I may not know what to do with Julian Assange, but Interpol sure does: they have arrested him. He is being held without bail, facing extradition to Sweden on those disputed sex charges, now further disputed from the left because Assange's accuser has been newly connected to the CIA.
He'll spend the next week remanded in British custody; I imagine the next step is to see what happens with that insurance file Assange has threatened to decrypt, and to see if any new leak sites spring up to serve Wikileaks' purpose.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Monday, December 6, 2010
Trevor The Tortoise And Qwop The Quail
In the 2001 World Athletics Championships in Edmonton, Trevor Misipeka attended as a representative of American Samoa, intending to compete in the shotput. He would be competing largely so that American Samoa could have someone participating, a common practice in large multinational competitions. No fun shutting out entire nations from the festivities. Bring in a guy, let the nation's flag fly with everyone else's, and we'll just all gloss over the inevitable crash-and-burn in the first round.
This was to be the case with Misipeka; however, eligibility rules had recently been changed without Misipeka's or American Samoa's knowledge. Athletes of this type could no longer compete in field events- such as the shot put. Only track.
Misipeka, who doubled in football as a 300-pound defensive tackle, proceeded to sign up for the 100 meter dash on two day's notice.
Here's the thing about Samoan athletes and defensive tackles: they're kind of big. Shot put suits them. Running, not so much. Misipeka, on two days notice, ran a 14.28, last in the 8-man heat and over three seconds behind 7th-place Philam Garcia of Guam, and was quickly dubbed 'Trevor the Tortoise'.
In the new online game QWOP, you play what is clearly a man inspired by Trevor's example and who also has had all his bones replaced with Jello. You control calves and thighs individually, and you'll quickly wish you didn't.
This was to be the case with Misipeka; however, eligibility rules had recently been changed without Misipeka's or American Samoa's knowledge. Athletes of this type could no longer compete in field events- such as the shot put. Only track.
Misipeka, who doubled in football as a 300-pound defensive tackle, proceeded to sign up for the 100 meter dash on two day's notice.
Here's the thing about Samoan athletes and defensive tackles: they're kind of big. Shot put suits them. Running, not so much. Misipeka, on two days notice, ran a 14.28, last in the 8-man heat and over three seconds behind 7th-place Philam Garcia of Guam, and was quickly dubbed 'Trevor the Tortoise'.
In the new online game QWOP, you play what is clearly a man inspired by Trevor's example and who also has had all his bones replaced with Jello. You control calves and thighs individually, and you'll quickly wish you didn't.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Wikiplexed
Julian Assange.
What am I going to do with you?
Anyone who doesn't know the name Julian Assange by now is hiding under a rock. He's the Wikileaks guy, for the two of you that applies to. He takes leaks provided by a range of whistleblowers, and after a period of time spent X-ing out the informant's name, releases the leaks to the general public. For a while, this worked out pretty well. The leaks had a place to go, once in a while they'd get major media airtime, Wikileaks got a free plug, everyone ends up happy (aside from whoever's information got leaked.)
Recently, though, it's all gone wrong. Half the world's governments would love nothing more than to see a bullet through Assange's head, with much of the general public none to fond of him either, generally those from countries Assange has targeted. Interpol knows where he is and is one order away from moving on him. Sweden wants him on (disputed) sexual charges. Some Americans want to try him as a spy. Ecuador offered, then rescinded, an offer of safe haven. Wikileaks is losing places to host a server, as well as sources of financial support.
Things began to fall apart, at least from my vantage point, right around the time of the leak of the 2007 "Collateral Murder" video, obviously NSFW, which was leaked back in April. Wikileaks, at this point, went from an in-the-background place to do your leaking to a news item in and of itself, placing its own practices in the spotlight. They came to a head just recently, when the first of the 251,287 diplomatic cables began to see light. So what of it all? What can we learn from all this?
Not all that much, actually. At least, not much that Assange has been intending to teach.
You see, a lot of his previous leaks never really drew much attention. Part of the reason, I think, has to do with the sheer size of the information dump being conducted. Remember the healthcare debate? Remember how many teeth had to be pulled to get people to read a 2,000-page bill? Remember how much hay was made of the size of said bill? People often made it onto the news simply for having read the entire bill front to back. 2,000 pages is a tiny, pint-sized Wikileak. Again, the diplomatic cables number 251,287. Assange himself has readily admitted that he receives more material than he can sift through on his own. Which is the thing. If he can't do it, the average person has no chance. No matter how much info is presented, one person can only get through so much. If the important bits are hidden among pages and pages of detritus, the important bits tend to go unnoticed, as if they were never leaked at all. In journalism, this is called 'burying the lede', and considering that Assange believes himself to at some level be a journalist, he ought to know this. When the important information is easily findable by a visitor, things run smoothly. When not, it has less impact.
With the diplomatic cables, he has reversed this and resolved not to bury the lede. However, he has gone too far in the other direction. He has made everything a lede. News cycle after news cycle sees only a small easily-digestible handful of the quarter-million cables released, with each and every one devoured. So far, only about 1,100 have seen air.
But there's a problem. 251,287 cables does not mean 251,287 bombshell revelations. Far from it. There is the assorted useful piece of information. There almost has to be. You take any random group of 251,287 diplomatic cables, there's bound to be something new and interesting. The knowledge that China is not as warm towards North Korea as originally thought, the plan by Hillary Clinton concerning spying at UN headquarters, these can be of use. But other things Assange may have intended as bombshells are really nothing that someone paying sufficient attention to the news might already have figured out independently. China's cavalier attitude and hacking of Google shouldn't come as a large shock if you had been paying attention to Google's early adventures in China, where they came perilously close to pulling out of the country entirely. Google had suspected as much. Corruption in Pakistan and Afghanistan are not big surprises if you had been paying attention to previous reports on same that did not require Assange's assistance to find out. Vladimir Putin knew of the death of Aleksander Litvinenko, we've learned, but then, this was merely a confirmation of something just about everybody had reckoned from day one. The cables show China as flexing their muscle in diplomacy to the point of irritation by much of the rest of the world, but then, this is about as easily seen as the sun. The part about China's irritation with Norway was already found out when the Norwegian-based Nobel committee awarded Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo the Nobel Peace Prize, to where people came away knowing that if China wasn't aggressive towards Norway before, they certainly are now. We learn from the cables that the United States is doubtful of Mexico's ability to fight the drug cartels, but then, who isn't? Any news value is merely concerning tone and scale. Even the China/North Korea leak is seen as some as overstating the case.
And then there's the chatter behind each other's backs. The insults. The gossip, as it's been so frequently called. These are functionally worthless. Less than worthless, even. Sure. Diplomats are catty behind each other's backs. So are workers in just about any field of employment ever. This is nothing compared to what often happens in the diplomatic world. Spies are frequently sent into that field; it's easy to spy and easy to pull the spy out if something goes wrong. Duplicity is a grand, time-honored tradition in the diplomatic universe, of which you can find examples all the way back to ancient Greece and Rome; the Bible; the time of Hammurabi. People talking derisively about other people in the State Department? Well, I never! All that is likely to happen by releasing these is that it makes people less likely to talk to these diplomats, and go to other methods, potentially war, to achieve their goals concerning the countries involved. Diplomats also engage in diplomacy- trying to get along with each other. Why engage in conversation with another country if this is going to be the result of discussing things in their country (these are all cables from embassies in the US)? Forget talk. Might as well take the more direct and forceful route. And in moments of particularly high tension, one wrong word can sometimes be all it takes to light the powder keg. Go and look at all the duplicity that went on over the course of the Cold War, spying, name-calling and everything. How much of it that was not public at the time of its occurrence do you think could have been leaked without either the Americans or Soviets pushing the button in response? Not a whole lot, really.
That is, if it's only one target. A curious thing about blame is that when everybody is guilty, frequently, nobody is. Governmental investigations of lobbyists and corporations and such more frequently claim a scalp when someone is singled out for blame. When someone wants people not to 'play the blame game', this is what they're trying to do: make everybody guilty so that individuals- or, more to the usual point, they themselves- don't actually suffer consequences.
This is the phenomenon that Assange, in his zeal, has seemingly triggered. Though he may hate Hillary Clinton and want her to step down, he has created so many other guilty parties that few are in a moral position to press for her ouster, not that one would do so over such trifling things anyway, and the ones that have not been targeted have ample reason to believe they will be soon enough and any attempt to go after Clinton will end up blowing back on them. There will be a black eye for a while, yes, but eventually, all will be forgiven.
There is a debate that exists over whether we have a right to know about the content of these cables or whether they should remain secret. The first thing we must establish is that, either way, the debate does not apply to Assange. His informant, perhaps, who's surely in for a world of hurt because Assange's technique of simply X-ing out the informant's name is absolutely boneheaded, but not Assange. (Any interested party with a copy of the information can just look to see what got X'ed out, see what name is there, and go after that person; the informant would actually be better hidden if Assange didn't X out anything at all. It's the anonymity equivalent of giving the informant a large neon sign saying "PAY NO ATTENTION TO THIS MAN".) The cables originate in the United States. Assange is Australian and does not answer to American authority. (Not that he answers to Australian authority either, but you get the point.)
We've covered this particular mentality in a previous piece. Foreign nongovernmental entities don't really care what you think of them. And when an empire declines, as the piece exposits, everybody wants to get their licks in. Assange could, in a sense, be compared to the Visigoths sacking Rome, accelerating the empire's decline by making off with things of importance to the empire- in this case, the empire's secrets, privacy and reputation. An actual sacking of Washington DC, or any major world capital, would be unfeasible in this particular day and age, but what one can do is, instead of taking objects of value directly, take the ability to earn those objects or be able to afford to keep the objects they have. This being an age of information, every time a secret is divulged against one's will, every time one's dirty laundry is forced out into the open, it's like another gold coin, another gemstone, another crown jewel out the door.
Anyway. Do we have a right to know about these things? It's in the eye of the beholder as to the exact amount, really, but there is a line somewhere. You wouldn't divulge nuclear launch codes, for example. Obviously to suggest that you should is ridiculous, but that's just to establish the fact that a line exists somewhere- somewhere, anywhere. Any secret less important than that which you'd want to keep is merely helping to establish the location of the line. And the line, at least to me, does come well before that. Obviously there are things we need to know as well. I mean, look what I deal in around here. I want to know a whole bunch of stuff too. But I'm willing to wait if that knowledge is of the type where the downsides of having it be public knowledge outweigh the upsides. It's the political equivalent of a football playbook. You would not ask a football team to divulge, for public consumption, the contents of the playbook they are using this season. For them to do so would be to virtually guarantee that they lose their games. When a football player is called into the coach's office to be cut, they're told to take their playbook with them. You don't want them running off with it after they're no longer on the team.
However, the downsides diminish over time, as the information becomes outdated, so eventually just about everything becomes safe to release. Including playbooks. Any random fan can go out and find books containing diagrams of old plays. Most Packers fans will be able to tell you about a particular old play of Vince Lombardi's, the power sweep. Someone made a Broadway play to tell you all about it. It's a matter of what is okay to release and when, and it can be very tricky sometimes to establish the threshold.
As a whole, Assange has selected cables for which the downsides have been deemed by most to outweigh the upsides, in particular the catty insults. The questionability of the value of the leaked cables has done a strange thing: it's made this all less about the rights of the people to know, and more about Assange and his motives than is healthy for one who purports to engage in journalism. And his motives are plain as day: he describes himself as "a combative person" who enjoys "crushing bastards." Crushing bastards, as he puts it, is well and good, and a lot of people get into the industry with visions of the day they get to crush a bastard dancing in their head like sugar plums. But it is not something where you should be waking up and saying 'So which bastard am I going to crush today?' You try not to make the story about you. Sometimes you can't help but insert yourself into the story, but even so, you are trying to be merely a part of the story, not the story itself. And if you do become the story, you want to try to get the story off of you and back onto the original topic. Assange has become the story and is making no efforts to change that, and in the process a budding debate over how some governments are reacting to the content- the United States with warning people in an official government capacity away from reading the leaks, China opting for a straight blackout- has been to a degree choked out by stories about Assange. The debate here is peppered with frustration that while Wikileaks goes to considerable lengths to force out the information of others, they themselves remain deeply in the shadows. Considering the amount of people after them, this seems necessary if they want to remain able to do any leaking, but it smacks of hypocrisy to some who disagree to one degree or another.
He does, however, have an out. Maybe not out of his problems with the authorities, but out of his problems with the public. If there's one entity people tend to hate these days more than the government, it's banks. Assange has made note that among his cache of yet-to-be-released information is a "mega-leak" from a major American bank. Which one, he will not say. This fact has caused the ears of many to perk up, eager to find out what this leak contains. Arguably, there's more interest in the prospective bank leak than in the diplomatic cables. Assange, by releasing this, would get a significant segment of the public back on his side, carrying the dual advantage of being a popular and worthwhile target. The fact that he also has information on BP (he doesn't know if it's unique) helps his cause further. And if apprehended by Interpol or someone else, he has a contingency plan, namely, tens of thousands of other people who went to the Pirate Bay, a sympathetic site, and downloaded an 'insurance' file which includes, among other things, the remaining cables and the BP files, who will all recieve decryption codes in the event of his capture or death and put everything out in one gigantic tsunami of information dumping. This brings us back to the first problem of some important information flying under the radar, but at that point it can't really be avoided.
Assange has what is surely some extremely useful information, somewhere in all of that, and has taken great pains to ensure its eventual release. But he has no sense of what information is useful and what information is filler, or alternatively, he doesn't care. He has the potential to change the world in profoundly positive ways, and has provided a vehicle for this to be facilitated with an ease not previously seen anywhere, but has let it go to his head such that the vehicle has been damaged.
Julian Assange.
What am I going to do with you?
What am I going to do with you?
Anyone who doesn't know the name Julian Assange by now is hiding under a rock. He's the Wikileaks guy, for the two of you that applies to. He takes leaks provided by a range of whistleblowers, and after a period of time spent X-ing out the informant's name, releases the leaks to the general public. For a while, this worked out pretty well. The leaks had a place to go, once in a while they'd get major media airtime, Wikileaks got a free plug, everyone ends up happy (aside from whoever's information got leaked.)
Recently, though, it's all gone wrong. Half the world's governments would love nothing more than to see a bullet through Assange's head, with much of the general public none to fond of him either, generally those from countries Assange has targeted. Interpol knows where he is and is one order away from moving on him. Sweden wants him on (disputed) sexual charges. Some Americans want to try him as a spy. Ecuador offered, then rescinded, an offer of safe haven. Wikileaks is losing places to host a server, as well as sources of financial support.
Things began to fall apart, at least from my vantage point, right around the time of the leak of the 2007 "Collateral Murder" video, obviously NSFW, which was leaked back in April. Wikileaks, at this point, went from an in-the-background place to do your leaking to a news item in and of itself, placing its own practices in the spotlight. They came to a head just recently, when the first of the 251,287 diplomatic cables began to see light. So what of it all? What can we learn from all this?
Not all that much, actually. At least, not much that Assange has been intending to teach.
You see, a lot of his previous leaks never really drew much attention. Part of the reason, I think, has to do with the sheer size of the information dump being conducted. Remember the healthcare debate? Remember how many teeth had to be pulled to get people to read a 2,000-page bill? Remember how much hay was made of the size of said bill? People often made it onto the news simply for having read the entire bill front to back. 2,000 pages is a tiny, pint-sized Wikileak. Again, the diplomatic cables number 251,287. Assange himself has readily admitted that he receives more material than he can sift through on his own. Which is the thing. If he can't do it, the average person has no chance. No matter how much info is presented, one person can only get through so much. If the important bits are hidden among pages and pages of detritus, the important bits tend to go unnoticed, as if they were never leaked at all. In journalism, this is called 'burying the lede', and considering that Assange believes himself to at some level be a journalist, he ought to know this. When the important information is easily findable by a visitor, things run smoothly. When not, it has less impact.
With the diplomatic cables, he has reversed this and resolved not to bury the lede. However, he has gone too far in the other direction. He has made everything a lede. News cycle after news cycle sees only a small easily-digestible handful of the quarter-million cables released, with each and every one devoured. So far, only about 1,100 have seen air.
But there's a problem. 251,287 cables does not mean 251,287 bombshell revelations. Far from it. There is the assorted useful piece of information. There almost has to be. You take any random group of 251,287 diplomatic cables, there's bound to be something new and interesting. The knowledge that China is not as warm towards North Korea as originally thought, the plan by Hillary Clinton concerning spying at UN headquarters, these can be of use. But other things Assange may have intended as bombshells are really nothing that someone paying sufficient attention to the news might already have figured out independently. China's cavalier attitude and hacking of Google shouldn't come as a large shock if you had been paying attention to Google's early adventures in China, where they came perilously close to pulling out of the country entirely. Google had suspected as much. Corruption in Pakistan and Afghanistan are not big surprises if you had been paying attention to previous reports on same that did not require Assange's assistance to find out. Vladimir Putin knew of the death of Aleksander Litvinenko, we've learned, but then, this was merely a confirmation of something just about everybody had reckoned from day one. The cables show China as flexing their muscle in diplomacy to the point of irritation by much of the rest of the world, but then, this is about as easily seen as the sun. The part about China's irritation with Norway was already found out when the Norwegian-based Nobel committee awarded Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo the Nobel Peace Prize, to where people came away knowing that if China wasn't aggressive towards Norway before, they certainly are now. We learn from the cables that the United States is doubtful of Mexico's ability to fight the drug cartels, but then, who isn't? Any news value is merely concerning tone and scale. Even the China/North Korea leak is seen as some as overstating the case.
And then there's the chatter behind each other's backs. The insults. The gossip, as it's been so frequently called. These are functionally worthless. Less than worthless, even. Sure. Diplomats are catty behind each other's backs. So are workers in just about any field of employment ever. This is nothing compared to what often happens in the diplomatic world. Spies are frequently sent into that field; it's easy to spy and easy to pull the spy out if something goes wrong. Duplicity is a grand, time-honored tradition in the diplomatic universe, of which you can find examples all the way back to ancient Greece and Rome; the Bible; the time of Hammurabi. People talking derisively about other people in the State Department? Well, I never! All that is likely to happen by releasing these is that it makes people less likely to talk to these diplomats, and go to other methods, potentially war, to achieve their goals concerning the countries involved. Diplomats also engage in diplomacy- trying to get along with each other. Why engage in conversation with another country if this is going to be the result of discussing things in their country (these are all cables from embassies in the US)? Forget talk. Might as well take the more direct and forceful route. And in moments of particularly high tension, one wrong word can sometimes be all it takes to light the powder keg. Go and look at all the duplicity that went on over the course of the Cold War, spying, name-calling and everything. How much of it that was not public at the time of its occurrence do you think could have been leaked without either the Americans or Soviets pushing the button in response? Not a whole lot, really.
That is, if it's only one target. A curious thing about blame is that when everybody is guilty, frequently, nobody is. Governmental investigations of lobbyists and corporations and such more frequently claim a scalp when someone is singled out for blame. When someone wants people not to 'play the blame game', this is what they're trying to do: make everybody guilty so that individuals- or, more to the usual point, they themselves- don't actually suffer consequences.
This is the phenomenon that Assange, in his zeal, has seemingly triggered. Though he may hate Hillary Clinton and want her to step down, he has created so many other guilty parties that few are in a moral position to press for her ouster, not that one would do so over such trifling things anyway, and the ones that have not been targeted have ample reason to believe they will be soon enough and any attempt to go after Clinton will end up blowing back on them. There will be a black eye for a while, yes, but eventually, all will be forgiven.
There is a debate that exists over whether we have a right to know about the content of these cables or whether they should remain secret. The first thing we must establish is that, either way, the debate does not apply to Assange. His informant, perhaps, who's surely in for a world of hurt because Assange's technique of simply X-ing out the informant's name is absolutely boneheaded, but not Assange. (Any interested party with a copy of the information can just look to see what got X'ed out, see what name is there, and go after that person; the informant would actually be better hidden if Assange didn't X out anything at all. It's the anonymity equivalent of giving the informant a large neon sign saying "PAY NO ATTENTION TO THIS MAN".) The cables originate in the United States. Assange is Australian and does not answer to American authority. (Not that he answers to Australian authority either, but you get the point.)
We've covered this particular mentality in a previous piece. Foreign nongovernmental entities don't really care what you think of them. And when an empire declines, as the piece exposits, everybody wants to get their licks in. Assange could, in a sense, be compared to the Visigoths sacking Rome, accelerating the empire's decline by making off with things of importance to the empire- in this case, the empire's secrets, privacy and reputation. An actual sacking of Washington DC, or any major world capital, would be unfeasible in this particular day and age, but what one can do is, instead of taking objects of value directly, take the ability to earn those objects or be able to afford to keep the objects they have. This being an age of information, every time a secret is divulged against one's will, every time one's dirty laundry is forced out into the open, it's like another gold coin, another gemstone, another crown jewel out the door.
Anyway. Do we have a right to know about these things? It's in the eye of the beholder as to the exact amount, really, but there is a line somewhere. You wouldn't divulge nuclear launch codes, for example. Obviously to suggest that you should is ridiculous, but that's just to establish the fact that a line exists somewhere- somewhere, anywhere. Any secret less important than that which you'd want to keep is merely helping to establish the location of the line. And the line, at least to me, does come well before that. Obviously there are things we need to know as well. I mean, look what I deal in around here. I want to know a whole bunch of stuff too. But I'm willing to wait if that knowledge is of the type where the downsides of having it be public knowledge outweigh the upsides. It's the political equivalent of a football playbook. You would not ask a football team to divulge, for public consumption, the contents of the playbook they are using this season. For them to do so would be to virtually guarantee that they lose their games. When a football player is called into the coach's office to be cut, they're told to take their playbook with them. You don't want them running off with it after they're no longer on the team.
However, the downsides diminish over time, as the information becomes outdated, so eventually just about everything becomes safe to release. Including playbooks. Any random fan can go out and find books containing diagrams of old plays. Most Packers fans will be able to tell you about a particular old play of Vince Lombardi's, the power sweep. Someone made a Broadway play to tell you all about it. It's a matter of what is okay to release and when, and it can be very tricky sometimes to establish the threshold.
As a whole, Assange has selected cables for which the downsides have been deemed by most to outweigh the upsides, in particular the catty insults. The questionability of the value of the leaked cables has done a strange thing: it's made this all less about the rights of the people to know, and more about Assange and his motives than is healthy for one who purports to engage in journalism. And his motives are plain as day: he describes himself as "a combative person" who enjoys "crushing bastards." Crushing bastards, as he puts it, is well and good, and a lot of people get into the industry with visions of the day they get to crush a bastard dancing in their head like sugar plums. But it is not something where you should be waking up and saying 'So which bastard am I going to crush today?' You try not to make the story about you. Sometimes you can't help but insert yourself into the story, but even so, you are trying to be merely a part of the story, not the story itself. And if you do become the story, you want to try to get the story off of you and back onto the original topic. Assange has become the story and is making no efforts to change that, and in the process a budding debate over how some governments are reacting to the content- the United States with warning people in an official government capacity away from reading the leaks, China opting for a straight blackout- has been to a degree choked out by stories about Assange. The debate here is peppered with frustration that while Wikileaks goes to considerable lengths to force out the information of others, they themselves remain deeply in the shadows. Considering the amount of people after them, this seems necessary if they want to remain able to do any leaking, but it smacks of hypocrisy to some who disagree to one degree or another.
He does, however, have an out. Maybe not out of his problems with the authorities, but out of his problems with the public. If there's one entity people tend to hate these days more than the government, it's banks. Assange has made note that among his cache of yet-to-be-released information is a "mega-leak" from a major American bank. Which one, he will not say. This fact has caused the ears of many to perk up, eager to find out what this leak contains. Arguably, there's more interest in the prospective bank leak than in the diplomatic cables. Assange, by releasing this, would get a significant segment of the public back on his side, carrying the dual advantage of being a popular and worthwhile target. The fact that he also has information on BP (he doesn't know if it's unique) helps his cause further. And if apprehended by Interpol or someone else, he has a contingency plan, namely, tens of thousands of other people who went to the Pirate Bay, a sympathetic site, and downloaded an 'insurance' file which includes, among other things, the remaining cables and the BP files, who will all recieve decryption codes in the event of his capture or death and put everything out in one gigantic tsunami of information dumping. This brings us back to the first problem of some important information flying under the radar, but at that point it can't really be avoided.
Assange has what is surely some extremely useful information, somewhere in all of that, and has taken great pains to ensure its eventual release. But he has no sense of what information is useful and what information is filler, or alternatively, he doesn't care. He has the potential to change the world in profoundly positive ways, and has provided a vehicle for this to be facilitated with an ease not previously seen anywhere, but has let it go to his head such that the vehicle has been damaged.
Julian Assange.
What am I going to do with you?
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Actually, No, Stop It
Today we have our first measurable snowfall of the year, and Watertown busted out a 'snow emergency' for the occasion. I'm only seeing a couple inches outside my window, but it is enough to where you have to bust out the plows, so sure, why not.
Wisconsin, however, comparatively gets off easy. The American recorded record for snowfall in a 24-hour period (recorded being the keyword; sometimes snowfall doesn't get recorded because it falls in a place not equipped to measure it, which makes the identity of record-holders pretty volatile) is at Mile 47 Camp, Alaska, which recieved 78 inches of snow on February 9, 1963. In the lower 48, the record- some say the overall record and in fact world record when they don't count Mile 47 Camp- is held by Silver Lake, Colorado, which comes up 2.4 inches short of Alaska at 75.8 inches in April 1921. (When this happens, the Alaska record seems to revert to a 62-incher taken by Thompson Pass in 1955.)
Ranking the states by their respective record 24-hour snowfall, and counting Mile 47 Camp, along with the other highest numbers I've come across since I've really got no way of knowing which figures are more trustworthy than others, we see this, (tied states ordered chronologically):
1- Alaska, 78.0 inches (Mile 47 Camp, 1963)
2- Colorado, 75.8 inches (Silver Lake, 1921)
3- California, 67.0 inches (Echo Summit Sierra at Tahoe, 1982)
4- Washington, 65.0 inches (Crystal Mountain Ski Resort, 1994)
5- South Dakota, 52.0 inches (Lead, 1973)
6- New Hampshire, 49.3 inches (Mount Washington, 1969)
T7- New York, 49.0 inches (Watertown, 1900)
T7- Wyoming, 49.0 inches (Hunter Station, 1924)
9- Montana, 48.0 inches (7 miles south of Shonkin, 1982/14 miles southeast of Millegan, 2003)
10- Oregon, 47.0 inches (Hood River ES, 1980)
11- Vermont, 42.0 inches (Jay Peak, 1995)
12- New Mexico, 41.0 inches (Kelly Ranch, 1964)
13- Maine, 40.0 inches (Orono, 1962)
T14- Pennsylvania, 38.0 inches (Morgantown, 1958)
T14- Idaho, 38.0 inches (Sun Valley, 1959)
T14- Arizona, 38.0 inches (Heber Ranger Station, 1967/Alpine, 1987)
T14- Utah, 38.0 inches (Alta, 1982)
T18- Illinois, 36.0 inches (Astoria, 1900)
T18- North Carolina, 36.0 inches (Mount Mitchell, 1993)
T18- Minnesota, 36.0 inches (Wolf Ridge ELC, 1994)
T18- Nevada, 36.0 inches (Dagget Pass, 1996)
22- West Virginia, 35.0 inches (Flat Top, 1998)
23- Virginia, 33.5 inches (5 miles east of Luray, 1994)
24- Indiana, 33.0 inches (Salem, 2004)
T25- New Jersey, 32.0 inches (Charlotteburg Reservoir, 1915)
T25- Michigan, 32.0 inches (Herman, 1985)
27- Maryland, 31.0 inches (1 mile east-northeast of Spring, 1942)
T28- Ohio, 30.0 inches (3 miles south of Warren, 1901)
T28- Connecticut, 30.0 inches (Falls Village, 1969)
T28- Rhode Island, 30.0 inches (Woonsocket, 1978)
T28- Tennessee, 30.0 inches (Mount Leconte, 1993)
T28- Kansas, 30.0 inches (Pratt, 2009)
33- Massachusetts, 29.0 inches (Natick, 1997)
T34- North Dakota, 27.0 inches (Minot Airport, 1984)
T34- Nebraska, 27.0 inches (Dalton, 2006)
T36- Wisconsin, 26.0 inches (Neillsville, 1904)
T36- Kentucky, 26.0 inches (Simers, 1942)
T36- Oklahoma, 26.0 inches (Woodward/Freedom, 2009)
T39- Arkansas, 25.0 inches (Corning, 1918)
T39- Delaware, 25.0 inches (Dover, 1979)
T39- Texas, 25.0 inches (Follett, 2009)
T42- Iowa, 24.0 inches (Lenox, 1918)
T42- South Carolina, 24.0 inches (2 miles south-southwest of Rimini, 1973)
T42- Missouri, 24.0 inches (Cape Girardeau/Jackson, 1979)
45- D.C., 21.0 inches (D.C., 1922)
46- Alabama, 20.0 inches (Walnut Grove, 1993)
47- Georgia, 19.3 inches (3 miles northeast of Cedartown, 1942)
48- Mississippi, 18.0 inches (Mount Pleasant/Tunica, 1963)
49- Louisiana, 13.0 inches (Colfax, 1960)
50- Hawaii, 6.5 inches (Haleakali, Maui, 1936)
51- Florida, 4.0 inches (Milton Exp. Station, 1954)
Kansas and Oklahoma got their state records on the same day- March 28, 2009- from the same storm. Georgia and Kentucky also shared a date; March 3, 1942. Again, they shared a storm.
While several of the states- the western ones in particular; again, it's hard to measure snowfall in the mountains to the degree you might want for this kind of thing- are in dispute, Neillsville doesn't get displaced by anyone.
That established, it only takes 3-4 inches and some gradient on Portland, Oregon roads to cause this to happen (3-4 inches being what these drivers had; it doesn't even really take that much):
Be careful out there this winter. Don't be these people.
Wisconsin, however, comparatively gets off easy. The American recorded record for snowfall in a 24-hour period (recorded being the keyword; sometimes snowfall doesn't get recorded because it falls in a place not equipped to measure it, which makes the identity of record-holders pretty volatile) is at Mile 47 Camp, Alaska, which recieved 78 inches of snow on February 9, 1963. In the lower 48, the record- some say the overall record and in fact world record when they don't count Mile 47 Camp- is held by Silver Lake, Colorado, which comes up 2.4 inches short of Alaska at 75.8 inches in April 1921. (When this happens, the Alaska record seems to revert to a 62-incher taken by Thompson Pass in 1955.)
Ranking the states by their respective record 24-hour snowfall, and counting Mile 47 Camp, along with the other highest numbers I've come across since I've really got no way of knowing which figures are more trustworthy than others, we see this, (tied states ordered chronologically):
1- Alaska, 78.0 inches (Mile 47 Camp, 1963)
2- Colorado, 75.8 inches (Silver Lake, 1921)
3- California, 67.0 inches (Echo Summit Sierra at Tahoe, 1982)
4- Washington, 65.0 inches (Crystal Mountain Ski Resort, 1994)
5- South Dakota, 52.0 inches (Lead, 1973)
6- New Hampshire, 49.3 inches (Mount Washington, 1969)
T7- New York, 49.0 inches (Watertown, 1900)
T7- Wyoming, 49.0 inches (Hunter Station, 1924)
9- Montana, 48.0 inches (7 miles south of Shonkin, 1982/14 miles southeast of Millegan, 2003)
10- Oregon, 47.0 inches (Hood River ES, 1980)
11- Vermont, 42.0 inches (Jay Peak, 1995)
12- New Mexico, 41.0 inches (Kelly Ranch, 1964)
13- Maine, 40.0 inches (Orono, 1962)
T14- Pennsylvania, 38.0 inches (Morgantown, 1958)
T14- Idaho, 38.0 inches (Sun Valley, 1959)
T14- Arizona, 38.0 inches (Heber Ranger Station, 1967/Alpine, 1987)
T14- Utah, 38.0 inches (Alta, 1982)
T18- Illinois, 36.0 inches (Astoria, 1900)
T18- North Carolina, 36.0 inches (Mount Mitchell, 1993)
T18- Minnesota, 36.0 inches (Wolf Ridge ELC, 1994)
T18- Nevada, 36.0 inches (Dagget Pass, 1996)
22- West Virginia, 35.0 inches (Flat Top, 1998)
23- Virginia, 33.5 inches (5 miles east of Luray, 1994)
24- Indiana, 33.0 inches (Salem, 2004)
T25- New Jersey, 32.0 inches (Charlotteburg Reservoir, 1915)
T25- Michigan, 32.0 inches (Herman, 1985)
27- Maryland, 31.0 inches (1 mile east-northeast of Spring, 1942)
T28- Ohio, 30.0 inches (3 miles south of Warren, 1901)
T28- Connecticut, 30.0 inches (Falls Village, 1969)
T28- Rhode Island, 30.0 inches (Woonsocket, 1978)
T28- Tennessee, 30.0 inches (Mount Leconte, 1993)
T28- Kansas, 30.0 inches (Pratt, 2009)
33- Massachusetts, 29.0 inches (Natick, 1997)
T34- North Dakota, 27.0 inches (Minot Airport, 1984)
T34- Nebraska, 27.0 inches (Dalton, 2006)
T36- Wisconsin, 26.0 inches (Neillsville, 1904)
T36- Kentucky, 26.0 inches (Simers, 1942)
T36- Oklahoma, 26.0 inches (Woodward/Freedom, 2009)
T39- Arkansas, 25.0 inches (Corning, 1918)
T39- Delaware, 25.0 inches (Dover, 1979)
T39- Texas, 25.0 inches (Follett, 2009)
T42- Iowa, 24.0 inches (Lenox, 1918)
T42- South Carolina, 24.0 inches (2 miles south-southwest of Rimini, 1973)
T42- Missouri, 24.0 inches (Cape Girardeau/Jackson, 1979)
45- D.C., 21.0 inches (D.C., 1922)
46- Alabama, 20.0 inches (Walnut Grove, 1993)
47- Georgia, 19.3 inches (3 miles northeast of Cedartown, 1942)
48- Mississippi, 18.0 inches (Mount Pleasant/Tunica, 1963)
49- Louisiana, 13.0 inches (Colfax, 1960)
50- Hawaii, 6.5 inches (Haleakali, Maui, 1936)
51- Florida, 4.0 inches (Milton Exp. Station, 1954)
Kansas and Oklahoma got their state records on the same day- March 28, 2009- from the same storm. Georgia and Kentucky also shared a date; March 3, 1942. Again, they shared a storm.
While several of the states- the western ones in particular; again, it's hard to measure snowfall in the mountains to the degree you might want for this kind of thing- are in dispute, Neillsville doesn't get displaced by anyone.
That established, it only takes 3-4 inches and some gradient on Portland, Oregon roads to cause this to happen (3-4 inches being what these drivers had; it doesn't even really take that much):
Be careful out there this winter. Don't be these people.
Friday, December 3, 2010
WhoThe Heck Is Parson Brown?
Is what you've likely asked at some point if you've had Winter Wonderland drilled in your ear. Which by now you surely have.
'Parson' was just the term they used when the song was written (1934) to refer to a priest. "He'll say 'Are you married?'; we'll say 'No man/ But you can do the job when you're in town'" refers to Parson Brown marrying off whoever's doing the singing.
Man, is that song out of date, isn't it? First off, nobody uses that term anymore. Secondly, priests used to travel from town to town like that, but not anymore. Third, later on the song talks about going off to "frolic and play the Eskimo way" when we don't call the Inuit that anymore either, and you know sooner or later kids are going to start asking what's an Eskimo. And then there's "later on we'll conspire" and these days it doesn't really matter what the next line is because by the time you get it out you're eating pavement with your hands in cuffs.
And while we're at it, Santa Claus Is Coming To Town. Why are we singing to kids "He sees you when you're sleeping/ He knows when you're awake/ He knows if you've been bad or good/ So be good for goodness sake"? Yes, kiddies. The old man is watching you sleep.
And if you're good, the old man who watches you sleep will come into your house through the chimney. To give you a present.
This is not something you could get away with telling children in 2010 if it were not already established tradition.
'Parson' was just the term they used when the song was written (1934) to refer to a priest. "He'll say 'Are you married?'; we'll say 'No man/ But you can do the job when you're in town'" refers to Parson Brown marrying off whoever's doing the singing.
Man, is that song out of date, isn't it? First off, nobody uses that term anymore. Secondly, priests used to travel from town to town like that, but not anymore. Third, later on the song talks about going off to "frolic and play the Eskimo way" when we don't call the Inuit that anymore either, and you know sooner or later kids are going to start asking what's an Eskimo. And then there's "later on we'll conspire" and these days it doesn't really matter what the next line is because by the time you get it out you're eating pavement with your hands in cuffs.
And while we're at it, Santa Claus Is Coming To Town. Why are we singing to kids "He sees you when you're sleeping/ He knows when you're awake/ He knows if you've been bad or good/ So be good for goodness sake"? Yes, kiddies. The old man is watching you sleep.
And if you're good, the old man who watches you sleep will come into your house through the chimney. To give you a present.
This is not something you could get away with telling children in 2010 if it were not already established tradition.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
2018/2022 World Cups
Congratulations to Russia and Qatar.
Russia, I'm sure you'll be a fine host. Summer in Russia's fine; you've put a lot of work lately into your soccer product. You're not as good as you were as the Soviet Union, but that's to be expected; some of the former Soviets are now playing as members of other countries, most notably Ukraine.
Qatar, though, is a bit perplexing, having beaten the United States straight-up 14-8 in the finals of the 2022 vote.
The heat in Qatar- it's the Middle East, in case you haven't heard- and the size of Qatar- smaller than Connecticut, the detractors appear fond of saying- are being brought up most often. The surrounding neighborhood is also a concern of many. I'm not terribly worried there; though 2022 is over a decade away and anything could happen, as things stand, the safer parts of the Middle East don't really tend to get hit. They're where all the money is, and if you're engaging in illicit behavior that requires money, that's probably where you get a lot of that money. You don't want to go mess that up.
What I'm worried about is the team itself.
Remember, a host nation is granted an automatic bid- the only automatic bid- into the Cup. We have just given the Qatari national team a spot in the 2022 World Cup.
Unless they qualify for 2014 or 2018, it will be their first. Qatar has never qualified for the World Cup.
Let's go over their previous attempts, beginning in 1978:
ARGENTINA 1978: Were placed into a first-round qualifying group with Bahrain, Kuwait and the UAE. The UAE withdrew. Qatar came in last of the remainder, winning 1 and losing 3. Kuwait, who advanced, came in 3rd out of 5 in the second and final qualifying round.
SPAIN 1982: Qatar was placed in a 5-team group in the first round alongside Bahrain, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Syria. They came in third with 2 wins, 2 losses. Saudi Arabia, who advanced, finished last in the final qualifying group.
MEXICO 1986: Placed in a 4-team group with Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon. Lebanon withdrew; Qatar came in second to Iraq, who despite playing their home games on neutral ground due to the Iran-Iraq War, wound up going to the World Cup. They came in last in Group B alongside Mexico, Paraguay and Belgium.
ITALY 1990: Qatar advanced out of their opening qualifying group for the first time, beating out Iraq, Jordan and Oman. There were two spots in the Cup on offer from a six-team group; Qatar came in third, one point short. South Korea and the UAE qualified; China, Saudi Arabia and North Korea rounded out the group. Losing 2-0 to last-place North Korea was probably what did Qatar in.
UNITED STATES 1994: Qatar came in second in their 5-team first round qualifier; North Korea would come in first, clinching two matchdays early. Then the North Koreans brought up the rear again in the final qualifying group.
FRANCE 1998: Qatar drew luckily in their first round qualifier, cruising past Sri Lanka, India and the Philippines. They came in fourth in their second-round group, losing 1-0 to group winner Saudi Arabia on the last day, who qualified right there as a result. Had Qatar won that game instead, they would have gone through. Second-place Iran went to a playoff with Japan, lost, went to another playoff with Australia, and qualified on the away goals rule.
KOREA/JAPAN 2002: The frist qualifier was another formality, blowing by Palestine, Malaysia and Hong Kong. The second round, though, was another elimination, as Qatar came in 4th out of 5. China qualified automatically in a rout; the UAE went on to be eliminated by Iran in the playoff.
GERMANY 2006: The first round was comprised of twelve weenie teams, of which Qatar was not one, so they entered in the second round. They lost their luck at the first hurdle, drawing against Iran, who would move on and eventually qualify. Jordan also finished in front of them, but hey: they beat Laos.
SOUTH AFRICA 2010: Everybody was drawn into an opening knockout round aside from the top five teams as per the FIFA Ranking; these were Australia, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Japan and Iran. (Please note that there were 4.5 spots available to Asia for this Cup.) Qatar was ranked 16th. They drew Sri Lanka, ranked 30th, and blew by them 6-0 over two legs. The second round saw a four-team group with Australia, China and Iraq. Australia and Qatar both moved on, and were placed into the third round. The ten teams left were split into two groups; in each, two would qualify and the two third-placed teams would play off to see who would go up against the Oceania winner. Qatar came in fourth in their group over right games, four points adrift of the money and nine adrift of automatic qualification, behind Australia, Japan and Bahrain.
In the Asian continental cup, the Asian Cup, Qatar has consistently qualified, but has only once advanced past the first round, that happening in Lebanon 2000. And that really only happened because there were three transfer spots in a four-team group and Uzbekistan was the fourth. Uzbekistan drew one and lost two; guess who they drew against. China then dispatched Qatar 3-1 in the quarterfinals, Qatar's goal only coming after China had done their damage. Their all-time record in the Asian Cup: 4 wins, 11 draws, 10 losses.
And then there's the Gulf Cup of Nations, open only to eight teams in the Middle East. There have been 20 of these; Qatar has won two, both as hosts in 1992 and 2004. This cup has a group stage, and in two of the last three, Qatar has failed to get out of it. The club teams aren't so great either; here's how they've done in continental competition. The last and only win by a Qatari club was Al Sadd in 1988-89; that was prior to the major growth of soccer in Asia.
And they're going to host the World Cup now. We're going to put that in the World Cup, folks.
Russia, I'm sure you'll be a fine host. Summer in Russia's fine; you've put a lot of work lately into your soccer product. You're not as good as you were as the Soviet Union, but that's to be expected; some of the former Soviets are now playing as members of other countries, most notably Ukraine.
Qatar, though, is a bit perplexing, having beaten the United States straight-up 14-8 in the finals of the 2022 vote.
The heat in Qatar- it's the Middle East, in case you haven't heard- and the size of Qatar- smaller than Connecticut, the detractors appear fond of saying- are being brought up most often. The surrounding neighborhood is also a concern of many. I'm not terribly worried there; though 2022 is over a decade away and anything could happen, as things stand, the safer parts of the Middle East don't really tend to get hit. They're where all the money is, and if you're engaging in illicit behavior that requires money, that's probably where you get a lot of that money. You don't want to go mess that up.
What I'm worried about is the team itself.
Remember, a host nation is granted an automatic bid- the only automatic bid- into the Cup. We have just given the Qatari national team a spot in the 2022 World Cup.
Unless they qualify for 2014 or 2018, it will be their first. Qatar has never qualified for the World Cup.
Let's go over their previous attempts, beginning in 1978:
ARGENTINA 1978: Were placed into a first-round qualifying group with Bahrain, Kuwait and the UAE. The UAE withdrew. Qatar came in last of the remainder, winning 1 and losing 3. Kuwait, who advanced, came in 3rd out of 5 in the second and final qualifying round.
SPAIN 1982: Qatar was placed in a 5-team group in the first round alongside Bahrain, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Syria. They came in third with 2 wins, 2 losses. Saudi Arabia, who advanced, finished last in the final qualifying group.
MEXICO 1986: Placed in a 4-team group with Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon. Lebanon withdrew; Qatar came in second to Iraq, who despite playing their home games on neutral ground due to the Iran-Iraq War, wound up going to the World Cup. They came in last in Group B alongside Mexico, Paraguay and Belgium.
ITALY 1990: Qatar advanced out of their opening qualifying group for the first time, beating out Iraq, Jordan and Oman. There were two spots in the Cup on offer from a six-team group; Qatar came in third, one point short. South Korea and the UAE qualified; China, Saudi Arabia and North Korea rounded out the group. Losing 2-0 to last-place North Korea was probably what did Qatar in.
UNITED STATES 1994: Qatar came in second in their 5-team first round qualifier; North Korea would come in first, clinching two matchdays early. Then the North Koreans brought up the rear again in the final qualifying group.
FRANCE 1998: Qatar drew luckily in their first round qualifier, cruising past Sri Lanka, India and the Philippines. They came in fourth in their second-round group, losing 1-0 to group winner Saudi Arabia on the last day, who qualified right there as a result. Had Qatar won that game instead, they would have gone through. Second-place Iran went to a playoff with Japan, lost, went to another playoff with Australia, and qualified on the away goals rule.
KOREA/JAPAN 2002: The frist qualifier was another formality, blowing by Palestine, Malaysia and Hong Kong. The second round, though, was another elimination, as Qatar came in 4th out of 5. China qualified automatically in a rout; the UAE went on to be eliminated by Iran in the playoff.
GERMANY 2006: The first round was comprised of twelve weenie teams, of which Qatar was not one, so they entered in the second round. They lost their luck at the first hurdle, drawing against Iran, who would move on and eventually qualify. Jordan also finished in front of them, but hey: they beat Laos.
SOUTH AFRICA 2010: Everybody was drawn into an opening knockout round aside from the top five teams as per the FIFA Ranking; these were Australia, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Japan and Iran. (Please note that there were 4.5 spots available to Asia for this Cup.) Qatar was ranked 16th. They drew Sri Lanka, ranked 30th, and blew by them 6-0 over two legs. The second round saw a four-team group with Australia, China and Iraq. Australia and Qatar both moved on, and were placed into the third round. The ten teams left were split into two groups; in each, two would qualify and the two third-placed teams would play off to see who would go up against the Oceania winner. Qatar came in fourth in their group over right games, four points adrift of the money and nine adrift of automatic qualification, behind Australia, Japan and Bahrain.
In the Asian continental cup, the Asian Cup, Qatar has consistently qualified, but has only once advanced past the first round, that happening in Lebanon 2000. And that really only happened because there were three transfer spots in a four-team group and Uzbekistan was the fourth. Uzbekistan drew one and lost two; guess who they drew against. China then dispatched Qatar 3-1 in the quarterfinals, Qatar's goal only coming after China had done their damage. Their all-time record in the Asian Cup: 4 wins, 11 draws, 10 losses.
And then there's the Gulf Cup of Nations, open only to eight teams in the Middle East. There have been 20 of these; Qatar has won two, both as hosts in 1992 and 2004. This cup has a group stage, and in two of the last three, Qatar has failed to get out of it. The club teams aren't so great either; here's how they've done in continental competition. The last and only win by a Qatari club was Al Sadd in 1988-89; that was prior to the major growth of soccer in Asia.
And they're going to host the World Cup now. We're going to put that in the World Cup, folks.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Random News Generator- Mexico
Mmmmmmm. Warm, tropical Mexico. The snow around here is starting to stick, so the RNG landing on Mexico really does the oh wait there's a drug war there. Drat.
Mmmmmmm. Nice, safe Wisconsin, where the guns are primarily focused on deer.
This one is really particularly depressing, standing out amongst the by now depressingly hollow-sounding arrest of a regional leader of one of the many cartels and the gruesomely familiar-sounding uncovering of a mass grave containing 18 people. Two months ago, Hermila Garcia, a 38-year-old lawyer, took the job of police chief in Meoqui, a border town in Chihuahua state with a 90-person force, because nobody else would. The job had been vacant for a year. Garcia made news for electing not to carry guns or other weapons, choosing to instead try and talk her way out of any problems. Her figuring was "If you don't owe anything, you don't fear anything."
Yesterday morning, she was proven wrong. She was gunned down by drug traffickers at about 7:20 AM yesterday. She was driving to work alone.
An AP photo here shows that federal officers have now assumed control. They may be waiting a while before anyone else steps forward.
Mmmmmmm. Nice, safe Wisconsin, where the guns are primarily focused on deer.
This one is really particularly depressing, standing out amongst the by now depressingly hollow-sounding arrest of a regional leader of one of the many cartels and the gruesomely familiar-sounding uncovering of a mass grave containing 18 people. Two months ago, Hermila Garcia, a 38-year-old lawyer, took the job of police chief in Meoqui, a border town in Chihuahua state with a 90-person force, because nobody else would. The job had been vacant for a year. Garcia made news for electing not to carry guns or other weapons, choosing to instead try and talk her way out of any problems. Her figuring was "If you don't owe anything, you don't fear anything."
Yesterday morning, she was proven wrong. She was gunned down by drug traffickers at about 7:20 AM yesterday. She was driving to work alone.
An AP photo here shows that federal officers have now assumed control. They may be waiting a while before anyone else steps forward.
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