Alan K. Henderson's Weblog

Check out this Hubble image of Fomalhaut. (Link via Pejman)

The Wikipedia entry on the star now features the recent "eye of Sauron" image. It also mentions that Fomalhaut 3 is the home of Gordon R. Dickson's fictional Dorsai.

The Khobar Towers bombing was nine years ago today. GlobalSecurity.org has some useful information. Here is Secretary of Defense William Perry's Report to the President and Congress on the Protection of U.S. Forces Deployed Abroad, dated September 15, 1996.

Turn also to Norman Podhoretz' FrontPage Magazine article titled World War IV from August of last year; his main beef is that Clinton treated an acto of war as a "common crime." Read the whole thing.

All of a sudden Blogger is inserting unwanted code into the front of every single post. It's screwing up my template. The words are being displayed as the default Times New Roman instead of Verdana, up until the post encounters the first a <dir> statement (I have <dir> configured to a specific font type), when things go to normal. The Henderson Prize blog is unaffected. I'm writing Blogger for answers.

Update: Sauvage Noble sees the same problem. The post has a quick fix that I will try shortly.

Update: The quick fix doesn't work.

The Washington Times is running an editorial denouncing the recent Iranian elections. (Link via Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi email.) Over a thousand out of 1,014 candidates were disqualified for dubious reasons. But the scandal doesn't end there - voting is being conducted in the United States, in apparent violation of law:

The United States has not had diplomatic relations with Iran since the 1979 hostage crisis. As a result, Iranian officials cannot travel more than 25 miles from Washington (where Iran has an interests section in the Pakistani Embassy) or 12 miles from New York (where Iran's U.N. delegation is based). On the other hand, Iranian law requires that voting be overseen by election officials representing the government -- people who would appear to have no lawful right to be present at any of the polling places that were held last week in mosques, hotels and other buildings across the United States. Last week, the Iranian government did not publicize the location of the polling places until right before the voting began in order to lessen the likelihood of protests by Iranian dissidents. That appears to be the case with tomorrow's presidential runoff.

Will Franklin has first-hand reporting on the Iranian voting in Houston, complete with video stills.

The Carnival is over at This Blog Is Full Of Crap. My recent song parody is among the attractions.

It's been nearly two years since my followup LASIK surgery. Went in for a checkup. Everything is fine.

I can’t get no satisfaction
I'm in Gitmo, out of action
And they pry, and they pry, and they pry, and they pry
I'm in Gitmo, I'm in Gitmo

I was drivin’ my bomb-rigged car
And that man comes on the bullhorn
And he’s tellin’ me I'll be put away
They'll drill me for useful information
While I'm under incarceration
I'm in Gitmo, mo, mo, mo
Hey hey hey, Guantanamo Bay

I can’t get no satisfaction
I'm in Gitmo, out of action
And they pry, and they pry, and they pry, and they pry
I'm in Gitmo, I'm in Gitmo

When I’m brought in for questions
And the interrogator tells me
How free I can be if I talk
Well I won't say a thing 'cause the infidel
Won't kill for Allah like me
I'm in Gitmo, mo, mo, mo
Hey hey hey, Guantanamo Bay

I can’t get no satisfaction
I'm in Gitmo, out of action
And they pry, and they pry, and they pry, and they pry
I'm in Gitmo, I'm in Gitmo

Well, I'm locked away from the world
And they're pouring this and they're playing that
My space invaded by some girl
She tells me, "Baby better spill the beans next week
Your terrorist friends are on a losing streak"
I'm in Gitmo, mo, mo, mo
Hey hey hey, Guantanamo Bay

I'm in Gitmo, I'm in Gitmo
No satisfaction
Don't flush that Koran
No satisfaction

Update: Original lyrics here.

Update: Lyrics tweak - "And some girl invades my space" is now "My space invaded by some girl."

Update: More lyrics tweakage. Had to have something about the Koran flushing in there (original had "No satisfaction" repeated three times). And "They'll drill me for information" is now "They'll drill me for useful information."

This passage sums up his reasons:

How can anyone say if the charges are true? Ed Klein is a respected author, a former editor in chief of The New York Times Magazine and the foreign editor for Newsweek. He would not have written these charges without some substantiation. But these accusations (in The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She’ll Go to Become President) are highly personal and have little bearing on what kind of president Hillary would make.

Why can’t her critics confine their attacks to the relevant and the obvious: that she would not be a good president and has not been a good senator?

He offers this contrast between the Clintons, which demonstrates her political shortcomings:

He is brighter than she and much more creative. He is intuitive and instinctual, while she works hard to compensate for her lack of these qualities. He crafts novel solutions to important problems; she learns the party line by rote and glories in its recitation. He is an innovator; she is a gladiator. She has discipline that he lacks and self-control he has never even attempted.

Most of all, Bill is a moderate who is a liberal when he has to be. She is an ultra-liberal who moves to the center as a charade to win election. Rated as the 11th most liberal senator by National Journal — one notch to the left of Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) — she has a liberal quotient, according to Americans for Democratic Action, of 95 percent, contrasted with 85 percent for the party as a whole and 60 percent for a real moderate such as former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.).

Bill Clinton made a fine president on domestic issues because of his ability to find common ground in the center of our process. Hillary has never been comfortable in the center and is at her most natural when she is deriding the motives of the opposition, as when she wondered if someone could be Republican and Christian at the same time.

Morris is a fool for thinking that being a moderate is a good thing. Being a moderate means that he accomplishes less than a conservative or liberatiran, and inflicts less damage than a liberal. But his main contention is quite valid: Bill is not the degree of fanatic that Hill is, and fanatics in the White House are dangerous.

Morris is also right that The Truth About Hillary is not the best ammo to use against Hillary - assuming it is the personal-life-only type of book that the reviews make it out to be. For politically relevant dirt, Hillary's Secret War, by Richard Poe is a good source.

I bet you never see this on Good Morning America.

These have been making the email rounds:

Manulite has Rules That Guys Wish Women Knew.

Jen has Education for Men.

I do not give full endorsement to either list. Especially not the course selection "EAT 201 Cooking with Tofu." That's blue-state liberal hippie food. I'll order the Bacon Ultimate Cheeseburger.

Want to end the childhood obesity epidemic? End the school lunch program.

Labels: Politics, Random thoughts

(Source)

Update: Here's the history behind the lower flag.

Labels: History, Holidays

Alley Oop is running an interesting storyline. Oop receives a visit from Doc Wonmug's assistant Ava. Dave Wowee, Wonmug's descendent who runs a time lab in the future, had made some electronic buttons that would allow the user to transport to Wonmug's time lab from wherever and whenever they happen to be; Ava used hers to travel back from Moo, with oop in tow, back to the lab.

Ava tells Oop that Dave and Wonmug had traveled to Dave's time lab, and had since been unable to make contact. She shows video of their last broadcast, which shows the two men with bruises sitting in a jail cell.

Dave and Wonmug are being interrogated by law enforcement officials. The leader is searching for information about Dave's alleged terrorist connections; to which Dave claims innocence. Dave is confused when the leader says they're in a nation called Crimsonia. Dave says he's a US citizen; the leader thinks he's playing dumb, and inists that the US no longer exists.

Ava and Oop proceed to Dave's time lab to investigate. There they stay hidden as they find two men (wearing the same uniform as the Crimsonian leader's assistant) installing files on a bunch of people into Dave's computer; conversation reveals that this is some sort of planted evidence. Ava deletes the files when the men leaves.

They remain unseen as Dave and Wonmug are marched into the lab by their captors. The leader demands to know why the Crimsonian flag is not on display. Dave restates his claim of US citizenship. The leader's assistant produces a map of Crimsonia - the 2004 election "red states."

Stay tuned...

Not guilty on all counts.

The crowd cheers. Doves are relased. (I'm not kidding; this article shows a picture of the doves in preparation for the verdict.)

A younger Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of Iran's leading politicians, side by side with Sean Penn - see here. And don't forget to read the comments; Abol Danesh raises another similarity between the two.

(Link via Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi email)

An occasional poster to Lord Spatula's comments section has passed away. The two had been friends since their old Fidonet days. Spats has more; go send your condolences.

Here's a roundup on Howard Dean's latest gaffe.

Clayton Cramer reports this:

During an earlier event yesterday, Mehlman poked fun at Dean's comment. At a reception for him by the Republican Jewish Coalition, held at the Duquesne Club, Mehlman quipped: "Good afternoon, my fellow white Christians."

Cramer has some further musings; the title of the post alone is worth clicking the link.

Scrappleface alleges another dubious Dean claim: that all us Republicans look alike.

Pejman Yousefzadeh, himself a White Christian Republican (well, one out of those three), addresses the "monolithic" portion of Dean's tirade.

White Christian Democrat Harold Ford is not amused.

Heh.

Update: Baldilocks says, "Reports of my whiteness have been greatly exaggerated."

Marxists Riot over Desecration of Their Holy Book

(Link emailed by Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi)

I am not making this up.

Meryl Yourish interviews Darth Vader. (Link via Damian Penny.) He informs us that we've been mislead about the Sith and the Jedi:

Oh, don't be ridiculous. The Sith Lords are no darker than your average Republicans. The Emperor wasn't an Emperor, the Rebellion wasn't a Rebellion. It was all politics. Palpatine won a closely contested election, and the Jedi got ticked. The Sith may have controlled the Chancellorship and the Senate, but the Jedi had the damned media behind them. And the academics, and they're the ones who write the history books. The truth is, I started out with the Jedi, and Palpatine ultimately converted me to the Sith. The Sith political party, not some scary cult that went around lopping off people's hands.

Later in the interview, Vader drops this bombshell:

Let's just say that Luke and Leia weren't my only kids. Padme may have dumped me, but she's not the only fish in the sea. My second wife and I retired here after I lost the election, and, well, that's all I'm saying for now. Except that he was born in the USA. And he's a Republican.

Clever, Lord Vader. You've got everyone trying to figure out who your son is, when the real mystery is the identity is Mrs. Vader. My guess is we should be looking for a Republican woman who likes to dress in black.

(Season Four episode list here)

(If you haven't read the update to the previous review, check it out.)

This episode is a clever merger with the TNG episode "The Pegasus." The USS Pegasus is an Oberth-class vessel (the same class as the USS Grissom in Star Trek: The Search for Spock), lost near Romulan space 12 years ago. This was Ryker's first Star Fleet assignment, and Admiral Pressman, the ship's former commander, orders Picard to search for the ship. What Picard doesn't know is that the ship was conducting a cloaking experiment in violation of treaty with the Romulans.

Ryker is under orders to keep this secret, and he agonizes over whether to tell Picard. The Enterprise finale bounces between the Enterprise-D and a holodeck recreation of the NX-01's final voyage, which Troi recommends to Ryker as a source of inspiration for how to deal with the dilemma.

Six years after the previous episode, The NX-01 is scheduled for decommission after delivering Archer to the signing of the Federation Charter. But on the way he is intercepted by Shran, thought to have died some time in the six-year gap. Shran wants Archer's assistance. His daughter has been kidnapped by former buisiness associates who want some sort of valuable crystals in return.

Archer arranges an exchange with the kidnappers. He counterfeits the crystals - they're actually an explosive, set off by remote control when Shran's daughter is safe. A firefight ensues, Archer rescues Tucker from what would have been a lethal fall, and Archer and company get away. The bad guys can do only Warp 4, so all is well.

But somehow they manage to catch up with Enterprise. They board, and in a hallway they hold the captain at phaserpoint while demanding that Tucker give them Shran. Tucker tricks them down an access corridor and does something with the wiring to cause an explosion. Archer finds him alive in the smoldering corridor, but Tucker dies in sickbay. Evidently this is what Troi wanted Ryker to see: a vivid example of the proverb "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one." In this case, the "many" are the Andorians, Tellarites, Vulcans, and whatever other aliens who wouldn't be allying with each other were it not for Archer's leadership.

Archer arrives at the conference and prepares to deliver his big speech. The speech itself is left to the viewer's imagination. The show ends with Enterprise-D flying off as Picard's voice says, "Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise." Then we see the TOS Enterpise and hear Kirk's voice: "To explore stange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilization." Then the NX-01 comes on screen as Archer picks it up: "To boldly go where no man has gone before!"

It was an okay episode, but not worthy of a season finale. One hughe problem is too much Ryker. It's the end of the series - it should be the main cast's day to shine. Another is that six years have gone by and we're given no glimpse into how lives have changed for the crew. Trek Nation says this:

There's a kind of painful irony watching Archer and his crew stick their necks out for Shran and his daughter when it seems none of them have managed to have children of their own - at least not children who survived. It's as if they've been stagnating personally and professionally as time passed while Shran, who has apparently made some very stupid decisions, also built a life for himself that matters deeply to him. What matters deeply to, say, Mayweather? A week ago we heard him profess to Brooks that maybe he was ready to leave space and settle down...now we find out that he's sat at those same controls for six years, changing very little. If this is the best for the characters that the writers could come up with for the final episode, I'm rather grateful they didn't write all the intervening boredom in which nobody grew or changed or left the ship or nearly died or was wounded enough to force a career change or simply asked to be transferred from engineering to communications just to do something new.

The six-year gap gives the Roddenberrians the option of cranking out a few movies. Whether they will exercise the option is another story.

Update: Best line from the episode: when Shran's daughter innocently says to Archer "Thanks, pinkskin." Archer's non-reaction shows that he sees the glass as half full; the little girl knows only the word and not the condescending attitude that normally accompanies it. Some day the epithet will disappear - or become the name of the first NFL franchise on Andoria.

Laura at 11D has an interesting post:

Watergate was one of those pivotal events in American politics. The presidency and the media were forever changed by Woodward's and Bernstein's article on the Nixon coverup of the bugs in the Democratic headquarters. Their finger prints are found all over Monica Lewinsky's blue dress, the guns given to the Contras, and Gary Hart's boat, "Monkey Business." We no longer look at the president as a hero, as royalty. The president's power has been curtailed, and his prestige forever tarnished.

Watergate was a turning point in that it marked the first time a President was strongarmed out of office, and inspired the press (during certain administrations) to think it could be done again. But it was hardly the first tarnishing of the presidency. The reputation of the presidency has always ebbed and flowed; some administrations are squeaky-clean (Coolidge) and some are dens of corruption (Grant).

Meet the new boss:

After Watergate, the journalist became the hero. He comes in the shape of Robert Redford or Dustin Hoffman and works tirelessly to provide ordinary Americans with THE TRUTH. THE TRUTH is usually that American politicians have feet of clay and that major world events are hatched by small groups of shadowy characters with little concern for the common man.

Same as the old boss:

Blogging has provided a new chapter in the post Watergate world of politics. The NEW TRUTH is that journalists have feet of clay and that major world events are hatched by small groups of shadowy characters with little concern for the common man.

Let's say it outright. Since the Edward R. Murrow era, the conventional media have held the royal aura that Laura ascribes to the presidency. Dan Rather is the new Nixon, LGF and PowerLine are his Woodward and Bernstein, and Microsoft Word is their Deep Throat. Dan wasn't the first journalist to be tarnished by dubious reporting, but his is the most prominent such case.

The blogosphere is too diffuse to inherit such regal awe. It never will, at least not as a whole, since anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can blog. Some are highly popular, but none are too lofty to be fisked by us mere mortals.

Laura then makes this remark:

At least among the conservative bloggers, there is a resuscitation of the old image of the royal president.

Has she paid attention to all to the whirlwind of conservative howls against Dubya for signing McCain Feingold and the steel tariff, establishing the Transportation Safety Administration, making an empty response to the Terri Schiavo crisis, and spending money like a drunk teenager on Spring Break in Cancun with the parents' credit cards? (At least drunken sailors use their own money.) If you want a recent president with a sycophantic following, look at Clinton. How many political careers could ever survive multiple rape allegations?

Nixon grins.

Heh.

(Hat tip to An Unsealed Room)

The blog is three years old today. See last year's blogiversary post for a list of other anniversaries on this date.

Today is the anniversary of the government crackdown on the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Wang Dan, a survivor of the protests who now lives in Taiwan, has a few things to say:

"It is certainly infuriating that Japan has refused to admit the atrocities committed during the war," said Wang. "But it is the Chinese citizens and not the government who have the right to be angry: there is not a single line in history books in China about 4 June and the cultural Revolution. The government is doing just what Japan is doing."

Read the whole thing. And let this quote be a lesson on the ills of granting governments the power to decide textbook content.

(Season Four episode list here)

Every civilization has its share of those who, for various reasons, want to keep their nation free of outsiders. Viewers got a hint of this undercurrent in an earlier episode this season, and are now introduced to a terrorist organization dedicated to ridding Earth of aliens: Terra Prime.

(Interestingly, the phrase "terra prime" translates "Earth first." I doubt that the parallel with the name of real-life eco-terrorist group Earth First! is intentional. It is certainly ironic; contrast Terra Prime's human-centrism to Earth First's subordination of humanity, and much of its industry, to the rest of the environment.)

The Enterprise crew is attending a diplomatic conference with a number of alien representatives present. Mayweather sees an old girlfriend Gannet Brooks, a journalist covering the conference. Starfleet official Nathan Samuels addresses the crowd, and Tucker is peeved that Samuels isn't giving Archer credit for bringing the Tellarites and Andorians together. A woman named Susan Khouri approaches T'Pol and says "They're going to kill her," and collapses - showing a phase pistol wound, from which she later dies.

Khouri carried a vial with a hair inside. Phlox tests that the child comes from a Human-Vulcan girl, and matches its DNA to the utterly confused Tucker and T'Pol. T'Pol insists she had never been pregnant; Tucker eventually overcomes his doubts about her truthfulness. Dude, do you honestly think she could hide a pregnancy under those skin-tight outfits?

Samuels gives Archer access to official investigation data, which reveals that the murdered woman lived in a low-gravity environment. T'Pol, on an un-Vulcanlike hunch, suspects a lunar colony. Archer orders Reed to contact his old Section 31 control Harris, who confirms Terra Prime's involvement with the child and Khouri's ties to the organization.

Brooks is on board Enterprise, getting reacquainted with Mayweather and (supposedly) filming a documentary. Archer learns that Brooks had been tapping into the universal translators of the conference delegates. He suspects that she's a Terra Prime operative, and has her thrown into the brig.

Meanwhile, Tucker and T'Pol infiltrate the Orpheus mining facility, a known hotbed of Terra Prime activity - which happens to be owned by John Frederick Paxton, the head of Terra Prime. The two are quickly discovered and captured. The Orpheus facility does something that moon bases ususally don't do - the saucer-shaped installation blasts off from the planet's surface, makes a brief warp jump, and lands on Mars. Orpheus links up with the (unguarded) verteron array, a monstrous beam weapon used to blast dangerous meteors and to guide comets toward the Martian polar ice cap.

Paxton hacks all communications channels and announces his ultimatum: all aliens must leave Earth, or he'll blast Starfleet headquarters. His broadcast shows the human-Vulcan baby, evidently to rile certain xenophobic factions. He demonstrates his control over the array by firing at the Moon, and also sends Enterpise a low-power warning shot. After the broadcast, he explains to T'Pol and Tucker that he was able to obtain their genetic material through a spy he has on board Enterprise.

Archer has a plan. A comet is scheduled to impact Mars within Paxton's deadline. Archer has the ship fly into its tail and launch a shuttlepod where it will follow the comet to the Martian surface undetected. The shuttlepod experiences technical difficulties, and Mayweather switches to manual and brings the crew safely down. The shot of the Carl Sagan Memorial Station is a nice touch.

Paxton allows T'Pol to spend time with the child if Tucker calibrates the aim of the verteron array. Tucker relents; he sabotages his own work at first, but is eventually caught and is thrown into a holding cell. In convseration with Paxton's right-hand man Josiah, he learns that the man blames the Vulcans for not interfering in the Third World War, suspecting them of preferring a weakened Earth to deal with. A snide remark about Tucker and T'Pol doing more than just talking suggests that Josiah is unaware of the baby's artificial origin.

The baby ill; T'Pol monitors her health with a tricorder, and manages to get a surrepetitious scan of the not-too-well-looking Paxton. She confronts him alone with what she's learned: that he is suffering from Taggart Syndrome and is receiving Rigelian gene therapy, flying in the face of his racial purity ethic. His spin is that "significant" leaders often don't live up to their ideals. I immediately thought of Hitler, who was as far from the blonde, blue-eyed Aryan mold as Kermit the Frog.

Sato has command of Enterprise, and in her finest hour resists Samuels' impatience with her waiting till the last second to carry out her orders to destroy the Orpheus facility - an act that would kill many nearby colonists - if there is no word from Archer in time. Archer and his team arrive at the base as Tucker escapes from the holding cell. Together they storm the control room, and a firefight ensues. Archer prevails, but not in time to stop the array from firing - hitting the waters just off the San Francisco coast, thanks to Tucker's work. Phaser the whales!

Prior to the shuttlepod launch, Brooks told Mayweather that she was not the Terra Prime spy, that she was with Starfleet Intelligence looking for the real spy. But she was right - the crew discovers that the shuttlepod was sabotaged, and she coudln't have done it. The culprit is Ensign Masaro, who kills himself with a phase pistol after apologizing to the captain.

The child has an incurable genetic flaw and dies in Phlox's care. She is named Elizabeth after Tucker's sister who perished in the first Xindi attack.

The episode offers a brief but fascinating insight into the "future history" of Earth. In the TOS episode "The Savage Curtain" we learn of a Colonel Green who led a genocide during World War III. This two-parter explains his motivation: as the Memory Alpha entry states, "He ordered the euthanization of hundreds of thousands of radiation sickened humans so they wouldn't pass on mutations to future generations." Paxton was an admirer of Green, and drew a faulty parallel between genetically damaged humans breeding with genetically healthy ones, and humans breeding with nonhumans - a scientific impossibility in the real universe.

Update: The way I worded that last statement may give the false impression that I find justification in Green's decision. Green faced a real problem but implemented the wrong "solution." In the real world we already have laws to protect the human genome - specifically, laws against marrying close blood relatives. We don't go around killing inbred persons we discover (there would be fewer living nobility otherwise). In the extreme situation that Green faced, I can imagine laws banning marriage between healthy humans and those whose genetic code was hacked by weapons of radioactive destruction; supporters of such a policy would argue that the damage must be contained, but the genetically handicapped should be allowed to live normal-as-possible lives - and maybe someday medical advances will restore their (or their children's) genes.

Humans breeding with sentient nonhumans (in the Star Trek universe where that sort of thing is possible) is not a problem - with two exceptions. First, certain species might pose as serious a threat of inheritable genetic damage as the post-WWIII genetically handicapped. Second, certain species might introduce inheritable advantages that threaten human liberty. The obvious Trek example is Orion women's pheromonal powers of suggestion. But this opens another can of worms: the prospect of full-blooded Orion females living in human societies. Now there's an idea for a film: Archer receives a female Syndicate defector, and the Earth government is squabbling over what sorts of regulations to impose on her if she is to be granted resident status.

Blog Business World is hosting the carnival this time around. Among the atractions is my Memorial Day post.

The Education Intelligence Agency reports the latest in education lobby histrionics. (Scroll down to "Teachers' Union Must Abide by Godwin's Law.")

Labels: Education