someone on Earth.

Another way of traveling to the future is by orbiting very close to a black hole. For example, if you orbit around the black hole at the center of our galaxy, you could also have your time stretched relative to observers on the Earth.

If future time travel is possible, then could a time machine like the one the Iranian businessman claimed to have built actually work?

Going to the future is no problem. A mechanism for traveling into the future is afforded by [Einstein’s] special theory of relativity. It’s when you try to go backward that you run into the grandfather paradox. However, that said, what the businessman claims to have built is still nuts.

One thing that’s rarely mentioned in time travel stories is that if you travel back only in time but stay in exactly the same point in space, the Earth won’t be there anymore. So wouldn’t time travel require traveling through space as well?

Yes, it would have to. The Earth is turning on its axis, and it’s orbiting the sun. So the Earth isn’t always in the same spot in its orbit. So if you’re staying in the same place and traveling back to the past, the Earth is gone from underneath you. When you stop your time machine, you’ll be in a bit of a pickle.

Why do you think time travel is so popular in books and movies?

You have to admit, it’s a pretty tantalizing idea. Part of the appeal is that you can go back and see things for yourself that you only know through history books and the geological record. I think everybody would think it’d be really cool to go back and see dinosaurs or go back and visit ancient Greece.

I think another appeal is we all have things in our past that we wished that we hadn’t done, or that we wished hadn’t happened. And I think there’s the desire to be able to go back and prevent those things from having happened

Before we dismiss Ali Razeqi out of hand, I will remind you that insurance companies have had a version of this science for decades. It is called Actuarial Tables. If you click that link you will see that I have less than 35 years left to live.

They use the same algorithms that are behind the whimsical Death Clock.

Of course those are still generalities and averages. Razeqi is claiming to be able to give you a day by accounting of your future.

Which is clearly nuts.

You’re only dancing on this earth for a short while…. from Richard Young

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It has been a week of people just making stuff up. Some kids found a bear paw and suddenly “SCIENTISTS ARE BAFFLED” and “EVIDENCE OF BIGFOOT HAS BEEN FOUND!!” Respectively, no they weren’t and no it wasn’t. Additionally, a documentary was released this week to no fanfare, unless your a truly disturbed person, that purported to have proof of extraterrestrial life. The press releases showed many pics of a 6 inch tall humanoid figure. The press release also states that scientists could not classify the creature’s DNA. All cool except that, in the freaking movie, Garry Nolan, director of stem cell biology at Stanford University’s School of Medicine in California clearly states that the DNA is human. Moving on to the “of course we believe you” realm, a lady in San Diego appears to have been unknowingly transporting marijuana across the Mexican border. The fact that she turned herself in makes cops think she may be telling the truth. The additional fact that she also turned over 30 pounds of pot is also in her favor. Just a memo to the people who may be responsible; you live in California, there’s pot everywhere. You don’t need to smuggle it in.

But, oddly enough, that’s not the truly bizarre stuff. Esha Bhandari of the ACLU has a story this week that should scare the pants of anyone wearing them. Citing an article in the New Yorker, she notes that our government is deporting U.S. citizens to foreign countries.

Yes, you read that right.

This week’s New Yorker features the harrowing ordeal of Mark Lyttle, a U.S. citizen with mental disabilities who was deported to Mexico. Lyttle was born in North Carolina and has psychiatric and cognitive disabilities. He was inexplicably referred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2008 after being misidentified as an undocumented immigrant from Mexico even though he had never been to Mexico, shared no Mexican heritage, and did not speak any Spanish. As the New Yorker article notes, “Lyttle is brown-skinned,” and “the vagaries of race and ethnicity obviously played a part” in causing him to be singled out for immigration enforcement.

ICE detained Lyttle for 51 days, despite substantial evidence that he is a U.S. citizen, and put him in removal proceedings, where he was forced to defend himself without ever having the assistance of a lawyer. Lyttle was ordered removed in December 2008, and forced to cross the Mexican border on foot with only $3 in his pocket. Lyttle endured 125 days wandering through Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, sleeping in streets and shelters, and even being imprisoned in a Honduran jail, before he was finally referred to a U.S. consular officer in Guatemala who actually listened to his story. The officer obtained confirmation of Lyttle’s U.S. citizenship by calling one of his brothers who serves in the U.S. military. Only through the extensive efforts of Lyttle’s family and a lawyer was he finally able to return.

Lyttle’s tale is unfortunately far from unique. Although no exact numbers exist, ICE regularly detains and deports U.S. citizens without ever providing them with a lawyer. And the U.S. continues to run a system of detention and deportation that fails adequately to protect the rights of vulnerable individuals like Lyttle.

The New Yorker article by William Finnegan, “The Deportation Machine,” highlights many of the continuing systemic problems with ICE policies, including its use of the flawed Secure Communities program, the prevalence of racial profiling, and the lack of any right to appointed counsel for individuals in immigration court. This lack of counsel is particularly problematic for people such as Lyttle, who, because of their mental disabilities, may not understand the immigration proceeding enough to be able to represent themselves adequately.

Although Lyttle was eventually able to return home with the help of a lawyer, not all those who are wrongfully deported have access to the same resources. In Lyttle’s case, the government spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to detain him, prosecute his removal proceedings and litigate against his federal court case—brought by the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, the ACLU of Georgia, the ACLU of North Carolina, and pro bono lawyers including the law firm of Troutman Sanders—and ultimately pay him monetary damages. However, the government has never admitted any wrongdoing, nor has it put in place procedures sufficient to ensure that this cannot happen to others.

On Tuesday a federal district judge ordered the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Attorney General, and the Executive Office of Immigration Review to provide legal representation to immigrant detainees with mental disabilities who are facing deportation and who are unable to adequately represent themselves in immigration hearings. The ruling in the class-action lawsuit Franco-Gonzalez v. Holder is the first of its kind for immigrant detainees, who often languish in detention facilities for years without legal representation.

While a landmark victory, this ruling only applies to people in California, Arizona, and Washington. More is still need to protect the constitutional rights of those particularly vulnerable to mistakes caused by ICE’s aggressive enforcement tactics. As Mark Lyttle’s case demonstrates, the risk of wrongful detention and deportation is all too real for U.S. citizens and immigrants alike.

The old joke of “where do they bury the survivors” is not supposed to have a numerical answer. That is also true of the number of U.S. citizens who get sent back to where they didn’t come from.

When Cheech Marin released Born in East L.A., it was meant to be comedy not prescient. I’m big, white and have a baritone voice. If I’m not careful I could wake up in Moscow.

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I like comic books. Of course, now that I’m older I prefer graphic novels. The difference? Graphic novels are more expensive. Among other things. One common theme in many of them is humans who have been altered somehow. Spiderman is a good example. Nice kid meets radioactive spider and becomes a super hero. Or Wolverine. Nice guy, who just happened to be an assassin who can’t be killed, gets experimented on by evil government people in Canada (why is it always Canada?) and ends up with no memory and adamantium claws. He then uses this new accessory to become a teacher at a school for misfit toys. Or something like that. Nevertheless you get the basic idea. Otherwise normal people suddenly have awesome powers. That’s a lot of fun to read about and it’s fun to fantasize about.

But, because scientists are stone cold insane, we may soon find out how well such people would really fit in. U.K.’s Daily Mail reports that the Ministry of Defence plans on creating meta-humans within 30 years.

A generation of genetically-modified ‘X-Men’ superhumans could be among us by 2045, a Ministry of Defence think tank has said.
Advancements in gene technology could help humans gain mutant powers such as the likes of Wolverine, Cyclops and Storm in the popular comic book and movie series, it has been reported.

The MoD’s Development Concepts and Doctrine Centre warn however that ‘genetic inequality’ could result from advancements in biology being unequally shared across society.

The centre met last summer for a two-day summit, featuring experts from government, industry and universities. The details have been released following a Freedom of Information request by The Sun.

It was reported during the summit, held to predict what would happen in the future, that: ‘Advancements in gene technology could lead to a class of genetically superior humans by 2045.

‘Human augmentation is likely to increase over the next 30 years.

‘Discussions highlighted that it is possible that advances in biology, unequally shared across society, could generate genetic inequality.’

The X-Men are a team of mutant superheroes created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby, who first appeared in Marvel Comics in 1963.

The mutants use their powers for the benefit of humanity, despite an ever-growing anti-mutant sentiment among mankind.

The comics were turned into a highly-successful film series, featuring Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, Halle Berry as Storm, Ian McKellan as Magneto and Patrick Stewart as Professor X.

Okay, let’s take Wolverine as an example. Assuming he had a modicum of intelligence he could easily kill people with his claws and no one would ever know since they retract. Storm? Picture the Sahara ocean. Professor X? This is your brain would no longer be true. Magneto? He could pull down the Willis Tower on a whim.

I’m not saying that people with those powers would do those tings, I’m just point this out that there is no way in hell we could stop them if they did.

Sleep well everyone.

tsurufoto presents… Sheila Savage Saves The Day!!! (NSFW) from tsurufoto. on Vimeo.

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I am a big fan of debunking conspiracy theories. And, if I die today, I can lay some claim to promoting rational thought. My article on UFO theories was reposted by a NASA astrophysicist. The fact that you can read this post is completely attributable to the development of accessible porn has been duly documented. So, for all my horny literate fans, today’s blog is for you. One of our followers, yes – I am using the royal “we,” is a guy named F. Grey Parker. He plays in a band called Sister Soleil and answers his phone when I call. He took a moment out of his busy day to write the best refutation of any conspiracy theory I have ever read. I will now share his genius with you.

“I’ve Got Your Conspiracy Right Here, Motherfucker” (a rant)

By F. Grey Parker

You know what lies behind the motivations of every die-hard, “it’s a secret conspiracy,” “false flag” spewing nut?

Narcissism. Period.

They insist that only THEY know “more.” They insist that if you don’t agree with THEM, you are a “slave,” or you’re “stupid,” or you’re a “fool.”

Only THEY have the grandglorious intelligence to “see.”

Only THEY have the “wisdom.”

Only THEY can read the “secret signs.”

Only THEY (who are so much more amazing then “we,”) know that there has to be a link between Boston – Aurora -Sandy Hook – Oklahoma – Waco- Columbine – 9/11- the death of their neighbor’s dog – Vincent Foster – the FALN – and the saboteurs who gave the rebels the plan to the Death Star.

Fuck them.

Fuck them running.

I hate to wish ill upon anyone.

That said, when it’s THEIR mother or brother or sister or CHILD who has had their legs blown off by a lunatic following the call of his or her own inner demons?

I demand that THEY allow ME total access to wander through THEIR grief and declare that Alex Jones has a right to scrape THEIR loved one’s flesh, blood and bone off the floor for a fucking web show. And ad sales. And licensing to Glenn Beck so he can continue to sell Gold while it’s tanking.

If America actually was the hive of super-capable and terribly awesome tyranny you claim it is…?

I wouldn’t be putting up with your public pronouncements at all.

Because the “secret team” would have put YOU and the rest of your cowardly, worm-ridden-filth out of MY misery long ago.

So, in closing. Dear pseudo-political narcissists…

FUCK YOU.

And, by FUCK YOU, what he really means is “fuck you.” He’s really very polite.

As was noted on my last podcast, America offers numerous media venues for people to express themselves, see Alex Jones as proof that the filters need not be rational, but that does not mean that every viewpoint is accurate.

Or, to keep things simple, Rush Limbaugh has demanded the arrest of every drug user not named Rush Limbaugh.

Consider the source and keep things in perspective.

Digits – “Love is Only Affection” (NSFW official video) from Seth Mendelson on Vimeo.

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Man, what a great week to be a complete whack job. I don’t care if you’re left wing, right wing or the whole flipping bird, if you’re a paranoid lunatic this week has been manna from heaven for you. It’s had everything; bombs, Muslims, manure, cops, police states, the NRA, Facebook and our beloved Kenyan President allegedly espousing socialist values. And most of the stuff was completely meaningless. The guy on the roof in Boston? Probably a Dish Network repairman who happened to be in the area. The number of turban wearing terrorists seen racing from the scene in West Texas is still zero. That is also the same number of guns confiscated by the Obama administration. Which, surprisingly, is also the same number of times that the CIA has hacked intro my Facebook account. But none of that matters. What matters is what YOU think, not what FACTS are.

Let’s start over on the left wing. Many pro-Bama blogs are reveling in the fact that the state of Texas hasn’t inspected the exploding manure plant since 1995. That is wrong. The plant was inspected in 2006. And it was found to be unsafe. And it was fined. But, because they paid the fine, they were never inspected again. Yeah, Texas rolls like that. The nice people at Think Progress have a succinct take on it all.

It’s impossible to know at this point whether unsafe workplace conditions were a direct cause of this disaster, but we do know that it was cited for failing to obtain or qualify for a permit in 2006 after a complaint of a strong ammonia smell, a smell that was reported to be “very bad last night.” The plant hasn’t been inspected in the past five years, and in fact only six Texas fertilizer plants were inspected in that time. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is chronically understaffed, which means that a given plant like West Fertilizer can only expect to get a state inspection once every 67 years on average.

Texas is a great state for companies. Not so much so for people. Of course Texas is the state where children who meet the state’s academic requirements in High School are ineligible for state college.

The report notes that the Fordham Institute gave the state’s history standards a grade of “D,” calling it a “politicized distortion of history,” that is “both unwieldy and troubling” while “offering misrepresentations at every turn.”

These misrepresentations, Erekson writes, include excluding Native Americans from the standards curriculum until recently and citing states’ rights as a cause of the Civil War when Texas did not cite it in their historical “Declaration of Causes.”

That’s actually the good news when it comes to education in Texas.

On the NRA front things seem to be circling the drain. Their current president avoided military service due to failing a psyche evaluation and the dude who set the tone they live by these days killed an illegal immigrant in Texas (which turns out to be legal down there).

But, despite those auspicious facts, one of their biggest sources or personal revenue just pulled the plug and ran away. Adolphus Busch IV, of Budweiser fame, has taken his rifles and gone home.

Adolphus Busch IV, heir to the Busch family brewing fortune, resigned his lifetime membership in the National Rifle Association on Thursday, writing in a letter to NRA President David Keene, “I fail to see how the NRA can disregard the overwhelming will of its members who see background checks as reasonable.”

The resignation, first reported by KSDK, came a day after the Senate rejected a series of amendments to a gun control bill, including a bipartisan deal to expand background checks for gun sales. The NRA had vigorously opposed all those measures.

“The NRA I see today has undermined the values upon which it was established,” wrote Busch. “Your current strategic focus clearly places priority on the needs of gun and ammunition manufacturers while disregarding the opinions of your 4 million individual members.”

I should note that Busch joined the NRA before they were overrun by nutjobs. He’s just a guy who likes to hunt. Speaking as someone who has hunted and enjoyed it and who was taught gun safety at a young age, I can empathize with him. But, since he is white, rich and republican, his word means much more in the circles of the NRA than mine ever will. Hopefully someone will listen.

Since we’re leaning to the right now, let’s tilt all the way over.

As anyone who has not been in a coma knows, the police captured Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, the alleged Boston Marathon bomber, just a day after killing his brother in a wild shoot out (coming soon to a theater near you). He had hid in a boat which is, quite possibly, the worst get-away vehicle known to man when you are surrounded by concrete. Let him be a lesson to remind you that we all live with the decisions we make.

Okay, so he’s caught. His family is Chechan. Mine is Irish. Neither fact matters. He is Muslim. So is my next door neighbor. It doesn’t matter. He worshiped his older brother. So does almost every little brother. It doesn’t matter. The older brother got dissed after winning the Gold Gloves. That is cause for a well written letter to the editor, not an excuse for blowing up innocent civilians.

Simply put what we do know is almost meaningless, beyond the fact that they caught the right guy. Well, almost all of what we know is meaningless. News Busters is going to be keeping a close eye on the media to see if they report the important fact that Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev may have voted for Obama.

Several posts on what several news organizations have confirmed as the Twitter profile of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev indicate that that the 19-year-old Chechnyan immigrant was a supporter of Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election.

If that is indeed the case, it does not mean that Obama has any sort of connection with or responsibility for the bombing suspect or his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. It does, however, completely reverse the fantasy that many American liberals were openly hoping for: that the bombing suspects might be revealed as Timothy McVeigh 2.0, someone whose very name they could use to smear and deride anyone who stands against their belief system. In other words, one of those “dog whistles” we keep hearing so much about.

Now that information has emerged which not only indicates the suspected bombers were not radical conservatives but that one of them appears to be a supporter of President Obama, how widely will it be spread in the endless series of reports trying to report as many details about the two suspects?

Several news agencies have tracked down a Twitter account which is believed to belong to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the younger of the two brothers whom the FBI has identified as the people responsible for a pressure cooker bomb which killed three people and injured nearly 150.

Well, it was good of him to note that our president is not suspected of being involved in an act of terror. For the record Timothy McVeigh was a big fan of Bush the elder. I don’t remember that nugget coming up at his trial.

Do you know why?

IT DIDN’T FREAKING MATTER!!!!!!

Whatever drove the Tsarnaev brothers to do what they did is almost meaningless. There is no rationalization that justifies killing innocent people outside of a war zone. And even with that exception things get murky.

Nevertheless, I’m glad they caught him. If only to ensure that he is not part of a larger plot or a member of some organization that means to do us harm. Something which I doubt at this point.

BTW, big UPS to NBC for noting that using white terrorists is easier in America than using Arabs. I’m sure no one will take advantage of that. I mean, seriously, thank God there are no white people in the world who wish us ill otherwise that could prove horribly prophetic.

Oy freaking vey.

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Every Friday or so I do a 15 minute radio show on a FOX! Sports affiliate based in Aurora. That’s their shiny logo to the right. Since we talk about everything from python hunts in Florida to the history of the Gospels there is one simple rule in place; I must be able to verify publicly any sources I cite. It has never once interfered with the show. I apply the same basic rule here and provide links that you, yes you, can click to find out more about anything you are reading about. FOX! News, which is a very different animal than FOX! Sports, takes a different tack. Instead of verifiable sources they use the, ever popular, “some people say” technique. That gets you high quality journalism that clearly, and confidently, states things like “Some people say that President Obama is really a lizard sent by, pork loving, Muslim aliens ….” and so on. What the hell, if you’re just going to be making stuff up anyway you may as well have some fun with it.

Oh well, the only people who take FOX! News seriously are the same ones who think that Wal Mart is for uppity folk.

That’s why serious people who want serious news turn to CNN. At least they used to. CNN, recently (under new management) has taken to the “I spoke to the guy who met the gal who walked the dog of the guy who met the guy who might know the gal who could possibly shed light on this issue or, at the very worst, tell us how Pop Tarts are made” school of journalism. It’s bad enough that they air crap like Get to the Point, which is based so far from reality as to make delusional people squirm.

Actual quote; “I’m a vegetarian but I love bacon.”

Yesterday CNN decided to set the bar so low I doubt that anyone will ever get under it. They spent an afternoon pretending that an arrest had been made in the Boston bombings.

Which was 100% wrong.

Marsha Guthrie has the whole story.

Questionable information from sources and a rush to be first contributed to a flurry of erroneous media reports Wednesday of an arrest in the deadly Boston Marathon bombing. CNN, the Associated Press, FoxNews.com and the Boston Globe were forced to backtrack on reports — all of which cited anonymous law enforcement sources — that an arrest had been made in the attack Monday that injured almost 200 and killed three, including an 8-year-old boy.

Meanwhile, the FBI took the unusual step of issuing a statement correcting the media and asking that it show restraint in its reporting and verify information “through appropriate official channels.”

Veterans of the TV news trenches say that while sources can often offer incomplete, misleading or bad information, the onus is on the news organization to properly vet that information.

“There’s nothing worse than having to backtrack on your story,” says one veteran producer. “Because then you get a reputation for being wrong.”

Such mistakes are nothing new in journalism, of course. The 2000 presidential election, the 1996 Atlanta Olympic bombing and the 1995 Oklahoma City attack remain watershed moments for the news media in which serious mistakes were made in how they were covered. But the age of the instant Twitter update may have ramped up the rate of error with a string of faulty reports during more recent breaking news situations.

Multiple media outlets misidentified the shooter in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Conn., and also said the suspect’s mother was killed at the school. CNN and Fox News misreported the Supreme Court’s January decision on President Obama’s health care overhaul. ABC News correspondent Brian Ross erroneously linked Aurora, Colo., shooter James Holmes to the Tea Party. And early reports about the January 2011 Tucson, Ariz., shooting involving U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords said the congresswoman had died.

But the stakes now are particularly high for CNN, as the struggling cable news network attempts to reinvent itself under new chief Jeff Zucker.

“The game plan for CNN is to wait until a major story happens and then strut their stuff,” says independent news analyst Andrew Tyndall. “Anybody can make a mistake. But when CNN makes a mistake, it matters more to them because this is the one time that they can get eyeballs to sample them.”

CNN also came under significant criticism for its reporting that the suspect is a “dark-skinned male.” CBS News reported that the possible suspect is a white man wearing a “white or off-white baseball cap backwards.”

In a statement, CNN defended its decision to report that an arrest had been made. “CNN had three credible sources on both local and federal levels,” said a network spokesperson. “Based on this information, we reported our findings. As soon as our sources came to us with new information, we adjusted our reporting.”

The Globe reported that the (false) reports of a suspect in custody sent “spectators, photographers and reporters” flocking to “the federal courthouse on the South Boston waterfront, expecting the suspect to be brought there for a court appearance.”

NBC News’ Pete Williams was an early dissenter in the erroneous Boston Marathon reports, insisting on MSNBC that no arrests had been made even as CNN was sticking by its original story, which earned him plaudits from network executives.

“There’s no second guessing with Pete Williams,” says MSNBC president Phil Griffin. “There have been other times when others have gotten ahead of themselves. We don’t do it until we get clearance from a guy that everyone in this building trusts. And that has helped us through a lot of things.”

Williams also was among the reporters who correctly analyzed the Obamacare decision as other networks rushed to air with the findings from the dense report. And sources at ABC News say that the network’s black eye over the Aurora shooting has led to an abundance of caution in reporting breaking news stories. ABC News president Ben Sherwood has been cautioning producers and correspondents to be “extra vigilant in their reporting on this story,” said one source.

Certainly during a quickly evolving breaking news story, miscommunication can occur. In an effort to be transparent, CNN’s John King noted on the air that one of his law enforcement sources told him there was “significant blowback at the leaks.”

The AP, which reported that a suspect was in custody, also subsequently updated its story to say that the law enforcement official who briefed the wire service “stood by the information even after it was disputed.”

The scope of the investigation, which involves state, local and federal law enforcement also is likely contributing to the confusion. There were initial reports of five unexploded devices in the area. Multiple outlets reported that a “Saudi national” injured in the attacks was a suspect. The New York Post still had a story on its website late Tuesday saying that 12 people had been killed. Three people were killed in the twin bombings.

Meanwhile, officials have postponed a news conference scheduled for 5 p.m. ET Wednesday while offering no update on when it might be rescheduled.

All the way back on Tuesday I noted how rushing to judgement was never a good thing. Maybe someone can forward that memo to CNN.

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Mankind has had the ability to blow stuff up for millenia. However it is only in the last century or so that some people have decided that blowing up innocents is a viable way to get a message to the masses. Back in 1886, in our fair city, a militant labor activist tossed a bomb at police. What started out as the Haymarket Affair quickly became the Haymarket Riots. 11 people died and 4 were executed for the deed. Five if you count the one prisoner who killed himself rather than face the gallows. Most historians agree that the condemned were railroaded and were most likely innocent. Which means the coward who did the deed was never brought to justice. The Haymarket Riots are a prime example of how quickly things can go from bad to disastrous and cautionary tale of why we should never rush to justice.

Make no mistake about it. People who plant bombs, whether they be by a roadside, or in clinics, or anywhere else, are cowards. They want to bully from afar. They want to impose their will on others without having to face any personal consequences. They are despicable.

Yesterday a coward or cowards, we don’t know yet, left bombs along the route of the Boston Marathon. They timed the bombs to explode at around the four hour mark of the marathon. That is, traditionally, when the most amateurs cross the finish line. It is also when the race is the most crowded as friends and family gather near the finish line to cheer for their loved ones.

Simply put, the cowards were looking to maximize the number of dead and injured while avoiding any personal threat.

The true definition of a coward.

While there are already those sad souls who see a government plot here or take to their favorite social media site to demand that we bomb Pakistan (I do believe that these people would demand that we bomb Pakistan if they got a stale doughnut), the facts are that we know very little.

In many ways it is the not knowing that is more frightening.

We do know that the Pakistani Taliban made it abundantly clear that they had nothing to do with this. Since they hung out with Osama bin Laden I am guessing they aren’t worried about bad press or not being liked in America. In other words, I’d take them off the suspect list for now.

The sad thing is that the most likely suspect would be an American citizen. April 15th though the 19th is a wide set of hot button issues for right wing activists.

It was on April 19, 1995 when Timothy McVeigh attacked the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma and killed 168 people. That would become the worst domestic terrorist attack in American history.

April 19th is also the anniversary of the Branch Davidian catastrophe.

Add in Hitler’s birthday falling on tax day, people who hate the government in general and so on and you suddenly have a long list of U.S. citizens who could have perpetrated this.

That is not a happy thought.

If there is a happy thought in this it is knowing that the people of Boston will prevail. They will move on and live their lives. They will raise their families and love their friends. Like all victims of terror in this country, they will not let terror win.

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My ex wife was terrified of flying. She hinted at this problem but never fully shared her concerns. She also hated being away from me for extended periods of time. So, naturally, when I had a business trip to France I bought her a ticket. The first leg of the trip, to London, was uneventful. When we got there we were greeted by long line, the British love lines, and then were informed that the plane we were supposed to take to France was the subject of a bomb threat. She kind of lost her mind and refused to board a plane that was being screened by people wearing bomb repellent gear. As it turns out there are laws in the UK that state that if you refuse to get on a plane that is being swept for bombs the police can detain you for up to 72 hours to see if you were the person who planted the alleged bomb. So her choices were board the plane or go to jail in a foreign country. She, reluctantly, boarded the plane. To say that the next leg of our trip was tense would be an understatement of epic proportions. It was also on this leg of the trip that she discovered the European fascination with mayonnaise. It was on every sandwich offered. She hates mayonnaise. So I was sitting next to a terrified hungry woman who was learning, rapidly, to loathe Europe. It was not a great way to start a trip.

However, it turns out that her many fears may not have been illusory. Andy Greenberg reports that any terrorist with a cell phone can hijack your next flight.

Here’s an uncomfortable image to keep in mind during your next flight: A rogue hacker who can redirect planes at will with the touch of an Android phone’s screen.

That’s the frightening scenario laid out by Hugo Teso, a security researcher for the German IT consultancy N.Runs, in a presentation at the Hack In The Box security conference in Amsterdam Wednesday. By hijacking a protocol used to send data to commercial aircraft and exploiting bugs in flight management software built by companies including Honeywell, Thales and Rockwell Collins, Teso told the crowd that he could send radio signals to planes that would cause them to execute arbitrary commands such as changes in direction, altitude, speed, and the pilots’ displays.

“You can use this system to modify approximately everything related to the navigation of the plane,” Teso told me in an phone interview following his talk. “That includes a lot of nasty things.”

Read more about the researcher whosays he’s found hackable flaws in airplanes’ navigation systems

Hackers and security researchers have warned for years of vulnerabilities in next-generation air traffic control protocols. But Teso focused on a different protocol called Aircraft Communications Addressing and Report System, (ACARS) a simple data exchange system that has evolved over decades to now include everything from weather data to airline schedules to changes to the plane’s flight management system. (FMS)

Teso says that ACARS still has virtually no authentication features to prevent spoofed commands. But he spent three years reverse engineering the flight navigation software that receives ACARS signals to find bugs that allowed him to send his own commands to the systems, either from a software-defined radio that can be tuned to use ACARS or from a compromised airline system. In his talk, Teso demonstrated an Android application he built that allowed him to redirect a virtual plane with just a tap on a map application running on his Samsung Galaxy phone. “ACARS has no security at all. The airplane has no means to know if the messages it receives are valid or not,” he says. “So they accept them and you can use them to upload data to the airplane that triggers these vulnerabilities. And then it’s game over.”

In his presentation, Teso explained that he experimented on used FMS hardware he bought from eBay and FMS training simulation software that was advertised as containing some or all of the same code as the systems in real planes. In our interview he declined to specify exactly what vulnerabilities he discovered in that code, saying that he has instead contacted the Federal Aviation Administration and the European Aviation Safety Administration, and is working with the affected aerospace companies to fix the problems.

Honeywell, for its part, confirms that it’s been talking to Teso’s employer. But spokesperson Scott Sayres argues that Teso’s work doesn’t necessarily prove any real vulnerabilities in Honeywell’s equipment or software. “We take this seriously and we’re going to work with N.Runs to assess this,” says Sayres. “But as Teso readily admits, the version he used of our flight management system is a publicly available PC simulation, and that doesn’t have the same protections against overwriting or corrupting as our certified flight software.”

Teso’s supervisor at N.Runs, fellow security researcher Roland Ehlies, counters that the vulnerabilities Teso found in the FMS software weren’t related to the PC version he was testing, but rather to functions that would also exist in real planes. “From our perspective it would work with at minimum a bit of adaptation,” he says.

I’ve reached out to Rockwell Collins, Thales, the EASA and the FAA for comment and will offer an update if I hear back from them.

Both Honeywell’s Sayres and Teso agree that even if a hacker were able to alter the FMS through commands remotely sent over ACARS, the pilots of the plane should be able to override those malicious commands with their own valid ones. Nonetheless, Teso said in his presentation that at the very least, a hacker could perform disruptive stunts like causing the cockpits’ lights to blink wildly or the passengers’ pressurized air masks to drop.

Teso’s presentation is far from the first to raise the potential for hackers to disrupt air travel. Two talks at the Black Hat and Defcon security conferences last summer suggested that hackers could spoof or intercept signals sent using the next-generation air traffic control system Automated Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast or ADS-B. That trick might allow an attacker to suddenly generate the appearance of a non-existent plane in a pilot’s direct path, potentially causing chaos in the air.

Tricks with ACARS to disrupt or hijack planes’ flight management systems–if they bear out in real world tests beyond those Teso has performed–could be far more dangerous. Teso believes that the bugs he’s discovered in those navigation systems can be fixed. In the meantime, those in the cockpit would be wise to keep an eye on their autopilot.

General question; why is this software available to the public in the first place? Is there a huge demand for developing homemade auto-pilots? Secondly, why is this research being made public? Terrorists may not have nuclear weapons but they sure as hell have cell phones.

Anyway, the next time you hear a flight attendant telling someone to turn off their cell phone thank them. They may have just saved your life.

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