Government schools work just fine

They're doing exactly what they're designed to do...

From USA Today, viaYahoo! News:

One in three U.S. high school students say the press ought to be more restricted, and even more say the government should approve newspaper stories before readers see them, according to a survey being released today.

(Found on several other blogs.)

These are the future of our country. Still optimistic about democracy?

Firefox Tweak Guide

Horsepower boost!

From Tweakfactor.com:
A great guide for tweaking out Firefox for faster downloads, even for slower connections. Includes a keyboard shortcut guide and more...

Time: Who's is it?

Today's Mini-Sermon

Since an entrepreneurial endeavor with a close friend, wherein we worked an average 85 hour work week without working either Sundays or the majority of Saturdays, I've been quite jealous of my time, far past the point of selfishness. My attitude has been such that any time not spent on me is considered wasted. I've known for some time that this is the wrong attitude, but was reminded this morning while doing my devotions that my time is not mine--it's God's.

If, as a Christian, I'm going to submit my life to the Lord and give it all to Him, then my time needs to be His as well. To what level should I take that principle? Do I need to sell all my goods, give the money to the poor, and head to Africa to live among the savages? Do I give up all earthly desires: nice home, enjoyable career, vacations, hobbies? Or is just being a bright candle in a dark world enough?

I don't think the Lord begrudges us a little earthly happiness, as long as it doesn't interfere with our pursuit of heavenly riches. If we're putting our Christian responsibilities anywhere less than Number One on our priority list, we need to rethink those priorities.

And being a candle is just a start: God wants lighthouses.

She likes Men!

Not just males; Men

From Sunni Maravillosa's blog:

What I realized tonight is that I simply like men. That isn't to say that I like every male I meet -- far from it. Most males I come into contact with aren't men. A man is special ... and increasingly rare, if my experience is typical. A man is confident in who he is. He's straight up in his interactions with others. He can do stuff -- whether it's build stuff, or fix stuff, or think stuff, he's a doer. He is sensitive but not sensitized; and he definitely isn't emasculated. If a man calls me "babe", it's received as a compliment; if a male calls me that, he'll get an icy look at best...

...A man will challenge me, but not be overbearing in doing so. A man is direct, and easy to talk to, whether it's serious stuff or just bullshitting. A man likes being appreciated for who and what he is; he dislikes being made a project. A man can cry at appropriate times at a movie or situation without making a performance of it or hiding it. A man can wrench an engine apart, and gently caress a newborn. He can laugh freely at the mysteries of life and living without hurtfully laughing at an individual. A man knows what being a man is about, and does his best to fulfill that. A man knows the difference between women and womyn, and acts accordingly.

Happy is the man who's woman is happy he's a Man.

Unhappy is the woman who's man doesn't understand that he needs to be manly: And if the woman ain't happy...as the Good Book says, you're better off living on the roof.

Speeding up Firefox loading

Firefox/WinXP tip:

From Curmudgeonly & Skeptical:

I found the following on the net and it really helps.

Firefox is slow to load initially on Windows XP. You can speed this up a bit by using XP’s built in prefetcher. Simply right-click on the Firefox icon you use to start the browser. Add the text /Prefetch:1 to the end of the line in the target field.

The whole line should look something like the following:
“C:Program FilesMozilla Firefoxfirefox.exe” /Prefetch:1

In other words…right click your Firefox icon and open “properties” the add the text above to the end of the line in the target field.
# posted by Anonymous : 2:09 AM

Does it work? Hell yes it works, and I added it to slow loaders like Paint Shop Pro, and Media Center (my television) and HFS! Suddenly, life is worth living again!

You've got to have a space in there:
“C:Program FilesMozilla Firefoxfirefox.exe” /Prefetch:1

Oh, hooray.

Every frickin' year

I may be a bit scarce here for the next few weeks: I've started to do my taxes. I really like TurboTax for this; beats waiting until 8pm on April 14th to find out how much you're going to owe the IRS, like some in my family do.

If I could figure out how to not pay taxes and avoid the government goons coming down on me like a freight train, I could avoid all this mess.

Anyone?

Police are your friends

With friends like this...

From UnknownNews:

Stinky Badges: Our weekly "police blotter"

They're back at work, raping, looting, beating, murdering, bribing, drugging, drinking, lying, cheating and stealing -- and the people without badges are busy too!

This list of over fifty crimes and acts of evil committed by police should help those folks that have trouble realizing that a shiny piece of tin and a pretty blue uniform don't give the wearer any kind of moral high ground.

It's not a complete list, and it's only from the past week!

Get Firefox!

Everybody's doing it!

From Neowin.net:

Firefox, the open-source browser which only went 1.0 in November, has this morning hit 20 million downloads. At the time of writing, the site's download counter reads "20,001,054" - it's currently averaging anything from 210,000 to 270,000 downloads every day.

If you're still using Microsoft's Internet Explorer, you're missing out: Not only does Firefox load pages faster, it is much less vulnerable to spyware and viruses.

It's the right thing to do.

Our New Constitution

Vote for me for Grand Poobah!

From The Libertarian Enterprise, a proposed new Constitution! (No one in gov't really abides by the present one, anyway...)

Go read it, it's great!

My favorite:

Section 2. Secession

Any Individual, State, or NCC may withdraw from this agreement at any time, upon publishing written notice to that effect, but no such Individual, State, or NCC may claim jurisdiction over any other Individual, State, or NCC without their express written consent.

Now that's REAL liberty!

Bush on Freedom

Reading the fine print...

From Vox Day's column on WorldNetDaily:

...But while we Americans have little trouble recognizing the predilection of others for the security of slavery, we do not see it so clearly in ourselves. In our terror of the extremely unlikely event of the black flag of Islam ever waving over the nation's capital, the American people have not hesitated to embrace the most openly anti-American, anti-freedom presidential program in over 60 years. After all, they can't hate our freedom if we throw it all away, can they?

...

The gradual encroachment on American liberties by their government is one that is primarily inspired by hypothetical fears. One cannot legally buy an anonymous cell phone because of the possibility that a terrorist might do so. One cannot withdraw more than $3,000.00 from one's bank account without a report being filed because of the possibility that one might choose to spend the money on chemical substances deemed illegal. One cannot even drive an injured woman to the hospital without being repeatedly interrogated because of the possibility that one might be the culprit responsible for those injuries.

Thus fear triumphs over all, ensuring a disastrous end. For whether one seeks security in a brothel or from Congress, the results are likely to be the same. Indeed, there is more honesty to be found in the whorehouse...

The freedoms we have left are rapidly being stripped away, and the self-appointed guardians of those freedoms--conservatives--are asleep at the switch, lulled into complacency simply because the President is "one of us." Is he? Do conservatives stand for freedom and individual rights, or do they simply root for their "teammates?"

Most Republicans, along with their Democrat counterparts, have become trapped a in "Red vs. Blue" mindset: If someone with an "R" behind their name says or does something, it is accepted as near-Gospel without any analysis or critical thought whatsoever.

Regardless of party or office, watch what politicians do, not what they say: If Bill Clinton had done even 1/3 of the damage to the Constitution that Bush II has done, there would be rioting in the streets and screams for impeachment.

And rightly so.

An armed society is a polite society

Well, this is the opposite of that.

From The Sun in jolly old England:

A VIOLENT craze in which thugs slap strangers across the face and record it on video phone is sweeping Britain.

The so-called "happy slappers" attack while an accomplice captures it to post on the internet or send to another mobile...

...There have been 100 incidents in London alone, leading to eight charges.

This is what you get when you outlaw self-defense.

Duh.

Women, Men, and Morality: Part Deux

Nate follows up with a challenge for the boys...

From Pan Galactic Blogger Blaster:

Repair starts with us. It is our responsibility. Adam did not stand up to the snake. Adam did not defend Eve, or his Lord, or Himself.Men have failed their women, and their God time and time and time again. Frankly, its high time we stop failing.

Its time for the men of the world to step up to the plate.

I'm not talking about Pie in the Sky hopes of Heaven on Earth. But there are certain battles we can pick, and win. The Abomination of Abortion must be ended. It will not be done by women. It will be done by us. We dropped the ball in the first place. Its up to us to pick it up.

And yes... I am aware that there are those out there who would claim that we didn't drop the ball. Who would claim that the women in fact took the ball from us and threw it.

To you I say...

What kinda sissy lets a little girl take his ball? Now stop whining and go get it.

Darn right, and the perfect follow-up. We men have far too long been much too passive when it comes to leading the home, the church, and the country. Not only is it OUR moral responsibility, it's what women really long for in their man: Morally, physically, and mentally strong leaders who will stand up for what's right.

"Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause;
He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws."
--Sir Richard Francis Burton

Go read "If" by Rudyard Kipling

Women, Men, and Morality

Sticking your head in the guillotine and living to tell the tale.

From Nate @ The Pan Galactic Blogger Blaster:

So here it is... Women, as a group, have an under-developed sense of morality, compared to men. They have an over-developed sense of nice and not-nice, but because of the lack of moral clarity, it's disregarded at the drop of a purse.

Popular is the claim that women civilize men. As Spacebunny already noted, this will greatly depend on one's definition of "civilize". If you deem civilization to mean, "Being nice to each other", as Mr Webster (Yankee Bastard) does, then yes... women do in fact know a great deal about it. However, if you are refering to the law and order... moral center... right and wrong that hold society... civilization... together then women know approximately nothing about it, as a group anyway...

...What I'm saying basicly boils down to: Women are less likely to have strongly held views of right and wrong than men. Their views are more often subject to change based on emotional circumstances. Women are far more easily corrupted... and many need no corrupting at all. With them, right and wrong, is far more fluid than with men. Men violate the rules... perhaps even more often than women... the difference is, that the men who break the rules do so knowingly, while women will spout circumstances and make excuses... literally convincing themselves that what they did was "right"...

I agree. Not all women are like this, however, and given the increasing feminization of men in America, not all men are as described above, either. Space Bunny and Arielle (both of the female gender) make some outstanding points as well in the comments section.

I'll digress here from the topic at hand to point out an error in the author's well-reasoned opinion (Don't take it personally, Nate!): He used anecdotes. The problem with anecdotes is that there is always one that refutes your point, thereby virtually handing your opponent a counter to the argument.

That being said, anecdotes have their uses, just don't hang your hat on them.

Mmmm...Coffee

From Veriuni:

PurJava liquid coffee concentrate is the easy way to make just the amount of coffee you want -- with no waste. Just add a 1/2 tablespoon to 8 ounces of hot water and you've instantly got a delicious cup of fresh coffee.

One 8 oz. bottle of PurJava Honduran Dark Roast makes 32 (8 oz.) cups of coffee

I bought some of the PurJava Honduran Dark Roast, and have to say that I really like it. I don't like the bitter taste of most coffees, but this stuff is really smooth and tasty.

It's also available as PurJava Sumatra Decaf.

Baby "Talk"

Teaching babies sign language

From Eric Meyer's blog:

This morning, Carolyn told me quite clearly that she wanted some yogurt for breakfast. Technically, what she said was “more baby", but I knew what she meant.

How did a 13-month-old manage to tell me what she wanted? By using sign language. Kat and I have been teaching her Baby Signs, which is a simplified version of American Sign Language. I’m given to understand that Baby Signs figure in the plot of the recent movie Meet The Fockers, but don’t let that sour you on the idea. The amazing thing is that it really does work, if you’re willing to put in time and effort.

Wow. I'd heard of this before, but wasn't really paying attention at the time...

I checked out the site a bit, and the concept is fascinating. To be able to effectively communicate with a child at this young age can prevent loads of frustration and headaches, for both parents and kids.

Now if you could just toilet train them at that age too...

Women: Gettin' and keepin' you a Man

"...the smarter a man is, the more he is likely to realize that being romantically involved with an intelligent, educated, upper-middle-class American woman steeped in 20 years of feminist indoctrination is about as desirable as being flayed alive and rolled in salt."
---Vox Day

From an old Vox Day article:

So, in the unlikely event there happens to be a 30-something single woman reading this, here are a few pointers...

1. Your rights are delineated in the Constitution. Everything else is a privilege.

2. Your family has to put up with you. For everyone else, it's optional.

3. Southern belles always get what they want. Watch and learn, grasshopper.

4. Sex as an incentive is fair enough. Using its deprivation as a punishment will backfire hideously.

5. Mocking your man in public creates a no-win situation. He can either slice and dice you verbally, which is no fun for you, or keep his mouth shut and look like an idiot. In the case of the latter, it doesn't mean that you've won, or that he's forgotten.

6. Men love happy women. Act happy and you may discover how to be happy.

7. If there's a doubt, choose the most optimistic interpretation. That's what he meant.

8. Honey, honey, honey - a thousand times honey. Never vinegar.

9. Conflict is not passion. It isn't any fun, either.

10. Limit yourself to five complaints and demands a day. If you're not counting, you're over the limit.

11. If no one ever taught you the traditional arts, find an older woman to be your mentor.

12. Your feelings and objectively verifiable facts may be different. Learn to distinguish between them.

I've nothing to add, save that these nuggets of wisdom aren't only for the thirty-somethings, nor exclusive to singles...

(If you've never read any of Vox's articles, get on over and nose around for a while...he writes primarily on politics and morality from a Christian libertarian perspective.)

Go ahead...

...make fun of the new logo.

See if I care.

Online petition to lift school prayer ban

Waste of time?

I got one of those online petitions/chain letters yesterday. It read as follows:

A PETITION FOR PRESIDENT BUSH

Please do NOT let this petition stop and lose all these names. If you do not want to sign it, please forward it to everyone you know.

To add your name, click on "forward". You will be able to and your name at the bottom of the list and then forward it to your friends. Or, if necessary, you can copy and paste and then add your name to the bottom of the list

THE 2,000TH PERSON PLEASE SEND IT ON TO THE FOLLOWING E-MAIL ADDRESS: President@WhiteHouse.gov Thank you very much.

Dear President Bush:
Many of us were deeply touched to hear you recite a portion of Psalm 23 in your address to this great nation in the dark hours following the terrorists' attacks. We, the people of America, are requesting that you lift the prohibition of prayer in schools. As the pledge of our great country states, we are to be "One nation under God." Please allow the prayers and petitions of our children in schools without the threat of punishment.

Currently, adults and children in the schools are prohibited from mentioning God unless, of course, His name is uttered as part of a curse or profanity. Sincerely, The People of America

There were over 1200 names on the petition, which is pretty neat.

I responded thusly:

From one concerned Christian to a bunch of others;

A couple of points:

I really admire the intent of the petition, but I think that one e-mail, even one containing thousands of names, will have far less impact than thousands of individual e-mails, a few at a time. A few e-mails a day will have a steady, gradual impact in the long run.

Want to make a bigger difference? Type or hand-write a letter, in your own words, and mail it. This type of communication takes a little more time and is therefore considered by the politicians to be a bit more serious than e-mail. It will cost you ten minutes, a piece of paper, an envelope, and a stamp.

Secondly, the President has no authority to reverse the ban on prayer in schools: Organized prayer is prohibited in public schools because the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled it (Incorrectly, in my opinion: the 1st Amendment is about freedom OF religion, not freedom FROM religion) a violation of the first amendment to the U.S. constitution. The president is head of the executive branch of our government and has no power to change either the contents or the interpretation of our constitution. Lifting the ban on organized prayer in public schools could only be brought about by the judicial branch (through a case which would provide for judicial review by the Supreme Court of previous interpretations of the establishment clause of the first amendment as related to school prayer) or the legislative branch (through the approval of a proposed constitutional amendment by two-thirds of both houses of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of state legislatures). The president has no direct role in either of these processes -- he cannot choose which cases the Supreme Court will hear, nor does he propose or approve constitutional amendments.

Thirdly (and this is where I might make you mad), if you're sending your kids, every day, to a place where prayer is forbidden, God's existence is denied, police presence and metal detectors are required to maintain order, Biblical Christian values are mocked by their peers, and the very mention of the truth about God's creation of the universe is forbidden, then brothers and sisters, you have some thinking to do. Forget political statements -- what about your children?

http://www.getthekidsout.org

http://www.honestedu.org

Jeff
http://contrarianistic.blogspot.com

After spending two hours creating this monstrous manifesto, my e-mail provider decided I wasn't signed in, and I lost it all. Arrgh!

I rewrote it, probably leaving out something from the first draft, and sent it off into cyberspace.

I wish I'd written the beginning a bit "softer", perhaps an explanation of my thinking on the matter at hand, but it's done now...I hope I didn't make anyone too mad, especially the members of my family who sent it too me. (Hi guys!)

Policing the Police

"Who will guard the guardians?"

Smle41 wonders what happens when civil authority oversteps it's bounds...

From Kicking Broadswords:

Which brings me to a question that I need answered. St. Paul wrote, famously, that evildoers must fear the civil government, and that the civil authority does not bear the sword in vain. What about when good men must fear the civil government, for it propegates and protects evildoers? What about when the civil authority does bear the sword in vain, not to protect order but to protect itself? When it serves not the law, not society, but it's own, greedy, power-hungry self?

Good question. Anyone?

Don't make any sudden moves

"Don't look at me! Bow down!"

From Unknown News:

The nation's 55th presidential inauguration, the first to be held since 9/11, will take place this month under perhaps the heaviest security of any in U.S. history...

...Thousands of performers - marching bands, color guards, pompon dancers, hand bell-ringers, drill teams on horseback and Civil War re-enactors - will be bused early in the morning to the Pentagon parking lot across the Potomac in Virginia. While performers disembark and go through metal detectors, bomb- sniffing dogs will search the buses.

Then everybody will get back on the buses for a trip to the National Mall, where they will spend most of the day in heavily guarded warming tents. Participants have been warned that they will not be allowed to leave the tents except to go to portable toilets accompanied by a security escort.

Other instructions given performers include a warning not to look directly at Bush while passing the presidential reviewing stand, not to look to either side and not to make any sudden movements.

(Emphasis mine)

I don't think I'd be marching in that parade. To be herded around and held in a tent like so much cattle for most of the day, then ordered not to look directly at the reason for the parade while you pass by doesn't sound like a privilege to me...

I hate parades anyway.

Conspiracy Theory!

Just because it's a conspiracy theory doesn't make it false

From Vialls.net:

It is beyond any doubt that a giant tidal wave (tsunami) smashed its way through South and South East Asia, and still had enough legs to continue all the way across the Indian Ocean to Africa, where it killed and injured a few hundred more. So the only question we must ask, is whether this tsunami was a natural or man-made catastrophe? A natural event would be horrifying enough, but if the tsunami was man-made, then we are unquestionably looking at the biggest single war crime in global history.

(Found via The Clair Files forums)

I'm not saying I buy it, but it certainly isn't out of the realm of possibility. It's pretty out there, but this guy makes some interesting points...

Bureaucratic Buffoonery

Stupid Stupid Stupid

From Nate at BloggerBlaster:

I wonder how common it is for advanced kids to be held back by teachers who are too stupid to realize what's going on...

I went to school in Kentucky... at least up until High School when I moved to Nashville. Back then, Kentucky had "achievement tests" that every kid in 1-12 took at the end of every year to determine their progress.

Now in the 6th grade.. you can imagine that I didn't really grasp the whole concept of test taking. I generally felt like the teachers knew me... and knew what I was capable of. And well... This is the story of how Nate found out just how stupid government school teachers are.

First some background. As you can well imagine... I wasn't the slowest kid in the class. In fact, I was insanely bored in school, most of my in class time was spent reading fiction, non-fiction, or drawing... On the occasion that I had a teacher that would object to these things, I would make it evident that I knew as much or more about the appointed subject as he/she/it did. I would point out blatant mistakes in text books, I would refuse to regurgitate verbatim dictionary definitions on vocabulary tests.. and on occasion I would throw words at the teacher and explain that they needed to study up some as well.

Most teachers quickly learned that I was better off left to read on my own.

I never studied... and I rarely did homework. My reasoning for this was simple. I knew the material. Therefore I didn't need the practice. My time was better spent elsewhere.

I was in the highest level classes for my age group... and I was bored out of my mind.

Go read the rest...

This sounds like something that would have happened to me in school, even though I went to a private, Christian school. It's more than just public schools that are screwed up. I think the whole procedure used to "educate" is faulty.

Teachers can only teach as fast as the slowest kids can learn, so the smarter kids are bored and restless. To complicate matters, the "slower" kids aren't necessarily slower; some kids don't learn well from the standard processes. What a waste...

The Fred:

May he live forever!

The new Fred column is out!

Fred wonders how children can be kept from reading for twelve long years in schools, when it only takes a month or so for a child to actually learn how...

A sheet of dry wall would be reading in less time.

The reason for this, which any conscious person with a half-hour of research and ten minutes of simple deliberation could conclude, is that the schools no longer use the phonics method of reading. This is a travesty. Phonics is, simply put, the best way--the only way, really--to teach a child to read.

At three, she was reading. Yes, it was, “Billy chased the cat up the tree,” not “the eschatological significance of the kerygma.” Still, it was reading. It was what millions of kids who have finished school cannot do, even at the cat-and-tree level. She thought it was splendid fun. It did not occur to her that any effort was involved. Of course Daddy was making an enormous fuss over her, which was not a discouragement. Daddy is that way about his girls.

How did I bring about this onset of literacy? The same way I later did with her sister, who also was reading well before kindergarten. I told her that c said “kuh,” that a said “a” and t said “tuh.” Kuh-a-tuh. Cat. And look here, Pumpkin, r says “err,” and if you put it in front of "at" you get err-a-tuh, rat. Ain’t that something?

She agreed that it was. Indeed she received all of this occult lore with attention and no visible puzzlement. It quickly dawned on her that you could string these letter things together to express interesting thoughts. Soon she could sound out words she didn’t remotely understand and, when the multitudinous exceptions and peculiarities of English intruded, she simply learned them.

I don’t know. About a month.

Moral: If you're going to put your children through the morass of the public education system (Shame on you!), at least teach them to read before you send them: they sure won't learn when they're there...

Please help this little boy

A twisted parody of those moronic "help the children" e-mails everyone's always getting...which by the way, are fake. You didn't think they were real, did you?

My name is Little Billy Evans. I am a very sick little boy. My mother is typing this for me, because I can't. She is crying. Don't cry, Mommy! Mommy is always sad, but she says it's not my fault. I asked her if it was God's fault, but she didn't answer and only started crying harder, so I don't ask her that any more.

The reason she is so sad is because I'm so sick. I was born without a body. It doesn't hurt, except when I try to breathe. The doctors gave me an artificial body. It is a burlap bag filled with leaves. The doctors said that was the best they could do on account of us having no money or insurance.

I would like to have a body transplant, but we need more money. Mommy
doesn't work because she said nobody hires crying people.

I said, "Don't cry, Mommy," and she hugged my burlap bag. Mommy always gives me hugs, even though she's allergic to burlap and it makes her sneeze and chafes her real bad.

I hope you will help me. You can help me if you mindlessly forward this
email to everyone you know. Mindlessly forward it to people you don't
know, too. Dr. Johansen said that for every person you mindlessly forward this email to, Bill Gates will team up with AOL and send a nickel to NASA. With that funding, NASA will collect prayers from school children all over America and have the astronauts take them up into space so that the angels can hear them better.

Then they will come back to earth and go to the Pope, and he will take up a collection in church and send all the money to the doctors. The doctors could help me get better then. Maybe one day I will be able to play baseball. Right now I can only be third base.

Please help me. I try to be happy, but it's hard. I wish I had a kitty. I wish I could hold a kitty. I wish I could hold a kitty that wouldn't chew on me and try to bury its "business" in the leaves of my burlap body. I wish that very much.

If you don't mindlessly forward this email, that's okay. Mommy says you're a mean and heartless bastard who doesn't care about a poor little boy with only a head. She says that if you don't stew in the raw pit of your own guilt-ridden stomach, she hopes you die a long slow, horrible death and then burn forever in Hell. What kind of cruel person are you that you can't take five freakin' minutes to mindlessly forward this to all your friends so that they can feel guilt and shame about ignoring a poor, bodiless nine-year-old boy?

Thank You, (the boy with just a head, and a burlap sack for a body)

Police, sir. We're here to help.

Officer pepper sprays diabetic suffering from insulin shock

From KeysNews.com:

KEY WEST — An assistant manager of a local pizza shop who became nonresponsive after going into insulin shock was pepper sprayed by a police officer after a customer told police the man appeared to be "stoned out of his mind."

Melzer and Gallo each described Scott's behavior simply as nonresponsive and disputed the account that Scott grew agitated or resisted the officer in any way.

"He wasn't even resisting arrest. He didn't know what was going on," said Gallo.

Another instance of the power-mad throwing their weight around. Who would have guessed?

If I advanced the idea that, oh, let's say, Enron, should conduct their own investigation, I would be considered retarded. Why then do police do their own internal investigations? It's a situation with an obvious propensity for corruption--and corrupt it is. Without the risk of real punishment for abuse of authority, the police have become almost unimpeachable.

It would be nice if there were video footage of this, although the officer in question would probably be given a medal for bravery, anyway.

If they can't police their own, how can they police us?

Ballistic Fingerprinting Bunked

Why ballistic fingerprinting doesn't, and won't, work.

Kevin over at The Smallest Minority has written a rather revealing exposition on the limitations of ballistic fingerprinting, the science of identifying a firearm used in a crime by the marks left on the projectile and casing.

First, let's see what the gun confiscation, er, control, um, SAFETY groups have to say. The Brady Campaign has a web page on the promises of ballistic fingerprinting. I won't quote the whole thing, but they do state the following:

"When a gun is fired, identifying marks are made on the bullets and cartridge casings. Those marks, called ballistic fingerprints, are as unique as human fingerprints - no two firearms leave the same marks. The marks are also reproducible - every time a gun is fired it leaves identical marks. The uniqueness and reproducible qualities of ballistic fingerprints can provide a critical tool to law enforcement for solving gun crimes by rapidly identifying the specific weapon that was used in a crime."

Here's the problem, though. What they say (and this is overwhelmingly true for these groups) is only partly (in this case, minimally) true. There's a whole lot of information they neglect, gloss over, bury, and avoid.

Go read his whole article; it's quite well done...

We don't need no steenkin' Constitution

"All your rights are belong to us."

From an interview of Nadine Strossen, president of the ACLU, by Reason magazine's Cathy Young:

...I don't want to dwell on constitutional analysis, because our view has never been that civil liberties are necessarily coextensive with constitutional rights. Conversely, I guess the fact that something is mentioned in the Constitution doesn't necessarily mean that it is a fundamental civil liberty.

[Emphasis mine]

If you had any doubts about the ACLU's commitment to your rights, they should be confirmed now. The ACLU does do some good (they do have an excellent set of guidelines on how to behave during a traffic stop), but when it comes to freedom of religion and the right to keep and bear arms, they pretty much just ignore the text of the first two Amendments and paraphrase at will.

Also, if it's screwed-up, they'll defend it.

Quake, rattle and roll...

NASA Details Earthquake Effects on the Earth

From NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory:

NASA scientists using data from the Indonesian earthquake calculated it affected Earth's rotation, decreased the length of day, slightly changed the planet's shape, and shifted the North Pole by centimeters. The earthquake that created the huge tsunami also changed the Earth's rotation...

...[they] also found the earthquake decreased the length of day by 2.68 microseconds.

(Found via Slashdot)

Kindof neat, but rather scary, too.

The thing we stand on, attach our houses to, and drill into for water, is shaking itself like a 7-year old after four cans of Mountain Dew and a king-sized bag of Skittles.

I guess it's no big deal, unless the whole thing falls apart. Or something.

Is it DRAFTy in here?

Draft officials ask church to "dust off" conscientious objector alternatives

From Unknown News:

As one of the historic "peace churches" that shun military service, Brethren officials were "cautious" after an unannounced visit by a draft official to a church center in Maryland last October. Officials were worried that the visit signaled that a draft may be at hand.

In follow-up meetings, draft officials urged the church to dust off long-standing "alternative service" programs that allow conscientious objectors to serve in two-year domestic service projects in lieu of military service.

Found on UnknownNews.com:

Your president (Don't blame me, I voted Constitution Party) insists that he's not going to reinstate the draft. He's already re-enlisted, against their will, soldiers who have completed their contractual armed service obligations, and now this. Makes you wonder...

Private Help for Tsunami Victims

It's not generous if you're using stolen money...

Article written by Ron Paul, MD, a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives. (He's more of a Libertarian in his thinking, and is the only member of Congress that actually takes his oath of office seriously. I'd almost move to Texas just so I could vote for him...)
Link to article: LewRockwell.com:

The original coalition of donor governments has been disbanded, meaning the United Nations will control all government-funded relief efforts going forward. Surely the oil-for-food scandal demonstrates that UN officials are the worst possible stewards of the tsunami relief funds, yet that’s precisely who will be overseeing the expenditure of our $350 million. Bush administration officials have promised to keep a tight watch over how those tax dollars are spent, but the truth is that we cannot control this money once it’s sent overseas for UN administration.

If government is made up of a collection of power-hungry bureaucracies (and it is, among other things that are equally distasteful) then the UN is a bureaucracy of bureaucracies, and therefore exponentially worse.

Publik Skule or Home School?

The reasons to homeschool just keep piling up...

From Doug Giles at TownHall.com:

It’s been eleven months since we pulled our teenage daughters out of the public school system and started to home school them, and I could kick myself for waiting so long. The educational, emotional, spiritual and physical progress they have made has been amazing. Not that they were anti-intellectual psychologically teetering bloated decadent nut jobs before they started home schooling, it’s just that I’ve been ecstatically stunned at how they have aggressively embraced this new lease on their educational life.

and;

parent[s] … home schooling isn’t as tough as you think it is. With the advent of online virtual schools, plus the tens of thousands of people who have bailed out of the system, there are afforded to you, the home schooling parent and student, amazing resources, local networks of like-minded families and world-class curricula, to help you help yours be the leaders God intends for them to be.

(Discovered via Vox's blog)

The best thing a parent could possibly do for their child is take them out of public school. Conversely, the worst thing parents could do to their children is place them in the public school system. The structure and atmosphere of government schools is neither conducive to learning nor promotive of the moral standards Christian young people are expected to uphold.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: God commands parents to "Raise up a child in the way he should go." Don't subcontract out the rearing of your children. Some day you'll stand before the Throne.


For more reasons why Christians should be educating their own children, click here.

African AIDS Epidemic--Fact or Fiction?

From Vin Suprynowicz on ReviewJournal.com:

But I found it interesting to again hear the old shrieks about how AIDS is not a "gay disease," since it's spreading out among females and heterosexuals as a sexually transmitted disease.

Since it's not.

We've been waiting a decade, now, for this prediction to come true. Remember, back in the '90s, hearing that "heterosexual women are the fastest growing group of AIDS victims"? Yeah: In a statistical stutter typical among small numbers, they were at one point up from half of one percent to a full percent -- most of those women turning out to be folks who shared needles with other intravenous recreational drug users.

and:

From "Aids in Africa" by Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos and Valendar F. Turner;

...unlike the West, in Africa AIDS is diagnosed without any laboratory tests, patients are classified as AIDS cases without laboratory proof that they have either immunodeficiency or HIV infection. All Africans need to have are various clinical conditions. But the conditions accepted as forming the "S" (syndrome) of "AIDS" in Africa bear no relationship to AIDS in the West.

In the West, AIDS consists of a person's having one or more of approximately 27 relatively rare diseases. In Africa, AIDS as defined by the World Health Organisation 1986/87 Bangui African AIDS definition is no more than a collage of common non-specific symptoms and signs such as cough, fever and diarrhoea, and a few diseases such as tuberculosis (TB) and a cancer called Kaposi's sarcoma, diseases which have been endemic in Africa for generations.

(Found on Bill St. Clair's blog)

AIDS is one of the biggest political extortions in existance: Not only is it mostly a homosexual disease, gay propaganda notwithstanding, but now we hear that Africa and the UN's latest fund-raiser isn't even medically verifiable.

I hope you weren't surprised. If a government is involved, there will be lies, distortion, and cover-up. Always.

What is the yoke for?

From today's Our Daily Bread: A Daily Devotional:

A Sunday school teacher read Matthew 11:30 to the children in her class, and then asked: "Jesus said, 'My yoke is easy.' Who can tell me what a yoke is?" A boy raised his hand and replied, "A yoke is something they put on the necks of animals so they can help each other."

Then the teacher asked, "What is the yoke Jesus puts on us?" A quiet little girl raised her hand and said, "It is God putting His arm around us."

When Jesus came, He offered an "easy" and "lighter" yoke compared to the yoke of the religious leaders (Matthew 11:30). They had placed "heavy burdens" of laws on the people (Matthew 23:4; Acts 15:10), which no one could possibly keep.

God knew we would never be able to measure up to His standards (Romans 3:23), so He sent Jesus to this earth. Jesus obeyed His Father's commands perfectly and bore the punishment of death for our sins. As we humble ourselves and recognize our need for forgiveness, Jesus comes alongside us. He places His yoke on us, freeing us from guilt and giving us His power to live a life that's pleasing to God.

Are you in need of Jesus' help? He says, "Come to Me . . . . Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me" (Matthew 11:28-29). He longs to put His arm around you. —Anne Cetas

I had never really thought about the yoke Jesus speaks of that way before, but it really makes sense. A parallel could also be drawn to the idea of Christians helping each other out; bearing the burden together.

Out of the mouths of babes...

The coolest thing EVER.

From Slashdot:

Space.com is reporting on the largest explosion ever seen in space. The outburst is orchestrated by a supermassive black hole that anchors a distant galaxy sitting amid a tight cluster of galaxies. The black hole has blown two huge bubbles into the galaxy, shoving aside a colossal amount of gas equal to the mass of a trillion Suns, or more than all the stars of our own Milky Way Galaxy."

I can't stand it. I need to go lie down.

Bush pays black TV show host to promote policies

From USA Today:

Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same.

(Found on The Drudge Report and Vox Popoli)

Where to begin with this? Your president also spent a huge pile of dough to propagandize (yes, propagandize) Social Security prescription benefits to seniors. Why on earth does the government need to advertise?

Homeschooling:

From FortWayne.com, comes this article on homeschooling:

Steve Beck begs to differ with anyone who believes his children are not properly 'socialized.'

"Our philosophy is to engage the world - not lead a secluded life. We want to have an impact on the culture," said Beck, who, along with his wife, Kerry, home-schools their three children - Ashley, 16, Gentry, 14, and Hunter, 11.

(Found on Kim du Toit's blog)

It's a pretty well written article; although it's hard to not want to reach over to Indiana and strangle some of the people interviewed for the story--why those in the welfare education system think they have any ground to stand on is beyond me.

Make sure you go over and read Kim du Toit's commentary...

Fred's back

From Fred on Everything:

The Last Necessary Column On Politics

In my capacity as Western Civilization’s principal moral compass and intellectual lighthouse, I thought I might explain politics once and forever. There are altogether too many television shows about politics, too many books by people who would better pass their time in drinking. Newspapers have gotten above themselves. They are full of columnists. A final explanation of all things political will allow the papers to concern themselves entirely with coverage of ghastly murders, divorcing celebrities, and the incursions of space aliens into Puerto Rico.

In America, politics breaks mostly into two groups, both of whom probably do not have enough to do: liberals and conservatives. I will explain each.

Fred goes on to explain why all policians are worthy only as filler for sinkholes.

He's right, of course. He always is.

The draft is already here.

From The Corvallis Gazette Times:

(Found on Claire Wolfe's blog:)

Last Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Owen M. Panner denied Santiago's motion for a preliminary injunction against having to report again for active duty, less than a week before Santiago is scheduled to ship to Fort Sill, Okla. A soldier with D Company of the Oregon Guard's 113th Aviation Battalion in Pendleton, he is and his unit are expected to be deployed to Afghanistan in February.

Santiago argued that he already had completed his contracted term in 2002, but Panner's ruling means that he will have to go. And he is only one of thousands who are finding themselves back in uniform despite having honorably completed the service they signed on for.

Santiato has been re-enlisted against his will for a term to end in 2031.

I hope none of you really believed Bush was against a draft...of course, this isn't a draft, it's slavery, but I guess that's irrellevant.

Local rag makes Drudge

(Linked on DrudgeReport.com)

From Public Opinion, our local newspaper here:

Mother used tot as lookout during burglary

Neiley told police that Joann Monica Epperson, 29, St. Thomas, had her 5-year-old son, Austin, stand watch.

"Tell me when they are coming," Neiley said she overheard Epperson tell the boy as she and Lehman walked up to the house.

"They're here, they're here," the child said

Due to past experience, I can be 85% sure that most of the quotes in the article are either dead wrong, or attributed to the wrong person. I read the 'Letters to the Editor' everyday for a laugh--it's like everyone in the trailer park just learned to write, and decided to enlighten the world with their vast reservoirs of wisdom.

Stereotypes have no basis in fact...[chortle]

From Bloggerblaster:

Anyway, we're sittin' in the food court... and I realize the black dude at the next table is talking to himself... loudly... and it was a one sided conversation... That's when I noticed the shiny chrome wireless headset, and the cell phone attached to his hip.

Funny, but makes me mad, too...

Read the whole thing: "I just hate people"

Firefox!

(If you're not using Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, then I can't be your friend anymore. It's faster, it's standards compliant, and it isn't full of security holes...GET FIREFOX! DO IT NOW!)

If you are, then here's a way to make it load pages even faster, if you have a broadband connection:

Here's something for broadband people that will really speed Firefox up:

1.Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:

network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows:

Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"

Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true"

Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

If you're using a broadband connection you'll load pages MUCH faster now!

Found at Bill St. Clair's blog.

Human Rights

While listening to Rush Limbaugh ranting on today about how the US Constitution didn't apply to the prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, et al, and that the Dems are trying to help the very people who are trying to destroy our Constitution and kill us all, I had a prickling inclination to call him, but I've heard the way he sets up the ol' straw man--he's good at that. When a caller points out an errancy in his "logic", Rushie goes into a monologue, setting up an ironclad rebuttal for a position the caller never held in the first place.

Anywho, it occurred to me that:

1. The Constitution is a list of natural, God-given, individual human rights that are common to everyone.
2. The US Government is charged with protecting those rights (Please note that the gov't is not the grantor of the rights, but the trustee...) and
3. Just because someone isn't born or living in the good old US of A doesn't mean that natural, God-given, individual human rights shouldn't apply to them.

("Don't you know there's a war on," you scream at the monitor, "those are terrorists down there, you dunderhead!")

Yes, I know all about the war. I don't care. Rights are rights. The reason those folks are being held is because there isn't enough evidence to try them in a military tribunal, or whatever they use for whatever they're considered to be. If there's not enough evidence to even hold a trial, much less convict them, then send 'em back to the wasteland they came from.

As for the belief everyone seems to have that the rules are different if there's a war, well, the Constitution wasn't written for the times when everything was cake and daisies--it was written for times like these, when your gov't is using some trumped-up crisis to overstep it's bounds.

Your assignment for today: Go read the Constitution. The whole thing, especially the original Bill of Rights. Catch the Declaration of Independance while you're at it, too.

To buy, or not to buy...

Silver is finally at a point where I can buy it for less than $7.00 per 1 oz. round (not talking US Silver Eagles; silver rounds @ .999 purity). The question now, is should I? The Wife and I are thinking of purchasing the house we're renting now, within the next few months, and since we don't have piles of cash laying around, closing costs might eat us up come settlement time.

I've considered buying a modest amount ($100-$200), instead of the $500 plus I had originally planned on. I probably should just do it, instead of sitting here thinking about it...the Republic isn't getting any more stable.

The best defense

From Kim du Toit, an image of two old S&W gun ads from 1928 (When men were Men and Women were glad of it!):

I wish Smith & Wesson, for one, would grow a pair and start advertising like this again. They remind everyone that when you're in s**t, nothing beats a gun, and not much beats a Smith.

Don't get me started.

(sigh...)

We're gay! We're OK!

From The Evangelical Outpost:

Because of an epidemic of STDs, particularly syphilis, Chlamydia, and HIV, among gay men in San Francisco, the local department of public health launched inSpot -- Internet Notification Service for Partners or Tricks (“tricks” being slang for a casual sexual partner). The website allows gay men to send an anonymous email recommending that their partner get tested. Why is such a site necessary? "These days it's a lot easier to have sexual encounters where you do not know who your partner is," says says Karl Knapper, a neighborhood organizer for the STOP AIDS Project. "The virtual world is a lot bigger and more anonymous than the real world."

Oh, this is rich.

These are the same homosexuals that want to marry and adopt children. By all that smells like crap on a farm, this is so retarded...I could go on for days with this, but don't have time this fine evening.

God impeached!

One day a group of scientists got together and decided that humans had come a long way and no longer needed God. So they picked one scientist to go and tell God so.

The scientist walked up to God and said, "God, we've decided that we no longer need you; We're to the point that we can clone people and do many miraculous things, so why don't You just go on and get lost."

God listened very patiently and kindly to the man. After the scientist was done talking, God said, "Very well, how about this? Let's say we have a man-making contest." To which the scientist replied, "Okay, great!"

"But," God added, "we're going to do this just like I did back in the Garden of Eden with Adam."

The scientist said, "Sure, no problem" and bent down and grabbed himself a handful of dirt.

God looked at him and said, "No, no, no. You go get your own dirt."

Tipping: Obligatory or no?

From a thread at the Claire Files forums on whether tipping is mandatory or not. It seems that DullHawk's girlfriend doesn't like to tip, and after a few meals at the same restaurant, the manager asked them to either leave a tip for the server, or not come back (the GF was picking up the tab).

Good discussion going on tipping, from a libertarian perspective.

My response:

I wish more of our economy operated like the restaurant model--prices are reduced, so as not to pay for the service portion of the goods purchased (due to the owner's paying an absolute minimum, or none of, the service portion of his costs), and the customer gets to pay whatever he wants for the service portion, based on the quality of service he/she recieves. Imagine if the cable company, your mechanic, and your marriage were run like this...

(Well, maybe not your marriage...)

...then further imagine that the police departments, the DMV, and all local, state, and federal governmental departments operated this way. Hooboy, wouldn't that be fun!

That being said: I think you should tip. I usually tip using 15% as a baseline for average service; less for crappy service, more for outstanding service. It's not a gov't rule, just common courtesy.

How to break the law

From WorldNetDaily:

The government of Mexico is raising eyebrows with a new comic book offering advice on how to cross the border into the U.S. illegally.

Called "The Guide for the Mexican Migrant," the 32-page book published by Mexico's Foreign Ministry uses simple language to offer information on safety, legal rights and living unobtrusively in America.

Well, the Mexican government has never really discouraged the mass invasion, anyway--just now it's come to the point that it's comical (pun intended).

The next time your President Bush (I didn't vote for him...) meets with "our friends" in Mexico, remember this.

Prudence

From Friday's Our Daily Bread devotional (I'm a couple of days behind):

In his painting "An Allegory of Prudence," 16th-century Venetian artist Titian portrayed Prudence as a man with three heads. One head was of a youth facing the future, another was of a mature man eyeing the present, and the third was of a wise old man gazing at the past. Over their heads Titian wrote a Latin phrase that means, "From the example of the past, the man of the present acts prudently so as not to imperil the future."

Half full...or just full of it?

A story gleaned from an e-newsletter I get:

A family had twin boys whose only resemblance to each other was their looks. If one was too hot, the other thought it was too cold. If one said the TV was too loud, the other claimed the volume needed to be turned up. Opposite in every way, one was an eternal optimist, the other a doom-and-gloom pessimist.

Just to see what would happen, their parents had "Santa Claus" load the pessimist's room with toys and games. The optimist's room was loaded with horse manure.

Christmas morning found the pessimist sitting amid his new gifts, crying bitterly.

"Why are you crying?" the parents asked.

"Because my friends will be jealous, I'll have to read all these instructions before I can do anything with this stuff, I'll constantly need batteries, and my toys will eventually get broken."

Meanwhile, the optimist was dancing for joy in the pile of manure. "What are you so happy about?" the parents asked.

To which he replied, "There's got to be a pony in here somewhere!"

Pity me.

I've been feeling rather under the weather since Dec. 30; I felt the flu coming on that afternoon, and have been fighting it since. I still have a cold, with stuffed-up sinuses, but the flu symptoms are mostly gone. I've been taking 1000mg of Vitamin C about 3-6 times a day since the onset of symptoms, and I think the reduction in severity and duration of the illness is largely due to this.

I also tried hydrogen peroxide in my ears on the 30th and 31st, and perhaps that helped, too. ("You did WHAT?", you ask incredulously.) I put H202 in my ears with a dropper. No, it doesn't hurt at all; feels kindof nice. The method and reasoning is outlined here and here. A Google search for "hydrogen peroxide flu" will give lots more info.

Knoppix for Newbies

From Slashdot.org:

"Knowing Knoppix is a beginner-friendly, 134 page freely downloadable book (released under the GNU Free Documentation License in PDF format) designed to familiarize new users with the Knoppix LiveCD distribution, GNU/Linux in general, and (as listed first on the description) Windows disaster recovery using Knoppix."

Hooray! I've been looking for some kind of tutorial for a Linux distro, and since I have Knoppix LiveCD (and was pretty confused when I tried it, since all I've ever known is Windoze), now I can take a step toward de-Microsofting my life...
Once I've got the hang of LiveCD, I'll move toward a dual-boot config, or possibly just roink the whole thing, and go all Linux.

Treating Alzheimer's with curry?

Article linked on Boing Boing:

Curcumin, the yellow pigment in curry spice may be a potential agent to fight against Alzheimer's, according to researchers at the University of California at Irvine.

The new UCLA-Veterans Affairs study involving genetically altered mice suggests that curcumin, the yellow pigment in curry spice, inhibits the accumulation of destructive beta amyloids in the brains of Alzheimer's patients and also breaks up existing plaques.

Every day or so, I find just one more reason to NEVER use pharmaceutical drugs ever again...other than the fact that there are almost always harmful side effects, the drugs rarely treat the disease they are prescribed for--they treat the symptoms.