Dagmar Krause Sings Surabaya Johnny

There's nobody else remotely like Dagmar Krause.  From the empty lilt of "Just A Conversation" on Slapp Happpy's debut, Sort Of, to the shrieking menace of "Joan" on the Art Bears' Hopes and Fears, and through all of the insouciant sophistication for which Slapp Happy was responsible; her range as a singer is incomparable.  The beauty and uniqueness of her voice are also notable.  Here she covers Brecht/Weill better than anybody since Lotte Lenya.  There also a German version by Dagmar available (and recommended - also hear her Mack the Knife in German - my personal favorite version, even over Ella's magnificent mangling from Ella in Berlin.)

Breasts!

Ann Althouse is obviously feeling a lack of Eyes on Ann!
Decolletage.

Pic h/t Brendan, TBogg.

Happy Trane Day!

It's John Coltrane's birthday.

The Origin of Stupidity

She has it covered, nothing more need be said.

h/t @kezboard

I missed her on Pharyngula, apparently.

Saturnebula!

How did I miss posting this?   This is NGC 6302, variously referred to the Bug Nebula, or the Butterfly Nebula, a bipolar (symmetric, two-lobed) planetary nebula located about 4000 light-years away, in the constellation Scorpius.  It is a grand, complex example, beautifully imaged here - one of the first images, in fact, from the newly refurbished Hubble Space Telescope.  This is an APOD image.  Click the image here to go to the APOD page.  Click the image there for a higher resolution version of the photo.

Missile Defense: It Doesn't Work

Here's a list of flight test results for the GMD (Ground-Based Midcourse Defense) - the system we're now not going to deploy in Eastern Europe. As you read down the table, look for the successes. You might note the FTG-05 test result (from December 5, 2008).   Looks pretty good, right? Here's the associated press release. It certainly looks like the best result so far.  (Up until that test, the successful results always included caveats about the speed of the target, the nature of the target, etc...)  But what's missing?  The salient phrase used to describe the nature of the target here is "threat representative."  What I don't see is any reference to the operative definition of that phrase in this context.  Do you think I'm being a little picayune?  Doesn't "threat representative" mean what it seems to say?  If you're at all familiar with the defense industry, you'll know that almost every bit of technical jargon is a term of art, an arbitrary designation often depicting something that seems at odds with the plain meaning of the words used. Think of "collateral damage" as a euphemism for dead civilians.  If you doubt this consider the words of Jack Hitt (h/t bjkeefe):

Missile defense exists in a world of its own. It has a special budget process that exempts it from most congressional oversight, and it is pioneering a new acquisitions process that redefines the very nature of what constitutes a "threat." The system has a separate definition to denote what it means for a weapon to "work" and even what it means to "know" something to be true. The shield operates beyond the world of empirical testing, and outside the four service branches of the U.S. military.

 I recommend reading the whole article, and Brendan's blog post, both linked above.

Ignoring this one result, for the moment, there is nothing in the test record that provides any degree of confidence in the GMD - none.  All of the "successes" are at best, technical successes - that is they indicate some benchmark has been reached; or they're dumbed down demonstrations that something can be hit with something else, disregarding the important consideration that the ballistic properties of the target don't bear any resemblance to those of an actual target.  Another factor ignored is the existence of realistic decoys - the only decoy tests listed used a small number of balloons to simulate the existence of decoy warheads.  These are important benchmarks, to be sure; but, the ability to distinguish a lighter than air, comparatively slow moving soft target, from a missile warhead traveling at supersonic speeds does not provide any sort of real world confirmation of an anti missile system.

I don't see any reason to believe that the FTG-05 result provides any reason for greater confidence, based on what has so far been published.

Irreducibly Complex Edition (John McWhorter & Michael Behe)

Thanks to BHtv commenter graz for posting the file.

Update:
The original diavlog has been reposted at bloggingheads.tv.

J. G. Ballard

Vaughn died yesterday in his last car-crash. During our friendship he had rehearsed his death in many crashes, but this was his only true accident. Driven on a collision course towards the limousine of the film actress, his car jumped the rails of the London airport flyover and plunged through the roof of a bus filled with airline passengers. The crushed bodies of package tourists, like a haemorrhage of the sun, still lay across the vinyl seats when I pushed my way through the police engineers an hour later. Holding the arm of her chauffeur, the film actress Elizabeth Taylor, with whom Vaughan had dreamed of dying for so many months, stood alone under the revolving ambulance lights. As I knelt over Vaughan’s body she placed a gloved hand to her throat.

So begins Crash: A Novel, an iconic, controversial novel of obsession and the nexus of technology and sexuality, written in the middle of the twentieth century, when the vision of technology was best represented by modes of transportation, rather than methods of information processing. The story still seems to accurately portray contemporary modes of obsession with startling clarity.

J. G. Ballard died today. Ballard was a fiercely smart British writer, similar in many ways to his contemporary, Brian W. Aldiss, Ballard wrote science fiction that was so much more psychologically sophisticated than what was being produced at the time that his work, and that of Aldiss, Norman Spinrad and a few others that a subgenre "British New Wave" was named to distinguish it - famously represented by the Michael Moorcock edited editions of New Worlds magazine. Ballard was probably best known for his novel Empire of the Sun, and the Spielberg movie of the same name. Crash was, of course, filmed by David Cronenberg. I can't think of another author whose work would have attracted such disparate attention.

Saturnebula!

What's remarkable about this beautiful image is that it's literally a scene from another galaxy. It's a picture of the Tarantula Nebula, an H II region (a cloud of glowing gas and plasma) in the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the closest galaxies to, in fact a satellite of, the Milky way. The nebula is an extremely bright object, if it were as close as the Orion Nebula, it would cast shadows. It's also the location of the nearest supernova since the invention of the telescope. This is an APOD image, click once for the APOD page, click the image there for a high-resolution version.

Saturnebula!

NGC 2818 is a strikingly attractive planetary nebula found in the southern constellation Pyxis (The Compass). The beautiful hues pictured here are the result of a sequence of exposures through narrow-band filters, highlighting emission from nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms showing as red, green, and blue in the image. This is an APOD image. Click through to see the APOD page, click the image there for a higher resolution version.

Saturnebula!

This is a depiction of a pair of the most conspicuous objects in the night sky (after major solar system objects). On the left is shown one the most recognizable nebulae of all, the Horsehead Nebula. On the right, the Orion Nebula, an object bright enough to easily seen by the naked eye – it appears as the middle “star” in Orion’s sword. Both are, in fact, parts of the vast Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, an object which, despite being about 1300 light years away, has an apparent size similar to your outstretched hand held at arm’s length in the direction of the constellation of Orion. (Which itself is one of the easiest to find and recognizable patterns in the night sky.) This is one of the most beautiful and keenly observed objects in astronomy. It's a stellar nursery, (in other words a molecular cloud in which stars are actively forming) the closest such in existence, and studied pretty closely as a result.

This is an APOD image. Click the image here for the APOD page, click the image there for a detailed view.

More Kew. Rhone.

Enjoy.

Kew. Rhone.

I had no idea I'd find this when I went hunting YouTube for a Peter Blegvad (rhymes with egg-bad) video. Peter is a god among rock musicians and is, in my totally not humble opinion among the best lyricists of all time. Kew. Rhone. was a collaboration with John Greaves who wrote the music and Lisa Herman, who had to sing this impossible stuff. Don't try to understand it, just love it for the wacky degree of complexity, the irony, and the overall musical gorgeousness.

Things I Think Are Beautiful

This is a long exposure image of the Kepler launch. The mission is, of course, a space geek's wet dream. But regardless of all that, just as an abstract thing this is a beautiful picture. Also, it is an APOD image, and all that implies. (Click image for APOD page, click image there for higher resolution version.)

Update: Not surprisingly, Phil Plait does me one better.

Limbaugh v. Obama

When Michael Steele told D. L. Hughley that Rush is an "entertainer" and that some of the things he says are "incendiary" and "ugly," it's hard to imagine that the Obama administration's political operation had predicted such a perfect event to crown their decision to engage Rush directly, after Rush's "I Hope the President Fails" became a cassus belli. Nevertheless, I have to say the spectacle appears to be one of the most spectacularly successful examples of ratfucking (cf) I've witnessed, on this scale. The image of Michael Steele kissing his ring and backing away apologetically under Rush Limbaugh's steely gaze (now indelibly the Face of the Republican Party) is an image that stings on so many levels I've lost count.

The O's can count the entire episode as a big win. It's clear to me what Rush get out of this. His ratings are way up. Rush in Opposition is Rush's strongest stance - just look back to the Clinton years. The Republican party is the obvious loser. Republicans ought to be asking themselves what it is they're getting out of their alliance with Rush.

Saturnebula!

The Crab Pulsar Wind Nebula (also known as a plerion, or synchrotron nebula.) At the heart of the Crab Nebula lies a pulsar, a spinning, stellar scale object with the density of a neutron, left over as the result of a supernova, in particular one caused by the collapse of a massive star. This Chandra X-ray image clearly shows some of the structure surrounding the Crab's pulsar. As usual, this is an APOD image. The picture here links to APOD page, and a click there will show a higher res view.

Merry Christmas (and goodbye Eartha Kitt)

Eartha Kitt's death was announced today. I think that's a very sad thing. I recommend staying with the video all the way through "Old Fashioned Girl" to hear "Santa Baby" sung by the first, and the best, interpreter of that song. Not to mention the little poke she takes at Madonna's ill-considered attempt at the tune.

Saturnebula!

Fomalhaut b. It's the first visible light image of an extrasolar planet. Though it's just a speck in this image, it's an incredible milestone. Fomalhaut itself is one of the brightest stars in the sky, located about twenty-five light years from earth in the constellation Piscis Austrinus. I'm not sure the toroidal dust disk surrounding Fomalhaut, imaged here, really counts as a nebula, as such; being apparently an analog of the Kuiper belt surrounding the Sun. However, this is such a cool discovery that bending the definition to be sure it's included in this feature seems perfectly justified. The sharp definition of the inner boundary of the cloud was one of the clues that led to the conclusion that there was a planet here to be found. The planet itself is thought to be three times the size of Jupiter, with a much larger ring system than Saturn - which might, in fact be what was actually imaged here.

This is an APOD image. Click away.

Saturnebula!

Just when I think the good images of galaxies are starting to dry up, this comes along. For those who aren't aware, the Hubble Space Telescope had been offline. After having been brought back online, this was one of the first images (within the first couple of days, at any rate) captured - a pair of gravitationally interacting galaxies known as ARP 147. A spectacular pair of ring-shaped galaxies, one face on, one nearly perpendicular to our viewpoint. This is an APOD image, you can click through for more explanation and a higher resolution view, as always.

Disappointing

I've only recent started reading Rick Moran's Right Wing Nut House. I was surprised by several judicious posts and had decided that Moran was somebody I could agreeably disagree with. However, his reaction to Erik's fit of utter lunacy is hardly reassuring. If the Republican party is going to recover, (and that's a goal for which I really do have sympathy) they're going to need to recognize the difference between partisanship and self-parody.

Operation Paranoia

Erick Erickson sure does think he's an Important Person. The anonymous McCain aids he seems so put out with are quaking in their boots, I'm sure. Malkin and Ace seem to be polishing their own batons. Jeebus. These folks need to take a breath. At least as long a K-Lo reigns at The Corner, Erik can't really be considered competitive for the title of Dumbest Political Blogger of any note. (Of course there's always plenty of competition on that score.)

Historic

Less than fifty years after the Civil Rights Act was passed. What more needs to be said?

Saturnebula!

Ok, in an effort to broaden this feature, since distinctive pictures of galaxies aren't an infinite resource, I'm rechristening (and retiming) it as Saturnebula. Yeah, it's a slightly goofy construction, but it's distinctive, and it's probably easier to post on Saturdays anyway - plenty of Friday Galactic Blogs went up on Saturdays in any case. I'll be pretty broad in my definition of "nebula," to encompass any cool galactic photos I find, consistently with older definitions like that of Messier.

This particular beauty is a depiction of the Veil Nebula, the leftovers from a supernova in the direction of the constellation Cygnus at an approximate distance between 1400 and 2600 light years. It spans three degrees in the night sky (six times the apparent size of a full moon) but is notoriously difficult to see in visible light, despite an apparent magnitude of about seven, which nearly as bright as the dimmest naked eye stars (corresponding to an apparent magnitude of about six.)

It's an APOD image, and you know the drill.

The Obamaclypse Is Upon Us!

---

(Posted first on Bloggingheads.tv - but it fits in perfectly on the blog.)

Spooky secondary effects of an election apparently leaning toward the Democrats! Mark Levin's head literally explodes!

The following pull is almost randomly selected from the gusher of a single run-on graf of stream-of-consciousness word spew. It's lucky this election is coming very soon, if only to preserve whatever sanity is left among the right-wing punditariat. Good golly.

Excerpted from The Obama Temptation:
Charles Gibson and Katie Couric sought to humiliate Palin. They would never and have never tried such an approach with Obama. But beyond the elites and the media, my greatest concern is whether this election will show a majority of the voters susceptible to the appeal of a charismatic demagogue. This may seem a harsh term to some, and no doubt will to Obama supporters, but it is a perfectly appropriate characterization. Obama's entire campaign is built on class warfare and human envy. The "change" he peddles is not new. We've seen it before. It is change that diminishes individual liberty for the soft authoritarianism of socialism. It is a populist appeal that disguises government mandated wealth redistribution as tax cuts for the middle class, falsely blames capitalism for the social policies and government corruption (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) that led to the current turmoil in our financial markets, fuels contempt for commerce and trade by stigmatizing those who run successful small and large businesses, and exploits human imperfection as a justification for a massive expansion of centralized government. Obama's appeal to the middle class is an appeal to the "the proletariat," as an infamous philosopher once described it, about which a mythology has been created.

Mark Steyn Continues...

to be an ass. And, if I'm not mistaken he's just conceded the next two elections to Obama!

Stupid Corner Tricks

Does Mark Levin Imagine that Colin Powell gives a rat's ass whether or not he has Mark's "respect?" Jeeze, those guys think a lot of themselves.

While I'm at it...

At Rick Moran's apparently ironically named Right Wing Nuthouse, a commendably sane post.

Liberalism is the yin to conservatism’s yang. We need each other and can’t make America a better place without the constant tug and pull of conflict between the two ideologies. What in many countries is a source of revolution, our war of ideas with liberalism and theirs with conservatism makes us both better. It forces us to come up with new approaches to solving problems in order to compete in the marketplace of ideas. This is a free market that Obama, no matter what his proclivities, cannot shut down.

To which, I might add, nor could George W. Bush.

I haven't really followed Moran's blogging - I don't know if he always been quite this reasonable, but I'm definitely going to keep reading.

Red State of Mind

I have a masochistic streak, apparently, that compels me to spend a lot more of my blog-surfing time among the nuttier reaches of the Rightosphere than among friends and allies. I think it's easier to get a feel for the zeitgeist by reading the stuff derived from what are, to me, the most alien (but widespread) points of view. Julian Sanchez pointed out, a few days ago, the low bar set by commenters at Red State - more accurately, Sanchez was taking note of the level of paranoia - but I think it amounts to about the same thing. I commented there on the quality of Erick Erickson's posts, specifically, and the example he sets for the mob of commenters there.

All of which leads me to this crystaline example of complete disingenuousness:

Turns out, according to sources we have in Texas, that Nick Lampson's wife is not even registered to vote in Texas 22.

She lives in Beaumont, TX - at an address well outside of the district - and this is where she is registered. She's in the 2nd District, and is represented by Republican Ted Poe. The address is on Collier Road in Beaumont.

Why does this matter? Well, two weeks ago, Democrat Congressman Nick Lampson's cronies accused Pete Olson of voter fraud. They claimed he had voted improperly in a Connecticut Special Election while he was working for Texas in Washington, D.C.

Ok, that's the setup. Now for the dénouement:

Even the most basic research shut down this wacky theory. It turned out that on the day of the supposed vote, Pete Olson was traveling from Capitol Hill to Texas on Senate business in his role as Chief of Staff for Texas Senator John Cornyn. He has the airline receipt to prove it.

And as you might expect, it also turned out that Connecticut does not require a photo ID or signature from anyone casting a vote. Of course, the idea that Olson would somehow go from 1998-2005, voting like clockwork in nine different elections (according to the Democrats' own records), and interrupt it to drive up to Connecticut to participate in an unimportant special election just doesn't pass the smell test. Well, for anyone but crazy liberals who happen to be supporting Nick Lampson, like Matt Glazer and others.

Pete Olson's experience shows us why you should be required to show a government issued photo ID before voting. But let's hope Nick Lampson wasn't counting on his wife's vote - if he gets it this year, something's wrong.

So Nick Lampson's wife has a different address than he does. Somebody who might know Nick Lampson accused Pete Olsen of voter fraud. Some mumbo-jumbo about a "smell test." (Why is it that nutcase conservative demagogues insist on sniffing everything?) Et voilà an apparent opening to smear Lampson about a future event and his wife's hypothetical voting habits.

This guy makes AoS look reasonable.

Shorter McCain Surrogates on Ayers

We need a premise to keep uttering the word "terrorist!"

Friday Galactic Blogging

Triangulum, aka M33, is the second closest major galaxy - after the Andromeda Galaxy - at a mere three million light years. It's also generally considered the most distant object, though M81 (twkeve million light years away) has been observed by a few experienced observers, and of course there was an event earlier this year, which for a short time was a naked eye object at 7.5 billion light years. M33 is a good sized galaxy - third largest in the Local Group, which, of course, also include Andromeda and the Milky Way.

This is an APOD image. Click the picture to view the APOD page for it. Click the image on that page for a higher resolution view.

LHC First Light

Last night a proton beam made its first lap of the Large Hadron Collider, with minimum drama, and almost no ending of the world. (Of course we did inch ever so closer to the Big Rip overnight, but that would have happened even without the LHC.)

Isaac Hayes

Kathy G posted this first. But it's timely, and fits a theme: songs my band covered reluctantly despite my bullheaded enthusiasm. The bastards.

Isaac Hayes was sui generis and a sublime artist.

Ok, just for contrast

This is much closer to the orginal, though it lacks Eno's wailing, screaming, siren/synth. This is how to achieve weight and power with rock and roll. Keep control of the pace, keep the energy just a hair under a boil, and hint at letting it all just crash through to the surface. Cale is masterful when he's at his best.

Sorry Elvis...

But John Cale owns this song. Though this isn't the best recorded version by Cale. That would be the version on the Slow Dazzle album. Still this is pretty nice.

Not Every Violation of the Law Is a Crime!

Especially if the laws were broken by Bush administration employees and are being judged by same. Mukasey:

Not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime. In this instance, the two joint reports found only violations of the civil service laws.

So despite the far-reaching consequences of politicizing the Justice Department, despite the obvious moral hazard in letting your boss's people off easy, despite the clear violation of the law, nobody gets prosecuted. It must be nice to be defendant, judge, and jury on the same case.

We'll see if Patrick Leahy is a hero, or is just paying lip service on this one, but he's making some good mouth noises (NYT):

Mukasey's remarks "appear premature based on the facts and evidence that congressional investigators and the inspector general have uncovered so far"

Mukasey sees no need to adjust the status of employees who were hired under the flawed process. But he does encourage those were wrongfully treated to reapply.

What a guy.

These guys can't leave soon enough.

While I'm Complaining about McCarthy

How much bad faith does somebody need to exhibit before we just dismiss their opinions out-of-hand? Andy McCarthy:

I suppose if we are thinking about turning our country over to the second Carter term — or the first McGovern — it shouldn't surprise anyone to see Russia go into its Aghanistan mode ... or Czechoslovakia ... or Hungary ... or (as Roger reminds us) Georgia.

What purpose does this serve? He's floating a causative relationship between Obama's candidacy and post-Soviet aggression? There's a damn Democrat running for president! The Russians can see we're weak and are taking advantage! He's "joking," of course.

Friday Galactic Blogging

That's quite a bridge! 22,000 light years long and spanning the gap between the galaxies NGC 5216 and NGC 5218, known collectively as ARP 104. Obviously in close a gravitational relationship, these two galaxies look appear to be in the process of tearing each other up, probably to merge in the next hundred thousand years or so. They're relatively close to us at a distance of about seventeen million light years in the direction of the Big Dipper. It's an APOD image, and you know what to do.

Hamdan and McCarthy

Andy McCarthy thinks the Hamdan verdict is a disgrace. The guy only got five-and-a-half years and is getting credit for time served.

It is the worst sentence I have ever heard of. It demonstrates an unseriousness about the war and the stakes involved.

Andy hyperventilates a bit here, I think. The guy is a driver. It seems to be acknowledged that he wasn't capable of planning or leading, he's just a guy who did low level jobs. A servant, essentially. By Andy's lights Hamdan provided

material support to our enemies, [...] actually protected bin Laden and transported weapons for al Qaeda,

all of which is, I assume, literally true. But it's a silly, bad faith exaggeration of Hamdan's apparent role. Does every grunt in Bin Laden's organization deserve life behind bars? What purpose does that serve, except to feed Andy and his fellow travelers' thirst for revenge, even when it's overblown and mostly inappropriate. Get your hands on Zawahiri, then try for a life sentence. Five years in GTMO ought to be enough for a the guy who changed Bin Laden's flat tires.

More Pandering Content

This is a perfectly expressed version of this song enhanced immeasurably by the B&W footage. It's this sort of noirish character piece - perfectly expressed by the spare quartet sound on Small Change - that first started my interest in Waits' music. That the avant-garde sensibility of his post Swordfishtrombones work has appealed as much or more ( at least to me) and if anything is even less compromised, is proof by my lights of the incandescent quality his work.

Young Tom Waits

Ok, I've been lax. Every few months, the effort of putting up blog posts begins to seem like a burden. So, in a naked attempt to make up for a complete lack of effort, here's a nice example of Tom from his maudlin period. Young Tom, Old Tom, it's all good to me.

Friday Galactic Blogging

Need visual proof of General Relativity? Today's your lucky day! The white smeary dot at the center of this image is a relatively normal seeming, distant, apparent elliptical. The partial ring surrounding it is another galaxy, lined up distantly behind the first, whose image has been lensed by the gravitation of the closer galaxy. Known as Einstein Rings such objects aren't necessarily galaxies. The phenomenon only occurs in instances where the two objects are nearly perfectly lined up. It's an APOD image and you know the drill.