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.

Moving

My life is in complete disarray my friends. I am living out of boxes and I can't find a damn thing (including my cellphone charger.. which is becomming a more serious problem by the minute). You see, I have moved.

My girlfriend and I bought a house on March 1. It was in perfectly fine shape, but we thought it needed a master bathroom closer to the bedroom (the original bath was far away down the hall). That led to us cutting a bedroom in half and building said bathroom. That of course made the bedroom too small so we then decided to combine it with the 3rd bedroom. Of course that meant we needed a new hardwood floor for the new bedroom. All of these things had to be done before we moved in (2 days ago). Also, we didn't want to spend a huge amount of money so we decided to do it ourselves. That, of course is why I've been so distant.

Let me tell you, nothing is harder than psysical labor and combine that with a 'real' job and you've got one tired person. I've been working 14 hour plus days since March 1 and we're not even done yet. Well, the office (the old bedroom) is pretty much done, but the bathroom is still only at about 50%. But we're moved in and all our stuff is here so all we have to do now is unpack and organize. Easier said than done..

Anyway, I'll try to post some photos and try to get back into writing here, but I'll be busy with unpacking, finishing up the bathroom and oh yea.. for the next 2 weeks my favorite Philadelphia event will be taking up about 6 hours per day : The Philadelphia Film Festival!!

Thinking Like Buffett

I just finished reading my favorite continuing story….the year in review of Berkshire Hathaway by Warren Buffett more commonly identified as the first 25 pages or so of their annual report. For those who haven’t seen one you can get to it online at http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/annual.html but I recommend you consider investing in Berkshire even minimally (about $3,000 for a B share) to get your own copy of the report to better appreciate its straight forward clarity of vision and to learn the real principals of value investing.

I am a bit of a numbers nerd having interests in finance and economics which I feel are the What and the Why of business, economies in general and even down to the micro level of how individuals react. So I take great pleasure in hearing Buffett’s description of how the Berkshire businesses performed and his strategies for long term value building. Buffett is a genius in applying the basic principals of finance to complex businesses and financial arrangements. And like a true genius he also has the ability to bring it down to our level with clear explanations and common folk examples.

Buffett is worth listening to. He rails against executive compensation that is excessive or not tied to the best interests of the owners. He highlights his own failures and trumpets those of his top performers. He preaches and practices pragmatic long term thinking in all of his business dealings including the detailed planning for his own replacement some day. He decries deficits and debt particularly the national debt and the trade deficit of which he says “at some point [this] problem will likely address us in an unpleasant way”.

Buffett’s thinking seems to be in the vast minority in today’s business world and non-existent in Washington. There are too many MBAs and not enough masters of business. Not so much at the entrepreneurial level where survival and success are still driven by committed people making the kind of hard nosed financial and economic decisions needed to build value. Rather it is most lacking in what we might call Big Business and the overall trend to globalization. I am not against Big Business. My pension too is largely tied to the efforts of Big Business and the overall economy. But the short term thinking that rules due to pressure to produce short term profits threatens to undermine our entire system.

As a nation, our long term security can’t be best served by losing our industrial base in a race to be the low cost provider of everything to the consumers. Already we don’t produce hundreds of items in this country – from the mundane such as socks, TVs and typewriters, to ball bearings and high-strength epoxies used to manufacture aircraft and computer components. More importantly our machine tool industry is all but gone (in some cases literally sold, packed up and shipped to the Far East for reassembly) and with it we lose the ability to produce the actual means of production. We can’t become a nation of service based industries selling to each other and have nothing to produce to sell to the rest of the world. If so, the value of our dollar won’t hold up in the long term with very unpleasant results to follow. Continued deficit financing by individuals and most importantly the government will only paper over the problem for so long. It’s time to get real with solutions instead of politics, corruption and pork-barrel spending as usual.

I won’t pretend to know what the answers are but my guess is that they involve all of the following – education, investment, cost control, sacrifice, patience and hard work. And I can’t forget breaking our dependence on imported oil, the single largest leak in our national fiscal bucket. These are some of the “old school” values that have kept this country competitive during the past century of world trade. Buffet would probably say to also forget about – flipping the property, buying into the bubble, simple protectionism, new paradigms, deficit financing and every other quick to riches but unsustainable idea.

And the sooner we get started the better.

Just as I thought..

...those red light cameras don't do any good. In fact, in one place where they were analyzed, accidents went up!

StreetWars

Yes!! I want StreetWars to come to Philly. Check out the website and the videos and stuff and see if you agree with me. Then email them and ask them to set up a game in Philly. Tell your friends too. My thought is that with enough interest, Philly will be the next battleground. If the game gets set up, beware, I will stalk the living shit out of you guys and there is no way I won't win the game.

Molly Saves The Day

For those of you in South Dakota who need abortions, here is how to accompish one. I think this is a wonderful gesture. I'm not sure what's going to come of it, but the only way I can support Molly in her casue is by linking to her blog and giving her some major props.

The more I think about this, it shows me that even if Abortions become illegal across the nation, the illegal abortion "clinics" will not be anywhere near as bad as they were back in the day. I can easily see piercing clinicians doing these procedures since they understand how to keep their tools sterile and clean. I can see step by step instructions posted on the net (like Molly has done). I can see well funded underground clinics opening up. Times are changed here in the world. This is not the 60's. This is the 21st Century where infomation is free and available. Maybe things aren't so bleak after all?

Susteen DataPilot is a piece of junk

I spent $90 so I could download my contacts from my computer to my phone. Yes, I agree this is an insane amount of money but its the only way. I bought a kit called DataPilot from a company named Susteen. The kit comes with a myriad of connector cables so it can be used with practically any cell phone. I thought it was worth it since between my girlfriend and I, we have 3 phones and I'm sure over the years we would end up with more and it would be nice to easily move the contacts to and from the phones. Also it would allow us to move photos, etc. as well to and from the phones.

The probelm is that the software sucks and doesn't work as its supposed to. I found this out after I had it erase the contacts on my phone (to make way for a new clean set from outlook). I tried a million different ways to get them to write to the phone but it just doesn't do it. It says it does, but nothing ends up on the phone. Tech suppost doesn't seem to cae either. It's email only and nobody answers it.

So I'm trying to return it and it seems that they don't refund shipping charges which I find insane as well. I take a risk in buying their product. I buy it online so they can save money and when their product doesn't work I ahve to pay the shipping both ways? How is that fair? Fuckers.

Now lets back up a second and ask ourselves why we need to buy 3rd parts software and hardware to connect to our cellphones. I mean, why when you buy a phone does it not come with some way to synch with a computer? I've got 30 photos on my phone that I can't get on my computer unless I use verizon to send them one by one to myself in emials. It's not even the cost that makes this prohibative, it's having to type in my email address into the phone 30 times.

Some phones have bluetooth, but I haven't found that to work that well either. It's just plan silly that we should have to jump through hoops to do simple stuff with technology. I'd write my own software if I could find the api for my phone..

Data Mining to find terrorists is bad for US

Remember the TIA program? For some reason I thought I wrote about it in the past but I can't find a post. Anyway, TIA was a data mining program proposed by the govt. that would collect as much data it could on every citizen of the country and then hopefully mine that data for patterns that would indicate terrorist activity. This is called data mining. TIA was killed but it still lives on in various forms in the govt.

Not only does Data Mining infringe on our privacy, it also doesn't work. Essentially it will create so much static (in the form of false alarms) that the system will be overwhealmed with waste:

When it comes to terrorism, however, trillions of connections exist between people and events -- things that the data-mining system will have to "look at" -- and very few plots. This rarity makes even accurate identification systems useless.

Let's look at some numbers. We'll be optimistic -- we'll assume the system has a one in 100 false-positive rate (99 percent accurate), and a one in 1,000 false-negative rate (99.9 percent accurate). Assume 1 trillion possible indicators to sift through: that's about 10 events -- e-mails, phone calls, purchases, web destinations, whatever -- per person in the United States per day. Also assume that 10 of them are actually terrorists plotting.

This unrealistically accurate system will generate 1 billion false alarms for every real terrorist plot it uncovers. Every day of every year, the police will have to investigate 27 million potential plots in order to find the one real terrorist plot per month. Raise that false-positive accuracy to an absurd 99.9999 percent and you're still chasing 2,750 false alarms per day -- but that will inevitably raise your false negatives, and you're going to miss some of those 10 real plots.

This isn't anything new. In statistics, it's called the "base rate fallacy," and it applies in other domains as well. For example, even highly accurate medical tests are useless as diagnostic tools if the incidence of the disease is rare in the general population. Terrorist attacks are also rare, any "test" is going to result in an endless stream of false alarms.

This is exactly the sort of thing we saw with the NSA's eavesdropping program: the New York Times reported that the computers spat out thousands of tips per month. Every one of them turned out to be a false alarm.

(From a wired article)

HD and Tivo

I am a tv maniac. I watch tons of tv. I am also an ex video professional and I have known about (and wanted HD) for about 5 years now. I also have the money to buy a plasma 1080p 50" monitor. But, I haven't. I've been quite happy with my 35" Sony Wega and SD. Why? Because it works and it works well. I've got 2 cable boxes, 2 Tivos and everything is nicely networked together so I can watch and record everything all the time.

HD has a million questions attached to it. First off, I've been waiting for a full 1080 resolution monitor to be released (most of the units are 720 and downconvert when needed). Secondly I've been (and still am) reluctant to use the Comcast PVR for HD. I hate the Comcast PVR for SD. It really doesn't compare at all to Tivo. I still am amazed that a company as big as Comcast hasn't solved this problem yet. And they even partnerned with Tivo a while back.. though nothing has come of it.

I love HDTV. I want HDTV but I'm not going to get it any time soon since I refuse to get rid of my Tivos. I've been considering DirectTV with their Tivo/HD combo, but they are really pricy and require all kinds of service committments and I refuse to lock into something that I can't play with first. I've been doing a ton of research on building a MythTV box. But god knows what a headache that will be. I'm a technical guy but I don't want to deal with building my own box.

Thankfully I have heard this news. And I almost cried when I read it. They say this box will go for $800. That's a lot of money but guess what? If it works as well as the SD Tivo, I will shell that out in 2 seconds. I will call Comcast, order up a couple of cable cards and fuck man.. my life will be back to normal again.. And let me tell you, I've been stressing this HD thing for a reeeealy long time. I just hope it comes out soon. I can't wait much longer..

American Inventor

First off, as promised I've been away from the blog. And more than that I've been away from life. I haven't spent much time at the computer so I haven't been keeping up on the news or my other blogs at all. Sorry.. I will most likely be out of the loop for another 2 weeks. Perhaps I'll fill you in about why in another post.

I did have a free moment to watch the first half of "American Inventor" though and let me say that it's a total copy of American Idol (which I have seen about 1.5 episodes of purely by osmosis). There are like 50,000 entries across the county and the first episode (or more, I don't know) is focusing on whittliing that group down to a manageble number. The entries are simply regular joes who have invented something.

Just like American Idol this show realizes that the bad entries are just as entertaining (or more) than the good entries so it tends to focus on those more. The bad entires are simply comical and I'm I'm not sure if the entrants are full of shit or not. I mean some of the entries and presentations are simply comical. It seems like the people are trying just to get on TV. If these people are serious, they are a sad reflection of the general populous of our country.

The good inventions so far are kind of dull but I have no doubt one or more of them could sell a million units. The show itself seems to focus on the human element and on the hard luck stories of the inventors. It's kind of sappy at times. I'm glad I have it on Tivo since I could fast forward not only over the commercials but over the crap in the show. The first hour took me about 25 minutes to watch.

I sort of reccomend this show. Maybe I'll have more of an opinion at a later date.. who knows..

have a good weekend.

Black. White.

Black. White. Here is a show that brings out all kinds of emotions for me. I originally checked it out for the novelty of seeing how the makeup worked (quite well for most of the participants actually), but I found that the show had more interesting stuff going on. It's a sign of something when we pause the Tivo 20 times to talk about something we're watching. Weather it's to say "that's bullshit!" or to debate about something we saw, pausing means that we are engaged and therefore the show is a success. For this show it was a little of both.

First off, to any black people watching the show I have this to say. Most white people aren't like the white family in this show. We aren't that ignorant of race relations. I mean in thius first episode, the dad seems to believe that someone is going to go up and call him nigger while he is in his makeup. He says it a number of times actually.. as if that actually happens in LA where this is shot.. Maybe, maybe in the deep south but come on.. The mom appears to be equally clueless but we'll have to see.

Here's where we found it interesting. The black family, especially the dad seems to think that racism is everywhere. As a white, he says stuff like "in this makeup, I feel more comfortable when I go out and about, more free". This statement leads me to one of the aforementioned tivo pauses. From what I can see, he feels less burdened when he is in "white" skin which seems to indicate that his uncomfort comes from within and not from external sources. This is further reinforced as he spends most of the first episode pissed at the white dad becasuse the white dad sees no racism while he is in his makeup. In fact they actually go out togther as 2 black men with the black dad trying to show him racism and to my eyes (and the white dad) there is none. Which makes the black dad say "well you just can't see it". Well, I may be a dumb white guy, but this certainly reenforces my stereotype that most (not all) racism towards blacks is self created. Essentially, when you believe you are persecuted, that is how you will feel.

But I'm a white guy, so what the hell do I know? The show is compelling, but it would be a lot more interesting if they put the people into controlled tests instead of this randomness. Example. The black guy goes into a pro shop to buy golf shoes and is amazed that the clerk not only is helpful, but actually puts his foot into the shoes for him! Personally I think this would happen no matter what his race. It seemed like a nice store with good service. What we didn't see was the same guy going in and doing the same thing as a black man. That would have convinced me that there was a difference in how he was treated.

This show is intereting. I would like to watch it with some black people so we could debate about it and compare notes. I have one black friend and I really can't believe that if he saw this same first episode he would hae said almost the same things that I did about it. Anyway, worth checking out.

Milosevic Dead

I wonder if anyone will notice this.. Usually once these leaders are captured we forget about them. Anyone remember Noriega? What ever happened to that guy? It was so important we capture him and once we did, not one more piece of news.. Am I the only one that finds that strange?

Bird Flu in the USA

Here is a pretty interesting press release from the Harvard School of Public Health about the US feelings towards Bird Flu. Thankfully we at least make the grade about being concerned about potential outbreaks (57% are concerned). What I found interesting is that if there is an outbreak, 71% of Americans would not attend public events but (and here is where it gets interesting) only 46% would stop eating chicken. Isn't there something odd about that? I mean this disease is spread more through poultry than humans.. right?

Two TV Shows

So I've found two new TV shows that you should check out.

First is "Sons & Daughters". This is a great show, but I don't think it will last since it really doesn't seem to fit into the general TV sit-com mold. First off I know it will fail since it has a very similar feel to "Significant Others" which I loved but only survived 2 seasons. So what makes it similar? Well, it has one of the same characters from SO in it (Fred Goss), has similar transitions, no laugh track and also is partially ad-libbed. Anyway, the show is pretty funny and certainly entertaining so I higly reccomend you check it our before it goes the way of "Arrested Development" (which was way more commercial). Oh.. just found a review that sums it all up quite nicely.

The second show is somthing that not everyone will like, but I loved and found it so funny that there were genuine tears running down my face. This show is called "Pros vs. Joes". Essentially the concept is this: take some average guys who think they are great atheletes and put them up against true pro atheletes and see what happens. Obviously this is a huge mis-match so to keep things relatively competative, they use ex-atheletes instead. For example (and this is where I laughed so hard I almost paseed out) the first show I saw asked the joes to play defensive back and cover Jerry Rice. Each guy got 3 tries and Jerry never got a rest. Of them, one made contact with Jerry (and that was when Jerry strong armed him into the ground). Others were simply hysterical as Jerry just faked these guys out of their shoes. To be honest, one guy stopped one pass, but in the NFL it would have been PI. Amazing stuff. Oh, another event we saw? Try to get a rebound off of Dennis Rodman.. Ha Ha Ha... Check this show out.. it's a ton of fun!

Yup.. color me unimpressed as well

I liked this simple review of the Philadelphia Flower Show. It was my first time as well and I was expecting something really cool. Instead I found a dark room with 4-5 big displays and then a whole convention center filled with a flower flea market. Not really my cup of tea.

Fishy Port

Something seems too easy here.. Seems that the UAE is dropping out of the ports deal but you know..I wonder.. if there were no US buyers before, why would there be one now? I would like to see who is on the board of this new US company. Probably the same bunch of people behind the original deal... I wonder if we'll ever know or if the deal will fall off the media radar. I bet it will now.. even though it may still be the same deal in sheeps clothing...

Missing

I know I write every weekday but I'm going to be missing for the next 2 weeks.. I'm going to be on a vacation of sorts.. I may slip in a post here and there but for now assume I'm away until I say I'm back..

We Don't need no Stinkin Forms!

This is a great video. It is part of a report by a local news crew and a watchdog group where they go into police stations across S. Florida and ask for a form to complain about an officer. While the report clearly shows that the forms don't exist (nor or required) in the police stations, what's shocking was how the person was treated. In one case he was threatened by an officer with his gun (something that happened to me once in the south) for no reason other than not complying with an illegal request for id. It's pretty chilling stuff. Also on the video is an interview with John Timony who is the chief there in Miami. His dept. had the forms. Timony is a really good guy. I met him once when he was cheif here in Philly and he did an amazing job during the RNC a few years back. It was good to see him running a tight ship in Miami. But the other districts? Wow.. totally predictable.

Munich and Crash

So, I missed my chance to post about Munich before the Acadamy Awards. We saw it yesterday since we wanted to see all 5 before the show. It was pretty bad. No, it was really crappy.. that seems more accurate. I won't go into specifics, but man Speilberg is just so annoying sometimes.. Can you spell out more stuff for us dumb american audiences Steve? Uhg..

Whatever. So Crash won. Here's what I have to say about Crash: It's an ok film, nothing special. You can wait for the video release and don't need to rush to the theatre. Personally I found it entertaining and veeeery preechy. You can read more about what I thought here. I had ranked it at number 3 on my list of the 5. The list was Good Night, Capote, Crash, Brokeback and a distant 5th Munich. But I'm not a member of the academy so I guess what I think is kind of moot.

Find out why the US let Bin Laden get away

This looks like a great presentation. Free event with the author of "Jawbreaker". Check out this msnbc article about the autor/book/hunt for Bin Laden and how the US Let Him Get Away! If I can get away from my hectic life this month, I'm going to go to this event.

You can choose window or aisle.. why not your seatmate?

This is a really cool idea. Essentially for a $5 roundtrip fee, you can choose the person who sits next to you froma group of people that match your selection criteria. The company website is another story. To me it looks like some kind of creepy dating service/escort site.

Personally I would pay $5 to make sure that I sit next to someone who won't bother me. I don't know about finding "a date in Los Angeles". But there is a market of some kind here I think.

Emerald Nuts

Please don't think I'm jumping on a bandwagon here, but I love Emerald Nuts commercials. The first one I saw was in October of 2004. My blog post was simply :

Good Yob
Ni Same
Ahhh. Thats Ok.
Ike It

Encouraging Norwegians love Emerald Nuts

"ahhhhhh"

Referencing the most amazing commercial I'd seen up to that point in time. I loved that spot. (It can be seen here by clicking 'tv ads' on the top spinner thing, then the 'next' hand thingie then "Encouraging Norwegians"). Something about that spot just cracked me up. Since then I'd see a spot once and a while.

During the SB the "Networking Druid" spot came on and even though I'd never seen it, I knew it was an EN commercial. Everyone else in the room were like "huh? What the fuck was that shit?" as I burst into hysterics. All I can say is that I love their commercials!

Didn't they have something like this in Waco once?

I'm not sure how I feel about the Domino's development in Florida. I mean, it's kind of like a commune right? Or a cult thing? In all honesty I think I remember Disney building a town in Florida that would follow strict christian guidelines.. FreedomTown? Something like that. Anyway, if the "town" is fully built on private land (and it doesn't say in the article.. though one would think that would be a crucial bit of news) I can't see why we should complain or would have any right to. Say I decide to set up a "store" in my house and sell stuff to my family. I don't see how the state or federal government could say what I could or couldn't sell there.

I like the idea acutally. I have proposed something similar (but of course opposite) in the past. A town on private land where there were no laws. See this ooooold blog post of mine from 9/04:

So I'll have to talk to a lawyer about this one, but here's my concept...

I was thinking that in some cases, towns and cities have laws that somehow supercede state and federal laws. So, for instance if a town wanted to legalize prostitution or marajuana usage or whatever, they could do it. I know in Cali they are in a legal debate with the feds over marajuana but still, I believe the concept is that a city can make its own laws.

So, my question is this. If I had a big enough land mass and a group of people living on/owning that land could we just consider ourselves a city or a town or a county or whatever?

My concept is this. Using some cool website and the internet, wouldn't it be possible to assemble groups of morally like minded people (say people who want legal drug use or liberal speed limits) and get those groups of people to all move to the same place and form their own towns and legal systems?

Why isn't this possible?

Apparently New Hampshire is the place to move to if you want liberty. Also here.

The DPA - Donate Today!

I only have 40-50 readers but that's enough to do some good. I urge you each to donate at least $10 to the Drug Policy Alliance. This is a group which has this simple stated goal :

The Alliance is the nation's leading organization working to end the war on drugs. We envision new drug policies based on science, compassion, health and human rights and a just society in which the fears, prejudices and punitive prohibitions of today are no more

You and I know that the "War on Drugs" has failed. Anyone can see that the program does little or no good and that it is a complete waste of money that does nothing to help abusers of drugs. Obviously I reccomend the movie "Traffic" to you, but more importantly I ask you to think about reading the book "Smoke and Mirrors" by Dan Baum. This book, published 10 years ago, gives us a history of the war and paints a pretty convinving picture that the war is a disaster.

But don't take his word on it. Ask Walter Cronkite what he thinks.

It's really hard to make change happen. Fortunately the DPA exists to help the process along. I'm giving $50 and you should give a little too. Click here to donate.

Oh.. also I just found on the DPA blog this post. Apparently Bill O'Reilly doesn't agree with Walter.

Floyd on Sirius

Well, Sirius is creating a 24 hour Pink Floyd channel. Also featured will be solo work from David Gilmour. This is cool, but I think they would have better music if they had Roger Waters' solo stuff on there which is much better..

Just change the report

See, it's not just the president that is the problem. It's the entire administration and all the top level people in the federal governemnt that he has put in place. As you may or may not know, there was a report sent up to the White House a couple of years ago that basicly said that the Insurgency in Iraq was local, was partially formed becasue of the occupation and would lead to civil war. But, that news wasn't going to go well when the report went to George Tenet so it was suggested that the report be changed to make it more palatable. Thankfully Wayne White prevailed and got the correct version out (he's not at the State Dept. any more):

Wayne White, a veteran State Department intelligence analyst, wrote recently that when it became clear that the National Intelligence Estimate would forecast grim prospects for tamping down the insurgency, a senior official "exclaimed rhetorically, `How can I take this upstairs?' (to then-CIA Director George Tenet)"

White argued forcefully in inter-agency deliberations for a more pessimistic description of the insurgency, and his views eventually prevailed. White is now an adjunct scholar at the Washington-based Middle East Institute.

But did the report change any minds in the White House?

"The mindset downtown was that people were willing to accept that things were pretty bad, but not that they were going to get worse, so our analyses tended to get dismissed as `nay-saying and hand-wringing,' to quote the president's press spokesman," he said.

The result, he said, was that top political and military officials focused on ways of dealing with foreign jihadists and disaffected Saddam loyalists, rather than with other pressing problems, such as growing Iraqi anger at the U.S.-led occupation and the deteriorating economic and security situation.

A former senior U.S. official who participated in the process said that analysts at the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department's intelligence bureau all agreed that the insurgency posed a growing threat to stability in Iraq and to U.S. hopes for forming a new government and rebuilding the economy.

"This was stuff the White House and the Pentagon did not want to hear," the former official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "They were constantly grumbling that the people who were writing these kind of downbeat assessments `needed to get on the team,' `were not team players' and were `sitting up there (at CIA headquarters) in Langley sucking their thumbs.'"

Great stuff and a great report all right here.

Ahh.. Proof about Katrina and Bush

Well, we all suspected he knew about the potential of the storm and we all assumed he knew about the potential for the levees to break. But here is the proof. Impeach Bush! The lying bastard!

Doh!

In a survey, apparently Americans know more about The Simpsons than the Constitution.

About 1 in 4 Americans can name more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment (freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly and petition for redress of grievances.) But more than half of Americans can name at least two members of the fictional cartoon family, according to a survey.

I would have gotten at least 3 of our freedoms correct, but I would have been able to name all of the Simpsons so I think I would have failed as well. Though I found stuff like the following bit amazing :

It also found people misidentified First Amendment rights. About 1 in 5 people thought the right to own a pet was protected, and 38% said they believed the right against self-incrimination -- commonly known as "Taking the Fifth" -- was a First Amendment right, the survey found.

Heh.. Funny stuff indeed.

Funny stuff and Not so funny stuff

I love Anderson Cooper.. this was a funny tidbit.. but seriously, those trailers are still in Arkansas! Have you actually heard that story? Read this and tell me what you think.

I'm not a drug dealer

Ok.. Let me clear something up for the authorites that are reading my blog. Contrary to what I may have said here, I'm not a drug dealer, nor do I have any illegal drugs.

Now. Why am I writing that? Well, I've seen a considerable spike in readership since that post and I'm scared. I have this vision of the police, fbi, nsa, whoever checking out my blog and deciding "ahh, another moron kid showing off for his friends" and then coming over and doing a raid on my house. While I'd like to believe that that's a longshot, you never know in todays society.

See, I was simply trying to make a point that just becasue you see something on a blog post or in a photograph doesn't make it true. The gun is real (and legally owned and registered by me), the drugs are clearly fake (as one of my friends pointed out in about 32 seconds).

It would be a waste of taxpayer money to come and raid my house. I'm just a normal citizen who has a hard time keeping his head down all the time. I really don't want to have a whole day (or more) of my life taken up by crazy searches and (god forbid) arrests.

You know, it's amazing that I'm so scared. Probably because just yesterday I finished watching a great movie called "The Tunnel" (der Tunnel is the real name) about the seperating of Berlin (and Germany) into the East and the West. The poor folks in the GDR followed one rule : innocent or guilty, keep your head down you don't want the police on you.

Maybe I'm paranoid but with all this wiretapping and erosion of civil liberties I kind of feel the same way when I write in this blog. I take contrary stances all the time to stuff. It would take 2 seconds to list me as a terrorist even though I couldn't be more of an American. I mean look, even Morrisey was questioned.