Living in fear is no good to anyone.

( Statistics and discussion supporting my conclusions. )

The court currently has 4 liberals, 1 moderate and 4 conservatives. One of the liberals (Stevens) is likely to leave the court during the next President's term and a second liberal (Ginsberg) will possibly leave during the next President's term.

A court balanced among liberal and conservative views tends to produce more interesting (and possibly valuable) opinions than a court that is strongly to one side or the other because they more thoroughly debate the sides of the issue and are more likely to come to a fair conclusion. It's in your best interests to vote for the Presidential candidate that will appoint justices that keep the court balanced.

Congress votes to place a limit on the time that we occupy the quagmire known as IraqNam. The Senate votes to place a limit on the time that we occupy the quagmire known as IraqNam. Both bills provide $100 BILLION in new money to feed, house, arm, train, replace, treat, armor, protect, and destroy the troops throughout 2007.

In response, the President threatened to veto the bill. According to the today's White House Website, he said, "Congress's failure to fund our troops on the front lines will mean that some of our military families could wait longer for their loved ones to return from the front lines. And others could see their loved ones headed back to the war sooner than they need to."

So, according to Bush, by passing legislation that funds the troops, we are actually causing the occupation to last longer BECAUSE WE PUT A LIMIT ON THE length OF THEIR OCCUPATION OF A FOREIGN COUNTRY?

Wrap your head around that one for a bit. Only within the delusional world inside the Bloatway would anyone even consider making such an illogical, nonsensical argument.

I don't like Kezelis' use of silly words, but that doesn't make him wrong. (All emphasis in the quote above is the author's.)


I won't pay for television service specifically because of crap like this:
When tacky trumps substance

Comics:
Something a little... different.
Anniversary Gift
Sometimes himynameisjamie is fuckedupawesome: http://filthhole.com/?p=50 (NSFP)

Movie night was very crowded. The fried chicken came out good and was all eaten quickly. There were a bunch of friends of Omni's that few others knew. Most of them didn't really seem to fit in or enjoy our crowd. Things didn't quiet down until about 0330 when most everyone went home.

Saturday, lalabob11 and I drove out on US-60 East and up into the Manzano Mountains. I had planned a route, but part of forest road 422 was still closed for the winter, so we ended up having to backtrack to the highway. I took some photos of a deep wash while we were exploring. The photos will be uploaded to Flickr eventually. We then went up NM-55 and NM-337 to Tijeras. From there we had planned on going up to Sandia crest and watching the sun set, but instead decided to go to Hobby Lobby and buy crafty things. I got a couple of sun-catchers to put together and bake and lalabob11 got some point protectors for double point knitting needles. Then we went to visit her sister and see the new baby (I hadn't seen him in person yet). After that we had dinner at Shogun Sushi which was relatively cheap and reasonably good. The scallop sushi wasn't the freshest I've had, but it had especially tasty seasoning, so it was the overall best scallop sushi I've had. On the way back to Socorro we stopped at Walmart to see if they had the pocket knife lalabob11's been wanting. They couldn't be bothered to have someone come to the back and open the cabinet to see if they had the knife, so we couldn't get one (jerks). I ended up getting a set of two cast iron pans that I've been thinking about that were ~$5 cheaper than at the Socorro Walmart. The pans are both about 10 inches in diameter, but one is deep (3 quarts) and the other is shallow. The cool thing is that they can be used as lids for each other.

Sunday I was around the house all day, doing random stuff. I did some dishes, made turkey mole, baked a rich chocolate cake, set up and used the Roomba Sage that I ordered that arrived the other day (it vacuums pretty well and is relatively quiet, but it's not good at edges) and I made the sun-catchers. One is a planet with rings and the other is two frogs sitting on a lily pad. It's hard to find these sorts of sun-catchers in stores, but the company that makes them has a website, so I think I can order more directly if I want.

If you cross the U.S.-Canada border with a computer, you may be uselessly accosted.

Many Mennonites are leaving Missouri due to new ID requirements.

Only on Tuesdays

Smith v. Smith (scroll down a bit) is an interesting case regarding child custody and the gender identity of the child

In 1950, Senator Margaret Chase Smith spoke out against McCarthyism with this speech. There's good material to learn from there.

...the president can displace from office a man whose merits require that he should be continued in it. What will be the motives which the president can feel for such abuse of his power, and the restraints that operate to prevent it? In the first place, he will be impeachable by this house, before the senate, for such an act of mal-administration; for I contend that the wanton removal of meritorious officers would subject him to impeachment and removal from his own high trust.
--James Madison

I've long said that I won't keep anything secret that I am morally opposed to keeping secret (e.g. a National Security Letter, most classified information, etc.). I'd rather be honest and in prison for a white-collar crime than a liar. Here's a story of someone who's been forced to lie extensively and hates it:
My National Security Letter Gag Order

Diebold is suing Massachusetts because they didn't win a contract to install voting machines. MA says the selection process was open and well documented and that the Diebold voting machines weren't selected because they weren't considered the best.

Are Americans going in the Same Direction?

Does anyone know what anime/hentai this is from (NSFP). I saw the icon somewhere and was wondering what it was from since hentai that is silly can be quite fun to watch.

Phil Hoskins rails on about partisan politics:

Partisans infect our life with a no holds barred assault on ethics, decency and goodwill. We would be such a better nation, a better served public, and a less a danger to the world if parties could just be banned. Let each candidate for political office generate their own campaign, free of “slates” and parties; let them run on their own merits, not tied to a party and its own purposes.

Of course we as citizens would have to engage more fully in the process of electing and monitoring our government. We would have to be “enlightened” just as our founders hoped we would be. It would take work on our part, but just imagine what our public life would be like if no parties existed.

Why the "Main Stream Media" is failing. Many of the comments to the article are also interesting.

This timeline is an attempt to recall some of the worst moments in journalism, from the fall of 2002 and into the early weeks of the Iraq War. It is not an exhaustive catalog, but a useful reference point for understanding the media's performance. The timeline also points to missed opportunities, when courageous journalists—working inside the mainstream and the alternative media—uncovered stories that should have made the front pages of daily newspapers, or provided fodder for TV talk shows. By reading mainstream media critically and tuning into the alternative press, citizens can see that the notion that "everyone" was wrong about Iraq was—and is—just another deception.

There is a movie night tomorrow. I'll be making a very simple mac and cheese, maybe some fried hamburgers to optionally mix in to the mac and cheese, and also some green vegetables of some manner. I have some ideas for the movie, but nothing is definite yet, so feel free to bring things to be played.

Women and the Bush Administration

This is really long, but an interesting discussion:
Event Transcript "Same-Sex Marriage in California: Legal and Political Prospects"

I just try to be happy. I must like being different from most people. It's hard though. I keep having encounters with people that make it clear to me that I am so far from what is "normal" and acceptable that my life can never be easy. My morals are so far out of line with most of society that simply having a good source of income will be tough. What makes it worse is the concerted effort the "normals" are putting in to making it harder to to be different. Most people don't even realize that they are adding to these conditions as they are. I need to change things.

The topic of this Doug Thompson opinion piece is only a part of my disappointment with the world around me, but it indirectly relates to many parts:

We need to rethink this experiment called America. Maybe we need to start with a clean sheet of paper. Maybe it's time to recognize that our present America is a rotting corpse, devoured from within by the cancer of politics, corruption, greed and a lust for power.

I can't just ignore the offensive things around me. I can't join in them and not feel terrible about myself. I can ignore things when I'm drunk, but I know the escapism is bad for my mental health (and the drinking itself is bad for my physical health). I can ignore things when I surround myself with distractions like crafting, cooking and friends. I don't want to be distracted though. I want to live in reality and be happy.

Dissatisfaction with my job brings me down. I think of other jobs I could have and how they could be more fulfilling but how they also would take more time and be more limiting in other ways. I think about just quitting and taking some time off, but I don't have the savings to really make that work. I think about all of the dreams that move out of reach the longer I put them off but also how they would stay out of reach without a steady income.

I don't know what to do.

There is movie night tomorrow. We won't be watching Dr. Tran (yet), but I will be making a big turkey and dressing.

Every time I go to Walmart, I glance at the empty shelf the Nintendo Wiis go on. On Tuesday evening, the shelf wasn't empty. There were two. I wanted to buy them both and sell the second to one of my friends at cost or eBay it if there wasn't interest among my friends. While waiting for 40+ minutes for someone to come over to unlock the case (I prodded many employees and there was an announcement over the PA), a couple came over and also wanted one. I didn't feel like being a dick/fighting about it, so I only bought one Wii.
For those of you with Wiis connected to the internet, my code is: 3369 4653 4227 1295

Hopefully the UCSF study will add to the pressure on the US government to rethink its irrational ban on the medicinal use of marijuana -- and its destructive attacks on patients and caregivers in states that have chosen to allow such use. Rather than admit they have been mistaken all these years, federal officials can cite "important new data" and start revamping outdated and destructive policies.

President Bush has not yet subordinated our judiciary to the military, but the more we learn about U.S. attorneys fired for failing to succumb to Justice Department and congressional political pressure, the more the Bush administration looks like the tawdry, third world, small-time dictatorship its opponents accuse it of being.

More anecdotal evidence for the ~30% crazification factor:
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/cm/content/view/179/159/

Why Private Police Forces are bad for most of us.

The other day, niap_si_efil lost his phone. He then found it. The condition he found it in sucks, but I was entertained.

I thought I had a good understanding of knitting looms. It appears they can be far more complex.

This is an interesting list. I'm surprised at how few names I recognized.
The 50 Most Important People on the Web

Ours has become a country operated by whichever group of thirty-percenters can bring the heaviest plate of blind, willful ignorance to the table, while shouting and chanting louder than anyone else.

The quote is from the comments, but the article has value. Things won't get better until they get worse because the honorable politicians are very few and far between.


What Does Marsellus Wallace Look Like? (NSFW video of animated text with voice-over.)

I meant to post this first part a few weeks ago but it got lost. I sent an email to Eugene Volokh a free speech law professor at UCLA:

Mr. Volokh,
This is a pretty straightforward question, but I've also never seen it answered anywhere. You, being somewhat of an authority on Constitutional Law seemed like the sort of person to ask for clarification.

My reasoning (and that of some others I've talked with) leads me to the conclusion that it is impossible to amend the first amendment:

1. Article VI declares that the Constitution "shall be the supreme Law of the Land;"
2. Amendments are part of the Constitution, which implies that they are laws.
3. The First Amendment states "Congress shall make no law...", therefore any law "respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." cannot legally be made.
4. Since amendments are laws, an amendment cannot be made that violates the First Amendment.
5. Therefore, the First Amendment is not amendable.

Why is this not the case? Is it the case and people everywhere conveniently "forget" it? Is there some flaw in my reasoning? Please let me know.

--
Thank you,
Jarrod Lombardo

A few short hours afterward, he replied:

No -- amendments aren't "laws" governed by the First Amendment. First, if you want to be superliteral, they aren't "made by Congress"; they are just proposed by Congress (or a Convention) but made by the States.

Second, article V specifically provides for a process to amend the Constitution, a process that entrenches a few very small bits of the Constitution against modification (for instance, equal representation in the Senate) but leaves everything freely amendable. In theory, this might itself be amended to entrench still other things, but by pretty ancient legal principles, repeals by implication are disfavored, so it would take something quite explicit to cut back on the People's article V power, and the First Amendment surely isn't it.

Third, as a matter of our constitutional theory, an institution generally may not bind future instances of that institution: One Congress may not bind a future one, and one instance of the state legislatures enacting an Amendment generally may not bind future legislatures binding an Amendment. (A constitutional enactment process or amendment process can bind future Congresses, but that's only because that process is at a higher level in the constitutional structure than the Congress; the amendment ratification process as of 1791 is at no higher a level than the amendment ratification process as of 2007.) The existence of some limits on the article V power is a slight exception to this, but there's a good argument that those limits are themselves only hortatory and thus politically significant, and not practically binding, precisely for the reasons I mention here.

So, although I find the concept of amending the first amendment offensive, the justification I an others have come up with "proving" it to be illegal is not correct.

"In the next few weeks, President Bush should deliver a speech along these lines…"
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/wp/2007/03/02/2247

A Man getting killed and coming back to life and floating up through the clouds so he can sit at the side of His Old Giant White Glowing Father and also there are naked people with wings and the reason Old Man sent his Son to earth to get killed so the Old Man could have a reason to forgive people for being dicks to each other -- this is reality. Billions of tons of carbon emissions spewing into the atmosphere for a hundred years causing climate change - this is a fairy tale. Gotcha.

Pizza Vending Machine

Something random I came up with as part of an IRC conversation:

HATE is an acronym for "Hate hAte haTe hatE"

...a society that believes in nothing is particularly frightened by people who believe in anything.
--Bill Durodie, Director International Centre for Security Analysis, Kings College
I just finished watching The Power of Nightmares, a BBC documentary about the Islamist and Neoconservative movements in the middle-east and the west, respectively. It makes clear many of the factors that have lead up to the debacle that is current US foreign policy.

Bruce Schneier explains the culture of Cover Your Ass Security.

You've probably heard about this murder:
"In 2004, Milwaukee teenagers Nathan Moore, Luis Oyola, and Andrew Ihrcke went out for a night of debauchery and ended up killing homeless man Rex Baum. Not only did they kill him, they brutally beat him with rocks, bricks, a barbeque grill and a baseball bat before smearing feces on his face, stabbing him and leaving him for dead. If that wasn’t bad enough, they were later found bragging about it."
You may not have heard what one of the boys' parents had to say:
The stepmother of one of the boys sent an email to Gabe of Penny Arcade in response to Gabe's rant "Here We Go Again" blaming the boys' parents for their actions. The letter is included in Gabe's post "A Rare Opportunity"

Some of why Windows Vista is bad for everyone other than Microsoft.

This is a neat clock. I may buy one.

How to build the Redneck Rollercoaser
There are some other videos of the car running if you click around.

This is just silly:
( St. Fu )

There is a movie night tomorrow. For those that had heard about my friend Amber from WA, she had some stuff come up with work and won't be here this weekend. I'm cooking ham steaks, brussels sprouts and corn. The movie might be a documentary about modern history and religious extremism, but it could also be something else someone brings.

"The News Media and Secrecy" by Phil Hoskins:

If we are to have any freedom at all we must always have the right to know about, debate and make decisions about any government program that impacts our personal lives in any way. It is our right as a citizen and there is never a justification for abrogating this right, at least absent "exigent circumstances."

And there is that phrase again, the one that this administration contends has already come into existence because some idiots flew planes into buildings and killed Americans. If this is all it takes to be "exigent" we are in deep trouble. A common definition might be "Generally, an emergency, a pressing necessity, or a set of circumstances requiring immediate attention or swift action." If this is a never ending war, the Administration's reasoning is merely a cover up for a power grab of unprecedented dimension.

The last line in that quote there really sums it up: the "war" on terror is never ending and the reasoning provided is just a cover up of the completely unreasonable, anti-democratic power grab of our now near-despotic executive branch.


Can Richardson build national appeal?

This is the most depressing thing I've thought about for a while. Realism is hard, but we need to stop living in fantasy land:
The truth about terror and terra

In a historical context, we [the United States] are the Huns, we are the ancient invaders of Egypt, we are the Nazis attacking France, we are the Napoleons and the Alexanders. We are the invaders and makers of war. And worse yet, when future historians look closely at these terrible times, they will conclude that it was our global policies that were the proximate cause of the 9/11 attacks, which in turn were used to justify our invasion of a country innocent of any connection with 9/11.

Humanity has always been at war. 9/11 changed nothing but how the constant war is sold to the populace. US foreign policy has caused many (maybe most) of our domestic problems, but those that lead our nation thrive on the foreign policy that harms everyone but them.

Those people who might actually have good ideas, a talent for leadership and otherwise would provide what we need to rescue our nation from a painful suicide are unlikely to seek office at any level, and least of all for the highest office. Fist, no sane person would be willing to go through the public bone picking over their most private matters. Second, no person with a shred of dignity and moral courage would go about the process of begging for the money required to run for office. It is demeaning and opens up opportunities for corruption that are anathema to our system.

This is probably one of the biggest problems with politics today. It's not just recent though: during the course of my Philosophy classes in college, I recall at least Plato and Chuang Tzu saying pretty much this same thing (I sadly don't remember exactly where they said these things). Those most able to lead effectively can not or will not because the process of becoming a leader in all political systems prohibits nearly all effective, fair and just leader-types from participating or wishing to participate.


On a lighter note, flow charts:
( Science and Faith )
( WWRFD )


If you like being angry at anti-contraception assholes, read these related links:
http://flemco.livejournal.com/1627427.html
http://community.livejournal.com/flemcomics/173542.html
http://theprojectplus.com/index.html

There is a Movie Night tonight. royal_spice is making eggplant parmigiana, I am making some yet to be determined manner of salad, Dorene is making rice and beans, and niap_si_efil will bring some pizza. I don't know what film we will watch.

Rob Kezelis summarizes many of the reasons I won't be voting for Hillary for President:

There are only 100 of you. You promised to uphold the constitution and protect it from enemies from without and within. At the very time that many smart, experienced and honest voices questioned Bush’s intel, you played it safe and hid in the crowd. Not exactly leadership qualities, eh?

When rape is a matter of timing
By Betsy Hart
The current laws don't work. I don't agree with Ms. Hart, but I also don't agree with the "feminists" she mentions. There are many lines, and many of them are blurry and in different places in different situations and at different times. Something more adaptable is needed.

"Web 2.0". two_pi_r applies the term only as a derogatory for webpages that are bathed in annoying javascript. To me, annoying javascript is annoying javascript; "Web 2.0" is about convergence of technologies and data sources and often does not include any javascript or necessarily even webpages. Here's what Tim O'Reilly has to say about it: What is Web 2.0? (I know the article isn't very recent, but it's been on my mind lately.)

It's rather like a puddle waking up one morning. I know they don't normally do this, but allow me, I'm a science fiction writer. A puddle wakes up one morning and thinks: "This is a very interesting world I find myself in. It fits me very neatly. In fact it fits me so neatly... I mean really precise isn't it?... It must have been made to have me in it." And the sun rises, and it's continuing to narrate this story about how this hole must have been made to have him in it. And as the sun rises, and gradually the puddle is shrinking and shrinking and shrinking and by the time the puddle ceases to exist, it's still thinking - it's still trapped in this idea that - that the hole was there for it. And if we think that the world is here for us we will continue to destroy it in the way that we have been destroying it, because we think that we can do no harm.
--Douglas Adams

I found it online. I don't know what essay or talk it's from.

The "War on Drugs" has been going on for several decades now without any discernible benefit to either our country as a whole or the American people. It has produced this minimal benefit while exacting a very high price, both in terms of dollars spent and the toll on the lives of people caught up in its net.

For the Nippophiles in the room (NSFW):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAYQZkAH9nY

This is sort of wrong:
( Kirby Valentine )

The various car manufacturers have test tracks where they run their cars. Here are aerial photos of many of them:
Test Tracks (I haven't found a way around the site registration, so I registered (free) to see the article.)

At that time that this essay was originally written, this was the only religious movement in North America of which we were aware which advocates genocide for followers of minority religions and non-conforming members of their own religion.

The Christian Right and the Rise of American Fascism:

"Secular Humanists," the popular Christian Right theologian Francis Schaeffer wrote in one of numerous diatribes, "are the greatest threat to Christianity the world has ever known."

The ideology of the Christian Right is not one of love and compassion, the central theme of Christ's message, but of violence and hatred. It has a strong appeal to many in our society, but it is also aided by our complacency. Let us not stand at the open city gates waiting passively and meekly for the barbarians. They are coming.

I'd like to be able to do something, but I don't know what I can.
Here's another article on the topic.

Do they see what the Bush administration has brought to our government? Are we supposed to accept torture and prisoner abuse as simply a new way to fight war? Do we accept the corruption found in our Social Conservative legislators simply because they were elected? This exposure of corruption is too vast to accept as the norm. By 2008 will the voters look at the GOP and think "corruption" and throw the rest of them out of office? They should! Damnit they should! Can we even try to locate anyone from the old Republican Party and ask them to return and help us eliminate this new corrupt mess? I think it would be a waste of time.

This was supposed to be a limited engagement in two countries, Iraq and Afghanistan, to be fought by regular career troops. The fact that it is now being undertaken by a disproportionate number of part-timers is, as Huckabee noted, testimony to the bad planning that went into this exercise.

I don't know much about any of the Republican candidates, but the small amount of info I have makes me like former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee the best from the Republican list.


I don't agree with this argument for paying for a national health plan with increased fuel taxes, but there is some interesting stuff there and in the comments:
A call for universal health care

Japanese honey bees killing a hornet in a really neat way.

Sometimes Reg Henry is really on:

A bunch of kooks in white jackets recently released another report that said our flat Earth is the subject of "global warming," which, of course, is nonsense because our Earth is not a globe. It may be a little warmer overall on our flat planet but climate change goes in cycles because the weather was invented by the Almighty to give people something to talk about.

After [Secretary of State Rice] complained several times that the department was facing a problem finding translators an exasperated Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) asked why the department had not hired any of the translators fired by the Pentagon because they are gay and lesbian.

This is interesting (read the whole front page or you won't get it):
http://www.wa-doma.org/
A friend of mine described it like this: "It's tricky, because it SOUNDS like one of those 'OMG TEH FAGZ SHULD DIE' laws, but it's a cleverly crafted bit of legislation."

Macro-scale power distribution failures explained.



Panel 3 is very "important".

I had Indian Cooking Class for the first time last night. There will be at least 3 more classes. I'll post all of the recipes we make.

Dahi-voda (donuts of dal dough, served with a yogurt sauce):
( Dahi-voda Recipe )

Mango Lassi:
( Mango Lassi Recipe )

Maine rejected RealID:
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/articles/2007/012807RealID.html
Montana and New Mexico will likely be passing similar bills soon.

Too much secrecy helps terrorists according to the director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Lots of other experts have been saying this for a while, but I haven't heard of anyone else as high profile saying it.

Actual security decisions FTW!!!

The most important lesson about the Iraq War for reporters was perhaps the simplest one: Don't assume the White House is telling the truth. It's a lesson that many reporters seem to be forgetting now that U.S. officials are escalating their claims about Iran's role in Iraq.

Germany, Italy and Canada are our allies, nations with a profound respect for the rule of law. Whatever the benefits of such circuslike kidnappings — the one in Italy was said to feature an impressive length of stays in luxury hotels — they are not worth the damage they do to our relations with our friends and to our reputation.

An ultra-conservative Washington think tank with direct ties to the Bush Administration is offering a $10,000 bribe to any scientist or economist who will dispute a global warming report released today by the United Nation's top scientific panel.

"I think you have to assume a 27% Crazification Factor in any population."

How increasing ethanol production from corn could cause lots of environmental and economic problems.

Romania "built our country on pirated Windows"

I've known the song for a long time, but I never saw the very weird video until today:
Aphex Twin - Windowlicker

( Mooninite Images )
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignignokt#Ignignokt

Bush’s plan to destroy America

Debunking the myths of health care

I parked with FastPark. They cost half what the airport long-term does, and their shuttle picks you up right at your car.

The new TSA checkpoint at ABQ has impressed me with its efficiency each time I've been through. The screeners are in abundance and people seem to flow through very well. One thing that's also nice is that the divestiture tables are at the correct height such that your bins shove right in without lifting (I believe they used to not match up right, even after the remodel). I'm well enough acquainted with their system, that I haven't had any complications for my past few flights. It takes 4 bins to get all my shit through, but I'm able to take my time unloading and loading my stuff.

In the previous post, I didn't mean to equate Al Gore and Bill Richardson, in case you interpreted it that way. My link was simply the article title. I don't yet think that Richardson has as good a chance as Gore did in 2000, but I like him more than I did Gore in 2000 and considerably more than any of the other potentials I've heard of for 2008.

A veteran Congress watcher observed recently that the salaries attracted two kinds of individuals to the job, the already quite rich and the crazies with causes. That may be a bit extreme, but there certainly is evidence that many desirable candidates forgo the experience because of both the high cost of campaigning and the relatively low pay, particularly those who are earning far more outside of public office. The hardship is probably more prevalent in the House where two-year terms mean almost perpetual campaigning.

This Daily Show clip isn't exactly new, but I hadn't seen it before:
Bush v. Bush

Turkey at movie night tonight. It's got pine nuts and garlic in it. :)

More about the Electoral College:
Math Against Tyranny

The same logic that governs our electoral system, he saw, also applies to many sports--which Americans do, intuitively, understand. In baseball's World Series, for example, the team that scores the most runs overall is like a candidate who gets the most votes. But to become champion, that team must win the most games. In 1960, during a World Series as nail-bitingly close as that year's presidential battle between Kennedy and Nixon, the New York Yankees, with the awesome slugging combination of Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and Bill Moose Skowron, scored more than twice as many total runs as the Pittsburgh Pirates, 55 to 27. Yet the Yankees lost the series, four games to three. Even Natapoff, who grew up in the shadow of Yankee Stadium, conceded that Pittsburgh deserved to win. Nobody walked away saying it was unfair, he says.

Natapoff's argument is all about that analogy. Pittsburgh may have won the Series that year, but they clearly weren't the best team that year. I, at least, don't want the candidate that wins the Series, I want the best candidate.

car_help
This community just got started. Pass the link around so people know about it and maybe we can all help each other with car troubles.

Most are offensive, but some are really funny:
http://www.thingsmyboyfriendsays.com/

Many security specialists (including me, if that's not yet clear) are skeptical of the value of ID-based security generally, and believe that the TSA has not demonstrated (in the public literature at least) that an ID-based system is an effective or efficient form of protection against aviation terrorists. But because it is so easy to circumvent the TSA's mechanism, one does not need to agree with that broad point to see that the current system needs to be replaced. Since the ID system can be reliably bypassed by criminals and terrorists, we pay all of the costs associated with ID-based security and yet get none of the potential benefits, whatever they might be. That should be unacceptable no matter where one stands on the other issues. [bold emphasis mine, italics in original]

Clearly, liability is not all or nothing. There are many parties involved in a typical software attack. The list includes:

• the company that sold the software with the vulnerability in the first place
• the person who wrote the attack tool
• the attacker himself, who used the tool to break into a network
• and finally, the owner of the network, who was entrusted with defending that network.

100% of the liability should not fall on the shoulders of the software vendor, just as 100% should not fall on the attacker or the network owner. But today, 100% of the cost falls directly on the network owner, and that just has to stop.

"If my Democrat colleagues are truly opposed to the mission in Iraq, then as the new majority in Congress they should schedule a serious debate and a vote on cutting off funding for our troops," said Cornyn, R-Texas.

Cutting off funding for the troops in Iraq could be a great idea. The troops would mutiny and come home to see their families, abandoning the Iraqi Civil War to itself. The Shia and Sunni have been fighting for something like 1200 years. They can wait us out as long as needed, so we might as well just get out of their way.

If lawmakers make good on their pledge, the Heritage Foundation figures that 67 million more foreigners will enter the United States in the next 20 years. That surge surely excites multiculturalists and capitalists eager for an endless flow of cheap labor.
But Americans have a different desire.
In opinion poll after opinion poll, U.S. citizens say they want less immigration, not more. They want existing laws enforced, not nullified.

I sympathize with people who aren't making very much and are probably forced to comply with arcane corporate rules and who have to deal with weirdoes coming in with cans labeled "Rocket Fuel." I really do. But... c'mon. How much effort is involved in *not* being part of the common-sense-negating, spirit-crushing, Bush-era fear-slash-stupidity machine? The terrorists win again.

In the interests of dignity, we have taken public executions out of the public square where vendors used to go around selling treats to the slavering crowd. We have invented execution lite, strapping people to gurneys and injecting them with fatal drugs.
But even if we killed criminals by making them watch public-television fund drives until they expired, it would still be undignified. Premeditated killing is always undignified. The crowd outside still drools in its imagination.

This is really sweet (a myspace music thing):
http://www.myspace.com/computerthanks
I've heard other songs of his, but this one is extra good.

My doctor's appointment today was quick and simple. My appointment was at 1430. I arrived early, at 1405. A short wait later, they called me in, took my weight and blood pressure (both are going down :) ), and then I met Dr. Reid. I had never met him before, but as I believe discreet_chaos said, he is muppet-like. I got the referral I wanted, so I'll be staying at the Presbyterian Sleep Lab in Albuquerque some night in the next couple of months. I was out the door at 1428, two minutes before my appointment was supposed to begin. Awesome.

Choosing Secure Passwords

Time to junk the Electoral College?
I think the electoral college would be fine if we had a reasonable number of federal representatives (The UK has a ratio of one member of the House of Commons for every ~94,000 citizens; the US one member of the House or Senate for every ~560,000 citizens; the US congress is ~1/6th as representative of US citizens as the US HoC is) and the U.S. President was required to take part in a weekly question time (ala UK House of Commons). Since neither of these conditions are true, there should be more direct democracy in our country. One step in this direction would be direct election of the President instead of using the Electoral College.

And what has been the result of this astonishing performance? Have Kristol's employers fired him for gross incompetence? Has he been exiled from the national media for having been completely wrong, over and over again, about the most important issue facing America today?
Far from it! Kristol has just been hired by Time, America's leading news weekly, to write a column. This is the journalistic equivalent of handing the former captain of the Exxon Valdez a case of whiskey and the command of a fully loaded supertanker.

Fit an NES in an NES controller (click on the photo in the article for more info)

Last Saturday, I drove the jeep to Albuquerque with lalabob11. We didn't drive on I-25 at all. We took dirt roads all the way from Socorro to US-60 between the Blue Springs and Mountainair and then up various back highways until we got to the cement factory on I-40. It took us 7 hours to get up there, but was fun, and that was the point. It'll be a much more fun drive in the summer, with the top down.

On Sunday, houdini_cs and niap_si_efil came over and we did some maintenance stuff to houdini_cs's WRX, installed his front strut brace and also put the air compressor in my Jeep. Now I can air-down and air-up my tires out in the middle of nowhere if I need to. :)

I've taken the first step to deal with my sleep apnea: I have an appointment with my GP tomorrow afternoon so I can get a referral to have a sleep study done. Wheee.

I pretty much back this position:
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/news2/2007/01/time_to_remove-print.html

"They helped us load our van," Kutz said. Investigators used a fake identity to access a surplus Web site operated by a Pentagon contractor and bought still more, including a dozen microcircuits used on F-14 fighters.

The undercover buyers received phone calls from the Defense Department asking why they had no Social Security number or credit history, but they deflected the questions by presenting a phony utility bill and claiming to be an identity theft victim.

Elementary teacher Derek Porter witnessed 15 different car collision on icy roads outside his Portland apartment Tuesday morning and caught several on home video.

niap_si_efil posted this the other day:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/040405fa_fact?040405fa_fact
It's a really interesting article about average human heights over time and why the U.S. height average isn't going up.

This service looks neat, but is only available in the Seattle area right now. There might be something similar out here in NM, but probably not in Socorro.

Webcomics: Lunchbox Funnies

I've met this cat:
http://www.stuffonmycat.com/index.php?itemid=2904
It's milkmandan's cat Aleph.

greyvorfeed is awesome.
In related news, Pentagon memo predicts 10,000 or more American soldiers could die in Iraq by 2008

My friend retrocareer also goes by the handle "mygiantrobot". In a few weeks, she is going up to WA to visit a bunch of our common friends. A couple of them made and sent her this freakin' awesome poster:
( My Giant Weekend Poster )

Random interesting things:

Parking in two spaces

I had seen the opposite as regards kittens a few years ago, but I'd never seen this before:
Think of the Puppies

http://www.skygod.com/asstd/abc.html

http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds_dying.jpg

Bush's speech is an in-your-face rejection of the will of voters who in November tossed out the corrupt, rubber-stamp Republican-led Congress and made it clear they want a swift end to Bush's Iraq debacle. It is a blatant "go to hell" to the American men and women who have died and will die because of his lunacy.

Fox and Hedgehog presidents

Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School, and author of the highly acclaimed book "The Innovator's Dilemma," makes the point that real change and improvement come from "disruptive technology rather than improvements on the existing system."

That is, when things aren't working well, you've got to look for fundamentally different approaches to the problem at hand.

This is exactly what the political establishment and the teachers' unions fight to prevent in education. It's because their goal is not to deliver the best possible product to their customers, the kids, but protection of their own interests. Innovators whose goal is the best possible product will try anything to achieve that end, that goal, that very best result.

If it turns out that pedophiles like kittens, will cuteoverload.xxx be out of bounds?

Wearing helmets 'more dangerous'
Cyclists who wear protective helmets are more likely to be knocked down by passing vehicles, new research from Bath University suggests.
Original Paper

NM snowstorm as national political news.

Shipping Container Standardization
Wireless internet and contracts.(Read the comments)
As in beer

Because the movie is ~3 hours long, the movie will start promptly at 8 p.m. tonight.

This is awesome:
( The wind )

This is even more awesome, but in a very different way:
President Bush -- quite frankly to general surprise -- has ordered that at that moment all classified records more than 25 years old and of historical value "shall be automatically declassified whether or not the records have been reviewed."
I'd be even happier if the cutoff number of years was lower, like 15 or even 5 years, but 25 ain't bad.

There will be a movie night tomorrow (Dec 22), but not one next Friday (Dec 29th). We will be watching Terry Pratchett's Hogfather tomorrow, assuming I can get it to play on my DVD player.

"Christmas makes things sadder and strengthens the cheap plastic crap industry. It's supposed to be about Jesus, and if it truly was, I'm sure I'd have a problem with that too."

Of all the tragic aspects of this national disaster, this is worst: The people who have been catastrophically wrong about everything are still in charge. And a year from now, when things are even worse in Iraq, we can be sure the neoconservatives will still be demanding that yet more American soldiers die so that Kagan and his ilk can continue to live out their increasingly destructive geopolitical fantasies.

Bush's actions don't border on criminal. They are criminal. He's a lunatic with keys to the greatest nuclear arsenal in the world, a madman with heavy artillery, a nutcase with military might.

The study, examining how sexual behavior before marriage has changed over time, was based on interviews conducted with more than 38,000 people — about 33,000 of them women — in 1982, 1988, 1995 and 2002 for the federal National Survey of Family Growth. According to Finer's analysis, 99 percent of the respondents had had sex by age 44, and 95 percent had done so before marriage.

"What If All the Ice Melts?" Myths and Realities

Fork Art

Furries, cute-junkies and potheads will like this safe-for-work animation:
http://www.machwolf.net/flash/puppies.swf

Socorro got 2 new garbage trucks. The trucks have a robot arm on the side which grabs a garbage can (standardized ones given out by the city), lifts it up, dumps it in the top of the truck, and puts it down. As the arm is going down, a compactor crushes the trash in the top of the truck into the big storage area in the back of the truck. It's a pretty cool system, when it works. Today, in front of my house, they got my trash and dumped it into the top and put the can down just fine. The trash didn't compact. They then tried to go up and down without holding the can, but the arm got stuck and banged against the truck in a way it is clearly not supposed to. After a few minutes of trying things, which included one of the guys getting out of the truck and dumping a few gallons of trash liquid on my curb, they pulled away, satisfied that most of the trash was in the truck even though some was scattered about the roof and tangled in the robot arm mechanism. The sounds coming from next door seem to indicate that it's working OK now.

At some point, someone somewhere will have to stop talking about what we should do in Iraq and, instead, just do it.
While the politicians, pundits and experts pondered the release Wednesday of the Iraq Study Group's long-awaited report, 11 more American soldiers died in that stupid war launched by a mentally-ill President under false pretenses.

A boots-on-the-ground look at the Iraq war
Make sure to read comments.

( Lighthouse )

Penis (not the same one scoffeepie posted).

Legend of the Vampicorn

The MPAA are criminals, but most of us knew that.
"Remember pretexting? It's the cute name given to...well...fraud. It's when you call someone and pretend to be someone else, in order to get information. Or when you go online and pretend to be someone else, in order to get something."

Separating Data Ownership and Device Ownership
An alternative for when copyright fails.

I still don't like the fascist overtones, but this is far preferable to me than the various anti-smoking ordinances cities have passed (regulating the restaurant is preferable to regulating the patrons of the restaurant).
New York becomes first U.S. city to ban trans fats
NYC health board bans trans fats at restaurants

Safe for work spoof educational videos

superhappy failed at making me not want to read xkcd.
Perception: http://xkcd.com/c32.html
Sister: http://xkcd.com/c49.html

I meant to post this yesterday and seem to have forgotten.
There appears to be some controversy about a conversation incoming VA Senator Webb and President Bush had:
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/news/publish/Capitol_Hillbillies_20/10167.shtml
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/news/publish/Capitol_Hillbillies_20/10173.shtml
I agree with Webb. It's none of Bush's business.

Leaving Iraq: A campaign promise that can't be kept

Violent Physics Video

A bike theif

A Fractal Pecan Pie

Since I am posting later than I planned, I can add to it. The Thomas Dolby and BT concert was really good. Dolby was fun and told stories between songs. BT was very weird compared to his usual music, but it was really, really good anyway. I'm going to get the new album.

Growing up too fast can be big problem for 'tweens'

"With one brilliant decision, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has wiped out hunger in America. In the eyes of the USDA, folks are no longer 'hungry.' The solution was so simple that people should have thought about it generations ago."

"The government discriminates against blind people by printing money that all looks and feels the same, a federal judge said Tuesday in a ruling that could change the face of American currency."

Good Agile, Bad Agile
This blog post strenuously knocks the Agile programming methodology and describes how things are done at Google (the poster is a programmer there). I've never really used the method, so I can't argue for either side. The way things are run at PMC is very similar to the Cowboy method.

Unless you are an internet fuckwad, you probably don't want to see the safe for work image behind this link.

The bacon rigatoni recipe I used to make somewhat regularly.

Dealing with the 'we' and 'they' of 'our' Iraq war
Dems reject Rangel's call for a new military draft
I'm a hypocrite as regards a draft. I think there should be one and all persons over 18 and below some certain age, regardless of sex, should be in the pool. I also think there should be ways to get removed from the selection pool, but I'm not sure what possible ways to get out would let someone like myself get out without unfairly advantaging the rich or disadvantaging the poor. If there was a draft and I was below the certain age, I would likely do my damnedest to get out of the pool.

This is silly: Stooge Sort

Animations (SFW):
Minilogue/hitchhikers choice
Kiwi!

Ages 5+

lamasong bought one of these for milkmandan_rss for his birthday. It looks pretty cool.
http://bigcrazystore.com/pro806390.html

Need to spice up your sex life? Roleplay as George W. Bush fucking America

Notes On A Fridge [On a Spaceship] (Serenity to be specific)

This essay is excellent. Go read it:

All global ambitions are based on a definition of productivity and the good life so alienated from common human reality I am convinced it is wrong and that most people would agree with me if they could perceive an alternative. We might be able to see that if we regained a hold on a philosophy that locates meaning where meaning is genuinely to be found -- in families, in friends, in the passage of seasons, in nature, in simple ceremonies and rituals, in curiosity, generosity, compassion, and service to others, in a decent independence and privacy, in all the free and inexpensive things out of which real families, real friends and real communities are built -- then we would be so self-sufficient we would not even need the material "sufficiency" which our global "experts" are so insistent we be concerned about.

(Thanks for linking to it pflarr)

If you don't know how to play the drums or piano, but do know how to edit film and want to make music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzqumbhfxRo

Women in the ‘Quiverfull’ movement are kept at home -- away from the evils of feminism -- where they birth armies of God’s soldiers.
I'd guess that most of you are offended by the Quiverfull people. Does anyone have a plan?

Links with no explanation because I'm lazy:
Immigrants held without due process
An untold story of a real Marine finally surfaces
Wiccans sue feds over military headstone rule

I like it when one of my all-time favorite songs comes on on Pandora:
http://www.pandora.com/music/song/566e5bcd5ab68de4

Now Let's Do Something About Iraq

Warning to Democrats: Remember why you won

Voting Machine Design

To say that politics has gone to the dogs is a libel on the dogs.

Self-esteem is down. Hyper-sexuality is up. It's even seen as a badge of empowerment. What, who, huh? Having the freedom to walk around in public like a vamp is empowering? Having the freedom to sell your body means women have achieved parity?

Fettes Brot

I'm definitely in the majority:

Watch or read this:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/10/23/olbermanns-special-comment-on-gop-fearmongering/

Supreme Court of New Jersey:

Denying committed same-sex couples the financial and social benefits and privileges given to their married heterosexual counterparts bears no substantial relationship to a legitimate governmental purpose. The Court holds that under the equal protection guarantee of Article I, Paragraph 1 of the New Jersey Constitution, committed same-sex couples must be afforded on equal terms the same rights and benefits enjoyed by opposite-sex couples under the civil marriage statutes. The name to be given to the statutory scheme that provides full rights and benefits to same-sex couples, whether marriage or some other term, is a matter left to the democratic process.

I meant to post this last Wednesday. Then on Thursday I realised I hadn't posted it yet, so I added to it and promptly forgot to post it again. The same happened Friday. Today, I haven't added anything to it other than this intro, but I'm actually remembering to post it now.

Rather than going to Congress and trying to negotiate changes to the law that regulates such activities, the administration simply grabbed that authority for itself, saying, in effect, "Trust us: if you knew what we know about the threat, you'd be perfectly happy to have us do what we're doing." In other areas, like the holding of prisoners in Guantanamo and interrogation methods used there and in the Middle East, one can only quote Moynihan on an earlier era: "As fears of Communist conspiracies and German subversion mounted, it was the U.S. government's conduct that approached the illegal.

Both political parties consider truth an expendable commodity in the pursuit of power. Neither party gives a damn about what's best for the country because the overriding consideration is always what's best for the party.

Need an election rigged?
http://www.fixavote.com/





Paint-spolsion commercial
Behind the Scenes commercial

Can't sleep? (totally safe for everywhere)
http://allenec.livejournal.com/93780.html

I got support points. Wheee!
http://www.livejournal.com/support/see_request.bml?id=650251
I'm not really into doing the support thing, but I do use some the more complex mobile features, so I answer questions when I can. This is the first support request where my answer was unscreened and the user closed the request, awarding me the points. The only other unscreened answer I have is awaiting close. The user may ask another question instead of closing the request though.

Security experts and security fanboys (such as myself) have been saying this for a long time. People still aren't getting it. I doubt repeating it will help, but I do like quoting and linking Schneier so much...

Our politicians help the terrorists every time they use fear as a campaign tactic. The press helps every time it writes scare stories about the plot and the threat. And if we're terrified, and we share that fear, we help. All of these actions intensify and repeat the terrorists' actions, and increase the effects of their terror.

...our job is to remain steadfast in the face of terror, to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to not panic every time two Muslims stand together checking their watches. There are approximately 1 billion Muslims in the world, a large percentage of them not Arab, and about 320 million Arabs in the Middle East, the overwhelming majority of them not terrorists. Our job is to think critically and rationally, and to ignore the cacophony of other interests trying to use terrorism to advance political careers or increase a television show's viewership.

Scorecard from the War on Terror

I don't often read Wonkette, but this one about the Iran War (yes, Iran) is particularly interesting:
http://wonkette.com/politics/iran/war-all-the-time-204928.php

I sent Ronald L. Rivest an email today and had to deal with his spam filter:
http://theory.csail.mit.edu/~rivest/rsf/
It looks interesting, though I don't think it would easily work for me. I would definitely like to see the code whenever he releases it.

"Wombat Land" is a cool shirt:

If the Bush Administration was written in C (notice the subtle error):

if (person = terrorist) {
  punish_severely();
} else {
  exit(-1);
}

I got the code snip from flemco who got it from Boing Boing.

The day freedom died in the United States of America: "Freedom died in the halls of the United States Congress Thursday as the U.S. Senate passed White House-sponsored legislation that gives President Bush virtually unlimited power to approve torture of detainees and allows the U.S. military to hold, without due course or Constitutional protections, anyone it considers a terrorist or threat to this country."
The House votes to strip away another freedom: "Another freedom that used to be protected by the Constitution is stripped away, destroyed forever by a Congress controlled by power-mad despots with no concern for basic rights."

I can see some of you really liking this simple organizer:
http://www.pocketmod.com/

Monster Smart Car:
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_2012974.html

The quotes in the subject line are a really bad pun based on the code above, if you didn't notice.

When you sweep away the hype, the lies and the politics of George W. Bush's so-called "war on terror," you are left with one inescapable conclusion: The President of the United States is at war with freedom.

In Bush's myopic view of the world, freedom is expendable. Freedom has no place in a Presidency where power is everything and the only opinion can be his.

Many commentators have noted the apparent irony: The pope suggests Islam encourages violence--and Muslims riot in protest.

Many commentators have pointed out the apparent hypocrisy: Muslims are outraged by cartoons satirizing Islamic extremism while in Muslim countries Christianity and Judaism are attacked viciously and routinely.

Many commentators are missing the point: These protesters and those who incite them are not asking for mutual respect and equality. They are not saying: "It's wrong to speak ill of a religion." They are saying: "It's wrong to speak ill of our religion." They are not standing up for a principle. They are laying down the law. They are making it as clear as they can that they will not tolerate "infidels" criticizing Muslims. They also are making it clear that infidels should expect criticism and much worse from Muslims.

In a speech on the five-year anniversary of 9/11, the president described our enemies as "extremists" who have perverted religion into "a totalitarian ideology that hates freedom [and] rejects tolerance." It is long past time that our activists explain to the country what we, as gay Americans, know to be true: on the issue of homosexuality at least, Bush and his conservative allies are practicing what they preach against.

The Absurdity of Fear

The story of Oedipus, in 8 minutes, performed by vegetables:
http://www.oedipusthemovie.com/

When failed, flawed candidates are the only choices, all you get is a failed, flawed President.

George Carlin - Owners of This Country

I haven't filled out many other people's memes yet because I've been busy at work. I should get to it Monday though.