Random John

Stuff's a movin'

2004-11-01T20:07:00.000-05:00

Well, I think I can finally move away from Blogger. Though Blogger has a lot of nice features, I really prefer a system where I have a little finer control, categories, and, well, how do I put this, I guess I want less of a "black box." Well, I found Pivot, and installed my new blog over over at iBiblio.

Cereal killers

2004-11-01T12:10:00.000-05:00

Fark has some ideas for new Wheaties boxes.

When you vote alone, you vote with bin Laden

2004-11-01T11:56:00.000-05:00

Neal Boortz goes off the deep end. I'm sad to see this happen. Boortz was a pretty good force for libertarians (and Libertarians) until those jet airplanes crashed into his head. Now he's become one of those "nothing else matters because of the war in Iraq" conservatives.

One of the "holiest" of the holy months

2004-11-01T09:09:00.000-05:00

Zeyad of "Healing Iraq" reports on the holy executions and assassinations in the month of Ramadan. Also covered are the hijab, Christian Iraqi women, the ban in France, and the hypocrisy in Iraq.

Some insight is given into the attacks in Iraq. Note that most of the attacks are against Iraqis, not coalition forces. At least for now. Why would the Ba'athists and Zarqawi want to do this? To delegitimize elections in two months, of course.

And more. Healing Iraq is always a good read.

Open questions, closed minds on global warming

2004-11-01T08:40:00.000-05:00

With reports like this, I wonder how people can decide that the question on "global warming" and its origins (if such global warming exists) is closed.

Tobacco and heroin apparently target the same areas of the brain

2004-11-01T08:30:00.000-05:00

This may explain why quitting smoking so hard. (Or easy, if you're Mark Twain and give it up thousands of times.)

For once I support Eminem

2004-10-31T20:32:00.000-05:00

Eminem wants less fame.

The involvment of truth in this election season has been merely coincidental

2004-10-31T19:46:00.000-05:00

Factcheck.org recounts the falsehoods made by both sides in their final flurry of ads of the election season. To Bush and Kerry (and the major parties in general), nothing matters more than being in power. Certainly not the truth.

Scary stuff for Halloween

2004-10-31T09:07:00.000-05:00

I saw an NBC news report on the lost ballots in Florida. What service did the Election Board workers use to get the ballots out this time? FedEx, of course! I love competition. (Thanks to my wife Alana for pointing this out.)

In other scary news, UNC stuns Miami! Not bad for a team who was expected to beat William and Mary, and that's it.

Because he is that bad

2004-10-30T15:25:00.000-04:00

I used to make fun of the "anybody but Bush" crowd. After all, the President can do a lot of damage, and most candidates pretty much would do the same damage to the country, maybe in different ways. However, Bush Jr. seems to be the worst of all. His DoD has screwed up the military until it's in the shape it was after Viet Nam, civil liberties are as low or lower than any other war time (don't forget under Wilson it was illegal to criticize the government at various times, especially of its involvement in WWI), we are faced with a perpetual war with truth being dead a long time ago, and the list goes on.

So I hold my nose and vote for Kerry. And may Badnarik make enough of a difference in the swing states (I'm not thinking that he will, but I am hoping).

Then I'll start my four-year campaign to get rid of Kerry.

North Carolina Dept. of Transportation Standard Operating Procedures

2004-10-29T12:30:00.000-04:00

Page 1, Paragraph 1: All projects shall take 10 times longer than any reasonable effort should require. It happened with 54, it's happening with 15-501, and it is the past, present, and future of I-40 in the triangle area.

Bush gives the one-fingered salute

2004-10-29T01:54:00.000-04:00

Here it is (Quicktime required).

via boingboing

On this day in history ...

2004-10-28T11:21:00.000-04:00

The Statue of Liberty was born. Harry Browne compares America when the Statue was erected and America today. I think he sensationalizes America 1886 a little bit too much, but, as always, he gives food for thought.

Were Russians in bed with Saddam?

2004-10-28T08:47:00.000-04:00

Michelle Malkins reports. I'd normally link to the Washington Times article, but it was only showing a picture of Al Qaaqa when I visited it. However, Malkins has an excerpt of the article.

I hope America is doing a lot of back room diplomacy. If Bush is stupid enough to lose America's respect in the eyes of the world then he needs to be kicked to the curb, and more. If leaders of the world are rallying around a dictator who uses rape rooms and torture to advance his politics and whims, then we need a different strategy for dealing with the world. France included.

Alternative energy sources

2004-10-28T08:23:00.000-04:00

Some snippets from here and there:

Factcheck.org sent out the following this last night/this morning:

Both John Kerry and President Bush have promised voters that they will make America "energy independent." But experts say both sides fall far short of what is necessary for energy independence in the next few decades.

New device produces power while treating sewage

I hear the new hydrogen fuel cell technology still requires crude oil. I don't know much about the technology, but it looks like that our dependence on crude oil is here to stay for a while. Maybe this is why Bush is promoting hydrogen rather than other sources.

Another missing link

2004-10-27T17:29:00.000-04:00

Another (extinct) species of human has been discovered. Also, a firm seeks to create a new "species" of cat.

Early Friday yoga blogging: finding sukha

2004-10-26T23:06:00.000-04:00

I had my weekly yoga class tonight, and I had some thoughts I wanted to get down anyway, so Friday blogging comes on Tuesday night this week. What was really cool was that some of the ideas I had about blogging came out in class today. So here goes.

After a hard workout, it feels good to rest, cool down, and get calm. And, for a long time, I viewed yoga as a hard workout, and in savasana (relaxation pose), I could "get calm," or find sukha (literally, bliss or happiness). Lately, however, I've been looking for this in every pose, including the ones you'd think would be the most difficult.

Take utkatasana (aka "chair pose" or "powerful pose") for instance. In this pose, you sit in a pretend chair, with your upper body at an angle and your arms stretched out high above you. You also keep your legs in parallel planes, so that they do not collapse inward or outward. It helps to scoop your tail bone downward toward your heels. Now, a couple of years ago, I just tried to maintain this pose, working like a dog. These days, I try to expand up through my arms on an inhale, and settle back on an exhale. At the bottom of the exhale, I try to find sukha, even though my legs are working hard. In fact, utkatasana seems to be one of the first poses that yogis use to find sukha during fiery poses.

Today in class, we looked at another aspect of finding ease. In the philosophy of my teachers (Anusara yoga), the front body is our expression of ourselves, our individuality. Our back sides are our support, our source. By paying attention to our back sides, and by making sure it's aligned properly, we can "fall back" onto the divine for support, so we can find ease in our poses.

Of course, this is all fine and dandy on the yoga mat, but the principle applies more generally. There's a reason we tend to think about our back sides being covered in a threatening situation. When we can't do it alone, when we can't find sukha through solely our own efforts, we must be willing to fall back on our source.

Another act in Bush's tragedy of errors

2004-10-26T13:00:00.000-04:00

Crooked Timber asks why not Zarqawi? And here is more on the matter.

So, the essential question is, if Bush knew that Zarqawi was operating freely in northern Iraq, why didn't we just take him out. The Pentagon had the plans drawn up, and he was under no-fly zone territory. One smart bomb, (assuming it hadn't gone dumb) could have rid the world of Zarqawi's scourge forever. However, the camp wasn't bombed until hostilities began during the Iraq war.

All together now (Sen. Luger included): Incompetence.

Update 10:55pm: Apostropher tells me this is old news.

Microchips and medical records

2004-10-26T10:47:00.000-04:00

More from Shrinkette: the use of implantable microchips to access medical records.

A double-edged sword, indeed. Let's come up with something a little less invasive, shall we?

Medical marijuana update in Oregon

2004-10-26T10:38:00.000-04:00

Shrinkette reports on a new medical marijuana measure in Oregon.

Funny thing, the Libertarian Party in OR doesn't support it. Apparently, they think that it allows too much government control over MM prescriptions, or something. At this point, any regulation of MM which allows any dispensing to patients whatsoever is a step down from the current regulation. Maybe OR has loosy-goosy laws on prescribing MM.

Fair taxes again

2004-10-26T09:22:00.000-04:00

Everybody who files their own return or pays an accountant to do it knows our tax code is broken. I've probably mentioned it on this blog before, but I support the Fair Tax, which replaces our whole tax system with a national 23% (or so) retail tax. Most politicians are, of course, against this proposal. Democrats in several races are using their opponents' support of this proposal as a campaign issue (scroll down to "LET'S DEMAGOGUE THE FAIR TAX"--Neal usually has page anchors for his sections but not today). Apparently, these candidates are trying to say that their opponent supports a 23% tax in addition to current taxes, which is a blatant lie.

I supported their petition, and I really hope this movement gains some traction. I think it will do more to bring a close scrutiny of our tax code to the public than "property taxes are inherently evil."

On the missing explosives

2004-10-26T08:46:00.000-04:00

Apparently there is some contradictory information on the missing RMX and HMX explosives issue. CNN reports also.

So, the large amount of HMX and RMX were probably already missing. What is unknown (to me) is whether terrorists seized further explosives from Al Qaqaa.

Update 9:33 am: Belmont Club says there were 600,000 tons of explosives distributed throughout Iraq, including 100,000 throughout the "Sunni Triangle." If so, then worrying about 380 tons truly is like worrying about a toothache after having been diagnosed with AIDS and Ebola.

Feelin' good about your job

2004-10-25T13:41:00.000-04:00

So, what really does go through comment spammer's head. (Or the bot's creators.)

Either Haloscan has a really good comment spam filtering system, or, as I more closely suspect, Random John is under their radars.

Maybe comment spamming is one of those "Make 1000's from home!" classified ads.

(via Modulator)

Incompetence, part the second

2004-10-25T11:59:00.000-04:00

The Peking Duck notes that 350 tons of explosives are missing. This is not your conventional high school chemistry lab bomb, but military-grade RDX and HMX. Sen. Luger has many more opportunities to utter the word Incompetence.

Apparently, the IAEA had this stuff locked away and accounted for before the Iraq invasion. So, not only have we not confiscated any WMDs, we let some pretty nasty conventional weapons slip to the terrorists. And, since this occurred last year, speculations of government coverup are waiting to be made.

See also the TalkingPointsMemo entries on the matter.

Sometimes I post good news about Iraq. Today I do not.

2004-10-25T09:31:00.000-04:00

It's a little belated, but here's a Healing Iraq entry about how armed criminal gangs move about in Iraq without interference from police or soldiers. Among the stories: a pharmacist and accompanying doctor were killed because they sold some drugs to the U.S. Army.