Via DailyKos

Thanks to Hunter for some mildly amusing stuff, found tucked in among the bailout bill provisions:

Page 279 -- Rum excise tax to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands
Page 280 -- Mine rescue / mine safety
Page 290 -- Motorsports racing track facility
Page 290 -- Hurricane Katrina and Gulf opportunity zone
Page 295 -- Wool modifications
Page 296 -- Permanent authority for undercover operations
Page 297 -- Child tax credit
Page 300 -- Children and wooden arrows

Privacy 2.0: No Privacy at All -- John C. Dvorak

Google's limiting the length of time it keeps records on people? Big deal. Why the public puts up with any tracking whatsoever is a mystery to me.

... this information would be quite useful in a police state or to merely curb dissent. The potential for abuse alone should have the public up in arms.

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The voters are angry -- and don't know why - Salon

What happens when the messy thing called democracy collides with the financial markets in full panic.

... The morning after the 778-point market mayhem, three TV ads were released with public fanfare, two by the candidates themselves and the third by the Republican National Committee blasting Obama. It was stunning how unresponsive all three commercials were to the real-world details of the worst financial crisis since brokers drank their martinis in speak-easies. Both campaigns seem determined to cling to their familiar arguments (Obama is too liberal and McCain is an out-of-touch Bush III) in the face of the dramatically reshaped realities on Wall Street.

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How the Telescope Changed Our Minds -- Wired

The telescope changed everything about how we see our place in the universe. But it took a leap of faith to accept the views of telescopes as real, just as it takes a leap to trust images produced by modern technology such as the microscope, the MRI and supercolliders.

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New surveillance program will turn military satellites on US -- ArsTechnica

An appropriations bill signed by President Bush last week allows the controversial National Applications Office to begin operating a stringently limited version of a program that would turn military spy satellites on the US, sharing imagery with other federal, state, and local government agencies. The government's own watchdog agency, the Government Accountability Office, has warned in an unpublished report that the more expansive program in the offing lacks adequate safeguards to protect privacy and civil liberties.

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Peacefires newest Circumventor sites:

http://www.ihatepeaches.com/

Remember, always try https://www.stupidcensorship.com first.

The big list.

Use them wisely!

How to Understand the Financial Crisis -- Wired

There's a lot of hype surrounding the financial crisis, but what does it really mean? To get acquainted with the financial crisis and what it means to you and me, we've pinged several sources on the internet for economic explanations even we could understand.

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How good is your eyeballing? My first try was 3.98.

http://woodgears.ca/eyeball/

I just contacted my Members of Congress asking them to support the Clean Water Restoration Act. Will you do the same? This legislation is critical because recent Supreme Court rulings have narrowed the scope of protections of the Clean Water Act, putting the drinking water of more than 110 million Americans in jeopardy!

However, Congress has an opportunity to make this right by passing the Clean Water Restoration Act. Click the link below to send your Members of Congress a strong message that you demand clean water.

http://action.lcv.org/campaign/cleanwater_m

Mail Goggles: A breathalyzer test for your Gmail -- ArsTechnica

I was laughing when I read about this

How many times have you stumbled home after a long night out with friends, only to plop down in front of the computer and start sending e-mails that you would wake up regretting the next day? OK, maybe some of our older readers in the crowd have never moved beyond "drunk dialing," but many of us are probably more familiar with the embarrassing phenomenon, a technological evolution of the drunk dial. Thanks to a new project out of Google Labs, however, you can at least stop yourself from sending "impaired" e-mails during certain hours.

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Analysis: data mining doesn't work for spotting terrorists -- Ars Technica

Earlier this week, the National Research Council produced a remarkably thorough 376-page report on data mining, counter-terrorism, and American democracy. I've plucked the quote above from the report's executive summary not only because it aptly summarizes both the report's implications and my own near-decade of thinking about and reporting on these efforts. More significantly, it runs directly counter to the prevailing wisdom in Washington on how best to use technology to defend the US homeland against a catastrophic terrorist attack.

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NSA eavesdropped on Americans, journalists in Baghdad -- Ars Technica

Two whistleblowers have come forward to ABC News with allegations that the NSA routinely listened in on the phone calls of ordinary Americans, journalists, aid workers, and military personnel who were living in the Middle East and calling friends and loved ones back in the US. Both of these whistleblowers were employed by the NSA as intercept operators at a facility in Fort Gordon, Georgia, where they were tasked with intercepting, recording, and monitoring satellite phone calls into and out of Baghdad's Green Zone.

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PS: This is my 1500th post

Log off. Shutdown. Reboot - ZDNet

Log off. Shutdown. Reboot Jason Perlow: Has your job, your enabling technology and the events of the day turned you into an anxious, depressed, sleep-deprived irritable head case? Enough already! Take a break from technology.

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Red and Rover by Brian Basset - 13 October 2008

 
Adam@Home by Brian Basset - 14 October 2008

Peacefires newest Circumventor sites:

http://www.eyebrowfire.com/

Remember, always try https://www.stupidcensorship.com first.

The big list.

14 October 1947 - Flying at an altitude of 45,000 ft (13.7 km) in an experimental Bell X-1 rocket-powered aircraft, American test pilot Chuck Yeager became the first person to break the sound barrier.

 
Don Wright - 11 December 2008

 
Deep Cover by Tim Eagan

Doctors warn of rash from mobile phone use -- Reuters

Doctors baffled by an unexplained rash on people's ears or cheeks should be on alert for a skin allergy caused by too much mobile phone use, the British Association of Dermatologists said on Thursday.

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5 Myths About Value Voters - Washington Post

"Values" is a word that clings to American office-seekers like rhetorical lint: They all have traditional ones and their opponents don't. The trick, of course, is in the definitions. Traditional values for one group may be "un-American" in another part of the country, we have been told lately.

Since the Reagan years, conservatives have been winning the battle to define values, and many now blindly accept that opposition to abortion or support for praying in school have been at the core of "real America" ever since the Founding Fathers.

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Peacefires newest Circumventor sites:

http://www.lionbell.com/

Remember, always try https://www.stupidcensorship.com first.

The big list.

October 29, 1969; 10:30 p.m. PST: The first packets make their way across the Net -- barely.

Before the Web was born, there was simply the Internet, and before the Internet came ARPAnet. Though plans for ARPAnet had been brewing since the early 1960s, it wasn't ready for prime time until fall 1969 -- and even then things didn't go exactly as planned.

Late on the evening of October 29, Professor Len Kleinrock linked a mainframe computer at UCLA to one at the Stanford Research Institute over a dedicated phone line. To test the connection, Kleinrock had arranged for students at UCLA to transmit the word "LOG," after which the computer at SRI would respond with "IN." Researcher Charley Kline managed to send the L and the O, but before he could send the G, the system crashed. (Some things really haven't changed all that much.)

The next attempt was successful, but "LO" marks the moment the Internet sent its first word -- as significant an utterance as Samuel Morse's "What hath God wrought?" or Alexander Graham Bell's "Watson, come here, I need you."

"Morse and Bell were a hell of a lot smarter than we were," Kleinrock noted in a 2004 interview. "They knew they were doing something of historical importance. We were just engineers, trying to do a good job."

Here are a few links from APOD -- Astronomy Picture of the Day -- that you could say have to do with Halloween.

The Witch's Broom Nebula
A Witch by Starlight
Halloween and the Ghost Head Nebula
A Spooky Nebula
The Perseus Cluster's X-Ray Skull

FYI -- APOD is my home page and has been for years. I always liked learning something interesting when I first jump on the net.