Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from May, 2002
I remember "back in the day".... Salon.com Technology | When 300 baud was the bomb Back in the day, there were boards. Bulletin Board Systems. BBS's. No Net, no Web, no cyberspace, nothing. Just boards, and their ugly stepchildren, D-Dials. All strung together with phone lines, hand-rolled software, and 8-bit computers. No backbone, no hubs, no routers, no DNS tables. Just one computer picking up the phone, calling another, and having a little chat. Hey, I even had an Atari 800, though with only 48k of RAM. My friend always bragged on about his Apple //e, but he came to my machine to program (assorted flavors of Basic for the Atari) or play any kind of game...except "Rescue Rangers," which is still a kick, assuming we can find a working //e, of course. The author, BTW, has a blog at The Truth Laid Bear .
Indy, I'm so pleased you're not dead! CNN.com - Indiana Jones to return for fourth film - May 31, 2002 HOLLYWOOD, California (Reuters) -- After more than a decade of silence, "Indiana Jones" will be cracking his famous bullwhip on the big screen once again. Variety reports Frank Darabont, the writer/director of "The Majestic," has been offered the job of writing the fourth installment of the "Indiana Jones" franchise and a deal is expected to be signed imminently. Paramount insiders say the picture will be aimed at a July 2005 holiday weekend berth. Now the question is, can Harrison Ford still tumble with the best of 'em? After all, it used to be the miles, not the years. Now it's both .
Color Me Confused CNN.com - U.S.: Nuke war would kill millions Up to 17 million people would be killed or injured in the first weeks of an all-out nuclear war between India and Pakistan, according to the Pentagon. So what I'm confused about is this drive to assume that a conflict betweeen India and Pakistan must go nuclear. Where is all this fear coming from? Is this the media shivering in anticipation, or are they hearing something they're not reporting?
You just have to wonder.... TheKCRAChannel.com - Stripper Mom Poses For Playboy RANCHO CORDOVA, Calif. -- The California stripper whose daughter was expelled from her Christian school because of her mother's job is back in the news. Just days after giving up her job as a stripper, Christina Silvas has posed nude for Playboy's Web site. Brilliant. Make an agreement, break an agreement. Make another deal, break another deal. Shine the light of publicity and abuse it. Wonderful lesson for the daughter.
Reality catches up.... Liberal Reality Check As we gather around F.B.I. headquarters sharpening our machetes and watching the buzzards circle overhead, let's be frank: There's a whiff of hypocrisy in the air. One reason aggressive agents were restrained as they tried to go after Zacarias Moussaoui is that liberals like myself -- and the news media caldron in which I toil and trouble -- have regularly excoriated law enforcement authorities for taking shortcuts and engaging in racial profiling. As long as we're pointing fingers, we should peer into the mirror. The timidity of bureau headquarters is indefensible. But it reflected not just myopic careerism but also an environment (that we who care about civil liberties helped create) in which officials were afraid of being assailed as insensitive storm troopers. So it's time for civil libertarians to examine themselves with the same rigor with which we are prone to examine others. The bottom line is that Mr. Moussaoui was t
So, it's not just the U.S. justice system that is insane: BBC News | UK | Head's widow asked to apologise to killer The widow of head teacher Philip Lawrence has described her "extreme upset" at being asked to apologise to his teenage killer. Frances Lawrence, 51, told how a probation officer rang her at home and said that Learco Chindamo had become upset after she criticised him for his lack of remorse. Mrs Lawrence, a mother of four, said the officer claimed an apology would make Chindamo "feel happier" when he came before a panel which was deciding whether his life sentence should be cut. I'm compelled to wonder why the probation officer is still employed. I don't know how the system works in the U.K., but here in the U.S. (or, at least in California) a probation officer is generally not an advocate for the convicted. Talk about a wack-o. (Link courtesy Moira Breen .)
From Protein Wisdom comes "Now here's how you handle an exam question..." You have to love creativity in action!
Speaking of profiling, I found an old link to Overlawyered.com archives -- Nov. 2001 pt. II , which leads with "Profiling perfectly OK after all," and goes on to list the various contradictory messages the Feds were (and still are) sending out about profiling. Fascinating set of links, too. Then there's the ad for "Men in Black II," wherein Will Smith's new Mercedes motors up to the curb, a white man at the wheel. He clicks a button on his remote, and the "man" is sucked into the streering wheel. Tommy Lee Jones asks about the feature, something along the lines of "is that standard equipment?" Smith says it is, noting that it used to be a black man but it got pulled over too often.
Personally, I think George has it all wrong, and so do the three pilots quoted: Armed (and Dangerous) Pilots (washingtonpost.com) Prior to Sept. 11, if a passenger became unruly, the pilot might come back into the cabin to assert authority. No more. Says one of these three, "The flight attendants know they are on their own." "You cannot fly an airplane and look over your shoulder, firing down the cabin," says one of these pilots. What you could do, he says, is look down the cabin by means of a closed-circuit television camera that would warn the flight deck of cabin disturbances requiring quick action to take the plane to the ground. Flight plans should show the nearest alternative airport at every stage of every flight. Another potential problem with arming America's 120,000 commercial airline pilots is what one of the three pilots here calls, with no demurral from the other two, "cowboys or renegade pilots." Many commercial pilots began their flying
Give me liberty or give me...mocha? Listening to Rush as he makes a point I've tried to make to others, namely that the current crisis invites a reduction in personal liberty that should be resisted.. Too many people say, "I'm not doing anything wrong, come search my [home/computer/car/body/etc.]." Rather cavalier attitude, especially given that granting such open access won't prevent another 9/11, ostensibly the reason for the proposed changes (or that horror known as The Patriot Act). And after the crisis subsides, after we either accept a certain level of terror or (preferably) squish the terrorists out of existence, will these surrendered liberties be returned? Bureaucratic history (and momentum) says, "No." I'm not willing to surrender an iota of what I consider personal liberty, and I don't expect you to, either. No, you can't read my mail, scan my email, etc., just because doing so is part of some broad, general data sweep. If you can
Personal Notes Seems no one wants the BMW as trade-in, and I'm too lazy to try to sell it private party. Means I'll keep it, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I was just getting bit by the "need new motorcycle" bug, even though the Beemer is only two years old. Rode it into work today and was reminded why it is so cool. Sure, sure, all those cages (cars) all around me. Gads, those people looked trapped. I switched over to the CD player, lowered the windshield a bit, set the cruise control, and listened to Sheryl Crow "soak up the sun." It's not having what you want It's wanting what you've got Ah, so true. Meanwhile, yesterday's mail brought me the news that I am returning to school, specifically to the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law. Egads, more student loan debt, greater knowledge. Heck, when I graduate (and am admitted before the bar, ahem ahem) will be I Bob Hovorka, Esquire? Raiders of electronic privacy beware, I s
"Bomb Saddam?" by Joshua Micah Marshall The neocons have been clashing with the establishment since the 1970s. Back then, the consensus view among foreign policy elites was that the Cold War was an indefinite or perhaps even a permanent fact of world politics, to be managed with diplomacy and nuclear deterrence. The neocons argued for deliberately tipping the balance of power in America's direction. Ronald Reagan championed their ideas, and brought a number of neocons into his administration, including Perle and Wolfowitz. Reagan's huge defense buildup and harsh, even provocative, rhetoric contributed significantly to running the Soviet military-industrial complex into the ground.The president went for the Hail Mary pass--whatever the dangers--and it worked. During the Gulf War, the hawks urged President George H.W. Bush to ignore the limits of his U.N. mandate, roll the tanks into Baghdad, and bring down Saddam Hussein's regime. Bush sided with the then-chairman
Amazing reading. Some day, 9/11, and the WTC towers in particular, may be regarded in the same way we regard the Titanic. Please, let's not let James Cameron make the movie.... Fighting to Live as the Towers Died
This isn't news news, but I just wanted to record it for personal posterity.... Weary, Bush mocks reporter -- The Washington Times PARIS -- President Bush yesterday derisively challenged press claims of widespread anti-Americanism in Europe and ridiculed an American TV correspondent for suggesting as much -- in English and French -- to him and French President Jacques Chirac. "So you go to a protest and I drive through the streets of Berlin, seeing hundreds of people lining the road, waving," Mr. Bush muttered to NBC News White House correspondent David Gregory during a joint press conference with Mr. Chirac. "I don't view hostility here," Mr. Bush said in the ornate Palais de l'Elysee. "I view the fact that we've got a lot of friends here." He added: "And the fact that protesters show up -- that's good. I mean, I'm in a democracy." Mr. Bush was responding to Mr. Gregory's question about anti-American demonstrations in
Regarding "racial profiling," see UNITED STATES V. ARVIZU Considering the totality of the circumstances and giving due weight to the factual inferences drawn by Stoddard and the District Court Judge, Stoddard had reasonable suspicion to believe that respondent was engaged in illegal activity. Because the “balance between the public interest and the individual’s right to personal security,” United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 878, tilts in favor of a standard less than probable cause in brief investigatory stops of persons or vehicles, the Fourth Amendment is satisfied if the officer’s action is supported by reasonable suspicion to believe that criminal activity “may be afoot,” United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 7. In making reasonable-suspicion determinations, reviewing courts must look at the “totality of the circumstances” of each case to see whether the detaining officer has a “particularized and objective basis” for suspecting legal wrongdoing. See, e.g., Un
Ann Coulter asks: Yahoo! News - WHAT DO DEMOCRATS KNOW NOW? In a girly-girl, eye-poking attack, House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., has demanded an investigation into "what the White House knew about the events leading up to 9/11, when they knew it and, most importantly, what was done about it." The more urgent question is: What do the Democrats know (BEGIN ITALS)now(END ITALS)? Memo to Democrats: Muslim men are plotting another terrorist attack on America right now! That's what you know. What are you doing about it? Directing airport security to keep searching white paraplegics at the airport? Cuts right to the matter, don't you think?
Klez: Hi Mom, We're No. 1 "Klez managed to triple its annoyance factor by using -- yes, using -- the AV industry," [Rod] Fewster [of NOD32] said. "AV companies have been exploiting those auto-replies as free advertising for years. Virus spreaders aren't stupid. They see what's going on around them and they work the system. Sometimes I think the antiviral industry is its own worst enemy." Clever people, these virus makers.
Salon.com Books | Truth and reconciliation Incest accusations of the recovered-memory craze tore families apart. Now one of its leaders wants to let bygones be bygones. Fascinating tale of what is potentially "junk science."
Salon.com Technology | Can we sue our own fat asses off? Lawyers and activists, flush from the tobacco victories, think they have found one [a "painless" way to reduce obesity]: Sue the companies who sell us the junk we overeat. They talk about recovering the costs of obesity-associated diseases. But the real hope is that by going after the companies, they can force changes in price and marketing that will, in turn, force us to stop eating so much junk food. Corporations, after all, are much easier to regulate than the fractious individuals targeted by most public health campaigns. Oh good grief! Are people responsible for anything today?
From today's OpinionJournal Best of the Web , a tale of two IQ challenged mentalities: Red Cross attacks exile of Palestinians, by Robert Fisk As twelve of the 13 Palestinian gunmen exiled by Israel left Cyprus for European Union countries yesterday, the International Committee of the Red Cross stated that their "transfer" outside the occupied Palestinian West Bank was illegal under humanitarian law. Vincent Lusser, a spokes-man for the Middle East department of the ICRC in Geneva, cited Article 49 of Annexe 4 of the Geneva Conventions, telling The Independent: "Transfers outside occupied territory are illegal and that covers the 13 men." Hey, stupids! Yeah, you, the writer and the foole being quoted: The 13 chose exile because they didn't want to be arrested. The Israelis wanted to -- still want to -- arrest them on a variety of terrorist-related charges. Duh, they chose to go rather than go to jail. Argh, the minds of some people. And if this doesn't
The Mysterious Riddle of Chandra Levy On May 1st, a date numerologically and occultly significant in the Illuminati's witchcraft and satanic calendar, she was disposed of during a ritual at D.C.'s mysteriously gothic Rock Creek Park, a large, forested area which is shaped like a goat's head -- the hideous head of Baphomet, the Masonic goat-god, representative of the coming antichrist. At last, the truth, apparently on the web for at least a year. He, the author's name is Texe Marrs, must be right, otherwise how would he know where the body would be found? Quickly, alert the Stonecutters!
Lies and Truth, by Orson Scott Card The other night I heard an Arab spokesman on Fox News tell a real whopper. "Don't talk to us about anti-semitism. You Christians had a thousand years of pogroms against the Jews, and we Arabs have never had a pogrom." For those who don't know the word, a pogrom is a sort of large-scale lynching. A mob would be whipped into a frenzy against the Jews and then would storm into the Jewish quarter of the town and slaughter, rape, and pillage until they ran out of victims or became exhausted. At least the Spanish Inquisition used legal process to kill Jews. In northern and eastern Europe the bloody work was done by volunteers. But it is not true that there were no Muslim pogroms against Jews. In April 1920, five Jews died and 211 were wounded in a pogrom committed by Arabs in Jerusalem. Ninety Jews died in a pogrom the following year, and in 1929, 133 Jews were killed in Palestine by Arabs. And the pogroms worked. The British government (
A movie of Orson Scott Card's ENDER'S GAME is on the way.... Warner Bros. has hired Wolfgang Peterson to translate Orson Scott Card’s much loved science fiction series of ENDER’S GAME books to the big screen. Please, dear God, let Card have changed the screenplay from that bit he had posted on his web site . It doesn't seem to be there anymore, but Card had the opening scenes from his screen adaptation posted for a while (I have a copy, but I don't have any permission to post it, sorry). If you've read the book, you know the end. Card's original screenplay gave away that ending right at the beginning. Argh! Please let it be changed.
Original STAR WARS versions will never see DVD In an interview carried in the latest STAR WARS INSIDER magazine, George Lucas reiterated he will never allow the original, non-SPECIAL EDITIONS of the STAR WARS movies to be released on DVD. Bummer. So when do the DVD's come out?
WHERE SOLVING CRIMES TAKES TOP PRIORITY / San Diego police outshine San Francisco's with fewer officers per capita and more ground to cover On average, San Diego police solved 64 percent of that city's violent crime - murders, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults - between 1996 and 2000, analysis shows. San Francisco police solved 28 percent. Unlike San Francisco police, San Diego police make solving such crimes the top priority. ... ... A Chronicle review of both departments found profound differences in their investigative practices. San Diego has detailed investigative standards for each type of violent crime, frequently reviews the performance of its detectives and selects investigators based on demonstrated ability. San Francisco has few written investigative standards, virtually no formal performance reviews and assigns inspectors to the various violent crime units based on how long their names have been on a list - not ability. Ah, one of the many benefits of a stron
Immigrants fear new proposal that would allow local police to enforce federal immigration laws Daniel Rosas Romero waits among the knots of men who line the sidewalks of a bustling street, hoping each day for painting, moving, gardening or construction jobs. The day laborers - many of whom slipped into the United States undocumented - have established an uneasy relationship with local police, who don't ask whether they are in the country legally. Romero fears that delicate balance could tip under a new proposal being considered by the Justice Department, which would allow local and state police to enforce immigration laws. Oh no, we can't have this, police enforcing The Law. Whatever will become of...us? Ye gods, is this what we've come to? We don't want the law enforced? Why is this even a question? And look who campaigns against it! Shock of shock, the very people who would end up being arrested. This is tantamount to having a "gang lobby" campaigning again
Open-Source Fight Flares at Pentagon Microsoft Lobbies Hard Against Free Software Microsoft Corp. is aggressively lobbying the Pentagon to squelch its growing use of freely distributed computer software and switch to proprietary systems such as those sold by the software giant, according to officials familiar with the campaign. In what one military source called a "barrage" of contacts with officials at the Defense Information Systems Agency and the office of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld over the past few months, the company said "open source" software threatens security and its intellectual property. But the effort may have backfired. A May 10 report prepared for the Defense Department concluded that open source often results in more secure, less expensive applications and that, if anything, its use should be expanded. MS, of course, completely denies that they're doing any such thing. Sure. Just like they've made full disclosures pursuant to every
Weldon: Clinton Official Ignored Program ... "It goes back to the very heart of the political leadership, goes back over the previous administration as well," said John Martin, a former FBI counterterrorist specialist and retired chief of internal security at the Justice Department, who added that even after the World Trade Center terrorist bombing in 1993, some top officials wanted the FBI to focus on abortion-clinic violence, street crime and the like. "We were not preparing for this kind of attack," he said. [Rep. Curt] Weldon [R-Pa.] said that even if the intelligence community was absorbed with other issues, it missed at least one public and maddeningly obvious clue that until now had gone unnoticed. "In August of 2000, an Al Qaeda member had been interviewed by an Italian newspaper, and (it was) reported that Al Qaeda was training kamikaze pilots. The intelligence community and enforcement agencies don't read open-source information," he said. No
Health experts question water rule Everyone from women's magazines to Colon Health Network and the Georgia Rural Water Journal extols the virtues of drinking at least eight, eight-ounce glasses of water a day. Bottled-water makers heavily market their products based on this theory -- so commonly held that nutritionists refer to it simply as "eight-by-eight." The industry's trade group even has a "hydration calculator" on its Web site ( www.bottledwater.org/public/hydratio.htm ) for people to determine whether they need even more than that. But a growing number of health experts say the advice may not hold water. The article spins it toward anti-business, that the entire "drink water" is a campaign put on by bottled-water makers. Of course, the deeper question is who are the researchers who created the entire "eight-by-eight" routine, and are they legit or who bought them? Excuse me, while I have another bottle of water....
NASA's Need for Speed: Advanced Propulsion Comes Of Age NASA is known worldwide for routinely putting people into Earth orbit. The agency is also revered as the only organization that has flung humans at escape velocity speeds to the Moon. However, NASA could also be known as an agency that's going nowhere fast. Even NASA's new chief, Sean O'Keefe, is keen about the need for speed. The agency is stuck in slow gear, he gripes, scooting about in spacecraft today at velocities not much greater than when John Glenn first sped into Earth orbit over 40 years ago. To help put some "momentum" into NASA, the agency is pushing forward on a nuclear propulsion and power initiative. Welcome news in contrast to the past. Over the years, NASA's advanced propulsion agenda has done little but advance in age. Like so many bureaucracies, NASA is stuck in its little rut. This agency when from exploding Redstone rockets to the virtually flawless Saturn V in less than ten years
What NASA is looking into.... NASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Program In 1996, NASA established the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project to seek the ultimate breakthroughs in space transportation: (1) propulsion that requires no propellant mass, (2) propulsion that attains the maximum transit speeds physically possible, and (3) breakthrough methods of energy production to power such devices. Topics of interest include experiments and theories regarding the coupling of gravity and electromagnetism, the quantum vacuum, hyperfast travel, and superluminal quantum effects. Because the propulsion goals are presumably far from fruition, a special emphasis is to identify affordable, near-term, and credible research that could make measurable progress toward these propulsion goals. Scotty, warp one!
Hollywood couldn't write stuff this funny: Convicted rapist sues hospital Edward Brewer, in prison for raping Providence patient, calls nursing staff negligent and asks for $2 million. I can only surmise that he feels if the hospital had provided better security, he wouldn't have been able to commit the rape and thus would not be in prison. Hmm. As Best of the Web points out, however, this mental giant has a wonderful track record. The original rape charge was reduced via a plea bargin, down to sexual battery, and Brewer got five years. However.... Brewer appealed, and the 6th District Court of Appeals in Toledo sent the case back to Erie County Common Pleas Court on the grounds Brusnahan should not have advised his client to agree to the plea bargain. According to the appeals court, because the victim had died of causes unrelated to the alleged sexual assault, Brusnahan should have realized how weak the case against Brewer was, a theory with which Brusnahan disagreed. Brewer
Best of the Web pointed out this beauty: Stanley Kurtz on Anti-Americanism & Education & Title VI on National Review Online You may know all of these notorious figures, but do you know that your tax dollars have been subsidizing courses that train American elementary and high-school teachers about the Middle East by assigning them Arundhati Roy, Robert Fisk, Tariq Ali, and Edward Said? This particular set of teacher-training resources was called, "The September 11 Crisis and Teaching Our Children: Resources for Teachers on Islam and the Middle East," and was sponsored by the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. And don't think this federally subsidized program balanced the leftist authors with readings from Bernard Lewis or Samuel P. Huntington. No, in the belief that public knowledge of the Middle East will strengthen our security, the American government has been pouring millions of dollars into the pockets of the mos
A little history, a little reason why trying to stop cloning is somewhat akin to stopping the rain by wagging your finger at the clouds and saying, "No!" Technology Review - Cloning Can't Be Stopped Controversy has surrounded the advent of every reproductive technology from artificial insemination to in vitro fertilization. Still, human cloning, like its forerunners, will happen.
Yes, Harry likes The Film: Ain't It Cool News - View Article I love that there is a new STAR WARS movie playing minutes from my house that literally makes me lose my shit with happiness. I love that in my chatrooms I can argue back and forth and cheer the merits and see elation from so many that they loved this chapter. And sure there are those out there that were disappointed or hated this film, but ya know what. It must suck to be you, because I saw STAR WARS: ATTACK OF THE CLONES and I can’t wait to see it again.
This is more depressing than I thought it would be (though not at all surprising): Remains in Park Identified As Chandra Levy's (washingtonpost.com) The skeletal remains found this morning in Rock Creek Park have been identified as those of missing intern Chandra Levy, D.C. Police Chief Charles Ramsey announced this evening.
Maybe Hollings should read this: Piracy: The Star Wars Solution While file trading has thrived, so too has Hollywood. Studios grossed $8.4 billion last year, an increase of almost 10 percent over 2000. The movie industry has even adopted new home technologies, promoting the DVD, which comes with alternative endings, interviews and background information. Just as movies now provide a larger-than-life experience, rentals give viewers more than they can get in a theater. In stark contrast, the music industry cast its lots behind copy-protected CDs, which limit how and where people can listen to their music. ...and have a copy protection scheme that cannot resist the power of a magic marker!
Get your bids in early. Kirk's chair is up for auction! Trekkies Bid on the Holy Grail "James T. Kirk was the only guy who could get the girl, save the ship and save the galaxy, all in one hour," said Ed Queen, a Star Trek fan and memorabilia collector....
Good grief! These people need to seek a life: Detroit News: Critics say 'Clones' has racial stereotypes George Lucas, sometimes accused of reinforcing racial stereotypes with his movies, has done it again, according to critics. My favorite whine is about Temuera Morrison, the actor who plays Jango. The "critics" keep saying he's soooo Latino, yet he's actually from New Zealand and is of Maori descent. Which is how he looked to me, especially his son. Never thought for a moment he was Latino, and actually thought it was cute that this tribe from a Pacific island would be bred into the most badass army the galaxy has ever seen. Revenge at last...or maybe it's been too long since I've seen "Utu" (excellent film; need to find out if it's on DVD).
Oh, nostalgia! Salon.com Arts & Entertainment | "Hardware Wars": The movie, the legend, the household appliances An obscure Bay Area filmmaker launched an empire in 1977. No, not that one. Fluke Starbucker, Oggie Ben Doggie, Ham Salad and Princess Anne-Droid are back in a "special edition" of the original Lucas spoof. Hey, my past comes to life! I shot the animation and optical masks. Insane and nutty animation. I didn't get a personal credit; it was my dad's company, after all. I can't remember if we're in the credits at all, but if we are you'll see Stop-Frame, Inc. in there. (My dad was the Bob Hovorka; I'm the pale imitation known as Jr.) Obviously, we're off to the stores in search of this DVD. I might have to hunt down the unauthorized Special Edition, too. Sing it with me! (To the tune of "Okie From Miskogee", or however the hell it's spelled.) "I'm proud to be an Obi Wan Kenobi...."
Amazing what opportunities will pop up when the going gets rough: Stripper, school make a deal / Mom won't dance until child's school year ends Christina Silvas, who worked as a stripper in Sacramento, has given up nude dancing for at least the next three weeks so her daughter can graduate from kindergarten at the Capital Christian Center. Main story is here , wherein: Silvas said she agreed to quit her job after receiving numerous job offers that came in after her plight went public. Silvas said she has been offered jobs at a law firm, an insurance agency and a sales job at a radio station and that she likely has other offers that she has been unable to look into. She also said that the strip club is very interested in getting her back to work due to high demand. "They said that if nothing works out over the next three weeks they want to throw me a big welcome back party," she [professional name: Samantha] said. Good to know you can always go home....
Since I work for the state, maybe I'm shooting myself in the foot. Nonetheless.... SacBee.com -- State hires despite freeze "My reaction is that, like many things the governor does, it seems to be all about public relations and nothing about substance," said Assemblyman John Campbell, R-Irvine. " ... Freeze means you stop. This is clearly not stopping. Call it a slowdown." Luv the Guv!
Yahoo! News - U.S. Won't Allow Guns in Cockpits WASHINGTON (AP) - The federal government said Tuesday that pilots will not be allowed to have guns in the cockpits of commercial airplanes. I want to see if I understand this. Commercial airline pilots deal with dozens (hundreds) of issues on a near-constant basis, especially during take-off and landing. They are trained not to panic, to think in a ordering, logical manner, to react in specific ways to prevent disaster. They are exceptionally motivated, trained, and skilled. A fraction of the general population could handle but a fraction of the workload they accept each and every working day. But, by golly, they're too stupid to carry a gun at work. If you grabbed a commercial pilot and a police officer at random, chances are you'd be happier with giving the pilot a gun. Sad, but true. But, heck Disney's Senator has the word: Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., who chairs the Commerce Committee, said guns would not be needed as
Now it's "child abuse"? So first, a little background on the convicted (as well as a reminder of the case): Information Please: Mary Kay Letourneau 36–year-old Tacoma, Wash., schoolteacher, was ordered to serve her suspended 71/2 year child-rape sentence after being found with the 14-year-old student with whom she had a baby last year. In October, LeTourneau gave birth to a second baby fathered by the same boy. No new charges were brought against her. Remember now? The plea was that theirs was a loving relationship, that he was a mature young boy. Heck, there was even the claim that he (the at the time 12-year-old) was a sexual predator, the aggressor, the one who started it all. She (breathless sigh) was a confused innocent. At her own website (yes, Mary Kay has an "official" website) she has a list of 27 Points which she closes with: These are the questions that I pray will bring good people together to force a complete circle of logic and light, so that th
Egads! CD Crack: Magic Marker Indeed Technology buffs have cracked music publishing giant Sony Music's elaborate disc copy-protection technology with a decidedly low-tech method: scribbling around the rim of a disk with a felt-tip marker. Internet newsgroups have been circulating news of the discovery for the past week, and in typical newsgroup style, users have pilloried Sony for deploying "hi-tech" copy protection that can be defeated by paying a visit to a stationery store. "I wonder what type of copy protection will come next?" one posting on alt.music.prince read. "Maybe they'll ban markers." I'm sure that's already in the works. Are the manufacturers of "magic markers" now subject to prosecution under the terms of the DMCA?
And the (box office) race is on.... ‘Clones’ attacks weekend box office "Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones" grossed an estimated $86.2 million over the weekend, after bowing Thursday with $30.1 million, for $116.3 million in its first four days of release. The three-day weekend tally ranks at No. 3 among all-time new releases, behind "Spider-Man," which opened with $114.84 million two weeks ago, and "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone" with $90.29 million last November. But worldwide, the four-day gross for "Clones" soared out of orbit for a total of $183 million. The family and I saw "Spider-Man" last weekend and thought it was great. Better still, it got better the more I thought of it. My only lament was for a better villain, someone with more motivation than...well, I never quite understood the motivation. Better if the Green Goblin had been pure evil, but ah well. And Tobey Maguire was too perfect, his final scene at
Call it morbid curiosity, I'm fascinated with subjects like this: Technology Review - 10 Technology Disasters What do a 17th-century Swedish warship, an opulent Chicago theater and a Kansas City hotel "skyway" have in common? All met catastrophic ends--and they have important lessons to teach today's innovators.
Don't people take American government classes any more? ArabNews: No media interest in a basic matter of democracy A basic principle of democracy is that every person’s vote should have equal weight. So we might expect some public discourse about the fact that the US Senate is fundamentally undemocratic. But it’s a complete non-issue among politicians and journalists alike. One of the key roles of news media should be to raise important questions that powerful people in government don’t want to ask -- or answer. However, while thousands of reporters and pundits stay busy with all kinds of stories about politics, they keep detouring around a central tilt of the US legislature’s upper chamber. It's been a few years, but I recall that the government was set up this way on purpose. The President represents the country, which is why that office is responsible for the conduct of our foreign affairs. The House represents the populace at large, "the common man" as it were. An
Daniel Henninger at OpinionJournal reflects on "[t]he hateful things people say when words aren't allowed to hurt": Wonder Land: How Our Age Dumbed Down Even Invective Not more than three university presidents in America would likely disagree with any of that. Yet their campuses are the sources of the crudest political language heard anywhere. Perhaps the adults are responsible for infantilizing speech. Their speech codes, and how they were enforced, made it clear that opinions about certain "highly charged topics" were verboten. Whole classes of people--women, native Americans, people of color--were immunized against being the subject of critical speech. Whether faculty or student, one had to be fastidious about one's words, or risk termination, public condemnation or expulsion. Simultaneously, at the very moment that some speech was shut down, another, related political movement announced that "the personal is political" and made words its instru
Is this why I never liked "The Lord of the Rings"? Attack of the Clones meets the Lord of the Luddites.. by Chris Mooney. May 16, 2002. And Tolkien wasn't using this manipulation-of-nature theme merely to advance a plot. A kind of twentieth century William Blake, Tolkien despised and distrusted technology in most, if not all, of its forms. He gave up driving and refused to own a television, or use a washing machine. In a letter, he expressed his disgust with the modern world as follows: "There is only one bright spot ... and that is the growing habit of disgruntled men of dynamiting factories and power-stations ... But it won't do any good, if it is not universal." It's no defamation to say that Tolkien was a full-fledged Luddite. And given his foundational influence on sci-fi and fantasy, as Attack of the Clones hits theaters it may be only fitting to bestow upon him a more grandiose title: Lord of the Luddites. All becomes clear....
Wired (again) on sinking oil tankers: The New Supertanker Plague The Erika was neither the first nor the last tanker to succumb unexpectedly to corrosion. Each year from 1995 to 2001, an average of 408 tankers broke apart at sea or barely escaped that fate, according to the International Association of Independent Tanker Owners, known as Intertanko. The leading cause was collision, but nearly as many suffered "structural/technical failures" - often a euphemism in industry circles for excessive corrosion. ... ... In December 2000, the Castor , carrying 8.7 million gallons of unleaded gasoline across the Mediterranean, developed cracks in its deck and had to be drained of its cargo in a risky ship-to-ship maneuver. Preliminary findings in the Castor case rocked the industry. According to the American Bureau of Shipping, the classification society that certified the vessel, the Castor had fallen prey to "hyper-accelerated corrosion" - swiftly dubbed "super-rus
Wired talks to Steven Spielberg: Wired 10.06: Spielberg in the Twilight Zone Yet there's a counterargument. It goes something like this: A strange thing happened to Steven Spielberg on the way to Minority Report. He became science fiction's premier auteur. He's my favorite (living) film director and he's making a movie based on a story by one of my favorite authors. This could be heaven, if only Tom Cruise wasn't around.
In the news: Bush Was Told of Hijacking Dangers (washingtonpost.com) Until now, the growing congressional scrutiny of possible warning signs before Sept. 11 has focused on the FBI's actions, including the bureau's handling of a memo written in July 2001 by an agent in Phoenix. A senior U.S. official who has reviewed the classified memo said yesterday that the FBI agent had made a "strong connection" between a group of Middle Eastern aviation students he was investigating and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. The link was included in the five-page memorandum sent to FBI headquarters two months before the attacks. The story goes on to note that none of the students the agent refers to were involved in the 9/11 hijackings. Political sharks smell blood in the water, and I hear the cries of "bring me the head of George W. Bush!" I wonder.... I wonder how many know how much information US law enforcement agencies collect every day. Beyond that, how many real
Hot damn, some people say/write things well: | KEN . LAYNE . DOT . CON | The only thing I believe in is Liberty and basic human decency. I don't believe in Jeebus and I don't mind if you do. And I'm not gonna kill you if you want to worship Allah, Yahweh, Buddha or Boba Fett. But I will defend those who believe in Liberty. It's the only goddamned thing that matters. Whether it's East Timor or the Czech Republic or Mexico or Mars, I'll side with Liberty. I could give a fuck if that means Jewish. You should really read the entire post to get the full flavor, but the entire push for Liberty makes it priceless.
I...I could be wrong, but I don't think Stephanie Zacharek likes this film: Salon.com Arts & Entertainment | In space, no one can hear you groan The soul-deadening string of clichés that is "Attack of the Clones" must immediately be shot beyond Pluto where it can do no harm. I already have my tickets for Sunday, so I'll have me own opinion then.
Justice today: Boy, 13, faces 8 years for spitwad / Walnut Creek 7th-grader's missile injured another student's eye After an investigation, the Contra Costa County district attorney filed identical charges against each of the Figueroa boys in December: battery causing serious bodily injury, assault with a deadly weapon, assault by force likely to produce great bodily injury and mayhem. Last Tuesday, Contra Costa County Superior Court Judge Araceli Ramirez found Stephen guilty of misdemeanor battery. Jeffrey was found guilty of battery causing serious bodily injury and mayhem, both felonies. Dan Macallair, executive director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in San Francisco, said the criminal prosecution "is another example of our society moving toward criminalizing kids. I don't know what purpose this serves." Macallair said the incident "sounds more like a typical schoolyard prank that resulted in an incident in which someone got hurt" as
Ah, the piety of freedom fighters: 'Greedy monsters' ruled church -- The Washington Times BETHLEHEM, West Bank -- The Palestinian gunmen holed up in the Church of the Nativity and later deported by Israel seized church stockpiles of food and "ate like greedy monsters" until the food ran out, while more than 150 civilians went hungry. They also guzzled beer, wine and Johnnie Walker scotch that they found in priests' quarters, undeterred by the Islamic ban on drinking alcohol. The indulgence lasted for about two weeks into the 39-day siege, when the food and drink ran out, according to an account by four Greek Orthodox priests who were trapped inside for the entire ordeal that ended Friday. Well, at least that explains why they were all so hungry. A former Palestinian I know says it is standard practise in that part of the world to have a good supply of food on hand at all times, because you never know when you'll need it.
Some hysterically accurate cartoons: Right to DRIVE! I remember the San Francisco Muni Metro. It was supposed to be the answer to all traffic congestion in downtown SF, all of Market Street from Van Ness to the Bay. Have you see the traffic on Market from Van Ness to the Bay? So, what happened? Oh, a variety of things, but most of all -- it seems to me -- The City couldn't stick with the original plan. Thus, what was sold to the citizens isn't what they got. What was sold was an underground "metro" system that sat above the BART subway, and was built at the same time. (Both were built via the trench system. That is, they dug up Market Street and went to work, closing the street back up when they were done. It was, to put it mildly, a mess, but my Grandfather -- a civil engineer from Ohio -- BS'd his way into a tour and was happy.) The design called for sidewalks along Market to be widened to allow improved pedestrian flow. Market was, at the time, six lanes wide,
Arafat courage and the love of the Palestinian people for Arafat, muhaha! Arafat cancels visit to Jenin amid fears for his own safety Flying by helicopter provided by Jordan's King Abdullah (his own Russian-piloted fleet was destroyed by an Israeli rocket attack last year), Mr Arafat went to Bethlehem, then Jenin, visiting the town, but not the rubble fields of the camp. He knew this meant abandoning a chance to step into the international limelight in a place where atrocities were committed by the Israeli army, and where the United Nations sought -- and failed -- to send a fact-finding committee to discover what went on. At least 54 people were killed in the camp during eight days of fighting, nearly half of them civilians. Arafat aides said they were worried about heckling. The odds are that their concerns were more serious. Palestinian opposition has been fuelled by popular anger over his decision to allow 13 Palestinian militants from Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity to b
Robert Fisk is frightened, oh my: Why does John Malkovich want to kill me? There was always, in the past, a limit to this hatred. Letters would be signed with the writer's address. Or if not, they would be so-ill-written as to be illegible. Not any more. In 26 years in the Middle East, I have never read so many vile and intimidating messages addressed to me. Many now demand my death. And last week, the Hollywood actor John Malkovich did just that, telling the Cambridge Union that he would like to shoot me. I think he needs to lighten up a bit. After all, Malkovich was responding to the question of who he would like to fight to the death with. If Malkovich's answer is so appalling, the question is even more so. Of course the question was asked with tongue firmly pressed in cheek, so the answer should be remain in context. Besides, what about all the Hollywood stars who wanted to murder conservatives during the Clinton dynasty? Oh, sorry, forgot; those are correct targets!
This is almost relentlessly depressing: Gaza's Children Worship Martyrdom (washingtonpost.com) "We don't have a single child in Gaza who knows what it's like to be a normal child," said Abdul-Rahman Bakr, director of Gaza City's psychiatric hospital. The drawings in the community center's conference room show battle scenes complete with guns, jets, helicopters and many dead bodies. "We wanted the children to express themselves through the drawings and this is what we got," said Fadl Abu Hein, a child psychologist. "Everyone can now see what's really worrying our children." Life in the Gaza Strip leaves children with little chance not to think of violence. Funerals and rallies with gunmen firing in the air are almost daily events. Walls are covered with graffiti glorifying 'martyrs' killed in attacks on Israelis. Their faces stare from tens of thousands of posters, and mosque preachers exhort worshippers to emulate them. &quo
IMRA - Saturday, May 11, 2002 Official Palestinian statement terms Israel search of Church of Nativity for bombs "war crime" This would be funny if the situation wasn't so serious. Unfortunately, the link to the official Palestinian press release is broken and leads to your typical "page not found" error. Maybe a thorough search of the WAFA website....
This week, Jerry Pournelle writes: Three Years of the DMCA You will find the Electronic Freedom Foundation report at http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/20020503_dmca_consequences.pdf . It's depressing. The Digital Millennium Communications Act has been expensive, and most of its effects have been unintended. It didn't accomplish what it said it was intended to do, and it has harmed commerce and the growth of the industry. So what else is new? Bob Thompson says the purpose of the DMCA was to get us used to prior restraint censorship, and it has done that well: Look at the fear generated by the act. And every month the movie studios and the music publishers come up with another mad scheme to make copy protection more obtrusive, with heavier criminal penalties for getting around even stupid copy protection, and no concern whatever for matters such as free speech, fair use, or for that matter, the protection of the rights of authors and artists. All the new bills in Congress seem aimed at
Troop Believers (washingtonpost.com) Helping to control this crowd, as a kind of ad hoc security garrison, are 250 or so members of the Fighting 501st, an unofficial worldwide costuming club whose sole membership requirements are this: You must be over 18, and you must own a suit of fully accurate Imperial storm trooper armor -- which can cost anywhere from $400 to $2,000, and is technically violative of Lucasfilm Ltd. copyright. (In this case, the Flanneled One -- a reverent nickname for filmmaker George Lucas -- has been tolerant.) But the lady asked why . Why storm troopers? Why the marching? Are these grown-ups with jobs and families? That's going to take some deeper explaining. When people try to decipher "Star Wars" they wind up speaking gibberish that drifts from religion to Carl Jung to Akira Kurosawa to Boba Fett. Museum exhibits have been done, and they took up space. If you were born at the right time, it's a short distance to connect the dots between "
For Old Parts, NASA Boldly Goes . . . on eBay NASA needs parts no one makes anymore. So to keep the shuttles flying, the space agency has begun trolling the Internet -- including Yahoo and eBay -- to find replacement parts for electronic gear that would strike a home computer user as primative. This is just depressing, coming from an agency that in its hey day went from Mercury to Apollo, Redstone to Saturn V, in a decade. There is currently nothing even on the drawning board to take the place of the shuttle. Worse, the only suggestion is little more than a shuttle update. No new capabilties, just a retread of the same claims that were made for the current shuttle. Ugh.
Glenn Reynolds noted this guest column from Alan Dershowitz, someone who normally makes my skin crawl. However, this column illustrates that even an enemy can teach you a thing or two: Chomsky’s Immoral Divestiture Petition Who is Noam Chomsky and why is he seeking to compel universities to divest from corporations that have ties to Israel? I have known Noam Chomsky for more than thirty years. I have debated him on numerous occasions, and I have written extensively about his zealous anti-Zionism and his flirtations with neo-Nazi revisionism and Holocaust denial. I was not surprised therefore to learn that he is the inspiration behind the foolish and immoral campaign for divestiture. He then cites specific Chomsky encounters that illustrate Chomsky's true goals in demanding MIT (and other universities) divest themselves of any investments in Israel.
I live in a state of insanity, one that the rest of the world knows as California. I've lived here all my life, first in San Francisco (huzzah!) and now in the Sacramento Valley (ugh). How I came to this sorry state of affairs is mostly a mystery to me, ah well. California has much to recommend it, but there is always this undercurrent of madness. And I don't understand it. Like Assembly Bill 60 . It starts off so well, but just goes straight to hell really, really fast. I understand the part about getting people a drivers license in the event that, for whatever reason, they don't have a social security number. Often these are lawful immigrants, who for one reason or another don't have that SSN. If the bill stopped there, no big deal. But, no, it keeps grinding on until you realize it's a bill to allow illegal immigrants to get a California state driver's license. This is couched in language such as, "[t]he bill would require the department to issue a driv
Yet another article on blogging , this one by Scott Rosenberg, who wastes no time making this point: This debate is stupidly reductive -- an inevitable byproduct of (I'll don my blogger-sympathizer hat here) the traditional media's insistent habit of framing all change in terms of a "who wins and who loses?" calculus. The rise of blogs does not equal the death of professional journalism. The media world is not a zero-sum game. Increasingly, in fact, the Internet is turning it into a symbiotic ecosystem -- in which the different parts feed off one another and the whole thing grows.
Ian Buruma, writing on the Guardian on-line: Why bashing the US is chic...in America ... However, in the populist hurly-burly of American cultural and political life, the book-loving intellectual, or those who aspire to that, will feel a little marginalised, a little beside the point. This might afford enough reason for resentment. But this resentment can also become a self-regarding mark of superior status, of a kind of upper class, if you like. Money, as everyone knows, is vulgar. Dissent is smart. It lifts you above the vulgar masses who like Jerry Springer and vote for George Bush. Opinion, in a highly commercialised society, becomes a sign of class. It is chic to disapprove of America, not only of its rulers or those who elect them, but of the idea of America itself. What Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal, and Tariq Ali have in common, then, is snobbery apart from anything else.
Maybe I'm a little confused, but today's New York Times website has a series of stories about the end of the siege at the Church of the Nativity. One link reads: Church Undamaged After 38-Day Standoff Click on the link, however, and you get a page titled: Stench Fills Jesus' Birthplace After Siege And a story that begins: BETHLEHEM, West Bank (Reuters) - The overwhelming stench of urine was the first thing to hit visitors who entered the shrine in Bethlehem revered as the birthplace of Jesus. The standoff between Palestinian militants and the Israeli army at the Church of the Nativity, which came to an end on Friday after nearly 40 days and nights of high drama, had left one of Christianity's holiest places in a shocking mess. Garbage bags, lemon peels, gas canisters, petrol cans and electric hotplates were scattered throughout the church off Manger Square. A Reuters correspondent saw altars, the sacred focus of Christian worship, covered with food scraps. "It'