The other day I was watching some reruns of The West Wing and told my wife that if things didn’t go right during this election, that show might be the last vision we see of government as capable, intelligent, and standing for something. I honestly think we’ve avoided that future with the election of Barack Obama as our next president. I’m looking forward to finally starting to move this country forward into the 21st Century the way we should have 8 years ago.
Haggard now “completely heterosexual”
DENVER – One of four ministers who oversaw three weeks of intensive counseling for the Rev. Ted Haggard said the disgraced minister emerged convinced that he is “completely heterosexual.”
Yeah, riiight. He’s just going to start hanging out at local fire departments and doing the keynote at the next lumberjack convention. But he’s not gay, oh no. The crack religious psychiatric commando team they put together to “cure” him also had this to say:
Another oversight board member, the Rev. Mike Ware of Westminster, said the group recommended the move out of town and the Haggards agreed.
It was also the oversight board that strongly urged Haggard to go into secular work.
“So congrats, you’re cured. But leave town and get out of our church.”
I almost feel sorry for Haggard. The self-loathing he must feel is just terrible. But then again, he’s a bigot whose words have instilled the same loathing in other gay people and their families so I hope he stays in the closet and hates himself for life. Maybe he’ll take up self-mutilation like a lot of other gay people have when forced to deal with the stress of hating who they are. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
Schneier on Security: What the Terrorists Want
The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act.
And we’re doing exactly what the terrorists want.
Once again Bruce Schneier is right on point. We’ve effectively given terrorists a whole new weapon; our own over-reaction. They can pretty much count on us mucking things up royaly even when there’s been no attack. The guys in London with their magic liquid bombs were no where near blowing anything up and they were caught but we’re still banning liquids on planes for who knows how long (which itself is pretty useless but that’s a different topic). All any smart terrorist group has to do now is make up a plan for using laptops as bombs and leak the info to the authorities and watch global business flying evaporate when laptops are banned for real. All without really having to do any hard work. We need to chill the hell out and start thinking instead of pissing ourselves every time 2 people with dark skin check their watches at the same time.
Tags: grommes, schneier, terrorism, terrorists, airlines
Kung Fu Monkey: “Wait, Aren’t You Scared?”
“Wait, Aren’t You Scared?”
Errr, no. And if you are, you frankly should be a little goddam embarrassed.
This is just plain great. Read it.
Light Blue Touchpaper » Ignoring the “Great Firewall of China”
However, because the original packets are passed through the firewall unscathed, if both of the endpoints were to completely ignore the firewall’s reset packets, then the connection will proceed unhindered! We’ve done some real experiments on this — and it works just fine!!
This is a very easy-to-use way of getting around most of the censorship done by the so-called “Great Firewall of China”. I applaud any attempts to route around censorship, especially political censoring like the government of China does.
Tags: grommes, china, censorship
The Porter County (Indiana) library system board of directors, apparently realizing that they’d rather not spend their afterlife roasting in hell, has lifted their ban on lending books to homeless children living in shelters.
Sheesh. These people should all lose their jobs for even thinking of something like this. A library should be a place for people to come and have a chance to better themselves or at the least get a break from reality, something I’d imagine most people living in homeless shelters would welcome. They don’t need to be treated like criminals and denied access to books, of all things. Shame on this board, I hope they never have to be treated like they’ve treated the residents of the shelter.
Delicious links
Why Evolution Is True by Jerry A. Coyne
Version Control with Git: Powerful tools and techniques for collaborative software development by Jon Loeliger
The Intuitionist: A Novel by Colson Whitehead
