The Strident Centrist Blog

Here are a few curiosities I’ve stumbled upon around the ‘net over the last few days:

Should you think twice before getting GM’s OnStar navigation system on your next car or truck? Lauren at the Privacy Forum thinks you should:

Greetings. Ready to turn over the keys of your vehicle to the cops, or that clever hacker in the next lane? How about that creepy guy following you on a lonely country road?

GM apparently plans to perhaps make this all possible. It’s been announced that they’ll be equipping nearly two million of their 2009 model vehicles (that have OnStar installed), with the capability to be remotely shut down to idle via OnStar commands at the request of law enforcement.
. . .

This new capability will also create an irresistible challenge to the hacker community — and perhaps criminal organizations — to try find ways into the OnStar system for triggering this fun — one way or another. It’s impossible to hack OnStar? Would you bet your life on that?

And the next terror threat is — Hot Sauce!

Super spicy chili sauce being cooked at a London Thai restaurant sparked road closures and evacuations after passers-by complained that the smell was burning their throats, police said Wednesday.

London Fire Brigade’s chemical response team was called after reports that a strong smell was wafting from the restaurant in the heart of London’s Soho district Monday afternoon, a Metropolitan police spokesman said, speaking anonymously in line with force policy.

Authorities sealed off several premises and closed roads. The Times of London described shoppers coughing and spluttering as firefighters wearing special breathing masks sought the source of the smell.

The paper said firefighters smashed down the door of the Thai Cottage restaurant and seized extra-hot bird’s eye chilies which had been left dry-frying. It said they were being prepared as part of a batch of Nam Prik Pao, a spicy Thai dip.

“The smoke didn’t go up into the sky because of the rain and the heavy air,” The Times quoted Thai Cottage owner Sue Wasboonma as saying. “It’s the hottest thing we make.”

The police spokesman said no arrests were made in the case.

“As far as I’m aware it’s not a criminal offense to cook very strong chili,” he said.

Link courtesy of the Armchair Generalist.

The silence of the Ft. Hunt men is ended:

For six decades, they held their silence.

The group of World War II veterans kept a military code and the decorum of their generation, telling virtually no one of their top-secret work interrogating Nazi prisoners of war at Fort Hunt.

When about two dozen veterans got together yesterday for the first time since the 1940s, many of the proud men lamented the chasm between the way they conducted interrogations during the war and the harsh measures used today in questioning terrorism suspects.

Back then, they and their commanders wrestled with the morality of bugging prisoners’ cells with listening devices. They felt bad about censoring letters. They took prisoners out for steak dinners to soften them up. They played games with them.

“We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture,” said Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess.

Blunt criticism of modern enemy interrogations was a common refrain at the ceremonies held beside the Potomac River near Alexandria. Across the river, President Bush defended his administration’s methods of detaining and questioning terrorism suspects during an Oval Office appearance.

Several of the veterans, all men in their 80s and 90s, denounced the controversial techniques. And when the time came for them to accept honors from the Army’s Freedom Team Salute, one veteran refused, citing his opposition to the war in Iraq and procedures that have been used at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

The 20 something blogger from Baghdad has escaped to Syria with her family. She last posted in April of this year, when she said her family had finally decided to leave Iraq. Her post today is about that heart-wrenching journey, the preparations leading up to it and the months of waiting for the arrangements to fall into place. An excerpt:

It happened almost overnight. My aunt called with the exciting news that one of her neighbors was going to leave for Syria in 48 hours because their son was being threatened and they wanted another family on the road with them in another car- like gazelles in the jungle, it’s safer to travel in groups. It was a flurry of activity for two days. We checked to make sure everything we could possibly need was prepared and packed. We arranged for a distant cousin of my moms who was to stay in our house with his family to come the night before we left (we can’t leave the house empty because someone might take it).

It was a tearful farewell as we left the house. One of my other aunts and an uncle came to say goodbye the morning of the trip. It was a solemn morning and I’d been preparing myself for the last two days not to cry. You won’t cry, I kept saying, because you’re coming back. You won’t cry because it’s just a little trip like the ones you used to take to Mosul or Basrah before the war. In spite of my assurances to myself of a safe and happy return, I spent several hours before leaving with a huge lump lodged firmly in my throat. My eyes burned and my nose ran in spite of me. I told myself it was an allergy.

I hope she can resume blogging more regularly again, so we can read first-hand what life is like for Iraqi refugees.

James Wolcott’s blog, as well as his regular columns in Vanity Fair, are worth reading just for his stunning agility with the English language. For example, this review of the summertime HBO show “Big Love” is worth the read if only for this hilarious clause:

. . once Fred Thompson flops out of the presidential race, he’d make a fine addition to the cast, marinated as he is in the thick sauce of male prerogative.

And that’s just one of Wolcott’s patented figures of speech in the piece.

By the way, the wedding came off with a hitch, as was intended. He and his new wife will soon be off on their honeymoon trip to the Pacific Northwest. It was a wonderful weekend, with wonderful people, in wonderful weather beside the always wonderful Lake Superior.

I won’t be posting for a few days. My son is getting married Saturday on the shore of Lake Superior in northern Minnesota, and internet access will be spotty, not to mention free time.

Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army officer and currently a professor of history at Boston University, reflects on his culpability for the death of his son, who was killed in Iraq earlier this month.

. . . responsibility for the war’s continuation now rests no less with the Democrats who control Congress than with the president and his party. After my son’s death, my state’s senators, Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry, telephoned to express their condolences. Stephen F. Lynch, our congressman, attended my son’s wake. Kerry was present for the funeral Mass. My family and I greatly appreciated such gestures. But when I suggested to each of them the necessity of ending the war, I got the brushoff. More accurately, after ever so briefly pretending to listen, each treated me to a convoluted explanation that said in essence: Don’t blame me.

. . .

Money buys access and influence. Money greases the process that will yield us a new president in 2008. When it comes to Iraq, money ensures that the concerns of big business, big oil, bellicose evangelicals and Middle East allies gain a hearing. By comparison, the lives of U.S. soldiers figure as an afterthought.

Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.’s life is priceless. Don’t believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier’s life: I’ve been handed the check. It’s roughly what the Yankees will pay Roger Clemens per inning once he starts pitching next month.

. . .

In joining the Army, my son was following in his father’s footsteps: Before he was born, I had served in Vietnam. As military officers, we shared an ironic kinship of sorts, each of us demonstrating a peculiar knack for picking the wrong war at the wrong time. Yet he was the better soldier — brave and steadfast and irrepressible.

I know that my son did his best to serve our country. Through my own opposition to a profoundly misguided war, I thought I was doing the same. In fact, while he was giving his all, I was doing nothing. In this way, I failed him.

The folks at Northwestern University have come up with some interesting findings on speed dating:

The more you tend to experience romantic desire for all the potential romantic partners you meet, the study shows, the less likely it is that they will desire you in return. (Think too desperate, too indiscriminate.)

In contrast, when you desire a potential partner above and beyond your other options, only then is your desire likely to be reciprocated. (Think hallelujah, finally, someone really gets me.)

In the past, social psychologists have had a difficult time observing initial romantic attraction in action, but the speed-dating methodology used in this study allowed the investigators to take a serious look at the chemistry that has been at the center of so much literature, art and imagination throughout the ages.

“Potential partners who seem undiscriminating are a definite turnoff, and those who evoke the magic of feeling special are a big draw,” said Paul W. Eastwick, the lead author of the study and a Northwestern graduate student in psychology. “The wild part is that our speed-daters were negotiating all of these subtleties with only four minutes for each date.”

There’s nothing more I can say. (h/t to Prometheus6)

From The Register comes this story of a man from Murmansk who bet his wife in a poker game, and lost:

In a heartwarming twist which disproves once-and-for-all the old “lucky at cards, unlucky at love” proverb, Tatiana started a relationship with Brodov and subsequently married him.

She enthused: “Sergey was a very handsome, charming man and I am very happy with him, even if he did ‘win’ me in a poker game.”

I know, I know. There’s been a bit of a posting hiatus around here. It’s more than just the Christmas holidays, however. The better half had had hernia repair surgery back in November, but a wound infection revealed itself about a month later. When antibiotics didn’t clear it up, more surgery was indicated, and that took place on the 26th. We sprang her from the hospital late this afternoon, and so far her recovery is on track. We’re keeping our fingers crossed.

Needless to say, between this an Christmas there hasn’t been much time for blogging.

Once again, I’ll try to pick up where I left off. The last night of our weekend at Lutsen the better half started feeling some discomfort at the site of an old surgical incision. (Or more accurately, at the site of four previous surgical incisions.) By Monday it was apparent that it was an emerging hernia, but she wanted to wait to see the doctor because come December 1 she goes on to Mecicare and off of the relatively high-deductible insurance she’d been carrying. The latter was what she’d had since the COBRA expired following the demise of her long-time employer in 2002. (That’s a long story of greed, arrogance, stupidity and managerial amorality in and of itself. But I digress.) By Tuesday it was apparent it couldn’t wait, and that evening she was under the knife. Fortunately the hour and a half of surgery went well and today she came home. The surgeon has strongly admonished her, however, that given her past history she must be exceptionally careful about lifting for the rest of her life. Even then, there’s a significant risk of reinjury.

I feel like I should write something about the dysfunctional healthcare financing system in this country but right now I don’t feel like it. It’s been a long couple of days and I’m tired. Anyway, that’s my excuse for not blogging for a few days.