First Fun Post

Eastern Motors
Originally uploaded by dcdan.

Hummer humping!

September Will Be

September will be happy fun, tech nerd posting month wherein I won't air my grievances in my blog and will instead post happy fun puppy stuff.

Is This What

Jesus would do?

UPDATE:
"Fucking Jews... The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world."

Ignorance is Strength

Ars has a write up of the law that I bitched about the other day and while reading I was reminded of something that I've touched on the past but never explicitly stated. The Republican Party and their religious right bed fellows are afraid of people gaining knowledge. This law is one of many policies that stop people from learning, communicating and sharing information, which is tactic that has been used by a lot repressive regimes, China comes to mind. Just remember learning, sharing and communicating shouldn't be something that the government tries to retard and restrict, if anything they should foster these ideas. As Orwell said in "Nineteen Eighty-Four" Ignorance is Strength

Wal-Mart Welfare

I don't shop at Wal-Mart, not because of the usual it is killing the small businesses reasons that most give, that is part of the harsh mistress of capitalism, but because the few times I've ventured into their stores I've found that they are dirty in complete disarray, there are long lines, oh and they basically only sell crap. But one of the main reason that people are opposed to Wal-Marts opening in their communities is that basically Wal-Mart subsidizes many of the costs by making the tax payers pick up the tab for costs that should be part of their employee benefit packages, on the less than livable wage one gets at Wal-Mart, one if usually forced to get food stamps and us medicaid. The following quote from Smithsonian Magazine sums up Wal-Mart's attitude toward making the government help them keep their profits up by robbing tax payers.

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Wal-Mart’s (VP of private brands and product development Matt) Kistler says the company isn’t about to take back used PLA for composting. “We’re not in the business of collecting garbage,” he says. “How do we get states and municipalities to set up composting systems? That is the million-dollar question. It’s not our role to tell government what to do. ”

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John Stossel

John Stossel is a great example to show that when ignorance meets eloquence that the hoi polloi can be easily misled by the willful neglect of pertinent facts knowing that the masses will not follow up because the talking head on said it, it must be true.

Idiots Rule

Lot's Seduction (by his daughters)
Originally uploaded by dcdan.

Laws like this which are written by people who think the Internets are a series of tubes and not a dump truck show what happens when we let these people make laws.
As I sit looking at a painting of a Bible story, I'm going to pray to fucking god, that this law is first used on a Bible site, because

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(2) MATTER THAT IS HARMFUL TO CHILDREN- It is unlawful for any person knowing to embed words, symbols, or digital images into the source code of a website with the intent to deceive a minor into viewing material that is harmful to minors.

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plus

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(b) DEFINITIONS- In this section:
(1) MATERIAL HARMFUL TO MINORS- The term `material that is harmful to minors' means a communication consisting of nudity, sex, or excretion that, taken as a whole and with reference to its content--
(A) predominantly appeals to a prurient interest of a minor;
(B) is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable material for minors; and
(C) lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.

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equals children being lead to Bible sites a crime, which I agree with by the way because stories where fathers offer their daughters up for rape and then said daughters get their father drunk and get impregnated by him are not stories for kids, please think of the children before you lead them to the Bible

Coinstar

Coinstar
Originally uploaded by dcdan.

I took my change to a coinstar machine that give amazon certificates and they don't charge you to use the machine. My take $169

Humor

This post from WFMU's Beware of the Blog it one of the funniest videos I've seen in a while and may just be the best safe sex ad ever.

Why Trusting Big Pharma is a Bad Idea

These ads exemplify why trusting the pharmacy companies who pretty much wrote the current Medicaid drug program probably isn't the best interest of The People.

Fox "News"

Think about this when watching Fox "News":

Eastern Motors

Eastern Motors
Originally uploaded by dcdan.

Where your job is your credit. Fellow C-List DC Blogger DCKatastrophe gifted me my very own car this weekend, she got a bunch of Eastern Motors schwag after mentioning them in her blog. I wonder if this is subliminally related to a not forgotten promise that if I'm ever in the the position where I can easily piss away $30k I'm going to buy her a pink Miata with the vanity plates "SNDYVAG"
Thanks!

People I Don't Know

People I Don't Know
Originally uploaded by dcdan.

This lovely couple, who were in some photos at the Tune Inn and asked me to take one of them. If you guys see this leave me a comment, please.

Double Standard

Boing Boing has posted about Israeli Children Signing Shells and goes on about the depravity of this. While I am by no means saying Israel has clean hands in the whole issue. I think a fair thing to do would be to also link to this site which has examples of what children are being exposed to in the Middle East.

Stop the DC Mayor's "Emergency" Crime Bill

In my inbox from the ACLU:

Dear Washingtonian,

D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams is pushing an emergency crime bill that, if passed, will seriously violate your civil liberties. And be ineffective in fighting crime. This emergency bill has created an emergency civil liberties problem. You can take action right now by sending a free FAX to the D.C. Council through our website. Take action now at http://action.aclu.org/dc. Then, join us tomorrow at 1pm at the D.C. Council.

While no one has seen the Bill -- it was presented at a closed meeting today -- press reports indicate that, among other things, it will include:

Putting general surveillance cameras in neighborhoods,
Imposing a 10:00 p.m. curfew for juveniles,
Allowing law enforcement officials to have access to the records of juveniles who have been released, but who are not the current targets of a criminal investigation,
Denying bail if the person had ever been conflicted of another offense,
And other outrageous measures.
Because it is proposed as an emergency bill, we need five Council Members to defeat it. Many of these measures have been previously voted down by the Council during its general sessions. Much as the USA PATRIOT ACT was passed without debate or review, the Council has agreed to an emergency meeting scheduled for tomorrow (Wednesday July 19) at 1 p.m. in the Council Chambers at the John Wilson building, 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW.

The ACLU of the National Capital Area supports all meaningful crime-deterring measures, but we want real security, not just a sense of security -- and cameras have been proven to be useless in deterring crime.

Here's what you can do, right now (tonight and tomorrow)

1. Send a FAX to the D.C. Council at http://action.aclu.org/dc. In D.C., there are nine councilmembers who either represent you already, or want your vote already because they are seeking higher office, and the other 4 may run for higher office next year. This gives you unusual influence on your local legislature. To send a FAX to ALL the DC councilmembers.

2. Please join us and attend the emergency Council session tomorrow, Wednesday, July 19 at 1 p.m.

Council Chambers
1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington DC 20004-3089
Metro Center (13th Street Exit)

To confirm the time, go to http://www.aclu-nca.org. We will keep you updated on any last-minute scheduling changes.

We at the ACLU of the National Capital Area appreciate your support, and hope to see you tomorrow!

Sincerely,

Johnny Barnes
Executive Director, ACLU-NCA

Maybe You're Crazy? Probably?

Keep Your God Away from My Drugs is well written piece on the insanity that follows along when people have "faith"

Were I tell to you that a magical person who lived a few thousand years ago, talks to me and guides my through my life, based on a lot of rules and history that don't jive with reality and then insisted that not only this is how I should live my life but also how you should otherwise when you die you be in trouble instead of in paradise you would encourage me to seek mental help, _unless_ of course the magic person to whom I am referring is named God/Jesus/Allah, then I am a member of a religion and my insanity is sacred and should never be questioned. I think perhaps "faith" should show up on the DSM-IV-TR as a mental disorder that needs the attention of a mental health professional.
This seems to explain the symptoms of religion in detail
Delusion note the exception for faith which should be amended to remove this silly exception, which is based on tradition and not sound science. Perhaps there was an outbreak of folie à duex in the early part of the first millennium.

Web Me Too Dot Uh-Oh

Horse Pooop
Originally uploaded by dcdan.

The first is that it is JavaScript based, as anyone who has written any significant amount of JavaScript should attest to, JS is a pain in the ass for several reasons. It is a scripting language, which isn't bad in its own right, but since the interpreters are browser implementations, this means there is a lot of flexibility and by flexibility I mean that what works in one browser on one platform may (or most likely) may not work on the same browser on a different platform and as for different browsers on the same platform you will most likely run into some issues. Next it is a throw back to the client server days except this time around the client is a random hostile platform on which you run, I have a feeling that XSS attack vectors are now opened daily, this it is assisted by the fact that the JS codes has to be pushed down to the client and in a clear view (a la view source) Another thing that concerns me about AJAX that it breaks the way people currently think about how the web is used, page to page in series sequence like a book. Just when I thought we had finally found away to handle people hitting the back button as an intuitive to get back the lasting thing you were looking AJAX comes along and screws the pooch as the back button can really fuck this model up (I'm looking at you gmail). Additionally pages never finish loading as they are constantly going back and forth to the server, if you think sites that use Flash to navigate are a bad idea AJAX pushes it to the next level as you never leave the page, you don't have a solid link to save. Lastly as shown in this The Daily WTF post AJAX is bandwidth intensive. (and as we have all learned from Ted Stevens the Internet is a series of tubes and they are already saturated)
All that being said, I've launched my new Web 2.0 Startup and I'm looking for good AJAX tutorials especially if they are focused on Java/Struts.

Pot Kettle Black

Bush concerned by Russia freedoms

You've Got to Be Kidding Me

Regarding Ken Lay, from The Houston Chronicle

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The Rev. Bill Lawson, pastor of Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church, likened Lay to James Byrd, an African-American man who was dragged to death in a racially motivated murder near Jasper eight years ago.

"Ken Lay was neither black nor poor as James Byrd was," Lawson said. "But I'm angry because he was the victim of a lynching." Lawson, who also spoke at Lay's Colorado memorial service, likened the businessman to President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Jesus — all of whom, the minister said, were wrongly victimized.

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James Byrd was drug three miles behind a pickup by three racist fuckers after having been beaten. On July 7, 2004, Lay was indicted by a grand jury in Houston, Texas, for his role in Enron's collapse. Lay was charged, in a 65-page indictment, with 11 counts of securities fraud, wire fraud, and making false and misleading statements. James Byrd on the other hand was guilty at most that night of hitching hiking with the wrong group of people, his sentence was a gruesome death, mostly likely caused by his head being severed when the truck hit a ditch. Ken Lay died of a heart attack and his case will most likely be abated, this means that it will be very difficult for Lay's crimes to be punished.

So to this I "Fuck You", fellow* Rev. Lawson, your comparison of these two events is beyond reprehension.

As such I've sent the following prayer request to Rev Lawson

I would like to pray the the Rev. Lawson will find his way to reason and that he will apologize for comparing the death of James Byrd to the prosecution of Ken Lay.


*Yep I've got a certificate on the wall at home that gives me the save privileges as the misguided Lawson.

The Truth About Myths

The other day I went out to dinner in Balston, I know, I know it is outside of my comfort zone of The Hill and I was reminded of this by two things on my excursion. The first is that while I was waiting to meet a friend about five Arlington police cruisers pulled out and a bunch of police officers, shotguns drawn, were running down the escalators to the Metro. Of course people assume that it must be a terrorist attack of some kind, to which I scoffed that it was probably nothing big for there were three things were missing. 1) The Bomb Squad 2) The SWAT team and 3) The Feds. So off I went to get a drink. I'd also like to point out that I live in South East DC which is usually met by Balsonites as "dangerous" to them I now say, I've never seen a group of police officers running down the stairs to my Metro stop with their shotguns drawn.

On the way back to the repose of SE DC. I saw an advertisement at the Ballston Metro stop, with a picture of the La Gioconda aka the Mona Lisa and something to the effect of "learn the truth about the DaVinci code" and a URL to Frontline.to which is part of the McLean Bible Church. [MBC] You see among the fundamentalist Christians of the world of which MBC is part of, (see this) it held that the Bible, though clearly self-contradicting and written by people, it the word of god and thus anything that contradicts it, besides itself of course, cannot be true. Hence they are will to help you "sort out" the fact from the fiction. I, of course, find this laughable were it not so serious, since they are both made up stories inspired by creative writers. I see this as a debate similar to what one would find at the Comics Convention where as a guy dressed up as Batman would debate a guy dressed up as Superman, next to a woman in a Wonder Woman outfit debating the virtues of the different Spidermen.

It's all make believe kids, like professional wresting and no one gets hurt until people think it is real. Oh shit after reading their site these people really do think this is all REAL, that folks is scarier to me than police running down the stairs with shotguns drawn.

He Who Counts the Votes Determines the Winner

It dawned on me today why Lieberman, somewhat before, but especially now when faced with a primary that he has a strong chance of losing, has decided to sell out his party. It is pretty damn simple once you think about it. Lieberman wants the GOP to help him win by "voting irregularities" it has been the GOP way since 2000 when they PUT (not voted) Bush into office and furthered this with the 2004 election. Lieberman knows that the GOP can do this and also knows this is the only way he will get to be the candidate for the Democratic party.

Go Ned Lamont!

PS 400th Post!

Benadryl

Benadryl
Originally uploaded by dcdan.

In praise of Benadryl, which has helped with my runny nose, itchy eyes and scratchy throat.

Oh No He Didn't

Oh No He Didn't
Originally uploaded by dcdan.

Because they should match.

Silica Gel

Silica Gel
Originally uploaded by dcdan.

I ate it, because throwing it away seems wasteful.

Independence Day Weekend Post

Those who are pro-Gitmo and don't think the addict and president should have to follow those things called laws and the Constitution (which he SWORE to defend*) should read this exchange

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MATTHEWS: I only have a minute here, sir, and I appreciate your position, and I‘m being tough with you because there is another side to this argument. Let me ask you, do you believe that people who fight us as terrorists deserve Geneva Convention treatment?

SWIFT: It‘s not whether they deserve it or not. It‘s how we conduct ourselves. It has to do where if we say that our opponent can cause us not to follow the rules anymore, then we‘ve lost who we are. We‘re the good guys. We‘re the guys who follow the rule and the people we fight are the bad guys and we show that every day when we follow the rules, regardless of what they do. It‘s what sets us apart. It‘s what makes us great and in my mind, it‘s what makes us undefeatable, ultimately

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link

*Note as an aside he hasn't sworn to protect us from "evil doers" at any cost he swore to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." which he pretty treats with utter contempt and disregard.