|
Current events are
below the scam alert.
19 Dec 2010 Biden parrots Rethuglican talking points about Assange in interview. Who is the terrorist? Two of the newspapers I was reading online, The Worcester Telegram ans Cape Cod Times, have gone to paid view. Their right, of course, but I wonder how that business model affects their page views and bottom line. Well, the whole industry wonders. It did not work for the NYT op-ed section a year or 2 ago. We stopped subscribing to the Telegram when it offered a cheap rate but didn't honor it, and it's phone reps wouldn't look into it. (And it's a right-wing rag with little content, but 3 readable columnists.) So, for now, I still read the Telegram headlines, and occasionally read an article, and I just don't read CCT at all. I can probably read them thru library web sites, but haven't bothered, yet.  censored mural Ben Stein must have absolutely amazing work habits. He insisted that "the people who have been laid off and cannot find work are generally people with poor work habits and poor personalities." 16 Dec 2010 Larry Flynt is more of a patriot that any Faux clown or GOP whore. Bradley Manning, apparently, and Julian Assange, definitely, are doing more for human rights than any Rethuglican politician or American media network. And more than most (or all) Democratic politicians, too.
Chris Hayes, on the tax cut deal: "It's the standard bribery model of legislating that has come to characterize Washington in the era of oligarchy: if you want to put food on the table of the unemployed, you must lavishly wine and dine the CEOs and bankers who laid them off."11 Dec 2010 more Rethuglican pandering NYT editorial: Just eight months after the nation was shocked by the death of 29 coal miners in the Upper Big Branch explosion in West Virginia, Republicans have once again pandered to industry and blocked passage of an urgently needed mine safety reform. 10 Dec 201 Pander Bear supports Obama's tax cave-in. No surprise there. 9 Dec 2010: Obama Agrees to Extend Republicans' Custody of His Balls, by Andy Borowitz WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) -- In an effort to end what he called "the bickering and rancor in Washington," President Barack Obama agreed today to extend Republicans' custody of his balls for an additional two years. ...  9 Dec 2010, Loyalists Fume Over Tax Betrayal - Hardly the Unkindest Bush III Cut of All, by Robert Becker Encircled by irate liberals, the president has done it now -- confirmed his domestic legacy by re-entrenching into the permanent status quo the “Bush-Obama” tax cuts. If passed, no one in two years, especially the tax-hating House majority, will touch this sacred cow. Though heavily telegraphed, this vaunted sabotage shocked those still clinging to Obama dreams of progressive change, audacity, or hope. Curiously, and frankly, this pact to sustain low taxes on the rich, however noxious, is a second-order symbolic Armageddon moment. ... 10 Dec 2010, Chris Hayes at DailyKos The Republicans have spent two years—an entire election cycle and postelection victory lap—repeating with tourettic persistence dire warnings about the existential threat posed by large deficits and mounting government debt. And yet, amazingly, these same Republicans (and a few conservative Democrats), who love to offer lectures about the necessity of shared sacrifice, also spent the week demanding that all the Bush tax cuts be made permanent, a policy that would increase the debt over the next ten years by an astounding $3.3 trillion.  9 Dec
2010 Halliburton may pay
$500 million to keep Cheney out of prison:
report
at Raw Story by Daniel TencerOilfield services company Halliburton is in negotiations with the Nigerian government to keep its former CEO, Dick Cheney, out of prison, according to a news report. Sources inside Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission told GlobalPost this week that a settlement keeping the charges against Cheney out of court could cost as much as $500 million. Wonder what the stockholders think. Holy Joe wants to prosecute the New York Times, etc, for printing some of the Wikileaks info. So the rest of the world can easily see what mildly embarrassing things the US has been up to, but we can't? What a teabagger.  The US is abandoning
efforts to persuade Israel to renew a
freeze on settlement-building as part of
efforts to revive Middle East peace talks.This is a followup to this horrifying example of turpitude, from 15 Nov 2010, "U.S. offers Israel warplanes in return for new settlement freeze Netanyahu presents security cabinet with Clinton's incentive of 20 F-35 fighter planes and security guarantees in exchange for 90-day West Bank building moratorium." Not all the fanatics are on one side. F-35 photo from DefenseIndustryDaily  Things
that fly and stuffAvro Vulcan Thunderball 7 Dec 2010 quoted in NYT "It's all about you, using your own mind, without any method or schema, to restore order from chaos. And once you have, you can sit back and say, 'Hey, the rest of my life may be a disaster, but at least I have a solution.'" Marcel Danesi, a professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto and the author of "The Puzzle Instinct: The Meaning of Puzzles in Human Life."6 Dec 2010 Headline: GOP leader Mitch McConnell calls WikiLeaks founder ‘a high-tech terrorist’4 Dec 2010 WIkileaks Comments seen: So it turns out Julian Assange's warrant for "sexual assault" is actually for "consensual sex without a condom". In other news, the U.S. government can't even orchestrate a decent smear job anymore  Conservitards now: "Assange criticized the US government? KILL HIM!" Of course, the Democrats are saying mostly the same thing. 2 Dec 2010 Note sent to Sen. Kerry: Looks like your colleauges, and probably you, are about to cave in on extending the tax cuts for billionaires, after you just refused to extend unemployment benefits.1 Dec 2010 The first teabgger senator in action: 2 million face bleak holidays after Scott Brown blocks jobless benefits Billions for the rich, but zip for people who (want to) work. Some attitudes have been with us a long time: Teabagger in 1860 There was a major bust of Russian spammers a few weeks ago. My spam blocking report has gone from an average of about 100/day to about 5! (But 2 or 3 per day are sneaking through.) Church talent night - some good, some not. I haven't heard Captain Beefheart since college, and it's still awful.  30 Nov 2010Irreducible Incoherence and Intelligent Design: A Look into the Conceptual Toolbox of a Pseudoscience. Maarten Boudry, Stefaan Blancke, and Johan Braeckman. Quarterly Review of Biology 85 (4), 2010 link 21 Nov 2010 via Daily Kos EJ Dionne: (Washington Post)19 Nov 2010 There is an article in Commonplace about Anthony Comstock (1844-1915), the evil censor. I didn't know his base was the the YMCA! There another good article there looking at the parallels between Mark Twain and Wong Chin Foo, A Connecticut Yankee in the Court of Wu Chih Tien.  18 Nov 2010
headline: Carville: If Hillary Gave
Obama One Of Her Balls, 'He'd Have Two'Can't disagree with that. Krugman notes how he repeats the right-wing mythology of St. Ronnie, etc., too. Follow-up, 9 Dec 2010: Obama Agrees to Extend Republicans' Custody of His Balls, by Andy Borowitz  It's not surprising that Democrats lost ground. The economy sucks, which means many people are flailing about for change, and we have to admit it: the Democrats are uninspiring, boring, and unfocused. They can't deliver a strong message that makes a case for why we should continue to vote for them, and I know in my case that when I went into the election booth, I was simply making an anti-Rethuglican vote; with the exception of a few local candidates, I was not excited about any of the Democrats here.The majority party usually loses seats at the mid-term election. The shift this time was large but not extraordinary. Some of the more insane Rethuglicans lost their races. This seemed to be overlooked by essentially all the media and commntators, looking for a supposed message from the teabaggers. (Their message is "I want it all, I don't want to share, and I refuse to pay for it.) As for the Republicans — how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical 'American heritage'...) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead. -- HP Lovecraft A map of college-educated adults shows a similarity to red-blue voting patterns. So do maps of obesity, Union-Confederacy states and urban-rural voting. Color me elitist. 
 northern harrier (I think), Fort Hill, Eastham, 24 Oct 2010 Karl Denninger, financial blogger and one of the originators of the Tea Party "movement," says the movement has been hijacked by the very people it was protesting, and is now obsessed with god, gays and guns. These include "Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Bob Barr, and douchebag groups such as the 'Tea Party Patriots.'" Denninger writes: "Tea Party my ass. This was nothing other than the Republican Party stealing the anger of a population that was fed up with the Republican Party's own theft of their tax money at gunpoint to bail out the robbers of Wall Street and fraudulently redirecting it back toward electing the very people who stole all the ****ing money!" And Karl Rove lies (of course) about the origins and timing of the TeaBaggers, claiming the public was fine with the banker bailout (by Bush) but outraged at Obama's jobs programs. 17 Oct 2010 No way to run a business: Ancestry.com includes WorldConnect, a site for posting genealogies. Most of them are recycled junk, not much better than the Mormon dreck, but there are enough good ones to make it one of my most useful sources. My data is posted there, as well as on my own pages. But for the past few days its Search function has been offline, and will be for several weeks, they say! The data is there - you just can't find it. [Followup - the search function was only disabled for a few days.] We went for a nice, long walk around Buffumville Lake, in Oxford and Charlton, a dam and recreation area operated by the Army Corps of Engineers. The Trustees of Reservations own many interesting properties Shelter Rock, Brookfield Doane's Falls, Royalston Mid-state Trail ... Nice walk from Mt Watatic south to Mt Hunger and back - 4h.  View north to Mt. Watatic from Mt. Hunger. Conservationists are worried about development and strange old men. Checking my stats - The popular image ranking changes pretty often, the popular pages less often. Most popular images:
 A bomb shelter was built on Nantucket for President John F. Kennedy in 1961, disguised by the United States Navy as a "Jet assist takeoff fuel bottle storage area," but was never used. cool site; Things that fly and stuff 13 Oct 2010 Ex-top soldier: Iraq war ‘fiasco’ due to Rumsfeld’s lies From Wikipedia:Considering the Know-Nothings and Tea Crackers - I'm also reminded of Ross Perot's appeal to a certain element. Every Perot bumper sticker I saw was on a pickup, a herd of people who fancied themselves "independent." The Republicans picked up the pieces of the Know-Nothings, marginalized the Perotistas, and mostly control the Teabaggers. Several partially known American nuclear accidents with weapons and power plants were near disasters, and presumably the tip of the iceberg.   1854.
The Papal Conspiracy Exposed.
Rev Edward Beecher. Boston: Stearns &
Co.A bit of sectarian vitriol, condemning the Romanist system as anti-American, anti-Biblical, bloody, intolerant and totalitarian. Sound familiar? Just the introduction is here. plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose 30 Sep 2010 "Nothing more symbolizes how the temptations of power can corrupt youthful values and idealism than Secretary Hillary Clinton's invitation to Henry Kissinger and Richard Holbrooke to keynote a major State Department conference on the history of the Indochina war," Fred Branfman wrote on Tuesday, in an article titled "Hillary Clinton and State Dept. to Celebrate War Criminal Henry Kissinger, While the White House Repeats His Deadly Mistakes."29 Sep 2010
 Terrorism in
America: the Limbaugh effect:SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Fears that newly elected President Barack Obama would curb gun owners' rights served as the catalyst for a father and son to plant a bomb at a bank that killed two police officers and maimed a third, prosecutors said Wednesday. Everything's so much simpler when you stop worrying about right-on, modern follies like "reason" or "proportion" and just let the contents of your paranoid id run rampage in a reeking spew of ignorant bile. - Flying RodentAnd then there's the Pew Center study just released showing that atheists score much higher on knowledge of religions than American christians, including their knowledge of Christian history and sectarian theology. That's largely because religious affiliation is tribal, not reasoned. Tim Minchin is a hilarious, foul-mouthed breath of fresh air. Americans & evolution the pederast with the hat The second, especially, is NSFW. I answered a phone push-poll for the tea cracker, Lamb, running against Jim McGovern for Congress. They aren't even pretending to be neutral. My support for McGovern is tepid, based on his weak civil rights record, but he's a paragon by comparison. There's also an even farther right candidate, Stupa, but no Green-Rainbow candidate.. As always, I will
write in "abolish the Governor's Council"
instead of voting for any candidate.
 24 Sep 2010 WATERBURY — A Connecticut man is under arrest after he allegedly stole an American flag from Waterbury's Town Plot Park and hoisted a stuffed hippopotamus toy in its place. Jeffrey Kovic, 23, of Waterbury is being held with bail set at $100,000 on misdemeanor larceny, criminal mischief and conspiracy charges.City police tell the Republican-American of Waterbury that they're also seeking arrest warrants for several minors suspected of taking part in last week's incident and damaging park bleachers. 22 Sep 2010 Bob Altemeyer's Comments on the Tea Party Movement, and his book, The Authoritarians (PDFs). Fascinating, convincing analysis of the mind set that sees Beck, Limbaugh, Palin, and priests, etc as truthful leaders. 19 Sep 2010 17 Sep 2010 Religious fundamentalists alone are a huge popular grouping in the United States, which resembles pre-industrial societies in that regard. This is a culture in which three-fourths of the population believe in religious miracles, half believe in the devil, 83 percent believe that the Bible is the 'actual' or the inspired word of God, 39 percent believe in the Biblical prediction of Armageddon and 'accept it with a certain fatalism,' a mere 9 percent accept Darwinian evolution while 44 percent believe that 'God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years,' and so on. The 'God and Country rally' that opened the national Republican convention is one remarkable illustration, which aroused no little amazement in conservative circles in Europe. - Noam Chomsky, "'Mandate for Change,' or Business as Usual," Z Magazine, February 1993, pp. 32-33 Compare complex and hard-to-understand scientific reasoning with the powerfully simple “God created it” and it’s really like giving a small kid a choice between “Vitamin enriched protein augmented Spirulina fortified Ginseng extract” and “Chocolate ice-cream” - Krish Ashok 12 Sep 2020 PZ Myers at Pharyngula on civil rights vs.special rights for the superstitious ... Informing me that the Muslims are genuinely and sincerely and deeply offended is not informative — contrary to the suggestion that I must have an empathy deficit to be unaware of that, I know that and appreciate the fact that their feelings are hurt and they are angry and outraged. My point is that I don't care, and neither should anyone else. The Abrahamic religions are all about fostering that feeling of oppression, even when it isn't there, and hearing yet another one of the more deranged members of the People of the Book whine that we show insufficient respect for their mythology gives me the same feeling of exasperation I felt when my small children would wail about not getting a candy bar in the grocery store. Fine, you can be mad about your deprivation, but that does not obligate me to serve your whims. ... 1  2
Sep 2010"Newt Gingrich may not be a 'birther' -- a believer in the false claim that Barack Obama was born in Kenya -- but he evidently doesn't have a problem pandering to that demographic.The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who loves his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair. - HL Mencken  Provincetown Advocate, 29
apr 1943, p1"As for Austin Jason, veteran of the Grand Banks, who has wrung more water out of his mittens than most of the others around here have sailed over, he can't see what all this fuss about rationing is all about. Hell's bells, says he, Cape Codders have always been rationed, leastways, until these new-fangled stores came in and the old folks died off. Why, for five and a half months on a Grand Banks trip, nobody beard of fresh meat, much less steak. Fried cod heads for breakfast, cod head chowder for dinner and halibut fins for supper, with maybe a bread pudding with some molasses once in a while and coffee that lasted like it was made from old ground-up shoes. Saturday nights there was a pot of beans with some pork in it, and sometimes the cook served up some "salt horse." "Nobody worried about it and everybody et and was healthy.—just as healthy as anybody today, maybe more so. We're here, ain't we?" We had to admit that Austin was very much here as he swung a festoon of monkey-fiah by way of emphasis. "Imagine me eatin' monkey-fish!" says Austin, "But there ain't no call at all for this fuss about rationing. We've always had it," says he with a final swing of the monkey-fish." PA archives 30 Aug 2010 Bush's poodle is a superstitious goober: “Those who scorn God and those who do violence in God’s name, both represent views of religion. But both offer no hope for faith in the twenty first century.” Tony Blair, speaking at Georgetown University for the Common Word conference of Muslim and Christian scholars. good riddance: Blockbuster to Go Bust in September
Teabaggers: Outraged that Bush bailed out the banks, although they blame Obama for it, but outraged further that the Demoncrats might tax the loot. A recentTelegram letter tried to defend the teabaggers against the racism charge, in particular, in a muddy way, by invoking the compromise that gave 3/5 of a census person to slaves. Apparently that was his way of saying the Teabaggers are a "deep cave" movement, that he won't disavow the inclusion of pants-wetters, birthers, truthers, Birchers, Republicans, Becktards, Dittoheads, plutocrats' bootlickers, gun droolers, libertarians, authoritarians, racists and bigots, creationists, neo-Confederates and secessionists, dominionists, Klanners, anti-Semites, anti-barcoders (but for identity documents for brown people), xenophobes, gold bugs, climate denialists, torturers, etc. He claims the Tea Party is NOT a party, just a movement, so it doesn't have a platform, just principles, but wouldn't say what those alleged principles are. Looks to me like he's saying that since all his 'Bagger brethren agree that the Negro in the White House must go, it must be done. He seems to think that collection makes a majority, when obviously it's just the looniest of the people who didn't vote for Obama in the first place. Bob Altemeyer's Comments on the Tea Party Movement, and his book, The Authoritarians (PDFs).
Aug 2010 There are 48 4,000-ft mountains in New Hampshire, by the criteria of the AMC. Should be 48 spectacular views, right? No, because the summits of most are now crowded with dense scrub spruce trees, so there is essentially no view at all. My solution would be for the US Forest Service to helicopter in a big wood chipper and a crew to clear view lines. It would attract more climbers to the less-climbed mountains, and relieve pressure on the ones that do have views. We just climbed popular Mt Osceola - nice view south (and a difficult view north), with its eroded trail; then Mt Tecumseh nearby - hardly any view, longer trail in much better condition. The teen does these climbs in half the time of the old man, running part of the way.  old man and teen, Mt. Osceola, NH  view from Mt Tecumseh  view of Lake George from Buck Mountain, with my favorite teen, wearing the same clothes We had a lot of fun tubing on the Sacandaga river - as usual the rafting company had a photographer stationed at a key point - she got a good shot of me clinging to my tube after falling out, but it was far too expensive to buy. Glens Falls seemed like a nice small city. We climbed Prospect and Buck mountains - great views from both. There are mayflowers growing on Prospect mountain. Bolton is a small town on the west shore with upscale shops and restaurants. I had most fun in the antique shops. At the other end of the antique shop scale, there was a horribly cluttered, dusty, leaky store near Ticonderoga, with the usual glassware and rusty mysteries, but also guns and animal parts, and a creepy attendant. Fort Ticonderoga has been on my travel list for ages, and I expected it to be a highlight of the trip, but I was underwhelmed. It is run by a private non-profit (the Feds refused it a number of times, a long time ago), on what seems to be a very limited budget. The staff in the fort, in the middle of tourist season, seemed to consist of 2 adult costumed interpreters and several junior-high students who changed costumes to be French and English fife-and-drums and cannoneers. They have a large collection of real 18th century cannons and mortars. The fort rebuilding seems well done, but the upper halttsls are filled with the irrelevant old stuff that historical societies used to collect, and if there are cellars and magazines underneath, they are not open to view. The Armory has a substantial collection of antique guns, which bore me. The site is impressive, and it's easy to see how it once guarded the strategic route between Lakes Champlain and George. The gardens are nice, the lodge in severe disrepair. (This contrasts with the rebuilt fortress at Louisburg, Cape Breton, where most of the cannon are fake., but there is a large staff.)  Ticonderoga gun crew Filtered-out spam has been hitting 100/day, just in my alumni account, and Verizon stops additional ones. Later in Aug.: over 200/day sometimes! Mostly penis enhancers, drugs for impotence and pain, and fake watches, plus some suspicious software, "business opportunities," and a few Nigerian scams. Haven't seen the penny-stocks scams in a long time, and I never did get the fundagelical and winger magic money scams for the particularly feeble-minded. Sure-Jell is powdered pectin, and Certo is liquid. Both are made by Kraft, but their proportions in recipes are quite different. Since I didn't know this before, and made a batch of jelly with Certo that did not set-up, I think Kraft should mention this in its recipes. Sure-Jell is considerably cheaper.
 10 Aug 2010 Fark story: Small government Tea Party candidate from New York vows to use eminent domain to stop the "Ground Zero" mosque, presumably without his head exploding from cognitive dissonance LGF
Sharon Angle speech and photo op in San Diego: The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, is a far-right organization that propagates absurd anti-government conspiracy theories. The group has called the establishment of Medicare “evil” and “immoral”; has denied the link between HIV and AIDS; has argued that the FDA is unconstitutional; has promoted “one of Angle’s previously expressed theories that abortion may cause breast cancer“; and has even warned that President Obama may have used a “covert form of hypnosis” to win over voters.  1 Aug 2010The Washington Post has a piece on an upsurge of visitors to Colonial Williamsburg, teabaggers looking for validation of their opinions. The staff are bemused. Good news, so far. The Mass. legislature and Gov. Patrick disagree over the insane gambling bill, and he will veto it, largely because the corrupt goober in charge of the House tried to ram through a no-bid award of slot machines for his district's race tracks. DeLeo continues to lie: “Make no mistake about it, anything short of Governor Patrick signing this bill represents a decision to kill the prospects of 15,000 new jobs and bring immediate local aid to our cities and towns,’’ said DeLeo, with 100 lawmakers standing behind him. - Boston GlobeI wrote a note of support to Gov. Patrick. My notes to Sen. Chandler and Rep. Day, some months ago, were never acknowledged. 30 July 2010 Where Are The Prosecutions? SEC Lets Citi Execs Go Free After $40 Billion Subprime Lie Zach Carter, Campaign for America's Future What is the penalty for bankers who tell $40 billion lies? Somewhere between nothing and a rounding-error on your bonus. Citigroup CFO Gary Crittenden will pay $100,000 to settle allegations that he screwed over his own investors. The year of the alleged wrongdoing, Crittenden took home $19.4 million. That's right. Crittenden will lose one-half of one percent of his income from the year he hid a quagmire of bailout-inducing insanity from his own investors. That's it. No indictment. No prison time. Crittenden doesn't even have to formally acknowledge any wrongdoing. [continues]28 July 2010 Attention Bigots: There Is Already a Mosque Near the WTC Site Wonkette operative “Evan B.” writes: “The debate over the planned mosque at Ground Zero seems a bit retarded to me; I work directly between the planned mosque and a mosque that has existed before 9/11 and continues to operate to this day. The existing mosque and the proposed mosque are probably 800 feet apart; one city block, let’s say.” This is humorous! LISTEN UP, HATEFUL ASSHOLES: The end is near! The Muslins have already invaded that city you call godless yet love because terrorism happened there! YOU ARE RIGHT TO BE VERY, VERY SCARED AND ANGRY ABOUT THIS! So you have to kill yourselves right now! It is the only way! When the right-wing noise machine starts promoting another alleged scandal, you shouldn’t suspect that it’s fake — you should presume that it’s fake, until further evidence becomes available. Paul Krugman, NYT 9 Nov 1863, Gettysburg
 15 July 2010Pyrosomes are a class of colonial urochordates, often luminescent, which typically form a cone or cylinder that is centimeters to meters long. They are best known from tropical surface waters, but also live at great depths. A report [and another] read today says the BP oil disaster is killing large numbers, which may have significant effects on the food chain. This is a little-studied, hard to study, group of animals, which I had never heard of until now, and I don't know what to make of the reports. Nature report of their role in marine carbon cycle, Armstong 2009 Underwater nature films Pyrosoma atlanticum
12 Jul 2010 Ross Douthat actually made some sense! The Class War We NeedBut of course he blames Obama for much of this, as if these were new problems, instead of just the same old politics. And George Will had an article on the evils of social activism, interesting and informative if you can ignore his perspective. Another round of Prohibition, anyone? Did a sense of shame ever reside in our Republican toadies? You can't stop people who are never embarrassed by themselves. Will's readiness to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse can be cited as world class sycophancy. - Norman Mailer, about George Will, 3/14/2002 Boston Globe letter11 Jul 2010 Dana Milbank at the Washington Post had a well-researched article about how Gov. Jan Brewer and Sen. Grampa McCain, etc. were flat-out lying about the crimes of Mexican immigrants. He used the real police and FBI data. The wingnuts just went ballistic in the comments (nearly 2000, so far), without any counter evidence (of course), with vile and idiotic ad hominem attacks, irrelevant shaggy dog stories, and far-winger rants. Headless bodies and other immigration tall tales in ArizonaI've never understood how illegal immigration is supposed to be a liberal plot. Seems to me the major direct benficiaries are landlords and business owners, prime tea bagger material. Liberals just want them treated humanely. Liberal commentators also point out how Reagan, Bush, etc gave amnesty to previous generations of them, but the wingers know amnesty is part of Obama's plot to impose socialism. The Rethuglicans, in control and out of control, have done nothing constructive about the "problem" they now scream about. (Their border wall is a sick, expensive, incomplete joke.) Just partisan politics. 9 Jul 2010 Biggest defaulters on mortgages are the rich by Jed Lewison, NYT
30 jun 2010 Local petty corruption?: the parking lot at the Worcester Public Library has meters, cheap enough at 25¢ per half hour. But several meters were damaged, then removed, more than a year ago. I assume those unmetered spaces are taken by the first city employees to arrive in the morning. Who damaged them? There is not an epidemic of meter vandalizing, so I believe it was specific. And yes, I use those spaces when I can. Study: US media redefined torture after US started practicing it [not a surprise] The NYT belatedly comments on agribusiness abuse of antibiotics. Scientists and health researchers have been complaining for decades. 29 jun 2010 Report faults U.S. for being too optimistic about Afghan security capabilities By Karen DeYoung
 When we were at our Wellfleet
cottage, I heard an unfamiliar bird call. I've
heard it in other years, too, but this time made a
point of trying to identify it. I asked the
experts at the Cornell Ornithology lab, who made
several good suggestions based on my inadequate
description, but the calls were not right. I
bought a book & CD of frog calls - and learned
something about them, but my call wasn't there.
Finally, I listened to my Elliott & Stokes CDs
of recorded calls, and, That's it!
- a Northern saw-whet owl. They are rather common,
say the descriptions, but their calls had never
sunk it before (and I've never actually seen one.)22 jun 2010 advertising scam: betterlinkadvertising 18 jun 2010 All songs about bells, or at least all the folk songs I've ever heard about bells, are awful. And why is Bruce Springsteen rich and famous? His good song is Pink Cadilllac, and all the others sound like each other, muddy and mumbled. Does the guy always have to sing like he's constipated and trying to force a log out? - comment at Pharyngula, 7 dec 2010New theme for the decade, First we hang all the bankers. 17 Jun 2010 Pharmaceutical Companies Back Away From New Research16 Jun 2010 WASHINGTON – The two chief authors of the Senate energy and climate bill joined 20 other Democrats Tuesday evening to help defeat a motion that would have stripped $35 billion in special tax breaks for big oil companies. Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) cast their votes against the amendment introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to H.R. 4213, the "American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act." It failed 35-61. -- Rawstory
16 Jun 2010 2010 Census I've been working for the Census for several weeks, part of the follow-up crew to get info from the people who did not mail in the Census in reasonable time. The hours are fairly flexible, the money reasonably good, my colleagues are interesting, and I get excercise climbing hills and stairs. Our sector is all within about 3 miles of home, and I've learned a lot about neighborhoods of Worcester I hardly knew existed. Most of the respondents have been helpful, once I catch them at home, but there are some whiney teabaggers (is that redundant?), suspicious (of my job) immigrants, and nasty jerks (probably hiding something, and/or mentally ill.) Landlords do not know the law, and are mostly unhelpful when I resort to them for information. The most common obnoxious peple are the ones who mailed in the Census a month or two late, yet berate the government for being incompetent and wasting money (a news article said that it costs about 23 cents to process a mailed-in form, and $57 on average for us to follow up on the non-responders). That said, some people say they did send the form on time, and I believe some. (However, many tenants claim to have only one or two people in their apartment, and are likely lying, as was a certain overpaid, arrogant public employee, concerning a mother-in-law apartment.) I think sternly worded reminders of the law should be given after several gentle ones, with publicized fines for non-compliance. One cranky nit-wit said the census is a waste of money, since the government could just spend a few seconds with its computers and get all the information. Where does he imagine data comes from? As for the buildings—I am mostly visiting triple-deckers, Worcester's most common, private low-income to low-middle income housing. Most have been covered with vinyl siding, many had their front porches removed (typical slumlord move), the back stairwell is often the original battleship-gray paint. The woodwork inside is sometimes the old stuff, in beautiful condition, sometimes hidden under multiple layers of paint, sometimes removed and replaced with cheap modern crap. In one neighborhood the houses often had a panel beside the front door with the remnants of speaker tubes and doorbells. I didn't see anything that made me want to jail the slumlords, but they won't get any sympathy, either. The few really disgusting apartments were the tenants' fault. Most of the people in poor neighborhoods drive much nicer cars than I do. And as for the Census bureaucracy —the rules keep changing for us enumerators, and it seems even worse for the crew leaders. At first we were supposed to make only 3 contact attempts, then 6, then "whatever it takes." Although resident interviews are best, we were encouraged to ask neighbors and landlords after initial attempts, but those proxy responses are now problematic. Refusals and deletions now require a crew leader to confirm (refusals are often unpleasant, so there is a tendency to avoid repeated nastiness, but sometimes we can catch another, more reasonable resident later.) The local office is weeks behind processing some of the incoming reports (but our pay checks come on time!) When no one answers at a house or apartment, we leave a Notice of Visit, with a Census office contact phone number, so they can phone in their info or schedule an enumerator visit, etc. Several people from my sets tried and failed with that, so I have been leaving my own cell number lately. Each data set comes as a binder with addresses to check on, a set of labeled questionaires for the non-responders, and a set of maps. The maps are completely useless; I tried using them, but always ended up using web maps or my own map book. The Census-numbered addresses within apartment buildings sometimes have no relation to the actual apartment numbers, so I wasted time trying to contact people who had actually turned in the form on time (and most apartment buildings do not have tenant names on the mailboxes or door-bells, and the door-bells seem to be functional less than half the time, anyway.) However, there is not enough work. The next phase is validation, checking on the vacancies, deletions, refusals, incompletes and probably sampling the normal ones with repeat interviews. So far, the bureaucracy is not being informative, which is frustrating. As a genealogist, I'm disappointed with the info requested. There is vastly less interesting information than in Censuses from a hundred years ago. Then the Census asked, among other things, name, age, relationship, marital status, time married, occupation, home/farm rental/ownership, birth state/country, parents birth state/country and language, race, disability, ability to read/write, immigration and naturalization dates for immigrants, school attendance for children, and for (married?) women the number of children born and number living. See the census forms from 1900, 1910 (PDFs). We are not asking for citizenship. Why? One reason is so as to get a fuller count of residents. Non-citiizens will be more likely to feel included, and not scared off. There certainly is a point to asking for citizenship, but politicians left and right from places with a high non-citizen population want the numbers to be a high as possible. Even the deranged right-wing (e.g., Bachmann), which was telling people to refuse to be counted, was apparently not trying to tell the Census to only count citizens. One of my colleagues is a college student of Hispanic origin. He was searched, interrogated and nearly arrested by Worcester police for "breaking and entering" while doing his job correctly. Only the arrival of a supervisor led to his release. I worked the validation phase for 2 weeks, which largely meant double-checking deletions and poorly documented vacancies. Lots of apologies for rechecking, insincerely blaming the Government for my assignment, when the usual problem was actuallly lazy tenants and landlords who don't know/won't obey the law. Five ridiculous gun myths everyone believes, thanks to the movies 14 Jun 2010 Pakistani intel continues support of Taliban Slate, from Guardian In an explosive report released by the London School of Economics, researcher Matt Waldman accused Pakistan's spy agency, the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence, of supporting the Taliban. According to the report, "Pakistani intelligence is so deeply involved in the arming and funding of the Afghan Taliban that it holds a seat on the militant leadership council and has sent the president, Asif Ali Zardari, to make prison visits to captured leaders," the Guardian reported.22 May 2010 The problem of portolan charts; how did they originate? Washington Post Widely applicable, but directly relevant to the Texas School Board textbook situation, where the nutters are trying to impose their lies and biases on Texas, and thereby much of the country: "Writing letters to elected representatives has the same effect on public policy that praying to Jesus has on cancer." - Tim Kreider, comment on RawStoryTelling lies to the young is wrong. 8 May 2010 One of the more idiotic teabagger talking points is that Clinton, Frank, the Dems, or somebody, 'pushed' the banks into lending to people who couldn't afford a mortgage. It's never explained how that could happen. As I saw it, the banks, allowed to speculate by Rethuglican deregulation of their industry, saw an opportunity to make billions by passing along the risk to speculators. It mostly worked, except they were still holding some of the garbage when the bubble burst, and we the taxpayers, and our children, are left to make up the loss.29 apr 2010 Reagan admin ‘hyped Soviet failures into threats,’ documents show RawStory by Daniel Tencer12 Apr 2010 Massachusetts is poised to pass casino gambling bills. What a disgusting situation. The reasons given are lies supported by misleading and partial statistics and analyses. At a personal level, I support what amounts to a tax on stupidity, but at a societal level I think it is counter-productive. Gambling on games, cards, dice, etc. contributes nothing whatsoever to society. The profits usually go to distant millionaires, often with organized crime connections, instead of being spent within the community. There is a culture of loan-sharking, drug use, and prostitution that goes with casinos. I find it hard to believe that the problems of increased crime rates, or decreased family solvency and cohesion caused by gambling addiction will be adequately addressed by the state. The state cannot eliminate gambling, but actively encouraging it is wrong. "The Connecticut legislature is considering a bill that would remove teh statute of limitations on child sex abuse cases. Guess who is opposing the bill. No, it's not NAMBLA. No, it's not a mob of sexually precocious toddlers. It's…the Catholic Church! You probably didn't see that one coming. The reason they oppose it isn't some conservative legal principle. They spilled the beans already — it's the cost to the church. The proposed change to the law would put "all Church institutions, including your parish, at risk," says the letter, which was signed by Connecticut's three Roman Catholic bishops. Oh? Why are they worried? Do they have a gang of septuagenarian child molesters tucked away somewhere in the bosom of the Connecticut church? Pharyngula, 12 Apr 2010 When you are looking at truth versus gossip, truth doesn't stand a chance - Barbara Mikkelson, Snopes.com
The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it. - Edward Dowling, 1941 What has 'theology' ever said that is of the smallest use to anybody? When has 'theology' ever said anything that is demonstrably true and is not obvious? … What makes you think that 'theology' is a subject at all? - Richard Dawkins, biologist (Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, 1991)   The major Fox
clown-whore made 32 million dollars last year for
his efforsts to drive the country insane and
encourage a coup.Using my right wing reporting tool kit: this was reported in a teabagger newspaper: ‘Glenn Beck raped and killed a little girl.’ "Virginia has been making big leaps lately in the category of general craziness. We all remember the Legislature’s heroic work in passing a bill to protect Virginia citizens from having microchips planted in their bodies against their will. And that the sponsor said he was concerned the chips could be a “mark of the beast” that would be used by the Antichrist at the end of days." - Gail Collins, NYT 9 Apr 2010 Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld Knowingly Kept Innocent Men at Guantanamo A new statement from inside the old Administration, backed by General Colin Powell himself, claims that President Bush and Vice President Cheney kept innocent men in Guantanamo so they wouldn't harm their push for war in Iraq. ...All year, so far: Tiger Woods' golf and bimbo scores have been an international obsession, impossible to avoid. As for me, if he vanished from the news, I wouldn't notice or care.  Apr 2010 The
Skeptic's Dictionary - posts on media spin,
update on the satanic ritual accusation insanity,
Texas revisionism ...The Straight Dope - "in 1950s Chicago, bombs were a routine means of interpersonal communication. " National Geographic - New Giant Lizard Discovery "an Unprecedented Surprise" Human-size lizard hid from science high in the trees. [The quote is dumb, but the story cool.] Old Beatles' songs on the radio: they've aged well, and most music is/was soon forgettable. 5 Apr 2010 on the use of drones to kill Taliban: 2 Apr 2010 Fark comment thread on Texas history revisionism and other recent wingnut statements madmann 2010-04-022 Apr 2010 CIA’s top spy: No losses from waterboarding ban Michael Sulick, head of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, told a student audience last week that the spy agency has seen no fall-off in intelligence since waterboarding was banned by the Obama administration.  3
Apr 2010 - Rawstory comment: Dear Teabagging Hick Terrorists,on the Health Care "Reform" process: "When you think of the vast majorities they have in Congress, and they had the bribe back room deals, corruption," Hannity continued, "that's because of the Tea Party movement, all these Tim McVeigh wannabes." *  on
the idiotic hoopla aver politicians and clowns using
the term "retarded:"Fark comment: You know, sometimes it's really hard not to feel elitist."Retarded" was invented as a euphemism for the people earlier called "feeble-minded," imbeciles, morons, etc., which are terms we are still allowed to use (and frequently do) for people who annoy us with opinions or actions we disagree with. The new PC euphemism for people genuinely afflicted is "developmentally delayed," and the mocking version is "rides the short bus." 21 Mar 2010 Thomas Friedman at NYT on the benefits of immigrants. America's Real Dream Team I have the pleasure of knowing one of the honored students.  20 Mar 2010The Fishing Lobby Wins Again19 Mar 2010 Empathy failed12 Mar 2010 2009, from Strident Centrist Treason committed by Richard Perle and Douglas Feith.March 2010, Montreal We just spent 4 days in Montreal, and had a nice time. It would have been more fun if we had more money, but when is that not true? It is unfortunate for us that the Canadian dollar is about at par with the US dollar now, unlike on our previous trips. As people usually write: Montreal is close enough to drive to easily (about 5 h), but foreign enough to be interesting. Everyone we tried could speak English - sometimes it was clearly their second or third language, and sometimes there were only little clues that French was their first language. I asked a Biodôme guide for help in pronunciation, and then she asked me a question on English grammar (how to use the plurals of 'fish'.) We even heard a family that switched back and forth among themselves. Our French is poor, and clerks and guides hear that and speak to us in English. Other times, something about us says 'English-speaker' or 'American' before we speak (and it's not always just looking clueless.) Highlights: the Biodôme (again) [see penguin webcam], the Botanical Garden greenhouses, the sights of Vieux Montréal and the Latin Quarter, a Tiffany glass exhibit at the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, the variety of ethnic restaurants (we ate Lebanese, Indian, Mexican and French), the fast and clean Metro (where a ticket-booth worker said "Welcome to Montreal" when we presented our passes.). Lowlights: too many smokers, Quebec highways are horribly signed, and even Canadian TV "news" is obsessed with Tiger Woods. We did an interested-student tour of McGill, but at 34,000 students, it just seems too big and not far enough away for our too-soon college student. Quebec drivers have a poor reputation on Cape Cod, about par with New York and New Jersey drivers, but in Montreal they were very courteous. The "underground malls" in Montreal (and Toronto) continue to unimpress, but maybe they are useful in the depths of winter. A little side trip along the way was to the Snowflake Museum in Jericho, Vermont. This is in the Red Mill, of the former Chittenden Mills, now also used for village offices and a nice gift shop. Jericho also happens to be where my grandfather was born, 25 Dec 1906, but the family is not mentioned in the History of Jericho. The criminals who are the banking system don't credit our mortgage payments until the last moment, to maximize the interest charged. The electric and phone companies credit us quickly, 1-2 days after mailing the check, because they don't charge interest. All of them charge extra, sometimes, for paying by phone or computer, even though it saves them time and payroll. But the credit card companies are in another league of criminality. T  urdblossom has
published a whole book of lies and excuses, and
he's proud that his administration tortured
people. Military veterans note note that he and
other neocon chickenhawk torture fans.did not
serve. Frank
Rich comment, 14 Mar 201014 Mar 2010, interesting NYT op-ed by Sean Wilentz, defending the reputation of Ulysses Grant against the Confederate revisionists and Ray-gun idolators. Looking at school department records from the 1920s and 1930s - school nurses took note of underweight, under-nourished poor children. Now those poor children are fat, and the media are having a tut-tut frenzy. Mrs Grundy is sure she knows what the problem is, and how to solve it. 11 Mar 2010 "Rep. Alan Grayson came to the House Floor today to introduce the Public Option Act, which would allow all Americans to buy into Medicare at cost. The bill is 4 pages long, and calls for an unsubsidized option for any American to choose Medicare over private insurers. ..." Okay, it makes sense at first, but then I wonder, how would that actually get calculated? Insurers have risk pools, because different groups have different risks and therefore different costs/prices. How would the government do that? And how exactly does a government calculate "cost"? A recent Kathleen Parker column (?) (that I can't find online now) claims that the current version of the "health care reform" bill extends the Nebraska, Florida, Louisiana bribes to cover many more places, for much longer. And Pelosi has buried the single-payer concept. While the insurers are raising premiums by double digits all round. To me, the "reform" has become just an example of corruption-by-compromise, which will do nothing useful. And Faux News lies, lies, lies. 
Meanwhile, the tea-baggers are gathering steam,
claiming to be for fiscal responsibilty and to be
unlike the Dems and Reps. Who can argue with that?
But behind that veneer, they vear off into all
sorts of wing-nuttery of religion, libertarianism,
states' rights, racism and gun droolery (see 'Oath Keepers' below). They
seem incapable of understanding what "the
government(s)" does(do) for them, or how it gets
paid for. A relative emailed a teabagger rant to
me a few days ago, full of complaints about the
government. Yet the husband has a very secure
government job, with phenomenal vacation time,
pension plan and health insurance. And another
relative sent a popular far-right rant by "Michael
Connelly, Retired attorney, Constitutional Law
Instructor, Carrollton, Texas" about thow
"ObamaCare" was unConstitutional for several
reasons — yet as far as I seen, even the
worst wackos in Congress and the Supreme Court are
not making those arguments [2 weeks later, yes the
pols are, now]. Connelly's supposed qualifications
and background are invisible to Google. _______________________
I
have
my
own
states'
rights
scheme.
Massachusetts
contributes
far
more
to the Feds than it gets back, as do several
other states. Yet the worst (most red-neck and
corrupt) politicians are from the states that get
far more than they contribute. So I propose a
Constitutional amendment requiring that states get
back at least 95% of what they contribute, with
borrowed money spent in the same proportions, with
a 3/5 majority required for each override, except
in case of Congressionally declared war. It would
include all expentitures and revenues.
What would that do for pork projects, agriculture
and business subsidies? I have no idea how that
would be applied to multi-state and international
companies._______________________
You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them. — Ray Bradbury Whatever happened to the nutter obsession of a few years ago with music lyrics, and playing records backwards? It would be interesting to have an IMAX movie about sailing the Straits of Magellen. But I'd get seasick.
3 Mar 2010 BOSTON — (AP) The state Senate voted Tuesday to ban text messaging while driving and to require motorists 75 and older to undergo regular cognitive and physical screenings. ...It creates the possibility of testing drivers likely to have faltering driving skills. As for "turn[ing] “active seniors into shut-ins” by denying them access to cars," if they can't pass a test administered by their own doctors, they damn well should NOT be on the road. 23 Feb 2010 The software for HP 6500 OfficeJet all-in-one is crappy, crappy, crappy. It crashes for no obvious reason, requiring hours' worth of time and aggravation to fix. Apparently it conflicts with other standard apps, like Adobe. All I'm trying to do is scan a line drawing. It sux, sux, sux. The drawing:
 9 Feb 2010 pandering pols and brain-dead fishermen The Congressional act that is the legal backbone of U.S. fisheries management came under fire this week, as U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., requested an independent review of the science that supports the current timelines for rebuilding fish stocks.The fishermen, including generations of my ancestors, spent 400 years destroying the fishing stocks, moving further and further off-shore, going deeper and deeper, to less and less desirable species. Now, when the government makes a slow start at restoring stock health, they still scream. The basic law in question was passed 14 years ago. Nothing much has improved, and the government is trying something else, which seems to have worked in other parts of the country. 18 feb 2010 Pro-torture teabagger Sen. Scott Brown expresses sympathy for, or solidarity with, with the Austin terrorist. What's next - a statue of Timothy McVeigh, a postage stamp for a KKK anniversary?
18 Feb 2010, from Pharyngula: Christopher Maloney is a quack. "Maloney is a naturopath in the state of Maine, where quacks like him get to call themselves "doctors". These so-called "doctors" get to make recommendations like this, in which he disparages standard flu vaccines and suggests these useless prescriptions:Republicans, hypocrisy and politics The Republicans get to benefit from the current financial problems in all ways: The get to keep the loot they stole under Bush. Their bankers and investors get to keep the loot they steal/stole from us during the bailouts, while the politicians wail (but in fact do nothing). If the Dems had refused to vote for the bailouts Bush wanted, they would be blamed for the crash. They get to blame Obama (and Clinton), even though it was obviously the Bush administration's policies that caused it. (Yes the Dems were complicit, and some Repubs possibly acted responsibly.) When the economy gets better, they get to say it would have happened anyway, or even faster without the Dems. They get to bring home the pork projects they voted against, and still complain about waste and fraud.
 Hell, no.   2D Goggles Dangerous
Adventures in ComicsThe Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage Steam-punk comics and blog. 12 Feb: Darwin Day 
Faux "News" and the drug-addled clowns are pretending that the climate is not changing, because it snowed in DC.  ___________________________________ It is because it is more egotistical that the patriotism of the American is more easily roused and more easily affronted. He has been educated to despise all other countries and to look upon his own as the first in the world; he has been taught that all other nations are slaves to despots and that the American citizen only is free, and this is never contradicted. For although thousands may in their own hearts f __________________________________________
 7 Feb 2010 We were in Providence for a meeting, but had time to kill and shopping to do, so we went to the Providence Mall. Nice mall, as such things go, but a horrible, horrible parking garage. Then we were back on the streets, with no signs to clue us in about where to turn next. Ended up quite lost, late for the meeting, but found a police cruiser with two cops, who wrote very careful and accurate directions to get us there. Maps would have worked eventually, but there's nothing like expert help. 8 Feb 2010 Jacob Weisberg in Slate: Down With the People: Blame the childish, ignorant American public—not politicians—for our political and economic crisis
Teen Pregnancies, Births, and Abortions Increase21 Jan 2010: The US Supreme Court endorses political corruption. Olbermann's scenario part 1, part 2 Leftist ideas on Haitian history are as stupid, insane and unrealistic as the righties'. What you see is news, what you know is background, what you feel is opinion. — Lester Markel (1894-1977)  Jan 2010Scott Brown trounced Martha Coakley, to become our new Senator. The Democrats and "moderate" chattering class are wailing that now now nothing progressive will get done. Somehow it doesn't matter that the Dems still have 58 members in the Senate, and that Dim Bush pushed through his agenda with a slim majority just a few years ago. Why did Coakley lose? Obama hasn't overcome the Bush disaster. Coakely assumed she'd win handily, then campaigned badly. Coakley was the leader in the Fells Acres daycare travesty of justice. The reichwing hate machine lied, lied, lied. Brown is handsome and articulate (even though nearly everything he says is ridiculous.) So the minority party, strong supporters of torture, militarism and unjustified war, suppression of civil rights, bad education, income disparity, superstition and government handouts to their base, prevents any action by the majority party, strong supporters of superstition and handouts to its base, and tacit supporters of torture, militarism and unjustified war, suppression of civil rights, bad education and income disparity. Rackjite on Brown, and again,
 Followup:Thursday January 21, 2010 06:00 am 'Oath Keepers' Leader Arrested for Child Rape; Cops Find Stolen Grenade Launcher In His House By Susie Madrak We first noticed Marine Sgt. Charles Dyer, aka "July4Patriot," back in March, when we ran one of the first reports on the "Oath Keepers" bloc of the Tea Party movement — an organization devoted to recruiting military and police-force veterans into a Patriot-movement belief system predicated on a series of paranoid conspiracy theories, especially the notion that the federal government intends to begin rounding up citizens and putting them in concentration camps. Dyer played a prominent role in connecting the Oath Keepers to the Tea Party movement, speaking at a July 4 Tea Party rally in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. And he's been involved in organizing militia "maneuvers" in Oklahoma. Dyer cropped up again in the news — this time in the police blotter for allegedly raping a 7-year-old girl: An ex-military man has been arrested on charges of rape of a child and forcible sodomy.Oh, and guess what police found when they searched his home: During the search the sheriff’s deputies noted several firearms and a device believed to be a Colt M-203, 40-millimeter grenade launcher, a complaint filed in the United States District Court of Western Oklahoma by Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco Special Agent Brett Williams said.As the story from KAUZ-TV notes, Dyer had a history of making bizarre claims in his videos — as well as violent fears of being arrested. “We come home and those bastards want to talk about how we’re domestic terrorists and a threat to this country. It makes me so angry,” said Charles Dyer, who has been accused of committing rape.GossipBoy is reporting that the rape victim was a close family member. They also report that Dyer had been in touch with a fellow militiaman linked to explosives dealing, and that when bomb-sniffing dogs searched Dyer's home, they indicated explosives had been stored there recently. Meanwhile, unsurprisingly, the folks at American Resistance Movement — a group Dyer was also prominently involved in — are claiming that Dyer was set up, and the girl who accused him was "programmed" to do so. Accordingly, they've set up a "Free July4Patriot" fund, with a little button on their front page so you can donate. Also, Dyer's YouTube page remains active. Every movement attracts its freaks. But the Patriot movement attracts an inordinate number of them — and particularly people with a pedophilia problem. (I can list at least 10 different prominent figures in the Northwest's Patriot movement in the 1990s who had a history of being charged with abusing and abducting children.) Evidently, being a pedophile leads to resentment of the government — probably for its desire to lock you away. consumer comments "Savers" is a new chain of used clothing (and random stuff) stores. I'm impressed. And there are the Salvation Army storees, as well. We just discovered Horseneck Beach in Westport, Mass. It seem to be the closest ocean beach to us, about 90 min. Parking is $7, the bathhouses are new, the beach is long and wide and clean, the waves are fairly big. You can't use boogy boards in the lifeguarded area, but can walk beyond that. And Handy Hill Creamery is on the way, on Rt 88, with good ice cream, fast and friendly service. Stewart's is a NY chain of gas stations/convenience stores. We are quite impressed, compared to the Mass. chains. They are clean, spacious, with good prices, light food service and ice cream, booths to eat and read at, toilets. My wireless Logitech mouse died, and apparently they don't make similar ones now. It ate batteries, but a wonderful feature was tha built-in volume control. Nothing similar is available at Bestbuy. Boston Public Library (BPL.org) supposedly has huge digital resources online, but I find the system awkward to use, buggy, with unhelpful staff, and often no usable results. Today, it doesn't matter what I want, the answer is: This document is not available due to either: (Jul 2010, and other times) [Unsatisfactory answer: BPL is arguing with ProQuest about paying for service.]Walgreens has fairly cheap photo developing, but its web site does not give prices for film processing, or even indicate thay can do it, only having prices for digital printing and related services. A moron at the phone help desk couldn't understand the situation. The actual store employees are always helpful. July 2010 I was pleasantly surprised to find that Clark Color Labs still exists, and has very good prices, and will develop my obsolete 110 film. We still have a couple of dozen rolls of print film, and several disposable 35mm cameras, a fairly good 35 mm SLR, a cheap 35mm panoramic camera, reloadable very cheap 35mm cameras that originally were intended for underwater use, and a 40-year-old 110 camera with one film cassette left. And a disc camera for which there is no film, and several defunct 35mm cameras, and defunct digital cameras, ... We have have had a number of digital cameras with very short lives - a bit of dust jams them fatally (as does major shock.) Digital is enormously convenient when it works, except for the shutter lag time, and the inability to see the screen in bright light. But they are fragile, and eat batterys. 22 jun 2010 advertising scam: betterlinkadvertising I hate dropdown lists. I hate web site dropdown country lists that start with "Albania." That's just incompetent design. First of all, the site should know what country you are connecting from. Even if not, it should offer the most likely countries first. I especially hate US dropdown lists for states. Yes, the "M" states are confusing, but the zip code is completely sufficient, and always needs to be included as well. And if the lists must exist, let them fully open. I needed a few feet of fine fishing line for a craft project, and was resigned to buying a small reel with a life-time supply. But the clerk at Dick's Sporting Goods asked what I actually wanted, and offered me several thicknesses, and cut off a long piece for free. Nice! When Honey Farms and Cumberland Farms has "2 for $x" items, they really do enforce the single price when I want just one bag, bottle, etc. I don't think that's true at the supermarkets, but could check. That's obnoxious. Once again, I note that the compact fluorescent "bulbs" last a small fraction of their alleged lifetime. Expensive, supposedly dimmable bulbs lasted less than a year, infrequently used, rarely dimmed. I look forward to LED lights taking over the market, or some newer, safe technology. So far LEDs are expensive, but the prices are dropping and the uses expanding. Why do computer monitors burn out quickly? Our regular TVs are more than 25 years old, and one is watched several hours per day. But several monitors have died in under 5 years, including a Dell flatscreen in about 1 year. CD drives in computers and boom-boxes also die quickly, usually with very, very light use — we have lost several. Media Monkey works much better than iTunes to organize and play our music files. The free version is sufficient for me. eMusic.com is a source of relatively cheap mp3s, but it hijacks FireFox with its own unauthorized toolbar. And it lacks much of the music I would like to have. AVG is good, free anti-virus software, but it also inserts an extra, annoying toolbar into FireFox, apparently without permission. We have a new HP OfficeJet 6500 all-in-one printer/scanner. It calls for its installation CD after every reboot of the PC. That's crappy software design. The software is crappy, crappy, crappy. It crashes for no obvious reason, requiring hours' worth of time and aggravation to fix. Apparently it conflicts with other standard apps, like Adobe. All I'm trying to do is scan a line drawing. It sux, sux, sux. Latest annoyance: it is printing things a day after it was supposed to, and printed out a form with word salad! March - had to uninstall and reinstall again to get it to do anything. This takes at least an hour, with reboots to finish both uninstalling and installing, after going through the hours of mess of trying to figure out where the problem is. And the uninstall froze too. October - It printed several pages 24 hours after the Print order, as well as several other pages (overlapping sets!) only 8 hours late. I had some hundreds or even thousands of image, music, doc and pdf files that were frozen - they could not be opened, moved, renamed or deleted. After trying several products, and asking advice of friends and online for years, I finally found Unlocker Assistant, freeware that works. Image and music files just need to be renamed or moved within a hard drive, usually. Pdf files were more of a problem, but I finally discovered that what works is to move them to another drive. The only problem is that Unlocker Assistant does not remember which locations to move things to. The early version would only move one file at a time, but the latest can move many files at once, and sometimes whole folders. (Jan 2010) Nov 2009 - Travelodge, Latham, NY Cheap ($54) and really shabby. Bad directions. Mar 2010 - rue Sherbrooke, Centreville, Montreal moderate weekday price, clean, helpful staff, desk lamp has a non-working switch requiring the wall plug to be inserted/pulled and it was not fixed, tub drained badly, next to Metro but not in heart of Latin Quarter as claimed, crappy coffee maker, CRT TV with few channels May 2010 - -- Latham, NY Cheap ($45), comfortable, clean, modern. One night --didn't even turn the TV on. good service, bad service |
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This
is it. This is the last time I’m going
to write the name 
28 Oct 2010 The very
bright teenager asks, did I have
an email address while an
undergrad! 
Discworld
Benito Scalia, a
Reagan appointee considered to the worst
asshat on the bench, told an audience at UC
Hastings Law School in San Francisco that
the court's recognition of a constitutional
right to privacy -- the basis of Roe v. Wade
-- is a "total absurdity," ...
"Even as they hammer Democrats
for running up record budget deficits," Lori
Montgomery writes in the Washington Post,
"Senate Republicans are rolling out a plan
to permanently extend an array of expiring
tax breaks that would deprive the Treasury
of more than $4 trillion over the next
decade, nearly doubling projected deficits
over that period unless dramatic spending
cuts are made." That means the GOP proposal
would be four times worse for the deficit
than health care reform and the stimulus
package combined. Senate Minority Leader
Mitch McConnell of Kentucky defended the
plan, insisting, "We have a spending
problem. We spend too much. We don't have a
taxing problem. We don't tax too little."
But he hasn't proposed linking the tax cuts
to any spending cuts, leading Matt Yglesias
to declare, "Conservatives don't care about
the deficit." "If conservatives in the
Senate wanted to pair tax cuts with spending
offsets, they could have written a bill that
does that," he says. But they didn't. - 
As
the Washington Post reported, the price tag
for the Republican scheme is staggering.
Among the highlights of the McConnell bill
are preventing a return of upper bracket
income tax and capital gains rates to their
Clinton-era levels and cutting the estate
tax even as the threshold is raised to $5
million per person. Oh, and red ink as far
as the eye can see:
By
Daniel Tencer at 
"Two of
the government supporters said they knew of
civilians, including friends, who had been
killed by being in the wrong place at the wrong
time. But, they said, they are prepared to
sacrifice the civilians if it means North
Waziristan will be rid of the militants, in
particular the Arabs. 
The Great
School Delusion, at 
