2004.12.16
I dragged in the semi-pro karaoke machine I have, along with the pretty big collection of karaoke CDs (around 114). Makes me a little melancholy, getting the karaoke machine was one of the last big projects Mo and I collaborated on...she typed in all the track titles, I made some small computer programs to sort and organize them, by artist then by song, so we could printout the "menus". Between that and the some old party mix CDs I reconstituted, "just in case", that remind me of the old parties we used to throw...sigh.
People who aren't easily offended and slightly hip to Japanese trends should check out this Lore Brand Comic. Of course, I think most of the people who will get the joke are probably the same type who won't be offended by it...
Funny of the Moment
warning: in case of rapture, this car will be swerving like hell to avoid all the empty cars.
Spin Doctoring of the Moment
Lehner disputed the suggestion that the exercise had failed, saying it simply was not completed.That's great. Can "We weren't able to complete the test that we had planned" be parlayed into "We weren't able to shoot down the Korean missile that we had hoped to"?
"We weren't able to complete the test that we had planned," Lehner said. "I definitely wouldn't categorize it as a setback of any kind. The test had been planned for a while so it's a disappointment for those of us who were working on it. We will isolate the anomaly and fix it."
Missile Defence is such a quixotic thing. I've heard it sayed that Reagan's "USSR's Panic over 'Star Wars' Defense Killed It" has been way overstated; they knew that it was going to be much easier to crank up the offense (lots of missiles, lots of decoys) than to make a defense that could handle it.
What keeps us safe from any missile launch we could then track is our ability to respond in kind with devastating effect. What these programs completely miss, and where the money would be better spent in homeland defense, is the truck nuke shipped in to one of our port cities.