Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Pride...

The Dilbert Blog: Yay! Both Sides Won!

If you want to win the Nobel Peace Prize, figure out a way to trade land for pride.

I don't think it's all about pride in the mid-east, but I do think we need to approach the negotiations from a different perspective. We can't give the same land to everyone: people can't seem to share. Getting back to pride though, it's unfortunate that pride often means dominance over an other. That's the cheapest way to get respect.

Monday, August 14, 2006

Lock down the cell phone networks

Another disturbing story- buying prepaid cell phones for resale is a pre-terrorist act. I think it is ridiculous that people sell consumer electronics with features disabled. In this case, they are doing it so they can sucker people in for a low initial price, but the major US cell phone networks frequently turn off features to try to force you to use their services. Rather than create all of these unbalanced markets, it is better to keep the hardware and the services sectors separate...supposedly too complicated for the American consumer. That's ridiculous, if there is one thing the US is good at, it's shopping.

Sunday, August 13, 2006

Devolution


http://arstechnica.com/journals/science.ars/2006/8/13/4967

I am sure there are going to be a few articles about a statistical analysis that showed up in Science [non free content - see ArsTechnica for coverage]. Basically, only 39% of Americans think the theory of evolutions is correct, and a slightly greater number think it is false. The correlation between religous belief and acceptance of evolution is much higher than it is in other countries- mostly because the Republican party has been using Christian belief as a differentiating feature, divisive issue. The abuse of religion for political gain has likely damaged the thinking of around 1/5 of Americans, amongst the 40% or so that believe evolution to be a false claim. How can the USA expect to compete in a century where genomic science is going to become a competitive international technological field? It can't. It really can't. Not if we can't even look at the data for fear of offending the gods.

Friday, August 11, 2006

Liquid Stupidity

This is ridiculous BS. No liquids at the security checkpoints- so we'll pour them out. Because they might contain explosives. Which will...explode? But put whatever you want in your checked bags- since they can't explode. Or something.

I hate these stupid little terrorists and the stupid reactions of the DHS/TSA/etc. (They better end this policy very, very soon.) And when the hell are the exploding people going to realize that we don't give one crap about them? Anyone who thinks that bombing an airplane (or dropping bombs from airplanes for that matter) is going to get them into heaven should just kill themselves now and save us the trouble.

From Boing Boing:

If the liquid could be explosive, why are you dumping it in a crowd?: "Mark Frauenfelder: xopl asks a fair question:

So CNN is reporting: 'Because the plot involved taking liquid explosives aboard planes in carry-ons, passengers at all U.S. and British airports, and those boarding U.S.-bound flights at other international airports, are banned from taking any liquids onto planes.'

And then they have the photo of the TSA guy dumping a tub of confiscated possibly explosive liquids into a garbage can in a crowd of people.

Figure that shit out for me.