Goose the Blog 2.0

These are not a fair comparisons for a number of reasons (Urban vs. Rural Distribution, Uncounted illegal immigrants, Military action and Warzone living vs. Just living a normal life etc, etc) and isn't apples to apples and isn't intended to be. I am merely posting it so those who are interested can get a relative idea of how bad, bad is...

California: Murders in 2000 - 2079 Auto Fatalities 3753 Population in 2000 : 33,871,648 Area 403907 sq. Km
Texas: : Murders in 2000 - 1238 Auto Fatalities 3769 Population in2000 : 21,325,018 Area 678054 sq, Km
Iraq : Deaths in the War: 500+ 130,000 Troops in Iraq (as of Nov 2003) Total Population of Iraq (2003) 24,683,313 Area 437072 sq. km

If war deaths are extrapolated to 12 months, deaths would be at around 625 for a year of occupation (this is probably a little high because it counts the initial fatalities of the invasion plus those that occurred during occupation)

from April to Aug 2003, 2,846 violent deaths were recorded by the Baghdad city morgue. 1,519 of which are probably the result of the American invasion of that city. Bagdad's Population is 5.6 Million

L.A. has a population of 3.7 Million (2003) and had 545 slaying in 2001. (Couldn't find a more recent number so take this as appoximate per population)

D-Day in World War II (First Real battle to Liberate France ) Saw the deployment of 130,000 men (estimated) and had an estimated 3000 men dead in 6 Days.

Vietnam War: 1.6 Million Combat Troops were deployed over 10 Years with a peak of 543,482 in 1969. Hostile deaths: 47,359
Non-hostile deaths: 10,797
Total: 58,156 (including men formerly classified as MIA and Mayaguez casualties).

Every life lost is one to be mourned. That doesn't always mean it was lost in vain.

Sources:
http://www.car-accidents.com/pages/stats/2000_by_state.html
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/iz.html
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/
http://www.warchronicle.com/numbers/WWII/ddaycasualtyest.htm
http://www.warchronicle.com/numbers/WWII/ddaynumbers.htm
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ibc23sep03.htm
http://www.safestreetsdc.com/subpages/murdercap.html
http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2003/030411-baghdad01.htm
http://losangeles.areaconnect.com/statistics.htm
http://www.streetgangs.com/topics/2001/010300crimeup.html

Neat java app that zooms in from 10 million light years to quarks making up a proton.

A 747 landing at the Princess Juliana International Airport on the island of St. Maarten, Dutch Antilles. Click photo for enlargement.

An interesting if somewhat biased explanation on the difference between a Recession and a Recession ("Slump")



http://www.nber.org/cycles/slate011303.pdf

I mostly liked it because it points out how pointless the argument is... but if you are 16-Words Myopic it will certainly vindicate your world view. :>)

Author Charlie Stross describes a future police state characterised by omniscient surveillance and mechanical law enforcement, examining key technolgies that could lead us there.

A Panopticon Singularity is the logical outcome if the burgeoning technologies of the singularity are funneled into automating law enforcement. Previous police states were limited by manpower, but the panopticon singularity substitutes technology, and ultimately replaces human conscience with a brilliant but merciless prosthesis.

Try not to get bent out of shape over the one about "cognitive radio," and read A Deepness in the Sky if you get a chance.

Talking animals, like Alex or Washoe, are old news. We get it already - non-human animals can communicate using symbolic and verbal languages.

But, new on the scene is an African Grey parrot named N'kisi that speaks in complete sentences and is psychic! The redoubtable BBC has the story.

The BCC downplays the birds psychic powers: "In an experiment, the bird and his owner were put in separate rooms and filmed as the artist opened random envelopes containing picture cards. Analysis showed the parrot had used appropriate keywords three times more often than would be likely by chance."

The researchers are more forthcoming: "N'kisi appears to telepathically 'surf' the leading edge of Aimee's consciousness, responding to the spontaneous moment of discovery rather than to any consciously projected thoughts" and "As this study was strictly controlled against cues from any normal sensory means, and chance coincidence has been ruled out, these experiments provide compelling evidence of interspecies telepathy."


Update: all the bad links are fixed (I hope).

Since I am aware that some of you are all excited about the "Largest Deficit in History" I figured I would post a few links to Inflation adjusted charts and articles.

http://www.ombwatch.org/budget/pdf/deficits-071703.pdf
To quote from the above article:

The current $455 billion deficit is:
· the highest deficit in current dollar terms in history
· the highest deficit adjusted for inflation since WWII
· $1,561 per person
· 4.2% of GDP

Now since I know that everyone listening is higly educated, I will forgo explaining the importance of using inflation adjusted numbers and NOT the current dollar amount, to judge the size of a deficit. It is also important to consider the size of the tax base (population) and the size of the GNP as indicators as to really how big the thing is (it is far more complicated than a dollar amount unless your primary interest is a political slogan rather than the truth)

This second document DOES NOT have good numbers after 2002. However, it is useful for seeing the historical trends. Compare the above infomration to these charts to get an idea of where this deficit will put us as far as the historcial perspective.

http://oregonstate.edu/Dept/pol_sci/fac/sahr/sumbudg.pdf

Note that I am not trying to defend President Bush on this one. He is doing a lousy job of controlling Spending (but just in case anyone forgot, the President can only Propose and approve/veto budgets... Congress does the majority of the work in deciding what gets spent where, not the Administration) However, you will note that this is the largest Deficit since WWII. At the beginning of WWII the country was recovering from the worst economic situation it has ever encountered and fighting a war. We too are recovering from a recession (obviously nothing as sever as a depression) and fighting a war, so Deficit spending might be expected to some degree.

Yo, Chill.

I merely said it happened on Clinton's watch. I have no idea who was the driving force behind it, other than it was someone in his administration. Obviously it wasn't just Clinton's fault since Congress had to approve it as well.

It is a fact that the CIA as an organization was not funded well enough and was legally restricted to a degree where it was difficult for them to provide any good intelligence for anybody, be they Republican or Democrat.

However, one can make the (unprovable assertion) that a leader, well leads, and that if a leader is corrupt it sends a tacit signal to others that they can get away with it too. So, in part, he probably had some effect on the economy to promote graft, and there has been a dramatic rise in the rate of Oral sex among teenagers after the Clinton scandal. Of course
All entirely coincidental and proving nothing. I would probably say a more direct cause would be those actually carrying out the fraud and having Oral sex.

Since he was out of office during the slow and still ongoing recovery, I would say he couldn't have much effect on that, and that 9/11 and business scandals have been doing more to slow the recovery than Bill.

The state of the CIA makes me think it was unlikely that Clinton could have gotten Bin Laden as he has been accused, so I don't think 9/11 belongs on the list.

I agree with the others.. :>)

That was weird. Five different edits of the same post. Obviously I'm not using blogger correctly.

In the thread below, some discussion was made as to what might or might not be Clinton's fault.

Here then, is a list of things I have thought of that are Clinton's fault:

Bad Iraqi WMD intelligence

The 9/11 attacks

The 2001 recession

Slow recovery from 2001 recession

2.7 million (?) jobs lost

Increased rates of teenage oral copulation

Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT)

Junior Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY)

The death of Buddy, "the first dog"

Al Gore's beard and weight gain

OK, I got the obvious ones. Can anyone think of some more?

"U.S. intelligence agencies need to explain why their research indicated Iraq possessed banned weapons before the American-led invasion, says the outgoing top U.S. inspector, who now believes Saddam Hussein had no such arms."

Why not ask why the Clinton Administration cut the CIA budget and prevented us from paying informants? Might that have something to do with it? No agents in the field that would enable us to see the "vortex of corruption"? I know, I know, Bush should have known what the CIA didn't....
Why wasn't the U.N.'s intelligence on the situation any better?

And did anybody notice that Congress passed a resolution calling for Regime change in 1998? Could that have Something to do with why there were plans to implement a regime change floating around in washington BEFORE 9/11?

http://usinfo.state.gov/regional/nea/iraq/text/0919cngr.htm

"However, we do know that Kay also thinks, according to Pres. Bush, that Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities." Like drawings of long range missles, among others."

No. We know what Kay thinks about the WMD programs from his interim report testimony before the House and Senate. Full text with pictures at link included.

http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/2003/david_kay_10022003.html

Also, for those who are interested, real data in conventional arms transfers to Iraq before the first Gulf War.
http://projects.sipri.se/armstrade/atirq_data.html

And after -- pg 448 in the 2003 yearbook

http://projects.sipri.se/armstrade/facts_and_figures.html

Isn't source material cool?

-Jeff

Japanese "researchers" (I guess) have created a 320,000 ping pong ball avalanche on a ski slope. Pictures and video are available.

My guess is they are studying pyroclastic flows - a big deal in a crowded country with many active volcanoes.

AP story here.

U.S. intelligence agencies need to explain why their research indicated Iraq possessed banned weapons before the American-led invasion, says the outgoing top U.S. inspector, who now believes Saddam Hussein had no such arms.

"I don't think they exist," David Kay said Sunday. "The fact that we found so far the weapons do not exist - we've got to deal with that difference and understand why."

However, we do know that Kay also thinks, according to Pres. Bush, that Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities." Like drawings of long range missles, among others.

Update: NYT story where Kay offers a likely, partial explanation (in my opinion) for how this intelligence failure happened.

From interviews with Iraqi scientists and other sources, he said, his team learned that sometime around 1997 and 1998, Iraq plunged into what he called a "vortex of corruption," when government activities began to spin out of control because an increasingly isolated and fantasy-riven Saddam Hussein had insisted on personally authorizing major projects without input from others.

After the onset of this "dark ages," Dr. Kay said, Iraqi scientists realized they could go directly to Mr. Hussein and present fanciful plans for weapons programs, and receive approval and large amounts of money. Whatever was left of an effective weapons capability, he said, was largely subsumed into corrupt money-raising schemes by scientists skilled in the arts of lying and surviving in a fevered police state.

Wendy's dad gets goods reviews from his students at UCLA. Well, two of them anyway.

If you have any links you'd like to see on the main page, or other blogs I should include at left (the blogs I typically read are posted there already) just put them in the comments below.

If you want your email contact or web page posted under contacts, let me know. However, putting your email on a web page is generally not a great idea because it will eventually get put on a spam list by some robot. Any other ideas how we could/should handle this?

As this blog is public, I feel it is important to share with you all my unequivocal support for John Ashcroft and the Patriot Act. After all if you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear. In fact my support is so whole hearted I hope anyone who reads this will understand that any future posts are purely rhetorical and I am most assuredly a patriot. No need to investigate me!

I've sent out emails to you to invite you to join blogger and begin posting to this blog. If you have any problems, let me know.

I'll be the first to admit, the name is pretty lame. If you have a better idea, please please please let me know.

There should be comments now. Here is that visual music search engine I found the other day, musicplasma.

Update: www.musicplasma.com is down now. They probably had too much traffic.

The majority of you thought this was a good idea (3 in favor, 2 abstaining), so let's try it out. There's no mission statement here or anything, maybe it will be just like the email links we send each other, or maybe someone will have news or opinions to post. In all, if we like it, it can be a good way for us to stay in communication.

In the next few posts, I'll try to see what I can get working, like comments and hotlinks.

Then, I'll send out invitations to you to become a team members. If you want to post your own messages (and not just comment on another persons post) you can become a team member, but you need your own blogger account. I expect the email will explain this in greater detail. For now, until things get rolling at least, I'll be the blog administrator. We can change that up later if I become mad with power.

Of course, this blog will be public information. Just keep that in mind before you do something to embarrass yourself. I don't plan on advertising it at all, but I think it would be cool to share it with other friends if you want to.