Winds of Change and The Nation.

In an era in which most U.S. population growth is occurring in the South, West and heartland, American liberalism is defined by people in the Northeast. At a time when rising tuitions are pricing many working-class Americans out of a college education, the upscale campus is becoming the base of American progressivism. The Nation

This is from a very long article. It is well worth a read. I am getting tired of people trying to figure out what went "wrong" or "right" in the election last month. It is, Leave it alone.

Disk World
I'm looking into Disk World. I've heard it described as a parity of all the SciFi fiction of the eighties. Sounds like the setting for me. I love eighties Anime and moves like Alien and Blade Runner. This vision of the future is probably not the way things are going to unfold. I've come to the realization that a bunch of corporations and capitalism will be the first entities other intelligent life forms run into. Some one with the title of "Sector 19 Regional Manager" will be the first to shake the tentacle of an alien, long enough for the photo-opp anyway. Then the marketing people will take over. There is more of Dilbert than Star Trek in our future, I fear.
Does any one out there have recommendations for this and other series?

I Learned Something
"al-qaeda" means "the Camp".

Dell
Some one came by the office today asking about Dell computers. They want to do video editing. You don't really need that powerful of a computer. You need lots of hard drive and gobs of RAM. You also need a fair to good video card. I don't know if Dell offers the video card you really need. Apparently, Dell is no longer offering the monitor deal I snagged.
I've been thinking that this could very well be the last desktop computer I buy. Desktops are not miles ahead of laptops any longer. You can get some portable desktops (big laptops) that are upgradeable and lugable. I bet in two years, when I decide to upgrade again, there will be better alternatives than another desktop.

More on the Lost Bomb

Police say the explosives, which were not accompanied by a detonating device, were slipped inside a small dark blue suitcase on a baggage conveyor belt. One sniffer dog detected the package, but police lost sight of the suitcase when they went to pick up a second dog that was supposed to take part in the exercise. Reuters

<bad French accent> Idiots, I told you not to put Clouseau on K-9 detail. </bad French accent>

eBay
You know, i need to go buy some little thing on eBay. I then need to turn around and sell something. eBay has become a modern cultural icon. It seems like every one I work with has had transactions on eBay. I know one guy who bought some ceramic figurines for his mother. He ended up getting some duplicates. When he sold them again he made money. He ended up buying more and just turning around and selling them as soon as he could. No one around me has done large or expensive items. It's great for getting rid of clutter..

Sunday
I just got back from my friend's house. I fixed the computer in no time. We ate. I spent the rest of the afternoon playing with their two year old daughter. Kaitlyn (I'm not spelling it right). She like holding your hands and walking up your legs to do a flip. She just gets the biggest kick out of that. It was fun.
It's times like this that I want to have kids.

Tillman
This  sounds just bad. I know there are confusing situations in combat. I've never even been close to being under that kind of stress. I play first person shooters. My life is not on the line. I still find myself and buddies in the same safe, warm, well fed room, to be in complete agreement on two diametrically opposite plans of action after discussing it for ten minutes. It doesn't take much for people to loose touch with the plan. Even the relatively minor stress of playing a video game can teach you that lesson.

It took the Army a month to change the record to show that Tillman, the Arizona Cardinals defensive back who gave up a $3.6 million contract to become an Army Ranger, was killed last April not by Afghan guerrillas but by his Ranger colleagues. Even then, the statement by Lt. Gen. Philip R. Kensinger Jr., head of the Army's Special Operations Command, gave few specifics of the corporal's death and implied that he was trying to suppress enemy fire when he "probably died as a result of friendly fire." ... Tillman's group moved toward the north-south ridge to face the canyon, and Tillman took another Ranger and an Afghan ally down the slope. "As they pulled alongside the ridge, the gunners poured an undisciplined barrage of hundreds of rounds into the area Tillman and other members of Serial One had taken up positions," the Post said Army investigators concluded. It said the gunner handling the platoon's only .50-caliber machine gun fired every round he had. The first to die was the Afghan, whom the Americans in the canyon mistook for a Taliban fighter. Under fire, Tillman and almost a dozen others on the ridge "shouted, they waved their arms, and they screamed some more," the Post said. "Then Tillman `came up with the idea to let a smoke grenade go.' As its thick smoke unfurled, `This stopped the friendly contact for a few moments,'" a Ranger was quoted as saying. Assuming the friendly fire had stopped, the Ranger said, he and his comrades emerged and talked with each other, the Post reported. "Suddenly, he saw the attacking Humvee move into `a better position to fire on us.' He heard a new machine gun burst and hit the ground, praying, as Pat Tillman fell," the Post reported. The Ranger said Tillman had repeatedly screamed out his name and shouted for the shooting to stop, the Post said. He and others waved their arms, only attracting more fire. Tillman was shot repeatedly by rifles, finally succumbing to the machine gun. Early in the firing, the Post said, the driver of one of the Serial Two vehicles pulled out of the canyon and recognized the parked U.S. Army vehicles in front of him. "The driver shouted twice: `We have friendlies on top!' ... Then he yelled several more times to cease fire, he recalled. "`No one heard me.'" Yahoo News (AP)

Lost Bomb
Oh, here we go.

Police at Paris' top airport lost track of a passenger's bag in which plastic explosives were placed to train bomb-sniffing dogs, police said Saturday. Warned that the bag may have gotten on any of nearly 90 flights from Charles de Gaulle, authorities searched planes upon arrival in Los Angeles and New York. ... A "momentary lack of surveillance" led to the bag being lost on a conveyor belt carrying luggage from check-in to planes. ... "Indeed, it's possible that someone will have a surprise when he opens his bag." USA Today (AP)

OK, they do say that there is no way to set off the explosives. They were set up strictly to get the dogs to respond. Still, it sounds pretty bad.

Blockquotes
Is any one out there confused by the gray boxes? They are block quotes. I'm trying to remember to put the link to the original story in the lower right hand corner. Any suggestions? Too many quotes? More of anything, lesss of something?

Off
I'm off in a minute to help a friend with her computer. I put in a hard drive a couple of months ago and now her CD ROM is puking every time she trys it. Some one else has put in a power supply since then and I wonder if that might have had anything to do with it. I don't mind helping her because she is cooking stir-fry. I mentioned before I will do computer work for a home cooked meal. Wish me luck.

Darn-it!
I ordered a Dell. Why didn't any of you people stop me? I was going to wait until after Christmas, but my current second machine is giving me trouble and my laptop won't run any of the recent games. I got a 3.2 GHZ processor, 1 gigabyte of RAM, 160 gigabyte hard drive, and a 17 inch flat panel all for a grand. Not bad. What finally convinced me was comparing the price to machines I could build myself. I went and priced parts. It didn't come out to much less than the Dell. Particularly the monitor. They started the "free upgrade" thing again which I figure saved me about $150 or so.
I've had good luck with Dell computers. I hope it sticks. The first thing I'm going to do is put another hard drive and DVD burner in it. I just  can't stop myself.

MP3 Player
Remember the MP3 player I bought? Listen to this. I was at work Friday. I had just walked in from the bus stop. I get to my office. I grab the MP3 player, having listened to NPR on the whole way in, and try to turn it off. That sounds simple enough. But, wait. The light is still on. The drive is running. I can feel the ever so slight vibration. That should not happen. None of the keys respond. The thing is locked up. Nothing seemed to work, so I though it in my bag and got on with my life. Eventually the battery wore down. I charged the device back up and it seems to be working again. That really pisses me off. Stand alone devices should not lock up. They should be exhaustively tested and rendered reliable. I bet the frigging iPod would not have done this.
The whole interface on this thing just seems "hokey". It just feels like some one threw it together on a weekend for pocket change. It was cheep, but it shows. The drive capability seems to work great. The music plays with no skips. The unit seems sturdy enough. The buttons work OK. They are kind of funny feeling. There is no way to run the device without looking at it. When it licks up, it isn't worth a dime. I have to recommend that people pass on this one.

Saturday
Well my appointment helping some one fix their computer has been moved to tomorrow. I went out with some friends this afternoon for lunch.
Ever-Crack
The talked extensively and obsessively about Ever-Crack 2. The could not help themselves. They tried talking about work. Soon enough, we found our way back to Ever-Crack. They tried talking ab out food. We worked our way back to Ever-Crack. One of my friends said something like "Kelly should have known this was going to happen." Like I care. They all seem to have fun. They want me to become as immersed as they are. I just can't bring myself to play those games. If you don't go the extra mile of doing out-of-game research, you will be stomped in the virtual world.
After lunch
I am burning some data DVDs. I'm watching some old X-Files episodes. I don't have to go to my friend's place to fix her computer now. I don't know what to do with myself. I suppose I'll keep up the good work.

New Computer
I keep hitting Dell's web site looking for deals. Over the Thanksgiving break, Dell was running an offer that basically threw in a free flat panel monitor. It was pretty close to the computer I'm looking for. Dells are so expensive for the numbers. They make great machines. I recommend them all the time. I missed the deal over Thanksgiving. Now, the prices have gone up. What is a geek to do? I hate buying off the shelf. I want "my" computer. I'm tired of building them. I always manage to get lazy and screw it up somehow. The ones I build always run hot, or develop a legion of gremlins. I'm going to wait until Dell runs another sale.

Old Leather Jacket
When I was 19 or so I got it in my head that I wanted a leather concert jacket. It was this biker type jacket that actually had zipper removable sleeves. I'm just trying to think why someone would cut the sleeves off their leather jacket. Well, The Who were coming to the Astro Dome that year. The jacket went on sale and I ordered the official tour jacket. $200. I got my parents to put it on their American Express Card. My dad said "wait till the bill comes in to give me the money." He has always been a fair man. I got the jacket and loved it. I'm waring it as I type. It is freezing in here. When the bill came in, the company had double billed us. My parents contested the charge via American Express. The company apparently double billed everyone, because they went out of business. My parents never ended up paying the bill. I never even went to the concert.
On a different note; Recently, Cynthia and I helped Katelyn put a blog together. She has recently given it up and gotten on with her life. Well she just turned fifteen. Which means my jacket is older than she is. I bought it in the Spring. She was born in the Fall. Yee-gads, I'm old.

Pedestrian Points
I've ridden with several people who say things like "The chick pushing the baby carriage is worth double points." I have said stupid things like that myself. The simple fact is that people behind the wheel of a car feel a superiority to those walking down the street. Our cities, particularly Houston, are designed for cars, not pedestrians. Someone is paying attention. Some cities are trying to make a difference. I say the change needs to come in those who drive, not those who walk.

A private study released Thursday concluded that sprawling, newer cities in the South and West tend to be built with wide, high-speed roads that are especially dangerous for walking. "So much of our transportation system is designed for cars and only cars," said Anne Canby, president of the Surface Transportation Policy Project, which issued the report. The group advocates balanced transportation. ...  "Wide roads, speeding traffic and a lack of crosswalks or sidewalks can make walking a deadly activity," the report said. "There simply are not enough pedestrian facilities." ...  "It's changing the culture so the person in the SUV on the cell phone knows that it's their responsibility to stop and respect the pedestrians," Yahoo News (AP)

It is just like everything else. It takes a huge stack of bodies before any one pays attention. Tobacco kills more people than guns. Drunk drivers kill more people than died in some wars. One child stubbys a toe on a slide in Kentucky and they are all band.

Ornethopter

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a nutty professor and his flying machine. This is straight out of one of those old Disney flicks from the fifties.

"It feels like going over a speed bump every second. It is a little like being on a vibra-bed," DeLaurier said. "I don't think the ornithopter will have any practical advantages for commercial vehicles." Nonetheless, microplanes with flapping wings could prove to be of interest to the military, because such a vehicle can achieve lift quickly. Ornithopter drones can also hover. SRI International and the University of Toronto a few years ago created a hovering plane called the Mentor for a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency project. CNet News

Song

Artist:	Pearl Jam [ Search RP ]
Song:	Nothing As It Seems
Album:	Binaural [ Search RP ]

Better War Through chemicals
Our tax dollars at work. I've heard of LSD tests on soldiers to see if they could ignore weird stuff happening all around them, ignore pain, ignore the fact that they were in a war, and keep fighting all the time.

If it's good enough for ravers, it's good enough for G.I.s. That's the thinking, apparently, behind the Army's decision to test the animal tranquilizer Ketamine as away to soothe injured soldiers. The drug – known in the clubs has "Special K" – has been reducing party-goers to gurgling blobs for more than a decade. This year, the Army has been running final, phase III Food and Drug Administration trials on a quarter-dose nasal inhaler of "K," to see if it can substitute for morphine. . . . THERE'S MORE, DUDE: Back in '64, the Army decided it'd be a good idea to give 60 of its soldiers inhalable LSD. DefenseTech

Here is a copy of the PDF document from DefenseTech telling about the experiments on soldiers in the sixties. It is hard to read. Would someone please read it and summarize in the comments. Thanks.
Hey Crispen, you should dig that crazy declassified LSD stuff.

Tank Silencer
I'm not sure what this thing really is.

My buddy Rob found the "tank" here. I've found this image in a couple of places. No one seems to know what purpose the cylinder performs. If it is some sort of test device, why paint it camouflage? It has me stumped. Those little brackets on the top of each section of cylinder must be crane mounts. I can't explain it, but it just looks like those things are full of compressed air, like inner-tubes. If that were the case, the metal structure would not look so stout.

Strange that it looks slightly like a fallous! Maybe it's a pun about the army playing with their weapons? The Humor Archives

Here's another photo that's doing the rounds on the internet. It's captioned 'Tank Silencer'. I have no idea what this device is actually used for, but somehow I don't think it's a tank silencer. So this would be a case of 'real picture, false caption.' The Museum of Hoaxes

Some one please find this thing out there and let me know WTF!! it is.

Boxing Day
What the hell is Boxing Day? It is the day after Christmas.
Why do I mention this? There was a murder of two police officers in England last year on Boxing Day. It was a top story and about the hundredth time I heard the term I had to go look it up. It was a particularly brute murder involving an audio recording of one of the officers begging for his life before being shot in the head.

A former US Marine was found guilty today of the cold-blooded murder of traffic policeman Ian Broadhurst on Boxing Day last year. David Bieber, a bouncer and steroid abuser who is wanted in the US for a murder plot, was also convicted of the attempted murders of two of Pc Broadhurst's colleagues. . . . [The jury members] were unaware that he was a drug dealer who had fled to the UK from Florida where he was wanted by police over a plot to hire a hit-man to kill a love rival. He was also suspected of hiring the same gunman to murder his former girlfriend, but the attempt on her life failed. news.Scotsman.com

West Texas
I have a buddy who recently went to some park in West Texas for a 3 day hike. No, I didn't go. He will not give me a written description of what happened, or I would quote him here. Check out the full list of pictures (Click on the image).



Please take a look at the pictures and let me know what you think. I will probably strong arm my friend for something in writing to post here. From his verbal description it sounded like a challenging blast. Mostly he described the feel of being miles from anywhere in a place that took hours to drive to.

They hiked through a cloud where everything was so wet that it seemed to sweat right in front of your eyes.
They camped twice, having to bring everything they needed the whole time including water on their backs.
They saw plants that only exist on the mountain where they hiked.

I went hiking in West Texas many moons ago. It was a life altering experience. I have to say, I'll never do it again. I'm not sure I'm glad I did it. It's done. I survived. I am glad these guys went. Some of the guys on this trip go hiking all the time.

Song

Artist:	Hank Dogs [ Search RP ]
Song:	18 Dogs
Album:	Bareback [ Search RP ]

Firefox
This guy has a review of Firefox. I like his list of must have extensions. I use Image Zoom a bunch as well.

Wrong
I wonder down the street listening to music. Maybe it was the news. I was listening to myself. I was listening to those little gut feelings. God is perfect. God can do anything. If I ask God to fix me, and God does not, then God does not want me fixed. I must fit God's plan somehow. I've said before that it is God's plan, not mine.
Life is too short to feel like this all the time. I cannot just get over it. I've been like this all my life. Perhaps I just don't know how to be happy.
Oh, well, I'm off to pay bills, do the dishes, finish laundry, mope around, climb the walls, scream at God and fall asleep worrying about death, all the while afraid to live.
I'll try to stop whining about this stuff. It does help to write about it.

Al Quida in Texas
From Out of Water

When my unit was conducting vehicle checkpoint operations is Iraq we came upon numerous vehicles with Texas registration. We would take pictures of the registration stickers for later investigation. Seems pretty clear how this particular vehicle got to Fallujah: stolen in TX, taken across the border into Mexico, put in a sea-land container and then placed on a ship, shipped to Egypt/Lebanon/Jordon and sold on the black market, bought by terrorist, driven to Iraq. Out of Water

I remember reading years ago that vehicles taken off the streets of my fair city of Houston have been tracked to the Mexico City police force, Sandinista Army, farm vehicles in the Australian outback, and now to the mean streets of Iraq. The blog link above quotes a story that says a Texas registered SUV was being stripped and filled with explosives for use as a car bomb in Falluja. It was found in a mosque. Houston has one of the highest car insurance rates I've heard of. Something like one in five Chevy trucks will be stolen that is registered in Southeast Texas. I wish I knew where I read that. We are supplying Central America and apparently the Middle East with affordable transportation.
Dammit, I'm sick of being mocked and taken advantage of by the rest of the world.

Russia's anti missile missile
Russia has a system similar to the U. S. missile protection system in the testing faze.

Russia has successfully tested a modernized anti-ballistic missile at a range in the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan, its defense ministry says. . . . The test suggests Russia has a working system in place around Moscow as the US presses ahead with the deployment of its new anti-ballistic missile (ABM). BBC

It seems that many countries get bent out of shape of a defensive anti missile system. They know it will just make the U. S. and now Russia more arrogant and self confident when pushing other countries around. There is some treaty this stuff violates from well before people thought it was feasible. Oh, and from long before Iran had intercontinental ballistic nuclear weapons. Oh, wait, Iran doesn't have those yet, they are just doing research.

In 1995, Iran signed $940m in contracts with the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy to complete a commercial nuclear power plant, and instantly became part of the nuclear weapons proliferation puzzle. Why, the experts began to ask, would Iran, a nation with huge supplies of natural gas, commit itself to an expensive nuclear power program that could not possibly generate electricity as cheaply as its natural gas program - unless of course the real plan was to gain the capability to make its own nuclear weapons. Guardian

Between Iran, Pakistan  and North Korea, it is no wonder the larger "super powers" are antsy. Maybe there was something to that whole "Axis of Evil" thing. You think? It sounds like the Russians could have saved themselves some headaches and just not sold a bunch of nuclear stuff to Iran in the first place.

Now it makes sense.
I wondered why Israelis were so upset by this story from The Guardian.

Of all the revelations that have rocked the Israeli army over the past week, perhaps none disturbed the public so much as the video footage of soldiers forcing a Palestinian man to play his violin. . . . The rightwing Army Radio commentator Uri Orbach found the incident disturbingly reminiscent of Jewish musicians forced to provide background music to mass murder. "What about Majdanek?" he asked, referring to the Nazi extermination camp.

I remember a scene in Schindler's List (Oh my God, I spelled that right on the first try) where this was depicted. Now I'm torn.

Lease
I have to give my apartment  complex notice by the end of December. The bastards want sixty days notice, or they charge you an arm and a leg. Who let that bill pass? Well, I HATE moving. I mean, I HATE moving. I would love to stay, except for the neighbors. They are mean and loud.  I want to buy a new computer, except I live in a shitty neighborhood and I don't want the DELL boxes to show up at the front office. I HATE moving. Now I have a one in a million chance at a job down town. I would love to live in the city. Well, except for all the people. Stuff is nice, but the people get in the way of it all. Rent is due day after tomorrow. I promised myself I would write a letter requesting my rent amount for next year on December first. That way, I'll have a one time shot to go looking around for another apartment, and some time to pack and higher some movers. I HATE moving. Some one needs to come up with a prohibitively expensive business plant that simply moves you in one shot. They show up in the morning and take your keys from you at work. They disappear for several hours. They don't bug you with any details. You simply show up at your new place. They hand you the key and you hand them a check. Behold, you are moved. I HATE moving.

Ukraine
The Ukraine is in some real trouble. Every one is worried about the money. Two guys have claimed victory in the latest presidential election. There is evidence of fraud in the election. The Ukraine has a bunch of cheep experienced labor and Russia (supported by one of he "presidents") and Europe (supported by the other "president") both want the country in their flock. If something doesn't give soon, it is going to be a nasty mess.

Work Email
Didn't I just gripe about my work email going down? Now, I'm really stuck. I have no idea where I left off on stuff. I leave that kind of information in the Outlook task list. I leave it there, because the company says to do that kind of thing. The email came back online after a while, but the network ground to a halt with loud squeaks and clunking noises.

News Updates
One thing I noticed this weekend, MSM (Mainstream Media) didn't update many of their web pages very thoroughly. Until about 10:00 Monday, Reuters didn't have a single RSS feed update since the 23rd. However, the blog-sphere was updated pretty religiously. True, not every blog was updated every day, but many were. At least one had a guest author because the regular author was in Libya on assignment. I was joansing for news and my only fix was blogs.

From Little Green Footballs

A masked Palestinian woman helps a boy to hold a toy gun near other children during a rally in support of Hamas movement in the northern Gaza Strip refugee camp of Jabalia.(AFP/Mohammed Abed)

Yes, this kind of makes me ill. Someone has to show you how to hold a gun. My parents taught me. This is a display of children holding guns to make a political point.  I've never met any one raised in the Middle East who was willing to tell me about their childhood. I have to say, this photograph is beyond my tolerance level for culture shock.

Songs

Artist:	John Anderson [ Search RP ]
Song:	Seminole Wind
Album:	Seminole Wind [ Search RP ]

Artist:	Portishead [ Search RP ]
Song:	Glory Box
Album:	single [ Search RP ]

Poker
Poker was fun. We played Texas hold-em. When I was out I went in and watch SciFi channel on a 61 inch TV. Nice evening.
I'm not sure what age every one was, but we all seemed close. The p;lace we plaid was one of the guys houses. He is single and has a really nice house. The one guy who was married there seems to have had a hard time of it. I won't go into details.
I lost $20. I gave up and went and watched SciFi on the 61 inch TV. Did I mention that already?

Life
I'm watching the Incredibles. I've missed my calling. I should have been a super villain. I'm already good at rants. I have a good hair style for the job. I'm strange and might qualify as the "quiet" type. Most of my big schemes tend to fail in the end. I'm a jerk. I'm on the edge. I'm a loner. I have a dark sense of humor. hmmm. I need to update my resume. Oh, and get one of those snazzy outfits. And, I need the whopping great bags of money it takes to build and maintain a layer. I'll need minions. I'll have to find some cool top secret technology too. This could work.

Saturday
I hope something interesting happens today. I'm getting anxious. So far today I've accomplished nothing. I can't even bring myself to fold the cloths in the dryer. I haven't even eaten the customary sandwich.
My parents are trimming the hedges in the front of the house. I'm watch Anaconda (4 I think). Poker is tonight. Well, we hope.

Links / News
It's a Dan-derful Life from IOWAHAWK (I found it on Little Green Footballs)

Turkey Day
It was great. Ate too much, drank three glasses of wine. Watched a bunch of TV. Shot the breeze with friends. It was great.

Song

Artist:	Fairport Convention [ Search RP ]
Song:	Matty Groves
Album:	Liege & Lief [ Search RP ]

New Flashlight
I ordered a new LED flashlight. I have to say, it is the brightest LED I've ever seen. It has a nice field and been. I do have a fixation for flashlights. It says water proof to 100 meters. That at least means it will not go down with the first  drop of rain. We will see how many hours of useful light I get out of it.

News/Links
Here we go (Iran)
Iran refuses to allow inspections or to shut down several centrifuges. I could have told you this was coming. They close their governing house (parliament) with official chants of "death to America" "death ti Israel" and those in Europe think they are going to comply on one damn thing? The Europeans didn't even require Iran to stop a Plutonium system. Who's side are those guys on anyway? ... Well, some one is keeping watch.

Song

Artist:	Greg Brown [ Search RP ]
Song:	Who Woulda Thunk It
Album:	In The Dark With You [ Search RP ]

Artist:	Be Good Tanyas [ Search RP ]
Song:	Rain and Snow
Album:	Blue Horse [ Search RP ]

Boring Day
It has been the most boring day. Even the news is boring. It feels kind of good though. It's raining outside. It is muggy and not too warm. I did one load of laundry. I made it to the store for bread and the like.

Lawyers and Blogs and the Truth, Oh My
I'm noticing several blogger talk about receiving letters to stop talking about (criticizing) what someone says. Some one writes something in a blog about a web page, then the web page owners get a bunch of lawyers and try to shut the bloggers up. It cracks me up. The web page folks spout some bullshit about politics and then get all pissy about some one calling them on it. They should save the lawyers' fees and spend more money and effort checking their facts. "We don't need to tell the truth, we need more lawyers." It is that pesky constitution again.
Every word you write on the internet is immediately ready for criticism. I think these people are more used to writing books. There, you are able to complete a complex thought before every one starts bitching that you are full of crap. Grow up, don't lawyer-up. You are free to say quite a bit in this country. People are free to say you are full of shit to.

Thanksgiving
Tomorrow is Turkey day. I'm off to a friend's house to enjoy a sort of traditional turkey dinner. I did the same thing a couple of years ago and it was a blast. There will not be any where as many people this time. Just a few dregs of social misfits. I will be the only one there without a significant other.

Wish and Wonder
It's cold outside. I think that is appropriate for Thanksgiving day. I wish I could say I was packing for the family trip to wherever. My wife is putting the kids to bed. I finished my honey-dos today so I'll have a day to myself when we get back. Or, maybe I wish I could say that I was working on my PHD over the holiday, or volunteering to help someone. Maybe building a house with Carter.  Maybe in Iraq, a career officer, squatting in a hole somewhere looking forward to my turkey flavored MRE. I'm half way up the scale. I'm not homeless and I'm not Trump. I am a member of the great and powerful American middle class. We make America possible. And, I'm holding up my end all alone. My luck, I'll have to be a pallbearer at my own funeral. Did I wish at some point to do it all myself? I bet I did. By mistake, I said that I wanted to do it all myself. To prove that I could. Well, I've done it. Now I wish to do it alone no more.
God, I wish I had someone to share tomorrow with. You know what I mean. Someone special who finds me special. What happened? Where did I go wrong?

P. S.
I tried not to type the above paragraphs. I stopped and deleted them twice, but they just kept coming back. Sorry.

Links
Simpson's personality test.
Bob Marley.

WOW
I've been looking for news about new energy sources. This blog (Winds of Change) has compiled quite an amazing list of recent developments. I don't have real idea of what will go in the tank of your next car, or what will generate the electricity in your home in ten years. They all sound like good ideas to me.

Writing
I have a friend who recently asked me about writing. She thinks she can write. That is all it really takes. I don't know if I can write well or not. I put the words down on the page. Now there are software based systems to write for you. These systems are in their infancy today. Most people are not creative. I suppose computers will not be required to achieve a genuine or unique thought either. The publishers would hand you a bowl full of fingernail clippings if you were willing to pay for it. They are in it for the money.
I enjoy writing. I am enjoying typing this right now. I don't really care if any one is reading this or not. I used like having it out there.
The one thing that I've always wanted to do is write fiction. The trouble is, I'm not very good at it. Perhaps practice would help. I'll spare you from proving my point. I enjoy reading sci-fi, but I'm terrible at writing it. The only thing I seem to be good at is writing anecdotes. I wrote a purely factual account of meeting a cat a couple of months ago. I got some positive response. I enjoyed writing it too.

Smoosh
I walked over to my friend's cube at work today. It is Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I'm taking tomorrow off, so this is my Friday. I had already gotten most of my work done for the day. It wasn't even lunch time. We chit-chatted about inconsequential stuff for a moment and I noticed her tweak one little rod on her desktop toy. It is one of those magnetic rod and steel ball constructor set doo-hickies. I have one much like it. She looked at the toy with quiet awe. I reach over as smooshed it flat (no harm done). Her heart skipped a beat. She gasped. and you would have thought I kicked her dog. I made some goofy construction that I knew she would instantly undo when her will came back. I'm glad we have a long break before Monday. Though she has already rebuilt her masterpiece, she will not forgive me by Monday.

Oceans
I learned a fact a long time ago. If you drop a basketball into a puddle of water and pick it up. The damp on the surface is deeper than the Earth's oceans, relatively speaking.
If I were able to shrink the earth down to the size of a basketball, how much would it weigh?

Links / News
What is wrong with letting Amtrack go out of business? What is wrong with the government taking it over (nationalizing it)?
VR Helmet Comparison Chart

Plane Crash
What did I just say about a plane crash? There was a bad one in Houston today. We heard about it at work this morning.  The weather is nasty. We speculated on what might have caused the trouble. It turns out, George Bush senior. was scheduled to take that plane on a business trip. That is why it was flying into Hobey Airport.  The plane clipped a light pole on the Beltway. Those things are quite high, but not so high you would expect planes to clip them. I wonder if it hit the pole after something else caused it to loose altitude. That was a corporate jet. I've heard those things are pretty reliable. I might be wrong. Here is another opinion. (from the Daily Brief) People have horrible opinions about this.

European opinion.
I've said many times that we should not take the Europeans opinions too seriously. Europeans are going to do what the Europeans do best, sit on their hands and bitch until America bails them out. Here is another opinion. (from Tim Blair)

Asshole
I hope this guy (the fan who threw the cup) gets seriously smacked by the legal system. I don't care who did what, players, who make millions, should never go after a fan. If the fan pulled a knife, or gun, I would say different. The guy threw a cup of ice. Look Mr. Multi-millionaire, (wait, not so much any more (hehe)) give it a rest and be the bigger man. You have a million impressionable kids worshiping your every move. Looser. I wish they would fire you and sue you for the hundreds of millions this may cost the NBA.

Ah, it is Us vs Them
Even a tolerant people will tern on the intolerant. When people who think they are the most welcoming folks in the world find themselves under siege, they will tern. They will defend their homes with the same ferocity as grisly will protect her young. It cannot be the people on the other side of the world in trouble. It cannot be people they do not know who are threatened. It must be them, their children, their way of life, their existence, their place in history, their legacy, and not one item less. They will tern, unless it is too late, unless they have been terned against.

Links
Some disturbing pictures from Falluja. (Thanks Cynthia)
A cool Flash experiment showing a battle in ASCII format.

Artist:	Ollabelle [ Search RP ]
Song:	Soul Of A Man
Album:	Ollabelle [ Search RP ]

Poker
We are going to try poker again this evening. ... Holy crap. I typed that last sentence and my phone rings to cancel. It terns out we have no real place to play. That is freaky. We will try again next Saturday.

Ordering Food.
No poker tonight. I had my mouth all watering for something bad for me. I figure I'll order some Chinese food. I call the place up and an Arabic guy answers the phone. Hey, it is the 21st century. I start placing my order. He doesn't speak English. I mean, not at all.  I can hear people in the background speaking English and Chinese. Never mind. I call another place that delivers subs. It is another Arabic guy. He speaks more english, but not enough to get the whole "no tomatoes" concept across. BAH! One more try. I call a third place. This one is a pizza place that also does subs and salads. A (cute sounding) Mexican girl answers who speaks better English than I do. I can't wait to find out if there are tomatoes on anything.

MP3 Editor
I found a program called AudaCity that has done pretty well so far editing my MP3 files. When you obtain these things, sometimes they have problems. This thing fixes them pretty well.
You need the Lame_enc.dll to save MP3 format. This is the problem with open source. They can't include it because of distribution rights. They make it easy enough to install though.
Some dope out there thinks it is better to record one long MP3 instead of breaking things up into manageable pieces. This software makes it easy to highlight chunks and save as MP3. This would work well for converting old tapes or even (heaven forbid) records, if you are in to that sort of thing.

MP3 Player
I received my MP3 player today. It has been charging for a couple of hours. This one was recommended by only a couple of people. There are so many "iPod Killers" out there now, that it is difficult to tell them apart. I haven't thought of many new requirements for the ultimate personal device.
I'm having some trouble getting my old MP3 DVD to read. Most of the MP3's I've acquired over the years are burned to data CDs. I recently burned a data DVD and it has some trouble reading. I hope it is not corrupt. The copy faze is going to take longer than I thought. I don't really have an index of my stuff, so I just have to go digging. You can only really copy one thing off a CD or DVD at a time because the head has to jump from one spot to the other. That operation is extremely time consuming on a CD or DVD drive.
Lets see, how many MP3s do I have.70 data CDs and one data DVD. Lets say that those CDs are about 85% full. (750 * .85) * 70 + (4.3 * 85) = 44 990.5 gigabytes. That is not nearly as many as I thought. I'm only putting  I'll be able to go through my whole collection.

Poker
We are going to try again this Sunday. This one is a cheaper game, so I should only be out a couple of bucks for a fun time.

God Kills
This comment (from samizdata.net) makes an interesting extension of how candles may lead to lung cancer via churches. You know Europe is on the way to making tobacco illegal. They ban smoking everywhere. They are talking about making fatty foods illegal in the States. It is never going to end. As long as there are new politicians or news correspondents who need a cause, something has to be the top story.
Politicians need crusades to fight for. They need the voters to be just pissed about something to vote for them.
News people need news. There is not always a plane crash to cover. They want you to be just mad enough to keep watching.
What is the answer? Talk to people around you. Talk to your family. Turn off the TV. Find a pen pal in another country. Don't be afraid to say something every now and then.

Addictive Behavior
This article scares me. I remember a few years ago at my day job some people were passing some pornographic images around through email.. They got busted and many of them got fired over the incidents. Some people who had very long histories with the company were allowed to stay with the company with a promis to stop. They did not stop. They just tried to hide it better. They sued the company and ended up getting their jobs back, sort of. I bet their argument had something to do with the addictive nature of pornography.
I remember sitting in some one's office/cube talking about why someone would keep doing the transfers via email even after they had been caught. I told this coworker that I thought it was because porn is addictive.

News
Who's Next?
Between North Korea, Pakistan, Iran and the U.S.  selling all kins of bad stuff all over the world, this whole axis of evil thing is more or less true. I'm sure Russia and China are not far behind. Hell, France sells jets to African nations. If memory serves those jets France blew up in the Ivory Coast last month were French made.
Some Good News
A Polish woman was freed after being held in Iraq for a while. I guess you can't make any Polish jokes about freeing hostages.
Contractors Die in Iraq
Wow, allot of contractors have been killed and injured in Iraq. I had no idea. (from IntelDump). I know at my company contractors are teated a bit like they just don't count. We do much of the same work and have no benefits. I wonder how many direct employees of those companies have been killed or injured. Or, is the term contractor being used differently here? I may just need to get my terms straight.
Scramjet
Scram Jet Test is successful. It is basically a high speed ramjet (the f-16 has a ramjet design). I thought scramjets were invented in the 60s. I've looked around and it looks like the ramjet was invented in 1913. The scramjet seems to be considered a variant on that design and there is not much of a line drawn between the development of both.

War Blogs
I'm really getting into reading blogs. I've found several that are political and military in nature. The Belmont Club gives a definition of aware crime. Later there is a great description of battle tactics used in Grozeny last decade against the Russians and how similar tactics have been used against us in Falluja these last few weeks.
The blog-sphere is very full of itself lately. Bloggers are proud of a couple of good catches. They are only humans and are just as fallible as MSM (Main stream Media).

Tom DeLay
I voted against this guy. He is as crooked as a cornered snake. Now congress changed the rules to protect him. That makes me ill.

Jordy Glasses
I've been thinking about building a pare of glasses with a camera and display like this for years. I may have to check these guys out. The product that might work best for me is the Jordy Glasses. Pretty cool stuff. This will fall far short of letting me drive. Honestly, that is the biggest shortcoming to my situation. If I lived in New York (blech) I would not perceive it as a problem.
I'll tell you what I really need. I need a car that drives itself. I want to sleep on the way to work. I want people in the front to face the people in the back. I want there not to be any windows (or they are opaque most of the time) so there is no reason to flip people off. I want to play video games while I am on my way to and from aunt what's her names place. I want to watch satellite TV whirl traveling across the country. I want people who cannot stop drinking and driving to have the wheel removed from their car so they cannot endanger my life.

Oil for Food
I remember people complaining about Iraq getting money for oil during the embargo. Now they are after a French bank, among many others, for laundering money for Iraq under the cloak of humanitarian aid. This really makes me sick. I knew it was a mistake letting Iraq export any oil. It sounds like more money went into the hands of Saddam and Al Quida than the Iraqi people. I blame the bleeding heart liberals in both the U. S. and Europe.

Unusually High Volume
Every time I call the help desk at my office, I get "all agents are busy" and a note about how some exchange server has crashed. It is always an exchange server. Our company runs on email. If something happened to email the U. S. economy would collapse. Anyway, I have to call in and up the priority on the ticket to fix the server. They hate that. I've had a license server with problems since yesterday and I cannot get any help from them. We call it 1-800-No-Help. I had to listen to crappy light rock and the same help messages over and over and over and over. There was a company that had interesting random facts on their hold lines. People griped when they got a human because they were waiting for the answers to the trivia.

400GB
Nice. I've sworn my next computer will have 2 gigabyte of ram and as much hard drive space as I can stuff in the box. Of course, I've also said I'm going to get one of those portable desktops. The truth is, I may not buy another box like I have before. I may stick to portable computers and left over / second hand desktops for servers.

Telling Picture

Things that jumped out at me with this photo.

• They are only waring kneepads on their right knees.
• The guy on the right is a sniper. That is a semi-auto sniper rifle with a specialized scope.
  
• The sniper is waring elbow pads as well.
• The Hummer is armored. Look at the doors (that louver look on the back door) and the thickness of the roof panel.
• The little tower just behind the sniper's head is the snorkel kit for the Hummer. Which means, it can drive through waist deep water (up to the windshield) without too much trouble.

Joke
To impress a woman:
Wine her. 
Dine her. 
Call her. 
Hold her. 
Surprise her. 
Compliment her.  
Smile at her. 
Listen to her. 
Laugh with her. 
Cry with her. 
Romance  her.
Encourage her. 
Believe in her. 
Pray with her. 
Pray for her. 
Cuddle  with her. 
Shop with her. 
Give her jewelry. 
Buy her flowers. 
Hold her hand.
Write love letters to her.
Go to the ends of the earth and back again for  her. <>

To impress a man:
Show up naked.
Bring chicken wings.
Don't block the TV

Christmas
I haven't decided what to do about Christmas. I don't know what to get any one, or if I'm going to get anything. Christmas i a fun time for kids. I'm 35. I'm old. I'm tired of worrying about it. Lets go to mass and have done with it.
Then I think about all the fun we had a couple of years ago. My parents and I said it was going to be a lean year. I bought them a play station and a remote control truck. They loved it. My mom to this day chases the dogs around with the truck. The dogs are smaller than the RC. I'm not sure what is going to happen this year. The earlier they start playing Christmas music and putting up Christmas decorations, the more anti-commercial I become. Thanksgiving is next week. I've already become sick of the whole Wal-Mart Christmas world. Hopefully I can pull myself out of it.

Language
I agree with this language expert. The English language is falling apart because of managers and people trying to sound committed when they are actually saying nothing.

Warp Drive
Sometimes the internet has too many answers. Sometime this afternoon I wanted to sit down and figure out how long it would take for Voyager to get home. I thought for sure they did something screwy with the math I plunked a couple of search words into Google and behold, some one had not only done the math, but made tables and fully explained and contrasted the different series math. It was a bit anticlimactic. It looks like this is the math they based the series on alright. Ill have to figure out a more obscure thing to ponder.


Childhood Memories

How much of my childhood did I spend playing with these cars?

Data
Let's see, 75 CDs with about 100 songs on each is 7500 songs. If you throw in the couple of data DVDs with seven times that many songs per disk, we are looking at 10000 or so songs. Well, that is nothing. The person in this article is going overboard. He wants to have a copy of every song ever recorded. I didn't catch how he keeps track of the songs. I can't get to the text because it is being slashdoted.

Song

Artist:	Blondie [ Search RP ]
Song:	Rapture
Album:	The Best of Blondie [ Search RP ]

Me
I've given up. I mean it this time. I've come to the conclusion that there is no point in wishing for happiness. I'm thirty five. That is the age where most people trade in their dreams for security. I'm trading in for some quiet. I've said in the past that I'm tired of hearing myself complain. Here I go again. It is far more frustrating on my end. In the last couple of days I've come to the realization that I should stop wanting happiness. A mate will not make me happy. Several people have told me that. Mom, stop asking me about grandkids. Friends, don't ask me about my love life. For God's sake, don't talk to me about sex or love or relationships. I'm done with it. I am a non sexual being. I am here for the ride. From this point on, I'm running out the clock.
I quit.

OUCH!!

Song

Artist:	Heather Nova [ Search RP ]
Song:	Walk This World
Album:	Oyster [ Search RP ]

Poler
Well, that was fast. Never mind the poker. Someone died and someone canceled. It is complicated. No poker. I shaved my head and everything. I'm going to order some Chinese and keep blogging I suppose.

TV
I forgot how bad the dubbing is on TV. I'm watching Die Hard 2 on regular TV and they masked the bad words and hack the movie to pieces to try and cut language and violence. No wonder I haven't been watching in a while.
I also caught a news story about poker. Since ESPN has put poker tournaments on TV people have been playing more. They interviewed some high school kids only to find they play for money. I remember playing cards in school. Never for more than a couple of bucks. It is just good timing that this story came on during the time I was supposed to be playing myself.

Poker
I'm off to play poker in a bit. That is, if we can find the other two people who said they want to play. This is a different set of people than last time. We are doing smaller anty stuff. It should be fun. I hope we order some greasy food that is really bad for you.  Fifteen times, I' said to myself that I don't want to go. I seem to be afraid of social stuff these days. Well, I have been for years. I'm going if it kills me. I hope that isn't ironic in the end.

No!
Schwarzenegger wants to be president. I'm not sure I like the idea. All the war movies and shitty strong man movies will not convince me he is any good at running a country.

Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart holds the most Information about it's customers, and employees. According to this article, twice as much data as the entire internet. I doubt that. I don't know what they are counting as data.
One thing I learned in the article. The number one selling item during the last couple of hurricanes that hit Florida was beer, not batteries. The number two item was Pop-Tarts.
<2004-11-14 16:00>
Yikes, I posted this before slashdot did. Creepy.

Mobile Phone Projector

Well, they have red, now they need green and blue. Check out the cool laser projection display these Germans came up with. There are a million uses for this. I wonder if I should ad this to my PDA wish list below. Here is a Google translation of the original site. This little invention really has potential. While I was first reading the SlashDot article, I pictured line drawings and solid levels of  gray, er, red. I didn't catch what the power consumption is, but this little puppy has got to make it. I want this one to work. Motorola, get on the bandwagon! I'm telling you, this is the worst time in history to buy a new mobile phone. There are too many cool inventions that are just one hair's breath away from our pockets.

Really Reality TV
The BBC reports on a new reality TV show that makes some sense. This show rebuilds homes destroyed during the war. I'm not sure how, but people are selected and their homes that have been completely destroyed are rebuilt. It might boil down to who has the best sob story reading the one example they give in the article. I may have to stop putting the whole genera of reality TV down. Na!

MP3 Player
I just ordered an MP3 player. This one does all the things I wanted a couple of weeks ago. Some new parameters have come up. While doing research, I figured out that many of the next generation media players will play videos and, perhaps, play satellite radio. Now, if they also had built in phones and did what some of the palm and other devices do, then they would be the ultimate hand held device.
I've compiled a list of features that i want in my next all-in-one personal communications/media device.

• Full featured mobile phone that actually works.
• Net surfing.
• Address book and personnel data retention.
• Play media including audio video and whatever new stuff pops up.
• Receive all forms of TV and radio  transmission including satellite.
• Interface with existing computer networks.
• Allow easy fast friendly input through voice tactile and motion sensors.
• Talk to me if I desire so I can do other things wile using it.
• Hold computer information I may need (external drive).
• Take high resolution images and video.
  
• Communicate wirelessly with other similar devices and hubs.
• Play games (including online and over the wireless network).
• Have a power source that lasts weeks on a charge.
• Have a Lo-Jack type system and be secure enough for every day use.
• Fit in my pocket and be both shock and water proof.

This isn't too much to ask, I'm sure. This list keeps growing. I'm quite sure you will get another idea from me in the weeks to come. As I look at my phone, palm and this new MP3 player, I will note all failings and revise my requirements. Any one have suggestions?

White Bread
On my way home yesterday I figured I should stop and get some food for the weekend. Normally, I blow it off and just order some pizza or something, but it was a nice chilly day yesterday and I would almost enjoy waiting on the bus. I stop at my local grocery store and begin tossing a few odd foods into my basket. I use the carry kind of basket because I only want to get enough stuff to carry home on the bus. I grabbed some green bananas. I got cereal, some cans of soup, hot dogs, lunch meat, and some store brand mac-and-cheese (with real cheese).  Typically, the last thing I grab is bread. That way it is on top and less likely to get smooshed.
I walk slowly up and down the wall of bread. I start pacing faster and faster and grunting in disbelief. All the bread is something special now. There are fifteen kinds of wheat bread. There are nine kinds of white bread, half of which are some kind of wheat. The loaves that say white bread don't look white. I say to myself out loud (really too loud to be just to me) "Is there no ^white^ bread in this country any more." Just as I was about to embark on a rant to no one on the liberal infection taking over the food industry, this little old lady standing a few feet away stops and says "Oh, honey, you want this stuff." She points at the bottom shelf. The loaf says "enriched white bread." I thank her and say "This sounds like the stuff I was looking for." Oh, baby this stuff is great. It reminds me of the sandwiches momma used to make. I'm about to embark on a toast making adventure with my new, fresh, enriched white bread.

Arafat's Funeral
I'm listening to the funeral of Arafat on the BBC. Live commentary is broken only by gunfire from the crowd. People are standing around shooting AK-47s in the air in celebration. The militants are running around in jackets and those table cloth head scarves Arafat liked so much. The helicopters circled a couple of times before landing. I bet they didn't like the look of the crowd. The body is stuck on one of the helicopters. The crowd rushed up and surrounded the landing zone.
The commentator is ducking. It's terrible. I can hear him duck when automatic fire cracks off near him. He describes the people around him as jubilant. They don't seem to care about the gunfire all around them.
The car is having to plow through the crowd to get to the aircraft. It has to push people out of the way. The commentator is still surrounded by automatic weapons fire. People are trying to touch the coffin. The people carrying the coffin are being blocked by the crowd. People are climbing on top of the coffin. The Egyptian helicopters are unable to take off for several minutes. The commentator calls the situation chaos. He has lost sight of the coffin. There are ambulances trying to make their way in the compound.
There are comments coming into the news studio saying the Ayatollah's funeral was like this.

Dear Dogbert
A friend of mine sent me this in email. I can't find the original link on Dilbert. (I didn't look very hard.)

Dear Dogbert,

Lots of people write blogs, but I've never heard of anyone who actually reads them. What's up with that?

Kurt


Dear Skirt,

Blogs exist to fill the important market niche of writing that is so dull that your eyes will burrow out of the back of your head to escape. People do read blogs, usually by accident, sometimes on a dare, but those readers are later mistaken for Mafia victims with what appears to be two holes in the back of their heads. On closer inspection, you might find their eyeballs clinging to the drapes directly behind them. Unless the cat gets them first.

Sincerely,

Dogbert

Next Topic
The golden rule. The one with the gold makes the rules.
Law of supply and demand. The one with all the supply, can demand whatever the fuck they want.

Time Tracking
I've had a requested to track my time at work. I complained about it in an earlier post. I'm looking at my Outlook calender. It is amazing how many things double up on my time. I have multiple entries for several swaths of time throughout my week. I feel like Hermione Granger in book three.  Who says there is no such thing as time travel.
Last year I had a person schedule a meeting for several Fridays in a row on something that was complicated and involved thought. I have since scheduled an LMA meeting every Friday for the last hour of the day in my Outlook calender. (LMA: Leave Me Alone)  I think I need to do the same thing for the first hour of Monday. I've heard of some one scheduling early morning meetings on Monday.
That is still not as bad as a buddy's wife who has to call in at 2:00 AM because the meetings are in Europe. Screw that.

Song

Artist:	Lush [ Search RP ]
Song:	Undertow
Album:	Split [ Search RP ]

TV-Night
My friends have TV-Night on some Thursdays. It's fun. Tonight was not TV-Night. My friend's TV is on the fritz. I'm at home reading blogs and watching Star Trek Voyager.

Arafat
Arafat is dead. One of the blogs I read said "France says Arafat's condition has improved. He is dead." He is yet hated by many. I have to say, I believe he is a murderer and stole far more from the Palestinian people than all their enemies combined.  His wife is self centered and those who surrounded him at his death bed's side were far more interested in knowing where the money went than easing his passing. Now the vultures dissect the power that was Arafat. Even some Palestinian people say the road to peace can now continue. Every thing I've read says "He was a great voice for his people, but he was in the way of progress." I remember thinking years ago, when Arafat was first pinned in his compound, they are just going to wait until he dies. They are not going to do anything about this despot. I remember thinking the same thing about Saddam Husein. Thank God he is not still in power. Neither of these evil men wield control over armed men any more.

Spam
Tracking doesn't work. Tracking is tracking down people who have written virus programs or who issue spam emails. Someone just got nine years for an email scam. That is the exception. I don't think it is a deterrent because the money is still there. It is the same as illegal drugs. If the money disappears the crime will dry up.
Filters don't work. For every filter you try to implement, the spammers have seven ways around it. I've heard one of the spam filters grabs emails that don't have any real words in the subject.
Now, you can get infected with a virus from clicking on a URL in an email. It used to be, you had to open an attachment. I've noticed the nasty trend of these virus writers getting smarter and sneakier. There is more than bragging rights involved these days. Computer virus are big business. They make money by sticking spyware on your computer or taking over the operating system to infect other computers. The way spyware makes money is by tracking your movements and selling your habits to advertisers or by using the data collected to steel from you or your company.
I've only found one filter that seems to work.I use Gmail and there is a community of people out there marking email as spam. As a bunch of people mark the email as spam, Gmail starts pulling the emails into people's spam folders.

Theory of Everything
If I'm at the origin, and the furthest known (known: piece of knowledge of any sort) is at point 1. Then is there anything at point 2? The moment you know something is at point 2, it becomes point 1.
Will there always be something at point 2? Was there always something at point 2?
String Theory: More complex bullshit spouted by physicists who really won't admit they have no idea what is going on at the sub atomic level. Basically, String Theory says once you delve below protons, electrons, and  neutrons, you run smack into all of these little funny subatomic particles that have been given all kinds of cool names like B1 and B2 ... Those particles are actually gas-zillions of these tinny vibrating strings. The strings aren't made of anything. They just "are". Actually, they are little bits of torn reality or poly-dimensional-intersections. Some say for Strings to exist, there must be 6 hidden dimensions, or was it 29, or was it an infinite number? The strings don't really exist themselves. They are manifestations. Perhaps they are just the overlap of these many dimensions. The strings change shape or rate of vibration and they, in tandem, become different forms of matter or energy. As they change shape or rate of vibration, they give off electromagnetic energy, or the emit gravity, or the strong or weak force.
This all boils down to the simple fact that science cannot tell us what gravity is. It drives scientists nuts. It makes me laugh. We cannot say what holds us down. What holds the planet and sun together in a dance through the galaxy. That is the target of all of this. I wonder if I'll know in my lifetime. If you have ever dropped a bolling ball on your toe, you know about as much about gravity as any of the smartest people on Earth. Well, OK, knowing more would probably not help your game.

Media Player
I'm in the market for a new MP3 player. The trouble is, they do more than play music now. Some of them play videos. Most of them act like hard drives. It is a bad time to want one of these things. Next week some one will come out with the all in one doo-hickey that is a phone, plays music and videos, plays radio and TV, receives satellite TV and radio, acts like a palm device, has GPS, and lets you really surf the Internet for $39.95. I just know this is going to happen to me. I can feel it. Someone please tell me which one to get.

Office
some one commented on the MS Office post below. They recommend Word Perfect Office. I'm not so sure. At home, I use Open Office. It is free and works extremely well. I haven't upgraded in a long time. There is another called EZ Office. It is designed for Windows only. It appears to have gone from the scene. Star Office is basically Open Office. Sun has donated allot to the project. To each their own, but MS Office sucks.

Word
Microsoft loves their word processor. For years MS has been telling people who are trying to come up with a generic document format to go jump in a lake. Word for years has been deliberately incompatible with the formats that have come out. Why should MS change things while they are on top? Well, HTML, the language of the Internet, is part of this larger generic document language standard. XML, the data language is also a subset of the same standard. These and many other forms of communication came about despite Microsoft's efforts. Much of the innovation that we call the Internet came to be in the face of lawsuits and software patents that attempted to sop it? If MS had it's way, we would still be faxing word documents back and forth. MS seems to fight every new thing that comes along. They buy companies that do something new and act like they invented it first. I really want to see Microsoft fall. The trouble is, it will be by a foreign entity. There is no U. S. company that can stand up to them on their own turf.

Falluja
The New York Times has a great article on the fighting in Falluja. The best feature is the list of pictures. They have slide shows (on the right hand side) of both fighting sides. Some of the rhetoric between the soldiers is interesting as well. All those scary things you've seen in SciFi movies about soldiers having an unfair advantage with night vision and the ability to sand off for kilometers and destroy the enemy without them knowing are coming true.

Ivory Cost
It looks like the French are getting a taste of modern war. First I suppose we must define modern war. I define modern war as a technical impossibility You are not allowed to conquer a country or people to sort out the trouble makers. You must somehow single out only those who wish you harm and only after they have done you harm. You are not allowed to take any casualties. There can be now collateral damage, and no one is aloud to admit you are there to kill people.
France is in the Ivory Cost  Here is the scenario as I gather it. The official government is trying to put down a rebellion with force. The people are pissed because, well, they are the rebels. Their families are the ones getting killed. They hold protests, then throw rocks, then attack out-write French soldiers as they go about their daily business. The French are sending in more troupes. The local government is backing off a bit. It is the same old story. It is a domestic fight. As soon as the cops show up both sides turn on the cops (in this case , the French). Isn't this how Vietnam started?