Posts from — June 2008

Today beginning at approximately 10:00AM PDT [1:00 PM on the East Coast and 1700 UTC] the newest version of the Firefox browser will be available, and Mozilla would like to break the Guinness record for most software downloads in a single day.

If you want to get involved go to the Download Day site during the 24 hour period and select your download site.

Be aware that if you use add-ins in your version of Firefox 2 it is unlikely they will work in Firefox 3.

The BBC has a timely reminder about “free speech”: Blogger arrests hit record high

More bloggers than ever face arrest for exposing human rights abuses or criticising governments, says a report.

Since 2003, 64 people have been arrested for publishing their views on a blog, says the University of Washington annual report.

In 2007 three times as many people were arrested for blogging about political issues than in 2006, it revealed.
…

The report pointed out that it is not just governments in the Middle East and East Asia that have taken steps against those publishing their opinions online. In the last four years, British, French, Canadian and American bloggers have also been arrested.

The report predicted that the number of blogger arrests in 2008 would exceed the 36 seen in 2007 thanks to greater popularity of blogging as a medium, greater enforcement of net restrictions, and elections in China, Pakistan, Iran and the US.

Our corporate owners don’t like it when “little people” get uppity and start acting like they are allowed to speak their minds.

You may have heard that Moqtada al Sadr has said that his organization won’t be participating in the up coming elections in Iraq.

McClatchy reports that that is technically true but it doesn’t mean they will not have candidates that they support in the election.

In a related note, The Official Monster Raving Loony Party notes a request for information about forming a foreign version of the party from a Mr. M. Sadr of Najaf, Iraq. 😈

It isn’t a lake or a swamp this time, but Orlando’s WKMG reports on Florida’s latest brush fire:

“Officials said the wildfire is burning in a wetlands area of Clermont and no homes have been threatened.”

If they start drilling off the coast we might be able to watch the Gulf of Mexico burn.

Oh, contrary to the propaganda of drilling advocates, there were, indeed, oil spills from broken underwater pipelines after Katrina. The pumps were shut down and there are check valves on the pipes, but crude oil leaked out. There were also major leaks from damaged storage tanks on shore.

While The Invisible Library isn’t going anywhere, Keith, Elvira, Lucy, and Rupert are bound across the country from Georgia to to Oregon. For some reason Keith is unhappy living in the Deep South.

It’s not a bad drive, I did Monterey, California to Washington DC a couple of times, but it will depend on the flooding.

Safe driving!

Kevin Drum thinks that suddenly no one cares about the rules. He’s probably not aware of the three on-going civil trials, and other fun that is going to weaken the Democrats for years.

McClatchy shows some of the anger boiling over: Obscenity-laden e-mail shows Florida delegate fight lingers

But just two weeks after Democrats thought they mostly had put the debacle over Florida’s delegates behind them, party faithful are bickering over who will get to attend the national convention in Denver in August.

The back-and-forth largely was behind the scenes, until party activist Jon Ausman sent a blast e-mail late Thursday featuring obscenity-laced excerpts of e-mails he’d received from Kirk Wagar, Barack Obama’s finance chairman for Florida. Wagar’s e-mails rip Ausman and the state’s top Democrat, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, who had backed Hillary Clinton but supported Obama after he became the presumptive nominee.

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The incomparable Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe noted last December that the White House drops veto bid on promotions

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration is dropping a plan to take control over the promotions of military lawyers, following an outpouring of alarm over the independence of uniformed attorneys who have repeatedly objected to the White House’s policies toward prisoners in the war on terrorism.

Sometimes retired flag officers write open letters [PDF] to the President to show him that he is not doing right.

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John, by the grace of God, king of England, lord of Ireland, duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and count of Anjou in the meadow which is called Runnymede, between Windsor and Staines, on the fifteenth day of June, 1215, signed the Great Charter in the presence of assorted heavily armed peers of the realm, who assured him it was the right thing to do.

The British Library has pictures of the Magna Carta available, and Wikipedia has a nice discussion of the document.

The Magna Carta of 1297 is permanently residing in the US National Archives.

The Avalon Project’s translation of the 1215 version with an index and definitions.

… I felt like it.

Not Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

Because of drought conditions we are currently battling wildfires in Butte County, Monterey County, and Santa Cruz County in northern California, a major fire in southeastern Colorado, and another fire in eastern North Carolina.

Meanwhile in the middle of the country we have terrible flooding:

…Illinois emergency authorities said a levee along the Mississippi River in far western Illinois burst Saturday morning, and voluntary evacuations were under way in Keithsburg, a town of about 700 residents.

“The levee broke in two places,” Keithsburg Alderman George Askew, 76, said of the town some 35 miles (56 kilometers) southwest of Moline. “We’re getting under water.”

Parts of southern Wisconsin have been dealing with flooding for days. West of Milwaukee, in Summit, authorities Saturday found the body of a 68-year-old man near his vehicle on a flooded road.

Iowa’s worst damage so far was in Cedar Rapids, where the Cedar River crested Friday night at nearly 32 feet (9.75 meters), 12 feet (3.66 meters) higher than the record set in 1929…

As usual the Shrubbery is on a vacation, and FEMA will spring into inaction real soon now…

World War II

Company F, 19th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron
316th Provisional Cavalry Brigade, 3rd Army

Service in France, Rhineland, Central Europe

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Oriskany is my Mother’s hometown, and it’s where she and her siblings graduated from high school. My younger brother and I also graduated from the high school as we moved back to New York when my Dad retired from the military.

The National Parks Service has a lesson plan for the Oriskany Battlefield, because it was an important battle during the Revolution, and members from different branches of my family participated.

The aircraft carrier, USS Oriskany was named for the battle, and the village houses the museum and hosts the crew reunions for the ship, which is now under the Gulf becoming a reef in my “backyard”.

Those are some of my connections to Oriskany, but most Americans have a connection to the village that they aren’t aware of – you have a piece of Oriskany in your wallet.

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Adopted as the flag of the United States of America by the Flag Resolution of 1777 enacted on 14 June, 1777.

The flag was first flown from Fort Stanwix, on the site of the present city of Rome, New York, on August 3, 1777. It was first under fire three days later in the Battle of Oriskany, August 6, 1777.

An official flag has a rise to run ratio of 1 to 1.9 [the flag should be 1.9 times as long as it is high] with the canton [the dark blue part] that rises over the top seven stripes with a run of 40% of the flag’s run.

The only time you will see a “correct” US Flag is if you see the official colors of a military unit. Most flags are 3’X5′ or 4’X6′ instead of 3’X5.7′ or 4’X7.6′.

Frances Bellamy, the Baptist minister and socialist who wrote the Pledge of Allegiance was from Rome, New York.

The CNN headline for the Associated Press report: ‘Flooding of biblical proportions’ in Iowa

“We are seeing a historic hydrological event taking place with unprecedented river levels occurring,” said Brian Pierce, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Davenport, Iowa. “We’re in uncharted territory — this is an event beyond what anybody could even imagine.”

Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan today, and it’s dumping into the Mississippi, so there will be more states downstream under water in the near future.

There are nine rivers above flood stage.

Were I an evangelical I might suspect I had elected the anti-Christ President – twice.