Fascism, Here we Come!

And I thought the Patriot Act was bad…Patriot Act II is in the works. Here’s what Dr. David Cole, Georgetown University Law professor had to say about the “secret” and proposed legislation:

This proposed law, he added, “would radically expand law enforcement and intelligence gathering authorities, reduce or eliminate judicial oversight over surveillance, authorize secret arrests, create a DNA database based on unchecked executive ‘suspicion,’ create new death penalties, and even seek to take American citizenship away from persons who belong to or support disfavored political groups.”

Kurt Vonnegut Interview

Here’s a wonderful interview with Kurt Vonnegut – a long time favorite of mine.

I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup díetat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka “Christians,” and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or “PPs.”

More Patch Woes

To make things even worse (read entry from earlier today), every time I try to reinstall Netscape (the standard first attempt to fix any windows problems), it causes a “system error” and the install stops.

MS Patch from Hell

There just aren’t enough words for how ticked I am at Microsoft right now. Last night, I did the standard Windows updater thing (because god forbid they write good, secure code the first time). One of the items on the list was a patch that would offer “better support for systems who don’t use Internet Explorer as their default browser.” Well, this sound made for me! Now, every time I try to launch Netscape, my system crashes. Grrrr.

Is it Really Aide?

The one bit of George Bush’s State of the Union speech that made sense to me was the announcement of increased funding to combat AIDS in Africa. Well, it turns out, that most of it comes from funds we’re using to fight malaria, malnutrition and various diseases that can be prevented by vaccination:

Table 1 clarifies that for the combined total of the Global AIDs Initiative and the Child Survival and Health account (which includes the bulk of HIV/AIDs assistance in H.J.RES.2), the Administration’s request for fiscal 2004 shows no net increase relative to the fiscal 2003 funding in H.J.RES.2. This is because the Administration’s increase of $450 million for the Global AIDs initiative is offset by a $470 million shortfall in its Child Survival and Health request relative to the fiscal 2003 appropriations bill.

So why isn’t this being mentioned in the press?

New Look

Hope you like the site’s new look…and if you don’t, tough! Actually, if you don’t, you can view the site with the old look by changing the theme to “miri” – just look for the drop down list in the left side navigation. (You must have cookies enabled for your choice to “stick.”)

UI

Hee! A fine example of how “user interface” can impact us in ways we’d never guess.

Shuttle Trail

Here’s an amazing loop of radar pictures of the debris trail. There have been reports that debris was found not to far from my house – at an IBM facility.

Shuttle Disaster

So close to the anniversary of the Apollo and Challenger tragedies, we have another reminder of the perils of space exploration and travel. I’m sure we will be bombarded ad nauseam about the investigation and possible reasons for the crash – I can’t imagine how awful it would be to be a family member of one of the astronauts lost and have to hear these reports over and over again.

Freedom of Speech

Loading...
X