Honda Civic: Motor Trends Car of the Year for 2006
# The Onion - RIAA Bans Telling Friends about Songs - satire, but mighty close to how the Recording Industry of America operates. Hehe. [root]
#
Centers for Disease Control -
Control of Communicable Disease Proposed 42 CFR Parts 70 and 71 -
This is the proposed rule-making that was discussed in the
Washington Post article 
to which I linked on
on Wednesday. I scanned most of it. Most of the PDFs are outlines
of the proposed rules. The text of the rules themselves is in
Section VII, Solicitation of Comments (PDF).
Section IV, Summary of Proposed Changes to 42 CFR Part 70 (PDF),
summarizes the interstate travel portion of the regulations. Part 71
is about foreign travel. The regulations require carriers (anybody who
transports people across state or national borders) to report death or
illness during travel. They must also "solicit", before travel,
personal contact information (name, address, phone, email, flight and
return flight, traveling companions, emergency contact, passport
number), keep it for 60 days, and give it to the CDC if they
ask. "However, passengers who decline to provide contact information
will not be prohibited from traveling." You can bet that at least some
airlines will make this information mandatory in order to travel. In
order to legally travel with a communicable disease, you must obtain a
permit from the CDC. The regulations authorize checkpoints at airports
to look for sick people. If you refuse to cooperate, they can detain
you, for up the three days. And no warrants are necessary for any of
this. Just one CDC official's opinion, on the scene, is necessary. If
they order you to be quarantined, you can appeal, but their response
to the appeal is final. No courts involved. Habeus corpus be damned.
Bottom line, if a CDC official accosts you at the airport, be nice to
it and be its slave, or squash it like a bug. You have no rights. You
have no legal recourse.
# Empire Information Services - Retailers of Common Fertilizer Now Required to be Registered, Keep Records - In New York state, retailers of products containing ammonium nitrate must register with the State Department of Agriculture and keep records of every sale for at least two years, including the buyers name and number from a state or federal picture identification card, and the buyer's address and telephone number. Your tax dollars at work restricting your liberty. [clairefiles]
# Tom Bearden at Spirit of Ma'at - Taming the Fierce Energy of the Vacuum - the reasons that we won't soon see power systems that extract electrical energy freely from the vacuum. First off, neither conventional scientists nor government will fund or believe such stuff. Secondly, those who control the current power systems, and make huge money from them, will prevent any such invention from being sold. The basics of Mr. Bearden's ideas appear to be expressed in his paper, The Final Secret of Free Energy. Interesting. [jomama]
It will get started when one or more of the inventors and researchers somehow succeeds in getting sufficient funding and scientific support (he will have to pay the scientists himself) to develop a simple, rugged, easily replicable COP>1.0 electrical power system and place it on the world market. Even then, he will have to do it outside the United States, in all probability. Otherwise, the U.S. scientific establishment will destroy him, by fair means or foul. And we do mean foul. Jim Watson demonstrated an 8 kilowatt practical self-powering generator system at a national conference, and then apparently received "the offer he could not refuse." He and his family simply dropped out of sight, and severed all further contact with his friends, including this author. He and his family are still alive, fortunately, but remaining very, very quiet. There are no Watson systems on the open market, and there are not going to be.
Steve Marinov was killed in a foreign country with a longitudinal EM wave "shooter," and his body was thrown from the top of a building to suggest a suicide. The body was left there for an extended period by the authorities, who knew it was emitting longitudinal EM radiation for awhile. Where the body lay on the concrete, the cement glowed. There is only one weapon on earth that will kill a body in such fashion: a longitudinal EM wave shooter.
...
The single thing that is likely to finally force COP>1.0 systems out there is the Internet. For the first time, researchers can exchange information worldwide and on a vast scale. My own website, www.cheniere.org, is an example of a tired old dog, trying to get out important information he has discovered -- or believes he has discovered -- and make it available freely to students, professors, scientists, and researchers that are interested. Jean-Lous Naudin's website is another example. There are many others.
# Evan Ratliff at Wired - Fear, Inc.: How homeland security became the biggest market opportunity since the dotcom boom - four page article. I only read the first page, about Tom McMillen's $46.8 million IPO on a promise to acquire a company in the business of doing something about disasters. I disagree with the second paragraph below, however. Lots of Americans are acquiring the technology and the mindset to defend themselves, personally, against terror. We don't need the gummint to do anything but get out of the way. [root]
So how does someone raise millions in the public market with nothing more than a vague pledge to buy something? The answer to that question stretches back to 1972. "I was very young, 20 years old," he says. He was playing for the US basketball team at the Munich Olympics when 11 Israeli athletes were taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists. All of the hostages died, two in their room, the rest in a bungled rescue attempt at the airport. "At the time I said to myself, it won't be long before this comes to America," McMillen recalls. "It took 30 years."
During that time, he says, as Europe and Israel began fostering strategies to defend themselves against terror, the US failed to develop the mentality - or technology - to protect its citizens. After 9/11, McMillen decided it was time to suit up. Fortress America is one of three ventures he founded to capitalize on a society increasingly preoccupied with disaster...
# I got a Nightstar Flashlight from the Handgun Club of America. It's one of those shake-to-charge LED lights. Works good. Not real bright, but bright enought to be useful.
