According to a Washington Post news item of May 4, 2007, it appears that President Bush’s Justice Department is writing legislation to immunize the phone companies from lawsuits stemming from post-9/11 surveillance.

‘The proposal states that “no action shall lie . . . in any court, and no penalty . . . shall be imposed . . . against any person” for giving the government information, including customer records, in connection with alleged intelligence activity the attorney general certifies “is, was, would be or would have been” intended to protect the United States from terrorist attack. The measure, which has not yet been filed, is contained in a proposed amendment to the fiscal 2008 intelligence authorization bill.’ read the full story…

Surely this must be another form of Corporate Welfare. If phone companies broke the law, and cooperated with a portion of the government illegally, then shouldn’t they be held both financially and criminally liable? The Executive Branch doesn’t play legislative interference when a person has shoplifted by declaring there should be no penalty for having done so; by similar logic, why should telephone corporations be granted special legal exemption from laws they were supposed to follow?

On January 17, 2007, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales wrote a letter stating that, in the future, all intelligence gathering of targeted communications will be conducted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (PDF link via Wikipedia). Unfortunately, the story detailed by the Washington Post news item referenced above, if true, shows that the Executive Branch wishes to excuse the past illegalities of its co-conspirators.

Why is it constitutional for the Justice Department, which is under the Executive Branch, to write legislation, when Article 1 of the Constitution grants legislative authority to the Legislative Branch, otherwise known as Congress?

It appears that phone companies that may have illegally complied with past Executive Branch requests for intelligence on phone conversations have left the companies with a rather large legal liability. In turn, the Executive Branch appears to be attempting to mitigate these liabilities by legislating retroactively. If it was illegal then, then why declare that no penalties or punishments can be assigned for those acts?

This appears to me to be ultimately all about money, and the ability of certain wealthy entities to be above law in effect at the time. In order to achieve this the Executive Branch simply attempts to change the law for the benefit of very few. Shouldn’t there be a penalty for breaking the law?

As usual, citizens lose when the government doesn’t advocate for them, but instead for a few wealthy entities that have interests that oppose the Constitution and the law. Congress needs to severely limit the power of the Executive Branch to legislate.

A good first step would be to impeach the current occupants of the White House.

All images are Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech, and are generated by JPL’s Solar System Simulator. I believe the use of these images is permitted per JPL’s copyright policy.

The viewpoint of the simulator has been set as earth, meaning this series of images are geocentric.

This next one interests me the most:

I marked the one above where the rings align with earth. I spent some time studying a number of books about Western astrology some years ago, but I’ve never read of anything that places importance on the day when earth intersects with a plane that represents an imaginary extension of Saturn’s rings.

The date that appears to correlate with the coming alignment, September 1, 2009, puts Saturn at 22Virgo55 when using a tropical zodiac; when using sidereal, 28Leo02. However, there’s a window of about +/- 2 days where Saturn’s rings similarly appear to disappear, and since I’ve judged the date of 9/1/2007 visually, the precise zodiacal degree mentioned has a little variance.

In viewing the series of images, the rings appear to oscillate up then down. This is most apparent in the image of 2008.12.01, where Saturn’s rings almost disappear, but then the next image’s leading edge of the rings appear to move back ‘upward’ for a period of time. I believe that is likely due to the earth’s orbit around the sun, the periodicity of the oscillation appears to be based upon an earth year. I’ve been meaning to run a set with the sun as the viewpoint, but this post has been sitting here in the blog for some time, and I just don’t have much time right now. Maybe later.

In my last post I wrote about one technique proofreaders use when checking their documents, and offered simple instructions regarding how to modify a WordPress 1.5.2 wp-admin.css file to help bloggers use the technique. Unfortunately, the 2.x versions require changes to post.php to achieve the same effect.

This post shows how to have more than one Post Preview section on the Write Post page in 2+ versions. It involves slightly altering the /wp-admin/post.php file with a small portion of ever-so-slightly altered code that was originally included in the same file from the earlier 1.5.2 versions. If you decide to try this, any WordPress upgrade you perform will overwrite these changes, and the programmers occasionally make changes to this file (version 2.0.5 to 2.1.2 had changes), so saving it from version to version is not a very good idea. You’ll also want to make sure you save a backup copy of the original file so you can easily undo these changes.

These instructions are specific to WordPress 2.1.2. This has also been tested to work in WordPress 2.0.5. (more…)

One of the techniques used by proofreaders when checking their documents is to change the font from proportional to non-proportional and read again. I’m no great proofreader or writer, however, this is a known technique. In reading, I’ve noted that I often look quite quickly at the whole word, or several words, instead of focusing on each separate character in each word. Changing from a proportional font to a non-proportional one, and increasing the line-spacing as well as line-height, helps me to see each and every letter in each word.

Therefore, I wanted WordPress to show me the post text in several different fonts on the Write Post page as a proofreading aid. The following How To applies to WordPress 1.5.2. This will not work in the newer 2+ series because the Write Post page, specifically post.php, has been completely reworked in the newer version. It is possible to recode post.php to do this (I’ve tested it in 2.0.5); however, that goes beyond the scope of this post which is limited to a simple CSS formatting change.

This was first implemented as a project on another 1.5.2 blog that I participate in as co-administrator, and it seemed like it had been quite awhile since I had posted anything here, so I thought why not share the template modification. (more…)

Alternate title: My first experience of voting on a Direct Recording Electronic or DRE device.

On Nov 7, 2006, upon arrival at the polling place with completed sample ballot in hand, unfamiliar voting machines were visible from the doorway. I asked the poll workers if paper ballots were available. They were! They asked me if I would like one. No, I decided, I wanted to experience the computerized system first hand.

Most elections I’ve participated in over the years have used the punch card machine, the one made infamous by the hanging chads of the presidential contest of 2000 between Bush and Gore. Since that time, our district of San Diego County has sometimes used a paper ballot and pen that was optically scanned as a last step before the voter left the polling location. This time, and for the first time, our district used DRE machines made by Diebold.

I don’t intend to vote using one again. (more…)

Once upon a time, I bought and sold stock. During that time I used what is typically referred to as technical analysis and charting. I have a shelf of approximately 35 books about the subject, all of them read at least once, some of them studied closely.

During the time that I traded, which I no longer do, it became apparent to me that volume, one technical measure of how many shares changed hands in the given time period, seemed artificially inflated at times. It was nothing in my view that could be proven using only pure technical analysis, but it was more of a gut feeling based upon studies of price and volume movement contrasted against how it moved historically.

Options? Today we learn:

“One of the nation’s highest-paid executives has left his job after becoming ensnared in a stock options scandal that already has forced dozens of companies across the country to wipe out billions in combined profits.” read more…

I’m continually amazed by the apparent corruption that seems to exist in business and at the top of many hierarchical pyramids that exist all around us, whether it is legal or not. While I’m not privy to any information about this particular scandal beyond what I read in the news, the following phrase caught my attention, “… has forced dozens of companies across the country to wipe out billions in combined profits.” Does this mean that those employees, companies, and investors who owned stock in the unnamed companies were lied to before the “profits” were wiped out?

From the same article:

“The company’s review didn’t reach any conclusion about whether there was intentional wrongdoing….”

Why does our society teach most of us little citizens to be honest, and punishes us severely when we’re not, often with zero tolerance, but that people at the top of hierarchy seem to get minor punishments, if any, when they’re either dishonest or seem to be? If it’s true that only the dishonest rise to the top, then why as a society do we teach our children to be honest and punish them when they’re not? (I’m not personally convinced that ‘only’ the dishonest rise to the top, it just often seems that way). Perhaps the question that should be asked is why do any of the dishonest ever rise to the top?

It’s curious that those with so much income seem to so easily escape the severe punishment so commonly prescribed for the rest of us. Why is stealing a candy bar such a heinous offense that it requires jail time, or at the very least a court appearance; but if you’re a CEO and take millions with the stroke of a pen are you allowed to resign if discovered, maybe pay back a small portion of it, perhaps continue to collect an astronomical retirement, indeed, simply have your act deemed “an error”.

We have a serious inequity of justice in the United States and we also appear to have a serious inequity of income distribution, both appear deep and entrenched, and lately these two groups seem to intersect in the title of CEO.

There’s an old saying, “Those with the gold make the rules.”

Why isn’t that rule enshrined in the text of the Declaration of Independence, and observed within the governmental structure delineated by the U.S. Constitution? Perhaps because it isn’t supposed to be that way?

Reality is hard to dismiss, even with a dreamy statement of principals that contradicts it.

Dave Pollard at How to Save the World¹ writes a post questioning society’s attraction to violent entertainment media, he asks:

“What’s going on here? Why, when we could be going to movies or plunking down in front of the TV to laugh with people, to be charmed and delighted by funny characters delivering clever lines, are we instead going to laugh at people who behave offensively, who act ridiculously, and who insult and demean others? Why, when we could be uplifted by stories of courage and indomitable human spirit, do we instead choose to see stories of unimaginable brutality, anguish, relentless horror and suffering, often without resolution or redemption? Why, rather than piquing our imaginations with what they don’t show, do today’s popular films use grisly hyper-realistic graphics and special effects that leave nothing to the imagination? We’re still coy about the depiction of sex in films, so why are we so blatant and vulgar in the depiction of extreme violence?”

I presume the attraction of violent entertainment is simply as a metaphor for our lives. The metaphor speaks to the non-physically violent raping that all of our minds have been subjected to year in and year out, from birth to death, by powerful corporatists intent on subjecting us to: their minds and their rule and their daily pick-pocketing; surely a kinder and gentler form of warfare.

While we may not have been violently murdered, the invisible butterfly wings we were all given at birth, and for some of us which were eloquently described in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, particularly the phrase about the un-alienability of each of our respective pursuits of Happiness, have been sliced away from many of us in a way similar to a violent murder, and arguably more cruelly than to simply have killed us quickly and to have been done with the matter.

Since great masses of people are hosts to a few powerful parasites, and since killing the hosts typically kills the parasites, the parasites seek the opposite, extending our lives so they can continue in their ways. Like the metaphor of vampire, the parasite seeks to suck our blood without actually killing us — but altering us — so that they can receive sustenance from each of us everyday, and so they can live their powerful lives of darkness and power, an ability which is multiplied exponentially with more hosts.

When one thinks about the metaphor of violence with this pattern, one may realize that coyness surrounding sex in movies serves the same metaphor. Sex, as fundamentally a reproductive act when performed between heterosexuals, simply perpetuates the aforementioned parasite-host relationship from one generation to the next, so coyness regarding sex could be reflective of a communal sub-conscious desire to not reproduce, even when, at the individual level, one’s own body signals powerful reinforcements and one’s mind rationalizes that it is only through reproduction that survival is guaranteed. But that guarantee is really nothing more than a promise to the potential child-to-be that they, too, will be subjected to the same, or perhaps improved, parasitical methods that ultimately lead to a denial of Happiness, and therefore reproduction represents little more than a passing of parasite-host misery from one generation to the next.

I presume that a population that loves violent metaphors has experienced great psychological warfare wreaked against it. As metaphor, it is familiar.

Bibliography 1. http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2006/10/03.html#a1663

Recently I added a plugin named Sociable to another weblog. While perusing the blog of Sociable’s developer, one post caught my attention. Peter Harkins asked his readers if they could recommend a good feedreader for Linux. Unfortunately, not having yet made the switch to Linux on our personal machines, it’s not possible to fully answer his question from the perspective of that operating system.

Recently I looked around for a newer feedreader for Win98SE, either one that runs under Firefox as an extension, or as a standalone program similar to FeedReader, and had some success. After finding some that didn’t work quite in the desired way, and others that had promise but unfortunately were still quite buggy, what I eventually settled upon was BottomFeeder, a standalone cross-platform Atom and RSS reader. It appears open-source and released under an Artistic License.

From the BottomFeeder front page:

“BottomFeeder runs on Linux x86, (also FreeBSD), PowerPC Linux, Sparc Linux, Windows (98/ME/NT/2000/XP/CE 4), Mac OS8/9, Mac OS X (PPC), AIX, SGI Irix, HP-UX, and Solaris (SPARC and x86).”

I have no intention of critiquing the program, as they all seem to have shortcomings and strengths of one kind or another; in the case of BottomFeeder, its feature set is impressive. This may imply it isn’t the simplest feed reader out there. I’m currently watching just under 100 feeds and have noted no big issues, but then I’m a simplistic user with basic needs who has always been attracted to the usefulness of powerware.

While it’s not perfect, you might like it — try BottomFeeder.

Now that Microsoft is no longer supporting Win98SE, where will people get security patches as they become necessary? Via cnet.com, one such third-party Win98 security patch source is calling themselves the Zero Day Emergency Response Team, or ZERT.

Jamesoff, coder of the RBL plugin for SpamKarma 2 has decided to shut down his blacklist at blbl.org, he writes:

“In due time, I’ll shut down rbldnsd too, but that’ll be a while yet. If you’re using the SpamKarma2 plugin for WordPress, or any other RBL lookup plugin on any blog software at all, please remove blbl.org from the lookup list (bl.blbl.org and uri-bl.blbl.org).”

Thanks for all the help, Jamesoff. Your decision seems a good one: if your heart is no longer in a project, then what’s the point?