Raising the Debt Limit--Again

/sarcasm/Thank God we have a Republican president.../*sarcasm/

From TheWashington Post:

Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said yesterday that the United States could be unable to pay its bills in early 2006 unless Congress raises the government's borrowing authority, which is now capped at $8.18 trillion.

Snow, in a letter to lawmakers, estimated that the government is expected to bump into the statutory debt limit around the middle of February.

Good old Bush--wolf in sheep's clothing.

Wanna know if you're being snooped on?

Watching the Watchers

From ComputerBytesMan:

The steps are:

1. Set up a Hotmail account.
2. Set up a second email account with a non-U.S. provider. (eg. Rediffmail.com)
3. Send messages between the two accounts which might be interesting to the NSA.
4. In each message, include a unique URL to a Web server that you have access to its server logs. This URL should only be known by you and not linked to from any other Web page. The text of the message should encourage an NSA monitor to visit the URL.
5. If the server log file ever shows this URL being accessed, then you know that you are being snooped on. The IP address of the access can also provide clues about who is doing the snooping.

The trick is to make the link enticing enough for someone or something to want to click on it. As part of a large-scale research project, I would suggest sending out a few hundred thousand messages using various tricks to find one that might work. Here are some possible ideas:

(Found on BoingBoing, who links to Dave Farber's warning that you might not want to try this if you want to fly via TSA-style strip search.)

I don't think I have the guts to try this. Great idea, though.

Exam stories, ala Slashdot

Question posted on Slashdot:

I'm sure Slashdot users have done their fair share of university exams. A good portion may be going through the process right now. Many tales have been floating around the internet about cheating (successful and not), cram stories, and tales of post-test celebration, most often in the testing room itself. Recall any first-hand experiences and write them down in a few short paragraphs. If you've been waiting to clear your conscience, or share your experiences, now is the time."

(Found on text)

A ton of good ones there, but the one I liked the best was this one:

A friend of mine had a physics exam in college and the prof told the class that anything they could fit on a 8.5x11 sheet of paper could be used on the test. Come test day everyone had their "cheat sheets" out on their desk. My friend came into class with a physics phd he knew, put the piece of paper down next to his desk and had the phd stand on it. He aced the test.

Wrapping the presents

It's taking DAYS...

I had a brilliant idea last evening--at least I hope it's brilliant--while eating at Red Lobster with my dear wife...

First some background:

You know how sometimes you get a gift that's maybe weighed down a bit with rocks or something to make it seem like something it isn't; or maybe it's inside of a box that's inside of a larger box that's inside of an even larger box (and so on)? Well, I got that last year from my brother-in-law.

I opened the first box: inside it was another box, wrapped, complete with duct tape, like it was to withstand nuclear war; around the box were a few balled-up dollar bills amongst a few sheets of crumpled newspaper. Inside the second box: the same thing--another bomb shelter for little people, some crumpled newspaper, and some more crumpled bills. Inside the third...I think you get the idea. I think there were at least four boxes in all, one inside the other.

All told, it took me upwards of five minutes to get through all that, and at the center were a few more bills; my present was $25 worth of crumpled $1 bills. (I think I got them all...) That's fine--it's my wife's family, and that's about how much gets spent per person. My complaint was with the wrapping job: I swore revenge.

It will be mine. Oh, yes: It will be mine.

As I write this, I'm freezing a small bar of soap, "borrowed" from a hotel, wrapped in a note, wrapped in a baggie, wrapped in a paper bag, wrapped in another baggie, inside a block of ice. The note says something to the effect of, "All that work, and your gift isn't even in here!"

I'm doing it in stages: The first stage was to freeze the wrapped-up soap, weighed down so it wouldn't float too high, in a small (6"x2"x1" thick) Tupperware container full of water. At this time, I got a slightly larger (9"x9"x6") cardboard box, lined it with a garbage bag (I cut the top half of the bag off), and filled the bottom 2" with water and crushed ice (so it would freeze faster). This box I also placed in the freezer, along with a Rubbermaid container (12"x18"x8") containing 3" of water and ice.

There were some mistakes and re-designs along the way (who knew that cardboard boxes wouldn't hold water?), but I think I have it all planned out the way I should--I just hope it's ready by tomorrow night, when the family gets together...

I have some pics--I'll post them after I get some of the "target" opening his "gift." Should be fun!

5:20AM, Dec. 23: Update--I don't think I'm going to be able to get as much done as I thought...the first box is (mostly) frozen, but when I wrapped it up a while ago, some water leaked out. Go to Plan B.

Freedom Quotes of the Day

From Bill St. Clair:

"The tragedy of modern war is not so much that young men die but that they die fighting each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals."

Follow the link for more good ones...

Transparent Factory

Photo tour of the VW Phaeton factory in Dresden, Germany.


If you've interest in manufacturing, like me (I used to be part owner of an equipment trailer manufacturer), you'll enjoy this:
VW Vortex.com
Great pics; nicely done tour.

Anti-American President

by Vox Day

From his weekly column on World Net Daily:

"Sept. 11 changed everything" has been the mantra of the strong government conservative, the pragmatic dialectoids who are flexible enough to justify any expansion of central government power in the name of the very conservatism that opposes it. Since "we are at war," Republican media whores have repeatedly claimed that because of an attack that killed the same number of people who die on American roads every 26 days, the following actions are therefore justified:

1. An undeclared war of indefinite end against an undefined enemy.

2. Invading two sovereign nations without a congressional declaration of war.

3. The anti-American Patriot Acts I and II.

4. The suspension of habeus corpus.

5. Torture.

These acts have all been justified under the guise of imminent national peril, despite the fact that the peril is so non-perilous that it has not been deemed necessary to expel foreign nationals, let alone enforce the wide-open national borders or existing immigration laws. If federal agents were to begin shooting innocent and unarmed civilians on the street, would that too be justified?

My only question for you dyed-in-the-wool-pulled-over-your-eyes Republicans: Would all this be OK if Clinton had done it?

Makes me wish we had a Democrat for president; maybe then Republicans would use their brains instead of blindly rooting for their "team."

"Hillary for President!"

Space on the cheap

NASA: Are you taking notes?

Thunder, of Claire Wolfe's blog, tells us of the newest privately-financed space venture:

We all remember SpaceShipOne's historic flight, becoming the first private manned flight into space and the first to be ready to launch again just a week or so later. Well, there's a new kid in town......

The World's Lowest Cost Rocket to Orbit will be launched December 19th at 11AM PST.

**snip**

* Most importantly, Falcon 1, priced at $6.7 million, will provide the lowest cost per flight to orbit of any launch vehicle in the world, despite receiving a design reliability rating equivalent to that of the best launch vehicles currently flying in the United States.

We didn't need the confirmation that a private venture could do it better and cheaper than a government. We already new that. But it sure is nice to see it proven publicly every once in a while.

Story on Spaceref.com

Yakkety Yak--Shut the heck up.

Subtitle

He's talking again. George Bush.

Methinks he doth protest too much. I would be willing to impeach him, and everyone in the chain of command after him, just to avoid the prime-time interruptions.

Mr. Bush has proven himself a traitor to freedom and the Constitution he swore to uphold and defend. Whether this is intentional evil or blundering incompetence or the result of his puppetmasters pulling his strings, it's time for him to go.

What would replace him? Would it be any different? Mr. Cheney isn't any better--SSDD, don't you know. Is there someone who would better fill this role--and by better, I mean someone who would lead the country to a state of anarcho-capitalism or at least pure Constitutionalism. Is this possible, given our current Congress?

Go to your local shopping mall (better yet--a Wal-Mart) on a Friday or Saturday evening, and sit on a bench where you can see the people walk by. As each person walks past, say to yourself, "That person helps pick this country's rulers." There's a wake-up call!

Is it possible, given our system of government where lawmakers are selected by the people, for this country to return to a freedom-centric status in a peaceful manner?

Is there a country in history that has?

Autism and vaccinations

Do you trust your doctor?

From Vox posts on the connection between childhood vaccinations and autism:

(Quote from the article he references:)

"We have a fairly large practice. We have about 30,000 or 35,000 children that we've taken care of over the years, and I don't think we have a single case of autism in children delivered by us who never received vaccines," said Dr. Mayer Eisenstein, Homefirst's medical director who founded the practice in 1973. Homefirst doctors have delivered more than 15,000 babies at home, and thousands of them have never been vaccinated.

Vox's comments:

I've long been anti-vaccine for two reasons. First, because there would be no need for Congress to have passed a law protecting those manufacturing and administering vaccines from being sued if they were genuinely harmless. Second, because of the rise of autism and other childhood problems which correlate with the increase in the insane US vaccine schedule.

Now, a second large group of unvaccinated children has been shown to be free of the very issues which the vaccine advocates claim cannot be caused by vaccines. The vaccine-free practice is somehow missing the 114 autistic children that the Illinois Education Department's statistics would predict, so it's clear that someone cannnot telling the truth here; Occam's Razor strongly suggests is that it is the side which is dependent upon selling and administering vaccines to maintain an important revenue stream.

I agree, wholeheartedly.

Read this (mercola.com references to the link between autism and vaccinations).

I don't get a flu shot for some of the same reasons.

Don't blindly listen to your doctor; do your own research.

Government out of control

Bashing down someone's door in the middle of the night, dressed in black, carrying guns gets you a hero's funeral--if you're a cop.

Go read this, (Free Market News) followed by this. (Claire Wolfe's blog...)

the man was minding his own business, asleep in his bed with his baby daughter in her crib, when several armed men stormed his door and entered his Prentiss, Miss. home, one night in December, 2001. In fear of his life and those of his family, Maye raised a gun and shot one of the intruders, seriously wounding him. After a bit more struggle, during which the other intruders identified themselves as police officers, Maye surrendered and was taken into custody, while his home was searched for illegal drugs.

As it turned out, the troops were looking for Jamie Smith, the man who lived on the other side of the duplex, suspected of drug dealing, and had stormed the wrong door. Nobody among the officers on the scene had even been made aware that the property was occupied by more than Smith himself, and they assumed the other door was only a side entrance to the house. Unfortunately, the officer Maye shot ended up dead; more unfortunately for Cory, who is black, the officer was not only a white man in Mississippi, but the son of the local police chief.

To Protect (their asses) and Serve (themselves).

Bastards.

Three cheers!

Being a vile hag, and reaping the consequences.

Nate, the The Pan Galactic Blogger Blaster, goes to the store and witnesses a canyon-mouthed lard-bucket recieving her due:
(You might have to scroll down the page to "A Long Cold Walk".)

Anyway.. I made my way into our favorite non-union grocery store... and as I went from isle to isle pickin' up this and thats, I found myself frequently following this little family. Average looking dad... young though... probly mid-20s... beautiful little blonde haired girl in the cart. Curly long hair.. happy.. cute as she could be. She was smilin' at me...

Then there was the mom... or.... the woman that was with them.. I assume the mom... I don't know for sure. She was fat. She was ugly. She was a royal bitch. Everything the dad said, she disputed. Everything he picked up was wrong. She berated him continually... I mean the whole time... in the most hateful voice you can imagine. Civilized people don't talk this badly to unwelcomed dogs.

The dad was simply unphazed. He acted like he didn't even hear her talking that way.

I was so discusted I was hoping he'd actually grow a back bone... but then she pushed it to far. She got onto the little girl.. in that same evil tone...

***SNATCH*** Dad grabs the lard-ass up by the back of her neck.


"You will never speak to my daughter that way. Do you understand? It is a cold cold night. You don't want to walk home. You hear?"

Go and read the rest--it gets much, much better.

Women: Don't sass your man. Be pleasant to be around. Consequences can be most distasteful.

Spamming the Spammers

Recruiting Nigerians for fun and profit!

Hog on Ice has taken upon himself the noble task of fighting the Nigerians with their own weapons, those being mounds upon mountains of rotten bulls**t. You know the Nigerians--the country seems to be chock-full of your deceased great uncles with multi-million dollar fortunes, and estate lawyers looking for a way to avoid taxes by giving half of the fortune away to YOU, the lucky spam-ee.

He ("he" being Hog on Ice), as one of his alter-egos, replied to a female spammer today:

Dear Princess Deodorant:

What an unusual name! I know a lady who named her daughters Listerine and Lavoris.

I hope you are right about God blessing me for helping you, because He has not been very good to me lately. Last month the house was overrun by migrating weasels in high rut, and a bunch of them died in my walls while doing "the deed." The stench is incredible, and I probably don't have to tell you it attracts mountain lions.Yesterday I tasered one under the porch, duct-taped it to the base of a tree and called the county to come and get it.

The damn thing is still there. The yowling is so loud I have go out and taser it every forty-five minutes. If civil servants were any lazier, they'd have to hire midgets to sit on their bellies and pump air in and out of them.

Let me get straight to the point. What I want from you is sex. I made a great deal of money trading Beanie Babies on Ebay, and I no longer have any financial worries. Yet I wish to procreate and spread my seed, which I consider far superior to that of the shiftless yokels and slackjaws I see whenever I drive into town for ammunition and adult novelties. I feel that society needs my offspring, with their genetic superiority and unusual intelligence, to set examples for the local Gomers and, in all likelihood, to seize power and rule them with an iron fist. As a displaced royal, I am sure you know exactly where I'm coming from.

I believe genes predispose people to greatness, so if you are really a princess, your DNA should be more than satisfactory. I can put you up here in your own cottage in my walled-in compound, and I will provide you with a generous monthly stipend as long you fulfill your obligation to provide frequent unprotected sex. I hope you can keep up with me. I take an experimental herbal supplement intended for use only by equine veterinarians.

As our children grow, you can help me home-school them and make them understand the danger we face from subversives such as Jews, people who are left-handed, and of course, the Bureau of Weights and Measures. Should you not wish to participate in the development of our new enlightened society, I will gladly send you home with the entirety of your seven million dollar fortune.

Regardless of whether you wish to join me in the creation of a better world free from the degenerate creeping Marxist perversion known as the Metric System, I will assist you energetically in obtaining your funds, in exchange for your help in locating other female royals who are down on their luck and interested in starting a new race of right-handed Supermen.

Send a picture. I need to see your bone structure. The less you wear, the better.

Richard Dewar
Ozymandias, MT

That's class, there. To be so generous...wow.

For the privacy-minded

Fingerprint scanners fooled by Play-Doh

From YubaNet.com, a site with a weird name:

Fingerprint scanning devices often use basic technology, such as an optical camera that take pictures of fingerprints which are then "read" by a computer. In order to assess how vulnerable the scanners are to spoofing, Schuckers and her research team made casts from live fingers using dental materials and used Play-Doh to create molds. They also assembled a collection of cadaver fingers.

In the laboratory, the researchers then systematically tested more than 60 of the faked samples. The results were a 90 percent false verification rate.

"The machines could not distinguish between a live sample and a fake one," Schuckers explained. "Since liveness detection is based on the recognition of physiological activities as signs of life, we hypothesized that fingerprint images from live fingers would show a specific changing moisture pattern due to perspiration but cadaver and spoof fingerprint images would not."

(Found on Slashdot)

Nationalized Health Care--Again?

The Socialists are getting itchy again...

At the end of a long, damning post on Michael Moore, Says Uncle mentions a movie that Moore is working on that attacks the US health care industry:

Mark Twain used to say there were three kind of lies. Lies, damned lies, and statistics. When it comes to Michael Moore there are five kind of lies. Kay S. Hymowitz wrote an excellent article, “Michael Moore, Humbug” that digs deep down into the muck and deceit that is Michael Moore. Hymowitz wrote, “the five Michael Moore lies are, bold-faced lies, lies of omission, artistic lies, slanted insinuating lies, and lies of exaggeration.”

You might ask why should we care?

We should care because Michael Moore’s next project may involve each and every one of us in Tennessee. The film “Sicko” is Michael Moore’s next project and sadly TennCare may be a focal part of this film. At this point it is not clear how much focus will be on TennCare. A thirty-minute documentary on TennCare has recently caused concern by a few observant people. At the end of this documentary when the credits run there is a credit for Michael Moore. What is the credit for? Was Michael Moore a consultant on this documentary?

Will “Sicko” be just another Michael Moore attack on the drugs companies or will it be a push for socialized medicine? What role will TennCare have in this new film? Most importantly, will the people of Tennessee be fairly portrayed in this film?

Someone’s pushing for nationalized health care…ABC News is promoting a report by the late Peter Jennings on the state of the nation’s health insurance system--the last piece he did before he passed away.

Is Bush going to try for nationalized health care? With the Republicans blindly following the Prez through whatever unconstitutional treachery he so decides to enact, and the Dems fully willing to nationalize anything they can see, it would be a good time to do so.

Ugly scenario: Hillary and Bush in a loose but unholy alliance for nationalized health care.

*Shivers*

I hope I’m wrong, but I’ll be looking into expatriation anyway, just in case.

Your Constitution: "Just a goddamned piece of paper"

So says your President Bush.

From Capitol Hill Blue:

Bush on the Constitution: 'It's just a goddamned piece of paper'
By DOUG THOMPSON
Dec 9, 2005, 07:53

Last month, Republican Congressional leaders filed into the Oval Office to meet with President George W. Bush and talk about renewing the controversial USA Patriot Act.

Several provisions of the act, passed in the shell shocked period immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, caused enough anger that liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union had joined forces with prominent conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly and Bob Barr to oppose renewal.

GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.

“I don’t give a goddamn,” Bush retorted. “I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.”

“Mr. President,” one aide in the meeting said. “There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.”

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”

I’ve talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they all confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution “a goddamned piece of paper.”

(Found on WolfesBlog)

If you're a Republican (or a member of any party), and you're still supporting President Bush you're either blissfully ignorant, severely retarded, or evil. Since September 11, 2001, Mr. Bush has shown himself to be perfectly willing and capable of pissing enthusiastically on the rights of We the People. He swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, and he has vigorously broken that oath at seemingly every opportunity.

Impeachment, anyone?

Problem is, the replacement wouldn't be any better.

Diversity. (huah!) What is it good for!

"Absolutely nuthin'"

From Fred on Everything:

Explain it to me, diversity. I don’t get it. Everyone in the feddle gummint and all the news weasels and the academia nuts and assorted distasteful do-gooders with goiterous self-admiration are always honking and blowing about how we need diversity. Why? What is it good for?

I think we need homogeneity. Probably the greatest desire of humanity other than getting sex is avoiding diversity. Mostly, people can’t stand each other. I respect their judgement.

Diversity causes nothing but trouble. Think about it. Do old people want to hang around young people? No. Do young people want to hang around old people? Generally they would rather take poison. Do liberals and conservatives want to get within rifle range of each other? No. Except conservatives, because they have rifles. Southerners and damyanks cordially detest each other, except after a few beers, when they stop being cordial. Urban folk and country folk loathe each other. Management and labor, Marine boneheads and army pukes, dogs and cats, on and on, don’t nobody much like nobody.

So why do we spend so much sweat and money trying to force people to do what they don’t want to do? It’s all bass-ackwards. What if we tried…well…freedom? What if the gummint just left people the hell alone?

Naahhhh.

Right on.

Now go away--you're kinda different lookin'.

Electricity: I feel all tingly

Don't touch that!

Via Hell in a Handbasket comes these pics of a huge snake electrocuted when it tried to crawl under an electric fence after eating an impala.

And if I had a nickel for every time I heard that, I'd buy me an island near Alaska.

Nature is weird.

Snowflakes

Wow...

From Caltech.:



Look at those snowflakes and tell me there's no omnipotent Creator.

Don't run and yell. You'll get shot.

Killing the mentally ill.

From Time.com:

At least one passenger aboard American Airlines Flight 924 maintains the federal air marshals were a little too quick on the draw when they shot and killed Rigoberto Alpizar as he frantically attempted to run off the airplane shortly before take-off.

"I don't think they needed to use deadly force with the guy," says John McAlhany, a 44-year-old construction worker from Sebastian, Fla. "He was getting off the plane." McAlhany also maintains that Alpizar never mentioned having a bomb.

"I never heard the word 'bomb' on the plane," McAlhany told TIME in a telephone interview. "I never heard the word bomb until the FBI asked me did you hear the word bomb. That is ridiculous." Even the authorities didn't come out and say bomb, McAlhany says. "They asked, 'Did you hear anything about the b-word?'" he says. "That's what they called it."

When the incident began McAlhany was in seat 24C, in the middle of the plane. "[Alpizar] was in the back," McAlhany says, "a few seats from the back bathroom. He sat down." Then, McAlhany says, "I heard an argument with his wife. He was saying 'I have to get off the plane.' She said, 'Calm down.'"

Alpizar took off running down the aisle, with his wife close behind him. "She was running behind him saying, 'He's sick. He's sick. He's ill. He's got a disorder," McAlhany recalls. "I don't know if she said bipolar disorder [as one witness has alleged]. She was trying to explain to the marshals that he was ill. He just wanted to get off the plane."

Unbelievable. Not a good idea to run and yell on an airplane, or within 100 miles of an airport, these days, but should anyone be justified for shooting someone for wanting to get off the plane?

The thing is, these air marshals will be protected from prosecution, punishment, and even gentle scolding, and will likely recieve promotions or cushy desk jobs for the remainder of thier careers. (See Lon Horiuchi.)

What happened after the shooting is even more telling...

McAlhany says he tried to see what was happening just in case he needed to take evasive action. "I wanted to make sure if anything was coming toward me and they were killing passengers I would have a chance to break somebody's neck," he says. "I was looking through the seats because I wanted to see what was coming.

"I was on the phone with my brother. Somebody came down the aisle and put a shotgun to the back of my head and said put your hands on the seat in front of you. I got my cell phone karate chopped out of my hand. Then I realized it was an official."

In the ensuing events, many of the passengers began crying in fear, he recalls. "They were pointing the guns directly at us instead of pointing them to the ground," he says "One little girl was crying. There was a lady crying all the way to the hotel."

Gosh, I feel safer somehow.

Fire!

Get out NOW.

From Hell in a Handbasket comes this warning on the speed and severity of home fires:

...found people inside those burning houses, all dead. Most of them were asleep at the time the fire started, and that's where he found them. It seems that smoke is the big killer in any house fire, which is understandable when one considers that your house is a big box that might as well have been designed to catch and concentrate deadly fumes. Added to the problem is that just about everything in your house will emit huge clouds of poisonous fumes while it burns. One breath of this stuff and the inside of your lungs are coated with plastic, and no power on Earth can save you.

Good info. Make sure you watch the video. Scary!