] Tacking Jr. or II onto a boy's name is too common, a new
] father decided, so the self-described engineering geek
] took a software approach to naming his newborn son.
]
] Jon Blake Cusack talked his wife, Jamie, into naming
] their son Jon Blake Cusack 2.0.

simply stunning.

CNN.com - Engineering geek names son version 2.0 - Feb. 1, 2004

] The state's school superintendent has proposed striking
] the word evolution from Georgia's science curriculum and
] replacing it with the phrase "biological changes over
] time."

CNN.com - Georgia considers banning 'evolution' - Jan. 30, 2004

] It's no secret that Dean has faced some nasty
] robo-calling and push-polling in Iowa and NH, as well as
] NM and elsewhere. This exerpt from an upcoming GQ article
] gives a glimpse of what Dean has faced over the last few
] weeks:
]
] Fast forward to the days before IA: Trippi's "cell phone
] rings. It's his pollster, Paul Maslin, who not only has
] bleak news out of Iowa -- but bleak news out of New
] Hampshire. Trippi hangs up and stares out the window. His
] phone rings again. "WHAT? Aw, fuck. I hate this business.
] This fucking sucks. Okay, thanks." He hangs up. "They're
] robocalling our ones," he moans. "He has just gotten a
] report from the field that Dean "ones" are getting
] bombarded with computer-generated phone calls telling
] them to make sure to caucus for Dean-then giving them the
] wrong address." Who would do such a thing? "Kerry,"
] Trippi snaps. "They're the only asshole snake campaign
] that would do it. Every frickin' day now, I'm reminded of
] why I got out of this in the first place."
]
] The Dean campaign keeps fingering the Kerry camp, and
] it's hard to see who else might be responsible.
]
] The calls were targeted at Dean in Iowa and NH -- the two
] states that were must-wins for both Dean and Kerry.
] Gephardt might've been behind a robo-calling effort in
] Iowa, but he'd have no reason to do the same in NH.
]
] Who else, the Republicans? Problem is that by all
] reports, these robo calls have specifically targeted
] Dean's "1s" and "2s". That level of sophistication would
] require an extent of polling unlikely from the GOP. Only
] Kerry would have conducted the type of polling
] identifying levels of support for Dean in both Iowa and
] NH.
]
] So it's all anecdotal, but the evidence suggests dirty
] tricks from the Kerry campaign. The thought literally
] makes me want to puke (some of the calls suggest Dean is
] not a real Christian because he's married to a Jew). None
] of the other candidates have faced this type of puke
] tactics, so there's only one guy engaging in it.
]
] God help Kerry if real evidence emerges.

I feel ill of the effects on our party, if this is true.

Daily Kos || Who is robo-calling against Dean?

] 10. If you saw Diane Sawyer's incredible "World News
] Tonight" show closer last night (and on GMA again this
] morning) about how the network tape showing Dean's "I Have a Scream" speech was totally misleading because of Dean's use of a directional mike you realize how easily a presidential campaign can be done in by the quirks of injustice.

ABCNEWS.com : The Note

] Eight security experts held a Red Team exercise on
] January 19, using a GEMS server and six AccuVote-TS
] terminals, replicating an election scenario with no prior
] knowledge of source code. As suggested by the earlier,
] Hopkins report, the team quickly guessed the hardcoded
] passwords to administrator and voter smart cards. At a
] cost of less than $750, they were able to reset voter
] cards to allow multiple votes with the same card and
] suggested similar abuses with forged supervisor and voter
] cards. All 32,000 statewide terminal locks are identical,
] and the team picked them in less than 10 seconds,
] allowing physical access to the PCMCIA bay, which
] contains cards for the modem and the ballot definitions
] and results. These cards could be tampered with,
] destroyed, or stolen for their valuable data. Attaching a
] keyboard to the terminals allowed resetting of all
] counters in the PCMCIA bay without an administrator card
] needed.
]
] The server was missing over 15 Microsoft security
] updates, and the team was able to use the flaws used by
] the "Blaster" worm. By using insecure USB ports or more
] secure CD drives, the team was able to modify results and
] databases

LawMeme - Voting Machines Compromised in Election Simulation

] Idiom Studio
] Governor Howard Dean, M.D
] Iowa Caucus Speech

This site features videos of the now-infamous Dean speech in Iowa, but from the perspective of the crowd. Lend some context which the media stripped out in order to sensationalize it.

Dean Iowa Speech

] Could the recognition of our imperfect understanding
] serve to establish the open society as a desirable form
] of social organization? I believe it could, although
] there are formidable difficulties in the way. We must
] promote a belief in our own fallibility to the status
] that we normally confer on a belief in ultimate truth.

Wow, this might be the most important thing I've read since MemeStreams started.

First off, despite the title, this is not an anti-capitalist screed. George Soros is an investment banker and the 38th richest man in the country. In fact, this article isn't really about capitalism. This article is about everything. The title is so poor that I almost changed it.

What Soros is saying about Capitalism is that there are people who accept the concept of free trade in a ideological way, in an absolutist way, and that is a problem. The problem with religious states, which requires the separation of church and state, is that when laws are the product of man, they are open to debate, but when laws are the product of God, to question is heresy. If you have a society in which the law cannot be questioned, you have a totalitarian society. It is only a matter of time.

The thing that Soros is saying here is that any absolutist ideology can be abused in this manner. It doesn't matter if your ideology is based on the Bible, or the writings of Marx, or the writings of Adam Smith. If you have a nation of people who believe that their principals are beyond question, ultimately you have a totalitarianism. It is only a matter of time before the inconsistencies your absolutism forces you to ignore cause fissures which break your society down.

Reading this essay caused me to think back across many of the discussions that I've had on this site over the past two years. My instinct that Fukuyama's belief in an ultimate solution was flawed. Being able to see great tragedies of history reflected in the idea of pre-emptive military action and being unable to demonstrate that its not "ok" if you're doing it for Democracy. In our worries about the state of the IT industry. In my various discussions about politics with people from various perspectives.

I've had a really hard time deciding where I fit in the political spectrum. I know what the tests tell me, but somehow I'm never comfortable with the answers. When I talk to conservatives they think I'm a liberal. When I talk to liberals they thing I'm a conservative (or at the least that I've been duped by them). One thing I've come away from years and years of these conversations with is the idea that people usually intertwine their identity and their perspective. They are a certain thing. They believe that thing is right. So they think a certain way. The way they think defines what group they see themselves in, which defines who they are, and we repeat. After years they get quite locked into a c... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

The Capitalist Threat - George Soros

you guys dont even know half the tragedy of brad's death. part of that being it was his first hit of dope in 8 years. and part of it was that he had had a death sentence on him once, back in the early 90s, when he was a solid user and had come so far and done so much with his life since leaving all that behind. but i didnt come on here to bring some kind of downer, i just wanted to share grief with you guys who seem to have actually been his friend. ive known brad since 1984, hung out with him every weekend for 8 years in a park where all the stoner and punk kids use to hang. i want to share with you a poem brad wrote on the back of his algebra homework on the 10th of January 1986, which oddly enough, we buried him on the 1/10/2004. this poem was passed around a circle of 20 grown up park kids while the body was lowered into the grave. this poem is so brad(from backthen mind you) that we all began to wail and laugh at the same time. im sure the old folks were trippin on us, but i wouldnt have changed a thing, other than wishing they coulda shared the moment with us...

the force of time has no limit. time plays the ultimate part in our lives. time affects us at every moment. time cannot be stopped except by the end of time. the end of time will be when time's force wears thin, in some distant generation, and time slows and eventually stops. imagine time stopping and all past times converging on the same plane. that will be the ultimate end.
the ultimate end will be like someone turning a television set off. it(everything) will all just suck into the giant vacuum of the space of nothing. all life & non-life will just dissolve, except for one ozzy osbourne record which will stand as a memorandum of our race...because...ozzy rules eternally...even beyond the ultimate end.

as we drove out of the cemetery, my best friend(also an ex-park kid) put in some black sabbath and we sat back for the cold quiet ride back to the city. brad touched alot of folks here, but i truly feel like ive lost a brother. im glad you got to know him, whoever all you guys are, and whereever you are.

bradley/cranky messiah

] A Danish biotech company has developed a genetically
] modified flower that could help detect land mines and it
] hopes to have a prototype ready for use within a few
] years.

Yahoo! News - Flower-Power Could Help Clear Land mines

] A conversation about polarizing debates on TV quickly
] devolved into a polarizing debate, prompting Stewart to
] walk over to separate the chairs of Bill Kristol of The
] Weekly Standard and TIME columnist Joe Klein. "Stop it,"
] he said parentally. "If you guys don't stop it, someone
] is going to ask you to do a show."
]
] When C-SPAN was applauded as an example of TV media
] giving time to all sides, Stewart quipped, "There's a
] difference between a security camera and presenting (the
] news)."

CNN.com - Election Line dispatch: 'The Daily Show' gets serious - Jan. 26, 2004