Right out of a scary movie

I woke up this morning at 7:15, as I usually do. I tend to have difficulty actually waking up, so I hopped on my computer and checked out the deal websites and the news. The reading usually prompts my brain to start working. At about 7:25 I went downstairs to take a shower. As I flipped the switch to turn on the light in the bathroom I got a small shock from the accumulated static generated by my slippers. At that moment I hear the sounds of the 20 Questions ball sitting on the shelf around the corner in the living room. Perplexed I walk in and find it turning on asking me if I want to play. I press "No" but nothing happens, so I pressing each of the other non-yes buttons, to no avail. So I press "Yes" and it begins with the question asking. Rather creepy. So I started answering the questions somewhat randomly, nothing particularly in mind. I'm mostly just hoping that when I finish it won't respond with something like, "I'm right behind you." or "Isn't it a good day to die?". After responding to question 20 it tells me that I'm thinking of a Magic 8 Ball. Fine, whatever. I put it back on the shelf and took my shower. As of yet there have been no further mysterious occurrences today.

A Scary Thought

So, I've been thinking. The rhetoric has already begun that terrorists will probably target the 2008 elections. My original fear was that King George would attempt to cancel or postpone the election claiming that terrorist attacks would make it too dangerous to hold. But, I think enough of the country would be unhappy about that so that it's not a feasible plan. What if, instead, the election were held, but the winning candidates were killed before Inauguration Day? Would we simply hand over the office to the runner ups? Would we hold a new election? I know of nothing that covers this situation in the law (I haven't studied it extensively, but I'm fairly certain this contingency isn't in the Constitution anywhere). With a Bush friendly Supreme Court, and a Bush friendly Attorney General, I don't know what would happen. I don't like where it may lead though:

1. President-elect and Vice-President-elect assassinated before taking office.
2. Bush declares National Emergency and using Executive Order 12919 begins a militarily enforced dictatorship.
3. ? I don't know what happens in step 3, but I sure hope we never have to find out.

Break Time

So I haven't written in over a week. I know. But on my other blog I haven't written in over TWO weeks, so you all should feel pretty good about life.

I'm finally all caught up on grading. Those pesky tests will be going back to the students today. Hopefully the grades won't ruin their Thanksgiving breaks.

For FHE last night we played Guitar Hero III, such a fun game. I'm really hoping I'll be able to get my hands on a Wii for Christmas this year, and very soon after, Guitar Hero III. I was going to get one last year, but none of my family members enlisted in the search were able to find one. Nintendo is producing around 1.3 million consoles a month, and they still can't keep them on the shelves for more than a few hours at a time. Incredible.

Other than those things, life is mostly just chugging along.

I bought a 1000 ft of cat 5e cable yesterday. I'm going to spend some of my break running network cable around the house so my roommates can have a hard-line connection in their rooms. It will be fun. I got a drill bit, crimper, tester, and time; all the necessary components. We're also planning to get the trim up in the living room, that will look very nice.


At the beginning of the semester I made an arbitrary deadline of November 23 to have a draft of my thesis proposal written. It is November 20, and I have about 10 entries in my annotated bibliography as well as a few sentences written in my introduction. I'm a little behind on that... oh well. It will get done eventually.

Sadly, It's time for a rant

Pardon me for a moment while I rant, and apologies for the first line which has uncharacteristically strong language.


What the hell are we letting the government do to this country?

I've given the Republicans a fairly good thrashing over the past few years due to the innumerable many stupid things they've done. They mostly got this attention because they happened to be in control of the government. Today we get to turn our attention to the equally incompetent Democratic party:

The College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007 (Copy of the text here. See pages 382 and 412), introduced to the House of Representatives on November 9 by Representatives Miller (D-CA) and Hinojosa (D-TX), has provisions in it to cut federal financial aid to all students of any university/college that refuses or is unable to implement technology aimed to spy on students in order to track and stop copyright infringement. In addition to this it would become mandatory for these institutions to either pay a "royalty fee" (also known as extortion) to the MPAA/RIAA for works that may have been and might be illegally copied over their infrastructure, or "provide" students with access to a fee-based service such as the new Napster, iTunes, or some other such garbage riddled system.

Are you kidding me?!

The RIAA/MPAA actually have (at least) these two "representatives" in their pockets, completely. They want to threaten colleges for not policing copyright infringement. That's so utterly ridiculous that I can't even come up with a suitably absurd analogy to compare it to, but here's a shot anyways: it's like cutting off financial aid to all students of any university that fails to arrest and prosecute all jaywalkers.

We all know BYU already has lots of systems and monitoring in place to deter illegal file-sharing via the BYU network, so they're probably already compliant with the provisions of this bill. I'm not upset with the monitoring itself, I know BYU does this, I choose to be at BYU, and I also choose not to live in BYU housing. But turning this into a demand and threat is absolutely unacceptable. The government has no place making these kind of broad sweeping threats against patrons of an institution due to the private actions of some of its patrons. What kind of justice would it be to cut off federal financial aid to 33,739 students because some handful of the 6,748 students living on-campus participate in illegal activities (statistics from UtahMentor.org). Even if every single one of the students living in on-campus housing were violating copyright infringement laws the law would still punish almost 27,000 students for something they had no control over or participation in.

Absolutely unacceptable.

Sadly, the daily disappointments in the government don't end there.

Back to the Republicans, specifically Darth Vader, err Dick Cheney (Hey, he dressed up as Darth Vader for Halloween so that's not a arbitrary potshot). Apparently the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran has been delayed by the White House (Dick Cheney's office) for over a year specifically because the information it contains does not support attacking Iran. Yup, the people in charge of drafting the report (which combines the intelligence efforts of 16 agencies) were told to rewrite it until the dissenting opinions about Iran were eradicated. Fortunately for us (finally), some of the people involved didn't think this would be appropriate and have not only refused to remove the information that doesn't support the current rhetoric, but have come out to the press to tell the world what's happening. This type of selective information reporting is disgusting. It's the same run-up to the Iraq invasion: falsified intelligence documents, continual lying to the American people and the world... the propaganda machine is in full swing. And for some reason the American people are buying it. The latest poll results that I have seen show that more than 50% of those polled are in support for attacking Iran. Are you people insane?! Have you not learned that we're already neck deep in our screw-ups?




But let's move on to yet another disturbing move by someone in this administration: (How I wish I didn't have this many things to be angry about).

Donald Kerr, Director of the National Reconnaissance Office, (and currently principle deputy director of national intelligence) says we need to adjust our definition of privacy to fit the government's. Which is, according to him, that no longer does privacy mean anonymity; privacy means something to the effect of "The government knows everything about you, so just trust them to use that information responsibly". I don't know what language he speaks, but I'm pretty sure he just defined "trust", heck it's right there in the sentence. I want my version of privacy specifically because I can't trust the government.

The problem, according to Kerr's line of thought, isn't that government and businesses may have intricately detailed information about citizens, or that they might be actively working to collect such data as part of an extensive program of electronic surveillance. The concerns, Kerr says, should be focused on how such data is safeguarded and how Americans view the importance of that data.

No, the issue isn't how that data is "safeguarded" the issue is that you have no right or reason to have detailed personal information about what I buy, where I travel, with whom I speak, or when I do these things. And until I've broken a law and was found guilty by a jury of my peers you have no reason to know anything about me, other than that I exist.

The people running this government are absolutely un-freaking-believable.

The mind of a Halo terrorist

Clive Thompson provides an interesting glimpse into the minds of suicide bombers. His experience in getting creamed playing Halo 3 online drove him to develop a new strategy, one which he quickly discovered was essentially suicide bombing. Why does it work you ask? Halo awards points for kills, but does not punish for deaths. So if you're about to die anyways, you can run crazy at your opponent and then stick a plasma grenade to their face as you crumple to the ground in a heap. And a few seconds later, they die too. So one could see how if a person believes wholeheartedly that they will die regardless of their actions, their most rational course of actions is to take out as many of their enemies as they can when they go. If your points are tallied by how many bad guys you kill, then you need to kill as many as you can before you die. And if you believe that anyone that doesn't believe as you do is a bad guy, then, well, that's what happens. Yes, it is a warped way of thinking, but within that mindset suicide bombing is the only rational thing to do.

The mind is a fascinating thing, which can be twisted and screwed up in so many fascinating ways....