This is one of the quizzes out there that can give a quick indicator of how your views are identified: Left, right, centrist, etc. It doesn't have very many questions, and is somewhat skewed based on the questions it has chosen, but it's a quick place to start.

If anyone knows of other more thorough surveys of this type, especially including options for opinions on current issues, please meme them? I'd be interested in taking a look.

World's Smallest Political Quiz

] A small group of Westside High School students plastered
] the school Monday with posters advocating that a white
] student from South Africa receive the "Distinguished
] African American Student Award" next year.

] The students' actions on Martin Luther King Jr. Day upset
] several students and have led administrators to
] discipline four students.
...
] The posters were removed by administrators because they
] were "inappropriate and insensitive," Westside
] spokeswoman Peggy Rupprecht said Tuesday.

Acidus comments:
WTF is this? It seems that Blacks professing they are "African American" is prefectly ok, but for a white guy to profess his nationality, it is "inappropriate and insensitive." What kind of bullshit double standard is that? If anything he is more African-American they any of these people: He was born in African, he lives in America. How many of these other students running for African-American Student of the year can say that?

I agree, this baffles me. To me, "African-American" does not mean only black, it means people whose ancestry is African.

Using myself as an example... Though I rarely use the title, I can claim to be Polish-American, or Croatian-American. The latter one is especially relevant because though two of my grandparents were born in Croatia, their own parents were born in Hungary. But I don't see that as negating the Croatian heritage. I grew up with Croatian culture around me -- dances, food, language, customs, and people who identified as Croatian. To say that I could not identify myself as of Croatian heritage because my ancestors hadn't been there for enough generations, or were of the wrong skin color, would be absurd.

You are not African-American, You are White

At the too-young age of 35, a well-known member of Memestreams, Brad Blines, died of a heroin overdose on January 8th, 2004. This page documents Brad's activity in our virtual community, and shows a fraction of the people whose lives he touched.

R.I.P.

In Memoriam: Brad Blines, aka CrankyMessiah

] A hornets' nest of fury over a video game that urges its players
] to "kill the Haitians" has prompted a South Florida city to
] approve -- at least initially -- a sweeping ordinance to regulate
] games sold or rented to minors. The law, proposed by North
] Miami's Joe Celestin, a Haitian-American, imposes a $250 fine on
] anyone who sells or rents to minors without their parents'
] consent games in which players kill or cause harm "to a human
] form."

Video Game Violence Leads to Florida Law

] THIS YEAR'S intelligence authorization bill provided a
] little-noticed and dangerous expansion of a peculiar and
] unaccountable FBI investigative power. Last-minute
] efforts to modify the provision in conference committee
] failed, unfortunately, so the bureau now has more power
] to compel the production of certain business records in
] national security investigations, with no court oversight
] and in nearly total secrecy. The use of "national
] security letters" is not new, but in light of new
] authorities provided the FBI in the USA Patriot Act,
] Congress should be finding ways to curtail their use, not
] expand it.

Washington Post Editorial: Too Much Power

Rattle wrote:
] Here are some thoughts on the State of The Union Address..
]

I watched it live too... My own initial thoughts:

- I agreed with his views on Iraq and that the world is a better place without Saddam. I'm also glad that he talked about the proof of weapons programs in Iraq -- it seems that many people only want the smoking gun of an actual weapons cache to justify the war. In my mind though, it's enough to show that Saddam was systematically hiding things from UN inspectors, maintaining WMD programs in secret, and intimidating scientists from telling the truth. Those facts, in combination with a *wide* variety of other factors, justified the war for me.

- I laughed at the unexpected applause when Bush said that the Patriot Act expires next year. :)

- When he said, "We have broken the Baathist regime," one of the people I was watching the speech with was convinced that Bush had stumbled and said, "We have broken the Baptist regime." ;) I guess we hear what we want to hear! :)

- I'm glad he named an actual date for Iraqi sovereignty, of June. Though I think it's a very ambitious timetable!

- I was surprised that he didn't mention anything about Mars or anything to do with the space program. The Rover landing was an astonishing accomplishment for America, and for the world. It would have been an easy applause-getter, and also is something that has positive world attention on us. So I'm baffled why it got left out. Maybe the speechwriters were worried that people were upset with his recent proposal to send a manned mission to Mars, and so to avoid any negative associations there, they just didn't mention the Rovers at all. I guess it's also possible that if he brought up Mars, he'd also have to talk about the Shuttle disaster... I dunno.

- The idea of promoting sexual abstinence among young people just sounds absurd to me. Stricter societies than ours have tried to enforce abstinence, with little success.

- My most intense "He said *what*???" moment: I was horrified when Bush talked about marriage and used the term "activist judges." ACTIVIST judges? Like someone just came out of a 60s street protest, put down their megaphone and placard, and took a seat on the bench by accident? I was mightily offended by that comment -- he was implying that the judicial branch of government has too much power and needs to be reined in. If he wants to propose a constitutional amendment, fine. But to take a slam at the judicial branch like that, as though they were making whimsical decisions, was out of line.

Anyway, those are my own thoughts,

Elonka :)

RE: State of the Union Address

Rattle wrote:
] w1ld wrote:
] ] Let the Patriot Act die is deserved death and bring on the
] ] guns and bombs where the real war of terrorism is fought.
]
] I agree with everything you said in spirit. However, I am
] 100% positive that it is not going to be allowed to expire or
] get repealed. If I judge the current political climate
] correctly, it would require evidence of abuse to start
] surfacing. And more then one case.. We will be lucky if any
] improvements or changes are made. We should focus on making
] sure it is not made permanent, as that's about the only
] outcome I can see actually happening.

My own opinion is that trying to attack the entire Patriot Act is a bad idea, but that it is worth focusing on getting specific provisions repealed or amended.

I've read large portions of the Patriot Act, and most of it is really unobjectionable, paperwork-streamlining stuff. But there has been an enormous amount of misinformation that has been distributed about just what it does. For example, there were lots of people screaming that the Patriot Act made hacking a terrorist activity, and that just wasn't true -- what it *did* do though was declare that if someone used a computer to affect systems in such a way that they caused a loss of life (like to turn off power to hospitals or cause a plane to crash), then that activity could be classified as terrorism. I don't have a problem with that definition.

There *are* specific parts of the Patriot Act though which do bother me, such as the possibility of putting librarians under gag orders and requiring them to divulge who checks out which book. To my knowledge that section of the Act has never been used, but every time I pass by a library, it's on my mind, and I don't like it. I don't like the idea of looking at a shelf of books and thinking, "Well, no one's probably going to care if I check out *that* book, but if I check out *this* book, then it may show up on an FBI agent's list somewhere." That crosses my Orwellian line of unacceptability.

I also have concerns about the recently-passed "Patriot Act 2" provision which allows federal investigators to access an enormous amount of personal financial information on anyone they want, and again placing the divulgers under gag orders, but with the investigators having to do no more than provide a letter saying it's related to national security. I agree with the Washington Post, in that it's too much power, with too little oversight.

My $0.02,

Elonka

RE: Patriot Act

This is a support page for a piece of software called Snapstream, which has been recommended to me for capturing digital video and saving it in a variety of formats. I especially like the chart on this page, which concisely displays the file size differences between MPEG2 and Windows Media file formats.

SnapStream FAQ

] To manage their schedules, Mishkin has printed out a
] spreadsheet and posted it on the refrigerator in their
] Altadena home. A green line shows his work schedule; a
] yellow line shows his wife's.

This is a link to the L.A. Times article about Andy and his JPL co-workers, and how they're adapting to the "space lag" of living on Mars time.

Workdays Fit for a Martian

There are some spiffy little utilities here.

The "ImageResizer" in particular is turning out to be a lifesaver when dealing with large quantities of digital cam images. Now I can load everything to a directory, select everything in one batch, right-click to rotate everything clockwise or counter-clockwise as needed, and then resize them down to a web-friendly handful. HUGE timesaver. :)

Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP