Posts from — May 2006

I had comments rejected at both NTodd’s and Michael’s the other night, they rejected my blog address. Both are connected to TypePad.

Apparently Blue Security, an anti-spam company, was undergoing a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, and to deflect part of the attack they transferred some of the incoming requests to their blog at Six Apart, knocking out that company’s TypePad and LiveJournal services.

This is one of the main reasons to find a tech savvy host that keeps their software updated, and to keep your software updated. A DDoS attack is made possible by people leaving their systems vulnerable. The person initiating the attack uses machines that were compromised at an earlier date. Your computer may be part of the attack and you wouldn’t notice.

I actually felt sorry for the survey taker at the other end of the telephone:

Could I speak to the lady of the house?

The only ladies in the house are cats.

Could I speak to the man of the house?

Speaking.

-Hollywood is terrible and not “family friendly” and putting pornography on television, don’t you think?

I wouldn’t know, I don’t watch television and haven’t for over a decade.

Movies are all about obscenity…

I don’t go to movies either.

How about the danger to your children and grandchildren?

Sorry, life-long bachelor.

The Dove Foundation survey is on-line.

I was nice, I didn’t get into how nothing is located in Hollywood anymore, and most of the production in North America takes place in Canada. I didn’t talk about the centers in Orlando, Atlanta, and Tokyo. I didn’t ask her why the Dove Foundation wasn’t doing something important, rather than carping about TV and movies.

She did give up, and I didn’t have to endure the entire spiel.

CNN has a poll on the Moussaoui sentence with 64% agreeing with the jury.

The BBC explored the sentencing with Jonathan Turley, professor at the George Washington University Law School, and Frank Gaffney, the Founder and President of the Center for Security Policy.

Mr. Gaffney complained that the death penalty in this case would have acted as a deterrent to the terrorists.

I would suggest that the death penalty would have had absolutely no effect on the 19 men who chose to fly aircraft into buildings on 9/11. Exactly what part of the role of “suicide bomber” does Mr. Gaffney fail to understand?

Okay, so people don’t get it. Academia is not a nice place: it is survival of the fittest and filled with some really talented street fighters.

For those of you who have never ventured into the battle zone of a faculty office building, I can assure you that “peer review” is not much different than climbing into a cage with rabid pit bulls. Resources and positions are limited, egos are huge, and no quarter is asked or given. Wit is the weapon and words are the ammunition, but the destruction is real. When you challenge someone at the top of the food chain, you had better have your facts squared away and your logic honed to a razor’s edge or you will be another pathetic stain on the carpet in the faculty lounge.

Fools who wander into the fighting pit of academic challenges and call out a heavy hitter like Juan Cole are not on the fast track of evolution.

Professor Cole’s dismemberment of Jonah Goldberg was properly immortalized by James Wolcott.

Then John Fund decided he would attempt to block a job offer to Professor Cole, in a move that could end up in court, as Mr. Fund did not verify his facts.

And Christopher Hitchens has violated “netiquette” by posting edited comments from a private forum. Initially Cole offered Hitchens the excuse of inebriation, but a “friend” has said “His cups” was miraculously sober when he hacked the list.

Don’t attack an academic’s credibility and expect to walk away unbloodied. These attacks are the process by which academics gain their standing. They are required to defend themselves when they present papers for advancement. The people attacking are their “betters”, experts in the field. You must prevail to move up to the next level. What chance do dilettantes have against such veterans?

Andrew Cohen, CBS legal analyst, presents his view on the Zacarias Moussaoui sentence, and I agree with him.

A dangerous, deluded individual is off the streets forever, to rot in a cell. There is no glory for him in the sentence.

The Christian Science Monitor noticed that the US does not consider Taliban terrorists.

The Raging Grannies are under surveillance, but the group blowing up the US and NATO military in Afghanistan aren’t terrorists? People who key SUVs are terrorists, but the group that sheltered Osama bin Laden isn’t?

It has been a busy day, and I’m not ready for this level of cognitive dissonance.

CNet is reporting that the Financial sector awakens to Net neutrality issues. Andante at Collective Sigh has the same story from a different source.

If you are a brokerage with a large ‘Net presence, your clients are not going to be happy waiting for a trade to take place. Your IT system is part of your overhead, and now it is going to be subject to increased costs that have not been factored in to your budget.

Steve Gilliard noticed the Sir Tim has also come out for neutrality.

As a service in explaining some of what’s going on I offer the Wikipedia entries for:

Dr. Vinton Cerf and ICANN, one of the Internet related boards he sits on; and then there’s Sir Timothy Berners-Lee and his creation, the World Wide Web [no, it is not the same as the Internet].

For desert there’s the article on Net Neutrality.

Telcoms and cable companies are not your friends. They are constantly adding “features” to justify increasing your bill. Did you ask for 6 shopping channels? Do you like paying for “caller id” and then having to tell the telco service people what your phone number is? If it was such a great idea why don’t they use it?

All Things Considered has a story, Small Paper Uses Profits to Train New Reporters [text & audio], about the newspaper in the town of Anniston, Alabama that gives some hope for the future of journalism.

When his daughter decided she didn’t want to get involved in the newspaper business, the publisher of The Anniston Star decided to forgo multi-million dollar offers for the paper and change it into a “teaching newspaper”, along the lines of a teaching hospital. A non-profit foundation was created by the publisher, and the University of Alabama supplies the students as Knight Community Journalism Fellows.

I linked to the Star when they were fighting with the Department of Defense over the incineration of chemical weapons at the Anniston Army Deport.

This isn’t a glorified student newspaper, it continues its role as the local newspaper for Anniston, while the students learn their job by working as “residents” under the oversight of their professors and the professional staff.

The Republicans aren’t ready for prime time, they just can’t lead a government.

JEB Bush and the Republicans have been trying to dismantle the public schools in the state of Florida for years. JEB’s A+ Schools is designed to show how dysfunctional the school system is so that it can be crushed and public funding be given to private schools.

The voters in Florida keep passing constitutional amendments to stop him and improve the system.

The Miami Herald reports on the latest battle in the article: School vouchers killed by one vote; senate majority leader asked to resign. Robert at Interstate 4 Jamming covers the basics in his article on what happened, so I’ll provide some background.

[Read more →]

On NPR’s Day to Day they ran a piece on the May Day immigration demonstrations and featured Congressman John Hostettler [R-Indiana].

Mr. Hostettler came on as “Mr. Law N. Order”. John really likes the laws of this country…well, most laws. He’s not really fond of laws about wandering around with a loaded 9mm Glock pistol in your carry-on bag.

IOKIYAR

There were about 500 people demonstrating in Pensacola, which seemed to come as a surprise to local people.

You let Lowes and Wal-Mart build their big-box stores, and you are going to have people who are less than fluent in English and who run like they grew up wearing sandals – a crouch and a scuffing as they run – familiar to residents of South San Diego County.

After the hurricanes in 2004 and 2005 the area’s Hispanic population jumped, and I have it on good authority [my next door neighbor] that Wal-Mart has expanded its grocery section to include “all kinds of Mexican food with foreign language labels” and Saturday night is “Mexican night, most of the cashiers don’t speak good American.”

If this continues she might have to go back to her hometown: Andalusia…Alabama.

The life guards at the beginning of the season have for some time come from Poland, and the last time I was getting my driver’s license renewed there were a number of people in the waiting room speaking Russian.

Until the government gets serious about the borders, and stops giving businesses the incentives to import labor when they are unable to export the jobs, people had better understand that we are going to have immigrants, just like their ancestors.

The first woman to command the Space Shuttle, Eileen Collins [Colonel, USAF retired], is leaving the agency to spend some time with her children. In her case, she has a son and daughter who will be in elementary school, so this isn’t a political excuse.

The birth of her son caused NASA to require female astronauts to now undergo a pregnancy examination before flight, as she also proved to be the first pregnant woman in space.

This is just another sign of the eclipse of the space program under the Shrubbery. There was a time when astronauts had to be kicked out, because no one wanted to leave the excitement.

The May Day association with labor is all American, and just as controversial as everything of any consequence in history. The day is tied to a strike for the eight-hour day and the so-called “Haymarket Riot” of 1886. When it comes to “riots” and the Chicago police are involved, you are not going to find a single truth.

As May 1^st falls at the mid point between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice it marks the beginning of summer for many people and is celebrated by Teutonic cultures [on the eve] as Walpurgisnacht [in German], and among the Gaelic peoples as Beltane.

The real significance was that it is unlikely there was going to be another freeze and it is probably safe to start planting crops, so a fertility festival is in order. This is to ensure a good crop, not to get together and have a good time before getting to the backbreaking work of farming, really.

This is the third anniversary of Mission Accomplished, the Shrubbery’s prance across the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, one of the most expensive photo ops in American political history, and 1687 days since he said that Osama was “Wanted, Dead or Alive”.

This year there is the added feature in the US of the boycott and demonstrations of Hispanic Americans and other immigrants. Unfortunately these people have absorbed enough American culture to understand that nothing is going to be done because it’s the right thing to do. You have to hit people in their wallet, or you’ll be ignored. Reality makes that Koolaid bitter.

Update: It’s also the 75^th birthday of the Empire State Building and, via Auntie Roo at Blonde Sense, Loyalty Day.

Update 2: and Law Day? Come on, people, this is piling on. There are 364 other days available.