Every day

Every day I see a story like this. This one is more interesting.. In this case, the boy is 18.. the age diff is 7 years. And it's hard to tell, but I would guess it was consentual. Why should this woman go to jail? What good will that do society? What harm was being done?

See, this is not objective

Here is what I've been complaining about in the MSM the past few years. Here is the first 2 paragraphs of an article in the Daily News today :

WHO WERE the thugs who shot a beloved father of two as he worked the graveyard shift guarding a construction site?

Who would creep up on Michael Powell, 39, as he sat in his locked SUV and pump a volley of bullets into the windows just after midnight yesterday, striking the devout churchgoer in the neck and chest?

As you read them, do you see what I'm saying when I say that the MSM has lost all objectivity?

"Who were the thugs..." : who says they are thugs? Maybe they were vigilanties and the guy shot was a drug dealer.. were they thugs then? or heroes?

"Who would creep up on..." : Why should the writer make assumptions on how the shooters approached the victim? And further, why ask "Who could do this?" or "Who would do this?".. just tell me the facts lady! I don't need your personal opinion.

I know these are minor quips, but still, when added up across all the papers in the nation and all the news agencies, these things add up in a big, negative way. The news is supposed to be objective. Why can't we as a people hold the MSM to this standard? Why do we not care anymore?

We need good ubiquitous encryption and we need it now.

As you all know, email is a disaster. We have spam to deal with, we have spoofed identity issues, we have privacy issues, etc. All of these can be solved by using encryption. But I want to take this a step further and say that we need it for phone conversations as well.

First, let me explain what I mean here. Using public key encryption we can accomplish two very important things. We can do either one or both at any time we wish. We can encrypt our communication so that only the intended recipients are able to receive it. And we can also use encryption to identify ourselves conclusively to the recipient.

You can see that by having digital ‘signatures’, we can eliminate the spoofing, phishing and spam problems in email quite easily. Once we can be sure who is communicating with us, we can then feel free to go back and prosecute the sender (in the case of spammers) or we can choose to not communicate with them (phisher). This can apply to telephone conversations as well. I just got a call from my bank asking for some information. Now. How do I know that it was them who called me? Because they knew my name and what bank I was involved with? Should I trust that? If I didn’t want to give out the info what recourse would I have?

Caller ID wasn’t used in this case. As is the case with most banks and big companies, their ID was blocked. I’m sure that a dedicated identity thief could probably hack the Caller ID system so I’m not really confident in that either. If we had encryption we wouldn’t have this issue.

Some say that encryption all the time would thwart the government attempts at countering terrorism. I’m not going to get into this since it would require me to write a whole lot and get way off topic. I will say that encrypted emails and phone calls, would be much better evidence in a trial than non encrypted emails and phone calls for 2 connected reasons: 1) tampering with the contents is virtually impossible, 2) the identity of the sender could be more positively identified. Of course the govt. has to be able to decrypt the messages which is easy to do once they know the private key of the sender and I would assume someone under investigation could be compelled in some legal way to give up their key just like they can have their homes searched, etc.

In all, we have a right to privacy and we have an obligation to others to positively identify ourselves to each other when we communicate using electronic means. Encryption is the way. If we started demanding it more, maybe the tools would be developed to make it painless to use.

The War on Drugs is a Waste and you know it is

Wow! I'm really impressed that the Daily News is for the decriminalization of marijuana. But did they have to hide it in the last sentence of one of their articles? I think they should write an editorial on the issue instead. Personally I don't smoke. I've tried a few times and have had good experiences, but I can count the number of times on one hand. That doesn't change the fact that I'm strongly for the legalization of pot and other drugs. It makes sense on so many levels.

You’ve seen it written about here in this blog in a number of places. The “War” on drugs is just such a waste of resources and does nothing to stop the actual usage of drugs. And has anyone ever bothered to debate on weather recreational drug use is actually bad at the macro level? Any reasonable person imagining a country with legalized drugs can hardly not make the connection to our usage of alcohol and cigarettes. In both cases, the substances are dangerous, and cause a lot of deaths, but for some people, maybe for many, they provide a safe way to relax and enjoy life.

This “War” also has had an adverse affect in some ways on our youth. As an example, let’s take Ecstasy usage. Here is a very popular club drug that is used by a huge number of people. Originally designed by a chemist at Mecrk and then used by therapists the drug has had a very interesting history. There still is no official determination on weather the drug is dangerous over the long term.

But in the media, MDMA (Ecstasy) is the devil incarnate. Everyone knows that there is a concerted effort to get young people to stop using MDMA. Most of this effort is found in the mainstream media. Oprah talks about it, there are news articles telling us about speculative papers that 'prove' that MDMA causes brain damage, there are commercials 'just say no', etc.

The problem here is that the users believe that they are being fed disinformation, they simply don't trust what they hear from the media and the government. So, even if there are true facts to be distributed to the users, they will probably be treated as more of the same and ignored, at worst, they will be deliberately misinterpreted.

For example, say the message is: "2 doses of MDMA in an hour will cause brain damage in 20 years". Here is how most of the MDMA crowd will interpret it: "There are no ill effects, you can easily see that. You've taken 2 doses before, what's happened in a week? A month? A Year? You're fine aren't you? What about your friends, hey, they're fine too...all we can do is scare you a bit by saying that in 20 years you will be screwed...it's all we can do to get you to stop."

If there was no “War” and recreational drug use was treated as alcohol usage is, perhaps the level of mistrust between users and the media (our tie to the medical/science/research community) would decrease to the point of triviality. We certainly give non-drug stories with a lot more credibility. If there was an article in the newspaper, or a story on Oprah about how eating the worm in Mezcal Tequila causes cancer in 20 years, I can guarantee you that most worm eaters would stop. The same would happen with drugs. Access to real/true information is the key to a better society.

Continuing with MDMA, there have been a few deaths reported. I know of two of them. In one, the person died not from the drug, but from ingesting too much water after taking the drug. That’s something that could have been avoided with good education programs. In the other case, it was determined that the drug ingested was not pure and contained an unusually high amount of poisons in it. Again, this is something that happens when one is forced to buy drugs from unknown sources.

With recreational drugs made legal what would drug companies do? You know as well as I do that they would manufacture recreational drugs. They clearly are set up for it: they have the r/d, the capital, the machines, and the materials. But here is the important question for you. Would it be to their advantage to make the drugs unsafe? You bet it wouldn't. While there is always some unsafety with all drugs (legal and otherwise), things like unknown side effects, interactions, etc., there is an acceptable risk level. The drug companies would certainly make safer, more controllable, less addictive, more concentrated recreational drugs...just like the companies that make beer and liquor.

What else may happen if the War was over? I would argue that for one thing amount of dialog would increase, not only between parents and children, but among people in general. The medical/science/research community would have more studies both for and against drug use...the debate would grow and from that would blossom even more good information.

Then there is the obvious one. I've heard that right now, 98% of violent crime is attributable to illegal drugs. Almost every criminal deals drugs or steals so they can buy them. Why? There is a huge profit motive in selling drugs, because the sale prices and the addiction level is so high. Remove the profit motive by selling the drugs at CVS (or in government sanctioned store) and the illegal drug trade goes away. Once legal, you can even tax them and use the money for public health or information campaigns.

Gore in 2008

As nice a dream as it would be, there is no way a "regular guy" (or girl) will ever become president. The process to get elected is just way too hard to do unless you are a seasoned politician and know how to play that game. So as much as we'd like some oulier candidate to show up, I'm hoping for Al Gore. I told you in my last post how I've been seeing a lot of him lately. Sure enough I see him in the Daily News today in a great piece.

Al Gore

You know what. In the past 6 months I've totally turned around my opinion on Al Gore. If he runs and wins the primary, I am going to take a year off of my job to go work on his campain. I want him to be president in the worst way.

So it started when I saw a video about him in volume one of Wholpin. It was a video made my Spike Jones during the 2000 election. Spike had spent a day with Al and his family about 2 months before the big day and the film really showed me that Al Gore was far from that stiff looser America had percieved him as. (see here for details). He was amazing and I almost cried when I thought about how different America would be today had the presidency not been stolen from him.

A few weeks later I read this article about Al in Wired. I learned how he took off after the election to go sailing with Tipper, and how he decided not to run in 2004 and how he began to make his global warming crusade his #1 priority in life.

Then it all capped off with the movie last night. "An Inconvenient Truth" really needs to be seen by everyone here and worldwide. It needs to become a global success. The message is simple, global warming is real and we're past the point of "almost too late to fix it" and at the point of.. "we're too late, but if we jump on this issue right now and get lucky we may have a shot at mitigating most of the ill effects".

The movie is awesome. Yes, it does have the feel of a political commercial at times, but the message is really clear. We have to take global warming seriously and we really aren't. Oh.. and don't just take my word for it. Listen to Roger Ebert (yes, I know movie reviewers are really not too credible lately, but look at the words he uses and decide how he really feels):

"In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to"

And that's why I think Al will run for president this time around. His name is coming out and this film and the issue he raises just screams out that he will. I just hope he doesn't follow the campain he followed in 2000. I hope he comes out as Al Gore and not as some campaining politician. If he does that, he could win.

Listen, no matter what you think of the guy or if you are a republican or democrat, go see the film and then tell your friends to..it's not a political thing. It really is an earth thing.

Yea... I would totally have hooked up with my female teacher in high school

DAmn.. I looked through my archives but couldn't find a post on this.. though I know there is one there somewhere. Almost weekly I see pieces on the net that talk about older female teachers hooking up with younger students. I've argued with my friends about this ad nausium and my theorey is that it does no harm, and in fact may actually do some good. Now I only know of one person who is a male that has had this happen (he was 16 and she was about 26) and let me tell you, he's the most successful of my high school class.. and he's not crazy at all, probably the most centered person I know.

I also have some women friends who had similar experiences that were apparently not harmful to them at all. In fact they look back on their hookups quite positively.

Now, I'm not saying that adults having affairs with children is a good thing. And I'm not saying that damage cannot be done, but damage can be done in all relationships with children who are under the age of 24 or so. It all depends on the circumstnaces.

I'm reading an interesting article in New York Magazine called "Dirty Old Women" that talks about this issue and it's quite interesting. One thing I noticed (and this is not the focus of the article, but an interesting tidbit none the less) was this snippit:

Bruce Rind, Philip Tromovitch, and Robert Bauserman (professors at Temple University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Michigan, respectively) published a study that has resounded through the psychological Establishment ever since. The article, published in the American Psychological Association’s Psychological Bulletin, was what’s known as a meta-analysis, an overview of the existing science, in this case on the long-term effects of childhood sexual abuse. The authors concluded that “negative effects were neither pervasive nor typically intense” and that men who’d been abused “reacted much less negatively than women.”

It goes on to say that a number of right wing people (shrinks and pundits) totally disagree, but still at least it makes my point valid for debate. And what is my point exactly, what am I writing about here? I think that essentially, if a person is past puberty and sexually active, I don't get why it is so taboo to have an age difference. Statutory rape is probably not the best idea in my book. If the 16 year old boy and the 24 year old teacher fall in love, why not let them get married? Let's let science figure out what is best instead of lawmakers and priests.. no scratch that.. we all know how well priests do with sex...

Oh.. I should add that there is this story at the end of the article that is priceless.. It talks about this 16 year old boy who had this affair with the mother of his girlfriend. When it finally got exposed and reported to the police.. well, here's a quote :

Jason says he would not have given a statement to the Long Island police incriminating DeMartini-Scully if he hadn’t been under pressure. “They said if I didn’t they were gonna press charges on me because I was with Diane’s daughter,” who is only 14, and now Jason is 17, thus making him guilty of “sexual misconduct” himself. As of his last birthday, Jason’s relationships switched status in the eyes of the law: Sex with the then-44-year-old school psychologist who had been after him since he was 16 became okay; sex with her teenage daughter became a crime.

Yea...so.. what can I do but complain?

So I've got Comcast cable.. and I'm a huge hockey fan.. as you all should know, it's game 7 between buffalo and carolina.. it's 2-2 with 10 minutes to go in the third period.. You know how I know? I'm moitoring the score on the net. Why am I not watching it? Well, Comcast seems to have forgotten how to broadcast OLN. Other channels are working, but OLN simply says "no signal". I've called to complain, no luck.. been on hold for 15 minutes.. what can they do? give me a refund for today? Is that a fair valuation? I have Comcast so I can watch what I want when I want. I don't jsut watch whatever is on.. so 1/30th of my $150 a month really means nothing at all to me. See, like most sports fans I would probably pay $50 to watch this damn game, but I can't becasue Comcast is a company full of morons. I wonder if they will blame it on the weather.. Hmn.. isn't that supposed to be an argument against DirecTV?

This is exactly what I'm talking about

I really don't have to comment much on this at all. This is exactly what I've been saying since the 2004 election. It was stolen and this should help you to agree with me.

Fuck Yea.. we're making progress

Ok. First off, a lot my new readers haven't read this post. It's a repost of something I wrote in 2004 and it is still totally true today. We have to look at our voting system and try and fix it.

A few months ago I wrote this post. And that is the one I'm going to talk about today. There is a movement that I heartedly support and I think you should as well. It's about a really cool legislative hack that will let the states get rid of the electoral college (which many scholars agree is just a bad way to elect a president).

The reason I write about it today is that the bill just passed in California! The same bill has passed in Colorado and is on the way to being passed in other states as well. I have written my Legislators in Pennsylvania and I ask all of you to read up on the "National Popular Election of the President" movement and if you agree with it, write your legislators as well.

Our real part of the bargain

In Above Average Jane today, she has a post titled "Our Part of the Bargain". Here is my take on the Hoeffel comment in it:

While I greatly respect Joe Hoeffel I think his response was too idealistic. It is partially true however. There is no doubt that staying informed is an important part of being a citizen in America. But I think that he’s overlooking the fact that most Americans do not exercise their actual right to vote. We in America have simply stopped voting. Look at the turnout results for any election in the past 10 years. They are clearly pitiful. Nobody votes anymore. But yet, we all seem to be able to complain.

I believe that the biggest problem in America today is not the Republican agenda, it’s that by not voting, we the people have let that agenda become reality. When turnouts are as low as they are, the Democratic and Republican parties have a much easier time getting their candidates elected. Tactics like vote suppression, targeted mail and phone calls, single issue pandering are all infinitely more effective when they are practiced on small groups. Lately the Democrats have been floundering, but there is no doubt that they will ride the Republican failures into office and as a Democrat, I kind of fear that as well. The Democratic agenda will be revenge. How much actual good government will occur then?

We the people need to assert ourselves. We need to elect candidates that actually care about their constituencies. We need to elect candidates that want to work with others and make progress in government. As far as I’m concerned, these candidates can come from any party as long as they represent a core set of values and beliefs that overlap my own. If everyone in America were to vote, I can’t imagine that our government would reflect the will of the people instead of the special interests.

OOh.. I'm on a roll now

This is a great little piece about the wonderfully incompetant BWH.. What makes it priceless is the photo at the bottom of the 'advisors'..

The Bush administration: It's not always wrong. It's not always dishonest. But it is always incompetent.

Oh Yea.. I forgot

You know.. I totally forgot to rant like a crazy person today about this little earthquake that occured in Indonesia. Yea, you may not have heard because the MSM is feeding you more important stories like the DC sniper trial, the Jimmy Hoffa search, and the Jolie-Pitt baby.

Yea, you many not have noticed that like 5000 people are dead from this little occurance. Let me put that in pierspective, that's almost 2 times the number of Americans killed in Iraq, it's more than 50% more fatalities than in 9/11, and more than 60% more than in Katrina.

So I ask you this, what makes an Indonesian life any less newsworthy or important?

The War on Terror

Linking to good posts is kind of a cop out, I know, but I'm not inspired today.. well, that's not true at all, I've got all these ideas but I can't focus on one and even if I could I just don't feel like writing..

Anyway, Matt Stoller posting on MyDD.com has a perfect take on what the "War on Terror" is and I suggest you give it a read:

During this so-called war on terror, we haven't caught Osaba bin Laden. The number of terrorist incidents has dramatically increased since 2001. Global warming and pandemics are threatening our very way of life, fiscal imbalances threaten to wreck the global economy, the government is cooking the economic books, and you can top that off with a severe and looming energy crisis for good measure. Oh, and the Constitution has been eviscerated, we went to war based on lies without politicla consequences, and the military is being ruined.

Why are we still in favor of this war again?

Wow. So I came across this flash presentation that makes the case for GWB and his people being complete evil fuckwads in going to war looking for WMD's, etc. As I watched I was like.."Yup! More people need to see this so they can remember how we got into this war. This is so perfect a piece. If more people saw this, maybe it would crystalize this debacle". I watch the whole thing and am amazed, literally blown away, to see that it was made before the 2004 election.

Fuck, now it all comes into view. I seemed to have supressed it, but wow! I can't believe we actually elected this guy again when we did. Wow! How amazing a propaganda machine do they have there in the BWH? And it makes me even more mad that the Democrats in congress and the senate have just let this all happen. And they did you know. Just becasue they are in the minority doesn't mean they have no power, no ability to sway the public, to fight the good fight. Nope, they just sat back and waited it all out. Much like they still are doing today.

oh yea, the flash piece can be found here.

Repost

You know, it started out as comment on a blog and ended up being pretty insightful. So I'm posting it here for you all to enjoy. (Well, it was my comment and this is my blog).

I was reading a post on the smedley log and decided to comment on it and the comment grew to be pretty much a real synopsis of what I'm trying to do here on this blog. If I had tried to write a mission statement on my own, I'd have had no luck. But sure enough , out this comment came. It's amazing how clear things get when you aren't trying isn't it?

So here is (as a comment to this post) the purpose of the Duh! Blog:

Of course you are 100% correct. You can easily see this evidenced in the fact that nobody votes anymore, that there is little media focus on real current events, that there is no budding revoultion occuring. We the people who care are certainly in the minority.

I believe that that's the way we want it. That the actual average human being in America is so spoiled that they don't need to care about these things. That is a result of our incredible prosperity in America.

If you read a book like "Island" by Huxley you see this utopian society that while incredible, will never happen in the large here in America and probably across the human race. Humans have conquered the real visilbe treats to their existance, they (and I mean all humans) can now get food and make shelter. In short, we can survive and there is some flaw to us that makes that ok. We have no overall need to acheive more as a race. We are inherantly self centered and lazy.

So, as I'm coming to believe, it is up to us, the small majority to lead the sheep to a better world. We can't count on them to help us. We need to drag them into what should be the 21st century by oursleves.

It frusterates me as well. On my blog I still complain and most of those complaints are not against the establishment. They are agasint the lazy sheeplike public. I feel helpless to make change in the world. But I think that my writing isn't for those masses, it's for others like you and others like me. I think it's a way to say "we've got to do something since the rest of America (and in the future, the world) doesn't (and won't) do it themselves!"

This really has to stop soon

Once again we see in the news how a student is being persecuted for expressing himself on the web. In this case, a student posted thoughts about how he was being bullied by the school into removing posts from his blog that he wrote on his own time at home.

I suppose we're just going to have things like this happening for a few years until everyone comes to grip with technology and how it affects our world. No wait, that's bullshit and I know it. The environment that our government has fostered, one where nobody has any civil liberties and our rights are regularly trampled upon "for our own good" is now trickling down to non-governmental authority figures. The school district is even using Bush rhetoric and fear mongering tactics.. sexual predators.. come on now, do I really have to spend the time outlining why that is a lame argument?

"It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" is back!

I really liked the show "It's always sunny in Philadelphia" when it first appeared on FX. Sadly FX cancelled it (as I predicted). It seems though, that the show isn't totally dead and we may see it on Fox next month, so tune in!

I don't get it

So in Indiana reciently, a school that has let one of its students dress in womens clothes all year decides for his prom that he can't attend. Why? Becasue he's wearing womens clothes and that apparently violates the dress code for the prom. Now I ask you, if he was wearing a formal dress (which he was), what was he doing wrong?

I suppose if the dress code was written in a certain way (ie. men should wear tuxes and women formal dresses) they could enforce it to the letter, but why do it at all for this kid? All year they let him wear a dress, why discrimiate him for the prom? Seems to be that they are discriminating against him on purpose and that just doesn't seem fair to me.

Why do I have to pay for others stupidity?

Look.. If you don't know that running executables you download off the net could be dangerous then you really shouldn't be using a computer. That's what I have to say. Why am I bringing this up? Becasue fucking Windows won't leave me alone!

I've argued before that there should be more than one Windows. One version should be for regular computer users and the other for the rest of them. The first would have no inane security helper training wheels or stupid animations or general overhead and the latter would be a dummed down version of what I'm using now that is simple and easy to use for the 99% of the computer owners in America.

Somewhere along the way, at some point I can't remember, Windows updated itself into a big fucking baby, looking over my shoulder at every possible second. "Are you sure you want to download that file? It could be dangerous!!!!!", "Are you sure you want to open that file? It could be harmfull to your computer!!!", "You haven't checked for viruses lately..." blah, blah, blah.. leave me alone you fuck!

You know, you can't turn it off, no matter what you do. Today I really tried. Finally, after who knows how long I decided to devote some of my day to making windows leave me alone. I'm a busy guy and I really don't have the time to give, but I can't take it anymore. I got this dialog after trying to run an update I'd just downloaded.



Yes, it was a common dialog. It comes up all the time, with executables, videos, music files.. whatever I download gets this annoying fuck of a message. You'd think that the dialog I got when I tried to download the file in the first place would have been enough:



But nope.. Windows just wanted to make sure, this time with a red shield inststead of the yellow one.. Thanks for looking out for me. See where they have that hyperlink at the bottom that says "How can I decide what software to run?"? Yea.. I click on that and nothing at all happens. So I head into internet options and try to turn it off. I find a few settings that look promising and begin to browse. Now guess what? Every single page I open or browse to I get this nice security warning at the top. Complete with a stange beep sound, in case I don't see the annoying fucking thing. You know how to turn it off? You can't sorry.



So I give up for the day. I close the browser and do something else. A few minutes later I open it again and now it won't let me go to my homepage without a warning.. How considerate!



So what am I to do? Nothing. Microsoft has beaten me once again. Once again, and this is far from the first time, something is working on my computer in a way that I don't want, and I am helpless to change it if I want to run Windows. I would probably say something here like "how could you all let Windows become the dominant OS?" but that would be like asking how everyone elected George Bush for a second term.

And people wonder why I don't like Republicans

So, it seems that a representative from my state has decided to try and ban in schools and public libraries all websites that contain blogs, chat sites and forums.

First off, the bill is crazy broad and if it passes as is, that would just be an insane act of government. But if it did, it could mean that the bill (which is being sold as a 'protect the kids' bill) could actually have ulterior motives.

In either case, my god.. how clueless. What a fricken waste of time. Do they actually think that they can stop this movement? Kids will find ways to get around the filters, and other websites will pop up that are subtley different. It's like the war on drugs, a total waste of time and money just to make us feel like we are doing something when nothing really can be done to stop people from getting what they want. Will they then filter text messaging on cell phones?

Stupid..

Tommy is tougher than you think

Ok.. enough of the serious posting.. I think you all should know that Tommy Hilfiger is a pretty tough guy.

Diebold is in the news again...

hmn.. I wonder why Diebold is in the news again. Could it be that they have done more poor software engineering? Nah.. couldn't be could it? Why yes.. yes it is. Apparently a security vulnerablilty has been found that will give complete access to the machines with little or no effort. Boy, I'm glad we don't have those machines in Pennsylvania. Oh wait.. we do... hmn... Fuckers..

It's not just D's and R's

There's no doubt that I've got problems with our political landscape these days. Our government has eroded our civil liberties, has ruined our reputation abroad, has trashed our economy and has basically wreaked havoc since September 11th. When I sit back and think about it, I realize that the Bush White House is not to blame at all. In fact they should be applauded for the incredible stuff they have been able to pull off. They are evil, yes, but they are also quite intelligent. They have worked the system in ways that nobody has ever imagined. They have used the system to do whatever they have wanted. Their power stems mostly from the Republican majority that has been building in the congress and in the judicial branch. The concept of checks and balances has had no effect and that is due to the Republican Party doing so well electing people.

See, checks and balances can work, but we need to have a larger check in place. We need a strong Democratic Party in place to balance the agenda, to balance the direction. We don't have that right now. The Democratic party is a management disaster, it is stuck in the 70's and 80's and it has never tried to grow up like the GOP has.

I'm not a fan of the two party system. Even if it was working perfectly, I think that it is a recipe for inaction. Essentially you have two groups of people who are by their very nature at odds on every issue possible. That means that every single bill, every single legal challenge, is approached as a battle to be won for one side or another. The theory is that if each party is equally strong, the results will be somewhere in the middle, a perfect compromise. The reality is that the parties are never equally balanced in power and even if they were, having a compromise all the time is hardly the way to change the world. Sometimes, there really is a right way to do something and by having these two opposed parties, working against each other instead of collectively for the greater good, we are cheated out of what is best for ourselves.

Think for a moment how much would get accomplished, think how much good could be done if the two parties set aside the battle of party politics for a moment and tried to work collectively for the countries best interest.

Can we get to that place? Can we reach this utopian government? I think we can if we follow a simple two step plan. First, get the Democratic Party up to speed and balance out the power in federal government and second, overlay on top of the two party system a third party, a common set of beliefs and values that each party member can agree on no matter what side of the aisle or bench they are on.

The first point, I won't talk about much and the reason is that I would simply be re-iterating what has been said already so incredibly well by Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga in their book "Crashing the Gate". If you are a progressive, or a Democrat you should buy this book. This is the user manual for the new Democratic Party. The book outlines what the problems are with the Democratic Party and how we can fix them. It is an amazing read. I can't say enough about this book. Read it and then pass it on to, or buy it for, your friends.

The second point is really why I'm writing today. I don't think I'm alone in saying that I'm a party member who is only there because overall I believe in that party more than the other. In my case I don't believe in overreaching government, I don't believe in unions the way they are right now, I believe wholeheartedly in the free market, I believe that we should be allowed to bear arms, I overwhelmingly believe that religion has no place in government in any capacity, I believe in a woman's right to choose, I believe in stem cells, I believe in evolution (mostly). So what party should I be in? My beliefs and values don't put me in either party. And I'm not really in the middle between them either. Is my situation uncommon? I bet it isn't.

But I'm a Democrat, and let me tell you that when I hear someone is a Republican I immediately loose respect for them. How is that possible? Am I just stereotyping? I don't think so. Being a member of either party is a choice that goes beyond core beliefs in the party positions. Or maybe, in my case at least, it is an absolute hatred for one particular party position that makes all the others pale in importance. Who knows? My point is, to govern well, we really don't need to care.

I've been intrigued by the Concord Party lately. This is a small group (growing, join now!) of really smart people from all ends of the political spectrum who have this plan to form a third party. A party where issues are debated intelligently and party platforms are not set in stone from the get go. Go check out their mission statement, I’ll wait.

The Concord party is in its infancy and it may never take the form that it aspires to. But it does show us that there are people (and I think there are a lot of them) who want to make government better and who see that it's not going to happen with the traditional Democratic and Republican battle.

My plan, and the plan I will propose to the Concords, and really fight for is that we don't need to be a third party. We can be something different. We can be a 'party' on top of the current two party system. We can be the common ground that is needed between the D's and R's. So a Democratic US Senator can sit in a room and hash out a bill with a Republican Senator as agreeing Concords instead of traditional party enemies. The Concord party can have, perhaps, a contract of sorts that leaders must follow to remain members. A contract of values like integrity, respect for differing opinions, etc. Once politicians see that their enemies actually have some common goals, think of what can be accomplished.

Obviously there needs to be much discussion on this issue. I'm going to start the discussion on the Concord forums and who knows where it will go. I would really appreciate it if all of you joined up in the discussion. We really need to get some changes happening in government. And I don’t think that if the Democrats come into power, anything other than 4-8 years of revenge will occur. We’ve more important things to do with our country.

Am I the idiot?

So, I read a lot of RSS feeds. I use bloglines like any self-respecting net citizen should and I've got it filled with blogs and news feeds. Two of my feeds are local, the Daily News Feed and (because it actually has a lot of local stories and updates quite a bit), the NBC10 feed. On the two local news feeds for the past few days I've seen literally 50% of the titles contain the name Barbaro. I don't know who Barboro is so I naturally ignore them. Evidently the guy is sick or something..

Finally I decide on a whim to check one of the feeds titled "Read & Send Barbaro Get Well Messages". Obviously if you were to click on it you would see where I got a bit surprised (and pissed off). Barbaro is a horse that got hurt.

Look. I love animals probably more than most, but to have an injured horse dominate the local news scene is simply insane. Why isn't there a story about some local protest against the Iraq war? Why isn't there a story about the local response to the wiretapping? Why isn't there a story about anything of any importance to our lives?

I'm wrong aren't I? I should think that this story should be the top story for not one, not two, but 3 days and counting. Shouldn't I? I really am the idiot. I must be. Nobody else seems to be complaining with me.

Wait.. Breaking news. In the middle of writing this I decided to do a Technorati search on the Barbaro deal. There were a lot of general news pieces, one insane one that just proves my point entirely, and a bunch of other crap.. But there in the middle of them all were two kindred spirits. So together we can be the 3 idiots. Yay.. Maybe we'll form a club!

Why the TV networks just don't get it

See. Here's what I'm talking about. People just have to stop and think about what they are doing once and a while and realize that a lot of it is outdated. No matter how many web portals or video on demand web deals the major tv networks put up, they still will sound like idiot dinosours when their to people say stuff like this:

"We are in the hit business," explains 20th Century Fox's Sharp. "You've got to make sure that once in a while you make a hit, otherwise you can actually go out of business in a couple of years."

That was from a Wired News article about tv pilots. According to the article, there are on average 100 pilots produced a year and of them, we the public get to see maybe 30% make it to the air. And we all know that of those, only a small few actually last more than a few episodes.

Here's a stupid question. Why not post the pilots that don't broadcast on the web somewhere? Why not create a whole alternate network of these long tail shows and see what catches on. How much would that cost? Relatively nothing. Give these producers a shot to grow an audience online.

The same goes for shows that critics and medium audiences love that don't catch on with the rest of the sheep in this country. (Sons and Daughters, Arrested Development, Enterprise, etc.). Move them to the web or direct DVD distribution. You can't tell me that they can't make a profit.

Privacy is a right we ALL should fight for!

I've heard so much stuff about this wiretapping/privacy issue lately and most of it has really pissed me off because a lot of people don't seem to care about it. I've been trying to find a way to express what I feel about this issue. I've been trying to think of a good way to tell people that even if you have nothing to hide, letting the govt. erode our privacy is a really bad thing and letting it happen is just plain un-patriotic. I just came across an essay in Wired News that says it better than I could ever have. It's one page, please go read it.

Highlight:

How many of us have paused during conversation in the past four-and-a-half years, suddenly aware that we might be eavesdropped on? Probably it was a phone conversation, although maybe it was an e-mail or instant-message exchange or a conversation in a public place. Maybe the topic was terrorism, or politics, or Islam. We stop suddenly, momentarily afraid that our words might be taken out of context, then we laugh at our paranoia and go on. But our demeanor has changed, and our words are subtly altered.

This is the loss of freedom we face when our privacy is taken from us. This is life in former East Germany, or life in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. And it's our future as we allow an ever-intrusive eye into our personal, private lives.

Steven Starr Coverup? Hmn?

So I was reading Philly Mag last week and I saw a piece about restaurant cleanliness. Apparently although the city does health inspections of restaurants, there is really no way for the public to get the findings of those inspections. So, Philly magazine decided to get the reports and then post them on their website. Of course I went online to find the reports but had no luck. They weren’t there. Apparently the report had a bunch of bad news about Steven Starr restaurants, some of my favorite ones too! If you look at this piece, you will see that SS wasn’t too happy about the report and it was taken down almost immediately (note that he is one of the magazines biggest supporters, and is also a large part of the city’s economy). Apparently (and here is where I wonder) the report was erroneous and one of the columns was in the wrong place. When corrected, the columns vindicated Steven Starr and then apparently put the blame on Striped Bass, but oh wait, that was another mistake.. the real culprit with the rat infestation was some tiny day care center. Again I wonder..

Small Investors have no shot

We really don't. All we can do is buy shares of companies that are solid and have good fundimentals, or are a great deal. I've said it before and I stand by it with all my heart. Right now, Sirius stock is an amazing buy. It was at 6, it was at 5 and now that it's below 4 you would be an idiot not to buy some. Most investors are amazed that every day, with no bad news, analist downgrades or insider trading, the stock continues to decline. Most believe that it is all due to the huge hedge funds shorting Sirus stock so they can make insane long term gains. That should tell you that in todays market, as a small investor, you are so out of the loop, you should just give up trying to time the market. You can't. Oh.. and I just bought another 150 shares so now I've got 1000. Some day when Sirius is as big as HBO I'll be laughing my way to the bank.

Wow

So, here is an interesting tidbit. Apparently not only did the White House know about a big al-Qaeda attack pre 9/11 (which we knew already) but Judith Miller at the New york Times did as well! Wow, this is amazing stuff.. (reported by my man Will Bunch)

Sons and Daughters

Bummer, "Sons and Daughters" got cancelled. This, for me was one of the standout shows to come out last season. Like "Significant Others" before it, it was an amazing show by a guy named Fred Goss. My gf and I knew it was a gonner though. It was just too different and difficult for the average American viewer to grasp. We knew it was gone midway through episode one. Every week we were happily surprised to see it on the Tivo. It's sad America didn't like it. Not becasuse it's gone now, but becasue of what it says about America. Fred has a myspace account and a blog if you are interested.

Vote Vote Vote

If you complain about the govt. in any way, shape or form and do not vote today I have no respect for you. The only way to change things in government is to vote. Yesterday I complained about the media slacking off. Today I finally found a useful resource in the Inquirer (online). It's a voters guide. That combined with the hallwatch polling place locator should be all you need.. Too bad I just found them in the last few days..

Vote and if you can, tell your friends and co-workers to as well!!

I wonder

I wonder what became of the two arrested girls from last year. Are they still in jail? After their treatment by our government I wonder if they would consider really becoming suicide bombers. I wonder how many others have been falsely arrested and imprisoned. I wonder why almost nobody seems to care.

Election Day

Well, tomorrow is election day. How many of you knew that? I almost forgot myself and I actually care. Our media, and I'm talking TV, newspapers, radio (and not just news) does a very, very poor job of promiting the fact that we can vote tomorrow.

Now, as you know as a primary with district seats, where you live and your party will determine who your choices are. I dare you to find a good city website that will give you a listing of the candidates, or a sample ballot for your actual polling place, or better yet a city website that will tell you where your polling place is!

I've looked. Comittee of Seventy was my best guess and they failed me. The city website? Do any of you know what the address is? phila.gov? nope.. careful.. it's actually www.phila.gov.. how hard to do some DNS work and get that working right? Doesn't matter.. if you get there, there's nothing obvious about the upcoming election.

There's nothing, and that's a shame. I think they want it that way so they can stay in power. So it's up to us to bust our buts and do research on who is actually running and then find out what we can about them all by our lonesomes.. shameful!!!

Never talk to the Police without a lawyer

Let me tell you a short story. This story is true and I can imagine all too common in America. It has a very simple moral: Never talk to the Police without a lawyer. So, it is May in Jacksonville at around 7:30AM. A white tourist couple is heading back to their room from breakfast when they are accosted by a tall black man with a gun. He takes the womans purse, shoots her and then runs away. The police arrive, the woman is sadly dead and the husband gives a description of the assailant. The description is something like : black, male, shorts, hat, with a gun, 20-30 years old.

The description goes out on the radio and an hour and a half later a patrolman pulls up to a first black male he sees on the street. A 15 year old kid heading to pick up a job application. He asks the kid if he can question him, puts him in the car and drives him to the crime site. At the motel the husband decides he is the killer (even though his description, other than black male, isn't the same). The kid is taken to the station for questioning where they interrogate him for over 6 hours with no lawyer. Eventually they bring in another interrogator who after spending some more time with him, brings the kid out to the woods near the station and proceeds to threaten to kill him, beats him and finally gets him to sign a confession.

Would you like to know how this story turns out? I bet you would. This is the story of Brenton Butler and it's told in the Oscar Winning documentary "Murder on a Sunday Morning" by Jean-Xavier de Lestrade. You may remember him as the maker of the amazing documentary I reccomended here and here "The Staircase".

My central argument here is one that most people don't seem to get. If you are ever arrested, and especially if you are innocent, don't say a word to the police until you have a lawyer. People always seem to think "Well, I'm innocent, I've nothing to hide" but guess what, when the police (or law enforcement) want to get something out of you they will take advantage of every possible trick they can think of. I have heard first hand from law enforcement officers some of the dirty tricks they use on people who really don't know any better. This film illustrates just one situation where your whole life can change in one simple instance of being in the right place at the wrong time.

The old Spam Debate

I've been on the net for a loooooong time. I actaully remember when the web didn't exist at all (anyone remember Gopher?). Anyway, I've seen the Spam war from the front lines from the time it first started. I remember getting one or two spams and spending the time tracking down the senders and mailing their ISP or mailhost with my complaints. I remember it getting to be too much work and then using the spampcop service every day. I remember it all. It pretty much sucked.

But you know what? I got every email sent to me and that was a good thing. Today I'm not so sure that's the case in both directions. I don't think I get all that is mailed to me and I don't think all I mail gets through to its recipients. And that is a very bad thing.

The problem is the indiscriminant use of Spam Filters by ISPs and false positives. When I send email it goes over my Comcast connection, to my mail host (1and1) and then off to who knows where. I've got filtering turned off at 1and1 but who knows if Comcast is looking at my email or if 1and1 is doing any bulk domain blacklisting or if someone else along the chain is.

Over the past year or so I've seen two things happen. First is that the Spam to my mailbox (and I have 5 email accounts) has dropped to almost nil. Second is that 3-4 of every 100 emails I send don't get to their recipiants. Who knows how many I don't get.

My complaint is that I don't want my email touched and I don't want any domains blacklisted without my knowledge. That is certainly the case right now and I don't like it one bit.

3 Reviews : A Movie, A Book and A Play (with bonus reviews!!)

...neither related...

First the book. I'm just about done this book called "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson. This book is a book about the history of the Earth, and Science and more. It isn't as much a hard core science book as it is a continuous dialog about the connections over time of historical scientific events. What I guess I mean is that it reads like a smooth flowing TV show like Nova and less a technical manual. It doesn't get too deep into any one subject, but it has tons of references so you can dig as far as you like into stuff that is interesting. There are some amazing things you will learn in that book including the fact that we really should be dead right now (asteroid or volcano) and that the odds are that we shouldn’t have even made it as a species.. It's a cool book. Go get a copy and try it.

Second the movie. I can't remember who recommended it to me or why it got on my Netflix list, but it has been on there for a really long time and finally I got it and watched it. And I'm so glad I did. The film is called "What the #$*! Do We Know?" and it's a film about Quantum Physics and how it relates to our lives. For those of you know a little about QP you already know that it is some insane stuff and that studying it takes one really close to thinking about existence and god and the like. This film also heads into those topics, as well as brain chemistry. It makes you think in the same way you would after you saw "The Matrix" (in fact it steals some quotes and SFX from that film). It asks questions like "What is reality?" "How are memories different than experience?", etc. There is some cool stuff in that film that make you want to pause it and just think for a day or two. I loved it and I bought it so I'll be watching it again and again.

As an aside, if you see the movie and like it, you should read two books after it that deal with some of the concepts you get exposed to. The first is one of my all-time favorites called "Conversations with God" which isn't a religious book at all, it's more an exploration of who we are and why we are here. The device used to drive the narrative is a bit hard to accept (you continually wonder if it is a device or if it indeed really occurred) but once you get past worrying about it, there is some amazing insights in that book. It essentially has become the way I live my life.

The other book (now I'm up to 3 books...) is one I talked about before called "Island" by Aldus Huxley. Wow! That was an amazing experience. I would give up my entire life and all possessions to live on that Island. The reason I mention it here is that the movie talked about concepts that Aldus had figured out in the 60's and put into this book. Simply awesome and something you should totally read.

Ok.. last but not least (and not connected) is this play I saw last night. It is called "Killer Joe" (playing at the Adrianne until May 28) and it was the kind of play that Tarantino would make. There was violence, nudity, cursing, drugs and it was all set in a trailer park. The play had a serious run off Broadway for a long while and while this production isn't up to those standards, it is thoroughly entertaining nonetheless. Tickets were $20 each and it was general admission. The theatre holds like 50 people and if you sit in the first or second rows you are essentially right in the trailer with the cast since you are so close. It really makes the performance quite intimate. There are some subtle issues with the performance but since I had such a great time I'm still going to recommend that you all buy a ticket or two and go see this play before it goes away!

Have a good weekend, I'm off...

The Concord Party

I'm going to do some more research, but I think I may be joining the Concord Party. In either case, I think you all should check it out. I really want to see a viable third party form. The Democratic and Republican party are totally unfocused and totally about opposing the other. This is far from a good thing in my opinion. Just think if we had a congressional session where members put aside their parties and worked as a group. Think about how much they would accomplish. Adding a third party to the mix may in fact counter all the energy spent on fighting back and forth. It may actually help people focus on the issues at hand instead of how to beat each other.

the NSA has all our Phone Records

Yup. There is a database at the NSA where they can simply type in a phone number (or I assume a name) and all the calls to and from that person are listed. This was reported in USA Today yesterday. I was reading a few weeks ago (and now I'm really pissed that I didn't link to it) a piece written by an ex-network technician at AT&T (it may have been another phone network, but it doesn't matter) who talked about the NSA taking over a room in the switching center and having all the fiber lines routed through it (ostensibly to tap all the calls). (update.. I found the piece! here)

You can't tell me that you don't care. You can't tell me that it's for our own good. You can't tell me that the scale isn't bigger than what is being reported. You can't convince me that "tens of millions of Americans are involved with al Qaeda" (in my paraphrased quote of Senator Leahy from this piece.

Our privacy is gone, and not in a "well giving up some privacy adds convenience to my life" tech way. It's gone in an evil Big Brother kind of way and nobody seems to care. Sure you and I care. Sure the 5% of America that actually votes cares, but the rest of us either don't care or accept what the govt. tells them because it's easier than getting stressed out.

Your vote isn't as important as the vote of 10 of your friends. Write 10 of your friends and compel them to vote next week and in the general election. Compel them to do the same to 10 of their friends. People, we need to increase turnout, we need to vote, we need to make the government work for us and not the other way around!

Juggling

Some may say : "But he only juggles 3 balls.. that's nothing!". In the words of Luke, "Sometimes "nothin' is a real cool handcool.

Lego Venice

I love people who build stuff out of legos. Here is a pretty amazing installation where they recreated parts of Venice.

The Book of Numbers

I just love flash animations that are done really well. The Book of Numbers, though I don't understand it is one of those things. Check it out.

eBook Reader

I really want an eBook reader. I've wanted one for like 5 years now. I love to read and I think that it would be awesome to buy my books in a digital format and have them all on one reader. After I was done with them, I could store the books on my server for future, maybe lend them to a friend like I do now with my real books.

The problem is that nobody has been able to get this right yet. The readers all so far have been bulky and have had miserable displays. The display is a huge part in my opinion. I hate reading stuff on LCD monitors and computer displays. I want something that looks like printed ink on paper.

The new Sony Reader has me intrigued. The display looks amazing, the batter life looks really good, the unit looks small and holdable, and they partially abandoned the goofy Sony Memory Stick and added an SD reader. I'm seriously thinking of buying one.

But I'm also skeptical. I'm pretty concerned about the proprietary sony BBeB format for the books. I mean, is it going to end up like beta? What if another format comes out and gets more popular? I've heard that a lot of books are being scanned into DRMed PDF files which the Sony apparently can't read. (It can read non DRM PDFs though).

I also want to know how many books are going to be available and how much they are going to cost. The sony bookstore is listed as "coming soon" so I'm worried about that. There is no way I'm buying the thing until I can see the bookstore. I guess with having their own bookstore they set up an iTunes kind of situation (which you all know I think is miserable).

The DRM thing has me really spooked. Will I be able to store the books on my server when I don't want them on the unit? Will they be shareable? Will they time out? Can I translate them to ASCII Text?

If they could get the DRM issues worked out, what would really sell me is if Amazon had a tie-in with it so if I'm looking for a book on Amazon, there could be a graphic on the book page that said "BBeB format available" and perhaps for an extra 15% I can get the real book and the BBeB file.

So there are questions to be answered, but I still may take the gamble and see. Anyone out there have any opinions on this?

the Safe Google Portal

As you all are aware, Google has been fighting the US Govt. over releasing search results. It's been written about a lot in the media and here in this blog in a couple of posts. I wonder if there exists (and if it doesn't, it should) somewhere a safe portal of sorts that allows you to do google searches anonymously. There are already anonymous email relay services, I can't believe that nobody has come up with an anonymous gateway for google...

How do they make a Paperclip?

Well, the answer can be found here. But the real reason I'm posting is becasue of the madehow website. Here is a website filled with a ton of articles on how things are made. From a Nuclear Submarine to a Baseball Bat. How cool is that?

Gas Prices

When it comes to high gas prices, Gov Corzine is mad. And I'm not saying mad like as in angry but mad as in crazy. About as crazy as everyone else who wants 'relief' from these high prices. New Jersey is one of the only states (Oregon is the other) that mandates full service gas stations. Compared to gas in PA, their gas is actually cheaper. Corzine wants to try a few stations at self-serve to see if prices will go down further. My guess is that the big oil companies would love this. Overall, they would be able to hire less labor and eventually their prices will float up and they will make more money than they are now. Corzine says that we can try it out and see how it works. I'll tell you right now how it will work. The prices will be held artificially lower for a while by the companies.. just long enough to convince the state to repeal the law and then in a matter of weeks we'll have self-serve across NJ and then the prices will slowly float up again. So we'll have the same gas prices and less service. (apparently I'm not the only one against this idea)

In PA they are talking about a temporary repeal of the state gas tax. Another brilliantly stupid idea. That tax is there to provide funds that are already spent or budgeted. We remove that tax and the state will have to cut services in some other place to make up for it.

Want to know how to deal with high gas prices? Stop driving your cars so much. Car pool more, take public transportation. Stop driving inefficient vehicles.

I look at high gas prices as a very good thing. I think over time it will force us to conserve more. It will force us to think about fuel efficiency. It may force us to invest more money in trains and other forms of mass transit. We may in fact, shudder, walk more and bike more and become more healthy. Wow.. imagine that!

Easter at the White House

Not sure who of you have seen this, but wow! It looks like easter at the white house was a real blast this year!

Stern animation

I don't know why but I find this humerous.

Actually, maybe this (non stern related) is funnier...

So I See

One more reason why I think my next move will be to the Pacific NorthWest.

Mechanical Pong

Needless to say, I want one of these.

Web Cams

I don't know how many of you are trolling the underbelly of the internet, but over the past couple of years the web-cam video has become pretty much one of the most popular things out there. For those of you who don't know, for like $100 you can add a camera to your computer so you can video chat with others. You can also make recordings. What seems to happen is that young ladies (like 22 down to 18 or 19) seem to make these videos for their boyfriends or potential boyfriends or maybe even other girlfriends where they put on some music and then dance all sexy like. Is it any wonder these have grown popular?

This link is a video that plays on that concept. I love the end..

Flight 93

There is a new movie coming out about Flight 93. I will tell you right off the bat that I believe it was shot down by a figher jet and the govt. doesn't want us to know (for whatever reason, probably becasue they think we can't handle it, maybe for some more nefarious reason). I don't care a bit about the film. What I think is that since the film is coming out we should take some time to do some research on Flight 93. I already sent you all to a great film about 9/11, you can see that and conclude what you'd like. Also, Will Bunch from the Daily News posted about Flight 93 yesterday and I think you should check that out too.

Supermodels

Hi, I'm Paris Hilton. I am a model. You can tell becasue I have so many different poses. "You're no model! I am!".

Opie and Anthony

So. Roth is out and Opie and Anthony are in. This is pretty interesting stuff indeed. First off, Opie and Anthony were fun to listen to a few years ago on the radio during drive time. When they got kicked off the air I was really surprised at how they just dissapeared without a fight. In a sense, they lost their street cred to me.

Then a few years later they show up on XM but the catch is that you'd have to pay for their show. Was XM kidding? That was a goofy move. Just put the show on its own channel and let it build subscribers. Alienating current subscribers was simply silly. It wasn't like O and A were Howard Stern (who's show you could actually charge for if you wanted). Whatever, I was done with them.

So now they come back to free radio, but get this twist, you get most of the same show (minus curse words I would guess) on free radio now. They're going to simulcast a 3 hour block of the show on XM and CBS radio. I wonder how all the XM subscribers who are paying to hear O and A feel about that.

Just one more example of really desperate and strange programming decisions by an outdated dinousaur (CBS) and a new company that doesn't fully get it (XM). But then again maybe I don't get it since Sirius stock is still stuck in the 5's.

Google Earth

You know, I've had Google Earth on my desktop for a few months now. I think I originally downloaded it to check it out, took a play for a few minutes, thought it was stupid and then forgot about it. A few months later I was chatting with a friend and he said something like "Yea, I was playing with Google Maps for a few hours today" and I was like : "huh?". Yet a few months more went by until today and I don't know why I fired it up, but I've been playing with it for a few hours now and I finally get it. This thing is pretty fricken amazing! I went to the Pyramids, I saw the Eiffel Tower, I found my house, I looked over Europe and Russia and Japan and flew in and over Bagdad. I just can't stop looking at stuff. And I've been doing it by using my mouse. Just scolling back with my mouse wheel and flying along, connecting locations like I was neo in the Matrix.

If you haven't tried this thing, you should. If you haven't spent an hour playing with it, you haven't had that "wow" moment. In that case I advise you play with it some more.

Dr. Who

When I was in 8th grade and in high school my favorite show was Dr. Who. I was in love with that show. I knew all kinds of trivia and had seen all the episodes. I was a crazy addict. And then for whatever reason, I drifted away from it. It may have been cancelled on channel 12. I can't rememer.

Well, as you may or may not know, it's back. SciFi Channel has been broadcasting new episodes with the 9th Doctor (well, it's last years 2005 BBC season). Let me just say that while it's not the most deep TV, it's certainly the most entertaining. I love the 9th doctor and Rose (his companion) is awesome as well. The plots of the episodes I've seen so far are pretty subversive statements about the state of our nation right now (news manipulation, the war on Iraq, etc.). Overall, I've been really happy with the show so far.

I highly reccomend you give the show a try (after you read the wiki article to get up to speed).

Cuban on Sirius

Apparently, my favorite rich guy Mark Cuban is getting a radio show on Sirius. I have been a reader and huge fan of his blog now for a while. I think he's really smart and he really gets technology and media and how they interact with society. As a Sirius stockholder I'm doubly happy about it!

Death and almost Death

Saw two interesting things in "The Week" yesterday. First was a pice about a student that was almost killed. I have to fully copy it over for you to read:

A University of Georgia student was swarmed by agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms when he left a costume party dressed as a ninja. Sophomore Jeremiah Ransom had a pair of bandanas around his head when agents yelled, "Freeze!" and surrounded him with drawn guns. "I was in shock, to say the least," said Ransom. ATF special agent Vanessa McLemore said the response was proper. "Seeing someone with something across the face-from a federal standpoint, that's not right," she said.

Ok. Now what do you think I'm going to say about this? First off, the obvious, what the fuck are ATF agents doing on a college campus staking out a costume party? Second, this civilian almost got killed for no reason. It reminds me of the guy in England on the Subway. Lastly, what the hell is that agent talking about? Should I be careful next winter when I wear a scarf across my face? What about all the Muslums wearing berkas? Are they "not right from a federal standpoint" ?? Insane.

Now, talk about insane, the second piece I found painful to read was a piece about this Canadian guy who went across the border into Maine and shot and killed 2 sex offenders. He got thier name and addresses from the online registry. Look. I've posted a number of times about sex offenders and the facination the police have with these people, but I don't get how it is a good thing to allow the general public to have access to these peoples addresses.. do you?

New York

Yay.. going to New York in an hour or so. I am the best man at a wedding. I've spent the last month or so stressing over what I will say during my toast. See, I hate public speaking. We'll see what I come up with.

In more interesting news, the NHL playoffs start tonight! The series I'm most into watching (other than the Flyers) is the Devils and Rangers. I think the way they are playing together and the goaltending they are getting makes the Devils a lock to make it to the cup round. But boy I'd love to see NY beat them. See, I think the Flyers can beat NY but not NJ.

In either case, here are my first round picks:

Flyers over Buffalo
Devils over Rangers
Montreal over Carolina (in an upset.. 7 games)
Senators over Tampa Bay
Wings over Oilers
Dallas over the Avs (should be a great series)
Calgary over the Ducks
Nasville over the Sharks

Have a great weekend!

WiFi - blah

I'm a tech guy as most of my friends can attest. So this statement may come as some surprise: "I hate WiFi (with one exception)". In my experience (and it is long and extensive) with 802.11 is that it isn't ready for prime time yet. From its inception, every company has come out with their own variant and often they really aren't compatable. The security is sup-par and totally crackable. The signals sometimes pass through walls and floors, sometimes they don't, sometimes it depends on the atmospheric conditions.

In my old apartment I had no choice but to use WiFi. I had a base station, two tivo's, one remote pc and a wireless hub to get all working at once. It took me days to get it all working. That includes firmware updates, buying and returing different access points and bridges, careful positioning and just flat out frusteration. I'm glad I own my new home. The first thing that I did was do end run cat6 cable runs everywhere. Guess what? I could never be happier. (well, I could be happier if I was able to do fiber).

Seriously, have you ever tried to get a powerbook working in a linksys environment? Hell, total hell. Anyway, I mentioned one exception and that is the IBM ThinkPad. for some reason, my girlfriends ThinkPad picks up and connects to everything and anything I want it to. I don't know how it works, but it does.

So, lets talk about security. I don't have the time to look it up right now, but there is a guy in federal prison becasue of crimes that were comitted over his WiFi network. What's the problem here? Well, the guy was a computer illiterate and the crimes were comitted by someone outside of his house in a car. After raiding his house and taking his one PC, the feds admitted that this guy probably didn't do anything wrong other than leave the WiFi unprotected, but since his was the connection, he was liable..

Anyway, the reason I'm writing today is that I'm concerned about Philadelphias WiFi project. I'm concerned about 2 things. First is of major importance to me: nobody has done a study on how all this additional RF radiation will affect our health in 10-20 years. City wide WiFi is not as simple as putting up some WiFi routers. We're talking about some huge transmitters putting out tons of Watts of energy and I for one am concnerned that it will increase our susceptability to cancer over time. I have this same concern about weather radar systems put in place by our TV networks. You hear a lot about the "Doppler 10000" or whatever it's called. The more power they put into these things, the more raditation is beamed out and into and through our bodies. Nobody seems to care one way or another and I don't get it.

The second issue with ciry WiFi is one that I'm looking forward to since it will casue all kinds of anarchy and chaos. See, there is a really good chance that the high powered city-wide WiFi network will interfere with all of the home WiFi networks and make them in-operable. I can't wait to see that mess.

Look I'm all for Philadelphia being progressive and all, but why couldn't they instead use the Septa subway lines to run fiber through the city instead? Why not become a city-wide ISP like other cities are thinking about and doing?

The Triumph of Professor Peeps

So I get this email about a week ago from a friend of mine. One of his buddies organizes a Peep eating contest every year after Easter. This year would be the 4th annual event and he wanted to know if I'd like to come along. The rules were pretty simple: Enter with $20, you have 20 minutes to eat as many Peeps as you could, you then had 15 minutes where you could not throw up. If you made it to the end, the person with the most Peeps down is the winner.

I actually like Pink Peeps, I've had the Yellow ones and I really don't dig the taste that much, but I told him: "I'll go, but I'm going to enter as well.". Now for anyone who knows me, entering an eating contest of any kind is simply not something I would ever do, but something about this one sounded good to me. I was confident I could eat at least 40 and maybe even 50. I was told, however, that the two time champion "Sgt. Peepers" set the record last year with 75. That would be tough to beat.

So, last Friday my friend Kanabul and I bought about 40 Peeps and began experimenting on how to win. We tested them in water and in soda and then came upon a breakthrough: Vinegar. See, there were two main problems that we could see. First was that the Peeps had an insane amount of sugar in them and the second was that they tasted awful. The sugar problem was so far unsolvable but the taste problem was countered by the vinegar for some reason. With the right ratio of vinegar and water we were able to neutralize the taste. The sugar was another issue.

See, ingesting all that sugar and marshmallow was bound to make you throw up at some point. We were warned that 100% of the entrants threw up either during or right after the competition. We needed a way to counter the sugar and a way to counter the effects of the marshmallow. Enter the blender. Against the wishes of my girlfriend, Kan and I put our vinegar mixture into the blender with about 10 Peeps. We set it to Liquify and gave it whirl. What came out was not appetizing at all. Back to the drawing board. We started brainstorming...What is the opposite of sweet? We wondered. And then it hit us: Sour! Back to the blender was a mixture of water and lemon juice and Peeps. Out came a thick, creamy Lemonaide drink. Kind of like an Orange Creamcicle but with Lemons instead. We had our solution.

So, to the event we went yesterday with a box full of supplies. I had mixed the lemon juice into two bottles with food coloring so my mixtures would look mysterious. I also had a big beaker thing that I was using to drink out of and mix with. That and the blender and a bottle of water and "Professor Peeps" was ready to rock.

I was the only one using a non-traditional (ie. Not stuffing my face) method and in a way I felt a bit bad, but innovation is the key to progress and the judges agreed that my method was totally cool. Since I was blending I didn’t need to ingest anything right away (pointed out by another friend of mine) so when the event started I just chilled and filled up the blender, grinding away 5 peeps at a time. I stopped after 60 had made it into the blender and poured it into my beaker so I could drink it at the opportune moment. 16 more Peeps went into the blender as a backup reserve.

It was chaos at the event. Everyone was screaming and yelling and taking photos. There was a fair amount of yelling at me for having my blender but there was also a fair amount of people supporting me as well. Most everyone was waiting to see what I would do next. One of the most common things I heard at this point was something like "Well, he still has to drink it!" which was a good point since the most I'd drunk was 10 Peeps during our test. I had no idea what 60 would do to me.

So one of my friends yelled out that there were 7 minutes left. At that point, the most I could tell that the others had eaten was about 40 so I felt like I was going to win. I picked up the beaker. Everyone, including the other contestants turned to look at me. All I heard was "Oh my God! He’s going to drink it!" I started drinking away to choruses of "Ugh!" and the like. I was committed so I just kept chugging away. I got half done and took a small break. It was great. People were convinced at that point I'd made a horrible mistake and would puke right there and then. But I was totally fine. I went back for gulp #2. As I finished it, people were amazed and I was the new leader with 60 Peeps down.

To be honest, at that point I felt pretty good. I didn't think I was going to throw up at all so I sat back and waited for the clock to stop and the 15 minute waiting period to begin. I looked up and asked for a time check and guess what? 11 minutes to go! My friend was off by 5 minutes and I was fucked. I wasn’t sure I could last that long. The plan was to finish my gulp right at the buzzer. I got nervous a bit and sat back to think and see how I felt. About 3 minutes later I felt something coming up. And then it did. A huge belch. And then another, and then another. Ahh! I was ready to rock again.

I looked around and saw some folks catching up to me so I said to myself : "Fuck this. I'm either going to win or loose horribly" so I grabbed the blender again. People all went crazy: "He's going for more!" was all I heard. I poured the rest into the beaker and gulped it down. 76 Peeps in my belly. I sat back and immediately realized that I had made a very grave mistake. At this point everyone was going crazy. One contestant had grabbed my beaker and thrown up into it, the crowd was calling for my blender to be filled with puke and one or two wanted them to puke on me instead. The crowd was going crazy and all I cold do was sit there and calm myself and not allow myself to get anymore sick than I was at that moment. I was convinced I was going to loose it and look like a fucking moron.

And then the clock stopped. If I could hold on for 15 more minutes I was going to not only win but set the record. About 30 seconds later with everyone convinced I was going to loose it (I probably looked miserable and white as a ghost), I stood up and burped again, and again, and again. That made me feel a bunch better and although I felt like shit, I knew that if I threw up, it would be a complete surprise to me. And then came the cigars. 3 guys with huge cigars headed to the table and started blowing the smoke at us, me in particular it seemed. This was going to be hard.

The crowd was growing restless. They would take any movement or look as evidence that someone was going to loose it, and some did. Most all of them used my damn beaker. At the 5 minute mark, one of the girls behind me grabbed my shoulders and started vigorously shaking me. "Puke Dammit!!". I stood up (not a good idea when your belly was filled with 3 liters of Peeps and Lemon Juice) and grabbed the puke filled beaker and menacingly held it near her. I honestly couldn't speak. I was convinced if I'd opened my mouth I would indeed loose it entirely. There was a story of this happening last year where a contestant opened his mouth and spontaneously projectile vomited a stream of fluorescent yellow liquid which bounced off of something and flew backwards over his shoulder and covered his girlfriend. I had no idea how much time was left (in me and on the clock) so I sat back down and began to tune everything out. Soon I heard "2 minutes to go" and I knew I was going to win. I started counting in my head to 120. Then I heard the announcer say "and the unofficial countdown begins now! 10-9-8…." And the crowd joined in.

Now I was worried. Was he trying to trick me in some way? Why was the countdown "Unofficial"? When they got to 0 and he called me the winner I was skeptical. I was convinced he wanted me to loose it right there and then he was going to say "1 minute to go". I wasn’t until my friend Anthony (a contestant and judge) shook my hand and gave me the winnings that I knew for sure.

And then it was time to puke. There was a tradition that on the road behind the bar, everyone purged themselves into a huge swamp of Peeps. I walked over to it and couldn't do it. I guess I had spent so much time meditating that I wasn't going to throw up that now I couldn't. But I needed to. I was really full and I felt miserable. So I leaned over and gave it my best shot. After about 3 tries it came out. In two huge events my stomach was cleared out. The second one was so strong I fell over and almost into it. I had to brace myself my grabbing the ground. After that was over I laid on the back in the street and relaxed.

When I looked back, my puke wasn't yellow at all, it was all clear. I'm not a chemist or doctor, but the blending and the lemon juice made a huge difference in how my body delt with it. I'm sure they will ban the blender next year but Professor Peeps will again use science to beat all comers. Prepare for the defending champion to come kick some ass next year!



Seems like there are others out there as well.

Update: Here is some other press on my victory.

DEA Officer Shoots Himself

Yea.. This is pretty sad but actually quite funny. I feel bad for this DEA guy, but on the other hand I'm sure he's arrested tons of innocent people in his life so too bad. On the video he is teaching a group of students about gun safety and is showing off with his glock that he believes is not loaded. Dumb ass.

I'm the only one in this room who's professional enough, that I know of, to carry a Glock 40

Netflix issues

For some reason I remember writing about this before. But like most posts I can't find it when I do a search for it so I'm not sure that I have or not. Well, in either case, it deserves a repost.

Lately (and in this case I'm talking about the past 6-9 months or so), every other DVD I get from Netflix has a scratch or is unplayable for some reason. It seems to me that for some reason I have the kind of luck that renders this unplayability as happening during the final 3rd of the film.

This is really starting to piss me off. What really makes me mad is that the folks at Netflix (originally one of my favorite companies) don't seem to care at all. I mean, they gladly rush me a new DVD with no questions asked, but when I write them, they never reply to me. See, for me, getting a replacement disk 3 days later is not a good way to make me happy. Now I loose the continuity of the film, I loose the experience.

What I would like is for them to do some kind of better quality control and stop sending scratched disks in the first place. I switched to blockbuster online as a protest but that lasted about 2 days until I realized that blockbuster was a company that censored films without telling anyone (now I know I wrote about this somewhere!).

I have no recourse. Netflix is my only choice. Perhaps that's why they don't feel the need to improve their quality. Well, fuck them man. If you don't have netflix and go to get your DVD's the old fashioned way, I say, stick with it for a while. No recommendation from me for you to move.

DRM is coming man..(and it aint gonna be pretty)

Seems that building my own PVR box isn't really going to work out for HD since I forgot about the up and coming Digital Rights Management schemes that are going to be all over the place.

For the home brewer, this means their solution won't work if they upgrade to high-definition cable, because the cable box won't send a readable signal to any tuner card that isn't part of a locked-down environment, such as TiVo or Windows Media Center.

You could always unplug your cable box and record free HDTV off the public airwaves, but perhaps not for long. The industry is trying to get Congress to make it illegal to build TV tuners that record broadcast HDTV without including DRM on the recording.

from wired news.

All I can think is poor Cat Stevens..

By now you all know the story of Abdul Rahman. He's the guy who while living in Germany converted from Islam to Christianity and then when he came home to Afganistan, was facing the death penatly for his actions. Those of you who read here regularly know that I'm pretty much against all forms of organized religion because I feel that they all are fronts for mass mind control and political power. Islam, from what I've learned in our media is a peaceful religion but I'm not sure that killing someone for converting seems that peaceful, not to mention rational.

Orson Scott Card, one of my favorite writers took a stand here and wrote an excellent essay on the Rahman situation and talked a bunch about how Islam could be promiting itself better. I think you all should give it a read. I agree with most of what he says.

Here are 2 excerpts:

Of all religions, Islam, with a firm belief that all that happens in the world happens as a result of the will of God, should accept that when someone leaves the faith, it is clearly permitted by the will of God, for God is not so powerless as to need bloody-handed men to enforce his will!

...

So I am waiting for American Muslims to band together to stand openly and bravely against the anti-freedom doctrines and laws within Sharia. I am waiting for them to establish the councils that would give official authority to a body that could renounce and excommunicate any imam, here or abroad, who taught that any Muslim has a right to kill or exile anyone over matters of faith and conscience.

Only Muslims can change Islam. And Islam must, for its own sake and for the sake of peace and freedom throughout the world, change on precisely this point of law.

The Sex Offender Next Door

I've written about this subject before. I'm glad that Phildelphia Magazine is concerned about the same issue. They had an article this month about two sex offenders, both the same in the eyes of the law in NJ but totally different to most people.

In the case of Steve Elwell, nothing could be closer to what I was talking about 6 months ago. Something really should be done about this issue. I know it's not something that any politician wants to touch, but they should becasue it's the right thing to do. All you and I can do is complain and home that Steve wins his case.

Klosterman on Barry Bonds

I'm not a fan of baseball by any stretch, but I have been a huge fan of Chuck Klosterman since I read "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs : A Low Culture Manifesto". A friend sent me a link to an article Chuck wrote about Barry Bonds that was an excellent read (and I'm not saying that because he tooled on "Crash" in the middle of it).

Drugs again

While on the subject of drugs, here is another drug related story that I found interesting today. A student had his cell phone confiscated. That makes sense, its a stated school policy. But, the part I take offense to is that the teacher not only took the phone, but snooped around on it and read the students text messages. I'm not sure that is legal and if it is, I'm not sure that it is right. But, what do I know?

Salvia

Hmn.. You know what's great about local news? How they keep you hip on new things to try out. There is supposivly a new (new to the country at large) hallucinogenic that is legal. I for one aim to try it out at some point.

Voting Machines Again

(above photo from Wired, Nov 2004)

I still swear that I could build a reliable voting system... light years better than better than Diebold and better than Sequoia and all the others. My system would be secure, have open source code, be seperate from the user interfaces, and of course have paper audits.

Today I came across a piece from the Inky last week that talks about problems with the new system going into Montgomery County:

Michael Shamos, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, said in an interview he was able to hack in and change totals during a state test. The machines are also being purchased by Allegheny County.

"I found that by altering one file I could change vote totals from 10 to over 8,000," he said. "It easily let me do that, so the security mechanisms associated with county central are deficient."

Why is the public not more worried that the basis of our democracy is being chipped away with this crappy technology? Why aren't there more people donating to the one and only org that is fighting this crap?

Interesting tidbit

Having internet connection issues galore here. All the fault of Comcast. But I think it may now be fixed after a looooong 5 days w/o the net.. Anyway, a friend sent me this :

On Wednesday, at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 in the morning, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06.
That won't ever happen again.