Good News Friday

there's a unicorn in the garden, eating lilies
Originally uploaded by Legominose.

It is a good news Friday wherein I forgot about my frienemies at the American Family Ass and talk about things like Unicorns and other happy go lucky stuff.

First up, thank you guy who hands out Express at the McPherson Square Metro stop on the White House side your effort to make sure to say good morning, with a smile even, to _everyone_ who passes has not gone unnoticed and I give you thirteen points for your endeavor to brighten everyone's day.

Second I went to a "Dinner Club" outing with a group of former clients and had a great time. I also discovered a regular reader! This motivated me to checked the stats, I know it isn't that impressive but I'm up to almost 20 regular (unique) viewers a day! Go me.

Third I recently received some good stuff in the mail: one a new t-shirt, two the movie "The Jerk" I will have to model the shirts (I got one a while back, that I will need to model as well) Look for a Flickr update over the weekend. The third mail order item, if I decide to disclose the details warrants its own post... ;-)

Not Even Wrong

This fucker from the American Family Ass's propaganda wing, is trying to claim that ID is science. It is NOT science. I suggest that the aforementioned fucker read
Intelligent Design: It's Not Even Wrong by Rush Holt. It does a good job explaining why ID doesn't get the respect that the ill informed or intentionally ignorant expect it to.
Two other notes, one is how does ID explain the existence of "The Designer?" and this quote really gets to me.

It is hard to imagine that Dover's students would not benefit from being told that there are gaps in Darwin's theory and that intelligent design theory offers a competing explanation for the origin of life and the cosmos. Failure to provide such an explanatory note implicitly gives state approbation to evolution's creed that there is no God.

First off there are gaps in Darwin's theory, this is true, but they are gaps and fundamental wrongs, but to say that ID offers a competing definition is just wrong, it isn't even science. There is nothing implicit in Darwin's theory that says there is no God. The existence of God has no impact on the theory, but when dealing with ID there _has_to_be_a_God_ to make it work. So the opposite is true, teaching ID implicitly gives state approbation that there is a God, which is clearly a violation of church and state, where as teaching Darwin's theory is independent (thought not exclusionary) of the God concept and as such does no such thing.

Hey 2004 Bush Voters?

Do you still stand behind your mistake or are you willing to finally accept responsibility?

The WHOLE STORY PLEASE

Family Seeks Legal Relief So Son Can Read Bible During Recess
A federal court has been asked to order a Knoxville, Tennessee, elementary school to stop prohibiting a ten-year-old student from reading his Bible during recess. Read More


First off it is more than reading a Bible during recess the kid is leading a Bible study group, which is pretty much soliciting for new believers. Second off if there were to be a Koran study group or an atheist discussion group you'd better believe these fuckers would be all over banning it.


Last-Minute Hate Crime Rider Catches Pro-Family Forces Off Guard
Bob Knight of the Culture and Family Institute says pro-family allies were caught flat-footed by a pro-homosexual rights amendment effort when the U.S. House of Representatives "blindsided" them by rushing through a hate crimes bill sponsored by Congressman John Conyers, a liberal Democrat from Michigan.
Read More


This one really disgusts me, the American Family Ass is pissed off that the following are included "the legislation also permits federal involvement in the prosecution of so-called bias-motivated crimes based on the victim's gender, sexual orientation, or disability."Being a good Christian one shouldn't care about this at all because they shouldn't be committing crimes, so that alone should make it a moot point point.

Excuse Me, Justice Ginsburg, But Your Politics Are Showing
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has openly declared that she seeks to pursue her own private political agenda, "women's rights" chief among them, while Judge Roberts has said repeatedly that he has no agenda other than to apply the law. The difference here could not be more starkly defined, nor the ramifications more significant.

And this is perhaps the most disgusting of them all. It can roughly be translated to "Bitch get your ass back in the kitchen in front of the stove where you belong." When the American Family Ass puts things in quote it is their code for a concept they don't endorse. They also use this technique for same sex marriages. So the idea of women's rights is something that they oppose. Secondly they mention Justice Ginsburg's agenda, which is the protect women's rights, I really don't see how protecting rights regardless of sex is an agenda at all and should be something that we should strive to make sure our jurists understand and support. The next thing bring up is Judge Roberts, who in the past has made statements (you can find them here) that implies that women entering the work place may not be common good! And lastly no mention of anything that American Family Ass has to say doing with the rights of women can be complete with out attacking Senator Clinton, one of the few women in the Senate, how dare she stand up for her rights the nerve of her. Anyone who thinks for a second the American Family Ass and the Religious Right isn't about the subjugation of women needs only to spend a bit of time on the Promise Keepers website, or spend sometime reading the Bible, perhaps you can join the 10 year old's from Kentucky Bible study class.

Ha!

Delay is busted maybe he can be roommates with James Traficant.

Spam Ahoy

This fucker from Comcast has been sending me viruses and spam for the last month now, I've tried abuse@comcast.net to no avail anyone have any suggestions?
c-24-15-231-208.hsd1.il.comcast.net [ 24.15.231.208 ]

What the Fuck?

(CBS) — CBS News correspondent Gloria Borger reports that Michael Brown, who recently resigned as the head of the FEMA, has been rehired by the agency as a consultant to evaluate its response following Hurricane Katrina.


Really? Won't at least a few Congressmen do something about this?

A Return to del.icio.us

I was using del.icio.us for while to manage my bookmarks, this was especially helpful when I was using one computer at home and another one at work. I could easily find site that I wanted to go back to and read further or try out some software that couldn't, wouldn't or shouldn't run on my work laptop. I have ceased working there and I now pretty much us the same computer all of the time, so in some ways del.icio.us seems a bit pointless, but I find it fun to read other people "link blogs" and with del.icio.us I can share them with others. To people who read it, I'll try my best to mark not safe for work links with NSFW tags. Enjoy

Too Much Angry Posting Again

I've been posting too much angry and bitter stuff lately so from now until the end of October I'll try to maintain a ratio of two fun or nerdy posts to each angry bitter post. First up I will finally finish up my Sony Ericsson K750i review.

More Thoughts About Porn

I was thinking more about this and the American Family Ass is a supporter of abstinence only education which I clearly think is a bad idea. But since the American Family Ass thinks this is way to go shouldn't they encourage porn? As masturbation falls under the umbrella of abstinence and is really the safest way to tend to sexual needs with no risk of disease or pregnancy. I would at least see the logic in their stance if they supported both abstinence only education and porn, but clearly the American Family Ass is not about rational or logical decisions.

Do NOT Mess with Porn

From the American Family Ass.

Local Activists in Four States Stop Movie Gallery Porn Sales
Two developers in Kentucky, a priest and a home-schooling mom in New Jersey, a contractor in Mississippi, and a beautician in Illinois know how to be salt and light in the culture. These activists took on Movie Gallery, the nation's leading renter of porn videos -- and they won. Read More of this fucking bullshit

Hey American Family Ass. you maybe believe whatever you choose, but you now are fucking with porn distribution and that sir crosses the line. If this doesn't cease, I'm going to start a movement to protest churches as I've seen the damage they can cause. The "damage" you claim that porn causes is circumstantial at best. Where the damage that churches cause are very real. They cause damage to the US economy in three ways. First off they are tax exempt which means that the burden spread to the back and check books of hard working Americans also related to the economy is that the churches encourage people not to work on Sundays which cuts into one/seventh of the possible work week. Secondly the services are held on Sunday which first off cuts into ad revenues, secondly it makes me want to not leave the house to go shopping because since there are churches in my neighborhood it is hard to find a parking spot when I get home and when driving on 11th St, traffic is congested because the church goers double park and take up a traffic lane. The churches have damaged the communities long enough and I think they should be replaced with porn stores perhaps dividing up the type of porn by the domination of the house of worship.

From JWZ Blog

This pretty much sums up what I've been saying/thinking for a long time:

Taken from here
"But man, religious people are weird. It always seems like they've heard of Occam's Razor, but they just don't quite get how it works! They kept saying things like, "God allows people to be posessed to prove to others that God exists". Well you know what, if God really wanted to prove that he existed, I don't think he'd have any trouble doing that, being God and all. Instead of making a statue bleed in front of some backwoods hick, why not make ten thousand statues bleed at the same time? It's fuckin' God! So the obvious, clichéd answer to that is that God doesn't actually want to provide proof, because he wants people to have faith (AKA "believing something for no reason at all"). In which case, posession proves nothing except that, well, God's kinda mean."

This is Only The Beginning

For those of you who are complaining about gas prices and how much the Addict's administration's lack of preparedness will cost. Wait until the full finical ramifications of the war in Iraq are felt here. As an aside ExxonMobile reports record profits. Good thing they are price gouging or anything.

Also as an aside, people of Iraq, with Katrina the Addict's administration has said, through actions not words, "see we can fuck over poor Americans who have oil facilities in our own country too!"

Lastly the really sad part about this is that if this story's headline "Halliburton Gets Contract To Pry Gold Fillings From New Orleans Corpses' Teeth" is not too far from believable.

A Word About Accountability

So the Addict and President Bush has finally claimed accountability for the debacle leading up to and following hurricane Katrina, well part of being a responsible adult, let alone the leader of the executive branch of the government, means that you also make amends. Well I know of a place not to far from New Orleans with great accommodations that the President has full and complete access to, a ranch in Crawford, he owns the land and he should use his PERSONAL wealth to make up for this debacle. Al Gore used his personal funds to get people of out harm's way and this wasn't even something for which he was accountable. I expect nothing less than the Crawford ranch to be turned into housing for those who have already lost so much.

Neighborhood Story Project

A few of my friends were involved with the Neighborhood Story Project. please take the time to check out the site, it is a series written by high school students in New Orleans about their neighborhoods and communities.

Keep Your Word

Dr. West and Cathy
Originally uploaded by dcdan.

The The DCist offered $100 to any reader who could catch Cornel West scarfing down a jumbo slice My friend Cathy stepped up to the challenge and there is evidence to prove it but it seems like now they are welching. Look in the comments for Martin. I'm calling shenanigans.


UPDATE:
The DCist paid up and the $100 was donated to the Red Cross. :-)

Blame Game

After watching a bit of the news, I have never been more disgusted with the Bush the Addict's Administration as I have been watching them try to pin the blame of the their incompetence others. As such I offer this ring tone.
The official DC Dan "Go fuck your self Mr Cheney" ringtone

If others can covert it to other formats let me know and I'll post it.

iTunes 5.0

A lot of people have hated on the new look of iTunes 5 and I say "screw you guys I like it"

Animal Farm

barnyard fun
Originally uploaded by shac.

For those that compare the W the Addict's administration to Big Brother in "1984" I can certainly see the similarities, but I think you would be remiss to not also read "Animal Farm."

Blame the Hero

This young man who actually did something about helping get people to safety in the wake of the disaster, is now at risk of being in trouble "looting." If had the ability to do so I'd make sure this guy got a top level job at the DHS, because not only did he manage to evacuate one hundred people to safety, he beat most everyone else there.

"Get Off Your Asses"

As forwarded from GK-
---begin---
I hope everyone had a chance to listen to Mayor Ray Nagin's amazing/incredible radio interview from Thursday evening:

http://www.atypical.net/mm/nagin.mp3

And this wonderful quote is from Friday, after he met with Bush:

"Today was a turning point, I think," he said. "My philosophy is never get too high, never get too low. ... I always try to keep my emotions in check and yesterday I kind of went off a little bit. I was worried about that, but it maybe worked out. I don't know. If the CIA slips me something and next week you don't see me, you'll all know what happened."
---end---

Mayor Nagin is the DC Dan person of the month.

RAID 1 is How I Roll

Backup Progress
Originally uploaded by dcdan.

Rsync isn't really cutting it for a backup type solution for me (one it takes two long and two I forget to do it often enough) So I'm backing up to my 200GB drive and building RAID 1 on my two 250GB. Does anyone have advice on how to work it? One 250GB is in USB 2.0 case and the other is in a 250GB USB 2.0/Firewire 400 case. The eMac that they will be hooked up to only has 2 USB ports. So any suggestions on my choices?
1) Do both on USB on a USB 2.0 hub (will this cause a performance issue?)
2) One USB, One Firewire?
3) Buy another Firewire case?
a) Link to both the Firewire ports on the eMac
b) Link to the Firewire ports from drive A to drive B?

These are some of the things that keep me awake at night.

Thanks

Fuck You American Family Ass.

From the American Family Ass. news letter:

Katrina's Devastation -- God's Punishment for New Orleans' Wildness?
While relief agencies continue to reach out to the victims of Hurricane Katrina in the Southeast, violence and looting in the areas struck by the storm has National Guardsmen and law enforcement changing their priorities. Read More

UPDATE - Those fuckers pulled the story.

This is incredibly low for someone to stoop to, Allie Martin and Jody Brown, you are less than worthless for publishing drivel like this, I thought being a Christian meant belief in benevolence and compassion.

When God talked to me last night (prove he didn't) he told me that Trent Lott's home was destroyed because he associates with the likes of you and other the loons of the Christian Right. He also told me that Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama and Florida felt the wrath of the storm because of their support for the known Addict Bush. And that this is was mother natures' payback for your disrespect of the environment.

I used to think you were just a group of easily lead, naive and misguided simpletons, now I realize that you are just bunch spiteful, hateful and pathetic people. And if I believed in hell, I'm 100% certain you spend the rest of your time there.