Miscellaneous Thoughts Part 9

• If Satan had tempted politicians with ultimate power, not only would they take the offer but ask how soon could they get it.
• I think Jesus and Buddha would have been good friends.
• Instead of having Congress' wages increasing automatically why not have their wages freeze and have the troops' salary increase automatically.
• If socialists want a universal health care system why don't they create a fund themselves for people they think deserve health insurance. They can put their own money in it and run it as they see fit. I don't see any socialist doing this.
• I would think AARP would be in favor of global warming. After all the elderly have a low tolerance of cold weather. Why isn't AARP supporting global warming?
• I wonder if there is a self-help group for people addicted to self-help groups?
• To say the earth is warming, is the equivalent of saying you have a fever to a doctor. If that is all you say, he will ask you what other symptoms do you have, what did you do before the fever, etc. Global warming could be caused by many factors.
• If you want to tick off a liberal/socialist/communist take away their power.
• I was disappointed that the Rosetta Stone software did not have the language of Aramaic in it.
• Computer tip: Don't make a shortcut point to another shortcut; make it point to the actual program, file, or folder. If the intermeditory shortcut gets corrupted or accidentally deleted then the first shortcut points to nothing.

How Earmarks Work

Earmarks: A four-step program for cash-hungry politicians:

1. A business or local government agency hires a lobbyist and pays him/her a fee. According to Open Secrets.org the top five donors are:

   American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees	$38,673,449
   AT&T Inc	$38,076,096
   National Association of Realtors	$30,873,798
   National Education Association	$27,267,750
   American Association for Justice	$27,117,606

2. The lobbyist donates money to a congressman's campaign war chest. Nine Republican Senators (3 are out of office now) & 8 Democratic Senators each received at least $500,000 from lobbyists. In the House: 11 Republicans and 6 Democrats a piece received at least $500,000 from lobbyists
3. The congressman earmarks cash the business or gov't agency wants.
4. The business gives the congressman campaign contributions.
5. Go back to Step 3.

Source: Outrage (2007) by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann.

All parties involved in the transactions above are happy except the taxpayer. You cannot really outlaw lobbyists because that would violate the first amendment. Although lobbyists from other countries should probably be outlawed because they are really looking out for their countries best interest--not necessarily America's best interest. To limit earmarks you have to have line item veto for the president or just ban riders. The first option would be the easiest. I don't see Congress banning riders in the near future though. Also, the authors suggest letting the president impound appropriations. Another good idea. By the way the American Association for Justice used to be called the Association of Trial Lawyers of America. Why the name change guys?

One final note, The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste has a earmark reform pledge that it wants the Congress to sign.

Liberal Football

This is my idea of football if liberals ran the game:

1. There would be no score keeping because we don't want the loser I mean the losing team to feel bad.
2. If the score was kept track of then the most winning team would be handicapped by not being allowed field goals or limiting the number of timeouts. The non-handicapped team could be given a lot of timeouts.
3. You cannot name your team after a weapon or any thing that seems violent. You are better off sticking with name like roses, daffodils, etc.
4. There would be a quota for non-athletic players. For example receivers who aren't very good at catching the football or quarterbacks who are not very good throwing the football.
5. Coaches cannot yell at their players. It might hurt their feelings.
6. If the game is close by 1-4 points the losing team can ask to see all the replays to make sure the other team was not cheating or to make sure the referees were doing there job.
7. If the game ends in a tie, this a good thing because everyone wins. No need to go into overtime. Overtime causes too much stress.
8. No praying by the coaching staff or football players before the start of the game as this violates the separation of church and football and will make the ACLU angry.
9. If a football player makes a touchdown and then dances in the end zone to celebrate, he could be kicked out of the rest of the game. Dancing can hurt the feelings of the opponent's fans or the opponent's feelings themselves.
10. Fans can not boo anyone.
11. Only vegetarian food and/or low-fat foods are served at the game. We want to keep the fans healthy.
12. You cannot be proud of your team or feel it is exceptional. After all your team is no better than any other team. No waving of team flags will be allowed or anything else that might make it seem you are proud of your team.
13. If a someone enters a stadium without buying a ticket he is allowed to stay and can be escorted to a good seat. This is called the "open stadium" policy. Anyone can enter any football stadium during a game without a ticket.
14. Tackles would be disallowed because someone might get seriously injured. Instead touch or flag football would replace tackle football.
15. If the points spread is 20 or more then the team ahead has to share at least 10 points with the other team so the team behind has a fair chance to win. This is called "points justice" or "score justice."

That's all I can think of for now.

Tasermania

Here are my thoughts on tasers. I should say in full disclosure I do not own a taser. Note: This is only for entertainment purposes only except maybe the first thought.

• I believe interrogators should be able to tase terrorist suspects.
• American people should have the right to own tasers. The Constitution should be amended to allow this right.
• Not only parents should be able to spank naughty children but should be able to tase them too--although the taser's power should be lowered.
• Taser football anyone? Instead of tackling players the defense would tase the offense.

Trivia: Taser is an acronym for Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle.

Evolution is Deterministic

ScienceDaily (2007-11-19) -- Biologists have concluded that developmental evolution is deterministic and orderly, rather than random, based on a study of different species of roundworms. The researchers note that even where we might expect evolution to be random, it is not. [...]

Well, if roundworm evolution is deterministic then how about other animal evolution? I mean natural selection is natural selection.This finding in a way gives a boost to the Intelligent Design theory.

I can understand why evolutionary biologists would say that evolution is random. Randomness is the easiest assumption to make. Randomness does not need any explanation. A mutation just happened. It could be caused by when DNA failed to copy correctly or it could be caused by external factors. Take your pick: Chemicals, cosmic rays, UV rays, etc. We (the scientists) just don't know. But to say it is deterministic, you are hinting at a designer or something guiding the evolution. Now you are venturing into philosophy which is not part of the scientific methodology.

Four Rules for Republicans

These four rules comes from Bernard Goldberg's 2007 book Crazies to the Left of Me, Wimps to the Right. My comments are in brackets.
One, you can never outspend Democrats. Never. It is mathematically impossible. Like trying to reach infinity, it cannot be done. [True. I think one of the reasons the Dems got back into Congress is because the voters thought well, if you are going to have a spending Congressmen you might as well have the ones who do it professionally. The bad thing was the voters forgot about the Dems loving to tax as much as they love to spend. Oops!]
Two, you can never out-compassion Democrats. They own the issue. [The Dems like to think they own the issue and the main stream media try to convince the viewers and readers that this is the case. The media likes to show the Republicans (especially the Conservatives) as oppressors. Conservatives are environmental polluters, won't feed the poor, and won't give health insurance to children. I could go on, but I won't. You get the point. But is it compassionate to try to make people dependent on the government? I never really did like the term "compassionate conservative." If you don't call yourself a compassionate conservative does that mean you are not one? (Not that I am saying President Bush isn't compassionate, just why do it at all.) If you are one then why do you need to call yourself that? Just be compassionate. It seems kind of alienating to me to label yourself that.]
Three, no matter how much money Republicans throw at the voters in an attempt to make over their image, it will never be enough. The liberal media simply won't let it happen. [The Democrats in Congress and the liberal media are basically share the same ideology, so the negatives of the Dems will not be reported (unless the negative is really bad and has to be reported or the media is fearful of losing their credibility) or the negatives will be put in a positive light. Reverse this for the Republicans.]
Finally, Republicans who try to repeal rules #1, 2, and/or 3 above will succeed only in losing an important constituency---fiscal conservatives, who will instantly see the cynical game they're playing and despise them for it. [Conservative Republicans will be better in the long run if they are honest, optimistic, and talk about conservative beliefs. They don't even have to use the word "conservatism." Non-political savvy voters won't know what the word means. This is exactly what Ronald Reagan did. They also have to learn to get their views out and be passionate about it. Drop the elitism, have faith in the American people and definitely look out for the national sovereignty of the country. Forget about the liberal media being your friend. They never will be. Go around the media and get your message out.]
All these rules are good rules to live by for Conservative Republicans.

LAPD's Muslim Plan Facing Criticism

The liberal Democrats have a habit of calling anyone who profiles militant Jihadists a racist. Take for instance the LAPD. I just seen on The O'Reilly Factor yesterday that the LAPD is being criticized for asking young Muslims to report on any extremist Imans in their Mosque. The critics call this profiling. Possibly, but this is what the FBI does all the time when they try to define a serial killer. I think what the LAPD is doing is a good idea and that all police forces should be doing this. How is this any different than the police asking for people in a neighbor to report any drug gangs in the area to them? It's not. Even if the gang would be Hispanic or black I still believe it would not be profiling. In my opinion, it is not profiling if the group is illegal or is involved in terrorist activities.

If a moderate American Muslim cares about his Mosque and his Muslim community I would think he would want to tell someone about his extremist Imam. Especially if that Imam is talking about illegal activities and wanting to undermine the Constitution. Yes, I know this is hard to do, but he/she can do it anonymously.

What Increases & Decreases Crime

What increases crime? According to the book Freedomnomics (2007) by John R. Lott, Jr., Ph. D. it is:

• Legalized abortion. An unmarried woman becomes pregnant. Her partner who feels he has been tricked doesn't want the baby and expects her to have an abortion because it is legalized. She does not want to have an abortion for whatever reason. He leaves her to take care of the baby alone.
• Affirmative action hiring in the police force. The police force lowers testing standards for new recruits so its population matches the demographic ratio of the surrounding community. It lowers testing standards by replacing cognitive or intelligence exams with more nebulous psychological tests that aim to gauge a candidate's temperament. Also, the police force implements affirmative action programs by assigning different standards to different groups of candidates in order to ensure similar pass rates.

What decreases crime?

• The death penalty. The author lists nine independent publications that support this position. Three independent publications say it has no effect either way. No publication says it increases crime.
• Police arresting criminals.
• Right-to-carry laws. The author found that significant evidence that criminals move out of areas where concealed handguns are legalized. Fifteen journal publications say that right-to-carry laws reduce violent crime. Ten publications say the laws have no effect either way. No publication say it increases violent crime according to the book.

Random-Access Warehouses

From Technology Review.com:

A company called Kiva Systems is speeding up Internet orders with robotic systems that are modeled on random-access computer memory.

Kiva Systems' CEO and founder, Mick Mountz, likens the system to random-access memory chips. The warehouse is arranged in a memory-chip-like grid composed of rows and columns of freestanding shelves. The grid gives robots access to any product in the warehouse at any time. The robots serve two basic functions. First, they deliver empty warehouse shelving units to workers who stock them. The workers might stock one unit with a mix of paper, various types of pens, and computer software, all compiled from large pallets that had been delivered to the warehouse. Then, when a consumer submits an order, robots deliver the relevant shelving units to workers who pack the requested items in a box and ship them off. "We turn the whole building into a random-access, dynamic storage and retrieval system," Mountz says. [...]

Luke's Binoculars

From Wired.com:

U.S. Special Forces may soon have a strange and powerful new weapon in their arsenal: a pair of high-tech binoculars 10 times more powerful than anything available today, augmented by an alerting system that literally taps the wearer's prefrontal cortex to warn of furtive threats detected by the soldier's subconscious.

In a new effort dubbed "Luke's Binoculars" -- after the high-tech binoculars Luke Skywalker uses in Star Wars -- the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is setting out to create its own version of this science-fiction hardware. And while the Pentagon's R&D arm often focuses on technologies 20 years out, this new effort is dramatically different -- DARPA says it expects to have prototypes in the hands of soldiers in three years. [...]

If this technology ever gets developed, the secret service could use it to protect the president and personal body guards could use it to protect their clients. Or even airline security could use it to prevent terrorists from boarding planes.

Questioning Interrogation

From National Review.com is an interesting article by Deroy Murdock. In it he talks about how the prisoners at Club Gitmo (Guantanamo Bay) are being treated and that President Bush should fight back against allegations of prisoner torture. According to his article this is how we are torturing them:

• Guantanamo’s library offers detainees such soothing titles as John A. Day’s The Book of Clouds, Pete Carmichael’s The World’s Most Beautiful Seashells, and Tony Sweet’s Fine Art Flower Photography.
• Detainees’ Islamically correct meals include fruits and nuts shipped from their home countries during special events.
• Atop taxpayer-funded [italics added] prayer mats, prayer-bead-wearing detainees hear the call to prayer five times daily. That’s when everything at Gitmo stops — including interrogations — so these Muslim fanatics can face Mecca. That’s easy: They follow the large, northeasterly arrows painted on the floor.

Oh, man when will the agony for these souls end? This torture must stop immediately! I agree that the president cannot let the press set his War on Terror agenda--they are definitely not his friend. Oh, by the way, water boarding is not physical torture--maybe psychological--but not physical torture in my humble opinion.

British Army Tests Invisible Tank

From Ananova.com:

The Army is reportedly testing secret technology which makes tanks and troops invisible.

The Ministry of Defence revealed they made a vehicle seem to completely disappear in trials last week.

The breakthrough uses cameras and projectors to beam images captured from the surrounding landscape on to a specially-adapted tank coated with silicon to maximise their reflective qualities.

Fascinating. For more invisibility technology read my Cloaking Technology blog.

Happy Halloween!

Isn't that a cool looking pumpkin carving? I believe that pumpkin came from the web site Extreme Pumpkins.com. Anyway, I saw it on the web site under the title "They Eat Their Own." If you want to look at other cool pumpkin carvings go to Pumpkin Gutter.com. Scott Cummins, the carver, does a pretty good job of carving.

Now, to the creepy. If you want to hear some good electronic voice phenomena go to South Jersey Paranormal Research web site. Especially, listen to the "Horn blaring...halt company!" one. It's loud and clear!

In the 1970s, a psychical research group "invented" a spirit named Philip. To their astonishment, Philip actually made contact with them. You can read more about this experience in the "How To Create a Ghost" article. Real ghost or not? What happened with this research group might explain some seances that are not deliberate scams. Seances should not be done anyway, in my opinion, because you never know what you will conjure up.

Creating a Label Cloud

To create the Label Cloud on the left go to Setup and configuration for New Blogger Tag Cloud / Label Cloud and follow the instructions exactly. Creating the cloud looks overwhelming but it isn't if you follow the author's instructions. The author (phydeux3) did a good job with the code and instructions for placing the code in the template. The label cloud would be a good widget for Google to add to the page elements.

The Hunt Doctrine

Below is a list of what U.S. Army Colonel (Ret.) David Hunt in his 2007 book On The Hunt. How to Wake Up Washington and Win The War on Terror thinks is the best way to run the war on terror:

• No soldier shall ever use, fly in, sit on, or ride in any vehicle or weapon that is older than he is.
• Only competent--that means proven competent--combat leaders get to lead soldiers in combat.
• When you are in an fight. . . kill them all.
• Never ask permission in combat.
• Never commit a soldier to combat you are not willing and capable of supporting 100 percent with everything he needs.
• Never give an order or mission you are not willing to do yourself.
• Always go with your men into the fight.
• As long as you care only about your soldiers and the mission, you can do anything.
• Once committed, the government tells only the truth to the American people when soldiers are in combat.
• Admit when you are wrong.
• It's intelligence, stupid; without it you die.
• The Air Force never runs a war.
• Never care who gets credit, just get it done.
• Love your soldiers enough to hurt them in training.
• Make training harder than combat.
• Make people do their jobs.
• When our troops f-ck up, punish and move on.
• Hold the highest accountable, just like the lowest.
• Keeping the peace is always harder than winning the war.
• When the order is stupid, say so, and don’t obey it.
• Your boss is only your boss; he is not always right.
• Administrative courage (standing up to the boss, telling the truth to the powerful) is more difficult than physical courage.

Most of doctrine is just common sense. He is referring to military commanders and the defense secretary mostly. A person in a blog said he disagreed with the first point. He said there are "B-52s in service now that are over 40 years old, but they’ve been retrofitted with new electronics and other gear and they’re perfectly good to use for dropping tons of bombs or missiles on bad guys." Disobeying stupid orders does sound like good advice, but first you have to recognize a stupid order. If you are in a combat situation you better be sure the order is stupid or not before you disobey it. It's a matter of having faith in your commander that he can do the job.

In his book, the Colonel says we should have shot the looters in Iraq in the beginning. Then put a sign in Arabic that says "American troops will shoot looters." A good idea, but the American press would have put headlines saying "American troops are murdering civilians." Then again the military commanders including the president has to ignore what the press reports on the war. Just win the war. Col. Hunt also said it was a dumb idea to disband the Iraqi army and the entire police force in the beginning. Yea, probably not a good idea. They could have gotten the looters under control and gave stability to the country.

This is very good book that every person in Congress and every presidential candidate should read. We (America and the Western world) have to get serious about this war because the militant jihadists are deadly serious about it.

Democrats Smear a Private Citizen

You see the list of forty-one names listed below? They are all senators from the Democrat party that smeared a private citizen. The names in bold print are presidential candidates.

Harry Reid	Hillary Rodham Clinton	Blanche Lincoln
Richard Durbin	Kent Conrad	Bob Menendez
Charles Schumer	Christopher Dodd	Barbara Mikulski
Patty Murray	Byron Dorgan	Bill Nelson
Daniel Akaka	Dianne Feinstein	Barack Obama
Max Baucus	Tom Harkin	Jack Reed
Joseph Biden	Daniel Inouye	Jay Rockefeller
Barbara Boxer	Edward M. Kennedy	Ken Salazar
Sherrod Brown	John Kerry	Bernie Sanders
Robert Byrd	Amy Klobuchar	Debbie Stabenow
Benjamin Cardin	Mary Landrieu	Jon Tester
Tom Carper	Frank Lautenberg	Jim Webb
Bob Casey	Patrick Leahy	Sheldon Whitehouse
Carl Levin	Ron Wyden

The people above signed a letter smearing Rush Limbaugh for comments he never said on his radio show and then sent it to his business partner. His business partner then rightly so ignored the letter and gave it to Rush who then sold it on Ebay for $2,100,100.00 to philanthropist Betty Casey. She was the highest bidder of 213 bids. All the proceeds of the sale went to the Marine Corps -- Law Enforcement Foundation. They give kids of Marines and law enforcement officers who were killed in the line of duty college scholarships. Rush Limbaugh even wrote a check matching the proceeds and gave it to the foundation. I think that is pretty decent of him.

You may think that Rush Limbaugh is a big boy and can defend himself. You are right and he did set the smear straight. But here is why I am writing this entry. No matter what you think of Rush Limbaugh, he is a private citizen like you and I. He does not hold an elected office. If this can happen to him it could happen to anyone that those in Congress or even in the White House deem a threat. That is why America has the Bill of Rights. America's founding fathers knew that a Bill of Rights protects the citizens from a potentially corrupt government. If these Bill of Rights were not in place who knows what those senators might have done. Other countries have done worse things. Rush Limbaugh has a radio show in which he can get his point of view across to a large audience. But what if the powers-that-be go after the little guy? What defense does he have?

I wish instead of condemning private citizens these politicians same would go after Bin Laden or other terrorists with the same zeal. But you don't see that much.

These 41 senators could have checked the transcript of what Rush Limbaugh really said on his web site. Or they could have had their staff check it, but they either did not care or were too lazy to do it. They just believed what a personal attack web site said on face value. I heard what Rush said. Why could not they verify it? I wonder how many other stuff they believe without verifying. After all that is why Congress sits next to the Library of Congress. So, they can do research on topics. It contains almost every book and magazine published.

Here is my wish. I wish that those 41 senators get kicked out of office and I wish those senators in bold face never get elected president. Any Republican running against these senators would be wise to bring up what they did to Rush in their political ads.

Atmospheric Vortex Engine

The Atmospheric Vortex Engine (AVE) is a process for capturing the energy produced when heat is carried upward by convection in the atmosphere. The process is protected by patent applications and could become a major source of electrical energy. The unit cost of electrical energy produced with an AVE could be half the cost of the next most economical alternative.

The design of this engine is really interesting. The design comes from a Canadian engineer named Louis Michaud. I first read of his ambitious design in the November 2007 issue of Popular Science. The article says theoretically the AVE should produce 100 megawatts of electricity.

The Anti-Christ and The New World Order

The Anti-Christ will assume power when he tricks both the socialists and the militant jihadists to support him. The anti-Christ will tell the world leaders that the Kyoto-Agreement must be signed to save the world from global warming and a New World Order has to be created to oversee the global warming crisis. The anti-Christ will tell the jihadists he is one of them and will install global sharia law. The anti-Christ may or may not install sharia law (possibly a hybrid of it) but there will be a horrible New World Order created with the anti-Christ as the world dictator.
What will the New World Order entail?

1. Elimination of private property ie Communism. Socialism is just Communism lite. The militant jihadists may not like this one. Islam respects private property.
2. Elimination of traditional governments and national sovereignty. This is what the New World Order is really about. Socialists think everyone should go everywhere in the world they want without passports or border checks. These are the so-called open border types. As long as the militant jihadist get world-wide sharia law they could care less about national sovereignty. Under sharia law there no separation of religion and state. Read: theocracy.
3. The elimination of traditional Judeo-Christian theism. The secular-progressives which a lot of socialists are think Christianity is the root cause of most problems in the world. The militant jihadists agree. They want to eliminate Judeo-Christian theism and replace it with their own theism.

There might be a clash between the socialists and militant jihadists but the anti-Christ will be able to control that and even use it toward his advantage.

Chinese Government Censoring Bloggers

China Censors Ratchet Up Web Monitoring from PhysOrg.com (AP) -- At first, Liu Xiaoyuan just fumed when his online journal postings disappeared with no explanation. Then he decided to do something few if any of China's censored bloggers had tried. He sued his service provider. [...]

Ladies and gentlemen this is what happens when government has total control of your life. They can censor your speech among other things. This is why America's founding fathers created the Bill of Rights for just this reason--to protect Americans from a potentially corrupt government. Keep in mind only government can truly censor--they are the only ones who make the laws. And people say President Bush is violating citizens privacy by listening to terrorist's conversations overseas to other terrorists. What the Chinese government is doing is far worse. America is not censoring any book that criticizes our government or our leader (and some anti-Bush books attack him on a personal level). I don't see this book being censored: Follow the money: how George W. Bush and the Texas Republicans hog-tied America (2007) by John Anderson (and no I haven't read this book). I wonder how many books in China criticize the Chinese government? Probably zero. Where are the civil rights people complaining about what the Chinese government is doing?

I just don't trust the Chinese government. After all it is still Communism. I wonder how long will it be when the government takes total control of the foreign businesses in China. Just because you have a little bit of capitalism in China does not mean China will change its form of government. First, you have to have democracy. Then capitalism will follow.

Terrorist Detecting Technology

Technology would help detect terrorists before they strike from PhysOrg.com
Are you a terrorist? Airport screeners, customs agents, police officers and members of the military who silently pose that question to people every day, may soon have much more than intuition to depend on to determine the answer.[...]

This is really interesting technology. It uses machine learning capabilities, which will allow it to “learn” from its subjects during the course of a 20-minute interview.