Weaver95

yep - they’re really gonna do it. Data mining blogs, comments and whatnot from all over the Internet.  The goal is to, in theory anyway, identify sites used by terrorists for getting their word out to the masses.  Then the CIA can track down these terrorist aggregator sites for more aggressive intel gathering operations.  Sounds scary, don’t it?  The CIA out there, combing through masses of data and then doing the nasty to their political rivals…but really, think about it for a moment.  Just how many social gathering sites are out there right now?  Not counting my tiny and ignored blog of course…there are MILLIONS of people from all over the world all talking to one another about every subject imaginable all at the same time.  The signal to noise ratio is enormous!  And the CIA is going to process all that garbage?  good luck with that guys.

Oh, and lest we forget - what happens to the CIA’s plan when the 4Chan goons get wind of this?  Because you just KNOW those motherfuckers will want to jack with the CIA’s intel gathering efforts.  Why?  well…why not?  it’s 4Chan.  it’s kinda what they do.  So if any of my 3 readers get the urge and have a connection with Anonymous (or anyone over at 4Chan forums) let ‘em know the CIA is begging to be played the fool.  Just let me know about it so I can break the story once they’re done!

Seriously - I wonder about this country.  Everyone spends all their time being outraged about things and nobody stops to just point and laugh.  Take this story for example -it’s a clever idea.  A play on words with a humorous result.  And yet, look what happened:

It’s “distasteful, mean-spirited and ignorant of social stigmas and current debate on immigration reform,” says Angelica Salas.

I think Angelica Salas needs to lighten up.  It’s a friggin Halloween costume, not a social statement!  Look, people wear naughty nurse costumes, naughty nun costumes, scary monsters of every stripe imaginable.  the point is to laugh at our fears and our prejudices.  It’s a healthy outlet for people.  But when you cannot - or will not - let people laugh and blow off steam, then you start getting into some dangerous territory.

So put a sock in it Angelica!  Go put on a naughty nurse outfit and trick or treat with your kids.  And for God’s sake lighten up already!  geez.  Activists are the most unfunny people in the universe.

Sphere: Related Content

Sometimes you hear news that makes your brain shut down. News like this for example. It makes your brain just shut down.

See, basically the story goes like this:

1. SCO decides they ‘own’ Unix.

2. SCO starts suing…well, the entire world really.

3. the world fights back.

4. lots of random, weird stuff happens.

5. Federal judge rules against SCO.

6. SCO - who’s run by a guy who makes Captain Ahab seem like a reasonable fellow, appeals.

Now, at this point in time - there has been (literally) a ton of documentation that proves SCO didn’t have a case.  Every judge, lawyer and specialist involved said that SCO didn’t have a leg to stand on.  This thing is locked down as solidly as you can possibly get when it comes to something in the law.  decades of legal precedent say SCO’s case is over.

But all the sudden, out of the blue, an appelate  judge ( who didn’t spend much time at all reviewing the case) decides to overturn the ruling.  Wow - just like that, decades of precedent is tossed out the window.  And now SCO is back in the game.  It’s enough to make me think that the appelate judge took a bribe - his ruling literally makes no sense.  it’s that out of whack with the law.

So once more unto the breech my friends.  If SCO wins this thing, then Linux is going to be declared illegal.  And once THAT happens, there goes the entire open source software development community.

Lets start this off with the obvious - meth is bad.  So, in fact, are most of the other drugs out there:  heroin, cocaine, various and sundry designer drugs.  All of which are bad news…in fact the only ‘drug’ out there that really isn’t all that dangerous is cannabis, but that’s a discussion for another time.  Coming back to the topic of THIS post, let’s chat about meth (crystal meth) for a bit.

Meth is some really bad stuff.  It’s made from stuff that’s poison (literally), it drives you insane and destroys your body.  it’s highly addictive - a single hit is enough to hook you for life.  A short life that revolves entirely around eating/smoking more and more of this poison until you eventually die.  It’s one of the scarier drugs out there, and there are some very good reasons for why the drug is on the Schedule I list.

Not only is meth bad for your body, but the means of it’s manufacture is equally dangerous - meth cookers tend to run operations that leave an area drowning in toxic by-products.  plus there is the constant danger of explosions and fire.  A bunch of meth heads cooking more meth and playing with dangerous and explosive chemicals is not good for local property values.  One of the main ingredients to meth is a chemical called pseudoephedrine.  This chemical can be found in most over the counter cold and flu remedies.  So meth cookers would toddle down to the local drug store, buy out the entire stock of sudafed and head up to the hills to cook it down into a batch of meth.

In it’s infinite wisdom, the DEA and FDA didn’t really do much about this situation.  what SHOULD have happened was pseudoephedrine should have been made ‘perscription only’.  But that wouldn’t suit the bottom line of various big pharma companies.  So it was left to the various state legislatures to decide what to do about meth cookers and over the counter drugs.  And the result?  laws that limit how much cold medicine you and I could purchase.  Oh, and of course we have to have our identity recorded.  It was thought that if sales were tracked, then meth cookers would find it impossible to find enough raw material to make batches of meth.

Great idea…in theory. Reality, however had other ideas. Now those meth cookers have found a way to make meth without the need for a large lab set up, or massive amounts of pseudoephedrine.  So all that filing, recording and tracking of legitimate purchases has done NOTHING to stop people from buying the raw materials to make meth and producing more of the poison for themselves.

A bunch of tweakers are smarter than the cops and various state legislatures.  Depressing, isn’t it?  And it just goes to show how unrealistic our drug laws are these days.

yep, it’s true -someone done broke it already.  It’s not even out for general release yet, and someone hacked it but good.

The folks over at Ars Technica have a good write up, but for those of you who don’t want to wade through the technical details basically what happened was that someone found the super duper magic key buried in the spiffy new anti-piracy code of the newest windows OS.  This crack allows people not JUST to steal the operating system but it was cracked before the product has hit the marketplace.

So right out of the gate, people can steal themeselves a new OS.  Which does not bode well for Microsoft’s boast that this next generation version of Windows will be pirate proof and secure.

Pirates - 1

Microsoft - 0

y’know, sometimes you really have to wonder about this country….

A student decide to take some time and make some art on the side of the road.  And as a result, he ended up being the target of a police investigation.  He was arrested, put on trial and sentenced, all because he had the termerity to one night create this:

I dunno, I thought he was certainly being creative.  there wasn’t any sort of hazard, he was being whimsical…and lets face it, he was pretty clever to put that together.  But in our culture, ‘whimsical’ gets you charged with a crime.  This student has to do 50 hours of community service AND now he’s got a couple criminal charges following him around.  All because he put a couple barrels together on the side of a road.

Authoritarian governments suppress ‘chaotic elements’.  Impromptu displays of art, music or creative expression in public are dangerous things to authoritarians.   Art of any kind is dangerous, art stirs emotion and provokes a response.  sometimes that response is silly, sometimes it’s serious.  But in all cases, authoritarian governments hate and fear spontaneous displays of creativity because they cannot be controlled or channeled.   So they hunt down and punish people who create artistic displays and make sure that ‘justice’ is seen to be done to those people.   That’s what happened here - the state government spent time and money hunting down and arresting someone who’s only ‘crime’ was to be spontaneously creative.  Then the court made certain that everyone in the local community knew that this kid had been punished.

Signs of the times indeed.  Now we’re punishing people for malicious barrel stacking.  America - land of the free, home of the brave indeed.

Saint Death.

yep - that’s what it means…Saint Death.  I found this on wikipedia.  Apparently, this pseudo-saint cult started somewhere south of the border.  Drug dealers, prostitutes, thieves, crooks - they all wanted something to call their own.  Somehow, somewhere they started worshipping…well, Death.  And they started worshiping her for safety, protection and luck.  Offering include roses, cannabis, and tequila.

I find articles like this one to be fascinating.  Not just because it involves death (which, lets face it - everyone finds interesting) but because this could be seen as a direct link to the ancient Aztec god of death, Mictlantecuhtli.  In a lot of ways, I don’t think the Catholic Church ever really managed to completely stamp out the worship of the native gods and spirits.  When things got bad down south, someone remembered the old legends and somehow/somewhere we ended up with Saint Death.

In some ways, Saint Death shares certain characteristics with Baron Samedi. A penchant for tobacco and rum (not to mention a spirit who appreciates the value of a good hat), is similiar to offerings made to St. Death herself.  And people pray to both gods for similar reasons: luck, protection, guidance.  Both are spirits mostly worshipped by the poor who turn to them in despiration and/or inspiration.  The Baron has an aspect related not just to Death however, and is frequently involved in matters of life and birth, as well as sex in general.  So in that respect he differs from Saint Death, who is largely focused almost entirely on death itself.   In practical terms though, the Baron is much more of a party animal than Saint Death.  Superficially they’re similar - but I find them interesting specifically due to the fact that they are publicly accepted death cults, with deep cultural roots and ties to their local communities.  Most ‘mainstream’ western religions don’t directly worship death, which is seen as ‘evil’ by our culture.  A lot of ‘native’ cultures don’t necessarily see death as a figure of ‘evil’.  they see death as part of life - after all, everyone eventually dies.  So they recognize that death is merely another phase of existence.  While nobody intentionally goes out looking to die, they find a balance between life and death and try live accordingly.

In our culture though, we don’t value death.  We see death as something to be feared.  Our culture worships youth.  Youth is the focus of our entertainment, we want pretty young people on our magazines, in our movies.  we see youth as an impossible standard to live up to, and getting old is something nobody wants to talk about.  Death is an uncomfortable reminder that eventually we will come to our end.  Look at the recent rise in popularity for various vampire books and movies - we value eternal youth, regardless of the price one might have to pay to achieve that state.

For what it’s worth, I think that since death is an inevitable part of life, we’d better get used to it.  Accepting that eventually we ourselves will age and die, we should live to our fullest - seen in that light, there isn’t time for people to be petty and bitter.  Why spend a life doing evil to our neighbor when there are so many more important things to do with the short time we’ve been allotted on this earth?  If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s this: whatever it is you do, be the best at it.  I don’t care if you’re a ditch digger, computer programmer or rocket scientist.  Just find something that you like to do and be the best at it.  Once you do that, once you accept that you ARE good at something…then look for something else to be good at.  And never stop looking for something else to do.  Be true to yourself, be true to your friends, be true to your family (not necessarily in that order).  But get out there and DO SOMETHING!  And don’t be afraid of death.  It happens to the best of us.  Just don’t make it the focus of your life.

I’ve often ranted/raved about clues to what it is that makes our culture unique. It’s hard to find indicators of what’s really going on out there in America.  The mainstream press is very corporate, very sedate.  The off broadway news sources all have their particular axes to grind and inherent bias.  And when I venture out there on my own, I can only see a tiny slice of the country - and that slice is usually very boring at that.

So when I come across an article like this one I see an opportunity to get a glimpse into what people out there are really thinking.  Ok, granted - it’s an article about a beer commercial.  And it’s a somewhat corny one at that - the ad campaign is a vaguely Hemmingway-esque, grey haired mentor who is seen doing odd, out of context actions shot in grainy slightly out of focus footage.  And his tag line is ’stay thirsty my friends’.

When I first saw those commercials, I thought ‘well gee, that’s an interesting approach’.  Since i’m not really a big time beer drinker I thought nothing more of it.  But I do know that the beer brand he’s been pitching has done well.  This article indicates that it’s doing better than I had realized, and the ad campaign is deeper that I even knew - since there’s a facebook page and online dimension to the whole thing.

Think about all of that for a moment - why is THIS character so popular?  Why does THIS campaign resonate with the 50 and under crowd?  Well, what are the characteristics of this guy?  For starters, his almost zen like tag line: ’stay thirsty my friends’.  In our society, we’re afraid.  Ever since 9/11 we’ve been running scared.  We’ve got bomb squads, bag searches, traffic stops, video cameras going up everywhere (even in rural Lancaster Pa of all places).  We strip search 13 year old girls for ibuprofen.  In an environment like this one, along comes a figure (fictional, I grant you) who tells us to ’stay thirsty’.  Thirsty for life, thirsty for experiences.  The subtext to the entire campaign is that it is ok to not be afraid all the time.

I think this country is tired of being told to live in fear.  I think we’re all tired of being controlled.  I think we’re getting tired of being taxed, numbered, stamped and filed.  I think we’re getting tired of watching a bunch of men and women wearing $2000 suits tell us that they need to raise our taxes to save a business that is ‘too big to be allowed to fail’.  I think this country wants to live large, roll the dice and let the chips fall where they may.  Because deep down, taking risks is what this country is about.  As a culture, we’ve been raised to believe that taking a shot at our dreams is what’s important.  And if we fall short, then that’s fine too - because we stepped up to the plate and gave it our all.  THAT is what it means to be an American.  It’s not about health care for all, or red light cameras on every corner.  It’s not about outlawing smoking or DUI checkpoints in the dark of night.  As our most interesting friend says on his facebook page: “Every now and then, bite off more than you can chew.”  THAT is what we want to do!

This weekend, go out and prove you’re alive.  I don’t care what you do - take a nature hike, ride a bike, go drinking in a bar you’ve never been to before.  Start a fight with a stranger for no reason at all.  But go and do something that you’ve never done before.  Just get up off that chair and do something different from what you’ve been doing for the past 6 months.  Stop.  Being.  Afraid.

Here endth the lesson.