November 30, 2004

End Times

Is it too early in the week for a dose of wierdness?

Naw, now is just fine: The Rapture Index. Please, come and take them away...

Via The Rule of Reason.

Posted by Steve on November 30, 2004 | Comments (1)

November 29, 2004

Raich v Ashcroft

This is what you should be paying attention to today! Drug War Rant has a detailed guide on the issues and links to the supporting documents.

Though I do not have high expectations that the Supremes will do the right thing Lawrence v Texas does give me a bit of hope. Heck, maybe they will go just a bit extreme and just whack Commerce Clause legislation back to its foundations: the feds only business in regulating interstate commerce is to make sure the states do not establish laws that discriminate against the citizens of other states.

Posted by Steve on November 29, 2004

November 26, 2004

Friday Ark

Cats, Dogs, Spiders and ? every Friday.

Warning: Ark loading delays this week. The regular staff is on the road with limited time and bandwidth. Expect delays until Sunday or Monday.

I'll post links to sites that have Friday (or shortly thereafter) photos of their chosen animals as I see them (no photoshops and no humans).

Leave a comment or trackback to this post and I'll add yours to the list. If there is interest I'll keep this as a weekly feature.

Do remember The Carnival of the Cats every Sunday.

Privious editions: 11/19/04, 11/12/04, 11/5/05, 10/29/04, 10/22/04, 10/15/2004, 10/8/2004, 10/1/2004 and 9/24/2004.

Cats

DogsBirdsOther VertebratesInvertebratesDidn't Make It

Posted by Steve on November 26, 2004 | Comments (4)

November 24, 2004

Making the Drug Thugs Useful

The DEA is about as useful as an appendix. It and the rest of the thugs participating in the so called war on drugs do much more harm than good to the citizens of the US and its dependent countries.

They could, if we must allow them to continue to exist, make themselves a little more useful if they focused their efforts on a real problem. Something that kills 5 million people a year world wide.

Posted by Steve on November 24, 2004

November 23, 2004

Let's Get Rid of Voter Fraud

Are any of you tired of hearing whining cries of voter fraud every time there is an election?

Some US dems raised the cry after the recent presidential election and it certainly isn't something that is limited to the US as this plaint about Sunday's election in the Ukraine highlights and Google currently lists 388,000 entries for "voter fraud."

It seems to me that if we dramatically reduced the power currently vested in these elected positions we would simultaneously get rid of the voter fraud issue. After all, who would want the positions if they wield no power and who would care who held these powerless positions.

....

Posted by Steve on November 23, 2004

November 22, 2004

Dogs Beat Cats

All you cat bloggers out there will be disappointed to learn that cats finished 3rd in Google's October listing of the most popular animal searches. Dogs were first followed closely by dragons. Cats were far behind and barely edged out puppies and horses. So why do I find so few dogs and dragons for the Friday Ark?

For the politically inclined In October kerry beat bush in the category of popular news queries (though bush currently leads kerry by about 3.6 million Google listings)

For more interesting Google search stuff check out the Google Zeitgeist.

Via Marginal Revolution.

Posted by Steve on November 22, 2004

Piscataway, Kochi, Zhuzhou

This much is the same:

A hot day in August:

Piscataway, New Jersey, US	95F/35C
Kochi, Japan			95F/35C
Zhuzhou, China			95F/35C


You may be surprised as well as entertained by the differences and other similarities.

Via the Apostropher.

Posted by Steve on November 22, 2004

November 19, 2004

Friday Ark

Cats, Dogs, Spiders and ? every Friday.

I'll post links to sites that have Friday (or shortly thereafter) photos of their chosen animals as I see them (no photoshops and no humans).

Leave a comment or trackback to this post and I'll add yours to the list. If there is interest I'll keep this as a weekly feature.

Privious editions: 11/12/04, 11/5/05, 10/29/04, 10/22/04, 10/15/2004, 10/8/2004, 10/1/2004 and 9/24/2004.

Cats

DogsBirdsOther VertebratesInvertebrates
Didn't Make It

Posted by Steve on November 19, 2004 | Comments (8)

November 18, 2004

Not Getting Things Done

I could blame lite posting on spending too much time last weekend trying to install a Captcha tool to help deal with comment spam that had become just too annoying. Others seem to have it working so I guess I'm not quite techie enough to overcome the installation instructions. MT-Blacklist is next.

But that was last weekend and this is Thursday so I'll add to my blame the other guy list this post which fed my personal management system addiction. I have been spending lots of time over the last several days reading David Allen's Getting Things Done, thinking about its ideas, and preparing to implement its tools. It just might satisfy my addiction where all the others I have tried have failed.

I plan to be getting a lot more done here, at home, and work once I am comfortable with this new system and have my stuff under control. In the meantime....well, we will see....

So, you see the Allen book in the "currently reading" section of the right sidebar. Some of you might raise your eyebrows a bit when you see Quicksilver there. I'm re-reading it before reading The Confusion and The System of the World.

Posted by Steve on November 18, 2004

November 17, 2004

Tired of just politics?

Head over and read a bit about health care at this week's Grand Rounds or, as Shrinkette calls it, the Carnival of the Caregivers.

Well, you won't escape politics entirely....

Posted by Steve on November 17, 2004

November 15, 2004

Be Prepared

That motto takes on ever more expensive trappings. The completists among you can now add the Philips HeartStart Home Automated External Defibrillator (AED) to your tool kit. As OneMansOpinion notes:

You need one of these -- to satisfy your ER jones during the off-season, perhaps.
He has a bit more to say about Philips products as well.

You early adopters start buying now! I want to see the price come down a grand from the Amazon price....

Posted by Steve on November 15, 2004

Comments are Broken

For the time being comments are not working.


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Posted by Steve on November 15, 2004

November 12, 2004

What You Need to Know to Lose Weight

Taught by a physicist!

Richard Muller, Professor of Physics at UC Berkeley, teaches first:

Want to lose weight? Easy! Just remember the first law of thermodynamics: conservation of energy. Oh, and you'll have to not mind being hungry.
And, second:
...breathe more. And the only effective way to breathe more is through increased activity.
And, you will probably feel a lot better after a few months of eating less and breathing more.

Posted by Steve on November 12, 2004

Microsoft's Thoughts on Their Competition

According to the new MSN search engine (beta) Google is more evil than satan.

Google has surged from #4 to #1 in the results since the Presurfer noted this tidbit earlier today.

Update: Shopiere experiments with "software monopoly."

Posted by Steve on November 12, 2004

Friday Ark

Cats, Dogs, Spiders and ? every Friday.

I'll post links to sites that have Friday (or shortly thereafter) photos of their chosen animals as I see them (no photoshops and no humans).

Leave a comment or trackback to this post and I'll add yours to the list. If there is interest I'll keep this as a weekly feature.

Privious editions: 11/5/05, 10/29/04, 10/22/04, 10/15/2004, 10/8/2004, 10/1/2004 and 9/24/2004.

CatsUffish Thoughts: Not supposed to be there!

  • Prophet or Madman: Otis and Milo
  • nycbabylon: Better to be a live cat...
  • Cat Out Loud: Eeyore
  • Box Stock Racer: Stella
  • Running Scared: Colin
  • Smijer: Friday Dogs
  • Watermark: Spike, Boo, and more
  • This Blog Is Full Of Crap: Piper
  • Blogging Cat: Muddy
  • feministe: Pablo
  • Athenamama: Salem
  • Onanism Today: Milhouse
  • Music and Cats: Sergei, Lyra, and Sasha
  • Pesky Apostrophe: Sassy
  • Elayne Riggs: Datsa
  • Little Hippocrat: Kusaka
  • Fake Handbags: Morrissey meets a cat
  • Codpiece Hagiography: Ptolemy
  • The Palaz: American Jurisprudence
  • Worshipping at the Alter of Mediocrity: Isn't she dainty?
  • The People's Republic of Seabrook: Chiropractor's Wet Dream
  • Trish Wilson: Fishing Cat
  • Upper Left: Audrey Hepcat
  • Your Moosey Fate: Sleepy Cats
  • Eschaton: Here and here
  • Catherine: Emily Frost
  • Velcrometer: Orca 7/20/91 - 11/10/04
  • Blog d'Elison: Hakuna added 11/13
    • DogsBirdsOther VertebratesInvertebrates
    Didn't Make It

    Posted by Steve on November 12, 2004 | Comments (4)

    November 11, 2004

    Nukes and Thermal Shirts

    Hey, if this guy can describe The End of the World he ought to be able to sell some technical clothing. Nike seems to think so.

    Via Michael Stastny.

    Posted by Steve on November 11, 2004

    10x10: 100 Words and 100 Pictures

    10x10 looks both interesting and entertaining:

    Every hour, 10x10 scans the RSS feeds of several leading international news sources, and performs an elaborate process of weighted linguistic analysis on the text contained in their top news stories. After this process, conclusions are automatically drawn about the hour's most important words. The top 100 words are chosen, along with 100 corresponding images, culled from the source news stories.
    They also provide links to the related articles and it looks like they intend to archive the hourly reports starting with their beginning back on 11/4. The history funtionality will be cool variation on 'this day in history' stuff.

    They do not say whether they intend to add more news sources to the three they are now using and the images currently load slowly.

    Via LawPundit.

    Posted by Steve on November 11, 2004

    Working Class Hero

    Zombyboy spent some time last night listening to various renditions of Lennon's Working Class Hero. I had no idea so many folks had covered this song.

    Go read his thoughts about the song, the original recording, and some of the covers.

    Posted by Steve on November 11, 2004

    Finding the Cure

    Health care emulates life

    I called Dr. Hammami with the news of the final diagnosis and asked why it had been missed by all the doctors the patient saw before arriving at his hospital. He thought for a moment before he answered. ''It's difficult for a doctor to say, 'I don't know,''' he said. ''The patient doesn't want to hear it, and the doctor doesn't want to say it. But in medicine you can't know everything; you just have to know how to get the answer. I was certain the eosinophils would get us there.''
    The rest of life is similar. We don't know everything and finding solutions to personal, work or social challenges requires a willingness to put in some work and a willingness to look beyond, to step outside of the current framing of a situation.

    Via DB's Medical Rants.

    Posted by Steve on November 11, 2004

    November 10, 2004

    Open the Duir

    Leap! Soar! Explore!

    Via Eschaton.

    Posted by Steve on November 10, 2004

    Voting Humor

    Go ahead, vote for kerry.

    NB: I'm not implying that this is what happened. It's just worth a chuckle.

    Posted by Steve on November 10, 2004

    Save $, Stay Healthy

    Just ignore the antibacterial cleaning products:

    A study by Dr. Elaine Larson at the Columbia School of Nursing called into question the usefulness of antibacterial products for the home. In New York, 224 households, each with at least one preschooler, were randomly assigned to two groups. One group used antibacterial cleaning, laundry and hand-washing products. The other used ordinary products.

    For 48 weeks, the groups were monitored for seven symptoms of colds, flu and food poisoning - and found to be essentially the same. According to Dr. Gerba's research, an active adult touches an average of 300 surfaces every 30 minutes. You cannot win at this. You will become obsessive-compulsive. Just wash your hands with soap and water a few times a day, and leave it at that.

    Yep, wash your hands and refrigerate spoilable food.

    Posted by Steve on November 10, 2004

    November 9, 2004

    Upgrades

    I just spent 5 minutes upgrading my browser, Firefox, and email client, Thunderbird to their new releases and am enjoying some noticeable Firefox speed improvements and some improved management features in Thunderbird.

    If you use these programs upgrade now! You will be happy.

    If you do not use them, especally those of you stuck in MS IE world, give them a try now! You will be happier.

    Update: The folks at Catallarchy also seem to like the latest version of Firefox.

    Posted by Steve on November 9, 2004

    ashcroft resigns

    CNN TV is reporting right now (23:07:09 UTC) that ashcroft has resigned.

    I'm glad to see him move on but the replacement could be better or worse....

    Posted by Steve on November 9, 2004

    Pinging Feedster

    Niall Kennedy notes that you can now ping Feedster. This should lead to more timely indexing of your material for readers who use Feedster.

    Posted by Steve on November 9, 2004

    November 6, 2004

    The Majority of Americans

    Did not vote.

    Let me repeat: the majority of Americans did not vote in the November 2 election.

    As of Friday evening (11/5) bush has tallied 59,651,891 votes. This is not a majority of Americans.

    Approximately 20.2% of the US population voted for bush.
    Approximately 22.0% of US citizens voted for bush.
    Approximately 29.4% of US citizens eligible to vote voted for bush.

    And, yes, a slightly smaller % in each category voted for kerry.

    When you read or hear someone stating that a majority voted for bush remember to put it in perspective. And, if they don't clearly qualify what they are saying, specifically that it was a majority of those who voted, you just might want to question the rest of what they are saying as well.

    NB: The above calculations based on US Census Bureau data from 2002, 2003 and the estimated November 2004 US population.

    Posted by Steve on November 6, 2004 | Comments (1)

    November 5, 2004

    Friday Ark

    Cats, Dogs, Spiders and ? every Friday.

    I'll post links to sites that have Friday (or shortly thereafter) photos of their chosen animals as I see them (no photoshops and no humans).

    Leave a comment or trackback to this post and I'll add yours to the list. If there is interest I'll keep this as a weekly feature.

    Privious editions: 10/29/04, 10/22/04, 10/15/2004, 10/8/2004, 10/1/2004 and 9/24/2004.

    Cats

    DogsBirdsOther VertebratesInvertebrates
    Didn't Make It

    Posted by Steve on November 5, 2004 | Comments (3)

    November 4, 2004

    Triple Eclipse

    Now this is nice!

    tripleeclipse.JPG


    Three large moons hang in the daytime sky above Jupiter in a newly released image, casting a trio of shadows on the planet. Such a triple eclipse occurs only once or twice per decade.

    Via The Esoteric Science Resource Center.

    Posted by Steve on November 4, 2004

    November 3, 2004

    Top Referrers

    On the right side bar is the updated roll of Modulator's 20 top referrers for the month of October. Number 20 produced 16 referrals compared to 11 for number 21 in September.

    October churn: 9 blogs dropped and 8 new ones added compared to 11 and 7 in September.

    Overall traffic was up about 123.7% from September and up 493% from October 03 (no I do not expect the year to year growth to continue at that rate). I am also seeing an increasing number of visits from folks who have bookmarked Modulator and I thank all of you for visiting!

    Top Referrer: This Blog is Full of Crap! Thanks, Laurence.

    Top search phrase/word: live strong bracelets

    Most popular post: Live Strong

    Statistics are culled from AWStats running on Modulator's server at Hosting Matters.

    Again, thank you one and all!

    Also, I'd like to acknowledge significant referrals from some of the blogosphere's 'service' sites: Technorati, weblogs.com, blogrolling.com, MovableType, Blogdex, Bloglines, blogoshpere.us, Sitemeter, NZ Bear's Ecosystem, Bloogz and Daypop.

    All of the blog rolls are ordered by most recently updated so be sure to ping weblogs.com or blogrolling.com to push to the top of the rolls. These are certainly the sites I tend to look at first and visitors will see you at the top of the roll as well.

    For a brief discussion of Modulator's blog rolls look here.

    Posted by Steve on November 3, 2004

    The US Election

    Disappointed but not surprised.

    I was not and am not a bush supporter. Regular readers know that I was not a strong kerry supporter either. For me, the one possible result worse then a kerry victory is the one that happened: a bush victory.

    It does puzzle me that many thoughtful, well educated folks looked at the available evidence and chose to vote for bush. By any accounting I would choose bush has been a failure. But, for instance, Megan McCardle looked at a wide range of issues and came up bush. Yet, even after reading her long, thoughtful discussion I could not come to her conclusion. Rather it was still clear that the devil I knew was, indeed, the devil and needed to be cast out.

    Did I have great expectations of kerry? No, not at all. Perhaps some modest improvements in protecting civil liberties; some effort to begin rebuilding international credibility for the US; possibly some improved fiscal responsibility; maybe more palatable supreme court nominees; hopefully some success in reducing the terrorist threat which, at least according to bush's campaign messages, bush has failed miserably at achieving; and not much else.

    The world is not going to end with bush's election to a second term nor would electing kerry have been its salvation. Both kerry and bush were seeking leadership of the largest gang state on the planet. This is a position vested with far too much power and one that seems focused on maintaining or increasing the influence of the state and corporate special interests rather than the interests of the people.

    Be it bush or had it been kerry there is a tremendous amount of work to be done over what will undoubtably be a long and difficult time to evolve human interactions and institutions to a place where the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of each human is fully respected by all other humans and our institutions.

    Posted by Steve on November 3, 2004 | Comments (3)

    November 2, 2004

    Voting

    I voted in the US election via absentee ballot over a week ago and have been delightedly ignoring all the campaign BS ever since.

    I have encouraged many others to vote however I do not fault some of the non-voters. The past several days have produced a challenging debate between voting and non-voting libertarians at Catallarchy. No matter your current leaning, today is a good day to read through and deliberate about the points raised in this discussion.

    My take: even with all the faults of the current system your votes can make some small positive difference for the immediate future. I fully expect whoever wins to provide ample material for sharp discussion and dark humor.

    This periodic voting is, though, a relatively small part of the ongoing discussion. Real long term change requires that discussion leads to regular action not simply a yes or no, him or her, every two or four years. Let's start looking for actions that can be done daily, weekly, monthly to move us toward a free and peaceful world.

    Posted by Steve on November 2, 2004

    November 1, 2004

    Government Work

    An old man lived alone in the country. He wanted to dig his potato garden, but it was very hard work as the ground was very dry and hard. His only son, Fred, who used to to help him, was in prison. The old man wrote a letter to his son and told him of his predicament:

    DEAR FRED,

    I am feeling pretty bad because it looks like I won't be able to plant my potato garden this year. I'm just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. If you were here, all my trouble would be over since I know you would dig the garden for me.

    Love, Dad...

    ---------------

    A few days later, he received a response from his son:

    Dear Dad,

    For heaven's sake, Dad, don't dig up that garden....that's were I buried the BODIES.

    Love, your son, Fred

    ------------------

    At 4 AM the next morning, FBI agents and local police arrived and dug up the entire area without finding any bodies. They apologized to the old man and left. That same day the old man received another letter from his son:

    Dear Dad:

    Go ahead and plant the potatoes now. That's the best I could do under the circumstances.

    Love, your son, Fred

    Posted by Steve on November 1, 2004 | Comments (1)

    Drink From a Half Full Glass

    For a healthier, longer life be an optimist:

    Those who reported high levels of optimism had a 55 percent lower risk of death from all causes and a 23 percent lower risk of cardiovascular death than people who reported high levels of pessimism. The protective effect of being optimistic seemed to offer stronger protection against all-cause death for men than for women.
    So, if you are on the losing side of tomorrow's US elections, find some bit of blue sky to focus on and begin or continue to work towards that better future.

    Posted by Steve on November 1, 2004