Quote of the week....

I'm blogging a blog of a post from another site, too many degrees of separation? From the cool guy at Alphecca.com comes the quote of the week, at the end.

Maybe that's why "Stand Your Ground" bills are becoming popular in various state houses here in the U.S. Last week I reported on one introduced in Alaska that is under consideration. Naturally there is opposition to it including (besides the usual Brady Bunch) trial lawyers. From the Fairbanks News-Miner:

The senator said the law would act as a deterrent to criminals. Melissa
Fouse, executive director of the Alaska Association of Trial Lawyers, disagreed.

"Nobody has ever proven that the death penalty is a deterrent to crime," Fouse said.

She describes the bill as a "boutique immunity bill" designed to deprive people of their right to sue over wrongdoing.

"We don't think that's right," Fouse said. "Besides, why would you shoot somebody over a car?"

Well, as one commenter to my post said, "Because it's my car!"

Bitter rant...part 2?

An update from Wired about Google being the only company so far to fight the search engine subpoena.

I never understand people who say "if you have nothing to hide, what's the problem?" Well, my personal privacy for one, which I value above almost every other inalienable right that I have as a human being in this world. I am not a terrorist, dammit. I will not let my privacy be violated without due cause. This is exactly what "unreasonable searches and seizure" is.

So...since other search engines have already bowed to the subpoena, I respectfully ask that you and everyone you know stop using any web search engines except for Google, who is the only one I know so far to fight back. That means no MSN search, Yahoo, AOL. Hell, Microsoft is in the government's pocket anyway.

As a free citizen, what you search for on the web is NOT the government's business. Guard your privacy....it's another part of your personal liberty they are trying to take.

Your resident libertarian,
Kris

Bitter rant....strangely involving porn.

Need I say anything about invasion of privacy on this one, that hasn't already been said about the current Bush administration?

The Bush administration, seeking to revive an online pornography law struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, has subpoenaed Google Inc. for details on
what its users have been looking for through its popular search engine.

Google has refused to comply with the subpoena, issued last year, for a broad range of material from its databases, including a request for 1 million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period

Given the most recent (blatant) abuse of executive power, I'm surprised they even BOTHERED to ask a court for the subpoena. And just watch the Democraps whine ineffectively from the sidelines. Our 2 parties are a shambles...corruption and endless bickering everywhere, while a third of your paycheck is squandered away.

TAKE IT BACK. If you don't help break the political stranglehold on this country by voting for a Big Change, then you deserve the crap country we are turning into. Don't come running to my house when they start tagging your kids with chips to track them and tax you into poverty so you can wait in line for more "entitlement" programs from your OH-SO-LOVING GOVERNMENT.

Hey, it worked SO well in Soviet Russia, right? Apathy leads to liberty for none.

Hypno-chickens?

Ending the year with some random stuff:

"A chicken can be hypnotized, or put into a trance by holding its head down against the ground, and continuously drawing a line along the ground with a stick or a finger, starting at its beak and extending straight outward in front of the chicken.

If the chicken is hypnotized in this manner, it will remain immobile for somewhere between 15 seconds to 30 minutes, continuing to stare at the line. "

More? Of course! See you in 2006!

Oxymoron of the day: "government efficiency"

As if you needed more proof that government-sponsored "help programs" suck:

Federal loans meant for businesses "adversely affected" by the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States often went to businesses barely touched by the tragedy or not at all, according to an audit...

The inspector general sampled 59 of 7,058 loans ... found that 85 percent of the loans lacked justifications or had justifications that were less than convincing.

For example, a $770,000 STAR loan allowed a restaurant in New Jersey to purchase a second location although the borrower said he only experienced a slight dip in business after the attacks and no long-term problems at all.

A real estate appraiser in Oregon received $371,500 to buy land although his financial reports "showed a growing business and an 87 percent increase in revenues," and the borrower said he experienced no adverse affects from the terror attacks.

So, go ahead and be sure to vote for the social-program-loving liberals next election to spend all your money helping other people who often don't need it. Oh, don't like that? Go vote for the conservative bastards, then or the "terrorists will win" or some crap. Yeah, that sucks too.

Ready for a new party yet? Ready to vote out the incumbent idiots? If you want the the government to change, you better vote, cause otherwise, I don't wanna hear crap from you. :)

Speeeeeeeed!

How fast computers have gotten since I finished high school, way back in 1993:

One stalwart component has survived through all of these innovations: the 3.5" floppy. ...The floppy is the only component that still remains in use today, practically unchanged in its 18 years of service, running at 360 rpm and offering a transfer rate of 34 kB/s. Once again, let's put that in perspective with regard to today's world: Transferring a file to your computer from a server that is 10,000 miles away on another continent is three times or even faster than getting it from your internal disk drive. And despite all this - the floppy lives.

It's a looooong article on the history of CPUs, but a great read for the geeks out there. My cell phone has more RAM than my first PC did (2MB!), and the new system I'm building has a quarter-terabyte hard drive. Wow, that sounds like, futuristing, dude!

SexBox360?

Wow, I bet this would have made standing in line at Best Buy for an XBox360 more worth your while (posting ahs since been removed...darn):

...if one Craigslist.org ad were to be believed, two Boston-area women would do just about anything to get their hands on the next-gen console. Under the headline "trade sex for an xbox 360," a person claiming to be a 22-year-old woman said "Me and my roommate are totally hard core gamers, but our desperate (sic) attempts to get an Xbox 360 have gotten us nothing so far."
...while the poster was apparently willing to debase herself to get an Xbox 360, she still had standards. "I'm looking for the PREMIUM system, not the sh**ty watered down one," she said.

Graffiticus romanus?

Ever wonder what Roman graffiti was like? Of course not. Broaden your worldly knowledge with such gems (first on the list is the best, by far):

I.2.20 (Bar/Brothel of Innulus and Papilio); 3932: Weep, you girls. My penis has given you up. Now it penetrates men’s behinds. Goodbye, wondrous femininity!

VI.16.15 (atrium of the House of Pinarius); 6842: If anyone does not believe in Venus, they should gaze at my girl friend

VIII.2 (in the basilica); 1880: The man I am having dinner with is a barbarian.

Herculaneum (on the exterior wall of a house); 10619: Apollinaris, the doctor of the emperor Titus, defecated well here.

Have we really changed much as a civilization (and I use that term loosely) in 2000 years?

Rational discourse?

Winning both the vote for the person I'm least likely to buy a house next to....and the quote of the day:

STORRS, Connecticut (AP) -- Conservative columnist Ann Coulter cut short a speech at the University of Connecticut amid boos and jeers, and decided to hold a question-and-answer session instead.

"I love to engage in repartee with people who are stupider than I am," Coulter told the crowd of 2,600 Wednesday.

Boy...that sure leaves her with a small audience, then. :)

No, seriously. You only really learn when you're surrounded by smarter people than yourself. Basically, she's admitting to getting off on bashing people. Can someone please tell her that her 15 minutes are up?

Take that, you extroverts!

Yahoo News is reporting that introverted individuals tend to have more brain activity in general, specifically in the frontal lobe.

Researchers using brain scans have found introverts have more brain activity in general, and specifically in the frontal lobes. When these areas are activated, introverts are energized by retrieving long-term memories, problem solving, introspection, complex thinking and planning.

Doesn't say that said activity is more productive....we could all just be sitting around daydreaming a lot. Hey, that's fine. The extroverts are probably just jealous we have so many free synapses. :)