Author: cosmo

So there was this guy. And a couple of his pals. And a plan they had to blow up JFK airport in New York City.

Luckily the plot was foiled, even though it appears it wasn’t very well-thought-out. They had intended to ignite the fuel lines running beneath the airport, expecting the entire airport to go sky-high and “leave very few people alive”. Indeed, blowing up an entire airport would be catastrophic, but apparently the way the fuel lines work make such an event extremely unlikely.

So three cheers for the FBI agents who tailed this guy for a year and a half before finally arresting him today, but a big fat raspberry boo to New York’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg. He proved that he’s been to Camp Nine Eleven when he said:

Why do these fear-mongering terrorist-happy politicians insist on claiming that every attempt to blow something up means we’re going to lose our freedom and our way of life?

It’s true that I would be sad if JFK airport went up in flames, and certainly there would be widespread feelings of grief for the victims and anger toward those who carried out the plot. But I can’t understand how an airport exploding would mean I’m less “free” than I was yesterday.

If anything, it’s the very politicians who spout such nonsense that are actually taking away our freedoms. Every time they point to a plot like this, and how we’re all “safer” because the Bad Guys were nabbed (note that the plot was nowhere near ready for execution, so there was no imminent danger), they mention that all of the surveillance techniques and wiretaps and other intrusive and freedom-destroying tools employed by our government were “instrumental” in making the catch. Then they insist we need more of them. More surveillance. More databases. More identification required. More background checks every time you buy a Snickers at the gas station.

I, for one, would rather face the chance that I’ll die in a terrorist act someday (which is terrifically unlikely) over the alternative of a police state whose stated goal is “protecting my freedoms”. No thanks, guys, my freedoms are just fine without your help.

From The Onion:

Laralee was weeding the yard, and she found this amazing little rock amongst the river rocks we use as landscaping around the house.

It’s about an inch across, and almost perfectly round! And it’s definitely a natural rock, not a weird lump of concrete or a marble or something. I guess conditions were just right on the river where it spent a million years getting beat up.

Let me see if I understand the Iraq war funding situation correctly.

January
Bush: I need a nice big check for… umm… a hundred billion dollars.
Congress: Ha, good one, George!

February
Bush: If you don’t give me a nice big check, it means you don’t support the troops.
Congress: Okay, we’ll give you the $100 bil, but you have to pull the troops out in a year.
Congress: By the way, we’ll also toss in $20 billion more in pork projects. Whee!

March
Bush: (insert tired arguments about “staying the course” and “supporting the troops”)
Congress: (insert tired arguments about how Iraq blows and we need to leave)

April
Bush: This thing about pulling the troops out kind of sucks. I’m going to veto the bill.
Congress: Ha, just try it. That clause stays in or you don’t get the money.

May
Bush: Veto, baby.
Congress: We were just kidding. Here’s your money. Is there anything else we can do for you, Mr. President?

Sigh. In January the Democrats took charge of Congress and said they were going to make some real changes. They sure talk tough, but I think they left their spines at the door. Once again we sit and watch as Bush gets a bucketload of money, very few restrictions on how to spend it, and all the latitude he wants to conduct his futile little war.

I wonder sometimes just how far the feeling of entitlement will go in our misguided society. It seems these days that everyone thinks they’re entitled to something. Today I read a news blurb about a high school senior whose mother, Lydia Pratt, is up in arms because her daughter isn’t going to be allowed to join the graduation ceremony. Never mind the fact that this girl can’t pass the Georgia High School Graduation Test which is– not surprisingly– a requirement in order to actually graduate.

It would be interesting, I’m sure, to hear that argument. What precisely is the problem here? How is this unfair?

Luckily sanity prevailed:

The worst part of this whole thing is that by behaving in this crybaby way, Lydia is teaching her daughter that failure is okay because you can always whine about it and hope someone has pity. Thankfully in this case the school board did not.

I have no idea what this is all about.

Zack, like all kids his age, has a recurring problem obeying us when we ask him to do something. Tired of having to tell him over and over, Laralee came up with a novel solution: if she asks once and Zack doesn’t jump to it, he gets to do a chore.

In particular, he gets to scrub baseboards around the house.

It sure isn’t a fun job cleaning things with a toothbrush. After a few weeks of this, he’s much better about listening to us. And our baseboards are all nice and clean.

A couple of weeks ago, as a joke, I suggested to a bunch of friends that we get together and play dodgeball. I hadn’t played since college (junior year, as I recall) and thought it would be a hoot to get a group together and relive those glory days.

So we got about a dozen people, eight or so Nerf soccer balls, and played. It turned out to be a heck of a lot of fun– more than any of us expected, I think. I imagine everyone was like me: it would be a funny evening and we’d goof off for an hour. But in the end everyone was saying how much fun it had been, and when were we going to do it again, yada yada.

I organized a second game… then a third. More people were showing up, including wives and even a couple of the guys’ kids. It’s turning into quite the event. We’re playing again this week, and expect to have a few more new players.

The moral of the story, I guess, is that sometimes it’s just plain fun to relive your childhood.

An 18-year-old kid stole a big white SUV in Corpus Christi, Texas, and led police on a long chase. Apparently at times he was cruising above 80mph on the interstate, finally taking them into San Antonio. There, he met his fate.

Mwah ha HAAA! He hit the guardrail on an interstate on-ramp, apparently skidded along the top of it “skateboard-style”, and ended up crushed between the ramp and a neighboring interstate. (He’s the guy sitting pinned in the truck looking pretty unhappy while firefighters figure out how to get him out of there.)

Son, I think karma is speaking loud and clear.

So digital rights management, or DRM, has been getting a bad rap lately… mainly because it’s a terrible way to enforce copyright laws. But the chief technology officer over at HBO, Bob Zitter, has a fabulous idea that will surely conquer the fear and distrust that DRM has gained. He wants to rename DRM, and instead call it

(drumroll)

Digital Consumer Enablement

(moment of stunned silence)

I guess to him, “DRE” sounds better than “DRM” for some reason. Never mind that it’s exactly the same thing– it’s just supposed to sound friendlier to consumers.

Actually, is “enablement” even a word?

Things like this not only make me laugh, but only prove yet again that the industry and the technology firms it employs are unspeakably clueless.