] The NHL lock out may have postponed the 2004-2005 season,
] but disappointed hockey fans can still watch the puck
] drop in more than 50 million U.S. and Canadian homes when
] the defending Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning
] face off against the Philadelphia Flyers in the season
] opener of the video game NHL season on G4techTV.
]
] All 1,230 regular season games originally slated for the
] 2004-2005 NHL season will be played, with results of each
] video game match-up available to fans who tune-in daily
] to "Sweat."

G4tv.com - Press Releases - VIRTUAL HOCKEY SEASON TO AIR ON G4TECHTV

] The Republican Party acknowledged yesterday sending mass
] mailings to residents of two states warning that
] "liberals" seek to ban the Bible. It said the mailings
] were part of its effort to mobilize religious voters for
] President Bush.
]
] The mailings include images of the Bible labeled "banned"
] and of a gay marriage proposal labeled "allowed." A
] mailing to Arkansas residents warns: "This will be
] Arkansas if you don't vote." A similar mailing was sent
] to West Virginians.
]
] In an e-mail message, Christine Iverson, a spokeswoman
] for the Republican National Committee, confirmed that the
] party had sent the mailings.

That's the national party that sent these out. Not some crazy locals. Not a 527 group.

Republicans Admit Mailing Campaign Literature Saying Liberals Will Ban the Bible

] What you will see on the ballot
]
] Shall the Constitution be amended so as to provide that
] this state shall recognize as marriage only the union of
] man and woman?"
]
] ( ) YES
] (X) NO
]
] What you will NOT see on the ballot
]
] Paragraph I. Recognition of marriage.
]
] (a) This state shall recognize as marriage only
] the union of man and woman. Marriages between persons of
] the same sex are prohibited in this state.
]
] (b) No union between persons of the same sex shall
] be recognized by this state as entitled to the benefits
] of marriage. This state shall not give effect to
] any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any
] other state or jurisdiction respecting a relationship
] between persons of the same sex that is treated as a
] marriage under the laws of such other state or
] jurisdiction. The courts of this state shall have no
] jurisdiction to grant a divorce or separate maintenance
] with respect to any such relationship or otherwise to
] consider or rule on any of the parties respective
] rights arising as a result of or in connection with such
] relationship.

The Gay Marriage issue is not one of my hot button issues, but the corruption evident here; the dishonorable behavior of our representatives cannot be more clear then in this case.

In November the people of the State of Georgia will be presented with a very short amendment and asked to vote on it. However, if they vote yes what they will actually be approving is an entirely different set of language which they have not seen!

What possible honest reason could exist for asking the people of the State of Georgia to sign off on a constitutional amendment that they haven't read?!

The dishonesty of this is beyond doubt! I've searched and searched for a straight forward explanation from the supporters of this thing as to why they feel its not important for the people of the State of Georgia to read what they are signing, and all I've come up with is "Thats not important right now, whats important is (talk about something different)."

Georgians Against Discrimination

] The time to reassert the right of the American people to
] instruct the court through the Legislative and Executive
] branches has come. America is a free nation and it is the
] duty of those who would represent the American people to
] find mechanisms for our generation which block activist
] judges from stripping us of the freedoms and values we
] believe in.

I used to like Newt Gingrich. Always saw him as a forward thinking, libertarian sort of Republican. I was wrong. He is regressive. He just flushed any respect I ever had. Its gone.

There is absolutely no element of the Republican's anti-constitutional platform that "preserves freedoms." Not one element. They want to censor the media, they want to harrass gays, they want to ban abortions (despite their supposed emphasis on healthy families), they want to force everyone in the country to practice their religion and recognize their god, they want to imprison people for protesting the government.

How dare he evoke Thomas Jefferson in the context of attempting to establish a Conservative Christian government! Thomas Jefferson was the foremost advocate of the separation of church and state! Thomas Jefferson is the reason that the Conservative Christian adgenda is illegal!

Runaway courts - The Washington Times: Editorials/OP-ED - September 23, 2004

] The framers, of course, believed in the absolute
] necessity of limiting power and pitting power against
] power so that no entity could get overweening power. Yet
] Congress is now attempting, with the Act, to deprive the
] federal courts of jurisdiction to check Congress's
] wayward ways -- in an arena where Congress was
] specifically believed by the framers to be dangerous.
] (Recall that phrase from the First Amendment's
] Establishment Clause, "Congress shall make no law.....)
]
] Do the members of Congress genuinely think that 50 state
] supreme courts -- with a host of disparate views -- could
] possibly keep Congress in check? Or do they perhaps,
] believe that as members of Congress, they need no check?
] My money is on the latter, but either way, they are very
] wrong.

Its a good thing that mind boggling FOIST Act got me so pissed off yesterday. I simply don't have the energy for my anger to carry over to this one. Of course, this is a million times more heinous, if thats possible.

CNN.com - Lunacy of Pledge Protection Act - Sep 23, 2004

] How much power Congress has to block judicial
] consideration of the constitutionality of its laws
] remains, somewhat surprisingly, an open question --
] because Congress wisely has chosen not to test the
] question. It has, rather, accepted judicial review -- the
] idea that the courts can strike down legislative
] enactments that offend the Constitution -- as integral to
] the system of checks and balances. So while legislators
] have sometimes been tempted to yank controversial matters
] from the court's jurisdiction, cooler heads have
] prevailed. They should prevail now too. Whether the
] pledge violates the First Amendment's separation of
] church from state is a legal question. Congress has no
] business obstructing the courts from answering it.

Anti-Constitutional Republicans are moving to eliminate the judicial check on the power of the legislature. Removing the court system has been a consistent theme from the Republicans in recent years... Detaining enemy combatants without trial, passing legislation that probits constitutional review of laws, setting manditory sentencing guidlines... Its also a key element of the official 2004 Republican party platform.

Welcome to the tyranny of the majority. You wanna talk about treason Anne? THIS IS TREASON.

Strip This Bill (washingtonpost.com)

This is no longer an interesting coincidence. It is an unmistakable message from God. I hope everyone is listening.

message-from-God.gif (GIF Image, 744x900 pixels)

] What if there were private armies totalling 275,000 men,
] armed with machine guns, assault rifles (legal again!),
] rocket-propelled grenades, and mortar launchers, hiding
] out in dangerous urban areas of cities all over the
] country? What if they completely controlled Seattle,
] Portland, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas,
] Denver and Omaha, such that local police and Federal
] troops could not go into those cities?
]
] What if the Air Force routinely (I mean daily or weekly)
] bombed Billings, Montana, Flint, Michigan, Watts in Los
] Angeles, Philadelphia, Anacostia in Washington, DC, and
] other urban areas, attempting to target "safe houses" of
] "criminal gangs", but inevitably killing a lot of
] children and little old ladies?
]
] What if there were virtually no commercial air traffic in
] the country? What if many roads were highly dangerous,
] especially Interstate 95 from Richmond to Washington, DC,
] and I-95 and I-91 up to Boston? If you got on I-95
] anywhere along that over 500-mile stretch, you would risk
] being carjacked, kidnapped, or having your car sprayed
] with machine gun fire.

What if America was Iraq?

] The discovery could also explain why some people are more
] susceptible to addiction -- they may have a morphine
] deficiency.
]
] "All of a sudden," Stefano said, "(morphine-deficient
] individuals) take this compound (and) it really makes
] them feel not only good but normal."
]
] A morphine deficiency could also be the cause of some
] chronic pain, Stefano said.

"Morphine deficiency" reminds me of the joke in the opening paragraph of Neuromancer.

Wired News: Humans naturally produce Morphine

] In recent months, these slender solid-state memory chips -
] known by many names, but officially U.S.B. flash drives -
] have increasingly been seen blinking from the ports of
] computers in classrooms and libraries, conference rooms
] and offices, coffee shops and airport lounges.
]
] And when the devices, which can cost less than a music
] CD, are not being used to store or retrieve data, they
] often dangle from key chains and backpacks - or even from
] the necks of users - as if pendants signifying a cult of
] convenient computing.

In the late nineties JLM wrote an essay on the death of the floppy disk. It was in response to a class assignment in which he was asked to design one.

What is the point, he asked, of having a floppy disk when you have the internet?

Well, the floppy disk is still here, and apparently its becoming somewhat of a fad.

I'm having a hard time with this. I want one. I'm not sure why. Basically, its a techno toy. I don't know what I would do with it, but its cheap, so who cares? Put it on my key ring... maybe it comes in handy some day.

Trouble is that everytime I think I might have a use for one, scp comes to the rescue. I can move whatever I want to the Memestreams webserver and grab it later. So what's the point? Why can't everyone use one of those web file storage services?

Part of this is the ease of use factor. People have trouble getting their computers to fileshare properly, but the USB drive is simple. Bandwidth issues sometimes matter. So do oppressive corporate firewalls.

But a fashion statement? What does it say? I'm enough of a computer geek to want to wear a computer peripheral around my neck, but I'm not enough of a computer geek to have figured out how to use the internet for this instead?

The New York Times - From Storage, a New Fashion