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

The Annual Christmas Haiku

Hello my faithful Rizznites - I hope your year has been at least as good as this one has turned out being for me. It was off to a rocky start... the middle wasn't that great, but it seems to be ending with a bang! I hope you all experience nothing but the best with your family, friends, and loved ones this year.

Long time, no see.

Howdy, folks. Been a minute since I've posted, and I've got some good reasons for that. As most of you know, I'm in East Texas still, and I've got a lot of buns in the oven, so to speak. Unfortunately, I've signed a crapload of Non-Disclosure Agreements recently (which really stink when you're a blabbermouth journalist type like myself), but are probably for the best. I'll try to outline a bit of them right here and on to the interesting news after that.

ThinClients
I've been contracted by a company named 5 Tribe, Inc. here in Tyler to work for the next four months to create what's called a Thin Client solution. I can't go into the details of my project itself, but a Thin Client, if you're unaware, is a system that has very little processing or storage power on the workstation itself, and instead relies on a server somewhere to do the bulk of the processing. The Thin Client solution I'll be putting together will be about the size of a PSP, and about the price of an off the shelf PDA.

The beauty of this contract is that it not only does it pay me well to do something I'm really interested in, but it eventually will tie back in to a lot of the technologies that I developed back at BlipMedia and AACS.

BlipMedia and AACS
Speaking of BlipMedia and AACS (and their online program), what's going on with all that there? Well, once again, I've signed a lot of NDAs and started a lot of super-secret negotiations, so again I cannot get into a whole lot of details on this one, but I can tell you that something huge is very likely going to be coming down the pike with BlipMedia that is going to shake the podcasting world down to it's core. I am not exaggerating one bit when I say that I fully expect to be interviewed on CNN and the Wall Street Journal on this one.

The best part is, it's good for the podcasting community - trust me, you guys are going to love how this one plays out.

Yes yes, I know, I'm a big tease. I'll give you a hint - imagine how cool it would be if the Blip server ran as stable as our competitor's servers ran. I've probably said too much, but hey, I'll let the speculation abound on that one and clean up the mess later.

Other Future Ventures
Speaking of new ventures and podcasting, I just got the go ahead from my pocket book to fund a new venture that's going to be headed up by Leo, Ricky, Art, and myself. Again, I'm not going too far into the details on this one, but once again, I will drop ambiguous clues and let the speculation run rampant. Art and I were talking about the Adam Curry story a couple weeks ago and decided that we needed to snap into action and stop simply complaining about the sorry, disorganized state of podcast content, promotion, and marketing.

So the plan is, as soon as we come up with a name for the company, to take Adam Curry down by showing the world who the real kings of all online media are.

Happy Holidays
I recieved the following from a faithful Rizznite this week:

You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese, the Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is accusing the U.S. of arrogance, Germany doesn't want to go to war, and the three most powerful men in America are named 'Bush', 'Dick', and 'Colon'.

John Spencer Dies
I guess we know which ticket is winning next season on West Wing - one of my favorite persons from the show has died. John Spencer, the actor who portrays Vice Presidential candidate Leo McGarry on the West Wing passed away earlier today from a heart attack.

This is upsetting, and I know many Rizznites were fans of both the show and the character (as well as the actor, who also played prominently on the old series LA Law) - we'll miss you John.

JibJab Strikes Again
Once again, JibJab makes a poke at politics both sides can enjoy (more or less). Their latest featurette called 2-0-5 was featured on CNN Headline News today.

Go check it out.

That's all I got, so you commence napping.

/rizzn

I am blessed to be surrounded by idiots, I guess.

I haven't been posting much lately. For this I apologize. I've tried to ponder the lack of inspiration for posting, but I guess it's more or less been my need to unplug for a little bit. It also could have to do with the fact I've been sick for a couple weeks off and on. It also could have to do with that I've been extraordinarily busy going back and forth between businesses here in Tyler and Dallas.

I've also been embroiled in conflict between my partners in Florida and my friend James Smith. To me, it seems stupid, but somehow it has gotten out of control. I've been subjected to eighteen individual email exchanges of escalating viciousness over the course of the last week. It started out as "please send the phone and power adapter." It ended up being "I will make your life miserable from now to the end of time." It's a bit out of hand. I would find the whole exchange a bit ludicrous and funny if I weren't forced to sign contracts exposing myself to $100,000 liability by continuing to be friends with James.

As a footnote, I suppose it should be said publicly somewhere that this hereby ends James' involvement with the BlipMedia project. This is only the first of many major announcements forthcoming around here regarding the Blip project.

Speaking of projects, we've got a few other big announcements as far as new endeavors go. There's the DBandit (no, it's not pet tags), three devices I've been contracted to engineer, a new podcasting company, and a couple of other side projects that will bear full entries of their own. Stay tuned for that stuff, it's very exciting.

... in Adam Curry is a Jerk news
Imagine my surprise, today, having been out of pocket news-wise for a few weeks at discovering that your friend and mine Adam Curry is topping the headlines at Technorati again. The first bit of research as to why revealed he was starting something called "soundvertising". I'm not sure exactly what this is since I more or less personally boycott all things Adam, but if the cludgy name is any indicator, it very likely is him trying to re-brand the concept of audio commercials and then claim to have invented them. There is no end to the man's ego. He won't be happy until there are eternal debates from now to apocalypse whether or not he or Al Gore invented the world.

As it turns out, though, the reason he's in the headlines has more to do with Mr. Curry's duplicitous nature, rather than his alleged altruism. Rather than dig through the tons of copy-cat blog posts that Technorati seems to be becoming famous for, I went to the industry source for the buzz on podcasting, Chris McIntyre's podcastalley.com. There it is, at the top of the "Podcasting in the News" section: Adam Curry Caught Trying to Inflate His Role in Podcasting?

What? Say it ain't so! According to the first post and the subsequently linked articles, "Former MTV veejay and podcasting entrepreneur Adam Curry appears to have been caught anonymously editing the podcasting entry on Wikipedia to remove credit from other people and inflate his role in its creation. When someone edits Wikipedia without logging in to a user account, the IP address is recorded to guard against abuse. Four times this year, an IP address controlled by Curry, 82.108.78.107, has made revisions involving the early history of podcasting."

I would make some drippingly sarcastic remarks about how Adam would never do that, he has way too much integrity, and could by no means be considered to ever do anything to over-extend his image as the 'father of podcasting,' but long-time Rizznites know that he has stolen just about every idea put forth by this blog, and are also aware I sell a tshirt that proclaims loudly his jerkiness, and would therefore be suspicious of my sincerity.

For the full story, see here and here.

Dawn Yang
How is it that there is no Wikipedia entry on Dawn Yang? This is like a month total that she's been in the Technorati most talked about list. I think that qualifies her for at least an entry. Hell, if Smokehouse and I have Wikipedia entries, I think that the hot chick who supposedly did or did not get plastic surgery gets at least a mention. I'm just sayin', yo.

Aeon Flux
I know you're all waiting for my Aeon Flux review here, but Darrell had a fever last night, and we didn't get to see a premiere, and as you may have heard on Leno last night, they didn't pre-release Aeon Flux for reviewers (something Ebert and Roeper claim hasn't happenned since the release of From Justin to Kelly.

The reviewers, who are all miffed they got no advance screening, taglined the film "some thought it might be "Aeon Sux," but it's more like "Aeon Lacklux." Clever, but my guess is much like those of us who saw Aeon Flux in it's original chopped up MTV format, most people just don't get it. To be honest, Charlize Theron dressed all hot for two hours in a theatre is worth the price of admission, whether or not they screw up the original spirit of AF or not.

Texas vs. Colorado
True blowout - you don't see this often. This is a qualifying game for who goes to the Rose Bowl this year. Right now there's 1:27 left in the third quarter, and the Longhorns are winning 70-3.

All I can say is, "Wow." My dad told me the score from the other room, and I had to turn it on to see what kind of game was being played. You just don't see that in football very often.

Stuff
Yeah, I've got a lot of little bits about nothing today. Get over it. That's all I got today. I'll start posting more regular. I'll start eating digi-fiber or something.

/rizzn