News and goings on.
For now on, if you “annoy” someone online without disclosing your true identity, you can face fines and up to two years in prison.
Wha? Who decides what’s annoying?
Now as long as you annoy someone and don’t lie about who you are, you’re good. But lie about who you are, you might be going to the slammer!
Do you think Pat Robertson actually believes the stuff he says?
First, he said that the president of Venezuela should be assassinated. Then he told the people of Dover, PA not to pray to God if a natural disater hit their town because they voted out a school board that favored “intelligent design.” Now he is saying that Israeli PM Ariel Sharon suffered a stroke at the hands of God.
Hasn’t he lost all credibility yet? These comments are not constructive at all. Instead he just seems to want to incite controversy. What is going to be his next wild idea?
It was good to see Dick Clark doing his New Years Eve thing again. Did anyone else notice that he got a little confused on the countdown? It was down to about 30 seconds, and all of a sudden he started counting from 20.
Regardless, New Years Eve means Dick Clark. For every countdown that I can remember, he was there. I wish him many more trips to Times Square and to continue his recovery from his stroke.
Did anyone notice that Regis (famed for “saving” ABC) was doing the countdown on Fox, while Ryan Seacrest (Fox, of American Idol (ugh…) fame) was on ABC? I found that to be an interesting switch.
Here’s to a great 2006!
Where do I even start?
The NYT disclosed that President Bush signed an order allowing the NSA to conduct wiretaps and eavesdrop on U.S. citizens. Now it wasn’t on entirely domestic communications, but communications which international in some aspect.
How hard would it be to get a court order allowing this? It wouldn’t take too much work to do, especially since they could use secret Foreign courts to get it. It’s just another example of this administration’s contempt for due process. Warrentless searches totally circumvent the idea of checks and balances.
I was listening to a program on the way home from work yesterday, and the host asked people what they thought about this development. He only spoke to a few people, but no one was up in arms. And that was scary. The overriding attitude was, “I have nothing to hide, so why not?” But that’s not the point – there are certain rules and laws that everyone must abide by, regardless of how “bad” someone may be.
In some welcome news, I am glad to see some members of the Senate finally wake up and start to question the Patriot Act. This all goes back to something I mentioned a while ago. We need to have working checks and balances in place. There needs to be a reason for obtaining a warrent to search someone, but the House version of extending the Patriot act.
What do you think? How has your opinion changed with the news disclosed this week?
Update (6:56 pm) – To drive the point home, a student at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents for requesting “The Little Red Book” by Mao Tse-Tung to read for a class.
When I first heard about some churches deciding not to have services on Christmas Day on the local news, I took it as a joke someone put out there and was picked up. Then when I saw the article on the NYT a few days later, and on the Weekend Today show yesterday, I knew it was real.
The main argument is that it’s not convenient to have services on Christmas Sunday, because not a whole lot of people go. People stay home to spend time with their families. They have plenty of other services during the week leading up to Christmas, so they’ll just skip that Sunday.
Excuse me?
So, does that mean there will be no services on New Years Day? I mean, many people will be recovering from a late night out, probably with a hangover. It won’t be convenient for them to get up and out.
Let’s just get right down to it. It’s the megachurches that are making the news over this one. I’m guessing they have done some surveys or studies, and have decided they will not take in enough money to make it worth staying open that day. Simple as that. A simple cost-benefit analysis told them to stay closed. Then they come up with the reasons to not have services.
Churches have services on Sundays. Just because it coincides with Christmas shouldn’t give them the day off.
As if outsourcing jobs to India (or out of the U.S.) didn’t cause concern for people, online players are outsourcing playing games. The basic idea is this – let someone in China play your games on the easy stuff, then take over from there. Another idea – the kids in China find stuff in games, then sell the “property” online. Of course, it’s against the terms of service in games to do that, but it happens anyway.
How lazy can someone be to pay someone to play their game, instead of actually playing the game themselves? It’s the same thing as cheating, as far as I’m concerned. Is there any sense of accomplishment left after that?
So what’s better for the environment, a real Christmas tree or a fake one? According to this article, real would be a bit better than fake, though both aren’t great.
For fake trees, the argument for them is that they last a long time, so you’re not buying a tree every year. In that sense, they are more economical too. But the fake trees are basically PVC. And during the production of PVC, several carcinogens are produced, which tends to be bad for people living around the factories (primarily in China).
Real trees, on the other hand, don’t have to worry about PVC, or lead, or carcinogens. But they are likely sprayed with pesticides. And getting rid of them in January can pose problems for dumps. Here, I think they take the trees and grind them into mulch.
I go for real trees. Always have, always will. There’s nothing like the smell of a fraser fir tree to make it feel like Christmas.
Diebold has ceased doing business with North Carolina rather than release the source code behind their voting machines into escrow. Their excuse? Their machines contain Microsoft software. If they give the source code to NC, they break their licensing terms with MS.
Whatever, I say. It’s a convienient way of getting out of town and not let their software take the blame. If Diebold really believed in their software, they would put the code in escrow, and let NC deal with Microsoft.
All I can say is good riddance to Diebold. I’m happy to see a company with such insecure voting software get out of here.
It’s only a matter of time before the U.S. executes it’s 1000th prisoner. Virginia spared what would have been #1000, and that “honor” will likely fall on NC.
I had wondered what state had carried out the most executions since 1976, when it was reinstated. Actually, I knew it was Texas, but was curious what the margin was between Texas and the rest of the country. From 1000executions.org:
On average, Texas executes a prisoner once a month. Now I’m not necessarily against the death penalty, but it seems like it is used too often, and doesn’t really deter crime. On the bright side, there are 17 states that haven’t executed anyone since 1976.
Another sad fact – there are 3400 people on death row now.
An 18-year-old high school senior was elected mayor of a town in Michigan. The other twist – he was a write-in candidate.
This reminds me of my “infamous” campaign for GM several years ago. Unfortunately, I don’t have any of the posters that we had. Our campaign was pretty crude, and we didn’t get a guest appearance on Letterman. Oh yeah, and we really weren’t serious about getting elected, just poking fun at the whole process. (What would actually want to do that work?)
bastone.org
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