Dan Rather’s excellent investigative report on electronic voting asks questions which haven’t gotten a lot of press lately. Ignoring the continued problems with the software running on these voting machines, Dan Rather looks at the hardware itself. Continue reading
Today was a pretty important day in San Francisco. After reading Wired’s coverage of the 9th Circuit hearing on the NSA’s spying, and AT&T’s alleged complicity, I’m left hopeful that the three judges will do the right thing and let both cases move forward. Allowing the government to get away with using the state secrets argument as a shield against inquiries into how it apparently violated the Constitution opens up a Pandora’s Box of unchecked abuses against innocent citizens.
My only concern right now is that this case hasn’t gotten enough publicity in the mainstream media to cause a public outcry to force Congress to do actually do something rather then talk about it. Rather, they’ve let the talking heads of the fear-mongers run around yelling the terrorists are coming and we’re all going to die unless you let Bush, the Justice Department and the CIA/NSA have unfettered and secret access to any information they wish. You would of thought after the 1970’s where the FBI routinely spied on people like Martin Luther King, Jr., Americans would have none of this unchecked spying on it’s citizens, but it appears many have forgotten or chosen to ignore history’s lesson.
Can we really have a free democracy where those that are in power can use their position to secretly spy and obtain information on it’s people? The framers of the Constitution implemented checks and balances between the three branches of government; it’s time for the legislative and judical branches to act responsibly in the independent manner for which they were created.
So I was flying out of LaGuardia, NY (LGA) this morning on my way home to San Jose, Ca (SJC). After checking in, I was directed by the nice woman at American Airlines to take my checkin bags to the x-ray machine.
There were a lot of bags piling up at the machine and 2-4 TSA agents processing the bags thru the x-ray machine and loading them onto the conveyer belt to the plane. What struck me odd though was that none of the TSA agents actually sat at the x-ray machine console to examine the x-ray images of the bags!
I watched for about 10 minutes as the rest of my party went through the long lines to get their boarding passes. Every few minutes one of the TSA agents would press a button on the computer to restart the x-ray machine and/or check off a form on a piece of paper. He or she would sometimes look at the computer screens for a few seconds, but anywhere from 5-15 bags would be processed in between… hardly enough time for the TSA agent to be able to examine the bags for any dangerous items or contraband.
After reading Mortimer Zuckerman’s editorial, Putting Safety First I’m both saddened and angered. You would think that someone of Mortimer’s position would be more well versed in both the facts and history.
Considering that your chances of dying from a terrorist attack is far less then being killed by lightning, fire, drowning, murder, car accident or even an asteroid strike it’s hard to justify giving up those freedoms and rights which make us uniquely American.
Personally, I would rather listen to some of the great Americans who shaped our country then people like Zuckerman who would use the threat of terrorisim as an excuse to give away our rights of free speech, free association, due process of law, privacy and most importantly the separation of powers between the three branches of government.
People like Benjamin Franklin who said, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Or as President Franklin Roosevelt said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself— nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
Will we as a country cower in fear, squander our freedoms away for an ounce of safety or will we stand up for our unalienable rights and continue to pass on that gift to our children as our parents and grandparents gave to us?
You didn’t really need it anyways right? And here I thought you needed to go through Congress to alter the Constitution. Apparently, I didn’t pay enough attention in my US Gov’t class, because apparently the President can just declare it null and void.
How many ways do I hate thee? Let me count the ways:
So my wife and I found a nice home up in the Santa Cruz Mountains which we really liked. Since Murphy’s Law is in effect, the owners had to be TCHOFH (The Crazy Home Owners From Hell). Anyways, rather then trying to explain the long and drawn out process, my friend Eric summarized our ordeal in a few lines:
let put this in terms i can understand:
me: how much for this rug?
pakistani rug merchant: for you? $400. I promise there are no stains on this rug!
me: um, how about $300. Why would there be stains? It’s a new rug? Is there something wrong?
PRM: $350. THERE ARE NO STAINS! WHO SAID ANYTHING ABOUT STAINS???!!! no, you may not look for stains
me: $310
PRM: $450!
me: WTF?
So I’m probably way behind everyone else, but I just found The Radiant Vista a few weeks ago. This is a very cool photography website for both experts and beginners. Every day there’s a new video critique of a photograph and they go over all sorts of photography concepts like framing, lighting, subject matter and color. There is also a weekly Photoshop workshop video which explains how to get the most of your digital photographs. While the site is definitely targeted towards digital SLR photographers, most of the content is applicable to people who shoot film or point & shoots.
So there’s an on-going argument about Stillsecure’s use of Snort.
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I needed some fast disk space for working on my photos and after some research settled on a pair of Western Digital My Book Premium ES 500GB drives and a Siig eSATA ExpressCard/34 card to connect them to my Mac Book Pro. Continue reading
