.: LarsonsWorld :.
just another persons waste of time

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others,
are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
Douglas Adams

Ted Rall 07.02.2007

Dana Summers - 07.02.2007

Dana Summers - 07.03.2007

I think I would be good at that! 

Dead Weight by Eric Hansen - Outside Magazine - When our man dons a tumpline and dhoko for a five-day trek in the Himalayas, he discovers two things: Nepali porters may be the toughest workers in the universe, and there's simply no way he can measure up

So far, I have been carrying a bamboo basket and tumpline for roughly three-quarters of a mile in Nepal and already the locals' responses are falling into a tidy pattern.

My three fellow porters and I approach a stone hamlet at the back of our string of clients, eight Chinese yuppies from Shanghai, and instantly one of the country's ubiquitous semi-feral children spots me—the freakishly huge queri sweating, grunting, and wincing under the weight of 13 pounds of his own clothes.

"Look! Here comes White Eyes carrying a dhoko!" he yells, and skips ahead to tell everyone the circus has arrived.

... A dhoko-naamlo isn't fun. It's an ancient tradition from a simpler, more Hobbesian time. The dhoko, a cone-shaped basket with a flat bottom, is woven out of bamboo slats to be roughly as tall as your torso. The naamlo, or tumpline, is a section of rope with a three-inch-wide head strap, generally cut from a flour or rice sack. Wrap the naamlo around the back side of the dhoko; position it just in front of the crown of your head; insert anvil collection.

Read on ...

Peacefire.org new cv

https://www.Unblock-Myspace-Peacefire.com/

Many more here

via Fake Steve Jobs

A few iPhone units are having some battery problems

A nice play on the Dell battery fires. 

~ Life, Liberty and the Pursute on Happiness ~

Schoolhouse Rock! - 'There are going to be fireworks' on YouTube

~ Quotes ~

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it - Mark Twain

... how little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy! - Thomas Jefferson

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it. - Edward R. Murrow

"My country, right or wrong" is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying "My mother, drunk or sober." - G. K. Chesterton

The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes 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. - H. L. Mencken

Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. - John F. Kennedy

The government is merely a servant - merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them. - Mark Twain

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. - Theodore Roosevelt

Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us. - William O. Douglas

~ Almost Nation Anthem ~

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet,
Whose stern, impassion'd stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine ev'ry flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness,
And ev'ry gain divine!

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam,
Undimm'd by human tears!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

- Katharine Lee Bates

~ The Written Word ~

Unfree Speech - By Robert J. Samuelson - The Washington Post

The Fourth of July is an apt moment to reflect on one of the great underreported stories of our time: the rise of speech regulation. Glance at the First Amendment, but do not think it still applies. Large bodies of political speech are now governed by laws, agency regulations, court decisions and lawyerly interpretations. Speech has become unfree.

This does not mean that we don't have vigorous debate or that most points of view aren't represented. But in and around elections, what can be said, by whom and under what circumstances, is now a tangled web of legal qualifications -- all justified as campaign finance "reform."

Read on ...

~ Editorial Cartoons ~

Cagle Cartoons collection for Independence Day

Live in joy,
In love,
Even among those who hate.

Live in joy,
In health,
Even among the afflicted.

Live in joy,
In peace,
Even among the troubled.

Look within.
Be still.
Free from fear and attachment,
Know the sweet joy of the way.

- from the Dhammapada

John Cole - 07.04.2007

Via LinuxInsider:

Shortly after the Free Software Foundation ended its long deliberations and delivered the third version of the General Public License, Microsoft proclaimed itself immune to the document. Novell, Microsoft's Linux partner, then expressed its commitment to GPLv3. It may take an actual lawsuit to clarify the validity of Microsoft's stance.

Read on ...

It's all about the balance

http://skatemoss.blogspot.com/2007/06/balance.html

2007 is the centenial of Robert A. Heinleins birth.

On Wikipedia:

• Robert A. Heinlein
• Bibliography
• His Characters

Quotes:

Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.

When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.

When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.

Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat.

Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors... and miss.

The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.

Pat Oliphant - 03 July 2007

We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.

Ayn Rand, The Nature of Government

Are you ready for global warming fashion?

Tom and the smoothy button take on the iPhone.

http://www.willitblend.com/videos.aspx?type=unsafe&video=iphone 

John Darkow - 03 July, 2007

Cagle.com has a whole selection of Scooter's Sentence Commuted.

Surgeon General Sees 4-Year Term as Compromised - New York Times:

Former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona told a Congressional panel Tuesday that top Bush administration officials repeatedly tried to weaken or suppress important public health reports because of political considerations.

The administration, Dr. Carmona said, would not allow him to speak or issue reports about stem cells, emergency contraception, sex education, or prison, mental and global health issues. Top officials delayed for years and tried to “water down” a landmark report on secondhand smoke, he said. Released last year, the report concluded that even brief exposure to cigarette smoke could cause immediate harm.

Dr. Carmona said he was ordered to mention President Bush three times on every page of his speeches. He also said he was asked to make speeches to support Republican political candidates and to attend political briefings.

Read on ...

An Underwater Fence to Stop Invasive Species - Washington Post

A century ago, engineers blasted the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal out of limestone to reverse the Chicago River, an unprecedented engineering feat that linked Lake Michigan with the Mississippi River.

The project served its purpose, sucking water from the lake to flush out the growing city's waste, but there was an unintended consequence: It created a pathway between two previously distinct ecosystems and a route for invasive species traveling in both directions. Until recent years, though, heavy pollution in the canal prevented fish from swimming through it.

Today, the canal is cleaner, and the infamous Asian carp and the round goby are both threatening to take advantage. But the government is stepping up its efforts to stop them.

Read on ...

Nick Anderson - 11 July, 2007

Signe Wilkinson - 11 July, 2007

From Peacefire.org

• https://www.grabfaster.com/
• https://www.airplanegoat.com

For many more go here.

Don Wright - 10 July, 2007

Matt Davies - 11 July, 2007

Tony Auth - 12 July, 2007 

Did you know? It's fair use day - ars technica

July 11, 2007, will mark the third-annual global "Fair Use Day," but chances are this is the first you've heard of it. Started back in 2005, "Fair Use Day" (project website) was created by Eric Clifford to raise awareness of the shifting balance in copyright laws around the world. Clifford acknowledges that Fair Use Day hasn't become the biggest advocacy day in existence, but perhaps the third time is the charm, as the Pirate Party of the United States has announced its support of the effort to raise awareness about copyright issues. As Clifford says, "Garbage had a day, taxes have a day, why not fair use?"

As we have chronicled here on Ars for years, copyright laws are increasingly being rewritten, modified, or tossed out in favor of new laws which grant copyright holders extremely broad powers over how you use content you pay for. Both Clifford and the Pirate Party hope that July 11 will serve as a day to remind users across the globe that fair copyright laws are essential to culture.

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Should US cities try a London-style camera network? - Christian Science Monitor

The speed with which London's ubiquitous surveillance cameras helped identify would-be bombers has prompted calls for extensive closed-circuit television networks in the US.

In the first such public effort in the US, New York is planning to begin the installation of a similar, permanent system for lower Manhattan by year's end.

In the struggle against terrorism at home, its backers say CCTV is both a forensic tool and a deterrent to all but the most dedicated suicide bombers. Sophisticated imaging technology allows cameras to alert police to unattended packages, zoom in on objects hundreds of feet away, identify license plates, and "mine" archived footage for specific data.

Opponents contend that this very technology is overly intrusive and open to abuse, raising serious constitutional questions. They also note that surveillance cameras not only are helpless against suicide bombings, but also that perpetrators may use video records to try to glorify their acts.

The British system was developed in the 1970s and '80s with little public discussion, in response to attacks by the Irish Republican Army. By the 1990s, technology improvements made it a key tool in the security cordon around central London known as the "ring of steel."

Read on ...

Gonzales Was Told of FBI Violations - Washington Post

As he sought to renew the USA Patriot Act two years ago, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales assured lawmakers that the FBI had not abused its potent new terrorism-fighting powers. "There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse," Gonzales told senators on April 27, 2005.*

Six days earlier, the FBI sent Gonzales a copy of a report that said its agents had obtained personal information that they were not entitled to have.* It was one of at least half a dozen reports of legal or procedural violations that Gonzales received in the three months before he made his statement to the Senate intelligence committee, according to internal FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The acts recounted in the FBI reports included unauthorized surveillance, an illegal property search and a case in which an Internet firm improperly turned over a compact disc with data that the FBI was not entitled to collect, the documents show. Gonzales was copied on each report that said administrative rules or laws protecting civil liberties and privacy had been violated.*

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Note: * - my emphasis

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Friday occurring on the 13th day of any month is considered to be a day of bad luck in English, German, Polish and Portuguese-speaking cultures around the globe. Similar superstitions exist in some other traditions. In Greece or Spain, for example, Tuesday the 13th takes the same role. In Russia, the unlucky day is Monday[citation needed]. The fear of Friday the 13th is called paraskavedekatriaphobia (a word that is derived from the concatenation of the Greek words ... meaning Friday, thirteen, and phobia respectively; alternative spellings include paraskevodekatriaphobia or paraskevidekatriaphobia) or friggatriskaidekaphobia, and is a specialized form of triskaidekaphobia, a phobia (fear) of the number thirteen.

No historical date has been verifiably identified as the origin of the superstition. Before the 20th century, although there is evidence that the number 13 was considered unlucky, and Friday was considered unlucky, there was no link between them. The first documented mention of a "Friday the 13th" is generally listed as occurring in the early 1900's.

However, many popular stories exist about the origin of the concept ...

Read on ...

Be sure to check out the external links. Quite a few of them are rather interesting.

Ben Sargent - 13 July, 2007

Nick Anderson - 13 July, 2007 

Walt Handelsman - 12 July, 2007

Huge telescope set to scour skies - BBC

One of the world's largest optical telescopes is set to peer into space for the first time.

Installed on a 2,400m-high (7,900ft) peak on the Canary Island of La Palma, the huge telescope consists of a mirror measuring 10.4m (34.1ft) in diameter.

The Spanish-led Great Canary Telescope (GTC) is extremely powerful and will be able to spot some of the faintest, most distant objects in the Universe.

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~

Bush Distorts Qaeda Links, Critics Assert - New York Times

In rebuffing calls to bring troops home from Iraq, President Bush on Thursday employed a stark and ominous defense. "The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq," he said, "were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th, and that’s why what happens in Iraq matters to the security here at home."

It is an argument Mr. Bush has been making with frequency in the past few months, as the challenges to the continuation of the war have grown. On Thursday alone, he referred at least 30 times to Al Qaeda or its presence in Iraq.

But his references to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and his assertions that it is the same group that attacked the United States in 2001, have greatly oversimplified the nature of the insurgency in Iraq and its relationship with the Qaeda leadership.

Read on ...

~

Birthing bears head for land as Arctic ice gets scarcer - San Francisco Chronicle

Increasing numbers of pregnant polar bears are coming to land to give birth instead of staying on the thinning Arctic sea ice, a trend that signals a bleak future for their population there, a U.S. Geological Survey study has found.

Data from northern Alaska show that the proportion of the bears' dens that are on pack ice declined from 62 percent between 1985 and 1994 to 37 percent from 1998 to 2004, according to the study, which was published Thursday in the journal Polar Biology.

The scientists based their findings on 89 females that were captured and collared and then followed using satellite technology. They ruled out hunting and attraction to bowhead whale bones as other possible causes for changing denning locations.

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~

'Move On'? Not So Fast, Mr. President - Washington Post

President Bush made several unsupported assertions about the war in Iraq during his press conference yesterday ... but when it comes to sheer audacity, nothing came close to his response when asked how he felt about two of his top advisers leaking Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA agent to reporters.

Jennifer Loven gets it right in her Associated Press story: "President Bush always said he would wait to talk about the CIA leak case until after the investigation into his administration's role. On Thursday, he skipped over that step and pronounced the matter old news hardly worth discussing.

"'It's run its course,' he said. 'Now we're going to move on.'

"Despite a long history of denouncing leaks, Bush declined to express any disappointment in the people who worked for him and who were involved in disclosing the name of a CIA operative. Asked about that . . . the president gave a dodgy answer.

"'It's been a tough issue for a lot of people in the White House,' he said.

Read on ...

If I flap these things fast enough I know I can fly!

The Strangest Sights in Google Earth - PC World

Ever since Google first let people scour the planet from the comfort of their computers through the Google Earth software program, fans have been on a virtual scavenger hunt from the North Pole to the South Pole looking for anything interesting, unusual, or unexplained. From shipwrecks to crop circles, from ads big enough to be read from space to a giant pink bunny nearly the size of a football field, we've collected just a few of the odd and spectacular sights. You can see the same images in Google Maps by clicking the links we provide--but you'll get a better view by copying the coordinates in parentheses after each link and pasting them into Google Earth's 'Fly To' box. We've also created a file of Placemarks that includes all of these sights and more; you can download it and open it with Google Earth. Enjoy the trip!

View on ...

via Wikipedia

Bastille Day is the French national holiday, celebrated on 14 July each year. In France, it is called "Fête Nationale" ("National Holiday"), in official parlance, or more commonly "quatorze juillet" ("14th of July"). It commemorates the 1790 Fête de la Fédération, held on the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789; the storming of the Bastille was seen as a symbol of the uprising of the modern French "nation", and of the reconciliation of all the French inside the constitutional monarchy which preceded the First Republic, during the French Revolution.

Read on ...

'Faux' gas tax tests resolve on global warming - The Christian Science Monitor

Rep. John Dingell says he expects his proposal for a hefty 'carbon tax' on gasoline will prove Americans don't really want to change their energy-rich lifestyle.

Rep. John Dingell (D) might seem like the last guy to want a big new tax aimed squarely at Americans' gas guzzlers. For more than 50 years in Congress, he's represented southeastern Michigan – home to thousands of US auto workers.

But the Democrats' "dean of the House" is calling for a whopping tax on gasoline and other emitters of carbon dioxide (CO2), a greenhouse gas that scientists say causes global warming. Whether he really believes that's the way to address climate change – not to mention keeping his seat in Congress – is another matter.

Representative Dingell admits he's proposing a carbon tax just to prove that Americans don't really want to make big changes in their energy-rich lifestyle. Asked last weekend in a C-SPAN interview whether people would be willing to pay higher prices because of energy legislation, Dingell said he doubted "that the American people are willing to pay what this is really going to cost them."

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~

Russia suspends arms control pact - BBC

Russian President Vladimir Putin has suspended the application of a key Cold War arms control treaty.

Mr Putin signed a decree citing "exceptional circumstances" affecting security as the reason for the move.

Russia has been angered by US plans to base parts of a missile defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE) limits the number of heavy weapons deployed between the Atlantic Ocean and the Urals mountains.

Read on ...

Stuart Carlson - 14 July, 2007

Lets see, it is day 7 of the Tour de France and I am finally watching a bit of the racing this morning on VS. The tour has hit the beginning of the Alps, ahh, the mountain stages. I really haven't followed the tour this past week, so I have some to burn some midnight oil to catch up and find out what is happening.

It has been fun listening to Phil and Paul again.

~

Tour thrives before thin heartland crowds - IHT

The weather was balmy, the course beautiful, the race exciting, but the crowds in Burgundy were generally small for the fifth stage of the Tour de France.

That does not mean, however, that the Tour is not alive and well in the heart of the country.

One explanation for the sparse turnout in three days so far in France is that the Tour has been traversing regions that do not attract vacationers, the usual bulk of spectators. A test of that theory will come in the Alps, starting on Saturday, and in the south next week.

For now, however, as it passed through villages so remote that cellphones went blessedly dead, the Tour showed on Thursday that, despite all the doping scandals and suspicions surrounding bicycle racing, it retains its traditional grip on such places as Lormes, population 1,300, most of whom turned out to celebrate the race's visit.

Read on ...

~

Casey Gibson takes the best photos!

Solar Power Captures Imagination, Not Money - New York Times

The trade association for the nuclear power industry recently asked 1,000 Americans what energy source they thought would be used most for generating electricity in 15 years. The top choice? Not nuclear plants, or coal or natural gas. The winner was the sun, cited by 27 percent of those polled.

It is no wonder solar power has captured the public imagination. Panels that convert sunlight to electricity are winning supporters around the world - from Europe, where gleaming arrays cloak skyscrapers and farmers' fields, to Wall Street, where stock offerings for panel makers have had a great ride, to California, where Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s "Million Solar Roofs" initiative is promoted as building a homegrown industry and fighting global warming.

But for all the enthusiasm about harvesting sunlight, some of the most ardent experts and investors say that moving this energy source from niche to mainstream — last year it provided less than 0.01 percent of the country’s electricity supply — is unlikely without significant technological breakthroughs. And given the current scale of research in private and government laboratories, that is not expected to happen anytime soon.

Read on ...

~

Climate Change Debate Hinges On Economics - Washington Post

Here's the good news about climate change: Energy and climate experts say the world already possesses the technological know-how for trimming greenhouse gas emissions enough to slow the perilous rise in the Earth's temperatures.

Here's the bad news: Because of the enormous cost of addressing global warming, the energy legislation considered by Congress so far will make barely a dent in the problem, while farther-reaching climate proposals stand a remote chance of passage.

Despite growing public concern over global warming, the House has failed to agree on new standards for automobile fuel efficiency, and the Senate has done little to boost the efficiency of commercial office buildings and appliances. In September, Congress is expected to start wrestling with more ambitious legislation aimed at slowing climate change; but because of the complexity of the likely proposals, few expect any bill to become law. Even if passed by Congress and signed by President Bush, the final measure may not be tough enough to slow global warming.

Read on ...

~

Web radio stations win a last-minute stay of execution - Salon

Wired's indispensable digital-music maven Eliot Van Buskirk reports some good breaking news: Internet radio stations will not shut down this Sunday.

Many Web radio outfits feared closure as their legal fight against staggering new music royalty rates met failure this week. On Thursday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals refused to block the new rates, which are scheduled to go into effect Sunday. But as a result of public outcry -- which, in turn, sparked congressional outcry -- SoundExchange, the recording-industry group that collects royalties, has agreed not to immediately enforce the rates, pending negotiations with webcasters.

I just spoke to Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora, the hugely popular Internet radio station that allows people to create personalized music channels. I asked Westergren if Pandora will shut down Sunday: "No, we won't," he said.

Read on ...

~

Paris readies for Velib frenzy - BBC

The humble bicycle is getting a boost in Paris as the city council launches Velib, a free bike scheme to encourage people to give up the motor in favour of pedal power.

Cycling in Paris is not a sport for the faint hearted.

The traffic runs as smoothly as a snail in treacle and drivers' tempers are about as sweet as bitter aloes.

The local authority in Paris is depositing 20,000 heavy-duty bicycles in 750 or so special racks around the city and anyone who wants one simply swipes his or her ordinary travel card and pedals off wherever they want to go.

Read On ...

As I get ready to empty out my storage unit I come across this article No Sex Please, We're Organizing: A nation of pack rats tries to get it together on Mother Jones.

Here are some tidbits from it:

American women would rather organize their closets than lose weight, according to a 2005 Rubbermaid survey.

1 in 3 ikea customers say they get more satisfaction from cleaning out their closets than from having sex.

75% of L.A. garages are used in ways that preclude any parking.

In 2003, a Bronx man spent two days trapped under his magazines—ranging from Vibe to the Harvard Business Review—before firefighters rescued him.

The average American fridge is twice as big as its European counterpart.

More than 70% of Americans are routinely unable to find matching lids for their 15-plus food-storage containers.

Read on ...

Discovery Channel team paying Austin firm to offset carbon output. - Austin American-Statesman

In the most recent twist on the carbon-neutral movement, a Tour de France cycling team is offsetting its carbon dioxide emissions through an Austin renewable energy company.

Technically, the bicyclists for the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team - which has an office in Austin and featured Lance Armstrong on its roster when he won his seventh and final Tour de France in 2005 - emit only as much carbon dioxide as they exhale while pedaling through France this month. But behind and in front of them lurk the support vehicles that carry coaches, water and spare rims - and spew pollutants from their tailpipes.

That's why the Discovery Channel team is paying Austin's Green Mountain Energy Co. to offset the estimated 62 tons of carbon dioxide generated by the race support vehicles during the team's cycling season. The savings is equivalent to bicycling instead of driving a car more than 151,000 miles - or about the same distance as riding the Tour de France 68 times, according to Green Mountain Energy.

Read on ...

NASA buys $19 million toilet system - Boston.com

In space, a loo costs a lot.

NASA has agreed to pay $19 million for a Russian-built toilet system for the international space station. The figure may sound astronomical for a toilet in space, but NASA officials said it was cheaper than building their own.

"It's akin to building a municipal treatment center on Earth," NASA spokeswoman Lynnette Madison said Thursday, explaining the cost of the new toilet system.

Also, astronauts are familiar with how it works since it's similar to one already in use at the space station. The new system will be able to transfer urine to a device that can produce drinking water.

The new system is scheduled to be delivered to the U.S. side of the space station in 2008. It will offer more privacy than the old toilet system, which will definitely be needed: The space station crew is expected to grow from three to six people by 2009.

Read on ...

Tired of those scooter gangs on their slug rockets reeking havic in your hood, just wait until the lowrider Cruzin Coolers come to your stomping ground!

This is one of 10 Ways to Have a Chilling Summer on PCMag.com.

Tom Toles - 17 July, 2007

Six Years After 9/11, the Same Terror Threat - New York Times

Nearly six years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives expended in the name of the war on terror pose a single, insistent question: Are we safer?

On Tuesday, in a dark and strikingly candid two pages, the nation’s intelligence agencies offered an implicit answer, and it was not encouraging. In many respects, the National Intelligence Estimate suggests, the threat of terrorist violence against the United States is growing worse, fueled by the Iraq war and spreading Islamic extremism.

The conclusions were not new, echoing the private comments of government officials and independent experts for many months. But the stark declassified summary contrasted sharply with the more positive emphasis of President Bush and his top aides for years: that two-thirds of Al Qaeda’s leadership had been killed or captured; that the Iraq invasion would reduce the terrorist menace; and that the United States had its enemies “on the run,” as Mr. Bush has frequently put it.

Read on ...

Living With a Computer by James Fallow - The Atlantic Monthly, July 1982

The author talks about his Sol-20 that he purchased in 1979, his trials and tribulations with it and then gives advice about buying a computer in the early 80's. It is interesting read as he talks about the make up of the industry in pre Microsoft days. It is amazing to read the specs he suggests and the capacities of the time.

... for a total of about $4,000, Optek gave me the machinery I have used happily to this day.

The microcomputer industry these days is like the auto business in 1910, with a thousand little hustlers trying to claim a piece of the action.

although any serious computer should have at least 48 and preferably 64K of random access memory

You don't need to remove the hard disks because each one stores a prodigious amount of data, from two or three on up to several dozen megabytes.

I gave in and bought a daisy wheel (printer), the Anderson-Jacobson 830 model, which cost about $1,400.

... the Displaywriter with a good printer was quoted at $11,350 by my local IBM dealer.

The best-known small computer is probably the Apple. Because there are so many Apples in circulation, and because the company has pushed software so aggressively, you can get a wider variety of programs and accessories for an Apple than for any other system. (How things change!)

One of the most interesting new computers, both as a piece of machinery and as a specimen of capitalism in action, is the Osborne I.

Doping in Bicycle Racing - Fact and Fiction - dailypeloton.com

We are being harassed almost daily by news stories about professional bicycle racers cheating by using illegal drugs to increase athletic performance. These news stories have resulted in a general acceptance by many people that drugs can really improve athletic performance. Many amateur athletes now use these drugs, sometimes with devastating results.

What are the facts about doping and athletic performance in the Tour de France? Is there a magic potion that can turn weak little Asterix into a superhuman athlete who can win the Tour de France?

Bjarne Riis admitted, in May 2007, to using erythropoietin in the 1996 Tour de France when he was the overall winner. The administrators of the Tour de France have stripped him of his title because of his admission. Did erythropoietin really help Bjarne Riss win the Tour de France?

Read on ...

Overhaul Plan for Vote System Will Be Delayed - New York Times

Democratic leaders in the House and Senate are slowing their drive to revamp the nation's voting systems, aides said yesterday.

Under pressure from state and local officials, as well as from lobbyists for the disabled, House leaders now advocate putting off the most sweeping changes until 2012", four years later than planned.

Overhauling voting systems before next year's presidential election had once been a top Democratic priority, primarily to allow greater accountability and be certain that all votes registered on computerized touch-screen systems were counted. But state and local elections officials told Congress they could not make the changes in time for the balloting in November 2008, particularly in light of the extra workload involved in preparing for next year's much-earlier presidential primary season.

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Broader Privilege Claimed In Firings - Washington Post

Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion of executive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, saying that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege.

The position presents serious legal and political obstacles for congressional Democrats, who have begun laying the groundwork for contempt proceedings against current and former White House officials in order to pry loose information about the dismissals.

Under federal law, a statutory contempt citation by the House or Senate must be submitted to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, "whose duty it shall be to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action."

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~

The Americas weren't farming laggards, after all - Christian Science Monitor

Archaeologists writing agriculture's history are gaining new insight from ancient food remains. They are tracing the progress of crop domestication through genetic changes recorded in DNA samples. This new perspective has already punctured the notion that agriculture was slow off the mark in the Americas. As recently reported research in northern Peru illustrates, agriculture's roots run back some 10,000 years in the Americas, just as they do in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, studies of DNA from ancient and modern cultivated wheats and their wild relatives trace the domestication of this wonder plant over thousands of years. They reveal how wheat's genetic nimbleness allowed breeders to adapt it to a variety of environments to the point where it now supplies 20 percent of humanity's food calories.

The impression that the Americas were agricultural laggards was an illusion created by insufficient data. A review of research into agriculture's origins published in Science last month quotes paleobotanist Tom Dillehay of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., who points out that archaeologists "were misled by what was not preserved and what we could not see." Now they are finding fossil remains of ancient crops under old grindstones, hut and hearth floors, and in other once-inhabited places. Dr. Dillehay and colleagues described a wealth of such discoveries in the June 29 issue of Science, which also carried the overall research review.

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Blast shows age of U.S. infrastructure - AP/Rocky Mountain News

With a blast that made skyscrapers tremble, an 83-year-old steam pipe sent a powerful message that the miles of tubes, wires and iron beneath New York and other U.S. cities are getting older and could become dangerously unstable.

The steam conduit that exploded beneath a Manhattan street at the height of rush hour Wednesday, just a block from Grand Central Terminal, was laid when Calvin Coolidge was president, and was part of a system that began providing energy to city buildings in 1882.

Investigators are still trying to determine what caused the explosion, but some experts said the age of the city's infrastructure was a possible factor. Pipes don't last forever.

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FBI remotely installs spyware to trace bomb threat - ZDNet

The FBI used a novel type of remotely installed spyware last month to investigate who was e-mailing bomb threats to a high school near Olympia, Wash.

Federal agents obtained a court order on June 12 to send spyware called CIPAV to a MySpace account suspected of being used by the bomb threat hoaxster. Once implanted, the software was designed to report back to the FBI with the Internet Protocol address of the suspect's computer, other information found on the PC and, notably, an ongoing log of the user's outbound connections.

Screen snapshot of 'timberlinebombinfo' MySpace account The suspect, former Timberline High School student Josh Glazebrook, was sentenced this week to 90 days in juvenile detention after pleading guilty to making bomb threats and other charges.

While there's been plenty of speculation about how the FBI might deliver spyware electronically, this case appears to be the first to reveal how the technique is used in practice. The FBI did confirm in 2001 that it was working on a virus called Magic Lantern but hasn't said much about it since. The two other cases in which federal investigators were known to have used spyware--the Scarfo and Forrester cases--involved agents actually sneaking into offices to implant key loggers.

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The Digital Imprimatur - How big brother and big media can put the Internet genie back in the bottle.
November 4th, 2003

Over the last two years I have become deeply and increasingly pessimistic about the future of liberty and freedom of speech, particularly in regard to the Internet. This is a complete reversal of the almost unbounded optimism I felt during the 1994-1999 period when public access to the Internet burgeoned and innovative new forms of communication appeared in rapid succession. In that epoch I was firmly convinced that universal access to the Internet would provide a countervailing force against the centralisation and concentration in government and the mass media which act to constrain freedom of expression and unrestricted access to information. Further, the Internet, properly used, could actually roll back government and corporate encroachment on individual freedom by allowing information to flow past the barriers erected by totalitarian or authoritarian governments and around the gatekeepers of the mainstream media.

So convinced was I of the potential of the Internet as a means of global unregulated person-to-person communication that I spent the better part of three years developing Speak Freely for Unix and Windows, a free (public domain) Internet telephone with military-grade encryption. Why did I do it? Because I believed that a world in which anybody with Internet access could talk to anybody else so equipped in total privacy and at a fraction of the cost of a telephone call would be a better place to live than a world without such communication.

Computers and the Internet, like all technologies, are a double-edged sword: whether they improve or degrade the human condition depends on who controls them and how they're used. A large majority of computer-related science fiction from the 1950's through the dawn of the personal computer in the 1970's focused on the potential for centralised computer-administered societies to manifest forms of tyranny worse than any in human history, and the risk that computers and centralised databases, adopted with the best of intentions, might inadvertently lead to the emergence of just such a dystopia.

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Google Pushes for Rules to Aid Wireless Plans - New York Times

If Google succeeds with federal regulators, it could change the way millions of Americans use their cellphones and how they connect to the Internet on their wireless devices.

In the Internet giant's view of the future, consumers would buy a wireless phone at a store, but instead of being forced to use a specific carrier, they would be free to pick any carrier they wanted. Instead of the wireless carrier choosing what software goes on their phones, users would be free to put any software they want on it.

Google believes that the cost of voice calls and data connections to the Internet may be partly subsidized by advertisements brought to users by Google's powerful online advertising machine.

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David Horsey - 20 July 2007

Google Earth and NASA Turn Up The Lights - Wired

Google has rolled out some spectacular new layers for Google Earth. "Astronaut Photography of Earth" is filled with images from the last 40 years of NASA Earth exploration, and "Earth City Lights" has stunning views of our home planet at night, as viewed from space.

The new layers can be found in the Featured Layers section of Google Earth. If you don't have Google's desktop atlas program, it's available as a free download. If you already have Google Earth, there’s no need to upgrade your installation. The layers should be there - just look for the "NASA" header.

The update showcases the ongoing collaborative effort between Google Earth and NASA which is designed to promote NASA’s various Earth exploration programs. As Wei Luo notes on the Google LatLong blog, "People are usually familiar with NASA’s space missions, but not everyone knows that NASA also devotes a considerable amount of effort to Earth explorations."

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I was hoping for Vino yesterday, especially after his time trial, but it was not to be. So, watching today, I was amazed at his recovery to win the stage. You have to give him credit for shear determination.

I can't wait to watch on Wednesday to find out how Vino does along with the new Disco boy Contador and his battle with Rasmussen.

Vino' wins second stage as Contador, Rasmussen duel - VeloNews

We should not seek revenge on those who have committed crimes against us, or reply to their crimes with other crimes. We should reflect that by the law of karma, they are in danger of lowly and miserable lives to come, and that our duty to them, as to every being, is to help them to rise towards Nirvana, rather than let them sink to lower levels of rebirth.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama

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FYI: This is post #1000 - I've averaged 21.75 posts per month/.74 posts per day in the 1391 days since 4 October 2003.

Vinokourov tests positive; Astana withdraws from Tour - VeloNews

Double stage victor Alexandre Vinokourov (Astana)learned Tuesday that he had tested positive for homologous blood doping following his victory in last Saturday's stage 13 individual time trial.

Vinokourov and his Astana team have reportedly withdrawn from the Tour.

The 33-year-old had lost all chance of winning the Tour with a dismal performance in Sunday's 14th stage but then bounced back to take Monday's 15th stage in the Pyrenees.

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Hmm ... this reminds me of something ... what could it be ... oh yea, I remember now, last years TDF winner and his amazing ride back into contention.

This is just what the sport of cycling needs to help its already cloudy reputation. Nice going Vino'.

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Here is an article also from VeloNews, written in 2004 during the Tyler Hamilton controversy explaining what blood doping is:

A doctor explains blood doping

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Astana manager trusts test more than Vino' - VeloNews/Agence France Presse

Astana team manager Marc Biver said he had confidence in the blood doping test which has snared his star rider Alexander Vinokourov and caused a scandal at the Tour de France.

Biver was speaking only hours after being told that 33-year-old team leader Vinokorov, the winner of two stages on this year's race, had tested positive for homologous blood doping.

If a test on his 'B' sample also tests positive, it means that Vinokourov has injected red blood cells from a compatible donor to enhance his performance.

"We can't condemn Alexandre until we know there has been a clear doping violation, and we have to wait for the result of the 'B' sample," said Biver. "But for us, if his 'A' sample tested positive then he is guilty until the 'B' sample proves otherwise."

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lol ... be sure to read the comments - they are classic  

A brilliant post on " 10 things i hate about star trek". It's a good laugh, hell, I'm still chuckling.

While your there, check out the replies, the bashing is pretty humorous in of itself.

101 frightening ice cream flavors from around the world

Rasmussen pulled out of Tour, fired by Rabobank - VeloNews

After 10 days in the yellow jersey, Michael Rasmussen appeared to have beaten back all challengers in his pursuit of the top spot on the Tour de France's final podium in Paris this coming Sunday.

On Wednesday, he handily dispatched his nearest challenger - Discovery Channel's Alberto Contador - winning the Tour's most difficult stage and adding to his already-formidable lead as the race made its final trip into the mountains.

But Rasmussen was apparently unable to defeat the growing skepticism surrounding his performance and his behavior over the past few months. On Wednesday evening, when the Dane should have been celebrating his all-but-certain victory, his own team withdrew him from the Tour and fired him.

"He broke team rules," explained Rabobank spokesman Jacob Bergsma, who said team officials believed Rasmussen had lied to them regarding his whereabouts in June of this year, when UCI and Danish Cycling Federation officials had been unable to locate the rider for out-of-competition testing.

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Cofidis can't win for losing - VeloNews

Italian rider Cristian Moreni woke up Wednesday just five days away from finishing the Tour de France as a member of the French Cofidis team - one of seven teams that had just announced a new rider's organization geared towards cleaning up the sport, and kicked off its existence with an anti-doping protest at the start of stage 16.

Moreni ended his day in the back of a police car at the top of the Col d'Aubisque, charged with using testosterone and breaking France's tough laws against using and trafficking in doping products. The 35-year-old former Italian champion admitted to administering himself with a synthetic version of the male sex hormone and did not ask for his B sample to be tested. Moreni tested positive following stage 11 in Montpellier. He's now out of the Tour, and expected to be out of a job as well.

The contrast of Cofidis riders protesting the use of doping products at the start of the stage with the image of Moreni leaving the race in police custody seven hours later was just another unimaginable moment in a Tour de France that seems to grow more surreal by the hour.

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CyclingNews reports Cofidis withdrawing from the tour.

Man, can you believe this? At some point you have to wonder when the professional cycling collapses on itself. If the powers to be in the sport ever want the sport to be big in the US they better get this under control.

Hey .. wait a minute ... scandal, lies, drugs, police searches, accusations ... maybe if they can just get Paris Hilton and Linsey Lohan involved, this could just be the thing to get America drooling over it.

Can't wait to see what ticketmaster/bike news reader has to say.

As team Rabobank sits on the back of the peloton today with no ambition left, in fact Menchov just stopped riding today, the papers are going crazy with news items. In fact, many are calling for the Tour to close shop and call it done. A sad state of affairs for the grandaddy of the classic tours.

Menchov quits as Rasmussen hits back - Eurosport/Yahoo

Top Rabobank rider Denis Menchov has abandoned the Tour de France as former team-mate and Michael Rasmussen protested his innocence. The Dane, who led the race by over three minute, was sacked by his team late on Wednesday for lying about his training whereabouts.

The Rabobank team, said by a spokesman to be "confused, angry and sad", met late into Wednesday evening to determine whether to continue the Tour.

... He (Rasmussen) told Danish tabloid BT: "I am shattered. I am on the verge of tears. I was not in Italy. Not at all. That's the story of one man who believes he recognised me. There is no hint of evidence.

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France reels from Tour de France scandals, and newspaper urges calling off race - IHT

One French newspaper ran a mock obituary for the scandal-tainted Tour de France. Another said the race had become a joke and should be canceled.

France reeled Thursday from the news that race leader Michael Rasmussen had been ousted by his team for lying about his whereabouts during pre-race training, the third blow this week to the venerable 104-year-old Tour. In recent days, two riders — including star Alexandre Vinokourov — were thrown out because of positive drug tests.

France Soir newspaper ran a mock death notice for the Tour de France on its cover. It said the tour died Thursday "at age 104, after a long illness."

Liberation newspaper's editorial read: "The Tour must be stopped."

"This procession of cyclists has been transformed into a caravan of ridicule," Liberation wrote. "If the organizers really want to save cycling, they should stop the competition and declare a pause of a few years, enough time to treat these athletes-turned-druggies."

L'Equipe sports daily, by contrast, was more positive, saying the blow was an opportunity for organizers to clean up the Tour de France — "but the Tour must seize it quickly."

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U.S. Sponsors of Tour De France Hang On - Forbes

Despite extreme doping scandals and waning interest at home in the Tour de France, U.S. sponsors are more hesitant than their European counterparts to drop ties to the world's largest cycling event.

Sponsorship is key to the Tour de France - a symbiotic relationship exists between the teams and cyclists desperate for funding and the corporations eager for exposure. Few images of the Tour are absent a company name emblazoned on a bike, jersey, helmet or team van.

But the race hit a doping high Wednesday when race leader Michael Rasmussen was removed after winning the day's stage, at the order of the Dutch team sponsor Rabobank. The Cofidis squad also confirmed its rider Cristian Moreni of Italy had failed a doping test, prompting the withdrawal of the entire Cofidis squad.

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Can 'green chic' save the planet? - CSMonitor

Ecofriendly buying choices alone can't sustain America's lifestyle, experts warn – unless 'looking green' becomes 'voting green.'

Green, it seems, has gone mainstream. Magazines like Elle, Fortune, and Vanity Fair have published "green issues" in the past year, and the Academy Awards were carbon neutral. The Vatican recently announced plans to offset its 2007 emissions, while Costa Rica pledged to arrive at "net zero" by 2021.

Green has also gone trendy. Last week, Whole Foods Market released a limited edition, $15 cotton bag with "I'm not a plastic bag" emblazoned on its side. When the bag went on sale at outlets in Taiwan, a stampede followed. In Hong Kong, throngs shut down a shopping mall. In New York City last week, lines formed at dawn. Later that day, bags were offered on Craigslist for between $200 and $500. "These bags are walking billboards," says Isabel Spearman, a spokeswoman for the bag's designer, Anya Hindmarch. "You do have to make something trendy, and it becomes a habit. That's the whole point."

Savvy marketers have clearly tapped into something. But the green craze has many asking how, if at all, it addresses what many characterize as an impending climate catastrophe.

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Earth too warm? Bury the CO2. - CSM

Under a blazing west Texas sun, with a whiptail lizard and cattle looking on, Rebecca Smyth works with an assistant to lower a measuring line, then a hose, and finally a slender plastic capsule down an old water well 200 feet deep.

She's hoping the water samples she collects will yield clues to what is, arguably, one of mankind's most pressing environmental questions: Can nations bury their greenhouse gases?

If they can, then governments will have bought themselves a decades-long respite as they search for less carbon-intensive energy sources. If they can't, then a significant rise in global temperatures by 2100 looks inevitable, if fossil-fuel consumption continues at its current pace.

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FCC to Rule on Wireless Auction: Lobbying Intense As Google Seeks To Open Market - Washington Post

The Federal Communications Commission will set the rules tomorrow governing the auction of $15 billion of public airwaves, a decision with stakes so high that the major U.S. cellular carriers and Google have spent millions of dollars on a lobbying campaign in an attempt to influence the outcome. The decision could dramatically alter the nation's cellphone industry.

Google, the giant Internet search company, wants to extend its popular tools, which include e-mail and video, to the rapidly expanding mobile phone market. To do so, it may spend billions to build a new, open network it says will loosen the grip telecom operators have over how consumers use their cellphones.

Currently, the major U.S. wireless carriers, including AT&T and Verizon Wireless, largely decide which Web sites, music-download services and search engines their customers can access on their cellphones. This is accomplished by wireless companies determining which cellphones will receive their services: AT&T, for example, is the only carrier available to users of Apple's iPhone.

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U.S. vehicles rank bottom in fuel efficiency - Reuters

The United States ranks at the bottom of industrialized countries in vehicle fuel-economy standards, but would jump far up the list if legislation to boost mileage requirements clears Congress and is signed into law, according to a report released on Monday.

The report comes as the House of Representatives will debate energy legislation this week, and some lawmakers want to tack on language to significantly increase the miles American cars and trucks travel on a gallon a gasoline.

U.S. fuel-efficiency requirements for passenger cars have been stuck at 27.5 miles per gallon since 1985, while the standard for pickups, minivans and other light trucks will increase from 20.7 mpg in 2004 to 24 mpg in 2011.

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