Aug 28
German company TrekStore make MP3 players. For several years, they’ve had a series called the i.Beat series. Which was fine, until they decided to name the new model “blaxx”. Resulting in:
Aug 26
Now that we’ve all accepted torture as a legitimate tool of the US government, the question is simply when it’s appropriate. The answer seems to be: pretty much any time the government doesn’t like what you’re doing.
Navy Veteran Donald Vance became aware of illegal arms sales in Iraq—land mines, rocket launchers, that sort of thing. He reported it to the FBI. In return, he was imprisoned as a “combatant” for 97 days and tortured.
There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and interrogators yelling the same questions over and over, that Vance began to wish he had just kept his mouth shut.
The America-hating left-wing rumor sheet publishing this news?
Aug 17
Quote:
The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders’ political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs. Certainly the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both replete with references to God, would be aghast at the federal government’s hostility to religion. The establishment clause of the First Amendment was simply intended to forbid the creation of an official state church like the Church of England, not to drive religion out of public life.
The Founding Fathers envisioned a robustly Christian yet religiously tolerant America, with churches serving as vital institutions that would eclipse the state in importance.
Well, now I feel better about the fact that he’s going to lose.
Aug 12
I’ve had a stressful couple of weeks.
At work, on the 1st we rolled out a brand new replacement I had built for a heavily-used database system. It’s now in use across the USA and Latin America to manage high profile events leading to multi-million-dollar business deals. Everything went fairly smoothly in the end, but still–stressful.
Then last week I had a business trip to Chicago. My hours there were pretty much 100% filled; although the scheduled meetings ended early on the second day, I then had a server crash and some network problems to deal with, plus a new server build that I confirmed was OK just in time to get in a cab and dash to the airport.
I am now trying to relax and not snap at the spouse.
Aug 01
The Church of Scientology is probably the only place where you can take a personality test and fail.