May 2009
48 posts
Last Titanic survivor, a baby put in a lifeboat,...
The last living survivor of the Titanic, Millvina Dean, has died at the age of 97 in Southampton after catching pneumonia.
As a two-month-old baby, Dean was the youngest passenger on board the giant liner when it sank on its maiden voyage with the loss of more than 1,500 lives.
Her parents had decided to leave England for America, where her father had family in Kansas and hoped to open a...
New ID Dangers
Quote of the Day: “I won’t call
it Real ID, I’ll call it enhanced or higher security drivers license.”
— Robert V. LaPenta, President and CEO of L-1 Identity Solutions,
which stands to be a primary beneficiary of any government scheme for a
national ID card
Subject: Tricking Americans Into Real ID
Jim Harper, at the Cato Institute, alerts us to new dangers on the...
Wikipedia bans Church of Scientology
In an unprecedented effort to crack down on self-serving edits, the
Wikipedia supreme court has banned contributions from all IP addresses
owned or operated by the Church of Scientology and its associates.
Closing out the longest-running court case
in Wikiland history, the site’s Arbitration Committee voted 10 to 0
(with one abstention) in favor of the move, which takes effect
immediately.
...
Should Congress read the bills or pass pointless...
Quote of the Day: “If I studied all my life, I couldn’t think up half the number of funny things passed in one session of congress.” - Will Rogers
Subject: Should Congress read the bills or pass pointless resolutions?
In addition to bills that become law, the House
and Senate also pass hundreds of resolutions each year. Many of them
are statements of appreciation or recognition of...
American adulthood, fact or fiction?
Quote of the Day: “When a
government controls both the economic power of individuals and the
coercive power of the state … this violates a fundamental rule of
happy living: Never let the people with all the money and the people
with all the guns be the same people.” — P. J. O’Rourke
Subject: When Will Americans Grow Up?
Three of the very most important issues of the...
'Complementary science' aims to fill in the gaps
Kat Austen, letters & community editor On May 13, I attended the inaugural lecture of Hasok Chang,
professor of philosophy of science at University College London. I
don’t know if inaugural lectures are always so popular, but UCL’s
Darwin lecture theatre was packed. People ended up sitting on the
stairs for want of seats. So what is so special about the guy?
Chang, who has a...
Stunning poll results
Quote of the Day: “Liberty has
never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the
subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of
resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of
governmental power, not the increase of it.” — Woodrow Wilson
Editorial comment: He didn’t practice what he preached, but we should
Subject:...
Russian man survives five storey fall - twice
A Russian man survived after downing three bottles of vodka and leaping from a fifth floor balcony - twice.
Alexei Roskov says he jumped the second time because he couldn’t take his wife’s nagging about the first time.
Wife Yekaterina had watched in horror as her drunken hubsand opened the
kitchen window of their Moscow apartment, and hurled himself out.
Astonishingly...
Natural Solutions Foundation Attacked - Health...
EMERGENCY NOTICE
To All Natural Solutions Supporters:
This is an emergency appeal for help and support. No fancy graphics,
none of the important information about health and freedom you usually
get from our Health Freedom Action eAlerts… just this note to tell you Natural Solutions Foundation is about to be shut down - permanently - through a series of vicious attacks unless you...
Boffins teach football bots how to fall
Boffins are teaching football-playing robots how to fall properly.
Traditional approaches to robotics have focused on keeping
mechanical machines upright and balanced. But in the context of playing
football on an uneven surface and with interaction with other robot
players, that’s an unrealistic goal.
Popular Whitepapers
Airport insecurity: the case of lost laptops Research and key...
Frank Zappa / Evelyn, A Modified Dog
Evelyn, a...
Man tased 19 times and dies, jury finds force not...
A Tennessee jury has found that police did not use excessive force
in the case of the man who died after being tased a staggering 19 times.
The victim, 21 year old Patrick Lee was tased by police for
resisting arrest outside a nightclub. Reports said that he was “acting
strangely” and was under the influence of LSD at the time.
According to local reports,
Lee’s parents sued the officers, the...
Drugs in Portugal: Did Decriminalization Work?
Pop quiz: Which European country has the most liberal drug laws? (Hint: It’s not the Netherlands.) Although its capital is notorious among stoners and college kids for
marijuana haze–filled “coffee shops,” Holland has never actually
legalized cannabis — the Dutch simply don’t enforce their laws against
the shops. The correct answer is Portugal, which in 2001 became...
National Archives Loss Adds to List of Govt. Data...
The U.S. government says it’s lost — yes, lost — an entire hard drive full of sensitive data.
The external drive, stored at the U.S. National Archives and Records
Administration, held personal data from the Clinton era, including
information about White House staff and visitors and electronic storage
tapes from the Executive Office of the President.
Unfortunately,
this...
Exporting Corruption
Quote of the Day “The thing that
gets me is we don’t learn a thing from history. We want our
institutions to be pure and not corrupt, but yet we do the things we
know is going to corrupt them.” Chief Jerry Cameron, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
Subject: Exporting corruption
Last month, a South Tucson, AZ, cop who ran his department’s asset forfeiture program was...
One Pervert Does Not Equal “Danger”
When it comes to America’s panic about sex, respect for fact is in short supply.
Blogs, CNN & Fox, well-intentioned family advocates, right-wing “decency” groups, and the whole machinery of the Sexual Disaster Industry continually pour out a single message: there’s sexual danger out there waiting for every child, woman, and man.
In reality, many facts of life are pretty encouraging: the FBI...
What We Didn't Tell You Last Week
Quote of the Day: “A political
leader must keep looking over his shoulder all the time to see if the
boys are still there. If they aren’t still there, he’s no longer a
political leader.” — Bernard Baruch
Editorial comment: What our so-called political leaders need most is leadership from us, their supposed followers.
Subject: Ask Representative Shadegg and Senator...
More good news for the Enumerated Powers Act
Quote of the Day: “The layman’s
constitutional view is that what he likes is constitutional and that
which he doesn’t like is unconstitutional.” — Justice Hugo L. Black Source: New York Times, 26 February 1971.
Editorial Comment: Justice Black must have been a layman
Subject: New co-sponsors!
DC Downsizers have pounded Congress with 32,067
messages in support of...
Chop Off that Camel's Nose
Quote of the Day: “Security is mostly superstition.” — Helen Keller (1880-1968)
Subject: Bailouts for trucking companies?!!!
When we predict bad results from new government
programs some people tell us our fears are exaggerated, or misinformed.
It happened when we opposed the Iraq war with our “Truth About War” website, and dared to claim that Hussein had NO weapons...
The dirty secret about expensive health insurance
Quote of the Day: “If Obama scews up health care where will the Canadians go?” — sign seen at a protest event
Subject: NEW CAMPAIGN! The dirty secret about expensive health insurance
Do you need health insurance coverage for …
Maternity care, if you’re a single male Infertility, if you don’t want a family Alcoholism, if you don’t drink If you live...
Are You Serious?
Quote of the Day: “Two roads
diverged in a wood. I took the one less traveled by, and that has made
all the difference.” — Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Subject: Are you serious?
I hear it all the time, in the emails that flood
my In-Box and on the radio shows I do. Everyone thinks we need to
replace our current Congress with better people. I always have the same
reaction —...
Lithium in drinking water has 'anti-suicide'...
Ewen Callaway, reporter In Aldhous Huxley’s Brave New World,
the government encourages its citizens to take a sorrow-erasing drug
called soma. Huxley’s novel, of course, was a commentary on a society
obsessed with pleasure and happiness at the expense of real
experiences. But a new study reminded me of the book and got me wondering: should government medicate its citizens for...
The Hidden $13,000 Tax
Quote of the Day: Do not let
these 545 people (Congress, President, and Supreme Court) shift the
blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish;
to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to
whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take it. .
. . Those 545 people and they alone are responsible. - Charley Reese
Subject:...
Neo-Nazis attack concentration camp survivors...
Survivors of a Nazi death camp were shot at and abused as they gathered to remember their liberation.
Masked neo-Nazi thugs screamed ‘Heil Hitler!’ and ‘This way for the gas!’ at ten elderly Italian men and women, who returned to the site of the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.
The gang also fired air guns at a group of 15 French survivors, many dressed in the...
Will You Be Nationalized?
Quote of the Day: “A centralized democracy may be as tyrannical as an absolute monarch.” — James Anthony Froud (1818-1894) British author and historian Source: Short Studies on Great Subjects, 1872
Subject: Will YOU be nationalized next?
The federal government is nationalizing and centralizing in all directions, including …
* Banks
* Insurance companies
* Car companies...
Your state belongs to the feds
Quote of the Day: “The powers
not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited
by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the
people.” — 10th Amendment, U.S. Constitution
Subject: Your state belongs to the feds
For the first time ever federal aid now funds the majority of state government spending.
It wasn’t supposed to be...
Frank Zappa Live from New York: Halloween @ the...
Watchfiredfly:
Zoom into a Leaf (via Weird_Weird_Science)
“Business is perfectly capable of making its own representations. It does not...”
– www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/05/04/mandelsons-fifth-column/
Sungolog turns 1
Today, May 9th, the sungolog: ‘blog of the sun god’ turns one year old. To celebrate this I will repost one of the first entries made on that day.
Also, I’ve added a Random Post link to the right side on here so you can stumble on any random article posted on the blog since.
A formidable feature indeed. Enjoy!
‘Adam before the accident.’
Army Growth Surges
MEDIA NOTICE: Today (Friday),
Jim Babka is scheduled to appear on “Straight Talk w/ Jerry Hughes,”
starting at 3:05 PM Eastern. Details can be found on the DownsizeDC.org blog.
Quote of the Day: “If it was easy, everyone would do it.” — Hugh Butler, businessman and friend of Downsize DC
Subject: Membership spiking upwards!
You hear about it constantly —...
Congress could mess up a train wreck
Quote of the Day: “I’ve come to
expect that even nobly conceived laws will be manipulated and distorted
for private ends. But once in a while I hear a story that gives me the
queasy feeling that I’m nowhere near cynical enough.” — Christopher
Hayes, The Nation
Subject: Congress could mess up a train wreck
One intent of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 was
to reduce...
Wireless spectrum: A hidden natural resource
Tom Simonite, online technology editor Google
is backing a political campaign to force the US government to release
full details of how one of our most valuable natural resources is being
exploited - radio communications spectrum. A post on Google’s policy blog lauds a bill
being introduced to Congress that would require the Federal
Communications Commission to “take a full...
Federal Reserve Counterfeiting Update
Quote of the Day: “Central
banking is almost entirely a phenomenon of the 20th century … .
created as a means of financing the government… . If you say
central banking is essential to a free market economy, I have to ask
you about Hong Kong, which has no central bank at all … Yet it does
quite well in terms of economic growth and stability.” — former
Federal...
Good news about the "Enumerated Powers Act"
Quote of the Day: “The powers
delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are
few and defined.” — James Madison, Federalist No. 45
Subject: Good news about the “Enumerated Powers Act”
Representative John Shadegg (R-AZ) has
re-introduced The Enumerated Powers Act (EPA). This bill would force
Congress to cite the specific constitutional authority...
EU urges US to drop ICANN
Obama should hand over control of ICANN so it can be overseen by an
independent international tribunal, EU Information Society Commissioner
Viviane Reding said today.
In her weekly address, Reding said the change of administration in
Washington, DC offered renewed hope of a privatized ICANN (Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the non-profit group that
oversees the...
Firefox users caught in crossfire of warring...
A protracted war between authors of two of the most popular add-ons
for the Firefox browser has prompted calls for changes in the way
extensions are written, after one of them admitted he added camouflaged
code that disabled features in the other’s program.
In a heart-felt apology posted Monday, Giorgio Maone admitted that he added a small piece of code that worked around the EasyList...
Koji Kondo / Super Mario World / Sub Castle BGM
...
Quote
“Now, I’ve shown you can’t say all about anything, you can’t say all about the Universe, you can’t know all about this room. And yet we think we know ourselves. What you really are is totally unknown and by definition, infinite because you can’t experience all of it at one time and you can never know it all at one time. Everyday you can find new aspects to...
Progress Report, April 2009
MEDIA NOTICE: Today (Friday),
Jim Babka is scheduled to appear on “Straight Talk w/ Jerry Hughes,”
starting at 3:05 PM Eastern. Details can be found on the DownsizeDC.org blog.
Quote of the Day: “A socialist is somebody who doesn’t have anything, and is ready to divide it up equally among everybody.” — George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) Irish comic dramatist
...
back in plant matter
The floor fan has been disassembled, the motor oiled, and now put back together. Works well for now. Now like a scene from times of old putting on a vintage vinyl player, I attach the headphones to the CD player and listen to some music of my era.