General, Politics

Organized Relations

I notice that Bush declares it legal to wiretap Americans without a warrant:

So, consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, I authorize the interception of international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations.

from a Dec 19th, 2005 conference.

Evidently, Bush, sharp legal mind that he is, got this vetted by the same administration lawyers who think torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners is OK.

It is the last few words of the quote that worry me. Based on comments of the Vice-President, various administration officials and Republican lawmakers, over the past few years, I think the Democratic Party falls into the “related terrorist organizations” category, along with anyone who opposes the Bush and any of his policies. Good thing I’m not organized.

Politics

No, No, No, No, No

I heard Bush on the news last night saying that his job is to protect the American People. I believe he was saying this to justify spying on Americans without a warrant.

No, No, No, No, No!

Evidently Mr Bush wasn’t listening to himself when he took his oath of office.

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

You see, Mr. Bush? Your job is to protect the Constitution, not the American People. I think we can defend ourselves quite nicely, thank you.

If Mr. Bush doesn’t listen to himself, why should the rest of us listen to him?

I notice, from the text of a speech he gave this morning, that he is still confused.

Liberating Thoughts, Politics

Gary Hart Interview

From a BuzzFlash Interview (via Sideshow) I found this quote from Gary Hart to be memorable:

… the reason you can’t mix religion and politics is, religion is about absolutes, right and wrong, good and evil. Politics is about compromise. If you cannot compromise on issues that are not central to a person’s faith – and that’s about 99% of the issues our country faces – then the country doesn’t work. The government doesn’t work.

I think I will have to check out the essay, God And Caesar in America: An Essay on Religion and Politics, that spawned the interview.

Yeah, without compromise, this country doesn’t work.

Geek Stuff

Frustration

Here I am trying to use my HTML tags to make a nicely formatted article and my browser won’t display them. In the previous article I set up the individual ideas as lists. They should be indented, with bullets. Do they show up that way? No. Look at the source code, doesn’t it show the < UL > tags and < LI > tags?

Silly browsers.

Geek Stuff, General

Column from PC Magazine: Pathetic European Attack on Google and the Net

Column from PC Magazine: Pathetic European Attack on Google and the Net

In a headline-grabbing comment last week, Pinto Balsemão, head of the European Publishers Council, said that the Internet cannot continue to be free, as it has been for the last decade. He wasn’t suggesting that publishers make all their sites pay-per-view, but that search engines could not and should not be able to search for content freely.

There is some concern that Google, and other search engines, can run rampant through a publishers library and start providing copyrighted works to the public, for free or a fee.

If this is a real concern, I can think of several ways to stop this.

  • Get off the internet.
  • Block the bots. I know what bots are visiting my web pages. I could set filters to stop them from accessing pages. Then they wouldn’t be collected, stored, mined, and indexed on the main site.
  • Get W3C to add a tag that tells bots that this page should not be indexed. Maybe even set the tag to allow some bots and forbid others, so internal search engines can provide a catalog for the Intranet. (Note: Intranet vs. internet)
  • Whitelist allowed users. Only allow valid, authorized IP adresses to access the web sites. In a closed community, this is a lot more manageable than a site that wants to be available to anyone, anywhere, anytime.

There are so many controls that a user can provide to limit access to files and pages on the internet. Folks seem to have forgotten them, or never understood how the system worked; just following the lead of what was done before, by a bunch of hackers who didn’t really want to restrict access to information, copyrighted or not.

Of course, it will require a lot more work to manage everything. An expenditure of time, money, and effort to limit access to a system that is a free-for-all in its natural state. But, it can be done.

Can I patent these ideas?

Politics

Capitol Hill Blue: Bush on the Constitution: ‘It’s just a goddamned piece of paper’

Capitol Hill Blue: Bush on the Constitution: ‘It’s just a goddamned piece of paper’

An interesting commentary, if true. I ran a quick Google on some key words and phrases, like: Bush, constitution, “piece of paper”, and I couldn’t find anyone else reporting this. I would think this would be a major story for any main stream media org.

Of course the major give-away is Bush’s statement that the Constiution is a ‘piece of paper’. I’m not sure that he even knows that.

Geek Stuff

An Important Equation

Elevation = sin-1(sin(lat)*sin(dec)+cos(lat)*cos(dec)*cos(15*hour))

where:
lat = latitude on earth
dec = declination of sun
hour = delta hour from noon (i.e. noon =0)

What’s that spell?

Elevation of the sun above the horizon!!!

So at 10 AM on June 21st at my house, the sun would be:
sin-1(sin(39)*sin(23.5)+cos(39)*cos(23.5)*cos(15*2))
= sin-1(.629*.399+.777*.917*.866) = sin-1(.868) = 60.2 degrees above the horizon
Wow!

The Thoughts and Luminations of Jack Heneghan