Quotes from a news article at ABC:
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"I believe Our Lord elected our president and I believe he put him in office and it is my prayer that he will sustain him in office," said one woman at the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
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...if their agenda is not implemented quickly if their concerns are not addressed in a timely fashion God will be angry.
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People who are concerned about the influence of Christianity "have never really surrendered their life to God and submitted themselves to his commandments and if they did that they wouldn't have so much concern about some court saying again that it's wrong," he said. Asked about the millions of Americans who are not Christian, or have a different interpretation of Christianity, Kennedy said with another laugh: "I couldn't care less. It's true."
Wednesday, 24 November, 2004. 12:52:57 PM
GW Bush is from the party of fat cats that tip the balance away from regular middle-class people, towards the interests of mega-corportations. He's cut investment taxes, on the theory that capital makes wealth, not labor. In other words, GW Bush values money, not work. To pay for the tax cuts on captal that is ultimately used by large corporations (not even small businesses) GW is removing the tax deduction that corporations get for providing health insurance to employees. What is going to happen is either the corporations are going to pay taxes on health insurance, or the employees will. Employees already pay taxes on their income, so why not also require them to pay taxes on the value of the health insurance that they receive? Many people might think at first that the value of the health insurance they get is what they pay every month, which might be $100 a person per month, for example. (My insurance at IBM costs much less than that a month). Taxes wouldn't be paid on $1200 a year cost, they would be paid on the true value which is about $9,950 on average. Voters this year may have voted for values, but what they receive instead is a tax scheme that gives a break to corporations, but ultimately ends up costing regular people a lot of money.
Wednesday, 24 November, 2004. 10:51:27 AM
The Smart car is parked in front of a Mini.
Wednesday, 24 November, 2004. 10:48:00 AM
The Smart car has cleared their EPA approval, and they will be sold in the US starting next year. This might be a perfect car for me.
Tuesday, 23 November, 2004. 05:18:49 PM
The spin that I predicted a couple days ago has materialized. Iran has now suspended their production of uranium hexafluoride, which presents problems to the Bush administration, because it weakens their case for action against Iran, which I think they are preparing for. But, there's still something to be salvaged from the situation, and CNN reported that the Iranians suspended their nuclear activities in response to US pressure. That's not even close to the truth. The agreement made was with the Germans, French, and the English, and is known as the "Paris Agreement." The basis of Europe's bargain was a promise for economic incentives, while the US maintains an economic embargo against Iran. Britain's involvement in the agreement is a little embarassing to the US, because although they acted as intermediaries in discussions between Washington and Tehran for many years, negotiating a deal which makes the Iranians seem less threatening doesn't make GW Bush very happy. In his comments, GW Bush wasn't positive, and suggested that the Iranians just couldn't be trusted. Nobody has suggested that the Iranians should "just be trusted" and the IAEA is going to be performing a verification role over the next few months. Before the deal with the Europeans was completed, the Bush administration was doing its best to paint the IAEA as a bunch of incompetents. But now, overnight, their tune has completely changed, and the US is going to be supporting the IAEA's efforts to monitor the Iranian production stand-down.
Tuesday, 23 November, 2004. 04:58:25 PM
If you watch CNN, or any other TV news, you're uninformed. CNN has been running that stupid basketball fight, the Peterson trial, and they've even dug up the old OJ Simpson case in the past few days. But so far, they haven't covered the vote recount in Ohio, nor have they talked much about the absolutely incredible tax-form snooping scandal in the Senate. TV news is the absolute worst.
Tuesday, 23 November, 2004. 11:36:15 AM
The victory of GW Bush in this election can largely be attributed to Christian evangelicals reacting to their fear of two adults of the same sex having their relationship legally recognised by the government. And now, they're moving to enforce their own ideals for a traditional marriage. Next in their sights are people who get divorced, who live together without getting married, and who choose not to have children.
Monday, 22 November, 2004. 11:19:43 AM
The Liber Chronicarum was written by Hartman Schedel. It is a history of the world from the Creation to the year 1493. He divided the history of the world into 6 eras: creation to Noah, Noah to Abraham, Abraham to David, David to Israel's captivity in Babylonia, Babylonian captivity to the birth of Christ and from the birth of Christ to the end of the world. There were also two eras allowed for the age of the Antichrist, and the Last Judgement. Schedel believed he was living in the very end of history, and that the age of the Antichrist would be coming soon. There were a few blank pages at the end of the book, so that if anything interesting happened before the end of history, it could be written down.
Not long after, Columbus returned from his historic voyage, and Europe realized that an entire continent lay across the ocean.
Sunday, 21 November, 2004. 11:06:54 AM
The Bush administration is making signals that they are planning an invasion of Iran within the next couple years. They even got Colin Powell to try to scare people with Iranian nuclear weapons on Iranian missiles. When I heard that I immediately thought of his very similar statements about Iraqi WMD, which turned out to be complete fiction. Within a couple days there was a lot of backpedaling as others who are better informed said that there wasn't really any evidence of Iranian nuclear missiles at this time. So, it was a political signal to the Iranians, or perhaps an attempt to take credit for the concessions that the Iranians made to the Europeans last week.
Any dreams that the United States can leave Iraq in the near future will not come true, because the US cannot afford to leave the region without a credible counter to Iranian influence. The Iraqis cannot defend their own country, and will not any time soon. Iraqi hearts and minds are basically unwinnable, and this should be obvious to anyone even slightly informed by now. As the occupation lasts longer, more and more Iraqis hate Americans and American troops. This same situation will exist in Iran in the event of an invasion. Anger and unrest will spread.
It's reasonable to ask if America is accomplishing its goals in this police action in Iraq. Are Americans becoming more secure in the world, or are the goals of America's enemies being accomplished? The reality in Iraq cannot be denied. The spin put on the situation is always going to favor the Bush administration. The fact that the situation looks so dire even after the spin-masters have operated isn't a good sign. The power of Al Queda depends on a grass-roots rebellion which can only be inspired by intense anger felt by the man in the street. Americans are acting against their own interests by fueling this anger.
At the beginning of this war, conservative voices were indignant. America was attacked, and we had to punish those responsible. Some people suggested that America was attacked for a reason, and trying to understand those reasons might be a good thing. The conservative response was that only a "liberal" could possibly think that trying to understand pure evil was a useful thing. That's important, so I'll repeat that. Conservatives believed that trying to understand the root of the problem wasn't useful for solving the problem. It's not so incredible that with hubris like that we would find ourselves embroiled in a police action against a country that did not attack us, was a natural enemy to the people who did attack us, and posed no threat to us.
It's never too late to change the policy. No situation is ever so far deterioriated that a bad policy cannot be abandoned in favor of an enlighted and educated policy. Henry Louis Mencken said "If you want peace, work for justice." Working for justice is the only way to address the problems facing us in Iraq.
Sunday, 21 November, 2004. 10:25:05 AM
All the bathroom tile is done now. All that remains is grout, toilet installation, shower enclosure installation, and new cabinet installation. The new bathroom cabinet has been ordered and paid for, and will arrive in January. After this project, I have to build the crawlspace door in the garage, start terracing the front yard, trim some junipers, and see if I can jack my shed up. One skid is resting on blocks, and one is on the ground. I want both skids on blocks.
Thursday, 18 November, 2004. 05:37:27 PM
My sister just called to tell me she's having another baby next June.
Thursday, 18 November, 2004. 12:35:18 PM
Another voting machine problem: North Carolina will probably have to redo the statewide election, because they discovered problems with how the votes were recorded. They also have no paper trail which they could have turned to for a recount. If only they had paid me a million dollars and actually asked me for advice, I could have saved North Carolina a lot of time and money.
Wednesday, 17 November, 2004. 05:08:02 PM
Stratfor: "Terrorism is a mode of combat." This is why we expect our soldiers to uphold the laws of land warfare. One characteristic of terrorists is they don't obey the laws of war.
Wednesday, 17 November, 2004. 01:10:48 PM
"The EU has a higher proportion of small businesses than the U.S., and their success rate is higher. American capitalists have begun to pay attention to all this. In Reid's book, Ford Motor Co. chairman Bill Ford explains that the company's Volvo subsidiary is more profitable than its U.S. manufacturing operation, even though wages and benefits are significantly higher in Sweden. Government-subsidized healthcare, child care, pensions and other social supports, Ford says, more than make up for the difference." - Salon
Wednesday, 17 November, 2004. 01:09:26 PM
"European children are consistently better educated; the United States would rank ninth in the EU in reading, ninth in scientific literacy, and 13th in math. Twenty-two percent of American children grow up in poverty, which means that our country ranks 22nd out of the 23 industrialized nations, ahead of only Mexico and behind all 15 of the pre-2004 EU countries. What's more horrifying: the statistic itself or the fact that no American politician to the right of Dennis Kucinich would ever address it?" - Salon
Tuesday, 16 November, 2004. 11:15:20 PM
The X-43A scramjet test flight was successful. It reached Mach 9.8, which is the current record for any kind of aircraft.
Tuesday, 16 November, 2004. 10:55:33 PM
Kristiana took 11 steps in a row today.
Tuesday, 16 November, 2004. 02:26:38 PM
Wow, it's happened. As I have said several times before, e-voting machines are a disaster waiting to happen. And now, in Indiana, an election which the machines said was won by a Republican was contested. The recount now puts the Democrat into office in Franklin County, IN. This isn't just a little glitch, it's a total failure. The voting machine error resulted in the wrong outcome for the election.
Sunday, 14 November, 2004. 01:06:36 PM
The cost of the action in Fallujah: 31 Americans dead, and over 400 wounded.
Friday, 12 November, 2004. 11:45:39 AM
My current spam load is about 16,000 spam mails a month. Last year at this time I was getting about 2000 spam mails a month, for an 8X increase. The trend has been very consistent, so by the end of 2005 I will be getting about 128,000 spam mails a month. That's about one every 20 seconds, all the time. And, but the end of 2006, I'll be getting 1,024,000 spams a month, or 23 spams a minute.
Spam forecast
Spams/minute Spams/year
Dec 2005 3 128,000
Dec 2006 23 1,024,000
I have a DSL line to my house with a capacity of about 1 megabit. Each
spam mail is perhaps 5K in size. This is what the bandwidth usage will
look like in the future.
Bandwidth usage forecast
Available Bandwidth - 125K/second
Spams/second Bandwidth Used % Bandwidth Used
Dec 2004 .006 .030 K/s 0.02 %
Dec 2005 .05 .25 K/s 0.20 %
Dec 2006 .38 1.5 K/s 1.20 %
Unless the rate of spam growth increases, or the average size of spams
increases well beyond 5K, it looks like my DSL line will remain usable for
the next two years. After that point, the bandwidth drain from just
receiving spam e-mails will be very noticable during regular Internet
usage. At that point, I'll begin to use a blocklist to reject connections
from known spammer IP addresses before they can transmit any mail.This is the bandwith situation for two years more, given 8X spam growth:
Bandwidth usage forecast
Available Bandwidth - 125K/second
Spams/second Bandwidth Used % Bandwidth Used
Dec 2007 3 15 K/s 12 %
Dec 2008 24.3 121.5 K/s 97 %
Without any action at all, spammers will completely swamp my high speed
Internet connection by the end of 2008.
Wednesday, 10 November, 2004. 01:01:19 PM
This letter in an Allentown, PA newpaper pretty much says it all:
From The Morning Call -- November 8, 2004
Jesus speaks through the Republicans
I hope the election of George W. Bush is seen as a wake-up call to all the liberal Democrats who oppose God's will.
It is His doing that George W. Bush is still our president. Millions of born-again Christians helped win this election through our prayers and votes. Jesus speaks through the Republicans.
The Democrats will not be able to win elections until they renounce their sinful ways and stop encouraging abortions, gayness, and trying to take away our guns.
Earl Balboa
Washington Township
Wednesday, 10 November, 2004. 12:20:18 PM
There are some people who mistakenly think that spamming is a First Ammendment issue. My own thinking is that it's a Second Ammendment issue.
Tuesday, 09 November, 2004. 04:58:41 PM
The report today is that Kristiana took three steps without holding on to anything.
Saturday, 06 November, 2004. 12:30:03 AM
OK, so it's three days after the election, and though I was feeling pretty bad about it, I'm actually not too worried about it right now. There's plenty of other things that I have to work on and think about besides politics. This election swung on a few different issues, but in the end, GW Bush built his victory on values issues. People like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Ralph Reed have built up real support in Middle-America, where gay-hating, war-mongering, and country-clubbing resonate with the people. I just can't get worked up about it; I have code to write.
Thursday, 04 November, 2004. 12:58:14 PM
Laminar Research is releasing X-Plane for Linux. This is terrific news, since X-Plane is the best flight simulator ever made for the PC.
Wednesday, 03 November, 2004. 10:16:26 AM
Going to bed last night, Ohio was still questionable. This morning, the situation is that it's a pretty clear win for GW Bush, so that means that he wins the election. My election predictions based on the incumbent rule didn't come true, because of Ohio and Florida.
Wednesday, 03 November, 2004. 01:08:31 AM
My predictions from Sunday night have gone haywire, since it appears that Bush has won Florida and Ohio, making things very rough for Kerry.
Tuesday, 02 November, 2004. 05:43:39 PM
Based on the latest poll numbers, Kerry is likely to get 306 electoral points, since he's picking up Iowa, but New Mexico has become too close to decide. If he wins it, he'll get 311 points.
Tuesday, 02 November, 2004. 05:22:36 PM
Our Kerry sign has been stolen again, in the middle of election day. What a bunch of bullies these Republicans are. It doesn't matter though, because we Democrats have the White House for the next 4 years.
Tuesday, 02 November, 2004. 03:34:45 PM
Exit polls:
AZ CO LA PA OH FL MI NM MN WI IA NH
Kerry 45 48 42 60 52 51 51 50 58 52 49 57
Bush 55 51 57 40 48 48 47 48 40 43 49 41
Kerry ahead in PA, OH, FL, MI, MN, WI, NH, and NM. Just like the
predictions from two days ago suggested.
The only difference is in Iowa, which I predicted would be a Kerry
victory, but appears to be a dead heat. No problem, with these numbers,
even if Iowa goes to Bush, Kerry will have 304 electoral points.
Tuesday, 02 November, 2004. 12:58:04 PM
I skipped all the early voting and went to the polls this morning. I only had to wait about 20 minutes to vote. Of course, there were some bigmouth Bush supporters in line, and from what they said it was clear that despite all the investigations, reports, searches, and wars, they still thought that Hussein had some WMD's. As someone else wrote on a mailing list today, the Republican party has become the party of the ignorant and uninformed dupes, across the board.