Ethel the Blog
Observations (and occasional brash opining) on science, computers, books, music and other shiny things that catch my mind's eye. There's a home page with ostensibly more permanent stuff. This is intended to be more functional than decorative. I neither intend nor want to surf on the bleeding edge, keep it real, redefine journalism or attract nyphomaniacal groupies (well, maybe a wee bit of the latter). The occasional cheap laugh, raised eyebrow or provocation of interest are all I'll plead guilty to in the matter of intent. Bene qui latuit bene vixit.

The usual copyright stuff applies, but I probably won't get enraged until I find a clone site with absolutely no attribution (which, by the way, has happened twice with some of my other stuff). Finally, if anyone's offended by anything on this site then please do notify me immediately. I like to keep track of those times when I get something right.

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"When they say, 'Gee it's an information explosion!', no, it's not an explosion, it's a disgorgement of the bowels is what it is. Every idiotic thing that anybody could possibly write or say or think can get into the body politic now, where before things would have to have some merit to go through the publishing routine, now, ANYTHING." - Harlan Ellison JOLLY OLD PALS Other stuff of mild interest to some: unusual literature scientific software blog physical oceanography glossary computer-related tutorials and texts Saturday, August 19, 2000 TIGER, TIGER, BURNING BRIGHT In the Aug. 21/28 New Yorker the sportswriter David Owen offers his requisite Tiger Woods piece. I've not read much of the other written hype about the Michael Jordan of the links, mainly because it appears in publications I don't usually read. This piece - entitled "Chosen One" after the bestowment of that title by second-place contender Mark Calcavecchi on Woods at the British Open - offers an insight or two into exactly why the lad is making a mockery of the rest of the PGA. One big reason: he probably works harder at the game than any two other players. For instance, his recent massacre of the neon pants crowd at the British Open started well over a year ago, i.e.: "I've worked countless hours," Woods himself said shortly before his Oklahoma exhibition (during which he demonstrated a new low-flying shot with his driver which he and Harmon [his coach] had spent a year developing specifically for the hard fairways and high winds of the British Open). "People have no idea how many hours I've put into this game." That's right, he worked for a year on a special shot for just one tournament (albeit a major one). The only adjustment most players probably make is switching from coffee to Earl Grey a week or so before it starts. The pros who were ready to quit the tour after Woods ran away with the 1997 Masters undoubtedly breathed a heavy sigh of relief when he went into a "slump" for a little over a year and half from late 1997 to late 1999, only winning a couple of tournaments. Since then he's won about half the tournaments he's entered. What was the problem? The swing that had made grizzled (well, as grizzled as a golfer can get) tour veterans weep and gnash their teeth was flawed. He was still getting his second shot on par 4 holes a few feet from the pin, but he was having to square the circle during his swing to do it. Or, as they put it in golfspeak: He had intended to play a fade - that is, a shot that starts left of the target and curves back toward it, to the right. At some point during his downswing, however, he had sensed that his club was in the wrong position in relation to his body, so he manipulated his hands in such a way that the club head rolled over at the bottom of his swing, imparting side spin to the ball in the opposite direction and causing the shot to curve from right to left instead - a shot known as a draw. This is somewhat akin to, for example, Jordan jumping towards the basket with the ball in his right hand, sensing a weakness in the defense the other way, switching it to his left hand, filming a couple of commercials, and then making the shot. Not only does he work harder than the other pros at getting and maintaining a better swing, but he also has a more powerful swing. Golf Digest has been filming the swings of top linksters since 1973 using a high-speed camera called a Hulcher, which shoots 65 frames per second. They recorded fifteen driver swings from Woods at five different angles, but of the 75 total shot recordings only five contained a frame that recorded the moment his club head came into contact with the ball. This is as opposed to recording the moment of impact almost every time for most previous subjects. During a normal swing the head of Woods' club moves at about 120 MPH, or about 15 MPH faster than the average pro and more than 30 MPH faster than the average weekend schlub. And, to make the lives of the tour pros (the poor bastards can barely clear a couple million a year trading off second place finishes to Woods) even more fun, both he and his coach have said seriously that he's playing at only about 75% of his ultimate capabilities. By the way, that famous commercial took only four takes and he skipped the most difficult part of a routine he developed to forestall boredom several years back, i.e. perfectly bouncing the ball back into the air using the top of the club (like a pool cue) before rocketing it up the fairway. I'd be enjoying this whole thing a lot less if I also hadn't learned in the article that the PGA constitution explicitly limited its membership to "Professional golfers of the Caucasian race" until 1961, and that one of Tiger's best friends is Casey Martin, the physically disabled golfer the PGA went to court to attempt to prevent from using a golf cart. posted by Steven Baum 8/19/2000 10:05:59 PM | link PINOCCHIO AL? The GOP and the supposedly liberal media have had quite a time in the last couple of years attempting to paint Al Gore as, if not an out and out lying sumbitch, then a pathological exaggerator. Archetypal GOP media hack Chris Matthews of CNBC's "Hardball" recently summed it up for his fanatical viewers with: It reminds me of Snoopy thinking he's the Red Baron. I mean how did he get this idea? Now you've seen Al Gore in action. I know you didn't know that he was the prototype for Ryan O'Neal's character in Love Story or that he invented the Internet. He now is the guy who discovered Love Canal. Supposed liberal mole George Stephanopoulos jumped in to "defend" his boy with: Gore, again, revealed his Pinocchio problem. Says he was the model for Love Story, created the Internet. And this time, he sort of discovered Love Canal. Liberal party organ the Washington Post wasted no time in covering up for Al with: Add Love Canal to the list of verbal missteps by Vice President Gore. The man who mistakenly claimed to have inspired the movie Love Story and to have invented the Internet says he didn't quite mean to say he discovered a toxic waste site. The Washington Times added their usual rational assessment of the situation: The real question is how to react to Mr. Gore's increasingly bizarre utterings. Webster's New World Dictionary defines 'delusional' thusly: 'The apparent perception, in a nervous or mental disorder, of some thing external that is actually not present... a belief in something that is contrary to fact or reality, resulting from deception, misconception, or a mental disorder.' Right definition, wrong target. Robert Parry's He's No Pinocchio looks at the reality behind these myths and shows us who's zooming who. Let's start with what Gore actually did say instead of what the above outlets and many others claim he said. The most famous myth is that Gore claims he "created the Internet". What he did say in an interview with Wolf Blitzer was: During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. As to discovering Love Canal, the actual quote originated in a speech Gore made to a group of high school students in Concord, N.H. last November. In a section where he was attempting to get the students to reject cynicism (you know, the thing that causes people to deliberately misquote people to attempt to make them look bad), he mentioned a high school girl in Tennessee who brought a toxic waste problem in her town to the attention of Gore's office in the 1970s. He said: I called for a congressional investigation and a hearing. looked around the country for other sites like that. I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal. Had the first hearing on that issue, and Toone, Tennessee---that was the one that you didn't hear of. But that was the one that started it all. The really ironic thing here is that the same people who've been routinely excoriating Gore for years about being an ultra-liberal tree hugging environmentalist are now misquoting him in an attempt to make him look less so. As to the Love Story myth, Parry offers: The earliest of these Gore "lies," dating back to 1997, was Gore's expressed belief that he and his wife Tipper had served as models for the lead characters in the sentimental bestseller and movie, Love Story. When the author, Erich Segal, was asked about Gore's impression, he stated that the preppy hockey-playing male lead, Oliver Barrett IV, indeed was modeled after Gore and Gore's Harvard roommate, actor Tommy Lee Jones. But Segal said the female lead, Jenny, was not modeled after Tipper Gore. [NYT, Dec. 14, 1997] So what is the reality behind Gore's supposed pattern of lies? The male lead in "Love Story" was partially modeled after him (although he was mistaken about his future wife's supposed role), he looked around for other toxic waste sites after the incident in Tennessee and did indeed find that a place named Love Canal had similar problems, and he did take the initiative on legislation expanding if not creating the Internet. While you can criticize Gore for phrasing that last one awkwardly, the critics that change "took the initiative in creating the Internet" to "created the Internet" or "invented the Internet" are clearly attempting to deliberately bias the interpretation towards a maximally unfavorable one. So much for the "pattern of lies." One wonders what these "responsible" critics would say if Gore claimed to have passed groundbreaking environmental legislation which in fact only calls for voluntary compliance by polluters. Or if he claimed to be a compassionate child lover and attempted to deprive 200,000 poor children of health insurance (in a state with the second largest number of uninsured children in the nation) so he could afford to make an economically unneeded yet politically expedient tax cut. One doesn't wonder what to call those who have almost undoubtedly seen the original quotations and have chosen to disseminate incorrect versions thereof. posted by Steven Baum 8/19/2000 08:09:55 AM | link Friday, August 18, 2000 MR. MIKE One of the really strong memories I have of the early years of Saturday Night Live is of the "Mr. Mike" bits by Michael O'Donoghue. Mr. Mike would appear on screen sitting in a chair, usually with the guest host or one of the cast members sitting on his lap, and then relate one of his "least loved" stories wherein, for example, the Little Engine That Could would die of a heart attack or Br'er Rabbit would be skinned alive. These sketches were part of what was definitely a harder-edged, more satirical SNL from 1975 to 1980 (at which point Lorne Michaels and all the original cast had exited stage right). Indeed, the first sketch ever involved Mr. Mike teaching a foreigner (played by John Belushi) how to speak English by getting him to repeat such phrases as "I would like to feed your fingertips to the wolverines." O'Donoghue's first encounter with fame was as part of the founding staff of the National Lampoon magazine along with Douglas Kenney, Tony Hendra, Henry Beard and several others. He was mostly responsible for such classic pieces as "How to Write Good," "Tarzan of the Cows," "Lt. Calley's Kill the Children Federation," "Children's Letters to the Gestapo," "The Vietnamese Baby Book" and many others. He's also responsible for a series called "The Churchill Wit" that I undoubtedly read but forgot about. I did the same sort of schtick myself about a decade ago and didn't realize until I read Dennis Perrin's Mr. Mike: The Life and Work of Michael O'Donoghue (1999) that I'd been unwittingly swiping from such Michael bits as: At an elegant dinner party, Lady Astor once leaned across the table to remark, "If you were my husband, Winston, I'd poison your coffee." "And if you were my wife, I'd beat the shit out of you," came Churchill's unhesitating reply. When the noted playwright George Bernard Shaw sent him two tickets to the opening night of his new play with a note that read: "Bring a friend, if you have one." Churchill, not to be outdone, promptly wired back," You and your play can go fuck yourselves." (As an aside, when I was posting similar such Churchillisms on a local bulletin board in the late 1980s, a friend overheard someone reading them and saying, apparently in all earnestness, that "I'm sure learning a lot of history today.") Perrin paints an almost surely overly flattering picture of O'Donoghue in which the basic fact that Michael was a vengeful, vicious, short- and ill-tempered son of a bitch still manages to jump out of the pages at you. But to somewhat temper this stark portrayal, I should also mention that he was almost definitely bipolar and suffered frequent, disabling migraine headaches, eventually dying (in 1994) from a massive cerebral hemhorrage during one of the latter. It was a love-hate thing with most people for most of O'Donoghue's life, with one example being his long-term off-on friendship with Chevy Chase (although most of the "off" periods were precipitated by O'Donoghue blow-ups). As with most everyone, Chase tolerated O'Donoghue's many foibles since he did write very good material. When Chase returned as a guest host in the early 80s in an attempt to revive a show that was clinically dead, O'Donoghue (who'd been lured back albeit for a very brief period to assist in the resuscitation) penned the following opening monologue for him: Right after I stopped doing cocaine, I turned into a giant garden slug and, for the life of me, I don't know why. Hi, I'm Chevy Chase. Have you noticed that, in the years since I left Saturday Night Live, my eyes have actually gotten smaller and closer together so they now look like little pig eyes? Why? Again, I don't have a clue. As I was saying to Alan King the other day at the Alan King Celebrity Tennis Tournament, "Alan, I need more money. What I can't fit in my wallet, I'll eat or I'll shove up my ass, but I must have more!" And when I looked in the mirror, my eyes were the size of Roosevelt dimes and had moved another inch closer to my nose. "What is going on here?!?" I exclaimed to my new wife, who looks like my old wife except she's new. Still, the fans showed up for my last movie - The Giant Garden Slug's European Vacation - a movie that any man would be proud of, particularly if that man was Cantinflas. There's much more I can say but I have a twenty lodged in my lower colon and it's just driving me crazy. My next film is called The Giant Garden Slug Blows Eddie Murphy While John Candy Watches and it opens tomorrow at Red Carpet Theaters everywhere. Don't miss it. As unflattering and painfully accurate as it was, Chase still thought it funny and actually wanted to do it, but it was nixed by the higher-ups. Overall the book is an entertaining if overly worshipful view of a sharply and often viciously funny man who was involved in two of the biggest mileposts of comedy in the 1970s (and the only place you're going to find any sort of collection of O'Donoghue's material). An obvious corollary to this is that the book makes a good supplement or complement to books already written about the National Lampoon and SNL (Tony Hendra's Going Too Far and Matty Simmons' If You Don't Buy This Book, We'll Kill This Dog for the former and Michael McKenzie's Saturday Night: A Backstage History of 'Saturday Night Live' for the latter, with all being predictably out of print). I wouldn't have paid the cover price ($25) for it (having snagged it for $1), but then again I probably wouldn't pay retail for a guaranteed guide to nymphomaniacal oceanography groupies. But if you're at all interested in NatLamp, SNL or comedy in the 70s you'll probably find a used copy of this both affordable and enjoyable. posted by Steven Baum 8/18/2000 02:25:02 PM | link NUMPY To forestall the ardent Python supporter clan from pulling a night of long knives on me for the previous entry, I should do equal justice by giving equal time to Numerical Python (Numpy), a set of extensions to Python allowing the efficient manipulation of large sets of objects organized in a grid-like fashion. Sound familiar? At its core, Numpy consists of a set of modules: Numeric.py, a module defining two new object types and a set of functions for manipulating those objects (with the former being multiarray and universal function objects); RandomArray.py, a high-level interface to a random-number generator; FFT.py, a high-level interface to the fast Fourier transform routines of FFTPACK; and LinearAlgebra.py, a high-level interface to the numerous and very useful linear algebra routines implemented in LAPACK Related packages that make Numpy even more useful include: Pyfort, a tool for creating Python extensions using Fortran routines; CXX, a tool for writing Python extensions in C++; and Tkinter, the standard Python package for creating graphical user interfaces. Although it might lag PDL a wee bit in functionality, Numpy does have a leg up in the documentation department with a nicely formatted manual in PDF format. posted by Steven Baum 8/18/2000 10:54:28 AM | link PDL So are you tired of the limitations in the scripting language cobbled together for your current very expensive matrix-based numerical calculation package, e.g. Matlab, PV-WAVE, IDL, etc.? And is your only real regret in life thus far the fact that you can't use Perl for everything from system administration to making the coffee to walking the dog? Then this is your lucky day. The Perl Data Language (PDL) is an extension to your favorite scripting language that gives it the ability to compactly store and speedily manipulate the large N-dimensional data arrays found ubiquitously in scientific computing. The PDL package provides both an interactive shell (perldl) for use via the command line and a Perl module (PDL) for use in scripts. It provides extensive numerical and semi-numerical functionality with support for 2-- and 3--D visualization as well as a variety of I/O formats. Specific PDL features and modules include: a Perl extension that implements indexing and looping features, with the former allowing access to the data in a very flexible way, and the latter providing efficient implicit looping functionality (via loops implemented as optimized C code); PDL::PP, a module for automatically generating PDL routines from concise descriptions; pdldoc, a shell interface to PDL documentation; PDL::Complex, a module implementing complex numbers; PDL::FFT, a module implementing fast Fourier transforms (FFTs); PDL::Graphics::PGPLOT, an enhanced interface to the PGPLOT graphics subroutine library; PDL::Graphics::TriD, a generic 3--D plotting interface for creating points, lines, surfaces, etc. and exporting the result in either OpenGL or VRML format; PDL::IO::Browser, a 2-D dataset browser; PDL::IO::PIC, implements I/O for several popular image formats using the converters from pbmplus; PDL::Image2D, a collection of 2-D image processing functions; PDL::Primitive, a set of over 70 primitive mathematical and statistical operations; PDL::Math, a suite of extended mathematical operations and special functions; PDL::Slatec, an interface to the SLATEC numerical programming library; and PDL::NetCDF, an interface to the NetCDF array-oriented data storage and access library. There's plenty of documentation including an introductory PDL tour, 2-D plotting with PDL, a FAQ and a boatload of documents in standard Perl documentation format. Get it today before the price goes up. posted by Steven Baum 8/18/2000 10:11:56 AM | link Wednesday, August 16, 2000 MARKETROID SHITHEADS I distinctly remember the advertising blitz that accompanied the release of Fight Club, and yours truly was not at all thrilled about wasting even two bits on something advertised as a Brad Pitt hunkfest. To begin with, I could wipe the floor with Brad's sorry ass and I'm at least 10 years older than him, and I really didn't see him as much more than a Leo DeCaprio-esque hack sellout who decided to get obscenely wealthy via high cheekbones and shit-eating grins rather than talent. Well, a good friend who'd recently bought it on DVD convinced me to see it and, to say the least, the movie advertised on telly and the movie itself couldn't possibly have been much more different. To begin with, it was an Edward Norton tour de force in which Brad comported himself quite nicely. Next, it's chock full of some of the blackest and most subversive humor I've had the pleasure to see in years. It's also viewable on at least a couple of levels, all of which provide good entertainment. I recognized a Tom Waits tune early on in the film, and I'll be damned if Pitt didn't deliberately attempt to pattern his character after the man I first saw perform on the PBS "Soundstage" show in 1974 (sharing the show with Mose Allison). I hesitate to say much more since you're got to see it for yourself. If you've been hesitating for the same reasons I've given, then do yourself a favor and see the sumbitch. EthelCo gives this flick a very high rating. You'll want to see it several times as well. Not to give anything away, but it rewards multiple viewings (and if you can get hold of the DVD version with the alternative soundtracks it'll be even more rewarding). posted by Steven Baum 8/16/2000 11:07:45 PM | link Tuesday, August 15, 2000 HYPERBOLE Hyperbole is an open and programmable hypertextual information management and outliner system that runs as a subsystem on either InfoDock or regular Emacs. It allows hypertext buttons to be embedded within unstructured and structured files, mail messages and news articles, thus allowing mouse--based control of information display within multiple windows. The four main parts of which it consists are: an interactive information management interface including a powerful rolodex system; a hypertext outliner with multilevel autonumbering and permanent identifiers attached to each outline node for use as hypertext link anchors, plus view specifications that can be embedded within links or used interactively; a set of hyper--button types that provide core hypertext and other behaviors; and a set of programming library classes for system developers who want to integrate the package with other user interfaces or as a back--end to a distinct system. The features offered by these components include: hypertext buttons that can link to information or execute procedures, e.g. starting or communicating with external programs; mouse dragging from a button source location to its link destination to create a new link; embedding buttons within email messages; creating outlines for rapid browsing, editing and moving of chunks of information organized into trees; and encapsulating other hypertext and information retrieval systems under the Hyperbole user interface. Hyperbole is written entirely in Emacs Lisp, is freely available as source code under the GPL, and has a complete online manual. It is also contained within the InfoDock distribution. If I weren't the sleek, elegant vi minimalist that I am, I'd be all over this like L.A. cops on the Bill of Rights. posted by Steven Baum 8/15/2000 10:56:18 AM | link INFODOCK InfoDock is an integrated development environment based on XEmacs. It provides a consistent look-and-feel across all of its integrated information management, software development and productivity tools. The features include: a compiler interface with which you can run arbitrary build commands such as makefile targets, with the build output placed in a scrollable buffer; support for five different debuggers with the capability of setting and clearing breakpoints with a mouse click; an autonumbered outliner with each item given a relative label reflecting its present position in the outline and a permanent label that can be used in hyperlinks; specific editing modes for most major programming languages including assembler and many scripting languages; automatic color coding of programs based on language syntax; function browsing, i.e. obtaining the definition of an entity by clicking on a function call, macro or assembler label; an object--oriented code browser called OO-Browser (and separately available); a visual file comparison tool that uses colors to show differences between files; running any InfoDock tool from a dumb terminal over a dialup line; an information management system called Hyperbole (also separately available and more about which anon); an online library system; remote file access; a Web browser with modes for creating HTML and Java code; several available email readers with advanced features such as automatic mail categorization and prioritization, filtering by message attribute, etc.; a news tool for reading and writing Usenet articles; and integration with paging server programs. The whole thing is freely available as open source. You can also obtain binaries for HPUX, Linux, SCO and Solaris machines. A complete manual is available online and (for $) in hardcopy format. Support is also available for $$$. Depending on your point of view, this behemoth can be considered either a bleeding-edge, turbocharged version of Emacs or a unconscionably bloated version of same. posted by Steven Baum 8/15/2000 10:30:43 AM | link TONIGHT'S MUSICAL ACCOMPANIMENT I'm slowly making my way through all the cheapies (i.e. $2.50 apiece) I recently snagged. I started out with Tete Montoliu's "Tete a Tete", a 1992 release by Steeplechase Productions of a February 1976 session. The liner notes tell me that "Tete's work is based on the twin influences of Art Tatum and Bill Evans, but strongly spiced by harmonies reflecting his national origins." Tete's from Catalonia in Spain, and I'll agree with those influences although (for some reason, perhaps crass sentimentalistic nostalgia) I'm also detecting a touch of Vince Guaraldi tonight (although it's probably nothing much more than Evans filtered through the guy what composed the music for the Peanuts TV specials of my long lost youth). Particularly impressive is the final cut, a 20 minute beastie called the "Catalan Suite," five traditional Catalan songs woven into a nicely coherent whole. Next up is percussionist Stomu Yamash'ta's avant freakin' garde CD Henze/Takemitsu/Maxwell Davies (1972, CD remaster 1990), which consists of a cut apiece by the aforementioned composers. In the second piece - "Seasons" by Takemitsu - we're told that "the instruments are made of metal, except the trombone, which is specially made of glass." Most affecting, though, is the 17:12 final piece played entirely on bells and metal surfaces. Stomu's probably best known for his work with the mid-1970s supergroup Go. Last is Mickey Hart's Supralingua, a thematic followup to At the Edge (1990) and Planet Drum (1991), both of which had companion books that are out of print but well worth snagging if you can find them. Hart was (and always will be, for that matter) a member of the Grateful Dead, and has always been fascinated by percussion in all its musical shapes and forms. He was one of those folks into world music before it became the marketing category World Music. Okay, I lied. I started out with yet another CD, a David Allen Coe bootleg that's one of the most potty mouthed such things I've ever had the pleasure to hear. You know how most country tunes just insinuate doin' the big ol' nasty? Well, Dave don't spare the monosyllables. Geez, I'd just returned from a two-hour sweatathon at the gym topped off by a 30-minute, 800 calorie sprint on the elliptic stairmaster thingamabob and I almost died from laughing at the sumbitch. Talk about inverting, er, perverting the traditional C&W forms. Hey, he ain't G. G. Allin but as far as I know he's still breathing. The vino that co-sponsored this evening with the CDs was a bottle of Marques del Puerto Rioja (1996, Spain) (yum) along with a wee bit of a bottle of Roodeberg Red Wine (South Africa, 1997) (a touch yummier). Both were snagged in the sale racks at the Central Market on Lamar in Austin, Texas. posted by Steven Baum 8/15/2000 12:50:10 AM | link SOURCE NAVIGATOR Hot damn! Redhat's released their Source Navigator source code analysis tool under the GPL. I remember first snagging a limited free trial version from the old Cygnus site (does anyone remember the contest they had to pick a new name which bit the dust when they were absorbed by Redhat?) several years ago. About a year after that I had a notion to use the full version to explore a godawful huge Fortran general circulation model (CCM3) and inquired as to its price. They came back with a multi-thousand smackeroo number and I immediately fell back in love with vi. They later wised up and offered it for a hundred or so bucks, although this took place just a couple of months before they were absorbed by Redhat. Anyhow, further clues as to what it is and what it does can be found in the online User's Guide. It is ... ... a powerful code analysis and comprehention tool that provides a graphical framework for understanding and reengineering large or complex software projects. ... Source-Navigator parsers scan through source code, extracting information from existing C, C++, Java, Tcl, [incr tcl], FORTRAN, COBOL, and assembly programs and then use this information to build a project database. The database represents internal program structures, locations of function declarations, contents of class declarations, and relationships between program components. Source-Navigator graphical browsing tools use this database to query symbols (such as functions and global variables) and the relationships between them. In addition to the languages supported in the standard distribution, you can use the Source-Navigator Software Development Kit (SDK) to add new parsers and extend Source-Navigator functionality to other languages. The Source Navigator manages projects, i.e. ... entities containing references to source code files. A project describes where files are located and how to operate on them. Once a project is defined, developers can: identify, locate, access, modify, and analyze program components, including symbol definitions and usage of classes in object-oriented languages; prevent parallel modifications on the same code and manage different versions of sources by way of an interface to external version control systems such as ClearCase and CVS; and create views of pertinent information while hiding information not relevant for the current view. The source code of the current stable release is available as are binaries for HPUX, Linux, Solaris and Windows. Development releases are also available. Give it a try. If your disappointment is truly profound I'll give you double your money back in the equivalent of my finest current beer. posted by Steven Baum 8/15/2000 12:15:10 AM | link Sunday, August 13, 2000 HOLLOW FORCE Is the military really a hollow shell of its former self, slowly dying from a funding retrovirus contracted from being reamed by Comrade Clinton? In The myth of the hollow force, noted bomb-throwing, tie-die wearing Marxist James Kitfield asks the obvious questions: Was the Clinton administration to blame, as many Republicans charged, for continually underfunding and overusing the U.S. military? Or did the Joint Chiefs bear responsibility for silently toeing a flawed Administration line and not sounding the readiness alarm sooner? What blame should the Republican majority shoulder for packing the defense budget with unrequested pork and refusing to close unneeded bases? and then suggests some answers: A closer look at defense trends suggests that all of the major players share the blame for the perceived readiness woes. But that closer look also suggests that those woes can easily be overstated and that they were, in part, a calculated risk taken by Pentagon planners, who predicted, correctly, that major threats to U.S. national security were unlikely in the years immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Furthermore, to focus attention on recent slides in readiness is to overlook the fact that this military is conducting the most competently managed and smoothest demobilization, or "drawdown," of the 20th century. In the third year of that drawdown, the American military was still strong enough to crush Iraq in Desert Storm. And what do those comsymps whose expertise comes from actually having been in charge have to say about Clinton's supposed emasculation of the military? "The U.S. military as a whole is in a time of change and flux," Adm. T. Joseph Lopez, who recently retired as commander in chief of Allied Forces, Southern Europe, said in an interview in Naples, Italy, "and some of the challenges we face today are more difficult than during the Cold War. But if we're not ready, I sure as hell don't know about it." And how does Adm. Harold W. Gehman Jr., who as commander in chief of the U.S. Atlantic Command in Norfolk, Va., is responsible for 80 percent of all U.S.-based military forces, feel about chicken hawk politicians and their toadies whining about the supposed lack of readiness of his troops? "Until recently," Gehman said in an interview at Atlantic Command headquarters, "senior leaders have been saying that readiness was fragile, but we were managing it very carefully; and the great troops we had were working very hard to fight some downward trends, and [the troops] felt that readiness was broken. I always felt that it was unhealthy for an organization to have the bosses saying one thing and the workers perceiving something else. Now we're all reading off the same script, and that's important, because the perception gap was probably more dangerous than actual readiness problems, that are really very tiny. Mission-capable rates have dropped somewhat, but nothing is broken. All of the officers of my generation lived through the horrific post-Vietnam 'hollow force,' and we swore we would never let that happen on our watch. This force is not hollow." Then we have the sage observations of Gregory Foster, the George C. Marshall professor at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces: Unfortunately, the whole readiness debate has become a political football, with speculative and subjective observations masquerading as hard data. We have a readiness system created to judge our ability to fight the wars of the past, but which gives virtually no insight into our readiness to conduct the kinds of strategic missions that make us effective in the post-Cold War era. In point of fact, the present system still doesn't address the root question: Ready for what? Now what about all the problems supposedly caused by Evil Bill using the military to attempt to solve a bunch of touchy-feely problems that have nothing to do with national security? While some Republican critics say that current military readiness problems are the result of the Clinton Administration's "promiscuous" use of the military for "ill-conceived" missions, the strongest proponents of these shaping operations are the four-star commanders in chief stationed around the globe. Charged with keeping the lid on regions bubbling with tensions, these regional commanders say the debate is simply "pay me now, or pay me later." "We have a tremendous opportunity as the world's only superpower," said Adm. Lopez, until recently commander in chief of NATO's southern region, "to prevent future conflicts-which is the most important thing we can do for our grandchildren-but it requires us to remain engaged in the world in a very focused way. I simply cannot influence events in my theater if my forces aren't out there," he said. "So my message is simple: You have to pay for peace, but it's a hell of a lot cheaper, in terms of both money and lives, than having to fight a war." David Isenberg's The Misleading Military "Readiness Crisis" offers us another look at the situation from those commie bastards at the Cato Institute (who are only agreeing with the GOP so often to soften them up for the eventual kill by their true ultra-liberal masters). After reviewing the post-1994 exponential increase in screeching about how the precious chilluns are in grave danger, which led to Clinton proposing a $25 billion increase in funding, Isenberg tells us: That money and attention were the result of trying to close a highly political "readiness gap." President Clinton acted as had his predecessors who were politically vulnera- ble to charges of allowing bomber and missile gaps to devel- op. History subsequently showed that those "gaps" were artificially created or manipulated. But in an age of attack politics, defenders of the status quo military estab- lishment have decided that the best defense is a vitriolic offense. The truth, however, is that charges of unreadiness are vastly exaggerated. They are the result of a combination of factors, including misunderstanding of what actually consti- tutes readiness, tardy congressional appropriation of funds, insistence on maintaining an excessively large and costly force, funding unneeded Cold War era weapons systems such as the B-2 bomber and the Seawolf submarine, refusal to ac- knowledge that some organizational turbulence during the downsizing of a military force is normal, and an unsound U.S. military strategy. And what do his Stalinist friends have to say about this? Other experts have reached similar conclusions. A report released by the Congressional Budget Office in March 1994 found that "overall, the readiness of deployable units is high now relative to historical levels."(12) Just three months later, the Pentagon's Defense Science Board, chaired by retired Army chief of staff Gen. Edward Meyer, who coined the term "hollow forces" in 1980, released a study on mili- tary readiness. That study found that "the general readi- ness posture of today's conventional and unconventional forces is acceptable in most measurable areas." Humorously and tellingly enough, after the GOP's victory in the 1994 elections just a few months later, Meyer joined the "unready" chorus, although I'm sure his change of tune had nothing to do with politics. One of the "shrieking points" that was pounded into its constituent atoms in late 1994 and early 1995 was the horrifying "fact" that three of the Army's divisions had supposedly dropped from C-1 to C-3 in their readiness ratings. You would think that the end was near listening to the usual suspects scream about it. The reality eventually leaked out: Nearly two months after the initial disclosure of the C-3 ratings, the Army quietly acknowledged that it had misstated the historical significance of those low ratings. It turned out that the three divisions about which all the fuss had been made--along with other units--had scored well below peak status for several years in the mid-1980s, during the height of President Reagan's military buildup.(24) Subse- quently, it was revealed that as many as 10 Army divisions had received C-3 rating or worse--some during the Reagan military buildup when there was certainly no shortage of funds for the Pentagon. Additionally, General Shalikashvili later admitted that the ratings of all three of the divisions were never supposed to be higher than C-2 in the first place. That is, three divisions under Clinton dipped one level in readiness as opposed to 10 divisions receiving a C-3 rating or worse during the Reagan years, with the former called a crisis and the latter a triumph by the same shrieking heads. Now on to the sacred 2-war scenario considered by many to be part of the long-lost third tablet containing commandments 11 through 15. That [two-MRC] prospect has been a bugaboo of U.S. force planners since before World War II--the only conflict in which the U.S. military was in fact called upon to wage simultaneously what amounted to two separate wars. Chances for another world war, however, disappeared with the Soviet Union's demise. . . . More to the point, our enemies have without exception refused to take advantage of our involvement in one war to start another one. Not during the three years of the Korean War, the 10 years of the Vietnam War, or the eight months of the Persian Gulf crisis of 1990-91. The Pentagon has identified six so-called rogue nations as current security threats: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Cuba, and North Korea. Yet the collective military spending of those six countries is $15 billion--about 6 percent of the U.S. military budget. The idea that the United States has to maintain military spending at approximately 85 percent of Cold War levels and extremely ready large standing military forces to be able to fight one of those nations is far- fetched. There it is. The details you aren't going to find on Fox "News" or any other source beholden to the GOP's official party ideology about how Clinton is personally responsible for all the problems of the late 20th century, even those that aren't really problems. posted by Steven Baum 8/13/2000 05:32:05 PM | link

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