Various Strange Ideas

Ultimate Arguments or It isn't want your willing to die for...

2011-10-31T08:51:00.000-07:00

This is copied from a whole 'nother world. I didn't write it, but I don't want to loose it and I'd like my kids to read it some day, so this seemed like the place to put it. It's... harsh... but honest and for the most part... I think it's true. I hope they never have arguments on the "ultimate" level, but if they do, I'd rather they had thought about this before hand.

The ultimate argument in the course of human events, whether personal, national, cultural, or political in nature has always been, "Do what I want or I will kill you."

Sucks huh? But the fact is it works like a charm and it doesn't have to be cool with anybody or fit anyplace into a neat world view or some fanciful Disneyland idea of a just universe. The meek may inherit the earth, but only after the strong have moved elsewhere and don't want it any more. Yeah, it's like that and it's always been like that. The pen is only mightier than the sword when the pen can convince a whole lot of swords to stand behind him.

When a person or culture approaches you, the opposition, with the commitment, willingness, and ability to use lethal force to get something done, and you do not have an equal or greater ability and willingness to respond in kind, then you do what they say or you die. Shake and spin and dance and bleat however you like, this has not and will not change. It is human history.

I bring all this up because I lately hear a lot of people talking about what they are willing to die for, as if this is somehow the ultimate sacrifice. Whether six feet of Arlington, or a green hippie funeral with the Grateful Dead playing in the background, we all get there eventually. We all end up dead whether we ever fought a battle, or took up a cause, or did anything meaningful with our time on this rock to make a difference about anything. Death is not a moral sacrifice, it is a certainty. We all have a ticket on that bus and we will all one day climb aboard whether we were ever committed to anything in our whole fucking lives or not. We may postpone it and few actually seek it, but we all get death in the end.

Killing, on the other hand, is a choice. You can easily go from one end of a human lifespan to the other without killing anyone at all. Most people manage to do it. At whatever point in life it occurs it requires an action and it requires a level of commitment. An enemy can make you dead, they cannot make you kill. People who die at the hands of others usually did not choose to do so. The people who killed them were the ones that made the choice and committed to a course of action.

The thing I notice is that when the entity that is willing to kill meets the entity that is only willing to die there isn't much difficulty in working out who gets to go home that night and fuck the prom queen. The meek in most cases inherit however much of the earth it takes to cover them up and not much more.

General George Patton, who was undeniably a crazed bloodthirsty son of a bitch, pointed out in a famous speech that you don't win by dying for your country. You win by making the other silly son of a bitch die for his country. Yes, not a pretty paradigm but it works. It isn't nice and it isn't cool and we don't get to sit around weaving hemp jewelry and waving a sign on a stick while we do it. Still I'd have to say it's fairly clear to me. If you tell me "I am ready to die for my beliefs" and your oppositions tells me "I am ready to kill for my beliefs" I may not be able to tell you who is right, but I can damn sure tell you who will be left.

When measuring a level of commitment I don't look at what people are willing to die for. Lots of people are willing to risk death rather than quit smoking, dying is something we all have to do eventually. When I am measuring a level of commitment I always ask "what are you willing to kill for?" In the end the measure of total commitment to an objective is not what I might give my life in pursuit of, but rather what I would take someone else's life in pursuit of.

Being green IS an American value... we've just forgotten.

2011-08-16T14:29:00.000-07:00

Copied and edited from an ageist rant... less most of the ageism, plus some technical points and clarifications. Blame Russell.

Back then, in the 1950's and 60's in America, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled; without being crushed, melted, and reformed, which costs more than washing.

Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. A lot of that clothing got made. Things got fixed, and you could fix them because they were made to be fixed.

http://www.ifixit.com/Guide

We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. We valued our appliances, tools, and cars and we took good care of them... and they lasted.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

- The VW Bug, best selling car of /all time/ was massively popular then and got better than 30 miles per gallon, 36mpg was the stated value!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Beetle

- The Model A ford (and there were a lot of them still on the road in 1950) got 25 to 30 miles per gallon. Of course, it was a death trap, and had a top speed (if you were crazy) of 65 mph.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_A_(1927%E2%80%931931)#Features

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. err... actually, it turns out that a high mpg car is probably greener than mass transit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_efficiency_in_transportation#US_Passenger_transportation

Even a Camry (rated at 28mpg) gets very close to beating the bus on average. Rail is about twice as efficient as a car, IF the train happens to go where you need it. But still, Bikes beat everything but walking, and keep you in shape... if the cars don't kill you.

http://www.pietzo.com/storage/downloads/Pietzo_LCAwhitepaper.pdf

Locally grown food was the rule rather than the exception. In most metropolitan areas, the grocery van (and the milk, and bread and everything else) came to your house once or twice a week, serving everyone in the neighborhood in ONE trip, instead of each person driving to a different store at different times.

http://antiqueshoppefl.com/articles/Jan11/milkcans0111.pdf

In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us.

Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

MIT Professor Walter Lewin (a /rock star/ of physics lectures) says that the energy the average American consumes today "... is the equivalent of having 100 slaves working for me like dogs 12 hours a day"

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-01-physics-i-classical-mechanics-fall-1999/video-lectures/lecture-14/

We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Your clothes dryer puts about 4.4 pounds of carbon into the air /every single load/.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clothes_dryer#Environmental_impact

Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw-away kind.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaper#Debate There are pluses and minus either way, but in a multi-child family, with a diaper washing service, cloth diapers do use less energy, if more water.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. Kids read comics and books and they played outside. Remember outside kids? It's that thing that goes by the windows of your car. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances.

When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water.

Ok, look... I'm not saying we should go back to the 1950's in every way. We've made a lot of progress since then: Women are treated a LITTLE better... and now have the opportunity to work all day and THEN "make" dinner and "care" for the kids and husband. Safety is much improved; these days you can be a complete idiot and yet survive. Corporations are well regulated which prevents pollution and economic collapse. And I do think life is more open now, more connected and more examined. Our technology is worlds ahead of what it was; the intertubes give us access to information we don't need almost as fast as we ignore it.

But we tossed the baby out with the bath water. Frugality, and with it sustainability, went into the ditch. We got lazy, fat, and stupid. Looking back at what was /right/ in the 1950's might do us some good today.

http://www.pathtofreedom.com

Avoiding unwanted IO redirection after echo in command line scripting.

2011-03-14T16:22:00.000-07:00

If you happen to work with computers and you are a programmer or other power user, you may have cause to work with command line scripts or, as they used to be called, batch files. This little tidbit applies to XP, Vista, 2k8, and probably Windows 7, and it may even apply to some of the *nix command prompt / bash / things as well. But I've never, in years and years of doing this seen it documented (as an error) or seen the workaround.

Try this command at the prompt:

echo test 2>test.txt

One might expect to see nothing on the console and then if you entered:

type test.txt

you might expect to see "test 2"

In fact, you see "test" on the console right after the echo and text.txt is empty!

What happened? The 2> is redirecting any error messages from echo test to the file test.txt. It is being interpreted as a stderr redirect and that leaves no > to send "test" into the file. Experienced programmers won't be shocked by that, although I expect you might be tripped up by it as I was. In my case, I was using a web script to build a batch file that a user could download and execute after filling out a form on the web page; it's an easy / tricky way to build a "program" on the fly which is customized by the user. Some of the user input would end up being echoed into a file on the local machine. When the users happened to enter anything ending with a number, it caused the script to fail... something I didn't see comming because I didn't realze what they would enter.

Now, how to avoid it? LOL this one is what surprised me:

(echo test 2)>test.txt

Can you believe it? That actually works! So the moral of the story is that if you are going to be echoing things to a file, you should probably enclose all of those echo commands in parenthesis as a habit.

Anyway, I was just amazed to have learned that little bit after all these years, and thought I should share it incase someone else finds it useful. Yeah... right.

Personal Freedom

2011-01-17T13:46:00.000-08:00

If freedom is freedom of choice, then we are more free in a huge mega super market on the aisle with hundreds of different types of cereal, or tampons, or whatever.

If freedom is freedom of time to our selves, then we are more free in Trader Joes or the corner 7-eleven with one type of toilet paper and one type of cat litter.

Your freedom to swing your arm stops where my nose begins but my freedom to kill you depends on my countries leaders deciding what evil you are up to, and our incompetence at finding any better way of stopping you from doing harm to us and ours. The lines are not always clear, but they are crystalline in a time of action, following orders, executing the protocol, performing the function we have practiced for again and again. Persons defending personal freedom.

When I joined the Navy, my father asked me how I could give up my freedom. I said I was happy to give up my freedom to go hungry, to be without medical care, and my freedom to find a way to support my fiancé… which I had not found any way to do before I talked to a recruiter. She was free to leave me after I joined.

When I was in the Navy, I knew when I was free (on leave) and when I was not (on duty) and I could manage both; enjoy either. Now, as a “bread winner” I am never free of the drive to earn more, and guilt follows every moment away from my pursuit of the dollar. Abuse victims find freedom from the abuse in their minds, but there is no freedom from our own tyranny.

It’s been said that a King has more freedom than a slave and then it’s been said that a slave has more freedom than a king.

It’s a silly little word, with no apparent meaning. And yet I’ve fought for it, without understanding; and comprehend it less with each passing day. It eludes me as I age. Will I eventually loose my freedom to live? Or find freedom some day in death?

Am I free to stop thinking about this non-sense and get back to work?

The $50 lesson

2010-12-27T15:47:00.000-08:00

A good friend of mine (who happens to be a conservative republican) send this email to all his friends, wisely using bcc for the recipients:

The $50 Lesson

I recently asked my friends' little girl what she wanted to be when she grows up.

She said she wanted to be President of the United States .

Both of her parents, liberal Democrats, were standing there.

So I asked her, "If you were President, what would be the first thing you would do?"

She replied, "I'd give food and houses to all the homeless people.."

Her parents beamed.

"Wow...what a worthy goal," I told her.

"But you don't have to wait until you're President to do that.

You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and sweep my driveway, and I'll pay you $50.

Then I'll take you over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward food and a new house."

She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, "Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50?"

I said, "Welcome to the Republican Party."

...............Her parents still aren't speaking to me................

And here is my reply:

I like you (a lot actually) and I appreciate what you are trying to say here, but I find myself painfully conflicted and I wish to respond in a way that is meant to get the conflict off my chest and also to try to help you understand my position, and how I see the world. E.g. My version of the truth. I hope you will not take offence, as none is meant and that you will simply see my reply here as a friendly challenge.

Although I generally agree with the idea of the post, I see two logical fallacies, to which I would enjoy hearing your reply:

1. This assumes the homeless person is capable of performing the work. Besides the mental health issues that could easily prevent the average (long term) homeless person from knowing /how/ to do the work, there are issues of physical strength and logistics which could also stand in the way. The most obvious of these is how does the homeless person get to the work place?

2. You also assume that anyone would be willing to employ a homeless person even if they could possibly do the work. Frankly, that is the fallacy I find most annoying about this. One the one hand, republicans will say "oh, the homeless should just work to earn a living" when in reality, those same republicans would NEVER hire a homeless person to do any work... no work at all... period. Ever.

So let me challenge you to answer those two fallacies to the same list of people to whom you sent this first email, and further, let me challenge you to hire a homeless person to do ANY work AT ALL!

Until you have risen to either of those challenges, I call hypocrite.

Remember, your real friends are the ones who will, hopefully politely, tell you when they think you are wrong. I could just forget about it, or ask you to simply not send me republican based emails, but I enjoy debate, and I like to try to bring everyone, myself included, to a middle ground.

I hope you don’t mind that.

Yes, we will all die, but HOW? When? And how long can we avoid it?

2010-12-27T15:44:00.000-08:00

The National Safety Council has released it's 2010 list of "what's gonna get yah" based on data from the 2006 census and health statistics:
http://www.nsc.org/news_resources/Documents/nscInjuryFacts2011_037.pdf

So here is the break down:

0. Dying from Death. You have a 1:1 chance of dying from something. Get used to the idea. Your only hope is putting it off as long as possible.

1. Heart Disease will take 1 in 6 of us. Tick Tock. It's more common in Women than most people think. There are lots of simple things you can do to reduce your risk of dying this way:
http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/Conditions/HeartAttack/PreventionTreatmentofHeartAttack/Lifestyle-Changes_UCM_303934_Article.jsp

2. Cancer, The Big C, is a close second, taking 1 of every 7 of us. Eat organic, avoid irritants, injury, the sun, and the amazing number of products containing possible carcinogens.
http://cancer.about.com/od/causes/tp/topreventcancer.htm

3. Stroke gets 1 in 28. Note that stroke (blood not flowing) is different than heart disease (blood not pumping). Avoid long periods of not moving followed by sudden activity, keep regular aspirin on hand.
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/stroke/preventing_stroke.htm

Which brings us to my personal favorite, which is UP this year from 5 to 4:

4. Motor-vehicle Accidents kills 1 out of every 85 of us. Think about that. If you love 85 people, one of them is going to die on the roads at some point. I personally know 2 people already who died in cars, but lucky for me, I didn't love either of them. The first spun out on "black" ice in a car going WAY too fast on a windy road in Oregon and was hit by a flat bed truck. They had just passed our school bus and all us kids got to see a good lesson on the consequences of unsafe driving. Jay was an ass, but it was still sad that he died. The second was my old bosses daughter... he was also an ass, but no one deserves to loose a daughter. Actually, technically, she wasn't killed; but brain dead is dead in my book. They held on to her body for a while before they unplugged her.

Airplanes kill 1 in 5,862, Lightning and earthquakes are down in the 1 in 100,000 range. Terrorism doesn't even make the list this year. It was in the 600,000's last time if I remember correctly.

One terrorist attack changed our laws, personal freedoms, and way of looking at the world forever. 9/11 killed less than 3,000 people. About 60,000 people die on the roads every single year. More than 40,000 per year on the freeways and then an unknown additional number on surface streets. And unlike heart attack, cancer, and stroke, cars kill young people more often than old.

Have any of us checked out any of these sites?
http://www.safercar.gov/
http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/
http://www.nhtsa.gov/

You may notice a bias in those .gov websites: They concentrate on the behavior of the driver, and give second place to the safety of cars. Why? Industry pressure? Pocket Politicians? Perhaps; but I think the truth is more interesting: As cars become safer, drivers adapt and take greater risks, eliminating the life saving effect of the industry regulations. Don't agree? Ok, but read these before you decide:
http://www.be.wvu.edu/divecon/econ/sobel/NASCAR/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed#.22The_Peltzman_Effect.22

Guess what? Despite all the improvements in car safety since the '60s, the death rate has stayed within a percent of the current number! When it comes right down to it, the 4th biggest killer in our country is:

YOU (and me)

...when we drive.

Please consider these possibilities:

1. Try to find a job that allows you to telecommute or just work from home. It's green, it's frugal, it's safer. It took me 10 years of working on my boss to do it, but I finally got to telecommute, and he is as happy with it as I am.

2. On the freeway, don't bunch up with the other cars; find the empty space between the lemming packs and stay as far away from the other cars as you can. Leave more space in front and look for the "escape routes" you can aim for to avoid a collision. If someone tailgates, just speed up or move over if it's safe, otherwise tap your brakes three times; the goal is space, not enforcement or "teaching anyone a lesson".

3. Driving is a full occupation time. No talking, texting, eating, primping, dreaming, or raging. (yes, I know I'm a hypocrite) To help stay focused, make a game out of playing "what if" and thinking about your response to unexpected dangers. Be afraid every time you drive. You should be.

4. Mass transit is many times safer than individual commuting. Take a train, bus, etc... Even in California, it can be done. The extra walking is healthy.
http://maps.google.com/help/maps/transit/index.html

I'm preaching to myself as much as anyone else here... I hope we listen.

Appreciation of Beauty, and why I can't.

2010-10-24T11:35:00.000-07:00

A friend wrote: "I find people to be incredibly physically beautiful. I never look at someone and think, "they should change X or Y physical aspect of themselves." I truly accept and, in fact, adore people's "imperfections." Yet I was, since about age 12 or so, horrified by my own physical appearance - enough to surgically alter it. "

I am also always more impressed with people than I am with myself and apparently more than they are impressed with themselves. Part of the problem (I think) is that we (especially men) really aren't allow to go around telling others we think they are attractive. People assume we mean sexually attractive, even when we simply mean they are lovely.

Before Wes Pearson died, Remy and I were watching him play the piano... And I was struck by how absolutely, amazingly, perfectly physically beautiful his old gnarled fingers were. They were so precisely made for playing that piano. I could tell people how much I loved watching his hands because no one would confuse my statement. But I can't tell a married women that I think her lips are stunning or that her hair is wonderful to watch. I for damn sure am not allowed to comment on how pretty some young women or girl seems to be.

I sometimes think if this underlying, dark, horrible fear of sexual molest, abuse, rape, etc... could be "magically" removed, then we could share our actual appreciation of one another and after being told a thousand times that we are attractive, we might come to believe it ourselves. Instead, we each see others as attractive, and never believe that we are ourselves. Women, especially, come to believe that they are only appreciated for the possibility of sexually gratifying that man who is smiling at them. I'm not saying men aren't motivated to seek sexual gratification; we most certainly are, or at least I am. But I am not motivated ONLY by that... and the part of me that can freely appreciate beauty without selfish motive is absolutely cut off by others fear of the other part of me. And I don't discount the need for that fear. It has been my experience that about half the women who have come to trust me have admitted they were molested or raped or abused sexually at some point in their lives. They have every right to be afraid.

It is... unbearably sad to me.

Fear of the Unknown, Authority, God, and other horrors and how Agnosticism helps with it all.

2010-07-27T09:10:00.000-07:00

The premise of this presentation is that fear of the unknown is a powerfully damaging force in our world, and that the practice of agnosticism, practicing agnosticism, helps us deal with that fear in a positive way.

I am an unapologetic supporter of agnosticism over all other religious positions; I need nothing more. But in keeping with the UU idea that we can mix and match religious ideas to meet everyone’s needs; I would suggest that most would benefit from a healthy dose of agnostic candor.

Definitions

Ever since the tower of babble (apparently) as noted by Lewis Carroll, words only mean what each of us says they mean, so please allow me to define some words in my own way, and I beg you to remember and apply that definition for the course of this presentation:

· By "agnostic" I mean one who does not believe it is possible to know the unknowable, the supernatural, the mind of god. The agnostic says “there may or may not be a god, or anything else supernatural, I don’t know, I don’t claim to know, and I don’t see how anyone can claim to know but maybe they can: I’m not sure.” The goal of my practice of agnosticism is to become more comfortable with not knowing.

· By “atheist” I mean one who claims to know that there is no God. The atheist says: “All the available evidence points to there being no god at all, and so that is what I believe.”

· By “belief” I mean those things we hold true, but which are difficult to prove, and which guide our lives and actions.

When Beliefs go Bad.
Beliefs are scary. The land of belief is a dangerous place, where the unstoppable force of the unknown meets the immovable objectification of that which we believe. The actions of any person or group are driven by their beliefs. Hero or villain, whistle blower or corrupt leader, feminist or rapist, force of volunteers or angry lynch mob. In each case, they are doing the same thing: That which they believe to be the right thing to do. The most heinous actions ever taken, are in complete agreement with the beliefs of the people behind them.

Villains Are People Too
Few people take the time to understand the point of view of a villain, but they always have a point of view, and it is always one that is perfectly right to them. The manifesto of the unibomber is really worth reading; it makes a very solid argument against technology, if not for the remote killing of those who teach it. It is obvious that Ted Kaczynski truly believed he was doing his part to save the world. Hitler firmly believed that the world would be better off without Jews. They, in their own minds, believed they were doing the best possible work for all humanity. Their beliefs led them to become the horrors they were.

How Much Belief Can We Afford?
Of course, we need beliefs; we must do something and we can’t always know for sure just what to do, so we must follow our beliefs. And beliefs can lead people to do things every bit as wonderful as others are horrible. But in asking the question of which beliefs to follow, I think we may fall into the trap of seeing that as the only question when there is actually another question of even greater importance: How sure are we that any given belief is right? Yes, pick a belief, but also decide how strongly to believe it.

Under WHOS God?
I hear people say “there is only one god” and “you will have no other gods before god” or that their religion will overcome all others. Non-religious people may believe in a leader "Obama will save us" or a tradition which guides their daily life. Ok, fine, I’ve got no problem with people believing that they are right and others are wrong. I also believe that my beliefs are right, and differing beliefs are wrong: If I did not think that my beliefs where right, I would have changed my beliefs to the ones I thought are right and again, believed that I was right. Just like standards, the wonderful thing about beliefs is that there are so many to choose from. The problem comes with people holding their beliefs so strongly that they are unable to change them when reality shows them to be wrong.

Fact Over Belief

And I will not say that there is anything generally wrong with continuing to believe what we have believed, or what we are taught to believe, or what reason leads us to believe... but to cling to these when our experiences clearly show our beliefs to be wrong, in the face of conflicting fact... to hold to a belief based on the unknowable even in the face of what we see around us, this is truly frightening.

She Chose Her Belief Over Her Precious Baby

There is a girl, about 14, who is living with her Grandmother because her mother is dead. I’ve talked to both of them several times, and they have told me the story of this late mother. Before the mother died, the entire family disowned her, and her husband left her, and the grandmother would not take her back, because she came out as a bi-sexual. All of them, including her own mother, disowned the mother for being bi because her church told them to believe, and they had always believed, and it seemed to them reasonable to believe that bisexuality was evil. Now… this is a grandmother, faced with a choice between her religious beliefs, what she trusts that her pastor knows from the mind of god, and the daughter she raised from a baby. The grandmother was a stay at home mom; as a girl, the mother attended a school run by the church, and spent most all afternoons and evenings at home because she was shy and introverted. No mother could say she know her daughter less well than this grandmother knew her daughter. Yet she rejected the reality of the goodness of the person she had raised, in favor of the beliefs of her second hand knowledge of the unknowable mind of god. She looked at the evidence of her good upbringing, of her goodness and believed she was evil despite that.

What Will You Believe?
The idea of belief without evidence, in the face of evidence to the contrary scares the living crap out of me. If you are willing to believe in heaven and hell because your pastor tells you they exist, are you also willing to believe in WMD's because the President tells you they exist? If you are willing to believe the devil is real simply because the evangelist and your mommy warned you about him, are you willing to believe that, I don’t know… that I'm a child molester because a rumor spreads out of control?

Dale Akiki And Why I Don't Eat At Jack In The Box
Does the name Dale Akiki mean anything to you? Mr. Akiki was a simple man, a simple minded man, with a slight deformity which made him appear strange to others. He was a kind, loving, caring person, as are many uncomplicated people. He and his wife volunteered as babysitters at the Faith Chapel church in Spring Valley, CA. A rumor was started against him… and it grew… the former CEO of Jack in the Box, whose children attended, pressured the DA in office at that time to prosecute despite a complete lack of any physical evidence. It was just a funny story that a little boy told when his mommy asked him what they did in child care after his fist day with Mr. Akiki. After 2.5 years in jail and the longest trial in SD county history, 7.5 months, he was acquitted. His life was destroyed. The CEO of Jack in the Box went on to believe that his meat was just fine and he killed 8 customers. Food poising. He lost his job. The DA went on to believe he could buy a re-election. He lost his job too. Dale still loves people, kids, and his wife who stood with him through it all. He’s afraid to leave his home.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_Chapel_Church_ritual_abuse_case

Belief Conquers Fear
Why do people need to believe so strongly? Well, belief conquers fear. And our greatest fear is fear of the unknown. I certainly understand being afraid of the unknown. I’m scared to death of not knowing; will I keep my job? Will I be able to provide for my family? Will we find a way to keep our home? Not knowing is a mind bending fear.

Gods Plan
I hear people say: “I believe there is a god and god has a plan for me and if I follow that plan, everything will be all-right” and I don’t blame them at all for believing that. If it comforts, so be it.

The Mind Of God
But the tricky part comes from trying to follow gods plan. To follow the plan, you have to know it, and if god wrote the plan, then knowing the plan means knowing a little part of the mind of god. And I don’t see how anyone can claim to do that. More likely, those who claim to know the plan, are following a plan that someone else heard second hand from the mind of god, actually… a plan that was written down by some one a long time ago who says they talked to god. Ok, that’s fine, I don’t mind if they follow that plan. I’ve read it, it actually seems pretty good in most places (with a few notable exceptions^). But then they listen to people who interpret that plan, people who say god talked to them and I think about Joan of Arc.

Joan of Arc
Joan heard voices. They told her to do things. She thought it was the voice of god. Others believed her. They were desperate to hear from someone who had heard from god. They were desperate to know the plan. They were afraid of not knowing. They were pretty sure they, themselves didn’t know, but they were ready to believe that a simple peasant did know. Maybe she did know… maybe she was schizophrenic… but an entire nation followed her into 24 more years of bloody war.

I Don't Know
We live with a fear of letting go of the idea that we, or anyone else, can ever really know the mind of god, or how the universe completely works, or what will happen to us. From my point of view, Atheists are just as religious as all the others are because they claim to know there is no god. I understand how scary it is to admit that we simply don't know one way or the other. Those who claim to know, and yet cannot explain it to me in a way I can understand, are either deluded or far more intelligent and advanced than I am. Again, I have no way of knowing! Agnostics (again, my definition) have simply come to accept not knowing, but we understand that this isn't desirable or welcomed.

You Don't Know

I fear challenging others to admit they do not know. We challenge the knowledge of others in so many ways and that sometimes provokes hostile reactions. We challenge the people who "know" that the sign in the Huston shop window was about honoring a 9/11 hijaker.
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/photos/martyr.asp

We challenge the people who "know" that climate change is absolutely caused by carbon emissions OR that it is absolutely NOT caused by carbon emissions. We challenge people who "know" what the RIGHT thing to do is. Most of all, we point out that it is the ultimate hubris for ANYONE to claim to know the mind of God. Asking people to give up the comfort of "knowing" the unknowable requires bravery.

Your Leaders Don't Know Either

I fear that people are unwilling to question authority because they (sometimes unreasonably) expect those leaders to know the unknowable when they do not. This unwillingness to question authority, due, we fear, to the misplaced belief that the leaders know "all", has lead to some of the most horrific episodes in human history. (Nazi officers "just following orders" while exterminating the jews, etc...).

Stanley Milgram Didn't Know (but people still killed for him)
The extreme willingness to follow leaders was studied by Stanley Milgram and documented in his book "Obedience to Authority". From his study, we learned, much to our shock and horror, that more than half of the people in society are perfectly willing to kill another human being when directed by an authority figure. I fear that this willingness to blindly follow is based in a fear of the unknown causing a dependence or expectation that others know better. If we could embrace the unknown, we may increase our ability to question the knowledge of others. When the fear of doing wrong is greater than the fear of not knowing, we can question authority.

Who Will We Kill For?

I fear that leaders constantly use the human fear of the unknown to bring society to the goals and benefit of those leaders at the cost of the society:

Hermann Goering, Hitlers Reich-Marshal on trial at Nuremburg after WWII said:

"Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along, whether it is democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country"

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

Agnostics Are Used To The Unknown
Agnostics, although still scared to death of many other things, seem less affected by fear of the unknown. It often comes due to an unwillingness to reject logical thinking or to reason in advance of the facts; a determination to accept the obvious conclusions of a logical, reasoned approach to the world despite the fear that accompanies this form. Our acceptance of, and dependence on logic, of the value of clear and reasonable thought, forces us to deal with our fears. This is the scientific method, often claimed by the atheists, but which, at it’s best, is based on theories not absolutes; on correlations and probabilities never on claiming to know the unknowable. It is the deepest tenant of science than when the evidence fails to support the commonly held theory, and another theory is advanced which better fits the evidence, we change our minds.

Global Warming Is Probable, NOT Certain
Global warming is caused by human activity with a /probability/ of 85 % according to scientists. That means there is a 15% chance, in the IPCC’s own estimation, that it may NOT be caused by human activity. Of course, in this case, wouldn’t it be good to err on the side of caution? But let us not sweep away the pain of those who will be injured by radical changes in our use of fossile fuels; let us do those things we can which do not cause others great damage.

Oh, Whatever Should We Do?
I think there is a link between a peoples ability to accept matters on faith, without proof; as in religious beliefs and their desire to believe that something is in charge and that they can understand the will of that something. When it comes to climate issues, people are desperate to believe that someone understands this and can say with authority what should be done.

As an Agnostic, I have worked long and hard to accept the possibility of failure, of being wrong, of NOT knowing, of the universe being too complex for anyone to understand... It is the hight of hubris to assume any human knows the mind of God OR the workings of the universe.

Do Not Meddle In The Affairs Of Dragons...

And when you don't know what effect you will have, I feel it best to err on the side of having very small effect. So that is all I'm willing to argue with regard to climate changes. The earth has trundled along for ages unknown without us so let us pretend we aren't here and hope it will continue that way.

Teach Thought Over Belief

I respect the right of everyone to find their own way, to choose their own beliefs. But I fear that remaining silent will lead our children to question the value of human thought vs human belief and to be unwilling to accept the idea of not knowing which may lead us to a future society that fails to question assumptions, to question leadership, or to think for its self.

Reason Over Bliss

It scared me that there has been a very positive reaction to the story of Jill Bolte Taylor, an agnostic and a brilliant scientist who studied the brain and then suffered a massive hemorrhage in her own brain. She now tours the world, saying that her brain damage allowed her to feel connected to the rest of the world, to feel interdependent, and that this point of view would lead to a peaceful future. I should be clear: I have no concern with what Ms. Taylor says, it is how her words are taken that concerns me. I’ve seen comments from people saying that they wish they could have a stroke in order to feel like she does.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyyjU8fzEYU (summary: Brilliant agnostic suffers brain damage and develops spirituality.) Show a frightening trend towards valuing a connection to the unknowable over even a fully functional brain.

Or Is Ignorance Bliss?
I fear that ignorance might be bliss... because I refuse to claim to know the unknowable.

How can we regulate companies when we can't regulate ourselves?

2010-02-19T09:11:00.000-08:00

I completely fail to understand how anyone can say that corporations are not accountable to us… Every single dime they have, every bit of power they exert is given them by the sale of their products. We have complete control over corporations based on what products we choose to purchase. The only exception to that, corporate welfare, is a relatively minor source of income for them, but one that I agree should be cut off, if possible. Read about Farmer Percy to see how hard that will be.

The problem is one of educating the people, not of regulating the companies. WE need to be reformed… the companies will follow our dollars like puppies after mothers’ milk. If you want to talk about how to effectively re-train the poor spending habits Americans are exhibiting, I will be right there with you, but regulating the corporations is shifting the blame; unnecessary and ineffective.

The stated and obvious goal of every corporation is to turn a profit. As long as they can do that though immoral means, they will continue to do it. We have no hope of regulating morals in corporate actions except though our purchasing decisions. "As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it." Dick Cavett.

The cigarette companies ran wild until the public was educated effectively on the cost of smoking. Not by a little warning label introduced by regulation, but by a series of TV and billboard ads paid for by health care organizations that were being financially damaged by the costs of treating lung cancer. Remember those? The woman talking through her throat? The guy who killed his wife with second hand smoke? "Mind if I smoke? Care if I die?"

Those ads, and the backlash to Joe Camel, shifted public opinion and vastly reduced the power and influence of those companies. The more recent ads, paid for by the companies themselves due to regulation, have been FAR less effective; less hard hitting. If people stopped buying cigarettes, they would be gone, but as long as people want to use nicotine as a drug, and damage their lungs, who are we to tell them they can’t? Or to prevent a company from supplying them what they ask for?

In the same way, if people accept food grown NOT locally and organically but instead GMO, insecticide soaked, in factory farms, who are we to outlaw that?

If people want to purchase cheap shoes or clothing made by exploited workers under inhuman conditions, how can we change the morals of the producer, if we can’t even change the morals of the purchaser? Get people to watch this show:
http://planetgreen.discovery.com/tv/blood-sweat-tshirts/ if you want to make a difference.

A population of sheep must begat a government of wolves; and so too idiot consumers fuel exploitive corporations.

Another "Beautiful Mind": Nikola Tesla

2010-01-27T09:29:00.000-08:00

Another "Beautiful Mind": The one man who invented our power grid, AC, generators, the electric motor, radio, remote control, neon signs, hydraulics, and so on. He controlled his tortured mind by force of will and used it to change our world in so many positive ways. Yet we remember his nemesis, Thomas Edison, who tortured animals trying to stop the AC power grid, and forget the real wizard: Nikola Tesla. The clip below is accurate, with one clarification: wireless power would be free in the sense that anyone could tap into it, not that it was "free energy". Worth a few minutes for those who want "the rest of the story"

Managing wiki spam

2010-01-26T09:17:00.000-08:00

I have a few suggestions for handling wiki spam:

First, each page edit should send an email or other notification to the owner of that page. This assumes that each page is “owned” or managed by a page editor. The wiki owner is the default editor for each page.

Second, the ability to have content on a page that is “private” or marked in some way that allows it to be removed from page before it is shown to anyone other than the author. If the author is not registered, the source IP address is used.

Any content posted by an unregistered user is forced to be private to that user, and a notification is sent to the page owner. In the notification is a single, simple link that allows them to publish (remove the private mark) or delete (revert) that edit.

Combined with VERY relaxed spam blocking rules which exist only to automatically block the very worst spam and reduce the page editors work load, this allows users to always post and instantly see the result without the stifling need for every user to register, and still prevents spam from reaching the general public with minimal effort on the part of the host/page editors.

I’ve been using this system for years and it works VERY well for me. Real users are more likely to contribute, false positives are almost eliminated, and no spam gets through. I’ve found that ANY extra effort required by real users to prove they are not spamming reduces participation unacceptably.

I also like having a little form at the bottom of each page for users to quickly append a comment without editing the entire page, as it also seems to increase participation.

The Non-permanence of Arrangements

2009-11-06T09:10:00.001-08:00

http://xkcd.com/659/

Live it while you got it! Be ready to let it go.

Civilization Collapsed After Cutting Key Trees: Discovery News

2009-11-02T16:01:00.001-08:00

Civilization Collapsed After Cutting Key Trees: Discovery News

Just like at Eater Island, the natives destroyed their ecosystem and perished from the face of the earth. Maybe it would be a good idea to have a small footprint on our Mother?

Danny boy

2009-10-31T17:09:00.000-07:00

"Danny Boy" is one of the most hauntingly beautiful songs ever written. If you've heard it, you were moved. You’ve probably heard it sung by a women or a man with an Irish lilt, and a voice so lovely that everything around just... stops. The sound is stunning, but I wonder if you’ve really heard the words.

The melody is Irish, but the words were written, not by an Irishman, but by an English lawyer and writer, Frederick Edward Weatherly in 1910, just after the death of his father. Mr. Weatherly had no roots in Irish music, the original version of “Danny Boy” was actually set to a completely different tune. His sister, Margaret, from America, heard "A Londonderry Air" from Irish immigrants and sent it to Weatherly who found that it fit the words of "Danny Boy" with minor adjustment. The current version of the song was published in 1913, the year before the start of World War One.

It has been said that the song was about Irish youth being marched off by the pipers to fight the Brits, or perhaps immigrating to the new world. But the bagpipes are played by many people in England (Irish, Scottish, and English alike) at important events; Weatherly heard them at his father’s funeral; he later said "there is nothing of the rebel song in it, and no note of bloodshed". There is no hint in the words of Danny being in danger.

Where is Danny going then? What takes our children from us? Not race, not wars, not resettlement, not anything we can hope to avoid; but instead the hopeless end, age, the passing of time, and the cycle of life. At some point the children must go on without us, as we have gone on without our own dear mothers and fathers:

Oh Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side
The summer's gone, and all the roses falling
'Tis you, 'tis you must go and I must bide
But come ye back when summer's in the meadow
Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow
'Tis I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow
Oh Danny Boy, oh Danny Boy, I love you so
And when ye come, and all the flowers are dying
And I am dead, as dead I well may be
Ye'll come and find the place where I am lying
And kneel and say an Ave' there for me
And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me
And all my grave shall warmer, sweeter be
For you shall bend and tell me that you love me
And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me

Goodnight: A dark ode to the music of Nora Jones

2009-09-22T22:37:00.000-07:00

Attention Safety Police: I am in NO WAY suicidal, just a bit old and tired at times. Trying to come to terms with the inevitable. Anyway:

Goodnight: A dark ode to the music of Nora Jones

As I ready for my bed,
my children, they have all been fed,
and fed and fed and fed again,
and grown to women and to men
Learned to love and yet be strong
And never cry; lifes circle wrong
Taught to eat and when to kill...
I know not if they will
For now my blankets call to me,
such warmth and safety promised free.
A little nap: Now or forever?
Would choices end? My burden sever?
Deaths soft, sweet voice, it sings to me.
Her big brown eyes, dark as can be.
My Nora causes me no fright
'Come away with me, in the night'

Yea! Our heath care is ranked #37 in the world

2009-09-11T17:06:00.000-07:00

Having said that, all the health care reforms I've seen so far amount to corporate welfare or will certainly cause rate hikes. It's going to be yet another screwfest with the American Sheeple happily bending over and asking to be... plucked...

Advocacy Group Decries PETA's Inhumane Treatment Of Women

2009-08-14T23:50:00.000-07:00

2009-08-02T13:31:00.000-07:00

http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/category/y-2009/ Project censored tracks stories that are from reliable, peer reviewed sources that are being ignored by all major news media outlets. Very interesting... "And now you know... the REST of the storys"

The recognition of diversity is the path to happiness

2009-07-15T23:57:00.000-07:00

If you watch this, please stick with it to the end; it's one of those things that seems very scattered and unrelated, but actually ties together in the most wonderful way. The conclusion is... sublime.

What's worse? Burkas or high heels?

2009-07-10T15:22:00.000-07:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Burka Ban

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Joke of the Day

Hummm... Which does more damage to women? Burkas or high heels?

Romancing the Road

2009-07-09T11:52:00.000-07:00

540,000 miles from one car, one owner. And they are both pretty cool! The owner is 89 and the car is a 1964 Mercury Comet. She aways gets lifetime warranty replacement parts (16 free batteries so far) and carries a pistol (licensed) for protection on the long trips. Really worth watching.

These are the people and cars that made America great. I guaranty this car has done less damage to the environment for all those miles of travel than the average Prius owner does today. Why? Because once it was built, it was never discarded. If you really want to help the earth, rescue an old classic from the junkyard and pay a local hard working mechanic to restore it.

MS ActiveX Video Security Vulnerability 972890

2009-07-07T10:52:00.000-07:00

My boss handed me the local paper today with an item marked mentioning that M$ is asking people to disable activex video in web content until they can fix a bug that allows hackers to walk right in and take over your PC. I was amazed that I hadn't read about it in the geek news that I typically follow and that it was so hard to find the information on the net. Searching "bing" or MSN for "microsoft security vulnerabilities" shure as heck doesn't get you to it. You have to google those keywords to find "Microsoft Security Advisory (972890): Vulnerability in Microsoft Video ActiveX Control Could Allow Remote Code Execution" and the patch for it at:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972890

I would STRONGLY recommend that anyone with an XP or 2003 Server go to that page and click on the "Microsoft Fix It" button under "Enable workaround" Follow the prompts to run the program.

More information on the M$ support page and on the main stream news:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=8015442

A (very) dark poem

2009-07-04T16:53:00.000-07:00

This is the darkest thing I've ever written.

Like everything written, it’s a lie (I didn’t see that in Iraq, I was in the gulf, not in the country, but I’ve seen it in through others eyes and in pictures online) and it is inspired by another poem from a dear friend which has been eating at me (in a good way) for years.

It's about MY war guilt. If you are a veteran or show it to one, keep in mind this is MY war guilt, not anyone else. Don't cry that I'm saying anything about the service, 'cause I'm not.

This also isn't about politics, so don't say that this party did that or that president did this. The consumers did it; the consumers elected the leaders; the lobbyists paid off the leaders with money they got from consumers purchasing corporate products.

It's about MY consumer guilt. If you’re a consumer, then yes; it’s also about YOU. Take 5 seconds to think about what you’re grown in oil, plastic packaged; transported 'round the world, life is doing to other people.

There are a lot of references to things I guess some people might not recognize. If it doesn’t make sense, click on the stars. If there are too many of those, I guess it won’t reach people.

Thank you for reading this… what I would really like is harsh, honest, painful feedback on whether or not it reached you at all and how it could be changed to reach more people, and in a better way. Please tell me what parts had an impact and what parts left you cold or confused.

And most of all, now that I’m holding this foul little thing, what do I do with it?

GODLESS BABY KILLER

I lost my God outside Iraq

She walked away from me

A beautiful little Arab girl

with half a face I see*

Amazing grace how sweet that sounds

B’what saves that wretch from me?

My own little girl has both her eyes

god help her eyes to see.*

Did we pray "rain!" for our crop was dry

and curse our neighbors yield?

For he had watered all along...

and can't eat a rotting field.*

Today her neighbor is next door

and half, the wide world ‘round

and how she prays for cheaper gas

says where the guns are bound

There are too many of us now

for just one god to know.

I’m scared to pick a god to fear

if again, this gun must go.*

If I could ever sleep again

and never see that eye*

and only see my daughters face

and never wonder why…

the butterfly flapped it's lovely wings*

around the fuel pump fill 'er

And told the lords of war that I

must be a godless baby killer

Brains or... balls.

2009-06-22T09:55:00.000-07:00

Just got this in an email from a friend. No idea if it is actually true, but I did verify that helmets were not mandatory in Hockey until 1979

The first testicular guard or "Cup" was used in Hockey in 1874 and the first helmet was used in 1974.

It took 100 years for men to realize that the brain is also important.

Of course, from a genetic point of view, the big head isn't as important as the little one... anyone who watched "The World According to Garp" knows that. LOL

Yes, I understand that undocumented immigration is illegal, please don't talk to me about until after you watch this.

2009-06-14T23:11:00.001-07:00

A Minute Man (himself a legal immigrant) must live with a family of illegal immigrants in L.A. for 30 days. He also visits their old home in Mexico. That's all. No political discussions other than what he and the family talk about. No facts or figures other than how they live and what they earn.

I do not like the fact that these people come to the USA illegally. But is that the fault of the people, or the fault of the law?

Please don't try to answer that question or talk to me about this issue at all until after you have watched this short film.

Obama Drastically Scales Back Goals For America After Visiting Denny's

2009-06-09T22:53:00.000-07:00

The solution to mysogany must include MEN.

2009-05-29T14:45:00.000-07:00

I read a really interesting post while browsing for Joss Wheadon / Firefly stuff. The overlay post is about the girl who was stoned to death by her family for falling in love with a Suni. Joss posted a plea for action, and some of the following comments where made by women who obviously have issues (not that I blame them) with men. Then this guy came along:

http://whedonesque.com/comments/13271#176025

...the simple fact is, the issue of violence against women isn’t going to be settled unless male sexuality is respectfully included in the equation. Denigrating it out of hand, condemning it outright, using it as a tool of shame and disgrace, that isn’t going to work. I’ve read an awful lot from hurt women on this board, and my heart goes out to all of you. There is no doubt that you have to put up with a lot of crap, just for being women. And you don’t want to hear about the crap that men put up with, because in many cases you a) don’t think it’s valid, considering we’re the ones doing all of the oppressing and b) why should we complain because we’re at the top of the social and cultural heap. The fact that we have our own issues, values, concerns and desires is inconsequential to your equation,...
...
You’ll call me a misogynist (unfairly), a sexist (because you haven’t tried to listen), an apologist (because you think me and my life are indefensible) and worse. Go ahead. I’m used to it. I’ve been called all of those things since I was 7 years old, before I even knew what a penis was for. By the time I was 12, I knew for a fact that, despite my inability to have any kind of control over my own life, I was single-handedly responsible for all of the worlds ills from slavery to the Holocaust, and that I was incapable of doing anything else unless I was willing to surrender my testicles first – and even then, I still couldn’t ever really understand. By the time I was 18, being the “sensitive guy” I was told every woman wanted my entire life hadn’t panned out because despite the rhetoric, on a personal level those same “feminists” were passing up sensitive guys like spoiled meat in favor of the very macho idiots they claimed to despise.
...
According to all the proper polls, I’m the guy with the most power in the world, no matter how personally ineffectual and inconsequential I feel. I safely own guns for a variety of reasons, I play violent video games upon occasion, I like pornography, and I love sex in all of its manifestations. Doubtlessly, by now you have written me off as an “oppressor” based on my vital statistics. My point: Any solution of violence against women is going to have to have the support of me and my white male suburban peers, however distasteful you find me and my lifestyle.

I'm not saying I agree with that, but he hits a few nerves, and the logic of his final point seems inescapable to me. Men, and I mean MEN, need to be included in the solution, or killed off entirly.

Best advice I've heard in a long time...

2009-05-26T18:55:00.000-07:00

If you hear that the world is ending and the Messiah has arrived, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true.

Insane food web site by my kid

2009-05-25T15:46:00.000-07:00

I'm proud: My 11 year old son put up his first web site the other day (all html hand coded in notepad without help from me) featuring the weird (but good) recipes of his best friend.

http://www.insanefood.com Really unusual (but delicious) recipes

Cake Batter Ice Cream (The best recipe yet.)
Chocolate Lava Muffins
Chocolate Soup
Corn Bread
Funnel Cake
Instant Pancake mix
Peanut Butter
Shrimp Gumbo

Tortured, used, and discarded.

2009-05-14T16:07:00.000-07:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/11/AR2009051103412.html

[Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi] became the unnamed source, according to Senate investigators, behind Bush administration claims in 2002 and 2003 that Iraq had provided training in chemical and biological weapons to al-Qaeda operatives.

...

The Defense Intelligence Agency and some analysts at the CIA had questioned the veracity of Libi's testimony, which was obtained after the prisoner was transferred to Egyptian custody for questioning by the CIA, according to Senate investigators.

...

When President George W. Bush ordered the 2006 transfer to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, of high-value detainees previously held in CIA custody, Libi was pointedly missing. Human rights groups had long suspected that Libi was instead transferred to Libya, but the CIA had never confirmed where he was sent.

"I would speculate that he was missing because he was such an embarrassment to the Bush administration," said Tom Malinowski, the head of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch. "He was Exhibit A in the narrative that tortured confessions contributed to the massive intelligence failure that preceded the Iraq war."

...

The Libyan newspaper Oed reported Sunday that Libi was found dead in his cell after killing himself, but added that friends of the 46-year-old former preacher, who ran a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan, questioned the alleged cause of death.

Tortured to justify an unnecessary war, then "dissappeared" when he became an embarrisment and now murdered... They must be getting worried!

Sustainability = frugality over the long term

2009-05-11T14:24:00.000-07:00

here is the big secret:

Actual sustainability = frugality over the long term.

If it costs more over its lifetime, it is NOT sustainable. So, when gas is at $2.50 a gallon, the Prius is NOT always sustainable.

Proof: The cost of any item, in the end, is the energy required to make it. All the metal, plastic, glass, etc.. needed to make a Prius is just setting in the ground, free for the taking. The real cost of making it into a Prius is the cost of the energy required to dig it up, ship it to the foundry, refine it, ship it to the parts factory, form it, ship it to the car factory, assemble it, ship it to the lot, and sell it to you. All of the equipment and people involved in those processes are, again, the cost of the energy required to make and operate.

Just about ALL of that energy is fossil fuels. So how does it make sense to spend $22,000 (http://www.toyota.com/prius-hybrid/trims-prices.html) worth of fossil fuel to get 51/45mpg, when you could spend $12,000 (http://www.toyota.com/yaris/trims-prices.html) worth of fossil fuel to get 29/35mpg? You are saving about 20mpg, or 12.5 cents per mile, for an expenditure of $10,000. You would have to drive 80,000 miles to make that worth doing. Given a 5 year average vehicle life, you would have to drive 16,000 miles per year or an average of 45 miles per day. So if your commute is less than ½ hour each way, a Prius actually HURTs our Mother more than it helps.

Of course, the numbers REALLY make a jump when you consider a USED car vs a NEW Prius. A 25mpg 2001 Camry for $10,000 with an average useful life of 20 years turns out to be a much more sustainable choice than a new Prius for that same 30 min commute.
http://www.truedelta.com/models/Camry.php

The REAL green people drive old cars and support their local mechanic until the repair bill exceeds the savings.

"Obama murders cow to enjoy pegan lunch?"

2009-05-07T23:34:00.000-07:00

Is this a joke or did FOX really do that?

If Stewart faked that, he should have been a bit more clear about it being fake. If that is real... well... wow... just. wow...

What stops population growth?

2009-04-29T19:47:00.000-07:00

What stops population growth? from Gapminder Foundation on Vimeo.

The first thing I've heard about this financial crisis that has made any damn sense...

2009-04-19T22:32:00.000-07:00

Unique wearable projection display and camera interface provides "6th sense"

2009-04-18T23:40:00.000-07:00

I want one and I think my son Remy will as well. It's less invasive than the "cyborg" systems that came out of the MIT media lab some years ago, but still quite powerful.

Top 10 Reasons why Same-Sex Marriage is "wrong"

2009-04-13T09:15:00.000-07:00

Please note: If you are one of my friends, and this offends you, you either aren't that close a friend, or you are suffering from sarchasm: the gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

Top 10 Reasons why Same-Sex Marriage is "wrong"

10) Same-Sex marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven't adapted to cars, the Internet, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.

9) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children, require both mom and dad to spend time equal time with kids rather than making the mom the primary care giver.

8 ) Same-Sex marriage is not supported by traditional religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we all, without exception, go to church on Sunday.

7) Obviously same-sex parents will raise gay or lesbian children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

6) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Same-sex couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children.

5) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if same-sex marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Brittany Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

4) Marriage shouldn't change now because it has never changed before; women are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

3) Legalizing same-sex marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets; this is entirely possible since dogs and cats have legal standing and can sign marriage contracts.

2) Same-sex marriage will encourage people to be homosexual, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall. If you are absolutely convinced that being homosexual is a choice, standing on the street corners protesting "gay" marriage and generally ensuring it is a topic on the news every day will certainly keep your kids from thinking about it or becoming curious as to why anyone would want to be anything other than straight.

And the number one reasons why same-sex Marriage is "wrong":

1) Being homosexual is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, medicine, and air conditioning.

~ Modified from the original, which is copyright Mana Bear on facebook

We are mostly Bacteria; they communicate, and act as multi cell organisms

2009-04-10T11:01:00.000-07:00

Wow...

2009-04-05T21:21:00.000-07:00

I sent then to my senator today; Diane Feinstein happens to be on the intelligence committee.

http://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=91639

Cyberspace 9/11 is here. A trojan worm similar to the planes that crashed into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001 are causing havoc to companies such as Time Warner Cable, Register.com and UltraDNS owned by Neustar and to millions of their customers throughout the United States and Europe.

...

Larry Kutscher, CEO of Register.com said: “unnamed persons all over the world are trying to attack us. ..."

Steven Weiss, the CTO of the Carlton Group in New York City insists we’re under federal attack. “We have no way to stop it. Why is no news organization documenting this? Where is the Federal CTO? Where is he? Where is Homeland security? This is a serious problem. I don’t feel comfortable. We’re under attack and no one is doing anything. Just like the beginning of the banking problems. It was swept under the rug for a long time. They’re going to keep it quiet until they’re pushed against the wall.”

Where was Homeland Security when my web sites went down as a result of attacks on my registrar (Register.com) from foreign countries? The internet is an integral part of our economy; a critical part of any business. Conflictor only infected about 5% of the computers inside the USA, so it was from the infected machines in other countries. Weather virus or direct human action, these are foreign attacks on US soil... the government has failed to protect us yet again.

Chickens

2009-03-27T11:02:00.000-07:00

A friend asked how hard it is to raise chickens. I answered as follows, based on my research into the subject (not based on personal experience since I'm not allowed to keep chickens where we live inside the city limits *wink*)

Chickens must be the easiest and most productive animal to raise. They need a run, a coop, food, and water. Other than the materials and labor to set up the run, coop, etc... The only maintenance required (assuming the run is big enough and you setup the coop correctly) is refilling the feeder, and cleaning out the water dish on a regular basis to keep disease at bay. A poorly designed coop will require regular cleaning, and a run that is too small or poorly placed will require hay or other composting material and semi-regular mucking out.

A rooster is NOT required for eggs, although some people claim that only fertilized eggs are worth eating.

Tips:

Set the run up on a slight slope, with the high end having easy access to throw in compostable materials (food scraps, lawn clippings, garden waste, etc...) and the low end having an easily removable gate to shovel out the lovely rich compost / fertilizer they produce. The ideal setup would have a drop of a few feet from the low end into a compost bin where the mixture of chicken poop and compostable material would drop and cook into a rich but usable material for your garden. Chicken poop is to rich to use directly, so it must be mixed with other materials (they do that naturally in the run) and then let set for some time to cook.

Setup the coup OVER the run (or lifted up on stilts) with a chicken wire screen under their roosting perch and a very slight slope (darn near flat) from the nesting boxes down to that screen and just a strip of wood to keep the eggs from rolling out onto the screen. Then the nesting material (sawdust, etc...) will randomly migrate out and down through the screen, they will poop through the screen while roosting (which they do a LOT) and that poop will be mixed with compostable materials in the run as they scratch through it. Chickens have a close relationship with their own poo. They let bugs, maggots, etc... grow in it and then scratch those out an eat them.

If you build your garden beds high enough and surround each bed with a waist high fence, you can let the "girls" out once in a while to clean the back yard of snails, bugs, spiders, etc... They don't like to eat ants, and they DO like to eat your best garden greens in the most destructive and wasteful ways possible. E.g. just the main root from each pepper plant.

Downside:

Smell: Really not as bad as people think, assuming the run is large and either setup smartly or kept clean with manual labor. But there is a bit of a whiff on hot days...

Flies: No matter how clean you keep it, chickens shit, and you will get flies.

Spiders: Spiders follow from flies. We have more black widows per square foot than any place I've ever lived.

Garden and grounds: They WILL get out, and they WILL destroy something you lovingly planted. They like to scratch or dig up flowers, veggies, etc... Any area that they frequent will be laid baron by their constant digging for bugs and the overly rich power of their poop.

HR1: Indexed and serchable version of the stimulus bill

2009-03-19T11:02:00.000-07:00

http://www.USARecoveryAct.com has a pdf version of the stimulus bill with a full index, table of contents, etc.. which makes it a lot easier to browse. Worth the $6 they charge to download it.

I can't wait to see how big business will warp the intended use of our tax dollars for their own purposes. Maybe this pdf will enable some of us to find ways to recover part of our taxes as funding for new business opportunities? If we don't, they will!

Violence, moral delimmas, and "The Watchmen"

2009-03-16T17:14:00.000-07:00

Our local youth group leader suggested using "The Watchmen" as a "jumping off point" for the discussion of moral delimas. I was torn; thought about it a lot, and wrote the following:

As I continue to read reviews and hear from friends who have seen "The Watchmen", I become more and more concerned about the level of violence in the film. A number of people have been very concerned about the full frontal male nudity that appears repeatedly in the movie, but that doesn't really bother me too much; what does disturb me greatly are close-ups of someone's head repeatedly hacked with a hatchet, people exploding from the inside out, rape, etc... My coworker who loves horror flicks told me she was shocked by this movie.

I'm trying to find the time to go and browse a copy of the comic book version to see if it is any less disrespectful of human life, but my general understanding is that it is no better.

I've tried very hard to teach my children that violence is not acceptable. That any human who sees a violent act or a simulation of a violent act should be sickened by it. I am greatly concerned that our youth, through video games, movies, and "art" are becoming inured to the horror of violence. It continues to amaze me that parents, on the one hand allow their kids to play first person shooters, and on the other hand are shocked and horrified when a few of them follow the example and go "Columbine" on the world.

I've made exceptions in what movies I allow them to see, and those exceptions were meant to teach them that violence IS part of our REAL world. So I would not mind if they watched "Saving Private Ryan" or "Glory" or "Casualties of War" because they show what can and actually has happened at the hands of violent men. We watched "Master and Commander" together and didn't turn away when the cabin boy lost a limb and the decks were slick with blood. We watched "Georgia Rule" together and talked about rape and incest. I don't mind "CSI" or "Bones" because they show violent people being brought to justice, and the violence is presented in a shocking way that tends to make it even more unacceptable. "House" shows that blood and guts are a natural part of what is inside us.

The movies and video games I despise are those that make violence an accepted part of the story, or even go so far as to glorify it. "Saw #", ("Texas Chain" or otherwise), "Grand Theft Auto", etc... So many make violence the primary method of solving a problem, showing "heroic" men mowing down their opponents while glossing over the fact that those men helped to create the situation that made the violence necessary, or at the very least, were unable to find any better way to solve the problem. "Commando" was a perfect example: His daughter was kidnapped because of what he did for a living.

"First Blood" (the first Rambo movie) was an exception, because he did everything he could to avoid the violence while still protecting his freedom. Some of the old Chuck Norris films tried to present violence as the last resort. In "Burn Notice", the lead actively tries to solve problems with the lowest possible body count. "MacGyver" etc...

Having said all that, and I said it mostly to make sure you understand how I, as a veteran of foreign wars feel about violence in media, if you are sure that the benefit of pursuing "The Watchmen" as an example of morel dilemmas outweighs the damage of exposing Allie to that sort of unnecessary violence, then I will give my blessing to her seeing the movie and reading the comic. I have respect for your opinion, and a great appreciation of your efforts. As a man, I bow to the better record of your sex with regard to violence, although I think most of that is due to the men getting sent in to deal with the problem after everyone else has failed.

If you say it's worth doing, I will trust you with my daughter. I do not speak for my wife.

I wish you could find another "jumping off point." Perhaps something about the tradeoffs between dropping the nuke on Japan and letting the war play out conventionally? Or any of the many stories of ordering young men into a loosing battle to win a war? If it has to be violent, why not "Full Metal Jacket" or "Born on the 4th" or "Forrest Gump" or even a few episodes of "MASH" like the ones about Hawlkeye loosing his mind because the noisy chicken the woman smothered when the V.C. were passing the bus wasn't actually a chicken. There's a moral dilemma for you... All of us dead or just the one little... hatchling.

I hope you teach them well. I don't think I could take on that job.

My answer to "Afghanistan South" by Patrick J. Buchanan

2009-03-09T09:31:00.000-07:00

A friend sent me the "Afghanistan South by Patrick J. Buchanan" email, which goes on about how our boarder with Mexico must be better patrolled to keep the drugs and drug cartels out and this was my response:

The solution to this is easy: Decriminalize drug production and sale. Production will move into the USA, and Mexican exports will become unprofitable for the cartels who will then fold up and go away.

Pour the funds currently used to police the boarder, chase drugs, and imprison drug users into drug use education, marketing campaigns against drugs, and the enforcement of driving or other critical activities while under the influence of ANYTHING. We should be telling our people that although drug production and use by adults is not illegal, there are very good reasons why they shouldn't use drugs, that drug use is uncool (like the anti-smoking ads) and that if they get caught high while doing anything of a critical nature, they will go to jail. That includes:
- Being the adult in charge of a minor while high
- Supplying drugs to a minor or allowing a minor to steal drugs from them.
- Driving or operating any machinery high
- Showing up for work high
- Applying for any sort of medical care while the after traces of any drug is present in your body. E.g. if you have lung cancer and THC in your hair, you don’t get treated unless you can pay for it. You pay the price or die. If you have rotting teeth and traces of meth, your dental program doesn’t cover the work.
- And so on.

On the other hand, if anyone wants put their responsibilities in good hands, lock themselves up in their bedroom, and go for a ride, that's just fine.

And most importantly, if you want to grow some pot or poppies or brew up some LSD and sell it that should absolutely, perfectly legal. In a location and with equipment to manage the explosion hazard, you should be able to make meth. The drug lords would shrivel up and wash away.

Actually, you don’t even have to decriminalize drug USE. You just have to allow us to produce it to meet the demand. The fact that I am not free to make and sell drugs is a major offense against the constitution of the USA in my opinion. Not that I would ever want to, but I am allowed to make and sell guns, booze, porn, and so on, and it is morally wrong and just plain stupid that I can’t make and sell drugs. The law that says I can’t has created this drug crisis as surly as if it had ordered the scum in Juarez to kill each other and us.

Fixing Congress

2009-03-07T12:25:00.000-08:00

My friend Al says:

I don't have a blog for my various strange ideas, but you can post this if you like it.

Congress is out of touch. They are insulated from voters by the rich few who finance the campaigns. Here's a few ideas to get them back in touch.

* Take congress off the their health care package. Give them health care through Medicare (or make them buy their own on the open market). They don't get any more medical coverage after they lose their job (OK, they could qualify for COBRA).

* Take away the retirement program for congress and put them on social security. Right now, they don't pay into social security and they have their own retirement package.

* Put them on a pay for performance package. Their pay should be linked to the economic performance of the country. When the country runs a deficit, their pay gets cut. You could link it to GNP or some other indexes. They can then make choices knowing that the result will hit their wallet.

Three simple things that could really change the way congress works.

What is the Justice System doing to bring some to Dick and G.W.?

2009-03-02T13:57:00.001-08:00

To:
Honorable Karen P. Hewitt
U.S. Attorney’s Office
San Diego County Office
Federal Office Building
880 Front Street, Room 6293
San Diego, California 92101-8893
Karen.P.Hewitt@usdoj.gov ?

Cc:
Honorable Bonnie Dumanis
San Diego County District Attorney
330 W. Broadway, Suite 1300, San Diego, CA 92101
619-531-4040 (phone), 619-237-1351 (fax)
publicinformation@sdcda.org (email)

Ms. Hewitt / Ms. Dumanis,

Isn't there anything that you could (should) be doing to move our country towards making the former President and Vice President pay for their crimes?

Does it not worry you that your predecessor / colleague lost her job after putting Cunningham in jail for his crimes?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Lam

If you let people like those who fired her go unpunished for their other crimes, it sends a CLEAR message to the current administration that in the future, they can take politically motivated action against YOU if you fail to do what they want?

- The lies about Iraq.
- Warrantless wiretapping.
- War crimes such as torture.

Clinton lied about a blow-job, Nixon lied about a break-in; they were both at least investigated. Here you have a man who may have ORDERED the commission of war crimes and you can't even open an investigation?

People go on about "no man being above the law" and we both know that’s not as true as people hope, but when it is a case as obvious as this, doesn't something need to be done to at least maintain the illusion?

--
James Newton

See also:
- http://www.groundsforimpeachment.com/
- http://feralhouse.com/titles/images/BushImpeachment.pdf
- http://www.wexlerwantshearings.com/

NAIS is a scam.

2009-03-02T13:53:00.000-08:00

NAIS was designed by NIAA (the National Institute of Animal
Agriculture), a corporate consortium consisting of Monsanto,
industrial meat producers such as Cargill and Tyson, and surveillance
companies such Viatrace, AgInfoLink, and Digital Angel. The NAIS
scheme fits agribusiness, biotech, and surveillance companies to a T:

1) They are already computerized, and they engineered a corporate
loophole: If an entity owns a vertically integrated, birth-to-death
factory system with thousands of animals (as the Cargills and Tysons
do), it does not have to tag and track each one but instead a herd is
given a single lot number.

2). NAIS will only be burdensome and costly (fees, tags, computer
equipment, time) to small farmers which helps push them out of
business, thus leaving more market to giant agribusiness.

3) Agribusiness wants to reassure export customers that the US meat
industry is finally cleaning up its widespread contamination. NAIS
would give that appearance ... without incurring the cost of a real
cleanup.

4) NAIS will allow total control over the competition: Owners of even
a single chicken would be required to register private information,
the Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates of their 'premise'
and if any animal leaves its 'premise', the owner will be required to
obtain an ID number for it and have the animal microchipped. All
information, including 24 hour GPS surveillance would be fed into a
vast corporate data bank, allowing for ease of false slaughter to
hide true problems or to substitute biotech's genetically engineered
animals.

5) NAIS may allow plundering of farmers through required DNA samples:
DNA samples would be invaluable to Monsanto and biotech corporations
genetically engineering animals. Farmers who raise heritage breeds
would have no say in how their distinct DNA would be used and to the
sole profit of biotech companies.

6) The advantage for the surveillance companies is obvious:
Compulsory tagging of 6 million sheep, 7 million horses, 63 million
hogs, 97 million cows, 260 million turkeys, 300 million laying hens,
9 billion chickens, and untold numbers of bison, alpaca, quail, and
other animals -- and new animals being born, means a massive
self-perpetuating market.

Please take action now to stop this insanity. Our health and our
lives depend on it.

Stop NAIS Action Page: http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum942.php

What HAVE seniors done for the new generation?

2009-02-10T09:25:00.000-08:00

I got this email from the stogies about a young man complaining to a senior that old folks can't understand because they grew up in a world without all the modern tech that has shaped our new generation; and how the old guy says (in less pleasant words) "yeah, we didn't have those things, so we invented them; what are you going to do for the next generation?"

That is only half of the story...

Young people today are:
- Dying in wars our senior citizens started in countries that have never lifted a finger against us. How did you vote? When did you last attend an anti war rally?
- Dealing with the environmental, health, and economic impact of the “I care for nothing but profit” industries our seniors have left behind. Do you have solar panels on your home? Planted a fruit tree? Feed your kids organic foods? Taken a bus or train instead of driving?
- Going to jail in numbers unmatched by any country in the world, which I blame to a large degree on the selfish lack of involvement of seniors with needy kids in our neighborhoods. How many kids have you tutored after school? Donated to your local library? Boys and girls club? Anything?
- Trying to figure out what hope they have of paying off the mind-numbing national debt all of those issues have caused. Add up the minutes you've spent thinking about your retirement and compare it to the minutes you've spent thinking about what kind of life is left for your children.

I personally will be amazed if our young people are able to even sustain what we currently have for the next generation. I will be proud of my kids if they survive.

...save more than a life, you could save a lifestyle.

2009-01-27T15:59:00.000-08:00

Reminds me of the scene in “the Jerk” where the guy from Texas is asking Naven for money because he can’t afford to reupholster the leather seats on his private jet.

And are these industry bailouts any different? How much of that money is really going to the worker? Why not setup vocational and other education to retrain those workers for other, growth industries? Why not put infrastructure projects out to bid for new and existing companies?

How much of a boost to our economy would we get from having free wireless internet everywhere? We have free roads, why not free “pipes” and “tubes”?

Fund the placement of a free set of solar panels on every single house in America. Millions of jobs and no more power stations operating; during the day, at least.

Same thing with those new vertical wind turbines, and now we don’t need power at night.

We could do those things if we wanted. If we hadn’t gone to war. If we weren’t ruled by lobbyists. If we weren’t Sheeple.

love our kids more than we hate our enemies

2009-01-26T17:39:00.000-08:00

I came upon this quote: Golda Meir said, "The only way to eliminate war is to love our children more than we hate our enemies."

If you believe that, and you see that we still have war, then you understand that we really don't love our children as much as we think we do.

Women shave legs and appear to be little girls.

2009-01-06T18:38:00.000-08:00

When children grow, at a certain age, they start to grow more hair all over. We always have hair all over, but at some age, we grow thicker, stronger, more noticeable hair. This age is the age of puberty, when our bodies change. In the USA, the normal age for puberty is between 8 and 13^. At that age, girls and boys start to grow more noticeable hair on their legs. It is almost always before the age of 18.

So, when a women of 20 or 30 or so on, in order to appear more attractive, as our society defines attractiveness^, shaves her legs, what age is she attempting to appear to be? She is NOT attempting to appear to be 18. She is not thinking about what age she is attempting to appear to be at all, but she is attempting to appear to be 13 or so.

Why does our society, here in the USA, want women to appear to be 13?

My first thought was that it must be a marketing campaign designed to sell razors. And there does seem to be some proof of that. The first mention I can find of women removing hair for any reason started in May, 1915 with a fashion spread in Harpers Baazar showing a women in a sleeveless gown with bare armpits. Under it is an ad for a hair removal powder.

Razors for women didn't appear anywhere until 1917 and in the Sears and Roebuck catalog until 1922.^

Leg shaving seems to have started soon after that, but really became popular around WWII with rising hemlines and pinup girls "to inspire our boys."

At the start of the war, nylon stockings were popular, but the nylon was needed for the war effort, so believe it or not, some women would shave their legs, then draw a line up the back of the leg to imitate the seam that was always present in stockings of that time. This does not, however, seem to be the start of leg shaving; hair under stocking is uncomfortable and shows so the shaving of legs started first, nylons came after.

It has been said that leg shaving was promoted by a razor company reeling from the lack of men buying razors since so many where "over there" fighting WWI^

Women in europe didn't start shaving until years later. After WWII one woman I spoke to came to the USA from Holland. She first noticed that American women had "weak" legs. They looked thin and frail to her. It was pointed out to her that her legs looked "stronger" because they were hairy and the women here were shaving. Her friend said she shaved because if she didn't, she would "look like an ape." My friend from Holland wasn't going to be a slave to fasion, but while at the denstist office, in the chair, she noticed that he kept lookin at her legs, and she thought: "He thinks I look like an Ape!" That's all it took; she started shaving her legs that night.

Leg shaving happens in Brazil, North America, Australia, Middle East, and Europe. Women in Europe, while they do shave their legs (even in France!) are not as religious about it as they are in the USA. It does not happen in Asia

Could it be simply related to the age old desire for women to look different from men? Since women generally have less hair than men, making a women have less hair, makes her less like a man and, supposedly, more womanly. There are certainly many examples of this, and not just since breast implants and high heels took hold; ancient peoples did everything from lopping off little girls toes (women have smaller feet) to stretching out necks (women have thinner necks). This tendancy for each sex to try to look less like the other is called artifical sexual dimorphism. Sexual dimorphism is very common, and there isn't anything wrong with helping it along. The problem is that in leg shaving, we have picked something that is not only makes women look less like men, it makes them look more like little girls.

As shaved legs became the standard of beauty in the USA, men became trained to find them attractive. As a result, men are no longer sexually attracted to the naturally hairly legs of mature women, but instead are attracted to a version of legs that are naturally found on underage girls. This doesn't excuse the actions of molesters, but it is one more small step in the wrong direction.

Thich Nhat Hanh says:

2009-01-06T18:22:00.000-08:00

“My right hand has written all the poems that I have composed. My left hand has not written a single poem. But my right hand does not think, ‘Left Hand, you are good for nothing.’ My right hand does not have a superiority complex. That is why it is very happy. My left hand does not have any complex at all. In my two hands there is the kind of wisdom called the wisdom of nondiscrimination. One day I was hammering a nail and my right hand was not very accurate and instead of pounding on the nail it pounded on my finger. It put the hammer down and took care of my left hand in a very tender way, as if it were taking care of itself. It did not say, ‘Left Hand, you have to remember that I have taken good care of you and you have to pay me back in the future.’ There was no such thinking. And my left hand did not say, “Right Hand, you have done me a lot of harm — give me that hammer, I want justice.’ My two hands know that they are members of one body; they are in each other.”

“When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don’t blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or our family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like the lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and argument. That is my experience. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change.”

“In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them. And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us.”

“We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. If we only think of ourselves, if we know only our own needs and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love. “

“Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.”

20% better MPG from an electro-magnet? Must be a joke, right?

2008-12-25T20:28:00.000-08:00

In the "are you kidding me" department, we find this report of a simple device consisting of an electrically charged tube that can be attached to the fuel line of a car’s engine near the fuel injector. Using power from the vehicle’s battery, the device creates an electric field that thins the fuel, reducing its viscosity, so that smaller droplets are injected into the engine. That leads to more efficient and cleaner combustion.

And who says so? Has to be a quack, a jerk, some backyard mechanic? Errr. no, actually, it's Temple University.

http://www.temple.edu/newsroom/2008_2009/09/stories/taofueldevice.htm

"Six months of road testing in a diesel-powered Mercedes-Benz automobile showed that the device increased highway fuel from 32 miles per gallon to 38 mpg, a 20 percent boost"

"Temple has applied for a patent on this technology, which has been licensed to California-based Save The World Air Inc., an environmentally conscientious enterprise focused on the design, development, and commercialization of revolutionary technologies targeted at reducing emissions from internal combustion engines."

I believe the patent application is for number 20080190771 It seems to be for a device that uses the electric power from the battery to create a magnetic field around the fuel.

So do those con artists who sell the perminant magnet thing you put on the fuel line actually have something going on? Mythbusters, and many others, proved that they don't. So what gives?

The patent application says: "It has been surprisingly found that if the applied magnetic field is a short pulse, the induced dipolar interaction does not have enough time to affect particles at macroscopic distances apart, but forces nearby ones into small clusters. The assembled clusters are thus of limited size, for example of micrometer size. While the particle volume fraction remains the same, the average size of the "new particles" is increased. This may lead to the reduction in apparent viscosity because the value of the crowding factor k, is reduced. "

So it's a pulse, not a continuous application, that makes the difference.

Pulsing a magnetic coil with a specific, adjustable, duty cycle and pulse width is taylor made for microcontrollers like the PIC or MSP430, and pretty easy to do.

A REALLY Different Christmas Poem.

2008-12-18T10:46:00.000-08:00

A friend sent the "Different Christmas Poem" email that has been circulating the internet. You can read it in the snopes link below if you are an idiot. This was my response to it.

Nice poem. It would mean more to me if the war we are currently fighting had any actual basis in protecting our country from a threat. However… LCDR Jeff Giles didn’t write it
http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/glurge/different.asp and the soldiers in Iraq are NOT protecting us from any real threat. No WMD’s, no Iraqi’s involved in 9/11, Osama bin Laden is not now, and never was, in Iraq… Not to mention the fact that we don’t seem to be actively looking for him anymore.

And from a purely humanitarian standpoint, while Saddam did apparently kill a lot of people (~600,000), we have now killed quite a few ourselves.
www.iraqbodycount.org/ says it’s around 90,000 at last count. And we have to wonder if we will leave the area (assuming we ever actual leave…) in a more or less stable state. It may just be that when working with a people who are insanely violent due to religious differences, an insane leader is the best possible match.

In fact, when you look at the deaths per day and compare days under Saddam’s rule with deaths during our occupation, the difference is less obvious. Saddam killed about 100 people per day (70-125), since we took over, it’s been about 40 or so per day (16-72). Just for comparison, on the average day in the USA, 119 people die in automobile accidents.

And even if (I say IF) our troops were protecting us from terrorists, the total death toll in the USA from terrorist action is less than 5,000… over ALL time. Less than 3000 in 9/11. Yet 9/11 was used to remove freedoms, change laws, justify torture, and send millions of our boys and girls into harms way.

In the USA, every single year, MORE than 60,000 people die in automobile accidents. Who at Firestone or Ford went to jail for knowingly putting inferior tires on a car with too high a center of gravity? Where was the service man protecting me from them? Where is the light rail line (Trains are THE safest way to travel, although airlines are safer than cars) for me to use going to work?

The point I’m trying to make here is that humans, and especially Americans, use emotion, rather than logic and statistics, to make decisions and justify actions. This poem, although lovely, plays to that fatal flaw. My logic and numbers may strike most as cold, and will never be repeated ad nauseam over the internet the way this poem WILL be, but they have a truth, clarity, and beauty that would better serve the USA.

http://techref.massmind.org/techref/other/911.htm
http://techref.massmind.org/techref/member/jmn-efp-786/MyLovelyCommute.htm
http://techref.massmind.org/techref/other/USAenforcesOPECprices.htm

John Stewart says it all on gay marrage.

2008-12-12T19:53:00.000-08:00

John Stewart makes some really good points about gay marrage in this... It's amazing how far people will go to safe the definition of a word. As far as I can tell, not re-defining marrage is the only defendable point left for the 8ers.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Mike Huckabee Pt. 2

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Bail out the WORKERS, not the companies.

2008-12-10T13:37:00.001-08:00

All I want to ask the people who are crying about the loss of jobs in Detroit is this ONE question: How many mortgate payments, full tuition college educations, free health care insurance policies, and meals could that same bailout money provide to those workers?

Let the crappy car companies FAIL. Do not reward failure. Reward the companies who make good cars by providing them with a better trained, happy work force.

How much are your kids worth?

2008-12-02T11:19:00.000-08:00

Thanks to my friend Bill for sending me this in an email. This is a “nice” little wakeup call for civilians who don’t understand the point of Military R&D funding. Yes, it would be better to not go to war at all, but that isn’t the reality of life is it? As longs as we DO go to war (no matter how stupid and wrong the reasons are) I want MY kids and YOUR kids to have the best possible weapons technology on our side. This video shows a man firing mortar’s at our troops. Watch what happens.

I never like to see anyone die, but when it’s a choice between us or them, I pick them. There is no way to know how many Americans his mortars killed, but it’s good to know it won’t be any more. Of all the weapons systems I've seen, this has to be one of my favorites. It's morally ideal in that it is totally harmless except to the guy who starts shooting at you. "...if it shoots, shoot back."

http://www.syrres.com/stc/products_lcmr.htm The technology that stopped him is called the LCMR: Lightweight Counter Mortar Radar-Enhancement and is made by Syracuse Research Corporation, a non-profit whose mission is to “keep America safe and strong by protecting its people, environment, and way of life.” The Lightweight Counter-Mortar Radar (LCMR) detects and locates mortar firing positions automatically by detecting and tracking the mortar shell and then backtracking to the weapon position.

http://clinton.senate.gov/news/statements/details.cfm?id=249992 Hillary got them $5M to improve that system for use inside the USA. It is being updated to track not only mortar shells but also small arms fire. So the local police will know in an instant when a gun is fired, and in a few shots, know exactly where.

$5 million of the federal funding will go to the Syracuse Research Corporation for the development of Lightweight Counter Mortar Radar-Enhancement (LCMR). The
funding will create new opportunities to improve and enhance national security. The radar, developed for the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and currently in theater, provides the capability to automatically locate mortar-firing positions by detecting and tracking the mortar shell, then backtracking to the weapon position. Accordingly, this technology will allow soldiers in combat to more effectively take cover from mortar fire, locate its origin, and respond. LCMR systems have already been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Funding in this legislation would upgrade these systems. SRC received $2.5 million of federal funding for the LCMR in FY 05.

Support our troops: First, BRING THEM HOME, but failing that, give them the best possible tools to keep them alive while they are in harms way.

Silly 8rs, you need 2/3rds to revise.

2008-11-24T10:31:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Blanca for sending me this news from the ACLU:

In an order issued Wednesday, the California Supreme Court agreed to hear the legal challenges to Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that would end marriage for same-sex couples in California. It passed narrowly on November 4th.

On November 5th, the ACLU, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit challenging the validity of Proposition 8 in the California Supreme Court on behalf of six couples and Equality California. The City of San Francisco, joined by the City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, and Santa Clara County, filed a similar challenge, as did a private attorney in Los Angeles.

The lawsuits allege that, on its face, Proposition 8 is an improper revision rather than an amendment of the California Constitution because, in its very title -- which was "Eliminates the right to marry for same-sex couples" -- the initiative eliminated an existing right only for a targeted minority.

If permitted to stand, Proposition 8 would be the first time an initiative has successfully been used to change the California Constitution to take away an existing right only for a particular group. Such a change would defeat the very purpose of a constitution and fundamentally alter the role of the courts in protecting minority rights. According to the California Constitution, such a serious revision of the state constitution cannot be enacted through a simple majority vote but must first be approved by two-thirds of the legislature.

Ok, my "Yes on 8" neighbors, if you are going to change the law, learn how the law can and can not be legally changed. In the end, the will of the people will be done, but the people of today must follow the rules set down by our founders. If you really want to descriminate against a minority, do it legally.

Lets see, 2 divided by 3 is 0.666... OMG: It's the work of the devil!

We. Do. Not. Need. To. Invade. Iran.

2008-11-21T17:26:00.000-08:00

There is another "invade Iran" eamil going around. It says:

"While Iran's low-enriched uranium is not quite weapons-grade, the Institute for Science and International Security, after reviewing the IAEA report, estimated that the further enrichment necessary could be done "within a few months."

That would give Iran a nuke right around Inauguration Day. "

Although the email provides no references, it seem to be quoting this report:
http://www.isis-online.org/publications/iran/ISIS_analysis_Nov-IAEA-Report.pdf

My response:

No references. Hear-say. Fear mongering. I smell FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. The standard means of manipulating the public into an action that benefits the authors).

"Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along, whether it is democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country" -- Hermann Goering, Hitlers Reich-Marshal at Nuremburg after WWII. (This is true: check snopes: http://www.snopes.com/quotes/goering.htm )

As it happens, every country with about a square mile of dirt has “enough fissionable material to develop a nuclear weapon”. That isn’t the question. The question is: do they have the technology to extract and purify the fissionable material from that dirt to the point that it would actually fission… err… go boom. And then, do they have a way of delivering that bomb to a target. What they have now is LEU or Low Enrichment Uranium. It’s good for nuke power plants, useless for A-Bombs. Moving it to weapons grade material is quite the trick.

These links are as close as I could find to the stuff they say in the email,

http://www.isis-online.org/publications/iran/ISIS_analysis_Nov-IAEA-Report.pdf seems to be what this email is referencing at the end. And what they say IS scary. But who are “they”? I couldn’t find anything about their funding on their actual site, but I did find this:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Institute_for_Science_and_International_Security and for the most part, that funding looks pretty good. A lot of it does, however, have ties to the dreaded "Military Industrial Complex"... The people who scare us into paying them to build better weapons, and then into sacrificing our kids into using those weapons so they can get paid to build more.

http://www.isisnucleariran.org/nuclear-faq/ is a very informative document from the same I.S.I.S. outfit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_program_of_Iran is an even better document that tells both sides of the history. Very much worth the read.

http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Focus/IaeaIran/index.shtml is the International Atomic Energy Agency but I couldn’t find any mention of 630 Kilograms of ANYTHING on their site:
http://www.iaea.org/googleResult.html?cx=004828748078731094376%3Am_jpm98tdns&cof=FORID%3A11&q=IRAN+%22630+kg%22+OR+%22630+kilograms%22+&sitesearch=IAEA.org#241

I did, eventually find a document at I.S.I.S. that says it is from the IAEA and quotes the 630 KG figure:
http://www.isisnucleariran.org/assets/pdf/Iran_Report_11-19-08.pdf Note that just after that figure it says “All nuclear material at FEP, as well as all installed cascades, remain under Agency containment and surveillance.” So the IAEA is right there watching and holding on to that material. If Iran starts trying to turn it into weapons grade material, the IAEA will know.

And if we wanted to, our Tomahawks could easily hit the processing facility and remove that threat. In any case, and this is the important part, there is NO need for us to invade Iran as we did with Iraq. WE, and not they, have the technology for war at a distance. There is NO NEED for our boys to risk life and limb in Iran… other than to justify the increased funding of the Military industrial complex.

We own the air. We own space. We own the planet. There is NO NEED for us to set foot on every part of it. We have the aircraft carriers, the ICBM’s, the F117’s, the Patriots, and so on and so on. We already paid for all that. Asking us to pay with our children is monstrous.

In the end, the key point is that there is NOTHING wrong with Iran having nuke power and having LEU to run it. The fact that they now have enough LEU to make the weapons grade material for one bomb does not mean that they will. They don’t even have the equipment to do it, as far as I can tell. If they did pull all their LEU and put it into a new facility for making weapons grade material, we would know in advance and could easily stop it. Even if we didn’t stop it and they did make a bomb, there is no evidence that they would use it. Iran has never committed any terrorist act against US or our allies. The idea that they would hand over a bomb to a terrorist or allow a terrorist to steal it is… unlikely. If terrorists wanted a bomb, there are lots of other places to steal one; security in Russia isn’t exactly stellar right now. On one seems to be freaked out that Pakistan, another militant Islamic country, already has the A-Bomb. If we are going to invade Iran, why didn’t we invade Pakistan? They have more ties to terrorists than Iran ever has. And again, even if all the very worst is true. We can just blow up their enrichment facility. It isn’t like you can hide that sort of a plant…

We. Do. Not. Need. To. Invade. Iran.

Half Baked Idea: Cleaning the Homeless

2008-11-20T11:01:00.000-08:00

I'm proud to say that my Half Baked Idea:
http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Cleaning_20the_20homeless for Cleaning the Homeless: "Offer secure, private, single person showers at low or no cost." has made it to the second page on the list of all time best ideas at the Half Bakery. It's one of the few somewhat political ideas that have been allowed to stay on the site (the owner doesn't allow politics). Other best ideas on the site from other authors include "Preformed Cream Cheese Rings for Bagels " and a "Tumbleweed Dispenser: For when idiots talk" so you can see that it's one of the few "best" ideas that isn't sort of tongue in cheek. There are serious ideas on the best list, such as "A Google 'minus' button for each listed result. " so humor isn't a requirement, but funny ideas usually do better in the voting results.

A word of warning about the Half Bakery: You can loose hours of your life, reading and laughing and thinking about the great ideas posted here.

My buddy is afraid he might accidentally marry a guy.

2008-11-18T14:36:00.000-08:00

There are apparently a large number of people in California, who are so unsure of themselves that they believe they need to government to keep them from accidentally marrying people they don’t want to marry. I have a neighbor, a man, (not the brightest bulb, but a nice guy) who is a Christian and feels that it would be wrong to marry another guy. So he voted YES on this prop 8 amendment to the state constitution that would prevent him from accidentally marrying another man. It’s amazing to me how people want the government to protect them from themselves…

He is a really nice guy and never tried to convert me to his religion, so I know that he isn't worried about OTHER people who might feel it is OK for a man to marry a man or a women to marry a women; he wouldn't be so pushy as to try to force his morals on another when it does him NO damage at all if a gay marriage happens.

His kids are all grown and out of school, so what they teach in school can’t be bothering him… and even if it was, the California Educational Code section 51240 specifically states that a student will be excused from teachings in conflict with the religious or moral code the parents. Any public school that failed to follow that directive is breaking the law.

And although he isn't all that smart, he does understand the separation of church and state guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution and agrees that having the government enforce religious ideals could be a real problem. After all we are one nation under whose God? I mean the Christians wouldn't want the government telling people they have to confess their sins on a regular basis. And the Catholics wouldn't want the government selecting only married men to lead their services. No, I’m sure he didn't vote for it as a way to make the government get into the business of religion.

My best guess is that he is worried about transgendered or hermaphroditic people. He might meet someone who he thinks is a women and then have it turn out that this is actually a man or someone who has both male and female organs. Like Thomas Beatie, the pregnant man. If my friend had a sister, and she happened to fall in love with Thomas, wouldn't it be horrible if the state didn't stop them from getting married, since he happens to have a womb and has given birth… twice… I mean, how would she know? He looks like a man, hairy chest and all. Of course, a background check would reveal that he used to be a she and was surgically altered to become man looking… so does that mean my male friend COULD marry him? Err… her… Or will the church/state decide that no one can marry Thomas since s/he brought all this on his/her self?

But then what about Lynn Edward Harris who was born with both sets of sexual organs. No surgery, no drugs, but today appears to be a man, after appearing to be a really cute girl (beauty pageant contestant at 18) through high school. If my friend had married her would the church/state annul the marriage when she turned into a he?

Anyway, the state law is now being tied in knots. Legal experts are expecting millions of dollars and years of lawsuits. The attorney general of the state of California has said that this proposition has pushed the state into a constitutional crisis with one part of the state constitution saying you can’t discriminate based on sexual orientation, and another part saying that only those of heterosexual orientation are allowed to marry.

I don’t think the government is going to do a very good job of protecting my buddy from accidentally falling in love and marrying a guy…

M.A.S.H.

2008-11-15T23:01:00.000-08:00

I've cried, and laughed, and cried for 2 hours tonight. There was a show on about M.A.S.H. (the TV series about a medical unit in the Korean war, but really just about all war) that reminded me of so many things.

- The most important is that our boys are still going through that hell. They are ALL coming back wounded, if they come back at all. Either dead, wounded in body, wounded in their minds, or wounded in spirit. Another generation with scars instead of innocence.

- I grew up watching that show, 30 years ago. I watched them talking about the insanity. How everyone was wounded. How Hawkey encouraged the strangling of a child who wouldn't stop crying when the enemy was near and he was afraid they would be heard and found. How, when it was cold, the surgeons would cut open the soldiers at the start of the operation and steam would escape and they would warm their hands over it. How so many innocents were lost. And I still joined the Navy and helped to kill people in the Gulf. I hope you and your children and young friends are smarter, better able to learn.

- There are so many examples, in the show, in real life, in war, and in peace where you don't understand what you are doing until it is done. So many times when we forget to thing about the consequences of our actions. I don't mean the times when we couldn't possibly know. I'm talking about the times when we figure out that if we had just pulled our head out of our own ego for a few seconds and thought about what the things we were doing was going to screw up the rest of the world. And then it's done. And it can't be taken back. And it can't be made right. That's where we are right now. They 9/11 terrorists were Saudi, not Iraqi. No WMDs in Iraq. No ties to terror. They used our fear to get us to put our boys and girls in harms way.

I would trade all that stupidity for the answer to this one: How do we avoid those times when we just aren't sure and it eats at us. When we are thinking, learning, knowing, and we still aren't sure. What if? If only I had, then maybe?

I can accept that a soldiers lot is, well, not very good. I can accept that I'm apparently incapable of learning from the examples of others (and therefor doomed to repeat their mistakes) and I can accept that I get so wrapped up in myself that I forget what I'm doing to others.

What I can't accept is that there isn't anything else I could have done. All the people I've talked to, the letters to my congress people, the politicians I've voted for, the web pages I've written, the pictures I've collected... the signs I put on my car... the T-Shirt I designed.

Could I have done something else to stop this war?

Please?

2008-11-14T10:11:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine sent me one of those emails that circulate every veterans day where they show pictures of our boys and talk about how good we have it and how they are suffering to ensure our freedom.

I was totally with it until this one:

"You criticize your government, and say that war never solves anything.
He sees the innocent tortured and killed by their own people and remembers why he is fighting."

And that is a total load of crap.

1. While war does solve problems (in the least competent, most violent, way) I strongly question what the hell this war was supposed to solve. It SURE as hell wasn’t about preventing the torture and killing of innocents. All we did was trade our own boys lives for the lives of forigners. No WMD’s, No Nukes, No terrorist support. We were, at best, missinformed, and at worse, LIED to. And if we are all about preventing torture and killing of innocents, why did we do nothing in Darfur? Sudan? Congo?

2. Anyone who tells me I should criticize my government needs to pull their head out of there ass. And using our boys to justify that should be a crime. The American Sheeple have been manipulated into giving over more power to the government than ever before by shear terror mongering on the part of the American Wolverment. Go check this out:
http://techref.massmind.org/techref/other/war-machine.htm Really worth hearing. The USA is using the same tactics the Nazis (and every other government) used on it’s people. Hearing it from Hitlers Reich-Marshal has an impact, though.

3. Yeah, those boys need an excuse to keep going everyday. I used that excuse in the first Gulf War:
http://techref.massmind.org/techref/other/incompetence.htm It was a lie. I lie I told to myself. There should have been better solutions. We are part of the problem.

4. If you just really get off on war pictures, see this:
http://techref.massmind.org/images/member/jmn-efp-786/war/index.htm

Damn it… Send this to the people you sent those pictures too…

And how about this last thought?

SUPPORT OUR TROUPS!
BRING… THEM… HOME!

Google being evil and hateful ...and poor business people! I SAY NO ON 8/HATE

2008-11-03T17:26:00.001-08:00

My web sites use adsense ads from Google to generate a few extra dollars, but yesterday and today I noticed a serious drop in income. After checking it out, I found that they were running political ads (which pay next to nothing and no one clicks because they are sick of the mud slinging) all over the place.

Thats one issue... But the other is that I am very strongly in favor of the government NOT restricting the rights of it's people, especially according to sexual preference. And prop 8 would take away the right to marry from gays and lesbians. Which makes it wrong, period, no matter how one feels about them (us).

And Google was running "Yes on 8" ads on MY sites!

I about had a fit. I've pulled all the ads down and lodged a complaint. It's evil, and it's hateful, and it's not even good business.

I'm keeping the ads running on this blog because VERY few people read this, and it's a way for me to see how long they keep those ads comming... as I write this, there is a "Yes on hate" ad above my blog. People who know me understand that this is not my position.

Everyone...

2008-11-03T14:38:00.000-08:00

I truly believe this:

2008-10-31T08:30:00.000-07:00

My Unca Glen runs the Roseville Big Band (how many guys can say they've run a big band these days?) and this is him singing his big band version of "Monster Mash." Although we can certainly act as silly as the next bunch, in general, we Newtons don't dance (my wife's genetics have apparently spared my kids since they are both in ballet) but Glen does a pretty good monster here... And "Igor" nails the voice... And the band is great of course; over all it's a fun bit for the big band crowd.

Well, he got ONE right....

2008-10-22T21:39:00.001-07:00

I do not support Brian Bilbray for congress... He has voted on the WRONG side of so many things: His racist attacks on the boarder issues and constant pandering to big oil make me sick. Which makes it all the harder to admit that on the bank bailout, he.. um... did the right thing. I was blown away when megavote emailed me that he had voted AGAINST the bailout. I wrote him an email asking why? This is part of his reply:

While I am in agreement with the Secretary that the state of the financial markets called for some form of government involvement, I held two serious concerns with his approach. First, I believe this plan would undermine the free market from promoting economic growth. Today, our system rewards innovators and entrepreneurs, but Paulson's plan subsidizes poorly managed companies at the expense of more responsible and competitive companies and the taxpayer. In so doing, this bill represents one of the greatest intrusions of the government into the free market in our history and it is a precedent I fear will be exploited to justify even greater federal intrusion into our own lives. Second, our government does not have the expertise or incentive to run Secretary Paulson's plan effectively or efficiently. Under the terms of the plan, our government would purchase thousands of mortgages and hold them for five years, or more, until the market improves. As it stands now we have neither the manpower nor the knowledge base to purchase, administer and sell mortgages on such a scale. For proof, we have to look no farther than the Recovery Trust Corporation from the Savings and Loan bailout of the 1980's which ultimately cost the taxpayer dearly because of mismanagement and private manipulation. Far too often in recent years people have looked to the
government for answers only to be met with waste and incompetence. We cannot allow that to happen again.

Ultimately, when the bill came before the House of Representatives on September 29, 2008, I joined with the majority of my colleagues to defeat the bill and it failed by a vote of 205-228. While I did not support the bill, I fervently believe that government should take some action to help restore accountability and stabilize our financial market. Not doing so would potentially risk that our credit markets would dry up and middle class Americans would be unable to receive car or home loans and small businesses would not have access to the loans they need to operate. To address these issues, I advocated for a mandatory insurance plan where banks would be required to insure their toxic debt with the government, which would have Wall Street foot the bill for much of their own bailout and greatly reduce the risk to the taxpayer. I also strongly supported raising the FDIC insurance limits to $250,000 to better protect the middle class from bank runs. Additionally, I fought to eliminate
mark-to-market mortgage pricing regulations for banks. This allows homes to be priced based on their long term value and not on recently imposed fair market accounting regulations that have turned mortgages whose owners have never missed a payment into toxic debt because the home is no longer worth the buying price. Moreover, I believe we need to update and more stringently enforce our financial oversight laws to reflect a twenty-first century economy and ensure that crises like this one cannot happen again.
Following the House's failed vote, the Senate passed the same measure, but only after adding more than $110 billion in pork to draw in additional support. These riders are laden with the type of wasteful pork-barrel spending Americans have come to expect, and fear, from Washington, including $192 million for Puerto Rico
and Virgin Islands rum producers, $128 million for auto-racetracks and $148 million for wool producers. Rather than working to forge a compromise that myself and many of my colleagues could accept the Congressional leadership added billions of handouts to Members of Congress as a way to buy their support. I believe that is a betrayal of the citizens we represent. As a result, when the Senate proposal came before the House on October 3rd I voted against the bill. Unfortunately, the bill did pass by a vote of 263-171 and President Bush has signed it into law.

Well, he nailed that one. Both the dems voted FOR it, Boxer doesn't get them all right.

2008-10-22T14:09:00.000-07:00

from XKCD.COM

Face it: This election is, in part, a race war.

2008-10-16T09:08:00.000-07:00

First, let me say that I'm no fan of Howard Stern. Although I would never seek to censor him, he is crude, self serving, and generally does our culture great harm. I blame the people who listen to him more than I do him. He is just serving their lack of taste.

However, there is some value in his lack of restraint: At times, he reports the cold honest truth when no one else would dare to. This is a good example:

Howard Stern Show - 1/10/2008 - Sal Interviews "Obama Supporters" in Harlem
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5p3OB6roAg

In this clip, "Sal" asks a series of black people if they support Obama just because he is black or because of his stance on the issues. They all reply that it doesn't matter to him that he is black. Sal then asks them to confirm that they support the issues by reading a few, but he actually reads off points from the McCain campaign platform which Obama directly opposes. He even asks if they have any concern that Sarah Palin will become the vice president under Obama. They all report being perfectly happy supporting "Obamas" "right to life", "stay the course in Iraq" and "Sarah Palin" platform.

Not only are they supporting Obama only because he is black, they are also totally unaware of the issues and which candidate supports which issue. Black racism against whites, however it may be justified, is very real. I don't blame them. But not knowing the issues is inexcusable.

Was it racist of Stern to report this and of me to mention it here? Perhaps. Probably even. But in my mind the point is this: The blue blood, blue hair, little old ladies would do exactly the same thing if you asked them why they supported McCain; "oh no, not because he's white and Obama is black, I strongly feel that women should have the right to choose, we should get out of Iraq, and Joe Biden will make a great Vice President"

We've already seen this sort of disconnection in the women who called Obama an Arab and those who shouted "Kill Obama" and racial slurs at McCain rallies. The whites are scared to death of a black man in the white house. Who will protect the interns?

Sad huh?

The difference in this election will be who votes. If the blacks actually go out and vote, Obama will win. If the young white people, who were not raised with the same hatred and fears now carried by most older people, actually go and vote, Obama will win. If the progressives and liberals, young or old, like myself, who actively try to suppress racism, actually go and vote, Obama will win. The problem is that few of those people have bothered to vote historically. Young people, "minorities" (not so minor), and mild liberals quite often don't bother.

The blue hair set ALWAYS votes. They are just as racist, just as unaware of the issues, and just as incapable of making a good decision, but they always vote.

Despite the polls, and despite my most fervent wishes and hopes, I'm still predicting McCain will win.

Sick, sad, world. Shaved legs molest girls.

2008-10-06T08:43:00.000-07:00

Women abhor pedophiles, and rightfully so, yet they continue to shave their legs and wear lipstick, blush, and false eyelashes.

*pause for a moment to let the apparent disconnect in that statement settle in with the confused reader*

The average age where a young woman's leg hair becomes visible is between 12 and 18 depending on hair color, genetics, etc...

What other reason is there for shaving ones legs, besides wanting to appear to be jail bait?

*pause to really allow the increasingly shocked reader to think hard about that*

Take your average 13 year old girl and stand her next to a 30 year old women while neither is wearing makeup. Notice that the 13 year old has ruby red lips, blushed cheeks, and strong dark eyelashes. The 30 year old has pale lips, sallow cheeks and thinning eyelashes. Now ask the 30 year old to go put on her make up. Compare again and feel slightly sick to your stomach. Don't take my word for it. Go see for yourself.

*hurries on to reassure the now outraged reader of the limits of my insanity*

Please note, I am not blaming women for this, I am trying to point out how sick our society is. I am not saying that women are knowingly encouraging men to look at jail bait, nor am I saying that men are knowingly pressuring women to look like jail bait in order to be attractive. I am also not attempting to excuse the actions of your local neighborhood child molester. We are all responsible for our actions, and must pay the consequences, no matter to what bad influences we are exposed. I am also NOT saying that I am sexually attracted to girls, just on the off chance that someone is getting worried here... I'm all about the MILF and specifically, my wife.

But something is wrong here. Very, very wrong. In Europe, or at least in the non-westernized parts of Europe, women do not feel a compulsion to do these things.

It may be that the problem is an unintended consequence of the advertising engine that must needs accompany each industry in our consumer driven economy. I once saw an interview where an experienced older man who had lived through the 60's and remembered it was asked why "blonds have more fun?" His answer was surprising to me: He said "Well, originally it was to sell hair care products." Apparently that saying was started by ads placed for a company that had come up with a new non-bleach hair coloring product and who wanted to create a greater demand. By convincing women that they would have more fun as a blond, they created a feedback loop where the women who wanted more fun, perhaps unknowingly advertised the fact by dying their hair. Men then saw dark eyebrows and blond hair, knew that the woman wanted to have "more fun" and so were more likely to ask her out. It was a self fulfilling prophecy.

I think the same sort of thing may have happened in the makeup industry. Makeup has several functions, including accentuating the difference between men and women, or sending that same "I want to have fun" signal, but mostly it is designed to mask the effects of aging. When an older lady caked on the powder to hid a few wrinkles or age spots, she was perhaps returning her appearance to that of a healthy 30 year old. No problem there. But how to sell lipstick, for instance, when the lips of a 30 year old are really no more red than those of a 50 year old? And why sell only to 50 year olds?

By presenting the women of the USA with an idealized, sexuallized, version of a younger than legal Brooke Shields or Kate Moss, companies could then push the sale of more lipstick. And so enlist the women who buy it in the consequence of training the men to be pedophiles.

Face it, or tell my why I'm wrong in an unemotional, rational, and logical argument backed up with references and facts. Hysterical rants, unsupported denials, and blame deflecting accusations will be deleted.

I'm tired of just accepting the sickness.

If we don't laugh about Palin, we would cry...

2008-10-03T12:51:00.000-07:00

"She does know about international relations because she is right up there in Alaska, right next door to Russia." –FOX News Channel's Steve Doocy, gushing over Palin's qualifications, to which Jon Stewart quipped, "When you think about it, Alaska is also near the North Pole, so she must also be friends with Santa."

"President Bush met with John McCain and Barack Obama. John McCain showed up without running mate Sarah Palin, which is a shame because she actually has a lot of experience with financial matters. You know, she lives right next to a bank." --Jimmy Kimmel (I had to think about that one for a second before I got it, but it's funny as heck...)

"Political experts are saying that to succeed in the vice presidential debate, Sarah Palin needs to show that she has the same concerns as everyday Americans. For instance, Palin planned to start the debate by saying she's really troubled by John McCain's choice for vice president." –Conan O'Brien

"Have you been watching the Sarah Palin interview with Katie Couric on the 'CBS Evening News'? Pretty interesting. Sarah Palin could not remember the name of a newspaper or a magazine that she reads. And I was thinking, wow, we could possibly have a leader of the country who doesn't read. And then I thought, well, hell it's worked pretty good for George Bush." --David Letterman

"Sarah Palin, you know, was at the U.N. yesterday, and she was a big hit. She's over there meeting all of the world leaders. She's still learning who the world leaders are. Right now, she thinks that Warren Buffett is the head of Margaritaville." --David Letterman

"Speaking of Sarah Palin, she said she's a life-long member of the National Rifle Association. Which may explain why she's in favor of shotgun weddings." --Conan O'Brien

"Everybody is trying to find out more about Sarah Palin. Someone was able to hack into Sarah Palin's Yahoo! email account because she hadn't taken the proper security measures. Yeah. So, folks, it's official. No one in the Palin family uses protection." --Conan O'Brien

Ok, not stop laughing and go check out the hard cold (and documented) facts:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-kurtzman/sarah-palin-by-the-number_b_127355.html

My pesonal "favorites" are:

0: the actual amount of time Palin spent in Iraq during a 2007 visit to the region, despite the McCain campaign's claim she had visited the Iraq battle zone. She never made it beyond the Khabari Alawazem Crossing in Kuwait. (Source)

2006: the year in which Palin declared she favors abstinence-only education and that "the explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support" (Source)

2008: the year in which Palin's 17-year-old daughter was impregnated by a self-described "f***ing redneck," who wrote on his MySpace page "I don't want kids" and "ya f*** with me I'll kick ass" (Source)

Bail-out WHO?

2008-09-26T11:49:00.001-07:00

So let me get this straight: The banks wrongly loaned money to people who purchased houses and could just barely make their house payment... When the economy sagged a bit (due to high fuel prices?) they suddenly couldn't make those mortgage payments and defaulted on their loans.

Now the banks are in trouble because so many people stoped paying their mortgage payments.

So... Gee Whiz... the solution is to forgive the bankers the bad debt and forget about the home owners.

Why not pay off part of the mortgage of those home owners so that they can continue to make their (now lower) payments and move back into those abandoned houses?

What I asked my representatives is this: "Why is welfare for people wrong, while welfare for the banking industry is right?"

Bilbray voted AGAINST the war on terror

2008-09-25T15:57:00.000-07:00

Here is the voting records for H.R. 1 Implementing "Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007".

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-1

Brian Bilbray voted AGAINST the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

Imagine Sheeple without loans.

2008-09-23T08:53:00.000-07:00

Imagine a country; a fine country with more than enough land for all it's people to have a place to live, more than enough sun for everyone to have electricity and more than enough water for everyone to grow all the food they would need to eat, if only they would work a few hours a day in their gardens.

But, imagine the people of this country are addicted to power. Cheap power. Lots of power.

The people work for those few who have the power, instead of working for themselves.

Imagine a very intelligent young woman who attended university and became very educated as well as very intelligent. Imagine that she found a way to make power for everyone, or rather that she invented a machine that would allow each person to make their own power.

She built a prototype, and wanted to start a company to build these machines, so that all the people could buy one, then stop working for the people who had the power and go back to their gardens for exercise and food, instead of health clubs and fast food restaurants.

To build so many machines, she would need money to build a factory; so she applied for a loan from a bank. But the banks in this country were all owned or regulated by the government. And the president of the government was working for the people who had the power. They had paid for him to come to power though something called an "election" in which the people pick who ever they see on TV the most. And he picked up his phone, and made a call, and set a policy, and the bank would not loan money for anyone working on alternative power.

It wasn't always like that. Once, the banks could decide for themselves to whom they would loan. But the bankers were also addicted to power, and they made foolish loans to people who could not really pay them back. Instead of letting the bankers pay the price for their mistake, the government took over the banks. They told the people that if the bankers were allowed to suffer, it would create a "financial crisis" and the people would suffer. Even though the vast majority of the people had next to no money in the bank, and only the richest people would really have lost anything, and even though all they would have lost was money, not food or land; still the people believed in the terrible "crisis". So the people, or the sheeple, allowed the government to take over the banks.

Before that, the sheeple had allowed the government to shut down a country that was a source of power, which had lowered the price of power^, because the government lied to the people, telling them that source was planning to make war on them with something called "weapons of mass destruction" which, it turned out, didn't really exist in that country. And even though some of the people realized the government was lying, when the "financial crisis" was announced, they didn't remember that their government was a government of liars, they just didn't want to face the crisis. They ran and hid and let the government take over the banks.

Stupid, stupid, sheeple.

Every year they worked harder for the power, which cost more and more every year, and the people with the power got richer and richer while the sheeple got poorer and poorer. The sheeple lost their homes, because even though the government told them it was O.K. to help the bankers, the government would not help the people keep their homes.

The sheeple could never see that they were surrounded by empty land, with water and sun and seeds and tools and enough power to work the land to make food and trees to make homes and knowledge and talent to learn and be entertained because they were blinded by power, too stupid to question thier government, and too frightened to make a stand.

I sing, you just suffer.

2008-09-20T21:32:00.000-07:00

My dear uncle Glen sent me a song list he had reciently played as a DJ at a company funciton and asked if I and his daughter had performed any of them: I thought my answer was amusing enough to share. Professional music, or rather the reaction people have to those who are not professionals, has been a sore point with me for years. I long for the days of the entire pub singing along with the one guy who can play the piano. Everyone "sings"; thats the way it should be.

The only songs on that list that I’ve “performed” are “Dancing Queen” (the ABBA version, ‘cause I’m in touch with my feminine side) and “Rock around the clock” ‘cause I’m a big enough dork to think I can pull that off. And by “performed” I mean sang along with the radio or CD. And by “sang” I mean croaked.

What I’ve performed in front of people, other than with the church choir (which the entire family is now in: S.A.T.B. Allie, Maria, Remy, Me) includes “Brother Can You Spare a Dime” and “Power to the People” (aka “Bomb the World to Peaces”) both of which were recorded and both recordings will remain mercifully hidden.

There was also “Country Roads” with two other guys and ukes; another guy playing one he made and me on the one I inherited from dad, We lost our place about ¾ of the way through. I mean, how do you loose your place in “Country Roads”?

And I sang “Morning has Broken” with a nice older lady from the church and I’m fairly sure I didn’t break it, but there was no recording so I can keep fooling myself.

4 of us did a arrangement by a 5^th of the barbershop classic “On the Banks of the Wabash”; we worked on it so hard we almost quit, we got to the point that we hated it. But we sang it _perfectly_ several times. Then when we performed it, our bass got off on the wrong note and it sucked all the way through. We haven’t been able to find a new bass. We were nice; he doesn’t want to do it anymore.

In the near future, I hope to again embarrass myself, by singing something well beyond my technical ability; and enjoy the heck out of it. Because that is my terrible secret: No matter how totally incompetent I am, I truly love singing. I just love it.

Y’all can just suffer.

Are the conservatives really wrong? Or just different?

2008-09-18T17:57:00.000-07:00

As the end of my prior post says, I'm not so sure I know all the answers. The following video really does a great job of pointing that out. It also includes heard a brilliant quote, which I'm not sure it true; it is brilliant in the sense that it really makes one think.

"Sports is to war, as pornography is to sex"

In light of prior readings about porn making ones expectations of sex unrealistic, it sort of makes sense...

...I've always had a distaste for sports, and perhaps now I can understand why.

Perhaps this also explains why so few women enjoy sports.

Anyway, the video is about the difference between liberals and conservatives. You may not agree with everything that is said, and it goes by very quickly. But I think it is worth the time to watch it.

"Why not vote for McCain and just drill the coast and in ANWR for oil?"

2008-09-16T16:59:00.001-07:00

Drilling is a great idea. Just like giving the crack-addict another rock to tie him over until he has a chance to get down to the rehab center.

I’ve got no problem with more drilling, even in ANWR (Alaskan Native Wildlife Refuge) because honestly the liberals have very much overstated the value of that area to wildlife.

But the oil is going to run out sometime. You can argue that it will run out next year or in 200 years, but it’s going to run out. For the USA, it ran out a long time ago, except for ANWR.

It’s a question of crushed ice in your drink or block ice.

With a crushed ice drink (slurpie, shake, etc…) you never really notice any difference until you are totally out. You can just suck on it and it tastes just the same until suddenly you get that first rattle of an empty hole. And then there is very little left… the end is near. With a block ice drink (lemonade, ice tea, iced coffee, etc…) as you sip, the ice melts and the drink is diluted until you are drinking basically water. It’s a gradual change and you know about where you are in the drink by how strong it is.

Sweet light crude is a crushed ice drink. When a country is pumping up the last bit of oil, it doesn’t cost them any more than it did when they drilled the first well. And then it runs out. Ask the UAE. They are in transition from oil exporter to oil importer. They have been converting their economy to investment, real estate, and entertainment for years now.

http://www.ameinfo.com/71519.html Wow... good thing Kuwait has that oil from Iraq to process now that the Iraqi system is blown all to hell.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HF07Ak01.html (really worth reading)

Mexico is on the edge of running out and has no plan to offset the hit their economy is going to take. As usual, in Mexico, the people will bear the brunt of that failure. Talk about sheeple.

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/46360

Saudi Arabia is going to run out in the next 10 or 15 years. They desperately need to keep their prices up in order to make the profit necessary to transition their economy.

http://techref.massmind.org/techref/other/USAenforcesOPECprices.htm

The USA, of course, ran out years ago… except for our reserves… Like ANWR… I wonder why our government decided to “protect the wildlife” that doesn’t need protecting up there, instead of just letting the oil companies drill till we sucked up the last drop? Could it be that they were thinking ahead to the possibility of the Middle East being so screwed up that we would no longer be able to buy oil from them?

The long story short is that if the costs of crack… err… I mean oil… doesn’t go up, if the crack… oil… isn’t hard to get, the American capitalist economy will never transition to anything else until the very last second. This would make that transition painful; horrible in fact. Rent the documentary “Oil Storm” if you want a “best case” idea of what that would mean for us.

The Pickens plan is great… It will keep American dollars in American so we can afford to buy CCC (cheap Chinese crap). It puts in place PART of what we need in the long term for alternative energy (the wind farms in the central USA) although that does not really work all that well for the coasts where most of the power is consumed since power transmission lines are very costly and inefficient. I would go with floating nukes on the coasts, and wind inland but that’s just ‘cause I’m a mad scientist. Heck, no one is bothered by that H bomb they lost off the coast of Georgia, why worry about an air craft carrier with a few high tension lines?
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/09/13/lost.bomb/index.html
<http://books.google.com/books?id=svfKD4-MMT8C&pg=PA153&lpg=PA153&dq=aircraft+carrier+"generates+enough+electricity"&source=web&ots=mxnLS9n9jD&sig=kpgyMEGTzLGS_Jr6vsXcYAFtV9k&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result>

Anyway, NG for the cars, wind (or nuke) for trons and keep working on that Hydrogen infrastructure. Oh, and something to make the hydrogen with… The worst part of the Pickens plan is that we will just move from smoking oil to mainlining NG until the NG starts to run out; thereby solving the problem once and for all. But wont… ONCE AND FOR ALL!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqPjxsAuUxk

There is nothing wrong with a corporation making a profit. But when that profit is at the cost of an unquestioning public, it just encourages further exploitation… *cough* I mean, “profit taking” which must eventually lead to a separation of the rich and the poor, which eventually leads to a revolution. A population of sheep must beget a leadership of wolves. And yet the American Sheeple buy Hummers, and fail to take a pay cut so they can telecommute, or pay extra for organic food (avoiding the use of oil based fertilizers and pesticides). They don’t see that the weak front of wolves on the left and right are herding them into the narrow valley where it will be easy for the pack to pick off as many juicy little lambs as they like. As the price of oil goes up, and the profit is taken, a few Sheeple are jumping about, trying to find an exit; buying the Prius or electric car (which, due to its higher cost of production, uses just as much oil to make as they will recover over the life of the car).

Obama is backed by “BIG COAL” and so he will push laws that remove environmental air quality protections from around coal fired plants. But at least it will be American coal instead of Saudi Oil. McCain will win points with the greenies by pushing laws that increase air quality requirements and cause more power plants to switch to NG (a byproduct of oil drilling which we still have volumes of in the USA). The bulk of the money for oil goes to the Saudis. A people who hate the USA to a man. A vote for McCain, is a vote for Oil, is a vote for the Saudi royal family, is a vote for Saudi peoples, is a vote for…

POP QUIZ: What nationality were the 9/11 hijackers? A) Iraqi? B) Afghan? C) French? D) None of the above. See below for the answer which is printed upside down.

Summery: We need a slow transition from Saudi oil to American NG + wind/nuke then to fusion? Solar? Something? Keeping the price low, in a free market economy, makes that transition happen very suddenly about the time the oil runs out. Bad. Forcing the price high by artificially restricting demand (keep ANWR closed, bomb Iran, invade Iraq) allows for the “free” market to adjust. Adjusting to a resource we have lots of in the USA (NG, coal, nuke) keeps our dollars here and out of the hands of the devils playthings. Adjusting away from oil makes oil companies very, very sad. Oil companies will ask McCain (and to a lesser degree Obama) to help them maintain a cheap supply of crack… err… oil. Vote for the lying pig bastard politician who isn’t supported by big oil.

Or maybe big oil is taking the long view and helping us to ease the transition to new fuels? Naw... couldn't be.

ıpnɐS ǝɹǝʍ sɹǝʞɐfıɥ tt\6 ǝɥ+ `ǝʌoqɐ ǝɥʇ ɟo ǝuoU (| :ɹǝʍsuV

More NeoCon lies about Obama...

2008-09-16T09:25:00.000-07:00

Email from the neocons:

Do you know how I can find the following Obama stuff?

1. Occidental College records -- Not released
2. Columbia College records -- Not released
3. Columbia Thesis paper -- 'not available'
4. Harvard College records -- Not released
5. Selective Service Registration -- Not released
6. Medical records -- Not released
7. Illinois State Senate schedule -- 'not available'
8. Law practice client list -- Not released
9. Certified Copy of original Birth certificate -- Not released
10. Embossed, signed paper Certification of Live Birth -- Not released
11. Harvard Law Review articles published -- None
12. University of Chicago scholarly articles -- None

13. Your Record of baptism-- Not released or 'not available'

14. Your Illinois State Senate records--'not available'

15. And why did you place your hand on the Koran when you were sworn in as senator if you are a Christian?

My response.

This is so completely stupid that it would be funny if people weren’t actually dumb (and hate filled) enough to believe it.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/obama.asp in general... This is a list of the LIES and distortions the NeoCons have propagated against Obama. Even the ones that show as true are not as damaging as they seem. E.g. the flag was removed from the /tail/ of the aircraft but not from the side, and the tail still shows red white and blue in a flag like pattern.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/50lies.asp college records, law practice, etc…

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/citizen.asp Birth cert is public. You don’t think the DNC checks these things?

http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/ellison.asp It wasn’t Obama with the Quran and bibles are not used anyway.

Some of the items in this list have not (yet) been refuted by snopes, but they don’t mater.

- Why do we care what his medical records say? The neocons are just trying to cover for McCain being the oldest candidate ever.

- Has McCain released his schedule? Why do we need to see Obamas?

http://deepbackground.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/07/24/1219454.aspx Columbia didn’t require a thesis at the time… He never wrote one.

McCain is buying the election.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121988099541678063.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

And who is loaning him the cash?
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/sectors.php?sector=E “Energy/Natural Resources” which consists of Coal, Utilities, Waste, and…

…BIG OIL!

I wonder why he supports drilling off the coast of California? (even though it is true the inflating your tires properly will make as much of a difference in the price of gas as will screwing up our coat line)

I wonder how he feels about Exxon never having paid for the Valdese incident and turning the greatest profit EVER for a single quarter? (they made $1,500 each and every SECOND the first quarter of the year, while we paid $4/gallon at the pump).

Buy a Prius, kill the earth?

2008-08-19T18:33:00.001-07:00

The cost of anything, when you break it down and break that down and so on, turns out to be the total cost of the energy required to make it.

To make a Prius you need about $28,000 of energy. For example, the metal parts have to be machined (coal for electricity for the mill/lath/cnc and everything it takes to support the worker including fertilizer, pesticides and so on used to grow and transport his or her food) but first the metal must be transported (diesel) and before that smelted (electricity or NG) and before that the ore is hauled (diesel) and mined (diesel, etc...) and so on. The metal doesn't cost anything, it's just sitting in the ground as ore waiting for us to take it. ALL of the costs to make that metal part are the energy required to transform it from the base ore.

The point I'm trying to make is that the COST of the car is the ENERGY used to make the car.

We expect cars to last about 5 years. On the bleeding edge, one tends to bleed. Hybrid cars are not well tested, although they do seem to be holding up well in fleets and as rentals. Let's give it the benifit of the doubt: This thing is going to cost you $28000 / 5 (years) / 52 (weeks per year) / 7 (days per week) or about $15.38 per day no matter how much you drive it. That is how much oil, diesel, coal, fertilizer, pesticide, etc... you will consume with this car each day without driving it at all. If you drive it 40 miles a day (which is about the national average) then you will be spending 38 cents per mile, NOT including the gas.

At 47 to the gallon and gas at $4 (for now) that is $3.40 more or 8 and a half cents per mile. Add some regular maintenance, you are looking at about 49 or 50 cents or per mile.

That is the bottom line: A Prius costs you, and mother earth, about 50 cents per mile.

A Hummer, by the way, costs about a buck a mile.

My $10,500 used 2001 Camry, purchased in 2007, given that it has one of the highest reliability ratings in the world, will very probably last 4 years MORE or 10 years total. It has a proven track record. The mfgr warranty for most of the car is actually 8 years, for pity sake.

$10,500 / 5 (years I plan to own it) / 52 / 7 = $5.77 per day. It gets 23MPG (25 estimated, 23 actual) and I drive about 50 miles per day so add 2.18 gallons of gas at, say $4 dollars per gallon. That is $8.72 per day in gasoline for a daily total of $14.49. I have almost $5 a day more than you to put towards maintenance and repairs.

But that is with my crazy commute. In terms of cost per mile, I pay less than 12 cents a mile to own the car and less than 18 cents a mile to drive it at $4/gal. So that is 30 cents a mile!

If gas stays at $4 I save 20 cents a mile over you!

38 - 12 is 26 cents a mile allowance I have for gas more than you do just because of the base price of our cars. Gas would have to be around $6 a gallon to justify my purchasing a Prius.

At $6 a gallon, there are a LOT of sources for fossil fuels that start making economic sense and so will become available. Oil shale extraction in West Virginia, algae bio fuel, etc...

Maybe they will come out with a lower cost version of some of these hybrids in the next few years and all of this will change, but for now, driving an old beater is the most ecological thing any of us can do.

And then there is the crash test ratings...

P.S.
www.truedelta.com is a fantastic resource for reliability information. You can compare Prius reliability with Hummers for example.

McCains voting record shows who holds his leash.

2008-08-19T13:42:00.000-07:00

Here is the vote the video is reffering to: 2007 Vote 425 on HR 6 to add amendment 3841, the amendment is massive but I believe the part they are reffering to is Sec..1562 "Elimination of the different treatment of foreign oil and gas extraction income and foreign oil related income for purposes of the foreign tax credit." It is interesting that the amendment would have added some corporate welfare for coal producers (see Sections 1509 and 1510), so McCain is apparently NOT in the pocket of big coal...

We needed 60 votes to prevail, and 59 of them were in. But John McCain ducked the vote.

As a result, instead of powering millions of homes with clean energy and building next-generation solar technology, we're giving ExxonMobil and other companies billions in tax breaks at a time when they're already making record profits.

Notice that by not voting, McCain can say that he never voted against removing those tax breaks, while still ensuring that they continue to get them.

choices and motivation reduce happiness.

2008-08-15T16:23:00.000-07:00

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html
This talk is based on clinical research which pretty clearly shows the following (summerized in my own words):

Choice opens the door for doubt regarding the choices you make
Being highly motivated to make the best possible choices and reach the highest possible levels of attainment increases the chances that you will take risks and make sacrifices that will decrease your happiness.
In a few months or a year, at most, you will be just as happy as you were before, no matter what actually happens to you.

Does the USA enforce OPEC prices?

2008-08-14T10:34:00.001-07:00

It may be that we invaded Iraq, not to increase production and access to oil, but to slow and control its production for the benefit of OPEC, and perhaps, our own benefit as well.

read more digg story

Is that human life?

2008-08-14T09:11:00.000-07:00

When you get the chance, read "Freakonomics" (an absolutely brilliant book) and pay attention to the chapter that shows the link between Roe v Wade and the decline in the crime rate just prior to the turn of this century.

In summary, the numbers show that crime declined at a rate inversely proportional to the number of abortions granted women who did not wish to become mothers but who had, nonetheless, gotten pregnant. True enough; if those women had been raised better, perhaps they wouldn't have found themselves in that position, but then that just takes us back to who raised them and to wondering if they were really wanted by their mothers.

Yes, partial birth abortion is sickening. But it is not, IMHO, as sickening as the life of an unwanted child. And that is a failure of our society as much as it is a failure of the mothers. All those people with "right to life" bumper stickers should be legally required to show proof of adoption before they can put that on their cars.

That "life", the thing they call a right, is horrible.... Period. Anyone who thinks otherwise is wearing rose-colored contact lenses. If there were enough love and caring to go around, I would feel otherwise, but the bald truth is that even more than a deficit of food, shelter, clothing, we have a much larger deficit of love, kindness, and caring. And Harlow's monkeys (as well as many studies on "failure to thrive") have shown that love is just as important as food to the survival of a human. With food, and not love, you might have a thing that breaths, walks, even talks, but it isn't really human.

What is more horrible: A bloody mass of tissue in a bucket, or a thing that steals, kills, consumes and can produce more creatures just like itself? Welfare gave us a prison population of 1 in 100 citizens here in the USA. No where else in the world has there been a welfare system that paid women to have children they didn't really want, and no where else in the world do every 99 people pay to incarcerate the 100th.

Life should be filled with love, joy, and happiness. If it isn't, then it isn't the thing I want to call life. Were it my choice, I would rather be a bucket of bloody parts.

Bush says birth control is abortion!?!?!?

2008-08-13T20:24:00.000-07:00

You have got to be kidding me? Well, no, it's real.

http://speaker.house.gov/blog/?p=1441

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/Story?id=5397146&page=1

Can you imagine living in a place where birth control is considered an "abortion" and health insurers won't cover it? Where even rape victims are denied emergency contraception?

It seems unbelievable, but the Bush Administration is quietly trying to redefine "abortion" to include birth control. The Houston Chronicle says this could wipe out dozens of state laws that protect women's reproductive freedom and protect rape victims. And this proposed "rule change" doesn't need congressional approval.

I just signed a message to Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, whose department is considering this rule change, telling him: "Contraception is NOT abortion." Can you add your voice to this cause? Click here to sign the message:

http://pol.moveon.org/contraception/?r_by=13468-6747112-xFwgXJx&rc=paste

Seriously, if they manage this change, birth control pills will no longer be something that health care providers need to include as a covered prescription.

From your pocket to Exxon.

2008-08-12T19:14:00.000-07:00

Exxon Mobil just broke the all time record for more quarterly profits than any company in U.S. history at $11.7 billion dollars in one quarter. That's nearly $1500 per second. Can you guess whos pockets that profit came from?

It's long past time for real energy independence in America and that starts by making sure oil companies pay their fair share, by getting rid of $13 billion in wasteful tax breaks each year and maybe making them pay a windfall profits tax.

This debate isn't just about dollars and cents. It's not even about the rape of our earth; does anyone remember the Valdez for which they STILL haven't paid damages! It's about real people whose lives are suffering while corporations continue to rake in record profits.

Honestly, I can afford the higher gas prices. What I can NOT afford, is to raise my kids with this sort of greed as an example of life in the USA. My kids need better schools, to show them that we care about our future; about the kids. They need better health care, to teach them the importance of taking care of each other. They need to learn that taking unfair advantage of others will NOT be tollerated.

If you are mad and frustrated, taking a few minutes to visit this site will make you feel better:
http://www.StopThePainAtThePump.org

Who are they lying for?

2008-08-12T18:51:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkUj9EIINIs Yes, how could we be surprised that Bush the Third was in bed with the oil companies.
http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/industries.php Confirms that the republicans are owned by big oil
Sadly, the news is perhaps even worse for the democrats: Their funding comes from *gasp* Lawyers! (apologies to Dick) Not to mention political organizations, education, Hollywood, and civil servants (which was surprising to me, most GS whatevers I've known were hard core republicans.)
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/sectors.php?sector=E again shows big oil supports McCain, but Obama got lots from them as well. Ag (read Monsanto, ConAgra, etc... ) also supports McCain over Obama, as does Transportation (of course; car companies)
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/sectors.php?sector=B Obama wins big with high tech and the phone companies and is generally on it with financial, insurance and HMO's.
That last part does NOT jive with his campaign promises:
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/healthcare/#coverage-for-all Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/sectors.php?sector=D amazingly enough the military was behind Hillary and it pretty much split on the current runners.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure they are all liars... But it's good to know who they are lying for.

HCMV and the middle road.

2008-08-12T18:43:00.000-07:00

This is absolutely fascinating to me...

…and may bore you to death. I've bolded the critical parts, and italicized the quotes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytomegalovirus

Basically, there is a virus called HCMV that is pretty much harmless... most people who get it (and 90.8% of individuals aged 80 and over are positive for HCMV) will not even notice, although they may have a sore throat for a while. Only immunocompromised people (organ transplant recipients, HIV positive, etc...) and unborn babies need fear HCMV. “Most healthy people who are infected by HCMV after birth have no symptoms.[1] Some of them develop an infectious mononucleosis / glandular fever-like syndrome,[3] with prolonged fever, and a mild hepatitis. A sore throat is common. After infection, the virus remains latent in the body for the rest of the person's life. Overt disease rarely occurs unless immunity is suppressed either by drugs, infection or old-age. Initial HCMV infection, which often is asymptomatic is followed by a prolonged, inapparent infection during which the virus resides in cells without causing detectable damage or clinical illness.”

The real fear is that if a women catches HCMV /while/ she is pregnant, there is a significant chance that her child will suffer a birth defect such as mental retardation. If she already has it, no problem. If she and her healthy baby catch it after the baby is born, no problem. But if she doesn't have it, and then gets it during the pregnancy, there is a problem. "CMV remains the most important cause of congenital viral infection in the United States. HCMV is the most common cause of congenital infection in humans and intrauterine primary infections are second only to Down's syndrome as a known cause of mental retardation."

The most interesting point is that this tragedy is more likely in a modern, sterile, sexually uptight society than it is in a poor, fun loving society: "Due to the lower seroprevalence of HCMV in industrialized countries and higher socioeconomic groups, congenital infections is actually more common than in poorer communities, where more women of child-bearing age are already seropositive. In industrialized countries up to 8% of HCMV seronegative mothers contract primary HCMV infection during pregnancy, of which roughly 50% will transmit to the foetus.[6] Between 22-38% of infected foetuses are then born with symptoms,[7] which may include pneumonia, gastrointestinal, retinal and neurological disease"

This specific cause of birth defects is apparently on the rise in our country. And it’s because we are too clean, too uptight, and not enjoying life; not really getting out there and living. Like the measles, mumps, chicken pox and other infections that are actually good to get early on, HCMV is something that it is probably best to pick up and get over with before you have a child.

Living a life in contact with the earth and others, having a little fun (“French” kissing and “making out”), without having too much fun (NO unprotected sex, including oral sex) will get a young woman her HCMV infection without getting her an STD infection and can actually increase the health of her children when she decides to have them; hopefully later in life. Unlike most STD’s (including HIV^) HCMV is carried in saliva as well as “other bodily fluids”: “Transmission of HCMV occurs from person to person through bodily fluids. Infection requires close, intimate contact with a person excreting the virus in their saliva, urine, or other bodily fluids.”

So I can see two different stereotypical young women: One, the conservative religious sort who has never kissed anyone except on the cheek, much less “made out” with anyone; who washes her hands compulsivly with anti-bacterial soap, and then gets married to the man her family approves of and bears children as soon as possible because she is expected to do so. Another, who is not afraid of living, who starts dating at an appropriate age and goes out with several guys before she settles down, kissing or even having sex (but always with double protection) before she picks the best husband; having a kid of her own when she feels ready. The baby from the first one is in danger. Of couse, there is the third example, who has unprotected sex with multiple partners and ends up a child with children and STD’s.

As with just about everything in life, the middle road is best. Too much on either side is dangerous.

Yes, actually, checking your tire pressure will do as much as offshore drilling to reduce the price of oil.

2008-08-12T18:16:00.000-07:00

http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/how_to/4276844.html?series=19 Pop Mech has a conservative bent and they checked out Obama's recent comments about proper tire pressure doing as much as offshore drilling to ease our Oil issues.... And even they say he is right!
Offshore drilling will increase our oil supply by about 1 percent and inflating our tires correctly would also save about 1 percent.
Check the pressure on a cold day before driving long distances. Apparently, the correct tire pressure for your car is printed on a plate in the door frame of the drivers door. Honestly, I didn't realize any of that... Pretty clueless of me, I should know better.
Anyway, the McCainites should think long and hard about who is financing his campaign*, and try not to let the fact that Obama was right prevent them from checking their tires and the Obamarinies should take the pledge to inflate their tires and stand with Barack against offshore drilling:
http://www.TrueMajority.org/ObamaPledge

It wasn't a suicide! It was Lemming MURDER!

2008-07-29T18:57:00.000-07:00

http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/lemmings.asp
It's amazing the things you find on snopes... I had no idea... Apparently they don't all get together and decide to take a long walk off a short pier...
Unless Disney makes them.
Just amazing.