A couple of thoughts which bear on this year's Presidential election:

First, on environmentalism:

There are hidden contradictions in the minds of people who "love Nature" while deploring the "artificialities" with which "Man has spoiled 'Nature.'" The obvious contradiction lies in their choice of words, which imply that Man and his artifacts are not part of "Nature" — but beavers and their dams are. But the contradictions go deeper than this prima-facie absurdity. In declaring his love for a beaver dam (erected by beavers for beavers' purposes) and his hatred for dams erected by men (for the purposes of men) the Naturist reveals his hatred for his own race — i.e., his own self-hatred.

In the case of "Naturists" such self-hatred is understandable; they are such a sorry lot. But hatred is too strong an emotion to feel toward them; pity and contempt are the most they rate.
As for me, willy-nilly I am a man, not a beaver, and H. sapiens is the only race I have or can have. Fortunately for me, I like being part of a race made up of men and women — it strikes me as a fine arrangement — and perfectly "natural" Believe it or not, there were "Naturists" who opposed the first flight to old Earth's Moon as being "unnaturaI" and a "despoiling of Nature."

And:

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as "bad luck."

Via Instapundit.

More gorillas:

The new census tallied more than 125,000 western lowland gorillas in two adjacent areas in the northern part of the country, covering an area of 18,000 square miles (47,000 square kilometers). Previous estimates from the 1980s placed the entire population of western lowland gorillas, which occur in seven Central African nations, at less than 100,000. Since then, however, scientists had believed that this number had at least halved, due to hunting and disease.

Gorillas in the mist . . . bushes . . . trees . . . ravines . . . rocks . . . low shrubs . . . swamps . . .

This month, sometime, I'll be upgrading my various sites (Medary.com, SDSUFans.com and the SDSUFans.com Forum) to the newest versions of the software.  As a part of that upgrade, I've been considering changing the look and feel (the "skin" in the jargon) of the sites to be somewhat less . . . formal.

I've also been seriously considering dropping the nom-de-blog of "Filbert," coming out of the Internet-pseudonym closet, and blogging and, um, webbing under my real name.  Now, my secret identity is not that terribly secret . . . any sufficiently enterprising and Internet-knowledgable person can easily suss out exactly who I am.  That's not the real point.

The point is that there comes a time when a guy needs to step up and own their words . . . both in a copyright sense and in a moral sense.  As I progress (ever so slowly and painfully) towards becoming what I hope will be, someday, an honest-to-goodness published author, I'll be doing it under my own name.  It makes sense to me to write on the Internet using my own name, too.  It seems to work for John Scalzi, Glenn Reynolds, and numerous others.

Well, I'm thinking about it, anyway.

With the recent drivel in some circles about how "The Surge" had nothing whatsoever to do with the current improvement in the situation in Iraq, perhaps we should note that the Defense Department is now institutionalizing the underlying counter-insurgency philosophy (written largely, by the way, by Gen Petreaus):

The Defense Department, in a new national defense strategy, also emphasized the need to subordinate military operations to "soft power" initiatives to undermine Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social development in vulnerable corners of the world.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the change would help establish permanent institutional support for counterinsurgency skills acquired in Iraq and Afghanistan within a defense community heavily skewed in favor of expensive conventional and strategic modernization programs.

Your homework assignment:  go and read Petreaus' book.  Then go read the new National Defense Policy (both PDF's).  Then you will understand that "The Surge" was about much more than just throwing 30,000 more troops at the Iraq mess.  It was about understanding, adapting, and winning the trust of the local population.  Which, in Iraq, we have largely now done.  Now it's required to maintain that trust--by leaving, if that's what they want.  But from all reports, that's not really what they want, although some Iraqis will say so for perfectly understandable politcal reasons.

Season four is now available on DVD, according to Tor.com.

In 1983, Jim Henson created Fraggle Rock, a groundbreaking piece of children's television that still feels fresh and relevant 25 years later. To celebrate the release of season 4 on DVD, as well as a 20-DVD, extras-packed set of the entire show run (both coming in November), Red Fraggle was on hand (with her "friend," Karen Prell), for a sing-along with a packed audience:

If you're a science fiction fan and you haven't been to Tor.com . . . just go there, OK?

Who really, really thinks that the U.S. Federal Government isn't big enough?  President Bush's proposed FY2009 budget is 3,107 billion dollars, growing to 3,399 billion dollars in FY2013.

The FY2009 deficit is projected to be 407 billion dollars.  Discretionary spending is 1,062 billion, meaning that over 2,000 billion dollars are "non-discretionary."

That is nuts.

Everything the Federal Government does needs to be considered "discretionary."  I don't know what laws you'd have to pass to get this done, but we need to do this.  And anybody who opposes that needs to be run out of government as too irresponsible to ever hold office.  We can't afford to let 2/3 of the Federal Government's budget be completely on autopilot, immune from any kind of review or check on waste, fraud, abuse, and governmental bureaucratic business-as-usual.

It's time to cut.  If the managers in the Federal Government can't find 10% in their budgets to cut, then we know where to start:  Start firing the managers and getting new ones.

I just saw on Fox News that Delta is going to charge $50 for a second checked bag.

It's nice to see that the airlines are still (apparently) following the advice of an Alienating Your Customers for Dummies book.

If you need to raise your revenue, than raise your damn fares, for crying out loud.  The BEST way to piss off your customers is to nickel and dime them the way the airlines are right now.

It doesn't take much research or reading to quickly determine that Pakistan's ISI espionage agency (or "elements" therein) are . . . how do I put this delicately . . . not counted among the good guys.

The decision to confront Pakistan with what the officials described as a new C.I.A. assessment of the spy service’s activities seemed to be the bluntest American warning to Pakistan since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks about the ties between the spy service and Islamic militants.

Via Hotair

Decree that poor people should not have access to "fast food" in Los Angeles.

The vote of the city council was unanimous.

Unanimous.

UNANIMOUS.

These people want to run your life, too. They want to dictate what light bulbs you use, how much (if at all) you can drive your car, what medical care you receive.  There is no aspect of your life which is beyond their reach.

Many of these people (not all, by any stretch) are Democrats.  One of them, I firmly believe, is the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for President.

Think about that when you step into the voting booth this year.

Hmm.  We have Sprint (pity us).  We can see a cell tower from our house, but sometimes our phones can't get signal.  In our house.  And don't even get us started on when we go visiting Filbert's sister up in rural South Dakota, where Sprint service is, to be polite, nonexistent.

Sprint AIRAVE™ is a device that creates a CDMA signal for your mobile phone (like a miniature cell tower). AIRAVE provides enhanced and reliable mobile phone coverage in your house or office even if your existing wireless coverage is poor.

Hmm, again.  Another way for Sprint to extract money out of customers.  Skimp on your nationwide network coverage, then sell folks a do-it-yourself cell tower.  Genius!

Update:  Ars Technica's take:

The potential advantages of the service are obvious, but Sprint isn't exactly giving it away. The Airave unit itself is $99.99 and must be activated when purchased. Customers must also pay a monthly Airave enhanced coverage charge ($4.99), and purchase an Airave plan ($10-20 per month, depending on your plan). The total monthly cost of Airave should run $15-25 before taxes and fees. $15 isn't much, considering you're buying cellular service for an area that (presumably) lacked it, but it's extremely ironic that Sprint is charging users for the dubious privilege of providing their own backhaul.

. . . 

Paying for the right to backhaul over one's personal Internet connection isn't a great deal for consumers, but the benefits of femtocells could easily erase the negatives, especially when it comes to providing coverage in hard-to-reach areas. Deployed en masse, these miniature towers could offer truly ubiquitous coverage, and make random dead zones a thing of the past.