1st Lt. Gregg Murphy: Bush shill?

The Media Citizen blog has some background on one of the soldiers in the pre-rehearsed interaction with Bush that occurred last Thursday--it seems he's been appearing in pro-Bush pieces on Iraq since 2003.

Science catches up with Jules Verne...

On the 16th of January, the Nautilus seemed becalmed only a few yards beneath the surface of the waves. Her electric apparatus remained inactive and her motionless screw left her to drift at the mercy of the currents. I supposed that the crew was occupied with interior repairs, rendered necessary by the violence of the mechanical movements of the machine.

My companions and I then witnessed a curious spectacle. The hatches of the saloon were open, and, as the beacon light of the Nautilus was not in action, a dim obscurity reigned in the midst of the waters. I observed the state of the sea, under these conditions, and the largest fish appeared to me no more than scarcely defined shadows, when the Nautilus found herself suddenly transported into full light. I thought at first that the beacon had been lighted, and was casting its electric radiance into the liquid mass. I was mistaken, and after a rapid survey perceived my error.

The Nautilus floated in the midst of a phosphorescent bed which, in this obscurity, became quite dazzling. It was produced by myriads of luminous animalculae, whose brilliancy was increased as they glided over the metallic hull of the vessel. I was surprised by lightning in the midst of these luminous sheets, as though they had been rivulets of lead melted in an ardent furnace or metallic masses brought to a white heat, so that, by force of contrast, certain portions of light appeared to cast a shade in the midst of the general ignition, from which all shade seemed banished. No; this was not the calm irradiation of our ordinary lightning. There was unusual life and vigour: this was truly living light!

Arrested Development

I'm rather skeptical about whether this concept will actually accomplish anything, because, aside from the fact that Fox almost certainly makes orders of magnitude more revenue from commercial advertising than they do from DVD sales, advertisers don't care about DVD sales, they care about ratings.

But what the hell? I can't resist stumping for such a hilariously funny show.

What other broadcast television show on the Republican-shill Fox network can you think of that makes fun of Bush's absurd "Mission Accomplished" photo-op, the military's recruiting difficulties, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, "free speech zones", and the lack of WMDs in Iraq?

I suppose an argument could be made that more DVD sales now could translate to higher ratings in the future. But how is it that the DVD can be ranked #4 on Amazon but the TV show is still getting dismal (less than 4 mil/week) viewership? It's a mystery!

Anyway, I hope the show at least finishes out a fourth season.

Two Thousand?

This item, found via the Antiwar.com blog, will probably be bouncing around the aether for the next few days. It strikes me, though, as far too antiseptic to be at all moving--not to mention the fact that it neglects the orders-of-magnitude more tragic, um, Iraqi side of the equation.

It also calls to mind this Herbert Spencer quote, from his essay "Patriotism," found in this book:

"When men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I don't care if they are shot themselves."

Bush talks to God / Karen Hughes adds "under God" to the Constitution

Former Palestinian foreign minister Nabil Shaath confirms that George W. Bush told him that he had been given a mission by God to invade Afghanistan and Iraq and then create a Palestinian state to bring peace to the Middle East.

Meanwhile, Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes, in addition to acting as "bin Laden's little helper" by spreading the message to Arab nations that the U.S. is acting out of Christian impulses, has also added the phrase "one nation under God" to the U.S. Constitution in her conversations with officials in Egypt.

Bush's jaw twitch

Harry Shearer has pointed out (via video samples) that Bush seems to have developed an unusual jaw twitch. TMJ? A reaction to medication?

Cops on bad behavior

This first-hand account of a person in a wheelchair (Preston Craig) being abused by cops (Atlanta PD) shows why some people don't like the police. He saw a police cruiser parked in a handicapped space and blocking the handicapped ramp for a coffee place, confronted the officer about it, and took photos with his camera phone. He ended up getting arrested, and the group of cops present agreed to lie about what happened (which included taking his cell phone and deleting the pictures).

The Tucson anarchist magazine The Match! has a regular feature each issue called "Who the Police Beat" that contains multiple stories that are at least as outrageous as this one. Although I'm sure the bad cops who engage in such behavior are a minority, it's a minority that is almost always allowed to get away with it. (Via Catallarchy.)

Student's Bill of Rights project gets investigated by Secret Service

A student of Selina Jarvis in North Carolina took a photograph of George W. Bush from a magazine, tacked it to a wall (through his head), and photographed his hand giving a thumbs-down gesture next to the Bush photo.

Someone at the Kitty Hawk, NC Wal-Mart thought this was suspicious, and the student got a visit from the U.S. Secret Service, which confiscated his project. The above story doesn't say whether it was returned, but at least they decided not to indict him.

Southwest Airlines kicks off passenger for anti-Bush T-shirt

CNN's story says that Lorrie Heasley's shirt featured pictures of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice along with "a phrase similar to the popular film title 'Meet the Fockers.'" I'm guessing that it said "Meet the Fuckers," similar to this shirt (which doesn't have the same people on it). She was made to leave the Los Angeles-to-Portland flight during a stop in Reno, Nevada.

She says she will sue for reimbursement for her hotel, rental car, and gasoline costs for the last leg of her trip.

Southwest claims they are obligated under FAA rules to deny boarding to any passenger "whose conduct is offensive, abusive, disorderly or violent or for clothing that is 'lewd, obscene, or patently offensive.'" An FAA spokesperson says there are no such federal rules. Historically the FAA has required airlines to operate by rules which the airlines are not allowed to publicly reveal, such as those about requiring identification that were at issue in John Gilmore's lawsuit.

If Southwest's claim about an FAA rule is correct, they had already violated it since they allowed her to board and fly half of the journey. Unless she was creating some kind of a new disturbance, putting her off half way through the flight seems pretty outrageous.

Level 3 depeers Cogent

InfoWorld:

A financial dispute between two major Internet backbones has led to dropped traffic between their networks, a high-stakes game of chicken that's angering customers affected by the network disruptions.

Early Wednesday morning Level 3 Communications Inc. terminated its "peering" agreement with Cogent Communications Inc., a step Level 3 says it took after months of fruitless negotiations.

This has had no effect on customers of any tier-1 providers other than Level 3. It only affects customers (and customers of customers, ad infinitum) who purchase service only from Level 3 or Cogent, without purchasing transit service from someone who has reachability to the other.

Tier-1 providers are those that connect to each other (to all other tier-1's) with settlement-free interconnections (SFI); these include MCI, AT&T, Sprint, Qwest, Verio, and Global Crossing. Part of the agreement is usually that the amount of traffic passed in each direction is on a par--the reason for entering into such an arrangement without exchanging money is that the connectivity is considered of equal value to both parties. To quote a paper by Geoff Huston,

The bottom line is that a true peer relationship is based on the supposition that either party can terminate the interconnection relationship and that the other party does not consider such an action a competitively hostile act. If one party has a high reliance on the interconnection arrangement and the other does not, then the most stable business outcome is that this reliance is expressed in terms of a service contract with the other party, and a provider/client relationship is established. If a balance of mutual requirement exists between both parties, then a stable basis for a peer interconnection relationship also exists. Such a statement has no intrinsic metrics that allow the requirements to be quantified. Peering in such an environment is best expressed as the balance of perceptions, in which each party perceives an acceptable approximation of equal benefit in the interconnection relationship in their own terms.

Cogent, unlike Level 3, is not a tier-1 provider; they purchase transit from Verio in order to get to Sprint and AOL, among other places. Cogent has applied filters to announcements of their routes to their transit providers for all of its peers, so that traffic to those peers can only go over the links where they don't pay for traffic (the peering links) rather than the ones where they do have to pay (the transit links).

Level 3 has apparently decided that it is not getting as much as it's giving from the peer relationship with Cogent, and so has ended it, with 75 days notice. This is a situation which Cogent could rectify by entering into a customer relationship with Level 3 or by removing their filters on Level 3 to use a transit provider such as Verio to reach Level 3.

This is a scenario that either party has the power to resolve--Level 3 by allowing peering from Cogent (which they have already clearly indicated is not a high priority for them); Cogent by purchasing service from Level 3 or reaching Level 3 by purchasing IP transit from someone else.

Cogent has been caught in this situation at least three times previously--it was depeered by OpenTransit (France Telecom) on April 14, 2005. Cogent gave in on April 17 by removing its filters that prevented traffic to OpenTransit from going across transit links. Teleglobe apparently attempted a similar move, but after paying Savvis for transit to resolve the issue, decided the peering was worthwhile. Back in 2002, AOL ended its peering with Cogent. So of these three peering battles, Cogent lost two and won one.

It's possible that Cogent generates more outbound than inbound traffic on its peering connection with Level 3; that kind of imbalance can be caused by, say, Cogent having more websites than individual customers on its network. Websites receive very small requests for pages, and send back very large amounts of data (web pages, images, streaming audio and video). Individual customers typically send out small requests (for web pages or files to download) and receive back large amounts of data. Peer-to-peer traffic can have high volume in either direction, but tends to cancel out since it's usually between individual customers. (UPDATE: Cogent denies that this is the case, saying that their inbound and outbound traffic with Level 3 was balanced.)

Cogent has been aggressive in price reductions on IP transit costs, allowing them to take customers from providers that they peer with; this is also being attributed as a reason for Level 3 to want to depeer with them.

It remains to be seen who will blink first this time. We may see calls for government regulation to address this issue, but those who have lost connectivity should complain to their upstream providers; those complaints will pass up to either Level 3 or Cogent. (And, if you are one of those affected, that means your provider is not purchasing sufficient connectivity to be able to withstand an issue like this.)

UPDATE (July 25, 2008): It was Level 3 that blinked first (back in 2005; I neglected to update this post), and as of June 2008, Cogent is no longer buying transit from anyone, joining the ranks of tier-1 providers.