Monthly Archives: January 2005

Howard Hughes, The Union Buster

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Doug Ireland wrote today that Scorsese’s The Aviator deified Howard Hughes while leaving out some key aspects of the entrepreneur’s personality, especially his strong hatred for communism and unions. In The Howard Hughes Scorsese Doesn’t Tell You About, Ireland posits that Scorsese, who previously made movies hailing the Hollywood-blacklisted communist, has gone establishment and now romanticizes the eccentric inventor whose efforts were thwarted at every turn.

“It is Hughes’ role in the blacklist and the anti-Communist witch-hunt that is the most shameful–as is Scorcese’s silence on the matter in his cinematic hagiography.”

While it is our right to call bullshit wherever we see it, it is also in our best interest to look for the most admirable in ourselves. Ostensibly, Scorsese’s biopic of Howard Hughes sugar-coated the inventor as a misunderstood crackpot, but if all we do is pooh-pooh our founding fathers for owning slaves while overlooking their feats of nation-building, it makes us very myopic people indeed. Ireland’s perspective is valid, however. Come on, someone had to say it.

This was my response to Ireland:

“It has occurred to me that quite a few innovators and businessmen back then saw communists as being against Yankee ingenuity, the true spirit of capitalism (not the uninspiring corporate fascism that calls itself ‘capitalism’ today). Also, not cooperating with HUAC meant jeopardizing their projects and need for invention.

“Not that I sympathize, but I see where they were coming from, as I see today why a lot of businesspeople (especially immigrants) vote for the Republican party. They hate the conservatives’ foreign policy and racist tendencies, but when it comes down to it, the business rises above all else.

“As a staunch supporter of Yankee ingenuity, but not what parades for capitalism today, I wish there were an American political party that supports innovation, free enterprise and the true movers and shakers, while preserving humanity and respect for others that the Republicans obviously do not possess.”

Revolution From Without

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Now that we have a neocon government bent on empire, how do we go about getting rid of them? Obviously not by sitting around in blogs and exhorting. Here is what I wrote on The Progressive Blog Alliance forum:

“The ineffectual Kerry campaign, some relevant new articles and personal meditation reveal that a revolution is necessary, but it has to be one that comes from outside the status quo. A great interview in Alternet also puts forth some of the same worries and ideas I have been entertaining in this vein.

“There are three interrelated things going on here:

“1. We cannot fight on the government’s terms. After 9-11 and the announcement of the war on Iraq, our “progressive” representatives …

Continue reading “Revolution From Without”

Update: John over at By The Bayou explains this much better than I ever can.

More Music Not To Buy

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Music purchasing just gets easier and easier. The following artists have joined the fight against music piracy: the Eagles, the Dixie Chicks, Bonnie Raitt, Sheryl Crow, Stevie Nicks, Tom Jones and Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson. Oooh, I’m scared.

Don Henley, the voice that brought you All She Wants To Do Is Dance says, “There is no more important case for the future of our business. These systems promote copyright violations on an unprecedented scale.”

Stop. There is no more reason to buy your music.

Does this mean big business conservatives like the Dixie Chicks now?

12 Year Old Corrects Encyclopedia Britannica

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Why do people give me funny looks when I say that more kids should be like this? There is nothing wrong with precocious brightness.

Lucian disputed the whereabouts of the Polish part of the Belovezhskaya Forest. According to the encyclopaedia, it lies in the Bialystok, Suwalki and Lomza provinces. But Suwalki and Lomza provinces have not existed since 1998. And, even when they did, the whole Polish section of the forest – which extends into Belarus – was in Bialystok.

… Another of Lucian’s bugbears was the terrain of the European bison. He argued successfully that it encompassed parts of Russia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Slovakia and Belarus – not just Poland.

After Lucian had written to the encyclopaedia with his complaints, senior editor Anita Wolff, based in the US, revealed that a geography specialist was working on a “major revision” of its Polish coverage.

As for the EB, it contains Madonna now, so we shouldn’t be too surprised about dropping standards.

This Is Why You Need MY Search Engine

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According to The Pew Internet and American Life Project survey released recently, “only 1 in 6 users of Internet search engines can tell the difference between unbiased search results and paid advertisements.”

While D argues that most people don’t know how to use search engines because they aren’t all that computer-savvy in the first place, this is great news for my non-profit, anti-Google search engine that will take you to unbiased search results (based not on how many hits it gets, but on how well it fits your query) and weigh/normalize various other results as you refine your search. Coming to a computer near you in full color, 3D and surround sound.

Don’t know how I’m going to to do it, but I will.

Grid Computing Hits It Big … Finally

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Mainstream industry are not early adopters, as is obvious from the only recent boom of commodity Linux, OpenSource and database solutions. Observing Miron Livny’s work in grid computing at the University of Wisconsin since 2000, I wondered why companies didn’t absorb and utilize this concept, when SETI@Home, Cancer Grid and academic researchers have put it to great use. A system like Livny’s Condor could crunch through the oil industry’s terrabyte seismic data sets just as it iterated our academic research group’s forward and inverse electromagnetic models. Some companies have internal grids and clusters, but what if all the oil majors could get together and host a super-grid and make it available to internal clients and then schools and research labs?

Globus which started as a government-funded project is now in the news because it has become a Consortium with backing from industry bigwigs such as IBM, HP, Sun and Intel. A great idea, but I foresee some problems: security and resource ownership. How secure is proprietary information and how much is company X going to pay the Consortium for time and resources used? Grids work well because so far they have been internal or non-profit. I can see a huge amount of bureaucracy created and time and money wasted by the various business/finance departments over this. Someone out there had already thought of this and wrote about it back in 2001.

Industry paranoiacs like oil companies may fall into this late in the game for fear of information loss/theft, but you never know. I maintain that it would be in their best interest to develop their own grid for data crunching and customize the necessary software and networks to their own business needs.

Grid Computing resources:
Cheat sheet: Grid Computing
grid.org

The Empire Of Vulgarity

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A scathing take on the Chimperor, reinauguration festivities and America’s hawkish neocon war plans by Mike Carlton of the Sydney Morning Herald.

“He’s in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this,” [Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, one of the two Pentagon undersecretaries under Rumsfeld] told a prayer meetin’ in Oregon just a while back.

Be very afraid.

When will a sufficient majority of progressives realize that logic does not work with Americans who think like Boykin? They blindly believe in the divine Christian right to rule this earth, all inferior races and godless white people be damned. No amount of reason or appeal for mercy can overcome such irrational and hateful zeal. One of the ways out of this is for us not to get our minds caught up in such thinking, especially when it comes to the issues in which we believe.

CRAPs!!

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The recent radio silence on VatulNet was caused by several incidents, not the least of which were the loss of my voice and, more importantly, parading in Krewe Du Vieux!!! Almost fully recovered, your favorite blogger is back in black (still mourning January 20th) and ready to tackle the new and (maybe) improved.

Dancing and prancing through the French Quarter for two hours was an experience bar none. Can you imagine what it is like to dress up as an armed panda and waltz through thousands of locals and tourists lining the streets of a major city to see you and beg for your beads and trinkets? My red and gold boa blowing in the cool breeze, watching the bubbles waft gracefully away from our tank into the night sky, handing out care packages (beads, bear-in-tank figurine and wristlets in a cup) to friends and cool strangers … WOW! All while the police block traffic and work security so that you can parade through the streets. So exclusive, so exhilarating, so freeing and SO MUCH FUN!

D was a great sport throwing beads into balconeys. My favorite part was garlanding little kids – they look like they just got a necklace made of pure gold! I should mention the support and creativity of my fellow krewe members, which made D and me feel so welcome and relaxed. The party after at the State Palace Theatre was a kickin’ time with music by Eh, La Bas!, Al “Carnival Time” Johnson and Jon Cleary & The Absolute Monster Gentlemen. Pictures are coming from various sources and will be posted to one of my picture galleries soon. Until then, amuse yourselves with pictures of my subkrewe, Krewe De C.R.A.P.S., building our float.

My cellphone’s antenna disappeared some time during Saturday evening’s proceedings along with my voice. Do you believe that was going to stop me from my primary priority of having a great time? I didn’t think so.