September 2006 Archives

Crooks and Liars: White House Bars Hurricane Report

More in the front on the War on Science. Ugh.

43 Things

"Discover what's important, make it happen, share your progress. Find your 43 things."

I just came across this site. Seems like a fun idea. You can add your own thing that "you want to do with your life" or see what other people said and use those ideas. You can track your progress. Larger fonts indicate more popular topics in the list. There are thousands of people from around the world on there. It also shows "People doing this are also doing these things", which is interesting as well.

Freakonomics Blog: An airplane announcement I’ve been waiting for

if I were a terrorist, don’t you think that I could figure out how to take the top off a bottle of contact lens solution and put my explosive liquids in there? It is totally pointless to enforce rules which impose costs on innocent people, but are easily circumvented by terrorists. Can anyone think this is accomplishing anything productive?

Fox and the Clinton Interview: Hanlon’s Razor

This was a long-overdue smackdown by Clinton after being sandbagged on Fox. They forced YouTube to take down the video clip--trying to rewrite history. Stephanie Miller played the audio this morning--are they going to go after her too? Oh no, people will know that Fox is slanted to the right and giving people on the right a pass!

Media Matters - Bill O'Reilly's enemies list, available in hardback for $26

Media Matters got an advance copy of O'Reilly's new book and dissects the "errors, unsubstantiated claims, and baseless attacks that run through Culture Warrior".

Debunking Christianity: My Debate With David Wood on the Problem of Evil

October 7th but in Virginia. Transcript and video will be available afterward. I'll be watching it...

Atheist Ethicist: Defending the Constitution

take some time, come up with a couple of sharp arguments, and spread those arguments among the people. We can complain about how well or how poorly legislators defend the Constitution. However, ultimately, it is our job to defend the Constitution, and this is one of the greatest assaults the Constitution has ever been subjected to.

Do you care enough to help defend it?

It sickens me to hear people like Pat Robertson on McLaughlin group making these claims as if we know that the captured people are 100% guilty. We often don't really know that, as evidenced by the many, many people we have captured, held, then let go free. We are considered innocent until proven guilty in this country to protect the innocent -- and that is you and me -- from unfounded abuse. Give that up and you or your family could be next. All it would take is for one of those in custody we are "coercively interrogating" (read: Jack Bauer tactics) to name you or your family. Then you could be sitting right next to them.

The struggle to find the downside ended in failure at Pandagon

There are laws that prevent some businesses from being open on Sundays??? I thought it was "christian" pandering by businesses. It is really annoying that so many businesses are closed Sundays and if the government is the reason why, then that is appalling.

I like the quote about "God doesn't do well in the free market."

Crooks and Liars: IAEA calls US Report on Iran—a lie

Cooking the books to lead us into war with Iran now? Where have we seen this before...

Boing Boing: Flu, hernia, or police more to kill you than Al Qaeda

This is great. People tend to make decisions using the emotional, fear-driven parts of their brain. Even in the face of raw data about risks it is very hard for people to feel comfortable turning away from those hard-wired instincts for self-preservation and making decisions that conflict with those feelings. A look at this chart shows how irrational spending and decisions are in this country. And how trading security for a little perceived freedom is a bad tradeoff--especially when you are far more at risk from plenty of other factors. The incidence of government taking advantage of its citizenry is likely to be higher than terrorist attacks against America.

Unfortunately, politicians rely on the masses making poor choices on inaccurate or flawed data to keep them in power. Think about that when you vote this November. Those who want you to stay afraid are themselves afraid.

The BRAD BLOG : HACKED: VIRUS IMPLANTED, SPREAD ON DIEBOLD TOUCH-SCREEN VOTING MACHINE!

Researchers at Princeton, including Ed Felton, have been able to implant malicious code on Diebold touch screen voting machines that was demonstrated to be able to flip election results. They have a video of them doing this as well.

The company response is typically clueless (as is their security). I wonder if the nice Diebold ATMs in use at banks such as USBank are anywhere near as vulnerable?

Think Progress: Bush Now Says What He Wouldn’t Say Before War: Iraq Had ‘Nothing’ To Do With 9/11

I saw this first on The Daily Show. I can't believe this hasn't gotten more press despite the large percentage of the country who have been made to accept the opposite as true because of the lapdog press and liars in this administration.

Legal Fiction: THE TWO 9/11s

the second 9/11 is the political prop — a mangled, grotesque doppelganger of the first one that has been whored out on the political street for over four years now. The second 9/11 is the source of policies that have made the world far worse, and have killed many times the number of people who died in the Towers. And so, what’s truly tragic about the second 9/11 is that it threatens to forever stain the legacy of the first 9/11

Indeed. How hard was it to find a radio/TV station that wasn't pushing 9/11 in your face? Who wants to hear another fearmongering speech by W? Not I.