Intelligent Design.. yup.. that makes sense

In the NYT today : "A sharp debate between scientists and religious conservatives escalated Tuesday over comments by President Bush that the theory of intelligent design should be taught with evolution in the nation's public schools."

Civil Liberties? Ahh.. who needs them...

I think the most important thing in America today is the fact that our Civil Liberties are being rapidly eroded by the government. I don't even need to go into the obvious ones like "the war on terror" or the Patriot Act, but I will give you a perfect example of something that most of us would never notice.

The FBI is trying to tap all satellite internet connections. This is outlined in a Wired News report that posted today. It states that the "FBI [is requesting] to force satellite-based broadband service providers to equip their in-air networks with a rapid-wiretapping capability"

This is just one small example. I'm sure there are others. What can we do? Well, for one thing, support organizations that keep an eye out and fight against this kind of stuff. I just gave $25 to the Center for Democracy and Technology. I while back I gave $100 to the ACLU but I will never do that again since they sold my mailing address to literally dozens of Left Wing organizations and I got a ton of unwanted (SPAM) junk mail. So, they aren't getting any more of my money..

But fight the power people... do something!

mp3 player

Bought a Creative Zen Touch 40GB mp3 player today. I actually used to have the original Archos Jukebox (just like an iPod in functionality but about 3 years earlier), so this is a big upgrade in style and downgrade in size. Anyway, I've been preparing for 3 days now by resampling my mp3 collection down to VBR5 from 320 fixed rate so I think I may actually get most of my collection on this thing, which would be impressive.. I'm up to the G's and I'm at 10GB.. we'll see..

Anyway, the unit came partially charged. I like to make sure my first charge is to a fully discharged battery so I fired it up and listened to some of the demo music on it in an effort to run down the unit a bit. I didn't even try the crappy earbuds it came with and I hooked it up to a nice pair of Sony MDR-7506 cans and so far I'm not impressed. I can hear all kinds of artifacts and fully turned up the unit is not very loud at all. It could be due to the mp3's on the unit. We will soon see when I start bringing over my tunes.

I refuse to buy an iPod for various reasons that I won't go into. (actually, search this and my other blogs and I'm sure there will be an anti iPod rant somewhere). So, if this unit isn't performant, I may go with the smaller capacity (6GB)Rio Carbon or the 20GB iRiver H10. We'll see...

Presidential Vacation

5 Weeks off!! Says President: "Well, everybody else is off.. why can't I be?"

From the Washington Post : "By historical standards, it is the longest presidential retreat in at least 36 years."

I know I said I'd stop for today but...

there is so much good stuff out there.. Please read this piece in Salon.. so sad how we are so easily manipulated.. well, not me.. those lame idiots who voted for Georgie...

Dare I say it?

MMORPGs are perfect for studying complex economics. Well duh! Article in the SF Cronicle..

Last post for the day (last movie post too)

Saw a preview for "V for Vendetta" last night. You may recognize the title since it was for this film that Natalie Portmant shaved her head a while ago. Anyway, all I could think as I saw the preview was "This is totally going to suck". It just looked bad. But then I saw it flashed up on the screen "From the makers of the Matrix".. The Wachowskis did this? Maybe I should give it another shot.. So today I looked it up on imdb and sure enough, there were their names, but not as directors or producers.. they were listed as writers and they weren't the only writers.. So, enjoy it.. I'm going to skip it, it's going to suck...

Dukes of Hazzard (futhermore)

Just found some bad reviews of the movie.. guess I'm a moron.. Anyawy, I thought I recognized 2 things in the film last night and I just confirmed them. First was a cameo appearance by Jay Chandrasekhar who plays a campus police officer. I totally remembered him from Super Troopers, which I liked a lot. Secondly I felt that the jokes were remiciant of that movie.. they had the same feel in a way. Although not written by the Broken Lizard crew, it turns out that Jay (who directed ST) also directed DoH.. so there.. I thought so..

Coolhunter

I added a new blog/site to my Bloglines listing at right.. check out Coolhunter.. it rules..

The Red Room

Say goodbye to Blockbuster when the Red Room arrives on our shores... No due dates, no aisles of DVD's all over the place, you get to see previews before you rent, and my favorite part? No salespeople..

Is that really what you think of me Georgie?

Senate Approval? Who needs it...

I'm sure Bolton will do a wonderful job at the U.N. The only reason I'm not super pissed about this "appointment" is that the U.N. is a joke and in the toilet and nobody could make it worse, nor make the rest of the world more pissed at us.. Or could they?

We need more stars like Sean

Sean Connery had something to say about the Hollywood morons (my word) : "I'm fed up with the idiots...the ever-widening gap between people who know how to make movies and the people who green-light the movies". How true.. The full article can be found here.

Happy and Sad

On a serious note. Jeff Norman writes in The Huffington Post about an event in California which was part of the U.S. Tour of Duty (which I would love to attend, and am so happy to see exist) tour. I really want to see the film that was discussed at the event. Also I'm really sad to hear about the recriuting assembly at the grade school.. how bad will it get people?

Fizzy Lizzy

I forgot to add. The movie last night was at the Ritz (I know.. odd, but it was an off night and the event wasn't theirs.. it was a pure Warner Brothers corporate event.. I guess Mondays are slow at the Ritz). Anyway, the Ritz added a new drink to their amazing snack bar called Fizzy Lizzy. I tried one and let me just say that I'm hooked. I had the cranberry and it was awesome.. So I highly reccoment you find some and give them a taste.

The Dukes of Hazzard

All of my friends can kiss my ass. The Dukes of Hazzard was a pretty good film. A while ago I posted about how I couldn't wait to see this film. The other day I was having a drink at Copa on South Street, reading the City Paper and low and behold an ad offering free advance screening tickets to the movie at a place about 100 feet from where I sat. My girlfriend frowned "surely you don't intend me to go with you". I of course ran out of the bar to get my pass before they ran out. I got back and she deadpanned "were there any left?".. ha ha..

So, yesterday I went (alone) to see the film. And you know what? It was totally entertaining. The jokes were surprisingly well written and literate and (most importantly, anti-red state). There was no lame-ass toilet humor either. Just a bunch of shots of Jessica Simpson in bikinis and such, car chases and jumps, and funny one liners that most of the theather didn't get. In fact, at one point I laughed out loud at one and was the only one.. I felt like a moron.. But it was funny as hell and a total dig on GWB and his brother stealing the presidency.. I guess nobody got the reference... but anyway..

The plot, well, there was one, but there were a few times when I said to myself "uh.. it's clearly obvious that doing A would be way more helpful to their cause than doing what they are currently doing...." but I actually didn't care. It was a ride and I was totally enjoying it, even if it took the long, pointless way around..

As for the connections to the tv show (which I used to love), they were very well done. The movie did nothing to detract from the original show. In fact, picture the tv show with curses in it and you've got the movie. And nothing crazy.. just a few "bullshit"s and the like.

All in all, I reccomend this to all. Go to be entertained and you will be happy.

Correction : Sudoku doesn't suck

Last week I wrote about how I thought that Sudoku sucked. After doing a few more puzzles, I've decided that it doesn't suck. It is a bit challenging and addictive. However, I still say that picture logic is way cooler and I still don't get why it hasn't taken off as well..

Be careful..

seems the brits are getting crazy and shutting down websites.. Don't they have something similar to the First Amendment? I wonder how soon our US government begins to follow suit. Wheather the websites were inciting terror or not is certainly not relevant. Can't anyone see that civil liberties are being eroded? There's an old saying we used to hear here in Philadelphia.. quite old infact.. "Live free or die!"

18 year tems for Supreme Court.. I agree

John Fund in the Wall Street Journal website Opinionjournal.com wrote an excellent piece (july 25, 2005 "18 Years Is Long Enough") arguing that the Supreme Court should have 18 year term limits, staggerd so each term would end every 2 years. I couldn't agree with him more. One interesting byproduct would be that each president would have a chance to nominate two justices in his term instead of the current system where some may get none and some may get more than 2.

Also it would cut back on the 80 year old justices. I'm sorry, they may be quite experienced, but are they truely fit to sit on the bench? Are they at all in touch with the world as it is? I'm not sure.

Read it and think about it... As for amending the constitution to allow it, well, only we the people can make that happen...

Mark Cuban.. please hire me!

This guy totally thinks the way I do.. yet another great little comment on how fucking stupid the record labels are...

Time

I think about stuff like this all the time (no pun intended). I hate daylight savings time and I certainly am not a fan of the fact that the calendar needs to accomodate a day every 4 years and that February always has a different number of days. Our Calendar needs to be reworked and cleaned up. I've proposed to friends (who think I'm crazy) that we somehow create a more 'metric' calendar with the same number of days per month and holidays always on the same day, etc. I've proposed the elimiation of time zones and daylight savings time before.

But this debate about the leap seconds is interesting. Even I agree that we should make one 'day' in our time calcualtions equal the amount of time we revolve 360 degrees. I don't know, I'm obviously ignorant about the whole thing but why is our government acting unilaterally again (like we're ceaser changing the calendar adding August and July)? I mean, why can't we as a nation start and foster a scientific debate globally and then use our infinate market power and polical might to make any changes they come up with? What does the State Department know about time?

Typical isn't it?

Verizon finally begins to think

I'm really, really pissed at Verizon for locking up the WiFi airwaves here in PA with the help of our governer but I'm still quite proud that they finally, finally figured out that they should be running fiber to the home. I mean it's a total non brainer. Finally they will now have virtually unlimited bandwith to the home and with that they will now be able to serve tv, internet and phone flawlessly with quality of service that will just annialate cable. Whenever they decide to implement it in Philly I will surely be an early adopter.. I can't stand thinking that my cable modem is on a local loop. Though I have to say that the quality of the connection has been quite good.

Ahh.. Finally found it

I'm so sick of registering for websites. I know it's the price I have to pay for free content, but it's annoying. So I just found this cool website called BugMeNot that gives you logins for websites.. All you have to do is type in the site address and then presto, a log in appears.. Cool no?

Busy weekend but..

I was reading in Time about Hiroshima, the 60th anniversary is coming up in a few days and I guess I just don't get the whole WW2 thing since we basicly destroyed a city and 140,000 of its civilians with a bomb. Not army bases or units but a city and its civilians. Basicly it was an attack on Japan who started war with us by bombing a military base in Hawaii. I don't want to sound insensitve, but how is it that an attack on 2 buildings and 3300 civilians is the most evil thing ever to have happened on planet Earth while it's ok to destroy 100 buildings and 140,000 civilians? Am I missing something?

Oh.. I almost forgot to mention that with conventional bombs that same year we destroyed 66 Japanese cities and over 900,000 civilians as well!

Home Heartbeat

I'm thinking about buying this new thing called Home Heartbeat. Basicly it's this thing that hooks to your keychain that keeps tabs on your house.. Is your door closed and locked? Did you leave the hall light on? Is the oven on? Silly things that you think about when you are an hour into a drive on vacation.. Supposively I hook up these sensors to stuff in my house and at any time I press this button and presto it assures me all is well.. I'm not really that OCD so I'm not sure I will really benefit from it, but it looks cool and well, I'm thinking about it...

A Walk Down Memory Lane

Well, not entirely.. Mobile Magazine did a piece on the Mobile Game Hall of Fame. The thing is that most of the games on there are quite old. Some of them, like Bop-it, are relatively new. In either case, all of them are games I totally remember. The most memorable one is the Merlin.. remember that one?

One day, near Christmas when I was near the age of being assured that Santa wasn't a real person, I was spying near my parents room when I heard the strangeist noises coming from the other side of the door. They were beeps. Mind you, I was 9 and this 1978 so beeping sounds weren't very common. In between the beeps I could just make out my parents saying to each other "my turn!".

Sure enough Santa had brought me Merlin and amazingly it made the same sounds. It was then that I realized that at least this toy wasn't brought from Santa.

Technorati

Read an interview with David Sifry, CEO of Technorati (another blog search engine that I found) today in Businessweek. He basicly outlines what I've been saying about the blogsphere...

You go to Google and type in wine, and it will tell you the best places to buy wine. But if you really want to find out what the world's leading wine experts are talking about, Google isn't really built to do that...The blogosphere today is about 30 times as big as it was three years ago...we're seeing about 900,000 new posts every single day. So that's about 11 posts every single second...

Sudoku sucks

While I don't doubt the challenge of solving a Sudoku puzzle, what I don't get is how it has become so popular while my favorite puzzle from japan which is called a Nonogram or Picture Logic (or Griddler) hasn't become anywhere near as popular. Its logic is more clear and therefore easier to solve brainwise, but still challenging from a time perspective. But most of all, it's cool to see the puzzle form into an actual picture.

If you have a palm, the best PL software can be found here. I've had it on my palm for close to 4 years now.

I say, if you are looking for some fun, find some Nonograms and try them out.. They are clearly more fun than Sudoku...

The IRA is done fighting

Wow.. how incredible a story is that? I wonder if the American media will even care.. I bet it's not even the top story tongiht and instead its some crap Lacy Peterson type story.. anyone want to take odds?

The Tour de France

Well, I'm all done watching it.. I had to do the final stage over 2 days (isn't tivo the best?), but now it's over and I have to say, I miss it already. Lance was awesome, but I enjoyed so much more than just watching him. Ullrich, Rassmusen , Vino, Oscar, the spinters McCuen and Thor, they were all awesome to watch. The race was simply awesome.

It's sad that now that Lance is gone, America will probably not give the Tour any interest. Well, I for one (a non-cyclist) will certainly watch the Tour and (if I can find any others on tv) other bike races.

I love professional cycling.. I would certainly put it above baseball and probably hoops as well, so it's now my #3 team sport to watch. I can't wait until next year.

Oh, for those of you who don't know me, Hockey then Football are the leaders and probably will be for quite sometime...

Subway Searches again

In case you didn't notice, someone posted a great link to "The Citizen's Guide to Refusing New York Subway Searches". It was written by a great group called Flex Your Rights whos stated goal and purpose is "The Flex Your Rights Foundation is a public education group teaching people to understand, appreciate, and assert their constitutional rights during police encounters". Read up and possibly support them.. they are fighing a tough fight in todays America!

OfficeGuns

Ok.. I don't work in an office anymore but when I did, I would have loved to have this site available to me. It outlines a ton of ways to assemble projectile weapons out of office supplies. Some of them are quite impressive!

Once again.. if you aren't white.. be careful!

Seems you can't be South Asian and on a tour bus in New York anymore either.. How sad..

Thank you IceRocket

Very cool. So you know I'm on the hunt for a new search engine. One that actually looks at blog entries. Well, I'm reading Mark Cubans blog this morning and he's talking about this search engine that I believe he owns that searches blog entries called IceRocket. I immediately checked it out by typing into the search box "water balloon launcher" and guess what? The first hit (of many) was a link to this very blog and my last post on the launcher I bought! Finally I'm searchable.. now we just have to make IceRocket more popular... spread the word!!!!

NASCAR - post

Yea.. So I'm back and let me tell you.. missing the final 2 days of the Tour was extremely hard to do and missing them for NASCAR was probably the dumbest thing I've ever done.

What a colossal waste of time.

NASCAR has got to be the saddest reflection of the average American that exists. Well, that's not true, I'm sure there are others that are worse, but for the purposes of this post, NASCAR takes the cake.

How is this the most popular spectator sport in America? I’m not even sure it should be considered a sport since I’m not even sure it is a race. Automobile racing is a race, sure, but this is far from a race in my mind.

First of all, I spoke to this guy there who was excited to tell me that they recently changed the rules of the race so they could eliminate the need for the drivers to shift! From the official program : "Gone are the days when teams had to out-think one another on transmission and rear-end gear ratios to achieve maximum horsepower...In other words mash the gas, feather the brakes and may the best man win".. further in the same article, a quote by a driver: "We actually have a chance to enjoy the race a little because we won’t have to do all that shifting"

I mean, as if it was hard enough to go around an oval track (in Pocono it’s a triangle, but still just 3 left turns), now they only have to step on the pedal and go. These drivers are so worshipped by the fans as being superior drivers and athletes.. give me a break.

Now I’m being unfair here. I have to say that this should be a competition of sorts but not of the drivers (who are simply there to put a pretty face on the mindless fans). The completion should be more focused on the pit-crews. We had infield passes and pit access with our tickets. I also rented a scanner so I could hear the pit crews crating with the drivers so I had awesome access to the part of the "race" that actually makes a difference.

It was in the pits where the range of preparation really showed. Some crews were simply amazing and prepared. Some crews were a disaster. It was actually fairly humorous the day before in a minor league race when I heard on the scanner, during the race, a driver arguing with his pit chief about how many tires they brought to the race. It went on literally for 10 minutes: "But bubby, we done used those tires already!", "just tell me yes or no? How many sets did we bring? 4?", "we had the set you are runnin on now..." And on and on.. Yesterday at the NASCAR event (the big leagues) one car ran out of gas heading to pit row.. the advice to the driver from his chief? "don't hit the brakes bobby, just roll it in here..."

On the other hand, the pits of the winning teams were poetry in motion. I was blown away watching them all function as a team. Like a great offense running a play in the Super Bowl, everyone had a job to do and they executed it perfectly in synch.. glorious.
And is has to be this way since the cars are all identical in mechanics. Sure you can set them up differently but all the parts are the same. The advantage comes from having a great mechanic and pit crew.

Now, where there apparently is no limit is in how much money you can spend on the crew. Some crews barely had a set of tires in their pits. They had no uniforms, nothing. Other crews had mini auto-shops with computers and radios and video feedback, tires, air conditioners, etc. These were the winning crews. Essentially the race is broken into two groups, the big money crews and the low budget crews. Of the big money crews, the "race" comes down to luck (assuming they are all equally motivated to win that day). This is a sport?

Ok, I can argue more about this, but I’m not sure it’s worth it. I really want to make a commentary on the phenomenon itself. I mean, there were a literal fuck-load of people there.. I would guess well over 100k in the stands and probably 4-5000 RV’s loaded in the infield. It was incredible. They were all camped out there from Friday until Sunday. Everyone had a beer in their hand at all times. It was 72 hours of drinking and wandering around aimlessly. And that, I believe is why NASCAR is so popular. It’s a cult, it’s a community, it’s a way of life for some people. They get in their RV, pile in 8-10 cases of beer and go camping at the track with others. What to talk about? Well, hardly politics or anything of consequence, lets all just talk about something simple, like what number driver we support.

I made the mistake of wearing a colored shirt on Saturday. Everywhere I went, people assumed I was a Tony Stewart fan (who apparently is represented by the color Orange). As I looked around, I didn’t see one person that wasn’t affiliated with some driver in some way. It was kind of like gang colors. On race day, I was conspicuous in my white shirt and jeans.

NASCAR was an experience that I really didn’t need to have. I had assumed the race would be boring, I had assumed that the fans would be mindless flag waving Americans, I had assumed that the only fun I would have would be listening to the pit crews on the radios, I had assumed that I would be assured that America is falling into a Soma-like sleep. I was right on all counts..

Subway Searches

So, I've been following this subway search thing in NYC pretty closely and I'm finally ready to talk about it a tiny bit. When I first heard about the searches, I wondered how it was legal to be able to just randomly search people. Finally, this morning actually, I learned that you could decline the search and not ride the subway. That makes legal sense and I'm fully ok with the searches at this point. I mean, sure most of us have nothing to hide, but who wants overzealous cops going through our bags all the time? What happens if they find something that seems to be dangerous (in their mind, you never know what they find suspicious)? I'll tell you what happens, you end up detained and maybe arrested or as I posted last week, you end up shot for wearing an overcoat (which as you should know by now was completely unwarrented).

But I understand that riding the subway is a choice and not a right and I'm fully in support of the searches as long as we can decine them. Now, I ask you this question: What will it help?

Let me explain. Say I'm a terriorist with a bomb attached. I'm heading into the 42nd street station ready to create some terror. I've got my bomb all set and ready with a trigger hidden in my hand. Since its NYC, there are literally 1000 people within 100 feet of me. A cop comes up and asks to search under my coat or my bag, or whatever. I now have 2 options and I will leave you all to discuss which one is more useful to my cause. I can a) blow myself up right there, killing way over 100 people and a couple of cops, or more interestingly I can b) not concent to the search, leave the station, walk a few blocks away to another entrance, get onto the subway and blow it up.

What is the best answer to stopping terrorism? Obviously, it's extremely difficult, and perhaps impossible to do at the micro level. I would guess that changing policy at a macro level may be a bit more successful. Well, I'm not going to get all political on you, but go find some anti-Bush website and you'll get some ideas.. look around for stuff about not attacking innocent countries for oil and meddling around in the middle east, supporting Isreal against the Palestinians so blindly, etc.

How Cool is China?

So I was reading this post about Danny Way, who jumped the Great Wall of China on a skateboard and I was really amazed to learn that China has a Minister of Extreme Sports! How cool is that? Do we have one of those?

Hmn.. is it coincidence?

I say NFW.. see here and decide if our new Justice to Be and the White House aren't trying to manipulate us in some subtle ways? And not neccisarrily "us" as in me and you (since we can't remember the Kennedys) but the democratic senators who will be voting on this guy..

-- as a side note, I feel like we're going to be unhappy no matter who Bush gets into the court and we really as a people have no way to change things so why stress out?

NASCAR

So. A month or so ago I posted that I'd be going to the They Might Be Giants concert tomarrow. Well, that's changed. My girlfriend and I are going to nascar at pocono raceway. Before you call me a hick with no brains or a sad American (I have been called both by friends after telling them I'm going by the way) let me tell you my story..

About a year ago the gf and I were at her friends house eating dinner or playing poker or something and her friend goes "Next year we should go to Nascar". Now he and his wife are both Red people and are the perfect candidates to be new nascar fans. They are "patriotic" and moderately wealthy and hard core bushies..etc.. But for some reason, they are nice people. We just stay far away from politics.

Anyway, I debated with them a bit about it. I explained how Nascar couldn't hold a candle to real auto racing in the form of the great Formula 1 tradition. I explained how it was a sport of rednecks and beer drinkers. I tried everything I could to discourage them from making us go. My girlfriend countered with "well, it would be fun to people watch". I was sunk. I agreed and decided it would be a fun experiment. But also, made no plans to go.

So a month ago, my dad calls me up and tells me that he has 4 tickets to Nascar that he didn't want to use. They were given him by a friend and were evidently very good seats in a box with parking and pit passes. Normally I'd have said no, but considering that I was going to have to go sometime and considering that sitting in a box away from all the crazy fans and flag wavers would be the safest way, I took the tickets.

And tomarrow, we're on our way. I'm not sure what the weekend will bring, but I guarantee I will not come home with a yellow ribbon on my car.

If you aren't white, you aren't alright

If you live in London, be afraid, be very afraid.. Oh, and no matter what, don't wear an overcoat on the subway...

Followup : we now know that he was innocent.. duh!

Quarters

Don't play quarters against this guy.

Prediction

I think the next huge successful web application will be a blog only search engine. There is so much content in all the blogs out there. People write about their lives, they write about their jobs, they write about current events, everything is out there. Now I know that it's not all accurate, but it is certainly important information and it's virturally untapped.

For instance, I talked about that water balloon gun the other day. Think of the case where someone wants to buy one. If they are lucky, they may find the company that makes the one I bought (the best I've seen out there, but not very well advertized in the search engines).. anyway, say they find the company. Wouldn't they want to know some peoples opionions on the gun? There may be reviews on the company web site but how non-partial will they be? Somewhere in the blogsphere there are entries about water balloon guns.. but they may never be found.

This is just one example, I could come up with dozens. I know there are aggrigators and some search engines out there for blogs but nothing has been created yet that searches all blogs in a topical manner. Simple subject line searching would be useful and even that doesn't exist yet there is an enourmous amount of useful content out there.

Someone will create this engine and it will be huge. And there need not be a monetary reward for it. Yahoo and Google weren't created for profit. Someone with programming skills and vision can easily build this thing. I'd do it myself but I'm way too lazy.

And I now sell my Sirius

What the fuck! I am so pissed off at Air America and at Sirius for the suprise loss of AA. AA is now apparently exclusivly on XM. This is really annoying to me since one of the main reasons I got Sirius was to hear AA. I was in the car yesterday and it was gone. Now I'm more pissed at Sirius since they probably had a chance to get AA and passed becasue they already had "Sirius Left".. Or should I be pissed at AA for signing an exclusive contract with XM? I thought they were all about getting their message out to as many folks as possible. Obviously I was wrong and as usual it's all about the money.

Fucking stupid fucks!

(followup : been reading a lot about this.. there are lots of others who are pissed as well.. anyway, found a website that has all the shows archived in mp3 format so I guess I could stream Randi but that doesn't help me when I listen to her most.. in my car...)

Homeless threat

Ok.. Am I the only one who sees it as a bit odd that a naked homeless man was such a threat that he needed to be shot multiple times? Now I know the story says that the homeless man was grabbing for the gun, but who believes cops anymore? I sure don't. If any of you have seen Crash, this seems quite similar to the scene in the car near the end.

Even if the guy was grabbing at the gun, understand that a cops gun is securely snapped into his holster and it would take a really serious effort to get it out from an obliquie angle. The cop could easily have rolled out of the car or whatever. We'll never know the whole story but it just seems like something isn't ringing true to me.

As an interesting aside I was there, moments after the event, driving home from the dentist and caught in traffic at 8th and Market. I was at that very moment trying to figure out where Air America went on Sirius...

The "War on Terrorism"

Read a good post about what we really should be up to with the "War On Terrorism" and I have to say I fully agree with the poster.

Water Balloon Launcher - report

I bought this water ballon launcher and told you about it a while back. Anyway, it was delivered and looked awesome.. It was huge and well made and all camo looking.. it was cool.

So, I haven't been able to personally test it since I haven't been to the shore (where I have a compressor and a place to shoot it). I did, however, send it down there to be tested by some friends.

They reported that it was tough to get to work. Either the baloons would break on the way down the tube or would break when the gun was fired. They were able to make other projectiles out of water bottles and they did report shooting them over 200 yards with extreme accuracy.

So, without testing it myself, I would say that the cannon rules, but the key is to find balloons that work well with it.. If I get down there to play with it myself, I'll let you know..

Any of you bought one?

Ha Ha

All i can do is laugh at how sad our nation is..

http://www.tvsquad.com/2005/07/18/abc-sued-over-live-8-obscenity/

The Court

I've been trying to stay pretty much non-political lately since the election. Those of you who were with me back in November remember my almost daily rants and commentary on the election... But anyway, a relative wrote an op-ed piece and shared it with me and since I agree with it fully, I post it here for you all to read as well.. enjoy:

The issue of the confirmation of federal judges highlights the partisan approach that we accept in our government. Why is the naming of particular judges so important if their purpose is to be unbiased in matters before them? Surely all of the candidates for federal judgeships are well qualified so why should we accept a situation where a candidate’s political activities and allegiance are so important? .

Perhaps it’s time to consider a different approach. Under the current system the President nominates all federal judges. But the constitution permits Congress to control the manner of selecting judges to courts other than the Supreme Court. Congress could, by law, require the Supreme Court to establish standards and qualifications for other federal judgeships….perhaps years of practice and prior experience; academic and education requirements; personal and professional recommendations by active judges; bar association standards and whatever other guidelines make sense to select the best and brightest of the legal profession that aspire to judgeships.

Lists of qualified individuals for each of the courts could be maintained and when an opening arises a name would be picked at random. The confirmation process would start from that point. This one change would remove the major political motivation under the current system and would provide a certain balance that is missing in the current system. The ideological center of the court system would usually be near the actual center of where society is without the entire system of party politics controlling it.

Congress has the power to make this change but it is doubtful that they would touch such a cornerstone of power politics and any President would not look kindly upon losing so much influence. In other words the process of selecting federal judges will change sometime after lobbying is found to be a corrupting influence.

Half Life 2 done

Just finished HL2. It was a bunch of fun. I played about an hour or two a day since I started. I had it on Easy since I'm into it more for the story and not the insane challenge of shooting like 200 guys a minute. If I wanted real combat, I'd have joined the Marines. Anyway, the game was super fun. I reccomend.

Entourage

So, my summer tv schedule isn't as intense as my winter one but I do have a bunch of stuff that I watch and try to keep up with. One show I've never mentioned before (and I'm not sure why) is Entourage (on HBO). I started watching it last year at the urging of a friend and began to like it. I'm a huge fan of Jeremy Piven and he's great in the show so I stuck with it.

This is the second season and I think that it's totally hitting it's stride as a series. Sometimes it takes a while to tune things in and get them right. This season is much more compelling than last.

Before you start watching, know that it's not a serious show. It's a show that follows a young movie star, his older brother, his manager and a friend from home, all 4 of which do everything together. It's fun and if you have HBO I reccomend. If not, go rent the first season on Netflix and see if I'm right.

Blog button tool

How cool is this tool? It will custom make any blog button in the standard format.. It's found at Adam Kalsey’s Button Maker.

Anyway. Here is mine if you all are interested in posting it somewhere:

(for some reason I'm having trouble posting an image with blogger.. who knows why.. perhaps I'll fix it, but I have to roll out of here now.. so if you'd like, the link to the image is here)

Freeware

I'm a big fan of open source and freeware stuff. The funny thing is that I somehow end up never ever finding stuff that has spyware or the like attached. I don't know why this is. Perhaps I'm just lucky, or perhaps spyware and virii simply don't exist.

In either case, I've come across this website that has a list of the best freeware listed by type. I highly reccommend you take a look.

The internet is shit

Or.. should the title be "The Internet is THE shit"? I wonder. I feel more towards the former. I've written here about how we should start again with email and re-think search engines and the like. I think this simple web piece sums up how I feel about the net. I was one of the few here back in the early 90's when the promise was so great.

Battlestar Galactica

I wrote in my old blog (which I can't find at the moment) how much I loved the Battlestar Galactica mini-series that came out a couple of years ago. It was really well done. I was so excited to see that they were turning it into a series and I watched it last year. This year, the next season is coming out and I want to warn all of you now.. don't believe the hype. The show sucks.

About 1/3 of the way into last season the story got simply stupid and was totally insulting my intelligence. Things were happening and not happening that just simply didn't make sense. I'm not going to go into it right now but I feel like I had to warn you since all I see all over the place are posts about how it's the greatest series since the original Star Trek.. don't believe it.

Walt Disney is becoming your Big Brother

This is simply scarey and pointless...

Oakenfold post

Hey.. went to the Oakenfold show last night at Emerald City and although Emerald City was a bit lacking in the service department the show was really amazing and intense. Our tickets were for 9pm so we showed up at 9pm and ended up waiting in line for the doors to open at 9:45. Nobody knew when Oak would start his set or what room he would be in (there are 3 there). Turns out he went on at 1am and there was an announcement about 10minutes beforehand. The club also had a no-reentry policy so when I decided to go outside to get some air (very smokey there.. hurt my eyes actually) I had to buy another ticket to get in again.. annoying. So the club was a drag mostly (the dj's in the other rooms were pretty good though).

Paul was amazing. The room he was in was pakced and he played a set that was just non stop energy. The room was going crazy and the show was great. Now I see how he fills Wembly Stadium.

The Tour de Lance

I haven't been writing much lately and I'm sorry. I can tell you that I've religiously watched the Tour de France and Lance. He is simply amazing and in my mind the greatest athelete I've ever witnessed in my life. Tomarrow will be no exception. Today was an incedible stage and there was one moment on a climb up a mountain that nobody I know could ever complete where Lance proved to me his greatness yet again.

First off, he and the others have been riding for 15 days.. hard days.. secondly they had just finished about 170km of riding up a few climbs and some long straits. Third, it was about 90 degrees out. Ok.. with all that said, a group of Lances closest rivals took off up the hill, breaking away from the pack. Lance hit the gas (uphill mind you) and caught up to the group. Then the group broke into 2 groups. Lance was in the back one and was simply watching the first group pull away as his group struggled to keep up with them. At this point, I was convinced the other group would either quit or never be seen again until the finish.. Lance chilled and then decided.. ok, I'm out of here and just took off.

It's hard to ride alone and it's hard to break away from a group thats chasing another group and its even harder to do it on an HC climb (which is one that is considered too crazy hard to even be classified). But, Lance did it like it was nothing. He took off and left whe group behind and caught up with the other group which was 10 or seconds ahead.

He went on to outclass some more by the end of the race, but that moment today was just amazing and incredible and mind-blowing. The last time I saw anything like it was in stage 10 (another mountain stage) when he held off a ton of attacks on his jersey.

I can't imagine anyone will challenge him tomarrow, but I urge you all to watch and see this man. You will never get another chance since he is retiring after the race. This is like seeing Jordan play in the finals before retirement or Lemeuix play his last game.. Don't miss Lance.. tomarrow may be the day he solifies his win!

Religion

Hey.. been awol lately.. lots going on here so I haven't had time to post.. God a crazy religious mass email today and felt strongly about it and was going to rant about it, but another blogger put it much better than myself.

Oh and watch the Tour.. Stage 10 was simply incredible.

Half Life 2

I played the original Half Life a while ago and loved it but got discouraged when I got stuck on a puzzle. Half Life 2 is so much better. I started playing like 2 days ago and I am compleltely hooked. The game is like a movie that you are the star of. It's not too much a FPS and it's not really that impossible to move forward in (which is a big minus with most games I play). They fixed the moving and jumoing to be more forgiving which is one of my pet peeves. Trying to get onto a ledge or something shouldn't take 10 minutes to get just right. In real life if you could make the jump, you can make the jump.. you know? If you are a gamer you will love this game.. it's spectacular. The graphics and sound are awesome and the story and action keep you totally engaged.

I just hope its not too late

This has been a tough year for me in the world of sport. Not because the Eagles lost the Super Bowl, that they made it was cool enough. But because I've misssed terribly my favorite sport and league : the NHL. I wonder what kind of damage the strike has caused to the sports reputation. It was already less popular that the other 3 majors which is sad since Hockey is absolutely incredible to watch, it's players are the most down to earth and their toughness and atheticism is unparralelled.

Well, apparently there is a deal. In an espn article today, it's being reported that a deal has been made. We will have hockey next season. I just hope the NHL hasn't lost what few fans it had..

Concert

as promised, my review of sorts. The concert was uneventful and entertaining. Patti LaBelle played and wow, she seemed out of it, but could still sing.. impressive. The big highlight of her performace was when Dahani Jones came out and danced and sang with her.. that was cool.

Eltons set sounded great. The sound was fantastic. Elton can't sing the high notes anymore and he knows it so he just doesn't sing stuff.. he will sing most of the line and just stop..

Anyway, nothing really happened of interest, the crowds were cool and behavied around where I was and there weren't too many incidents where autorities didn't know what was going on (usually expected in huge events such as this)

Scoring the Tour

So, I know I complained a few days ago about not being able to find stuff on the Internet and I know that yesterday I urged you to watch the Tour De France. So, if you indeed watched Stage 2 of the tour today (like I did) you may have some questions about the scroing of the race. I know that I did. So I did what everyone else would probably do, I popped open Firefox and began searching for info on the scoring.

Of course I had to choose my search words careully. "tour de france for dummies" was my first guess since I wanted to find some kind of tutorial. Of course there is actually a book named "Tour de France for Dummies" so that was a dumb idea. Next I tried "tour de france tutorial".. nothing but a bunch of links proporting to teach me french... "tour de france scoring system" yielded a cool article about the electronics and technical aspect of timing the race on a bike by bike basis (here) but it wasn't what I was looking for. Finally I got smart and tired "tour de france scoring" which finally led me to a site on SI.com that was an ok intro but not very helpful. But also on that search I found a post in a forum from someone asking for a set of rules. The reponse to that post included a link that finally had a useful tutorial on the scoring of the jerseys.

But I still didn't have all the details and answers figured out.. Like simple stuff like what happens if a guy has to pee? Or what is the ettiquite in certain situations? Or what do some of the words mean? Finally after loking through forums and the like I came up with this link
to a decient tutorial on the tour. It could be better, there are grammatical errors and stuff ut still I found it the most informative overall.

So, my dear readers I have done in about 1.5 hours what google should have done for me 1.49 hours ago and that's give some useful links about a topic I needed to know about. Sad isn't it?

Live 8 - part 4

Well, I guess I was wrong. My worry about riot and chaos at th eshow was totally unfounded. I was right however about the attendace. The parkway wasn't full all day so they didn't get over 400k. Maybe 400k over the whole day, but certainly not 1M.

I was also right about the Philly lineup. It looked lame and from what I saw on tv, it wasn't too impressive. Certainly when compared to London. In fact it was an embarressment for the american music industry that the US concert site was so underrepresented. But whatever.

I had fun watching the comments of my friend Catherine Lucey who is a reporter for the Daily News. She was there, blogging all day long for the DN blog Attytude with her co-reporter Will Bunch.

My personal favorite things from the event? Maria Carey looked so sexy and hot. I couldn't tell you one song of hers or even album or whatever, but buy she has always just been sso hot to me. I love her shape..

Oh, as for the music, I think that my favorite things were the Floyd reunion, the Verve song and maybe Madonna who showed that she is still a mega-performer.

As for the message? Yea, I wonder how much the concert did? Maybe some people feel "more aware" about African poverty but how long will that last? And how much will the average american actually do about the problem? That remains to be seen.

Hey.. I'm actually going to Elton John since I scored some nice backstage passes. I'll let you know how that went tomarrow sometime.

Lance!

Psssst... watch the Tour de France on OLN.. pass it on!

Fucking Thief (or viva la revolution)

I almost forgot to tell you. Someone stole my black ribbon car magnet thingie that I just bought! A little while back I wrote this post about my new car magnet. Anyway, I bought it and put it on my car along with the "dissent" one and a week later, it was gone. Though the dissent one stayed put. I have a theorey about this now.

Originally I thought it was stolen by some right wing do-good patriot moron since at first glance it appears to be anti-american, but then I thought that they would definately be more offended by the "dissent" sticker so now I'm thinking that someone liked it and wanted it on their own car. Though the theif may not have understood the other sticker and left it out of ignorance, which could be the case with most right wind do-good patriots in America today. Hmn..

Well, in either case, I've ordered a new one and it will be here soon. Get yours now!

Live 8 - part 3

Ok, it's 11am and I figured there would be 100 or 200 people down there by now.. Apparently there are over 1000 times that many. Anyway, in reading up on the concert in the news this morning I couldn't help but notice (it really is everywhere) that Milton Street, the mayord brother has 17% of the concert concessions today. Coincidence? I think not. Corruption stillin the Street administration? Nah.. couldn't be could it?

Your PA state house at work

No matter that I think that its completely insane that they are spending time on this issue when the state has more important issues to work out. And no matter that I completely disagree with what they are proposing, the funny thing is that even in our state legislature, there is that wonderful divide that we see all over in govenment today. You must read this article from the Daily News and tell me that you didn't laugh out loud about 3/4 of the way through it.

The Water Balloon Launcer

Incidentally, if you are looking for the best launcher you can buy, I would suggest checking out the Balloon Bazooka Magnum Model which I am ordering today. I'll let you know if it rules or not when I get it..

Search Engine

Why is there no better search engine than Google out there yet? Before Google my favorite SE was Alta-Vista which actually searched pages by words on the page. It had a huge database of pages, the most at the time and it was incredibly fast at doing queries.

Obviously AV had problems with people putting invisible meta data into their pages so Google came along and said, well, our search will rate pages on the users percieved utility by seeing how many links others give to the page. So for example, if there were 2 web sites that sold water balloon launchers, the one with the most links from others would be considered the more popular and therefore a better result.

This was cool for a while, but I'm not sure people link to other pages on their web sites as much as they used to. There are barely any "home page"s on the net any more and personal link collections, its all blogs and commercial pages. As such, I can't find a damn thing with Google any more.

As I see it, Google has 2 problems, one is that its base algorhythm is flawed (unless it has changed) and second, it doesn't seem to search text anymore. As an example, this post is about search engines and Google in particular. If you were to type into a google search box something like "As I see it, Google has 2 problems, one is that its base algorhythm is flawed" which is a very specific reference to this very post, it will not come up. Why is this?

I would argue that there are 2 main types of searches people do. The first is the commercial search which I would argue is further speciefied with the following question "Where can I find the best x" or "what is the best x". If I want to buy a wall calendar I don't want a seach to give me 10,000 pages with the words "wall calendar" in them or even 10,000 vendors of wall calendars. I want to buy the best wall calendar. So of all the people in the past year who searched for and purchaced a wall calendar, tell me where they all went to do it. Something like that.

The second seach is one where someone wants to learn about something. This search should be non-commercial, it should look in blogs and in public info archives. So when I search for "search engine commentary" I find a listing of current blog posts and articles on search engines.

Now, I'm being over simplistic here I know, but what I'm getting at is this: The net is huge and contains almost certainly the answer to any given question a person could have about anything. The problem is that x% of those people don't find anything close to a usable answer because there is no tool that has been developed for them to find that answer. The tools that exist are archaic and useless. Some may disagree with me, but I would guess that x = 80 and it should be something on the lines of 10-20.

IF someone builds this tool, they will be in instant billionaire. So fucking get to work dammit! I need to find this damn water balloon launcher.

ads ads and more ads

Damn.. I've added a bunch of crap to my sidebar. I am doing it in an attempt to gain readers. But, I won'd want to loose the ones I have so if you find that loading this blog takes a long time, let me know and I'll start pairing down stuff. If it's no bother, then cool...

Movies

I was reading in "The Week" today about the fact that Hollywood is concerned that people aren't going to the movies as much as they used to. Apparently (says the New York Times) sales have declined for 17 weeks strait.

There are lots of opinions on the matter. In an AOL poll apparently 73% of americans prefer to watch movies at home. Well, I agree. A while back I posted about how going to the theatre sucks and I can't imagine that others don't feel the same way. But the reasl reason that people are slowing down is that movies on average suck and we've figured out that the studios marketing machines promote them with no truth at all.

We figured out that the studios time releases to happen every week so they can claim that their new movie was the "top grossing film!" that week. Well, if it's the only new one, of course it will be. We've figured out that a review can be totally scoured and edited to say anything they want it to : "It's amazing that this crap made it to the screen!" = "Amazing!".

Just make good movies and make the experience better and may we will come back. No matter how nice a home theatre is, there is nothing better than a 60' wide screen and 5000 watts of sound and an audience that feels the way you do experiencing something new along with you.

Oakenfold

Well, I wanted to let you all know that Paul Oakenfold is playing a show in Philadelphia on July 16. It's at Emerald City on 2nd and Spring Garden. There are only 1000 tix and I bought 4 of them. You can get tix at 611 Records or at www.groovetickets.com.

If you don't know who Paul Oakenfold is, he's considered the greatest Trance DJ alive and islike Bob Dylan in Europe. I suggest you buy his "Perfecto Presents Another World" CD as an intro.

Flickr

I didn't realize what flickr was until I spent some time surfing along looking at peoples photos.. it's quite addictive..

Live 8 - part 2

See this article? Yea, one more reason to fear this concert.

Though I can't believe anywhere near 1M people are going to show up. I'd guess more like 200,000. We'll see..

Survey

Found time to do a survey about blogging for MIT. Seems they are trying to correlate blogging with making online friends.. something that I have just barely done. Which isn't really true since when I had my last few blogs (here and here and even here) I had generated a number of online aquaintances.. for some reason I've got like 10 readers on this one.. I'm guessing since this one is far less interesting and doesn't reveal much about my personal life.

See my first post on this blog to explain a bit as to why I've not put personal info here, but i guess by revealing my other blogs, I've jsut let it all out of the bag.. Now you have photos and names and all that jazz. The problem is that I really feel I should be able to post what I want and all should be well. We'll see if I have to move again to hide from someone.

Anyway, the survey is here for all you bloggers that haven't taken it:

Wilco

Went to the Wilco show at Festival Pier yesterday. I'm a big fan of the band and the show was quite good in the sound and performance department but I wasn't really blown away like when I saw Radiohead or Aerosmith or any of the other "incredible live" bands. Wilco was billed to me as being really great live and to be honest I wasn't too impressed. Jeff Treedy was pretty good though and personable, but I wasn't as impressed as I thought I'd be.

Nonetheless a great show and I had a really good time so I'm glad I went

Update

Hey.. been quiet lately and I'll tell you why. I've been spending most of my time (other than work) building my new pc and moving my software and files over to it from the mac.

A couple of things to know on the software side: 1) Quicken for mac does not move over to the PC very easily and even then it requires a ton of work. Not cool. 2) email from apple mail to outlook or outlook express, forgetaboutit. 3) iCal and address book over to outlook. not sure yet, still trying to get that one to work.

So essentially, moving my important data back to the pc is not going well. Fortunately I have all my old files from when I moved to the mac in the first place so I've moved back to them and given up on the 3 months of data from my mac days. Quicken is easy to update since I have all the statements, email is another story though I only will loose a tiny bit since I've been keeping stuff on my pop servers for the past 2 months in preperation.

Hardware: so far, I love my new pc. I bought a new case for my old mb and a new power supply and vid card as well. The case is the new Antec P180 which was engineered with 3 qualities in mind: silence (evidenced by its huge 120mm 3 speed fans and rubber hd mounts and) and cooling (again see the fans, wind tunnels and vid card cooling baffles) and ease of installation (very nice sliding HD mounts and other cool features). The case rocks.

I tried to buy the new Antec Phantom 500 Power supply, but its too new and I can't find it in stock anywhere. I settled (and glad I did) on the ePower Lion EP-450P5-L1 which so far has prooved amazingly silent. It has passive cooling and also a fan that will kick in variably whenver the load gets up over 300W. So far I've never heard it.

Video card was a Gigabyte GeForce 6600 GT card. The 6600 is just about as good as the 6800 but 1/2 the price. A great deal and it runs my games quite well. I sold my $500 top of the line ATI card when I bought the mac and in general I tend to like nVidia stuff better so I'm happy there.

Oh I forgot to mention my favorite new part. I was going for a quiet pc (and I so far succeeded since I can't hear a thing from this box) so I wanted to replace the intel fan on the CPU since it is massivly loud. I ended up buying the biggest most insane fan/heat sink unit from zalman. It's a CNPS7700-ALCU and you can see a photo here. It is amazing. The fan barly spins and the CPU has so far kept quite cool. It's the best $40 I've ever spent on a pc build.

Ok, back to organizing my email.. Talk to you soon.

Live 8

Let me just go on record as stating that I think the concert on July 2 is a bad idea. First off, the original stated goal of the concert was to forgive African Debt (which I don't agree with) and that has already been realized. Secondly, Philadelphia gains nothing from hosting the concert yet has all kinds of headaches. Driving around the city will be hell, the cost to the taxpayers is huge (when the money could be better spent on libraries, fire houses, schools, etc.), and who knows what kind of problems we will encounter with 1M + crazy 50 cent fans running around all day. Not to mention that the lineup is really crappy.

Typical and sad

I've complained a bunch about this over the years, and it's sad to see that it still is a problem. Why can't we properly teach sex to children? Why is sex education such a huge issue? Here is an article from the Washington Post that tells us what we already know: Children are having sex and the ones who aren't are talking about it all the time and we still refulse to teach them about it. How sad is it that we have so many teen age pregnancies? We should have 0.

Sex offences

I'm as against sex offenders as the next guy, but how is this (http://www.nbc10.com/news/4622956/detail.html?rss=phi&psp=news) not entrapment? I see this all the time as peoples lives are ruined by investigators who pose as young kids on the internet and then have conversations with "offenders". I don't know about you all, but I will gladly admit that I've had cybersex and corresponded via email with people who I didn't exactly know. In those cases, it could have been an FBI agent pretending to be someone and then I'd go to jail or at least be publicly labled a sex offender.

I bet the guy in the story had all good intentions and maybe threw in some innuendo but then I can guarantee that the emails from the girl (read : the investigaotr posing as the girl) ended up steering him in the direction of interest. And even though, who is to say that this guy would have gone through with anything in reality? Perhaps it was just fantasy, and what is wrong with that? Would I hook up with someone underage? Uh.. no fucking way. Would I think about it? Perhaps build a fantasy or two around it? Maybe. Does that make me a criminal? In todays America it just may.

profile

For those of you dying to contact me, I've added my email address to my profile..

The new Ad

For those of you who keep track, I've changed the site a tiny bit. At the bottom of the sidebar I've added an advertisement. I did it in hopes to generate some traffic (and readers) to the blog. Its a link exchange kind of deal, supposivly by putting this up, I get free exposure on other blogs and will generate traffic. Of course I will be monitoring this to see. I'm not a big fan of advertising at all, especially blind (non-targetted) ads, but this one isn't too obtrusive and so far it seems like an ok trade.

TMBG

For those of you who may like them, They Might Be Giants are playing a free concert at Penns Landing on July 23.. I think I'm going, I haven't seen them live yet..

Where do I sign up?

http://www.freekatie.net/

Michael is found Not Guilty!

need I say more?

anyway, here is something that you may find quite enjoyable...

The TSA

You just have to read this short artice from slate the other day. It talks about what we already know.. that the TSA and the current airline screening process is a bunch of useless time-wasting processes that do nothing to protect us, while doing everything to inconvenience us. All so GWB can say that things are safer now.

Just take as an example how we have to show ID when we get to the checkpoint. Have you ever wondered about this? Who is this protecting? How hard is it for even a low-rent terrorist to obtain a fake ID? Or how about the fact that nail files are confiscated while some types of plastique still don't show up at all during scans? (examples courtisy of "The Week" June 17 issue).

Duh

Global Warming

Well, its finally good to hear that almost everyone agrees that Global Warming is not science fiction and is actually science fact. Now if only the US would sign the beautiful, elegant, really cool, really helpful, really reponsible Kyoto Treaty (can you tell I'm a big fan of it?).

Global Warming is REAL! We need to address this issue in America. Though I really don't care since I'm not having any kids...

American Ignorance

So, you've all seen those yellow ribbons on the cars. I've thought about these a whole lot and I've come to the conclusion that in most cases, the people who have them on their cars don't realize what they actually mean. The text on the ribbons say "Support our Troops" so I think that most people believe that the stickers mean "Support the Iraq War" since obviously, that's where the troops are. This theory is bolstered by the fact that most of these cars have “W” stickers or big American Flag stickers along with the ribbons.

The best one I saw was a ribbon that looked like all the others except in the center where there is usually an oval cutout, it was cut out in the shape of a cross. How sweet.

It’s incredible. Does anyone realize that the yellow ribbon is a reference to the song "Tie a yellow ribbon" which essentially means "I'm coming home"? This obviously is saying “unlike Vietnam, we support your work and know its your job to follow orders and fight over there, but we want you home now since this war is really unjustified and useless. We don’t want you to die in vain”.. but I guess I’m the only one that sees that.

I’ve wanted for a long time to put an anti Iraq war sticker or an anti-Bush Administration sticker of some kind on my car. But, I haven’t for 3 reasons. First, and most importantly, I value my privacy and don’t need confrontations (or at worst, I don’t need to be beaten up). I would be labeled “un-American” or “un-Democratic” or something like that. I’ve already been called all kinds of things by people for stuff I’ve said or written about how upset I am with the current Stalinist government we have. The second reason is that I don’t want my sticker to be misunderstood. I didn’t want the Iraq war and I want the troops back home preparing to fight real threats like N. Korea. I want to put a yellow ribbon on my car, but everyone will misinterpret it. The last reason is simple, I haven’t found a sticker that sums up how I feel.

I want to say something like “You dumb fucks, you’re supporting bringing home the troops with that yellow ribbon.. don’t you get it?”. Or I want to say something like “Being an American and living in a democratic society means that I’m supposed to speak up when I don’t agree with stuff”. Or I want an anti Administration sticker of some kind because George Bush isn’t the problem, it’s the people who put him there and are running the government.. He’s just a moronic figurehead with an earpiece connected to Karl Rove.

I better be careful talking about the president. I don’t want the Secret Service visiting me. I saw this thing the other day about this guy who said something like “I’d love to go to DC an show him what a real man is” in a personal email to a friend and a month later the SS was at his door interrogating him.. How sad.. Privacy? Ha. But I digress…

So, the other day I finally saw it.. Right on the back of a big SUV interestingly enough.. but anyway, there it was, a black ribbon saying “Support our troops, Bring them home!”. Ahh. Finally. So I found the sticker and a few other cool ones at a website that claims to be a source for “liberal bumper stickers”. It’s sad that the black ribbon is considered a liberal sticker.. why isn’t it just an American sticker. I bet a ton of the parents of soldiers who are most likely Republicans would like a sticker like this one.. Sad that it all comes down to this liberal/conservative democratic/republican thing.. I mean, I’m probably the most conservative anti-bush democrat you will ever meet. Welfare? Unions? Social Aid? Yea right..

Anyway, again I digress.. The website is at carryabigsticker.com, and I’m buying the black ribbon and a sticker with the famous Howard Zinn quote “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism” and I’m putting them on my car. I will let you know if a) I get beat up or b) get rammed in some way. If the SS visits me I may not be able to report anything to you since they probably won’t let me. So, if I disappear, you know where I am…

damn

I miss my old blog.. at it's peak I had like 100+ daily readers. I admit, the content was a bit better since it was more personal, and I publicicized it quite a bit. But still I'd hoped that I could gain readers and comments by just posting and waiting. No such luck so far. My daily average is about 8.

Making the blog a lot less personal was a concious decision since I had that crazy stalking incident and I could have gotten a bunch more readers had I linked my old blogs here, but I just had to sever the ties..

So anyway, I know this blog is a bit boring, but still I want to be read so I'm asking you, my 8 readers to kindly send a friend my way. I promise I'll be nice..

Oooh.. better yet, how about tell two friends and then they can tell two friends, and so on, and so on.. and if you know that reference then I'm quite impressed.. Although it's so old I can only remember that line and the image from the commercial and I've forgotten the actual product.. maybeline?

Ah.. whatever..

Maybe I should spice things up a bit and talk about my sex life.. sex sells.. nah.. can't do it.. sorry..

The nice Internet

I was just reading a story in the Inquirer about spyware and adware. I've barely been hit with this stuff since I'm really careful and aware when I'm browsing the web or using freeware. But I've got lots of friends who have been inundated with crap on their computers. I would argue that most net users are not like me and are more like my mom in their understanding of their computers (and by extension the Internet). And that's totally cool. You don't need to understand a thing about your cars mechanics to be able to drive it and you shouldn't need to know a thing about programming or computers to get info from the web.

On the other hand, the problem lies in the fact that there is no clear distinction made between getting and processing information and customizing ones computer. Unlike a car, a computer is easily customized. You may want a new screen saver or a cool mouse pointer graphic or some cool sounds, etc. So a computer user is given all kinds of ways to customize. Using the car metaphor, this is like having my mom go into Pep Boys and buying a new exhaust system and installing it into her car.

On a computer, installation of software has become quite easy and in some ways it has become automatic. This is what makes spyware, adware and viruses so prevalent. Is this a good thing? Well, yes actually it is. Your computer is not a television or a car, it’s a totally different appliance. By it’s very nature, it requires a different way of dealing with it. It is complex and it needs to be made easy to use for the masses.

So what is the solution? Well, I’ve said before that Microsoft and Apple have really missed the boat when it comes to OS design. My theory is that there should be two versions of every operating system. Because there are two classes of computer users. There are power users, people who don’t need system files to be “hidden” for their protection for example. And there are regular users, people who don’t care or even understand the need for system files. But, that’s another post. Let’s just assume we’re in the craptacular middle ground OS mode.. which we are.

My solution to the adware, spyware, virus and spam problem is quite simple and for the life of me I can’t figure out why nobody is implementing it. What we need is a new Internet. Let me explain.

The Internet as it is is quite an amazing beast. It is far more complex than most users imagine. Most users only know the web and email. There are far more applications that can work over the Internet, but everything has been shoehorned into the web interface so we the masses would have a simple to understand interface to the net. As a developer, this makes my job really hard since the rules that the web browsers use are severely kludge like and are a total headache. The rules had to be adapted over time to be backwards compatible so when graphics got added to the web (yea, the web was only text at one point) and input forms and encryption and secure transactions were created, things started to get messy. The same goes for email. It was originally designed to work in a small trusted society where everyone knew each other. There were no attachments, no html, just plain text email messages.

But the net has grown and changed and now it has become much more than originally intended. It was the great design in the beginning that enabled it to change so much so easily. But it is showing signs of decay. In my opinion the largest problem with the Internet the way it is is the concept of Identity – it is pretty much impossible to know that someone is who he says he is on the Internet. This problem is what allows spam to occur, it’s what allows people to install spyware and adware on your computers and not get penalized for it, and it’s what allows viruses to exist. Nobody is accountable. Think of it in real life terms. If you were in a store and nobody could identify you and you had questionable morals, what would stop you from robbing the place?

Of course there are other problems with the Internet the way it is, the web can use a total overhaul and the domain name system can be improved, and encryption could be added, etc.

Anyway, adding Identity to the Internet is pretty much impossible at this point and any other changes would just be new hacks added on top of old hacks. So I propose we go down to the bottom level of the Internet protocols (TCP/IP) and build two new layers on top of it. First would be a security layer which would positively identify all packets via a new non-spoofable identifier packet using encrypted signature keys. The second layer would be a new application layer with a new web-like application, a new email application and a new API other net apps to use.

I bet the original designers of the Web and Email and the Net have tons of amazing ideas that they would love to implement but can’t since they are wed to the net as it is. If they could start again, I bet they would build us something amazing.

Anyway, this new net, combined with my proposed simple OS for the masses would eliminate (yes I believe total elimination is possible) all the nefarious threats we deal with daily. So start clambering for change. Stop accepting the status-quo.. You really don’t have to.

Audition

I've said it before, but Takashi Miike is one of my favorite directors. I've seen a number of his films. My first was Dead or Alive which totally started my bug for his work. I've gone on and seen a few more of his films when I had chances, but one that slipped by me for a long while was Audition. I wasn't dissapointed when I saw it this afternoon. For those of you who can't handle graphic films, I advise you to skip Miikes work, but for those of you who can handle a little blood, guts and strange shit, I say go see some of his films. Make sure you see Audition though...It was great. But don't take my word for it.. take a look at some of the reviews on imdb...

ps. Audition is a horror film of sorts.. and Dead or Alive is a Yakuza (japanese gangster) flick.

I Wish I was an artist

Ok. I totally found the coolest site of the day. This web tool (also downloadable) is called The Rasterbator. What it does is take any image file and convert it into a large scale rasterized version that you can print out and paste on your wall.

I wish I was an artist so I could use this tool in a cool way. Some of the examples on the web site are really cool..

This is cool

Check out this site with 30 re-enactments of cool movies.. I particularly like the Pulp Fiction one..

http://www.angryalien.com/

I miss NYC

I mean, how cool a hotel is this place?

Actually, the photography is quite cool...

What a retard...

And you know.. politics is just going into the toilet...

http://frymax.typepad.com/longcut/2005/06/photoshopping_i.html

scumbag cops

Reciently I've noticed that the police have become total facist pigs and its sad:

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/video/taser_video3a.html

I hate this fucking mac

So a few days ago, my new (this is my second one..last one died after a couple of weeks...see other posts) mac decided to run one of its fans at high speed.. to achieve silent operation, the mac has control over its fans and it only runs them when needed.. which is basicly never. But this one decided it wanted to run one of its fans all the time. Been back and forth with service and tried all kinds of things to no avail.. except now the fan just runs at full blast every minute or so and then turns off.. so over and over again, all day long the fan fires up for no reason.. ahh..

But the real reason I hate this thing is that I'm getting pains in my mouse hand that I never had in 12 years of pc use. Why? (and I'm serious here) I have to use the mouse way more than with Windows.. Mac forces you to move up to the menu bar all the time and down to the (unuseful) dock to do all kind of simple stuff.. As an example? Say you have 10 windows open at the same time, a few browsers, a word doc, your email program, calendar.. whatever.. on windows, every open window is there on the bar at the bottom of the screen. On the mac, nope.. the dock at the bottom has the open applications listed, but not the windows so to open a window you have to first go to the bottom of the screen to click the app in the dock, and then back up to the top of the screen to the tool bar, click a menu item and then scroll to the window you want. Doesn't seem like much, but think if you were moving stuff from a browser window to a word dock or email and you have to do this process a dozen times, it's 6 clicks and 2 long drags to 2 clicks and one drag for the windows box each time.. so that's 72 clicks and 24 drags versus 24 clicks and 12 drags.. over a typical day, thats a huge amount and I literally have already been to the doctor to look at my hand since it hurts like crazy by the end of the day.

This computer is a total piece of crap and now I'm going to build a new PC and go through the process of moving back to it.. all the hours I wasted moving my address book, calendar, email, quicken, files over to the mac.. wasted energy.. What a fucking scam this piece of crap is.. Oh yea.. then I have to find someone to buy this piece of junk so my $3000 wasn't wasted..

If you are tempted to buy a mac I have some simple advice.. try it for a week before you buy it.. it's shit man

Enron : The Smartest Guys in the Room

Saw the enron movie yesterday. It wasn't bad. Told the story pretty well. Seemed a bit biased, but no documentary is objective anymore is it? I am in agreement that the 3 guys at the top should be jailed, but I took offence to them villifying the energy traders for the things they did in the Califonia energy market. I guess it's my Wharton upbringing but traders are supposed to find arbitrage opportunites and milk them until they run dry. If the California government deregulated with a law that was full of loopholes, it was the markets job to teach them where they went wrong.. Free markets build better envoirnments in the long run if governement stops calling mommy for help all the time and admits mistakes and fixes them.

Dark Tower

So, for once I'm not talking about the Stephen King book series of the same name (Which by the way is one of the best things I've ever read), but a game that preceded the Tower series by a bunch. It was a game that I remember playing in 7th and 8th grade (think 1982-3) with my friends.. It had this cool tower that spun around and mosters to kill. At the time we were (imagine this) way into D&D so this "Electronic" game was the shit to us.. (we also played a fair amount of Electronic Detective).. Anyway, the reason I mention this is that a few weeks ago I thought about the game and wondered weather I could get a copy of it and sure enouh today I found (without looking for) a link to a flash version of the game.. I haven't tried it yet, I was too excited about it and I wanted to let you all know about it right away.. so here it is.. have fun!

http://www.wakefieldfamily.net/darktower/

Podcasts

Those of you who pay close attention to my bloglines links at right may have noticed that I've reciently removed a ton of the podcasts I had listed there. The reason is simple. Podcasts are a lame fad. I may be wrong about this, but it seems to me that all they are are radio shows (often really poorly done radio shows) made into long mp3's. I say BFD. And so they are all gone except for the Daily News one which I keep there for sentimental reasons.. so don't bother with podcasts..