My favorite character eluding me

We haven't worked too hard to get the toys, but we have already acquired the four Star Trek collector glasses from Burger King.  Their Kingon Star Trek movie tie-in campaign is - uh - different.



I have now graduated from Kingon Defense Academy. Qapla' Balth je'!

The old man

In February, 1948, Rollins College and its "Animated Magazine," an annual event drawing in up to 8,000 visitors to Winter Park for a series of lectures by "luminaries of the day," gathered an impressive group of honorees. Among the group that year were John Mott, winner of the Nobel peace prize; U.S. General Jonathan W. Wainwright, who was the highest ranking POW in World War II and who brought with him 10 veterans of the infamous Bataan Death March in the Philippines; Kendrick Guernsey, President of Rotary International; Nuremburg prosecutor (and future Senator and father of sitting Senator Chris Dodd) Thomas J. Dodd; and U.S. Senator Claude Pepper. The February 27, 1948 edition of the local Winter Park social and cultural weekly, Winter Park Topics (Pepper is the sixth person from the left pictured on the bottom of page one of the linked page), marked the event, saying of Senator Pepper, that "in the traditional assuring tone of the politician expressed his belief that all will yet be well with the world."

Claude Denson Pepper was something of an idol of mine when I was in grade school in South Florida - dad did a fantastic impression whenever his name was mentioned, which it often was being raised just outside of Miami during the late 1960s through the 1980s. The child of sharecroppers in Alabama, he grew up to eventually make his way to Harvard Law School and then moved to Florida, serving as a state representative, then as a U.S. Senator, and in his later years as the Congressman for Miami. In an era of Southern Conservative Democrats, he was a true liberal FDR New Deal Democrat, a good man and, more frequently than most (and more than most people today understand), a great man. By the time I came to observe him, he was that old man with the characteristic Southern drawl (close your eyes and imagine listening to an Alabama country judge with a mouth always half-full of dinner), oddly representing - with overwhelming support - a growing population of Hispanics and a community of aging Jews. In 1982, the population of Miami Beach was 62% Jewish. When I spent time with my great grandmother - an elderly Jew living in an efficiency apartment a couple of blocks from the ocean, and, accordingly one of Pepper's stereotypical constituents - walking on Lincoln Road in pre-Miami Vice Renaissance Miami Beach, I was visiting not only one of the residents of his district, but also a key beneficiary of the policies for which Pepper tirelessly fought in Washington.

A brilliant, imperfect man, Claude Pepper's passion for individual rights destroyed his Senate career. Having served in the Senate during World War II, when the U.S. had been allied with the Soviets, and having seen the horrors of the Holocaust, Pepper focused on the Soviet liberation of prisoners of war, choosing to believe, or at least hope, that the Soviet Union was interested in freedom and democracy and friendship with the U.S., and in human rights. His apparent softness toward the Soviets was based in no small part on the push by a pro-Soviet group to form a Soviet Jewish republic in the eastern Soviet Union. Despite what conservatives of today would likely charge, he was no weak-kneed liberal pacifist; the main line of attack against Pepper before the U.S. entry into the Great War was that Pepper was an interventionist, advocating for the U.S. to enter the war for years before it was fashionable. It was the conservatives who favored isolation and opposed war against Hitler. In 1940, Senator Pepper drafted the first lend-lease legislation to supply planes to the British to battle the Germans, which legislation was passed the following year. Pepper was so hated by the Nazi sympathizers that Jeffrey Herf in The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust describes how those Nazi sympathizers charged that Pepper "emerged as a fighter for the global dominion of world Jewry."

In fact, Claude Pepper did emerge as a lonely advocate (along with the so-called Bergson Group, which, incidentally, included Nancy Pelosi's father, Congressman Thomas D'Alessandro, Jr.) for the U.S. to open up its borders for Jews fleeing the Nazis before we finally entered the War. His support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine also predated the War. The loyalty of those elderly Miami Beach Jews was not the result of political pandering, but was earned and deserved based on a lifelong interest in, and advocacy and action for, their security (social and existential).

But post-War conservatism, fear of the Russians, and McCarthyism prevailed. Pepper lost his Senate seat in 1950, having been dubbed "Red Pepper" for his perceived pro-communist views, with Pepper allegedly convinced that the U.S.S.R. was anti-discrimination. Charges of his socialist inclinations were reinforced by his ahead-of-its-time push for universal health care. Interestingly, Southern historians point to Pepper's defeat, and the similar defeat of Frank Porter Graham in North Carolina, as critical points in setting back New Deal liberalism as an alternative to the Dixiecrats.

Pepper didn't make that mistake again. After returning to Florida to open a law practice in Miami, he went back to Washington in 1962 as the Congressman from Miami and Miami Beach. By then, having been burned before, seeing the Soviets for what they were, and recognizing the reality of serving South Florida, he had become staunchly anti-communist and anti-Castro. The far-right conservatives hadn't warmed to him, however. Pepper ran that 1962 campaign for Congress by linking himself to President Kennedy; his campaign signs read "Support JFK - Pull Lever 1A." But the night before the election, Miami police in a black neighborhood discovered members of the John Birch Society scamming to trick voters by handing out posters reading "Support JFK - Pull Lever 7A." The right wing hasn't improved all that much in their tactics over the last half century. But Pepper chose his district well - he had won Dade County in his 1950 Senate defeat, and had a loyal base there. (On the other hand, there's this account of alleged vote rigging in Dade County to keep Rep. Pepper in office. Make of it what you will.)

Today, despite his consequential career as a Senator, Pepper is most remembered for his time in the House of Representatives, particularly his policy battles with Ronald Reagan. While in the Senate he pushed for national health care and helped establish the National Institutes of Health. In the House, he built on that legacy, establishing himself as the nation's foremost advocate for the elderly, focusing on strengthening Medicare, and working with Alan Greenspan to put Social Security on solid footing - a footing that would remain stable today if the Social Security Trust Fund was being respected (alas, it is not).

Which brings us to the paper that I wrote about Claude Pepper for a social studies class while in grade school, where we were to write about a political leader that we admired. While most others were writing about Presidents, I picked Pepper. I recall spending a weekend at the Broward County Public Library, reading books and looking at old issues of The Miami Herald on microfiche, all to find the information that would now take me a fraction of the time on the Web. I don't have the essay any longer, as far as I know (it may be in my parent's attic), but I still remember what was to me the highlight of that paper, referring to the the legislation prepared by Pepper and Texas Rep. Jake Pickle to preserve social security benefits for remarried widows. It was, I called it then, the "proverbial Pickled Pepper," and continued on with a variation on the popular tongue-twister. Pretty corny, and I am sure I thought I was extremely clever. But apparently I was not alone. This is how Time Magazine's April 2, 1965 edition covered the legislation:

For 14 years in the Senate and two in the House, Florida’s Representative Claude Pepper, 64, wandered Capitol Hill, not precisely friendless but somehow incompleat. Then, this January, Texas Democrat Jake Pickle, 41, took his seat in the House. Before anyone could say rubber baby-buggy bumpers, the two sponsored H.R. 2465, modifying a portion of the social security laws. It will be known to one and all, naturally, as the Pickle-Pepper bill. Purpose? Whereas, would winsome widows winning their way with welfare wealth wed wooers on social security themselves, why wish widows and wooers to lose whatever combined welfare wealth weddings would work?

Going back to the 1950 Senate Democratic primary, legend has it that Pepper lost that election (in Florida back then, the Democratic primary was effectively the general election, and it was where the real liberal-conservative battle played out, as well) when his opponent George Smathers gave a speech in which a reporter claimed Smathers said of Pepper:

Are you aware that Claude Pepper is known all over Washington as a shameless extrovert? Not only that, but this man is reliably reported to practice nepotism with his sister-in-law, and he has a sister who was once a thespian in wicked New York. Worst of all, it is an established fact that Mr. Pepper, before his marriage, habitually practiced celibacy.

That particular speech probably never happened - it appears to be a caricature of Smathers' actual words by a reporter disgusted by Smathers' genuine Red-baiting - but my recollection is that it was reported as fact in my research , or perhaps when I was in grade school I didn't understand the meaning of the word apocryphal. So, I believe, the quote made its way into my essay, as well. What Smathers, who voted against basically every piece of civil rights legislation introduced while he was in the Senate, really said about Pepper was, if not as colorful, at least as disturbing: "Florida will never allow herself to become entangled in the spiraling spider web of the Red network. The people of our state will no longer tolerate advocates of treason." Sadly, the rhetoric on the right hasn't changed all that much in sixty years.

Claude Pepper passed away on May 30, 1989. When he died, his body lay in state for two days in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, an honor reserved for Presidents and a select few extraordinary Americans. Today is the 20th anniversary of his death. Here's the obituary that appeared in the New York Times on May 31, 1989.

The judge

It is remarkable to me that the Republican case against Judge Sotomayor is that this Princeton Summa Cum Laude and former editor of the Yale Law Journal, Assistant District Attorney in New York, federal judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Adjunct Professor at NYU Law School and guest lecturer at Columbia Law School, boils down to the idea that she was only nominated to the Supreme Court because she is an Hispanic woman, and that she is an intellectual lightweight. John Yoo, the Torture memo guy? Gimme a break!

Actually, that attitude by the GOP is not that remarkable to me. Their mendacity never fails. 

Danger's high

The news is abuzz with talk about the "first Apple Mac virus" investing Mac computers.

But blogs are buzzing this week about what two Symantec researchers have called the first harmful computer program to strike specifically at Mac.

This Trojan horse program, dubbed the "iBotnet," has infected only a few thousand Mac machines, but it represents a step in the evolution of malicious computer software, Haley said.

The iBotnet is a sign that harmful programs are moving toward Mac, said Paul Henry, a forensics and security analyst at Lumension Security in Arizona.

"We all knew it was going to happen," he said. "It was just a matter of time, and, personally, I think we're going to see a lot more of it."

Sorry folks, but it's not really so. The media, as usual, is incapable of doing its job, instead doing the spinning of special interests, in this case of McAfee and Symantec. They've flat-out missed the point.

The point to the spin, of course, is that Mac users need to start getting all afraid of the giant anti-virus enemy forces that would otherwise be amassing their anti-Mac bands of Al-Qaeda operatives hell bent on destroying the Mac, except for the fact that the Mac represents only an irrelevant 7 1/2 % of the market. That would be similar to the logic that terrorists aren't all that interested in destroying Israel because it's this tiny, irrelevant little county.  Is anyone so so gullible as to believe that hackers coding viruses don't want to be recognized as the ones who finally cracked open Mac security?

But then there is this little nugget, the buried lede on the story:

Mac users at large, however, should not be alarmed by the incident, experts said. The program infects only computers whose users downloaded pirated versions of the Mac software iWork.

In language even the media can understand, the point here is that this is not malware in the traditional sense of a virus. It does not spread from computer to computer, peer to peer, without action by the computer user. Rather, it is a feature. Yeah, it's a malicious feature, designed into an illegal (I'll repeat that - illegal, as in stolen, pirated, criminally obtained) copy of software used by people who steal software. And stupid criminals, too, as the software is available for a free 30-day trial from Apple. But it's a feature nonetheless. The only way to get it is to steal an illegal copy of the iWork '09 software to which a malicious program has been added. 

Put even more simply, you have to take action yourself to install the thing. You know, that message you get that tells you that you are installing software downloaded from the internet and which asks you if you want to continue with the installation, which is not from a trusted source. Yeah, that's why it's there. That's why there are rules, codes of conduct.

Antivirus software makers are spinning this as the harbinger of future threats against the Mac, as evidence that you need to protect yourself by turning over control of your computer to them. I would expect to hear that no computer with Symantec's antivirus software has been infected by iBotnet, even though it probably doesn't protect against it. Be very, very frightened.

They've learned well from Dick Cheney.

And that's also my commentary on Cheney's speech and media blitz.

Listen to the Silence

It would be a complete waste of my blogspace to comment on Dick Cheney's speech today at the American Enterprise Institute. And now I've already dignified it too much.

I'll put myself out there, part II

Well, well, well.  It's looking more and more like Pelosi wasn't lying.

And Eric Boehlert at Media Matters takes on the media's incomprehensible Newt worship.

Easy on the gas, part III

A couple of days ago I mentioned the Hindenburg problem with hydrogen fuel cells.  It was really just a throw-away comment, a concern about using hydrogen as a fuel source but not one about which I have done any research. 

Tonight we watched Quantum of Solace, the most recent James Bond movie.  Its vision of hydrogen fuel cells isn't so cheery, either. A quick search on the Google pulled up this article, which does a good job explaining the science (and lack of it) in the Bond movie, as well as confirming my skepticism for the whole hydrogen venture.

Calling you a bad name

The blueprint for the coalition of Republicans and Jews being built by the RJC.

I'll put myself out there

The big talk around work this afternoon was about disgraced former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich's charge that Nancy Pelosi "lied to the House" by claiming that the CIA did not brief her about the Bush Administration's policy of torturing prisoners (excuse me, enhanced interrogating suspected terrorists). The disgraced formed Speaker went on to call her either "incompetent or dishonest," and to say that "She is a trivial politician, viciously using partisanship for the narrowest of purposes, and she dishonors the Congress by her behavior."

Interestingly, the high-tech water cooler discussion centered on Pelosi: "she appears to think she is more powerful than she is"; "Speaker Pelosi should demand an investigation to clear her good name" (sarcasm intended). Those are real comments, on the email thread that I refrained from entering. It seemed that the Disgraced Former Speaker's credibility was not to be questioned.

But it appears to me that a few points need to be made.

In making a choice between Nancy Pelosi and the Disgraced Former Speaker regarding truth-telling, it's really an easy selection, and you don't even need to like Nancy Pelosi to arrive at that conclusion. That's a partisan reaction, true, but it's backed up by facts, things with which Newt is rarely concerned.  We don't even need to look that far for clear examples. Just a couple of weeks ago Newt was running around claiming that President Obama's nominee for the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, David Hamilton, ruled that you cannot mention Jesus in an opening prayer to a legislative session, but that it was ok to mention Allah. He's also been incorrectly claiming (and news sources witlessly presenting his claims as truth) that EFCA would put politically-appointed NLRB arbitrators into the middle of employer-union negotiations. If you're wondering, like most of what Newt says, both are lies. He projects a bit much when calling others liars - remember how he also ran around calling Joe Wilson a liar. How'd that work out for Scooter Libby? I was going to chronicle Newt's lies some more, but on quick investigation it turns out that the idea is so obvious that Media Matters did it a few days ago. Does he lie because he just doesn't have a clue about what he's talking about, or because he has no regard for the truth. In the Disgraced Former Speaker's words, is he "incompetent or dishonest" Does he lack such self-awareness? I'm not sure why we should even care.

The man was embarrassed out of Congress for many reasons, not the least of which was for being a contemptible, scurrilous and dishonest human being (broadly defined), and completely aside from being a serial adulturer who walked away from a sick wife, which is pretty much standard flair for Republicans (and John Edwards) and can even earn you the GOP presidential nomination (though serving divorce papers while she's in the hospital for cancer has a bit of that extra-special flair). Newt would know better than anyone about "viciously using partisanship for the narrowest of purposes." How about blaming the horrifying murder of a pregnant woman and her children on "the welfare state" and "the moral decay of the world the left is defending" while he was Speaker? Vicious use of partisanship is and has always been this hypocrite's modus operandi. For the life of me, I don't understand why the media is rehabilitating this guy, consistently putting him on television and in the newspapers, promoting the idea of him as a reasonable voice on the right, their "idea man" who can bring the Republican Party out of the wilderness, and a potential future presidential contender. Presented with the Disgraced Former Speaker's unflappable dishonesty, the celebrity journalists are starry-eyed over the unflappability but unfazed by the chronic mendacity. But I guess when your alternatives are Rove and Cheney... Oh, sorry, the broadcast media fawn all over those guys, too.

Regarding the snarky comment that Pelosi should demand an investigation, she has been demanding an investigation. She supports a Truth Commission regarding everything relating to torture, and has from the start. She has not changed her position since these latest allegations began - in fact, if anything it has further cemented her call for one. This whole allegation is an attempt to shut that process down by implicating Pelosi in order to force her to back down from that, because those who were actually involved in ordering torture don't want one.  If the stars are aligned properly, that attempt will backfire, just like everything else the Republicans try these days. Justice takes time, and not necessarily in the form we'd hoped, but it seems that it does come.

I wouldn't be surprised (although I would be disappointed) if Pelosi had been informed and was too much of a political coward to do anything about it. This was the post 9/11 era of Bush political scare tactics marked by wielding the security and national pride (wear your flag pin, dammit) hatchet over the heads of the opposition. But there's a tremendous difference between being informed of something and being a participant, and not just a question of degree. Apparently we're now supposed to believe that it's more of an offense to be told of that the Administration was engaged in improper behavior (and be told it's classified and that you're not allowed to discuss it with anyone) than to actually make the policy and carry out torture. Oh, and it wasn't torture according to those guys - or it was torture but it was okay anyway; I'm not sure what their current story is, since it changes so often - until Pelosi was "implicated".

However, I'm not prepared to concede the point. Everything that the forces of torture have said have been lies - real lies, not the kind that Newt charges people with - and lies of genuine and nefarious consequence. Beyond that, former Senator Bob Graham (D-FL) - who, although a bit eccentric, is one of the most honest politicians that we have seen in a long, long time - says that Pelosi is right. That means a heck of a lot more to me than anything the Disgraced Former Speaker may have to say.

It's a long, long race

President Obama is receiving a fair amount of flack from the left regarding his apparent about-face on the release of additional Abu Ghraib prison abuse photographs, his appointment of General Stanley McChrystal - a man who appears to be tainted by the Tillman cover-up and Bush-era prisoner abuse - to head military operations in Afghanistan, his foot-dragging on the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, and his disinterest in a Truth Commission.  Just go and read Glenn any day of the week for the latest round of liberal disappointment.

From a pure sense of justice, I would prefer to see something different on all of those examples above. And, let me be clear, the voices criticizing the President about this are right.

But I don't think Barack Obama is anything different than what I assumed all along - incredibly smart, pragmatic and, most of all, careful.  And all of these actions can be explained by the same need: to build the confidence of the military commanders and the Pentagon so that they will be willing to follow him and trust his leadership.  That requires some give and take.  Rather than coming in as a crusader, he is coming in as their new leader.  He will win their confidence, and then begin to enact reforms. Anything else would doom his efforts.  At the same time, he is securing the political "middle-ground," showing he is not a pawn of any perceived extremists (despite the fact that I do believe the "left" has the moral high-ground here).  And so we wait a bit for change, because it's the only way real change can come.

Only time can tell if my assessment is correct.  

Easy on the gas, continued

The automobile industry is peeved about the cut of the budget for hydrogen fuel cells that I pointed out a couple of days ago.

As my readers know, I am a hydrogen fuel cell skeptic. To be clear, I believe that the technological hurdles for building efficient fuel cells for use in automobiles can be overcome (or at least I won't argue the point), so that a car, driving on the road, can go a fairly long way and emit no pollutants. That is, a hydrogen fuel cell can be designed to serve as a great battery, that just needs more hydrogen to recharge - though at this point, the ability of hydrogen to do this is not so great, as it's not all that efficient, its sole advantage being that it can be recharged quickly. Remember, hydrogen is not really a fuel, but rather an energy carrier. (I know my point about efficiency is subject to argument; there is a posting under the New York Times article that challenges that assertion, but all of the objective studies - rather than industry spin - I have read indicate that my concerns are correct.)

Nevertheless.

I don't have much confidence in the sourcing of the hydrogen. You're just moving the emissions to a different step in the process. Here's a key quote buried at the end of the NYT article: "The hard parts are reducing costs, developing an infrastructure and figuring out a hydrogen process with a low carbon footprint." Bingo. The rest of it can wait until item 3 is resolved - until then, this is all smoke and mirrors. See this article from the Times from a couple of years ago. I don't find it terribly helpful, and the article is wrong where it simply accepts the industry assertion that hydrogen fuel cells would have greater efficiency than gasoline engines, but that's journalism for you.

Then there's the idea that we can get carbon-neutral sourcing of hydrogen by using nuclear power. Let's get real for a moment. Nuclear energy has numerous hurdles, and the right-wing obsession with it is silly when it's not dangerous. It's too costly, too risky, too far off in the process, there's not enough uranium out there, and it's just not gonna happen. Even if you had a policy that favored it. How long does it take to build a nuclear power plant? According to a McKinsey study (h/t The Daily Dish), under the best possible scenario we get less than 100 megatons of carbon dioxide offset by nuclear power by 2030 - that is, less than 2% of current emissions. Can we wait two decades to address global warming issues? Can we build nuclear reactors in sufficient capacity and timeframes to keep up with consumption needs at current rates of growth? Not even close.

And the premise of that discussion assumes that the "clean" nuclear energy would be sourcing the hydrogen from H2O via (what is still extremely inefficient) hydrolysis. 

Which itself is not likely the case, either. Instead, the only practical source right now for generating large quantities of hydrogen is natural gas - another fossil fuel.  And if we're going to do that, as T. Boone would surely tell you (though it advances his economics to promote both natural gas and hydrogen, since he knows the hyrdrogen would come from the natural gas - remember, his interest isn't really combatting climate change, it's reducing reliance on foreign oil), natural gas is much more efficient if you use it directly as a fuel.

There's also the Hindenburg fuel station problem. That is, you're ok, supposedly, when the hydrogen is in a well-designed tank. But, at some point it's got to transfer from a storage tank to a car tank.

In the end, all of the auto industry's (self-serving) objections may be technically correct, when you look only at the last link in the chain. It's simply that, until you can make your way to that link, it just doesn't matter.

They figured they could do whatever they wanted

Oh my. DLC Chairman Harold Ford is on MSNBC's Hardball basically condoning the possibility that some people were aware of the Bush Administration's torture policies, arguing that it was acceptable in light of the post-9/11 mentality and the idea that you needed to do everything in your power to prevent another attack on a U.S. city. The topic was the current charge, intended to either implicate the Democrats in the torture regime or to absolve the Republicans because Democratic leadership was supposedly involved, that Nancy Pelosi was briefed on and aware of the torture program.  

Some of our so-called journalists have been quick to take the charge as evidence that Pelosi was complicit in torture.  They do this while, ironically, maintaining the cognitive dissonance that what was done by the Bush Administration was not, in fact, torture, or was in some way justified under the circumstances. Moreover, apparently it is a greater offense to be informed of a brutal crime than to be the one who actually committed the crime. It's the standard Beltway establishment media perspective; it's okay when done by the Republicans, but a sign of evil in a Democrat. 

Others have pointed out the dubious nature of those making the charge; the awkward timing of those briefings; the inability of Ms. Pelosi to take any action even if she had been briefed due to the classified nature of the briefings - disclosure would be illegal; and the fact that former Senator Bob Graham, who was the only other Democrat to have been briefed on detainees during the period that Pelosi was briefed, appears to have not been told about waterboarding or other enhanced interrogation.   

But back to Harold Ford. This guy just hasn't gotten the memo, has he? Or maybe he got the memo from Dick Cheney, who this weekend claimed that the Bush Administration was engaged in an "honorable approach," preventing a "mass casualty attack against the United States." 

Ford's argument is really that those he is defending were cowards who were afraid of another attack occurring and then being charged by Bush, Cheney and crew of having blocked measures to keep America safe. Regardless of the validity of that charge. The only problems are (1) people behaving like that would have been simply, as I said, cowards, (2) the argument would have been flat wrong, and (3) even if it did work - which it didn't - efficacy is no defense to war crimes and a violation of international human rights law. Period. Even if some Democrats were complicit. It just doesn't matter.

Jeez.

On a related topic, I was planning to use an image from the brilliant Star Trek: The Next Generation episode in which Captain Picard is tortured by the Cardassians, and discuss how torture was addressed in that episode, which is eerily prescient of the Bush torture regime. In short, the Cardassians refuse to obey interplanetary treaties on prisoners of war, instead deeming Picard a "terrorist," opening the way to torture him.  But, the torture doesn't "break" Picard in the sense that he reveals any information, but ultimately it almost gets him to say what the Cardassians want to hear (that there are five lights, rather than four). The goal - just like the goal of the Bush/Cheney torture - is not to get information, but to break the tortured person's will, and to get the answer they already want. 

However, in searching for the image, I see that Slate has beaten me to the story.

Easy on the gas

The Obama Administration has pulled the plug on the development of hydrogen fuel cell-powered automobiles, choosing instead to focus spending on developing clean energy technologies that actually make sense.

“We’re very devoted to delivering solutions — not just science papers, but solutions — but it will require some basic science,” [Energy Secretary Dr. Steven Chu], who won a Nobel Prize for his work in physics, said at a news conference.

As my reader(s) know, I've been harping on this issue for some time. Hydrogen fuel cells have never made sense as a true green fuel, unless you only look at the emissions from the auto itself. It's good to have scientists who know what they are doing in charge of science policy again.

If you're interested in what's currently on the horizon for fuel efficient automobiles, here's the new Prius.

Fields of Gray

Following up on a story that I discussed several months back, a new report has been issued that shows that the Bush Administration kept secret data which showed increased cancer risks from drinking water contaminated with coal-ash impoundments.

Chasing skirts

No Star Trek spoilers on this blog, except that the movie is superb. It ranks among the top few movies bearing the Star Trek name. I'm not sure it's really Star Trek, - it's more of Trek-as-a-comic-book - and there are lots of issues that I could go into, but it doesn't offend too much Trek canon, either, and is a heck of a ride.

Oh, and Uhura is hot.  Really, really hot.

I will do a follow-up in a few days on my tribbles with the movie. So you have a few days to go out and see it. A couple of times.

Confident Gent

According to various sources who seem to have just noticed, Obama is Spock.

Wasn't that already obvious?

Anyway, here's Leonard Nimoy on his first meeting with Barack Obama:

He was in Los Angeles, speaking at a luncheon we were invited to. There was a very small crowd — minuscule compared to the crowd that he gathered later — at a private home in Los Angeles. And we were standing on the back patio, waiting for him. And he came through the house, saw me and immediately put his hand up in the Vulcan gesture. He said, “They told me you were here.” We had a wonderful brief conversation and I said, “It would be logical if you would become president.”

Live long and prosper.

Funhouse

It's time for the annual downloadfest and fundraiser over at Bruuuce.com. This year, instead of a Daily Dose Day, it's Daily Dose Week! Si Twining is doing a week of full-concert downloads, and raising money for the "Everyman" campaign for the Institute of Cancer Research. Go check it out, and drop a few dollars to help the cause - it's in the UK, but a good cause, and a good way to thank Si for maintaining the leading Hornsby site on the web.


(Here's a clip from the upcoming Robin Williams movie, Worlds Greatest Dad, which features a bit of silly commentary on Bruce - as well as an appearance from him at another point in the film.)

You've got to hide your love away

But in fewer places than before. Maine today becomes the fifth state in the Union to legalize marriage equality, joining Vermont, Massachusetts, Iowa and Connecticut, and is the second state to do so by legislative action (Vermont is the other).  

Lose all reason or rhyme

It seems that Arlen Specter has become a "Democrat" in order to allow Joe Lieberman to appear loyal to the Democratic Party.  In furtherance of that goal, after proclaiming on Meet the Press last weekend that he never said he would be a "loyal Democrat," Specter has now told the New York Times that he hopes Norm Coleman will win the Minnesota Senate race. To be exact, in response to a question about Specter's concern that there are no more Jewish Republicans in the Senate, he said "There's still time for the Minnesota courts to do justice and declare Norm Coleman the winner." 

Apparently he's trying to walk that comment back right now. Specter claims to have "misspoke." I guess he figures that if Joe Biden can get away with that on a routine basis, he can, too. But Specter forgets that Biden, joke that he is, is our joke. Arlen hasn't shown that he's even remotely on our side yet, going out of his way to indicate that his party switch is just semantics.

UPDATE: Words have consequences, and Specter's games over the past few days have been consequential. A few days ago Specter indicated that he would retain his seniority after becoming a Democrat. Not so fast, say the Senate Democrats. No seniority for now for Specter. It's up for reconsideration once he's proven himself as a Democrat. Arlen, it's time to fall into line. Or somewhere close to it.

Passing Through

Commuter rail in Central Florida - SunRail - is probably dead, at least in its current form.  The implication from Congressman John Mica is that failure to satisfy the conditions now will cause over $300 million in federal train dollars to go elsewhere.