So I was reading http://www.parenting.com/article/Mom/Work--Family/101-Ways-to-Bail-Out-Your-Family-Budget and came across this tip:
46. Bank what you resist spending.All I could think was "I'd have to transfer my entire income to savings every month!" :)
Every time you talk yourself out of an impulse buy, like a pricey pair of shoes, transfer that amount into your savings account. You'll be amazed at how much you'll have in the bank by the end of the year.
The maker of touch-screen voting machines used in half of Ohio's counties has admitted that its own programming error is to blame for votes being dropped in some counties.
The problem can't be fixed before the Nov. 4 election, so Premier Election Solutions and Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner are issuing guidelines to counties for how to avoid the problem.
The Columbus Dispatch : Ohio's voting machine glitch exposed
This company cannot. be. trusted. They have proved this over and over again. First they blame anti-virus software for the loss of votes; then turn around and admit it's their own programming at issue.
There are _open_ solutions out there. A prime example is http://www.openvotingconsortium.org. This is a fully open, verifiable, 3 way system which can be audited by millions of technically savvy individuals. Donate to them, if you've got spare change.
While watching a commercial, Jayden announces...
"hey! Now we don't have to hang up our clothes, we can just get spacebags!
(Click image for full version)
Came across this comic today -- this about perfectly sums up the base idiocy of the "AV software caused lost votes" argument coming from Premier/Diebold. (See Ohio Sues Diebold/Premiere Over Lost E-Voting Votes)
This is the most insightful article I've read all week. I'm not sure if that's good or bad.... but this article is spot on.
The 5 Most Ridiculously Over-Hyped Health Scares of All Time | Cracked.com
WTF?
Ice Chewers Bulletin Board - All about Chewing Ice
A place to share about ice chewing..
WASHINGTON — A lot of parental worries about Internet sex predators are unjustified, according to new research by a leading center that studies crimes against children.
Perhaps this should say "Media FUD" instead of "parental worries"? I'm hopeful that this is the first step in the end of this particular phase of media fear-mongering; unfortunately this will like be ignored.
The study comes out with a set of information that have individually been reported/suspected for years, but as far as I'm aware, were never performed as a formal study.
In this case, their are 3 studies:
The conclusions, published in American Psychologist (the journal of the American Psychological Association), in a paper titled "Online 'Predators' and Their Victims", by Janis Wolak & co-researchers, were as follows:
Here's hoping we can get more facts -- I'd settle for well-supported theories! -- in the near future, instead of more fear mongering from the media.
Daddy, I want my cereal squishy, so it doesn't hurt the pink stuff that holds my teeth in.
-- Jayden
This is an excellent article on the basis of fear, and it's use (and misuse) in politics. This should be required reading before registering to vote!
The evolutionary primacy of the brain's fear circuitry makes it more powerful than the brain's reasoning faculties. The amygdala sprouts a profusion of connections to higher brain regions—neurons that carry one-way traffic from amygdala to neocortex. Few connections run from the cortex to the amygdala, however. That allows the amygdala to override the products of the logical, thoughtful cortex, but not vice versa. So although it is sometimes possible to think yourself out of fear ("I know that dark shape in the alley is just a trash can"), it takes great effort and persistence. Instead, fear tends to overrule reason, as the amygdala hobbles our logic and reasoning circuits. That makes fear "far, far more powerful than reason," says neurobiologist Michael Fanselow of the University of California, Los Angeles. "It evolved as a mechanism to protect us from life-threatening situations, and from an evolutionary standpoint there's nothing more important than that."
Got broken into again! Sometime between 6pm on the 30th and the next morning. Took most of my & (Uncle) Gary's battery power tools, Gary's miter saw, most of our hardwood floor, and broke the main garage door hinge and the interior 4' custom door. Also went thru the china cabinet and the boxed stuff in the garage.. yay, what did they take we won't know about till we unpack? At least they left his tile saw.
Gary has an idea it's someone who lives near us. He bases this on the fact we have been taking our tools home with us every night - until the 30th, when both he and I left our battery power tools upstairs. I don't see who could see the house well enough to know this, but hopefully it won't be an issue once we move back in. Shayna will be in the house to bark, Putting up some cameras, inside and out, and adding more lighting to the front and back yard, motion activated.
Gotta get the neighbors to sing....
...
Every light in the house is on
The backyard's bright as the crack of dawn
The front walk looks like runway lights
It's kinda like noon in the dead of night...
He's looking entirely too old in some of these pictures :( I want him to stay a litte boy longer!
It was ALIENS!!!!!!!
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The only surviving copy of the 500-year-old map that first used the name America goes on permanent display this month at the Library of Congress, but even as it prepares for its debut, the 1507 Waldseemuller map remains a puzzle for researchers.
Why did the mapmaker name the territory America and then change his mind later? How was he able to draw South America so accurately? Why did he put a huge ocean west of America years before European explorers discovered the Pacific?
"That's the kind of conundrum, the question, that is still out there," said John Hebert, chief of the geography and map division of the Library of Congress.
The 12 sheets that make up the map, purchased from German Prince Johannes Waldburg-Wolfegg for $10 million in 2003, were mounted on Monday in a huge 6-foot by 9.5-foot (1.85 meter by 2.95 meter) display case machined from a single block of aluminum.
Map that named America is a puzzle for researchers - Yahoo! News
Neat new info!
Scientists on Monday announced the discovery of what appears to be the world's most intact dinosaur mummy: a 67-million-year-old plant-eater that contains fossilized bones and skin tissue, and possibly muscle and organs.
Preserved by a natural fluke of time and chemistry, the four-ton mummified hadrosaur, a duck-billed herbivore common to North America, could reshape the understanding of dinosaurs and their habitat, its finders say.
Rare Mummified Dinosaur Unearthed: Contains Skin, and Maybe Organs, Muscle
"So far, they have determined that the hadrosaur's hindquarters are 25 percent larger than previously thought for the species, meaning that it could run up to 28 mph -- faster than previously estimated. They have also discovered that the specimen's vertebrae, which museums commonly stack together, are actually spaced 10 millimeters apart. The result, Manning said, implies that scientists may have been underestimating the size of hadrosaurs and other dinosaurs."
This is hilarious :)
MADRID, Spain - Many Spaniards were so amused when their king told Venezuela's president to "shut up" they want to hear the words every time their phone rings.
About half a million people have downloaded a mobile phone ringtone featuring the phrase "Por que no te callas?" or "Why don't you shut up?" leading Madrid daily El Pais reported on its Web site Monday.
That's what King Juan Carlos told Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez during a heated confrontation at a summit in Chile last week.
...
The spat last week began when Chavez repeatedly called former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar a "fascist."
Spain's current prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, asked Chavez to be more diplomatic and show respect for other leaders. As Chavez repeatedly tried to interrupt, King Juan Carlos leaned forward and said: "Why don't you shut up?"
I can remember this being used in TV shows as the basis for the prosecutions case; I can imagine this will have pretty significant impact on quite a few case.
The science, called bullet lead analysis, was used by the FBI for 40 years in thousands of cases, and some of the people it helped put in jail may be innocent.
Lee Wayne Hunt says he's been behind bars for over 22 years and 6 months, and maintains he's an innocent man. "What I've said from the word get go that I ain't -- never killed nobody. I didn't have nothing to do with this," Hunt tells Kroft.
Hunt was convicted in 1986 of murdering two people in Fayetteville, N.C., based on the testimony of two questionable witnesses and what turned out to be erroneous ballistics testimony from the FBI lab.
For years, the FBI believed that lead in bullets had unique chemical signatures, and that by breaking them down and analyzing them, it was possible to match bullets, not only to a single batch of ammunition coming out of a factory, but to a single box of bullets. And that is what the FBI did in the case of Lee Wayne Hunt, tying a bullet fragment found where the murders took place to a box of bullets the prosecutors linked to Hunt.---
Tobin says the Quantico lab was the only place in the country that did bullet lead analysis, and the assertion that you could actually match a bullet fragment to a specific batch or box of bullets went unchallenged for 40 years -- until Tobin retired in 1998 and decided to do his own study, discovering that the basic premise had never actually been scientifically tested.
"FBI lab personnel testified that you could match these fragments to this bullet," Kroft remarks.
"Yes, that's correct," Tobin says.
Asked what he found out, Tobin tells Kroft, "It hadn't been based on science at all, but rather had been based on subjective belief for over four decades."
Reading the news today, I came across this bit, which by itself is pretty good news. It, if passed, would extend reporter's privilege to federal cases; such already exists for all states, including DC. It also, as a side effect, would include Bloggers, or anyone else involved in "the regular gathering, preparing, collecting, photographing, recording, writing, editing, reporting, or publishing of news or information that concerns local, national, or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination to the public".
Anyone regularly engaged in "journalism," which would seem to include some bloggers, wouldn't generally be forced to divulge confidential sources in federal cases under a bill approved Thursday by a U.S. Senate committee.
By a 15-2 vote, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee backed an amended version of the so-called Free Flow of Information Act. Sens. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) cast the "no" votes.
Bloggers land legal shield in Senate panel vote | Tech news blog - CNET News.com
But wait, there's more! You can't simply pass a new law these days; someone has to tie it to terrorism and child porn or child predators:
The Justice Department has argued that the language is far too broad and could endanger national security and criminal investigations. A Thursday Washington Post op-ed by U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald claims the bill would unwittingly protect Iraqi spies posing as journalists and child pornographers who swapped information via the Internet.
Give me a break. I'm sick and tired of everything being reduced to either terrorism or "protect the children!". I'd vote for Mickey Mouse for president at this point if I thought he'd govern thru wisdom, and not thru fear mongering.
