This is a very strange story, with some strange, strange characters. The principal weirdo is Glendon Crawford, industrial mechanic by day, super weapons designer for the KKK on weekends. Crawford claims to have designed and partially built a radiation gun to kill people in their sleep, which he tried to sell to Jews in the hope they’d use it on Muslims: [Read more…]

By now you’ve probably heard that an 29 year-old employee of a private contractor was the source of the latest NSA spying leaks. How did he get all that stuff? Well, he got a lot more than he’s released, but short answer is he was a system analyst. I hope the video plays for your region, it is a rare, fascinating look into a secret community offered by someone with above average ability to articulate those complexities. Snowden could have sold this stuff, easy, to anyone, including front groups for North Korea or Al Qaeda (Link here). But he didn’t, that video — the fact that he’s so open — and the statements on it suggest strongly to me this is not your average whistle-blower.

I realize we’re in a dilemma here, we don’t want to encourage people to ruin their lives and careers fumbling around for infame in a gray area between justified citizen action and aiding enemies. But in the video … there is something heroic about this guy. I did not know such strength of character and brain-power existed in the NSA et al and I feel better knowing they do.

There’s a nice woman I casually dated a few times last year, we’ll call her Jill. The relationship didn’t go anywhere, not much spark, but she’s a very sweet intelligent and fun person and we’ve stayed friends. But another reason it didn’t go anywhere is she’s been hung up bad on another man for a couple of years, let’s call him Jack. This particular Jack is married, and he kept stringing Jill along telling her he couldn’t stand his wife and was going to get a divorce. Then he moved from Austin to Houston for work reasons, wife in tow. Jack finally did get a divorce, but he didn’t follow through on any plans with Jill, much to her heartbreak.

Jack’s is now dating another woman, but he still comes to Austin every few months and, when he does, sometimes he calls Jill. Often from a sixth street bar late at night. They crash together, Jill rekindles her hope this time, this night, all will be different and Jack will fall madly in love with her. Of course that never happens.

Some of Jill’s coworkers had a Memorial Day Weekend pool party and cookout this evening, she asked me if I would go with her as a friend so that she wouldn’t have to go alone. I was happy to do it. She texted me when to pick her up, where the party would be, etc., around noon this morning. I want to help her feel good so I dressed up nice and metro, new haircut, new pants because I’m now down to a svelte 30 inch waist! I text Jill I’m on my way right before 6 PM, arrive at her house, ring the doorbell and …. nothing. I called her cell but it rang twice and then went to voice mail.

I was worried I might have gotten my signals crossed, so after waiting fifteen minutes loitering at the doorstep like a thief casing a house, I went to the private home where the party was and told them I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to meet her there or not. They were totally cool, invited me in, I waited for a bit. But no Jill. I texted her several times and tried to call letting her know where I was, no responses. Eventually it felt awkward enough that I politely thanked them and left.

Finally, just before 9 PM, two and half hours after I was supposed to pick her up. I get a brief text saying Jack flew in unexpectedly and “he doesn’t feel like going to the party so we’re just gonna stay in.” That’s it. Now you guys and galls tell me, I understand Jill and I are friends, I understand matters of the heart take precedence, and she honestly and earnestly told me about the weird hold this guy has over her from the moment we first we went out.

But does that justify leaving me hanging like that? It was her idea to call me and ask me to go with her, not mine. Had she told me right up until this evening that her plans had changed, or even standing at the door when I went to pick her up, I would have been completely sympathetic. But she didn’t. I didn’t even rate a ten second text or phone call telling me not to show up. That’s dating life folks, doesn’t matter if you’re middle aged or in Middle School. People will use you, disregard you, keep you as a back up without telling you, and even often profess how special you are and what  a unique connection they have with you while they’re doing all that.

And lest anyone thing I’m singling out flaky women. When I go out with a new girl there are a lot of things I have to worry about, they might be scammers, suffering from borderline personality or extreme depression, almost all of them have psycho ex boyfriends stalking them, there may be a serious substance abuse issue, they might even be professional hustlers. But one of the things I don’t give a second though to is ending up tied in the basement being sodomized and strangled by a psycho serial killer. So don’t get the idea I think women are the sole problem here…

Nevertheless, this left me feeling pretty unimportant, worthless, like I wasn’t even a good enough friend to rate simple basic decency

Seattle KOMO News — The Interstate 5 bridge over the Skagit River collapsed Thursday evening, dropping three vehicles into the water and injuring at least three people.

Rescue crews in at least three boats were able to pull three people from the semi-submerged vehicles, which are tangled in the wreckage of the bridge. All three were taken taken to a local hospital and the extent of their injuries is not known. Nobody was killed in the collapse.

Bart Treece with the Washington State Department of Transportation was unsure when the bridge was last inspected. “All of our bridges in the area are pretty old,” he said.

The bridge is not considered structurally deficient but is listed as being “functionally obsolete” – a category meaning that their design is outdated, such as having narrow shoulders are low clearance underneath, according to a database compiled by the Federal Highway Administration.

The bridge was built in 1955 and has a sufficiency rating of 57.4 out of 100, according to federal records. That is well below the statewide average rating of 80, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal data, but 759 bridges in the state have a lower sufficiency score.

There’s been some confusing reporting on the rating of the tornadoes that devastated Moore, OK, yesterday. Earlier today some outlets reported it was an F4, this afternoon others reported an F5. I’ve dug around and can’t be certain, but what appears to be happening is various parts of the twister’s path are being analyzed and those findings help assigned a rating on the Fujita Scale for that portion of the ground track. In addition, the scale now used is the Enhanced Fujita Scale, which is why you see the EF designation popping up. The original F designation cuts off for an F5 at winds greater than 261 MPH, the EF scale cuts off at 200 MPH. The reason the older scale is considered obsolete has to do with how wind works. Momenta of wind or swirling debris moves with the square of the velocity, but a newer metric called energy dissipated is proportional to the cube.

It is likely some EF5 portions will come to light and that may be beginning already. When you see cars tossed like they are above, on top of a shredded steel-reinforced cinder-block storm-rated hospital, that’s usually gonna be as bad at it gets. If surface winds in a hurricane were to get as strong as they did yesterday in Moore, we would have to extend the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Intensity Scale to at least Category Seven. Whether it crosses the 261 MPH threshold remains to be seen, but that is extremely rare and depends on precise measurements at the greatest max intensity which are almost impossible to gather directly without exposing very specialized equipment to the wall of the vortex. It’s also just academic at this point.

There can be great profit in giving powerful people the wrong answer, as long as it’s the answer they want to hear. But there’s also times when a wrong answer really is wrong. Polling giant Gallup has issued intent to do that, and I think we can all tell them exactly how to accomplish it — assuming they really want to:

TPM — Gallup’s editor-in-chief Frank Newport wrote in an email published Monday by Politico that “a blue ribbon group of outside experts” is conducting a review of the firm’s “methodological issues” during the 2012 election. The findings will be unveiled during an event on June 4 at Gallup’s Washington, D.C. office.

The move comes after an embarrassing stretch for Gallup in which the firm was widely panned for its 2012 election polls. Soon after the election, Fordham University put the firm near the bottom of its rankings for pollster accuracy. And more recently, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough launched a blistering on-air attack last week against the firm.

Here’s how Gallup the polling operation fixes massive polling failures: you fire the highest level, best paid people who were assuring you everything was fine as the failure unfolded. I don’t know if that includes Frank Newport or not.

But I predict Gallup the for-profit company won’t do that. After being jaded by the new corporate reality, where failure at the top is crammed directly down below as far as it will go with no consequences at all to the culprits, I predict Gallup will let go a few mid level people, nerf payouts and career ladders for the least infuential and most vulnerable foot soldiers in their workforce, and keep most of the high level fuck-ups in place free to refuck-up. Then in a few years maybe we’ll all be treated to Gallup failing again and wondering quietly or aloud why they can’t get it right when so many others did.

Remember that communique? It was the header on a memo that made its way into the Bush WH, then into a reporter’s hands, where it sped into the imagination of two groups of people. One was the mainstream left, who thought “Aha! See? Bush/Cheney are totally incompetent!” The other was the fringe 9-11 truther clowns who said “Aha! See? Bush/Cheney knew about 9-11 because they and the Saudis/Israelis/Illuminati planned the whole thing!” But despite the damning headlines, all by its lonesome it wasn’t good evidence of either of those back then. But there’s a lesson in it for today: [Read more…]