Just Another Day

Had a semi-productive day. Still putting names on the list for the Alpha Test. If you're interested, mail me at mark@5tribe.com and let me know.

I for one welcome our new robot overlords...
The South Korean government has robot fever, and they're about to unleash a whole army -- literally -- of the mechanized creatures on their public. According to The Korea Times, the country will see the rollout of police and military robots within the next five years, thanks to a newly approved $33.9 million spending appropriation. Patrol bots will guard the streets at night, and even chase criminals, while horse-shaped combat bots will augment the country's fighting force. In both cases, the bots will communicate via Korea's vast mobile network.

To get things rolling, so to speak, Korea will debut a series of household bots in the private sector this October. Unlike domestic bots already released in Japan, the Korean bots will be relatively cheap, since they use the network to perform much of their computational work instead of internal hardware and software.

Yeah, but they probably won't do it right...
Google's made it pretty clear that's it's got advertising aspirations that go well beyond Adsense ads on web pages, looking to sell space in magazines and newspapers and on TV. Don't forget about radio, either, with Google saying it will buy a company that's developed a platform for selling, scheduling, delivering and tracking radio ad spots online. That sounds like Adsense for radio -- so unsurprisingly, Google will integrate it into Adsense to sell radio airtime alongside Web ads. The question remains, though, just how much better and more efficient Google can make radio advertising. The results of its first print ad trials weren't very promising as Google couldn't deliver the same benefits to advertisers that it does online. Radio may not prove much different.

Cox, BigBand Networks extend agreement
BigBand Networks has signed a five-year agreement with Cox Communications that extends Cox's use of BigBand's FastFlow BPM (Broadband Provisioning Manager) to provision Cox High Speed Internet (CHSI) and VoIP-based Cox Digital Telephone services and features. Cox currently uses BigBand's FastFlow to bring other offerings to its broadband Internet, voice and commercial data subscribers. Cox has been a BigBand customer since 2000, using the platform for CHSI, various VoIP-based Cox Digital Telephone launches, RateShaping, HDTV, digital advertising insertion, and Gigabit Ethernet transport of video.

Reminds me of my Nokia Days
Slashdot points us to some research on the negative effects of meetings. For most people, this probably sounds intuitively correct. People are always complaining about the number of meetings they attend, as most aren't particularly helpful. Many are complete wastes of time, often designed more to make it appear like something is being done or some decision is being made, when the reality is that someone is trying to avoid getting something done or making an important decision. Of course, the article doesn't break down the different types of meetings, but one rule of thumb I've heard is that the more "all hands meetings" a company has, the more likely it's in trouble. If you have an all hands meeting every day (and I once worked at a company that did -- and they even claimed it was mandatory), then you know it's time to look for an escape route.

Tidbits from PopBitch
Brad and Ange are getting married on Valentine's Day. Justin Timberlake has told his mum he's "gearing up" to ask Cameron Diaz to marry him. How thrilling.

British tourist Sharon Tendler married a dolphin last week in Eilat. She has been visiting the 35-year old for years and said, "I'm the happiest girl on earth... And I am not a pervert."

Donnie Carroll, the real-life inspiration for the character of Turtle in HBO's Entourage, Mark Wahlberg's buddy, died at Christmas, aged 38, of an asthma attack.

Best holiday season celebrity spot: Crown Prince Albert of Monaco, on the dancefloor at a villa party in Cape Town, "tongue down the throat of a blonde, sporting a pair of beige and black african pyjamas, accessorised with a pair of earplugs, dancing to r&b."

Khashoggi and Energy
While the rest of us were concerned with other matters, some of the wealthiest people on the planet were busy snapping up small, independent power companies.

The repeal of the depression-era Public Utility Company Holding Act made it all possible and allows the big utility holders to take these little money machines–into which tens of millions pay monthly payments–and turn them into massive liquidity pools to buy more utility companies or to trade energy for profit.

The man at the penultimate position of power in this dangerous development is Mayo Shattuck III, a key player on Wall Street. He has just guided an $11 billion deal to create the largest utility merger in U.S. history, having a market capitalization of $28 billion. The new company combines Constellation Energy, of which Shattuck is CEO, and Florida Power and Light, well known for its windfarm development. It will operate in several states and therefore not be subject to state regulation.

Shattuck has been involved in deals with Russian ruble trading, Microsoft, Enron, the Bronfman dynasty and a massive insider trading scandal involving international arms trader Adnan Khashoggi’s Genesis Intermedia just before 9/11.

On 9/11, Shattuck was head of the A.B. Brown unit of Deutschebank AG of Frankfurt, Germany. He took over after his good friend A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard left to serve as number three man in the C.I.A. in 1998.

Shattuck presided as huge "put" options were placed with his bank against United Air Lines stock just before the World Trade Center attacks. "Puts" are bets the price of the stock will fall.

The next day, Shattuck resigned his position, abandoning the latter half of a multi-million-dollar, three-year contract as chairman. He then became CEO of Constellation Energy Group, a rather obscure player in the field. Even more unusual, Shattuck had no background in the energy field.

CEG gained access to Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force and also helped refinance the Carlyle Group in its purchase of United Defense Technologies in 2000. The Brown bank has links to the Bush family that stretch back more than 70 years. It helped organize and manage the bank managed by George W. Bush’s grandfather, Prescott Bush. That bank was Brown Brothers Harriman. The federal government, in the World War II era, shut it down for trading with the enemy. The government said Bush and Harriman were giving financial support to Hitler’s regime in Germany.

Shattuck owns 583,964 shares of Constellation Energy, according to Yahoo Finance. Other declared holdings of Shattuck include: Capital One Financial of New York, Capital Source Inc., and Gap Inc., where he holds 14,319 shares.

Quote of the Entry:
Unclespam21: your in florida????
Unclespam21: come on over
Unclespam21: we'll have fun
RznDoUrdn: no, I'm back in Texas now.
Unclespam21: wtf
Unclespam21: your like god danm carmon sandiago
RznDoUrdn: haha
Unclespam21: exept u dont get the endorsments

Libertarians Needn't Focus on Bush

I posted this letter to both the Broward Libertarian mailing list and the Rizznite list earlier last week. I didn't preface it when I sent it to the RIC list, which apparently I should have. I was subsequently told by a couple readers that my reasons here were particularly flimsy defenses of the President. The reason they may seem flimsy, if you think my point was to defend the President, is that I wasn't. My point in the letter was to speak to the independents and the LPers on the lists and point out that it is both not in our best interests nor is it constructive to simply deconstruct the Republican and Presidential agenda.

I ask that you, my faithful Rizzn-ites, re-read the following letter in that context and help me out with it. I know that many of us Libertarians hate the President's conduct, and many of us support the President's politics. That's the mixed bag you get with Libertarians. There should be focus on solutions rather than accusations, is my position. With that in mind, re-read my letter and tell me what you think.

(original slate article found here: http://www.slate.com/id/2133908/)

Dear fellow Broward LPers,

I don’t know whether to attribute this piece of garbage reporting and editorialisation to poor MSM journalistic standards or plain ol’ fashioned bias. I’ve stopped disputing the garbage I see come from the LewRockwell site, since I think it goes without saying that it’s pretty much a HateBushFirst rag (for explanations: http://www.rizzn.com/2005/11/hate-bush-first-rant.asp and http://www.rizzn.com/2005/11/hate-bush-first-responses.asp).

But since this is the Slate, and it’s yet another article recommendation from Frank J. Gonzalez, the Democrat that thinks he has a bunch of friends in the Libertarian Party because no one says anything to contradict his mindless drivel, I’m going to speak up again. I’m just a little fed up his assumption that just because I’m in an alternative party, and don’t support President Bush that I want to buy every piece of idiotic rhetoric the liberals and the Democrats want to feed me.

And just so it’s clear where I stand on Libertarian issues and the LP, I’ve taken a position starting in a couple months where I’m campaign treasurer for an LPer running for State Legislature in Texas. I believe in the majority of the precepts of the LP, enough to heavily support one of its candidates in what promises to be a heavily involved election process. But I also strongly believe that it doesn’t behoove any of us to pursue the Hate Bush First mentality and the fallacies of logic and research demonstrated in this and many other propaganda pieces put forward by Mr. Gonzalez.

Fallacies Put Forth by Mr. Kaplan
1) The evidence that the war in Iraq is wrecking the Army is steeply mounting.
You cannot say that the war in Iraq is the root cause of the problem, or at least not definitively. We’re talking about what amounts to social issue here, and sociology isn’t as much of a science as an art. You can’t point to one thing and say, hey, yep, that’s the only reason why millions of Americans don’t sign up to the military.

What could be some reasons? Other than the most obvious one: over the last 20 years, we’ve turned ourselves into a culture of wussies that will sue over a papercut (for emotional trauma, of course). So given that signing up for an Army or any other branch of service has an inherent risk of death in a non-combat situation, when there’s an actual hot-conflict situation going on, do you think Johnny Emo-boy or Jenny Gothy-pants is going to want to sign up for the military? No!

That’s the thing, most people don’t want to join the military in the first place! That’s why recruiters have been using dirty tricks since my Dad was a kid to get people to join. People just don’t want to die. Personally, I think that’s a healthy position for most people to take. And maybe, if the MSM would cover more of the positive outcomes of the war, everyone in this country wouldn’t be so staunchly against it. I mean Lord knows I have a million issue with the way this whole thing has been conducted, and it’s especially easy for us civilians to armchair quarterback this war, but there has to be at least a couple stories of positive outcomes that the conflict has produced. Seriously! I’m not a huge fan of Fox News, but they’re the only outfit I’ve seen that has reported such stories.

With bad PR like that, who can blame the general public for not wanting to sign up to die for a hopeless cause?

2) Category IV recruits are starting to skyrocket.
This is just simple math. 4% is not ‘skyrocketing’ when compared to 2%. The additional statistical information provided (even in the mathematical explanation) is ambiguous at best, and clearly phrased with an agenda in mind.

4) Every Army officer knows that the military is going to hell in a handbasket and every Army officer wants the US out of the war in Iraq.
In the resolution to the piece, he uses the facts that he does cite to prove a conclusion unrelated to the facts at hand. The facts do not prove that the military is going to hell in a handbasket. More importantly, it nowhere cites the opinions of any military officers.

How come everyone involved here has no solutions?
This is the problem with the anti-war crowd today (as well as the anti-Bush crowd). Everyone has a million reasons to hate war and the President, but nobody has any solutions! I’m calling them all out. It’s easy to sit here and say, yes, the President lied, we’re in a war we don’t need to be in, and war sucks because people die. It’s quite another to have viable alternatives to dealing with world unrest and instability.

What would fix this problem? Well, I have an unorthodox solution that would probably be right up Mr. Kaplan’s alley, if he had put any thought at all into this piece.

If you read about Mr. Kaplan’s past, he’s a graduate of MIT (poli-sci major). Someone who attended MIT had to have been exposed to the best and brightest technological solutions of the day, and has to have some sort of working knowledge of at least what’s out there in the technological field; anything less, and I’d be severely disappointed in the declining standards of MIT admissions. Given that, doesn’t it sound like we need more automation in our battlefield strategies? Put more robots or automated vehicles out there with operators who don’t have to go behind enemy lines? Instead of taking the easy way out and punching up on the administration and the recruiting problems, be suggesting some innovative ways to utilize technology to lower the casualty rates, thereby lowering the human cost of conducting war, thereby increasing the ability of the recruiters to recruit without using their age-old patented sleazy techniques.

I’m just sayin’, that’s one solution that could have been put forth, and it took me ten seconds to come up with it. This article, like 90% of the articles that Mr. Gonzalez forwards us, are articles that are agenda-based, have no clear solutions for us to prosecute or discuss, and are ultimately useless and self-destructive. Granted, that’s the culture we find ourselves in, but shouldn’t we as Libertarians be setting ourselves aside from the political culture of sheep-mentality and rhetoric?

You tell me.

/rizzn

Quote of the Entry:
"The follies which a man regrets most, in his life, are those which he didn't commit when he had the opportunity."
- Helen Rowland

Back on the Set, and Coverin' All Bets

I'm back from my weekend trip to Florida. I have one piece of advice for all you people living in Texas wanting to travel to Florida. If you ever get the opportunity to travel on Spirit Airlines - don't. What a long and arduous journey! I missed my first plane out of town, and because I chose the fledgling airline for my ticket, and they didn't have another flight that left on Saturday to get to Fort Lauderdale. As a result, I had to fly on American Airlines, which is a nice and big airline, but cost me $200 extra dollars for a one way ticket!

Once I got there, my Leo and I had a nice lunch and catch-up session. Then I wound up waiting at the auto-repair place while they worked on changing a tire on my car for three hours!!! I can change a tire in 10 minutes. I don't know what the big hold-up was, but anyways...

Then I went home and started packing up my belongings. I'm sub-letting my apartment to a former business associate who's moving back into town, so I had to get all my personal affects out of there. I then proceeded to go home and fall fast asleep until about noon on Sunday. When I woke up, I was in a panic, because I had about four hours to finish boxing things up (and the maid service I called to clean my apartment never showed up! That was a waste of a hundred bucks!).

Fortunately, I go 99% of everything I wanted done this weekend (except I left a load of laundry at the cleaners - and my FAVORITE shirt is there. hopefully Leo will go and pick up my laundry for me).

I took a limosine back to the airport. That was interesting. I found out it was cheaper to rent a limo than to call a cab! At any rate, I arrived at the airport in style, walked up to the counter, and found out the airline had lost my ticket AGAIN!

So, I reiterate, if you ever have the chance to fly on Spirit airlines - DON'T! Bad times!

Fortunately, I had enough cash to buy ANOTHER one way ticket back home.

Cops were told gun likely fake
In Longwood, Florida, The parents of a 15-year-old boy accused of terrorizing classmates with a pistol warned authorities the weapon likely was fake before police shot him in a middle school bathroom, a family attorney said Saturday.

Christopher Penley of Winter Springs reportedly brandished the gun in a classroom and roamed the grounds before a SWAT team member shot him in a bathroom, authorities said.

Officers who went to the suburban Orlando school believed the gun was a Beretta 9mm and did not learn until after the shooting that it was a pellet gun.

The parents, Ralph and Donna Penley, were in contact with authorities during the incident and told them the weapon was likely fake, said family attorney Mark Nation. Ralph Penley went to the school to try to talk his son out of the situation. The boy was clinically brain dead Saturday and his organs were being harvested, Nation said

George Clooney is Gay
If there were any question whether or not George Clooney was gay after his loving apprortions given to his flick Brokeback Mountain, he appeared to fight back the tears as he accepted a special award - the Freedom Award.

The Freedom Award? The Freedom Award!?! The Freedom Award is special tribute "for illuminating our shared values of freedom, tolerance and democracy", at the 11th annual Critics' Choice Awards in Santa Monica. Granted, the award wasn't for the gay-fest Brokeback Mountain, but his performance in Good Night, and Good Luck. Still, though. Crying? Over the Freedom Award? Give me a break.

Sorry ladys, George is taken. With boiies!

Stern and Burn
Howard Stern played it safe on his debut for Sirius Satellite Radio. The show kicked off with secret cast member revelations (that will be matched to the appropriate Stern regular next week), the truth about his romantic trip over the holidays (no marriage for Howie), and the addition of Star Trek star George Takei as the show's announcer (at least through the end of the week).

Foul language and lewd acts were kept in check, perhaps deliberately. Stern is looking to duplicate -- and ultimately surpass -- his terrestrial radio success, so there's no point in going for the jugular overnight. Starting tame also helps Stern prove his point that his show won't be raunchy for raunchy's sake.

So there you go. Not exactly a big start for the Stern-master, but maybe he's mellowing out in his old age. One can only hope. Personally, I tired of the same dick and fart jokes about two weeks into the first time I listened to Stern.

Life ... will ... find ... a way! Bwahahaha!
I know, I normally don't do a whole bunch of environmental stories, but this one is just great, and I can't wait to see what sort of search engine results I get from posting this story. Originally found here.

Wildlife researchers have found new evidence that Arctic polar bears, already gravely threatened by the melting of their habitat because of global warming, are being poisoned by chemical compounds commonly used in Europe and North America to reduce the flammability of household furnishings like sofas, clothing and carpets.

There is also evidence that compounds similar to the PBDEs have contributed to a surprisingly high rate of hermaphroditism in polar bears. About one in 50 female bears on Svalbard has both male and female sex organs, a phenomenon scientists link directly to the effects of pollution.

Are You Actually Trying To Tell Me that a Democrat Lied?
...because I thought only Presidents who were named George W. Bush did that. Below is an excerpt I was given from a book called "Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left" by an author named David Horowitz. It should be released in paperback this month.

On July 10, the Democratic National Committee released a television ad which they titled, 'Read His Lips: President Bush Deceives the American People.' The subject of the ad – and of weeks of unrelenting Democratic attacks – was a sentence containing sixteen words from the president's State of the Union address of January 28. The words referred to an alleged attempt by the Iraqi government to purchase 'yellow cake' uranium in the African state of Niger: 'The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.' The ad included a clip of the president uttering the second half of the statement, but omitting the fact that he was citing a British intelligence report. The DNC text continued, 'But now we find out that it wasn't true. Far worse, the administration knew it wasn't true. A year earlier, that claim was already proven to be false. The CIA knew it. The State Department knew it. The White House knew it. But he t old us anyway.'

In other words, the commander in chief was a liar, and his deceptions had taken America to a war that was needless and that cost America lives.
Democrats were certainly aware of the seriousness of their attacks on the integrity of the president, not to mention the possible ramifications for national security. Presidential candidate John Edwards told a New York Times reporter, 'The most important attribute that any president has is his credibility – his credibility with the American people, with its allies and with the world. When the president's own statements are called into question, it's a very serious matter.' The fact that the accusations were being made over such a flimsy claim was thus particularly troubling. The British government continued to stand by its report, making the presidential statement literally true. Moreover, the ad's insinuations in regard to the CIA and the State Department were misleading since both had vetted and approved the president's speech. Neither of these considerations served to restrain the Democrats' attacks.

A year later, when major damage to the commander in chief's credibility had already been done, a bi-partisan Senate committee investigating intelligence failures leading up to the war exonerated him: 'We conclude also that the Statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" was well-founded.'

Geek Joke of the Day
Unless you're the sort of person who immediately recognized why the folks at Google originally sought to raise $2,718,281,828 in its IPO, you might want to just pass over this story. A reporter at News.com noticed an extremely unintentional inside joke with Apple's closing share price today. On the very day the company officially announced its first Intel-based product, Apple's stock price closed at $80.86. If you don't get it, it's time to read up on your computer history. No, there is no way at all that this was intentional. However, that doesn't make it any less amusing.

Quote of the Entry:
I've wrestled with reality for 35 years, Doctor, and I'm happy to state I finally won out over it.
- Mary Chase

She's Got Manhands, Jerry!

Project Catarl Mini-Update
I wanted to say I've recieved quite a few requests to join the Alpha test, despite the fact that the email address was completely wrong on the previous entry. This is the Correct Address. Feel free to try it again if the address buggered out on you last time.

Captain Insano Dating Life
I'm thinking very heavily about starting a little story of the week section about my dating life, as my recent history has become like some sort of protracted episode of the Seinfeld show. I've been on maybe two or three second dates in the last two years, and the reason always comes out sounding like a George/Seinfeld answer ala "She's got MANHANDS, Jerry!", but when the whole story comes out, the listener will tend to side with me. The latest little episode has really pushed me over the edge as far as wanting to spread the stories around (although when you hear it compared to some of the other ones, you may wonder why it was that one which pushed me over the edge or not).

The moral debate, of course, is that I know a lot of the girls I've dated, both past and present, still read these pages. Despite the fact I'll probably never talk to these girls again, I still feel bad about making direct references to them in ways that they'll know I'm talking about them.

But of course, on the other hand, every time I tell these stories in mixed company at a party or a gathering of friends, they absolutely kill like a session of Seinfeld standup, so I'm pretty sure they're at least entertaining stories. I'll leave the decision up to you. In the comments section below this entry, let me know what you think. Should I sacrifice half my female demographic by pissing them off one by one and telling stories about them and the tragic dates I went on? Or do I keep my mouth shut like a gentleman, and only tell the stories when I'm sure they won't find out?

Supercomputing on its way...

University of Michigan scientists have created the first quantum microchip, which could be a giant stride in the race to produce a new generation of brawny, super-fast computers.

So, on a semiconductor chip roughly the size of a postage stamp, the Michigan scientists designed and built a device known as an ion trap, which allowed them to isolate individual charged atoms and manipulate their quantum states. An ion expresses a positive or negative charge, depending on whether its parent atom has a missing or an extra electron. And ions are the preferred building blocks for a quantum system.

"The cadmium atom that has lost an electron becomes a negatively charged ion, which can then be controlled with an electrical field," said Daniel Stick, a doctoral student in the University of Michigan's physics department who participated in the work.

Will your notebook or desktop PC someday sport quantum innards? It's unlikely, at least in the immediate future. Researchers believe quantum systems will be much more efficient at rock-solid cryptography and mass database searches than running the latest version of Doom.

The Skylab-Area 51 Incident

Today on Slashdot, a reader wrote in:

"The Space Review has an interesting story written by Dwayne Day about the 1974 incident when astronauts onboard Skylab took photos of a facility that did not exist in the US called Area 51. From The Space Review: What the memo indicates is that there was a difference between the way the civilian agencies of the US government and the military agencies looked at their roles. NASA had ties to the military, but it was clearly a civilian agency. And although the reasons why NASA officials felt that the photo should be released are unknown, the most likely explanation is that NASA officials did not feel that the civilian agency should conceal any of its activities. Many of NASA's relations with other organizations and foreign governments were based on the assumption that NASA did not engage in spying and did not conceal its activities."

The article itself states:

Why the Skylab astronauts disobeyed their orders and took the photo is unknown, as are what it depicted. Because they had only handheld cameras for earth observation, the resolution of the image would have been limited. The existence of the base was not a secret, particularly to an Air Force pilot like Bill Pogue—the pilots who flew in the huge Nellis testing range in Nevada referred to Area 51 as “the box” because they were under explicit instructions to not fly into that airspace. But for whatever reason, they had taken the photo and now it had created a stir within the intelligence community

By the way, if you're interested in a higher-resolution look at Area 51, just point your Google Earth to 37 d 14' N, 115 d 49' W. Interestingly enough, while you can get a perfectly good picture of Area 51 from Google Maps, Area 51 does not show on the FAA aircraft navigation charts (e.g. the Las Vegas VFR sectional chart). Groom Lake itself is on the map, but there is no sign of any aircraft facilities. The whole point of these charts is to provide information to pilots, including the nearest place to land if they're in trouble. Suppressing Area 51 must have taken some pretty high-level string-pulling.

Comcast adds 200K VoIP subscribers in 2005
At a Citigroup investors' conference in Phoenix, Comcast announced that it added 202,000 new VoIP subscribers by end of 2005, making its total number of telephony customers (both circuit-switched and packet-switched) to 1.3 million, in line with its expectations.

Acknowledging that Comcast needs to migrate a substantial portion of its circuit-switched customers over to the Comcast Digital Voice (CDV) service, chairman and CEO Brian Roberts expects the CDV product to capture 1 million new customers in 2006. According to Doug Mitchelson, analyst at Deutsche Bank, voice will be one of the key catalysts for 2006 as Comcast redefines its addressable markets by allowing it to target its non-video subscribers with a voice/data bundle and helps drive video and data growth. To do this, however, Comcast will need to increase CDV's footprint. Sixteen million homes today can avail of Comcast's VoIP service, which still leaves 60 percent of its footprint (or roughly 20 million homes) lacking the technical capabilities to take advantage of the VoIP service.

Comcast continues to expand availability of the VoIP service in markets like San Francisco, Washington, Nashville and Little Rock, AR, and hopes to have the service available in 70 million homes over the course of its five-year plan, capturing a penetration rate as high as 20 percent.

Do What I Say, Not What I Do
Remember all those people who were insisting to us that using an open WiFi connection is a horrible crime that deserves terrible punishment? Well, perhaps they should arrest new UK MP Adam Afriyie, who reportedly had to sit on the steps of the Parliamentary building and catch the available WiFi from a neighboring cafe. Doesn't seem like he has a problem with using open WiFi. The rest of the article talks about how the folks in Parliament are simply begging for WiFi to be enabled in Parliament so they can actually get some work done. In the past, of course, Parliament has not always been particularly tech friendly. A year ago, for instance, it banned the use of Blackberries -- not necessarily because they were distracting, but because someone accidentally sent the wrong email to the wrong person.

Western Muslims' Racist Rape Spree
Someone posted the following story on the Miami Craigslist (which I still subscribe to). It's interesting, and it is confirmed by some MSM sources (for what that's worth). It's not getting a lot of play or research by the MSM, so I'm turning it loose on you, Rizznites. See what you guys can turn up as far as verification or denial of this story. Either way it falls, it's quite interesting given it's very volitile nature.

In Australia, Norway, Sweden and other Western nations, there is a distinct race-based crime in motion being ignored by the diversity police: Islamic men are raping Western women for ethnic reasons. We know this because the rapists have openly declared their sectarian motivations.

When a number of teenage Australian girls were subjected to hours of sexual degradation during a spate of gang rapes in Sydney that occurred between 1998 and 2002, the perpetrators of these assaults framed their rationale in ethnic terms. The young victims were informed that they were "sluts" and "Aussie pigs" while they were being hunted down and abused. In Australia's New South Wales Supreme Court in December 2005, a visiting Pakistani rapist testified that his victims had no right to say no, because they were not wearing a headscarf.

Earlier this year Australians were outraged when Lebanese Sheik Faiz Mohammed gave a lecture in Sydney where he informed his audience that rape victims had no one to blame but themselves. Women, he said, who wore skimpy clothing, invited men to rape them.

In Norway and Sweden, journalist Fjordman warns of a rape epidemic. Police Inspector Gunnar Larsen stated that the steady increase of rape-cases and the link to ethnicity are clear, unmistakable trends. Two out of three persecutions for rape in Oslo are immigrants with a non-Western background and 80 percent of the victims are Norwegian women.

In Sweden, according to translator for Jihad Watch, Ali Dashti, "Gang rapes, usually involving Muslim immigrant males and native Swedish girls, have become commonplace." A few weeks ago she said, "Five Kurds brutally raped a 13-year-old Swedish girl."

In France, Samira Bellil broke her silence -- after enduring years of repeated gang rapes in one of the Muslim populated public housing projects -- and wrote a book, In the hell of the tournantes, that shocked France. Describing how gang rape is rampant in the banlieues, she explained to Time that, "any neighborhood girl who smokes, uses makeup or wears attractive clothes is a whore."

/rizzn

Quote of the Entry:
"The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it."
- Benjamin Disraeli

I'm Crazy, But I Get the Job Done

Hey guys. Just an update to let you know I am alive. Here's some news about me and the world.

Project Catarl
I've been really busy lately with the new hardware project. Things are coming along nicely with it, and we should have some good pictures and video of the final stages of it being put together (assuming of course the shareholders approve public dessemination of its innards), as well as some alpha prototypes.

That's right, I said alpha prototypes. That means I'm taking applications from you, my loyal rizzn-ites, to see who wants to be first in line to get the new devices. At the moment, I'm not sure if there will be a charge to be in the Alpha program, we haven't formed all the rules, so when you RSVP for the Alpha program, make sure to include whether or not you'd be willing to pay a charge to be included in the program.

What is it exactly that you'll be testing? Well, leaving out the gritty details of the device, it's a dockable handheld that you can use either out in the wilds of wherever you go every day, or you can dock it at your workstation. It should be around 20x20 CM or a little larger than half a foot squared. It'll have all the power of a desktop system, and it'll be in the palm of your hand. You can use it for a mobile phone, you can use it for an MP3 player, you can use it for a workstation, or even a PDA. The killer part of the system is that the retail price is going to be exceptionally low, but due to mountains of NDAs I've had to sign, I can't tell you exactly how low (here's a hint -about the price of a standard PDA or MP3 player).

So who's game? Email me here.

We're Being Punked!
My good buddy Kelly said the other day:

OMFG I am so obsessed.

WHAT IF:

Kevin and Britney are PUNKING us.

As in, he releases a few more crappy singles, puts out some lame videos with Brit Brit and baby Tater Tot in it and then at the end of this year there is some big show and it's like we were PUNKED.

Does anybody know Ashton Kucher??? We should confirm.

I'm still waiting on confirmation from Ashton's people. I'll let you know.

Bad Day at the Office
I tend to not forward funny emails (mostly because I've seen them all about ten million times), but this one was particularly good and new to me, so I'm forwarding it on to you guys.

Rob is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers in Louisiana. He performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs. Below is an E-mail he sent to his sister. She then sent it to a radio station in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, who was sponsoring a worst job experience contest. Needless to say, she won.

Hi Sue,
Just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother. Last week I had a bad day at the office. I know you've been feeling down lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you realize it's not so bad after all.

Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job. As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea I wear a suit to the office - it's a wetsuit. This time of year the water is quite cool. So what we do to keep warm is this:

We have a diesel powered industrial' water heater'; This $20,000 piece of equipment sucks water out of the sea. It heats it to a delightful temperature. It then pumps it down to the diver through a hose, which is taped to the air hose.

Now this sounds like a darn good plan, and I've used it several times with no complaints. What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is take the hose and stuff it down the back of my wetsuit. This floods my whole suit with warm water. It's like working in a Jacuzzi. Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my ass started to itch.

So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within a few seconds my ass started to burn. I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was done. In agony I realized what had happened. The machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit.

Now, since I don't have any hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn't stick to it. However, the crack of my ass was not as fortunate. When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into the crack of my ass.

I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator. His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with five other divers, were all laughing hysterically. Needless to say I aborted the dive. I was instructed to make three agonizing in-water decompression stops totaling thirty-five minutes before I could reach the surface to begin my chamber dry decompression.

When I arrived at the surface, I was wearing nothing but my brass helmet. As I climbed out of the water, the medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to rub it on my ass as soon as I got in the chamber. The cream put the fire out, but I couldn't poop for two days because my ass was swollen shut. So, next time you're having a bad day at work, think about how much worse it would be if you had a jellyfish shoved up your butt.

Now repeat to yourself, "I love my job, I love my job, I love my job".

Love, Sam

Questions We'd Like to ask the MSM
As I was watching President Bush's latest news conference, I was again struck by the thought of how different the news climate and public mood would be if the mainstream media (MSM) were truly as unbiased as they pretend to be. If the MSM were indeed objective and animated by an investigative impulse and a nonpartisan, government-watchdog instinct, they might thoroughly cover and inquire into the following:

• Why Joe Wilson appears to have lied when he denied that his wife, Valerie Plame, recommended him to the CIA to investigate the claim that Saddam Hussein sought uranium yellowcake from Niger, manifestly unqualified though he was. They might also examine Wilson's bragging about debunking certain forged documents on his trip that were not even discovered until eight months later.
• Why one of its own standard bearers, the vaunted New York Times, sat on the surveillance "scandal" story until the week Congress was debating reauthorization of the Patriot Act.
• Where Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid gets off demanding an independent investigation about this NSA surveillance -- a practice that essentially began under President Clinton and about which Reid and his colleagues were privy to a dozen briefings.
• Why only a handful of Democrat senators availed themselves of their access to certain detailed reports on Iraqi WMD.
• The Democrats' conspicuous inability or unwillingness to offer a single alternative plan for Iraq, though they ceaselessly condemn President Bush's policies on it.
• How Democrat Senators can complain about the government's failure to connect the dots concerning the terrorists' 9/11 plot and at the same time take action that will virtually guaranty our inability to connect future dots.
• On what basis Sen. Harry Reid charges that the present Congress is "the most corrupt in history."
• The remarkable progress in Iraq of the training of Iraqi security forces and the rebuilding of the Iraqi infrastructure.
• The positive morale of the American troops in Iraq despite the endless distortions of the MSM and Democratic politicians.
• The robustness and resilience of the American economy under President Bush.

The MSM has been largely silent or slanted on these stories, along with many others that don't support their preferred template. Yet, in the face of this evidence, the MSM mostly deny their bias. What's scary is that many of them actually believe they aren't biased, which is as much a result of self-deception as deception of others. This is because they operate in the type of stifling bubble they believe envelops President Bush. They surround themselves only with people who share their decidedly leftist, secular worldview. They harbor a myopic arrogance that regards contrary opinion as aberrant, perverse and evil. They oppose at all costs anything that advances that worldview, including the dissemination of the truth.

Thus, their professed allegiance to the truth must yield to their jaded perception of the higher good. Their pretense toward objectivity must be subordinated to their desired political ends. This explains their concerted suppression of the undeniable historic significance of the Iraqi elections in favor of their timed release of the story on the surveillance scandal. It explains CBS's John Roberts' obliviousness to how he embarrassed himself in asking President Bush -- on the heels of this remarkable news about the burgeoning Iraqi government -- to confess his worst mistake in office.

Vonage Don't Know Nuthin'
In further proof that Vonage doesn't know how to run a business, instead of making money legitimately, Vonage has received $250 million in convertible debt funding, bringing the provider's total funding to $658 million. Bain Capital led the round. Also participating in the funding were existing investors New Enterprise Associates, Meritech Capital Partners and Vonage senior management, with a total of 16 new investors. Vonage says it plans to use the proceeds to further build its U.S. network and deploy E911 services. Citigroup, UBS, and Deutsche Bank acted as financial advisors to the deal, while Shearman & Sterling provided legal advice.

It's great an all that everyone believes in Vonage, but we're going into what, our third year of Vonage, and still no profit? VoIP has a long way to go to become profitable, but it's not because the product is bad or particularly low margin. How hard is it to do a cost/benefit analysis on your marketing plan? NOT AT ALL! Heck, I'd do one for free for Vonage, as long as they gave me a piece of the pie. I could get that company profitable in five minutes.

It's called stop buying TV ad time and advertise online, you ignorant cows marketing plan. Pay per click, or any other marketing scheme in which you actually have a decent ROI instead of these name-recognition schemes. Sure, everyone knows who Vonage is now. Is it making you any money? No.

/rizzn