SAI's first day of trading!!!!

Hells yeah! So I now work for a publicly traded company, strangley it dosen't seem terribly differnt around here after the change... It opened @ $17 and hasn't exactly zoomed towards $50 as everyone around here, myself included, was hoping for. So we shall see! YEAHHHH!!!!

Locking cockpit doors have a fatal flaw

Cockpit doors only work if they are LOCKED! If you don't properly secure the steel reinforced terrorist prevention mechanism, there's nothing to stop someone from commandeering the aircraft, you don't even need box cutters. DUH!

Lone hijacker shows up lack of cockpit defense

By Mark Trevelyan, Security Correspondent
Reuters
Wednesday, October 4, 2006; 12:49 PM

LONDON (Reuters) - How can a single unarmed passenger hijack an international airliner?

With surprising ease, a 27-year-old Turkish man demonstrated on Tuesday by forcing his way into the cockpit of a Boeing 737 and forcing it to divert to Italy.

The bizarre incident showed that the introduction of locked, reinforced cockpit doors -- a much-publicized innovation following the September 11 hijack attacks on America five years ago -- is ineffective unless airline crew follow rigorous drills when opening and closing them.

"One person with no weapons was able to penetrate the entire security system of the airplane. What does it say about our airline security?" said Omer Laviv, an Israeli specialist in aviation security technology.

He said the episode sent a signal to hijackers: "You don't need weapons to hijack an aircraft -- you don't need anything ...This would make life for hijackers very easy."

Mursel Gokalp, pilot of the Turkish Airlines plane, told reporters that hijacker Hakan Ekinci had bluffed that he had three accomplices at the rear of the plane who would detonate plastic explosives unless his demands were met.

"I obeyed because he gave me the impression his friends were there because he was often looking to the back of the plane," the captain said. He added that Ekinci was a burly man who forced his way into the cockpit when a stewardess opened the door to ask the flight crew if they needed anything.

Philip Baum, a consultant who trains flight crews to deal with hijack scenarios, said airlines should have drills in place to protect the cockpit when the door is briefly opened -- something that is unavoidable, especially on longer flights, when the pilots need food or to go to the toilet.

"What we teach is ... you pull one of the galley trolleys across the aisle as an additional barrier before you open the cockpit door, or at the very least you put another crew member there, looking down the aisle," he said.

COMPLACENCY RISK

But analysts say some airlines, in practice, become complacent and tend to neglect the drills.

"Those cockpit doors swing backwards and forwards, (the cabin crew) will share a few words with the pilot and then come back out and lock the door again. In that space of time, anyone can get in there," said Chris Yates, aviation security expert at Jane's information group.

Baum said a potential drawback of the reinforced doors was that an attacker could close them behind him, preventing cabin crew from coming to the pilots' rescue and overpowering him. It was not clear if this was a factor in Tuesday's incident.

"It's all very well having these doors, but if a hijacker gets into the cockpit and closes the door behind him, he's actually sealed in there together with the captain and first officer," Baum said.

In Tuesday's drama, the flight from Tirana to Istanbul, carrying 107 passengers and six crew, landed safely at Brindisi airport in southern Italy, where the hijacker apologized, requested political asylum and was arrested. He turned out to have no weapon or accomplices.

Aviation analysts interviewed by Reuters said airlines have no absolute rules for responding to hijacks -- unlike other emergencies such as engine failure -- because each situation requires a judgment call from the pilot and crew. But the airline staff have to err on the side of caution.

"You can't afford to take any chances whatever with a multi-million-dollar aircraft stuffed full of people at 30-odd thousand feet," Yates said.

"Your prime duty is the safety of everybody on board that aircraft. As such, you just have to get it on the ground."

Drinkers earn more than those who remain sober.

Man, here's the excuse i have been looking for all my life! Although this study seems to tie the observed benifits to social drinking. So I think they are hinting at the fact that sitting alone in my room watching Initial D episodes while consuming a liter bottle of gin isn't going to help my career, rats.

Alcohol use helps boost income: study

Thu Sep 14, 6:44 AM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - People who consume alcohol earn significantly more at their jobs than non-drinkers, according to a US study that highlighted "social capital" gained from drinking.

The study published in the Journal of Labor Research Thursday concluded that drinkers earn 10 to 14 percent more than teetotalers, and that men who drink socially bring home an additional seven percent in pay.

"Social drinking builds social capital," said Edward Stringham, an economics professor at San Jose State University and co-author of the study with fellow researcher Bethany Peters.

"Social drinkers are out networking, building relationships, and adding contacts to their BlackBerries that result in bigger paychecks."

The authors acknowledged their study, funded by the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank, contradicted research released in 2000 by the Harvard School of Public Health.

"We created our hypothesis through casual observation and examination of scholarly accounts," the authors said.

"Drinkers typically tend to be more social than abstainers."

The researchers said their empirical survey backed up the theory, and said the most likely explanation is that drinkers have a wider range of social contacts that help provide better job and business opportunities.

"Drinkers may be able to socialize more with clients and co-workers, giving drinkers an advantage in important relationships," the researchers said.

"Drinking may also provide individuals with opportunities to learn people, business, and social skills."

They also said these conclusions provide arguments against policies aimed at curbing alcohol use on university campuses and public venues.

"Not only do anti-alcohol policies reduce drinkers' fun, but they may also decrease earnings," the study said.

"One of the unintended consequences of alcohol restrictions is that they push drinking into private settings. This occurred during the Alcohol Prohibition of 1920-1933 and is happening on college campuses today. By preventing people from drinking in public, anti-alcohol policies eliminate one of the most important aspects of drinking: increased social capital."

The researchers found some differences in the economic effects of drinking among men and women. They concluded that men who drink earn 10 percent more than abstainers and women drinkers earn 14 percent more than non-drinkers.

However, unlike men, who get a seven percent income boost from drinking in bars, women who frequent bars at least once per month do not show higher earnings than women drinkers who do not visit bars.

"Perhaps women increase social capital apart from drinking in bars," the researchers said in an effort to explain the gender gap.

Oppose the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA)

This bill seeks to make legitimate protest illegal if it affects the bottom line of the target of said protest. but hold the phone here... When protesting unethical treatment of animals, or unsafe farming practices, the entire goal is to impact the offenders bottom line in an effort to effect change. this is completely unacceptable, please congress don't cave to pressure from industry simply because you know it's going to be a rough election come November and your willing to ram through crappy legislation in the desperate hope of securing a few more votes and campaign contributions.

H.R. 4239 and S. 3880 (as amended)

The Humane Society of the United States has no tolerance for individuals and groups who resort to intimidation, vandalism, or violence supposedly in the name of animal advocacy, and we have spoken out repeatedly against violence in any form. We believe harassment, violence, and other illegal tactics are wholly unacceptable and inconsistent with a core ethic of promoting compassion and respect, and also undermine the credibility and effectiveness of mainstream, law-abiding organizations and individuals. However, the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) threatens to sweep up – criminalizing as “terrorism” or otherwise chilling – a broad range of lawful, constitutionally protected, and valuable activity undertaken by citizens and organizations seeking change. Even with changes that have been incorporated into the current version of the legislation, it is still seriously flawed.

The AETA threatens legitimate advocacy. The legislation uses vague, overbroad terms such as “interfering with” which could be interpreted to include legitimate, peaceful conduct. For example, someone who uses the Internet to encourage people not to buy eggs from a company producing eggs with battery cages could be charged with terrorism for causing the company a loss of profits. Likewise, someone who seeks to “interfere with” the cruel treatment of puppies by filming the brutal conditions at a puppy mill, causing lost profits for the company when the film is publicized, could be charged with terrorism. The very risk of being charged as a terrorist will almost certainly have a chilling effect on legitimate activism.

The AETA is not clear. The bill imposes penalties for “economic damage,” including loss of profits. It provides an exemption for “lawful economic disruption (including a lawful boycott) that results from lawful public, governmental, or business reaction to the disclosure of information about an animal enterprise.” But this exemption doesn’t explicitly include activities such as whistleblowing and investigations that may well cause loss of profits. And whether an activist’s actions are subject to criminal penalties will depend on whether a public, governmental, or business audience reacts in a lawful way, something out of the activist’s control. Moreover, this exemption doesn’t tie back to the offense, which uses different words than “economic damage,” so a court might disregard the exemption language altogether. (We had requested a clear exception in the offense section: “Nothing in subsection (a) shall be construed to prohibit any damage or loss of property that results from boycotts, protests, demonstrations, investigations, whistleblowing, reporting of animal mistreatment, or from any lawful public, governmental, or business reaction to the disclosure of information about an animal enterprise.”)

The AETA is a solution in search of a problem. Under the current federal law, the Animal Enterprise Protection Act of 1992, which the AETA seeks to amend, there have recently been several successful convictions, yielding sentences of 3-5 years for activities such as running a web site to incite vandalism and violence. (According to the Department of Justice, the national average sentence for a violent assault is 5 years, and sexual assault is 6 years.) Given that, it’s not clear that existing law even needs to be strengthened. Law enforcement agencies already have the tools they need to successfully prosecute and convict people who engage in campaigns of harassment and intimidation.

Passing the AETA reflects misplaced priorities in Congress. It is particularly disheartening to think Congress may rush forward with this ill-advised bill, yet not enact reasonable and long-overdue reform, such as the Animal Fighting Prohibition Enforcement Act (H.R. 817/S. 382). Purportedly, the AETA sponsors want not only to penalize, but also to prevent, extremist conduct that endangers animal enterprises and the people associated with them. When Congress fails to act on modest animal welfare reforms like the animal fighting bill, it makes it more difficult for organizations like The HSUS to make the case to activists that meaningful change is possible working through the system – and that they should pursue legal channels rather than taking matters into their own hands.

MARX CAFE TONIGHT!!

Marx Cafe
3203 Mount Pleasant St. NW

Music starts at 10pm.

be there!!

American democracy in danger! SOS!

very disturbing...

By Bruce Ackerman, BRUCE ACKERMAN is a professor of law and political science at Yale and author of "Before the Next Attack: Preserving Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism."

September 28, 2006

BURIED IN THE complex Senate compromise on detainee treatment is a real shocker, reaching far beyond the legal struggles about foreign terrorist suspects in the Guantanamo Bay fortress. The compromise legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights.

This dangerous compromise not only authorizes the president to seize and hold terrorists who have fought against our troops "during an armed conflict," it also allows him to seize anybody who has "purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States." This grants the president enormous power over citizens and legal residents. They can be designated as enemy combatants if they have contributed money to a Middle Eastern charity, and they can be held indefinitely in a military prison.

Not to worry, say the bill's defenders. The president can't detain somebody who has given money innocently, just those who contributed to terrorists on purpose.

But other provisions of the bill call even this limitation into question. What is worse, if the federal courts support the president's initial detention decision, ordinary Americans would be required to defend themselves before a military tribunal without the constitutional guarantees provided in criminal trials.

Legal residents who aren't citizens are treated even more harshly. The bill entirely cuts off their access to federal habeas corpus, leaving them at the mercy of the president's suspicions.

We are not dealing with hypothetical abuses. The president has already subjected a citizen to military confinement. Consider the case of Jose Padilla. A few months after 9/11, he was seized by the Bush administration as an "enemy combatant" upon his arrival at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. He was wearing civilian clothes and had no weapons. Despite his American citizenship, he was held for more than three years in a military brig, without any chance to challenge his detention before a military or civilian tribunal. After a federal appellate court upheld the president's extraordinary action, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, handing the administration's lawyers a terrible precedent.

The new bill, if passed, would further entrench presidential power. At the very least, it would encourage the Supreme Court to draw an invidious distinction between citizens and legal residents. There are tens of millions of legal immigrants living among us, and the bill encourages the justices to uphold mass detentions without the semblance of judicial review.

But the bill also reinforces the presidential claims, made in the Padilla case, that the commander in chief has the right to designate a U.S. citizen on American soil as an enemy combatant and subject him to military justice. Congress is poised to authorized this presidential overreaching. Under existing constitutional doctrine, this show of explicit congressional support would be a key factor that the Supreme Court would consider in assessing the limits of presidential authority.

This is no time to play politics with our fundamental freedoms. Even without this massive congressional expansion of the class of enemy combatants, it is by no means clear that the present Supreme Court will protect the Bill of Rights. The Korematsu case — upholding the military detention of tens of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II — has never been explicitly overruled. It will be tough for the high court to condemn this notorious decision, especially if passions are inflamed by another terrorist incident. But congressional support of presidential power will make it much easier to extend the Korematsu decision to future mass seizures.

Though it may not feel that way, we are living at a moment of relative calm. It would be tragic if the Republican leadership rammed through an election-year measure that would haunt all of us on the morning after the next terrorist attack.

Tommorow!

Borat Sagdiyev in DC, right now!

BORAT IN D.C – NEW TIME


Thursday, September 28, 2006


*****MEDIA ADVISORY*****


WHO: Borat Sagdiyev (Kazakhstan’s second most famous journalist!)

WHAT: To make honor of Washingtons D.C. visit of Kazakhstan Premiers Nursultan Nazarbayev to meet with Premier George Bush, Mr. Sagdiyev to say he so excite that Kazakh Premiers helps make benefit new movie, BORAT: CULTURAL LEARNINGS OF AMERICA FOR MAKE BENEFIT GLORIOUS NATION OF KAZAKHSTAN.

WHERE: Hotel Rouge, 1315 16th St.
Washington, D.C. 20036

WHEN: Thursday, September 28, 2006, 1:00PM EDT

BORAT IN WASHINGTON, D.C. – LOCATION ADDED

Thursday, September 28, 2006


*****MEDIA ADVISORY*****


WHO: Borat Sagdiyev (Kazakhstan’s second most famous journalist!)

WHAT: Mr. Sagdiyev will make a statement regarding Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s visit to the U.S. to meet with President George W. Bush.

WHERE: Corner of 16th Street and “O” NW
Washington, D.C. 20036

WHEN: Thursday, September 28, 2006, 1:30PM EDT

For further information, please contact:

National Press
Carol Sewell, (310) 369-5519
Robin Davids, (310) 369-4264
Elizabeth Petit, (212) 556-8610

Online Press
Carol Cundiff, (310) 369-1996

International press
Hilary Clark, (310) 369-5156

Washington, D.C. local press
Brandi Dunnegan
(202) 742-8743

WTF?!!?

Click here to see the WTF!?!? It's worth it!

http://allbleedingstops.blogspot.com/20...

Man bites panda

Those drunk migrant workers, always good for a laugh. good stuff.

Man bites panda in Beijing zoo as retribution
Drunken migrant worker jumped in cage, was bitten after petting bear

BEIJING - A drunken Chinese migrant worker jumped into a panda enclosure at the Beijing Zoo, was bitten by the bear and retaliated by chomping down on the animal’s back, state media said Wednesday.

Zhang Xinyan, from the central province of Henan, drank four jugs of beer at a restaurant near the zoo before visiting Gu Gu the panda on Tuesday, the Beijing Morning Post said.

“He felt a sudden urge to touch the panda with his hand,” and jumped into the enclosure, the newspaper said.

The panda, who was asleep, was startled and bit Zhang, 35, on the right leg, it said. Zhang got angry and kicked the panda, who then bit his other leg. A tussle ensued, the paper said.

“I bit the fellow in the back,” Zhang was quoted as saying in the newspaper. “Its skin was quite thick.”

Other tourists yelled for a zookeeper, who got the panda under control by spraying it with water, reports said. Zhang was hospitalized.

Newspaper photographs showed Zhang lying on a hospital bed with blood-soaked bandages and a seam of stitches running down his leg.

‘No one ever said they would bite’
The Beijing Youth Daily quoted Zhang as saying that he had seen pandas on television and “they seemed to get along well with people.”

“No one ever said they would bite people,” Zhang said. “I just wanted to touch it. I was so dizzy from the beer. I don’t remember much.”

Ye Mingxia, a spokeswoman for the Beijing Zoo, confirmed the incident happened but would not give any details. She said Gu Gu was “healthy.”

“We’re not considering punishing him now,” Ye said in a telephone interview. “He’s suffered quite a bit of shock.”

Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.

Congress dosen't trust your kid

This is soooo wrong. The legislators know it to; why else would it be held to a simple floor vote and allowed to by-pass committee? Call your senator, tell him if he votes for this tripe he better start packing come November. More reason never to send your children to a public school.

House Approves Strip Search Bill
Wednesday, September 20, 2006

A bill approved by the U.S. House yesterday would require school districts around the country to establish policies making it easier for teachers and school officials to conduct wide scale searches of students. These searches could take the form of pat-downs, bag searches, or strip searches depending on how administrators interpret the law.

The Student Teacher Safety Act of 2006 (HR 5295) would require any school receiving federal funding--essentially every public school--to adopt policies allowing teachers and school officials to conduct random, warrantless searches of every student, at any time, on the flimsiest of pretexts. Saying they suspect that one student might have drugs could give officials the authority to search every student in the building.

DPA supporters and others who opposed this outrageous bill called their members of Congress this week to express their disapproval. However, House leaders circumvented the usual legislative procedure to bring the bill to a quick vote. It did not pass through the committee process, but went straight to the House floor. There, it was passed by a simple voice vote, so constituents cannot even find out how their Representative voted.

The bill moves next to the Senate, but it is unlikely to be considered there this session.

Bill Piper, DPA's director of national affairs, said, "It looks like this bill was rushed to the House floor to help out the sponsor, Rep. Geoff Davis (R-KY/4th), who is in a tight re-election race. This vote lets him say he's getting things done in Washington. But I would be surprised to see a similar push in the Senate."

HR 5295 is opposed in its current form by several groups, including the Drug Policy Alliance, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the ACLU, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Parent Teacher Association, the American Association of School Administrators, and the National School Boards Association.

DPA will be watching the bill so that if and when it does come up again, this wide array of opponents can mobilize to stop it.

Diebold = Dunces

Nice article here describig how dreadfully poor the e-voting machines are. We trust our democracy to these idiots?

read all about it...

marx cafe Tonight!!

Come out to the Marx Cafe tonight to hear myself playing some garage and 2step goodies. music starts at ~10pm. Cheers!

3203 Mount Pleasant St. NW

Jackass 2 Movie breaks new ground for advertisers.

You know the jerks who put together Jackass, CKY and Viva L Bam are always going to push the envelope as much as possible in search of killer footage of foolery. You may have not realised it's also one of the first movies scheduled for theatrical release that allows for dynamic inseration of advertisments. Yeah! pretty wild, huh? read all about it.

Dynamic Backing for 'jackass’ Movie
Studio Makes Use Of On-Demand Insertion Tools
By Linda Haugsted 9/11/2006

However it performs theatrically, jackass number two will earn a mention in cable’s history books as one of the first national products to promote itself with ads inserted on the fly into on-demand programming. Viewers of comedy programming on demand by Sunflower Broadband of Lawrence, Kan., will see ads for the Paramount Pictures release. The studio and its agency, Mediaedge:cia, which designed the campaign, control the ad content, which is inserted as users select content via the platform.

The studio will be able to change the on-demand spots, offering pre-release movie promotion then changing the message as the movie is available in theaters. Sunflower has been dynamically inserting local ads into its VOD content, using equipment from SeaChange International Inc. (AdPulse On Demand Advertising System) and Atlas Solutions (On-Demand Media Console).

On-demand video typically contains ads that appear throughout the run of a specific program. The technology used in the 30,000-subscriber Kansas system allows the ad agency to handle media planning, creative management and campaign tracking remotely, and to change ads on the fly. The ads will appear in Comedy Central on-demand programs, including two episodes of South Park, one episode of Mind of Mencia, stand-up performances from Premium Blend and a stand-up comedy concert featuring Louis C.K.

“In general, MTV Networks thinks it’s a great deal. [We] want dynamic ad insertion as a standard,” said Caroline Everson, senior vice president of ad sales strategy and business development for MTV Networks. “We’re bullish” on the Lawrence test, she said. “We think the whole industry needs to be going in this direction.” The Sunflower Broadband ads will include some 15-second and 30-second pre-rolls. Other ad units will be placements on the larger screen, around the streaming content, that will make the appearance different from TV and more like a Web experience.

With the technology, the partners will be able to monitor which ads are viewed or skipped, and can replace ads that aren’t working, Everson said. She declined to discuss the revenue split on the ad deal. Terri Swartz, director of advanced advertising for SeaChange, said cable operators, content providers and ad agencies have yet to hash out the thorniest question about ads on demand: how the advertising should ultimately look.

In linear TV, there are eight minutes of commercials per half-hour. The network sells six minutes; the local operator or station retains two. But it’s still uncertain whether consumers will exploit video on demand if it carries the same ad tonnage as traditional TV, Swartz noted. Ad agencies have embraced web advertising because it’s more measurable and targetable. With static ads, cable has not been able to blunt that argument, he said.

Ad buyers also are reluctant to have to cut deals on an operator-by-operator or system-by-system basis. No one has created the ultimate business model for determining who owns the on-demand ads to sell, Swartz added. “There are a whole number of moving things” that need to be resolved before there is widespread national advertising on VOD, “and the cats are still unherded.”

Swartz differed with Everson in one respect: “This is not a test,” she said. “This is the real deal.” She would not detail subsequent campaigns, but added, “I’d be astonished if more [national advertisers] don’t step up.” Everson said MTV Networks would wait until the movie advertising has been completed, regroup, and then see about going to the broader marketplace. But the company has already received great feedback from ad buyers she said.

Winstons drummer died - RIP G.C. Coleman

The drummer for the Winstons, a funk and soul band from the 1960s, has passed away. Gregory Sylvester Coleman played the drums on the Winstons song 'Amen Brother', the drum breakdown on this track has become the most widely sampled peice of music in the history of the world. His ten second drum solo has been used on countless jungle, drum and bass and hip hop tracks over the years, and he never saw a dime for it. Lotsa history here!

read all about it...

be sure and watch this video as well. http://video.google.com/videopla...

Get your mad max inteceptor on ebay

That's right, come get it while they are hot. Sweet ride!



http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/MAD-MAX-INTE...

U.S. Park Police officer shot and killed Precious

I can't begin to think about this story in today's washington post. this is sooo sad. What the hell is wrong with people? that must have been one vicous dog that it had to be delt with like that. Did the officer even try and call animal control, why did he have to shoot a dog? there should be an investigation.

Dog Shot, Killed After Charging Officer, Police Say
By Allan Lengel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 12, 2006; Page B03

A homeless Texan named Joe often preached about the Lord and hung out in Dupont Circle with his white dog, Precious. People say she was harmless. The same for Joe.

But a U.S. Park Police officer shot and killed Precious yesterday after the unleashed, 6-year-old pit bull charged him shortly before 6 p.m. about 35 feet from the circle's fountain, police said. Witnesses said the park was filled with people.

"When I . . . saw it, I was shocked," said Carolyn Stromberg, 27, who was sitting by the fountain with her brother. "I started crying. We hadn't heard any dogs attacking."

She said the dog's owner ran toward the animal, asking: "Why did you shoot my dog? He was just chasing squirrels."

continue reading...

MARX CAFE TONIGHT

Hey, hey, hey...

you know

how

we do...

3203 Mount Pleasant St. NW

music starts ~10pm.

Voting snafu highlights looming disaster

These problems will continue to foul vote tallies, and spoil our democracy for generations to come until something is done to nationalize our voting system. The mechanisms of voting needs to be removed from the corrupt, incompetent and lazy local officials that are allowed to choose any voting system they feel will work, or where a vendor is willing to take them out to a ballgame or cruise. These local election officials are too willing to cheat as their loyalties lie not with democracy and the preservation of our way of life; but instead with the political party which they happen to belong. An independent class of federal workers should be entrusted with running elections on a national scale, these folks should be culled from a consortium of our nation's most talented system engineers and integrators and should hold democracy as a cherished value. To many local election officials are involved in the political parties present in those localities and in all frankness can't be trusted to fairly carry out their duties.

It is absolutely a national disgrace that we don't have accurate election tallies in our country, that a recount should ever be necessary is lubricious.

'It's Not the People Who Vote that Count; It's the People Who Count the Votes' Joseph Stalin said that, and nothing could be truer. We need to remove the vote counters to be replaced with an infallible automatic electronic system, each vote should be tabulated instantly across the nation and added into the tally in presidential elections as soon as that vote has been placed. That way each citizen can watch the voting being counted in real time, so there's never any need for a recount.

Electronic voting can work, it just needs the right people managing and directing the project for it to be a success. People who know that democracy transcends individual political parties, that the sanctity of the process is more important then who wins; we need people who are bent on dedicating theirs lives to preserving democracy.

It will never happen.

Election Glitches Thwart Montgomery Voters
Inoperable Voting Machines Also Affect Parts of Pr. George's

By Debbi Wilgoren
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 12, 2006; 12:08 PM

Election Day in Montgomery County and parts of Prince George's opened in chaos and frustration this morning, as a series of problems and missteps left thousands of citizens unable to vote or forced to cast provisional ballots.

By mid-morning, a bevy of statewide and local candidates had begun calling for polling stations to stay open past the scheduled 8 p.m. closing time. Montgomery County's Board of Elections held an emergency meeting and agreed to petition the Circuit Court to extend voting times until 9 p.m.

No electronic voting machines were operational when polls opened at 7 a.m. in Montgomery County, because election officials failed to deliver the required voter authorization cards to the county's 238 precincts. Voters were supposed to be given provisional paper ballots instead. But several precincts quickly ran out of those backup ballots.

At Lynkbrook School Center in Bethesda, one voter said poll workers went scurrying to a photocopy shop to make more provisional ballots.

"This is just obscene that we can live in one of the most forward-thinking counties in the country, and have so many advantages open to us, and for some reason we can't get our polls to work," said campaign volunteer Valerie Coll, who was stationed outside Cannon Road Elementary School in Silver Spring. She said poll workers turned voters away until the campaign volunteers told them to offer paper ballots instead.

continue reading...

Invisibility cloak LOLZ CALL HARRY POTTER

This shit is bbank yo!

Theoretical Blueprint for Invisibility Cloak Reported

Once devised using exotic artificial 'metamaterials,' the cloak will have numerous uses, from defense applications to wireless communications

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Note to Editors: David R. Smith can be reached at drsmith@ee.duke.edu or (919) 660-8258; David Schurig can be reached at david.schurig@duke.edu or (919) 660-8259. More information about metamaterials is available at http://www.ee.duke.edu/~drsmith.
Durham, N.C. -- Using a new design theory, researchers at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering and Imperial College London have developed the blueprint for an invisibility cloak. Once devised, the cloak could have numerous uses, from defense applications to wireless communications, the researchers said.

Such a cloak could hide any object so well that observers would be totally unaware of its presence, according to the researchers. In principle, their invisibility cloak could be realized with exotic artificial composite materials called "metamaterials," they said.

"The cloak would act like you've opened up a hole in space," said David R. Smith, Augustine Scholar and professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke's Pratt School. "All light or other electromagnetic waves are swept around the area, guided by the metamaterial to emerge on the other side as if they had passed through an empty volume of space."

Electromagnetic waves would flow around an object hidden inside the metamaterial cloak just as water in a river flows virtually undisturbed around a smooth rock, Smith said. The research team, which also includes David Schurig of Duke's Pratt School and John Pendry of Imperial College London, reported its findings on May 25, 2006, in Science Express, the online advance publication of the journal Science. The work was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

First demonstrated by Smith and his colleagues in 2000, metamaterials can be made to interact with light or other electromagnetic waves in very precise ways. Although the theoretical cloak now reported has yet to be created, the Duke researchers are on their way to producing metamaterials with suitable properties, Smith said. "There are several possible goals one may have for cloaking an object,” said Schurig, a research associate in electrical and computer engineering. "One goal would be to conceal an object from discovery by agents using probing or environmental radiation."

continue reading...

Women banned from Mecca?

good stuff. Although not mentioned directly in this article; see how interwoven Islam and Judiasm are, there's many references to their shared history here. These are facts many people would be good to recognize.

Saudis Consider Banning Women From Mecca

By DONNA ABU-NASR
The Associated Press
Thursday, September 7, 2006; 2:25 PM

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia -- Officials are considering an unprecedented proposal to ban women from performing the five Muslim prayers in the immediate vicinity of Islam's most sacred shrine in Mecca. Some say women are already being kept away.

The issue has raised a storm of protest across the kingdom, with some women saying they fear the move is meant to restrict women's roles in Saudi society even further. But the religious authorities behind the proposal insist its real purpose is to lessen the chronic problem of overcrowding, which has led to deadly riots during pilgrimages at Mecca in the past.

continue reading...

Steve Irwin - RIP 1962-2006

Crikey! That's really awful. I hear that there is a tape.

Steve Irwin: The incredible story of the wildlife warrior
5 September 2006 09:21

To some, he was just a reckless attention-seeker. To others, he was the lovable bloke from the Outback whose antics with the world's most dangerous creatures made him irresistible. But the shocking death of Steve Irwin has deprived Australia of one of its most colourful personalities. Were the voyeuristic demands of television to blame? Or was it just a random, tragic accident? Kathy Marks reports
Published: 05 September 2006

Unlike most Australians, who shrink from the tropical sun and shudder at the dangerous creatures that surround them, Steve Irwin was a man in tune with his environment.

Nothing fazed him - not the sharks or killer jellyfish, nor the man-eating crocodiles, nor the dozens of snakes and spiders capable of delivering a fatal bite. For Irwin, Australia's animals were "like a magnet", and he acquired fame, and considerable fortune, by getting up close to them. He appeared to have no fear. And it was, perhaps, that sense of invulnerability that killed him yesterday.

Continue reading...

London ravers know how to do

Sounds like a wild party for sure. I think though if anyone ever tried to do that in DC's foxhall or palisades neighborhoods they would quickly find themselves in jail, and the pigs would take the turntables for sure. It's wacky that cops in England are powerless to evict squatters like that. read the comments on the link, some interesting quips on the squatter laws in merry olde England.

Ravers seize £10 million house
31.08.06

Revellers are flocking to this house in north London.

Squatters have seized a £10 million home to host drug-fuelled raves, it has emerged.

Furious residents of the exclusive Primrose Hill area of North London say their lives have been made a nightmare since the eight bedroom house was taken over two months ago. The occupants charge hundreds of ravers £5 each to attend all-night parties which shatter the peace of the area that is home to celebrities including David Walliams, Gwen Stefani, Sadie Frost and Jamie Oliver.

The front of the house is littered with beer cans, broken glass and used needles, while inside the carpets have been ripped up and the walls covered in graffiti. But despite scores of complaints, police say they are powerless to act until the owner of the property gets a court order to evict the revellers. The squatters boast that the only thing the police have done is to politely ask them to keep the noise down.

The takeover comes amid a resurgence in illegal rave parties, fuelled by confusion over the Government's reclassification of drugs and pocket money prices for substances. Kitty Massey, whose home backs on to the garden of the occupied house, said the scale of the raves was 'unimaginable'. 'Hundreds of screaming teenagers are turning up in droves and heavy metal and rock music has been blasting out day and night.

'It was a beautiful and magnificent home but now it is a wreck. 'I am shocked that nothing has been done to stop it. I've made hundreds of complaints in the last eight weeks. 'It appears that squatters' rights are more important than my own. The law is an ass if it cannot control criminal activity of this nature.'

She said the home, which is set on an acre of land on Radlett Place, was bought by a Russian businessman last year. Jane Anderson-Craig who lives near the house said the parties were highly organised and well-advertised.

'The squatters are charging the guests to come in and making a small fortune selling them cans of beer and drugs. 'The police say there is very little they can do and that they are at the mercy of the squatters until they get a court order.

'In the meantime the residents are suffering and are frightened to go out at night.' The squatters have fitted metal grills over the windows and pasted a notice to the front door declaring: 'Take notice that we live in this property. It is our home and we intend to stay here.'

Inside three stages have been erected for DJs to perform on and signs have been put up over makeshift bars selling cans of beer at £2.50 each and spirits at £2 a shot. Cans and bottles litter the floor of the house which has been 'decorated' with graffiti covered walls and psychedelic flags.

Upstairs en-suite bedrooms have been turned into communal sleeping areas where at least eight punk squatters are living. One squatter, sporting a huge green mohican haircut and nose piercings, said: 'All we were doing was having peace parties, man. 'The police came round but they were fine with it, they just asked us to turn the music down.'

A DJ who played in the most recent party said: 'I think people have the right to party in beautiful houses with beautiful gardens.' A police spokesman said: 'Officers are aware of the problems residents have been experiencing in regard to excess noise and are liaising with the council and residents to try and resolve the matter.'

Last week nine police officers were injured by an angry mob of partygoers as they tried to stop an illegal rave in Great Chesterford, near Saffron Walden, Essex.

Bin Ladin's website expired on 9/11/01

Now this is just weird. Apparently the domain name for the Bin Ladin family construction business expired on sept, 11 2001, that's a rather odd coincidence.

read all about it...
http://www.saudi-binladin-group.com/

Marx Cafe tonight!!

Hey everybody! Looking for something to do tonight? Come and check out the sounds at the Marx tonight. I'm going on @ 10pm. be there!



Marx Cafe
3203 Mt. Pleasant St. NW

Today in history!

1896 - Chop suey is invented in New York City.
1833 - The United Kingdom legislates the abolition of slavery in its empire.
1885 - Gottlieb Daimler patents the world's first motorcycle.
1831 - Michael Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction.
1898 - The Goodyear tire company is founded.
1991 - Supreme Soviet suspends all activities of the Soviet Communist Party.

birthdays' of note..

1958 - Michael Jackson, American singer.
1941 - Robin Leach, English television host.
1936 - John McCain, American politician.
1962 - Rebecca De Mornay, American actress.
1920 - Charlie Parker, American musician.

an important day in history for sure.

About time, FAMS gets new duds

Wow, this is what 5 years late?! Maybe they can now begin to work on the high visibility created when these "air cops" walk around the metal detectors and board the plane before even the first class passengers. So now the person avoiding metal detectors and boarding early might be wearing "civilian" clothes. These guys will still be easy to spot. Hell of an outfit they are running over there.

Air Marshals Get New Dress Code Policy

By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 24, 2006; 5:30 PM

On your next flight to the tropics, the person sitting next to you in a Hawaiian shirt might be armed. At least that's the implication of a new dress code policy announced today in memo sent to air marshals by Dana Brown, director of the U.S. Federal Air Marshal Service. The dress code will take effect Sept. 1 and will replace a more controversial policy that some air marshals criticized for being so strict that they stood out on some flights.

Brown told air marshals in the memo that the dress code was being amended to "allow you to dress at your discretion." He added that the new policy is designed to let air marshals blend into their environment while still being able to conceal their weapons. "It's not about the clothing," said Conan Bruce, a spokesman for the service. "It's the ability to blend into wherever you are going."

The service, part of the Transportation Security Administration, had been criticized in the past for having too strict a dress code. Accounts of the dress code vary, but generally air marshals were required to wear collared shirts, sport coats and dress shoes. A year ago, the service loosened some of the restrictions, officials said.

However, some air marshals felt that was still too strict a dress code. Those complaints led the service to issue the new policy, officials said.

Why are pets illegal in Saudi Arabia?

Ohh.. Yeah, because they spread diseases and can frighten small children and families. gotcha.

Ban on Sale of Pet Cats, Dogs
Saeed Al-Abyad, Arab News

JEDDAH, 24 August 2006 — The Makkah governorate, acting on a request from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, has decided to prohibit the sale of pet cats and dogs. The commission made the request after it noticed many young Saudis going out in streets with their pet dogs in violation of the Kingdom’s culture and traditions. Saudi authorities in Jeddah have begun enforcing the decision.

The commission complained of Saudi youth, apparently influenced by Western culture, bringing their pets into public places, allegedly causing distress especially to families with young children. Arab News learned that the Jeddah Municipality had received a letter from the Makkah governorate banning sales of pet dogs and cats in the city.

The municipality is in the process of dispatching special squads to close down such shops. The growing trend in purchasing domestic pets has encouraged businessmen to open shops and clinics for such animals in Jeddah. Veterinary clinics charge SR100 to SR200 for diagnosing sick animals and the amount can increase if the animal requires special treatment or surgery.

The popularity of pets has increased the demand for breeds that are popular among pet lovers, such as Dobermans, boxers, pit bulls, Yorkshire terriers, etc. Pet cats, too, aren’t relegated to the countless street felines, but rather fancier breeds. These breeds of dogs and cats have increasingly been imported from the United States, Russia, Hungary, Ukraine and some other European countries.

Prices of dogs vary from one breed to another. Prices for boxers, pit bulls or other popular breeds can run into thousands of riyals. According to a veterinarian doctor, the danger of spreading diseases among humans through cats and dogs is limited, as most diseases spread through them are minor and can be easily treated, except for rabies, for which a vaccine is available and which can be treated.

However, diseases for which pets can be vectors could dangerously affect newborn babies, the elderly or persons with immune system deficiencies.

Snakes on Plane

I'm hoping to get a chance to see this over the weekend. If you go see it be sure to print up several dozen copies of this, http://snakeplay.pbwiki.com/script, and pass them out to people in the audience so that they will know what to say out loud during the movie. It's neat seeing audiene participation making its way back into mainstream movie theaters.
lol.good stuff.

Joe Leiberman = Sore Looser

Joe should really pack it up and support Lamont. This article is hilarious and does a lot to illustrate the problems that are endemic of politics in our nation. Lieberman campaigns for the sake of his own glorious self aggrandizement and not for the good of his constituents. In fact that's common to most politicians. People who naturally excel at politics are the very last people who should ever be in positions of authority.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...t_going_away/1

THE LOW POST: Dead Man Coming
Don't hold your breath waiting for Joe Lieberman to go away.
MATT TAIBBI

Late at night in Hartford's Goodwin Hotel last Tuesday -- I'm not even sure what time it was -- Joe Lieberman made his way to the podium for his much-anticipated "concession" speech.

I'd been joking with another reporter that en route to his capitulation Joe would leave fingernail tracks in the carpet leading all the way back to his private room upstairs, but surprisingly he did not have to be dragged onstage at all, and his little elfin nails looked unbloodied and intact as he spoke. I was looking over a crowd of reporters and Joe staffers, off to the right and to the rear of the hall, as he announced his determination to press on:

"If the people of Connecticut are good enough to send me back to Washington . . . " he began, "I promise them I will keep fighting for the same progressive new ideas and for stronger national security . . . "

At the words progressive new ideas I couldn't help myself and let out a little laugh, recalling Lieberman's determination to yank funding from public schools that counseled suicidal teens that it was OK to be gay. Was that the kind of progressive idea he was talking about? I really did try to muffle it, but it was too late -- a middle-aged woman with big dangly earrings in a Lieberman T-shirt whipped around and glared at me.

"Yes?" I said.

"Have some respect!" she snapped.

"What?" I shouted.

"You should be ashamed of yourself!" she hissed.

I shrugged. A few minutes later, Lieberman ended his speech with an impassioned promise to fight on: "I believe tonight, more than ever, in America's greatness in its values . . . Will you join me? "

Roars, cheers from the crowd; the sneering lady in front of me jumped up and down; and then, weirdly, Joe descended from the stage to the strains of the Tattoo You-era Rolling Stones anthem "Start Me Up." As the defeated Democrat (now officially an insurgent candidate) hugged his family and shook hands with his supporters, the familiar but suddenly unpleasant lyrics shot out through the ballroom:

If you start me up

If you start me up I'll never stop . . .

Slide it up!

As I listened to this, another Joe supporter -- a somewhat older woman in horn-rimmed glasses -- came over and cornered me.

"You know what?" she said. "You reporters are all alike. You won't admit it, but you're all anti-Semites . . . "

I scratched my head. Anti-Semites? The song rattled on creepily:

If you rough it up

If you like it you can slide it up, slide it up

I shuddered at this, trying to keep my wits, but Horn-Rimmed Glasses was still whaling away at me. "You people really do have no respect," she went on. "Joe is such a wonderful man . . . "

"Listen," I exploded, interrupting her. "Do you know what this song is about?"

She froze.

"It's about a guy who gets an erection that doesn't go away," I said. "Can you explain to me why this song is playing now? What the hell is wrong with you people?"

Horn-Rimmed frowned and listened. At that exact moment Mick Jagger was wrapping the song up:

You, you make a dead man come . . .

You, you make a dead man come . . .

The woman recoiled, briefly assumed a quizzical expression, then walked away shaking her head, like the song was my fault.

My experience at the Lieberman event was not unique. A number of other reporters were accosted by a man who showed up at the Goodwin dressed in a Hillary Clinton T-shirt and proceeded to cruise the periphery of the ballroom accusing the indifferently boozing crowd of journalists of being pro-Hezbollah, anti-Semitic terrorist supporters. In a few cases fistfights were narrowly avoided. Apparently the post-electoral talking points had been issued in advance, because almost from the moment that Lieberman "conceded," a wave of politicians and commentators began similarly hammering home the theme that Lamont's victory was a comfort to terrorists and Al Qaeda, his supporters de facto collaborators.

Lieberman himself was the most shameless: speaking on the day the British terror-plot story broke, which came just 36 hours after his loss, he said that if Lamont's Iraq plan is implemented, "it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes." Dick Cheney held a press teleconference to comment upon the Lamont election -- an incredible step for a vice president to take on the occasion of an opposition-party primary result -- and suggested that "Al Qaeda types" were encouraged by the Lamont election. And Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, quickly reacted to the Lamont win by calling the Democrats the "party of defeat and retreat."

It should be noted that both Cheney and Mehlman pointedly referred to the Lamont win as a "purge," echoing the seminal anti-Lamont editorial by the Democratic Leadership Council from two months ago which used the term eight times. They were joined in that effort last week by virtually the entire conservative punditry establishment, with everyone from Cal Thomas ("Purge by Taliban Democrats" was his clever innovation) to American Conservative Union chief Patrick Keene ("The purge that began with the McGovernite seizure of the party . . . ") to Foundation for Defense of Democracies president Clifford May ("The August Purge of Lieberman," a funny historical malapropism; May was trying to echo Soviet Russia, which had an August putsch, not a purge) to Fox's John McIntyre to a whole host of others decrying Lamont's supporters as rich, elitist, neo-commie liberals bent on softening us all up for a terrorist attack, apparently just for the pure, America-hating thrill of it.

There is something perversely exhilarating about watching the American political establishment in action, especially now, when -- with the Middle East in flames, the front pages filled with news of jarring electoral surprises, and the poll numbers of its once-brightest stars falling through the floor -- it has begun behaving like a cornered animal, lashing out incoherently at anything that comes near.

Lieberman himself has been stumbling around like a deer that has just been hit and thrown 200 yards by an F-150, taking the utterly insane position that his candidacy -- his, Joe Lieberman's candidacy -- somehow represents a fight against the "same old" Washington politics. You have Dick Cheney and a whole host of conservative talking heads, all pretense of two-party politics gone now, openly parroting the talking points of the supposed other side, the Democratic Leadership Council. And then you have Times columnist David Brooks, acting like a man high on laughing gas, committing to print that positively amazing assertion that "polarized primary voters should not be allowed to define the choices in American politics."

(That one might be my all-time favorite; flailing around in search of a new group on the margins to demonize, this yutz accidentally argues that voters shouldn't be allowed to decide elections. I thought it was funny, but Brooks this time nearly gave Dave Sirota an aneurysm.)

The reason the Lamont election has all of Washington so badly freaked out and dug in is that it's revealed a crack in the long-dependable mechanism of mainstream American politics. For almost four decades now conservatives in both parties have been governing according to a very simple formula. You run against Jane Fonda and George McGovern in election season, then you spend the next four years playing golf, shooting flightless birds, and taking $25,000 speaking gigs in Aspen while you let your fundraisers run things around the office.

But their problem now is that they've fucked up Iraq and everything else so badly that they've practically made "McGovernism" mainstream. A whole generation of hacks has reached office running against George McGovern, and now Joe Lieberman is threatening to ruin things for everybody, just like Jimmy Carter wrecked the Barry Goldwater gravy train for the last generation by falling on his face against Ronald Reagan. If there is such a thing as a principle in Washington, avoiding such a catastrophe as that is it. That's why they won't let Joe die easy -- no matter how much he seems to deserve it.

NASA looses orginal moon landing recordings

I'm shocked and very angry. This is a national disgrace. I really hope these tapes turn up. Unfortunately this will only serve to fuel conspiracy theorists who claim no human has ever walked the surface of the moon. It's very likely these tapes now are a part of some eccentric billionaires’ private collection.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The U.S. government has misplaced the original recording of the first moon landing, including astronaut Neil Armstrong's famous "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," a NASA spokesman said on Monday.

Armstrong's famous space walk, seen by millions of viewers on July 20, 1969, is among transmissions that NASA has failed to turn up in a year of searching, spokesman Grey Hautaloma said.

"We haven't seen them for quite a while. We've been looking for over a year and they haven't turned up," Hautaloma said.

The tapes also contain data about the health of the astronauts and the condition of the spacecraft. In all, some 700 boxes of transmissions from the Apollo lunar missions are missing, he said. (Watch the first moon landing -- 2:47)

"I wouldn't say we're worried -- we've got all the data. Everything on the tapes we have in one form or another," Hautaloma said.

NASA has retained copies of the television broadcasts and offers several clips on its Web site.

But those images are of lower quality than the originals stored on the missing magnetic tapes.

Because NASA's equipment was not compatible with TV technology of the day, the original transmissions had to be displayed on a monitor and re-shot by a TV camera for broadcast.

Hautaloma said it is possible the tapes will be unplayable even if they are found, because they have degraded significantly over the years -- a problem common to magnetic tape and other types of recordable media.

The material was held by the National Archives but returned to NASA sometime in the late 1970s, he said.

"We're looking for paperwork to see where they last were," he said.

Gove Vs. Bush

Wow, this interpretation could ultimately form the basis for a complete overhaul of our election system. Doing away with the current ability of each prescient to choose the method of counting votes and standardize the voting process for the whole country. It's inexcusable that there are voting 'errors' at all. How fucking hard is it to count votes flawlessly, it should be a simple matter to design electronic voting systems that make dirty tricks such as ballot stuffing and dead people voting impossible to pull off.

Has Bush v. Gore Become the Case That Must Not Be Named?
By ADAM COHEN
At a law school Supreme Court conference that I attended last fall, there was a panel on “The Rehnquist Court.” No one mentioned Bush v. Gore, the most historic case of William Rehnquist’s time as chief justice, and during the Q. and A. no one asked about it. When I asked a prominent law professor about this strange omission, he told me he had been invited to participate in another Rehnquist retrospective, and was told in advance that Bush v. Gore would not be discussed.

The ruling that stopped the Florida recount and handed the presidency to George W. Bush is disappearing down the legal world’s version of the memory hole, the slot where, in George Orwell’s “1984,” government workers disposed of politically inconvenient records. The Supreme Court has not cited it once since it was decided, and when Justice Antonin Scalia, who loves to hold forth on court precedents, was asked about it at a forum earlier this year, he snapped, “Come on, get over it.”

There is a legal argument for pushing Bush v. Gore aside. The majority opinion announced that the ruling was “limited to the present circumstances” and could not be cited as precedent. But many legal scholars insisted at the time that this assertion was itself dictum — the part of a legal opinion that is nonbinding — and illegitimate, because under the doctrine of stare decisis, courts cannot make rulings whose reasoning applies only to a single case.

Bush v. Gore’s lasting significance is being fought over right now by the Ohio-based United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, whose judges disagree not only on what it stands for, but on whether it stands for anything at all. This debate, which has been quietly under way in the courts and academia since 2000, is important both because of what it says about the legitimacy of the courts and because of what Bush v. Gore could represent today. The majority reached its antidemocratic result by reading the equal protection clause in a very pro-democratic way. If Bush v. Gore’s equal protection analysis is integrated into constitutional law, it could make future elections considerably more fair.

The heart of Bush v. Gore’s analysis was its holding that the recount was unacceptable because the standards for vote counting varied from county to county. “Having once granted the right to vote on equal terms,” the court declared, “the state may not, by later arbitrary and disparate treatment, value one person’s vote over that of another.” If this equal protection principle is taken seriously, if it was not just a pretext to put a preferred candidate in the White House, it should mean that states cannot provide some voters better voting machines, shorter lines, or more lenient standards for when their provisional ballots get counted — precisely the system that exists across the country right now.

The first major judicial test of Bush v. Gore’s legacy came in California in 2003. The N.A.A.C.P., among others, argued that it violated equal protection to make nearly half the state’s voters use old punch-card machines, which, because of problems like dimpled chads, had a significantly higher error rate than more modern machines. A liberal three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed. But that decision was quickly reconsidered en banc —that is, reheard by a larger group of judges on the same court — and reversed. The new panel dispensed with Bush v. Gore in three unilluminating sentences of analysis, clearly finding the whole subject distasteful.

The dispute in the Sixth Circuit is even sharper. Ohio voters are also challenging a disparity in voting machines, arguing that it violates what the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Daniel Tokaji, an Ohio State University law professor, calls Bush v. Gore’s “broad principle of equal dignity for each voter.” Two of the three judges who heard the case ruled that Ohio’s election system was unconstitutional. But the dissenting judge protested that “we should heed the Supreme Court’s own warning and limit the reach of Bush v. Gore to the peculiar and extraordinary facts of that case.”

The state of Ohio asked for a rehearing en banc, arguing that Bush v. Gore cannot be used as precedent, and the full Sixth Circuit granted the rehearing. It is likely that the panel decision applying Bush v. Gore to elections will, like the first California decision, soon be undone.

There are several problems with trying to airbrush Bush v. Gore from the law. It undermines the courts’ legitimacy when they depart sharply from the rules of precedent, and it gives support to those who have said that Bush v. Gore was not a legal decision but a raw assertion of power.

The courts should also stand by Bush v. Gore’s equal protection analysis for the simple reason that it was right (even if the remedy of stopping the recount was not). Elections that systematically make it less likely that some voters will get to cast a vote that is counted are a denial of equal protection of the law. The conservative justices may have been able to see this unfairness only when they looked at the problem from Mr. Bush’s perspective, but it is just as true when the N.A.A.C.P. and groups like it raise the objection.

There is a final reason Bush v. Gore should survive. In deciding cases, courts should be attentive not only to the Constitution and other laws, but to whether they are acting in ways that promote an overall sense of justice. The Supreme Court’s highly partisan resolution of the 2000 election was a severe blow to American democracy, and to the court’s own standing. The courts could start to undo the damage by deciding that, rather than disappearing down the memory hole, Bush v. Gore will stand for the principle that elections need to be as fair as we can possibly make them.

(nytimes)

MARX CAFE TONIGHT!!

3203 Mount Pleasant St. NW

yeah.

Drunk mom calls cops.

No that's a bad parent.

Allegedly drunk, mother calls police to say son is missing

He was asleep in the same room

By Deborah Sederberg

The News-Dispatch

A drunk mother reported her son missing when the boy was sleeping on a sofa just across from the one on which the mother had passed out, according to a report at the LaPorte County Sheriff's Police.

Police received a call at just after 9 p.m. Thursday from a woman in the 9800 block of U.S. 12, Michigan City, who said her 11-year-old son was missing.

When an officer arrived, he found the boy sleeping in the living room. The report indicates the mother had passed out and had been sleeping for about 7 1/2 hours. When she awoke, police said, she failed to notice her son.

The woman at first became angry when the officer pressed to enter the residence. She repeatedly asked the officer why he wasn't searching for the boy (away from the home) instead of walking through the home.

The officer found just the one sleeping child in the residence and that child turned out to be the one the mother had reported him missing.

Police called the county's Child Protective Services and a CPS representative placed the boy with a neighbor for the night. Police officer ran a background check on the neighbor and the man had been convicted of theft, but CPS placed the child with him anyway. The reasoning: The man's background did not include any crimes against children, the report said.

After police left the mother's residence, the neighbor who had the boy called the police to report that the mother was at his home demanding to see the boy.

Police then arrested the mother on charges of trespassing and public intoxication.

According to police, the mother's blood-alcohol of .257 percent, more than three times the state .08 threshold for intoxication.

q

Contact reporter Deborah Sederberg at dsederberg@thenewsdispatch.com.

Refuse to be terrorized!!

I'm flying to florida next friday, and I'm rather upset to find out that I'll not be able to take my hip flask with me to keep myself entertained. An excellent article from Reason magazine describing our best response to terrorism is to ignore it so that it'll go away. the thing I never got about all this chicken little response; how is this 'threat' a danger to our nation's long term survival? So what if terrorists kill a thousand americans a year, does that mean we all pack up shop and cease to exist as a nation? i don't think so...

Yesterday, British authorities broke up an alleged terror plot to blow up as many as ten commercial airliners as they flew to the United States. In response, the Department of Homeland Security upped the alert level on commercial flights from Britain to "red" and boosted the alert to "orange" for all other flights. In a completely unscientific poll, AOL asked subscribers: "Are you changing your travel plans because of the raised threat level?" At mid-afternoon about a quarter of the respondents had said yes. Such polls do reflect the kinds of anxieties terrorist attacks, even those that have been stymied, provoke in the public.

But how afraid should Americans be of terrorist attacks? Not very, as some quick comparisons with other risks that we regularly run in our daily lives indicate. Your odds of dying of a specific cause in any year are calculated by dividing that year's population by the number of deaths by that cause in that year. Your lifetime odds of dying of a particular cause are calculated by dividing the one-year odds by the life expectancy of a person born in that year. For example, in 2003 about 45,000 Americans died in motor accidents out of population of 291,000,000. So, according to the National Safety Council this means your one-year odds of dying in a car accident is about one out of 6500. Therefore your lifetime probability (6500 ÷ 78 years life expectancy) of dying in a motor accident are about one in 83.

What about your chances of dying in an airplane crash? A one-year risk of one in 400,000 and one in 5,000 lifetime risk. What about walking across the street? A one-year risk of one in 48,500 and a lifetime risk of one in 625. Drowning? A one-year risk of one in 88,000 and a one in 1100 lifetime risk. In a fire? About the same risk as drowning. Murder? A one-year risk of one in 16,500 and a lifetime risk of one in 210. What about falling? Essentially the same as being murdered. And the proverbial being struck by lightning? A one-year risk of one in 6.2 million and a lifetime risk of one in 80,000. And what is the risk that you will die of a catastrophic asteroid strike? In 1994, astronomers calculated that the chance was one in 20,000. However, as they've gathered more data on the orbits of near earth objects, the lifetime risk has been reduced to one in 200,000 or more.

So how do these common risks compare to your risk of dying in a terrorist attack? To try to calculate those odds realistically, Michael Rothschild, a former business professor at the University of Wisconsin, worked out a couple of plausible scenarios. For example, he figured that if terrorists were to destroy entirely one of America's 40,000 shopping malls per week, your chances of being there at the wrong time would be about one in one million or more. Rothschild also estimated that if terrorists hijacked and crashed one of America's 18,000 commercial flights per week that your chance of being on the crashed plane would be one in 135,000.

Even if terrorists were able to pull off one attack per year on the scale of the 9/11 atrocity, that would mean your one-year risk would be one in 100,000 and your lifetime risk would be about one in 1300. (300,000,000 ÷ 3,000 = 100,000 ÷ 78 years = 1282) In other words, your risk of dying in a plausible terrorist attack is much lower than your risk of dying in a car accident, by walking across the street, by drowning, in a fire, by falling, or by being murdered.

So do these numbers comfort you? If not, that's a problem. Already, security measures—pervasive ID checkpoints, metal detectors, and phalanxes of security guards—increasingly clot the pathways of our public lives. It's easy to overreact when an atrocity takes place—to heed those who promise safety if only we will give the authorities the "tools" they want by surrendering to them some of our liberty. As President Franklin Roosevelt in his first inaugural speech said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself— nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." However, with risks this low there is no reason for us not to continue to live our lives as though terrorism doesn't matter—because it doesn't really matter. We ultimately vanquish terrorism when we refuse to be terrorized.

Ronald Bailey is Reason's science correspondent. His book Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution is now available from Prometheus Books.

Israel vs. Lebanon - It's about Water!

So in doing a little reading about the current problems in the Middle East I have come to the conclusion that it's all about water. Access to water for farming, drinking and industrial applications is critical for the survival of any nation, especially one that happens to be located in a barren desert. Here's what I have been reading.

Initially I read this, http://www.newshounds.us/2006/08/07/you_cant...

Which lead me to this, http://web.macam.ac.il/%7Earnon/Int-ME/wa...

and then in turn I found this, http://www.mideastnews.com/WaterWars.htm

and then I read this, http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks...

and then I found what might be called a smoking gun of sorts, the Jordan river is drying up.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_e...

Seems pretty straight forward to me.

And this seals it.. Israel has bombed irragation channels and pumping stations. jeez...
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwor...

yeah.

Well, I'm really letting this blog go to shit here...

ummm.. Marx cafe tonight. you know.

and I'm playig with one arm tonight, skateboarding accident, spent shoulder. you know.

how we do.

be there.

Tom Hanks on the Tonight Show

If you have seen 'Who killed the electric car', in it there were some clips from Tom Hank's apperance on the Tonight Show . Here's the whole segment where he talks about his RAV-4 EV.

MARX CAFE TONIGHT

OHHH YEEAHHH!

you know how we do, and stuff.

3203 Mount Pleasant St. NW

Thermite for sale on ebay.

Why the fuck is this stuff available for purchase on Ebay? Thermite, a violent explosive, a potential tool for terorists, is cheap and plentiful, and absent any restrections on it's sale. WTF!!?!?


Auction with thermite + mag det strips. what a great deal!

4 pounds + detonator strips! get it while it's hot, (pun intended)

10 Pounds, all ready to blow sir!

Bush Pilot

Water powered car?

Iranians speak out

It's good to see someone has some sense over there in persia. Now if we could somehow ensure they would try and reprocess the spent fuel rods, then perhaps we could come to an understanding.

Some Iranians angry over Hezbollah aid

TEHRAN, July 22 (UPI) -- Some Iranians are worried and angry that their country is too closely tied to Lebanon's Hezbollah, The New York Times reports Saturday.

For decades, Iran has been Hezbollah's prime patron, creating a Shiite Muslim militia by supplying it with money and weapons. But now that Hezbollah is in the midst of fighting with Israel, Iranian officials are insisting that they had nothing to do with the events that set off the crisis, the Times said.

Iran fears punishment from United States and Europe, the newspaper reported, but Iranian officials may have a wary eye on their public. In interviews in central Tehran Saturday, person after person said the same thing: Iran should worry about Iran's problems and not be dragged down by others' battles.

The Hezbollah crisis comes at a time of heightened anxiety. Many Iranians are nervous about the potential for sanctions as a result of their nuclear program, the Times said.

However Iranians have rallied for nuclear power, saying that is their inalienable right. And while they are willing to tolerate public isolation, there is far less unity about standing up for Lebanon, many people told the Times.

Copyright 2006 by United Press International

MARX CAFE TONIGHT

oh yeah! I'm playing tonight, taking it back to last year. I'm going to play some old records. Here's some cool drawings.

3203 Mount Pleasant St. NW

bum returns bonds, and gets what's his.

Hey, who is it that said good things never happen to poor people? Not this guy.

Homeless man rewarded $4,000 for honesty

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

DETROIT -- A homeless man who returned $21,000 worth of saving bonds he found in a trash bin is finding out how much honesty can pay off.

Charles Moore, 59, had been searching for returnable bottles last week when he came across the 31 U.S. savings bonds. He turned them in to a homeless shelter, where a staff member tracked down the family of the man who had owned them.

For his good deed, the bond owner's son gave Moore $100, but residents around Michigan and in other states decided his action merited a more generous reward.

So far, Moore has received over $4,000.

One man sent him eight trash bags full of returnable bottles and a bowl of coins. Three others gave a combined $2,500, and two businessmen from Troy donated $1,200, a shopping spree and a lead on a job.

"I was thankful for it," said Moore, who had lost his roofing job in Ohio and moved back to Michigan but couldn't find work.

Moore said he plans to use the money to find an apartment.

David C. Smith, of Albuquerque, N.M., gave Moore $1,000. Smith said he and his fiancee wouldn't have thought twice about what to do if the bonds had belonged to them.

"We would have given him the whole amount, period," Smith said. "No questions asked."

wacky news round-up

Sounds like copper theft could become a good part time home-business for many people.

6NEWS Investigators: High cost of copper theft 3:56 PM

03:57 PM EDT on Monday, July 24, 2006

By STUART WATSON / 6NEWS
E-mail Stuart: SWatson@WCNC.com

The high price of copper is drawing thieves bound and determined to steal the metal. At Overcash Electric in Mooresville crooks were caught on tape carting away four rolls of copper wire. At a Greenville, South Carolina Duke Power substation a man was electrocuted while trying to strip copper. At a Charlotte cell phone tower thieves dug under a fence to steal copper tubing. At a Charlotte antique store thieves even heisted a 7 foot, 600 pound bronze fountain for its copper. Newcomb Spring near the Charlotte Douglas Airport has to use fans to cool the plant since crooks ripped the copper pipes from their giant air conditioning units.

From businesses to construction sites, “They're breaking into houses under construction and stealing the copper piping that is already in the house," said Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Detective Andy Leonard.

Police say these days if it has copper, thieves want it.

continue reading...

This article mentions Limewire then dosen't elobrate how it was used to assist in the theft of $500k.

Man arrested over theft of 500,000 yen from account

The Yomiuri Shimbun

A man was arrested Monday on suspicion of stealing about 500,000 yen from a postal savings account using LimeWire file-sharing software, police said. According to the Nagano prefectural police, this is the first known case of the software being used to gain illegal access to an Internet banking system.

Arrested was Mitsugu Tominaga, 34, of Kawaguchi, Saitama Prefecture, who is on trial on charges of violating the Antiunauthorized Access Law. Junichi Iwai, 33, of Hatogaya in the prefecture, who had been indicted on the same charge in an earlier case, was sent to the prosecutors for the same charge. In February, the two men were arrested on suspicion of withdrawing 950,000 yen by illegally accessing an Internet banking account at Hachijuni Bank in Nagano.

According to the police, Tominaga and Iwai obtained the password for a Japan Post postal savings Internet account and transferred 500,000 yen from the account of a Ishikawa Prefecture man to Iwai's account.
(Jul. 25, 2006)

Missing Tesla Patent!?!?

Whaaaaaaa?? Is this some sort of generator based on tesla coils? It's interesting to note that the US patent office won't accept any submissions claiming to produce excess electricity, must be a rule left over from the perpetual motion machines of the 1800's. If this is for real it'll be HUGE! that's a lot of tesla for one week, from motors to nicola!

World's Most Valuable Patent Released As Freeware
Thursday July 20, 10:54 am ET

EDMONTON, Alberta, July 20 /PRNewswire/ -- What has been described as "The missing Tesla Patent" has been posted on the web site www.fluxite.com .

The Fluxite patent has not been filed with any patent office. In general it describes a method and apparatus that wobbles a high strength magnetic field using low voltage Tesla Coils. According to the inventor, a person that has numerous core patent applications both granted and pending, "the United States Patent Office rejects all patents applications that claim to produce excess electricity, thus making its allowance impossible anyway."

Without any doubt, a need exists for such a technology. It is semi-conductor based and therefore has no moving parts. Such a portable, low cost, clean and safe electrical supply system could be used to irrigate crops, purify water supplies, move vehicles, and power all forms of mechanical devices. The purpose of its freeware release is to put it in the hands of the Internet's numerous skilled electronic designers in mass and thereafter spread around the world as a free and peaceful technology.

About The Fluxite Patent Author:

The Author is not seeking financial gains. No attempt to contact the author of this patent is wanted, nor will any response be given to assist in the development of this technology. Although the use of the Fluxite technology is not dangerous in skilled hands, it could be considered dangerous to commercialize. Further, the Fluxite patent author gives no guarantees as to results anyone else obtains with the building of this technology.

Email: info@fluxite.com

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS

Safe Harbor Statement: The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 provides a "safe harbor" for forward-looking statements. Certain of the statements contained herein, which are not historical facts, are forward- looking statements with respect to events, the occurrence of which involve risks and uncertainties. These forward-looking statements may be impacted, either positively or negatively, by various factors. Information concerning potential factors that could affect the Company is detailed from time to time in the Company's reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Tesla Roadster!

Fat Kids, and what we can do about them

I hate to admit it but.... My mom was right! Many, many, years ago I really wanted a Nintendo Entertainment System, yet my parents were dead set against it. All my friends had one, I felt totally left out. My parents warned of a depersonalized society devoid of human contact and decreasing activity in community projects as a result of personal entertainment. I of course thought they were bonkers and plain mean by not rushing out and spending $100, or whatever it cost back in 1990, on a video game system for me to play Mario on. Oh boy is hindsight twenty-twenty.

The breakdown of the American community that has been able to rely on neighbors and friends for literally hundreds of years is responsible for this public health crisis. It's one of our strengths as a Nation, being able to count on each others when it matters most. People today likely don't know their next door neighbors. I'm not going to hunt for studies about this, I'm sure that they are out there for the finding, and I'm certain of what I would find. That Americans know less of their neighbors than they did two decades ago. And we have, FAT KIDS! As a result of living increasingly isolated and compartmentalized lives, our kids are less likely to organize that neighborhood game of football. If parents don't know their neighbors they are less likely to let their kids go play next door, where the kid might actually get some exercise. Of course this may be nothing new, and I would toss it off as such if it weren’t for the alarming rate at which childhood obesity has been increasing as of late. It's wacky that we have to address this topic with such sensitivity. GET OFF YOUR COLLECTIVE ASSES AMERICA!! Young kids should be running around causing all sorts of trouble, not sitting in front of a computer or TV screen. Trust me, you'll have plenty of time to sack out in your 30's, but for now go run, climb a tree, organize that neighborhood football game, etc... Parents - please encourage your kid to go get some exercise!

So, yes my Mom was in fact right (certainly not the first time), that there would in fact be negative consequences to the personal entertainment craze. And here we are, FAT KIDS!

Who Are You Calling Fat?

By Sandra G. Boodman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 18, 2006; Page HE01

Some doctors call it "the other f-word" -- a problem they see on a daily basis but many are reluctant to address: kids who are too fat.

The issue is not new, but experts say it has acquired greater urgency as obesity has ballooned in the past 25 years, accompanied by sharp increases in diabetes, hypertension and high cholesterol, conditions that used to be largely the province of those middle-aged or older. In 1980, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 7 percent of children and 5 percent of teenagers were overweight; today the figures hover around 19 percent and 17 percent, respectively. Doctors at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, where 38 percent of patients are obese, say that in recent years they have treated a 9-year-old who suffered a heart attack, a child with a body mass index of 52 (a 5-foot-6 adult with a BMI of 52 would weigh 322 pounds) and several others so dangerously fat that they underwent gastric bypass surgery.

Continue reading...

Bridge troll arrested

OMG, this story is toooo funny not to share! The details are golden. It says here that police confiscated a large marijuana joint rolled in $1 bills. That means one (1) large joint rolled with mutiple dollar bills. Quite likely the same monies they were demanding for safe passage across their bridge while armed with a golf club. ROFLMFAO!!1 Just look at these guys, they look like they are still fairly lit in their mug shots.

'Bridge Troll' Arrested After Confrontation With Deputy

POSTED: 10:09 am MDT July 13, 2006
BOULDER, Colo. -- A man who acted as a modern-day bridge troll faces charges in Boulder after he and his companion allegedly got into a confrontation with an off-duty sheriff's deputy.

According to a police report obtained by 7NEWS, Robert Hibbs, 19, was arrested Friday in a park near Foothills Highway and Colorado Avenue after demanding money and attacking the deputy. Police said that Hibbs insisted he was a troll and owned the bridge the deputy was trying to cross.

Witnesses told police that Hibbs and Bradley Boville, 19, were demanding $1 from joggers and bikers who attempted to cross the bridge.

The off-duty deputy, who was not identified, told police the confrontation with Hibbs started after the man hit his bike with a broken golf club when he forced his way past without paying. The two became involved in an altercation and Hibbs hit the deputy with a golf club, the police report stated. The deputy said he took the golf club away from Hibbs and struck him in an attempt to defend himself.

Boville, who was with Hibbs, reportedly told police that they had consumed LSD and that Hibbs was having a bad trip.

Police said they confiscated a large marijuana joint rolled in $1 bills at the scene and then searched Boville's apartment and recovered drugs and drug paraphernalia.

Hibbs was arrested for investigation of menacing and possession of a controlled substance, according to police. Boville was arrested for investigation of possession of a controlled substance and drug paraphernalia.

War in Iraq to cost half a trillion dollars.

Wow, what a collosal waste of money! Once we walk away from the war in Iraq, as some would argue we should do as soon as possible, what are we going to have gotten from this ill-conceived misadventure? Not a damn thing! Initial estimates were for a $100 to $200 Billion war, that's the war America signed up for . Iraqi oil production was said to be enough to fund reconstruction, well that didn't work out at all. Daily crude oil production in Iraq is still below the levels enjoyed during Saddam times. So in consdieration of this MASSIVE investment in "middle east security" (and boy did that ever backfire) It's unlikely that our troops are going to be coming home any time soon. Judging from some of the reports of massive perment base construction, our military knows we'll be there for at least another decade. Neverending war, a Rumsfeld wet dream!

Iraq war costs 291 billion U.S. dollars so far: report

The Iraq war has cost 291 billion U.S. dollars so far and could total half a trillion dollars even if the U.S. government pulls all troops out of Iraq by the end of 2009, The Los Angeles Times reported Friday.

The figure comes from an analysis of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), amid debate in Washington over whether to set goals or timetables for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq, according to the report.

The CBO study estimated future war costs based on two scenarios.

The more optimistic scenario is based on the U.S. maintaining troop levels in Iraq at 140,000 through next year, but quickly dropping them thereafter and pulling out most of them by the end of 2009.

Under this schedule, the Iraq war will cost an additional 184 billion dollars for the 2007-2010 budget years.

Under a more pessimistic scenario, with a slower drawdown of troops and a continued U.S. presence of 40,000 over the long term, the Iraq war could cost 406 billion dollars over the next decade, the CBO said.

Since the war started in 2003, the actual costs have far exceeded early estimates.

Former White House economic advisor Lawrence Lindsey initially put the total costs between 100 billion and 200 billion dollars.

Source: Xinhua

Great EV article in LA Weekly

Great Article! All about EVs. The authors mention Tommy Chong's electric lowrider, hmmm.. I wonder if it bounces, cause that would be sweet! That's another celebrity to add to the electric band wagon! It's neat to hear that the same shop working on Chong's conversion is also doing a bunch of LBC (or ABC if you prefer) conversions of Triumphs, Sunbeams, MGs and Lotus cars.

http://www.laweekly.com/general/feature....

In other EV news the Tesla Roadster is to be unveiled (finally) next Thursday infront of a sold out crowd in Santa Monica, California. Expect this to be big news, as the company has been very secretive concerning this car and hasn't released too many pictures of the vehicle. If you are lucky enough to have seen 'Who Killed The Electric Car?' then you got a glimpse of what it looks like in the closing segment of the film. If you poke around Tesla's website a little there are a few images here and there, a fender here, a charge port there, etc... but no real good view of what by all accounts is to be an amazing ground breaking vechicle.

http://teslamotors.com/