Out Adventurin’

Don’t expect the Justice Department to become better under a Gonzales lead. While he lacks at least some of the religious fervor that Ashcroft has he is no fan of civil rights. As perhaps the most egregious example he is the author of the memo saying that in the war on terror torture of prisoners is justified, and called the Geneva conventions regarding prisoners “quaint.” Also, secrecy, it would seem, is Gonzales’ middle name. The White House declined to release his middle name saying he prefers to use just the initial “R.” Gonzales is also exceptionally loyal to the White House, more so than Ashcroft who did disagree with Bush on a few things. This means a tight knit consolidated power structure that is only bad for America, especially as all the other Cabinet level critics are also expected to leave.

I know it’s a bit early for this, but looking forward to 2008 I’d like to officially throw my support behind Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico. The guy is incredible, I sincerely hope he decides to run. For those that don’t know much about him he was a congressman representing a rural New Mexico district for 15 years, then he was the Ambassador to the UN for a while before becoming Secretary of Energy under Clinton. In 2002 he was elected Governor and so far he has been doing good things for New Mexico. He has such a great set of experience, he is strong on the environment, he is strong on the economy, he is strong on foreign policy. Also he’s been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize four times so far. His name was tossed around for this last presidential race, but he decided not to run, his name was tossed around again when it came time to choose a VP.

For those thinking that Hillary is the shoe in for 2008 I’m highly skeptical. I don’t really think that Hillary really wants to be President, Senator is a pretty prestigious and important position in and of itself, I don’t think it’s a stepping stone to the presidency. Also, Hillary running would polarize the electorate as there are a great many people out there who really hate Hillary personally, add to that the probably larger than people think number of people who will be opposed to the very thought of a woman being president and you’ve got way to motivated an opposition. Mind you, I do think that Hillary Clinton would make a good president, but I’m not very convinced she’d get elected, or that she wants to go through that hassle. I think, for the time being, that she’d make a pretty good VP pick, depending of course on who was the presidential nominee.

I am continuously fascinated by the parallels between our present time and the late nineteenth century. There are many of them, policy issues like should the US have imperial interests, to social issues like the rise in morality in influencing politics. One of my favorite topics is the role and influence of media in shaping public opinion and policy. On this issue the parallels are truly remarkable and very important to our present day discussion.

I got a letter from Ed Gillespie. It said I was going to make an important decision in the next few minutes. That decision was whether or not I believed in our President’s vision for a stronger, better America. An America where The Rich pay no taxes, and the poor have no rights. Also, it mentions how if I don’t give now those nasty liberals will raise our taxes, take away our guns, turn the country over to the terr’ists and plunge the nation into recession.

Well, ok, I’m paraphrasing, and poorly at that, but you get the idea.

Needless to say I wrote them out a check for $1000 right there. After all we can’t have those damned liberals taking over the government.¹

I don’t know why they keep sending me these things, you’d think after I refused to return Tom DeLay’s phone calls two years ago they’d learn. Alas, they still believe me to be a bit of a Republican and one with money even. Maybe it is because I own a business yet still pay no taxes.

1. This, for the uninitiated, is sarcasm, or at least a lie. I realize I don’t post a great deal, so it is indeed difficult to tell sometimes. Also, while the letter was so convincing that I wanted to write them a check for $1000 I just don’t have that kind of money to spare right now.

As I type this I can’t feel my fingers. You’ll probably have to just trust me on this, but it’s very difficult to type when you can’t feel your fingers, it’s similar to trying to chew when you’re jaw is numb from recent dental work, only with less risk of making a tasty treat of your own tongue.

Now one could expect that since I haven’t posted in nearly a year, nor have I communicated in any meaningful way with anyone save for a couple of people for nearly a year, that I would post something with more content that the fact that I can’t feel my fingers. I will, however, not do this, as not feeling my fingers right now, as I type, is the only thing of consequence that has happened to me in the last year.

Sounds a lot like “I just want to focus on making my salad.”

So what’s the first thing that Bush talked about upon getting back from his weekend at the Bush Family Compound in Maine? Yes, that’s right, he said that Saddam Husein was evil, and the world would be safer if he wasn’t in charge of a country. Then he went on to tell congress to hurry up and give him more money for the “War on Terrorism”. As a side not he completely brushed off anything related to his own involvement in strange business practices, you know stuff like Worldcom. Well, at least stuff like all of the businesses he ever ran went bankrupt, but he and his other execs from those businesses still ended up millionaires. Hmmm.

So if we launch any aggressive military actions this week I will laugh, then I will be afraid. For I will know that at least the timing was calculated to pull attention away from corporate accounting scandals, and Bush himself.

Why yes I am cynical, thanks for asking.

Wow, 1954 was when a particularly unruly congress stuck "under god" into the pledge of allegiance. Some of us were wondering when they did that ever since we saw that one movie with the catholic school extortion racket. Now it's gone, at least for the time being. Mind you that without the "under god" part I have no problem with the pledge of allegiance, even as falsely patriotic as it is. "

Of course, the bizarre part of this is that lawmakers across the board are saying this is bad. They claim they'll push for a constitutional amendment authorizing the use of the words "under god" in the pledge. What the fuck? I think there is a certain mostly religious percentage of the population that will have a problem with it, I don't think as a general rule that it will "not sit well with the American people", as Ari Fleischer put it. I could be wrong though, maybe the public will be outraged by this. Wait? How could we tell? Oh that's right, 'cause we'll here from various elected politicians, they'll speak for the public. Mutter mutter mutter mutter, ok, I'm done.

Does anyone find Jakob Nielsen's site ugly and many aspects of it very distracting? I find it especially interesting that he employs just about everyone one of his usability points, but does so with little regard for making it all fit together nicely.

People are so stupid, irrational, simple minded, and hateful. They lock themselves in their own little paradigm and can not even begin to comprehend what it is they are doing. People fucking suck, that is my rant.

I crave red licorice and creme soda. Mostly red licorice though.

I have recently come to the conclusion that the best solution for penalties against Microsoft would be to immediately put them out of business. The government should seize all of the corporate assets, it should pay off the stockholders a little, it should pay off the employees a little. I don't really care what happens to the actually software rights so long as they are given directly to another company. If it's all simply kept hidden and unavailable that's fine.

The point is this, with Microsoft out of the way you'd have other companies springing into that role within weeks. And you'd end up with actual real competition in the market. It would spur the currently fairly stagnant software economy, it would spur innovation. It would generally be a tremendous positive for the consumer.

Microsoft is not like Ma Bell, it's not providing a valuable service that no one else could provide. Breaking it up will only result in two companies with a stranglehold on their respective markets, and it'll generally be just as bad for the consumer.

Anyway, questions? Comments? Angry hate mail? To be fair, I've generally been pretty pro-Microsoft. I think that all of the proposed penalties are pretty stupid and will probably do more harm to everyone (especially the consumer) then good.

Bingo.

For those that haven't already seen this bit of pure comedic genius, (perhaps on the Late Show with David Letterman) already. Of course, it's an ironic thing for him to be singing, since the eagle is sort of a symbol of personal liberty and freedom.

Let the Eagle Soar

The thing that I hate most about religion, or at least many religious people is their ability to completely deny something simply because it doesn't fit into their preconceived ideas. I must add that this is not to say that I hate religion, or religious people as I do not. The type of thing I'm talking about is a creationist denying that dinosaurs ever existed, or even that plate tectonics are real.

This phenomenon is not reserved for religious people though, simply more common there. I have seen many people who define themselves more with science, who are intelligent and well educated do the same thing. I realize that it is often difficult to changes ones views radically, but not even being open to it seems particularly contrary to what science is.

There is a concept that science is based on that you observe something, then attempt to explain it. If and when you later observe something where your current explanation no longer fits, you revise your explanation. This I see as the primary difference between explaining things scientifically and explaining thing religiously. With religion you observe things, then you explain it once, and that explanation must always be true, so there is use of the supernatural, or things like "who are we to question God's will?" Further you are discouraged from questioning, or digging deeper into explanations.

In the end I see this as an act of idiocy equal to or worse then the hillbilly fighting to keep away from any of that nasty booklearnin', regardless of how otherwise intelligent these people are.

Stolen from mathematics where it was stolen from isomorphisms: Questions to ask at "any" math talk.

I especially like #4: Isn't there a suggestion of Theorem 3 in an early paper of Gauss? [The answer to this question is almost always YES!].
Gotta love Gauss

"What? It's just a hat belonging to a small headed man of limited means who lost a fight with a chicken."

The Roger Moore Bond can bite me, but that's one of the better lines.

This was at the end of a spam I just received:

You are receiving this e-mail because you have opted-in to receive special offers from Hi-Speed Media or one of it’s marketing partners. If you feel you have received this e-mail in error or do not wish to receive additional special offers, please scroll down to unsubscribe.

Hah hah hah, that’s all there is, that’s the end of the email. Oh man, that’s pure comedic genius.

Stupid fuel trucks, why can't they just deal with getting hit by trains like the rest of us?

Oh yes, and Gnutella sucks, in all it's shapes and forms.

This is so bizarre.

I'd guess Bin Laden over Iraq (for Kine), but you never can tell. Iraq is easier for us to strike back, I don't think they could afford it, nor do they have sufficient reason for it.

Update: Of course saying it is Bin Laden is simplistic, he's just the source of a little bit of money. It's the spirit and intense hatred of the US pretty much all through the arab world, and even througout the world in general that is responsible.

Freaky shit, for all intents and purposes this is war.

I have complete faith that we will end up doing whatever is necessary to strike back for this. If it is Bin Laden, there's a healthy possibility that will include invading Afghanistan, or at least bombing lots of it.

Things they aren't telling you btw (you being everyone) New York has a special emergency services coordination program thing designed for things like this, it was located of course in the World Trade Center.

Heh heh, no one has ever made a good movie with martial arts and banjo music.

Ok, so there is currently this bunch of outrage over the whole spy plane incident, a lot of the press is focused on the Chinese outrage over the whole thing, not only does the US have the audacity to spy on them, but one of their pilots rammed the spy plane and got killed in the process. So what the fuck, they are mad at us because we are utterly incompetent at spying on them, we can’t even take a simple spy plane on a routine flight without getting caught.

So it occurs to me that it wasn’t that long ago that there were a number of things about Chinese spys stealing stuff from the US. Including a revelation that upwards of 90% of our nuclear secrets had been stolen.

The concept here, is that nations spy on each other, getting all huffy over it is just silly. The second point here is that our relationship with China is probably more severe and disturbing and complex then we ever had with the USSR. The Soviets were simple, we were at war with them, and we knew it, so we were afraid of them, and they were afraid of us. The Chinese are different, the Chinese are our friends, our pals, but they are also our worst enemy right now. The old saying “keep your friends close, and your enemies closer” comes to mind, the question is, are we keeping them close? Or are they keeping us close?

China is dangerous to us because we are approaching the end of our reign as a superpower. Europe and some Asian countries are going to rival us economically, South America, and other Asian countries are rising to fill those sub-super economic positions. Militarily we have issues, sure we have great people in the military, but we don’t know jack shit about how to use it. And the equipment is complete crap, half of it we can’t use if it happens to be raining out.

So anyway, I’m done with my rant now, I apologize, I’m pessimistic and rather bitter.

I miss the cold war. You see, the cold war gave people something to fear, now whether or not it was legitimate to fear from it is an argument for another day. Since the end of the cold war people have had to find different things to fear, and they've come up with some pretty lousy things. Crime being the major one.

Since the cold war, more so called anti-crime or tough on crime measures have gotten their way through. Things like mandatory minimum sentences, mandatory trial as adult for juvenile offenders, complete with mandatory minimum sentences for them. Victims rights bills, by god WTF does victims rights mean? It means taking away various rights of the accused, rights that we should pride ourselves on having as a civilized society. Alas, in recent years I have become much more hesitant to call this a civilized society.

School shootings, by god, its an epidemic because 30 people have been killed in 5+ years as a result of them. Of course, these have been a long time coming, these kids who have committed the shootings are quite wacky, and one could see it coming. So what is the consequence of these shootings? Certainly its not to improve the state of schools so they don't just serve to provoke and create these kids, so that they are a place of learning, not of complete bullshit. No, instead we're going to make public schools more fascist and extreme, with more metal detectors, and armed security guards, and bullshit.

Which is why I miss the cold war. During the cold war there was fear directed at communism, at least that was something of foreign origin, and somewhat more clear and present. And the action was usually not to restrict peoples rights more, but rather to increase military spending, and bully other countries. I do mean usually though, there were quite a bit of infringing on folks rights, but at least it wasn't non-stop like it is now.

I don't have much against using fear for political gain. I just prefer it when the fear causes some sort of uniting effect, rather then just fucking up everything so we have to correct it later and be embarrassed for our past political leaders.