THE PROBABILITY BROACH (Graphic Novel Edition) is online at http://www.bigheadpress.com/tpbtgn?page=0 . Don't miss this barnburner of a novel. It's got everything, pretty girls, gunfights, crooked bureaucrats and heroic heroes. Serialized until all pages are online, with new pages every Wednesday. Whyare you still here, click the link and go read it!
"Filed under: Text, Utilities, Web services
Marshall Kirkpatrick of TechCrunch notifies us of Grazr, a quick tool to browse your OPML files, no programming knowledge needed. I guess you could think of Grazr as a hierarchical exploded tree-menu explorer-type interface on some kind of weird custard that makes you say things like "dandy." For an example, check it out over at TechCrunch. Grazr, a sort of OPML browser makes RSS feeds pop and even plays video (like YouTube) and other media right in the browser. I love the slippery
Facts to Ponder
(A) The number of physicians in the U.S. is
700,000.
(B) Accidental deaths caused by Physicians
per year are
120,000.
(C) Accidental deaths per physician
is
0.171.
Statistics courtesy of U.S. Dept of
Health Human Services.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Now think about this:
Guns:
(A) The number of gun owners in the U.S.
is
80,000,000.
(Yes, that's 80 million..)
(B) The number of accidental gun deaths
per year, all age groups,
is
1,500.
(C) The number of accidental deaths
per gun owner
is
.000188.
Statistics courtesy of FBI
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
So, statistically, doctors are approximately
9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Remember, "Guns don't kill people, doctors do."
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
FACT: NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN,
BUT
ALMOST EVERYONE HAS AT LEAST ONE DOCTOR.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Please alert your friends
to this
alarming threat.
We must ban doctors
before this gets completely out of hand!!!!!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>
Out of concern for the public at large,
I withheld the statistics on
lawyers
for fear the shock would cause
people to panic and seek medical attention
"
Get the lowdown on any Web 2.0-type company with web2logo.com, a site that gives you the latest buzz, Alexa stats, Technorati graphs, and more.
Companies are ordered by logo and tag; you can also just scroll through the over ten (!) pages of Web 2.0 sites that are currently indexed. This is a great tool for keeping on top of the seemingly inexhaustible supply of Web 2.0 goodness. — Wendy Boswell
web2logo.com [via MicroPersuasion]
"Filed under: VoIP
Believe it or not, if you're an American, you've been paying a 3% excise tax on all of your long distance calls to finance the Spanish-American war (yup--the same war that ended years before Theodore Veil founded the first long-distance networking firm, AT&T). This week, that tax has been officially repealed, hinting that the old war has finally been paid for, some 108 years later. Or, perhaps more importantly, that your long-distance carrier no longer has the burden of shuffling 3% of their revenue over to Uncle Sam.
Me? I've been a VoIP user for almost four years now, allowing me to circumvent the
There are any number of FREE program or application launchers for XP. You can have them in the system tray. You can launch from Open / Save dialog boxes. Keep 'em on hotkeys like Launchy (shown above left),
with the Free Launch Bar,
the Vista Start Menu (no relation to the Longhorn OS)
Intended for software development teams or helpdesks, ONTIME 2006 is far more useful for "next-action" list / task managment. Keep all your personal todo lists in this email enabled database. FREE single user license!""Students are using a new ring tone to receive messages in class -- and many teachers can't even hear the ring. Some students are downloading a ring tone off the Internet that is too high-pitched to be heard by most adults. With it, high schoolers can receive text message alerts on their cell phones without the teacher knowing. As people age, many develop what's known as aging ear -- a loss of the ability to hear higher-frequency sounds. The ring tone is a spin-off of technology that was originally meant to repel teenagers -- not help them. A Welsh security company developed the tone to help shopkeepers disperse young people loitering in front of their stores while leaving adults unaffected. The company called their product the 'Mosquito.'" (06/12/06)
JMM: Just like any prisoners do.... sidestep the guards!
BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:2.1
N:;
REV:20060227T174258Z
END:VCARD
What kind of idiot buys a computer and willingly – even eagerly – exposes it to all the malware and viruses he can? Me. I bought a Dell Dimension B110 ($468! Cheap!) and tried to kill it for more than two weeks. I clicked on every pop-up and downloaded the gnarliest porn, gambling, and hacker files I could find. It seems our Internet overlords are sterilizing spam. If I were to treat my body the way I treated this computer, I’d have yellow fever, bird flu, and Alzheimer’s. But the Dell? Eh. Somewhat the worse for wear.
– Steve Knopper
Diary of DestructionPrelaunch: I ask friends and relatives to forward me their nastiest-looking spam. In response, I start getting emails from my mom with discomforting subject lines like “Dating for kinky people!” I disable all my firewalls and virus-protection software.
Day 1: I click on Viagra come-ons, Chinese-language ads, and anything else I can point my cursor at. “Gain” spyware, “MORE SIZE!” enticements, and Free Smut Club offers pop up every few minutes – a decent start. But I crave viruses. Frustratingly, Yahoo Mail refuses to open the dozens of dubious -attachments I’ve forwarded to myself.
Day 2: Craving a less discerning email service, I open jakeusbrownus@dbzmail.com, which features the cartoon Dragonball Z.
Day 4: I receive an email in Portuguese from the Brazilian government announcing that it has rejected an email from me because it contained W32.Netsky.Q@mm. Score! No perceptible impact on my system, but apparently networks in São Paulo have been brought to a standstill.
Day 10: I download Kazaa, search for .xxx, .gif, .rar, .pif, and .exe files, and open everything. My desktop is soon stuffed with pornography, MP3s in Arabic, and pirated copies of Tomb Raider. Within minutes, Explorer has a grand mal seizure – 95 pop-ups and innumerable error messages. Hah!
Day 11: Incredibly, the Dell boots up. I’ve gotten some strange attachments that Yahoo, Outlook, and Eudora won’t let me open. I try copying some from my regular computer to the Dell using an external drive. Nothing.
Day 12: Upon firing up the computer, I get six Internet Explorer pop-ups, one WhenUWin Sweepstakes, and one “The Best Offers.” McAfee VirusScan says I have 25 potentially unwanted files, including W32/Netsky.q@MM!zip and two other viruses. SaferScan finds 1,002 porn files on my hard drive, and my Yahoo Mail inbox has 200 brand-new messages with subject lines like “Tired of dating games?”
Day 18: I take the Dell to Best Buy’s Geek Squad and tell a technician that I’m having a bit of trouble with it. Less than four hours later I get a call back from Carla. She declares it a total loss and advises wiping the hard drive and restoring it with system disks. “The tech ran a couple of virus scans,” she says. “One kept beeping so much that he had to just turn it off.” Ah, that’s the stuff.
| http://www.kaboodle.com/za/ite...&itemId=AAAABBPMoMoAAAAAAAHqbg | Date: 3/14/2006 5:30 PM |
Tablet PC Guide: Agilix GoBinder is designed to leverage all of the technological advances found on a Tablet PC. GoBinder provides a free guide to help students compare...
"Filed under: Audio, Fun, Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Web services, Commercial
The Home Recording and Instruments blog has news of a cool new software download for Mac and Windows that allows you to conduct musical jam sessions with your buddies on the Internet--in real time! This piece of software lets you use MIDI instruments--guitars, keyboards, and woodwinds--to collaborate on musical compositions from miles
Nightraker ADDS: The keyboard is the most musical instrument I play, but this sounds really cool!
"Tomato 7 has more on the death squad that deployed because a doctor was allegedly involved in sports gambling.
Any bets the executioner is never punished? I'll lay 10-to-1 odds it never happens.
Oops. I didn't just solicit illegal gambling, did I?
Hold on--I think there's somebody at the do...
8% INFLATION, 12% UNEMPLOYMENT. 800,000 JOBS LOST IN 2005, BUDGET DEFICIT OF $3.5 TRILLION, with a T. I saw "V for Vendetta" last night, but I'm not talking about an alternate future. These numbers are the conclusions of a private economist who has been tracking government statistics for 20 years. More importantly, he has been reading the fine print in government reports. There is a reason your personal experience of the economy doesn't quite match all the good news in The War Street Journal. Most people would rather be told a comforting lie than confront ugly reality. Politicians figured that out a long time ago. Walter J. Williams has been keeping track of how the books are cooked. He figures that social security checks would be 70% higher if honest CPI figures were used. Nixon imposed price controls when inflation was less than 5%; today we live with nearly twice that figure. Only the lies are different. Those who suffer are the same: the retired, the disabled, the helpless, the savers, anyone on fixed income. If you are not first in line to get that fabled "money from thin air" created in such massive quantities today, you are falling behind every single day. His site, Shadow Government Statistics is worth a look for those"
" WELL SAID -JMMThe NYPD is installing 505 surveillance cameras around the city - and pushing to safeguard lower Manhattan with a "ring of steel" that could track hundreds of thousands of people and cars a day, authorities revealed yesterday.
Turning America into a prison: one cellblock at a time...
"Tomato 7 has more on the death squad that deployed because a doctor was allegedly involved in sports gambling.
Any bets the executioner is never punished? I'll lay 10-to-1 odds it never happens.
Oops. I didn't just solicit illegal gambling, did I?
Hold on--I think there's somebody at the do...
"Launched in February 2005, Randex is an online database of media references to Rand and Objectivism. The entire database of articles may be searched by text, date, and amount of relevant content. The purpose of Randex is:
To provide an indication of the impact of Ayn Rand’s ideas in today’s culture. This impact can be measured by the frequency with which the ideas are discussed or mentioned, the level of understanding shown, and also by the attitude taken by writers to Rand’s ideas—be it positive, negative, or neutral. As the database of references grows, it becomes a source for analyzing longer-term trends in these areas.
To be listed on Randex an item must appear online as a dated article at a news, information, or opinion website. Interestingly, the three new items listed today are repsectively negative, positive and neutral.
"The Subway Navigator is a handy tool for figuring out subways routes in cities across the globe.
Browse the entire map of a system or search by entering a departure and arrival station. From Chicago to Budapest, from Tokyo to Sao Paulo enter
"Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Web services, Microsoft
Continuing on a quest to buy everything that Google or Yahoo haven't bought already, Microsoft announced the acquisition of Onfolio today. Onfolio, for the uninitiated, is one of the most powerful web bookmark, page capture, research assistant tools available for Windows. The big M will be adding Onfolio onto its Windows Live Toolbar as a free offering. I'm sure that won't go well with those who ponied up $99 for their copies of Onfolio, but hey, now the rest of the world can share the wealth of your 'seed funding'. It will be interesting to see what Microsoft does with the Firefox
"
Maxpower has a nice listng of truly free icons.
The list below represents some amazing work by various artists who have made their work available to the general public. Each artist has a link to their homepage, the license of the released work, and an attached sample of what you can download by following the named link. Note that what you view doesn’t represent the entire work, only a small portion of it to give you an idea of the icon style.
Surprisingly there is some great stuff in there. Icons can be a bit tricky and stock isn't always a good fit, but these are worth a look.
Free! Icons for your website or application [Maxpower]
Comment on this post
"
Windows Live Expo is a craiglist-style social listing service from Microsoft.
Expo is a dynamic social listing service that allows members to find and sell items, discover information, and meet other parties in their area – all for free! With Expo, you can browse and post listings to those you trust, like your buddies, co-workers, and fellow students, or, to all Expo visitors. In addition, you can map listings easily using MSN Virtual Earth, post a free listing in less than a minute with our easy-to-follow steps, and use instant messages to communicate quickly with other members.
The mapping feature in particular seems handy and the interface, while a bit slow, is fairly clean and easy to read. More on this in coming weeks.
Comment
"
In just a few weeks, Stefan Molyneux has profoundly changed the way I view the world. Though I already shared much of his philosophy, his erudite yet easy strolls through...
"
Are you frustrated at the loss of freedom and responsibility in America, while the growth of government and taxes continues unabated? Do you want to live in strong...
""Alan Korwin, author of Gun Laws of America, noted on his website last June that '22% of federal gun laws now authorize arming staff.' Scroll down the screen a bit and he further observes, 'Some of the more unusual federal 'police' forces are the egg inspector police, the print shop police, the EPA police, and one of the newest, the Federal Reserve Board police.' All of these absolutely beneficent bureaucracies have been endowed with 'broad powers to keep and bear arms in cases where the public is banned from keeping arms.' (Incidentally, it's US Code Title 21 Section 1041 that makes it illegal to forcibly interfere with a federal egg inspector, and extending the death penalty to anyone murdering such a valuable government asset apparently became the law way back in 1991.)" (03/03/06)
Somalia is in the news again. Rival gangs are shooting each other, and why? The reason is always the same: the prospect that the weak-to-invisible transitional government...
Sometimes, you blog things just because you can. In honor of Earth Day, I present to you eco-friendly possum-fur nipple warmers and g-strings from New Zealand. PETA may...
You can put any of our FIVE great quote of the day javascript feeds on your site. To use the quote feeds, just copy this one line of code and insert it any where on your...
" A very nice list of free stuff for Windows users
" Get RSS in InBox
This is the official blog of the creators of Squeet.com. We discuss Squeet, RSS and other cool stuff.
"TIPs for the world of OUTLOOK
This service pack includes previously released service packs and fixes several undocumented bugs, including one affecting users with multiple SMTP accounts. SP2 adds...
"
The following joke is as politically incorrect as they come, but I need to quote it in order demonstrate my point (I apologize in advance):
Five Jews changed the way we look at things:
Moses: The Law is everything
Jesus: Love is everything
Marx: Money is everything
Freud: Sex is everything
Then came Einstein: Everything is relativeThat’s as far as the old joke goes. But, when it comes to the Filing vs. Searching debate, Google would add:
Google: Search is everything
What is wrong with
The feeling of information overload is proportional to the amount of unprocessed information we have. I have a name for places where this unprocessed stuff piles up: “inboxes”. The email inbox is the obvious one, but there are others too.
Here are my inboxes:
All of these have a plentiful supply of information to assimilate and decide how to handle. I resist anything that threatens to increase the number of inboxes I have. For example, I tried out OneNote and EverNote. These are cool products, but not having a tablet computer, the most useful feature to me was the ability to capture snippets from web pages for later reference. After using these tools for a while, and accumulating loads of snippets, I realized that I had unconsciously added yet another inbox. This was one too many, as I had to make a conscious effort to remember it when cranking through my other more visible inboxes. So how did I replace it?
OneNote Replacement
I’ve found a way that works better for me: when I want to capture text or a URL I copy it to the clipboard, switch to Outlook and create an Outlook Post item (Ctrl+Shift+S) into which I paste the information. When I click the Post button, my snippet is put into my regular email inbox, so it will get handled during my next triage session. It’s a few more clicks, but one less inbox.
Keep RSS Temptation at Bay
Although this would allow me to reduce my inbox count by one, I am resisting the temptation of getting an RSS Reader that integrates into Outlook. I don’t want my feeds to be just a click away, as it will be too tempting to check them all day long. I prefer to keep them on the side in a standalone RSS reader that I fire up once a day, as I’m winding the day down.
Post-it Notes are a No-No
Another item I’ve eliminated altogether is post-it notes. These break all the rules of my system and compete for my attention when they are least relevant. If I have something I have to do today, it will be on the relevant list which I scan frequently. If it’s not so urgent, I can write it down in my notebook or create an item that appears in my email inbox.
I’m haven’t managed to find a tool that will clip web content to my Outlook inbox via a keyboard shortcut. If you’ve heard of one, let me know. Otherwise I’ll just have to write one…
"
by Gina Trapani
After I wiped my hard drive clean and reinstalled Windows XP last week, I booted up into an pristine, default operating system - that felt a lot like a hotel room just before I rolled my luggage in, tossed my jacket on the couch, unmade the bed and set my toothbrush next to the sink. I had no idea how many changes I'd made to Windows to fit my preferences over the years until they were all undone.
Today I've got a list of the most important Windows customizations that make my PC feel like a place I can get work done in more smoothly and easily. Hop in for a quick ride around Windows dialogs, tabs, menus and toolbars to get your XP fitting like a glove.Re-locate the the taskbar
I've got a wide screen and I like to see as much information vertically as possible, so I drag and drop the Windows taskbar to the left hand
"Filed under: Cellphones, Peripherals, Wearables, Wireless
Forget those fossilized SPOT watches. If you want to go all Dick Tracy, check out Seiko's CPC TR-006, a Bluetooth watch that communicates with your cellphone. Currently just a prototype, the watch can receive text messages from your phone, capture Caller ID data so you know who's calling, and adjust ringtones. Pair it with a Bluetooth headset, stick your phone in your bag, and you've got a complete hands-free interface that
The New York Times reports previously-mentioned blog publishing software BookSmart, which will download and reformat your blog into book form, print and help you sell copies to your fawning blog readers and internet admirers.
Pricing for printed versions of your book from Blurb starts at $30 for an 8-by-10-inch full-color hardcover volume with dust jacket and up to 40 pages. A book of up to 80 pages is $3 more. (Blurb plans to eventually offer paperback editions selling for about 30 percent less than hardcover.) Authors will also be able to set up online bookstores through Blurb's Web site.
BookSmart's not yet available to the public, but it's uptake will be interesting to see. While the thought of a million muffled hyperlinks subjected to the non-clickable imprisonment of actual paper makes me sad, self-publishing blogs jives with the whole scrapbooking/DIY media phenomenon. Would you ever bookify your weblog? Or is it a terrible idea all around? Let us know what you think in the comments or at tips at lifehacker.com.
"
The dollar bill isn't the only quick ruler on the block. The Transuranic blog shows us how you can use a standard piece of letter paper (8.5" x 11") to make a quick and accurate foot-rule.
Take the first page, and fold from either top corner down to the side, lining up the side carefully, making a right triangle.
Remember how you thought you'd never use trig? Well you were right, because I just used it for you. One ABC and three squares later, the hypotenuse of the right triangle you've created is 12.02 inches - very close to being exactly one foot.
Quick and easy, and a .02" margin of error is good enough for me. Give it two more folds and you've got markers for 3", 6", and 9" as well.
"We constantly hear about Dick Cheney's ties to Halliburton and how his ex-company is making bundles off U.S. contracts in Iraq. But what we don't hear about is how Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein and her husband are also making tons of money off the 'war on terror.' The wishy-washy senator now claims Bush misled her prior to the invasion of Iraq. I don't think she's being honest with us, though. There may have been other reasons she helped sell Bush's lies. According to the Center for Public Integrity, Feinstein's husband Richard Blum has racked in millions of dollars from Perini, a civil infrastructure construction company, of which the billionaire investor wields a 75 percent voting share. ... Feinstein, who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee as well as the Select Committee on Intelligence, is reaping the benefits of her husband's investments." (02/28/06)
by Adam Pash
Here at Lifehacker, we check out handfuls of brand spanking new software and web applications every day. Reading Lifehacker for a couple of days, you quickly come to notice that an overwhelming majority of these apps claim sanctuary in the beta phase. In fact, some of my favorite web apps (Gmail, Flickr) have remained in beta well over a year after their initial launch.
Of course, there's a good reason for the beta phase - it allows developers time to test their product with plenty of room for mistakes, feedback, and improvements. That's all well and good for software, but for those of you who aren't developers, a good beta period can still be just what the doctor ordered. In fact, my single most useful tool for productivity and success is a well-thought out, well-planned "beta" period for whatever I'm hoping to accomplish.
As many of you probably know by now (and as I'll continue to tell you, I'm sure), I'll be running the Chicago Marathon on October 22 of this year. As you can see, I've got plenty of time to prepare, but that's not stopping me from getting started immediately. With the marathon 34 weeks away, I've got just enough time to set up two training sessions (a 16-week beta session, two weeks rest, and the final 16-week training plan) so that, come Marathon day, I can run with full confidence that I'm completely prepared for what lies ahead.
My beta training session will cover the same workouts (though slightly easier) as my final training plan. Aside from helping me prepare physically for a fairly grueling training schedule, the beta period also takes care of any major concerns I have about whether or not I can handle it. After I finish my beta training, I will know both that I can do the work necessary to train for a marathon and that I will be able to finish those 26.2 miles.
And that's a full 4 months before the actual race!
It's foolish to expect that you'll have instant success with anything you try. You can avoid major disappointment and frustration if you plan ahead and consider the early stages of goal-setting and goal-accomplishing as just that - an early testing period that can potentially bring success, but, regardless of the outcome, is nonetheless a great learning and testing ground.
If luck smiles on you and you happen to get everything perfect right off the bat, then congratulations! If you're not so lucky, don't worry - allow yourself to make some mistakes, learn from them, gain better footing, and continue.
Of course I know it's not practical to plan a "beta" period for everything. For example, when time isn't on your side, it can be just as foolish to try to plan everything out when the only realistic option is to go off-the-cuff. But when you can identify your goals in advance (and there are plenty of times where this is the case), laying the groundwork and immediately starting in, especially when it's important to you, can make all the difference.
To make sure that you're always prepared to take the next step in whatever direction you're steering your life, it's important to recognize and set your goals as far in advance as possible, allowing yourself the opportunity to lay as much groundwork as you can before the time comes that you have to do it for real.
While Google is notorious for keeping its products in beta for years and years, there's no question that they've got the goods. As far as your goods go, whether your beta lasts for several weeks or several years (it really depends on the goal), the main concern is whether or not you're getting done what you need to do to be prepared to go live.
In my example, I go live on October 22nd in Chicago, and I'm happy and comfortable with the knowledge that I'll be prepared.
What goals (long- or short-term) have you (or should you) set up plenty of beta time for? How are you making sure you're ready when it's your turn? Let us know in the comments, or send an email to tips at lifehacker.com.
Adam Pash is an associate editor of Lifehacker. His special feature Hack Attack appears every Tuesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Hack Attack RSS feed to get new installments in your newsreader.
"
ThinkFree Office Online lets you open, edit, create, and save Microsoft Office documents (Word, PowerPoint, and Excel) from any browser for, just as you thought, free. ThinkFree Office Online also boasts the ability to:
Post documents directly to your blog without any conversion
Create powerful Web presentations using a familiar interface
Convert your existing documents to PDF formatWith the free account (which requires only an email address for registration), you get 30 MB of storage space and full functionality. You can upgrade your account for more storage, though I'm having a tought time finding out how. At any rate, ThinkFree Office Online is an awesome way to access and edit Office documents when you're away from the desk. Thanks Dhaval!
ThinkFree Office Online [ThinkFree.com]
""If you thought al Qaeda or Iraqi insurgents were the major threats facing America, Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) says you're wrong. According to Dent, 'The growing availability of methamphetamine is a form of terrorism unto itself.' Many of Dent's colleagues apparently agree, so they've attached surveillance, 'smuggling', and 'money laundering' provisions to the reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act. These vast new police powers, contained in a new 'Combat Methamphetamine Act' (CMA) and other provisions, serve no purpose in the ongoing and serious struggle against terrorism." (02/24/06)
"
There are hundreds of ways to customize your computer during and after setup. We've gathered tips on setup and customization for you to explore and try.
Julian VanDyke often gets under my skin. I don’t think I am alone in thinking that his combative attitude makes it tough to have true discussion. That attitude is not reserved only for the discussion posts. Recently, in our inboxes, HoT editors received this challenge:
How about it, Hammer of Truth writers. Write something about this or is the only thing you can do is bash the Iraq war and promote pornography? Let’s see some Second Amendment action. Guys like me are really interested in preserving what little freedom we have to buy, sell and own arms of all kinds and descriptions without interference from big brother. Are you interested in this issue or are you hung up on bashing soldiers and our military?
Naturally, he included a tip. February 15th was reserved for the Oversight Hearing of “The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) Part l: Gun Show Enforcement.” This site provides the testimonies of a gun show manager, a former police officer turned gunsmith and an enthusiast. The testimonies, if true, demonstrate that the BATF has completely failed- either by ignorance or irreverence- to uphold its duty as servant of the American people and the constitution we hold dear. That failure reaches past the Second Amendment and actually brings in the First and Fourth as well.
The oral statement of Annette Gelles, the owner of Showmasters Gun Shows clearly defines her business purpose and expertise:
By way of background, I have been the sole manager and proprietor of Showmasters for 10 years. Showmasters is a family owned business that began as Old Dominion Shows in 1971. My father and mother began the Roanoke Valley Gun Show and Old Dominion Gun Collectors Society 34 years ago. Over the years, we have produced thousands of shows in Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland. We are a family oriented business with a conservative customer base. We allow no profanity, pornography, explosive or smoke devices so that the show is appropriate for families with children. Many of the exhibitors are retired or active duty military or law enforcement personnel. Many are just average citizens - hobbyists, knife collectors, coin collectors, holster manufacturers, booksellers, and those offering police supplies and accessories.
She admittedly worked with law enforcement in the past and had insisted on safety and security with regard to vendors, but had never recognized more than a couple ATF officers at a show. I wonder why 475 officers were assigned, without her knowledge, to her August 13 – 14, 2005 show. Ms. Gelles apparently wondered the same.
Mr. Chairman, you might ask if the purpose for this operation was explained to me as the show promoter. It was not. Instead, here is what I observed. People were approached and discouraged from purchasing guns, before attempting to purchase they were interrogated and accused of being in the gun business without a license, detained in police vehicles, and gun buyer’s homes visited by police and much more. An example of what happened is as follows: One individual was simply pulled aside from a table in the middle of a purchase and asked by an ATF agent, “What do you want to buy that gun for?” All weekend long people were interrogated in a similar manner at a table in the concession area just outside the ATF Command Post exit door.
John White, former police officer and owner of The GunSmith, gave similar testimony.
And then he went a step further:Early activity at the gun shows was entirely appropriate and within the law, however, it appeared that as time went on, the ATF was joined by personnel from other law enforcement agencies who were outside their span of control. As more resources were added, both financial and personnel, the mission and activities seemed to continually expand to try to keep everyone busy. For example, in the early gun shows, the ATF would observe and interview when activity seemed suspicious. Then home checks were added as more local officers participated with the ATF. Then instead of just address verifications, our customers told us that the officers would interview neighbors and family members about how they felt about this person buying a gun.
snipWe would also like to see the inordinate attention on purchasers of firearms who happen to be female stopped. Times have changed and the world has changed. As more women have become head of households, entered law enforcement and the military and learned of their many advantages as competition shooters, more women are interested in firearms for the same reason as male purchasers.
It seems, however, to be the prevailing opinion for law enforcement at the gun show that any woman who brings a male friend for advice or support must be making a straw purchase.snip
If a woman approached a gun table, she was quickly surrounded by undercover officers closely observing her every move. A women was almost guaranteed to rate an interview if she actually purchased or attempted to purchase a gun at that show on Sunday.
James Lalime gave testimony which indicated that he was questioned because he was seen at many shows.
The first question agent McComas asked me was, “We see you at a lot of gun shows, are you in the business of buying and selling firearms?” To which I answered, “No sir, these are my personal firearms.” Again agent McComas said, “well we see you at every gunshow, are you sure you’re not buying and selling guns as a business?” And again I told him that these were out of my personal collection. To which agent McComas replied, “Well, because we see you at all the gunshows we think you are, and you should get a business license to do so, it’s not that hard!” When I tried to explain to agent McComas the reason they see me at all the shows, might be because I work for a FFL dealer and work at those shows. Agent McComas replied, “Are you walking around at gunshows buying and selling guns for the dealer you work for?’ I told him no, that I was there for myself, that I had some guns I didn’t shoot and wanted to sell. Again agent McComas insisted that they saw me at, “ALL the gunshows” And again I told him that I worked for an FFL dealer, at gunshows and maybe that’s why they see me at every show. Agent McComas again asked if I was there working for the FFL dealer, and again I told him that I was there for myself. This type of round, and round questioning went on for about another 15-20 minutes.
Violations of rights and liberties are too common today. Many people will read about this gun show and think that it doesn’t affect them. That is unfortunate for us all. I am thinking now of a woman who was well served by her ability to have a gun. Jackie Mae King, an 87 year old Illinois woman, was robbed in December. The crook cut her phone line to keep her from calling her big brother local police department. When a crook attempted again in February, Granny popped a cap into his ass lung. Again her phone line was cut, but she was not beaten as she was in December.
Our government and the anti-gun groups in this country would have you believe that the Second Amendment is something that relates to another era. Tell that to Jackie Mae King or the the people that Fox News found defending themselves.
– Little Rock, Ark: After the assailant attacked him and his son-in-law with a poker, a 64-year-old minister shot a man dead on church grounds. The attacker had engaged in a string of assaults in an apparent drug-induced frenzy.
– Corpus Christi, Texas: A woman shot to death her ex-husband, who had broken into her house. The woman had a restraining order against the ex-husband.
– Tampa Bay, Fla.: A 71-year-old man, Melvin Spaulding, shot 20-year-old James Moore in the arm as Moore and two friends were beating up his neighbor, 63-year-old George Lowe. Spaulding had a concealed weapons permit.
–Bellevue, Wash.: A man shot a pit bull that lunged to within a foot of him and his family. Police said the man’s family had been repeatedly menaced in the past by the dog.
– Jonesboro, Ga.: A father out walking with his 11-year-old daughter was attacked by an armed robber. The police say the father shot the attacker in self-defense and will not face charges.
– Houston, Texas: Andrea McNabb shot two of the three men who tried to rob her plumbing business on the afternoon of Dec. 1.
– Philadelphia, Pa: A pharmacy manager fatally shot one robber and wounded another after the robbers threatened to kill workers at the store. The wounded robber escaped.
The Second Amendment has a purpose. The purpose is to give free (wo)men the ability to protect life, property and/or country. That our law enforcement agencies wish to disregard that purpose should outrage us. That they disregard it while violating other rights should bring us to the point of outrage and action. Our founding fathers knew that we could not ever remain free if we were controlled by the guns of the government and they protected that knowledge by clearly stating it in the Constitution. It is not relative to a different time. It is essential for liberty today.
"In his speech to the American Legion last Friday, Bush boasted, “With my 2007 budget, we’ll increase VA’s medical care budget by 69 percent since 2001. Our increased funding has given almost a million more veterans access to the VA medical care system.”
Bush did not go into further specifics. He did not say anything about a 437% increase in the number of soldiers who have received artificial legs, or a 328% increase in the number of soldiers who have gotten replacement right arms, or the surge in the number of American boys who have gotten false eyeballs courtesy of Uncle Sam. He did not mention how the Veterans Administration’s soaring number of wheelchair purchases is creating jobs for American manufacturing companies.
And while Bush brags that his reforms have given “almost a million more veterans” access to the VA, he does not specify how many of those are maimed for life, hollow shells of the men and women they were before Bush sent them to Iraq.
Regardless, the American Legion members cheered Bush like a conquering hero.
[**
""Farfrompoopen Road, the only road to Constipation Ridge, lost to Divorce Court and Psycho Path, which placed No. 1 in an online poll of the nation's wildest, weirdest and wackiest street names. Mitsubishi Motors sponsored the poll on the website, and more than 2,500 voters cast their ballots during a week of voting that ended this month. Winners were announced Friday. 'Our readers really stepped up with some insane street names,' said Web site publisher Paul Eisenstein. 'Our panel had a difficult time narrowing several hundred down to the 10 our readers voted on. But we learned a lot about the byways of this country, not to mention the collective sense of humor of city planners everywhere.' In first place was Psycho Path in Traverse City, Mich., followed by Heather Highlands, Pa.'s, Divorce Court in second and Tennessee's Farfrompoopen Road in third. Eisenstein said all the roads were verified, although some are private and hard to find." (02/27/06)
"Blogger Peter Jelliffe has posted a simple guide for setting up Microsoft Outlook to mimic the conversation threads used in Gmail.
To mimic Gmail’s threads we need a way for Outlook to group by subject, but ignore the FW: and RE:. Luckily, it has just such a feature. It’s called Conversation, and it's an optional column just like date received and subject. In your Inbox, go to the pane that lists your emails. Right-click any of the field headings, like From, or Subject, and select Field Chooser. You’ll get a list of additional fields that pertain to your emails. Click and drag Conversation to the other field headings. You’ll notice it looks just like subject, but ignores FW: and RE:.
For all you Thunderbirds out there, you can do the same by simply clicking on the column on the far left of the message pane with the conversation bubble.
Make Outlook Work Like GMail [100% Pure Petroleum Jellife]
A favorite topic of GTD‘ers is the contexts that we each choose to identify the times, tools, or locations by which a given task can or must be undertaken. This is a highly personalized decision, and I’ve learned a lot from seeing how other people are doing it.
Since I see it’s been a while since I’ve talked about how I’m using contexts, here’s an update that reflects how I’m now using Kinkless GTD and iCal to keep things wrangled.
It’s worth mentioning that a lot of my approach has been shaped by my move from Entourage to kGTD + iCal. While the actual contexts haven’t changed too much, the way I organize and think about them has evolved, as we’ll see a bit later.
The context themselves, with a brief explanation, where it’s useful or non-obvious:
(Note: the “+” sign tells kGTD that these contexts don’t generate next actions or iCal syncs)
So, that’s a snapshot of where I am now. A number of those contexts are “on the bubble” right now — too cute or fussy or potentially procrastinatable (is that even a word?). I comb through contexts in general every few weeks, or more often when one of them seems to have become an oubliette for the items I want to banish from thought. That’s a good sign that the context is not about action at all and should be removed or refactored immediately.
And now: the sexy.
iCal sucks in a lot of ways (that’s for another post), but it does do one thing I love: it let’s you put your separate “calendars” — which, in our case, are the actionable contexts we’ve synced from kGTD — into “groups.” I’m using this to make three “meta-contexts” that mirror the very general types of work into which all my tasks (and their parent contexts) belong.
But why bother with organizing these into meta-groups? Ah, because it makes it so easy to reveal or hide all the tasks that I can work on at a given time, just by ticking the group’s little click box. This makes having many contexts so much more manageable. So, if you’re keeping score, here’s how they break out in iCal
Which gets me to the secret point of this post. It’s the basic kGTD approach that’s been really useful to me:
- Use kGTD to collect, process, organize, and review
- Use iCal to do
This has the effect of keeping you really focused on the doing rather than the fiddling. Once you’ve got kGTD set up to a point where you trust it to mind your world, try living in iCal instead. For one thing it’s a lot less engrossing to play with, which might send you back to work more quickly than the amusement park ride that kGTD can be. You end up with a shorthand way to mentally gauge your “doing-to-fiddling ratio”; If you find you are spending a lot more time in kGTD than iCal you know it’s time to ramp up the working and dial down the fussy meta work.
"
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""The brushed aluminum box on the brick wall glows purple, a rim of light around an unblinking HAL-like eye. You peek in and stare for a second, and the steel doors click open. A soothing female voice says: "Identification is completed."
Welcome to Park Avenue Elementary School.Freehold Borough School District installed the iris-scanning devices in its three schools last month. It and a district down the road in New Egypt are the first U.S. school systems to study what happens when adults are asked to eye-scan to get in the door each day. .... Parents began signing up last fall, submitting to scans of both eyes and driver's licenses. At last count, 300 of a possible 1,500 had enrolled, with many citing privacy concerns. It's optional, and Meara doesn't plan to change that. Privacy advocates such as Lillie Coney of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C., say people's concerns are justified — both government agencies and computer hackers could someday access the data. "Eventually it's going to be used in ways that have nothing to do with getting into those three schools," she says." (02/23/06)
"With public support for the “War on Terror” flagging, the White House and the Pentagon have a plan. Not to curtail the excesses of the “War on Terror” or to abandon the “benevolent hegemony” they’re buying with the lives of American soldiers, but something much better. They’re changing the name.
The ill-conceived state of perpetual war formerly known as the “War on Terror” will now be known as…wait for it…”The Long War.” That’s right, instead of backing away from the critics who have been making comparisons between the current regime and Big Brother from Orwell’s 1984, the Bush Administration is embracing it. The Pentagon is making 20-year strategic plans and Rumsfeld is publicly comparing the current effort with the Cold War (1946-1991). One of the core elements of the Pentagon strategy is
A much more fluid and interesting way to display information from the CIA World Factbook."
Very interesting buildings that you probably have never seen before."
"
Joke Number One, from Newsday.com:
The mobile homes started arriving sometime in October, pulling into a 282-acre site at the Hope, Ark., airport, one after another, row upon row. They kept on coming, week after week and month after month, convoys of sometimes 100 at a time lugged by trucks that clogged the roads into town, queuing up on a runway and on the adjacent gumbo-like soil, side to side, front to back.
They were supposed to be shelters for the thousands of victims left homeless by Hurricane Katrina, waiting here to be shipped out, reflections of the goodwill of a nation. But they never left. Instead, they kept on coming, kept on piling up, like logs at a dam. Today, 10,777 of the units sit stockpiled in Hope, $300 million in taxpayer money gridlocked in bureaucracy, 450 miles from New Orleans with no place to go.
And more than five months after Katrina hit, the scene has become a symbol to locals almost on
"An interesting article from WebProNews that landed in my inbox today, about China’s censorshiop efforts:
One Chinese blogger stays on the move, uses multiple blogs, and says the demand for non-corrupt political officials is the real foe of censorship.
Li Xinde has no First Amendment to protect him as an investigative reporter in China. But he does have a knack for finding stories of corruption and abuse that make their way even to state-run media outlets, Reuters reported.
“I can still spread news across the whole country in just 10 minutes, while the propaganda officials are still wondering what to do,” Li told Reuters.
He described how he has to work to avoid arrest, by shuttling around to different Internet bars in rural China:
“It’s what Chairman Mao called sparrow tactics. You stay small and independent, you move around a lot, and you choose when to strike and when to run.”
Those strikes have taken down a corrupt deputy mayor in one province, while another claimed a businessman met a brutal death while held in official custody.
On the topic of businesses like Yahoo and Google choosing to
"I agree with babylonandon--this is funny and well-made, and your politics shouldn't matter.
I like the picture Dan Gifford forwarded, too:
"Dear, Merlin,
For someone so fond of lecturing other people about their problems, I have a lot of annoying tics (I mean, duh). One of my worst, at least back in the day, was seldom bothering to RTFM before demanding lots of time-consuming help from others.
For years, my court of first resort was almost always to email the smartest, often busiest person I knew about a given topic, alerting them as to their new role as the speed bump between me and solving my problem (cf: the classic Balloon joke). I’ve gotten better at it over the years, for sure, and, in the age of Google, it’s a habit that’s easy enough to shed.
The funny thing I eventually realized was that I could and often did find the solution to my problem — part way through writing the email in which I was asking for help. I realize this sounds kind of silly, but the next time you’re having trouble figuring something out, try writing a note to yourself.
Seriously, open up your email program, type in your own email address, then choose a
Digg/nightraker 
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Wishlist/Nightraker 
GMail/j.marshall.mccombie 
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tumblr/myotherhead
