Category Archives: General

General

Day one

Hey, hey! Day one of our voyage, and we’re stuck at the pier.
Something to do with the Engine Operations Systems–someone said the
navigation, but there’s no “official” word on that.
It was hard leaving Jenny this morning, esp. since I found a scrapbook
she made for me in the stuff I carried on this morning. This is the
longest time we’ll have spent apart since we’ve been together. More
soon.

General, Tech

Design

macbooklogic 5in1 tool

One is a mac logic board, one is a painter’s 5 in 1 tool. Both designed for their own (completely different) purpose, and utility, and yet so similar in profile.

General, Politics, Tech

From the “Do No Evil” Dept.

Can I just say that Google sucks
To bad they’ve forgotten point #6 of their philosophy.

6. You can make money without doing evil.

..and, no, I won’t link to them, and I use Jeeves as my default search engine.
I really can’t believe that they think that this is a good move for their stockholders/business. Is the business they do in China enough so that all the flack they’ll get from this is worth it? Can you really trust any search you do using Google? (Can you trust searches you do from any other search engine?) This is a whole giant can of worms on trusting that results of searches are not censored, or compromised in any way. Google thinks of themselves as gatekeepers of the flow of information (or, atleast to “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”) on the internet–who watches the gatekeepers?

General, Politics

From the Ben Franklin lives department

Hurrah!!! for students at Georgetown Univesity who turned their backs on Alberto Gonzales (*affectionately* known as the Inquistitor around here) and holding up a banner quoting Ben Franklin, to protest his speech defending the President’s domestic spying program.

GU Protest

Mainstream news sources are reporting “more” than a dozen protestors (looks like most reports came from the same wire service report.), some didn’t even mention it. Non-mainstream sources (Hammeroftruth) report up to 26 (including the 4 in black hoods holding the banner). I say any amount is good–the more the merrier.
It’s good to see that some law students remember what the Constitution is.

General, Politics

Redistributing wealth upwards?

I didn’t link to Wil Wheaton’s first post in this saga, because nothing interested me out of the ordinary. But this post did interest me because of one sentence/quote:

W: So redistribution of wealth downward is bad, but redistribution of wealth upward is good?

My question is, “How do you redistribute wealth upwards“?
The easy answer is that you can’t. There are other answers though, like corporate welfare.
I’d like to go on record as saying that both forms of “welfare” are wrong. Morally wrong–let’s call it what it is. Theft. At the point of a gun. It doesn’t matter who you take the money from–rich or poor–if that person has earned that money, you are stealing it from them, taking their money to do what someone else deems to be “important”. If I did that as an individual, I’d be thrown in jail, why does it make it right if a collective does it?

As an addendum, this here post of mine doesn’t really have anything to do with what Wil is talking about in his posts, and I apologize for that, and hope that everyone reads Wil’s posts in their entirety.

General

One to beam up.

scotty

Sad news for Star Trek fans, and others today. James Doohan, better known as the rougish Mr. Scott, or Scotty, died this morning from pnuemonia, and complications from Alheimers.
I guess it’s fitting that he died on the 36th anniversary of the first manned landing on the moon. He wants his ashes to go into space, let’s hope they get there.
Warp speed, Mr. Scott, give ‘er all ye’ve got.

General

Harry Potter Day

Yes, that’s right, the 6th Harry Potter book came out today, with all sorts of hype and secrecy. So we took a trip to the big city (not specifically looking for the book, just general shopping) and went to several stores (yes some big box ones 😀 ), and we went to Borders, and they had people liined up at the door, being checked to see if they had pre-orederd dit, and getting little tags to take to the counter so that they could get their book. I bought my magazine, and we headed out.
Interestingly enough up the street and a ways aways there’s a Kmart, and stacked up in a big pile by the front door, is Harry Potter and the Halfblood Prince for $18.99 each.
Well long story short, my stepsons got a copy of it on the first day, with no hassle, or anything. I’m not usually a big fan of the “Big K”, but I’ve got to say that the lack of hype there about it was real nice.
Damn–it’s a kid’s book, already. Do we really need all this hype. Is this what we have to look forward to for the next six books? I mean they’re fun, and adventurous, but they aren’t that good.