The Early Birds

Finally, some hard evidence to show that Monte Verde wasn't first. It's been pretty much accepted by everyone that Clovis wasn't first, but the oldest, certainly datable materials have been from Monte Verde. There have been tons of people claiming carbon from a fire or hearth dating to some absurd number, like 24,000 years, but nothing concrete. It's something that people in the know have been pulling their hair out over, since everything in them says that people were here earlier, but we had nothing to prove it.

This isn't the kind of date I would have fantasized about, that date is 20,000+, but 14,340 is pretty damned good. I just feel, with a degree of understanding about human nature, that if we were building boats, or roaming 20,000 years ago, we found our way to North and South America. Too bad the fuckers were so transigent that they likely never stayed in one place too long. And if Monte Verde, way in the southern part of Chile, was dated at more than 13,000 years, where are all the earlier people that traveled down? Did they come straight from the Pacific Islands? I find that hard to swallow because of the length of the journey, but damnit if Heyerdahl didn't make it. Granted, he was heading west which is easier than east. Still, it's possible.

And the theory of people following the coastline is impossible to deny. A group following the coastline and ignoring big game in favor of fishing could make the journey very quickly, maybe in a decade or less. And the fact that the feces discovered had little bison in it seems to indicate a reliance on smaller game.

And, for me, the Solutrean hypothesis is also hard to ignore. Again, a journey is possible, and a group following the southern glacier via small boats could make the journey quickly. If only we could find evidence in the Eastern US indicating an early presence. Still, this does not explain the first people to come to the continent.

These fecal droppings, otherwise known as poo, confirm East Asian origin, so Solutrean or not, people from Asia were certainly here and I would wager they were the first. I just know that there is evidence out there waiting to confirm a first steps date of well more than 20,000 years ago.

Again, I'm copying the whole Yahoo! article since they delete the articles after a week or so.

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer Thu Apr 3, 7:20 PM ET

WASHINGTON - New evidence shows humans lived in North America more than 14,000 years ago, 1,000 years earlier than had previously been known. Discovered in a cave in Oregon, fossil feces yielded DNA indicating these early residents were related to people living in Siberia and East Asia, according to a report in Thursday's online edition of the journal Science.

"This is the first time we have been able to get dates that are undeniably human, and they are 1,000 years before Clovis," said Dennis L. Jenkins, a University of Oregon archaeologist, referring to the Clovis culture, well known for its unique spear-points that have been studied previously.

Humans are widely believed to have arrived in North America from Asia over a land-bridge between Alaska and Siberia during a warmer period. A variety of dates has been proposed and some are in dispute.

Few artifacts were found in the cave, leading Jenkins to speculate that these people stayed there only a few days at a time before moving on, perhaps following game animals or looking for other food.

The petrified poop — coprolites to scientists — is yielding a look at the diet of these ancient Americans, Jenkins said.

While the analysis is not yet complete, he said there are bones of squirrels, bison hair, fish scales, protein from birds and dogs and the remains of plants such as grass and sunflowers.

The oldest of several coprolites studied is 14,340 calendar years old, said co-author Eske Willerslev, director of the Centre for Ancient Genetics at Denmark's University of Copenhagen.

"The Paisley Cave material represents, to the best of my knowledge, the oldest human DNA obtained from the Americas," he said. "Other pre-Clovis sites have been claimed, but no human DNA has been obtained."

The date for the new coprolites is similar to that of Monte Verde in southern Chile, where human artifacts have been discovered, added Willerslev.

Jenkins said it isn't clear exactly who these people living in the Oregon caves were, since there were few artifacts found. He said there was one stone tool, a hand tool used perhaps to polish or grind or mash bones or fat.

"We are not saying that these people were of a particular ethnic group. At this point, we know they most likely came from Siberia or Eastern Asia, and we know something about what they were eating, which is something we can learn from coprolites. We're talking about human signature," he said.

"If you are looking for the first people in North America, you are going to have to step back more than 1,000 years beyond Clovis to find them," Jenkins said.

The Clovis culture has been dated to between 13,200 and 12,900 calendar years ago and is best known by the tools left behind.

Michael Waters, director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Texas A&M University, said the find, along with indications of human presence at other locations, adds to the evidence for a pre-Clovis human presence in North America.

"The genetic evidence from the coprolites from Paisley Caves is also consistent with the current genetic data for the peopling of the Americas — that the earliest inhabitants of the Americas came from Northeast Asia," added Waters, who was not part of the research team.

Anthropologist Ripan Malhi of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, said this data along with material from Alaska provide increasing "evidence that ancestors of Native Americans used a coastal route during the colonization of the Americas." Malhi was not part of the research team.

Jenkins said that discoveries like those in the Oregon caves "help us to reconstruct the American past."

"Our heritage is really important and it is important to the majority of the American public. If you don't know where you come from, it's hard to have a feeling of community, of participation."

To make sure the Oregon cave material hadn't been contaminated with modern DNA, the researchers tested more than 50 people who worked at the site. The DNA testing indicated that the feces belonged to Native Americans in two groups that can be traced to Siberia and East Asia.

In their paper the researchers dated the coprolites at 12,300 "carbon years" before the present. Prior to 3,000 years ago, carbon years differed from calendar years, resulting in the date of approximately 14,300 calendar years for the coprolites.

The research was funded by the Museum of Natural and Cultural History, University of Oregon; Association of Oregon Archaeologists and the Marie Curie Actions program.

Towering

Not to let Dubai hog all the limelight, yet another disgustingly rich arab guy has decided that the way into the Western world's heart is to build huge fuck-off buildings. My first point is that, no, I'm sorry, it doesn't work that way. The average Westerner has a hard time remembering where Paris is, much less the conglomerate of sand-covered metropoleis that these men call home. You do not "buy" your way out of being a backwater, horrid culture by spending your oil money to build the very shimmering towers of excess that so many in your countries decry. You will remain "those fellers that wear towels on their heads" to most of American for many, many years. And, in my eyes, you remain a bunch of savages as long as you have separate entrances for men and women.

But enough about that, the mile-high tower is very cool. It's sad, too. I was hoping that America would be the first to build the mile tower with the Illinois, Frank Lloyd Wright's swan song. Ah well, how they overcome a number of design issues is of immense interest to me.

• The temperature between the top of the building and the bottom is going to be immense. Aside from the fact they're in the fucking desert, a mile difference straight up is going to play havoc with the materials used. Most buildings aren't used to 20-30 degree differences at the same time.


• In the Illinois, the height would require an immense number of elevators to reach the upper floors. So many that a large portion of the lower floors and even middle floors would be taken up just servicing elevators. Large towers, today, have express elevators that reach certain levels which allow people to take slower, smaller elevators to their desired floor. Still, a mile high would require multiple stops, and express elevator speeds close to 60mph. Even still, times to get to your desired floor could be in excess of thirty minutes.
  
  Would they follow FLW's idea of massive, five-story elevators on the outside of the building? An elevator that large would have to make so many stops for all its passengers that you would be in the elevator for an eternity waiting to get to the top.


• Just getting stuff moved around the building is an amazing problem. Getting water to the large population above is an engineering feat in and of itself. Would they let the waste water down and run generators from its flow to power more water up? Would they have recycling centers in the upper floors? Would they store reservoirs that would supply peak usage times and recharge during down time?


• Materials! What the hell would they make it out of, or I should say, of what the hell would they make it? Steal flexes a lot, as does aluminum. Would they use composite materials, such as the layered fibers with which they make plane fuselages? Giant beams of reinforced carbon fiber could certainly fit the bill, but they aren't very resistant to heat. A good, two/three-inch coating of fire-resistant material could do it.


• Powering the beast is another immense challenge. The size of the power infrastructure to get electricity to the upper regions would be amazing.

This reminds me a lot of Sky City, the never-realized super project to be built in the heart of Tokyo. It was on that show on Discovery that also had the floating city that was a mile long. I think the primary importance of this building, if it does get built, is the answer to all those technical questions. We're covering the globe with the pestilence that is us, and we have to build up. Towers measured in miles are truly the future of our species, and if our addiction to oil is what funds it, I can think of no better use for the money than our very survival.

P.S. Did I use the word immense, enough?

Sexy.

In the most recent New York Times Magazine, there is an article about modern, college-level abstinence proponents. To them, abstinence is philosophical, research-based, an outgrowth of feminism, sexy and fun, and all of the above.

I agree with none of those statements.

• It is not philosophical, it's ideological and theological, but I guess it could be argued.
• Research-based is comical; more on that later.
• Abstinence as feminism is just dumb. The virginal female, the group to whom these people used to market exclusively, is a classic male-constructed ideal. Feminism has nothing to do with holding back, it has everything to do with letting go and not being ostracized for it. Saying that abstinence is feminist is insulting.
• Sexy and fun is also dumb. There is no such thing as sexy and fun without sex and fun. This is them trying to market their position and failing.

The first part, philosophy. The fact that the bulk of these people are Catholics gives you an idea of how much philosophy plays a part in this. True philosophical inquiry would see them questioning their own views and actively trying to bash their way to enlightenment and truth. This is dogma. Saying this has anything to do with philosophy degrades the pursuit.

You cannot form logical arguments from this. Go ahead, try. Write out a formal logic equation to support no sex before marriage. Try to discover a contradiction that makes abstinence the only choice. Metaphysics? Anything there? Maybe epistemology. We can break down the argument to degrees of justification. But, no, that's all just the analysis of semantics. This isn't philosophy. The arguments fall apart without theological or cynical axioms.

The second part, feminism. I guess you could call me a feminist. I'm apparently more a feminist than these wack-jobs. I want to see women able to fuck whoever they damn well please with absolute abandon and receive no negative response from society. Saying that holding back your precious virginity from the evil and vile males until they plop a ring on your finger is cynical, close-minded, and self-centered.

And when I say evil and vile, you can tell from even the short text in the magazine that that is how the main subject, Janie Fredell, feels. They focused on females, marketed with cards that said "Why wait? Because you're worth it." Again, precious virginity, but also that men are evil! We're here to steal your virginity!

Freddel had said that "She had awakened to the wage gap, to forced sterilization and female genital mutilation — to the different ways that men have, she said, of controlling women." You found out about these things in college? Don't you, like, read newspapers? This shit is common knowledge. Now, how did you get into Harvard?

Her "men are evil" theme continued;

One of these was sexual. Fredell had seen it often in her own life — men pushing for sex, she said, just to “have something to say in the locker room,” women feeling pressured to have sex in order to maintain a relationship. The more she studied and learned, the more Fredell came to realize that women suffer from having premarital sex, “due to a cultural double standard,” she said, “which devalues women for their sexual pasts and glorifies men for theirs.”

Yes, we have a double standard, but it's fading fast. And you know how all men are just waiting to talk about the pussy they just plowed to the guys at the bar? Yeah, the guys that do that are scumbags, anyhow. How they treat women is the least of our problems with them. If you're dating him, you're the moron for staying, not for sleeping with him. Smart women, here's a tip, DON'T DATE ASSHOLES! Now, I know it's hard, them all hot on their motorcycles, with their leather jackets and dance numbers, or whatever the hell bad boys do, but you know them. You can pick them out. Not all men are evil.

Even the guys hate guys!

Keliher was an earnest man in dark clothes, unwrinkled and untouched, with the face of a subdued boy. Quite openly, he explained that his father was sent to prison for child molestation and that Keliher’s mother later married an electrician who eventually left her for a woman 20 years younger. So it was not hard to understand Keliher’s point of view. “I just have a huge amount of frustration with guys,” he told me. “They need to know that so much hurt can come from the lack of respect for women.”

Man, it's just one big hate-fest. No, dude, you have frustration with assholes. Not guys. None of my friends are assholes. I'm a rather big asshole, but none of my friends are. Also, like everyone else involved, this guy is a raging Catholic. Apparently, his mother enrolled him into some Christian thing and he suddenly became a model student. He learned "how to love women out of strength and not out of need.'" What? I don't love my partner out of strength, I love her out of love. That's the dumbest freaking thing I've ever heard. I hate aphorisms.

I'd like to point out, here, that from an evolutionary standpoint, abstinence is great for guys since he knows with a high degree of certainty that the child for which he is providing is his genetic offspring.

And for poor Janie, someone so self-righteous, cynical, and close-minded is doomed. Unless she changes her views, she's never going to find a nice guy and will be miserable her whole life through. I guess that works. Everyone in her home town sounds that way, considering they called Harvard "Godless liberal Harvard." Oh yeah. The preeminent educational institution on the continent. Yep. You definitely know better, you twat.

She quotes John Stewart Mill, "She said she read in Mill that women are subordinated in relationships as a result of “socially constructed norms.”" John Stewart Mill died in Eighteen Seventy Three. Society has changed a little bit since then, but it gives you an idea of in what century her morals are stuck. You can quote philosophy from 1873, but social commentary has an expiration date.

Third part, research based. "If men are commonly more promiscuous than women, it is only because the culture allows it, she said." I've got a few evolutionary biologists who would seriously love to argue that point.

Murray and his girlfriend, Sarah Kinsella, decided that their club would focus on the issue “most immediately relevant” to people on campus — premarital sexual abstinence — and would try to persuade people toward it with arguments less philosophical than scientific. “Many people on our campus were deprived of information,” Murray told me, and so he says he went looking through peer-reviewed journals and government sources for research that supported the abstinence view.

That is the reason they're not scientists. Selectively plucking out data to support your statement is what Republicans do, not scientists. I've read all the same articles they've read, and that means they ignored the near-countless articles that do not support their ideals. I wonder if they saved all the work by the Camerons about how gay parents destroy children?

“We found a huge body of scholarship that suggested conclusions that nobody on our campus was making,” he says. They posted the conclusions on their Web site — the belief that “ ‘safe sex’ is not safe”; that even the most effective methods of birth control can fail; that early sexual activity is strongly associated with all manner of terrible outcomes, from increased risk of depression to greater likelihood of marital infidelity, divorce and maternal poverty. Premarital abstinence, on the other hand, is held up by True Love Revolution as improving health, promoting better relationships and, best of all, enabling “better sex in your future marriage.”

CORRELATION DOES NOT INDICATE CAUSATION! This basic, easy-to-remember premise from scientific research seems lost on the public. You can link lots of nasty stuff with other nasty stuff. It's really easy. I can probably link STD's to bank robbery. it doesn't mean that STD's cause banks to be robbed. And yes, the only form of birth control that is 100% effective is abstinence, but since you're Catholics, even that's not true. If 106 billion people have ever lived, half are female, that means any given female has a 1 in 53 billion chance of spontaneously producing a child. Bummer.

And if you use a condom correctly, combined with the pill, or even contraceptive foam, chances of pregnancy are so low as to be statistically insignificant. You will not get pregnant. And if, in some bizarre confluence of coincidence, you do get pregnant, abortions are easy to get. But, oh right, that's evil. I wonder if Lil' Janie came across the historical info about how the modern abortion wars are a direct result of religious oppression of women in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Anthony Comstock, and all that rot. You can literally trace, through the first and secondary sources, almost down to the month, when they changed from marketing abortion as something evil because it allowed women to be promiscuous to KILLING BABIES. They didn't see babies as anything more than property. It was a battle over contraception; specifically insofar as it had to do with women's freedom.

(And on the subject of Comstock, why do all these moral crusaders say they're defending the children? And if the previously mentioned guy, Keliher, and his discussion how amazingly horny he is is any indication, Comstock was against all this stuff because he wanted pussy but was too bleeding ugly to get any.)

Fourth part, it's sexy and fun. I think the sentence mocks itself. The quotes from Keliher imply that he's having no fun at all. He describes his sexuality as an "untamed beast." He talks about being unable to keep it under control. Oh yeah. Sounds like a blast. And sexy isn't sexy without sex. It's in the fucking word. Haha. Fucking word. I kill myself.

Ok, that's enough. Almost everything is wrong about this article. Lil' Janie talked about feeling that her lifestyle was being attacked in the school newspaper. Well, I have a tip for you, don't have such a ridiculous lifestyle. And if you do, admit what it is, religious, and go to where you won't be mocked. If you want to hang around with other religious types, head south, and leave the smart thoughts to us edge-oo-mucated folks. You're in college. Having an ice cream social filled with people pretending to be asexual overgrown kids is going to get ridiculed. Go home and leave us to our Godless liberalism. We don't want you.

Fact or Fiction?: Living People Outnumber the Dead (Scientific American)
Students of Virginity (The New York Times)

God Made Me Think Good.

I was at How Stuff Works, looking up how ab exercises work, and a banner ad for Regent University popped up in the left corner. Apparently, Christians do a lot of ab and core work.

Well, their tag line of sorts is "Online. Christian. Learning." I just... I... well first, having the words "Christian" and "Learning" in the same sentence is just wrong. Perhaps they figured that and that's why each word is its own sentence.

Take out "Christian." Online. Learning. That just sounds dumb. Yes. I know I'm learning. That's kind of the point of a University. And make a sentence somewhere! If they had said something that matters aside from the obvious, like "Online. Christian. Muslim-free." I think it would have been a better ad. And is "Apply to your future today" even grammatically correct?! There should be a comma after 'future.' What they wrote means I'm applying to a today that is in the future. And I get what they're trying to say, but applying to your future isn't grammatically solid. It should be "apply for your future." My future is not an institution. This also implies that I can be rejected from my future. Their sentence thus means that I should apply to an abstract thing that exists in a future now.

And just because I'm a marketing and design guy, I'm going to make fun of their actual image. Did they take that photo with a cell phone? It's suffering from so much compression blocking that the two people in back are either melting or suffering from Downs. And the ad itself is as compelling as yogurt! Let's face it guys, the only thing you really have going for you is your Christian bent. You should make that the focal point of the ad because that's what you're really selling. You've got no history, no fame, and your distinguished alumni list has such luminaries as "National Middle School Principal of the Year, Sharon Byrdsong." I would put CHRISTIAN and ONLINE in huge letters.

Man! God may have created the Heavens and the Earth, but he teaches grammar, marketing, and web design really poorly.

I was also surprised to see this ad at How Stuff Works. I always figured that the point of religion is avoiding too much knowledge about things. Ah well. Those wacky religious types. Always catching you off guard.

Oh, and the free issue of Christian Leader Magazine, you're saying that people would otherwise pay for it?

Earth Hour... An Hour For Earth.

Remember to turn off everything you have for an hour at 8:00pm, whenever that comes for you. No, it won't do much, but if enough people in the US do it, it might let the rest of the world know that we're not all as dense as certain politicians. I feel the need to keep reminding them.

http://www.earthhourus.org/

New York Times Anomaly

I get the New York Times. I'm a full week subscriber and, recently, I've been getting the Wall Street Journal instead of the Times on random days. It happened again, today, March 26th.

Now, the rational part of my mind says that my delivery dude probably just delivers both the Times and the Journal to this area and gets them mixed up now and then. But, the paranoid part of my mind keeps intruding and conjuring conspiracy theories.

Rupert Murdoch, the closest thing we have to a living member of SPECTRE, recently purchased both the Dow Jones and all its holdings, which includes the Journal. He has made no secret of the fact that he wants to turn the Journal into a competitor for the New York Times, both as an economic and business source and in political bent (read: facism).

So, could he actually be arranging for Times subscribers to "accidentally" receive issues of the Times as a form of guerilla marketing? How far does the conspiracy go? Is he paying off individual delivery men? Is the President involved?? IS BRITNEY INVOLVED???

So, has anyone else been receiving "accidental" issues of the Journal instead of their usual Times?

Autism SPECTRUM

There is an article in March issue of Wired, which is available for reading on their website, about a young woman who has autism. She recorded a video, described the world in which she lives, types 120 words per minute (blows me out of the water), and hangs out in Second Life with others like her. She says that just because she has autism, it doesn't mean she's trapped in her own world and that she's no better or worse than us.

About three paragraphs in, I expressed doubts to the veracity of the video and claims; suspecting aid from a caretaker. The article addresses a variety of scientists who also had similar doubts.

The front cover of the magazine has, just above the logo, "The Truth About Autism: Everything You Know Is Wrong." Well, no. Everything I know is not wrong. And aside from the epistemological argument that if it's wrong, you can't possibly know it, I found the title rather absurd.

Autism and autism spectrum disorders are a pattern of behavior. That's it. We can't find anything wrong physically with most patients, and when we do find abnormalities, they're frequently in different parts of the brain. The amount we know about autism is surprisingly small.

I think this is the weakness of the article and the argument that autism is different, not deficient. They make that final point at the end of the article, finally hearing from scientists who say the difference model is even more inaccurate than the arguable inaccurate deficiency model. If we all lived in the wild, and something about you would make you sit there until you died, that means something is wrong with you. If you can't go to the bathroom yourself, eat, or go outside by yourself, something is wrong with you. If communication with the whole of your species is difficult to impossible, something is wrong with you.

I think the aspect of this research that is critically important that was totally overlooked in the article and, in general, in the literature is that autism is likely, in my opinion, not a disorder. It is a whole bunch of disorders. The focus of the article, Amanda Baggs, who recorded the video, is high-functioning. She's obviously intelligent, cna write, communicate, and angrily blog about misperceptions about autistics.

That's great! But what if she doesn't have autism? There are many illnesses that have cold-like symptoms, we don't call all of them colds. I suspect that like many mental illnesses, autism isn't one thing. I more than doubt, I feel highly confident that illnesses like schizophrenia are a family of illnesses. It's just that we understand so little about the functioning of the brain that the best we can do is come up with crude names to describe behavioral patterns. Schizophrenia, schizotypal, schizoid.

Autism spectrum disorder. Spectrum? Spectrum? Could you imagine that sort of nomenclature attached to colds. Instead of influenza, we had cold spectrum illnesses. We don't know anything about this! Instead of focusing on "curing" or "accepting" autism, we should instead be focusing on using autism-like behavior as another window into the workings of the brain as a whole, in hopes of one day getting a grip on its functioning.

The Truth About Autism: Scientists Reconsider What They Think They Know (Wired Magazine)

Harping About Design

I know I'm harping about design, these past few posts, but it is a critically important subject.

Major design has taken two directions: either high-falutin' über-expensive crap aimed at people in Manhattan, or watered-down, mass-market designs aimed at the lowest common denominator. That middle ground is losing out to the large profits to be had on either extreme of the spectrum.

If we could only combine the two extremes and provide fancy designs for the masses. If only! This rant is brought to you by Motorola. Yes, Motorola, a company so caught in design doldrums that there are rumors of them selling off their entire cell phone division. They made the StarTac, then they made the Razr, and have since made shit.

Well, actually, the StarTac was cool, but Motorola's phones have been shitty for some time. The Razr was a shitty phone, it's fancy design just overshadowed that. Then, after everyone tired of the design and all the immitators, everyone realized how terrible the phone actually was. High-falutin' design covering up terrible engineering. I'll give them credit, though, it was high-falutin' design for the masses. The Razr showed it can work!

All is not well, though, as it appears Motorola is planning to shutter its entire UK development and design lab.

Motorola Firing Half its Designers at a UK Facility (Gizmodo.com)

A Tribute

Daisy Daisy, give me your answer do
I'm half crazy all for the love of you
It won't be a stylish marriage
And I can't afford a carriage
But you'd look sweet
Upon the seat
Of a bicycle built for two.

It's Not Easy Being Green

In a recent post I said, in regards to a lack of innovation in design, "Housing and architecture is in such desperate need of it the world is now aware of it." While we have plenty of hot, edgey designers, the designs that actually make it into mass production are always sad, pale retreads of existing ideas and directions. We have not had a fundamental shift in general design trends, especially industrial design, in a long time. I attacked housing and architecture specifically because the world is cruising for an environmental bruising, and our houses are some of the worst culprits. As such, this article at SciAm was of special interest.

One thing pops into my head: regulation. The government has one tool, regulation, and when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. DO NOT REGULATE! ENCOURAGE! I have a hard time naming moments when laws actually helped a situation. Instead of simply trying to pass regulation, then, when it fails because it was a dumb fucking idea, blaming the populous who didn't want your plan, enact government funded encouragement. Subsidize environmental building. You can even come up with a cool name that you can make a logo for, like GreenHouse. Give tax breaks, hand out money, sponsor education and workshops. Make an actual difference as opposed to shooting your mouth off.

Green Buildings May Be Cheapest Way to Slow Global Warming (Scientific American)

More About Cars

In questions about "Cars of the Future," people ask designers about the future of automotive design, the designer than proceeds to lie. For exahmplay, here, Mike from Ohio asks why all cars look the same. This question is directed at Hyundai, who have been one of the most laughably blatant rip-off houses in recent memory. And, oh, lo and behold, one of his answers is CONSUMER ACCEPTANCE. When in doubt, blame the consumer as opposed to your own crap product.

"In regard [to consumer acceptance], one can look at a number of cars in the recent past with styling that was markedly different but was not accepted by the public." Recent past? What cars is he talking about? The Pontiac Aztek, which was selected as one of the 50 worst cars ever made? It failed because it was a piece of crap, not because it was hideous. For all the failures he can mention, I can mention weird-lookin' cars that succeeded. BMW's Z4, the Honda Ridgeline, and the absurd Scion xB were all great successes. They looked different. Don't confuse bad design with different design.

Cars, Again

As I posted a few days ago, I was thinking about automotive design. I was also kind of thinking about “futurists,” or arrogant jackasses who think they know how the world works. I'm a real playa' hayta' when it comes to futurists. Futurists love to talk about cars and if one of them opens their mouths you can rest pretty well-assured that they're wrong.

I wrote about how we need to re-boot design, and the auto industry is a good microcosm to discuss a lack of innovation in industry on the whole. The New York Times has a good slide show on “visions of the automotive future-ture-ture-ture!” and showcases all these hot (literally, they're all quite attractive), young designers and their concept cars as though these cars will ever be made. These are a facade to make people think that real design is taking place. As though real innovations are happening. Ha. A lie, I say!

None of these cars will be made. None. The only one that stands a chance is the Toyota A-BAT because it's quite obviously a sad rip-off of the Honda Ridgeline. There is very little innovation in its sad, pathetic lines. The Dodge Zeo not only stands little chance of being made, there's a good chance Dodge itself won't be around for much longer.

We've been waiting for the cars of the future for sixty years. Every car show, every magazine, every company PR release discusses the future and how “we're working towards it with you!” Bah. It's all shit. The words and the designs. Cars have been nothing more than a constant and measured evolution. Go back 15 years, a round number, and the “future” cars are just as futuristic and unfulfilled now as they were then. They say the concepts tell you where they are “going” with their designs. Too bad they never get there.

Look at the Mustang Mach III concept in the above photo. AMAZING car. Now look at the sad shadow of itself that it presaged for the 1994 model year. They have nothing more than a passing similarity. We need a car company either ballsy enough or desperate enough to really try something new. To actually push the envelope, as opposed to simply using cliched phrases in the brochure to convince you that this family sedan is practically the Enterprise. Do that, and I'll buy! And if you do it, and it's just a half-baked piece of crap, don't blame it on being ahead of its time. Just blame your own sad lack of skills.

WE WON WE WON!... Sorta'

The House recently denied the bill supported by President Hitler to give immunity to the telephone industries who BROKE THE LAW by spying on innocent Americans for der fuhrer and his administration. Obviously, Bush broke the law as well, but since the Democrats are so bloody useless they've been unable to hold him accountable for this severe transgression. Apparently what Bush believes is right, he is above the law.

House Passes Spy Bill, Rejects Telcom Amnesty Despite Veto Threat (Wired.com)

House Denies Warrantless Wiretapping Immunity For Telcos (Gizmodo.com)

Senate Panel Approves Immunity for Spying Telcos (Wired.com)

About Obama

Geraldine Ferraro recently said that Obama would not be where he is if he hadn't been black. She has of course been attacked as a racist lunatic and Obama has gone so far as to call her comments wrong-headed.

Umm, no. Not wrong-headed. She's right. Anyone with a clear head, I feel, can see that. The stunning black turnout in Mississippi has shown loud and clear that race has a LOT to do with this election. If he hadn't been black, he wouldn't have won many of the races, it's that simple.

Obama is a very simple candidate based on fancy, abstract words like "hope" and "change." His whole bloody campaign is predicated on these ideas. It's working fine because, ya know, Americans are dumb. I'm not saying Americans are dumb for liking Obama, he's a decent candidate, I'm saying Americans are dumb and as such they easily fall for words.

If he had been white, no one would have looked at him twice. He's a freshman senator, for Pete's sake! I remember reading an article about Obama being the new, default black guy that America lifts from the din to show to everyone how equal-opportunity we are. We did it with Colin Powell and we're doing it with Obama. I have to admit, after the end of the article, I agreed.

I can't really say for sure if Obama is America's feel-good-about-ourselves candidate, because that's just idle speculation. But I can say for sure that he would not be here if he had not had the stunning support of blacks that he's had. Record turnouts from black Americans in almost every primary with a massive majority of them going to Obama. I'm sorry, they're voting with their skin, not their heads. Obama won nearly 90% of the black vote. Oh yeah. Race wasn't an issue, there. And Hillary and Obama continue parading around talking about how race has nothing to do with this, pandering to the feel-good politically correct buffoons who seem to think the hard truth isn't the truth.

It goes both ways, too. The large white turnout for Hillary in Mississippi also means that whites were likely voting with their skin, but it was much worse for black stats. I infer this to mean that blacks are more race-oriented than whites. That means Ferraro's comments hold water. Hillary bowed to pressure saying she disagreed. She's lying, of course, because if she told the truth the politically correct amongst us would call for her head. She said "It's regrettable that any of our supporters - on both sides, because we both have this experience - say things that kind of veer off into the personal"

Um, it's not personal. Look at the data! It might be personal for Ferraro, maybe she hates Obama and just wants to hurt him, but the data dismisses that possibility as irrelevant.

Obama is a man with little meat to his plans, little experience, lots of fancy words, and way too much Bible. By all accounts, he shouldn't be here, that means there must be a reason for his meteoric rise. The only apparent reason is race, and I support Ferraro's comments as as truthful as the data allows.

About Eliot Spitzer

As I'm writing this, Eliot Spitzer has announced his resignation as governor of New York. If you don't know what's going on, read a damned newspaper.

Obviously, this has triggered much discussion on the nature of power, prestige, corruption, and public image. The word corruption is getting thrown around a lot, like at the cited LiveScience article, and I frankly couldn't disagree more. I don't think this story has anything to do with corruption.

The story has a great deal to do with hypocrisy, and I'm glad to see a hypocrite, any hypocrite, take it to the face publicly. I also think the story has to do, primarily, with morals and ethics, not corruption.

For example, look at the definitions of corruption from Dictionary.com:

1. the act of corrupting or state of being corrupt.
2. moral perversion; depravity.
3. perversion of integrity.
4. corrupt or dishonest proceedings.
5. bribery.
6. debasement or alteration, as of language or a text.
7. a debased form of a word.
8. putrefactive decay; rottenness.
9. any corrupting influence or agency.

Do ANY of those sound applicable? I certainly don't think so. Let's try the meaning of the word 'corrupt,' instead.

1. guilty of dishonest practices, as bribery; lacking integrity; crooked: a corrupt judge.
2. debased in character; depraved; perverted; wicked; evil: a corrupt society.
3. made inferior by errors or alterations, as a text.
4. infected; tainted.
5. decayed; putrid.

Again, do any of those accurately describe his behavior? Nope. I don't think so. Let's run down the list, shall we?

1: Replace 'corrupt' with 'crooked.' I don't think anyone would call him crooked.
2: Wicked?? Evil?? He paid for sex, he didn't kill Jews.
3: Last I checked, he's not a book.
4: If the prostitute hadn't been tested recently, that's possible, but not applicable in the way people are talking.
5: Again, no.

So I think by the very definition of the word that this has nothing to do with corruption. This behavior had no bearing on his public behavior. He accepted no bribes. He did no harm to the populous.

I say it has everything to do with morals because I am of the mind that prostitution isn't bad. It's a service in every way to massage, or even a haircut. When you're on the outside, it's very easy to point figures and be all self-righteous. But when you're in the position to either be a client or a prostitute, suddenly it doesn't seem so bad. Suddenly morals get foggy, as they should be because morals are undefinable.

I have nothing against prostitution. I think it's a valid service that people want to sell and buy, so let them! I have heard a number of arguments against its legalization and they are all wrong. I'm not too keen on going to a prostitute, but I'm sure as hell not going to stop others. He bought sex? Who cares? Would we be pointing fingers if we found out he and his wife were into bondage? I'm sure there would be a few self-important asses willing to do so, but I think most people wouldn't care. There is nothing wrong with prostitution.

Legally, there is, so that's a problem for Spitzer, but morally there is not; and morals is what is being discussed. He is not corrupt, and he is not immoral. He paid for sex. Woop-dee-doo.

Why Power and Prostitution Go Together (LiveScience.com)