To hear Obama make noises about finally getting around to closing the illegal prison at Guantánamo Bay, would be amusing if it were not so tragic. Joe Nocera has a good explanation why:

Obama’s Gitmo Problem

Late Wednesday afternoon, less than 24 hours before President Obama made his big national security speech — in which he said, for the umpteenth time, that the prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, should be closed — a group of American lawyers representing Guantánamo detainees filed an emergency motion with the Federal District Court in the District of Columbia. The motion asked the court to order the removal of “unjustified burdens” that the military command at Guantánamo has placed on the detainees, making it nearly impossible for them to meet with their lawyers.

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It is my belief, shared by many lawyers who have followed the legal battles over Guantánamo, that the president could have shut down the prison if he had really been determined to do so. One reason innocent detainees can’t get out is that the courts have essentially ruled that a president has an absolute right to imprison anyone he wants during a time of war — with no second-guessing from either of the other two branches of government. By the same legal logic, a president can also free any prisoner in a time of war. Had the president taken that stance, there would undoubtedly have been a court fight. But so what? Aren’t some things worth fighting for?

Whenever he talks about Guantánamo, the president gives the impression that that’s what he believes. The shame — his shame — is that, for all his soaring rhetoric, he has yet to show that he is willing to act on that belief.

Unfortunately, though, it's not just Obama's shame. It's a national disgrace, and watching Obama apologists twist themselves in knots trying to justify it is nauseating.

And this is what life in a nation more concerned with tax breaks for billionaires than with basic services looks like. "Crumbling infrastructure" isn't just a metaphor, it's the bridge you're driving across suddenly ceasing to exist.

I-5 bridge collapse survivor: 'You hold on' (Yahoo! News)

MOUNT VERNON, Wash. (AP) — Dan Sligh and his wife were in their pickup truck on Interstate 5 heading to a camping trip when a bridge before them disappeared in a "big puff of dust."

"I hit the brakes and we went off," Sligh told reporters from a hospital, adding he "saw the water approaching ... you hold on as tight as you can."

There's no question that the IRS fscked up big time, but there is also a real issue with 501(c)(4) being used to hide the strings pulling our poltics.

Five 501(c)(4) Groups That Might Have Broken the Law | The Nation

The real scandal has been the blatant abuse of 501(c)(4) status by dozens of lobbyists and operatives who have set up such tax-exempt organizations as political slush funds to conceal money in political campaigns. Since the Citizens United decision, 501(c)(4) groups, have operated as Super PACs—raising and spending tens of millions in corporate funds—without disclosing a dime of their contributors. IRS rules state that the primary activity of such groups cannot relate to political advocacy, yet examples abound of 501(c)(4) groups spending well over 50 percent of their funds on attack ads, political action committees and other clearly political expenses. These potential violations of the law have gone on for several years now, with very little interest from the Beltway media or Capitol Hill Republicans, many of whom owe their election to spending by bogus 501(c)(4) organizations.

From the bad science department...

This doesn't show that intelligence (as measured by IQ) has declined. It shows that reaction times have slowed. If reaction times are an accurate measure of intelligence, then intelligence has declined -- but we know that, contrary to the core trope of Idiocracy, intelligence (IQ) has actually increased (the "Flynn Effect"). The proper conclusion is that reaction times do not correlate well with intelligence (IQ). Anyone watching a dumb kid do well on an twitch video game ought to recognize that.

Whether the quality measured by IQ tests, or the quality measured by reaction time tests, is better labelled "intelligence" is left as an exercise for the reader. It may well be that like "consciousness", "intelligence" is simply an ill-defined term.

REVEALED: Disturbing Trend In Human Intelligence (The Huffington Post)

Our technology may be getting smarter, but a provocative new study suggests human intelligence is on the decline. In fact, it indicates that Westerners have lost 14 I.Q. points on average since the Victorian Era.

Sometimes, "equality" just means that the Combine has eaten you, too. LGBT citizens are now equally free to serve our corporate masters and genuflect before the military-industrial complex. From Common Dreams: Bradley Manning is Off Limits at SF Gay Pride Parade, but Corporate Sleaze is Embraced (Common Dreams):

News reports yesterday indicated that Bradley Manning, widely known to be gay, had been selected to be one of the Grand Marshals of the annual San Francisco gay pride parade, named by the LGBT Pride Celebration Committee. When the predictable backlash instantly ensued, the president of the Board of SF Pride, Lisa L Williams, quickly capitulated, issuing a cowardly, imperious statement that has to be read to be believed.

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What we really see here is how the largest and most corrupt corporations own not just the government but also the culture. Even at the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade, once an iconic symbol of cultural dissent and disregard for stifling peities, nothing can happen that might offend AT&T and the Bank of America. The minute something even a bit deviant takes place (as defined by standards imposed by America's political and corporate class), even the SF Gay Pride Parade must scamper, capitulate, apologize, and take an oath of fealty to their orthodoxies (we adore the military, the state, and your laws).

From the "duh!" file: two members of congress are (finally) calling for the end of cannabis prohibition. From ABC/Yahoo! News:

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) say marijuana legalization is a common sense fiscal policy that could save the government billions of dollars through a combination of tax revenues and savings from not pursuing costly enforcement and incarceration.

“We are trying to rationalize federal drug policy,” Blumenauer tells Top Line. “We're spending too much money on enforcement for something most Americans think should be legal, and we're losing revenue. And we're going to create federal train wreck if we don't fix it.”

Someone needs to punch the headline author and whoever put the phrase "trippy idea" into the story; but this is newsworthy.

From the Guardian: Bill for compulsory science fiction in West Virginia schools:

A bill calling for science fiction to be made compulsory reading in schools has been proposed by a politician in West Virginia in order to "stimulate interest in the fields of math and science".

Ray Canterbury, a Republican delegate, is appealing to the West Virginia board of education to include science fiction novels on the middle school and high school curriculums. "The Legislature finds that promoting interest in and appreciation for the study of math and science among students is critical to preparing students to compete in the workforce and to assure the economic well being of the state and the nation," he writes in the pending bill.

...

"I'm not interested in fantasy novels about dragons," Canterbury told Blastr in a recent interview. "I'm primarily interested in things where advanced technology is a key component of the storyline, both in terms of the problems that it presents and the solutions that it offers."

There's been a lot of discussion lately about "rape culture" and consent, prompted partly by incredibly stupid stupid statements from politicians ("legitimate rape", anyone?), partly by shocking events in Steubenville and New Delhi and...well, too many other places to name.

It's certainly useful and necessary to talk about consent. Anything that gets us communicating about sex can only be to the good, and a conversation about rape can increase respect for victims, help us understand and believe their stories, and make us more determined to catch the assholes who commit it. That's all to the good.

But the people doing most of the raping aren't going to be listening to that discussion. When I hear some folks suggesting that we don't need to teach women how to protect themselves against rapists, we need to teach men how to not rape, I fear that they are mistaking the nature of the problem. I'm sure there are some edge cases, but by and large it's not that the rapists don't understand consent; it's that they don't care.

There's an interesting analysis at Yes Means Yes:

...the sometimes-floated notion that acquaintance rape is simply a mistake about consent, is wrong... The vast majority of the offenses are being committed by a relatively small group of men, somewhere between 4% and 8% of the population, who do it again … and again … and again. That just doesn’t square with the notion of innocent mistake. Further, since the repeaters are also responsible for a hugely disproportionate share of the intimate partner violence, child beating and child sexual abuse, the notion that these predators are somehow confused good guys does not square with the data. Most of the raping is done by guys who like to rape, and to abuse, assault and violate.

The sort of beasts who not only rape a woman but (taking Steubenville as an example) urinate on her in the most primitive possible display of primate dominance, and take pictures to show their friends, are not going to be changed by any sort of discussion. (Short of intensive psychotherapy, at least.) They're not operating at that mental level.

Yes, we also need to talk about how we raise kids, especially boys, so that they don't grow up into people who like to abuse, assault, and violate; and what we can do with someone who has grown into such a person once we catch them.

But to stop these people once they've gone bad and before we catch them, we need to talk about personal safety and self-defense strategies.

(BTW if someone in the Baltimore area has a space, I'd be happy to put on a community self-defense class, for women and men.)

And I thought I had worked on some hairy old code: kottke.org passes on the story of a 1948 vintage plugboard computer still in use (at least as of last year): Don't mess with Texas's old computers

Sparkler's IBM 402 is not a traditional computer, but an automated electromechanical tabulator that can be programmed (or more accurately, wired) to print out certain results based on values encoded into stacks of 80-column Hollerith-type punched cards.

Companies traditionally used the 402 for accounting, since the machine could take a long list of numbers, add them up, and print a detailed written report. In a sense, you could consider it a 3000-pound spreadsheet machine.

"The Star-Spangled Banner" is Baltimore's song, but at times like this I'm glad we gave it to the nation. From WCVB:
Bruins fans sing national anthem in emotional pregame ceremony -- click through and watch the video.

...The Boston Fire Department Honor Guard brought out the U.S. flag to honor the first responders who rushed to the aid of the three killed and more than 170 injured by the twin bombs at the marathon finish line.

Longtime Boston Garden troubadour Rene Rancourt took his place for the "Star-Spangled Banner." But he sang only the first few lines, allowing the crowd to carry the tune while he pumped his fist to keep time.