lookin

Well, I should hope so!

Kirobo the talking robot rockets into space. Kirobo, a knee-high talking robot with red boots and a black and white body, has blasted off from Japan for the International Space Station to test how machines can help astronauts with their work. The Japanese-speaking robot, equipped with voice- and facial-recognition technology, was packed into an unmanned cargo vessel along with tonnes of supplies and equipment for the crew of the orbital research base. . . . At a recent demonstration, Kirobo said it "hoped to create a future where humans and robots live together and get along". Oh, my!

Why it's Edward Snowden on the run instead of James Clapper is beyond me.

The downside is that great posters are lost too soon to the ages. StuCotts now has only one post in the archives, and he had lots of great ones that will be fun to read again. I'd hate to have to trouble the NSA every time I want to find one.

Golly, did I ever land in the wrong thread!

I really liked this quote from The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel : Everything will be alright in the end. So if it's not alright, it is not yet the end.

Stop!, he bellowed.

As it is the case with everybody-I-can-think-of's articles. If you can find an article anywhere that's complete, balanced, and gives a full picture, I'd be grateful if you'd post a link. In the meantime, I guess we'll just have to keep reading as widely as we can and doing our own critical thinking. Or not.

The next president of Egypt may be an el-Sissi.

Tomorrow, so they say, Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Palestinian lead negotiator Saeb Erekat will begin peace talks in Washington, the first in three years. I sure didn't see this one coming, and it's a triumph for Secretary of State John Kerry, who's been working diligently for months to get it to happen. He got the Israeli's to release 104 Palestinian prisoners, and he got the Palestinians to drop their demands for a prior Israeli commitment to stop new settlements and to return to pre-1967 borders. Not sure how he did it, but he did it. I won't begin to guess the outcome or how long the talks will last, but I'm sure glad to see them start. Anyone care to offer any predictions?

Gotta agree, he's used up his hyperbole allocation for today, but he must be wondering what else he can try to get us to sit up and take even a little notice of the privacy invasion and profiling story that's been served up to us on a silver platter. Perhaps he'll think of a better way to get our attention.

Nope. Peace Corps. More to my liking. Fairly low, but, again, no direct experience. This is another one of those questions that just cries out for a bit of context. I've come across other opinions that were so appealing, I've latched onto them as my own. Then there were some others that were real stinkers. Case-by-case is my motto.

Had you reversed the order of those two sentences, I'd be in full agreement.

Can't speak for ihpguy but it would sure be hard for me to drum up respect for an opinion that it's OK for our government to toss its citizens (even one - especially one) into an internment camp without due process. I wouldn't like being 're-located', and I'll bet it's a 'sacrifice' you wouldn't like making either, even if it came with all the food you could eat and all the fuel you could burn. I'll grant you it's better than being cold and hungry, but it's still illegal imprisonment. And the folks who locked you up are the very same folks who could decide one morning that, from now on, it was gruel for you - breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The point is, the moment our government starts behaving extralegally, that's the time to start getting worked up about it. Not tomorrow, and not next year. History is chock full of examples of folks who figured they would never be personally affected by the bad things happening around them. Until they were. Erosion of civil rights doesn't just stop by itself. It takes awareness that it's happening and a commitment to stop it in its tracks. Last week, I watched a program called Hitler on Trial in which a young lawyer named Hans Litten put Hitler in the witness box during a 1931 trial of SA thugs who had stabbed two leftist German workers. Litten's purpose was to expose the violent underpinnings of the Nazi party at a time when Hitler was hellbent on bringing it into the political mainstream. Had Litten succeeded, and had German citizens paid attention, imagine what future anguish could have been avoided. I'm sure I'm 'preaching to the choir' here, RA1, as I believe we see many, if not most, of these issues through the same prism, you should pardon the expression. It's just that I think this is a time for an extra dose of clarity, as there are still many folks who do not yet appreciate what the harvest might be when a government starts treating its own citizens as the 'enemy'. (And it was George Santayana who said "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.")

RA1, I expect we're still pretty much on the same path, at least on this issue. If you get a minute, look at my post again. You won't see anything that characterizes this surveillance as 'fair', 'legal' or 'Constitutional'. And the only thing equal about it is that all of us are getting our information hoovered up at the same time. What the NSA so far has been able to 'work around' is the issue of profiling. And that's because all the profiling is done behind a black curtain in Utah. It was real clear when we were profiling Japanese citizens seventy years ago because we kept them behind barbed wire. And it was real clear when we were profiling Muslims in New York because the cameras were mounted right outside their mosques. It took a while for the penny to drop and, if it hadn't been for AdamSmith's most estimable opening post, it would have taken a while longer, but it's pretty clear to me now that the 'data mining' that goes on in Bluffdale is profiling, pure and simple. Doing nothing more than mapping folks' phone calls creates a web of contacts with, for example, a Muslim-of-interest in the middle, and many rings of law-abiding Muslim citizens all around. And the FISA court, if it's even consulted, can expand the ring any time it sees fit, and give the OK for listening to phone calls. If the government actually said it was going to create a map of all U. S. Muslim contacts, there'd be a hue and cry, just as there eventually was with the Japanese camps, and just as there eventually was with snooping on Muslims in New York. And if it actually said it was profiling Tea Party Republicans or Progressive Democrats, which is quite doable with existing technology, the din would never die down. But the profiling that goes on in Bluffdale is hidden behind layers of secrecy and the majority of us haven't yet managed to give a shit. In fact, lots of folks think Edward Snowden should be put in jail for even calling it to our attention. And if the NSA ends up getting away with it, plus other stuff we may never even hear about, I'm going to call that a civil liberties workaround for the ages.

No question, it's easier to hold onto a principle when we're feeling secure than it is when we're afraid. But just because it's hard doesn't mean it's not worth preserving our core values. As the Japanese became our allies after World War II, we began to regret that we had ignored our principles, even as we were fighting to protect them. No one was proud of what we did to our Japanese citizens and, fortunately, we were able to avoid doing the same thing to our Muslim citizens after September 11th. But we had to make a conscious effort to keep away from that cliff and some folks did drift pretty near the edge. We had plenty of worried Muslim citizens a decade ago, and I'm sure there are still some who keep looking over their shoulders. We should take some pride, I think, that we resisted a repeat of the actions we took seven decades ago. Although there's no doubt that we did some significant ethnic profiling after September 11th, and are still doing some today. During the past decade, the New York police department took some heat for mounting cameras near mosques and infiltrating them. But at least, when it became known, there was a public debate, and a renewed agreement that we didn't want a repeat of what we did to our Japanese citizens. One thing that occurs to me now is that, in order to keep such ethnic profiling at bay today, the NSA has devised a workaround that involves profiling everybody. Seventy years ago, we couldn't keep everyone under surveillance, so we rounded up our Japanese citizens and put them inside barbed wire. Ten years ago, strategically placed cameras let us keep many of our Muslim citizens under close watch where they lived and worshipped. Now, to avoid that kind of scrutiny again, and since the technology allows it, our government has decided, in secret, to put everyone under some level of surveillance. As the technology matures, I expect we'll all be under closer watch. And, as our government becomes more and more committed to secrecy, the opportunities for debate will be closed off one by one. At least we don't have armed guards surrounding us. Not every day anyway.

One thing that troubles me is that my already wispy hopes for a midterm Democratic resurgence in the House are getting downright gossamer. Fortunately, my Representative supported the Amash-Conyers amendment. A couple weeks ago, he hosted Nancy Pelosi at a fundraiser in a fairly well-to-do enclave that probably hasn't hasn't seen a protest in decades. It did this time. The progressives were out in full force, demonstrating against Pelosi who has been vocal in her support of the NSA and who was one of the "no" votes. I'd have been there too, had I known about it. Me!! Who's been one of her most vocal supporters! I'm glad I'm not in her District, as I don't see a way I could check her box, you should pardon the expression. The last thing the Democrats need to do, by my lights anyway, is to drive off any of their most loyal supporters in 2014. And here they are, finding a way.

Usually just a splash of eau de toilette, though never right after shaving.

Respected the US Constitution, same as today. ( Did I pass? )

Personally, I'd vote for more exhibitionism rather than less. Could it be that Wiener is on the right track and the rest of us have some catching up to do?

Sir, here's the extra fluffy king-size towel you requested.

From the get-go, this has made the most sense to me. And it's where I expect ObamaCare will end up as the years go by. My suggestion, in a post long ago and far away, was to lower the enrollment age for Medicare by a couple of years annually until, by 2040 or so, we would have the single-payer system that makes sense for all. And the insurance companies would have had several decades to adapt their business models. Of course, even such a sensible, gradual approach may not be very likely to get past Republicans.

Seems to me only those who have actually experienced addiction are qualified to judge other addicts, and everybody else is lucky to just be guessing.

It's a crappy day in Shitterton, and Sir Henry decides he could do with a bit of fresh air.

You rang? Perry Como, mellifluous though he may be, is a mere parvenu compared with the enduring greats like Ted Fio Rito, Little Jack Little, and Basil Fomeen. To this day, nothing gets me into my 'boogie shoes' quicker than hearing the needle dropping onto the shellac of Diga Diga Doo ! Perry who?