May 31, 2002
The Emperor Wears No Clothes
The entire text of the classic expose of the government persecution of agricultural hemp is on line. I've always wanted to read this book - but could never find it.
Permalink | Comments (2)The Sum of All Fears
It's really not a matter of if at this point, it's when. Read this from the Jewish World Review for more.
Permalink | Comments (1)Racial Profiling: A Rant
Yesterday, Governor Jeb Bush was given the full wand search treatment at the Oakland Airport. I'm sure it made for a great little picture, even a governor isn't immune from the law, and of course I agree 100% with that.
However, airport security is not about enforcing the law, its about keeping air travel safe. Was the safety and security of the passengers on that plane enhanced because we confirmed that Governor Jeb Bush was not carrying a belt bomb? Of course not. Was the safety and security of the plane compromised because we didn't take a close look at the brown guy in a turbin two people behind Bush in line? We don't know, do we?
And there in lies my problem with our approach to airport security. We are randomly looking for weapons in places where we are least likely to find them, on high level government officials, little old ladies, decorated war Vets, etc. We are so desperate to be politically correct that we are ignoring the very obvious point that WE KNOW WHAT THE BAD GUYS LOOK LIKE!
They are Arabic, Middle-Eastern, Brown, pick whatever adjective you want. We know on a pure mathematically basis, that the guy of middle-eastern descent is more likely to be the terrorist that Governor Jeb Bush. Since our security staff will always be limited, the best way to actually make air travel more secure is to focus the limited resources on those we know to pose the greatest threat. This isn't rocket science.
But we can't do that in this country. It might make some people feel bad. I wonder how they will feel when their guts are spread across 10 acres because they were in the next plane to blow up?
If we really are so intent in this country on treating everybody equally, lets do it right. Everybody flies naked. It will speed up security, and greatly enhance safety for all of us.
Permalink | Comments (2)May 30, 2002
NY Times right for once
I'm generally not a fan of the NY Times Editorial page. However, I can't find much to argue with in this assessment of our government's performance since Sept 11.
Permalink | Comments (0)Town employees polluting creek
It seems as though employees of Leesburg, VA (where I live) have been caught dumping paint into the street, with the runoff ending up in a creek. I'm no ecoterrorist, but we all know what would happen if a non-government employee were caught dumping paint like this.
May 28, 2002
The Political Compass
Where do you stand? I am in the same quadrant as Milton Friedman, a right leaning Libertarian. I am nothing if not consistant ;)
Permalink | Comments (0)May 27, 2002
Weekend Camping Trip
I hope everybody had a great Memorial Day weekend. The highlights of mine include:
- My first Geocache! We had a great time "treasure hunting" as my kids refer to it.
-A really cool used bookstore in downtown Front Royal, VA. The weather was bad on Sunday so headed into town for ice cream, to kill some time, and found the bookstore. 30 minutes, 30 dollars, and about 40 books later, we left as happy campers.
-One hell of a storm on Sunday night. It stormed from about 5-6, which we passed in the tent with our new books. The weather cleared from about 6-8, and at 8 PM it just dumped. I'm talking Noah's flood quality rain, with plenty of thunder and lightning too. The kids were in the van watching a movie, so we headed to the van too to wait out the storm. Two hours later at 10 PM we are still waiting, its still pouring, the thunder and lightening are getting worse, and the kids are very tired and cranky. At 10 PM, it let up enough to allow a bathroom room, and it started pouring again just as we got into the tent. The tent was fine, not a drop of water to be found inside. I woke up several times between 10 PM and 1 AM as bone shattering loud thunder, and lightening so frequent it was like daylight, had my heart beating at 120 bpm. I layed there imaging the headlines....
Family killed as tree falls on tent
Family dies in fire as lightning torches campground.
It really was that bad. By far the worst thunderstorm I can remember experiencing. The kids slept through it all once we were in the tent. I don't know what time it finally let up. but I slept through whatever happened after 1 AM.
By the way, the forecast, as late as 4 PM on Sunday, was for scattered thunderstorms, some possibly severe. Scattered to me says hit and miss, they are bad for 30 minutes and then its over, etc. Not 6 consecutive hours of torrential rain, thunder, and lightning.
I should have majored in meteorology. Its the only career field that I know of that the so called professionals are so consistently wrong with no apparent detriment to their careers.
Permalink | Comments (3)May 23, 2002
Coconuts more dangerous than Sharks
As a former resident of Kwajalein, Marshall Islands, I've seen coconuts fall off a tree and just miss somebody. A direct hit to the skull could certaintly kill you.
Remember this article this summer when the press gets hysterical about a shark attack in Florida.
Permalink | Comments (0)May 21, 2002
This is brilliant
The Bill of Rights, printed on a thin pocket sized piece of metal. Imagine the confusion at the airport as the government employeed security agents try to decide if you can bring The Bill of Rights on the plane with you!
Link via Dodd
Permalink | Comments (3)National Geography Bee Dominated By Homeschoolers
In what is becoming a national trend, another academic competition is being dominated by homeschoolers. The National Geograpgy Bee, to be held today in Washington DC, has 12 homeschoolers in the final group if 55.
Obviously, this can not continue. We all know homeschoolers are just a bunch of nerds that spend every waking moment memorizing useless stuff like math, science, and geography. It's just not fair to the public school kids, who have to fit studying into a day filled with cultural sensitivity training, mandatory volunteerism, and random drug and weapon searches.
You read it here first, somebody from the NEA will demand some sort of limit on homeschooler participation in these types of events.
The really cool thing though, is that Alex Trebek is the host for the event!
Permalink | Comments (1)May 20, 2002
Sony's latest, greatest copy protection scheme can be circumvented with a 99 cent pen
Proving once again that the digital copying genie is out of the bottle for good, Sony's fool proof copy protection is easily circumvented by using a felt tip pen to draw a line on the outer edge of the CD. This keeps your CD-ROM drive from reading the erroronous data in the outer track that is the key to Sony's system.
I love it.
Permalink | Comments (1)What the ????
Today's high temperature in Fairbanks, Alaska - 79 degrees
Today's high in the DC area - 61 degrees
Anybody know if its snowing in hell?
Permalink | Comments (0)May 15, 2002
Some advice from Chris
If at some point in your life your faced with two routers (one is ISDN, one is 802.11b, but that really doesn't matter) that after 4 days of successfully passing packets to each other, just quit, take the easy route and connect a LAN port on each router with a crossover cable and get on with your life.
Don't call Netgear and Speedstream tech support 3 times each, don't spend 1/2 a night trying to change the IP address of the Speedstream router, don't try to configure the ISDN router to function like an ISDN modem. Turn your Wireless router into the world's most expensive hub and get on with your life. Nobody cares if it "should" work. Trust me on this one.
For the record, regardless of what they tell you at Speedstream support, you can't change the IP address of your PC first, then change the IP address of the router, because as soon as your change the PC IP address to something not in the routers network, you lose the ability to log into it via the web interface. However, the router will not accept the address change first, most likely because the new address is not on the same network as the PC address. And remote management doesn't seem to work at all, and yes it was turned on.
Speedstream tech support said they were going to fire up a router and do it themselves, then call me with the proof that it can be done. I'm still waiting for that call.
Permalink | Comments (0)May 13, 2002
Magazine names Chelsea Clinton a sex symbol
Apparently, they are smoking copious quantities of crack at Vanity Fair.
May 12, 2002
SPAM Irony
I got a SPAM this morning advertising a new tool that will keep your inbox spam free. I'm pretty sure the only tool that would be 100% effective would be a sledge hammer to smash my computers with!
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Sun, 12 May 2002 21:47:44 -0400
Date: 12 May 2002 21:47:42 -0400
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May 08, 2002
Stop! Your help is needed
My friend Jason is in the band CombinationLock. They are being featured this week only (until May 15) on the Jim Beam Music site. Jim Beam and Rolling Stone are sponsoring a web based battle-of-the-bands competition. Winning it, or at least suriving a few rounds, could get the band some big time national exposure and put them that much closer to rock stardom.
Given the fact that you are actually spending time reading the 3,000,000th most popular site on the Internet, I trust you can spare 10 seconds to pop over to the site and vote for CombinationLock.
Please vote now. Do it for the children. Do it because we all had the rock star fantasy at one time, and helping this band make it is probably as close as you will ever come to living the rock star dream. Do it just to see if this post on the 3,000,000th most visited web site on the Internet can actually influence the results of a national competition. Do it just because you can. Just Do It. (Trademark infrigement is completely intentional)
One more thing, leave a note here after you vote.
May 06, 2002
Admit it, you owned one of these
The Cartalk guys ran a poll to find the 10 worst cars of the last millineum. Some of the comments are hilarious. Although I never personally owned one, my dad did have a banana yellow Ford Pinto hatchback for a while.
Permalink | Comments (0)May 03, 2002
CD Review: Kasey Chambers - Barricades & Brickwalls
I love this album. Kasey has an amazing voice, but it is the stylistic range on this CD that really blew me away. Within the first 5 songs you get a gritty blues tune in the title track, pure pop perfection in "Not Pretty Enough" and what I thought was a Hank Sr. cover tune in "A Little Bit Lonesome." (It's not a cover tune, she wrote it.) Also, I rarely notice the vocals in music. I'm much more tuned in to the rhythm of a song when it really does something for me. However, Kasey Chambers has a voice that you just can't ignore. The emotion and feeling in these songs really hit me. You need to own this album.
May 02, 2002
Treasure Hunting Geek Style
This looks like a whole bunch of fun. It's called Geocaching. People all over the world are hiding stuff in the woods, city parks, wherever and posting the GPS coordinates on the web. Then other people go and find the stuff using a GPS receiver to pinpint the location. Sort of like high tech hide and seek. This seems to be a great way to spend the day with the kids. My kids would absolutely love spending a day on a real treasure hunt. One more thing, its an excuse to buy another high tech toy!
Permalink | Comments (2)CD Review: Indigo Girls: Become You
A used CD shop just opened about a mile from my house. This is a dangerous thing. I made my first trip there tonight and came away with the Indigo Girls "Become You" and Kasey Chambers, "Barricades and Brickwalls". A Kasey Chambers review will be forthcoming.
I haven't bought an Indigo Girls CD in a long time. I wasn't real big on their direction the last couple of records. However, "Become You" takes them back to their roots. Very accessible southern flavoured folk tunes. It doesn't have the gritty feel of their early stuff, primarily because they are so much more polished as songwriters, and the production is so much better. A definite buy for any fan of the folk genre.
Permalink | Comments (2)Cable Modem, The Final Chapter
It's dead. After 11 days of no service, 3 missed appontments by Adelphia, and numerous non-returned phone messages, I quit. I called Adelphia on Tuesday and told them to cancel all services and come get the modem. They said they would be here between 8-5 yesterday to pick it up. Make that 4 missed appointments.
Verizon will be here next week to install my 128K ISDN line. If anybody out there in blog land is an ISDN networking guru - I have a question. Can I use a Cisco 750 ISDN router/modem as the modem for dial up ISDN service? I already have the Speedstream wireless router running, so all I need is a modem. I can configure the 750 as a bridge, which I think would force it to not try to route anything, however the term DHCP does not exist anywhere in the docs, so I'm concerned that it's not going to work with a dial up service if I don't have a static IP address. The 750 is an antique - it was state of the art back in 1995. However, the price was right, as a friend gave it to me, so I 'd like to make it work if possible.
I posted the quetion on USENET too. I can't remember the last time I posted something to Usenet. I guessing maybe 3-4 years ago? I have a vague memory of getting help with a Netscape problem from USENET.
Permalink | Comments (0)