Not long to go now until the mid-term elections.   Here’s some predictions from Electoral Vote Predictor:

The home page also has a great graphic mapping out the projected Senate outcome for each state.

In the unlikely event that you prefer your poll results and projections to be republican-flavoured, you can go to Election Projection instead.

"We are pressing Iraq’s leaders to take bold measures to save their country. We’re making it clear that America’s patience is not unlimited," Mr Bush said (in the Herald today).

America’s patience is not unlimited?!?   George Bush, the guy who led America to invade Iraq, is warning the Iraqis to hurry up and fix the mess that his invasion created?  Is this some lame attempt to shift the blame for the Iraq mess onto the Iraqi people in the vain hope that the Republican voters won’t realise who is really to blame for the fuck-up?

Iraq’s leaders don’t have any bold measure they can take to "save their country" because their all their infrastructure was bombed to smithereens and their country is now being occupied by the US military.  It was the US that came in and fucked the country over, so it is the US’s responsibility to fix it, no matter how long it takes.   It is the Iraqis who have every right to be losing patience.

My trip to Texas is all booked.   I leave here on the 9th of December at 9pm and arrive in Dallas three hours before that

Booking the flights was a little bit tricky.  I had hoped to use my Airpoints, since I was under the impression that the new Air New Zealand Airpoints Dollars scheme allows you to buy tickets with a combination of Airpoints Dollars and real dollars.  The site wouldn’t let me.  I initially though it was because my trip wasn’t a standard return but was a multi-city trip.  I spent hours fiddling around with itineraries but couldn’t get it to work. 

I eventually discovered that I was sadly mistaken about the Airpoints – you need enough Airpoints dollars to pay for the entire ticket and you can’t combine it with real dollars.  Good thing I finally stumbled on that gem of information buried in the help pages, because if you have to phone them to book for you rather than booking online, they charge you at least $50 per leg.

The tickets that I bought from the AirNZ website eventually cost me less than I was quoted by all the travel agents except Flight Centre.  Flight Centre’s deals were $4 cheaper, but I would have a 9 hour stopover in Tahiti each way.   I’m willing to pay $4 to avoid that length of stopover. 

I can see why many people would pay the fee to have the agent book everything though – it is a bit nerve-wracking to enter your credit card details and charge up over $2k of non-refundable tickets.  At least if the travel agent cocks up rather than you, you probably won’t be out of pocket.

So, my itinerary is as follows: 

The first 9 days we will spend checking out various parts of Texas (not too much though, Texas is biiiig).  Then we’ll spend 8 days in Las Vegas, staying in the pyramid at the Luxor.  I’ll be sleeping in a pyramid! YAY!  (Ahem, ok, sorry, I’m over it now)

My must-see attraction in Vegas is Penn & Teller, which is where we’ll be spending the evening on Christmas day.   I’d also like to see David Copperfield and either the Chippendales or Australia’s Thunder from Down Under.

After Vegas, it’s off for 6 days in LA, staying right outside the gates of Disneyland.  I plan on heading down to San Diego to visit SeaWorld, as well as checking out various places that I’ve heard about on TV, like Venice Beach, Rodeo drive and so on.

New Years won’t be a huge drunken party, because I have to fly out on the 1st in order to be home on the 3rd to start teaching summer school on the 4th.  Maybe.  If I still have a job. 

I don’t generally go in for conspiracy theories, but one thing surrounding the 9/11 attacks has always bothered me.

Scenario 1: the official story

A bunch of muslim extremists hijacked four planes.  Two were flown into the twin towers and one into the pentagon.  The fourth was brought down by passengers before it could reach its target and crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.  The damage from the impacts and the heat of the fires weakened the twin towers to the point where they collapsed.  Two other WTC buildings also collapsed, weakened by fire and damage from rubble.

Scenario 2: the uber-conspiracy

Someone (maybe muslims, maybe not) organised by the US, hijacked planes.  The bosses arranged for them to disappear from air traffic control, prompting the suspicion of terror that lead to all aircraft being grounded.  The planes were flown to a US airbase, where all the passengers were transferred onto one plane.  The planes took off again and two went and hit the twin towers.  Meanwhile a missile disguised as an aircraft was fired at the pentagon and the plane full of passengers deliberately crashed into the pennsylvania countryside.  The fourth plane was presumably hidden somewhere.

Back at the twin towers, the aircraft impacts didn’t bring the towers down, so the bosses pressed the buttons to detonate the explosives that had been previously planted in all the WTC buildings, bringing them all down in controlled demolitions.

Which scenario do you think is more likely? 

This is, after all, the US government administration we are talking about here.   Dubya and friends.  They took ages to find Saddam Hussein, still can’t roust out all Iraqi insurgents, still haven’t found Osama bin Laden, and quite frankly, I don’t think they could find their ass with two hands and a map.  How the hell could they have pulled off something like that?   

And the key issue for me – how could they have done it with nobody knowing.   If you think about the number of people who had to have some knowledge of that kind of thing – painting the drones, transferring the people and so on … how can none of them have talked?

That’s the big clincher for why scenario 1 just seems more plausible – you just can’t shut up that many people (nor can you kill them all without people noticing).

The one thing that I don’t understand is the collapse of the towers themselves.  They imploded in near freefall time, looking exactly like a controlled demolition.  Not only that but two of the WTC buildings were hit by aircraft, but four of them collapsed exactly the same way.

No high-rise building on Earth has ever collapsed due to fire.  Ever.  And some of the fires have been much more extensive than the fires in the WTC buildings, covered a larger area and burned longer and hotter.

OK, I grant you that the damage done by the planes and the addition of the jet fuel could have made things worse – maybe worse enough to bring down the buildings.   I’d probably accept that if it wasn’t for the strange way the buildings fell – imploding in pretty close to freefall time, looking exactly like a controlled demolition.  I know from watching documentaries that a lot of work goes into calculating exactly how to place the explosives to bring a building down properly.  Get it wrong and the building goes sideways or everywhere else.  It’s a very precise thing.    How did two very different aircraft impacts near the top of the towers manage to have precisely the same effect as a carefully set up controlled demolition?

But OK, let’s just say that is what happened to WTC1, 2 & 6 – they collapsed due to fire.

That doesn’t explain what happened to WTC 7, which also collapsed that afternoon, and which DIDN’T have a 767 flown into it.  It was also furthest away from the twin towers, and least damaged by them.  This is in contrast to WTC 5 & 6, which were much closer and were significantly damaged by debris from the twin towers.  WTC5 in particular had extensive fires, worse than any of the other buildings including the twin towers, but it didn’t collapse.  

I just don’t get it.  What the hell happened to WTC7?

In 1776, the American people became so fed up with the injustices of their ruler, King George, that they decided to become independent and tell him to sod off.   They felt it was a good idea to set out in writing their reasoning for this act, and so Thomas Jefferson drafted up a Declaration of Independence. 

This is the preamble:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence indeed, will dictate, that Governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.

I think this is a beautiful document.  The American people currently are showing themselves more disposed to suffer than to right themselves.  But hopefully the train of abuses and usurpations by the current administration has been sufficient to pursuade them to throw off the current government and get some new guards.  

It is less than one month until the US midterm elections.  We can only watch and hope.

The US Senate just took a vote on whether to amend the constitution so that flag-burning could be banned.  It failed by one vote. 

The ability for Americans to burn the American flag in protest seems to be the very epitome of the American ideals of freedom and free speech.   You can’t have a free society or a good democracy without the ability of the citizens to freely criticise the government without reprisals.  If you start outlawing that kind of criticism, you are starting down the staircase towards fascism.

Sure, this amendment would only provide the ability to outlaw flag desecration, not actually outlaw criticism or free speech.  But flag burning itself is useless as a practical form of protest – it is solely a symbolic gesture.   Trying to criminalize the symbol of free speech is symbolic of criminalizing free speech itself. 

I’m glad the vote failed, but I’m chilled by the fact that in the (self-styled) world bastion of freedom, it failed by only one vote.   

What do you think are the odds of the United States disuniting in our lifetimes?

You only have to look at the concentrations of Republican (red) vs Democrat (blue) voters in the last presidential election to see clear divides.   
Not that it proves anything, its a favourite recurring theme of Clive Cussler that lower California, New Mexico, Arizona and southwestern Texas are more hispanic than "american", and might want to form their own little hispanic state.

Just from what I observe through the web and blogs, the polarisation within America seems to be getting stronger.  The bible belt people are getting louder and more strident, bolstered by the fact that they have their boy in the white house at the moment, and he’s stacking the courts and other governmental agencies with conservative fundamentalists.
Liberal is used as an epithet, and liberals with their so-called ‘gay agenda’ anti-family policies and foetus killing tendencies are frequently charged with being the cause of everything wrong in America today.

Of course, the left wing are equally horrified by the country waging unjust wars, sacrificing citizens for what looks like a religious war masked by a flimsy cover story.  Likewise, the steady eroding of the freedom on which the country prides itself and a government in which church seems to have a strong grip on the state.

And in line with my theory that extremism just breeds more extremism, how long will it be until the two sides no longer want to try and run a country together?

The fact that the US is currently waging wars in the middle east postpones the scenario for a while.  Like the September 11, being at war tends to make people feel united against a common enemy, and their own internal differences are drowned out by the massive difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’.

However, what happens when the war stops?  Whatever way (and even whether) the US tries to extricate itself from the war in Iraq, it is likely to stir up supporters and opponents.  Without the convenient bogeyman of Islamic terrorism to absorb people’s wrath, I think internal tensions could just boil over.

Instead of the ‘red, white and the blue’, we’ll end up with Red America (the bible belt) and Blue America.  I wonder if Red America will call itself the Confederacy again?  Unfortunately, Blue america is geographically divided – both the the westernmost states and the north eastern states are democrat.

And who knows, maybe the Mormons will take the the opportunity to create the independent Mormon nation of Utah at the same time?
Maybe California, New Mexico, Arizona and and SW Texas will end up a hispanic nation allied with Mexcio.  Maybe Alaska, Washington (state) and Oregon will join up with Canada? 

I wonder if it could happen bloodlessly?  After all, the two sides can’t nuke each other.    Can they? 

National Geographic does a series of surveys of 18-24 year olds in America to test their geographical knowledge. I don’t think any of us would be shocked to learn that its pretty abysmal.

First, the results from 2002.  (You know, shortly after September 11) 

Although nearly 60% knew that the Taliban was based in Afghanistan, only 17% knew roughly where Afghanistan was.  At the time of the survey, GW hadn’t invaded Iraq yet, he was just making threatening noises about it.  So maybe that’s why only 13% knew where Iraq was.

A little closer to home, 30% couldn’t find the Pacific Ocean.  90% could find California and Texas, but only half could find New York, and only one third could find New Jersey.  But perhaps the most shocking of all: 11% of American youth couldn’t find America on a world map! 

Fast forward four years, has the situation improved?

Despite Dubya’s dabblings in Iraq, still only 37% of those surveyed know where it is.   Only 66% can even find one of Iraq, Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia.  Knowledge of Afghanistan’s location is down to 12%.  If 88% of American youth can’t even find the country, it’s not so hard to see why Dubya can’t find Bin Laden inside the country.

Two thirds overestimated America’s population, usually by a factor of 2 or 4. (It’s about 300 million)   Almost half underestimate China’s population, reckoning it to be double the American population, when it is actually four times larger.  70% can find China on a world map though, so that’s a positive.

This time around they gave the people a selection of countries and asked them which continent they were on – they didn’t even have to pinpoint them exactly.   Sadly, it turns out that nearly 20% think the Amazon rainforest is in Africa.  Less than half know that Sri Lanka is in Asia, or that Sudan is in Africa.

90% can still find California and Texas, but again only half of the sample can find New York, and only two thirds can locate Louisiana, despite the Katrina publicity. 

You know what I think National Geographic should do?  Give the test to Dubya.  I reckon he can probably find Iran, Iraq and Afganistan just as well as the average young American.

Apparently, US Christian conservatives want to have the US Constitution amended to prohibit gay marriage.   They’d like to see an amendment preventing consenting adults from legally committing to each other right alongside freedom of speech, abolishing slavery and granting women’s suffrage.

I came across this while reading through a conservative message board (it’s like watching a car crash, you don’t want to look, but at the same time it’s morbidly fascinating).

Here are some of the comments on the message board supporting this proposal:

• "Same sex marriage is only a step in a vast plan to pervert society. Anyone who thinks otherwise, isn’t paying attention."  Yep, there’s a whole bunch of gay people who do nothing but plot and scheme to turn society gay. All they care about is getting in your heterosexual pants.  Sure.
• "Until there is an amendment, there will be a real risk that the liberal bloc of the Supreme Court will impose on all of us its own view of how society should be ordered"  And as we all know, only the conservative bloc of the Supreme Court should be able to impose it’s view of how society should be ordered on everyone.
• "A protection of marriage ammendment would stop government from imposing sodomite marriage on us."  Because if gay marriage was allowed, then everyone would be forced to take it up the ass?
• "Since we have the right to freedom of religion, and forced recognition of sodomite marriage would violate that right, a Constitutional ammendment barring government from recognizing sodomite marriage is legitimate."  So allowing two men to marry somehow violates your freedom of religion?  It somehow forces you not to be Christian anymore?  Riiiight.  Does allowing atheists to marry violate your freedom of religion as well?

(From http://www.darrenbarefoot.com/hall/slides/Political-Labels.html)