Stonehead

Here's what the late, great Johnny had to say about politics:

"I fail to see how terrorists present anything like as big a threat to liberty in America as you guys do by passing this kind of legislation. The founding principles of this republic are not being defended where they need to be defended." --quote from interview with John Perry Barrow in ReasonOnline (The Thomas Jefferson of cyberspace reinvents his body -- and his politics.) BTW, here's what he had to say about Kerry: I had a conversation with Kerry. It was pretty disheartening. I asked how he felt about civil liberties. He said, "I’m for ’em!" That’s great, but how do you feel about Section 215 of the Patriot Act? He said, "What’s that?" I said, it basically says any privately generated database is available for public scrutiny with an administrative subpoena. He says, "It says that?" I say, "You voted for it!"

With all the brouhaha surrounding the legitimacy of Kerry's Vietnam medals, here's an article that shows Bush wearing what appears to be an unearned military ribbon (Air Force Outstanding Unit Award).

Curious, what you folks might think about this. Is this issue merely academic, something not worth thinking about, or is this truly important? On the 16th of August, John Gilmore filed his case before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (Gilmore vs. Ashcroft, et.al). His case stems from the following event: On the 4th of July 2002, John Gilmore, American citizen, decided to take a trip from one part of the United States of America to another. He went to Oakland International Airport -- ticket in hand -- and was told he had to produce his ID if he wanted to travel. He asked to see the law demanding he show his 'papers' and was told after a time that the law was secret and no, he wouldn't be allowed to read it. John politely refused to show his ID and was not allowed to fly. John then went to San Francisco International Airport and attempted to fly to Washington, DC on United Airlines. There he was informed that if he was not willing to show ID he could fly, but only if he submitted to a far more intrusive search than what every passenger goes through at the security checkpoint. He politely declined the search and again was not allowed to fly. Gilmore asks two questions in his suit: 1) Do citizens currently need to show ID in order to travel in their own country? 2) If the answer is 'yes', is this constitutional? Gilmore claims that the restriction on his free travel within the country involves constitutional issues primarily the First Amendment right to freely assemble and the Fourth Amendment concerning search and seizure. Gilmore brings up the point stated by some people, “if you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear”. He counters by asking why did the founding fathers insert the Fourth and Fifth Amendments into the Bill of Rights. In his words, “After all, nobody who hasn't done anything wrong needs to worry about being searched or being forced to testify against himself.” -- source (see home page) See this link also. Another recent legal case surrounding the identification issue was Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada, a case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The ruling in this case upheld the constitutionality of yielding to a police request for identification. -- commentary here and here. Also here's an interesting story about the importance of providing identification to Forest Service agents. The writer lists Brown vs. Texas (1979), a case in which the court ruled that a suspect has no obligation to provide his name to police. So, does this have any significance in regard to the terrorist threat and government demand for citizen identification, an issue discussed here (What's In a Name?). Other related cases: Terry vs. Ohio (1968) Kastigar vs. United States (1972) Kolender v. Lawson (1982)

Maybe it reminded him of... Scrambled Eggs!!! NSFW

I've wondered that same question about spam. How do they get information besides email harvesters, spyware, techniques such as social engineering, and exploits? I recently came across a site that lets you see what type of information is available concerning you and your browser (http://gemal.dk/browserspy/ ). So, started thinking what might one do to prevent this leakage of information? Perhaps an anonymizer could do it. One is a German site (http://anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/index_en.html/ ). See website for detailed information concerning this anonymizer (JAP). As far as I know, JAP is a stand-alone application. Also, came across information concerning something called Onion Routing (http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,64464,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1). Go to this website to download a program called Tor. At the Tor download page, you may also obtain two other programs (OpenSSL & Privoxy) that may be needed to work together with Tor. Klenke, I don't know if this may provide an answer to your spam deluge. Also, realize that these programs are not complete anonymizers, e.g, the German developers of JAP were required to insert a backdoor into the program (kind of like that NSA backdoor in MS Windows, huh?). I have also taken other steps such as switching from MS IE to Mozilla Firefox browser (patched, of course). Cryptography such as PGP might also help. Or is it overkill? The worst part is that the script kiddies (and some blackhats) are uniting with the spammers. Their spyware becomes more sophisticated each day. It'll be a bad day when they learn how to use root kits.

Declassified government documents released under FOIA and stored at George Washington University--CIA and Assassinations: The Guatemala 1954 Documents Records include a document titled: 'A Study of Assassination'. Excerpts: JUSTIFICATION Murder is not morally justifiable. Self-defense may be argued if the victim has knowledge which may destroy the resistance organization if divulged. Assassination of persons responsible for atrocities or reprisals may be regarded as just punishment. Killing a political leader whose burgeoning career is a clear and present danger to the cause of freedom may be held necessary. But assassination can seldom be employed with a clear conscience. Persons who are morally squeamish should not attempt it.

Just make sure you don't clog the toilet with a dookie! Student Charged With Clogging Toilet

Friday, August 20, 2004 Rabid otter attacks boy in Putnam Animal killed after chasing swim class By Nik Bonopartis Poughkeepsie Journal PUTNAM VALLEY -- A rabies-infested otter was shot dead by a sheriff's deputy Wednesday after it chased down and bit a Putnam Valley boy at a local swimming spot, the Putnam County Sheriff's Office said. Six-year-old Ethan Pederson was taking swimming lessons at a community swimming area in a small lake in the town, police said, when he escaped from the water with the otter hanging onto his back and legs. The lifeguards were able to wrestle the otter off Pederson, but the animal began chasing other people in the immediate area. Police said the otter ran back into the water several times but returned and tried to attack the rest of the people in the swimming class. Sheriff's deputies were called to the lake about 11:16 a.m. Lifeguards were able to trap the otter under a plastic crate before police arrived, and a deputy killed the animal. -- source

When the going gets rough, vote for the party that gots your back.

Yes, it's that first link (concerning Peak Oil) that points to what we want in that region. Buchanan touches on the issue briefly but conjures up the Zionist bogeyman, all of which sounds consistent with his character. But, I believe the internal threat of fiscal meltdown to our economic system is as great as the external threat of terrorism. I also believe, and here is where I agree with Buchanan to a point, is that the Islamic world will not respond willingly to external pressure. It must undergo internal change, a reformation within its own institutions initiated from within their own society. Speculative? Yes.

Many answers here at this link (New overtime rules are mostly bad news for employees).

A person could get really worked up based on some of the info out there such as this. If true, then the turmoil we see now is a drop in the bucket. Buchanan also had some interesting ideas ( Buchanan Against the Empire ). For example, "Using rhetoric that hearkened back to Christ Himself in the New Testament – 'he who is not with me is against me' – Bush divided the world: 'Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.'" Or this, "How can President Bush say we are not secure if the Islamic world is not democratic? The Islamic world has never been democratic. Yet, before we intervened there, our last threat came from Barbary pirates." This, "America's huge footprint in the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia led straight to 9/11. The terrorists were over here because we were over there. Terrorism is the price of empire. If you do not wish to pay the price, you must give up the empire." This, "Nine days after an attack on the United States, this tiny clique of intellectuals was telling the President of the United States and commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces that if he did not follow their war plans, he would be publicly charged with a 'decisive surrender' to terrorism." And this, "Terrorists are picadores and matadores. They prick the bull until it bleeds and is blinded by rage, then they snap the red cape of bloody terror in its face. The bull charges again and again until, exhausted, it can charge no more. Then the matador, though smaller and weaker, drives the sword into the soft spot between the shoulder blades of the bull. For the bull has failed to understand that the snapping cape was but a provocation to goad it into attacking and exhausting itself for the kill." What is the cost of empire?

Damn, Pope. What a lucid and refreshing point of view. You cut right through the Gordian knot, right to the heart of the issue. But P. Buchanan believes otherwise... WHERE THE RIGHT WENT WRONG: How Neoconservatives Subverted The Reagan Revolution And Hijacked the Bush Presidency Look at the choice quotes listed at the link, like this one: “[A] civil war is going to break out inside the Republican Party along the old trench lines of the Goldwater-Rockefeller wars of the 1960s, a war for the heart and soul and future of the party for the new century.” (234)

This (inaccurate)lesson about brain function brought to you by....."Stonehead". Fairweather, you seem to live in a little world where your imagination, creativity and cognition are limited, i.e., the world of the conservative. Have you never heard of the amygdala, that almond-shaped organ in your brain? Let's expand your mind. The role of thinking in voter behavior: Cognitive Science Designs Political Ads Excerpt: According to Rick Farmer and Jeffrey Fox, co-authors of the essay “A Behavioral Approach to Political Advertising Research”, research in cognitive science can help answer the question. First, however, it should be explained what many, scholars, pundits, and the public would like to see in public advertisements, the normative model. Popular among political scientists, it argues that voters make decisions about candidates based on as much information as they can find. With this information, they rank it according to its utility, or its value it has for them, and they make a decision. So, for instance, it assumes that before an election, you find out about, say, the candidates’ positions and compare which you think is the best for you. Behavioral Decision Theory (BDT), a branch of cognitive science, is, according to Rick Farmer, a professor of political science at the University of Akron, more realistic in understanding voter behavior. It assumes that voters are cognitive misers. That is, they use as little effort as possible to process political information. Also, the effort you use is not used equally for all tasks; rather, the tasks that are more important, remembering where you left the winning lottery ticket or finding a reliable pregnancy test, those topics and events that are more personal and important, require more thought and therefore you’re likely consider more rationally. BDT, Fox and Farmer believe, can be used more effectively at understanding voter behavior. An alternate model can be developed based on viewing political parties as cults: Sex, Drugs, and Cults. An evolutionary psychology perspective on why and how cult memes get a drug-like hold on people, and what might be done to mitigate the effects Excerpt: In the aggregate, memes constitute human culture. Most are useful. But a whole class of memes (cults, ideologies, etc.) have no obvious replication drivers. Why are some humans highly susceptible to such memes? Evolutionary psychology is required to answer this question. Two major evolved psychological mechanisms emerge from the past to make us susceptible to cults. Capture-bonding exemplified by Patty Hearst and the Stockholm Syndrome is one. Attention-reward is the other. Attention is the way social primates measure status. Attention indicates status and is highly rewarding because it causes the release of brain chemicals such as dopamine and endorphins. Actions lead to Attention that releases Rewarding brain chemicals. Drugs shortcut attention in the Action-Attention-Reward (AAR) brain system and lead to the repeated behaviour we call addiction. Gambling also causes misfiring of the AAR pathway. Memes that manifest as cults hijack this brain reward system by inducing high levels of attention behaviour between cult members. People may become irresponsible on either cults or drugs sometimes resulting in severe damage to reproductive potential. Evolutionary psychology thus answers the question of why humans are susceptible to memes that do them and/or their potential for reproductive success damage. We evolved the psychological traits of capture-bonding and attention-reward that make us vulnerable for other maladaptive functions. We should be concerned about predator and pathogen memes and the mechanisms that make us vulnerable. The possibility of modeling important social factors contributing to the spread of dangerous cult memes is discussed. The history of the author’s experiences that led to understanding the connection between drugs and cults is related.

The next GU?

George W. is my hero and he has medals too, which BTW he never pretended to throw away! The medals of George W. Bush

Rove and cronies have another even more politically destructive advertising blitz aimed at eroding Kerry's potential support from veterans. This one takes sound bytes from Kerry's 1971 testimony concerning the ugliness of war. Kerry will never downlive this part of his political career, which is potentially more damaging in veteran's eyes than Bush's unaccounted service in Alabama. It hits at the reptile (survival instinct) and mammalian brains, i.e., at the gut level and feelings. That's all it takes since many do not take things up to the next level by processing with the neocortex--higher thinking level. Politics boils down largely to how you feel about issues, which is why the Repubs can garnish support from lower income people who do not largely benefit from Repubs fiscal/financial plan. Repubs simply play the social issue card, e.g., gay marriage, and that becomes the overriding factor that tips the scale in Repubs favor.

I thot Hamms was the beer for bears.

...the Olympics? Official Trailer

Smoke some herb, Merv.