Just a brief blurb about the poll, what it's asking is, do you support a war on Iraq given what we have now, not what we might find.

First, sorry for the lack of updates as of late, I have been busy and also without much to say. Plus, it's hard to get anything done when every waking moment outside of work is spent fixing a computer, beit yours or someone else's. Without SSH though, I don't know where I would be; as I recompile Gentoo remotely from work.

Second, there have been a couple of updates to the backend, with more coming in the next few days. Most of it's hidden stuff, but the main addition is that of an 'Old Polls' link beneath the poll box, which allows you to see the results of all the old polls. Most everything else I'm doing is administrative related, but I'm known to randomly add features without thought or warning *cough*fortune*cough*.

Which brings us to the happenings over the past week. Two separate club incidents left a total of 118 people dead due to human stupidity. 302 people died in an Iranian plane crash, which has been grossly under-reported in the American news, while the nightclub deaths are all over. The same can be said for the at least 260 dead in an earthquake in China. Bush and Blair continued their press going to war with Iraq. Most humorous is Blair's quote: "I do not want war."

mkomitee recently called into question the significance of the UN if it were to do nothing about Iraq. To which I must ask, what gave the UN or any of it's member nations the right to force their policy on another member for no reason whatsoever? What gave the UN the right to call for crippling economic sanctions against a member, which have resulted in the deaths of over a million Iraqi civilians? When did it become the 'right' and 'humanitarian' thing to do to cause suffering and death to an untold number of innocent people? People who support their leader only for show, people who have done no wrong to the world, are being killed by this decision of the UN. And it makes me wonder - why? Why are we involved Iraq at all? Here we stand, on the brink of war with a country that has taken no aggressive action in the past 10 years, a country that we have contributed to the ruin of, and without any provocation, we are needlessly meddling in their affairs.

The UN measure calling for disarmament in Iraq has been around since 1991, but only now, on the push of George Bush against Iraq, is anything being done. The UN has shown itself to be little more than a puppet for the interests of the US government under the guise of being a humanitarian organization.

Just as the League of Nations failed because of lack of support, so shall the UN fail because it has no strength of it's own. If the US were to defy the UN, not a thing would be done to stop it, short of wasting a lot of breath talking about it. Why is Iraq different? Because they've been labeled 'evil', associated with the 9/11 terrorists in spite of no evidence of ANY connection whatsoever, and made to look like the most likely cause of another attack. Yet North Korea, who recently restarted it's nuclear program, and has publicly stated it has missiles capable of reaching the US, is ignored. I would definitely consider North Korea to be much more of a threat that Iraq, they definitely have the will and the potential to initiate a large attack on the US, whereas Iraq lacks that, having only its animosity towards the US.

I wonder, if North Korea were to attack us, would the government even notice? Or would Bush be too busy working on his smokescreen in Iraq to even notice or care?

As I've stated before, I am not opposed to war, if it's justified. If Iraq were to attack us, I would have no problem with us fighting back. What I do have a problem with, however, is an unjustified war than can only be considered a war of aggression on our part. A war of aggression, the same thing we are ostensibly trying to prevent in Iraq. Does a definite war of aggression to stop a potential war of aggression justify itself?

Turning to a rant from last week, we see the poll favors the idea that America is too commercial. No one was sure enough to vote No, though there were a number of votes for Unsure. On a related note, I have been trying to locate a copy of 'No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies', which seems to tie in a lot with the content of said rant. jmoiron pointed me to a GNN report called Coca-Karma, which makes for a very good read if you have the time.

An oil tanker exploded near Staten Island this morning. Authorities say there is no evidence of terrorism. Take a look at the lower left corner of this screen capture from MSNBC's coverage:

Apparently they feel it necessary to remind people of the High terror alert as they show footage of what might have been, but wasn't, a terrorist attack. This comes on the heels of the unveiling of the new 'Be Ready' campaign from the Department of Homeland Security. Their oh-so-helpful website has some strange images that make little sense, and offers advice that completely contradicts common sense. As mocked on the Daily Show, if you are on fire, don't run. If confronted with a giant aerosol can, stop, think for a minute, and walk away. The TV commercials are even better, when members of the NYPD and FDNY talk about 'getting through this' (getting through what?) and Tom Ridge tells us that every family should be prepared for a terrorist attack (likened to hurricanes in Florida and earthquakes in California).

Why? One possible explanation, though it may sound like a conspiracy theory, is that the government wants to keep the public afraid, so that they're more willing to support things like the 'Patriot' 2 act. It was fear that got the first act passed, and I'm more than willing to bet that an artificial threat created by our government will create fear amidst which this bill will be introduced.

first, a start with a quote:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
-- Dwight Eisenhower, April 16, 1953

this quote, obtained from a fortune and first spread through the omlettesoft webchat, was parodied by arsjerm. ignoring that part of his latest update, we see that i've been accused of being a 'leftist liberal' and a 'rioting, slandering nincompoop'.

first, i point you to a recent posting by jmoiron, which seemingly addresses this exact point, despite having been posted 2 days prior to the libel of arsjerm. secondly, how much trust would you put into the words of a conservative religious rightist? from a member of an organization which sides with bush because he prays, i am yet to see anything from him addressing the issue at hand here, besides gross generalizations that are entirely baseless and totally incorrect.

in the interest of brevity, and on the fact that this is jerm's first offense, i shall progress no further with this at the present time.

a 'real' update will be made tonight.

Walking through Times Square station on my way to work this morning, I became more aware of something I'd always noticed, and always just pushed into the back of my mind - advertising is EVERYWHERE. Spaced less than 2 feet apart down the entire tunnel were ads. This isn't the only place like this, at one point or another both Verizon and Johnnie Walker had taken over all the ad space at the Hoboken PATH station. As in, every single ad there was for them.

It seems that everywhere we turn, we're bombarded with more advertising. We have games with product placement, increasingly longer runs of commercials on TV ('For every 30 minutes of network television, there are approximately 22 minutes of the actual show and 8 minutes of commercials.', meaning over a quarter of a show's 'usable' time (the whole half hour) is commercials), commercials before movies and on DVDs, popups & banners on the Internet, sponsored stadiums/arenas/other buildings, and even more beyond that. Each of these, I think, deserves to be elaborated on.

Product Placement in Games

The most notable example of this is The Sims Online. McDonald's is featured in the game as a prime way to satisfy a character's hunger, with the side effect of also increasing that character's Fun rating. Don't want to eat McDonald's in-game? Too bad, there's no choice. This blatant product placement (and also the completely unnecessary correspondence to an unrelated game stat) detracts from the game as a game, turning it towards being an interactive commercial.

And what exactly did this 'sell-out' accomplish? The game still sells for $50 plus the monthly fee, so the revenue from this certainly wasn't passed along to the players, instead going towards lining the pockets of some EA execs.

Longer Commercial Breaks On TV

As noted above, more than 1/4th of the average half-hour of television is commercials. This number is even worse when you're in the closing of a suspenseful Fox show, like Joe Millionaire, with a 'teaser' recap show that was only a money-grubbing action on Fox's part, or Greed, which cut to commercials 3 times before finally showing the last minute of the show.

It seems that advertisers just want to get their names into our heads by sheer repitition. It's not uncommon for the exact same ad to appear twice during the same break on the same network, and a virtual certainty that any ad you see, you will see again the next break.

It's even better since, with the exception of basic broadcast, cable & satellite channels are a subscription service. We're charged for the channels, and then also are shown ads on them. It's getting worse now, some networks (Discovery Channel comes to mind) have annoying and intrusive ads for their own programming be shown over the bottom of the screen. Annoying and irritating because these ads are animated, and distract from the show. I can't imagine it'll be long before one network sells that space for ads (or has someone already?)

Commercials Before Movies

The price for a movie ticket in NY is $10. At the AMC Theater near where I live, it's $8. So I've paid money to see a movie, and for at least 5 minutes before it starts, I'm stuck watching ads. Not the slides that they show when the lights are still on, I mean full-motion ads, shown right before the previews. And not just ones for the concession stand; I've seen ads for MovieTickets.com, AFI, Lego Mindstorms, and some game which I can't remember the name of. And for what? These ads don't bring down the price of my ticket, I actually pay more now that I did years ago before there were ads (though the ads aren't responsible for that at all).

Commercials on DVDs

This is quite similar to commercials before movies, in that commercials are shown in front of content I've already paid to see (and in the case of a DVD, paid to own a copy of). Yet some companies put unskippable commercials (see section 2) at the front of the DVD. After paying $20 for a DVD, why should someone be forced to watch commercials every time they want to view the movie? The fact that getting around this is illegal is a subject for a whole other write-up, but the fact is that it's a misuse of a technology to force ads on the public.

Popups & Banners

Anyone who uses the Web has undoubtedly encountered banner ads, and almost certainly popups. Popups are bothersome enough that some ISPs are offering popup blockers as part of their service, and some browsers have a popup blocker included and enabled by default. Banner ads were generally considered the 'right' way to do Internet advertising, at least to me, until ad companies starting doing Flash ads. I've seen Flash ads that expand to take up the whole screen, ones that have sound, and ones that hang my browser. This sort of invasive, disruptive advertising actually accomplishes the opposite purpose, I know that I would never buy or visit the site of someone whose ad crashes/disrupts any part of my computer. Conversely, when a banner or text ad is done right (Google being the #1 example of this), I do click on the ad, if only to to support that site in some small way. This differs from the other things I've mentioned so far in that many of these sites don't have any other way to obtain income, and advertising is the only thing they can do to offset some of the cost of keeping the site up. Movies and TV have no excuse, because I've already paid them, and then I have to be fed ads to make them even more money.

Sponsorship

Think back 10 years, about how many sponsored stadiums you can remember. I for one can't think of any. Nowadays though, we have 3Com Park (formerly Candlestick Park), Enron Field (now Minute Maid park, the old stadium being the Astrodome), the First Union Spectrum (formerly the Corestates Spectrum, originally just the Spectrum), and so on. So much of sports tradition in naming is being lost to corporate sponsorship. As shown by Houston's Enron Field, we see that a corporate name is hardly a permanent or dependable thing, this one having come and gone within 2 years, while the Astrodome name was around since 1965, or about 35 years, lasting the entire life of the stadium. But it's not just stadiums which suffer from this sponsorship; NASCAR has a racing series called the Winston Cup, which from it's inception has been sponsored by Winston, the cigarrete company. Recently, though, RJ Reynolds (which owns the Winston name), has made it clear it's through with sponsoring the series, possibly sooner than the 2007 date it's contract with NASCAR is through. NASCAR itself seems to be little more than a money-making venture, with all the sponsorship of the cars, and it seems that any entertainment is provides is only secondary.
This isn't just confined to sports though. On my walk from work to the PA Bus Terminal, I typically walk past the Ford Theater. Ford as in Ford Motors, evident since the Ford logo appears all over the building. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples of this just in NY alone.

Hallmark Holidays

Secretary's Day (apparently this is now Administrative Professional's Day). Boss's Day. Mother's Day. Father's Day. Just a few of the 'holidays' that are artificially created by companies like Hallmark so that they can squeeze money out of the public when they feel compelled to buy cards and gifts for people.

Even More

Beyond those, we have some other advertising ideas that are just plain stupid. There's a company that wants to buy advertising space on college students' foreheads and stories of Pepsi and Coca-Cola grafitting pristine natural formations. There were rumors of a Pepsi game show with up to a $1 billion prize; contestants would be winners of a contest (one of those bottle cap-type ones).

And it's not like the quality of advertising has gone up. It's been quite some time since I've seen a commercial I didn't think was stupid, even after putting aside my dislike for them in general. A short discussion with Joe about this brought about the logical idea that nearly all advertising is aimed at the stupid people, and since it's so prevalant, there must be a lot of stupid people. Which won't get any argument from me, but still, either I underestimate or ad agencies overestimate the number of stupid people who will be viewing their ads.

Before I'm labeled anti-capitalist, I want to go on record as saying I'm not opposed to capitalism. I also want to say I think that socialism is a good idea on paper, though it will never work in practice. The whole point that I'm trying to make here is not that companies shouldn't advertise, they exist to make money, but it's certainly not a right that they have. And when their desire to make money, and the actions they take toward this end, go too far and become nothing but ridiculous, something needs to be done, like evaluating the effectiveness of current techniques, and coming up with something new, innovative, and effective. When done properly, advertising can be an effective tool, but the overcommercialization of nearly everything in America has greatly decreased the potential impact that it can have.

And now, having spent much of the day working on this, I prepare for my trip home, which will have me on the ad-laden subway, to a bus with a ads on it's sides. The other option would be to take the PATH, with the same level of ads as the subway, but with the added 'benefit' of seeing the flashy animated commercials that are displayed between 23rd & 14th street stations along the wall of the tunnel.

Yeah, it's the update I'm sure you've all been on the edge of your seats waiting for. Or not. Anyway, yesterday's anti-war rally, I was one of an estimated half million people to take to the streets of Manhattan to protest an 'imminent' and 'inevitable' war with Iraq. Overall, it was a very well-organized and well-run event, despite generally cattle-like treatment from the NYPD, effectively forcing us to march, in spite of the fact that the organizations behind the rally didn't have a permit for that.

This in and of itself warrants more telling. After arriving at Grand Central station, myself, Jay, Krupnick, and Christian walked down 42nd street to 3rd avenue, expecting to walk to 1st ave and then uptown to 49th street, the announced 'center point' of the rally. Upon arriving at 3rd ave, we saw that there was quite a large crowd there, and that the NYPD had closed off 42nd street east of 3rd avenue. Figuring a walk uptown was going to have to happen anyway, we began the slow process of walking up from 42nd street to 66th street. When we got to 53rd street, however, an impasse was reached. the NYPD was holding people back from pressing north or east. Chants of "let us pass" and "whose streets? our streets!" could be heard from every direction, to little or no avail. We discovered that it was possible to continue, and proceeded uptown to 66th street, at which point we were able to cross over to 2nd ave. From there, we had to walk up to 72nd street to cross over to 1st ave, necessitating a walk downtown just to be in visual range of the stage. We made it as far down as about 58th street, where we could press on no further due to the immense crowd. Before long though, the end of the rally was announced, and the dispersal began. At jew's suggestion, we walked from about 60th street down to 34th, so that he could meet up with some group he's involved with. When we got there, the building was locked, and we decided to go home. Crossing 5th ave though, we looked uptown and saw a rather large group of protesters who were blocking off 5th avenue. Who these people were, why they were there, or what became of them, I do not know, but I think it's safe to assume they were also part of an anti-war protest.

Also of note were some of the signs people were carrying. "Drop Bush, not bombs." "Bomb Texas! They have oil too!" "How many lives per gallon?" "Empty warheads found in Washington" (with accompanying pictures of Bush, Rumsfeld, and others with obvious empty-headedness). These were the most memorable of the signs, though I believe the greatest was this: A picture of Uncle Sam followed by the text

I WANT YOU
To die a horrible meaningless death to sustain a lifestyle that will ultimately destroy the earth

All this took place under 'orange alert', which, it has been learned, was raised on the basis of false information. Government intelligence shown once again as the oxymoron it really is. The fact that nothing happened comes as absolutely no surprise to me; if something was going to happen, our government wouldn't know about it or be able to do anything, so they just pretend to know of attacks that are 'almost certain' to happen, but never materialize. It's almost like the boy who cried wolf; if they do this enough, people will stop taking the alert seriously (of course, there are people (like me) that never took it seriously to begin with).

In other news, NATO decided to provide Turkey with defense in case of a war, over the objections of France (who is not a member of the Defense Council); the San Francisco rally drew upwards of 200,000 people; and CNN is lying to us (a lie of omission is still a lie).

Pictures from yesterday's rally will be available shortly, thanks to the camera of arsjerm and the photographic skills of jay.

It's always amusing to see the reactions of people and organizations to the increased terror alert. The reaction at NYU was to buy plastic sheets and duct tape for the dorms. The Stevens reaction is even better:

STEVENS ALERT
Stevens Institute has been notified by the State of New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services of a change in the National Threat Level from Yellow to Orange. With this heightened alert it was felt that for a short period of time the southern entrance to the Howe Center should be closed and that all customers, faculty, staff, students and vendors should enter through the main entrance into the lobby area. Once this alert is lifted the Howe Center will be returned to the normal course of operations. I would like to thank all those individuals and groups who use the Howe Center for their understanding in making the temporary change. You may call me at extension 5340 at any time if you have any questions or comments on the above.
Thanks!
Henry P. Dobbelaar, Jr., P.E.

So, basically, the whole of Stevens campus is safe now because they closed a door to the Howe center. I can't speak for everyone, but I know I feel safer with that door closed. Because even if there were some kind of attack initiated from Stevens (there won't), if it's chemical or biological, access to the building isn't needed, and if it were a bomb, the Stevens police wouldn't know what to do. It's not like there's any more security at the one door they have still open, you could carry almost anything in there and not be questioned about it, or even looked at. Not to mention that it's a glass door, and the way up to it is blocked off with yellow Caution tape. I'm sure that anyone intent on large-scale destruction would, of course, not disregard the tape and break the door if they felt like it.

This is just another of a long string of foolish and nonsensical overreactions to a 'very specific threat' about which we don't know date, time, place, or method. This isn't just limited to Stevens, though. In DC, anti-aircraft missiles were deployed around the city, Congressmen have been given gas masks and are being told to keep $1000 at home (I fail to see how this really matters, if there is some kind of attack, money becomes much less of an issue (unless, of course, you're Starbucks)), and the security guards at the Capitol are now carrying submachine guns. What good is a submachine gun going to be? We all know from James Bond movies that if you have a submachine gun, you always miss, but with a pistol, one shot kills. Seriously, though, I can't see any circumstance whereby the security at Capitol Hill would be better off armed with submachine guns.

So we have a serious of moves with no practical purpose, that we're told are done to 'increase security', when in actuality, they do nothing more than inconvience people unnecessarily (as with what Stevens has done), or make people more afraid of the 'specific' general information our government claims to have.

Ok, the polls are closed, and even after the confessed ballot stuffing by jmoiron, the results still favor attending. Which is what I had decided to do anyway, attracting all kinds of reactions. From my dad, simply 'ok, don't get arrested', from my aunt, "no way...stay away from that....it is too scary", and concerns for my safety from nicole.

now that the dust & fud concerning the rally Saturday has subsided, we see the truth comes out, that the group behind the rally still has the necessary permit to gather (though it seems that requiring a permit to allow an assembly is a gross violation of the first amendment, since the city could not issue a permit, for any reason; and if the group gathering was arrested for that reason, that would be a gross 1st amendment violation), but rather the denial of a permit allowing the group to march from 49th & 1st past the U.N. I still don't feel it's appropriate for a restriction like this, and it's still just a gross a violation of rights, but to those not as fiery about things like this, it does serve to put some things into perspective.

In some site news, there's now a basic (and crappy) comment system, allowing you to reply to whatever it is I write here.
A discussion between myself and arsjerm was responsible for setting a new record for biggest thread on nondeus.
Scant more was completed on my Eldred v Ashcroft letter, though I completed reading the majority opinion, by the weekend I should have the whole letter ready to be mailed, following not far behind my previous letter to Sen. Corzine.

You know your country's intelligence program works well when, during questioning by Congress, the CIA director is taken completely by surprise when it's mentioned that N. Korea has nuclear weapons, or that they have missiles capable of reaching America's west coast. Complete lack of knowledge about something like this by the highest-ranking intelligence officer in the country is exactly what the government needs to reassure the people that everything is going to be ok.

In the process of braving the extreme cold that has become the winter in Hoboken to acquire a Valentine's gift + card for Nicole, I picked up a book from barnes & noble called Writing To Win, which claims to be "The Complete Guide To Writing Strategies That Will Make Your Case - And Win It", a reflection on the sharply increased interest I have in certain legal matters of late; if nothing else, it should be a halfway rewarding read.

And for a wonderful end to all this, the 'G' key on my laptop is being to suffer critical failures, not something you want from a fairly common letter when you're writing something.

From Granma International:

Frightened by the growing organization of resistance movements, from Tuesday, February 11 onwards the New York Federal District Court has banned all public demonstrations against the U.S.' announced war on Iraq.

Our first amendment tells us that "[Congress shall make no law ... prohibiting ... or abridiging] the right of the people peaceably to assemble". While this says nothing of our court system, I think we can all agree that freedom of assembly was specifically mentioned as a right that could not be taken away. Yet here we have a clear case of a judge doing exactly that, coincidentally involving a protest to Dubya's war. I'm not going to even claim there's any connection, the fact that this is happening is bad enough that it should cause everyone to take a long look at exactly what what we're allowing our government to get away with.

The first European settlers in America came because it was a place they could be free from the laws & discriminations of their homelands. When the Revolutionary War was fought, it was for freedom. The Bill of Rights is a testament to the fact that those who wrote the Consititution wanted to preserve our rights and freedoms, and specifically named some of these, and those which were not named, and not specifically given to the government in writing in the Constitution, were given to the people.

So when did the American people stop caring about the rights and freedoms that our nation's founders fought and died to obtain and preserve? When did we let the government start walking all over our natural rights? And why do we keep letting this happen?

On a slightly more positive note, though, House and Senate negotiators agreed on a Senate amendment to freeze programs like TIA, saying it won't get any funding until the program and it's impact on Americans can be thoroughly examined by a Congressional oversight board. At least there's some good news to come out of all this.

mondays suck. after a weekend, having to wake up early to go to work ... and then not having a single task to do all day. kept myself busy by adding a poll to the site, i have no idea why, i should have added something useful like comments, but they'll get done eventually.

one thing i got done at work, made a list of what has my name spelled right ('philip') and what has it wrong ('phillip')...cubicle nameplate == wrong, email address == wrong, paychecks == right, lotus notes name == right (now how the hell is this right and my email wrong?), etc. etc. i still haven't been able to figure out how they managed to do this, it's truly something that can only be accomplished with several levels of beauracracy so there's so much paper, errors are bound to appear simply by random chance.

other things done on the day include joining the eff's action network (at some point, when i have more money, i will finally make a donation), wrote a short letter to senator corzine for co-sponsoring the 'data mining moratorium act of 2003', nearly finished off the silmarillion, and read a little more of the eldred v ashcroft decision, but am no closer to finishing my letter about that yet.

i'm a bit surprised by the surge of activism i've been feeling lately, i can't say it's anything i ever expected to see from myself, but i think i've been pushed to it from the way that this country is going (for those who are blind and/or ignorant: hell in a handbasket), and to at least feel like i might be making a difference is somewhat rewarding.

as evidenced by today's house meeting, i'm not the only one, jew rallied support for an anti-war march in nyc this weekend, and mike komitee brought up the patriot 2 to the whole house. nice to see there are those who also feel motivated to understand the issues and work to change them. how long now until we're all labeled 'terrorists' for not simply allowing ourselves to become a part of the collective ignorance that is much of america these days?

planned for tonight - hunt down a highlighter, finish off the majority opinion in e v. a, and get some sleep, or maybe echew sleep for justice steven's dissent and some more writing. which reminds me, i have figured out a purpose for the crappy laptops we were given - running emacs, so that i may compose letters from atop my bed.

and with that, i shall take my leave, in the hopes that i will accomplish something of note tonight.

Quoted off a /. post:

That splashing sound you hear is immigrants swimming BACK to where they came from

What does that have to do with? The leak of the text of a proposed 'PATRIOT 2' act. For those unfamiliar with what the original act is, it's quite possibly the single largest finger given to the Constitutional rights in this country. Hastily thrown together in the wake of 9/11, the PATRIOT act expanded the powers of police and federal agents to conduct surveillance/wiretap/etc. without needing a court order to do this.

The lack of a court order means that 'probable cause' is no longer need to initiate these activities against an individual/group/etc., requiring in it's place the lesser standard of 'reasonable suspicion'. The end result - if someone, somewhere decided they don't like you, you can become a terrorist and be subject to a complete and total invasion of your privacy.

Perhaps the biggest example of the full effect of this law is the case of jose padilla, accused of plotting to make a dirty bomb. Arrested in Chicago, he was promptly labeled an 'enemy combatant' and locked up without being able to contact an attorney. Despite the fact that he had absolutely no means of making a bomb in his possession, he was still put into jail. When the government realized they had no evidence against him, they transferred him to military jail where he is still being held. Last month, a judge determined he could contact his lawyers; within a few days, the government was asking the judge to reconsider.

But enough about the original act. The issue at hand here is the potential for a second act with only makes these things worse. Some of the alarming things present here:

• the use of encryption during the commission of a crime would be a felony
• possible expatriation for joined a suspected 'terrorist organization'
• engaging in intelligence-gathering for a foreign power, even if this intelligence-gathering is not a federal crime, is grounds for classification of that person as an 'agent of a foreign power'
• allowing suspected terrorists to be detained without bail prior to a hearing

These are provisions that run completely contrary to America being a 'land of the free'. It seems that what the current administration is trying to do is make America such a locked-down police-state that no one will want to attack us.

EDIT: Forgot to link to the draft of the new act, check it out here.

EDIT2: Found an HTML page with the full text here.

ok, so I'm not god, but i think that living with someone close to it is enough to justify the title.

anyway, on to an explanation of what this is and why it's here. i'd been meaning to do something like this, but with life with mr. moiron and arsjerm, i finally got around to doing it. and so, without futhur ado, i present to you version 0.0 of chaotic. why chaotic? why the hell not, and i couldn't come up with anything better, and if i should find a better name, changing it here is trivial.

content will be added whenever i feel like it, figure on every couple of days, with periods of both increased and decreased activity. and since this is probably the only chance i have to provide some tech stuff about the site, i'm going to take full advantage. currently, the back-end of the site is perl & mysql powered. this script doesn't do a whole lot, it basically grabs the stuff from the db and makes it look somewhat nicer. eventually i'll make my own life easier and add an admin part, which will have a larger textarea than phpmyadmin does.

as for other stuff to see here, basically for now, there is nothing, but i'm working to add more useless stuff to the internet, i feel it's my duty. an about me section, pictures perhaps, and assorted files should be available as my laziness lessens (typically due to an increase in boredom of work). i'm working on adding some kind of comment system here, so you can bitch at me after i post something, if you should so desire. i'll probably come up with a whole long list of deluded ideas, and then never get around to implementing any of them in more than a half-assed way, but hey, it's the thought that counts, ain't it?