For “District Unknown”, Afghanistan’s first heavy metal band, the answer could be “Two Seconds After the Blast”, from their soon-to-be recorded first album, “A 24-hour life time”…
The thumping, heavy metal rock and aggressive lyrics which reverberate within the sound-proof walls of Kabul’s “Sound Centre” music school allows young Afghans to vent their anger at the violence they have witnessed during years of war before and after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States …
Kabul’s rock music school, housed inside the small “Venue” restaurant in the Afghan capital, also reflects the return, although sometimes tentative, of social and individual freedoms since the end of the Taliban rule … And the shadow of the Taliban looms large ahead of the 2014 transition when most [American] combat troops leave … The Taliban staged a 12-hour siege at a popular lakeside hotel outside Kabul this month.
I’m sure Saigon had at least one rock band in 1973, too. That ended well.
I just finished rereading Phil Caputo’s book on his experience as a Marine in Vietnam, “A Rumor of War.” In 1975, Caputo was back as a reporter to cover the fall of Saigon. The South Vietnamese shot at the evac helicopter as the Americans left town.
Instead of prosecuting elite computer hackers, the US government should recruit them to launch cyber-attacks against Islamist terrorists and other foes, according to a leading military thinker and government adviser.
The brilliance of hacking experts could be put to use on behalf of the US in the same way as German rocket scientists were enlisted after the second world war, said John Arquilla, a professor of defence analysis at the US Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, in an interview with the Guardian.
He said that the US had fallen behind in the cyber race and needed to set up a “new Bletchley Park” of computer whizzes and codecrackers to detect, track and disrupt enemy networks. “If this was being done, the war on terror would be over,” he said …
Many dabbled in illegal or questionable acts but the US, he noted, had turned Wernher von Braun, Hitler’s top scientist, into an American hero after putting him to work on US rockets and space programmes.
Would you want to sit in a course by a fellow who actually makes such a comparison with a straight face?
Rhetorical. It would be fun to sit in back and hoot, though.
Anyhoo, it’s just a little bit difficult for our limited mind to see similarities between the guy who used concentration camp slave labor in WWII to build his V2 rockets to bombard London, the chief architect of the Saturn V and — “hackers.”
Standards for the technical help have been so watered-down.
Some have harsh words for this man of renown
But some think our attitude should be one of gratitude
Like the widows and cripples in old London town
Who owe their large pensions to Wernher von Braun!
Note: To my knowledge, no hackers have ever employed concentration camp labor or launched ballistic missiles at one of the biggest cities in the world.
On a single day this month here, a US Airways regional jet became stuck in asphalt that had softened in 100-degree temperatures, and a subway train derailed after the heat stretched the track so far that it kinked — inserting a sharp angle into a stretch that was supposed to be straight. In East Texas, heat and drought have had a startling effect on the clay-rich soils under highways, which “just shrink like crazy,??? leading to “horrendous cracking,??? said Tom Scullion, senior research engineer with the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University. In Northeastern and Midwestern states, he said, unusually high heat is causing highway sections to expand beyond their design limits, press against each other and “pop up,??? creating jarring and even hazardous speed bumps.
Excessive warmth and dryness are threatening other parts of the grid as well. In the Chicago area, a twin-unit nuclear plant had to get special permission to keep operating this month because the pond it uses for cooling water rose to 102 degrees; its license to operate allows it to go only to 100. According to the Midwest Independent System Operator, the grid operator for the region, a different power plant had had to shut because the body of water from which it draws its cooling water had dropped so low that the intake pipe became high and dry; another had to cut back generation because cooling water was too warm.
Nature, global warming — or hackers and armies of Chinese cyberwarriors just raring to bring down the nation through Internet attacks on the “infrastructure”?
National security experts with tunnel vision — priceless.
1. Drop-dead, collar-ad handsome with gracious, statesmanlike aura. Looks like every central casting’s #1 choice for Commander-in-Chief.
2. Been married to ONE woman his entire life, and has been faithful to her, including through her bouts with breast cancer and MS.
3. No scandals or skeletons in his closet. (How boring is that?)
4. Can’t speak in a fake, southern, “black preacher voice” when necessary.
5. Highly intelligent. Graduated cum laude from both Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School…and by the way, his academic records are NOT sealed.
6. Doesn’t smoke or drink alcohol, and has never done drugs, not even in the counter-culture age when he went to college. Too square for today’s America?
7. Represents an America of “yesterday”, where people believed in God, went to Church, didn’t screw around, worked hard, and became a SUCCESS!
8. Has a family of five great sons….and none of them have police records or are in drug rehab. But of course, they were raised by a stay-at-home mom, and that “choice” deserves America’s scorn.
9. Oh yes…..he’s a MORMON. We need to be very afraid of that very strange religion that teaches its members to be clean-living, patriotic, fiscally conservative, charitable, self-reliant, and honest.
10. And one more point…..pundits say because of his wealth, he can’t relate to ordinary Americans. I guess that’s because he made that money HIMSELF…..as opposed to marrying it or inheriting it from Dad. Apparently, he didn’t understand that actually working at a job and earning your own money made you unrelatable [sic] to Americans.
Readers know I believe in failure, sodomy, promiscuous sex, cigars, going to the liquor store daily, taking many naps, cheap malt beverages, free pornography, no goin’ to meetin’, drinking before noon and stealing. Among other things.
The budding Afghan air force was supposed to receive $355 million worth of planes custom-made for fighting guerrillas well ahead of the U.S. withdrawal in 2014. Equipped with machine guns, missiles and bombs, those reliable, rugged turboprop aircraft are cheaper to operate and easier to maintain than fighter jets …
The Afghans won’t get the planes on time. The Air Force initially awarded a contract to a U.S. company to supply Brazilian-designed planes. But it canceled the contract after a Kansas-based plane maker filed suit to block it, and the Air Force decided the contract had insufficient documentation. The Kansas congressional delegation also lobbied hard against the Brazilian plane …
Air power is essential for policing Afghanistan, a mountainous land with forbidding terrain, harsh weather and few roads. Recent events have underscored its importance in quelling the insurgency. When the Taliban staged attacks in Kabul and across the country in April, Afghan security forces managed to end the assault thanks to U.S. air support.
The country’s previous occupiers knew this well: As the Soviets withdrew in 1989, they left to the Afghans over 400 military aircraft, including over 200 Soviet-made fighter jets. Remnants of that defunct air force—rusting supersonic Su-22 attack planes, bullet-perforated Mi-6 heavy lift helicopters—now litter the boneyard of Shindand, the hub of the Afghan air force near the Iranian border.
Maj. Gen. Mohammad Baqi, the top Afghan air force commander at Shindand, likes to bring young Afghan trainees here for a history lesson. The scrap heap, he says, is a reminder of “what a strong air force we had” before the base was battered by Afghanistan’s civil war, and before its runway was cratered by U.S. bombs during the 2001 campaign to oust the Taliban.
Read the whole thing if only for the astonishing levels of bullshit and cognitive dissonance.
What made the United States think Afghanistan could have an air force? It’s not even a functioning country. On both sides, people with so little sense they couldn’t pour piss from a boot with the instructions printed on the heel.
Forty seven million Americans on food stamps and we’re trying to buy an air force for the crooked semi-government of Kabul.
Mr Bezos does not have an obvious deputy, but former employees say its most influential senior executives are fearsomely smart. The unified way they repeat Mr Bezos’s mantras suggests they are so well drilled that the company could tick over without him for a while.
[Mr Bezos] said he was focused on customer needs that were not going to change, because he could plan for them. “I know for a fact that 10 years from now customers will still want low prices. I know for a fact that they will still want fast delivery. I know they will still want selection.???
Amazon says it “obsesses??? over doing what is best for customers. But coddling them seems to depend on stretching its employees.
According to an investigation last year by the Morning Call, a Pennsylvania newspaper, workers at local warehouses said they endured punishing productivity targets and temperatures that soared above 38C in the summer, while Amazon parked ambulances outside to treat people with heat stress.
Federal regulators that received complaints from some employees recommended that Amazon take several steps to reduce the risks, the newspaper said.
Amazon says its safety record cannot be portrayed accurately with anecdotes …
Fearsomely smart. And making life more miserable for everyone except Mr. Bezos and the people who buy lotsa stuff through the mail, one day at a time.
And this, the press-release trivial profile on the Presto and E la Carte, the innovative business for eliminating the poorest paid wait staff at the most generic restaurants, because — y’know — people who earn less than minimum wage and get tips already take away too much profit.
E La Carte knows that waiting too long in a restaurant can leave customers with a bad taste in their mouths, regardless of the chef’s best efforts …
“It’s so fast, so easy to order and pay,??? said Rajat Suri, CEO and founder of E La Carte …
E La Carte has already received $5 million in funding from investors including SV Angel and Lightbank, and Suri said he plans to continue focusing on the casual dining experience rather than replace the interactions between waiters and customers in high-end restaurants.
Appropriately, written by an intern at the San Francisco Chronicle. Interns work for free, just for the privilege of it. Cuz they wouldn’t work at all for corporate America were it any other way.
I’ve yet to see any newspapers contemplate what the near total destruction of Penn State’s football program will do the school and the economy of the region.
Beaver Stadium is one of the largest outdoor football venues in the world. And now it is stuck with a team that will be less and less capable of filling it.
From an old Harrisburg Patriot News article I pulled an estimate of what a family of three spends on a Saturday spent at State College and in Beaver Stadium.
$476.30 This was in 2010. Gas prices are higher now, so let’s jigger up to an even five hundred for gas, and then subtract assuming most of the fuel cost will be distributed at the local start point. Final tally — $465.00 — modestly.
On a standard banner game day, attendance = 110,000
Divide by 3: 3666
3666 x $465.00 = $17,050,000
When attendance dwindles to 66 percent — $11,253,000
Fifty percent — $8,525,000.
Keep in mind I’m reasoning the cost of running the gigantic facility will remain about the same.
Nonsense, say the Penn State loyal. We’ll never forsake our team!
Oh yes they will.
At least four years wandering the wilderness with lousy, if any TV contracts at home and a team that will be about as good as … UCLA.
The lost money on game days in State College, over the course of at least half a decade, will cripple the local economy and the school. Penn State lived by football and Joe Paterno. Austerity is coming.
Penn State will be wondering what the heck it can do with Beaver Stadium, now that it looks like one of the construction marvels of the world, stuck in the middle of nowhere, its reason for being knee-capped.
Can it do the world’s biggest Easter Egg roll? Sunday craft and antiques fairs?
U2, Brad Paisley or Lady Gaga will probably not be planning stops in State College.
On a slightly more elevated note, Matt Yglesias has some fun with a prominent libertarian, Peter Thiel, who looks at the contrast between rapid progress in information technology and less rapid progress in “stuff??? and blames .. the government.
In a way, I’m reluctant to make too much fun of Thiel because at least he points to something that I notice a lot. If you look at what futurists were predicting 40 or 45 years ago, they somewhat underpredicted progress in IT (except for the artificial intelligence thing), but wildly overpredicted progress in dealing with the material world. Weren’t we supposed to have underwater cities, commercial space flight, and flying cars by now?
By that standard, Peter Thiel waxes about every scientist who ever lived:
Peter Thiel, sitting directly next to me, is one of the most successful investors that Silicon Valley has ever known. He was an early ?? he was the first investor in Facebook. He was a founder and CEO of PayPal. He helped found Palantir, which has been a tremendous success. He has a hedge fund, Clarium Capital; an early stage venture, no not early stage, yes, early stage venture capital fund, Founder’s Fund; and many, many other things that I think we will have an opportunity to discuss this evening.
And then there’s Google’s Eric Schmidt, also odious but for different reasons.
Here Schmidt attributes all the freedom that hasn’t quite happened in the Middle East yet to social media, more precisely the Internet, which you hear about once or twice a day, if not more:
PETER THIEL: When you talk about the Arab spring, you can say that it’s evidence of Google and Twitter ??
ERIC SCHMIDT: I didn’t say that.
PETER THIEL: ?? liberating the world through information. But, the actual facts on the ground are that food prices rose by 30 to 50 percent in the previous year and you basically had people who had become ?? you had desperate people who had become more hungry than scared, who revolted. Then Eric goes around and says, let them eat iPhones, or maybe not ?? that’s not precisely what he would say.
ERIC SCHMIDT: Let’s just say that everything he just said is not actually true. Let’s start with the food revolution. The issues of food in the globe are all related to mismanagement by governments. Many, many people have looked at this. And even without synthetic foods and the other things that are being developed, we can feed everybody. It’s just bad policies. And that can be fixed with better governments, more representative governments, so forth and so on.
With respect to the Arab Spring, and having been there and spent quite a bit time talking to the people, these people were very courageous and they used the tools available to them to topple these sort of bad regimes that weren’t giving them what they wanted. Sure, food prices went up, but there was a long history of repression. If you go back, each of these groups had a couple of years earlier tried and had been squelched.
The fact of the matter is that the dictators who were overthrown had a failure to regulate the Internet. They regulated everything else, the telephone, the television and so forth.
ADAM LASHINSKY: So, on the margin, Twitter and Facebook and other social media devices contributed to greater freedom …
One of the last college football games Don Hunt and I watched together was Penn State/Houston in the Ticket City Bowl. Joe Paterno had been fired. The team limped into the holiday season and was subsequently destroyed by Houston. They looked like young men who wished to be put to death.
That day I told Don I bet the Jerry Sandusky atrocity would kill Paterno and it did, although the official cause was lung cancer. It wasn’t a hard wager to make.
Through much of the Eighties I spent Saturday afternoons as a guest of my family at Penn State home games in Happy Valley. I was a grad student at Lehigh which does wrestling and pretends a little at college football. So given the option of seeing the Nittany Lions during the fall and early winter, rather than the Engineers in Bethlehem — well, it wasn’t really a choice.
And over the years in which Paterno became the the most winning coach in college football you could always find me in front of the television on Saturday afternoons in season. I drank the Kool-Aid. I bought all the superlatives.
But James Holmes and Jerry Sandusky are the two biggest arch-fiends in America today. No one walks away from such associations.
And so Penn State and Joe Paterno have not. In one stroke, all the wins that put the Nittany Lions at the top of the heap were taken away. They were made non-entities in their conference for four years, a team no one good will want to play because it can only take the role of a hated spoiler. And PSU and JoePa are now statistically just good to mostly average, which is nowhere if you wish to outgrow the reputation of being enablers to the country’s most loathed sex offender.
Today you can still see Jerry Sandusky working the sidelines and exhorting the troops in the ten minute highlight reels Penn State fans have put on YouTube by the scores. And when they’re over one thinks about what Jerry was doing with young boys at the victory party in his home or posh hotel room later that night. There’s no way to get rid of the man in the film and videotape records of the glory years.
The school won’t recover from it in my lifetime. The entire economy of Centre County will take an enormous hit, especially in the fall. It will be as if you were living in a beach resort and woke up one day to find the sand and ocean taken away. Nothing left but flopping, dieing and rotting fish on mud flats. Television interest is already almost gone, I bet.
No more Happy Valley, no White Out, no more shouts of “We Are … Penn State” without smirks. Plain blue and white, black shoes, the linked official athletic wear of pedophilia and cover up. No one will wish to remember where they were during football season, from 1969 when Jerry Sandusky arrived, until news of the sex crimes erupted last year.
Books, magazines and merchandise sales will plummet. No more great enthusiasms for getting your picture taken with the almost life-size JoePa cardboard standees. Glorious statues, murals, trophies, autographed photos, promotional football cards and programs, all metamorphosed into embarrassment. Maybe there could be one last bonfire for all of it. (eBay auctions of PSU stuff are frozen up.)
Whenever someone says they played football for the old Nittany Lions, those being told will immediately wonder if the person knew Jerry the Molester, defensive architect of Linebacker U. As an ice-breaker, it will be right there with admitting you partied, say, with John Wayne Gacy.
It’s a shame for the kids who have to work out their exit plan now
the NCAA equivalent of a giant nuclear bunker-busting bomb has been detonated in State College.
