A Bit of History

I just had the realization that this blog has been up and running for over a year now and this is my 293rd post, and it is has come along way from the original Spank Your Face blog (started March 14th, 2002) that I created using JSPs and MySQL and Tomcat that I hosted on my Linux box on a 144/144 connection. When I moved back to the District proper I started anew with DCDan.com and again self hosted this time on a 6/768 connection using JRoller, but after bunch of pain in the ass stuff dealing with mail and Tomcat/JRoller crashes, I finally got a textdrive account pointed Blogger to post to that account and this site was born.

DC per Student Spending

D.C.'s Distinction: $16,344 Per Student, But Only 12% Read Proficiently
First off comparing DC's school spending to a state's spending already shows people are going for an "oh my fucking god school DC spends the most on schools and doesn't do a great job with education thus spending money doesn't help education we should move to a market system" shows the article is written by a biased ass. DC is only a city there aren't rural parts of DC to average out for the expensive costs of running a school in the city. To have fair comparison one must compare DC to Chicago, NYC, Philadelphia or other cities.

Secondly lines like the following also really show the sleight of hand when dealing with figures

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D.C.'s public elementary and secondary schools spent a total of $16,334 per student in the 2002-2003 school year, according to a Department of Education study. That compares to the $10,520 tuition at St. John's College High School, a District Catholic school that sends almost all its graduates to four-year colleges.

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Note that it explains that it says DC's schools SPENT a total of $16,344 per student while the TUITION at St. John's College High School. Now for those not paying attention, I'm willing to bet that the amount spent per student is more than the tuition given by parents because you see St. John's collects money from their alumni that they then use for education so comparing spending vs tuition is a totally fucked up thing to compare and again goes the lengths that these figures can used to show whatever.

Additionally, I know of plenty of kids who went to private schools in Milwaukee, but didn't go to college. I went to a public high school in Milwaukee, Rufus King, "where over Over 90% of students continue their education after graduation", so a high rate of continuing education is not only a private school phenomenon.

This article is an attempt, of course, to try to use the misguided principles of school voucher as a solution to education, and that argument warrants it's own post.

Getting Hammered

I was sent a link to this article by Samantha Levine and goddamn does it piss me off. I'll pick over a few of the really, really egregious points.

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DeLay says he sees war on Christianity in U.S.
Sugar Land Republican speaks at conference of religious leaders
American society looks down on Christianity, U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay asserted Tuesday at a conference of religious conservatives, but God and Jesus Christ have chosen Christians to stand up for faith.

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Actually, if the "Hammer" had done his research, which is something I've learned people from that side of the aisle are exempt from he would have realized that "American’s increasing acceptance of religious diversity doesn’t extend to those who don’t believe in a god" and that in fact Atheist are the most distrusted by American society in general.

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DeLay, who is facing tough times of his own, offered a half-hour speech that was part history lesson and part sermon to a crowd of about 300 gathered at a Washington hotel for a two-day conference titled "The War on Christians and the Values Voter in 2006."

The Sugar Land Republican said some commentators — the "chattering classes" — will argue that there is no war on Christianity in this country.

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The Hammer is having tough times because, well, DeLay was indicted by a grand jury for matters related to a conspiracy to skirt campaign finance laws. I don't really see how that is very Christian at all. As far as the chatter classes, I'm willing to bet that if two students went to school and one wore a WWJD t-shirt and the other there is no God t-shirt, the later would be the one who got sent home.

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"This is a man, I believe, God has appointed ... to represent righteousness in government," Scarborough told the audience, which included Eagle Forum Founder Phyllis Schlafly, former ambassador Alan Keyes, and Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan.

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Too bad in the US God doesn't put people in House, voters (or more likely Diebold) does. Also that group you run with isn't the best crowd.

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Scarborough said DeLay had been "nearly destroyed in the press," and he made a vague pitch for the conference participants to support DeLay in his general election race in November. DeLay should not worry about it, however, he said: "God always does his best work after a crucifixion."

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To equate DeLay with Jesus, I'm pretty sure would offend even God. Additionally I thought churches weren't supposed to endorse candidates as the "The Internal Revenue Code now expressly prohibits churches and other nonprofit organizations from directly endorsing or opposing political candidates."

700 Club

From the Wikipedia article on the recently captured Charles Taylor

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Taylor and Pat Robertson
According to a June 2, 1999 article in The Virginian-Pilot, Taylor had extensive business dealings with televangelist Pat Robertson. According to the article, Taylor gave Robertson (who also had business dealings with Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire) the rights to mine for diamonds in Liberia's mineral-rich countryside. According to two airplane pilots who reported this incident to the state of Virginia for investigation in 1994, Robertson used his Operation Blessing planes to haul diamond-mining equipment to Robertson's mines in Liberia, despite the fact that Robertson was telling his 700 Club viewers that the planes were sending relief supplies to the victims of the genocide in Rwanda. The subsequent investigation by the state of Virginia did conclude that Robertson did divert his ministry's donations to the Liberian diamond-mining operation, but then-Virginia state attorney general Mark Earley (a Robertson ally) blocked any potential prosecution against the TV preacher.

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To quote the Dead Kennedys "Moral Majority":
God must be dead
If you’re alive

Solution to the Whine

Solution to the Whine
Originally uploaded by dcdan.

This seems to fix the whine that comes from MacBook when brightness isn't at it highest or off. This doesn't mean though that I'm not taking it in to get it fixed.

Just Wondering

I was just wondering if the reason Christian's get their panties in a bunch over abortion is because if Mary, a single mother, had a safe environment in which to terminate her pregnancy their whole story wouldn't have turned out as it did.

For the Children?

From the American Family Ass.

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Fox allows 's' word. Take a stand for our children!

Dear Daniel,

Tired of all the profanity on TV? Want to do something about it? Here is your opportunity.

File a complaint with the FCC against Fox Network for using the "s" word.

This past Sunday afternoon, Fox network broadcast the NASCAR "Food City 500" race. During the course of the race, driver Martin Truex, Jr. crashed his car after being bumped by another driver.

Fox network aired a conversation between Truex and his crew chief, Kevin Manion. During the course of the conversation, Manion told his driver, "We missed the set-up today. It (the car) was a piece of s**t.

Fox had been warned about allowing the "s" word on the air. The network could have used a delay and bleeped the profanity. But they chose not to. The network chose to air the segment live. Millions of viewers, including children, were offended by the crude profanity.

Also, please forward this to your family and friends. Together, we can make a difference!

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Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of Fox Network or NASCAR, but that doesn't mean, I'd push the FCC to stifle their right to speak freely.

Since when is offending people a problem? To quote The Suicidal Tendencies "You Can't Bring Me Down"
"And if I offended you, oh I'm sorry...
But maybe you need to be offended
But here's my apology and one more thing...fuck you!"

Can anyone sight one study that shows that "crude profanity" actually damages children?
I grew hearing profanity and I wasn't really restricted in it usage and I don't believe I've suffered any harm from it.

Rude Pundit has a Great Post

Welcome to the Party, Bitches: Christian Right Outraged Over Afghan Trial of Convert
He calls out the Christian Right for their hypocrisy.

Georgia vs Scott Fitz Randolph

I was going to write a super detailed post about Chief Justice Roberts' dissension but the American Family Ass site wore me out. So you will just get a summary

This was to settle if the police come to your door and one person says you can come in and the other person says you can't has consent been given to search. The Court decided that consent wasn't given.

1) Touches on the issue and uses the example of a couple where an abused spouse gives consent but the abuser doesn't and hence dissents. What CJ Roberts fails to remember is that if the police have "reasonable suspicion" that the spouse is being abused then they don't need consent.

2) The next reason that he gives is that if the individual shares info and that isn't protected. For example you have some illegal plans and your spouse turn those over the govt. Those plans aren't protected and hence you don't have same right to refuse your house being searched. This is true, but not relevant. This implies that there isn't an understanding of implicit trust in this situation. Which is flawed there is a concept of privileged information true this isn't the exact same case but your talks with your doctors, lawyers and spouse are all considered privileged.

3) He then goes into a tangent about if your spouse could invite a social guest and the level of consent for that. What CJ Roberts fails to see is that a social guest and the government are two completely different entities.

Now I'm worn out and tired hopefully some else will do a better analysis. Hopefully people will get out an vote in 2006 and 2008 so I won't have post about these crazy thing and post more about fun things like Mac OS X hacks and bitch about people on the Metro and the Safeway near my house.

here is another take

Warning About the Following Link

My Space Joke Shirt
Originally uploaded by dcdan.

Now a fun post, this is a great song, but feel the need to warn you about the following facts
1. The link is to myspace
2. It will immediately start making noise when you click on it (and you finish waiting for your browser to try to render this monstrosity.
DJ Green Lantern

Made the Mistake of Going to American Family Ass Site

I read a post about the American Family Ass hating on our friends down under because they have a tourism ad that says "where the bloody hell are you?" and are of course pissed about the use of the words bloody and hell and are encouraging their members to not go to Australia, which of course made me immediately think, if the boycott works Australia would be a great place to vacation. The article doesn't give a link to the American Family Ass. which meant I had to peruse the site. FYI their search sucks. I never found what the article was talking about but I did run across the following:

Help Save The Life Of An Afghan Man Who Refuses To Deny Christ
While I'll agree 100% that the man shouldn't executed, from all of the other articles I've read the man is fucking nutcase, literally, this quote from CNN

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"Afghanistan's judicial system is currently evaluating questions raised about the mental fitness of Mr. Rahman, the results of which may end the proceedings," the statement said.

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You put two and two together, that's all I'm saying

I also ran across Female Voters Are Slipping Democrats' Grip, Women's Forum Editor Says
First off every woman I know who isn't chained to stove, wouldn't vote for a party that wants to control their body. Second the
Arguments in this are weak

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"If we lose the war in Iraq, this is not the kind of enemy that waves goodbye to us," Hays explains. "It's the kind of enemy that is bold and then follows us home. So, for security-oriented people, [Bush's] standing should be very, very high with women," she says.

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Honey, Bush made Iraq into a place where the enemy wouldn't wave goodbye to us. Hussein a horrid person in his own right wasn't shit, he didn't have the capability to hurt Americans, one could even argue that since Bush sent our army there he was directly responsible for more American deaths than Hussein. So security minded people wouldn't have supported him in the first place. Another quote:

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Nevertheless, the Forum's senior editor is not surprised that the President seems to be having a hard time keeping his approval numbers up. "It doesn't surprise me that he has trouble," she says, "because you have a media that's really an adjunct of the Democratic National Committee. They sort of take up the issues of the Democrats and go with them."

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The easy way to tell when a Republican doesn't have an argument is to watch for two things one blame the media, two blame Clinton, 'nuff said.

I Guess I May Have to Eventually Remove this Biblical Post

Lot's Seduction
Originally uploaded by dcdan.

I read today the Online sexual material is obscene if any community in US objects does this mean that if my community feels the Bible is obscene it will have to be taken offline?

Other American Family Ass. Haters

Yep more people hate on the American Family Ass.

Pantyshot

Pantyshot
Originally uploaded by dcdan.

I'm going to order 30 I heart DC Dan thongs (15 medium and 15 large) If you promise to send a picture like this and allow me post it on DC Dan and/or Crotch Project your thong is free. This is open to both women and men. You can remain anonymous if you'd like. If you want one shoot me an email. If you buy one on your own and send a picture you will get a page of honor on my site.

Why Doesn't The NYT or WaPo Point Things Like Out?

Connect the dots.

Consensus

I got an email from a friend today

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ok...so how many people have told you that you look just like the guy on american idol???? I have told my husband every week that the american idol guy "looks just like my friend dan." and then today it happened...i got an email from tony f (group email to me, julia, robin and deb) asking if any of us thought the american idol guy looks like you. I laughed out loud 'cuz i thought maybe i was the only one who saw the resemblance. So it made me wonder...how many people have approached you with these comments?

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Except you no one, the last time people insisted that I looked like a celebrity was in college and people said I looked like George Clooney, no kidding hey I wasn't complaining so for your viewing pleasure. I've made a comparison chart and I leave it to loyal readers to determine who will play me in a bio pic.

Dedication to Teachers

This is dedicated to a guy who has seen the worst

coming soon "Ode to a Door"

Until Now I Didn't Want to Fuck Jessica Simpson

It just feels wrong,” one Simpson insider told Reuters Wednesday, adding that the actress keeps her political views private. “She would love to meet the president and talk about Operation Smile ... but she can’t do it at a fund-raiser for the Republican Party.”

Intel Mac / WMV Files

For those lucky enough to have one of the shiny new Intel Mac's you'll notice that flip4mac won't doesn't play nice with the Universal version of Quicktime, I have seen a lot of recommendations that people run Quicktime under Rosetta to get it to work, but then complain about Quicktime performance for other stuff via Rosetta. What I've done is simply copied the Quicktime application in the Application's folder and set that one to use Rosetta, then I right click on WMV files and tell it to use the copy. (Choose other then Enable All Applications otherwise it will be grayed out)

Hat's Off to Neon Bubble

Future History is damn funny.

Only in the Case of Rape

I was thinking today about the American Taliban often talks of abortion in only in the case of rape. This got me thinking rape trials usually seem to take a long time, I'd be willing to bet that they often don't even start until long after the 14 weeks where you have several options open to you. So I'd like to know more about how "in the case of rape" works.
You are a woman you got raped and to make matters worse you are now pregnant. Do you have to wait, until the trial has been completed before you are allowed to terminate the pregnancy, because the guy is innocent until proven guilty? There are four paths.

One you have wait until the trial is over
If the trial takes 16 months, I'm pretty sure that you don't have the right to terminate a 5 month old, so the option was never really open to you.
or
If you are lucky the trial finishes really quickly and you can have your abortion.

Two you have the abortion before or during the trial
If the guy is found guilty all is pretty clear.
but
What happens if the guy gets off on a technicality or has a really good lawyer and the charge doesn't stick? You've already had the abortion, are you now guilty of breaking the law? Does the clinic that performed it have to worry?

I just want the people who feel that "well there is a rape clause" to think about what that really means.
Also to make the math simple I didn't factor in that you usually can't tell you are pregnant for at least a few weeks, which makes the time line tighter.

You Can Take My Sex Toy When You Pry It from My Cold Dead Hand.

Mississippi why do you hate freedom go read this article.

Back?

WTF you may ask yourself, me too. People, people, people, you stress the fact that "abstinence is only way" and I concur your chances of getting pregnant and catching an STD if you aren't doing it are very, very, very low. The safest sex you are going to ever have is with yourself, you know your limits, shit you don't even need a "safe word" So why, pray tell, would you ban the sale of sex toys? These are one of the best ways to encourage abstinence. "Little Sally don't have sex, use this instead" Mississippi, the fact that you rank pretty far down there in education shows when you do things like this.

A Fellow American Family Ass Hater

The Gays Have Hatched a Gay Secret Gay Plot to Make Everyone Gay a great post. In my life I've had far more people try to convince me to believe in God than I've had people try to convert my sexual preference. And to be honest the latter sounds a lot more fun than the former.

Movie that Makes Me Smile

I shot this short starring "Big Ed" in NOLA the weekend before it disappeared.

Eclipse, Lomboz and MacBook Pro

Note this post is only of interest to my fellow Java people. (ie a lot of my friends will just scratch their heads and say huh?)

The milestone build of Eclipse 3.2M5 coupled with Lomboz was causing me problems when I would edit JSPs the machine would max out the CPU and then become unusable for while. So I did some google-fu and this post coupled with this link to a jar which you then drop into your plug-ins dir and unzip the lomboz install over the the Eclipse install from the Terminal. Will get you a speedy Eclipse, it shows the binary as PPC but since most of the work is done via Java, I haven't noticed a speed difference.

Three Things

It's not even 11 am and I've seen or heard three things today that I didn't need to.

• A piece of dental floss outside a stall door in the mens room


• Cleavage with stretch marks


• Hear that a woman at my Dr's office was hot today because she was going through "the change"

I guess I need to close my eyes and turn my iPod to avoid this in the future.

What Me Worry?

In order to win the war on terror, we've got to strengthen our relationships and friendships with moderate Arab countries in the Middle East," Bush told a meeting of the National Newspaper Association in Washington. the Addict and president.

What the Addict fails to realize is that Iraq WAS one of the moderate countries in the Middle East, under Sadaam it was damn near secular, by Middle East standards. The UAE actually funneled money through for the 9/11 attacks. Someone needs to buy this guy a clue stick.

IANAL

Often on /. you will see people when talking about legal matters say IANAL (which stands for I am not a lawyer) but you don't see people say things like IANAS (I am not a scientist) my presumption in this matter is that the disclaimer exists because dispensing legal advise while not a lawyer is a crime, perhaps there should be a law against dispensing bad science as well and we could stop the scientists for Exxon (the earth isn't getting hotter crowd) and the Ignorant Design people (I'm no kin to a monkey) people from representing their bullshit as science. Note I'm not saying that they shouldn't be allowed to freely speak their ideas about things, but representing those ideas as science is wrong.

Different Take

Malcolm Gladwell the author of "Blink" and "The Tipping Point" has an interesting post on about the book "Freakonomics" I have yet to read "Freakonomics" but I may just pick it, my hesitancy to read it is because it sounded a lot like the trickle down (a.k.a. voodoo economics) of the Reagan era, which simply don't work and aren't worth wasting time on.

PS Reagan is dead, punk isn't.

DC Dan Link of the Month

Abstinence Only

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Rigorously rub your face, body and genitalia against those of your faith partner until orgasm. (Also known as 'faith-fucking')

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I Pronounce You Man and Wife, Wife, Wife

'Big Love's' big subject: polygamy
I haven't received my American Family Ass "Action Alert" yet to call HBO about this. I wonder if it because the American Family Ass approves? I mean it is about a man of faith, who is fighting Wal-Mart, who believes in "traditional" marriage so much that he has three women wives. I guess the American Family Ass must like the show.

What's Good for the Goose is Good for the Gander.

Meal ban added to Senate lobbying bill
I have in the past worked on government contracts and having worked in the private sector for a while I was surprised to learned that as a consultant you were NOT allowed to you buy your government clients dinner or lunch. In fact often times if you had a meeting at your office and you catered in food, your government clients were expected to pay you back for the food, this was far from standard practice in the private sector. This is to make it clear that the government decisions weren't influenced by you bribing them with nice meals to influence their purchasing decisions. I had assumed that the same rules would apply to our representatives as last I checked they work for the government and their law making abilities should not be influenced by fancy dinners, but instead by what is the will of their constituency and in accordance with the Constitution. The following quote is very telling about the disconnect that some in Senate feel from the rest of the civil service people.

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Sen. Trent Lott, R-Mississippi, chairman of the Rules Committee and one of the authors of the base bill along with Dodd, went along with the amendment but warned it could cause unintended problems every time a lawmaker or staff attended a reception where food was available.

"It's totally ludicrous that we are doing this," he said. "I'll be eating with my wife and so will a lot more senators after we pass this one."

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Senator Lott, misses the point that this is what is expected of all other government employees. Why should he expect different treatment?
Also as member of the "Family Values Party" should be excited and happy to spend more time with his wife and be happy to dine with her more often.

On The Issue of Abortion

South Dakota has decided to prove that it is really Southern and not like the rest of the usually progressive Upper Midwest, by rolling back progress via banning abortion and as an added bonus make the rest of the free world look at the US and think, shit not only do they not get science (evolution and global warming) they are creating a theocracy. What's the next act do they stop using indoor plumbing?

I offer to you the following two links which sum up some pretty interesting ideas on the whole South Dakota embarrassment.

First from the Rude Pundit The Solution For South Dakota: More Fucking
and second from Warren Ellis How Many Things Do You See Wrong With This Statement?

Like Coca Cola, enjoy.

Government Accountability Office

Government Accountability Office
Originally uploaded by dcdan.

Someone needs to get on this group about doing their job and starting holding people accountable. I'm talking about holding accountable the executive office for a lot of things. Some of which includes spying on Americans without a warrant, starting a fucked up war and not even being close to what was expected for hurricane Katrina.
They may also want to take a trip of over to South Dakota and hold them accountable for pushing their state back into the middle ages.

Off to the Leper Colony

If you are sick don't come into the office, you have sick days I'm sure that in addition to making gross snot noises all day you also run the risk of getting everyone else sick. The appropriate punishment for this should be working with people with communicable diseases for a week.

PSP Games

I picked up Mega Man X Maverick Hunter and Lumines last weekend and I have to say they are both pretty enjoyable games. Mega Man X is everything you remember from the NES days, expect a sore wrist from constantly jumping and hitting fire. Lumines is a puzzle type game that at first glance you'd think is similar to Tetris, but really is a very different game and if you are in a Tetris frame of mind you won't play well. Based on the background music, the graphics and the general game play I'm pretty sure this game was designed by someone who was really stoned (and that's a good thing)

Lies

When the last president lied about a blow job people wanted to impeach him. The current president lies about much bigger things like the knowledge that a whole city would disappear and no one seems to care. What will it take?