Monthly Archives: February 2006


Incompatible

According to Websters:

sedition
One entry found for sedition.
Main Entry: se·di·tion
Pronunciation: si-‘di-sh&n
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin sedition-, seditio, literally, separation, from se- apart + ition-, itio act of going, from ire to go — more at SECEDE, ISSUE
: incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority

The first amendment to the US Constitution:

Amendment I – Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression. Ratified 12/15/1791. Note

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances

The concept of sedition is completely incompatible with the First Amendment to the US Constitution. If someone cannot complain out loud about the policies of the government, and advocate changing those policies than the constitution has no meaning whatsoever. The true threat to American freedom comes not terrorists, but from those who want to vacate the constitution. Indeed acts of terror are a threat to life and limb. However, if we refuse to sacrifice our freedom, we can still combat criminal acts of violence which is what terrorism amounts to. If we allow corrupt politicians to vacate the constitution in the name of security and co-opt specific religious views in the name of benefiting their rich cronies, it is not the terrorists who have won, it is the powerful rich elites of this country who will end up enslaving us.

Words are indeed powerful, but words in and of themselves do not cause a drop of blood to be spilled. Only someone who acts upon the words is responsible. A person cannot control the events around them, they can only control their response. If a person acts in a foolish or violent manner based on words alone, that person needs to be held accountable for their acts. Banning the words only leads to that inexorable slide into tyranny. I don’t like hate speech but I will always be the first person to defend someone’s right to say stupid shit. Any politician who says that law of the land, does not apply to them, should be held accountable in an appropriate manner when they violate that law and the rights of Americans. A nurse who writes a letter to a newspaper has done nothing wrong by that act and is only exercising her constitutional rights. The only acts of treason that I have seen are being directed from Washington.


Tired of all the winners?

Actually I don’t really care much about any of it. I haven’t really watched any sports on TV in years. I actually don’t watch much TV at all. However, when I did last see stuff like the Olympics I was so nauseated by all the fawning puff piece background segments on the American stars that I turned it off and never looked back. This morning however I spotted a cool post on scripting news about all the losers at the Olympics. The blog is called DFL, and if you can’t figure out the meaning of the acronym from the content, you probably shouldn’t know it anyway. The writer of the blog started this in 2004 during the Athens summer games. Now he has revived it for this years winter games in Turin. He writes a post about the last place finisher in every single event. So far as I post this South Korea is leading with 2 last place finishes in the first 4 events. Here’s to all the losers of the world! They worked hard to get to the Olympics too and they deserve some recognition. Remember the Eddie the Eagle from the 1988 games in Calgary? As far as I’m concerned Eddie and the Jamacian bobsled team were the stars of the Calgary Games.Eddie the Eagle I think it really sucks when stuck up people like the IOC take all the fun out of life by essentially banning the likes of Eddie. We need more people like him, not less. Long live Eddie the Eagle!


According to Webster’s dictionary

Tyrant:

Main Entry: ty·rant
Pronunciation: ‘tI-r&nt
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English tirant, from Old French tyran, tyrant, from Latin tyrannus, from Greek tyrannos
1 a : an absolute ruler unrestrained by law or constitution b : a usurper of sovereignty

Sound like anybody we know?


What a Dumbass 2

I just spotted this on Om Malik’s blog. So Shrub is putting forth a budget plan for the coming fiscal year that includes $2,770,000,000.00 (that’s almost 2.8 trillion) in spending. That is almost $400,000,000.00 more than he proposes to take in in revenues. He has come up with a brilliant way of trying to make up some of that deficit. He wants to tax unlicensed spectrum. For those who don’t know most radio spectrum is licensed so that you have to have a license from the fcc to broadcast on those frequencies. Radio and TV stations and cellular phone companies all have licenses to broadcast on the frequencies they use. The cellular companies have to pay for their frequencies. There are certain frequency bands that are set aside as unlicensed spectrum for use by lower power devices. The most common of these are 900 MHz and 2.4 and 5.8 GHz. These frequencies are used by devices like cordless phones, garage door openers, microwave ovens and in recent years wireless networking gear. Devices that operate at these frequencies are not required to be licensed by the fcc and users don’t have to pay any fees to use them other than buying the gear in the first place. But now shrub wants to tax unlicensed spectrum. How that would be implemented is not clear, but it just seems like a really bad idea. What are they going to do, tack extra fees on wifi gear and cordless phones? or are they going to cruise around sniffing for unlicensed frequencies and then knocking on doors with invoices for taxes?


Quote of the day 2

Charlie Rangel Democratic congressman from New York was interviewed on New York public tv and had this to say about shrub:

“Well,” Rangel said. “I really think that he shatters the myth of white supremacy once and for all; it shows that, in this great country, anybody can become president.”


WHO HASN’T DREAMED ABOUT PERFECT HEAD?

P.W. Fenton, the wonderful guy behind the digital flotsam podcast has a new music podcast out that is definitely worth a listen. P-Dub plays a bunch of podsafe music of various styles. I don’t even know how to describe it, you just need to listen to it. You can find it at perfecthead.com I love the podcasts that P-Dub creates. He is a musician, and I think a former radio guy, and always a pleasure to listen to.


Turn Down the volume! 4

In the past couple of weeks there have been several stories about ipods causing hearing loss. The problem is that excess sound volumes can damage your ears. Well Duh!! Of course excessive volume can make you deaf. This is not a new phenomenon. This has been known for decades. That’s why for example when you walk into noisy factories you will find boxes of ear plugs everywhere. Your hearing can damaged by turning up the volume in a car with dozens of speakers and a trunk full of amplifiers. It can also happen when you listen to a 25 year old walkman at too high a volume.

But there is a really simple solution to all of this. Every one of these personal audio devices, from the ipod to the creative zen has a remarkable mechanism to prevent hearing loss. It is commonly known as the volume control. All you need to do is turn it down a bit, then you are good to go. Of course this “problem” primarily affects owners of ipods because upwards of 80% of all digital audio players sold to date happen to be ipods. Microsoft and there hardware partners have been utter commercial failures in this market.

Now however a lawyer has filed a lawsuit against Apple claiming that the ipod is defective because it can damage hearing. The suit doesn’t target any other manufacturers. All the other manufacturers with any market share at all happen to support Microsoft’s audio file format. They are just as capable of causing hearing loss. So why aren’t they being sued? Could it have anything to do with the fact that the lawyer in the case is on retainer to Microsoft? From Ipoding.com comes this:

What the Washington Post fails to mention in their story is that the attorney, Steve W. Berman, is on retainer at Microsoft:

More recently, Microsoft recognized Mr. Berman’s experience and expertise when the company retained him to be part of the core national team representing the company in antitrust class actions arising from Judge Jackson’s Findings of Fact in the Department of Justice antitrust case against the company.

Naw! No lawyer would ever do anything that slimy would they?


Now that’s inspiring! 2

I just spotted this on a sign posted outside a cubicle at my office

Due to the current financial constraints, the light at the end of the tunnel will be turned off until further notice.

That about sums up the situation around here.