While SSF is on holiday till Sunday, January 13, for your linking pleasure, we are re-running a prior SSF that got some attention. I believe it was the words "fluorescent testicles" that were the cause. This is in the news today as Chinese scientists observe the Year of the Pig with a nod to the genetic feat of developing fluorescent green pigs (and, I suppose, ham). Chickens and eggs to follow in the Year of the Rooster.

May we all have a new year that brings peace and healing to this torn world - and in which we all exorcise our inner pigs - green or not.

Now the story is out. You can find your worst fears confirmed here.

After all, with a hard term of work behind us faculty, anything that gets grading done as quickly as possible is highly efficient and thus good for the economy.

The usual suspects among the chattering class have already lined up to lend intellectual respectability to the policy of more-of-the-same in Iraq. They believe their job is to reassure the public that as a class they should still be trusted, so that when George Bush gets around to announcing his 'new' plan, it will not be greeted with the outrage it will deserve. The time to shut these gasbags up is now, for the good of the country, and the way to do it is by humiliating them as they deserve.

How? By peppering each of them, their sponsors, and the media that give them voice, with demands for accountability. Why should our troops alone bear the burden of failure heaped upon them by this administration and its apologists?

We can separate the apologists from the politicians by putting the chattering class on notice that it too bears responsibility for the fiasco, and that any escalation will increase its own culpability. Without his gasbags, let's see Bush try to sell more-of-the-same.

We need an "Operation Yellow Gasbag."

It's an annual tradition: I spend the last weeks of December inhaling Christmas cookies and cocktails, and vow to consume more sensibly once the new year begins. If, like me, you're formulating food-related resolutions, there are some recent news items to keep in mind, extending to issues beyond the numbers on your scale:

Or is it just luck that certain corporate executives and directors just happen to get grants of stock options when they are at their lowest? Two recent studies find a very high degree of manipulation.

From our friends at PoliticsTV:

_{Click the image to play the video}

. . . it could be worse. I live in a so-so state as far as women's wages, jobs, and benefits go. It could be worse. I could live in West Virginia or New Mexico where things are bad for women. Or I could be an optimist and live in New Jersey or Colorado where things are relatively good. In the U.S. full time working women have median annual earnings of $31,800, only 77% of what men earn. Mind you, this is an improvement. In 1989, the percentage was 68.5%. Lest you are thinking that things will improve once more women are in professional and managerial jobs, at the moment, more women (35.5%) than men (28.9% work in professional and managerial jobs.

And this is not the worst news.

Hurricaine Katrina dramatically illustrated what it means to be truly left behind because it is impossible to get out of harm's way. Hurricaines are not the only disasters that could prompt mass evacuations. Nearly every part of this country can face the need for evacuation. So have our states and cities learned the lessons of Katrina? A new report says: No.

To follow up on the prior post, there is a new GAO report on problems with contractors I would also like to bring to your attention: Military Operations: High-Level DOD Action Needed to Address Long-standing Problems with Management and Oversight of Contractors Supporting Deployed Forces GAO-07-145, December 18, 2006. This one focuses on the contractors who are "supporting" out troops. And lest we forget, as of today, Bush's wars have now killed more Americans than has Osama bin Laden! Way to go!

I first learned about cost-plus contracts many years ago when I was investigating a company that was a prototype supplier for a large automobile company (LAC).

During the investigation, I learned that the executives all had their cars worked on at the shop with costs all charged to LAC - plus a % that was the "plus" in cost plus.

Not only that, they had their buddies bring their cars in and get new tires, repairs, all thanks to LAC.

Not only, only that, but the top officials had company employees go out to their country homes and do fancy skilled metal and carpentry work. All paid for by LAC. In fact, the more things they could charge, the better for the company, because of that "plus" part of cost-plus.

What's more festive than holiday facts and figures from the U.S. Census Bureau?

Enjoy!

From This Week in Peace and Justice History:

Dec. 24, 1992: Outcry after President George H.W. Bush pardons cabinet members implicated in Iran-Contra

The special prosecutor responsible for investigating crimes committed in the Iran-Contra Affair, Lawrence E. Walsh, denounced the pardons granted the day before by President George H.W. Bush. Mr. Walsh charged that "the Iran-contra cover-up, which has continued for more than six years, has now been completed."

He had pardoned: Caspar Weinberger, former Secretary of Defense, soon to go on trial for lying to Congress; Clair E. George, the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency's clandestine services, who had been convicted twice of perjury; Robert C. McFarlane, the former national security adviser, and Elliott Abrams, the former assistant Secretary of State for Central America, both of whom had pled guilty to withholding information from Congress; two other CIA operatives were granted clemency.

Walsh said "evidence of a conspiracy among the highest ranking Reagan Administration officials to lie to Congress and the American public" was central to his case against Weinberger. Pres. Bush had been Vice President at the time of the arms sales for hostages to Iran, and illegal aid to the insurgent Contras in Nicaragua.

Where are they today?

After being stuck in Denver International Airport, SSF has decided that the wisest course of action is to accede to events. SSF is therefore is on the way to seek wisdom on the heights a/k/a Snowmass. But not to worry. It's not this Snowmass. SSF will be back January 17 and will continue the series on Intelligent Life.

For those of you who want a science hit, here are a couple links to past hits.

Sunday Science Fun: Beautiful Science and Science Sunday Fun: Heavens!!

I'll put up more links to past hits during this hiatus.

At some point in your round of holiday excess - or if you are Jewish, your traditional observance of Christmas - you will find yourself at the movies. Amidst the dross and the gloss, there are a couple films now showing that are must-sees if you want to open minds to important issues facing our country.

Florida Gov-elect Charlie Crist announced the creation of the Office of Open Government in a press release last week:

The Office of Open Government will be charged with providing both the Executive Office of the Governor and each of Florida’s agencies with the guidance and tools to serve Florida with integrity and transparency. This office will have two main functions:

1. To assure full and expeditious compliance with the open government and public records laws of Florida.
2. To provide training to all government agencies on transparency and accountability.

The shroud of secrecy of another disasterous Bush Administration looks to be coming to an end.

Worldwide so many have been kidnapped for no good reason and dragged off to gulags in George Bush's "war on terror" that it's easy, perhaps even reassuring, to forget that each is an individual, each lost his day of freedom in a sudden catastrophe, each was swept up and dumped into an indistinct mass of human misery at the outer edges of civilization. This is the story of one such man, Bisher al-Rawi.

The background and history to his detention at Guantanamo is so complex that it has been daunting even to begin writing about his circumstances. But the essential points are fairly easy to explain.

The U.S. has lodged only vague and absurd accusations against Bisher, based upon exceedingly thin evidence. It strained to portray seemingly innocent statements and acts in a sinister light. It ignored the force of Bisher's counter-arguments. It refused to investigate the exculpatory evidence he presented. And the U.S. has deflected a request from Britain for his return.

The process by which he has been judged an "enemy combatant" is outlandish.

This week smintheus has been going above and beyond his usual stellar work - and that was all by Tuesday night. As I read smintheus' most recent work, I thought: wouldn't it be fun to have a sit-down a la Talmudic scholars and just have a real go at the Bush Admin documents from every angle - use of language, use of stats, use of graphics. Since that is not possible in reality, I'm going to try to do something close.

Chris Floyd at Empire Burlesque took to heart my complaint about the difficulty of downloading the PDF of the Pentagon's report on Iraq, which I wrote about here yesterday. He has now posted a much more accessible HTML version of the Pentagon report. Kudos to CF.

Now you've got no excuse not to peruse the document, if you haven't already. The executive summary is mind-numbingly vague and exceedingly sanitized. Anybody who stopped reading at the executive summary and did not carefully examine the details, and strip away the Pentagon spin from them, might easily overlook the fact that this document is describing an extremely messy civil war.

By now several news accounts about the Pentagon report have appeared: WaPo, the Associated Press, Reuters, and the NYT.

I thought I would comment here on what these news reports fail to do.

The Bush administration, always bursting with embarrassing information, is famously addicted to the document-dump. I discovered long ago that the ritual dumps on Friday evenings had become so widely anticipated that the White House began experimenting with Thursday document-dumps. But any convenient day for burying the bad news will be welcome among this gang.

Given that Robert Gates was sworn in as the new Defense Secretary today, I naturally went looking to see what information the Pentagon would be flushing out the back. The website did not make it particularly easy to discover where the trash was buried. No mention on the "Today in DOD" or the "News releases" pages.

But eventually I smelled it out. I knew there would be something, somewhere. It's the week before Christmas.

Well today, it turns out, the Pentagon released to the public its quarterly report on the situation in Iraq, as mandated by Congress. The study is dated November 30; today, of course, is December 18.

Along with Henry Kissinger and Gen. Jack Keane (ret.), military historian Fred Kagan has been instrumental in convincing George Bush to heed his own demons. Bush is all set to reject the recommendations of the ISG, and every counsel of reason. Rather than seriously consider withdrawal from Iraq, Bush will probably gamble with more soldiers' lives in the faded hope that "one last push" will suddenly retrieve all his previous failures.

What a motley collection of advisors Bush has assembled. Kissinger's reputation for wisdom lies buried somewhere in the jungles of Vietnam—or is it Cambodia?

Keane too is in thrall to his own delusions. For example, this bravado just ignores the failed battle for Baghdad:

"The notion that we can’t provide protection for people in one of the capital cities of this world is just rubbish."

Jointly Keane and Kagan presented Bush with a plan last week that begins thus: "Victory is still an option in Iraq." If wishes were horses, their plan would constitute a stampede of stupidity.

We share the surface of the earth with birds. We breathe the same atmosphere. But birds who fly exist in a realm that gives them a different perspective from those of us creatures confined to the earth's surface.

So what about intelligent creatures whose home is a world, largely hidden from us, where we cannot exist unaided for more than a few minutes? What if we could . . . talk with them? Hear their perspectives on their world . . . and on us?

Tomorrow a new intelligent life post will be up. But to follow up on last Sunday. It was the third in a series reviewing some recent research on animal cognition. Its focus was on birds. We had some great feedback and comments, which I have collected for you here today. So here's more on bird intelligence.

As employers abandon defined benefit pension plans, workers are being moved to far riskier defined contribution pension plans, such as 401(k)s. Though not the focus of this post, a recent Kaiser Foundation report discusses changes in retiree health benefits.

Here the focus is on a new GAO report examines the need for new legislation to protect workers whose retirement money is invested in 401(k) plans.

by Liz Borkowski, originally posted at The Pump Handle

Could anyone besides the Economist dare to think it could overturn three of green shoppers’ sacred labels in a mere three pages? Its 12/7/06 article “Voting with Your Trolley” tries to debunk organic, Fair Trade, and local foods all at once. I didn’t find it very convincing.

On November 9, I wrote about the on-going struggle in the British House of Commons to break the stranglehold of the Official Secrets Act: More explosive charges from British UN diplomat. Many MPs want to get documents out in public regarding the run up to the Iraq War, and Tony Blair's role in manipulating intelligence to make a case for invading Iraq.

Yesterday, finally, they were successful.

The White House's strategy for Iraq, which we thought would be delayed endlessly by Bush and his advisors, has already been unveiled—earlier than anticipated. And it's a complete non-starter.

I read the plan not so much with disappointment as with indignation. Bush's prolonged refusal to face up to reality; his evasion of responsibility for failures; the incoherence of previous attempts to identify a credible strategy; playing politics for months on end with the lives of our troops, as the situation on the ground deteriorated. These were all merely a prelude to this stupendously foolish 35 page document (PDF) released by the White House.

The immediate reaction in DC was to reject the plan outright as more of the same:

Several leading congressional Democrats dismissed...the strategy document as warmed-over versions of Bush's rhetoric on Iraq.

It is not news that higher education is increasingly delivered by freeway flyers a/k/a roads scholars a/k/a contingent academics. A new report by the American Association of University Professors is just out with updates on the the increasing insecurity of the teachers at our country's colleges and universities. One thing I noticed is that if you attend a for-profit or private instution, you are more likely to be taught by a non-tenure track teacher.

The Department of Labor has announced that it is seeking public comment on the operation of the FMLA. These comments are requested for the purpose of "ascertaining the effectiveness of the current implementing regulations and the Department’s administration of the Act." Information is sought in specific areas.

The courts have defined away many of the rights under the FMLA so this is an important opportunity to restore its effectivness.

Here are three reports whose conclusions as to some new-fangled health plans that were supposed to be the answer to high costs and lack of accessibility are all the same - bad plans that no one likes and that do not improve access to health care.

Important reports are just falling from the sky. So rather than let them get lost while I wait for the time to give them a thoughtful write up, I am just going to list them here and hope to be able to get back to them. First up, Katrina and fraud.

Milo is still looking for that will-o-wisp of his—a cheap, dependable used Pierce-Arrow. I suggested that what he really needs is a small pickup, given how many bee hives he now owns. But he never listens.

Anyway, he's off for a few days in Texas where he thinks he has a lead on a relatively new P.-A. with little rust. Yesterday he called excitedly about a story in the local news that has people talking.

Seems that a new Texas law is going to allow the legally blind to drive on interstate highways. There's already a pilot program in place allowing them to drive on state highways. Some kill joys are saying it could be dangerous.

On November 27, 2006 the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released its latest inventory of oil and gas resources on more than 99 million acres of federal land - most of this land in the West. The report is known as EPCA II (EPCA = Energy Policy Conservation Act) and is yet another example of how the Bush administration has no hesitation to misuse science and lie like hell to acheive whatever end its oil and gas bosses demand.

Lets look at EPCA II and what you can do about it.

By chance, I happened across a post I wrote on Memorial Day at Inconvenient News which, sadly, remains all too relevant. In it I pointed out that the nation will never come to grips with the problems we face in Iraq, much less formulate a coherent plan to cope with them, until we face up honestly to the past. The country has to cast aside the fantasy world in which Iraq policy has resided, and as the first step toward forcing the politicians to face reality, I argued that we need a round of public mea culpas from all who supported and facilitated the war mongering in the first place.

As is painfully obvious this week from the pie-in-the-sky recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, and their petulant reception by George Bush, our 'leaders' continue to inhabit a fantasy land without a clear past, or present, or future. We still haven't had those mea culpas, and we need them more than ever.

Here are some quick summaries of some new reports out on education issues. The first looks at community college students. The other is on state v. fedearl reponsibilities for education. The third focuses on workforce preparation. And GAO weighs in on how universities are not safeguarding private information.

It's showtime folks. Time to show and tell the stories of forgotten people. Time to make their stories resonate widely and demonstrate the need for a change in where this country is going.

For links to prior parts of this series, scroll to the end. So far, we have looked at the standards for assessing intelligence and for research on how elephants measure up against those assessments. To recap, they include tool use, theory of mind, learning, burying one's dead. This is not an exhaustive list, and it is a list that is problematic for some species. For example, if you have no hands how can you manipulate tools? Elephants can and do use their trunks, but you see the problem for say, dophins or whales. So today, lets see some recent research on intelligences in birds.

There were many so many good comments and ideas from the last two SSFs, that before leaving the topic of elephants and moving on to explore developments in nonhuman intelligence, I wanted to pass on some of the resources mentioned so far by commentators.

Joining a tragic chorus of defeated and retiring legislators in their exodos, Sen. Frist delivered himself of a tedious and maudlin farewell speech in praise of himself. Along the way, Frist also found time to laud several stray individuals who had the bad luck to need his help over the years.

An exaggerated appreciation for his own career was about the extent of introspection on display, however. It was a meandering speech in search of a theme, any theme. I think the Senator missed his best opportunity to identify his legacy right at the outset.

Rather than comment immediately on the Iraq Study Group Report (and this cut to the heart of things pretty quickly), I preferred to ponder its rhetoric for a while. The Report is highly rhetorical, though it adopts a disarming just-the-facts rhetoric.

The biggest obstacle the Groupies faced was not the intractability of the mess, though the problems are huge; nor their own lack of expertise on Iraq, though that was profound. No, the main stumbling block was this: George Bush will do whatever suits him, even despite the best advice.

That made their project a rhetorical one. Though ISG was charged by Congress with evaluating the situation and identifying the best solutions, their goal rapidly transformed into persuading Bush to stop listening to blundering advice.

Rhetoric works indirectly. You have to step back to evaluate it. One of the hardest things is to train yourself to look for what is absent, unmentioned, omitted.

One particular item in the ISG report (hat tip to How the World Works, by way of Brad DeLong, Jim Henley, and Reuters) resonated with yet another disturbing fact about our government that I've just learned over the past couple of months. Here's the ISG excerpt:

Yesterday, George Bush announced that he's withdrawing two preposterous nominations: David Laufman, to be the Inspector General of the Defense Department; and Tracy Henke, to be Executive Director of the Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness in DHS.

These are significant victories. Both Laufman and Henke have fashioned ugly careers as enforcers for Bush Co. Yawning pits can be found where their integrity ought to be. And the position of Inspector General in the DoD, now free of Laufman's meddling, may be critical to all manner of investigations of Bush in the next two years--not least those involving the NSA.

So say your goodbyes to two bums. You can just feel the tide carrying cast-off cronies out to sea, one after another.

Nuthin' says lovin' like charging up the card and getting your loved ones a bright shiny toy - for big or small boys and girls. Or does it?

So how about giving gifts that demonstrate who we are?

The ACLU on December 6, 2006 re-submitted its case on behalf of Khaled al-Masri v. George Tenet. al-Masri was picked up in Macedonia on or about December 31, 2003, taken to Afghanistan and tortured for months. By March the CIA realized it had imprisoned the wrong man, yet the torture continued as the CIA tried to figure out what to do next. al Masri was not released until May when he was let go in a forest in Albania and told “don’t look back.”

Around the time of al-Masri's release US ambassador to Germany Daniel Coats was on his way to Germany to do two things: attempt to silence al-Masri, and attempt to keep the German government quiet about it. Coats' mission failed.

A year ago, starting in early August 2005, unbossed published a series of investigative pieces on highway privatization in Colorado - the Roads Scholar series. These and follow up stories contributed to a political shift in Colorado by exposing backroom deals and bad decisions that outraged Coloradans.

Now Pennsylvania is talking seriously about privatizing its roads. If ever there was a subject that the blogosphere should take on, it is this one.

A court of appeals recently upheld a National Labor Relations Board order for George Washington University to recognize and bargain with the union that recognizes its adjuncts. For a report on the court decision, see this link.

For links to more information on organizing by contingent academics, check out COCAL. And check out Joe Berry's new book on this subject - Reclaiming the Ivory Tower. And for a past unbossed report on this subject, look here.

Quick! True or false?

If your boss at the Wesayso Corporation tells you not to discuss your pay with other workers, your employer has violated the law.

If your boss tells you that you are salaried, you are not entitled to overtime pay - or even minimum wage.

If your boss tells you that you are a supervisor, then you are not allowed to organize a union.

Your boss cannot fire you if the reason is she wants to replace you with someone who works for less.

On Tuesday Italian prosecutors asked a judge to indict 26 CIA agents, along with several top officials from the Italian spy agency, for the kidnapping and 'rendition' of Abu Omar off the streets of Milan in February 2003. It will be the first time that anybody involved in the 'extraordinary rendition' program has faced criminal prosecution.

In an earlier diary, CIA torture flightlogs now available, the amazing smintheus posted an important update to Germans documented American torture in 2001.

If you consider documentation of the CIA's kidnapping flightlogs a smoking gun, I'm in complete agreement.

We thought we knew about rendition; a nice word for kidnapping. Until Stephen Grey's Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program, did we know that thousands of individuals have been flown away to be tortured at CIA black sites around the world, with the full knowledge of the U.S. Government and in the name of the American people?

Unnoticed by the MSM and by most of even politically aware people, one of the Bush administration's major pushes has been to privatize huge parts of the federal government. The lack of attention has let them proceed and succeed. Even when they have not contracted out work, it has come at an enormous price for public sector workers. One example is IRS mailroom workers. Many kept their jobs, but those who did saw fulltime jobs converted to parttime jobs and worse.

Now and then, runaway privatization is stopped.

But the main story has been contracting out, corruption, destruction of the agency mission, and bad service for the public.

In late October, writing about some new evidence for the torture of terrorist-suspects by US troops in Bosnia (Germans documented American torture in 2001), I mentioned that Stephen Grey was promising to post within the week, on his blog, the logs from CIA torture flights. Grey is the author of Ghost Plane: The true story of the CIA torture program.

Well, it didn't happen until Nov. 29, but now they are available for the world to see. And what a resource they are. It's about time that bloggers took notice and began to report about this explosion of information.

A new report examines who lacks health insurance and some of the reasons why they do.

The report gives some why's, but, of course, it never asks the big why:

Why, when such a huge percentage of health insurance is subsidized or directly paid for by our taxes, don't we just go all the way and do the right and humane thing and just cover everyone for less?

If there is a truism about modern education it is that access to computers is critical. But, skeptic and naysayer that I am, I have to ask: Is this truism true?

The insanity just keeps coming. The Bush administration is now offering grant money for sexual abstinence programs to be directed at adults up to the age of 30. Yes.

It's a Sunday. Seems to be quiet around here, so what better to do than appeal to the patron saint of the internet - Isidore of Seville.

What are your prayers for the internet over the next year?

Last Sunday, SSF looked at recent research into the existence of intelligent nonhuman life on earth. Its focus was on what we mean by intelligence. Obviously if intelligence means beings who speak five European languages fluently, play chess, have solved the Riemann Hypothesis while writing tomes on philosophy on the way to Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize in medicine there is no intelligent here on earth.

Who we define as intelligent has an impact on political decisions. It is not just about wishy-washy, tree huggin', philosophyin'.

On January 5 the Congressional Research Service issued a study of the Bush administration's initial justifications for its warrantless wiretap program. The authors, E. B. Bazan and J. K. Elsea, indicated that the courts were unlikely to buy Bush's feeble claims, which ran afoul of the clear intent of the FISA statute. Administration apologists complained bitterly that the authors were biased (shockingly, they measured the Great Man's pronouncements against what the laws state).

Since then, Bush & Co. often have tried to justify the unjustifiable and rebut the rebuttals of their assertions of authority.

It's gone unnoticed that a more recent survey by CRS in September, "Anti-terrorism authority under the laws of the United Kingdom and United States", completely nullifies Bush's claims. 'Nullify' is exactly the right term. The newer CRS report describes the law as it really is and it simply ignores the unwarranted fantasies that Bush & Co. have spun for the last year.

In my memory, all the Reagan years have a taint--a texture almost --of cruelty. I particularly hate 1982. In 1982, Nancy hadn't just said "no" yet, and the drug war wasn't officially announced -- but it was on, let me tell you. The neighborhoods I lived in then were "those" kinds of neighborhoods. They were full of junkies and in 1979 they were full of ambulances.

By 1982 you only saw coroner's vans. No one called the police anymore, not with so much brutality and fear. Reagan's presidency heralded the outdoor overdose, the corpse on the lawn, the curbside hospital drop.

A few minutes is an awfully long time when someone's not breathing. The time it takes to pause and wonder if it's as bad as all that, if it's worth the risk -- that uncertain minute can make the difference.

So many people died in those minutes.

And that's why I hate 1982. In 1982, I knew about AIDS. It was a year of despair, disbelief, hopelessness. A year holding your breath. 1982 was the life or death minute, stretched to eternity.

This week, representatives of the Bush administration are arguing before the Supreme Court that the EPA should not be regulating greenhouse gases. EPA employees, on the other hand, think they should be.

Presidents of unions representing more than 10,000 EPA environmental engineers, environmental scientists, environmental protection specialists, and support staff have written to Congress to protest the lack of progress in addressing global warming.