Moving at the Speed of Me
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
StrongAxe's LiveJournal:
| Tuesday, May 10th, 2011 | | 5:06 pm |
What goes around, comes around Bin Laden son says sea burial demeans his familyA statement purporting to come from a son of Osama bin Laden denounced the al Qaeda leader's killing as "criminal" and said his burial at sea had humiliated the family, an online monitoring service said.The thousands of 9/11 deaths were "criminal", and grieved and humiliated thousands of families. The statement, attributed to Omar bin Laden, bin Laden's fourth eldest son, said the al Qaeda chief's children reserved the right to take legal action in the United States and internationally to "determine the true fate of our vanished father," the SITE Intelligence Group said.Just as the families of the 9/11 victims have the right to take legal action (including, in this case, lex talonis) against Bin Laden over the fate of their thousands of vanished fathers and mothers. The letter said, in part: "We hold the American President (Barack) Obama legally responsible to clarify the fate of our father, Osama bin Laden, for it is unacceptable, humanely and religiously, to dispose of a person with such importance and status among his people, by throwing his body into the sea in that way, which demeans and humiliates his family and his supporters and which challenges religious provisions and feelings of hundreds of millions of Muslims."We hold Osama Bin Laden legally responsible for the fate of our fathers and mothers, for it is unacceptable, humanely and religiously, to dispose of so many people (whose worth is no less than his), by throwing their (still living) bodies into a pyre in that way, which demeans and humiliates thousands of families and friends and supporters, and which challenges religious provisions and feelings of hundreds of millions of Americans. The letter said the U.S. administration had offered no proof to back up its account of the mission. It alleged the goal of raid had been to kill and not arrest, adding that afterwards the American commandos had "rushed to dispose of the body."The goal of the 9/11 attacks had been to kill... Some Muslims have misgivings about how U.S. forces killed bin Laden in a raid in Pakistan on May 2 and disposed of his body in the ocean.Most, if not all, Americans have misgivings about how Al Quaeda forces killed thousands of Americans in attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2011, and disposed of the bodies in pyres from which recovery of remains for burial was as futile as trying to recover someone buried at sea. Bin Laden's swift burial at sea, in what many Muslims say was a violation of Islamic custom, has also stirred anger.Burning people alive, incinerating their corpses, and burying them in thousands of tons of debris so they can never be identified is a violation of American custom, has also stirred anger. What goes around comes around. Payback is a bitch! If there were true justice, he would have been burned alive several thousands of times over. His son should be thankful that he only had to die once, and quite quickly and relatively painlessly at that, unlike his victims. (I'm not normally a vindictive or judgmental person, but I have no tolerance for people who hold others' lives in complete contempt, nor for self-righteous hypocrites.) Current Mood: pissed off | | Friday, July 3rd, 2009 | | 4:27 pm |
| | Sunday, November 30th, 2008 | | 6:21 pm |
Unplug the internet, or go to jail.
Read it, and weep (unless your name is Kafka, then you're familiar with the concept): http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20081128005538214An amicus curiae brief submitted by the EFF is here: http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/US_v_Drew/Drew_Amicus.pdfThe basic gist of the situation it his: Lori Drew is a mother who created a fake MySpace account, and used it to bully a fragile teenage girl (who later killed herself). She was put on trial for murder. The jury acquitted her of that, but found her guilty of unauthorized access to a computer because she made misrepresentations when creating the MySpace account (and thus violated its Terms of Service). The situation was so heinous, so they HAD to nail her for something; when they couldn't get her for what she did, they got her for something else (much like convicting Al Capone for tax evasions). However, few people seem to realize that implications of this. Judge Wu set a very dangerous precedent by permitting this legal theory. Unless this decision is appealed and overturned, even the slightest violation of ANY web site's Terms of Service is now a FEDERAL CRIME, for which you can be fined $100,000 and go to jail. Most web sites explicitly state that they can change their TOS at any time without notifying you, so defining what constitutes a crime is now in the hands of all web site operators. Even worse, many (like Myspace, Youtube, Craigslist, etc.) are self-policing, and allow other users to decide what content is inappropriate (and hence, now, illegal), so defining what is a criminal act is now in the hands of bored teenagers, who could ultimately end up sending you to jail because they think one of your posts is "lame" (or even people you turned down for a date). While the hysteria may be overblown, this precedent makes it possible for any prosecutor who doesn't like someone to criminalize him for the flimsiest of reasons. Can anyone remember having their profile spontaneously disappear from any web personals site for no apparent reason? I'm sure a lot of people here have experienced that particular annoyance. Most sites claim the right to delete profiles that violate their terms of service. But now, anyone who has had a profile yanked, or a picture rejected for posting, or a Yahoo group deleted, or an uploaded image or video taken down (whether justly or not) is now a federal criminal. Current Mood: annoyed | | Monday, May 12th, 2008 | | 10:18 am |
LJ Annoyance
Just recently, I have noticed an annoying feature on LJ that I remember seeing some time back: when your mouse hovers over certain external links, something "thoughtfully" pre-fetches that page for you, and displays it in a popup directly under your mouse (which makes certain things like "right-click/open in new window" annoyingly difficult). It has the same affect on me as the Microsoft Office Paperclip, and Barney. So "friendly" I want to reach for a harpoon. (And heaven help you if it's an URL with side-effects, like "click {here} to unsubscribe") This first happened a while back (maybe a year ago?). Fortunately, however, there was an option you could set somewhere in the maze of configuration menus that allowed to you to disable this feature. Unfortunately, recently that setting seems to be being ignored, and I can't remember where it was (or even if it still exists). Does anyone else remember this problem, or how to fix it? Current Mood: annoyed | | Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 | | 2:45 am |
For coffee drinkers everywhere
A friend sent me this: http://englishrussia.com/?p=1516It appears to be a simple but clever product idea (followed by several photoshopped alterations to it). (I have seen similar ideas floating around the web - T-shirts with tuxedo jackets silk-screened on them, shopping bags with pictures of guns on the side so when you carry them by the handle, it looks like you're armed, etc.) Current Mood: amused | | Wednesday, August 29th, 2007 | | 9:30 am |
Poking the Tarbaby (Update: the trolls involved have linked this page from their article. So, to visitors from EncyclopediaDramatica: Welcome to my journal. Judge for yourselves if I'm over-reacting. And feel free to add your two cents worth, as long as you show your face (as the article authors have cowardly refused to do in several other related threads in other people's journals.))OK, I've decide to finally stick my hands into this long-going tar-baby LJ flame war, and if I offend some people on either side of it, so be it. I have avoided taking sides in this, and I'm still not "taking sides" (I think all sides can share the blame), just pointing out just how absurd and juvenile this is getting. If people can't take the heat, they shouldn't be in the kitchen in the first place. Please do NOT read this unless you thrive on LJ drama (and/or can read about it without being offended). That having been said, I am trying to be objective (and if I'm not, please feel free to call me on it. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.) ( You HAVE Been warned!Collapse ) Current Mood: pissed off | | Monday, July 2nd, 2007 | | 1:46 pm |
| | Monday, June 18th, 2007 | | 5:01 am |
More tales from Bizarro World
( See original Ars Technica article) The intellectual property magnates once again show their true colors. From the article: "NBC/Universal general counsel Rick Cotton suggests that society wastes entirely too much money policing crimes like burglary, fraud, and bank-robbing, when it should be doing something about piracy instead. 'Our law enforcement resources are seriously misaligned,' Cotton said. 'If you add up all the various kinds of property crimes in this country, everything from theft, to fraud, to burglary, bank-robbing, all of it, it costs the country $16 billion a year. But intellectual property crime runs to hundreds of billions [of dollars] a year.'"
Yes, folks. So next time you want to pirate a CD or DVD, they would prefer that you use Smith and Wesson, rather than Bittorrent. Current Mood: annoyed | | Sunday, July 2nd, 2006 | | 3:45 am |
Moving at the Speed of Me
I was just reading messages before going to bed, and saw one comment by furtummy. When I saw his profile page, I misread the journal title, which is "Mumbling at the Speed of Sound " (subtitled "the world revolves around me") as "Moving at the Speed of Me", which struck me as enigmatic and intriguing - so much so that I decided it was an appropriate title for my own journal. Current Mood: contemplative | | Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006 | | 3:42 pm |
Mesmerizing!
Yesterday, a friend of mine sent me a link to this flash animation. It shows a picture that you can zoom into, which shows that the colored pixels in the picture are in fact made up of other smaller pictures. These, in turn, are made up of other pictures. You can navigate around ad infinitum. I have probably spent a few hours just wandering around it. It is very relaxing in a zen-like way. Current Mood: relaxed | | Thursday, May 18th, 2006 | | 11:30 pm |
| | Saturday, March 11th, 2006 | | 4:16 pm |
Of horses and barn doors
When we moved to Phoenix two months ago, we moved into a house that had a lot of stuff in it already, so there wasn't room enough for all of the boxes, and the house has no basement or attic, so we left around 60 boxes of stuff outside, next to the side of the house. This was not a problem because it was inside an enclosed, locked fence, and it hardly ever rains in Phoenix (and had not done so in at least three months before that). Well, today it is raining, and quite a lot too - there are flood warnings in an adjacent county. Needless to day, all the cardboard boxes got soaked, although hopefully the contents are fine (the few I looked at looked OK). Unfortunately, wet cardboard has the structural integrity of toilet paper, which will make them next to useless for storage in the future. I managed to get about half the boxes (the smaller ones) moved into various seats and trunks of our unused vehicles, while Chris draped garbage bags over the remaining boxes to protect them at least partially from more rain. Of course, we could have done this any time within the past two months, and saved a of wet cardboard, but... oh well... Current Mood: pissed off | | 4:11 pm |
Optolinguistics
A few days ago, I broke my new glasses - as I was getting up to go get lunch, one of the lenses popped out (followed quickly by the screw that held it in place). We tried to put it back, but neither one of us seemed able to deal with screws that size while holding the frame and lens in place, so I decided to take it in to the optical department at a local Walmart, where they fixed it for free (although I did have to wait about 20 minutes before anyone spoke to me). While I was waiting, I was reading all the signs in the store (and, being in Phoenix, most signs everywhere are bilingual - English and Spanish). From one of the signs, I learned that the Spanish word for eyeglasses is anteojos which literally means before [the] eyes. So, if at any time, anyone looks at you in your glasses, and calls you fore eyes, they aren't insulting you - they are just trying to speak to you in Spanish ;) Current Mood: amused | | Saturday, September 24th, 2005 | | 7:23 am |
They've finally given themselves enough rope.
Others have commented on this (thanks to furrbear for bringing the article to my attention), but this has me sufficiently ired all week to comment on it as well. The following article tells the details, but here is an excerpt: Pope bans homosexuals from ordination as priestsApplicants with 'gay' tendencies won't be admitted to seminaries Pope Benedict XVI has given his approval to a new Vatican policy document that bans men with homosexual tendencies from being ordained as priests, reports Catholic World News.
The policy statement is a direct result of the pope's concern about the pedophilia scandal in the church – especially in the U.S.
The new document, prepared by the Congregation for Catholic Education in response to a request made by the late Pope John Paul II in 1994, will be published soon. It will take the form of an "Instruction," signed by the prefect and secretary of the congregation: Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski and Archbishop Michael Miller, according to the report.
The report was first referenced on Joseph Farah's nationally syndicated radio program last week by Raymond Arroyo, author of the new book "Mother Angelica: The Remarkable Story of a Nun, Her Nerve and a Network of Miracles." Arroyo has covered the papacy more than any other U.S. journalist.
The text, approved by Benedict at the end of August, says that homosexual men should not be admitted to seminaries even if they are celibate, because their condition suggests a serious personality disorder that detracts from their ability to serve as ministers, says the CWN report.
Priests who have already been ordained, if they suffer from homosexual impulses, are strongly urged to renew their dedication to chastity and a manner of life appropriate to the priesthood.The following argument was proposed to me by a good friend of mine who is a gay Eastern Orthodox priest, but I agree with it whole-heartedly: The Catholic church now says that homosexuals (people with gay tendencies) should not be permitted into the priesthood because the mere presence of gay tendencies is a sign of psychological disorder, which would render them incapable of performing satisfactorily in ministerial roles. However, consider the following verse from the Bible (St. Paul's letter to the Hebrews, chapter 4, verse 15 (NIV translation): For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are - yet was without sin.This means one of two things: 1) Jesus was not tempted by homosexuality. Because homosexuality is </i>not</i> a sin. If this is true, the Catholic Church is being grossly negligent by persecuting a significant portion of the population. In fact, considering Matthew 18:6 ( But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea), if their persecution drives gay people away from the church, this attitude is putting their own existence in extreme peril. 2) Homosexuality is a sin. Which means Jesus was tempted by it. Which means (according to their analysis) that he was psychologically disturbed, and thus was not capable of acting in a ministerial role. So his entire ministry on earth must have been a tragic mistake, since he was not competent to carry it out. (Of course, if they say it was OK for Jesus to be tempted by homosexuality, but not OK for anyone else, they are requiring that we imperfect human beings adhere to a higher standard than Jesus himself - in effect, we must be better than Jesus). Their declarations require one of the above statements to be true. No matter which one they choose, it means they are being at best (damnably) Pharisaical, and at worst (damnably) blasphemous (in one of two different ways - take your pick). I would really love to see them come out with a rational rebuttal of the above conclusions. Current Mood: infuriated | | Tuesday, August 9th, 2005 | | 10:07 am |
Quality of Life
A friend of mine sent me the following quote: From a Guardian review of The Impact of Inequality: How to Make Sick Societies Healthier (Routledge), by Richard Wilkinson: "Life expectancy in rich nations correlates precisely with levels of equality. So Greece, with half the GDP per head, has longer life expectancy than the United States, with the lowest life expectancy in the developed world. The people of Harlem live shorter lives than the people of Bangladesh. When you take out the violence and drugs, two-thirds of the reason is heart disease. Is that bad diet? No, says Wilkinson. It is mainly stress, the stress of living at the bottom of the pecking order . . . the stress of disrespect and lack of esteem. Bad nutrition does less harm than depression." Current Mood: annoyed | | Monday, April 25th, 2005 | | 11:59 pm |
Interview Meme
I am usually quite leery of LJ memes, especially those that just make up random content totally out thin air, but don't mind those that actually get people to talk about themselves and get to know other people better. Here are the rules for this one: 1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me." 2. I will respond by asking you five questions. I get to pick the questions. 3. You will update your LJ with the answers to the questions. 4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post. 5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions. (Or, if you're lazy and/or don't want to spread the meme, just post the replies here). phenryss asked: 1. When did you come to terms with your sexual orientation?I came out to a friend on Chinese New Year, 2001, then to three other friends very shortly after that. It took me a few days to finally come to terms with it. Unfortunately, this allowed me to re-examine many things in my life, and it was like opening a Pandora's Box of a quarter century of repressed emotional crap; I've come to terms with some of that, but still haven't come to terms with all of it. 2. If you could pin it down to three things, what are they that turn you on in a guy?1) A nice face, eyes, and smile 2) A sparkling wit and generous disposition 3) A big belly 4) Fur (OK, so I'm a math major; does that mean I'm supposed to be able to count?) 3. What are your feelings on the "new" Pope?From what I hear so far, he will just widen the schism between the clergy and everyone else. This is not a good thing. (Unless you consider the Roman Catholic Church to be an archaic fossil that has long outlived its usefulness, and should die the way of the dinosaurs; in this case, it would be a GOOD thing). 4. Do you consider yourself religious or spiritual, and why?Yes, and yes; however, I'm not big on ritual. I tend to be an iconoclast - I generally won't follow a tradition unless someone can give me a very good justification for doing so. This makes me heterodox in most things. So I'm not really big on observing special holidays, attending church services (as a means of ritual as opposed to socializing, etc.) 5. How would you discribe your relationship with Chris ( singerbear?Like any relationship, it's not perfect (I mean, what relationship IS?) but I think that we're both very well suited to one another, and very much in love; and if I had to go back again and do it all over again, I might make a few minor tweaks here and there, but overall keep things the way they are. bearbong asked: (1) If you were friends with somebody and you wanted to have sex, do you think that it would hurt the friendship if later he just wanted to remain friends? Or is that a line that shouldn't be crossed?It depends a lot on the friends, and how mature both people are. There are many things that can happen in many kinds of relationships that fit into the category of "I'm glad I did it, but I'll never do it again", or "I'm sorry I did it, and I'll never do it again". Sex can be one of those things, as long as neither side gets hung up about it. (Of course, those who consider sex as the "defining experience" in a relationship would probably think otherwise). (2) What do you think your most admirable trait is?This is a tough one, because it's hard tor be objective about yourself. However, you asked what I think my most admirable trait is, not what my most admirable trait actually is, so I can be as biased as I want :) That being said, I tend to think it's honesty; it's the main non-negotiable thing I demand from others, and also from myself. (I do sometimes tend to avoid unpleasant truths for the sake of tact, but I won't outright lie, except perhaps in a literal life-or-death situation.) (3) What do you do best; in the kitchen?Probably the dishes. Although I can also cook adequately if the need arises, and have been doing a lot more of that than usual in the past couple of months. (4) Porn: A waste of time, or, The only way to fly?Good question. I've always wondered what the appeal of porn actually is; if someone is horny, why does he need porn when he's already aroused, and if he isn't, then what's the motivation. That being said, I can speak for myself and legions of others that it definitely DOES have its appeal, although I can't explain why that is. (5) If there was one thing you could change about what you see and hear on the internet (besides SPAM) what would it be?I would have to say that the thing I most want on the internet is the ability to hold people accountable for what they say. If someone makes an accusation, I want the ability to know who is making the accusation; if someone pops into an IRC channel and says something vile (and then signs off), I want to be able to send a reply back that they are forced to read. If a company advertises "You just won a free Ipod*", I want them to be forced to actually give all the winners a free Ipod. If someone creates a virus and spreads it, I want it to be possible to track it to them and prosecute them to the full extent of the law (and the same for people who use phishing schemes to steal account information). (This has the side-effect that it would also eliminate almost all SPAM, since illegitimate SPAM could be hunted down and destroyed, and "legitimate" SPAM has legitimate methods for controlling it.) guikc asked: 1. What was your biggest childhood fear?I have had (and still have) two of them: 1) Heights, probably from falling out of a tree when I was around 5-7) 2) Unidentified Flying Insects (especially bees, wasps, hornets), probably from being chased home by a dragonfly, around the same age. 2. What is your biggest adult fear?Other than the above two, going all the way through life without ever figuring out what I'm supposed to be doing on this planet. Or the fear that someday, for reasons I can't fathom, I'll somehow end up in jail, or in an asylum, or on the street, or in a morgue, or some other equally cheerful place. 3. Do you enjoy sports?In general, no. The only ones that tend to hold any interest at all are the many variants of "two teams fighting for a token to put into the opponent's goal", such as hockey, lacrosse, soccer, basketball. I deliberately exclude football, since that seems to be mostly about insanely complex plays rather than just running around with the ball. I'm also occasionally interested in "Forcing a token to land on the other side of the net" games like volleyball,p tennis, and badminton. I occasionally go bowling or play miniature golf, but it's debatable as to whether those would be considered sports. 4. Do you consider yourself a compassionate person?I try to be, but I think I'm capable of being much more compassionate than I actually end up being :) 5. What is your favorite song?This is a very hard one. I can't really point to one specific song, although there have been many songs and/or other pieces of music over the years that have driven me to obsession (For example, I hear it on the radio and then think "I HAVE to have that!" and can think of little else until I know what it is and have obtained a copy). Back in 2001-2002 when I was going through very deep depression after coming out, I used to listen to "Thank You" by Dido a lot; I found I could relate to that song in may ways (both the up and the down parts). I still can. Current Mood: pensive | | Saturday, April 2nd, 2005 | | 8:58 pm |
Snowstorm from hell
I had finally gotten used to winter being over. After all the nasty weather we had in December, I was already sick of winter by Christmas (especially with the furnace going out twice, and the temperature indoors going down to 48 degrees). So I was FINALLY happy when, over the past three weeks, it was starting to get warm and rainy most of the time, rather than cold and snowy. It even got to the point on Wednesday when I had to open the windows to let some of the heat out, because it had gotten so warm inside. I was a bit concerned when someone told me that snow was expected on the weekend. Weather.com predicted overcast and rain and snow, with a high of 42 and a low of 32 (plus rain on Sunday) so I figured that it would be no big deal - at worst, a bit of dusting which would melt on the ground. This afternoon a bit after one, we had a power outage that lasted for about an hour. I don't know if this was related to the snow or not, but the timing was suspicious. After it was over, I powered my computer on. There was no video on either of my monitors. So I tried again, many times. I swapped cables, and even fetched a third monitor. Again nothing. Then, after about a dozen attempts, I was suddenly seeing a BIOS POST message on one of my main monitors and the new one I added. Joy! Success! So I put everything back the way it has been, and again nothing. Even after putting things back to the way it worked that one time, nothing happens. So I started pulling out boards, etc. blowing out dust, etc. (I severely stubbed both of my big toes earlier, to much screaming and yelling, while stumbling around earlier in an unsuccessful search for a can of compressed air). I set it aside and decided to take a nap for a few hours, because otherwise I would have been throwing computer equipment (and/or anything else that wasn't nailed down) through windows and/or walls. At this moment, my computer is sitting in pieces on the floor of my office and I haven't the faintest clue of what is wrong with it (because all the parts that are needed in the boot process have already demonstrated that they DO work sometimes). For now, I'm briefly using Chris's machine to check mail, etc. but until I get this fixed, I won't be online 24/7 (and active 16/7) as usual. So if people are wondering why I'm suddenly not around, this is it. If you need to get in touch with me, please send me an email (or post here); I will try to check in several times daily. | | Sunday, January 9th, 2005 | | 8:05 pm |
Supersadomasochisticexpialidocious </a></b></a> singerbear figured out how to get mIRC to work with Microsoft Agent's text-to-speech feature. It can be useful when you have one or two channels open and want to listen when you go into the other room, but it becomes really interesting if you have several networks and a dozen channels windows open at the same time. I set mine up to automatically increase to 250% normal speed whenever there were 10 or more lines queued up in the buffer. With Biggercity alone, it can't keep up with all the channel joins, parts, and people posting their stats and web pages. It's a bit like watching a dozen TV sets at once and listening to them all at full volume. It's like A Clockwork Orange on crack. [Thanks to UzrFrndly for the subject name] Current Mood: amused | | Saturday, November 13th, 2004 | | 10:37 pm |
The most assinine IP story I have ever read in my life
The principles exhibited in this story are so outrageous that it has prompted me to switch from lurking to posting. Slashdot has just run this story. The United States has imposed its draconian Intellectual Property laws on Iraq, so now Iraqi farmers can no longer keep part of one season's crop as seeds for the next season. Instead, they will be required to purchase properly-licensed seeds from multinational corprations each year (to protect the intellectual property rights of the patent-owners of genetically engineered crops). So, instead of a thousands-of-years-old self-sufficient agriculture, you will have a "bend over to the big corporations" agriculture. It seems like the U.S. is destined to sue itself into excinction someday (and the rest of the world with it). This reminds me a lot of part in Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker Trilogy where the people who colonized Earth (made up of such useful occupations as telephone sanitizers) decide to use leaves as currency - then plan to defoliate the planet to prevent inflation. Current Mood: infuriated | | Monday, November 17th, 2003 | | 5:29 am |
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