March 2004 Archives

The genuises over at the GOP have decided the best way to get out the vote is so send out pop-up advertising while you surf the net. The prospect has sure encouraged me to vote against them. How about you? Do you like being irritated by people who want your support? If so, I'd see if your health insurance covers a psych evaluation. I got the story from Slashdot, who also link you to a story on how to check on your neighbor's political contributions. Kinda creepy but I know a few of you are just that bored.

In any case, I refer you again to Jim Rapoza's story about the stupidity of pop-up ads and point you to the Mozilla and Firefox download pages so you can finally get a browser that stops ads from getting to you in the first place.

Our GOP buddies have been probably successful with our less intelligent citizens in painting anyone against their lying reasons to go to war as unpatriotic and possibly treasonous. So, if you are one of those I just offended, please explain why is the widow of a fallen soldier not falling into line in blind obedience and awe to the Big Lie? Because she's right, that's why.

Our pals the French are cozying up to Saddam again. At least one of their more insidious lawyers. Let's be honest though; his call was probably only minutes ahead of Johnny Cochran's.

You want to know why the Israelis still marginally hold the moral high ground in their fight against their own local bomb throwers? This is why.

Watch how fast I stop using Travelocity. Did ya miss it? Want to know why? Read on. Granted, probably all the travel agencies are going to do this, but I'll at least I only know about this situation at the moment.

So, I'm on page 10 of Had Enough?, James Carville's new book and I figured I might as well recommend it to you already.

We'll start off with the political stuff and move in to the fun stuff later, okay? Slate has a couple articles dealing with Bush's attack ads and his continued screeching that anyone against him is against the United States. There's also another one on how the truth doesn't seem to matter to the current White House and one on the cancer that is Karl Rove.

Here's a story on how the government is attempting to kill our First Amendment. Yes, the Janet Jackson thing was out of line. But tell me how you plan on silencing Howard Stern discussing sex (which is a natural thing, right?) and then let the Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh types preach slander and hate without any repercussions. It just doesn't seem fair to me.

Martha Stewart's daughter says prison will be bad for her mom and she shouldn't have to go. I say, "Great!" It should be as awful for her as it is any convicted liar and thief.

I can't remember if I mentioned it earlier, but I love the new Nike ad where sport stars are playing sports we don't expect to see them playing. Here's a story on it and a link to the ad if you haven't seen it.

What else? Oh yeah, this should probably make your day if you've ever dealt with a city government.

How's your pool? No, not swimming. College basketball. Mine is fairly okay but that Michigan State loss kind of messes me up. In any case, here's a story on the history of the terms involved with March Madness.

I may have mentioned this one to a few of you before, but I was walking through a Barnes and Noble the other day and ran across Walter Mosley's Futureland on the bargain shelves. Granted, its fiction, but very good, plausible fiction of our world in the near future. For $6 you can't go wrong and I hope a few of you take the time to at least peruse the book.

Other tech news. The BBC reports on your damn dirty ape computer. Jim Rapoza from E-Week usually comes up with great articles, but this one on the business model against pop-up ads is one you may be able to use if you answer to someone about a website.

Don't believe that corporations are meddling with government? This story about the MPAA basically writing speeches for California's AG will hopefully wake you up.

Extra stuff: Christopher Hitchens rips Spain a new one for trying to leave us high and dry in Iraq. A story on why I don't eat seafood. And, for once, a lottery winner who actually deserves it.

Two stories about people too wrapped up in themselves to see the bigger picture. The first is from neighboring Utah where an expectant mother let one of her twins die because she didn't want the scars that would result from a Caesarean procedure she was repeatedly asked to accept. The second is another from our pals in the federal government. Instead of just trying to profit from the dead via re-election ads like his boss, Donald Rumsfeld actually has pieces of debris he has collected from 9-11. And apparently he loves to show it off. Just slightly less morbid than the Bitch of Buchenwald, but not by much.

John Kerry's website now has a special portion called DBunker, where they plan on dissecting and refuting any and all GOP attacks on the candidate. I found it to be useful but somewhat dry, so I'm sticking to Doonesbury for political information.

Leslie and I found the time to head to the north side of town for a Multicultural Festival at CCSN-Cheyenne campus. That's Cheyenne street; its not like we took off to Wyoming for the afternoon. We missed the food but caught the last couple hours of the dancing and such and had a lot of fun. So yes, there is culture to be had in our town.

Work continues to increase in intensity, but I managed to pass an internal program certification test so I didn't forget everything after 4 years and managed to pick up some new stuff so that's good news. Leslie, of course, still works too hard for her ungrateful staff members.

In case you haven't heard, salad is bad for you, but coffee isn't. At least, according to those stories. In a slightly related story, we have 14th century product placement.

>Technology boons and banes. Our first story is about a Navy instant messaging project that translates on the fly. You want to bring the world together? Get it to where we can chat without barriers. The next story concerns the falling out of encyclopedia usage with the advent of the Internet. I feel we may have lost something there.

Some bozo in Hollywood wants to make it an automatic R-rating for any movie portraying smoking. Apparently drinking alcohol is just fine with him even though it causes far more problems. Also from California, because Britney Spears needs to do something now that she is musically irrelevant, the state wants to lower the voting age to 14.

This just cracks me up. And this ain't non-funny either (the March 10th image).

Evil Ned passed along some images today and I am going to share one just because I haven't gotten any argumentative mail in awhile. I figure a healthy political discussion is just what this country needs right now and why not start at home?

I mean, isn't this what all those flag-waving, profiting-from-civilian-deaths ads are telling us?

For clarification's sake, this is an actual bumper sticker you can buy at CafePress.

Clarification: To wrap up the day, I provide a cautionary tale. I posted on the Galva Guard Yahoo group about my call with Tom on Sunday. Some of that info made it into a Star Courier article a tad out of context. Tom travelled with the advance team to Kuwait and may have had different flight routes, departure/arrival times and experiences on his way there from Fort Polk and I apologize for possibly misleading anyone because of that story. I was just advising a small group of people of a single call, not expecting to be front page news. I don't necessarily mind, but I wanted to be sure folks knew where I stood on the info I pass along. It was a snapshot of my brother's life and not a blanket statement on anything I knew (or didn't know in this case) about the rest of the unit.

Well, we've got an administration running for re-election that: a) pimps off of the deaths of thousands, b) screws its troops on gear (seriously, ask any soldier how much they've spent on goggles, night vision, and the like), and then tries to silence any dissent on the public airwaves. And that's the good news. William Saletan and Joe Klein weigh in on the campaign (another by Saletan here). You'll hear some hatchet men from the GOP call Kerry a Boston Brahmin as the year goes on; here is what that means and why he isn't.

The high price of gasoline - by necessity or design - is having an impact on auto sales. Check the story here. Incidentally, we are paying about $2.10 a gallon here in Nevada. Hope its not as bad where you are.

In school news, we are leaving no child behind by using duct tape. Another teacher tries to force feed their "morals" to students by: presenting an R-rated movie, illegally obtained, with religious overtones in a public school setting. And what lessons exactly were to be gained by this? At least the school lunches will be healthier.

Two views from Vegas. One comical, the other poignant. First, we have a report from a visit to the Gun Store, a little shop a couple miles down the road from us. Next, regardless of where you stand on the gay marriage debate, take a moment to read this article from a local reporter. She explains, in terms no one has taken the time to use, what she and others are actually fighting for when it comes to civil rights. I offer it not to change anyone's mind but to give you a non-politicized, individual look at the issue.

Apparently people still fear their bodies. In Crawford, TX the local cave-dwellers have decided to yank their daughters out of the Girl Scouts because of that horrible social blight - education. Hi, welcome to the twenty-first century. Leave your baggage at the door please.

As McDonalds prepares to phase out super-sizing, Slate offers a story on how darn near everything has gotten bigger over the past few years.

Our slightly more paranoid citizens have websites too. Sometimes they come across an actual thing to be concerned about. Apparently the government is keeping track of where our dollars go. Our $20 bills to be specific. And no, this isn't just a John Ashcroft fantasy come true. Our pals in Europe have loaded up their Euros with tracking devices as well. (Note: I know the rest of both sites are beyond outlandish; its better just to stick to the individual stories.)

I like to let you know on occasion that while Martha Stewart is probably going to get away with insider trading, sometimes the legal gurus get it right. Case in point: this jerk is spending 30 months in federal prison for redirecting kids to porn sites.