Vista News & Ramblings

Iraq Resistance Crumbling

by Sandi

Post Source:

In Iraq with the surge yes and that is old news... but I'm talking about here at home.

WASHINGTON - U.S. Rep. John Murtha today said he saw signs of military progress during a brief trip to Iraq last week, but he warned that Iraqis need to play a larger role in providing their own security and the Bush administration still must develop an exit strategy.

"I think the 'surge' is working," the Democrat said in a videoconference from his Johnstown office, describing the president's decision to commit more than 20,000 additional combat troops this year. But the Iraqis "have got to take care of themselves."

Via Dave Price at Deans World.

Posted Thursday November 29, 2007 | Catagory: (War) | Permalink
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Sorry We Ruined Your Apartment

by Sandi

Post Source: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Over use of swat teams.

A Milwaukee, WI Police swat team busted into Denise Berndsen's apartment, threw most of the occupants to the floor and cuffed them. Then tore the place apart saying that they would state their purpose in due time. They were looking for evidence of child porn.

Oops. The man they were targeting had moved out five weeks earlier.

Instead they roughed up Berndsen, who had returned home from back surgery that day, her 74-year-old father, and a man she had just started dating and who for a few terrifying minutes wondered what he got himself into.

Even if the guy hadn't move, is it necessary to come in full force with a swat team? Don't get me wrong, I think that child porn consumers are vile sick people, but they are seldom heavily armed, and there is no indication in the article that they suspected that he was.

"They proceeded to destroy my apartment, still not saying why they were there," she said. "They not only told me the detective would explain all in time, they also had the nerve to tell me I should be lucky I'm not in handcuffs."

Officers rummaged through her bedroom closet, dresser drawers and kitchen cabinets, and in doing so, broke a couple of wizard figurines and cracked the headboard mirror on Berndsen's bed, she said.

They brought high-tech equipment into the apartment and hooked it up to her laptop computer to search for evidence. If they were looking for porn, Berndsen said, she found it odd that they never touched a bookcase full of DVDs and videocassette tapes in the living room.

Once they realized their mistake, the police showed Berndsen and her guests a photo and told them the name of the man they were seeking. She said she recognized the name from some mail that had arrived at her place.

....

"They said, 'We're sorry. I guess you're just one more of his victims,' " meaning the child porn suspect, Berndsen said. "I said, no, we're your victims."

You like to think the cops are chasing after people who exploit children. But it would seem that with all their intelligence-gathering skills, they would know if the target had moved away more than a month earlier.

Sorry my ass. Nothing like passing the blame for their screwup to their victims. If they hadn't seen the suspect for more than a month, wouldn't you think that they would have at least checked with the apartment landlord?

Also via The World According to Nick.

Posted Wednesday November 28, 2007 | Catagory: (Stupid Should Hurt) | Permalink
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Valuable Whiskey Seized in Raids (dumped?)

by Sandi

Post Source: Los Angeles Times

Sometimes you just have to wonder: "What in the world are they thinking!"?

Black Velvet- 80 proof Canadian Whiskey: $11.
AH Hirsch 21 year old 93 proof Rye Whiskey: $156.
Jack Daniel's 100 year old whiskey seized in raid: Priceless.

NASHVILLE -- Here's a sobering thought: Hundreds of bottles of Jack Daniel's whiskey, some of it almost 100 years old, might be unceremoniously poured down a drain because authorities suspect it was being sold by someone without a license.

Officials seized 2,400 bottles late last month during warehouse raids in Nashville and Lynchburg, the southern Tennessee town where the whiskey is distilled.

"Punish the person, not the whiskey," protested Kyle MacDonald, 28, a Jack Daniel's drinker from British Columbia.

"Jack never did anything wrong, and the whiskey itself is innocent."

[...snip...]

The estimated value of the liquor is $1 million, possibly driven up by the value of the antique bottles, which range from to half-pints to 3-liter bottles.

One seized bottle dates to 1914, its seal unbroken.

Elks said it is worth $10,000 to collectors. Investigators are looking into whether the liquor was being sold for the value of the bottles rather than the whiskey.

I'm a brandy drinker myself, but have to agree with Kyle MacDonald. Wow! what a waste if they dump it. Two wrongs don't serve justice.

Via The World According to Nick

Posted Wednesday November 28, 2007 | Catagory: (Crime) | Permalink
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Small But Tough

by Sandi

Banned VW Comecial

Posted Tuesday November 27, 2007 | Catagory: (Video blogging) | Permalink
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Chasing Cars on the Ohio Highway

by Sandi

Well no, not a dog, a cat. A big cat. As a matter of fact a damn big cat weighing around 550 pounds, who escaped his owner's cage, then decided to chase cars on highway 23.

Pike County sheriff's deputies responded to a 911 call of a lion "attacking" vehicles on U.S. 23 Monday and found a man trying to capture a 550-pound feline near Wakefield.

Terry Brumfield told officers that his lion named Lambert had broken out of its pen in nearby Piketon, about 90 miles east of Cincinnati. The owner was able to get the animal back into the cage without anyone getting hurt.

Or watch the WISC-TV 3 news video here (no ads).

Posted Saturday November 24, 2007 | Catagory: (Oddities) | Permalink
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Three Suspects Rearrested In Natalee Holloway Case

by Sandi

Post Source: MSNBC

Maybe this will bring closure to this mystery and, I'm sure, long sought relief to Natalee Holloway's family.

ORANJESTAD, Aruba (AP) - The Aruban public prosecutor's office said Wednesday that three young men previously detained as suspects in the 2005 disappearance of American teenager Natalee Holloway have been re-arrested in the case.

[...snip...]

The prosecutor's office says Dutch teenager Joran van der Sloot and two Surinamese brothers, Satish and Deepak Kalpoe, were arrested on suspicion of involvement in manslaughter and causing seriously bodily harm.

Van der Sloot was arrested in the Netherlands, where he is attending a university, and is expected to be extradited to Aruba.

Posted Thursday November 22, 2007 | Catagory: (Crime) | Permalink
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Fisking the "good news in Iraq is not news"

by Sandi

The other day I posted on one of my news forum haunts about an article in the Chicago Tribune. The article was about life returning to normal in Baghdad since the "Surge." Not surprising, I got the usual negative comments from the usual suspects about how meaningless the good news really is. A few examples:

"...a large part is due to completion of an initiative to segregate Sunnis and Shia in walled off and gated neighborhoods or districts"

"Baghdad is a very small part of a very large nation."

"Progress?? Some headway toward a problem that was a direct result of poor planning by the Bush admin and I'm supposed to call it progress??"

"Unfortunately, the bad seems to outweigh the good with this 'war.'"

But as one of the few posters who consider the news good said: "Democrats who pronounced the war lost are in a tough spot."

That's certainly true; not that all Democrats call the war lost, but a few have. Now the New York Times—certainly not a paper to hold a pro-war or a pro-surge view in the past—is conceding to success, and a lot of it at that. But then consider, once the handwriting is on the wall it is not a good idea to keep ones head in the sand either; not if one wants to avoid that "tough spot."

This isn't just one article, or two in the Times, but six (count them six), articles by three different authors. These articles each look at a different aspect of Iraqi life that has recently returned to normal. (just short excerpts so read the articles)

Weddings:

These days, marriages are back, in public and in some cases, after dark. Mr. Muhammad's shop has reopened. And at a photo studio in western Baghdad recently, three young happy couples appeared for portraits, arriving with an entourage and bands in tow. The brides and grooms ascended a long line of stairs to get their pictures taken in front of landscapes depicting pastoral gardens, sunsets or even an American-style suburban home with a white picket fence.

....

None perhaps were happier than Rifaat al-Haliji, 32, one of the bandleaders who arrived with a couple from Allawi, a neighborhood close by. After Ramadan ended last month, he said that business started to increase.

"We were stuck out of work for seven months," he said. Now, he added, "we do five weddings a week."

Restaurants:

Now things are a little better. Customer come at 4 p.m. and leave at 11 p.m.

"You be the judge," said one cook, Ali Abu Hussain.

A few hundred yards north on a sealed-off stretch of the riverbank a dozen long-closed restaurants stand poised to reopen. Owners refurbished the dilapidated cafes using American dollars pumped into what American and Iraqi officials trumpeted as a showpiece renovation of the city's historic Abu Nawas Boulevard.

Zawra Park:

"Gardens are the paradise of God on earth," reads the sign welcoming an ever-growing but still cautious group of pleasure-seekers visiting Baghdad's largest public park, beside the Green Zone. Beneath trees and models of traditional Marsh Arab and Bedouin homes, picnicking families sit in clusters chatting and sipping Alpha Cola, against a backdrop of police sirens and shots from outside — some perhaps in anger, but mostly armored Blackwater-style convoys forcing their way through traffic jams. Some families are here for the first time in years.

Computer Street:

Some have trickled back to Baghdad after fleeing to Jordan or Syria. Others had no electricity in their homes to go online.

With the improvements in security, there is also increased demand for equipment. Customer numbers are up 20 percent for Nazar Nazaryan, a laser printing specialist, with much of the demand coming from government ministries.

Theater:

The entire room rose in a wave to sing: "My country, my country, glory and beauty and delight is in your land. Safety, prosperity and hope is in your air."

There was no curtain, no set beyond a chair, a long rope and an Iraqi flag, which would soon be used as a shroud. But the piece, written and performed by students at Baghdad's Fine Arts Institute and sponsored by the Young People Union, an allegory with more mime than words, needed no more to be understood.

A painter smiles as he depicts all that is beautiful in Iraq; a small singing bird keeps him company until bombs begin to fall. The painter drops his brush and cowers, the bird flies away. People die in the street. An Iraqi politician in a snazzy suit appears. He is tied by a long rope to a man dressed in an American military uniform. The painter weeps as he watches the politician raise his arms like a marionette when the American tugs at him. Iraqis, tribal sheiks and workmen, painters and bodyguards, attack one another with cardboard daggers and guns.

Liquor Store:

On Thursday evenings now, before the Muslim holy day, men in long white garments and tribal head scarfs squeeze elbow to elbow with men in western T-shirts to scrutinize the shelves of dark shops lined with bottles of cheap whiskey, Dutch beer and Turkish arak.

They walk away now their heads held high, swinging their purchases in plastic bags. On a recent evening several men crowded near a small shop that was little more than a large pair of shutters halfway up the wall of a house. The shopkeepers leaned out the window and passed bottles across the ledge to waiting customers.

Such a scene would not have occurred even four months ago. Both the Shiite Mahdi militia, with ties to anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr, and extremist Sunni groups viewed liquor as a sin and bombed stores that sold it and threatened the owners. Christians were most often the victims since they owned the majority of liquor shops — there is no prohibition on selling alcohol in Christian teaching, although some Christian groups eschew it.

Tell me again now how bad life really is in Iraq.

Via Dean's World, thanks Dean.

Posted Tuesday November 20, 2007 | Catagory: (Good news (WOT)) | Permalink
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Servers Run Like a Beehive Run Sweetly

by Sandi

Post Source: Physorg.com

Sometimes the simplest solution is the best solution. A couple of System Engineers noted that bees and servers had similar barriers to efficiency.

After studying the efficiency of honeybees, Craig Tovey, a professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech, realized through conversations with Sunil Nakrani, a computer science colleague visiting from the University of Oxford, that bees and servers had strikingly similar barriers to efficiency.

<...snip...>

Bees tackle their resource allocation problem (i.e. a limited number of bees and unpredictable demand on their time and desired location) with a seamless system driven by “dances.” Here’s how it works: The scout bees leave the hive in search of nectar. Once they’ve found a promising spot, they return to the hive “dance floor” and perform a dance. The direction of the dance tells the waiting forager bees which direction to fly, the number of waggle turns conveys the distance to the flower patch; and the length conveys the sweetness of the nectar.

The forager bees then dance behind the scouts until they learn the right steps (and the particulars about the nectar), forming a bobbing conga line of sorts. Then they fly out to collect the nectar detailed in the dance. As long as there’s still nectar to be found, the bees that return continue the dance. Other forager bees continue to fly toward the source until the dancing slowly tapers off or a new bee returns with a more appealing dance routine (Hey, the nectar over here is even better!).

<...snip...>

Internet servers, on the other hand, are theoretically optimized for “normal” conditions, which are frequently challenged by fickle human nature. By assigning certain servers to a certain Web site, Internet hosts are establishing a system that works well under normal conditions and poorly under conditions that strain demand. When demand for one site swells, many servers sit idly by as the assigned servers reach capacity and begin shifting potential users to a lengthening queue that tries their patience and turns away potential customers.

Tovey and Nakrani set to work translating the bee strategy for these idle Internet servers. They developed a virtual “dance floor” for a network of servers. When one server receives a user request for a certain Web site, an internal advertisement (standing in a little less colorfully for the dance) is placed on the dance floor to attract any available servers. The ad’s duration depends on the demand on the site and how much revenue its users may generate. The longer an ad remains on the dance floor, the more power available servers devote to serving the Web site requests advertised.

I wonder if bees would recognize a DOS attack?

Posted Monday November 19, 2007 | Catagory: (Science & Technology) | Permalink
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Swift Boat challenge

by Sandi

The $1 million challenge has been made by Texas oilman, T. Boone Pickens. The challenge has been accepted by John Kerry.

If Pickens win the proceeds go to American military veterans' causes, and if Kerry wins the proceeds go to the Paralyzed Veterans of America.

Posted Sunday November 18, 2007 | Catagory: (Politics) | Permalink
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Movin' On Up

by Sandi

No, not the Jeffersons. A Treasury study that refutes the popular crap we hear about "income inequality." This reaffirms my belief that over the long term, income over various groups is fluid and mobile; usually in the upward direction.

The Treasury study examined a huge sample of 96,700 income tax returns from 1996 and 2005 for Americans over the age of 25. The study tracks what happened to these tax filers over this 10-year period. One of the notable, and reassuring, findings is that nearly 58% of filers who were in the poorest income group in 1996 had moved into a higher income category by 2005. Nearly 25% jumped into the middle or upper-middle income groups, and 5.3% made it all the way to the highest quintile.

Of those in the second lowest income quintile, nearly 50% moved into the middle quintile or higher, and only 17% moved down. This is a stunning show of upward mobility, meaning that more than half of all lower-income Americans in 1996 had moved up the income scale in only 10 years.

Also encouraging is the fact that the after-inflation median income of all tax filers increased by an impressive 24% over the same period. Two of every three workers had a real income gain--which contradicts the Huckabee-Edwards-Lou Dobbs spin about stagnant incomes. This is even more impressive when you consider that "median" income and wage numbers are often skewed downward because the U.S. has had a huge influx of young workers and immigrants in the last 20 years. They start their work years with low wages, dragging down the averages.

So next time someone tells you that "The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer" you know better.

You can read the rest of the article here.

Posted Friday November 16, 2007 | Catagory: (Economy) | Permalink
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Strange Toys

by Sandi

The 25 Most Baffling Toys From Around the World (2 pages).

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Child's sled. The strange protrusion is a handle with which the child can hang onto while enjoying winter fun.

Why? What did you think it was?

Posted Friday November 16, 2007 | Catagory: (Oddities) | Permalink
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Soldier With a Lot of Heart

by Sandi

Ohh! Check out this touching story with photo on Hugh Hewitt's TownHall Blog. It's a picture of Chief Master Sergeant John Gebhardt in Iraq, holding a little girl that survived execution.

This is John Gebhardt in Iraq. His wife Mindy reports that this little girl's entire family was executed. The insurgents intended on executing this little girl, too. In fact, they tried by shooting her in the head. But miraculously, this little girl lived, but is obviously suffering while her body tries to heal. She cries and moans incessantly, but John is able to calm her. The nurses where she's being treated say John's the only one she clings to. So John and this little Iraqi girl have slept for the last four nights in that chair so that she can continue to heal after her injury.

Not exactly Abu Ghraib-like, so it's doubtful you'll ever see this hit the nightly newscast.

This is so sad, and yet not in a very touching way.

Posted Thursday November 15, 2007 | Catagory: (War) | Permalink
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Pin Ups for Vets

by Sandi

Ok guys and gals, here is a chance to help hospitalized veterans and the troops in the field. Help Gina Elise with her posters and calendars "Pin Ups for Vets" project.

The calendars would be sold to raise funds for our hospitalized Veterans.

The calendars would be delivered as gifts to our ill and injured Veterans with messages of appreciation from the donors.

The calendars would be sent to our deployed troops to help boost morale and to let them know that Americans back home are thinking of them.

Pin Ups for Vets News Clip

With Gina's online purchase forms your can have them sent to veterans, active duty troops, or order them for yourself.

Via Grandpa John's.

Posted Thursday November 15, 2007 | Catagory: (General) | Permalink
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BMI Technology Can Be Operated By Thought

by Sandi

Post Source: Science Daily

BMI (brain-machine interface) has reached a new level, that could be great news for the severely handicapped people who cannot contract so much as one single leg or arm muscle.

Thanks to the rapid pace of research on the BMI, one day these and other individuals may be able to feed themselves with a robotic arm and hand that moves according to their mental commands.

"Our work has shown how important the learning process is when using brain-controlled devices," says Andrew Schwartz, PhD, of the University of Pittsburgh. "By permitting the subject to adaptively recode the generated neural activity, the overall performance of the device is dramatically increased.

"Furthermore, as we have progressed in this work, it has become apparent that the basic idea of 'intention' during learning is very important and can be addressed by the direct observation of the neuronal transformations taking place during this fundamental processing," Schwartz says.

<...snip...>

In the Pittsburgh lab's latest studies, macaque monkeys not only mentally guided a robotic arm to pieces of food but also opened and closed the robotic arm's hand, or gripper, to retrieve them. Just by thinking about picking up and bringing the fruit to its mouth, the animal fed itself.

The monkey's own arm and hand did not move while it manipulated the two-finger gripper at the end of the robotic arm. The animal used its own sight for feedback about the accuracy of the robotic arm's actions as it mentally moved the gripper to within one-half centimeter of a piece of fruit.

<...snip...

The animal's thoughts emitted electrical signals that were recorded by tiny electrodes that the scientists had implanted in the monkey's motor cortex. A computer-decoding algorithm translated the signals into the robotic arm and gripper's movements.>

Great news for paralyzed people and amputees.

Read the rest here. Via Kurzweil.AI

Posted Wednesday November 14, 2007 | Catagory: (Health/Medicine) | Permalink
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Singing Tesla Coils

by Sandi

Here is a novel way to produce music

The Tesla coil is named after its inventor, Nikola Tesla. Tesla used these coils to conduct innovative experiments in electrical lighting, fluorescence and x-rays. In simple terms it's a power supply, capacitor, transformer (coil) and a spark gap.

These are modern solid state dual resonant telsa coils built by Steve Ward. When you watch this keep in mind that it is actually the spark that is producing the sound. It is said to be so loud that some people hold their hands over their ears. While it isn't exactly theater quality music it does have a certain fascination... or maybe I think that because I worked in electronics my entire life.

Don't try this at home people, unless you understand the dangers involved.

Singing Tesla Coil at Duckon 2007 Teslathon

For more information visit Terry Blake's Telsa Coils.

Posted Tuesday November 13, 2007 | Catagory: (Music) | Permalink
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Sunni, Shia Sheiks United Against al-Qaeda

by Sandi

Good news from Iraq is always refreshing.

A short-notice reconciliation meeting of regional sheiks with potential for impact throughout Iraq was held Nov. 8 in Al Bassam, an area approximately 16 kilometers west of Baghdad city center.

The conference was called by a highly influential leader, Abu Maruf, with less than 24-hours notice, to make a public declaration of unity amongst the tribes against al-Qaeda and to map the way ahead for their region.

....

Members of more than 30 tribes attended the conference; both Sunnis and Shias were represented. Their differences were set aside for the day as they publicly united with one voice and vowed to fight al-Qaeda and work toward a lasting peace for their region.

Maruf facilitated the conference and announced the formation of the Baghdad Brigade which will provide support to the region stretching from Yusufiyah to Taji. The brigade will consist of not only military elements, but also be the umbrella organization for their socio-political initiatives.

Some Mulit-National forces were also invited. Lt. Col. Brian Coppersmith saw the unity as an indicator of better things to come.

More than 350 officials of varying ranks and positions within their tribes were present to participate in the conference. In addition to the public declarations of unity, the tribal sheiks declared their support for a representative government and council members were voted on immediately following the speeches. Meetings with key ministries of the government of Iraq have been scheduled for the near future.

Posted Tuesday November 13, 2007 | Catagory: (Good news (WOT)) | Permalink
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Greenpeace: Eat Kangaroo to Fight Global Warming

by Sandi

Post Source: Australia's Herald Sun

This is something I found pretty amusing. Sometimes I think GreenPeace is as bad as PETA.

MORE kangaroos should be slaughtered and eaten to help save the world from global warming, environmental activists say.

The controversial call to cut down on beef and serve more of the national symbol on our dinner plates follows a report on curbing greenhouse gas emissions damaging the planet.

Greenpeace energy campaigner Mark Wakeham urged Aussies to substitute some red meat for roo to help reduce land clearing and the release of methane gas from flatulent cattle and sheep.

[...snip...]

It also coincides with recent calls from climate change experts for people in rich countries to reduce red meat and switch to chicken and fish because land-clearing and burping and farting cattle and sheep were damaging the environment.

They said nearly a quarter of the planet's greenhouse gases came from agriculture, which releases the potent heat-trapping gas methane.

So we should eat wild meat (I suppose we could sub our wild deer for the roo) instead of raising our own, should walk or ride a bike instead of drive, and should just leave technology alone and the Earth will be happy again?

I can enjoy eating fish once in a while too, but I'll pass on the chicken unless in a salad.

Posted Monday November 12, 2007 | Catagory: (Stupid Should Hurt) | Permalink
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Testing Blog Changes

by Sandi

Just experimenting and playing around with color. Well a bit with the graphics too.

So tell me, is it better?

or does it still sucks?

Leave a comment (and be honest).

Update: I'm pretty much through playing with major changes in the CSS, so for now I will leave it alone. It seems to display fairly evenly across IE, Firefox and Opera.

In case your curious about the graphics, they came as a bonus "blog skin" with a forum skin I bought for my News Forum (Left button on top nav bar). However it came with table layout and used no CSS *yuck* so I spent a lot of time ripping the tables out and replacing them with CSS boxes. Always fun when you try to keep layout compatible with 3 or 4 popular browsers.

If you check this skin on the forum though it may not be the default skin (there are 5) and only members can use the skin changer on the bottom left. Not my idea, just the way Invision set up the software.

Posted Friday November 9, 2007 | Catagory: (Blogging) | Permalink
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Is It Dumb Luck, Or The Surge?

by Sandi

Bill Ardolino takes a look at the reduction in violence in Iraq.

The drop began in September, as civilian deaths (884) fell 52 percent from August and 77 percent year-over-year, while military deaths (65) fell 23 percent and 10 percent over the same periods. October’s declines made it a trend: Civilian deaths (758) dropped an additional 12 percent from the previous month and 38 percent year-over-year, while US military deaths (38) dropped 42 percent and 64 percent during the same periods.

"Is it the surge, is it just dumb luck, or are there a series of factors that all contribute towards the lessening violence in Iraq?" asked General Terry Wolff, the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Iraq and Afghanistan Policy Implementation on the National Security Council, in a conference call last Friday. Wolff and other senior military and intelligence officials offered a list of "complementary" factors theorized to have reduced the violence in interviews with The Long War Journal.

“The Surge” and counterinsurgency tactics

Top US officials are quick to point out the effect of the increase of US personnel on the reduction of violence, citing an acquired ability to target a wider range of al Qaeda and Shiite militia extremists and to project security into new areas with a focus on protecting civilians.

“[There are] two key threats out there. [C]learly al Qaeda is the large near-term threat. They’re the folks doing the car bombings, the mass killings, and you’ve also got the “Special Groups,” also known as the militant Shia splinter groups,” said Air Force Colenol Donald Bacon, Chief of Strategy and Plans, Strategic Communications at Multinational Force Iraq. “Fact is, we’re having some success in both areas and that’s equated to these better trends.”

H/T to Dave Price at Deans World

Posted Thursday November 8, 2007 | Catagory: (Good news (WOT)) | Permalink
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Google Destination Maps From the Gas Pump

by Sandi

Post Source: CNN

This is rather cool not to mention a boon for travelers.

As part of a partnership to be announced Wednesday, the online search leader will dispense driving directions at thousands of gasoline pumps across the country beginning early next month.

The pumps, made by Gilbarco Veeder-Root, include an Internet connection and will display Google's mapping service in color on a small screen.

Motorists will be able to scroll through several categories to find local landmarks, hotels, restaurants and hospitals selected by the gas station's owner. After the driver selects a destination, the pump will print out directions.

Posted Thursday November 8, 2007 | Catagory: (Science & Technology) | Permalink
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Thanks and Praise

by Sandi

Michael Yon has videotaped Muslims and Christians rejoicing and working together placing a cross atop the St. John’s Church in Baghdad. Michael is making the

A Muslim man had invited the American soldiers from “Chosen” Company 2-12 Cavalry to the church, where I videotaped as Muslims and Christians worked and rejoiced at the reopening of St John’s, an occasion all viewed as a sign of hope.

The Iraqis asked me to convey a message of thanks to the American people. ” Thank you, thank you,” the people were saying. One man said, “Thank you for peace.” Another man, a Muslim, said “All the people, all the people in Iraq, Muslim and Christian, is brother.” The men and women were holding bells, and for the first time in memory freedom rang over the ravaged land between two rivers. (Videotape to follow.)

The video isn't up yet, but check out Michael Yon's great picture. He is making it available to media outlets for a limited time, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting to a few of them to publish it.

Posted Thursday November 8, 2007 | Catagory: (Good news (WOT)) | Permalink
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DARPA Third Annual Urban Challenge

by Sandi

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funds many technologies in their quest for new military might. One being this race by autonomous vehicles (no human control). The Department of Defense wants military supply vehicles which one day will drive themselves.

The DARPA third-annual "Urban Challenge" was held sunday at a ghost town in California. The vehicles traveled autonomously through traffic for six hours and 60 miles. An autonomous car or truck as defined by DARPA is: any vehicle that navigates and drives entirely on its own with no human driver and no remote control. Through the use of various sensors and positioning systems, the vehicle determines all the characteristics of its environment required to enable it to carry out the task it has been assigned.

This autonomous driving is by no means perfect yet but the progress so far is quite impressive. In spite of the vehicles having been well instrumented and programmed, the off-road part of the course can be perilous There is no lane or shoulder markings to verify that the vehicle on the road as the clip below shows. Still while traveling at a slow pace this SUV called "The Boss" makes it through without incident.

In the Dirt

The NQE testing on these autonomous vehicles include: Ability to handle situations at four-way stops by determining which vehicles at the intersection have precedence and then taking its turn. Ability handle cross traffic and oncoming traffic and to make safe left turns across moving traffic. Find gaps and choose opportunities to enter and cross traffic.

More information about this years winner, "The Boss," and several clips at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA.

Posted Tuesday November 6, 2007 | Catagory: (Science & Technology) | Permalink
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Kerry Says He’ll Be Ready Next Time

by Sandi

Post Source: The Patriot Ledger

By using ~~smear tactics~~ a documented portfolio to expose opposition charges like those from the so called swift boat veterans.

"We have put together a documented portfolio that frankly puts their lies in such a total light of absurdity and indecency, that should they ever rear their ugly heads again, we have every single ‘t’ crossed and ‘i’ dotted, and I welcome that in a sense," Kerry said following a morning address to the South Shore Chamber fo Commerce. "It’s a shame we weren’t able to produce all that at the time."

[...snip...]

While Kerry is sitting out the 2008 presidential election n he’s instead focusing on his own his race next year for a sixth term as U.S. senator n he expects he’d be dogged by the same war record critics in a subsequent race for the White House.

That would put Kerry's next Presidential bid in 2014. Plenty of time to build his portfolio of enemies.

Posted Monday November 5, 2007 | Catagory: (Politics) | Permalink
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Bloggers: Don't Fall For This

by Sandi

This morning I got an email from blogrush.com telling me about their free traffic generating service. Well, when someone wants to give me something for free I rarely bite. In the rare occasion that I do I check them out pretty thoroughly first. Ok, I was curious so I visited their site, but not by using their "invitation link" of http://www.blogrush.com/i11840573. I dropped off the i11840573 which is probably just a tracking check to see how effective their email campaign is. Yes I know they probably sent me a tracking cookie anyway but, I deleted cookies after I left their site.

On their site (it looks like a new startup) they have a short flash presentation that looks like it has great potential as a traffic generator. It probably does. If you sign up, they monitor your RSS; then feed it into a widget that goes on your blog, and the blog of every other person who signs up with blogrush.com.

It's set up so than you earn a slot for your RSS in the widget every time a reader loads your page, and another slot if/when a reader clicks on an item of interest in the blog RSS widget (they call these syndication credits). In other words if 100 users visit (load your page) your RSS gets shown in the widget 100 times, plus you get one more spot for every click on an RSS link in your widget. But there is even more. At the bottom of the widget there is a sign up link to let another blogger to sign up for blogrush.com. They track where this sign up came from, and now you get a credit for referrals as well. How this works is that you get your RSS shown for every one of your page loads, plus one for every page load on any page of one of your referrals.

Sounds like a great traffic generating syndication right? Not so fast. Doesn't something sound familiar here. Maybe a light is coming on in your memory of another scheme... like maybe chain letters. Look, I have no doubt it will create more traffic for your site, but thats not all it is going to do. This really is like a chain letter/pyramid scheme, and what your are really doing is handing over personally-identifying information of all your readers, unless they're some of the few that browse with their information blocked. Information that might qualify them for lots of spam emails eventually. If they knew this, or should find out, I doubt they would be very happy with you.

Read the "terms" and especially the "privacy" link at the bottom of the blogrush page. This is where you learn that blogrush.com is run by Income.com, Inc. I'm sure you already guessed from the domain name what will go on now. First they say that they collect "non-personally-identifying" information like browser type, language preference, referring site, and date/time of visits.

Sounds innocent and I suppose they probably hope your satisfied now and stop reading there, but please keep on. In the next section they get into the "Personally-Identifying" information that they collect. In fact in their privacy statement they use the term "non-personally-identifying information" only twice, while using the term "personally-identifying" information sixteen times. If you still have any doubts, here is what they say they do with the Personally-Identifying information that they collect. (my emphasis).

Income.com discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only to those of its employees, contractors and affiliated organizations that (i) need to know that information in order to process it on Income.com's behalf or to provide services available at Income.com's websites, and (ii) that have agreed not to disclose it to others. Some of those employees, contractors and affiliated organizations may be located outside of your home country; by using Income.com's websites, you consent to the transfer of such information to them.

For just who these "contractors and affiliated organizations" are, lets go back to the income.com website which also looks like a new startup internet service. The first thing you see under the income.com Network logo is:

We're hard at work building the ultimate community for entrepreneurs that want to start their own Internet business or business owners that want to maximize their online marketing efforts.

As I said, this scheme will undoubtedly bring a lot of traffic to your site. But do you really want traffic so bad that you will glean personally-identifying information from your readers for Internet business companies?

Posted Saturday November 3, 2007 | Catagory: (Blogging) | Permalink
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Which is cleaner?

by Sandi

1) A keyboard or toilet seat?

According to this in Real Tech News.

“We don’t think twice about eating at our desks, even though the average desk has 100 times more bacteria than a kitchen table and 400 times more bacteria than the average toilet,” Gerba said. “Without cleaning, a small area on your desk or phone can sustain millions of bacteria that could potentially cause illness.”

So... then, logically that means that the kitchen table is 4 times worse that the toilet seat. Does that mean that we would be better off eating off of the toilet seat?

2) Ice water or toilet bowl water?

Actually ice machines contain more bacteria than toilet bowls?

Benito Middle School student Jasmine Roberts examined the amount of bacteria in ice served at fast food restaurants. The 12-year-old compared the ice used in the drinks with the water from toilet bowls in the same restaurants. Jasmine said she found the results startling. “I thought there might be a little bacteria in the ice, but I never expected it to be this much,” she said. “And I never thought the toilet water would be cleaner.” Her discovery: Seventy percent of the time, the ice had more bacteria than the toilet water.

Of course we know she isn't a scientists, yet something to think about. Maybe it's the cleansing effect from the tidy bowl.

Ok I'm off for some lunch and ice tea, no make that coffee... in the kitchen.

Posted Friday November 2, 2007 | Catagory: (Humor) | Permalink
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The Saddest Dog in the Universe

by Sandi

Or maybe I should go with Rachel Lucas who posted the picture on her blog and call it the saddest "bee." I've seen some pretty sad looking dogs in my life, but the look on this dogs face almost makes me want to cry.

Is it just me? Or do those feet sticking out under the costume almost look human?

Posted Friday November 2, 2007 | Catagory: (Humor) | Permalink
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Singing Tesla Coil at Duckon 2007 Teslathon