flickerbulb

President Obama, don’t let this attack—this one attack that was thankfully stopped by smart, fearless passengers and airline staff—take us further in the wrong direction. I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this way. Americans of all stripes and affiliation standing up to say, “This isn’t working. We gave you our money. You’re not making us safer.” We appreciate the attempt to make us safer and acknowledge that it came from an honest attempt to protect American (and the rest of the world’s) lives.

But it’s a failure. It’s wrongheaded. It’s a farce. Tear it down. Put the money towards the sort of actions at which our government excels, like intelligence. The failure of the TSA leaves us no choice, but it’s okay. The American people are ready to take back the responsibility for our own safety. Really, we already have.

President Obama, It’s Time To Fire the TSA – Travel – Gizmodo

One More Thing
Always question authority and power.

Today I saw a bumper sticker that said, “Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.” I think that’s right, but it’s also only part of the story. I think that the judicial system is also what keeps the poor from murdering the rich. And the police. And what we are taught in school keeps the poor from murdering the rich. The stories we are taught at home from infancy are what keeps the poor from murdering the rich. The belief that it is acceptable to be rich is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich. The desire to be like them keeps the poor from murdering the rich. None of this, of course, keeps the rich from murdering the poor.

—Derrick Jensen, The Culture of Make Believe (2004)

About — educe me

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So who’s writing Sarah’s Facebook notes? Hell, your guess is as good as mine. Meg Stapleton perhaps? Bill Kristol? An intern? The person ghostwriting her forthcoming book? Who knows! But whoever it is, their being enlisted to perform these services is obviously part of a diabolical plan to rehabilitate Palin’s image as a staggering dipshit. However, they really should have eased into it, because it’s just way too obvious that Sarah Palin did not write the note that was posted to her Facebook page tonight. Period.

There’s Just No Way Sarah Palin’s Writing Her Facebook Notes – sarah palin – Gawker

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey.

The Washington Region Religious Campaign Against Torture rallied on Capitol Hill in March 2008.

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Only 42 percent of people who “seldom or never” go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified — more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.

Survey: Support for terror suspect torture differs among the faithful – CNN.com

There are certainly legitimate criticisms to make of the stimulus package as potentially being too large and generating too much additional debt to be added to our already staggering national debt. There are even more legitimate criticisms of how the various bailouts the government has been handing out to banks are more likely to help the proverbial Wall Street than Main Street (God, I hate that cliche, but got sucked in to using it anyway).

But comparing Obama to Hitler and his policies to advocating white slavery just shows the hypocrisy of the right. The right made political hay every opportunity it got when the left compared Bush to Hitler, labeling the comparison hopelessly and irredeemably offensive from 2002-2008

Respectful Insolence: “Have the conservatives in just two and a half months out of power become everything they hate about the loony left?”

Let’s start with the first part of the myth. Inanna and Jesus both travel to a big city, where they are arrested by soldiers, put on trial, convicted, sentenced to death, stripped of their clothes, tortured, hung up on a stake, and die. And then, after 3 days, they are resurrected from the dead. Now there are, to be sure, a number of significant differences between the stories. For one thing, one story is about a goddess and the other is about a divine man. But this is a specific pattern, a mythic template. When you are dealing with the question of whether these things actually happened, you have to deal with the fact that there is a mythic template here. It doesn’t necessarily mean that there wasn’t a real person, Jesus, who was crucified, but rather that, if there was, the story about it is structured and embellished in accordance with a pattern that was very ancient and widespread.

Valerie Tarico: Ancient Sumerian Origins of the Easter Story

“What is amazing here is how much political capital Obama has spent in the first six weeks,” said Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart, who conducted this survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff. “And against that, he stands at the end of this six weeks with as much or more capital in the bank.”

By comparison, the Republican Party — which resisted Obama’s recently passed stimulus plan and has criticized the spending in his budget — finds its favorability at an all-time low. It also receives most of the blame for the current partisanship in Washington and trails the Democrats by nearly 30 percentage points on the question of which party could best lead the nation out of recession.

Poll: Obama’s rating at all-time high – White House- msnbc.com

Current methods for writing CSS require expert level ability just to get started. To become a CSS expert, you need to spend couple years coding away in your basement by yourself before you are remotely useful. Front-end engineering needs to accomodate entry level, mid level, and architect level developers, but our sites are too brittle. You may have a perfectly accessible or high performance website, and then the first newbie to touch it, ruins it. Our code should be robust enough that newbies can contribute while maintaining the standards we’ve set.

Stubbornella » Blog Archive » Object Oriented CSS, Grids on Github

the internet will make available long-obsolete media, produced incidentally, and not for its long-term value, for others to draw ironic conclusions about, allowing the blindness, limitations and stupidity of all previous generations to be demonstrated, while offering opportunities for self-regarding individuals in the present to create self-congratulatory comparisons with their own incisive, far seeing 20-20 hindsight.

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unfortunately for the self-regarding individuals (aka ‘bloggers’), the above will continue to be true.

Future of News video from 1981: epitome of dumb futurism – Boing Boing

Online computer users often engage in what is affectionately known as “cybersex.” Often the fantasies typed into keyboards and shared through Internet phone lines get pretty raunchy. However, as you’ll see below, one of the two cyber-surfers in the following transcript of an online chat doesn’t seem to quite get the point of cybersex.

Then again, maybe he does…

A Cybersex Encounter

Herold, a widow whose daughter was killed in a car accident several years ago, told the Today Show that the incident was “a freak thing.”
She said Travis “couldn’t have been more my son than if I gave birth to him,” and rejected criticism that chimpanzees are inappropriate pets.
“It’s a horrible thing, but I’m not a horrible person and he’s not a horrible chimp.” she said.
The unexplained attack was uncharacteristic of Travis, a veteran of TV commercials who could eat at the table, drink wine from a stemmed glass, use the toilet, and dress and bathe himself.
Don Mecca, a family friend from Colchester, N.Y., said Herold fed the chimp steak, lobster, ice cream and Italian food.

The Associated Press: Chimp owner begs police in 911 call to stop attack

Human activity may indeed be affecting the climate, but after reading the calm, methodical statements by the “deniers,” I’m no longer willing to believe that anyone has a complete model of the complex, chaotic systems that determine global temperature, and I regret that the simplistic fear-metaphors used by people such as Al Gore have tended to demonize those who simply feel that the evidence, at this point, is still inconclusive.

Climatic Heresy: 1