Geek On The Mountain

It’s been a good bet for years that the government has been spying on it’s own citizens without even getting warrants since the Patriot Act allows for it, but it’s nice to see Bush confirm that it’s happening.

Of course, not only does he openly admit to the practice, but he’s upset that he’s looking at a situation that won’t allow him to do it any more. The senate failed to renew the Patriot Act, so he’s faced with the possibility of having to ask a judge for permission to do things. Damned constitution…

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I haven’t felt much like writing the past few days. My blogging mind keeps on rolling though, so I keep on coming up with things and running through outlines in my head. At this point, it’s easiest to just write down one big jumble. So consider yourself warned..

Firefox (the cat, not the browser) had to have surgery last week. He had been having problems with an infected eye. We had been giving him some homeopathic crap which seemed to be helping (the swelling on his inner eyelid had noticeably decreased). Then suddenly, his whole eye swelled up quite badly a week ago from last Friday. This was labor day weekend, and apparently our vet didn’t want to bother answering pages for emergency service, so we couldn’t do anything for him until Monday (I’m not sure if it would have mattered or not though). He had to have the eye removed. He’s doing fine now, although he looks weird, not so much because he’s missing an eye, but because one side of his face (including whiskers) has been shaved and the other hasn’t. He’ll look pretty much normal once his hair grows back. The situation sucks really, but I’m just glad he didn’t die or anything.

In case you missed the news last week, they released a report on the data received from Deep Impact, the probe NASA sent to investigate a comet. What they found was quite interesting. Instead of what we expected to find, a ball of ice, there was more of a ball of snow. They found that there was no ice present in any size larger than small pieces. They’re saying that it is more like a snowball, or a ball of dust, and a ball of ice. The funny thing here is that the ESA launched a probe last year that’s due to land on a comet in 2014. If the findings from deep impact are consistent amongst all comets, the probe is going to be wasted as it is supposed to land on the surface of the comet. That is to say, if there is no solid surface to land on, the probe will just sink into the comet.

I picked up a copy of Staind’s Chapter V last week as well. Although it’s a bit on the light side (meaning I’d classify it as plain old rock, mind you), it’s pretty good. I had to listen to it a few times to really get into it (although that’s normal really..), but there are definitely some catchy songs on there. I would think anyone who liked 14 Shades of Grey would like this disc just as well.

The Simpsons started off their new season earlier than they have in some time this year. It’s been years since they’ve started before November (sometimes even showing the Halloween special AFTER Halloween… even if it falls on a Sunday during their time slot!). Fox is trying to get a jump on everyone else this year. The episode…..was OK. Homer looses a bunch of money betting on Football games (again). Of course, he was betting money he had borrowed from Fat Tony and when he couldn’t pay him back he had to agree to let Fat Tony use the house to make an “Adult Film”….Lemony Licket: A series of horny events. The rest of the show is all about Manatees….it was an OK episode. It had it’s moments. It’s nice to see a 17th season..

I finally got around to watching the last episode of The 4400 (I probably would have watched it sooner, but I basically knew what was going to happen). It was pretty good, and it set up what should probably be an interesting season 3 (if < 10 episodes really counts as a season I guess). And, as if the show weren't enough like a soap opera as is, we find at the end that one character, who was just a baby, is suddenly a teen-ager. I suspect they'll explain it though, rather than pretending that it's just normal.

Football is finally starting. There've been pre-season games for the last month or so, but it's just not the same. Maybe the Lions will do well this year. Probably not though. No team has ever played in a Super Bowl in their own stadium. I'm sure this year won't be an exception. Detroit is a truly crappy club. They haven't won a championship since the 50's, before they joined the leagues and starting playing Super Bowls. They currently hold a record for most games lost over the past 4 or 5 seasons. They've had some good teams over the years, but there always tends to be some critically weak link that holds them back. Most notably, they can never seem to get a good QB. Their current one, Harrington, is OK at best. When he's having a good game, he's truly an asset. The problem is that every other game, he's totally off and they're just screwed. Last year a significant portion of their offense was just returning kicks for TD's. It was pretty sad. On the up side though, they just killed Green Bay last night. It was actually a fairly even match-up for a while, but Favre was having a bad day for sure which of course helped immensely. They actually held GB to only 3 points, which is apparently the fist time they've had such a low score with Favre starting since 1992. Not bad…The Lions have a LOT of young talent right now. Hopefully they can turn it into at least a first round playoff game.

I also noticed yesterday that the Pentagon revised our nuclear strike plan to include use of nukes for going after terrorists (to stop an attack, that is) and to destroy WMD. Although I can say that it’s understandable, I can’t really say that using nukes, ever, is really a good idea. There tend to be these side effects, you see… I read an article in Popular Science a month or two back about nuclear bunker buster bombs. (this online article is nowhere near as detailed as the one I read in the mag). I see as well that they have links to a blast effects calculator and a fallout calculator. I in find it’s most interesting to put the blast on familiar geography….I placed it on the east coast, and with a 15 mph wind, a swath of land nearly the width of Virginia was in the “recommended evacuation” area. Nice.

Finally, iTunes 5.0 was released and they’ve somehow managed to make it even uglier than the last version. Things just don’t flow as well. It’s also rather odd, because they’ve actually put the menubar into the titlebar (which works because the title text is always centered in the bar and not left justified. On the upside, the “status box”, that’s my word for the thing in the middle of the upper part of the window that actually tells you what’s going on….what’s playing, what’s importing, what’s burning, etc., has gotten bigger and they seem to put more information in there. I can hardly believe Apple decided to ruing their “simple” design by putting more useful information in the interface, but they did. What will they think of next?

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Last Chance to Stop Renewal of the USA PATRIOT Act!

Congress will vote any day now on new legislation that would renew parts of the USA PATRIOT Act scheduled to expire or “sunset” at the end of the year, while possibly handing the FBI even more unchecked power to snoop on your mail and private records, including logs of your Internet activities.

PATRIOT’s notorious Section 215 allows intelligence investigators to demand private records about citizens who aren’t suspected of spying or terrorism, including medical, financial, and library records, while other parts of PATRIOT radically expanded the government’s power to subpoena records or conduct wiretaps to see what you’re doing online.

The current PATRIOT bills could make these and a host of other highly controversial provisions permanent. Some in the Senate want to go even further, and allow the FBI to secretly demand any and all types of records without a judge’s permission, using new do-it-yourself “administrative subpoenas.” Meanwhile, the sensible checks and balances proposed in the Security and Freedom Ensured Act (SAFE), an alternative PATRIOT reform bill, have yet to be seriously considered.

Don’t let Congress defy the bipartisan will of the hundreds of local communities that have passed resolutions opposing the PATRIOT Act. Contact your legislators today and tell them to vote against PATRIOT renewal and for PATRIOT reform!

If you’re unfamiliar with the PATRIOT Act, then I’d recommend you read up on it (The EFF also has a nice summary). Basically, it’s legislation that was passed after 9/11 that gave up some basic civil rights in exchange for security. It’s an idea that made some amount of sense at the time (though it wasn’t worthwhile if you ask me). The idea was of course to combat terrorism, but really the act can be (and is) applied to any crime (or rather, potential crime). It allows law enforcement to do things without getting a warrant first. This is terrible. The only protection we have against surveillance and searches is that a court must approve that there is just cause to do so before it can happen. When that is removed, so is our protection.

They could begin debating these bills as early as this coming Wednesday, so head on over to the EFF Action Center and you can send a letter to your legislators.

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….or maybe he’s just lying.

I came across some words from our president and was rather surprised. I shouldn’t be I guess, but man….

“Our mission in Iraq is clear: We’re hunting down the terrorists. We’re helping Iraqis build a free nation that is an ally in the war on terror. We’re advancing freedom in the broader Middle East. We are removing a source of violence and instability and laying the foundation of peace for our children and our grandchildren.”

Check out that first line…..we’re in Iraq to hunt down terrorists? Assuming that actually was our original intent, it was proven long ago that our terrorists weren’t in Iraq. Our intelligence was wrong, there were no weapons of mass destruction. There were bad people there for sure, but not those same bad people who attacked us.

But Bush is still selling us the war as being one against terrorism?

I guess there are “terrorists” in Iraq, but we generally call them insurgents. They seem to fighting the fact that we’re in their country. These terrorists weren’t there before we got there. But maybe he wasn’t referring to the insurgents…but then what exactly did he mean?

Read the quotes and you might come to the conclusion that Bush would march through the entire middle east and “free” them all if he could… Only 1295 days to go….

(This is my patriotic post for the day….. )

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From the site’s main page:

The Downing Street “Memo” is actually a document containing meeting minutes transcribed during the British Prime Minister’s meeting on July 23, 2002—a full eight months PRIOR to the invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003. The Times of London printed the text of this document on Sunday, May 1, 2005, but to date US media coverage has been limited. This site is intended to act as a resource for anyone who wants to understand the facts revealed in this document.

The contents of the memo are shocking. The minutes detail how our government did not believe Iraq was a greater threat than other nations; how intelligence was “fixed” to sell the case for war to the American public; and how the Bush Administration’s public assurances of “war as a last resort” were at odds with their privately stated intentions.

When asked, British officials “did not dispute the document’s authenticity.” and a senior American official has described it as “absolutely accurate.” Yet the Bush administration continues to simultaneously sidestep the issue while attempting to cast doubt on the memo’s authenticity.

Check out the Downing Street Memo.

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