Dan Weiner, RIP
"You can have my (pink) pistol when you pry it from my cold, dead (but well-manicured) hands." -- Dan Weiner ( 194? to 10-29-2003 ), Founder of the Houston Pink Pistols chapter.
From kaba:
"Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American... The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state government, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people." -- Tench Coxe, Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788
From brad:
The New California Governor has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the state, rather than German which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, The Terminator's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5-year phase-in plan that would become known as "Austro-English" (or, if nobody will be offended, "Austrionics")..
In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favor of the "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with the "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.
In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.
By the 4th yer peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".
During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl.
Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.
If zis mad yu smil, pleas pas it on to oza pepl.
The Claire Files Message Boards are back after a long down-time. Yay! [claire]
Eric Raymond - The Glider: Proposal for a Hacker Emblem - Eric proposes that we who subscribe to the hacker mentality use as our emblem an image of the glider from Conway's Life. I like it. I've put it at the bottom of the left column with a link to this article. Note that this is the classical use of the term "hacker", someone who likes to solve problems, not someone who likes to break into computers, properly labelled as a "cracker". [picks]
George Potter at Liberty Forum - The Liberators - "For the children of Baghdad, Warning: adult content - violence/language." Fiction. Making it crystal clear that killing babies, in Baghdad or Waco or anywhere, is not OK. [libertyforum]
George Potter was born an individualist, just like the rest of the human race. He, however, had the good fortune not to have it beaten out of him.
Gene Callahan at LewRockwell.com - Signs of Progress - a little satire about the war on Iraq. Hehe. [smith2004]
Said Paul Bremer, recently appointed as Grand Vizier of Iraq: "We'll have rough days, days where these terrorists may capture several hundred American troops and assassinate the entire Iraqi puppet regime... but the overall thrust is in the right direction and the good days outnumber the bad days. For example, on no other day this week did we lose an entire company of troops!"
As they have said following previous attacks over the last two-and-one-half years, U.S. officials vowed that the newest wave of violence will not deter them. Major General Ray Ordinario said, "Nothing will prevent us from blindly following this hopeless... I mean, from systematically rooting out remnants of the former regime and training Iraqis to take over responsibility for security."
Kerry Lauerman at Salon via fairuse.1accesshost.com - Camille speaks! - a new interview with Camille Paglia. The Salon copy is here. [lew]
The last time we spoke with Paglia, in February, at the onset of war, she spoke of "a terrible sense of foreboding" about what would come next. We pick up the conversation from there -- and cover other recent key cultural developments, from Gen. Wesley Clark ("What a phony!"), Sen. John Kerry ("the hair!"), and the tumultuous fall of Rush Limbaugh. She also cast a disapproving eye on the confused antics of Madonna, the comedic influence of David Letterman, and bloggers ("endless reams of bad prose!").
...
I had a momentary hope, when Bush recently hung out that outrageous bill for $87 billion, that maybe Congress would stand up and refuse to pay for one more day of this. But no, they've all collapsed again like toothpick men. As I repeatedly prophesied over the years at Salon, we are in a period like the Roman Empire, where there is an arrogant, imperial executive branch and a misuse of the army for partisan or fantastically hallucinatory purposes.
My view -- which is an extreme position -- is that we should get the troops out of Iraq now. But even many liberals are saying, "We're gone too far. We cannot turn back now!" Oh, yes, we can! Get the United Nations in there, and get out! I don't think this thing is worth one more American life -- not with the pressing needs we have at home. We have catastrophically compromised our internal system of defense against terrorism because of this adventure overseas. Our National Guard and reservists are over there -- our first responders for emergencies in terrorist attacks here.
...
I don't personally hate Bush. I think he's sincere and well-meaning. But I feel very sorry for him. Every time I watch him, I feel his suffering, and I suffer with him. But he's out of his depth in this job. His view of the world is painfully simplistic -- like a Wild West video game where the good guys wear white hats and always win. But he's surrounded by manipulators -- like Vice President Dick Cheney, the invisible man, the shadowy puppeteer.
The person I do hate is Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who is out of control and who has trashed what should be the professional cooperation between the State Department and the Pentagon. Rumsfeld is lost in some delusional state. He's like Newt Gingrich in the grandstanding narcissism department. Both Rumsfeld and Gingrich show how narrow-bore thinking can turn high I.Q. into colossal stupidity.
...
As Salon readers know, I am not anti-military. On the contrary, I believe in just wars and would have been proud to serve in the military. But this Iraq adventure was a grotesque misuse of American power unleashed on a Third World nation. What pleasure can we take from a victory where our high-tech arms were blasting poorly armed foot soldiers to oblivion? Most of the Iraqi Army weren't necessarily Saddam fanatics -- they were working-class people just trying to make a living. U.S. officials don't even bother trying to count Iraqi casualties -- including civilians -- and the American media lets them get away with it. Only American deaths matter; Iraqis are non-persons.
billstclair.1accesshost.com is a web site I created at the 1accesshost.com hosting service. It currently contains only one page. 1accesshost provides 100 megs of storage and 600 megs of monthly bandwidth for free (almost, you have to put up with ads on your site). For $6.95/month you get 250 megs of storage, 3 gigs of bandwidth, and 3 POP email accounts (and no ads). $9.95 gets 500 megs / 4 gigs / 10 accounts. $14.95 gets 1 gig / 6 gigs / 50 accounts + CGI (PHP, Perl, Python) and MySQL. I'm tempted to switch hosting services, but I've been with Netherweb for a long time, and they do a good job at fixing problems quickly, so I'm hesitant.
Following a link from 1accesshost.com, I created a messaging forum at BraveNet. Click below (or on the new "Forum" link in the left column) to try it out.
bravenet.comI changed the right column as well. There is a new "Skype me!" button, and I added L. Neil Smith's Atlanta Declaration.
Charley Reese - Osama Doesn't Like Us - if you really listen to Osama bin Laden, what he is saying to America makes sense, certainly a lot more sense than the war talk from the Busheviks.
Americans should take note of what this dangerous man, truly our enemy, says. He's not angry because we are rich (he's worth about $300 million himself) or free. He's angry because of our foreign policy. And, as public polling has shown, that is exactly what the rest of the people in the Middle East are angry about.
Rather than trying to kill our way out of this conflict, maybe we should re-examine the policies that caused it.
Palm Press Release - PalmSource Spin-off and Handspring Acquisition Approved by Stockholders - Palm has spun off its Palm OS business into a new company called PalmSource and has merged with HandSpring to form a handheld hardware company, PalmOne. One of my coworkers expects PalmOne to begin selling Palm hardware running Microsoft's PocketPC OS. Haven't heard of that anywhere else.
