Blog

I have to say some of the most entertaining, creative writing I can find on the web is at Sanity Adrift. His posts are spaced out as if each is being drafted, proofed, re-written, tossed out, pulled from the garbage, written again, edited and finally published against a relunctant deadline of "I must move on to another topic." The time between posts is rewarded with a post of several paragraphs from which you cannot divert your eyes. It’s not lengthy in the sense that you want to skim to get to the end. At Sanity Adrift the writing is so well done that you want to read each word and sometimes twice. TV deserves to be published! I’ll leave it to the curious to explore and figure out "TV." His bio is as much a pleasure to view as is his blog.

Drapes removed from Justice Department statue. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales makes a good choice!

The drapes [covering Spirit of Justice’s one exposed breast], installed in 2002 at a cost of $8,000, allowed then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to speak in the Great Hall without fear of a breast showing up behind him in television or newspaper pictures. They also provoked jokes about and criticism of the deeply religious Ashcroft.

Alright! That’s progress. Now how do we get the other one uncovered?

An ORANGE ALERT is issued for Saturday, June 25, 2005. Ride a KAT bus fare-free and help to improve our air quality.

South Knox Bubba shows us why we should carpool, ride buses and take other steps for cleaner air.

For those who can’t get along with your band members this is for you.

Appalachistan has led us to The Hanging Stranger for an explanation of "What happens when you burn an American flag?"

Student: My body aches.
Master: Your mind says you ache.

Sometimes white noise drives me nuts. As a child I could tell you from the opposite end of the house if the television was turned on even if the sound was all the way down while others would insist there was no noise. The hum of a computer monitor can be distracting enough to prohibit programming. At these times I like to put in some ear plugs dropping noise by 20db and effectively cutting out the white noise but still allowing you to hear.

I am programming and I hear a noise that I can’t identify. I take out an ear plug to acknowledge an airplane. A few minutes later with the ear plugs in I hear what sounds like a Cessna single engine plane flying too low. The sound is coming through the baby monitor and getting louder. I can only assume an appliance is dying despite a childhood flashback so I run upstairs to seek out the noise before it wakes everyone in the house.

The childhood flashback was to being in right field during a t-ball game praying that some lefty hitter didn’t smack the ball my way. I’d much rather hang out assuming my lack of ability than have the ball fly my way and prove my lack of ability. I was living in Kenner, Lousiana at the time. Lots of mosquitoes. During the game a skeeter eater would drive by, the game would pause as all the children would stare at the truck spouting off a wall of fog, the fog would approach and be welcomed by the crowd as we knew we’d have a few less bites that night, and the game would continue without so much as a thought toward what this horrid chemical might be doing to our lungs and tissues.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that no appliance was dying and no airplane was crashing into the house. I stood on the porch for a few moments and watched the funny looking truck approach spouting off its spray of whatever is supposed to reduce the mosquitoe population. As it neared, the outdoor cat meowed as if to say, “Am I supposed to hold my breath?” and I slipped back inside with the clean air feeling slight remorse for the cat while not allowing the dog to go out into the fog but happy to know that there may be a few less blood suckers tomorrow.

I said a long time ago that Heir Bush would try to stay in office forever. Now B.K. Delong of Brain Stream points out that Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland introduced a bill on February 17, 2005 to "remove the 22nd Amendment setting Presidential Term Limits."
Co-sponsors:

Rep Berman, Howard L. [CA-28] – 2/17/2005
Rep Pallone, Frank, Jr. [NJ-6] – 2/17/2005
Rep Sabo, Martin Olav [MN-5] – 2/17/2005
Rep Sensenbrenner, F. James, Jr. [WI-5] – 2/17/2005

Well, your fearless dictator is trying to strike yet another blow to the Constitution.

Who keeps voting for these morons?

Time to hunker down for an all-nighter of programming. Sometimes I wonder if the trade-offs of homebased, self-employment are really worth it.

If there is one thing I could have changed about today, I would have been quite happy to not witness my cat toss its cookies.

Sometimes we never know just how many lifes we touch.

Dear Alberto Gonzales, US Attorney General:

Morality is taught to our children by their parents and cannot be dictated by the government. A government of the people takes the views of all the people and if a person standing to my left has opinions, beliefs and morals differing from the person on my right it is neither the right nor the place of the government to force the views of one of those people upon the other as long as a person’s stand does not cause harm to another person. Mr. Gonzales will argue that 18 USC 2257 is protecting our children from harm and I strongly disagree.

18 USC 2257 is blatant censorship. It is electronic bookburning stiffling a creative outlet as sited in the Boing Boing article "Rotten.com: our gapingmaw.com and other sites shut in anticipation of 2257"

We might mention that the material here isn’t even pornography as you normally think of it — this site is just adult humor, in essay format, with some illustrations. The government is mandating that we meet certain bookkeeping requirements, ones impossible to meet for this site. Never mind that those requirements do not actually gain the public anything. This is the strongest attack on free speech since the passage of the CDA, and oddly, the media seems to have hardly noticed. The penalty for not abiding by these bookkeeping requirements is five years prison.

Because the nature of their site is user submissions of adult humor they will receive pictures for which they cannot document the person in the picture therefore their site must cease to exist.

I am not advocating child pornography but I do put the onus of protection of children on the parents. Parents must protect their children from from the evils of the world through education and involvement. Children will see hardcore magazines at their friends houses; children will experience horrific things (death, the twin towers, etc); children will see things on their friend’s Internet connection. You can cleanse your house but you cannot blindfold your children when they leave the house. Parents must protect their children from exploitation through supervision and education. If the parent is an abuser, the parent must seek help.

18 USC 2257 is the equivalent to Prohibition.

Prohibition also presented lucrative opportunities for organized crime to take over the importation (“bootlegging”), manufacture, and distribution of alcoholic beverages. Al Capone, one of the most famous bootleggers of them all, built his criminal empire largely on profits from illegal alcohol. [ source ]

You are attacking inadvertant distributors who would happily pull the content if it was suspect. You have not protected a child. Shutting down a site that showed a child depicting a sexual act has not stopped the adult from abusing that child. If anything, shutting down the site removes a digital footprint to finding the adult that should prosecuted. 18 USC 2257 will drive child pornographers into more ingenious distribution methods that may be more elusive to prosecution.

Where does this stop? Will Blogger shut down because they have no control over what I post? Will that picture of my naked newborn scare them enough to erase my writings?

A powerful, thought provoking statement from the gapingmaw.com statement: "No nation has freedom when it is run by religious zealots."

Sincerely,
A parent who wants his children to grow up in a free society.

Now Christians can leave their message while they walk. Of course, this may not have the desired affect in Cancun. 

Excellent article on when products expire.

Contacting your senator does help!