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.

A bill has been proposed in the Texas Legislature that will require all Texas Public Schools to offer elective bible study courses:
The full text of Texas HB-1287
I read through the bill and except for the parts requiring schools to offer it, it sounded ok. If the bill made the course description clear and then "allowed" schools to offer it if they wished, I would have actively liked it (until I read more about it; see below). Most people I know of judeo-christian and especially of non-judeo-christian upbringing (including myself) don't recognize a large number of literary allusions to bible events strewn throughout classic and modern media. An elective course offered in high schools could help alleviate this growing flaw in our collective knowledge.

PFAW is against the bill though. They wrote a letter of complaint to the Texas Legislators pointing out the many flaws in the bill. Not having an educational background in law nor direct knowledge of the cases referenced, I didn't notice the major flaws in the bill until I read the letter. There are also other more minor problems, particularly the bill's lack of a requirement of qualified teachers for the courses.

The PFAW letter draws heavily from an excellent document about teaching the Bible (and, to a lesser extent, other religious texts) in public schools. The Bible & Public Schools: A First Amendment Guide was published by the Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center and by the National Bible Association, and endorsed by many religious liberty groups and religious and educational organizations.

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.

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.

...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

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 )

I'm off to visit some of my PAX Enforcer friends. I plan to make various posts during my travel. If I haven't posted again by Friday afternoon, something has gone wrong (the internet is fuxxored, I have been physically incapacitated in some way, I am being held by the government without charge, etc.).

Even though I will be gone, two_pi_r and lalabob11 are hosing a movie night tomorrow. I don't know what the food or movie will be.

These comparisons seem obvious to me, but they aren't in the press as often as they should be:

Another Vietnam? Defenders of President Bush's Iraq war policy have long shrugged off such comparisons. But as the war heads toward the four-year mark and a newly empowered Democratic Congress takes aim at presidential spending for more troops, the comparisons are becoming more frequent.

Generals are saying the Iraq War is making us less secure. Whee:

Nearly four years in Iraq have hammered US army and marines into a skilled counter-insurgency force but has left it unready for war against a conventionally armed foe, US generals warn.

Is Bill Richardson the new Al Gore?
Richardson's my favorite prospective candidate right now, but there's lots of time for things to change.

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

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

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

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 got the following in an email from the polylegal mailing list I'm on:

Section 750.441 http://www.legislature.mi.gov/%28ylz0bf45ccoi1545ruw2mnbd%29/mileg.aspx?page=shortlinkdisplay&docname=mcl-750-441
[Printer-Friendly Versions] http://www.legislature.mi.gov/%28ylz0bf45ccoi1545ruw2mnbd%29/mileg.aspx?page=print&objectname=mcl-750-441
*THE MICHIGAN PENAL CODE (EXCERPT)*
*Act 328 of 1931*

*750.441 Teaching, soliciting and advocating polygamy; felony.*

Sec. 441.

Teaching, soliciting and advocating the practice of polygamy--Any person who shall solicit to a polygamous life, or teach polygamy as a correct form of family life, for the purpose of inducing men and women to enter into the practice of polygamy or advocate the doctrine and practice of polygamy, or attempt to persuade any person by private or public discourse to adopt a polygamous life, shall be guilty of a felony.

*History:* 1931, Act 328, Eff. Sept. 18, 1931 ;-- CL 1948, 750.441

A bit later the same sender sent the following:

This came as a complete surprise to me. I've done searches for polygamy laws before but never found it. There is a United States Supreme Court decision (United States v. Musser) that actually ruled in Musser's favor against charges of "lewdness" for distributing literature in favor of polygamy. The court ruled that a person cannot be denied the right to try to change public opinion or the laws, and this law clearly comes in violation of that ruling, at least, as well as a basic foundational Constitutional right of freedom of speech.

I thought it was interesting and should pass it on.

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/

September 2001:
On the 10th I had a long argument with then SA President Chris Liu while at the SA meeting. One conclusion of the public argument was that he had to wake up early the following morning to let me into the KTEK office and studio at 0700 the following day. That morning he let me in to the rooms grumpily at the appointed time. I did what I had to do in the offices and then went over to the SUB and ended up hanging out watching TV in the lounge or sitting at the green table out on the grass most of the day. That evening I was listening to one of the random Albuquerque radio stations that had gone to an all-talk format temporarily (102.5FM I think). I called in and got on. I talked about how I had old friends who probably lost relatives in the towers and ensuing chaos (I'm from the NYC metro area if you didn't know) and that I hoped they discovered that some Americans had orchestrated the destruction because if not, the government would probably go unreasonably attack some nation full of non-white people. They hung up on me when I said that last bit. Sadly, the government followed my prediction.

Doug Thompson wrote a pretty strong opinion piece for today:
The real axis of evil that destroyed America

Some psychoanalytical commentary on GWB:
Has Bush gone over the edge?

Scientology nearly ready to unveil Super Power

Now, a meme:
( World Leader Meme )

U.S. history as I was taught it:
The U.S. history classes I had up through 8th grade were wholly cheerleading: "America is awesome! Yay!"
The classes I had in high school were better; things were taught more objectively. The classes focused on "rule of law" and how the laws changed over time.
In college, the U.S. history classes (I took both that were offered, pre 1865 and post 1865) were focused on once core topic, and were cheerleadery about it. The topic was "slavery is bad." ALL of the material covered was brought back to that point.
I would estimate that I know more about U.S. history than the average American, but my knowledge is clearly biased and has gaps due to the courses I've taken.

Bush declares himself absolute ruler: It's 'my government'

Retroactive War Crime Protection Proposed

The Bush administration drafted amendments to the War Crimes Act that would retroactively protect policymakers from possible criminal charges for authorizing any humiliating and degrading treatment of detainees, according to lawyers who have seen the proposal.

James McMurtry's "You Can't Make It Here Any More":
http://scoffeepie.livejournal.com/224510.html

Information and authentic videos of metals reacting violently with water:
Sodium Party
Alkali Metal Bangs

A parody of "The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny":
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/330027
It is very vulgar, with penises flapping around everywhere, but it pretty accurately spoofs every scene in the original.

There will be a movie night at JPL tomorrow. Dinner will be something involving chicken, probably roasted. The movie will be The Aristocrats.


Ernie and Bert Explore a Pyramid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nSmWHHZpVE

An icon I think many of you will like:



A Nation of Wimps from Psychology Today by way of ravendisplayed.
One quote I found very appropriate from my experience with many of my peers and younger people:

The perpetual access to parents infantilizes the young, keeping them in a permanent state of dependency. Whenever the slightest difficulty arises, "they're constantly referring to their parents for guidance," reports Kramer. They're not learning how to manage for themselves.

So many of the people I see in college have no idea how to deal with simple situations necessary for living an independent life. It's a sad position for our society to be in.


How does the risk of terrorism measure up against everyday dangers?
A False Sense of Insecurity?
BY JOHN MUELLER
Ohio State University
BoingBoing's description of the paper:

Only traitors try to make us afraid of terrorists.
In this mind-blowing, exhaustively researched Cato institute paper by Ohio State University's John Mueller, the case against being afraid of terrorism is laid out in irrefutable logic, backed with credible, documented statistics about terrorism's risks.

Lincoln:

You might reply that our liberties define our nation: If we abandon them, we give up on America itself. But Abraham Lincoln said otherwise, and lucky for us. By sacrificing a bit of freedom for suspected Confederate sympathizers, he helped win freedom for nearly 4 million enslaved African-Americans.

I think it was worth it. And I bet you do, too.

Until we Democrats can specify when and how we'd take the same harsh measures that Lincoln did, we don't deserve to sit under his mantle. Or to run the country.

The author takes a naive view of the Civil War as being primarily about freeing slaves, but I had never known that Lincoln had many people imprisoned without charges. I think slavery ending was a good thing, and the war did cause that, but other things could/would have done it too, given time (possibly a civil war or slave revolt internal to the Confederacy; possibly economic pressure from other countries; possibly something else). Regardless of the state of the slaves, I feel the Union should have let the Confederates secede and let the issues between the nations work themselves out over time instead of flatly rejecting the Confederacy's negotiation attempts, forcing the Battle of Fort Sumter (the first battle in the war).

This is an excellent presentation on the state and trends of world health and how to visualize world health data:
http://ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=hans_rosling
Anyone who is interested in health issues, macroeconomics, developing technology or visualization techniques should watch it. The video download is much higher resolution than the stream. The downloaded .mp4 file wouldn't play for me in Winamp or Windows Media Player, but it played fine in Quicktime.

I'm trying to remember where these (or very similar) lyrics are from:
"...gonna have a party, have a real good time."
They were used in a recent song, but they're also from an older (60s, 70s or 80s) song. I wasn't able to find anything useful with Google other than another group of people trying to find the older song. I poked some of the other search engines, but they didn't help either. I'm hoping someone out there might know what song it is.

Issues:</a>
Sky Marshals Name Innocents to Meet Quota:

The air marshals, whose identities are being concealed, told 7NEWS that they're required to submit at least one report a month. If they don't, there's no raise, no bonus, no awards and no special assignments.
"Innocent passengers are being entered into an international intelligence database as suspicious persons, acting in a suspicious manner on an aircraft ... and they did nothing wrong," said one federal air marshal.

Random Entertainment:
The Fairy of Actual Nickels:
http://wigu.com/overcompensating/2005/03/fairy-of-actual-nickels.html

Monty Python:
http://spamusement.com/index.php/comics/view/323

Just for Laughs Gags - "Protester Leader" video:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=NFFbmDkDV_c

While My Guitar Gently Weeps:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8oxlPoZNbU

wolf359nmt will love this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0neAHeBc_Zc

I can't say it better, so I'm cut and pasting:

***************************************************
American Civil Liberties Union
FROM THE DESK OF ANTHONY D. ROMERO
Worse Than the Patriot Act
***************************************************

Dear Jarrod,

You may have read headlines calling the Cheney-Specter bill on surveillance oversight a "compromise." But make no mistake, this deal is nothing short of a complete capitulation to the Bush administration.

The bill includes legalized assaults on our civil liberties worse even than the sweeping powers ceded to the government by the Patriot Act, and would write into law what is now the administration's belief that the president can wiretap any American he wants without any check.

From the Supreme Court to people on the street, America is starting to wake up to the Bush administration's abuse of power. Unfortunately, Congress hasn't gotten the message and is poised to rubber stamp a dangerous agenda that is doing real harm to our democracy.

Not only is Congress considering NSA "oversight" legislation that would hand the president vast new powers -- only days after the Defense Department stated that it will comply with the Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of detainees -- a top Justice Department lawyer urged Congress to "ratify" the military commissions that the Supreme Court invalidated two weeks ago.

The headlines are full of White House spin claiming that Senator Arlen Specter's (R-PA) bill on surveillance is a successful compromise between Congress and the White House. Of course, Senator Specter would like you to believe he is taking a stand on the Bush administration's actions because he knows that is what most Americans want Congress to do. But in reality these ill-advised proposals give the president a blank check to spy on Americans without a warrant and without mandatory judicial review of his actions.

You can help us get out the truth about this bill and the dangers it poses to our basic rights. Please take a few minutes to contact your newspaper right now. Tell them that this "compromise" actually compromises our rights and gives a blank check to the president.

It is very important that the American people know that the bill that is supposed to rein in surveillance of innocent citizens actually includes:

-- Legalization of the president's program of warrantless surveillance on Americans, a program that is illegal under current law and unconstitutional.

-- A diminished role for the court that oversees the NSA's warrantless domestic spying, making oversight by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) optional -- and we know that when this administration doesn't believe in getting court warrants even when required; making them "optional" is making them non-existent.

-- A new, unconstitutional process for challenging surveillance, via a secret appeals court composed of judges hand-picked solely by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who supports expansive presidential powers.

-- An information blackout by the Executive Branch against the Congress or our courts when it comes to the names and number of Americans monitored by the spying program. Without any oversight, countless journalists, lawyers, hotel clerks and others will inevitably be swept into round-the-clock monitoring of their phone conversations, indefinitely.

We cannot allow the Executive Branch to weasel out of obeying the Supreme Court and federal law; and Congress is overdue in asserting and affirming its role of keeping the president in check and reining in the president's sweeping interpretation of power.

The ACLU will be keeping the pressure on all summer and into the fall, and we'll be calling on you and everyone across America who cares about our liberties to join us in the fight.

How these stories are characterized in the press plays an important role in our success. So, please take a few minutes right now to write your local paper with our easy-to-use letter to the editor tool.

As always, thank you for standing with us. It is absolutely essential that every one of us rallies to protect the freedoms that define our democracy.

Sincerely,

Anthony D. Romero
Executive Director
ACLU

-------------
Don't let the Cheney-Specter "compromise" succeed in expanding - rather than curtailing - the president's ability to spy on Americans without a warrant and without mandatory judicial review of his actions.

Help counteract the spin! Write your local newspaper to tell them that this compromise actually compromises our rights and gives a blank check to the President:
http://action.aclu.org/site/R?i=Dc11tnyJW2jmPzT69SkTtA..

Then, help your friends, family and colleagues separate the spin from the facts. Send them an eCard here:
http://action.aclu.org/site/R?i=ETypIgh8915bIFrhi4BNMA..

Donate Now at:
http://action.aclu.org/site/R?i=FPRqLC0-DY-gNl_BYR_G0A..
-------------

EDIT: A link to a recent draft of the bill. My big problems start on page 12 line 15 where a section is written that says the President can order the Attorney General to start an electronic surveillance program without a warrant or court order with the only program oversight coming from the Attorney General (the AG is required to tell some Congressional committees, but they can't stop him from starting the program).

EDIT: Page 12 line 11 removed the following from 50 U.S.C. 1801(h):

(4) notwithstanding paragraphs (1), (2), and (3), with respect to any electronic surveillance approved pursuant to section 1802(a) of this title, procedures that require that no contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party shall be disclosed, disseminated, or used for any purpose or retained for longer than 72 hours unless a court order under section 1805 of this title is obtained or unless the Attorney General determines that the information indicates a threat of death or serious bodily harm to any person.

With this struck, they can keep any information gathered on US persons indefinitely and use it for any purpose they wish.

EDIT: I spoke too soon. On page 15 line 20 they overwrite the chunk of 1805 that talks about 72 hours with a similar, but more broadly defined chunk that gives 7 days before the information needs to be destroyed unless a court order has been approved to keep the information indefinitely.

[T]he NSA's surveillance cannot successfully detect terrorists unless both the percentage of terrorists in the population and the accuracy rate of their identification are far higher than they are. He correctly concludes that "NSA's surveillance system is useless for finding terrorists."
The surveillance is, however, useful for monitoring political opposition and stymieing the activities of those who do not believe the government's propaganda.

The League of Women Voters Supports Voter-Verifiable Paper Trails but "the national office simply doesn't want to acknowledge the membership's position on the issue, and wishes the issue would just go away quietly."

Privacy expert and George Washington University Law School professor Daniel J. Solove wrote a template to make it easier for reporters to write stories about surveillance. The following quote from the template links to the article:
"We're not trolling through the personal data of Americans," Bush said, "we're just looking at all of their records."
It's sad how accurate the template is to many of the articles I've already read. The government is on fire and no one in power to put it out seems to be trying.

Intelligence Support Systems for Lawful Interception, Internet Surveillance and Investigative Analysis Conference and Expo conversation snip:

Reporter: "This is the equipment of totalitarianism, and the only things that can keep a population safe are decent law and proper oversight. I want to know what they think when they learn that China, or Syria, or Zimbabwe is getting their hands on it."
Vendor:"You really need to educate yourself," he insisted. "Do you think this stuff doesn't happen in the West? Let me tell you something. I sell this equipment all over the world, especially in the Middle East. I deal with buyers from Qatar, and I get more concern about proper legal procedure from them than I get in the USA."
...
Vendor:"You're not listening," he said. "The NSA is using this stuff. The DEA, the Secret Service, the CIA. Are you kidding me? They don't answer to you. They do whatever the hell they want with it. Are you really that naïve? Now leave these [engineers] alone; they make a product, that's all. It's nothing to them what happens afterward. You really need to educate yourself."

Unethical engineers/scientists are a problem in addition to the corrupt officials and salespeople. Ethics weren't taught to most computer scientists and engineers I've met. NMT's CS382 is sadly one of the best technology ethics classes I've heard of.

A fake name/address/credit card generator:
http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/

A website that does it's best to post the full text of all of Bush's signing statements:
http://www.coherentbabble.com/signingstatements/TOCindex.htm

An article about signing statements and scandal that I somehow missed:
The Case of the Missing $21 Billion
Who's Following the Iraq Money?
By DAVE LINDORFF
Ths signing statements limiting the Inspector General from investigating:
http://www.coherentbabble.com/signingstatements/pressignstate.htm#2003-15
http://www.coherentbabble.com/signingstatements/pressignstate.htm#2004-14

Losing the War on Terror:

The Center/Foreign Policy team divined a consensus among top experts about terrorism and U.S. national security: "A vast majority think that the world today is more dangerous for the American people. Fewer than two in 10 believe the United States is winning the war on terror. More than eight in 10 believe we are likely to face a terrorist attack on the scale of September 11 within the next 10 years. Over half list Islamic animosity and the Iraq war as the main reasons why the world is becoming more dangerous. The experts put nuclear weapons and materials as the top threat, followed closely by weapons of mass destruction (WMD) as a whole and then terrorism. Only 4 percent rank Iran as the greatest threat."

Defining Drugs:

One measure of a drug's dangerousness is the gap between the typical effective dose and the typical fatal dose. By this measure alcohol, which is fatal at a dose about ten times greater than that that produces the initial desired effect in users, is about as dangerous as cocaine and heroin, and vastly more dangerous than LSD or marijuana.

Ben Goldacre writes some pretty good, often humorous, science columns:

Imagine a two-headed monster called "The Nutrition Society". On the one hand, they are a respectable and august research body, representing some of the sharpest academics in the country, doing research work on nutrition in both people and laboratories, publishing academic journals, and so on. That's science. On the other hand, they "run" a "register" that I suspect consists mostly of those commercial "nutritionists" who make good money peddling lifestyle advice to the public. That's inviting trouble. I am trouble.

Cute, Silly: Of Mouse and Toad

I saw and purchased some silly/appropriate shirts for eparchos, greyvorfeed, two_pi_r and myself (not all the same shirt design). I need one of them in time to wear on August 18th; I expect they will all arrive much sooner than that though.

I sent a comment to Amazon today:

I am not a member of Amazon Prime. Every time I place an order, the checkout page has a bunch of ads on it telling me to become a member. I find the ads annoying. I haven't joined already because the service is not worth it to me. I get free super-saver shipping on nearly all of the orders I place. I see no need to pay for an Amazon Prime membership to get items shipped faster for "free" when I already get items shipped free and a faster arrival is useless to me. It would be nice if you could give each user an option like "I am not interested in Amazon Prime; stop showing ads for it at checkout." somewhere in their account settings.

I wonder what their reaction will be.

Top 5 Myths About America:

• MYTH 1: The US was founded on Christian principles.
  
• MYTH 2: US Conservatives tend to be patriotic, ethical Americans; liberals tend to hate America and are immoral.
  
• MYTH 3. The US has a liberal media.
  
• MYTH 4. The US doesn't need improvement compared to other countries; it is the greatest country in the world.
  
• MYTH 5: The US government loves to help other countries.

Also, a quote from the conclusion:

For you self-congratulatory, redneck-inspired conservative fuckwads who will start to say, "B-b-b-but you're anti-American! M-m-m-moonbat! G-g-g-god bless the USA!" I answer, "Go fuck yourself. We can do better." Stop blindly believing everything your president tells you. Come back to us only when you start realizing that the $400 billion your president has allocated to his Roman Empire-style military overstretch could be better spent on correcting the sociopolitical and economic problems in the arenas that I've listed above.

QuizLaw provides reasoned (if sometimes biased) summaries of Supreme Court decisions. They also link to the official Opinion pdfs.
Here, in chronological order, are the decisions I find most interesting since June 1:

• Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings v. Metabolite Laboratories, Inc. - Not a decision, but an interesting case about patents on fundamental processes within nature.
  
• League of Latin American Citizens v. Perry - The "Texas redistricting case" where the SC decided that gerrymandering isn't a constitutional issue, i.e. the states can do what they want as long as they don't break other laws.
  
• Hamdan v. Rumsfeld - This is the most important decision of late: "With this case, the Supremes have ruled that President Bush was acting outside of any valid authority when he set up the tribunal commissions at Guantanamo Bay, and that these commissions are illegal under both the Geneva Convention and U.S. military justice law. This raises obvious questions about "what happens next" for the current Gitmo detainees, but it is certain to bring further criticism of Bush's, and his administrations', handling of the war on terror." I haven't read the official decision in full yet, but I'm working on it.

Signing (statements) away our freedom

None of this might have happened had the US and the European Union seized the opportunity created by Hamas's success in the elections last January. Hamas would have extended its unilateral truce into a long-term ceasefire agreement, had the world community recognised it as a legitimate representative of the Palestinians and sought to persuade the Israelis that dealing with Hamas was their best option.

I generally side with the Arabs when the issue of Israel comes up, so I like it when well reasoned arguments against Israeli actions are published. It should be noted that I'm not an anti-semite; I have no more qualms with Judaism than with any other of the Abrahamic religions. I am against terrorism in general (which means I also don't like a lot of the stuff some of the Arab nations/groups have done), especially terrorism being conducted with money from my taxes with the implied support of my government. Israel being a U.S. supported terrorist state offends me and I'd like them to stop being terrorists or the U.S. to revoke all aid to Israel (which would cause a major war and the problem would eventually resolve itself through the deaths of millions).

lalabob11 called me a "ray of sunshine" today at lunch after I talked about the neo-cons controlling the voting machines, which implies that we won't likely ever have a democratically elected President again (we haven't had one for over 5 years: in 2000, Bush was appointed by the supreme court and in 2004 Bush was elected due to major election fraud in multiple districts, particularly districts in Ohio, against the will of the populace).

Tomorrow, for Movie Night, I'm making a pork loin, onion, French vin gris sauté over rice. Dinner will probably be around 8ish because I expect it to take a while for the sauce to simmer down/thicken.

Random Silly/Wrong: Goofus and Gallant Slash.

An excellent article on the sanctity of marriage and returning to "traditional" values:
Oh the horror of it all.

Capitol Hill Blue has a slew of articles on spying/surveillance today:
Land of the watched, home of the spied upon
Big brother is watching, but who is watching big brother?
Many are watching but few are regulating
Video surveillance by the numbers
Video becomes a crime fighting tool
Is a watched society a free society?
Bush gets access to international banking records


Only two rules...and you MUST follow them!
1. You can only say YES or NO!
2. You are NOT ALLOWED to explain ANYTHING unless someone asks!
( meeeeeeeeeem )

Iraq's National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie wrote an op-ed in yesterday's Washington Post describing Iraq's wishes for the removal of nearly all U.S. troops by the end of 2007:
The Way Out of Iraq: A Road Map
(Logins you can use for washingtonpost.com)

Homeland Security, the $40-billion-a-year agency set up to combat terrorism after 9/11, has been given universal jurisdiction and can hold anyone on Earth for crimes unrelated to national security — even me for a court date I missed while I was in Iraq helping America deter terror — without asking what I had been doing in Pakistan among Islamic extremists the agency is designated to stop. Instead, some of its actions are erasing the lines of jurisdiction between local police and the federal state, scarily bringing the words "police" and "state" closer together. As long as we allow Homeland Security to act like a Keystone Stasi, terrorism will continue to win in destroying our freedom.

Bruce Schneier has chosen a winner for his Movie Plot Threat Contest.
His Wired article about the contest and choosing a winner.

Why Israel's Airport Security Methods Will Not Work In The U.S.

I'm convinced George W. Bush is a madman, a brain-damaged dry drunk whose insanity and megalomania threaten the very existence of America. He represents a clear and present danger to the peace and security of this nation and must be treated as a traitor to the very Constitution he swore to uphold in two inaugurations.

The "evocative" part of the love song thing yesterday was very subjective and I'm sorry I didn't consider that when I brought it up. I don't know some of the songs people posted, so I can't judge them. Of the ones I know, I don't consider most of them to be "evocative." The most evocative love song (to me of course) mentioned was Willie Nelson's "Always On My Mind." Yesterday I couldn't come up with any powerful love songs other than The Smiths' "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out" and The Beach Boys' "God Only Knows," both of which are religious. Thanks for your input.

Anyway, off to movie night and what I hope to be a relaxing and productive weekend.

This heavily annotated article goes into some depth on the various issues relating to election fraud in the 2004 Presidential Election:
Was the 2004 Election Stolen?
Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.
BY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.

Jaron Lanier on the hazards of online collectivism:

We now are reading what a collectivity algorithm derives from what other collectivity algorithms derived from what collectives chose from what a population of mostly amateur writers wrote anonymously.

The Contrast Podcast is a collaboration of bloggers all over, commenting on mainly new music, though older stuff is usually allowed. Each podcast has a theme uniting the songs people choose. The current podcast has the theme "Road Trip." It also has a contribution from me (I need to spend more time working on the intro the next time I submit something). Download the mp3 here.

While I'm on the topic of music, My Old Kentucky Blog has a post up about Murder By Death. They're a hard band to classify, but I guess rockabilly comes close. It's good stuff.

What happens when you combine 200 liters of Diet Coke and over 500 Mentos mints? (video)

MediumLarge is often quite silly:


A comic comparing the X-Men comic books with the new movie.

Doug Thompson talks about our rights destruction (erosion isn't a good enough word, since the evil are actively digging instead of just nudging things along) in a way that inclines me to support the overthrow of the government or at least take up arms against the corrupt. I'm aghast and at a complete loss for ways to improve the situation without major bloodshed during which I am likely to die. I haven't seen any notable progress toward freedom from oppression in my lifetime and the outlook appears grim since the lack of progress goes back at least to World War II and nothing is changing to make it better. How can one outside of the international investor elite get through or even be overall contented during these hopeless times without becoming an ignorant sheep? We put on our hopeful masks; we say things are "fine," but we don't really mean it. The terrorists in control of the world have won and we are powerless. Something major will have to happen before their power can be shifted to any other party. Possibly a natural disaster. I wonder how many will die do the hurricanes and other storms this year; probably not enough to change much, but maybe next year. Possibly a directly man-made disaster, like Bush nuking Iran and the other nuclear powers retaliating in the only way they know how, with more nuclear missiles of their own. Nothing is safe. We have lost.

http://www.climatecrisis.net/
An Inconvenient Truth (trailer) will be playing at the Century 14 in Albuquerque starting on June 16th. Who else wants to go see it?

Supply Side Economics is probably bad for the economy/you.

Lessig describes the similarities between Fair Use and Net Neutrality.

A good, free eBook:
The Conservative Nanny State
How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer

The other day, I was talking with a long-time (>25 years experience) defense contractor about the economic future of the U.S. The rough sum of what he said was:

Baby Boomers are turning 60. The total cost of Medicare and Medicaid is estimated to surpass the total income of the federal government in less than 6 years. Baby Boomers vote, so the U.S. will have a major demilitarization to help economically support their old age within the next few years and there won't be much of any business in defense contracting.

I'm not sure on his statistics, but the overall story seems reasonable. What do you all think about this?

Some examples of the FBI spying on the press. The National Security Letters (NSL) really piss me off. If I were anywhere that one came down, I would definitely tell the target and possibly publicize it, even though both are felonies. Thompson's response was totally reasonable and justified:
"I told the company to send the [NSL] over to my lawyer and then told him to send the following message to the feds:
'Fuck you. Strong letter to follow.'"

"They lie. They lie all the time. And they will continue to lie. Why? Because they can. Because no one will do anything about it. Because that's all they know how to do."

I Love To Singa!

A very cute website and book about Hinduism (thanks awillowweeping):
http://www.gheehappy.com/default.htm

All 39 episodes of the "Mysterious Cities of Gold" are on YouTube I only saw a few episodes, out of order, on Nickelodeon when I was young, but it was cool in a complicated soap opera/adventure sort of way. I'll watch all of them eventually.

( Political Philosophy Quiz )

( Mind Sex Meme )

I wrote most of this post on Friday and kept being busy with other things and didn't post it until now.

I hadn't uploaded photos to Flickr in a while. Here are some of the new ones:
Photos of NMT 2006 Graduation.
Photos of redsekhmet's wedding

I was going up to Albuquerque every weekend for over a month a few weeks ago. I was having fun, but going crazy and being frustrated with not getting any of my projects done. I need some time without traveling. This particular weekend there's no way I could have gone up because I had already bought food for Friday, I hosted a graduation breakfast party on Saturday, I went to Commencement, and king_luddite had a graduation party Saturday evening. Overall, I need to be selfish/lazy for a while to stay sane, so I won't be going up to Abq for a while.

Detailed maps of religious adherents by county in the U.S.

Anti-abortion zealots target birth control

A group of ~80 people dress up similarly to Best Buy employees and go into a NYC Best Buy. It's silly in places and also shows us how people react to uniforms as authority.

Q. What could a boarding pass tell an identity fraudster about you? A. Way too much
A simple airline stub, picked out of a bin near Heathrow, led Steve Boggan to investigate a shocking breach of security

Tyson Slocum on gas prices, Charlie Savage on Bush's signing statements. It's an episode of FAIR's CounterSpin. The interview with Slocum gives some excellent information about the price gouging of the oil monopoly.

Topato Breakfast!

Some proposals for reform
Follow the money...
Time to reclaim our America
The organization he's forming isn't "up" yet, but I'll let you know when it is.

[Dr. Shaber] is not a political activist or a conspiracy theorist; in addition to her own practice, she's Kaiser Permanente's director of women's health services for northern California and head of the HMO's Women's Health Research Institute. Yet this decidedly mainstream doctor and administrator says, "I no longer trust FDA decisions or materials generated [by the government]. Ten years ago, I would not have had to scrutinize government information. Now I don't feel comfortable giving it to my patients."

Many prominent figures in science and public health think they know the answer. "People believe that religiously based social conservatives have direct lines to the powers that be within the U.S. government, the administration, Congress, and are influencing public-health policy, practice and research in ways that are unprecedented and very dangerous," says Judith Auerbach, Ph.D., a former NIH official who is now a vice president at the nonprofit American Foundation for AIDS Research. In fact, Glamour, has found that on issues ranging from STDs to birth control, some radical conservative activists have used fudged and sometimes flatly false data to persuade the government to promote their agenda of abstinence until marriage. The fallout: Young women now read false data on government websites, learn bogus information in federally funded sex-education programs and struggle to get safe, legal contraceptives—all of which, critics argue, may put them at greater risk for unplanned pregnancies and STDs.

California court rules that the Bush administration broke the law by ignoring the Energy Policy Act of 1992.

This is a couple of weeks old, but I only just found it:
Sorry, Your Viewpoint Is Excluded from First Amendment Protection: That's what the Ninth Circuit holds today, as to student speech in K-12 schools, in a remarkable...decision

This test was really tough. I've seen easily over 900 movies in my lifetime and I hadn't seen (or sometimes even heard of) a good portion of the movies in the test.
( Actor-Movie Meme )

The culture of 'national security' in which as much as possible is classified has proved itself to be dysfunctional. It does not protect us from our enemies. It protects bureaucrats and politicians. It is the perfect place to hide incompetence and even malfeasance. It is a tool for turf wars and in-fighting and false prestige. Clearly the Senators and Congressman who are supposed to perform intelligence oversight are so thrilled at being part of the top security clearance club that they don't notice how much has gone wrong or understand why.

When making decisions about other security systems, it's important to look for these two characteristics. Imagine a "panic button" in an airplane cockpit. Assume that the system was designed so that its publication would not affect security. Should the government publish it? The answer depends on whether or not there is a public community of professionals who can critique the design of such panic buttons. If there isn't, then there's no point in publishing.

Missile guidance algorithms is another example. Would the government be better off publishing their algorithms for guiding missiles? I believe the answer is no, because the system lacks the second characteristic above. There isn't a large community of people who can benefit from the information, but there are potential enemies that could benefit from the information. Therefore, it is better for the government to keep the information classified and only disclose it to those it believes should know.

It's been about a year since I got incredibly excited about a new artist (Jem). I just discovered Lily Allen, who has a somewhat similar feel (British girl, fairytale hip-hop), but jazzier. She doesn't have an album out yet (I think), but I'm buying as soon as I can.
http://earfarm.blogspot.com/2006/05/lily-allen.html
http://www.myspace.com/lilymusic

This is kinda slimy, but reasonable at the same time:

Always enter a conversations[sic] with a drink you are about to finish. If things don't go well, all you need to do is take one last gulp from your drink and excuse yourself to get another, never to return. If the conversation is going well, finish your drink and ask the other person if you can get them anything when you go to get another. They will appreciate the gesture even if they decline, and it impies[sic] that you'll be returning for a longer conversation.

An animation about a badger and some crows:
http://www.beam.tv/beamreels/play_clip.php?reel_file=QyqWJvFcVH&action=open

[Scott McClellan] wasn't put there to brief the White House press but to frustrate, and belittle it, and provoke journalists into discrediting themselves on TV. The very premise of a White House "communications" office gets in the way of understanding the strategy that prevailed from July 2003, when McClellan took over from Ari Fleischer, until this week, when he announced his resignation.

"They terrorize other government officials, and they're so secretive that their names aren't even revealed to a harmless federal employee directory. And they've helped ruin the country. Meet Dick Cheney's staff."

Ahmadinejad's Demons (bugmenot.com for logins)
An article is about the new President of Iran and the gruesome events leading up to his term.

William Stuntz's Misguided Theory of Privacy and Transparency
by Daniel J. Solove
Stuntz wrote an article arguing that privacy and transparency are bad for government and citizenry. This is Solove's counter-argument.

http://www.petefagerlin.com/
A bunch of cool "helmetcam" mountain-biking videos.

Paul Anka Spins Pop His Way with 'Rock Swings'
I ordered this CD, which should be silly/fun. The link has 3 tracks you can listen to (RealPlayer).

The Smiths. Live. 1985.
A whole concert you can download.

From http://www.overheardintheoffice.com/

2PM Mentoring Session
Tenured faculty guy: You know you really should start attending faculty meetings.
Non-tenured faculty guy: Why? I'm not allowed to vote on any departmental issues.
Tenured faculty guy: It would still be professionally instructive for you to attend.
Non-tenured faculty guy: But I'm already aware of the fact that this department is full of petulant egomaniacs.

Department of Mathematics
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Overheard by: mark mccombs

Firefly Squid

Another quote from the yesterday's article about Argentine food:

Dulce de leche is a culinary cry for help. It says "save us, we are baffled and alone in the kitchen, we don't know what to do for dessert and we're going to boil condensed milk and sugar together until help arrives".

This documentary looks good:
http://www.sonyclassics.com/whywefight/
The site uses flash, but has a bunch of video. Of particular interest are the clips from Eisenhower's Farewell Address.

Stompy-stompy tonight. Lots of food shopping tomorrow with some initial cooking in the evening. Lots of cooking Saturday and Sunday. Woo.

( Memes )

Just Say It's Sunny
TV weather reporters and climate change.
Also, it turns out the Weather Channel's executive vice president has a name I find silly.

View Source Chart Firefox Extension
It's a really nice extension that makes color coded scoping charts of html and other stuff you view with Firefox.

Procrastination

Procrastination is a complex psychological behavior that affects everyone to some degree or another. With some it can be a minor problem; with others it is a source of considerable stress and anxiety. Procrastination is only remotely related to time management, (procrastinators often know exactly what they should be doing, even if they cannot do it), which is why very detailed schedules usually are no help.

Chávez, Seeking Foreign Allies, Spends Billions
The Venezuelan President is spending huge sums of money on foreign aid.

I saw this from awillowweeping first, so she'll get the credit.
( Wikipedia Birthday Meme )

"People who live in retarded houses... shouldn't throw... stuff...."
--Mike Krahulik ("Gabe" of http://www.penny-arcade.com)
It made me laugh out loud when I heard it in the podcast. I now realize it's not as funny if you haven't heard it in context.

Dance Monkeys, Dance!
A "filmstrip" summarizing human civilization.

I'd like to visit this town at some point and look around:
Centralia, PA has been burning since 1962 and will burn for at least another 60 years.

Step 1: Put your Music Player Daemon or whatever on random.
Step 2: Post the first line from the first 20 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing the song.
Step 3: Post and let everyone you know guess what song and artist the lines come from
Step 4: Looking them up on Google or any other search engine is CHEATING

My music player (winamp) has no songs in the playlist right now. It has a list of ~20 internet radio stations in it. Most of the stations play rpm that has little/no lyrics. I went to one of the stations that plays songs with lyrics and listened long enough to fill the list. You will sense a theme once you recognize a few songs.

( Lyrics behind the cut. )

Eleven of the above twenty lyrics contain the song title. I think the two of the three easiest don't have the title in the lyric though.

I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction.
--President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Cecilia Fire Thunder

David Berlind linked to one of my flickr photos in his article about Improving Wikis with OPML. I feel vaguely famous now; it's cool.

You can download and listen to the discussion Lawrence Lessig led at Mashup Camp here:
http://www.mashupcamp.com/index.cgi?CreativeCommons
It's a really quiet mp3, but it's pretty clear if you turn up the volume. At 11:14 and 52:50 I ask questions (the recordist was sitting very near me, so I'm much louder than Lessig). The 52:50 question is the one I asked due to the argument with Dr. Holcomb last year.

I got "Beyond the Lines" by The 303s from one of the mp3 blogs I read. I liked it a lot. I was able to find a few other songs of theirs on their site and their label's site. I decided that I wanted the upcoming album, "Lines Of Parallel Minds". It's not supposed to hit stores until April 11th, so I preordered it. It arrived today, much earlier than expected. Sweet!

When I was watching "V for Vendetta" last week, I had a nagging feeling that John Hurt (Chancellor Adam Sutler) had played Winston Smith in one of the versions of 1984, which would be some ironic casting. I looked it up today. He did play Winston.

While on IMBD I found some good John Hurt quotes:

We are all racing towards death. No matter how many great, intellectual conclusions we draw during our lives, we know they're all only man-made, like God. I begin to wonder where it all leads. What can you do, except do what you can do as best you know how.

Someone once asked me, "Is there anything you regret?" and I said, "Everything!" Whatever you do, there was always a better choice.

My birthday being in a few weeks, if any of you want to get me something (none of you are under any obligation to buy me anything), you could get me this or one of the many things listed here. (I wasn't really serious about this, because although it seems really cool, it's unreasonably expensive)

To quote Pirsig, "The truth knocks on the door and we say, 'Go away. I’m looking for the truth'". In the race to clean out inboxes and scratch items off the to-do list, we miss chances to find the thing we’ve created the inbox and to-do list for. Like an American tourist in Europe racing from site to site with barely a moment to take a picture or talk to someone not on their tour bus, we’re trapped in a quantity mentality, despite our quality based desires.

I believe you do a disservice to consumers everywhere when you purchase iPods (or any of the other media players full of CRAP), but for those of you who have them, you might be interested in learning about the iPod diagnostic mode:
http://www.methodshop.com/mp3/ipodsupport/diagnosticmode/index.shtml

A cool video about making fun of video game characters:
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/03/22/abusing-in-game-characters-has-violent-repercussions/

Victoria Falls:
http://local.google.com/local?t=k&ll=-17.925516,25.856731&spn=0.01325,0.015042

"Throughout the Bush presidency there's been a very simple formula for defining what's news -- if Republicans say it's news, than it is. Democrats are largely irrelevant. (Yes, Democrats are the minority party, but being in the minority didn't stop reporters from camping outside GOP Congressional offices during the Clinton years, eagerly amplifying whatever allegation the caucus had hatched the night before.)"


A really slick social engineering attack, which hugely influenced the outcome of an important and popular college basketball game.

A woman anonymously gives birth to a child and surrenders the child to state authorities at a fire station:
http://community.livejournal.com/neph_politics/312251.html
I think that it is really good to have laws like the one the mother was protected by.

I found this link in at least three different places over the past few days.
15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense
Opponents of evolution want to make a place for creationism by tearing down real science, but their arguments don't hold up

adigitalpimp talks about his views on US policy and society. He's quite scathing. I pretty much agree with all of it.
http://community.livejournal.com/neph_politics/313425.html

Liberals don't breed enough, which could lead to an overwhelming worldwide conservative majority (which I see leading to another dark age).
http://community.livejournal.com/neph_politics/313743.html
Taking it from the point of view that civilization is an ongoing process and I don't matter, it's not too bad. Taking it from the point of view that my life is important to me (which it is), I see my later years being miserably lived/tortured in a prison due to my left-of-center beliefs. (That last line was over-the-top emo, but I'll leave it there because it is an interesting sentence, even if it is an exaggeration of the situation.)

Eight Easy Pieces: News You May Have Missed if You Rely on the Deficit Disorder Mainstream Media (ADD MSM)

Our drinking bottled water is really bad for the environment:
http://community.livejournal.com/liberal/2798886.html

A comic about Creative Commons:
http://www.law.duke.edu/cspd/comics/

I get lots of job posting emails from the NMT Career Services Office. I got one today with a subject that made me giggle:
Cold Fusion Developer Needed
I read down into it to discover that "Cold Fusion" is some sort of web development language or system I didn't know about. The subject, out of context, is still silly.

two_pi_r will be hosting a Movie Night at JPL this Friday. I may not be there because I may go to Albuquerque for cathyn's birthday party (he and anda are cool people I'd like to get to know better). Whether or not I'm at Movie Night, there will be some sort of dinner, a selection of movies to choose from and probably lots of cuddles all around.

I'm meeting with someone tonight for the room for rent, so I might have a tenant (who's already a friend of ours) who can move in immediately after primetimeelite moves out. He's been cranking his stuff out of the house pretty efficiently, so maybe she will be able to move in before the end of the month, assuming she does want the room.

WY (R) Senator escalates war on women's health care
http://community.livejournal.com/neph_politics/310913.html?nc=10&style=mine

The definitive rebuttal of data mining as a counterterrorism tool.
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/014248.html
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/03/data_mining_for.html
I think we should all send this to all of our senators and representatives and any NSA/CIA/FBI guys we know. Also, we should tell other people about it, encouraging them to do the same.

"China struck back Thursday against U.S. criticism of its human rights record by saying the United States is plagued by crime and racial inequity and is abusing detainees who are terror suspects."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-03-09-china-humanrights_x.htm

"Please try doing some or all of your travel by declining to show ID and report back about what happens to you."
http://www.papersplease.org/investigation.html

A blanket with sleeves is a great idea.
http://www.theslanket.com/product.php

A parenting advice forum with ranking and commenting not entirely unlike slashdot ranking and commenting:
http://www.minti.com/

I'll be able to talk with lalabob11 in about 45 minutes. Hopefully I'll have reason to move my default icon off of "Sad Jellaby" after we talk.

Food tonight will be weird. I've never sauteed cherries before. I think it'll be tasty though. I'll post the recipes if they come out good.

I didn't write up my Mashup Camp trip report yet, but I do hope to do it tomorrow. Today I watched some movies and loafed around until ridingstar's costume birthday party. I went as a Level 1 NetHack Tourist. I got a few photos that will be up tomorrow sometime.

I got a Flickr accout the other day. I'll be using both Flickr and LJ Scrapbook at least until the scrapbook is full. If you have a Flickr account, you should add me to your contacts list. My Flickr page is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/62248962@N00/


The past two nights have been making me think more about sensual/sexual physical contact with people. Long ago, I worked under the assumption that people didn't usually want to be touched and would make it very clear when they wanted to be. I basically had no contact until college due to this.

When I got to college, I met lonespark and we started dating. There was contact there, but that fit with my assumption that people would be very clear about touching. When we broke up in the summer of 2000, I realized that a girlfriend was unlikely to fall in my lap like that again and that I'd need to be actively trying if I wanted one.

I had tried in high school, but was never able to get anywhere, so I now knew that my approach needed to change. I was going to try harder to interpret more subtle signals and be more open to contact than I had been before. That halloween (2000), Cort and Val threw a big party. I went, gave a massage to someone I found attractive after chatting and interpreting her signals, and was then pretty much thrown out for having, in Val's words, "sexually asaulted" the girl. I was really down about things for a while. I also thought my interpretations must be all messed up since I had been incorrect with that girl.

I then didn't have much of any dating or physical contact with anyone until May 2002 when futonsulo and I met. We went out once and it was ok. She was then gone for the whole summer. In the fall, I sought her out during orientation weekend, we spent nearly all of our waking time together until classes started, and ended up dating until late spring 2004. During the entire period between 2000 and 2004 I was still confused about signals, and with the exception of futonsulo without any contact. My blogging started around the time we broke up, so my history with women since then is pretty well documented.

I am still bad at signals. Many of my current friends give signals whose interpretations don't match their following actions (e.g. I get the feeling that someone doesn't want to be touched/cuddled much by anyone and then minutes later is happily covered in people). I've learned not to trust my interpretations, but that leaves me with very little to work with (just direct/blunt statements which are very rarely spoken). The times when I've been the first-actor have almost all gone badly (the worst being the girl at that halloween party years ago), so I'm not really willing to initiate something unless there's already a clear understanding. I feel left out of a lot of the cuddling going on between my friends. Not being an initiator usually ends up leaving me out of the group (when it doesn't, it's usually as an edge "connected" only through lalabob11). I want to be/feel included, but I don't know how.

I know a few of you are be bothered by my wants and the crowds I have generally been spending time with. This post may have been kinda down, but the people I have regular contact with now have made me happier overall than at any other period in my life, so the naysayers can suck it.